The Destruction of the World by Fire

by Shiden Kanzaki

  With last month’s Seitenshi assassination case, he had defeated the sniper who had an ingenious plan and saved the Seitenshi. For his services, Rentaro had been promoted to IP Rank 300, and he had risen to a Level 5 top secret–information access key. He was far from the Level 12 access key that was given to those within the top ten IP Ranks, but even so, there might be details about his parents or the Gastrea War that he could find out with his newly opened levels of access, so he had entrusted his access key to Sumire and had her look into the details for him.

  He guessed from Sumire’s sharp words until now that she was trying to prepare him for what she was about to show him; she always did things in such a roundabout way. Before he knew it, the palms of his hands started sweating, and he wiped them on the cuffs of his pants. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.

  Sumire pulled out a disc from the top of her desk and inserted it into her laptop. Pointing a remote control at the wall, she pushed a button and a screen Rentaro had seen before slid down, connecting wirelessly to the projector. It was probably what Sumire used for her hobby of watching movies. Sumire started to do something with her back turned toward him, and then snuck a glance at him and laughed with meaning. “I hesitate in uploading this information to the cloud. It’s that kind of information. There’s pretty shocking stuff in there, too.”

  Rentaro held his breath and waited for Sumire to finish what she was doing.

  “First, this.”

  Suddenly, a picture was brought up on the screen. The large image was covered with small writing, and Rentaro squinted as he leaned over. It looked like it went back twenty years, counting back from the current year of 2031.

  Rentaro read over it and scowled. The items from the year 2021, when the Gastrea War broke out, until the end of the war were mostly blacked out. Taking the mouse from Sumire, Rentaro clicked on the blacked-out parts and got an error sound accompanied by the message “Access Key Level Too Low.”

  “Have you noticed, Rentaro?”

  “Yeah…” Rentaro nodded as he glared at the chart. The chronological tables of recent history everyone, including Rentaro, studied at school did not have these black lines in them. This was because the items themselves were completely erased from public view.

  In the history textbook used at Rentaro’s school, Magata High School, there were surprisingly few pages that touched on the Gastrea War. He had heard that the documents relating to it had been lost in the fires during a period of confusion during the war, and many of the data centers that housed servers had been destroyed, so there were no accurate records left. That was the reasoning given, anyway.

  When he had first heard that, he had nodded in agreement. That was because ten years ago, in 2021, the world population, which was in a glorious spring and had grown to almost eight billion people, was slaughtered until less than ten percent were left.

  However—

  Rentaro glared at the blacked-out chronology once more and tapped his foot in irritation. The message “Access Key Level Too Low” meant that as long as he had the right access key, he could open the censored parts and see the truth. In other words, the public reason given by the government that documents had been destroyed during the Gastrea War was a flat-out lie. But why was the government hiding the details of the War? Or…what was under those black lines that was so bad it had to be hidden?

  “Rentaro, look at this.” Sumire approached the screen, extending a pointer and indicating one side of the display.

  When Rentaro looked closely and double-clicked the words to enlarge them, parts of the words that had been blacked out were revealed and turned red. Apparently, this was the information that could be revealed with a Level 5 access key.

  He skimmed it and saw that most of it was the war history. There was the Gastrea Legion’s fight against the self-defense force in the Kanto Battle and the Second Kanto Battle, and the recent Fox-Hunting incident where Tokyo Area almost broke out in a Pandemic. There was also what was declared the most beautiful destruction in the world where poisonous butterfly scales caused group hallucinations in the Morphe Butterfly Incident, and the Kagetane Hiruko Terrorist Incident, which of course was hard for Rentaro to forget. All these names were still too fresh in his memory to be called nostalgic.

  Jumping to the items on military affairs, the Stairway to Heaven Project and the New Humanity Creation Project—which were thought of by the general public as an urban legend—were both evidenced here as truly extant. Rentaro tried going to the detail screen of the New Humanity Creation Project, but there was nothing more than what Rentaro already knew written there. That was only to be expected, Rentaro thought, crossing his arms. If he wanted to know more about the New Humanity Creation Project, instead of fishing for information in documents, it would be faster to just ask the head of the Japan branch of the project, who was standing in front of him. He would get more details, too.

  Rentaro input all the information into his brain at once and fell into a slightly excited state. He felt his pulse quicken.

  “Rentaro, the problem is this.” The words were so small that if Sumire had not used the pointer, he would have almost missed reading them. There it was.

  It was as if his spine was struck by lightning, and his eyes opened wide.

  “On a certain day, in a certain month, in the year 2021, Seven Stars Village was annihilated.”

  Rentaro’s body felt numb, and he couldn’t move an inch. His throat was dry. “Doc…is Seven Stars Village…?”

  Sumire nodded gravely. Rentaro and Sumire both knew the name Seven Stars.

  The Inheritance of the Seven Stars—It was hard to forget the key item of the Kagetane Hiruko Terrorist Incident that had rocked Rentaro’s fate. Rentaro had chased down the mastermind, Kikunojo Tendo, but not even he could figure out why the mysterious item was a catalyst that could call out the Zodiac Gastrea Scorpion.

  The duralumin case the Inheritance of the Seven Stars was in contained a broken tricycle…

  His instincts screamed to not get involved with this case. Rentaro was sure that once he knew the truth, he wouldn’t be able to run away and would be screaming until the end of the world. That almost certain premonition ran through the back of his head.

  “Strangely, this is the only account of Seven Stars Village. Looking around on maps online, Seven Stars Village had been erased from all of them. It was hard to find this, you know.” Saying that, she threw a thick book of maps on the desk in front of Rentaro. It was dirty and faded from the sun and ragged with tears, but Rentaro could just barely make out the words Atlas of Japan 2020. This was a map of Japan from before the Gastrea War.

  Rentaro turned the pages with shaking hands. Sumire had marked it with a tab, so he didn’t have to go through the trouble of looking for the exact spot.

  It looked like Seven Stars Village was in the northern part of Old Nagano prefecture. It was somewhat near the boundary with Old Toyama prefecture, at the foot of the three-thousand-meter mountains that made up the Hida mountain range. Of course, not just Seven Stars Village, but all of Nagano prefecture had turned into Unexplored Territory long ago, so it was not possible to approach it sans preparation.

  Anyway, Rentaro carved the location of Seven Stars Village deep into his heart.

  “There’s one more thing. This one is a video. I acquired this in a remarkable way.” Sumire raised her head as she operated the laptop. “A government worker uploaded it by accident. Whoever it was noticed right away and deleted it, but it was still cached. The file was corrupted, but I used some software to restore it. Thanks to that, the video is rough. Normally, you would need a Level 10 access key to see this data.”

  “Level 10?” If he remembered correctly, Level 10 was for those with an IP Rank in the top thirty. Rentaro now could barely dream of having an IP Rank of 30.

  Sumire’s unusually serious eyes were staring at Rentaro. “This is the really bad one. Proceed with caution. This is the Ardi File.”

  Ardi File
?

  Just as he opened his mouth to ask, Sumire double-clicked the mouse. Suddenly, the screen turned black, and there was sound like the breathing of a monster. The sound and video skipped and there was a loud noise artifact that repeated from the bad video quality, making the strange breathing seem even more eerie. He knew it was impossible, but Rentaro even felt like there was a nasty smell coming from the video.

  It looked like it was recorded on something of handycam size, and the photographer was trembling terribly.

  Rentaro licked his upper lip nervously and couldn’t decide if he wanted to stare at the screen so he wouldn’t miss a single word, or run away desperately out of the basement room the second he was given permission to. However, the video that was filled with noise suddenly became clear.

  As soon as that happened, Rentaro’s whole body stiffened.

  Some thing had been put on top of an operating table and was looking at him with its enlarged right eye. Its whole body was covered in bandages, and if it didn’t just barely retain a human shape, then Rentaro would not have been able to identify what it was.

  Its left shoulder was gigantic, and its left arm was shriveled awkwardly as if the shoulder had stolen all its nutrients. There was a third leg at the crotch by its right thigh, and its sternum was enlarged. Even worse was its face. Only its completely red right eye was swollen, suppressing its left eye and nose and other organs, and drool dangled from its uneven yellow teeth, making a large stain on the sheets of the operating table. There were a large number of tubes going through its arms, legs, eyes, genitals, and everything, and the wiring on the operating table looked like a bundle of spaghetti.

  Rentaro’s knees felt weak, and he put his hands on the table at once to stop himself from falling over, but when he put his hands on the table, glass test tubes were pushed off and fell to the ground, breaking one by one.

  “Rentaro, are you all right?” Sumire approached him uneasily, giving gentle commands with her hands.

  The back of his right eye throbbed with pain. He bore it and forced himself to look. Seeing the bulge of the chest, and not seeing the bulge of the male genitalia, Rentaro discovered that it was female.

  He hadn’t noticed the words DEVIL VIRUS coming onto the screen. The monster was panting and staring at the person behind the camera with its red eye. The person behind the camera took a long shot of the monster from the front, as if it was their job, and then without warning, it was cut off.

  It hadn’t even been a whole minute, had it? But to Rentaro, it had seemed like an eternity. Rentaro desperately rubbed his upper arms and just then became aware that he was holding back a feeling of nausea. “Doc, what was that…?”

  Sumire shook her head silently. “I don’t know, either. But since it’s called Ardi File, that’s probably the Ardi.”

  “Ardi……?”

  Because the beast’s whole body was wrapped in bandages, he couldn’t see the color of its skin, let alone whether or not it was human. The only things on the screen were the operating table and the machines around it. Because of the bright white light shining down from something that looked like a halogen light, he had assumed it was an operating table, but he had immediately lost confidence in his abilities of perception given his reaction after.

  “Ardi was likely a code name. Probably taken from Ardipithecus ramidus. Rentaro, have you ever heard of how our ancestors came from Africa?”

  “No……,” Rentaro said. “By ‘we,’ do you mean the Japanese people?”

  “No, not only Japanese people, but Americans and other Asians and Europeans, too. Ten years ago, the world was about to reach a population of eight billion, and it was said that mankind had branched out from a single woman born in Africa. This was seen in mitochondria, but it is only passed down through the female family line.”

  “Only female… Does that have anything to do with why the Cursed Children are all female?”

  “I don’t know. But the African woman who was the origin of the mitochondria was given the name Mitochondria Eve, based on the Bible. And getting back to the point, currently, the oldest fossil of mankind ever excavated is a 4.1-million-year-old ramidus ape-man, in other words, Ardi. Ardi does not equal Mitochondria Eve, but Ardi and Mitochondria Eve have both been called ‘mankind’s first woman’ before. But anyway, neither is scientifically the oldest.”

  “‘Mankind’s first woman’…? Then, Doc, what was that?!” Rentaro pressed Sumire for an answer.

  Sumire nodded. “That person’s eyes were red. That was probably the first ever infected, mankind’s first Gastrea.”

  The strength left Rentaro’s entire body, and before he knew it, he had slouched down onto the stool. There was a mountain of things he shouldn’t have thought about. However, there was something he just had to ask Sumire before he forgot about it. “Doc, you saw the words Devil Virus on the bottom right, didn’t you? That’s the Gastrea virus, right?”

  “Well, that makes sense if you think about it.”

  “But why is it called the Devil’s Virus?”

  This time, it was Sumire’s turn to tilt her head in question. “Probably because it acted like a devil?”

  “Then, wouldn’t demon or Satan work, too? No, wait. That’s not right…” Rentaro put a hand to his chin as he gathered the questions lurking in his mind. “Why didn’t they tell the world about it as Devil Virus? How did we come to call it the Gastrea virus?”

  Sumire didn’t seem to quite understand his question. “Does there need to be a reason? I think it’s common for names to change when they go into widespread use among the population.” She didn’t seem to have any doubts about the phrase Devil Virus.

  The more Rentaro thought about it, the less he understood. What was happening? Why did something like this—

  Rentaro’s cell phone buzzed. The name on the screen read Kisara.

  “Satomi, did you see the news?” Her voice, however tense it was, still made a part of him feel unconsciously relieved; it blew away the otherworldly atmosphere that had wrapped itself around him. He felt like it had pulled him out of hell.

  However, that was short-lived. “Satomi, it’s started,” she continued. “The Monolith’s bleaching has been spotted! It looks like it can’t be hidden any longer.”

  Rentaro kept the phone on his ear and said in a low voice, “Doc, turn on the TV.”

  Sumire quickly operated a nearby device and soon the picture from the TV was projected onto the large screen. There was no need to change the channel; all the stations were probably broadcasting the same breaking news.

  The video was aerial footage from a news helicopter. The rotors were noisy, and the female reporter’s voice sounded far away, but there was no doubt about what she was trying to say.

  From the close-up of Monolith 32, they could see what looked like stains of white mold all over the Monolith. The corrosion fluid injected by Gastrea Aldebaran had finally eaten away at the enormous barrier, enough so that it could be seen from afar.

  The video changed again, this time to show recorded footage. Rentaro groaned involuntarily. A helicopter flying above the Unexplored Territory was recording the mass of Gastrea that had gathered in the dense forest. The black mountain of them that could be seen from between the trees were of varying shapes and sizes. Of course, they weren’t limited to land-dwelling units. Bird and insect aerial units that could fly could also be seen. It looked like there were already close to a thousand of them. Perhaps in response to the approaching news helicopter, the Gastrea on the ground looked up, and they roared together in a bone-chilling wail filled with resentment and hatred.

  Then, suddenly, the recorded footage was interrupted, and it went back to the live broadcast. Abruptly, on the top half of the screen, an IN MEMORIAM reel came on with headshots and names. Apparently, the news crew that went to film the concentration of Gastrea had been unable to return.

  “The people of Tokyo Area are in a state of panic. Everyone is waiting for the government to act as soon as
possible.” Even though it hadn’t even begun yet, the captions on screen were already calling it the Third Kanto Battle.

  Sumire hadn’t known what was going on, and she was frozen with her eyes wide.

  Even after turning off the TV, the image of the gathering of Gastrea facing the sky and howling remained burned into Rentaro’s brain. Why are you coming for us? Do you really hate mankind that much? Rentaro slowly let out the breath he had been holding.

  There were four days left until the Monolith collapsed. He needed to gather his force as soon as possible.

  7

  “Rentaro, is this good?” With a hammer in one hand, Enju leaned over and waved at him, all smiles.

  “A little deeper, please,” said Rentaro.

  “Got it!” With dangerous enthusiasm, Enju hammered the pegs that fixed the four corners of the structure they were building.

  As Rentaro watched Enju nervously, he took two poles, put them through canvas sleeves, and crossed them. Once Enju saw he was ready, their eyes met, and they pulled it up together with a shout.

  There was a loud flap, and then the two-person tent was standing over the thin undergrowth.

  “Oh, it’s up, it’s up! That’s brilliant, Rentaro!” Enju hopped around, making her pigtails bounce.

  Rentaro looked at the sun shining down on them from the middle of the sky and wiped the sweat on his brow, then shifted his gaze to the tent with a grim expression on his face. The tent they had just put up was not much to look at, with visible stains and traces of repairs (and even though it was already the year 2031, it was still made of heavy canvas).

  Looking around them, he saw several eight-meter-square squad tents and the tent for the frontline headquarters in the distance, made of the newest GORE-TEX. They were probably all government-issued goods from the self-defense force. Compared to that, their tent was taken from the Satomi family closet, and they were just lucky that it hadn’t gotten moldy.