“Just you wait, Toma. I’ll avenge you for sure.”
The girl was a regular fireball, but even she recognized that wasn’t the sort of thing she’d normally need to say aloud. She could say it a million times, and it’d still just be an excuse.
When she realized as much, Meg broke off three branches and sharpened them into harpoons. By focusing her attention, she could forget D for a while, and she intended to permanently banish him from thought.
Meg was walking across level ground. The sun was high but vaguely hidden by fog. After walking for what she thought to be about thirty minutes, she saw something black up ahead. She quickly squatted down.
Though the Nobility couldn’t walk in the light of day, the bothersome creatures they’d created could perform their duties even in sunlight.
She waited a little while, but there was no sign of anything moving. Working her nerve up again, Meg started forward. As she got closer she realized what she’d seen was apparently part of something massive buried in the ground.
The scenery had changed completely. The grass was gone, and now dirt was beneath her feet—though the dirt was trapped beneath a black, glassy substance.
“What’s the story with this ground?” she murmured, taking in her surroundings.
On scattered spots around the harshly glinting plain, parts of some building or an enormous mechanism could be glimpsed, but Meg didn’t recognize it. Her surroundings grew dim. At some point, she’d moved into the shadow cast by the object. Rising from the ground at an angle, it reminded her of the tip of a weird skyscraper. It went fifty feet high, and had it been standing straight it probably would’ve reached over sixty. Due to its ash-gray surface it looked like rock, but on closer inspection it was actually metal. Meg touched the surface, which had violent pits and bulges all over it. Its rough texture and appearance called to mind the glassy ground. That these were traces of a place struck by a few million degrees of heat was something beyond Meg’s comprehension.
Being in this world of silence made Meg uneasy. Though she could look up and see the sun and birds winging across the sky, here alone she couldn’t sense even the faintest signs of life. Even the strange happenings in the tunnel seemed a pleasant memory, but Meg gave her head a good hard shake to keep her mind from crumbling.
You’ve gotta get a grip on yourself. Be strong!
But even that was a painful thought.
A dull sound came from somewhere. As it spread, it had a ring to it that made her think of something low, heavy, and mysterious. Meg got the feeling something preposterous was happening.
“What?!” the girl murmured, and just then she distinctly heard the sound of iron shredding close at hand. When she turned and looked, a single line was burned into her eyes.
From its very top to where it was buried, the object split vertically—a line actually ran right down the center of it. The sound the girl had just heard was undoubtedly the screams of its welds tearing apart. The ground shook.
Not saying a word, Meg backed up.
The ground was being pushed away. The line up the object just kept growing wider. It was opening to either side. Pale electromagnetic waves flashed in the depths of the gap.
For the longest time, Meg felt like she was spellbound.
Now the gap had spread to more than six feet, and in its depths a section like a lustrous black cocoon could be seen. Something strange happened to the head portion of it. Though Meg couldn’t see from where she was, a hole about six feet in diameter had opened in it. A pale human hand reached from the head of the cocoon. It only became apparent that the occupant was a woman when the arm was followed by the appearance of a head of luxurious black hair, graceful shoulders, and tantalizing breasts. Her face was raised and angled off to the right, and as it turned in the girl’s direction, black hair billowed across it.
Hell, I’m better looking than she is, Meg thought.
The woman had the face of a rustic peasant girl, but the movements she made seemed to compensate for that. Skillfully she crept down the smooth surface of the cocoon, like a spider or some kind of reptile. Her absent-minded expression, lacking even an iota of intelligence, shrouded Meg in a fog of fear.
The woman came down and stood on the ground, but perhaps she wasn’t accustomed to that, because time and again she went down on all fours, until presently she got up jerkily.
“Oh, this is definitely not good,” Meg said, hauling back with the harpoon in her right hand. The others were lashed together with a vine and slung across her back. Extending her left hand, she gauged the distance to the woman. She was confident she could respond to whatever movement the woman made. You had to be more than just fair at this to nail a fish leaping out of the water from the deck of rocking ship.
The woman started walking. With her first step she nearly stumbled, and with her second she was reeling. It was a nightmarish parody of walking that a marionette on broken strings might perform.
“Hold it right there!” the girl shouted.
The woman halted for an instant—then began walking again.
“Are you one of those old settlers? I came over from the same village. I’m here to save all of you!”
Meg looked into the woman’s eyes—and gave up. Putting her strength into her right arm, she trained her eye on the woman’s chest.
The woman suddenly vanished. When she leapt up with unbelievable speed, Meg’s wooden harpoon pierced her through the left arm. The force of the impact stopped her for a moment, and then the woman bent back far. She righted herself, including the harpoon in her arm. And it wasn’t just that she’d sprung back up. The harpoon sped forward, too.
Meg was aware that it’d pierced the left side of her chest. The girl lay flat on her back, and the woman sailed lightly down on top of her. Her mouth opened with a hiss. Incisors like ice picks were the last thing Meg saw before her consciousness was swallowed up by pitch blackness.
“That girl’s gonna follow you for sure!” the hoarse voice was heard to say. “And just as sure, she’s gonna run into them. Too bad she doesn’t have a chance of making it through alive. How’s that make you feel?”
“She chose her own path,” D replied.
The young man’s conclusions were quiet and cold, like a blade. If anyone had been there to hear it, it probably would’ve felt like fate.
“Oh, I see. By the way, the fog’s gotten oddly heavy.”
The area around the steed and its rider was bleached white. He, too, was out in the middle of a plain.
“Can’t make out our position from the 3D sensors or the tracking satellites. But this fog . . .”
“Are you trying to say it acts as a sensor that wouldn’t let even an insect slip through?” the Hunter asked.
“Probably. Either they’ll be lying in wait for us, or they’ll come after us. No matter which, it’s all the same to you, I suppose.”
Even the head of the cyborg horse had disappeared from D’s field of view.
“Stop!” the hoarse voice demanded. It came from the vicinity of D’s left hand, which gripped the reins.
The horse stopped. That was all. There was no change in D. Not the slightest hint of murderous intent tinged the world of white.
“What is it?” D inquired.
“Nothing. It’s just dangerous.”
D looked overhead, with the palm of his left hand shading his face from the sun. It was an expanse of blue sky. Yet his surroundings were a thick sea of fog.
“So that’s it,” the left hand said, sounding satisfied. “Mind your horse’s position. A long time ago, I heard about a way of killing sort of like this.”
“From whom?”
Apparently this was a sensitive subject, and the hoarse voice fell silent for a moment before saying, “Through the grapevine.” Suddenly, in a low, intense tone it added, “See, here it comes!”
The black horse tore into the ground at almost the same time a stark light filled the world. Waves of heat struck the rider’s back.
“Left!”
As his steed touched back down to the ground, D pulled on the reins. Hooves kicked up the soil. The steed’s front legs creaked from the load this rough handling placed on them.
D shot a quick glance over to the first spot he’d landed. Beyond the fog—there was nothing. There was no ground, and even that space didn’t exist. He could sense only nothingness.
D or not, there was no saying what might’ve happened to the rider had he stayed there.
As if looking for the answer to that, the white light flashed. If D had looked up, he might’ve witnessed a beam of light shooting from where the sun shone in the blue sky. There must’ve been a device with an amplifying lens or something similar somewhere between the Earth and the sun that could collect a portion of the sun’s rays and focus them into a beam the width of a human hair. At a heat of several hundred million degrees, the beam could actually make the ground boil.
And after the Hunter’s miraculous escape, a cruel trap had awaited him.
Dodging a third shot and then a fourth, the rider had just broken into a gallop when the hoarse voice cried out, “Oh, no!”
Both horse and rider pitched madly to the right, and they were swallowed up by the swirling fog.
III
“He is slain,” said a voice that seemed to flow across the fog.
Here, too, the world was tinged a milky white. Aside from the fog, everything was shadows. Something like pillars, something like stairs, something like statues—all colored by a world of stagnant milk, as if to eternally shield themselves from the flow of time. That was where the words had sprung into being.
At the same time, a shadowy figure moved in the vicinity of where the voice had come from. That movement stopped dead when another voice was heard. It came from ahead of the shadowy figure—from the depths of the swirling fog. Though the voice was that of a young woman, it had a ring of time to it like that of a crone.
“And you can prove this?”
“He fell into the ‘nothingness.’ No mathematical construct can exist there.”
“Anything swallowed by something that doesn’t exist also ceases to exist?”
“Correct, Your Grace,” replied a vibrant voice which in sound at least seemed far older than that of the woman.
“And what is Gildea doing?”
“At present, he’s in the medical center recovering from his wounds. It must’ve been quite an incredible opponent to injure him. It is said Gildea’s strength wasn’t sufficient to remove the blade stuck in his throat, and that he had to activate a device in the medical center before he finally extricated it. The gravity controller was bearing him back here on autopilot when he lost consciousness.”
After a short time had passed, the woman said, “His opponent was a dhampir?” She seemed to be putting the question to herself.
“In all likelihood. And far and away more skilled than the average one.” The vibrant voice paused there for a moment. Clearly the speaker was gauging the listener’s reaction.
Presently, he continued, “On regaining consciousness, Gildea said his opponent had mentioned your name, even going so far as to inquire as to your condition. Are you familiar with his foe?”
“I know him,” she replied in the same tone she’d used up until now. However, the intensity of the emotion that swayed there would be evident to any who heard her.
“What manner of foe is this?”
“His name is—D.”
“Oh! In that case—”
A horrible sense of turmoil came from the figure in the fog. It was on account of that that he stopped in midsentence.
“When we and the island were destroyed, you didn’t get a chance to meet the man.”
“Ah, but now I may finally encounter him? Why would this D come to the island, though? Is he not most likely in someone’s employ?”
“Seven days ago I rose again. It may well be that he became aware of my resurrection and came here.”
“And how would he become aware of that?”
“What do you know of him?”
This time, as the woman’s voice streamed out it suggested she couldn’t read the vibrant one’s mind.
“Well—nothing.”
“In truth?”
“Yes, your grace,” the man replied, his voice carrying a fear unimaginable from his tone up to that point.
After a short pause, the woman continued, “You said he was slain, did you not?”
“Yes, your grace,” he replied in a tone of relief, not due to the woman’s question itself, but because she’d bothered to ask.
“For the D I know, that simply isn’t possible.”
“We made use of the solar cannon and the ‘nothingness.’”
“You could crush the whole Milky Way and it still would be for naught.”
The man didn’t know what to say to that.
“Prepare the light shielder. I shall be going out.”
“But that’s—”
“You’re giving me a look as if I were going to help him, aren’t you, Danae?”
“As you say, your grace.”
“Even if that were the case, you could do nothing to stop me. The least you could do is keep me company.”
A movement took place in a world of silence. The depths of the fog stirred. Another shadowy form had passed beside the man called Danae. A scant amount of light swayed by the figure’s chest. Even Danae halted. One fog eddied with the other, collided, then separated again. Even after the shadowy figures melted away into the milky whiteness, their respective fogs continued an unending feud.
On realizing that she was being shaken roughly, the girl awoke.
“You okay?”
A heavily bearded face Meg couldn’t recall seeing before was peering down at her. She leapt up in a hurry. Something ran down her cheek. Sweat. It was strangely hot.
“Who are you?”
“They call me d’Argent. I’m a survivor of those who came over to the island one hundred seven years back.”
Meg stared at the man and nearly forgot to breathe. She could understand if he were the descendant of somebody who’d crossed over a century ago—but he claimed to actually be one of the settlers.
Now, that’s strange, was her first thought. He was too young to be one of them. Under all that beard, his face looked like that of a man about twenty, give or take a year. Then, it suddenly hit her. If what he was saying was true, could it be that he was a Noble—or some other creature that didn’t age?
More than the hand she involuntarily raised to the nape of her neck it was the change in Meg’s expression that d’Argent noticed. Grinning wryly, he said, “Oh, you’re a sharp one to put this face and the bit about one hundred seven years ago together. I was subjected to the Nobility’s experiments. All the others died, I think, and I alone was spared. Ever since, I haven’t aged. Just to be perfectly clear, I’m not a victim of the Nobility. If I were, you wouldn’t have been safe this long.”
Meg nodded. There were no wounds on her neck. And although they were presently in what seemed to be some sort of cellar, strong light filtered in. It was daytime.
“Then that woman . . .”
The image of the reptilian woman who she could only imagine was a victim of the Nobility filled Meg’s mind. She hadn’t done anything to the girl?
“Did you save me? Was there anybody around me?”
“No,” d’Argent said, shaking his head as he reflected. “I found you by that huge machine. That area used to be another testing facility. But now, as you saw, it’s a wasteland. You were lying there alone.”
“Is it okay to go outside?”
“Sure,” d’Argent responded with a slightly suspicious nod, perhaps having gleaned from Meg’s demeanor that she had some important business.
The terrain all around was jagged and rocky. It seemed terribly hot there, and gas jetted from a number of spots.
Meg looked up at the sun. From its angle and the way it was shining, more than an ho
ur had passed since that incident—but not two. When she turned around and asked him, d’Argent told Meg about forty minutes had passed since he’d found her and brought her there. That being the case, what’d happened during the other fifty minutes or so?
Meg asked about the woman.
“I think she was a test subject,” d’Argent replied.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Apparently before we came here, other people had been brought over to the island. They went crazy as a result of the experiments conducted on them, and they were expulsed.”
“What’s an X-pulse?”
“It means they were banished, actually.”
“Well, why didn’t you say that, then? Don’t go using fancy words with me.”
“Pardon me.”
Eyeing the man intently, Meg said, “I don’t get the sense you’re a fisherman. What, then?”
Laughing at the way she’d framed her question, d’Argent replied, “I’m an elementary school teacher.”
“I see. But that was a hundred years ago, right? Don’t be acting all uppity just because I’m a fisher, okay?”
Meg punctuated that with a smile. Even when she had huge arguments with other villagers, that was the wonder drug that always reconciled them immediately.
“What brings you here?”
His query was natural enough, and in response Meg looked up at the sun again and said, “Don’t suppose I could tell you along the way, could I? I’m here to save the villagers who were brought over to the island. If you’ve been here for a hundred years, you must know where everything is. I’ll make it worth your while. Help me out.”
“Sorry, but no.”
The man’s reply struck Meg so coldly it took her a moment to say, “What? Why not?”
“I really like it here on the island. Thanks to the Nobles’ furnace, this area’s always warm, and there’s no shortage of things to eat. Plus, if I were to go home, everyone I knew is dead now.”
“There might be others around like you!”
“I’ve never met one, but even if there were, they’d think like I do.”
Undead Island Page 7