“Tell me! What happened to her?!” Sousuke’s voice was straining as he lost his temper and grabbed her by the shoulders. Tessa looked shocked for a second before her expression turned a mix of regretful and indignant. At last, he said, “I’m sorry, Colonel. I’m just... confused.”
“It’s all right,” Tessa said. “I feel the same way.”
“I ran into Leonard before I came here,” Sousuke told them next. “He seems to know something. He said that Chidori would go to the bottom floor even if he didn’t interfere... and meet a spirit.”
“I see. He must have been quite confident, then...”
“About what?”
“That this would happen to her,” Tessa clarified. “Although I couldn’t have predicted it, for reasons that are still hard for me to explain: a sort of ‘shadow’ of the TAROS’s original test subject has been gestating over time in that facility’s core. Mental waves passing between future and past via the omni-sphere created a crystallized consciousness. The crystal itself is the true ‘Whispering.’
“It’s like the relay antenna broadcasting our knowledge to us in the present,” she tried to explain further. “I came to these ruins in order to destroy it. I thought that with the Whispering gone, we could stop the flow of black technology.”
“Leonard said Chidori was the Whispering,” Sousuke told her.
“She is now,” Tessa agreed. “I don’t know how it happened or what powers are at play... Or why it chose her...”
Perhaps because he’d been hearing so much fantastical nonsense lately, Sousuke understood what Tessa meant without much difficulty. He didn’t understand the precise mechanisms involved, but he had an idea of what had happened to Kaname now. “Her mind’s been taken over?” he asked. “By the Whispering?”
Tessa neither confirmed nor denied this theory. She just kept walking in front of him, trembling as she squeezed the next words out of her throat. “I’m sorry...” Her tone was tormented, full of regret, mortification, and a terrible sense of guilt. “I didn’t realize,” she told them wretchedly. “If I’d known this would happen, I would have kept her away at all costs... this is all my fault.”
Sousuke couldn’t find it in him to comfort her. You think that would have helped? he thought bitterly. You already let her go so easily...
He was doing everything he could to keep himself from laying into Tessa. She must have picked up on his mood because she didn’t say anything more, being fully aware that excuses and apologies couldn’t take back what had already happened.
Perhaps unable to bear the awkward silence, Lemon was the one to comfort her. “It’s not, Testarossa-san. I’m the one who insisted on coming with you,” he added, “and none of us could have expected this outcome.”
“Thank you,” Tessa said emptily. “But there’s no taking it back...”
I’m the worst, Sousuke thought. Why didn’t I encourage her? Why couldn’t I tell her, “it isn’t your fault,” the way Lemon did? I’ve made more than my share of mistakes, so why can’t I let this go?
I know why, he thought gloomily. It’s because it’s about her. Despite all my improved understanding, I still can’t give up my fixation.
Moving through the dark corridor, Sousuke whispered too quietly for anyone to hear, “Chidori...” I almost had you, he thought regretfully. If I manage to see you again, what will I have to do?
Kalinin received a transmission.
“This is Alpha Leader. Three enemies sighted in region F3: two men, one woman. We traded fire, but lost sight of them. No dead. One light injury. Continuing pursuit.”
That was the report from his subordinates, who had finally arrived on the bottom floor just as Sousuke and the others were escaping. “One woman” was probably a reference to Teletha Testarossa.
“Continue pursuit, but remain cautious,” Kalinin ordered. “All you have to do is slow them down. Don’t kill the woman, if possible. She has valuable information.”
“Alpha, roger.” The responding voice was interspersed with gunshots as it cut off.
Even with a relay station, the signal was bad. Moving squads of a few dozen men around an underground labyrinth was backbreaking work, and until just recently, the soldiers’ confusion had made it difficult for them to proceed to the lowest floor.
It was because of that bizarre déjà vu, of course. It hasn’t driven us all mad, at least, but it throws a significant wrench into communication and coordination, Kalinin thought. Some were forced to repeat orders multiple times, while others found it difficult to explain their current location and status. The confusion became more frequent the further in they went. In the end, a pair of teams had almost engaged in friendly fire, with only Kalinin’s warning beforehand allowing them to avert catastrophe.
That sense of déjà vu had just recently lifted.
Something strange has happened down there, Kalinin intuited in a corner of his mind, remembering what Leonard had told him previously. Chidori Kaname had survived the helicopter crash, arrived on the bottom floor under her own power, and there, guided by destiny of some kind, she and the Whispering—
No, don’t think about it, he told himself. All that mattered was that their teams could move unhindered now.
Their vanguard, Alpha Team, seemed to have allowed Sousuke and the others to escape. But Kalinin had already placed another team nearby the exit from the basement floor. No matter how incredible his skills might be, Sousuke couldn’t escape on his own, and Kalinin’s subordinates would shoot him to death without hesitation. If Teletha Testarossa tried to resist, she’d suffer the same end.
Is it all right to let them die? Kalinin asked himself, the question flitting through his mind for the umpteenth time. Don’t worry about it, he told himself sternly. If they die here, they die here. The hesitance in his mind disappeared, and he even managed to convince himself that it was for the best.
During the attack on Merida Island, he’d decided not to delete the “worst case scenario” resupply point data he’d secretly prepared in the de Danaan’s databanks. He’d still had his doubts then, even after Leonard’s premonition about the solar flares came true. The de Danaan had managed to retrieve important supplies and survive because of his hesitation in that moment.
But now that he’d committed himself to achieving Leonard’s objective, he wouldn’t show them an inch of mercy. The sense of unease that had haunted Andrey Kalinin for so long—that the world they lived in was somehow wrong—he felt keenly, and it was stronger than ever now. So, no matter what happened, from now on, he had to purge with great prejudice those who stood in the way of that objective. Even if they were his former allies.
And Sousuke... you’re no exception, he thought. If it’s your destiny to die now, then so be it. But, if it’s not—and if you mean to try and stop me—I hope you’re prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.
“Halt!” a subordinate nearby shouted, taking aim at the man and woman who had just become visible through the lingering dust and darkness: they were Leonard Testarossa and Chidori Kaname.
“Hold your fire,” Kalinin ordered. He didn’t have to try hard to stop the mercenary; once the two figures were clearly in view, the man quickly lowered his gun. Leonard was in his AS operator’s uniform and Kaname was in a crimson coat, walking towards them with steady steps. They appeared to have met up successfully.