Black Bullet - Volume 6 - Chapter 3.06

6

“What?!”

The blanket flew off his body as he rose, causing some of the other detectives to give him questioning stares. Inspector Shigetoku Tadashima paid them no mind as he pressed his phone against his ear. On the other end of the line, he could hear Yoshikawa, one of his detectives, blabber into the phone, his obvious excitement causing his tongue to trip over itself.

“I said Miori Shiba, daughter of the president of Shiba Heavy Weapons, has gone missing. I was staking out the front gate, and the limousine she always uses came out the exit. I tailed it. It stopped in front of Magata High School, where she goes for class. So I waited for a while, but no Miori came out. I took a peek into the limo’s interior, and that’s when I realized someone pulled the wool over my eyes. Then I—”

Tadashima ended the call before his coworker could finish, grabbed his jacket from the desk corner it was slumped over, and leapt out of the station’s nap room, putting his jacket on as he stormed down the hall.

It had to be Rentaro Satomi. But what was he doing, taking the president’s daughter with him? Unless they knew why, searching the city would be fruitless…

“Hey, wait a minute, please!”

Turning toward the strained voice behind him, he found a square-shouldered female officer approaching him, standing tall as she inserted herself between Tadashima and the exit ahead.

“How long have you gone without any sleep, sir? You should really take a longer break first.”

“The suspect’s not gonna wait until I’m done napping!”

“You’re going to wreck your health! You aren’t that young anymore.”

“If this is all it takes to wreck my health, I’m not cut out to be a detective, anyway!”

He tried to push off the officer, already taken aback by his threatening tone, when something occurred to him. He took a closer look at her face.

“Hey, Shiba Heavy Weapons helps the force out a lot, too, right?”

The inspector’s sudden question further surprised the newcomer. “Y-yes,” she managed to reply, rubbing her chin as she thought it over. “They supply us with weaponry; they take on some of the criminal-science work for us…ballistics analysis, blood testing, DNA… That’s all part of their work—”

“That’s it!”

“Huh?”

“Great. Good job, Officer! The Shiba Heavy Weapons HQ building. Get me as much backup as we got available. I’m going on ahead.”

Tadashima provided as much appreciation as he could for the glassy-eyed officer, then spun in place and flew out of Magata Station.

Rentaro Satomi and his gang, for whatever reason, had their sights on a truck loaded with Gastrea. Whatever they picked up from that, they had to be analyzing it somewhere. Which made the theory that they were running around with some kind of concrete goal in mind seem even more plausible for him now.

Tadashima turned the key in his vehicle, then pushed down as hard as he could on the accelerator.

Test fluid flowed through a lab-room flask as Miori expertly operated the analysis machine. Watching off to the side, Rentaro realized his amateur knowledge gave him no clue how far along in the process she was. He didn’t have much else to do, so he headed for the stairway, figuring he might as well gain an understanding of the building’s setup while he was there.

Checking the position of the emergency exits, he opened the metal door and started climbing the dimly lit stairwell. The rhythmic tapping of his soles against the flat stone helped energize his thought process.

He had already been targeted once by Hummingbird. The hideout they took such great pains to keep safe was now discovered. The enemy, whoever it was, was damn talented at sniffing him out. For all he knew, their gnarled hands were circling themselves around his neck at this very minute—

This is stupid.

Shaking off his paranoid delusions, he examined the plate on the wall and realized he was on the first floor. He decided to turn around, not wanting to run into those security guards again—and just as he did, he stopped at what sounded like an explosion.

A gunshot. A sound familiar enough to understand immediately.

Cold metal hit his ear as he placed it against the emergency-exit door. Another gunshot from the other side. This time, he could tell it was a small-caliber, high-speed round. That pretty much IDed the culprit. An assault rifle.

The gunshots continued off and on, followed by the sound of glass shattering. Then the sounds of scuffling, interspersed with screaming. Then, complete silence.

His palms coated with sweat, Rentaro slowly, soundlessly, cracked open the door. The thick stench of blood through it made his body shiver. Summoning up his resolve, he opened it all the way—only to groan at what he saw.

“What the hell…?”

The first thing Rentaro could see was a security soldier slumped on the ground, as if taking a quick siesta. But some manner of bladed weapon had cut a deep gash in his neck, the initial spray from which was now exhibited in all its horrific glory on a nearby modern-art canvas.

The lobby’s chairs and desks were upturned. There was evidence of corpses being dragged around, as well as spent casings and the like. That, and a wide selection of dead security, the number of which would’ve taken a conscious effort to count. Some had their necks snapped by force, their legs bent in unnatural directions. Others had one or more limbs amputated.

The lights had been knocked out on this floor, except for a night-light on a lone counter, creating a sort of spotlight effect on the front-desk attendant.

His back was turned to Rentaro. Looking closer, there was a puddle of dark liquid at his feet, as if he had just had an accident.

Rentaro sidled around, Beretta in hand, toward the chair. The man was staring straight up, his neck slashed from ear to ear. His wide-open eyes were frozen for all time in a gaze of terror.

He checked for a pulse. No dice.

“Good God…”

Something like twenty security guards, and they were annihilated?

Rentaro’s throat was dry. He tried to swallow his nerves, trying to keep his head on straight. Then he heard another scream from afar, mixed in with rifle fire. Looking toward the front lawn spread out across the Shiba Heavy Weapons entrance, he saw a lone surviving guard swinging his rifle around, firing blindly. Shell shock, no doubt.

“Hey!”

The guard took notice, unfortunately.

“Eeeyaaahh!!” he shouted as he turned the gun on him. Rentaro ducked under the front desk and covered his ears.

He didn’t have to wait long. The glass covering the entrance shattered, as did the lone light fixture still illuminating the lobby. The darkness grew thicker.

“Hold your fire! I’m friendly!”

He risked waving his hand above the desk. Nothing. Then he looked up. The shooter, finally coming to his senses, ran up to him.

“H-help! Help me!”

“What happened?”

The guard had both hands latched on to his headgear, clearly in pain.

“I don’t know! I looked at my buddy and he was hanging in midair. His, his head was stabbed. There was blood spraying everywhere. And then I just… I have no idea.”

“What the hell’s that mean…?!” Rentaro shouted.

“Don’t ask me, man! That’s what I wanna know!”

Sensing that panic was about to set in again, Rentaro put both hands on the guard’s shoulders to calm him. In his clutches, the guard explained that he found one of his coworkers run through with a knife and with a broken neck in a spot where nobody else was in sight—as if killed by an invisible man.

It was extremely hard for anyone sane to believe. If it weren’t for the grisly scene laid out before them—the sheer scope of it—Rentaro would have doubted the guard’s current mental state.

This was that group again. The one pursuing him. They had released their grim reaper yet another time.

Rentaro had already taken care of Hummingbird, the killer of Kenji Houbara. Which meant there were two left…

He already knew the sniper Dark Stalker, aka Yuga Mitsugi, had murdered Giichi Ebihara. This assassin still had something up his sleeve, he sensed—but was he the type who could break people’s necks with his bare hands?

Meanwhile, the killer of Saya Takamura was still at large. Was that person the one behind this?

“I’m gonna get Miori out of this building. That’s the rear entrance back there, right?”

The guard made a face like he just realized the existence of the rear gate for the first time. He made a break for it.

“Whoa! Wait a sec!”

“Get outta here!” the guard shouted behind his back as he ran. “I can’t spend another minute in this hellhole!”

Then something Rentaro found hard to believe happened.

As he ran, from out of thin air, a large knife stabbed through the guard’s exoskeleton and right out the other side. There was a sort of shhkk sound, and then his body was lifted off the ground.

“Ga…aaa…!”

Rentaro stood bolt upright as he witnessed the otherworldly spectacle. What on…?

There was nothing but utterly empty space where the knife had come from. It was like the weapon had leapt up and plunged itself into his chest on its own volition. Did a ghost stab him or something?

“You…monster…!”

The guard writhed violently in midair, kicking at his adversary. Then Rentaro spotted it: a sort of waving of the air, a bit like the noise seen in a poor digital TV signal. The air flickered, and he could see human-shaped visual garbage flicker in and out of sight.

He was there. Someone had stabbed him after all. A pretty large someone, at that.

Could this be—?

Rentaro could think of only one property of physics that could explain this unexplainable sight—and one type of equipment that could make it possible.

“Optical camo…?”

Whispering it to himself didn’t make it any easier to believe.

The ability to bend the light around an object, making it melt into the background. The classic “invisible person,” but something that still went beyond the framework of modern science.

And did this invisible giant lie in ambush there, waiting for his poor victim to run blindly for the rear exit? This was the man who destroyed all this military tech, the pride of Shiba Heavy Weapons?

The guard, still aloft, vomited a round of dark blood, then stopped moving. Tossing the body aside, the invisible man—Rentaro sensed—turned his eyes toward him. Murderous intent radiated from the space.

Rentaro’s breathing grew short and shallow. It was too dangerous to stay there. Using the toe of his shoe, he kicked a rifle on the floor up into his hands, flipping the switch to full-auto mode and firing. It spat out an impressive amount of flash as it sprayed bullets across the wall of a nearby hallway with an ear-piercing roar.

But it was out of ammo in two seconds. Time to run.

Rentaro threw down the weapon and went back down the way he came, half running, half lunging for the stairwell. At the bottom, he tackled the B3 door open.

Hotaru and Miori, looking at a piece of paper, turned to him.

“Satomi, we’ve got the analysis results.”

“The enemy’s here,” he panted. “It’s bad.”

Hotaru narrowed her eyes. “Where?”

“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here.” Rentaro turned. “Miori, that VR training space is still two floors down from here, right? I need to use it.”

“A VR training space?”

“Yeah,” he replied to Hotaru’s doubtful query. “This, ah, enormous cube-shaped space that we use as a battle simulator. We’ll take the guy on in there.”

It was a curt explanation, but one good enough for Hotaru. She nodded. He turned toward Miori again.

“The enemy’s after all three of us. You go to some other room and run the simulator for me. Shut off the door completely so no one can get in.”

“All right. I just explained the results to Hotaru. She’ll give you the story once we’re clear.”

“Got it.”

Rentaro pushed the elevator button, and then set his hand on a gracefully hesitant Miori’s shoulder.

“I really hope you don’t have to die, Satomi dear,” she said in reply.

“Already happened once, apparently. Don’t really feel like having it happen again.”

He nodded at her, conveying his resolve and thanks at the same time. The door closed.

“Let’s go, Hotaru.”

With new determination, Rentaro began to run. Taking three steps at a time as he tore downstairs, he checked the nameplate by the fifth underground floor’s entrance and jumped inside.

Beyond the doorway was a locker room with two Shiba-branded assault rifles. Rentaro grabbed them both and tossed one to Hotaru. Next, he pushed open a nearby door that had a card reader mounted to one side.

Although he was expecting it, the brightness made him raise up his arm in self-defense.

It was a clear white space, so white that it was hard to tell the walls from the floor. It was completely empty, not a speck of dust at their feet. It was surreal, like nothing of this world—and, to someone experiencing it for the first time, a jaw-dropping experience.

Hotaru gingerly took a step forward. The result was enough to convince her the floor was really there, but stupefaction was still written all over her face. Rentaro beckoned her over.

As they walked across the vast cavern, the white began to twist and turn before them. Rentaro felt a sharp sense of dizziness for an instant, then the view around him changed 180 degrees.

It was now dark, humid, and musty. Rentaro could smell dust, and no light came in through the windows, which were framed by bare wood. The scent of rust and decomposing forest matter indicated this “building” had been abandoned for a while.

They were inside a dark, high-ceilinged space. Some kind of storage facility.

“Wh-what’s this?” a wary Hotaru asked.

“The name of the stage is ‘the warehouse,’” Rentaro replied as calmly as possible. “That’s the cool part about VR battle training. You can change the entire combat environment at the push of a button.”

Presumably this stage was Miori’s decision.

“This is…virtual?” Hotaru asked as she curiously poked at a nearby storage crate. Beside her, Rentaro took a penlight out from his hip pocket and swung it around. Large piles of square crates sprung out from the darkness, carelessly layered in haphazard stacks or piles, all covered in a fine coating of dust.

The space seemed resentful of being awoken from its slumber; the only environmental lighting was slight and came from the opposite wall, a surprisingly long distance away. The chamber itself was about as large as a decent-size factory.

Rentaro placed his rifle on top of a nearby crate, deploying its bipod for stability as he aimed at the door they had arrived through. He peered into the dot sight as he gave Hotaru a quick rundown of how to operate the rifle.

“All right. So the enemy’s gonna open this door and run through. He’s using optical camo, so expect him to be invisible. Once it opens, start firing, whether you see anything or not.”

“Gotcha.”

Through the gunsight, Rentaro could see a pale red dot in the center of his view, jiggling to and fro in response to his pinpoint adjustments.

After a few moments, there was a faint clanging sound. The door was being pushed from the other side.

Rentaro’s pulse raced. He sharpened the corners of his eyes, put his finger on the trigger, and pushed down enough to eliminate the play on it. The door opened enough to be slightly ajar.

“Hotaru!”

Full-auto fire ensued. The door was instantly pockmarked with holes, the blinding flash and concussive noise continuing on for what felt like eons. Eternity didn’t last long, however, because the ammo was soon exhausted. A small moment of silence, and then a figure fell forward, onto the warehouse floor, the now unhinged door doing little to break his fall.

Rentaro gave a hand signal to his partner, took out his handgun, and approached. Gradually, he could see a silhouette via the glare behind him—a fully visible one. Either he’d turned off his optical camo or it was destroyed in the barrage.

Rentaro went up to the body, giving it a slight nudge with his foot. No response. Taking that as a cue, Rentaro crouched down and turned the body over. Then he froze.

“It’s not the guy, Hotaru,” Rentaro shouted behind him. “We’ve still got an active hostile!”

The man, presumably in his early thirties and dressed in nothing but a shirt and his boxers, was the security guard who lost his life just a moment ago. The enemy threw the corpse through the door to attract their fire.

“—I’ve been looking for you, ‘New Humanity.’ My name is Swordtail.”

The voice came from behind.

Rentaro turned around just in time to see a knife, floating in the air, descending rapidly upon him.

“Shi—”

Rentaro immediately pictured it—the knife piercing deep into his chest cavity and skewering his heart. But before it became reality, there was a gunshot. It tinged against the knife, sending it across the floor.

Support fire from Hotaru. Rentaro crouched down as she continued the salvo without any rest, firing blindly with both hands.

The bullets carved the warehouse’s walls, but they were just a moment too late. The enemy’s ghostly form had vanished again.

Hotaru grabbed on to Rentaro. Before he could ask why, he felt another powerful acceleration, as if being blown away by an explosion. The girl, reasoning it was too dangerous to remain there, had leapt upward.

“How the hell’re we gonna beat that?!”

“I’m trying to think of something, all right?!”

The two landed in the central area of the warehouse, Rentaro on Hotaru’s back.

“You murdered Saya Takamura, didn’t you?!” he shouted into the unfathomable darkness.

“Hohh,” a voice echoed across the expansive warehouse space, its position impossible to detect. “You’ve dug yourself in that deep and you’re still breathing, huh? No wonder the group’s running itself ragged trying to find you.”

As he spoke, Rentaro’s mind raced for a potential solution. His enemy was invisible, and yet his knife wasn’t. His invisibility was the result of some kind of cloak or vest, perhaps, but whenever he attacked, maybe that meant his weapon had to be exposed for that one moment before the strike.

And it wasn’t like the camo could nullify his footsteps or sense of presence. If the enemy didn’t have any close-quarters weaponry besides that knife, Rentaro could always use his five senses to figure out where he was. If there was a handgun or something on his person, though, that complicated things.

But who is this Swordtail guy, anyway…?

“Lemme guess what you’re thinking right now. It’s something like How’s he able to camouflage his entire body? Right?”

Rentaro’s mouth snapped shut.

“You know how Dark Stalker has a copy of Sumire Muroto’s 21-Form Varanium Artificial Eye. Hummingbird had an upgraded clone of Ain Rand’s Shenfield tech. Meanwhile, I’m installed with something called the ‘Marriott injection,’ something originally meant for mechanized infantry. My nanomaterial-infused skin can bend the light around it at will. It’s the most powerful skill a robot soldier can have, and Arthur Zanuck made it practical for real-life use.”

“Wha—?!”

Arthur Zanuck… He’d heard that name before. One of the so-called Four Sages alongside Sumire. So Swordtail was another one of their skill mimickers… But what did that mean? Whoever was behind the New World Creation Project, what were they trying to—?

Amid the mazelike piles of metal containers strewn all over the place, Rentaro turned his attention left and right, guard ever on the ready. Nobody seemed to be nearby. The sound drained itself from the shabby warehouse, and he felt completely alone. Every cell of his skin was attuned like radar, ready to pick up so much as a pin dropping.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Nice try.”

The human hand that came out of the darkness set a gun to rest comfortably against Rentaro’s temple.

Rentaro reacted. Just before the trigger was pulled, he brushed the gun away and darted his head to the side. There was a loud crack from the gun, then a rush of heat as the bullet grazed his temple.

Rentaro dropped to the floor, executed a forward roll, then got right back on his feet. He drew his gun on the enemy, but he was already gone.

“Don’t you know about me? You would if you’d done your research.”

A half-pitying, half-chiding voice sounded off, this time in point-blank range of his ears. Rentaro was taken by surprise—it was exactly like before, except this time the point of the gun was right at his back.

“You can try as many times as you want. But you can’t win.”

But there, faster than the naked eye could see, Hotaru plowed in.

“Nrh!”

Turning around, Rentaro found that Hotaru had deftly made her way to the giant man’s hand, using her entire body to squeeze the gun out of it. The optical camo flickered out—perhaps not as effective when grappling with a foe like this—revealing an eerily large man in a coat. Rentaro could hear his muscles creaking, screaming for help, all the way from his vantage point.

“God damn—”

But their enemy was still up to the task. His muscles grated one another as he jerked his wrist back, not caring if he dislocated it or not, and shook Hotaru off. Hotaru slammed against the ground back-first. Swordtail drew his gun on her.

By the time Rentaro thought Oh crap, his body was already running, all but slamming into her. As he did, two gunshots overlapped each other. Pain wrenched his back. He gritted his teeth.

Hotaru, held down on the ground, opened her eyes wide in surprise, her eyes shaking. “Rentaro…! What are you—?”

The blood dripping out the back of his school uniform fell upon Hotaru’s face. She shook it off in disbelief and screamed.

“You’re so stupid! I can regenerate myself at will! You didn’t have to—”

“—Shut up!”

Hotaru instantly fell silent.

“I really don’t like that attitude of yours.”

“Stop it! You’re gonna die!”

Swordtail fired another flurry of bullets. They all struck home on his back.

“Gaaaaaahh!!”

Hotaru shook her head back and forth again. “Stop! Please, just stop!” she barely managed to whisper, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“At least let me protect my partner this time!”

“It’s over, kid,” came a voice from behind. There was no way to instantly react to it. The end was near. Rentaro’s body tightened, anticipating the heat from the bullets coming the next instant.

Then he was tossed aside without warning.

Gunshots. Blood sprayed from Hotaru’s left breast, right on the heart. For a moment, Rentaro didn’t realize what had happened.

But Hotaru was dead. The moment he realized it, rage seared him from head to toe.

“You piece of—”

He couldn’t afford to have the enemy go invisible again. He got up, spewing blood, and with all his might, planted his feet on the ground and calmed himself. A cartridge spat itself out of his leg, spinning, and propelled his foot upward.

Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 14—

“Inzen Genmeika!”

The midlevel kick, launched from a low, near-crouching position, found its mark. It hit cleanly on the chest area of the giant, a look of shock burned onto his face.

The force seemed to blow the air in all directions, the propulsion from Rentaro’s leg sending the man flying like so many dead leaves in autumn. He collided with a stack of crates in the center of the room, kicking up plumes of dust as the collapsing pile tumbled over his body.

“Gnh!”

Rentaro’s response was to vomit a thick splatter of blood across the floor. Firing a cartridge with open wounds on his body succeeded in ravaging all his injuries. But he could still move. And if his Tendo Martial Arts skills—further powered up by the jet turbine–like cartridges in his leg—found their target, it would be the same as being struck by a semitruck at full speed. In fact, it was a miracle his adversary’s limbs didn’t get blown off.

As he smelled something pungent among the dust, Rentaro used his free hand to cover his mouth so he didn’t breathe it in. A moment later, he spotted Swordtail’s brown coat. He was lying facedown, surrounded by a carpet of wood splinters, and his coat was the only part visible.

Rentaro went up to his enemy’s feet and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger on his Beretta twice. If the man was playing possum, well, now he wasn’t.

The bullets shredded the coat, sending fabric fibers flying, but there was no blood.

Something was off. Rentaro nudged at the coat with his fingertips, then decided to simply rip it off.

Before he could even consciously acknowledge surprise, his body had already planted itself against a nearby crate. Gingerly daring another look at the coat, he saw a pile of vaguely body-shaped splinters under it, and nothing else. No body.

Rentaro felt something to his left. He pulled his chin back, his body falling in reverse, and a fist the size of a boulder thundered past his head. He was now out of position, and he had no way of evading the foe as he advanced upon him at astounding speed. He, and his combat boot.

“Gah!”

“That wasn’t a bad idea,” a monotonous voice said from across the dark warehouse. By the time Rentaro’s bleary vision focused itself again, he realized Swordtail was standing no more than a meter away from him.

The man was damaged. The cuffs of his pants were frayed, and he was bleeding. Breathing, for him, required heaving his shoulders up and down. Without the coat, he could see that the man, his hulking body shaped something like an inverted triangle, was wearing a black tank top.

“But you just had to go around thinking I was on the same level as somebody like Hummingbird.”

Swordtail aimed his handgun at Rentaro’s head. A bottomless abyss awaited within it.

“You lose.”

“And that arrogance just made you lose.”

No one was more surprised than Swordtail to see a figure perched on top of him, as if he was giving her a piggyback ride.

“You… Why are you…?!”

Hotaru had both feet laced around the bucking Swordtail’s head, using her free hands to draw her twin pistols from behind her back.

“I hope you taste even a tenth of the suffering Kihachi did.”

The next moment, a continual cycle of explosions and muzzle flashes swarmed the area. Fresh, warm blood fell upon Rentaro’s face.

“Aaaahhhhh!”

With a beastlike roar as he desperately tried to peel Hotaru off, Swordtail found himself the target of a merciless pair of .45-caliber handguns as they thudded their payloads into him at point-blank range.

The otherworldly sight didn’t last long. Soon the slide stops popped up on both weapons, indicating they had exhausted their ammo. Hotaru leapt out of the way.

“Ngh…ahh…!”

Swordtail fell to his knees, then face-first onto the ground with a mighty, earth-shaking foom.

“Rentaro!” Hotaru shouted as she all but threw herself at him, embracing his head. He couldn’t feel the sensation, which wasn’t exactly encouraging, but Rentaro weakly nodded nonetheless. The chill from the blood loss was making his eyes heavy. Hotaru shook him as hard as she could.

“We need to get out of here and get you treated!”

He got back on his feet, Hotaru lending him a shoulder, and forced his knees to not buckle. He was cold. He’d lost too much blood; he felt like he’d freeze to death before anything else.

Rentaro took a side glance at Swordtail—only to have the sight shoot a jolt of reenergizing surprise into him.

The huge man was gone without a trace. In his place were bloodstains, with a trail of droplets following out of the room.

“Hotaru… He ran on us…”

“How?! How could he have moved after that?”

“I don’t know…but looks like he did.”

Anyone involved in either the New Humanity or the New World Creation Projects were people with strength beyond all reason. Applying Varanium to human bones and organs had the terrifying power to turn mortal wounds into not-so-mortal ones.

“We gotta go after him… We can’t let him leave with the info we have.”

Swordtail, also known as Jugo Katake, slammed a fist against the wall as he entered the shower room, all but ripping the curtain off the pole as he stormed into a booth. He used the knob to set the temperature to 36 degrees Celsius—suitable for washing blood spatter off his body—and immersed his head in the lukewarm water.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Not this, Jugo whispered to himself as he struggled to take hold over his consciousness.

His powerful carbon-nanotube muscles, combined with a spinal column made of self-repairing Varanium alloy, had stopped all the bullets. His blood vessels had constricted themselves to prevent excessive blood loss. The organic transistors implanted in his body had monitored all medical statistics relevant to keeping him alive, making adjustments as necessary.

And yet the flurry of handgun fire Jugo took at point-blank range wasn’t anything he could ignore. Especially given how physical brawn was such a key part of his battle strategy.

The blood now washed off his body, he checked to make sure his optical camo still worked as usual, then flew out of the shower and began his escape. On the elevator he went, jumping over the dead security guards still decorating the first-floor lobby, and soon he was outside, greeted by the murky, humid night air.

He couldn’t shake the frustration that bubbled up. He was supposed to be the brightest star of the New World Creation Project. So how did an obsolete pre-war model leave him in the dust like that?

What part of me could possibly be inferior to him?

“Well, someone just got put through the wringer.”

“Who—?”

He was in the central courtyard of the Shiba Heavy Weapons building when a figure emerged from under one of the poplar trees that dotted the well-kept lawn. Jugo winced in disbelief once the moonlight fully exposed the boy.

“Dark Stalker?!”

He wanted to know what the kid was doing there, but he resisted the urge to ask. This was too good an opportunity to let pass.

“Perfect. Report to Hitsuma through Nest for me. I landed a lethal blow on Hotaru Kouro, but she came back to life. Whatever her Gastrea element is, it gives her an incredible amount of vitality.”

“Yeah? Thanks for the report.”

The carefree, inattentive tone of voice made Jugo wonder if he even realized how vital this was. He swung an arm out, frustrated.

“What’re you doing?! The enemy’s coming! Let me go!”

“Afraid I can’t agree to that.”

“What?”

“I know it’s kind of a summary judgment, but I need to execute you right here. You screw up, you die.”

For a moment, Jugo stared blankly, unsure what Dark Stalker had just said.

“What kind of joke is that?”

“Sorry, but it’s not any kind of joke at all. You lost, and as a result, the group told me they don’t want anything to do with you.”

“I haven’t lost at all yet!”

“You’re the only one who thinks that, you know.”

Hold on… Is he really going to…?

“W-wait a minute. Just give me another chance.”

“Don’t need to.” Yuga brushed his hair back, the spite practically radiating from his face. “Is it that hard to believe? That you might wind up being the executed instead of the executioner sometime?”

There was no way he could. Jugo had given everything to the group. Why would they treat him like this? “…And you think I’m just gonna let myself get killed?” he demanded.

Yuga shrugged. “Well, that’s what I’m here for, anyway.”

Swordtail lowered his body into a battle stance. “That’s insane! You’re the one who deserves to die. Go ahead. Ask Mr. Hitsuma anytime you want. The group isn’t gonna just dump me like that!”

The pain from before was gone now. All the adrenaline his body generated had pushed his ability to sense discomfort deep into his subconscious. He checked his legs, and other parts, too. His organs and respiratory system were damaged, but less than half of Jugo’s body was organic, anyway. Everything else was the fruit of modern bioelectronics, a far cry from anything in nature’s creation.

He lowered his breathing—and with it, his body temperature. Glaring into his adversary’s eyes, he took off, activating his optical camo to make his body a mirage in the wind.

He had heard about Yuga’s cybernetic eyes. But this was exactly the kind of match he wanted—a fighter given a skill so advanced that he couldn’t help but be bound by it in his tactics.

Jugo made no sound as he sidled around his foe, attempting to get closer. Dark Stalker was still looking at Jugo’s position from a moment ago; taking out his auxiliary knife, Jugo approached from the right-hand side like a predator stalking its prey—and then slashed forward at full speed. To someone like him, a veteran of undercover assassination, this was his killer move. By the time his target realized he was under attack, his head would already have been separated from his torso.

Immediately afterward, Dark Stalker’s head would arc through the air. He could picture it already.

But what he didn’t anticipate was his foe’s right hand flying up, his head still pointed forward.

He saw the hand brush against the blade of his knife. Then he heard the crunch of crumpled steel. Jugo’s vision shook, as if he was being electrocuted, and his optical camo peeled right off.

He leapt back reflexively, struggling to regain equilibrium. When he did, Jugo saw his stainless-steel knife in his hand, crushed from the tip of the blade to the handle.

Jugo shuddered as the bladeless handle fell from his hands, unable to believe the sight.

“That’s…crazy…!”

“What is? The fact that you had no idea what you were getting into when you attacked me? Or the fact that lame optical camo of yours was neutralized at the single wave of a hand?”

Dark Stalker smirked and shrugged his shoulders at his adversary, now shocked into submission. “I like that Marriott injection and all the other stuff you use for that invisibility trick of yours,” he said, arms open wide, “but none of that mattered after I got you in my sight. The processors in both of my eyes spotted the way you flexed your muscles and calculated your strategic approach—even the position you’d show up at. It’s almost like they predict the future for me. All I have to do is keep myself from yawning while you telegraph your punches from a mile away.”

“But… But how did you pulverize my knife just by touching it?!” Jugo yelled, looking down at the cracked, shattered pieces of metal on the ground. Come to think of it, he did hear about Dark Stalker being equipped with some kind of experimental armament. “S-some kind of ultrasonic wave device?”

As Jugo finished shouting the question, Yuga was upon him, a lethal palm placed upon his heart.

“Well done. I think you should taste it for yourself, though. Isn’t modern technology amazing? It takes the concepts of physical strength, the idealism of martial arts, and turns it all on its head.”

Then, without any time to curse his regrets, Jugo experienced the vibrating waves from Yuga’s death-dealing palm destroy the very connections between his skin and muscle cells.

“This is my second power. It’s called Vairo-orchestration.”

The pain was intense for Jugo—like his organs were being put through a blender. His heart was quickly pulverized, no time provided to even conceptualize any last words as his consciousness faded into darkness.

There was a splurt, something no simple palm strike could ever produce, as Swordtail coughed up enough blood to form a puddle around his feet. He tottered dangerously, eyes staring in disbelief at Rentaro—before he fell like a tree to the ground. There was no getting back up this time.

Rentaro had made his way out of the Shiba Heavy Weapons building just in time to witness a sight he never expected—two New World Creation Project veterans attempting to kill each other. He couldn’t imagine what brought this chain of events about, but either way, Swordtail had just fallen with a single hit.

Yuga’s victory couldn’t have been more complete. It was barely even a match. A scar in the shape of his hand remained on Swordtail’s chest as the man lay dead on his back. The strike must’ve had the effect of necrotizing the local tissue. Even the palm’s prints were clearly discernible.

It was the same skill that Rentaro had luckily escaped at the Plaza Hotel. If there was an ace up Yuga’s sleeve, that had to be it. Rentaro felt a cold twinge, like someone had slipped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. He steeled himself, fists balled up tight, and began to walk up to Yuga. They were face-to-face again, not ten meters away from each other in the Shiba courtyard.

“Yuga…Mitsugi…” came the resentful, whispered words from Rentaro’s mouth. Ever since they’d first met—ever since Mitsugi had shot him out of the skies above the hotel—he could never forget that name. Nor could he forget the fact that both were doomed to fight each other again someday.

“We finally meet,” came the joyful reply as Yuga put his arms out wide in a gesture of welcome. “Not quite when I was expecting it, though. I didn’t think Swordtail would do that bad of a number on you.”

“This doesn’t hurt at all.”

Rentaro was wobbly, his vision bleary at best. But at least the blood coming out of his mouth was close enough to the color of his uniform that it didn’t stand out too much.

Yuga’s lips loosened into a piteous smile. “Well, if you’ve gotten to see Swordtail in battle for yourself, I guess you realize who you’re dealing with in New World now, don’t you?”

“The New World Creation Project is a second-generation team of mechanized soldiers, in the style of the New Humanity Creation Project program,” Rentaro stated. “The eyes you use to fight with were copied from plans developed by Dr. Sumire Muroto, one of the Four Sages. Hummingbird’s thought-activation interface was borrowed from research conducted by Ain Rand. Swordtail’s skills were copied from Arthur Zanuck. Dr. Muroto told me that developing artificial eyes or limbs required knowledge across so many different fields that most researchers can’t even understand the basic concepts that drive them. And if you think about it, it must take one hell of a genius to not only copy that stuff, but to upgrade it, too. In fact, I can think of only one person.”

Yuga arched his eyebrows in curiosity.

“Let’s hear it.”

Rentaro looked down at Yuga, jaw still jutted forward.

“The person beating the war drum for your dirty project is the last of the Four Sages—Albrecht Grünewald.”

Yuga, in apparent agreement, lifted his hands high into the air. “Well done! And the name of our group is the Five Wings Syndicate! Happy to make your acquaintance!”

“The Five Wings…?”

“Take a look at this.”

Yuga rolled up the right sleeve of his school uniform, showing off his triceps. What Rentaro saw tattooed there made him gasp.

“The pentagram…and the wings…”

He had seen it several times by then, but Yuga’s star mark had four ornately designed wings drawn around it. Two wings, however, appeared to have been erased in some fashion. Apparently doing so wasn’t easy, since they had been crudely scratched out, like a kindergartener’s scribble-scrabble with a crayon over a coloring-book page.

Yuga smiled as Rentaro looked on. “Yeah, I kinda had two wings plucked off me. Now I can’t fly anymore. I fell back to earth.”

“…I’ve seen that in a few places now. All on things associated with the Five Wings Syndicate, I guess. Is the number of wings some kind of ranking system?”

“Well, if you know that much, I can cut right to the chase, I guess. You’re right. Five wings indicate one of the group’s core leaders. It goes down to four, three, and two wings after that. One wing marks you as either a follower or a slave—or maybe house pet, I guess. If you feel like frisking Swordtail’s body over there, there’s probably a two-wing mark on him somewhere.”

Rentaro could feel the fog lift from his mind little by little. He decided to prod their discussion just a bit further along.

“When I visited Dr. Ayame Surumi’s apartment, I got a call from someone disguising his voice and warning me about Hummingbird. That was you, right?”

A gust of wind flew around them, lifting Rentaro’s, Yuga’s, and a watching Hotaru’s hair up. There was a rustle as the surrounding trees swayed gently.

“That wasn’t me, no.”

“The hell it wasn’t. Why? Why did you take action to help me?”

Yuga responded with silence for a few moments before sighing, apparently opting to give up the charade.

“Satomi, has the beauty of the world around you ever made you want to cry?”

“What?”

“I was born blind in both eyes.”

Rentaro was thrown by this. He was starting to lose track of the subject.

“My mother fell ill while she was pregnant with me, and that’s kind of what happened. One hundred percent blind. It never particularly bothered me at the time. You can’t miss what you never had in the first place, and stuff. But you know how cruel other kids can be. By the time I made it to elementary school, they picked on me all the time. It really made me angry. But it was Professor Grünewald who saved me, along with his second-generation mechanized-soldier plan. That was already under development in secret by the time I showed up. And as you’ve probably noticed, my ‘21-Form’ allows me to see even when I don’t have it activated, unlike your eye.”

Yuga shook his head a little, then turned directly toward Rentaro. The color of his eyes was gone, replaced with a dangerous-looking glare that felt sharp enough to cut with.

“Once I joined their ranks, the beauty of a springtime day honestly made me cry. So did the summer sun, beating down on my eyes. The colors of autumn did it to me all over again, and so did the whiteness of winter. I felt like I couldn’t possibly ask for anything else, and that I needed to give the Professor everything that I possibly could in return. That’s why I built myself up. I mean, I was absorbed heart and soul in the training they gave me. That’s what earned me four wings in the end. I was the Professor’s prodigal son. He gave me VIP treatment. And then…”

All the tension Yuga had built up fell off a self-chiding cliff with the and then.

“I messed it up just once, and that cost me two wings. The Professor branded me a failure, and now I’m up to my neck in this dirty assassin business. You wanted to know why I’d do anything to help you, yeah? Don’t make me laugh. I didn’t do that for your sake or anything. I just couldn’t stand the concept of some tin soldier like Hummingbird or Swordtail doing you in. That’s all.”

He steeled his resentful eyes at Rentaro, denying him the chance to offer any semblance of compassion.

“The Professor promised me that if I beat you, he’d give me my wings back. Once I do, I can go back to serving him again.”

Rentaro had never met Grünewald. But if he was the type of academic to personally brand Yuga a failure, and then dangle the chance of rehabilitation in front of him if he killed Rentaro…then he hadn’t seen much to respect about the man yet. Ain Rand, Tina’s mentor, was the same way. Something told him the three other Sages didn’t care much about virtue or common decency, unlike Sumire.

“And you think Grünewald’s justified in this? In forcing you to commit first-degree murder?”

“It’s not a matter of whether the Professor’s justified or not. All that matters is whether I believe in him or not.”

Yuga turned his back then, only to shoot him a sidelong glance.

“I will await you at the site of the final battle. We can conclude it there.”

With that, without taking another look back, Yuga left the scene. Soon, he was gone from Shiba Heavy Weapons property. Rentaro stared intently at him the whole time, convinced he’d turn around at any moment. But after a while, when he’d disappeared and hadn’t returned, Rentaro let out a deep sigh.

In the process, he realized his vision was lurching sideways a little. Hotaru stopped him before it went fully vertical, but the damage was done. Yuga must have realized, Rentaro thought ruefully, the state of total exhaustion I’m in.

“We better head back to the hideout, Rentaro.”

From some indistinct corner of the city, the familiar sound of sirens blared. It sounded like it was headed straight for them.

Hotaru scowled. “That’s a lot of ’em, judging by the sound.”

“Ah, the Knights of the Round Table. Just a little too late, once again.”

Hotaru flashed him a look. “If you got enough energy to spout stupid crap like that, you’ll be okay if I’m a little rough getting us out, right?”

“A little rough?”

Hotaru turned her head almost straight up. Rentaro followed her eyes. They were pointed at the roof of the main building.

“They’ll track us down if we keep running. I wanna jump away from there.”

The door opened with a crisp electronic beep. Rentaro braced a shaky arm against the elevator wall as he exited, Hotaru propping him up. They were greeted by a howl and a gust of surging wind. Turning his head, he could see the red, yellow, and blue neon flash down below, just past the helipad. The lights from the swarm of police cars at the bottom. Another familiar sight.

The hand around Rentaro’s shoulder was warm. Worth his trust. Far more than usual, at least.

“Let’s go. Grab on to me.”

He tried to thank her. He couldn’t quite manage it, his pallid, zombielike lips and semifrozen skin no longer listening to his instructions.

But—

“Freeze! Do anything funny, and I’ll shoot!”

Rentaro and Hotaru stopped at the sound of a handgun’s cylinder rotating behind them.

“Lemme see your hands. Walk slowly back toward my voice. Slowly!”

Rentaro raised his hands, not wanting to rile the gunman, and turned around. There he saw a police detective, a stern look on his face as he readied his pistol in both hands.

“Inspector Tadashima…”

Hotaru lowered her stance, readying for battle. Rentaro raised a hand to stop her, then took a step forward.

The humid night wind blew fiercely across the space between Rentaro and Shigetoku Tadashima, making their clothes flap violently in the air.

“Are you people half-bird or something? Every damn time I see you, you’re on the roof of some high-rise. You gotta be nuts.”

Rentaro tried moving his jaw. It seemed to work well enough to speak.

“Let us go, Inspector.”

“No! I’m here in the name of the law. And it’s my duty to uphold it. The law is the only beacon of order this world has. We’d be in total darkness without it. What would we call a world without order? It wouldn’t be a civilization. It’d be chaos.”

“So you’re gonna just neglect justice?”

“Oh, you think you’re in the right here? Look, what’s going on behind the scenes with you? What do you know?”

“I told you a hundred times in the interrogation room.”

“Oh, so all the delusional bullshit you gave me in extreme detail in your testimony is true? Don’t give me that crap!”

“The group I’m fighting is spreading chaos. They’re destroying that order you were talking about. And now you’re helping it grow. Saying ‘I didn’t know’ isn’t gonna help you. It’s your fault you’re so clueless. I’m outta here.”

“You think I’m gonna say you can go?”

“Atsuro Hitsuma’s an enemy spy. He’s infiltrated the police department.”

“He is not!” Tadashima shook his head in obvious mental distress and turned away. “That’s…not true…!”

“Okay. Shoot me, then.”

Hotaru shot Rentaro a surprised look. “Rentaro, wait a…!”

“Don’t move, Hotaru. I want to handle things properly with this guy.”

Tadashima turned back, and Rentaro addressed him:

“If you think you’re right, then shoot me. If you arrest me, you know they’ll find me guilty. I might die in prison, for all I know. That’s how far the enemy’s sunk its teeth in you.”

“Don’t be stupid. We’re the police. We’re duty-bound to protect the accused.”

“That won’t help,” Rentaro insisted. “That’s how this enemy works.”

Tadashima’s lips pursed.

“So I’m guessing by your reaction that you know Atsuro Hitsuma, huh? If you’ve been with him before, did you notice anything weird about him?”

The detective froze. The proverbial cat had gotten his tongue. He tried to conceal his expression, but the effort shamed him.

“Right. So you have noticed something, but he’s your boss, so you have to suck up to him instead?”

Tadashima was silent.

Rentaro closed his eyes and shook his head. “So shoot me. You’ll get a certificate of honor out of it, won’t you?”

“I—I…”

Tadashima’s body began to shake, his index finger wrapped around the gun apparently frozen in place. His face was covered in greasy sweat.

“If you ain’t shooting, we’re leaving.”

Rentaro motioned an order at Hotaru, hung on to her shoulder, then fell forward.

“Whoa! Hey!”

Tadashima hurriedly peered down the side of the roof. But the boy in black had already melted into the night, gone without a trace.

“Argh!!”

Driven by anger bubbling over, Tadashima pointed his gun to the sky and fired three times. The three shots echoed through the air, catching rides on the gusting wind. They did nothing to quell the anger aimed at himself. He tossed the gun to the side, then fell to his knees, not caring about the pain as he batted a fist against the roof several times.

“Why?! Why couldn’t I shoot him?!”

He had to shoot him. He had to prove that the law, such as it was, supported him. He had to prove he was Shigetoku Tadashima, and that the brunt of his will could only be expressed by killing the hated criminal that reared its ugly head before him.

But he failed.

Something in him doubted whether Rentaro was a criminal. The odd obsession with secrecy Hitsuma brought into the investigation had made him arch his eyebrows one too many times.

That meant defeat. The law, the concept he worshiped to the point of believing there was never any way to cheat one’s way out of it, had lost. Shigetoku Tadashima’s “law” had been brought to its knees by the immature, childish “justice” that civsec just had to bring into the picture.

“Inspector! What are you doing up here?!”

He turned around to find Yoshikawa, white as a sheet, running up to him. He must have heard the gunshots. Tadashima quickly felt his thoughts start to cool down. Wiping the dust from his pants, he stood up and walked past his underling.

“I’m leaving this investigation for a little bit. I found something that I have to look into. Superintendent Hitsuma’s probably gonna be here in a bit. Take your orders from him.”

“I-Inspector? Inspector, what’s going on? Inspector!”

He could feel the voice pulling at him from behind. But Tadashima ducked his head down low, never turning around, and left the scene.

He had to do it. He had to resolve these doubts in his mind. He had finally realized that he was no longer able to perform the basic duties of a police officer.