Black Bullet - Volume 6 - Chapter 4.02

2

Rentaro spent the next morning and afternoon recuperating. It was already nearly dark again by the time he set off. His destination: District 31 of Tokyo Area, part of the Outer Districts. It took several train transfers to get there.

By that time, in the year 2031, most of the Outer Districts were either abandoned or already down to rubble with no plans to renovate. However, the area that hosted Old Shinagawa Ward, Old Koto Ward, and Old Minato Ward was still relatively unscathed in comparison to some, being protected by the Monoliths that surrounded Tokyo Bay. As such, he knew it would make a good meeting point. Especially when the only people there would be local residents.

But he couldn’t afford to rest easy. The person he was about to meet was part of the city’s dark underbelly. He knew how easy it was to have a dead body “taken care of” in the Outer Districts, if it came to that. He’d prefer if it didn’t.

Based on the address he was given, he anticipated a lengthy walk from the rail station to the meeting point. He wasn’t expecting a march all the way to the edge of the Monoliths. At least the jet-black towers were still clear as day in the blackness. He certainly would not be getting lost.

Pushing his way through the crumbling infrastructure, eerie shadows flitting all around him, he finally heard the roar of the sea, accompanied by its telltale scent. Scrambling up a particularly large pile of rubble and surveying the landscape, he looked down at the mirrorlike black surface shining in the moonlight, the ripples in the water refracting the light this way and that. His heart lifted a bit at the rhythmical sound of the waves’ advance and retreat. Then he spotted the far edge of the mammoth-size Monolith, sucking the very darkness into itself.

Climbing down and heading toward the oceanside wharf, he could see a line of elongated, semicircular warehouses lining the water. Comparing the signs to the number written on the scrap of paper in his hand, Rentaro eventually stopped in front of a storehouse, one notably larger than the rest.

Once upon a time, it was no doubt a seafood processing facility; there was no telling how much fresh fish and shellfish it handled in the past. The numbers painted on the wall were faded, almost succumbing to the constant barrage of salt-water air, but he could still tell he was in the right place.

Rentaro checked the time. Midnight. Nobody was there.

“So this is the sea…”

Wholly ignoring Rentaro’s concern, Hotaru wandered toward the shoreline, a look of awe on her face.

“You’ve never seen it before?”

Hotaru looked up at him and nodded. “Can I go look?”

“Why do you need my permission?” Rentaro chuckled.

Under the blessed Monolith magnetic field, she could even go for a swim if she wanted, as long as she didn’t wander too far offshore. However, given the seafaring Gastrea lurking somewhere under the surface in 2031-era Earth, seaside fun in the sun was usually seen as something reserved for the truly eccentric. The fishing industry was basically destroyed, and even missile-bearing ships with Varanium-lined bottoms could never be truly carefree on the high seas. Tokyo Area was now entirely reliant on shoreline spawning farms for their seafood, sending prices through the roof. So it goes, Rentaro supposed.

Forgetting about Rentaro for the time being, Hotaru ran to the shore. Then she stepped back a bit, surprised at the cold water and positively shocked at the sensation on the tip of her tongue after tasting it.

“Look, Rentaro! It’s all salty!”

“Yeah, no shit!”

Her look of curious astonishment was as pure as it was childlike. It shared something in common with Enju, and it forced Rentaro to recall how at odds he had been with her, too, when they first met.

“Are you okay, though? The Monolith’s right nearby.”

Initiator or not, she still had the Gastrea Virus coursing through her veins. Depending on her corrosion rate, that could have assorted effects on her.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “My rate’s still in the high teens.”

“Oh. Well, there’s one difference between you and Enju.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Rentaro said as he glared at the sea, his thoughts turning elsewhere.

I swear I’ll get you back, Enju.

Then he turned around, hearing the thump of feet against dirt behind him. A man was there, cool and composed as he walked forward. He was neither very young nor very old; in fact, it was hard to guess his age. He was in a completely white suit, and while his dull, sallow skin suggested he was well on in years, his eyes were quick, young, and penetrating. Rentaro’s civsec instinct told him he was not to be trusted.

“You the guy Abe told me about?”

Rentaro kept his response to a silent nod.

Before they went there, Rentaro and Hotaru had paid a visit to Kofu Finance, the yakuza-linked loansharking outfit located in the Happy Building’s fourth-floor office space. There, they had a little meeting. All of Rentaro’s personal and business contacts were no doubt being marked by the cops at this point, but he doubted even they’d guess he had a yakuza friend or two. As it happened, he was right.

Shouki Abe, one of the mobsters he was familiar with, usually joked around with him whenever they met. But this time, he had acted oddly nervous. After some chitchat, he had borrowed a lighter, lit a cigarette, and seemed to noticeably calm down. “I was just surprised, Rentaro,” he had admitted. “Your face has changed a lot.”

It probably had. In order to avoid the facial-recognition cameras, Rentaro no longer let himself be caught in daylight without sunglasses. He had no time to shave, except for the bare minimum. Nor did he have time for a proper meal lately. Maybe it was showing in his hollowed-out cheeks.

Rentaro, dwelling on this, shook his head. That probably wasn’t what Abe had meant, anyway. This Rentaro—formerly the pursuer, now the pursued, waiting for his chance to turn the tables on his enemy—probably was different. At least, it was to the point that it overwhelmed Abe at first glance, even though he was a man who had no doubt seen a thing or two in his line of work.

And to think that just a bit ago, I was being hailed as the hero of Tokyo Area.

It all seemed tremendously ironic. But he had pushed the thought away long enough to ask Abe about the recent market for trifdraphizin. The gangster had sourly explained it all to him. To sum up, the retail price for trifdraphizin was rising because of a lack of supply going around the market. Apparently some mystery group was buying it all up.

Abe had closed by promising to connect him to a courier better versed in the market than he. “Rentaro,” he had said, “let me just tell you one more thing. I know we don’t act like it sometimes, but there’s a code of justice we all live by in here. Me, personally? I’m one hundred percent against the drug trade, period. Most of our people are just messing around with numbers on computers these days—insider trading, that sort of thing—but I think that beats drug dealing any day. That’s the whole reason I’m here—I didn’t wanna deal, so they demoted me to loansharking duty. So I’ll help you, okay? But don’t think that this makes you buddy-buddy with the Kofukai Group or anything. If you start messing around with our sources of income, I think you know how some of us are gonna react to that, you know what I mean?”

Rentaro ruminated over this previous conversation with Abe as he stared down the courier in front of him. The man, for his part, was focusing on the inky deep-black waters beyond the tetrapods scattered in the wharf, taking an occasional sideways glance in Rentaro’s direction.

“So, what’s the savior of Tokyo Area want to know?”

Rentaro ignored the verbal jab, giving the courier a cold gaze. “Who’s going around buying up all the trifdraphizin on the market?”

“I can’t really go around divulging information about my clients, now can I? Trust means everything in this business.”

Rentaro was already fed up with this. Even someone like him—who preferred to let his guns do the talking instead of negotiate—could tell: This was Abe’s way of sticking out his palm and asking for it to be greased.

“All right. Let’s cut the crap. How much do you want?”

The man let out a raspy, vulgar laugh. “Well, if it’s information you’re looking for, this is about the going rate.”

He had three fingers lifted up. What a rip-off. You goddamned hyena.

“I’ll give you twice that. But it’s gotta wait.”

“You gotta be joking with me.”

“I don’t have it on me right now. Once I solve this case, I’ll pay you double.”

“Why do I have to believe an empty promise like that?”

“Hey, you can’t collect from a dead man, right? So that way, I don’t have to worry about you feeding me a line of BS intel. Besides, apparently I’m famous enough that even you know what I look like, so it’s not like I can run from you for long.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then only one of us is getting out of here in one piece. And lemme just say, I’m not exactly planning to die in a place like this.”

The sea breeze beat against Rentaro’s uniform and the courier’s suit.

“I want triple.”

Rentaro nodded. They had a deal.

“Okay. Talk to me.”

The man removed a pack of cigarettes from his suit pocket and lit one of the sticks. The breeze blew the smoke toward the warehouse building.

“So actually, I don’t really know much about the client, either. They send a negotiator over to work with me, but I don’t go nosin’ around in his business much. That’s how it works, you know? It pays good enough, too.”

“Come on,” Rentaro interrupted, the irritation clear in his voice. The man raised a hand to stop him.

“Hang on. Lemme finish. Every time he makes a deposit, I deliver the trifdraphizin to a set location. It’s kind of a weird one.”

“A weird location?”

“Here in the Outer Districts, near one of the Monoliths, there’s a path down under a manhole that looks pretty much like a coal mine. I open the manhole, climb down the ladder, drop off the stuff, and beat it. But I’m guessing that’s their hideout.”

Rentaro could feel a lightning-flash of inspiration erupt in his mind.

“Hotaru.”

The chestnut-haired girl next to him nodded deeply, holding in the excitement just as much as he was.

“We’re finally on to something. That’s gotta be a Five Wings Syndicate hideout, probably.”

When Rentaro asked where it was, the man pointed out a spot in the Outer Districts that was almost exactly opposite theirs, the entirety of the city in between. It would take a while to get there. But they were ready.

Rentaro turned and began to walk off. “Whoa,” a voice said. “What’re you gonna do over there?”

“I thought you didn’t go nosing around in client business.”

“Well, judging by how much stuff they’re ordering, the group you’re pursuing probably has a lot of people working for it. I don’t see anything besides handguns on you guys, but you sure you’re ready to take on a group that big with just that?”

“What’re you trying to tell us?”

The courier, diverging from his previous macho demeanor, shrugged.

“Oh, I’m just saying—if you die, I can’t collect, you know? So I figure I could stand to up the ante a little bit. Follow me.”

The man ventured into the truck loading dock of the nearby seafood plant, ducked into the management office, and went up into the building.

Rentaro and Hotaru exchanged glances.

“What do you think?” Rentaro asked.

“It’s dicey, but I have to admit: We’re short on resources. Let’s try him.”

So they followed along, about ten paces behind the courier as he navigated the hallways with a flashlight, not bothering to acknowledge them.

For an Outer Districts ruin, the processing plant was deteriorating in a remarkably orderly manner. Rentaro had seen dozens of abandoned buildings like this. He could sniff out the difference between a ruin that hadn’t seen human activity in years, and a ruin simply made to look that way. His instincts told him this was the latter kind. Most useful buildings would have been long scavenged by the Outer District’s denizens by then. This wasn’t.

Going upstairs, the man stopped in front of a door, then held the flashlight with his teeth as he turned a crank. An airtight door for what was probably a freezer room opened up with a clang. The familiar scent of metal and machine oil flew out.

Taking a look inside made Rentaro sigh. It was, in a word, an arsenal. The walls were lined with countless numbers of handguns, hand grenades, assault rifles, and rocket launchers. They were all brand-new.

Rentaro shot a dumbfounded look at the courier. He shrugged again.

“Take whatever you like.”

“Are you sure?”

The courier snickered nervously. “Lemme set something straight, though. I don’t care about you. I care about you surviving long enough to pay me. Try not to confuse the two, all right?”

Rentaro nodded his thanks, then focused back on the arsenal. He brushed his hand against a nearby wooden crate. It felt moist. Using a nearby crowbar on the floor, he pried open the top of the box. There, encased in dried straw packaging and oiled paper, was a large cache of KRISS vector short-barrel machine guns.

“Ooh, here’s a sniper rifle.”

He turned around to find Hotaru grasping the large gun, arms trembling.

“An M24…”

It was the US Army’s preferred choice of sniper rifle, a customized version of the Remington M700 they purchased in mass quantities. It was equipped with a Leupold 10x fixed-power scope. That made it the so-called A3 model, a heavily reworked version of the original. Must have been sold off by the military. Amazing to see it here of all places, Rentaro thought. But hang on a minute—

“You’re gonna have to zero that. Otherwise you’re not gonna hit the broad side of a barn.”

“Oh? You know about these?”

“Ah,” Rentaro replied, “we had a specialist over at the office. Can you handle that?”

“I’m still a student,” Hotaru said, “but yeah. I’ll zero this at one hundred meters. You want this?”

“Nah. I don’t carry anything heavier than a handgun. Otherwise I’ll just be a drag in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Oh,” Hotaru said, not particularly put off as she crossed her arms. “Well, if we can get some explosives over there, at least, that’ll be perfect.”

“Explosives?”

Hotaru stuck her hand into another crate and spread a set of rectangular hunks of clay—plastic explosives—on the floor. There were enough to practically start a war. Certainly more than enough to engage any enemy Rentaro could imagine.

By the time they were done casing the place, discussing their strategy, making their choices, and stepping outside of the building, the night sky was already starting to lighten. Day was breaking over the placid Pacific. Rentaro took a deep breath, then exhaled.

The duel was fast approaching.