There was a particularly expensive hotel located in Hakata Ward, just off the Naka River and conveniently close to the Nakasu entertainment quarter. Once upon a time, it had been constantly packed with tourists and white collars on business trips. Currently, though, it served as the seat of leadership. Some months ago, the interim government of Japan had seized the building under eminent domain, and Yu recalled hearing that the administration’s chairman was also effectively the commander-in-chief of the military. So there was also some talk about utterly trivial nonsense, like designating the position with a brand new rank and title.
They talk about how this is all temporary until Japan recovers, but I’ll believe it when I see it, Yu thought.
He had more pressing matters than politics right now, anyway. Primarily the fact that he was under house arrest in one of the hotel’s vacant rooms. Granted, he could have left whenever he wanted—no one could stop him, after all—but Ein and Ijuin had been taken hostage. So he was pretty much stuck.
As for Natsuki, Leo hadn’t cared enough to bother with her. He’d shooed her away and told her in no uncertain terms to simply “get lost.” The boy was likely smart enough to know he couldn’t keep two Devicers tied down at once.
“How long will I be here?” Yu asked. The voice changer was still on, as was the entire Frame, two whole hours after the battle with Leo. The Mark III remained plated over his body.
The Frame could support its Devicer’s vital functions for up to a week of prolonged armorization, sustaining water and nutritional balance as well as body temperature, and even disposing of human waste. One could even sleep inside the armor. Yu had agreed to Leo’s terms on the condition that he wouldn’t have to remove the Mark III, and the boy had accepted.
Yu now found himself and the weapon of mass destruction sitting in a hotel room, supervised by a singular woman.
“Well,” the girl replied with difficulty, “they’re thinking about court-martialing you.” Kiriko Kaji had a distinct Kansai accent, and she seemed young for an officer. In her early twenties, maybe. “Some people wanna charge you with desertion and rebellion against ‘the lawful succession of the Japanese government and military,’ or...something. That’s just what I heard.”
“Do they?” Yu said, more sarcastically than as a real question. “They must have me mistaken for my predecessor.”
“B-But we can’t really know that unless you show us your face!” the female officer stammered.
She was clearly intimidated by Devicer Three’s presence, but Yu didn’t want to scare the girl. Careful this time to speak with less hostility, he asked, “I’m guessing you heard that from Devicer Seven?”
“Er! Uh, how’d you figure that out?”
“Had a feeling. He seems the type to plan for everything.”
Cunning was a good word to use to describe him. He was sharp. That was Yu’s impression of the boy called Leo Makishima.
“Tell me about it!” Officer Kaji exclaimed, leaning forward out of sheer exasperation. “That guy’s always mouthing off, and oh my god, he’s got no filter either. He’s drier than a desert and constantly arguing, I swear. If there’s a way he can twist your words to make his own life easier, he’ll find it. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever met a kid as bratty as him! I mean, I’m his superior officer! Don’t I deserve some respect?”
Yu had evidently touched a nerve. He hadn’t expected her to go off like that, but it made asking the next question easier.
“How’d a guy like that become the Mark VII’s Devicer? And you—you’re augmented, right?”
His current prison was, unfortunately, inaccessible via commlink. Yu had tried to connect to his friends several times to no avail, and the cause was his watchdog: Officer Kaji. Earlier, nanofactors had flowed out of the palm of her right hand, scattering across the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room. They were keeping Yu from contacting the outside world. The only explanation was that Kaji was nano-augmented, and this was her manifestation—the ability to jam nano-communication methods within a fixed space.
Yu had never met someone with such a unique nano-ability before. On the plus side, though, she was rather talkative. He tried to use the chance to dig up some intel, but he ended up getting a whole lot more.
“Do not get me started!” she snapped as if Yu had stepped on a landmine. “So me and Leo were in the same group of kids that got rounded up at this one nano-tech facility in Kansai, and around the same time, the elves there’d just gotten their hands on the Mark VII—they were supposed to do some tune-ups then send it over to Taiwan. But right then, all of Kansai got hit with this huge earthquake and everywhere started flooding.”
Suddenly, Yu understood. Leo and Kaji’s story was the same as his. As Ijuin’s. As Aliya’s.
“There were Anomalies and portal-keeps,” she went on, “and things were just crazy. Leo stole the Frame in the chaos, put it on, and—”
“And he used it better than anyone,” Yu interrupted.
“Right. Yeah. So anyway, the Defense Force recruited us before they retreated west, and now we’re here.”
The story was the same, right until the end. They had chosen the opposite path, the one leading to Fukuoka, while Yu’s had taken them to Nayuta.
He sighed. These weren’t the people he should have been fighting. But here they were, squabbling over a Replicant—over Ein—while the archmages were still out there.
“Where...are we? Where is...”
Ein grimaced. She awoke in a bed and was immediately assaulted by a splitting headache. For a second, it felt as if someone had driven a nail through her skull, but the feeling dissipated a moment later.
She glanced around the room, still lying down and not daring to test if she was well enough to sit up again. It was bleak, wherever it was, and it seemed to be a hangar of some kind. She could see military cars and mini trucks occupying the space, and then she noticed that what she lay on wasn’t a bed meant for sleeping. It was a stretcher for transporting patients. She deduced she must have been being moved somewhere.
The final thing she noticed was the young boy with eyes like daggers.
“You’re up,” he said plainly.
“Where is Ijuin, boy called Leo?” Ein asked arduously.
“Relax. Left him at the hospital. I’m not after him.”
“And the Devicers? Of the Mark III and VI?”
Leo ignored her. He knew discretion. It was clear to Ein that he was intelligent and shrewd beyond his years, but she could tell this wasn’t the wiliness of wisdom or rationality. It was younger, and it came with all the folly that youth did.
“Leo,” she said, “I’m afraid to tell you that you and I are not meant for one another. We are incompatible. I cannot bestow either the Holy Shroud or the Gospel Code to you as a comrade must.”
Leo grunted.
“Taking me prisoner will gain you nothing,” Ein stated.
“Sure it will,” said Leo. “All I need is the upgrade for my Asura Frame. Your opinion, your ideals, and even your body don’t matter to me.”
He glanced at a truck parked nearby. Ein recognized the thing in the trailer bed.
It was a sleeper pod. The very same device Ein had slumbered within at Maizuru, floating for so long in a bath of vital fluid. Only in battle did her awareness flicker dimly awake inside it, just enough to allow her to transmit the Gospel Code to the first Devicer Three. To the soldiers who fought the Anomaly invasion in eastern Russia across the Sea of Japan.
“What I need isn’t an elf with a god complex.” A shadow loomed behind Leo’s eyes. “It’s a tool.”