“…!”
Then Hitsuma brought her close, his lips approaching her face. The two silhouettes overlapped.
Rentaro’s body tensed up, as if struck by lightning. Sweat ran from every pore in his body. Then he turned around on the spot and swiftly walked out of the restaurant.
As Hitsuma’s face dominated the entirety of her vision, Kisara closed her eyes. But, the moment before their lips met, Kisara brought her palm between them like a partitioning board, pushing him away with the other hand.
“…For now,” she said, “let go of me.” She was freed without complaint.
Kisara adjusted the neck of her kimono in order to focus attention away from her flushed cheeks.
“So is that how it is? You don’t mind if I use anything of yours that I find useful, and in exchange for that, you want me?”
“You can feel free to see it that way, yes.”
Kisara mulled this over silently as she pretended to adjust her wardrobe. No matter what she decided to do, her life was worth about as much as a pebble on the side of the road. All she had to do was make sure she kept it intact until the remaining four Tendos were slain. And being lucky enough to be born with this beauty, being able to use it as a bargaining chip for her aims—who could ask for anything more?
It’s a matter of using, and being used. As simple a relationship as that. I might even find myself liking Hitsuma before long.
A prickly sensation ran across Kisara’s chest.
…Wait a minute. Is this what love and romance is?
4
“So you saw Kisara get all kissy-kissy and that pissed you off so much that you ran away from her?”
Sumire Muroto, head of the Magata University forensics research lab, stared at Rentaro with a look of pure glee on her face.
“It’s, it’s not like that, or anything…”
“The way you look, you’re not exactly convincing me otherwise.”
Rentaro remembered that he was currently head down on the desk. He sheepishly sat back up and looked distractedly at the bare light bulb illuminating the basement room.
He liked visiting the forensics lab at times like these. It was his way of appealing for divine aid—or, in Sumire’s case, demented aid. Someone older and more experienced was a treasure to have right now. Rentaro failed to sleep a wink the previous night. The whole thing with Suibara played a role in that, but to be wholly honest with himself, he was agonizing over Kisara’s arranged marriage. He decided to give Sumire the whole story because he was certain she’d have just the right piece of advice to cut through this crisis. Right now, he was being disappointed.
“Well, forget it. Just give it up. The fact that a prime piece of land like Kisara hasn’t been snapped up yet is a miracle in itself. She just found the right buyer, is all.”
Rentaro grimaced. “Jeez, Doctor… I thought you were rooting for the two of us.”
“What, are you kidding me? I’m just trying to stir the pot a little, ’cause if I didn’t, nothing would change until you both had one foot in the grave. In fact, if things start working out between you two, I’d start sabotaging it for fun.”
“Awful. Just absolutely awful.”
“Though actually, I was really hoping you’d finally let your hormones get the best of you and just push her down. Think about the headlines you’d make once the police caught you!”
“Why would the police get involved?”
“You think you’ll ever bag Kisara any other way?”
Rentaro snorted in disgust as Sumire pulled up a chair facing him, waving a hand in front of his eyes.
“Just knock it off, okay? Knock it off. I know you’re thinking about some hanky-panky with Kisara and maybe marriage in the future, but why do you think marriage is such a good thing anyway? Lemme give you a little lecture on how men and women work. Men, you know…they have to put up with women nagging them to no end until it drives them insane. They give up on their dreams, and they have to resist the urge to stare at every big-titted bimbo they see on the way home from work. And women, too—they have to deal with men’s crazed fetishes; they have to cook and dress in a way that pleases them; they give up their entire bodies to them! It’s just a constant string of sacrifices for them both. Men, at the core, really hate women, and women, at the core, really hate men.”
“So why do people get married, then?”
“‘We all need the eggs,’ as Woody Allen put it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Eesh. Look, Rentaro, could you at least try to make an effort to think a little? People in ancient times thought that brains were used for nothing but creating the snot out of your nose, but you’re not using your brain for too much apart from that, are you? Your whole existence is a tragedy. I’m a nihilist, remember? Just take the nihilism out of my advice if you don’t like it.”
“What’d even be left?”
“Men, at the core, love women, and women, at their core, love men. Don’t tell me you don’t even get that.”
Rentaro froze, as if bewitched. It was impossible to tell where the jokes ended and real talk began with Sumire. She stood up and turned her back to him, no doubt off to whip up another batch of coffee. Rentaro stared at the back of her oversize lab coat and resolved to bring up another topic close to his heart.
“Doctor, have you ever heard of something called the Black Swan Project?”
“No, I haven’t,” Sumire said as she filled a kettle with water and pushed the ON button within her induction cooker. “However,” she added, “if they named it ‘Black Swan,’ it might have something to do with the black swan theory.”
“The black swan theory?”
Sumire measured out a suitable amount of instant coffee from the can. “Swans, you know,” she began, “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. It can cause all sorts of damage if you’re not careful. There’s no such thing as absolutes in this world—life’s full of uncertainties. Making predictions as if these uncertainties are ironclad facts always costs you in the long run.
“You could kind of see this theory as a warning to the human species, and how their minds work. If you’ve had ten years straight of bountiful harvests, you’d never imagine that a flood would ravage your farmland tomorrow, right? Or maybe crises that theoretically shouldn’t occur for millennia keep taking place every few decades, or an unexpectedly huge earthquake causes a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, or—”
“—Or a pack of virus-infected parasites appears and tries to destroy the human race?”
Sumire grinned. “That’s exactly it. Glad to see you’re quick on the pickup, at least.”
Rentaro turned his eyes toward his hands. The “Black Swan Project”—something about the name disturbed him. He was already starting to regret what he’d said before. Perhaps the situation Suibara fell into was a lot more dangerous than he thought. Perhaps he should’ve forced the whole story out of him at the office.
He checked the clock. There was still a fair amount of time until their meet up.
“There’s something else, too, Doctor. The ‘New World Creation Project’—does that ring any bells?”
Sumire swung around, surprised. Judging by the reaction, Rentaro knew he hit the nail on the head. The eerie resemblance between “New World Creation Project” and “New Humanity Creation Project” was something that stuck out in his mind from the moment Suibara uttered the term.
The kettle began to emit a shrill whistle, the lid clattering around on the top.
“Where did you hear that name?
”
“A client relayed it to me.”
“How much do you know about it?”
“Pretty much nothing. That’s why I’m asking you, Doctor.”
Suibara had been acting far too jumpy. He had been paranoid about bugging devices and wanted to talk at a separate location. It seemed fair to think that these “New World” and “Black Swan” projects were something dicey enough to put the fear of God in him.
Sumire considered this for a few moments, a thoughtful hand on her chin.
“I think I told you why the New Humanity Creation Project was disbanded.”
“Yeah…um, because it cost too much money and stuff.”
“Right. The natural-born Children we use cost nothing, but even building one of you took vast sums of money.”
Sumire picked up two heat-resistant beakers and filled both to the brim with coffee, staring up and down Rentaro’s body as she did.
“You’re a ten-billion-yen kid, Rentaro.”
Yeah, that’d sure torpedo the project, all right. If it took that much to produce just one soldier, setting up some kind of mass-production system would’ve been all but impossible.
“But if it weren’t for the Children showing up,” Sumire continued, “the New Humanity Creation Project was prepared to move on to the next phase. In other words, the New World Creation Project. You can basically think of the New World project as the final, complete version of the New Humanity one.”
“Complete version…?”
“Right. People like you and Tina and Kagetane Hiruko are walking high-tech marvels—superfibers, replacement organs, metal skin, you name it. The New World Creation Project would’ve taken that one more step. The aim was to replace at least half the human body with machines. The idea was to eventually work up to replacing the entire body, except for the brain.”
“Wait a minute,” Rentaro interjected. “You said that the success rate for New Humanity surgeries was pretty low as it was. If you guys tried to replace even more of the body at once…”
Sumire sat back down, looking a bit remorseful as she squinted at the light bulb. “Well,” she replied, “there was a nonzero chance of it working. And if there’s a nonzero chance, a scientist is always gonna take a crack at it.”
“…But you’re a doctor first, aren’t you? Not a scientist.”
“I am, yes. But the poison you and I call ‘curiosity’ works its magic at astonishing speed with people like us. It kills a lot more than just the cat, you know.”
Sumire slid one of the beakers Rentaro’s way. He picked it up with both hands and stared at the murky black liquid inside, a faint warmth spreading across his palms.
“But what’re you talking about, though? The New World Creation Project never took place, then? I heard that name right from the mouth of my client…”
“Yeah, I’m awfully curious about that myself. I was the woman in charge of the New Humanity project, but I never heard anything about the New World one starting up. But…hmm. Maybe it’s got to do with those murders?”
“Which ones?”
Sumire sat in silent thought for a moment before continuing. “Well,” she said, “a man was killed at the New National Theater a bit ago. Kenji Houbara, age thirty-five. An opera aficionado. He was stabbed during a performance. At the same exact time, someone went into the home of Saya Takamura, age twenty-eight, and murdered her with what’s believed to be a shotgun. And at the same time as that, Giichi Ebihara, age fifty-three, was shot to death by a sniper while on a high-speed train.”
“Three murders on the same day…?”
“Yeah. But that’s not the point. The point is that all three victims had something in common.” Sumire took a sip of coffee, her tone suddenly growing dark and heavy. “Kenji Houbara and Saya Takamura were both surviving soldiers enhanced by the New Humanity Creation Project.”
“What?!”
Sumire crossed her legs and tilted her glass again as she glanced at her dumbfounded guest.
“They were both my patients. Let me tell you, I was shocked. I knew them both really well. I was hoping you wouldn’t have to know about that—two ex–New Humanity soldiers, hunted down like that… But this was premeditated murder. Both of them saw action in the Gastrea War, unlike you, and they both retired to civilian life after the war because they were sick of fighting.”
Rentaro had heard from Sumire earlier that a lot of enhanced soldiers, finding themselves with no place to go, wound up becoming civsec officers like him. Apparently there were exceptions, though. Sumire put her hand back on her chin and stared off into the distance.
“If they wanted peaceful lives for themselves, I welcomed that with open arms. But it looks like there was a snake tempting them. This guy.”
Sumire picked up a sheaf of papers from her cluttered desk and tossed it over. An autopsy report, apparently. The first page had Giichi Ebihara’s name and profile printed on it.
“Who’s he?”
“Someone high up in Public Security.”
“Public Security” referred to the Public Security Force, the department that protected the national government from things like radical extremism and international terrorism. Most of their investigative techniques were classified, but word on the street indicated it was akin to a secret police or spy organization.
“Why Public Security?”
“It looks like this Ebihara guy made secret contacts with these two war retirees. He had them do some kind of secret-agent stuff, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because now that he’s dead, I can’t establish what kind of relationship they had. He’s the only one who would’ve known that. I only learned about this because Ebihara’s secretary saw him conduct a secret meeting with Houbara in their building. He said that he heard the term ‘New World Creation Project’ in their conversation, not that he knew what that meant at the time.”
“And now all three of them are dead. Which means…?”
“They all knew something they shouldn’t have. What, I couldn’t say.”
Silence descended upon the basement. The humid air lapped against Rentaro’s neck as Sumire extended a pale, veiny hand toward another file on her desk.
“By the way, Satomi, have the police visited Tina yet?”
“No…why?”
“Well, I got all curious about these murders, so I had Miori give me some information. There were no witnesses to Kenji Houbara’s stabbing at the theater and they couldn’t find any fingerprints on the knife, but apparently there was a faintly sweet scent left on the weapon. Saya Takamura was murdered with anti-personnel rounds fired by a twelve-gauge shotgun. No witnesses there, either. As for the train murder, the bullet that killed Ebihara was a powerful type of sniper bullet known as Lapua Magnum. I don’t know all that much about guns, but the train would’ve been running at high speed at the time—200 kilometers an hour or so. Despite that, the sniper made a clean kill through the train window and right through his head. Can you believe that?”
Now Rentaro knew why Tina’s name came up.
“Wait a minute, Doctor! Tina’s not a murderer!”
“Well, I’d like to believe that, too. But if you whittle down the suspects to the kind of people with superhuman skills like that, Tina’s bound to show up on the list sooner or later.”
No way. There’s no way Tina could do anything like that.
“Lady Seitenshi pulled a lot of strings to keep Tina’s punishment down to just probation, but remember, she tried and failed to assassinate our leader. If she racks up any more charges, it’s gonna be the firing squad for her.”
“…But—all right—even if we assume there’s some kind of superhuman hit man group out there, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re from the New World Creation Project. If they were, though…like, could I even beat them, being an older type?”
Among Kagetane, Tina, and Aldebaran, Rentaro had a lot of high-profile kills under his belt by now. But he never thought his powers ever gave him an inherent advantage. If anyt
hing, he was amazed he always managed to eke out a victory at the very end each time.
Sumire sighed dejectedly, apparently knowing what Rentaro was getting at. “I don’t know if you have the wrong idea or something, but there’s still a lot of potential for improvement in your artificial limbs.”
Rentaro paused for a moment, having trouble parsing this statement. “R-really?” he said, all but pressing Sumire for an answer. She confidently lifted her hands in the air.
“Really really. You’re in the top class of the soldiers I created, and when I say that, I’m talking about your potential, too. You’re doing a great job using your limbs and your eye, but I can’t say you’re performing up to the specs I envisioned at first. That eye, for example.”
Rentaro instinctively brought a finger to his artificial left eye.
“There’s a limiter circuit in your eye that ensures its processing speed doesn’t go above a certain level.”
“Wh-why’s that?”
“Because you’d see too much. It probably feels like time’s slowing down for you as your eye calculates the enemy’s range and future position, but it can still go a lot further than that. We transplanted a version of your eye without a limiter into several patients, but none of them ever came back.”
“Came back…?”
“The moment their eye was unlocked, their brain scans started going haywire, then flatlined to zero. I have no idea what they saw, and I couldn’t really use it if I didn’t know what was going on, so we were forced to stick a limiter on it. It’s a pity. I mean, every day of our lives, we use things that we can’t fully observe—operate a car engine, write data to hard drives, that sort of thing. But when bio-ethics get involved, the bosses get all picky about every little thing.”
“Well, yeah. If you ignore stuff like that, that’s criminal neglect, isn’t it?”
“Neglect, huh…? I see. So I’m a criminal to you, then?”
“You’re pretty much as gray area as you can be without going full black.”
Rentaro Satomi, Fugitive Page 6