Black Bullet - Volume 7 - Chapter 2.02

2

During the Gastrea War ten years ago, when Tokyo put up the final temporary Monolith and shut the Gastrea out of the city for good, the people’s hearts were filled not with relief from returning to safety but with a mix of boundless despondency and a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t really over.

When Prime Minister Zama, head of state at the time, announced on TV, radio, and the Internet that the war was over, most people greeted the news with warm tears, even if they didn’t know where their reaction was coming from. The tears symbolized sadness for the people who were killed, chagrin at losing the war, and a deep melancholy, a self-reckoning over what they had just done with their lives.

Soon after, the last prime minister to rule over a united Japan lost his standing in the political world when, fearing for a Japan whose population was ten percent of what it was before, he placed intense pressure on the medical world to institute a blanket ban on abortion. This ban ultimately led to an explosive growth of what would later become known as the Cursed Children. The lack of access to birth control also led to an increase in unwanted children, causing a rash of abandonment and abuse—and indirectly leading to the urban legend that illegitimate children were more likely to be Cursed.

Zama, ironically enough, met his demise in 2029 on the way to the hospital after one of the Cursed Children his policies allowed to be born snapped his neck in two. His rule was followed by the first Seitenshi, who worked to merge the city of Tokyo with the scattered prefectures that surrounded it to create the forty-three districts of Tokyo Area.

After the end of the war, the Area was faced with a mountain of tasks—repairing broken infrastructure, solving the Area’s endemic power shortages, procuring a reliable food supply, and securing more territory for the large population crammed into this relatively small space. That led to the construction of the so-called Mega-Float, an artificial island off Tokyo Bay.

Construction on the bay had been frequent and vigorous before, but after the war, the shore was so densely packed that the buildings were eating into the bay itself, literally changing the map.

And now Rentaro stood in front of one.

The heavy shadow of a bird crossed the ground. Rentaro looked up, exposing his face to the torturous sun. He raised a hand to his forehead as the cries of some distant shorebird hit his eardrums. Probably a flock of seagulls, he figured, lazily working their way along the seaside. They were called umineko in Japanese, literally sea cat, because of their distinctive cry—a cry that Rentaro always thought sounded more like an infant than anything.

Seagulls, he didn’t mind so much. Especially compared to the herring gulls that shared this shore with them. They were stupid birds. Stealing chicks from other nests, ripping them apart and feeding them to their own, or sometimes taking them for their own babies and raising them instead. Ugh.

Rentaro would’ve wanted to continue exploring the natural knowledge he had encased in his brain for a while longer, but he stopped himself and eyed the ominous-looking entrance before him. This was part of the rush of sloppily built construction the Area saw after the war; despite being less than a decade old, the white outer walls already sported cracks and falling plaster. There was a rustic feel to it, like an old seaside sanatorium, coupled with an inscrutable sense of pure evil.

This was Tokyo Area’s District 32 Offshore Criminal Detention Center.

Among the chaos people had to endure in the postwar years was a short but intense period of hyperinflation, with a box of cornflakes almost reaching 100,000 yen for a time. But that was a common occurrence in history—things like 1,000-yen and 10,000-yen bills were just pieces of paper, after all; they only held value because of the good name and trust people held in the Japanese government. The Gastrea War cost these bills their liquidity, and once the Tokyo Stock Exchange shut down, people’s trust in their currency went right with it.

In the ensuing months, it wasn’t unusual to see entrepreneurs with money to burn a few days ago suddenly being forced to poke around garbage cans for food. There was, naturally, an accompanying increase in crime.

Most cases involved people with no other choice but to break the law—but there were light and dark sides to every person. People who lost their sense of guilt after committing one crime and getting away with it; people whose crimes escalated thanks to the adrenaline thrill they got… This offshore prison was built for people like that, people who took a step over that most final of lines.

Looking back the way he’d come, Rentaro eyed the impossibly long wharf. The only thing visible on it was a solitary gate and guard booth. Despite being considered part of the Outer Districts, this bayside locale was free of rubble; it had been fully revitalized, in fact, the crescent-shaped bay around it now a beachfront park. It was an urban oasis of sorts, lined with lovers walking shoulder to shoulder, mothers pushing strollers, and activity centers for the elderly. Then there was this prison. It was cut off, separate.

Rentaro gave his name and civsec license to the man at the front desk. He looked rather surprised when Rentaro asked for an urgent meeting with Litvintsev. He left for a moment, then brought back an older guard who said, “Come with me.” Rentaro followed, hands balled into fists as he prepared to face this most final of confrontations.

“Ah, you civsecs come pretty young these days… You’re the guy who arrested Litvintsev?”

It wasn’t until they passed the second locked door that the guard leading him had finally opened his mouth.

“Well, by sheer coincidence…but yeah.”

“I dunno if you know, but you won’t find any normal prisoners in here. These are all people who were too much for our other facilities to handle.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Rentaro said as he looked around. There wasn’t a single light on. It felt empty, with only the sounds of their footsteps filling the space. Small, barred windows dotted the walls at regular intervals, and light flowed diagonally down. It smelled like the sea, and the sound of seagulls in the air was incessant—and, once Rentaro looked hard enough, he spotted the lenses of surveillance cameras on all four corners of the ceiling. There were lines of holes in the floor, which he assumed contained metal bars that shot up in case something happened.

He was also surprised to find some girls among the security staff. One was seated on a chair, with one leg over the other, as she tapped her foot nervously. There was a spade symbol painted below her right eye, like she was part of some underground club scene; it was clear she was trying to project a bad-girl image.

“Wow, you’ve got Initiators on payroll here?”

“Transfers from the IISO, yes. Not sure we need them, though. It’s kind of going overboard with the security.”

Rentaro turned his head toward a particular bit of darkness that seemed to waver for just a moment. A pair of sharply lit eyes followed his movements silently from a darkened cell. He didn’t know what the guy was in for, nor did he care, but it was clear he was one of the prisoners. The way he remained perfectly silent only made it all the stranger.

“Over here, civsec.”

He could still feel the eyes stabbing into the back of his head as he approached a small guard post at the other end of the hallway. This marked the third gate he had gone through; presumably every gate opened the way to inmates who had committed more and more serious crimes. Once he passed, he noticed that the guard accompanying him was gone. Turning around, he found him standing at the entrance.

“This is as far as I go. Be careful, civsec. That guy used his handcuffs to put me in a chokehold the first day he was here. If help came any later than it did, I would’ve been strangled.”

“…All right. Thanks.”

The guard bowed down to him, as if shrinking back in fear. Rentaro turned around, crossed the large C BLOCK stencil painted on the floor, and stepped into the darkness. He didn’t exactly want to go it alone, but there was no way he could make the guard join him now. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants.

This block was generally built like all the others, but the eyes upon him seemed to stick more closely to him than before, infused with a vague yet clearly murderous animosity.

Suddenly, there was a jangling sound from somewhere, like someone rolled a jingle bell along the floor. He followed the sound, which came from the far end of the corridor.

When he approached it, the first thing that struck him was the brightness. It was a single cell, a bit larger than the rest, and it had a window much larger than elsewhere, illuminating almost all of the cell’s bare mortar walls. They loomed over a plain pipe-frame bed and a simple shelf lined with books, their titles written in Cyrillic. His attention then turned to the wind chime tied to one of the bars. The wind blew at it now and again, sending a bell jangling along inside its glass compartment every time it did. That must have been it.

And there, sitting in a folding chair and reading a book, was—

Rentaro made a pair of tight fists as he felt his blood vessels constrict.

“It’s been a while, Andrei Litvintsev.”

The man wedged a bookmark in his book, put it on the shelf next to him, and looked up.

“It sure has, Rentaro Satomi.”

The tenor of his voice evoked unpleasant memories in Rentaro’s mind.

He had a cleft chin and a well-chiseled face, one that didn’t go too well with his black prison uniform. His blond hair shone in the sunlight. The tracking anklet on his right foot personified the sense of terror he projected, the same one the guard spoke of.

“Why did you ask for me?” Rentaro asked.

“I’ve been looking into you since my arrest.”

Litvintsev tilted his head, inviting Rentaro to have a seat. Rentaro picked up a folding chair propped against the corridor wall and set it up for himself, never taking his eyes off his adversary. He made sure to leave three paces’ worth of space between himself and the iron-bar door that separated them, just in case.

The chime jingled sweetly in the air, a sound heavily out of place in the oppressive atmosphere.

“First Scorpion, then Aldebaran… You’ve been busy since you caught me, haven’t you?”

“You didn’t bring me here just to crack jokes at me, I imagine. You sure got it good here, huh? Three hots and a cot, and all that.”

“Wanna trade places?”

“Hey, I’m just saying, be glad you didn’t get the death penalty.”

Litvintsev’s lips curled into a smile. “You don’t have to be so nervous. I’m not gonna kill you or anything.”

“I’m sorry, has your time in jail hurt your eyesight or something?”

The prisoner sneered a jeer of supreme confidence. “Fear has a certain scent to it. You’re masking that fear with your anger right now.”

“…”

Rentaro glared back, fists on his legs, as he kept himself from trembling. As much as he hated to admit it, he was never any good at playing mind games with people.

This was Andrei Litvintsev. A spy who gave bribes to several Tokyo Area politicians and tried convincing them to switch over to warmongering extremist groups. He was accused of building connections to the Area’s heavy industrial, economic, and political powers, then reporting his findings back to Russia. He even built an operational office inside Tokyo Area for his activities.

The authorities finally caught up with him, but when they did, they were only able to arrest five other people connected to him. All exercised their right to remain silent, so the courts weren’t able to pin anything on him apart from the meandering offense of “disturbing the peace in Tokyo Area and collusion with other nations.”

It was sheer coincidence that a master spy like this was arrested at all. He was installing a litany of bugging devices in the house of a politician that opposed his friends, and the noise from the construction work annoyed one of the neighbors. That neighbor employed a civsec in order to file a complaint, and soon his entire cover was blown.

Litvintsev was the darling of the news media for a while after his arrest as his other crimes came to light—but to the Tendo Civil Security Agency, which had the limelight taken from them by the district attorney and was only involved in the first place because they were handling a dinky little noise-complaint job, it was a little embarrassing, if anything.

“The only reason you managed to catch me was because I didn’t have an Initiator by my side. I don’t want you to forget that.”

“Heh. Pretty lame excuse. That’s the kind of explanation an elite-level agent like you’s turning to? Almost makes me wanna cry. Or should I say ex–elite agent?”

“Is that princess of yours doing well?”

“Lady Seitenshi, you mean? Was she in here?”

“Just for a little bit. Looked like a pretty delicate woman.”

“Well, don’t pick on her too much. She’s a really devout woman.”

“Devout?” Litvintsev asked, lowering his voice an octave or two. “She’s turning to religion in times like these?”

“Are they all atheists over in Belarus?”

“Sorry. I stopped practicing once the Greater Minsk Area got thrown into the deepest pit of hell.”

“…Look, Litvintsev, you know what’s going on in Tokyo Area right now. The Area’s been falsely accused of making Libra do its bidding. We’re half a second away from war with Sendai. They’re looking for a fight, in fact, and unless something happens soon, they’re gonna get it—and once that happens, it might wind up being a world war. Now, there’s a chance the things your people stole—Solomon’s Ring and Scorpion’s Neck—are involved with this. You were up to your neck in that, too, weren’t you?”

“Why do you think that?”

“You’re paying off the staff here so you can contact the outside world. That’d be easy for you, wouldn’t it?”

Litvintsev chuckled as he shook his head.

“If you tell me where those people are now, I can negotiate to have your sentence reduced. And just so we’re clear—if you don’t give me some intel soon, don’t be surprised if it’s worthless for you later. I’m not as patient as you are.”

Rentaro paused, gauging the response from the other man. Negotiations like these were largely unexplored terrain for him, but still he thought he did at least a tolerable job sounding caustic enough.

The Seitenshi had given him advance permission to promise Litvintsev a release if the need arose, on the condition that he’d be deported to Russia and forbidden from entering the five Areas of Japan again, but it’d be foolish in man-to-man negotiations like these to show your cards right at the outset. He was a dropout, yes, but Rentaro was once a military cadet during his years with the Tendo family, and he had a grip of the fundamental rules here, at least.

The regulations around this prison were strict to the point of paranoia. Only one visitation was allowed per month—even then limited only to family—and visitors were heavily restricted in what items they could bring into cells. Inmates weren’t allowed to speak in the cafeteria, a place that served as the main social outpost for most other prisons. The ceiling was lined with tear-gas sprays set to deploy whenever any disturbance took place. Roll call took place twelve times per day; if you failed to respond, you were treated as an escapee and thrown into solitary. Even the twice-a-week outdoor recreation period, the lone chance inmates had to breathe fresh air, took place in an area surrounded by high concrete walls, patrolled by guards with live-ammunition rifles who circled above the prisoners like buzzards.

There was, in other words, no chance to relax for a single moment. It sickened most inmates. Many tried to escape, but there was no report of any successful attempts.

The strong defenses that lurked under the battered-looking exterior were symbolized by the extreme security measures taken in all areas. It was said that even the most hardened of thieves, killers, and arsonists broke down and cried like babies when told they were coming here.

Litvintsev may be acting tranquil, but half a year in this facility must be taking its toll. That was the conclusion Rentaro had made when he profiled Litvintsev beforehand. It meant Rentaro was the one dangling the fishing pole in front of him; there was no need for easy compromises. He just had to put the carrot in his face, then keep reeling it away.

The logical part of his mind knew that anyway, but on another dimension, his temples were throbbing with a sense of abject dread. There was no sense that the man in front of him could be driven by quick impulses. Is that just an act? Or am I missing something fundamental, something decisive in my thoughts…?

Litvintsev let out a snicker that, after a few seconds, changed to a louder, more ridiculing laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Rentaro demanded. The prisoner glared back.

“I think you’re misunderstanding something. I have no intention of negotiating with you.”

“Wha…?!”

Rentaro couldn’t believe his ears. What did he just say…?

He found himself lost for words as Litvintsev continued, “Now yes, I know I told that government official that I wanted to see you. That wasn’t a lie, either. But I didn’t call you here because I wanted to negotiate.”

“So, what, then…?” Rentaro muttered in a raspy voice.

Litvintsev stood up and walked toward him. Rentaro knew the iron bars were there, but he still instinctively tilted his head back, steeling himself.

“Listen,” Litvintsev said sternly, face against the bars. “Starting now, I am going to destroy both Tokyo and Sendai Areas. The people you love in your life are going to kill one another. They’ll be blown to pieces. They’ll have their guts splattered all over the pavement like a bug on the sole of your shoe. And you can’t do anything except grit your teeth and watch, cursing yourself for being so powerless.”

For a moment, Rentaro felt like he and Litvintsev had switched sides around the bars. The light from the window illuminated the prisoner’s body only from the neck down; his head was completely dark, but his staring eyes shone brightly from within. They overpowered Rentaro, immobilizing him. But even in his paralyzed mind, one corner of his thoughts could understand the truth. His expectations had been completely overturned.

This wasn’t a negotiation. It was a declaration of war.

“You better take your family and get out of this Area as soon as you can. I’m telling you this out of respect. You caught me once, so I owe you that much. But if you ignore this warning, you’ll have to face a hell that’s even worse than death.”

“Don’t give me that shit!”

Upon realizing that he could still move his arms, Rentaro immediately unholstered his handgun and pointed it between Litvintsev’s eyes. The sight of the muzzle right in front of him put the prisoner into an eerie silence, his eyes stabbing at Rentaro.

“Why? Why would you do something like that?! Are you controlling Libra because you want Tokyo Area to taste what happened to your homeland? Why?!”

“You caught me once. But I’m not going to lose to you again.”

A harried voice shouted out. Before Rentaro could comprehend it, someone rammed into his side, clouding his vision. By the time he realized it was a guard forcing his way between them, another had stripped the gun away and put him in a full nelson. He tried to resist the guards but stopped after they twisted his neck, incapacitating him in dull pain.

Litvintsev simply looked on, eyes frozen.

Damn it. Rentaro groaned as he was dragged away. He had me in the palm of his hand. Here I am, thinking I’m reigning supreme, taking the leadership role in this chat—how could I be so stupid? That vague gut feeling he’d had about the guy before he had met him—that had been correct the whole time. He was like a natural enemy—someone he should’ve killed the moment their eyes met.

After being chewed out by the guards and kicked out of the prison, Rentaro found himself awash in waves of inferiority. He dragged his body up, braving the intense fatigue as he traversed the wharf. Taking a look back, he glanced up at the bright sun, accompanied by the ever-chattering seagulls.

With a sigh, he began to wonder how Enju was doing in school.