Black Bullet - Volume 6 - Chapter 5.02

2

Using his hand to shade his eyes, Rentaro looked up. The rising sun from the east was half-blocked by the enormous wall in front of him, but already the heat it cast out was beating against his skin.

NO. 0013 was stenciled on the bottom of the wall. It was a Monolith, an edifice of black chrome. Rentaro and Hotaru had spent the night traveling to it, taking the long way to evade detection.

Turning around, he surveyed the ruined buildings and piles of rubble. They extended out as far as his eyes could see. Around them, tilted electric poles provided weak support for wires that snaked out in all directions, like a giant game of cat’s cradle. The only fortunate thing about the sight was that it was still far too early for the Outer Districts’ denizens to be out and about.

“This is it?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it.”

Hotaru’s reply came in her usual suppressed tone, although Rentaro could sense a hint of excitement.

“The courier said there should be a manhole somewhere here. Let’s look for it.”

The ground beneath them was lined with aluminum cans and piles of colorful, dew-covered plastic garbage. Rentaro hardly wanted to touch any of it, so he kicked it away instead. It was oddly warm, as if decomposing. Yet it was a seemingly endless pile of materials, mortar, rusty nails… Finding actual soil proved to be difficult.

Just when they began to wonder if the courier fed them a line after all, Rentaro spotted a brand-new manhole cover amid the junk. He called Hotaru over and showed it to her. “That’s gotta be it,” she immediately replied.

“How do you know?”

She used a foot to point out the area next to the cover. There was a tiny star mark with wings, small enough that it was easily overlooked. He could feel his blood vessels tense in response.

Allowing Hotaru to hoist off the cover and toss it aside, Rentaro felt a cold wind run up his spine, along with the tingling smell of some kind of filth. Pointing his light downward, he saw a rusted-out pipe and corridors leading left and right.

The two threw their weapons-laden traveling bag and aluminum case inside, quieted the voices in their minds telling them to stay back, and took the rusted ladder one step at a time. Rentaro took the lead, although he wasn’t enthusiastic about it. Leaving the sun above them like this made it feel as though they were pacing right into the maw of some enormous monster.

It was, of course, dark inside. The only light they had to work with was the MagLite’s small circle. There was an ever-present whistling groan, like the wailing of the dead. Just the wind crossing some kind of hollow crevice, Rentaro told himself.

Hotaru flashed the light down one side, then the other.

“So we got the Monolith on one side and the way we came from on the other. Which way?”

“Which way would you go?”

“The way we came.”

“Okay. Let’s take the Monolith direction.”

Hotaru gave him a kick in the shin. It actually hurt a fair bit. “You are so stupid!” she said, cheeks puffed up.

Rentaro gave an apologetic chuckle. “Well, let’s just try going toward the Monolith first, okay? If it’s a dead end, we’ll go back the other way.”

She nodded after a moment, not seriously offended after all.

The slushy liquid around their feet gave an odd, swampy shlorp with every step they took. The echoing grew louder the closer they came to the Monolith, making the waves of worry crash loud against their minds.

The path curved gradually at one point, but was otherwise basically a straight shot. After about one hundred meters, Rentaro and Hotaru stopped.

“Dead end…huh?”

A large wall about a meter across stood before them.

They hadn’t been counting every step, but chances were that they were now directly underneath the Monolith. That would explain why the wall was black chrome, shining brightly in the flashlight’s beam. It must have been to block the Gastrea.

“Guess you chose wrong, huh?”

“Um, I think it’s too early to say that.”

“Rentaro?”

Hotaru, already on her way back, turned around. Rentaro ran a hand against the smooth, cold surface of the Varanium wall. His fingers came across a depression.

He instructed Hotaru, standing beside him, to touch it. Surprise ran across her face. There was a hole in the Varanium, not even two centimeters across.

“Remember that loud whistle we heard? I knew the wind had to be coming in through somewhere. But look—”

Rentaro fell silent and pointed the light straight ahead.

“Doesn’t this look like a keyhole to you?”

The quizzical Hotaru brought a shocked hand to her mouth, then hurriedly fumbled in her jacket.

“I got it.”

She took out the key with the maple leaf—the one Swordtail had owned. The one whose home they had no clues about. The mystery.

Rentaro took a step back as Hotaru inserted the key and twisted it. There was an ever-so-slight click, and then it silently opened, beckoning them in.

“Holy…!”

A domed space, about the size of a small home, had been dug into the earth. Stationed inside of it was something that looked like a train. A bit of a small one—and a bit too large to be a microbus—but close enough.

“A light-rail line…? Why’s there one here?”

They walked through the door, only to find the ceiling was higher up than they expected. They could see the tracks the train car was on now, extending deeper into a tunnel. They tried shining the light down the way, only to be greeted with total darkness. It must have been a light-rail station.

“I guessed right…”

“Uh-huh.”

It seemed safe to guess that the Five Wings Syndicate was perched on the other side of the tunnel. Considering they were right under the Monolith, boarding this car would take them into the Unexplored Territory.

These guys had cornered the market on trifdraphizin, the same drug Rentaro and Hotaru had found in that Gastrea. They had killed Kihachi Suibara, Ayame Surumi, Kenji Houbara, Saya Takamura, and Giichi Ebihara. And those were only the names Rentaro knew. He understood full well they were just the tip of the iceberg.

What had those victims known? Why did they have to be murdered? What was the Black Swan Project—this menace that consumed the blood of so many people, this presence that must have been straight ahead?

Carefully, the two approached the rail car, all but expecting a trap as they boarded. It was…a train car. Eerily so, right down to the seating and the leather straps dangling from the ceiling. There wasn’t a spot of dust inside, and it felt like the car had seen use fairly recently.

Rentaro turned to the driver’s seat, wondering how the thing worked. He was rewarded with a set of instructions placed right on the instrument panel. After a quick once-over, he was convinced driving it was within his grasp. The key was already in the ignition; he twisted it, the engine revved to life, and the headlights—far brighter than the MagLite he was working with—cut through the darkness. Then he placed his hands on the cold, metallic master-control handle and gradually pushed it up. With a shudder, the speedometer began to ratchet upward, the handles on the ceiling swaying back and forth.

Bringing the handle up to gear P5, Rentaro watched as the car switched to running on momentum, maintaining a steady fifty kilometers an hour. Turning behind him, he saw Hotaru glued to a window, staring at the tunnel’s inside. “I think the tunnel walls are made of Varanium,” she said.

Rentaro focused on the tunnel to confirm it for himself. “I see. They must’ve used a shield to dig this hole.”

“A shield?”

“A tunneling shield. You know, one of those big borers with a cutter bit on the end of it. These days, you have machines that bore the tunnel while laying down wall segments behind it, reinforcing it so it doesn’t collapse. They probably used Varanium segments on this.”

“That’s pretty amazing,” Hotaru blithely replied. But Rentaro sensed she had something else to say. He had a pretty good idea what it was, too. The Five Wings Syndicate used a tunneling shield to dig this pathway; they clearly maintained it well; they had laid rails across it; and now they had a working train system. Any way you sliced it, this was a huge job.

There was a proposal making the rounds called the Cassiopeia Project that would link all five Areas in Japan via underground trains. But not only was that a huge engineering challenge; it was also being heavily lobbied against by assorted vested-interest groups, balking at the idea of cheaper goods or produce from other Areas flooding the market. To say the least, it would be a long time coming. But an entity like the Five Wings Syndicate taking the initiative and building something like this? How large a group was this, anyway?

As they drove on in silence, Rentaro heard the sound of wheels grating against track as the car shifted slightly. He kept his hand on the control handle, peering into a darkness so black not even the headlights could penetrate it. Then he heard a clank behind him. He twirled around, only to find Hotaru opening up their luggage and preparing for battle.

“Rentaro,” she said as she pulled the cocking handle back on a KRISS vector machine gun and squinted at the chamber, “I was thinking—we probably shouldn’t help each other out in battle after all. If I get taken down, just keep on fighting, okay? I’ll try to do the same thing.”

Her tone was blunt, just like it was when they first met. Rentaro opened his mouth to object, but before he could, he asked himself why she was acting like this now, of all times. Maybe she was thinking that something could happen to her in the not-too-distant future, depending on what was waiting up ahead.

Spotting a stop sign marked in red, Rentaro hurriedly turned the handle toward the brake section. He lurched forward, then rocked back when the car finally stopped.

“We’re here.”

At the exit was a simple concrete floor with a rust-colored door on the other side. Above it was a lit-up green sign, a bit like Japan’s standard emergency-exit signs, except this one read BIOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY #3.

“A laboratory?” Rentaro said. “Here?”

“Where do you think we are on the map right now?”

“Well, we’ve been going fifty kilometers an hour for twenty or so minutes, so simple math says we’ve traveled around sixteen kilometers.”

They were certainly well into Unexplored Territory, beyond the protection of the Monoliths. Was this some kind of underground lab, then? If they had any facilities on the surface, how did they keep them safe from Gastrea attack?

Rentaro wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, put a hand on the doorknob, and took a glance at Hotaru.

“Let’s go in.”

He opened the door and walked through.

It was dim. The ceiling lights that connected to the outside corridor shone a light blue like will-o’-the-wisps, reflecting off the silvery gray walls and floor. It reminded Rentaro of a hospital after lights-out. Nobody was around, although he could hear the hum of some kind of machine operating. It smelled like medicine, too. The floor was immaculate; someone had clearly cleaned it recently.

Going through a set of double doors, Rentaro found himself in a locker room. On one wall, he found what looked like an attendance sheet. On it were plates with names like Firebird, Huckebein, and Squid Octopus—no real names at all. All the movable tags were turned around, indicating that no one was currently on duty.

But he doubted they were all on vacation. In fact, chances were the Five Wings Syndicate had abandoned the lab because they were fearful of Rentaro’s advance.

That hunch was all but confirmed when he entered the adjacent business office. It was littered with piles of cross-shredded paper and ash—presumably they started burning paper when the shredding didn’t go fast enough. Apparently paper was still being used as a trusted data format around there.

Five Wings must have known by then that Rentaro defeated Hummingbird and Swordtail, he reasoned. They must have figured this site was his ultimate destination, so they’d vacated. And if that reasoning was right, there was nothing there for Rentaro to discover.

And yet, opposing his logic was the feeling that something was nearby. Like someone was holding his breath in the darkness, constantly staring at him.

The elevator they came across next seemed to be powered, but for some reason, both Rentaro and Hotaru instinctively resisted boarding the eerily bright car. From the button panel, they learned that the facility had one aboveground floor and two basement stories. They decided to take the stairs down to the bottommost floor.

There, they found a sterilization room apparently meant for disinfecting people. Protective clothing hung from hooks on the wall, but Rentaro wasn’t too interested in following procedure at the moment. Opening up the bulkhead door on the other side, he discovered that it led to another, even thicker door, the surface of which resembled space station materials. It opened on cue after the door they just went through closed.

The room beyond opened up into a fairly wide hallway where, in the darkness, they saw something odd ahead.

“Are these…cages?”

Rectangular cages, built into the corridor walls, lined both sides of the path. They continued down the hallway as far as they could see, but what struck the pair as particularly odd was their size. These were nothing like the tabletop cages to house lab rats or rabbits. They were far bigger, and they could faintly hear the sound of breathing coming from them. Something was there. And not just one or two things.

Rentaro could feel them staring at him with bated breath.

He took a step forward, only to feel something pulling him back by his shirt. He turned to find Hotaru shaking her head at him. He knew painfully well why she was doing that, but he also knew there was no going back now.

“Lemme go see what it is,” Rentaro said as he began to softly walk down the hallway, seized by regret that felt like leaving his planet for another. He tried looking into a cage, but in the darkness he couldn’t make out what was huddled in the far corner.

With shaky hands, he illuminated the nearest cage with his MagLite. A creature with blood-red eyes immediately reacted by shrieking and making a mad dash for the cage wall. It slammed itself against it repeatedly, emitting ear-piercing screams as its razor-sharp teeth chewed at the bars.

A panicked Hotaru responded by spraying fire from her short-barrel machine gun.

“Screeeeee!!”

The creature, emitting a noise like a mouse being strangled to death, fell back to the other side of the cage. This was followed by an eerily loud scream, as if the walls had just exploded. The creatures in the other cages, excited by the gunfire, were now copying their dead companion’s act, screaming and bashing themselves against the cage bars.

“Let’s move!”

Rentaro didn’t bother to wait for Hotaru’s reaction as he grabbed her hand and dashed down the hallway. He hit the door at the end with his shoulder, as if attempting to batter it open. He turned around, breathing heavily.

“Was that…really…?”

“Yeah.”

He waited for his pulse to slow, then gingerly approached a cage and lit it up again. Bodies shone in the light, thanks to the viscous slime covering their skin. They smelled like rotting flesh, spitting something sticky at him as they screamed at the top of their lungs, as if casting a curse upon him.

“Are these Gastrea?”

“Look at that…”

Rentaro pointed his light not at the Gastrea, but at the cage. Hotaru’s body tensed up, as if she had been shot.

“Varanium cages…? You’re kidding me. Why…?”

All Gastrea had a natural fear of Varanium, to the point where locking them in a room lined with the metal on all sides would make them grow weak and die. The laboratory had probably been abandoned for at least a few days, but these creatures would have been in the cages for longer than that. Even a Stage Four Gastrea would have been half-dead by now. So why were they still alive?

All Rentaro could do was file the question away for later as he continued on.

Inside of a small room meant for handling dangerous P4-level biohazards, they found an octopuslike monster, its tentacles twisted and bony. It shrieked at them, too, repeatedly slamming itself against a glass window.

A door with the sign OPERATING ROOM led to what looked like a crime scene. Looking at the state of the thing on the operating table, Rentaro immediately shut the door. This room, at least, was skippable for him.

It seemed clear that this lab was being used for assorted types of Gastrea experimentation. The researchers must have been in such a hurry to evacuate that they didn’t even take the time to euthanize their test subjects. Yet, despite all the dreadful scenery he had seen so far, Rentaro was still nagged by the feeling that he still hadn’t reached the main section. He needed to know about the Black Swan Project, and there had to be something there that’d bring him to the root of it.

After taking a full tour of the facility, they concluded their journey in front of a door a fair bit larger than the others. According to the map on a wall they happened upon, it opened to a large space, about the size of a concert hall. A plate on the side read CULTIVATION ROOM.

“Let’s go in,” Rentaro said as he fiddled with the control panel to the side of the door. Inside was another bulkhead door; it whirred open with a hydraulic psshh, and with it, Rentaro felt a blast of cold air hit him from below.

Once the air cleared, it came into view: a room full of large, jellylike masses. Akin to yellow bags that someone had inflated into a ball, they squirmed around like a baby in the womb. A mesh of blood vessels ran across their surfaces, densely crisscrossing over one another, as they hung ponderously from the domed ceiling.

Each one was just large enough to house a grown human. The bags were thin and transparent, and inside were what appeared to be a large number of half-man, half-fish creatures, as well as a large beetle with a thick, warty carapace, a ropelike creature that looked like something in between a snake and a roundworm, and assorted other living things.

As crowded as the room was with them, the yellow bags looked a bit like gigantic muscat grapes, hanging in bunches from the ceiling—each one with a Gastrea inside. Like purple wisteria trees laden with grapes.

“She had to burn the vineyard.”

Even though they had never met, the voice of Dr. Surumi rang softly in Rentaro’s mind.

“This…,” Hotaru whispered. “This is crazy. It can’t be real.”

“Well…believe it.”

Hotaru must have known it by then; she was just pretending not to. For some reason, her professed disbelief made Rentaro furious.

“They’re raising them! They’re raising Gastrea in here! And not just any Gastrea, either…”

He knew letting his anger out on Hotaru wasn’t constructive at all. But the pure, unadorned horror seizing him made it impossible to control.

“The Gastrea they care for in here get put into those cages we saw once they reach maturity. These aren’t normal Gastrea… They’re making them so they’re immune to Varanium. That’s why being in a Varanium cage doesn’t kill them. God… So this was it the whole time?”

Sumire had said it herself: “Swans, you know, are supposed to be all white in color, but then they found a population of black swans in Australia. It turned the world of ornithology upside down back in the day. The entire world ran on this assumption that swans were supposed to be white, so nobody was ever able to predict that black swans would ever be a thing, too.

“So the ‘black swan theory’ is where you build long-term predictions while bound by your current state of comprehension, but thereby fail to account for unpredictable events even after they happen…

“If you’ve had ten years straight of bountiful harvests, you’d never imagine that a flood would ravage your farmland tomorrow, right?”

No, you wouldn’t. A strain of Varanium-immune Gastrea? Who would ever guess? And if the virus ever got out and their numbers started multiplying, the human race would immediately lose all their safe zones. Every nation, every human being would meet their maker. The Gastrea conquest of planet Earth would be complete.

This was the Black Swan Project. What an ugly, horrible, disgusting thing. And most of all, Rentaro couldn’t believe this was all the work of mankind.

“But what’s the Five Wings Syndicate going to do with these…?”

Rentaro shook his head. “If they had enough of these Varanium-resistant Gastrea, they could deliberately set off a pandemic anytime they liked…”

“They can’t! There’s no way you can domesticate Gastrea like that. They’re never going to listen to them. They’ve already tried implanting electrodes in their minds, and it didn’t work. Even if all the Gastrea in there were released right now, they’d just scatter off in a million different directions.”

“The trifdraphizin.”

Hotaru’s eyebrows arched.

“That’s the one puzzle we still haven’t solved. Why is the Five Wings Syndicate so desperate for trifdraphizin that they’re willing to risk blowing their cover to buy up the black-market supply? That drug puts its victims in a deep hypnotic state. Maybe they’re putting the Gastrea they’re raising here in a catatonic state and—I don’t know how—but maybe conditioning them into attacking or going toward Tokyo Area? You know, like how they condition soldiers to immediately pull the trigger when a target appears.”

Conditioning was the way people trained animals to perform certain tasks—instilling a conditioned reflex that made them perform the action on command. If you stuck a mouse in a maze and conditioned it with cheese to memorize the correct path, it would eventually run through the entire thing without hesitation—without cheese—simply because it was conditioned to run the maze. And after a soldier was conditioned in boot camp to open fire the moment he saw a target, he’d be able to pull the trigger independent of his own will, improving the chances of killing his enemy. Army commanders loved it, but it had a side effect: post-traumatic stress disorder. Making soldiers kill people they didn’t want to kill. Committing these murders permanently altered their mental state, and there was no limit to the mental fallout and subsequent health bills.

All of it showed that conditioning worked, even on high-level animals like humans. Gastrea couldn’t be any different.

“But… But even if it’s theoretically possible, what are the chances of it working without a hitch?”

“That’s why they’re conducting this whole experiment. To see.”

Rentaro looked up at the dome. The muscat grapes on the vines distracted him too much to notice that the dome, about two hundred meters in diameter, had a tangled mesh of pipes and wires snaking down from the center, like a tall, straight tree trunk. The dome was, in a way, a vast, computerized tree, the pipes keeping the grapevines alive.

“I’m sure Five Wings releases the Gastrea grown here all the time as an experiment. To see whether they can get into Tokyo Area or not, you know? And they put that star-and-wing mark on them so they can tell them apart from other Gastrea. Then they have crews pick them up. I’m sure the Gastrea you and Suibara killed was Varanium-resistant, too. Normally, it would’ve been whisked away before it ever made it to Dr. Surumi’s operating table—but she found out. She knew too much. So they eliminated her.”

This is what you wanted to tell me. Isn’t it, Suibara?

Rentaro heard a sob behind him. He found Hotaru down on her knees, face buried in her hands.

“Why…?” she wailed, shaking her head back and forth. “Why did Kihachi have to die for this…? Just being with Kihachi made me so happy, and then…this happened…!”

It was true; Hotaru was just as much a victim of the Black Swan Project as the others. And she might have more company soon. If Black Swan ever got out, Tokyo Area would be crushed. Suibara tried to blow the whistle on them. He knew how dangerous it’d be for him, but he tried anyway.

If we crack under pressure now, the thing Suibara lost his life trying to reveal will be lost in the darkness again. The Five Wings Syndicate will just continue their experiments somewhere else.

Rentaro couldn’t bear to let that happen. He shook his head lightly and looked up at the giant tree in front of him.

“You know what, Hotaru? I was wrong. I thought that if I came back with some evidence, that’d be enough to clear my name. But this is on a whole other level now. We can’t let a single Gastrea get out of this facility. We have to kill them all right here.”

“How?”

Rentaro turned his head toward the center of the cultivation room. Hallways fanned out from the large pipe in the center. They were fairly basic in structure, the floors made out of steel mesh that looked like it was recycled from the construction phase. Rentaro picked the nearest one and walked toward the trunk, his soles clanking against the metal, and Hotaru following. Looking down, he saw that the catwalk spanned above a mass of wires—the “roots” of the tree, so to speak.

White fog steamed around, dissipating into a thick, milky mist. The chill they felt must have come from the evaporating liquid nitrogen, or whatever this was. Something told him that falling on those cords could be hazardous to their health.

Upon reaching the center of the dome, he and Hotaru checked out the assorted machinery accessible to them. It seemed to control operations around the vineyard. Destroying it might kill off the Gastrea gestating inside.

It made Rentaro marvel at his enemy all over again. The Five Wings Syndicate had the resources to build this massive facility. What kind of scale were they built on? And how far had they sunk their talons into Tokyo Area by now?

It was lucky they had stayed constantly on guard this time, expecting the enemy at any moment. It paid off when, all of a sudden, they felt a menacing presence behind their backs.

On went the cybernetic arm. The extractor installed inside grabbed a cartridge. The ejector kicked it away from his body.

Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 13—

“—Rokuro Kabuto!”

The swirling motion he added to his fist as it whizzed through the air collided against something advancing upon him from Hotaru’s side. For a moment, a shock wave crossed the room, like the air itself had been deconstructed. With a loud boom, the object—a rifle round—was deflected into oblivion.

Rentaro turned in the bullet’s direction. Hotaru, taking another moment or two to realize she had been targeted, swiveled her head around, searching fruitlessly.

“Welcome, Satomi. I figured you’d be coming.”

A shadowy figure trudged its way across the corridor. He had a broad nose and an ice-cold stare, but above the boy’s popped uniform collar, a twisted smile was painted on his face. He brought the sniper rifle lingering over the mist back to his side, stuck both hands in his pockets, and walked toward Rentaro.

“Yuga Mitsugi,” muttered Rentaro, voice filled to the brim with disgust. There was no sense of surprise. Sooner or later, he knew the guy would show up. And he knew that, so long as he failed to take him down in battle, there would be no victory against the Five Wings Syndicate.

“Hotaru,” Rentaro said, eyes still fixed upon Yuga, “I need you to do me a favor. Take all the plastic explosives in the bag and plant them around the main parts of the lab. I’ll join you once I beat this guy.”

“But I wanna—”

“Please. I need to settle things with him personally.”

Hotaru frowned at the interruption.

“…Good luck, Rentaro. Please don’t die.”

With that, she mentally shook off her concerns, picked up her traveling bag, and headed for the main door. Rentaro followed her from the corner of his eye until she disappeared, then turned back to the presence in front of him.

Silence reigned for a few moments, accompanied by the mist billowing around them. Except for all the machines humming, it almost looked like they were standing on a rope bridge deep in some uncharted mountain valley.

“I’ve got you, Yuga Mitsugi,” Rentaro rumbled in a low voice. “I know what you’re doing. I’m gonna blow the whistle.”

“I’m gonna have to give you a ‘no’ on that.”

“What is Five Wings after? Are you gonna sell the Varanium-resistant Gastrea to some third-world terrorist or something?”

“Sell them? Why would we do something like that? We’re gonna use them.”

Rentaro had trouble understanding this for a moment. The logical part of his brain refused to accept it.

“Use…them?”

“Exactly.” Yuga broadly extended his arms and began to breezily pace in a circle around his adversary. “The mission of the Five Wings Syndicate is world hegemony. World dominance. I don’t know how it was before the war, but the Five Areas of Japan comprise one of the richest countries in the world. We’re a major Varanium exporter, and we’re a world leader when it comes to technology. By themselves, the rest of the world’s nations are helpless. Like badgers hunkered down in their badger holes. We need to step up in their place, maintain world order, and exterminate the Gastrea on a worldwide level. But in order to achieve that, we need to bring the world under our administration. To make sure everyone’s marching to the beat of the same drum. Our drum.”

Rentaro narrowed his eyes.

“But it’s tragic, though, isn’t it?” Yuga continued. “All the different races, religions; all the conflicting ideologies in the world. Too many nations that would never listen to our call to action. If we want to keep everyone on the same wavelength, first we have to clear out the countries that aren’t reasonable. That’s what the Varanium-resistant Gastrea are for.”

“Clear out…? How is that different from taking over the world?”

“It’s completely different. We’re trying to provide proper guidance to the world. That’s what it takes to create a Gastrea-free planet. And as part of that effort, we need to step up. The US used to be called the ‘world police’ a long time ago—well, now it’s our turn. We have to take their place and make the troublemaker nations of the world submit to us. After all, it’s truly a pity, but mankind—the supposed ruler of all things in the world, that most social of animals—is simply unable to create a form of government without an elite ruling class. As supposedly intelligent as we all are, we’re still so blindly obedient to authority. It’s just like a colony of ants. That’s why we need to teach people who the queen ant is around here. The Five Wings Syndicate, you know… It transcends borders. It transcends political affiliations. It’s a group of people distressed by the destruction of their native lands, working under the same flag to make the world a better place.”

“Are you being serious at all?”

“I’ll tell you that, at the very least, the people above me truly think this. That’s why the vanguard force of this group is the New World Creation Project. Not New Humanity.”

With a blaze of speed, Rentaro drew his gun and fired at Yuga’s feet. The bullet ripped through the sole. The barrel, as hot as his own anger, pounded against the side of his arm.

“Don’t give me that shit. Is that what Suibara had to die for? That? You made Hotaru break down in tears for that bullshit?”

Yuga shrugged his shoulders in a not-my-problem gesture.

“I’m sick of all this talking. We’re never not going to be in conflict with each other… Now I know that all too well!”

Rentaro’s left eye, and both of Yuga’s, activated simultaneously. The preliminary calculations were underway.

“Today’s going to be a great day,” Yuga hissed. “Let’s get started. The New Humanity Creation Project, or the New World Creation Project—which is the truly legitimate evolution of mankind?”

The final battle between Rentaro and Yuga was underway.

It was heralded by a particularly large burst of billowing mist, hiding both figures within. It cut off Rentaro’s ability to harness his cybernetic eye—but his foe was in the same boat. He pushed off the ground and, at astonishing speed, covered ten meters in a single instant. Next came Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 5—Kohaku Tensei—and despite not using a cartridge, his fist zoomed across the air at subsonic speed, blowing away the white mist. But it was Rentaro whose eyes burst open in surprise afterward. The enemy he sought was not there.

The next moment, an intense pain raced across his temple. He blacked out for half a moment.

“Ngh!”

Looking back, he saw that Yuga was somehow by his side now, about to unleash a kick. In his right hand, he gripped a large knife—really more of a short sword. The path it took for his follow-up attack seemed to leave white-hot afterimages, like a flash of lightning. The CPU in Rentaro’s eye raced to gauge this threat. It found an escape route just in time. He turned his head back to dodge, wound his elbow up, tensed his arm, and aimed a knee kick to Yuga’s face. It was blocked just before it made impact.

His enemy’s face was right in front of him now, twisted with hate. It seemed to Rentaro like that face was sunken into his head. Then stars went off in his mind. By the time he realized he had been the victim of a head butt, he was spewing blood from his nose and taking several unbalanced steps backward. His vision lurched. The blood plinked against the metal catwalk, like crimson flowers on a meadow.

When he looked back up, Rentaro had lost Yuga in the heavy mist again. He almost fell into a panic, just barely retaining his wits.

I can’t track him with my eyes.

I am my gun, and my gun is me: The unity of man and machine, so expertly honed in the VR training Rentaro undertook to defeat Tina, was attuned not only to his own gun, but to the sound of the trigger bar scraping against his enemy’s frame, the firing hammer going down through the sear.

Just as he dove to the right, a flash erupted from the fog. The scream of gunpowder deafened his ears.

“Wha…?!”

Somehow, despite both sides being robbed of their artificial-eye skills, Rentaro dodged the bullet. The surprise was obvious in Yuga’s yelp. Rentaro was instantly there. By the time Yuga adjusted his aim, Rentaro’s fist was already speeding within range. Both hands were free; both feet were planted on the ground.

“Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 15—”

A cartridge made an ominous ka-chack as it tumbled out. Rentaro’s Super-Varanium fist propelled itself at unthinkable energy levels as it tore at Yuga from below. It broke the sound barrier and, like a wrecking ball, blew the mist away. In a panic, Yuga crossed both arms in self-defense. It was pointless.

“Unebiko Ryu—! You’re outta here!”

The uppercut, curving from below toward Yuga’s chin, smashed through his left arm. It sent his body a good ten meters away.

But he wasn’t done. Launching a leg cartridge to thrust him forward, Rentaro closed in for a second attack. Drawing a semicircle in the air with his body, he rose up to Yuga’s midair position and launched another leg cartridge. The casing arced in the air, tracing a gold-tinged path behind him.

Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 16: Inzen Kokutenfu.

“Raaaaah!”

The flying roundhouse kick buried itself into the still-midair Yuga’s stomach, this time sending his body downward. He crashed against the bare steel of the catwalk with a loud clanging sound, bouncing several times from the force of the impact before putting a dent in the anti-fall railing.

How’s that?!

To a normal human, the first uppercut would have been enough to crush every bone in their body. No matter how mechanized his body was—

“Huh?!”

Rentaro found his eyes opening wide in shock once more. Yuga stirred, hoisting himself up via the dented railing. He had nothing to say, his tousled hair covering one eye. The other one, its iris spinning rapidly, glared at him.

“I’ll kill you.”

“…You got me at the hotel,” Rentaro replied. “Now we’re even.”

“I can’t lose to the Tendo style a second time!”

…A second time?

As he shouted, Yuga took two survival knives from his belt, gripping one in each hand as he screamed at the heavens.

Rentaro’s instinct told him not to approach, so he unholstered his gun, aimed, and fired a barrage of shots. The recoil from the nine-millimeter rocked his arm.

He realized the mistake he had made when he saw Yuga twist and turn his body to dodge them. Of course. He was fighting a foe with eye enhancements just like his. If he kept relying only on what he could see with his eyes, the predictive AI was going to read his bullets’ trajectory every time.

The sheer speed at which Yuga then rushed toward him, body kept low to the ground, was clear from the mist he kicked up around him. Rentaro aimed his Beretta again.

But Yuga interrupted him with the throw of a knife. It stuck into the Beretta, confusing his eyeball’s measurements and making him accidentally pull the trigger. The muzzle flash erupted toward nothing in particular.

The remaining knife was at Yuga’s hip, shining dully in the mist as it rocketed toward Rentaro. Realizing it was too late to dodge it, he lowered his body, preparing to deflect the blade with his Super-Varanium right arm.

His entire body seemed to creak at the moment of impact, his soles sliding against the steel floor. The heat generated by the friction left the smell of something burning in the air, and the sound of metal screeching against metal greeted his ears. The blade danced by in the air, mere centimeters from his nose.

By a hair’s breadth, he had stopped his opponent’s bull charge. Yuga’s hate-twisted face was directly in front of his. He could feel his breathing.

But once again, Rentaro misjudged Yuga Mitsugi’s threat. Yuga only had a knife in his right hand. In his left he held a small, round object that he brought toward Rentaro, as if offering it to him.

Rentaro groaned, like an icy hand had a grip on his heart. He recognized that object.

An HG-86 mini-grenade.

The detonation pin and lever were already off. At this range, both were squarely in the kill zone.

A suicide strike?!

Rentaro’s body reacted to the fear seizing his body. With a free elbow, he knocked the grenade away. It flew off the catwalk and fell down below, then exploded with a body-wrenching shock wave.

Yuga’s left hand was now free. It struck hard against Rentaro’s stomach, left wide open by his uplifted elbow. Belatedly, Rentaro realized what Yuga was doing.

Oh damn. His palm strike can—

One look at Yuga’s upturned lips was enough to freeze his spine.

“Vairo-orchestration! Prepare to be shattered!”

The next instant, a withering pain beyond all imagination tore through his body.

“Gyaaaaahhhh!”

His vision was jarred. The pain made it feel like his body was being blown apart.

Without even realizing what he was doing, he flailed his feet and managed to wrest himself free. His vision was still lurching back and forth, and the pain made him fall to his knees. Rentaro looked at his wound. His guts felt loose in his body, and the amount of bleeding damage was unlike anything he had seen before. He felt a blob of something distasteful well up in his esophagus, and then blood bubbled out of his mouth, along with bits of lung that had been vibrated off. It was jet-black in color, and now it stained the floor an even more ominous shade.

His eye blurred, his body screaming out in pain. It urged him not to move—but, gritting his teeth in desperation, he looked up at Yuga. He, too, was gravely wounded. It was a wonder he could still stand. And why wouldn’t it be? He had taken the full brunt of not one, but two cartridge strikes. That he was alive at all was a miracle.

“We were created ten years ago to defend the world during the Gastrea War! Don’t you see how pointless fighting each other is?!” Rentaro shrieked.

Yuga swept an arm horizontally in front of him. “I believe in Professor Grünewald! That’s the path I’ve chosen!”

“I never got used to this machine body. I had to get my limbs replaced every time I grew a bit more. It was a constant barrage of pain.”

“Me too.”

“I thought it was gonna kill me, once or twice.”

“Me too.”

“It’s not too late, all right?! I don’t want to kill you!”

“You’re making no sense!” came Yuga’s reply. “Why aren’t you trying to join the ruling side? We’re the chosen ones! If there’s any problem with us, it’s only that we can’t transcend entropy—we can’t make a machine that doesn’t break down! Sumire Muroto made you into just as devastating a killing machine as I am! We were built to create destruction and chaos. We’re practically brothers! You…and I!”

“Shut up! I’m not like you at all! Dr. Muroto gave me this arm so I could connect with people!”

“That’s a pack of lies!”

“You asshole…!” Rentaro shouted as he stood up, shedding droplets of blood. His lungs shuddered in pain with every breath. White mist continued to billow out from the cords and devices around him—but all he could hear now was the beating of his own heart.

Yuga lowered his stance, preparing for action as he took his unique crossed-arms defensive tactic again. Rentaro joined him, but he chose to take the Tendo Martial Arts Water and Sky Stance instead. There was nothing defensive about it. No escape for his foe.

The cybernetic parts of each young man were operating faster than they ever had before—perhaps for the last time. Sparks of light entered their vision.

The staredown made both sides hold their breath. It was a picture of concentration in its ultimate form. Once it was released, it was over. The fists of both opponents were clenched, ready to take the life of their respective foe.

What wound up breaking the tranquility was the voice of a girl from behind the door: Hotaru.

“Rentaro!”

That was the signal. Without even a second of hesitation, Rentaro stomped his foot on the floor and set off three cartridges at the same time. He closed in on Yuga at supersonic speed, faster than a jet engine. Then he burned through one on his arm, the smell of burnt gunpowder penetrating his nostrils.

His fist unleashed itself. Yuga’s own was approaching his eyes.

Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 8: Homura Kasen.

Cartridge thrust clashed with ultravibration—two of the world’s most advanced technologies colliding, immediately clearing all the mist out of the room with the shock waves. Their footholds collapsed under them, the main computer emitting sparks in the background.

“Haaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Grrrrrraaaaahhhh!”

Fist collided with open palm, vying for superiority. Rentaro’s opponent was in such a bad mess that Rentaro had no idea how his ultravibration device still worked. But work it did. Thunder coursed across his artificial arm, cracking his Super-Varanium fist.

Releasing a guttural, beastlike roar, Rentaro activated all his remaining cartridges at the same time.

“Unnnnn-liiiiiimited…burrrrrrrsssst!!”

There was an unprecedented clash of energy, to a level that not even experiments with a particle accelerator could hope to achieve. Then, like nothing ever heard before, there was the sound of machinery cracking to pieces.

Rentaro felt something tugging at him, as if trying to wrench his head from his neck. He was shot backward by the destructive blast, like two magnets repelling each other. The force sent his body against the floor a few times before he finally crashed into the tree trunk of pipes in the center of the dome. He gritted his teeth hard enough to lose one or two—but Rentaro still leapt back to his feet.

Yet he couldn’t find the enemy he was pursuing. He picked up his Beretta handgun, plucking the knife out from where it was stuck.

Risking a peek down into the guts of the catwalk, he realized why there was no answer to his attack. Amidst the fog produced by the evaporating hyper-chilled liquid nitrogen, he saw Yuga plastered against a pipe, his clothes frozen to it. He was motionless. Rentaro wordlessly pointed the Beretta at him. Yuga glared back, the hatred congealing over his eyesight. His eyes rejected all sympathy.

Convincing him with words would never work now.

So Rentaro instead nudged his handgun to the side and shot a bullet through the tank next to him.

Immediately, a clear, all-freezing liquid, chilled down to negative 196 degrees Celsius, descended upon Yuga’s body, emitting dense, thick clouds of evaporation.

“Gaaahhh!”

Rentaro averted his eyes. If he had any mercy to give, it lay in how the massive clouds of mist kept the decisive moment from being viewed.

There was the crackling of rapidly freezing matter. Then silence.

A strong, cool breeze rustled across his hair. The world was a bloom of grayish white once more.

“Rentaro…”

Hotaru clearly had something to ask. But instead of letting her continue, Rentaro walked past her.

“It’s over,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The moment they climbed the stairs from the second-floor basement to the single aboveground story, they were each forced to put a hand over their own forehead, to protect their eyes from the burning sunlight.

They hadn’t realized it, since they had spent the past several hours belowground, but it was already well into daylight outdoors. Going out the facility’s back door, they found themselves on top of a small hill, in the middle of a basin dug into a conical valley.

“I guess that’s how they keep the Gastrea from getting in here,” Rentaro said as he shaded his eyes. In front of them was a line of tall, deep-black stone Monoliths. There was hardly any room between them to go through.

“Portable Monoliths…? Is that how they claimed the land?”

Each one was about two meters in width and 3.25 meters in height. A set of mini-Monoliths, through and through, as if manufactured for a Tokyo Area–themed mini golf course. Size made all the difference in effectiveness, so these Monoliths would likely repel Stage One creatures and not much else. Against a Stage Two, they’d act as a mild deterrent; anything tougher, and the best you could hope for was a good running start.

They were familiar enough to Rentaro. Varanium mining operations in the Unexplored Territory always deployed sets of these, usually accompanied by civsec bodyguards. Maybe that was Swordtail’s and Hummingbird’s day job around there.

“What’d you do with the explosives?”

“I placed them on the load-bearing columns across the building. We can set all of them off at the same time. I took a bunch of pictures of the facility, too, so we’re good to go evidence-wise.”

“Okay. Let’s move back a bit and set it off. We’ll have to watch to make sure the whole thing collapses.”

“Hang on. If we blow it up now, we won’t be able to take the train back.”

Rentaro gently shook his head. “Their plan was probably to have Yuga ambush and kill me in the lab. We just turned the tables on them. I guess New World can monitor their assassins’ vital signs somehow, so the enemy already knows he’s dead by now. There’s no guarantee they won’t blow the tunnel while we’re running that train down it. We can’t afford to let up for a single moment until we hand over the evidence and bring Five Wings to public light.”

Hotaru eyed the Monoliths nervously—the real ones, off in the far distance.

“Can we make it back okay?”

“The Monoliths’ magnetic field reaches out five kilometers past the border. We’re around sixteen kilos from there now, so once we walk eleven, we’re in the clear. Even if we run into any Gastrea on the way, they’re gonna be Stage One, Two at most. Strength-wise, we’ve got nothing to worry about. The sun’s gonna set on the way, but I think we can manage.”

He couldn’t tell how much of the bravado in his voice made it across to Hotaru. But she seemed to accept it well enough. She looked up to him, an optimistic smile on her face.

“All right. But let’s bury those Gastrea alive first.”

Rentaro nodded lightly.

They marched past the line of mini-Monoliths, standing proudly as they sucked up the intense daylight sun, and climbed up the valley. Once they reached a position where they had a full view of the lab, Hotaru took out the wireless switch to activate the explosives and removed the plastic cover on the button. Rentaro tensed himself up with anticipation as he looked down at the lab.

“Rentaro.”

Hotaru’s voice had an odd sort of wistfulness to it. It seemed rather out of place. Turning to her, Rentaro found her slightly flush around the cheeks, an affable smile on her face.

“Thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

“For everything up to now.”

Rentaro’s eyes darted away. He scratched his head, unable to reply to this unfamiliar appreciation on Hotaru’s part.

“Kind of too early to thank me, isn’t it? It’s gonna be hilarious if those explosives turn out to be a dud.”

Hotaru brought a hand to her eyes, chuckling as she shook her head a bit. “Rentaro, I…I know maybe you don’t want to hear this from me, but…”

Maybe it was an Initiator’s sixth sense sounding a warning to her.

Looking at the lab, Hotaru’s eyes shot wide open. She ran back up to Rentaro. Unable to comprehend this, Rentaro found himself thrown into the air. He couldn’t recover in time, hitting his head against a stone on the ground as stars filled his eyes.

“…Ow!” Rentaro shouted. “What’re you—?”

Rentaro managed to make it this far before he ran out of words.

“I’m glad you’re…okay, Rentaro.”

Hotaru dimly smiled as she stood there. She waddled forward with unsteady steps, trying her best to stay on her feet. A trail of blood ran from the edge of her lips.

Looking down, Rentaro saw that her abdominal area—the light pink in her tank top—was now stained a deep red.

This was the point at which the second sniper bullet probably came along.

It ripped Hotaru’s chest area open. Warm blood spattered on Rentaro’s face. She immediately lost her balance, falling to her knees, head down, before collapsing on top of Rentaro.

His eyes remained open in disbelief as he broke the shattered girl’s fall.

“Hotaru?”