Mathias stayed where he was. He couldn’t move.
“I want us to talk,” he tried.
Rita said nothing in response. But nor did she cut him down.
“I…”
It was cold, and yet Mathias was covered in sweat.
“I wanted to help you. You had been left here, in Quinta. I thought I could help get you to the interior. For that, I needed to leave Fuerth and come─”
“I know,” she cut him off. “That man told me.”
“Then─”
“You said you came to help me?”
“I…”
“Were you trying to help me when you killed Duccio?”
The scene from half a year ago replayed itself in his head. The flash of the muzzle, the boy soldier’s head exploding, all of it dissolving into a downpour.
“No… That was an accident. I hadn’t meant to kill him.”
His voice echoed amidst the pillars, the water, the walls, the ceiling. It was as though countless versions of himself were all speaking at once.
Rita opened her mouth, abruptly asking, “Am I so precious? For whom?”
Surprisingly, there was no sign of anger in her eyes. Nor sorrow. They were hollow, devoid of any message.
Mathias was unnerved, but responded, “You are. Of course you are…”
To me.
It hit him before he finished. He realized what Rita was trying to say.
Everything he thought he’d done to help her, to rescue her, he’d done for himself. It was to see her again, and nothing more, that he’d returned to Quinta.
If he had rescued her… That would have been nothing more, too. It wasn’t for humanity’s benefit that he’d tried to save her, to say the least.
Rita appeared to share the realization. She made a slight nod, her eyes still hollow. “I appreciate the sentiment. But it’s misguided. It’s wrong to consider your own happiness and nothing else.”
Mathias had assumed the boy soldier’s death had triggered Rita’s rampage. That a desire for revenge had pushed her to initiate such extreme policing measures.
But the truth wasn’t so clear-cut.
As the cause of Mathias’ selfish behavior and the ensuing tragedy, perhaps she was feeling untoward guilt. Perhaps “eradicating all selfishness” had become her obsession for that reason.
Because Rita did not forgive selfishness.
She’d always been that way, in fact. She’d forsworn her own father, the man who’d left his daughter behind and killed himself in order to escape it all.
How had Mathias forgotten? It amazed him.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I should never have come here. It was a mistake to even think about it. I should have stayed in Fuerth, prayed for your safety, and searched for something I could do from there. I accept that.”
“If you believe it, disband the resistance. Turn yourselves in.”
“We won’t.” Mathias shook his head. None of this altered what he needed to do. “I was wrong, but I don’t think what you’re doing now is exactly right, either. If I’m the one who started this, then I’m the one who ought to put an end to your rampage. To atone for my own actions.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong.” She drew her second blade and pointed it at him. “You see, I’ve decided to build a better world. I’ll make this a place where nothing like that happens. And I’ll do whatever I must.”
“You’re wrong to keep everyone imprisoned in such a dangerous place. You have to try to establish contact with the interior and begin evacuating.”
“They abandoned us.”
“That’s not true. They just don’t know the situation here.”
“Why so sure?”
More than half a year had passed since Mathias’ departure from Fuerth. He could hardly claim he knew how things stood in the interior.
“Either way,” he insisted, “the district can’t live on like this forever, completely isolated. There’s a limit to how much food you can get from the Night Harvest.”
“That’s not all we’re doing. We’ve started cultivating, and also, inside the wall─”
“How many people will it support, for how long?”
Mathias recalled what he’d been through only hours earlier. Attacked by a Titan, he’d sought refuge in a river only to be captured. He would have been eaten alive if not for Bernhardt.
“Forget cultivating anything outside the wall. I was just attacked by an aberrant Titan, not far from town. Does your ‘better world’ force people into facing that kind of danger?”
“Sorry, I’m getting bored.”
The voice came not from ahead, but from behind Mathias.
It was accompanied by the hiss of compressed gas. Something raced past his right side, below his armpit, and straight towards Rita.
She swung her blade. A high clang, followed by a low thud. A blackish object struck the wall and fell onto the narrow path. It was an anchor from the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. The wire led back past Mathias.
Amanda.
“Run,” she said.
“But─” Mathias tried to turn around, but his clothes were yanked at his left shoulder. He lost his balance and began to lurch towards the pool of water. “Wha…?”
It had been Amanda. The stone wall, Rita, Amanda─they were all receding even as the two women stood with weapons drawn. Amanda reeled in her anchor and fired her other one. She charged as if to chase after it.
That was the last thing Mathias saw.
He hit the reservoir back first. His heart froze.
It was cold, much colder than the midnight stream.
He was sinking. It was dark. He couldn’t make anything out, not even which way was up and which down. It felt as though he was being swallowed alive by some black, amorphous monster.
At any other time, he would have panicked. But right now, his safety was the last thing on his mind. It hardly mattered whether he lived or died.
What mattered was Rita.
Her heart had grown as cold and hard as ice. Thawing it would be no simple matter. The chances of persuading her here were almost nonexistent.
But he couldn’t let time take its course. Every day, numerous residents were being made to take part in the Night Harvest. They lived under strict surveillance terrified of informants.
No, he had no choice but to take definite action.
First he had to end Rita’s dominion over Quinta.
By force.
Without his realizing it, Mathias had floated back to the surface. His face emerged from the water.
Up ahead, Rita and Amanda were locked in combat.
The latter seemed more proficient with the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. While she deployed her blade with one hand, she used her other to repeatedly launch and reel in her anchors. She was firing them whenever even a little space opened, taking advantage of her opponent’s distraction to step in and strike with her blade.
Meanwhile, Rita seemed adept at swordplay, employing two blades with precision to deflect Amanda’s attacks in the nick of time.
“There are four exits, leave using the farthest!” Amanda said, holding her blade before her face and parrying Rita’s blow.
Four exits. Meaning there would be stairs leading aboveground at each of the underground reservoir’s four corners. He just needed to make for one.
“Got it!”
He wouldn’t be of any use, even if he did try to help. And he wasn’t puerile enough to insist on fleeing together. Amanda might defeat Rita and manage to escape. On the contrary, she might fall into Rita’s hands. In that case…he’d push Bernhardt into fulfilling his role sooner.
All he could do was pray neither of them sustained severe injuries.
Pressing her sword in against her opponent’s, Rita abruptly released the blade from its hilt. The freed blade sailed into the air while Amanda’s scythed above Rita’s head. By then Rita had already swung her hand down and fixed the hilt to a new blade. She brought it up in a sweeping arc.
Amanda jumped back to evade the blow. Then came the sound of an anchor firing.
Mathias had a bad feeling about it…
He plunged his arms through the water, propelling himself forwards and ducking his head below the surface. Anchor and wire whistled overhead. They pierced behind him, formed bubbles, and were reeled back in immediately.
Rita had aimed for him, not Amanda.
Mathias surfaced for air.
“I’ll find you, even if you run,” Rita warned, still facing forward.
Mathias didn’t respond, this time diving as far as he could into the water. He began to swim toward the wall at the opposite side from where Rita and Amanda stood.
It was difficult. He didn’t really know how to swim. But he kept going, stifling his desire to breathe. It was dark, after all. From above Rita wouldn’t be able to tell where he was.
No sooner than he thought this, an anchor and wire sliced diagonally past him. She’d fired again. Could she guess his approximate position, then, even without seeing him?
He couldn’t hold his breath any longer.
His fingers found something hard and slimy. It had to be one of the columns. Disregarding the unpleasant sensation, and thanking his good luck, Mathias traced his way to the far side and swam up to the surface.
Poking out his head, he took a gasping breath. The stone column acted as a shield so he didn’t need to worry about a direct line of fire.
He could hear metal clashing against metal. The fight continued.
He didn’t even try to look their way.
He took another big gulp of air then, for the second time, plunged deep. He repeated the process of swimming to a pillar and raising his head out of the water.
I’ll find you, even if you run, Rita’s words replayed themselves in his head.
You’re wrong, Mathias argued against the voice. I’m the one who’ll find you.
He cut through half of Quinta, keeping to the backstreets wherever possible. His hair and clothes were all but dry by the time he finally arrived at the bazaar.
The bookstore was locked, but one of his comrades let him in as soon as he’d knocked and given the password. When Mathias proceeded towards the back, he saw that most of the resistance leaders were there. The store’s owner, Derek, must have called an emergency meeting as soon as he’d received word of Bernhardt’s rescue. Mathias saw Jodi for the first time since she’d handed him the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment by the gate.
Bernhardt was there too, sitting in the center and drinking warm tea like he owned the place. His handcuffs hadn’t been removed, but the chain linking his wrists had been severed. He’d bathed and changed into clean clothes; he seemed to be in high spirits.