by Shouji Gatou
Kaname fell silent. Her face, which had been softening, now tensed again. Of course a war-obsessed fool like him wouldn’t know the custom of giving flowers to a woman you’d hurt. “If memory serves,” she said slowly, “these flowers only grow in dangerous areas in Southeast and Central Asia.”
“They’re also cultivated in certain regions of the Philippines,” Sousuke said helpfully. “I availed myself while I was on a job.”
“A job?” Kaname looked up at Sousuke questioningly. “Wait a minute...” She stood up and pulled Sousuke out of the room. Once they were in the hallway, she checked to make sure no one else was around, then whispered, “A job... for Mithril, you mean?”
“Yes. I had an emergency call. We went to the Philippines and back,” Sousuke admitted readily enough. Kaname was the one classmate of his who knew his “real job.”
It had all started two months ago. Kaname, a supposedly ordinary high school girl, had nearly been kidnapped by cunning terrorists; she had been saved by Sousuke, who had been deployed to their school as a transfer student, and Mithril, the organization to which he belonged.
She still didn’t know why the terrorists were after her, or why a group like Mithril would go out of their way to protect her; all she knew was that she was a special entity known as a Whispered, that she possessed some sort of important information—and that Sousuke, as her bodyguard, had to be in her life at all times.
To put it bluntly, though, he was a piss-poor bodyguard. Like yesterday, he frequently left her behind to travel overseas. He’d given her a mini-transmitter necklace to wear “even when you’re in the shower or sleeping,” but she had her doubts about how useful that would prove.
It was all very nerve-wracking at first, but as time passed, she’d grown accustomed to this way of life. In reality, she hadn’t been attacked even once in the two months since that incident. It seemed that she could just live a normal life... for now, anyway.
Realizing at last why he’d broken his promise, Kaname let out a sigh. “Darn it... If that’s what it was, you could have just told me.”
“I was in a hurry,” he apologized. “I’m sorry.”
“So, did it all work out?”
“Yes. Kurz managed to get back in action, too.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
“Yes, it is. So, do those poppies close the deal?”
This time, Kaname struck him with a closed fist. It was a powerful hook that grazed Sousuke’s jaw and sent him staggering.
“That really hurt.”
“Shut up! Why do you have to be like this?! Don’t you realize there’s something you should say before you go offering me drugs?! I don’t care what kind of awesome mercenary you are, you’re a seriously broken human being!”
“Actually,” Sousuke remarked, “I’m perfectly healthy.”
“I’m talking about your common sense! From the moment I first met you, you’ve been a pathetic idiot, making trouble for everyone, never showing any reflection, and I just...!” She trailed off into screeches of rage as she took a slipper in each hand and started slapping Sousuke’s head with them.
“I understand. Please stop. You’ve made yourself very clear,” Sousuke said soothingly.
Kaname stopped, shoulders heaving. “Do you really understand?! I’m talking about sensitivity and good faith!”
“Good faith? How about this, then... In Tokyo, cocaine will sell for a higher price than heroin. If you truly find this unacceptable, I could get you some coca paste to—”
Kaname unleashed a high roundhouse kick to the back of Sousuke’s neck.
26 June, 1310 Hours (Japan Standard Time)
Japan Ministry of Defense Technical Research Institute, Suburbs of Sayama, Saitama Prefecture
Across the one-sided glass was a boy. He sat on a chair in a bare-bones interrogation room, staring at a point on the table in front of him. He looked about the same age as Tessa, his small frame clothed in purple pajamas. He seemed like an ordinary young boy in every respect, yet at the same time, he had the aura of someone fundamentally “other.” Was this young man really a member of A21, the terrorist organization which had planned a series of bombings a few years ago? It was definitely hard to believe.
Tessa was watching from the observation room. She knew that she couldn’t be seen from the interrogation room, but somehow, she felt like the boy could sense her eyes upon him.
“It was purely by chance that he was caught at Narita Airport,” Major Kalinin explained, standing behind Tessa in the dim light. “He passed himself off as a student returning from a language study in New Zealand, so Japanese customs didn’t give him a second thought... They frequently don’t even check such passengers’ belongings. If he’d kept his head down, he would have slipped through easily.”
“But he didn’t keep his head down, did he?” she returned. “What exactly did he do?”
“He flew at a customs official, hit him, and tried to wring his neck,” Kalinin said offhandedly.
“He did that?” Even Tessa, who had an idea of why it might happen, could hardly imagine the boy showing such violence.
“Yes. Even after his arrest, he seemed excessively agitated, so they ran a drug test. His blood tested positive for Ti971, a drug we at Mithril have been tracking for some time. We learned about it yesterday through some complicated channels.”
“And that’s why you called me,” Tessa concluded.
“Precisely. Someone’s been conditioning him to use a lambda driver, and I believe you’re the only one who can judge whether or not they’ve succeeded.” The lambda driver was a device that could channel a user’s will into phenomena that defied the laws of physics. It was one of the products of “black technology,” unbelievable advancements in tech that far outstripped anything contemporaneous.
Tessa was the only person in the world who could fully understand and utilize black technology to any degree... Or rather, she had thought she was. She’d been starting to wonder if some other power had access to it and was doling it out to dangerous terrorists and authoritarian states. That same power might have given special training and drugs to the boy before her. It was a conditioning that came with side effects—violent outbursts, memory loss—and the boy was showing signs of a few of them, it seemed.
“The Japanese government is unaware of his significance,” Kalinin told her. “They refuse to turn him over to us, but only for legal reasons.”
“I see...” Tessa flipped through the printed documentation that described the tests he’d undergone. It was headed by the name on his passport: Kugayama Takuma. She didn’t know if it was a real name or an alias, but the address and family information were apparently fabricated. “I read through the specific values before, and I didn’t see anything that would rule it out. If he has undergone conditioning, that means they have a lambda driver-mounted weapon ready for him somewhere out there.” The terrorists would have their hands on a machine of unimaginable power—a destructive weapon that conventional arms couldn’t hope to combat.
“In addition to whoever did this to him, I’m curious as to whether anyone else from A21 has returned to Japan,” Kalinin said.
“Do you think you can get him to talk?” she asked, referring to the two subjects he’d raised.
“He’s keeping mum, and standard interrogation techniques don’t seem to work. And cruel and unusual methods are out of the question while he’s in Japanese government custody.”
Tessa scowled a little at Kalinin’s blunt wording. “They’d be out of the question in Mithril custody as well... I would never allow such a thing.”
Just then, without any warning, the boy leaped over the table and lunged in Tessa’s direction.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, he slammed into the mirror and staggered. Despite knowing he couldn’t possibly break through, Tessa dropped the documents she was holding and fell to the ground in shock.
Takuma just bared his teeth and kept slamming into the mirror again and again, perhap
s not realizing it was futile. He seemed like a different person—a different species, even—as he pounded on the one-way glass, howling like a beast. Security poured into the interrogation room to restrain him.
“Colonel, ma’am,” said Kalinin. “Were you hurt?”
“I... I’m fine. I was just a bit startled.” With Kalinin’s help, Tessa picked herself up. After letting her racing heart slow, she began to gather up the spilled documents; Kalinin helped her there, too. “He definitely wanted to wring my neck...” She was trying to sound casual, but she knew immediately that she’d failed. “Anyway... If we want to do proper testing, we’ll have to bring in a portable NILS to measure his reactions. But... I think he’s probably one of them. Call it a gut instinct.”
“What do you think of an interview?” Kalinin questioned.
“I’ll do it. Though preferably not alo—eek!” While bending down to pick up one of the dropped papers, she bumped her head on the corner of a table. A dizzying pain shot from her head to her toes. She moaned and stumbled back.
Kalinin caught her and held her up. “Colonel?”
“I... I’m fine. It’s nothing serious,” she responded with tears in her eyes. She was acutely aware of her clumsiness—but then, gifted as she was with intelligence and beauty, it would be too much for her to ask for grace as well. “Anyway, let’s go... We won’t accomplish anything by sitting here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tessa and Kalinin left the observation room.
Her bodyguard, Corporal Yang, was waiting in the corridor. Shimamura, their host, was in front of the interrogation room door, discussing something with Takuma’s attending physician. Once he was done, Shimamura approached them. “I’m sorry, they’ve had to give him a tranquilizer. You’ll have to wait until this evening for your interview.”
Tessa’s heart sank. She’d had a feeling this would happen. “Very well... By the way, if I may ask, are you certain that your security measures are foolproof?”
“I assure you, not even an ant could slip inside,” Shimamura reassured her. “Why do you ask?”
“It occurred to me that someone might try to break in.”
Shimamura gave her his most condescending look. “Please. You think those terrorists will try to get him back? A simple drug addict? I don’t know what interest Mithril has taken in him, but even we just want him back in the police hospital ASAP.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” Tessa began to explain. “What I’m trying to say is that his importance—”
Shimamura cut her off with a dismissive wave. “This facility is far more important than he is; we have the strictest security possible. We have two platoons—you know what that means? It means sixty men patrolling in shifts at all times. Added to the fact that knowledge of his transfer was restricted to the department—”
Shimamura’s words were interrupted by a roar. A series of shots shook the air around them; the sound of a massive autocannon. It was followed by a metallic grinding sound and an explosion.
Tessa looked out the window. Fire and smoke billowed from the direction of a distant hospital building within the facility grounds. A security vehicle was in flames, the aftermath of an explosion.
There was the sound of small arms fire, now, coming in short bursts: ra-ta-tat, ra-ta-ta-tat. She heard shouts of anger, cries for help...
“What in the world...”
Someone was attacking the laboratory. Was it A21, coming to retrieve Takuma?
“Colonel, get away from the window.” Kalinin, automatic pistol suddenly in hand, pulled Tessa by the arm. Corporal Yang moved swiftly to the corner of the hallway to evaluate the situation outside.
Tessa shook herself out of her momentary stupor. “They’re after Takuma. We need to get him out of here.” She immediately headed to the interrogation room nearby.
“I can’t recommend that, Colonel,” Kalinin said.
“Why not?”
“We have no authority here. We should hide out and wait for them to take Takuma away.”
Tessa knew well that this wasn’t simple cowardice; Kalinin was simply a cautious man by nature. He wanted to avoid unnecessary risks.
But she shook her head in response. “We can’t let A21 have Takuma. If they’re going to lengths like these to get him back, it means they don’t have a substitute. I’m sure they have some terrible weapon for him to pilot... Letting them have him would be extremely dangerous.”
“Keeping you safe will take everything Yang and I are capable of,” Kalinin retorted. “And the enemy is—”
“W-Wait a minute,” Shimamura said, recovering from his initial confusion. “He’s right. You aren’t authorized. We can’t have you taking the boy with you.”
“But if you can’t protect him, we’ll have to, won’t we?”
“As I explained to you before, we have a fully-armed security team. No matter how many they send, they won’t succeed.”
As if to punctuate his words, an armored car with a 20mm autocannon chose that moment to pass in front of their building.
“You see?” Shimamura continued. “Let’s see their rifles stand up to something like that.”
“No. Tell them to fall back—” Kalinin tried.
Immediately, the armored car was speared by a line of fire, which sent metal parts flying. Spewing smoke, it first skidded, and then exploded. One of the fragments broke through the window next to Tessa with a crash.
The culprit revealed itself from behind the hospital building, an enormous figure stepping out of the flames. Its torso was squat and egg-like, its legs and arms spindly. It was the second-generation Soviet AS, the Rk-92 Savage, wielding an unadorned 40mm rifle.
“An arm slave?! You can’t mean—” Shimamura’s voice was close to a shriek. It was a natural reaction; most people only ever heard of them in civil wars in war-torn regions. A sudden AS raid here in Japan was like getting a pound of spare ribs dropped on your plate in the middle of a multi-course traditional meal.
“I can’t believe it...” The gray-painted Savage took step after step toward their hospital building. Its head-mounted machine guns ripped through the assembled security forces; its rifle riddled a nearby building with holes. Tessa could hear the death cries of the men whose lives it claimed.
Two round red eyes flicked in their direction. An inhuman gaze—for some reason, she felt like the AS was laughing at her. The head-mounted machine guns took aim in her direction. The 40mm rifle that had taken out the armored car was pointed toward her, too. It was about to shoot.
“Colonel!” Tessa was frozen to the spot. Kalinin and Yang ran at her simultaneously; Shimamura had already made himself scarce. “Get dow—”
In that moment there was a powerful shockwave. The ceiling collapsed. Glass, steel, and concrete began to fall around them.
There was no sound, and the fragments fell in slow motion. Close by, she could see Corporal Yang speared by a shard of glass... yet he was still running toward her, trying to protect her. You don’t have to go so far just for me, Tessa thought to herself.
Then another shockwave hit her.
◆
The Savage had secured the target building and its surroundings. The security forces showed no more signs of interfering. They were all AWOL, dead, or dying—one of the three.
The gray Savage approached the devastated building through the smoke and dust that hung thick in the air. Planting a foot on the rubble, it stretched its hand through the collapsed wall. Then its joints locked up, holding it in that position. The hatch behind the head opened and the operator climbed out. She was dressed in her orange G-suit, her gaze unemotional, as if indifferent to the tragedy her rampage had wrought.
The woman, Seina, grabbed the submachine gun attached to the bottom of the hatch, then moved lithely down the arm of the Savage to enter the building. The hallway was littered with debris. She stepped on the remains of a corpse torn apart by the Savage’s machine guns as she walked, but she paid it no mind.
She came to her
destination—the interrogation room where she expected to find Takuma—and opened the door. But it was just a gray, empty space containing a toppled chair and a simple table. Seina said nothing. Her eyes flared with rage.
“Seina. Did you find Takuma?” a masked man, a member of the strike team, asked as he approached.
“He’s not here,” she replied shortly.
“No way. The transmitter readings said he’d be in this room—”
“He’s not. He’s been removed.” There were faint drops of blood around the room’s entrance. A member of the security team, though injured, must have taken him away. But in such a short time? And without anyone on the strike team noticing? “We can still track the transmitter, can’t we?” she asked.
“Yes... but it’s out of range,” the masked man told her. “It will take time to find them.”
“Begin the search immediately,” Seina ordered him. “We need Takuma to move that devil.”
The man nodded, then said: “And... there seems to be an injured person with him. What do we do about them?”
“Kill them.”
“But I—”
The masked man made way as another member of the team came by, bringing in one of the casualties. It was a large Caucasian man, dressed in a tattered brown suit and bleeding here and there. He had several shards of glass sticking out of his back; it was a state that would kill most men. But though his head was bowed as he was dragged along, he still seemed to be conscious.
“He doesn’t appear to be part of the facility’s staff,” the new team member noted.
“Agreed,” Seina said.
“What should we do, Seina?”
Seina didn’t respond, but used her submachine gun’s barrel to tilt the man’s face up. He had strong features and gray facial hair; despite his injuries, his dark eyes glowed with defiance. Instinctively, she could tell that this was a man who made his living on the battlefield. It reminded her of someone—someone she had nearly given her heart to long ago. “Who are you?” she asked.