Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  His outstretched leg reached the window frame, and then his gun-wielding hand. Finally, he shifted his weight in one movement.

  He was in. He dropped down from the window ledge, which was higher up relative to the floor than he had anticipated. He landed with a thud.

  His Boston bag slipped off his shoulder, and Shell thought he would collapse from the impact, but he managed to stay upright.

  There were no lights on in the room, but the natural light from the window was just about enough for Shell to make out his new surroundings. It looked like some sort of abandoned store. It was completely bare, with visible cracks running across the concrete walls. A number of large windows lined one of the walls, and there was a cross marked out in tape.

  Shell suddenly realized that he was standing on something soft. He looked down and noticed that various objects were scattered across the concrete floor. He hoisted one of them up with the tip of his gun.

  It was a dull piece of cloth. He looked closer and realized that it was a skirt.

  Farther along was a blouse. Even farther along—and his eyes came across a sight that made him jump.

  A white coat, fluttering in the darkness.

  He thrust his gun out quickly, and the skirt on its end fell to the floor.

  At the end of his muzzle was a girl.

  A girl encased from top to toe in white. She was looking his way.

  “Rune-Balot…”

  Shell called out the name of the girl that should have died in his dreams.

  ≡

  Shell’s Chameleon Sunglasses were in the middle of transforming from blue to red.

  “Why, here… Why are you in a place such as this?” Shell’s inflamed red eyes stared at her in shock from behind the sunglasses. He kept his gun trained on her.

  Without a word, Balot raised her hand for Shell to see.

  In her hand was a cell phone. She tossed it over to him.

  The phone bounced off his bag, and he caught it reflexively. Its monitor showed that a second had already passed since a call had been initiated. It was on. Shell frowned, puzzled, and put the phone to his ear.

  –This is PI Oeufcoque here. Hand all your weapons over to the girl in front of you. Do so and you’ll be recognized as a cooperating witness for our second case, and the Life Preservation Program will take effect in order to protect you.

  “Where are you? Why won’t you show yourself?”

  –I’m near enough. Don’t trouble yourself. Or would you rather take your chances with your old Trustee, now that your contract has been well and truly broken? He’s under a new contract with OctoberCorp now, and I imagine he will take your life the moment he gets the opportunity.

  “You say you’re ‘near enough’? Well, can you see what I’m doing now, then?” Shell’s glinting eyes were on Balot. A crooked smile crossed his lips, and he stretched out his gun hand so that the muzzle was pointing straight at Balot’s face.

  Balot stared at Shell and his gun. She seemed, if anything, a little disappointed.

  –What are you hoping to achieve by doing that? Do you really want to die? This is your last chance to save yourself, you know.

  “That’s right! This is my last chance! A woman is a gambler’s jinx!” Shell was shouting, like a drowning man calling for help. “Oeufcoque. I remember that name. Boiled called you a talkative mouse. Who gives a shit anymore why you don’t want to show yourself? Anyone who’s so dumb as to leave a girl unprotected like this needs to be taught a lesson on how to negotiate.”

  –You can try negotiating if you like, but you won’t get what you want, not that way. We have so much more firepower than you.

  Shell’s face warped into another sneer. He looked like he’d been hit in the face with a sledgehammer.

  “Stop fucking with me! Come on out and face me like a man! Fuck me about any longer and I’ll shoot the little bitch!”

  –Oeufcoque. He’s threatening me. My life is in danger.

  The cell phone suddenly spoke in a girl’s voice. A cold, indifferent voice.

  Balot’s left hand rose up toward Shell. Her white glove squelched and became something else. It took only a moment, and then, as if by magic, Balot was holding a gun in her hand.

  Shell froze in shock. The trigger of Balot’s gun clicked into place of its own accord. That was all it took. A shot rang out. From Shell—he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

  Balot didn’t flinch. She just pulled the trigger quietly.

  There was an explosion of sparks. Shell had no idea what was happening. The bullets met in a flash of steel fragments, acrid smoke filling the surrounding space.

  Balot fired again. And again. Shell managed to fire another shot back, not that it had much effect. Balot allowed it to hit her body at the top of her shoulder, where it disintegrated into another mass of sparks. It was as if she were deliberately showing him how impenetrable her defense—her shell—was.

  In the meantime, Balot fired coolly and repeatedly at Shell.

  Shell staggered backward in a grotesque dance. His Boston bag was pierced by the bullets, but the thick wads of notes shielded him, saving his life. His money was protecting him to the end, keeping him out of harm’s way quite literally.

  Balot fired again and again, always aiming precisely for where the bundles were the thickest.

  Shell was like a sandbag now and took the volley of bullets, not even allowed to fall down.

  Balot’s supply of bullets was virtually inexhaustible. Shell’s supply of banknotes was not.

  Eventually, Balot brought her volley to a close. Shell collapsed backwards, and millions of tiny fragments of what used to be his bag were scattered around the area, mixed with the confetti that moments before had been Shell’s money.

  Balot closed in slowly on Shell, now a pathetic figure on the floor taking sniveling breaths.

  Suddenly Shell raised his head, gritted his teeth, and thrust his gun out again. His hands and face were covered with scraps of banknotes, pasted to him with his own sweat.

  His trembling hand pulled the trigger, but Balot could see his movement as if it were in slow motion.

  She shot the bullet down in front of her as easily as if it had been a balloon.

  The bullets met, and the impact caused red and yellow sparks to fly.

  Before the sparks had even finished dying down, Balot had put three bullets into Shell’s hand with lethal accuracy: through the grip and into his index, middle, and ring fingers respectively.

  The rest of the bullets in Shell’s magazine exploded, bathing the room in their incandescent white light. His fingers were torn off, and the Blue Diamonds glistened like tears as they rolled to the floor, still attached to their fingers.

  Shell collapsed.

  His Chameleon Sunglasses were a deep scarlet as they smashed against the floor, and their fragments scattered like blood. His quivering right hand no longer had a single finger attached to it. His days as a sharp—a professional gambler—were over. The right side of his face was shredded by steel shrapnel from the explosion.

  Balot stared at Shell and the state he was in.

  Shell could barely breathe. The right side of his face was drenched in black and reflecting light. Perhaps he was crying.

  Balot knelt down next to him and reached out with her left hand, the one that held the gun.

  Shell tried weakly to wriggle away from her. As he did so, the gun in Balot’s hand squelched and disappeared. Something else appeared in its place.

  Shell’s eyes focused on it with trepidation.

  It was the thing that Balot had received from the Doctor at the Broilerhouse. Or rather, things. Four of them. The four storage devices used in Shell’s Clapping, his memory extraction operations. The chips. Shell’s eyes grew wider and wider.

  –Here you are. I want you to have these back.

  Shell’s eyes moved slowly from the chips up to Balot’s face. Balot touched Shell’s temple with her right hand. She located the terminal. The fiberoptic ci
rcuit that connected straight to Shell’s brain.

  Balot snarced.

  Shell’s body bent backward and went rigid. His eyes opened so wide that it seemed as if his eyeballs might pop out of his skull, but instead they started flickering rapidly.

  Without her realizing it, Balot’s left hand had closed tightly over her four chips.

  Her right hand was still pressed against his temple, and before long Balot had got the measure of the circuits to Shell’s brain.

  –Everything that you’ve lost, I’m going to give back to you.

  Balot took the vast amount of information contained in her left hand and started to feed it through the circuits and into Shell’s brain. Carefully, so as not to overload or damage anything.

  At first Shell didn’t understand what was happening, but soon his face started twitching, and a crazed voice leaked out.

  “Stop it…”

  His eyes rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. An unearthly scream left his mouth. A cry of despair. His mouth started frothing, then bubbled up, and blood poured from his nostrils.

  Balot remained silent and continued to feed Shell’s memories back into his mind. His destroyed gestalt was gradually reconstructed, and even his paralyzed nerve circuits were being repaired electronically.

  It wasn’t possible to manipulate his nerve cells directly, of course, but it was possible to restore the outlines of all the events that had taken place, with details of how they all related to each other, memories of the sights and sounds and smells and other stimuli.

  Shell’s scream continued for a long time. This was the man who had voluntarily chosen to be an empty husk of a man, but Balot was now forcibly pumping the rotten contents that he’d been turning away from for so long back into him.

  Eventually Shell was all screamed out, but the operation continued unabated for about thirty minutes. Only because of Balot’s incredible aptitude was such a speed possible.

  Her glove squelched and swallowed up the chips again for safekeeping.

  When she was finished, Balot touched the still-unconscious Shell’s head and communicated directly via the circuits in his brain.

  –If you take good enough care of it then even a rotten egg might eventually come back to life.

  Shell slept. Throughout the whole operation, from start to end, he hadn’t even looked at Balot once. Just like when he’d waved goodbye to her from outside the car that trapped her. He hadn’t really been looking at her—only his own reflection. You reap what you sow, Balot thought, and then she realized that this applied to herself as well. She had never loved Shell and never wanted to. All she had ever wanted was to be loved.

  She felt a great void disappear—where there had been a sorrowful emptiness inside her, now she was feeling complete again.

  The very next instant she sensed something approaching the building they were in. She gulped.

  It was threat personified. A cold killing machine in the shape of a giant. And it was drawing near.

  “Boiled is coming…” Oeufcoque murmured, for he too had sensed the impending danger.

  Balot nodded. She felt overwhelming pressure bearing in on her from all around, and she shivered. For a moment she forgot about Shell, forgot about herself, forgot about the dead girls and their accursed lives—everything was wiped cleanly from her mind.

  For that alone, Balot found herself feeling almost thankful.

  04

  –All air traffic has been cut off! Boiled has put in a thousand different investigation requests to the aviation authorities!

  Balot heard the Doctor’s voice shouting down the cell phone in frustration. “Investigating the airways? What’s he playing at?” asked Oeufcoque.

  –It’s not the investigations themselves that are important. He’s sent in aerial camera crews, weather balloons, that sort of thing, so as to block off all the flight paths. Humpty can’t get permission to enter any airspace on safety grounds. I can exercise my rights as a Trustee to get them out of the area, but it’ll take time for the messages to get through. Too much time. We’ve fallen right into his trap. What do we do?

  “We prepare to defend ourselves and try to escape. What else is there? Even if the police were to come to our aid, there’s no guarantee that we’d be able to keep Shell to ourselves. If OctoberCorp has its way, Shell will be shot dead on the spot. There’s nothing else to do—we have to protect Shell,” Oeufcoque said, as businesslike as possible.

  Balot could tell, though, that Oeufcoque was worried—and suffering for it. She listened to the conversation, tuning in to Oeufcoque’s feelings as he spoke to the Doctor in the form of a cell phone in her hands.

  She sensed Boiled moving toward them somewhere outside the building. He would stop now and then to touch the building, and every time he did so Balot felt it as keenly as if it were her own body he was touching. He was closing in on them, like a grand master seeking out the opening that would allow him to checkmate.

  Oeufcoque and the Doctor conversed quickly now. Oeufcoque kept a level head throughout. At no point did he even consider the possibility of giving up the case. This saved Balot—and gave her an answer to the question What should I do?

  Outside the building, Boiled was moving in a peculiar way, cutting off their escape routes as he closed in.

  There was only one of him. There should have been any number of ways they could have run. And yet there was no escape route. It was as if they were surrounded by an army of a hundred.

  This was another answer to Balot’s question.

  –I’ll protect us all.

  Oeufcoque and the Doctor fell silent as Balot snarced the phone.

  –How long until you can get here, Doctor?

  –Two hours should be—no, I’ll make it there in an hour. Believe me.

  –Sure. I believe you. I won’t run away.

  –No, no, if it gets too dangerous then please do run away. I’m begging you.

  –All right.

  –I’m trusting in you, Balot, Oeufcoque. I’ll be there to pick you up as soon I can.

  The conversation ended and the display on the cell phone went blank. Balot placed it on the floor.

  “What exactly are you planning?”

  –Please, help me with this.

  Balot snarced her bodysuit to speak to Oeufcoque.

  Shell had received rudimentary first aid—he was bandaged up and laid out on the concrete floor at Balot’s feet.

  He looked almost like a mummy. He was trussed up in bandages, gauze, and ropes that bound his arms and legs. All Made by Oeufcoque.

  Perhaps due to the magnitude of the memories that had just been crammed back into his mind, Shell showed no sign of moving or regaining consciousness.

  He might have been drowning in a sea of dreams from his murky past, but his face was tranquil as he slept. Balot felt a pang of relief—perhaps it was true. Now that he had his memories back, his murderous urges might finally subside.

  Balot knelt down to pick up Shell, who was as limp as a rolled-up carpet. Oeufcoque helped her. Here and there her bodysuit turned into a metal exoskeleton to support Shell’s weight.

  Balot propped the sleeping Shell over her shoulder and went to the garbage disposal chute in one corner of the room. Checking first that there was no shredder or pulverizer at the other end, she lifted Shell’s body into the opening, holding on to him by the lapel of his shirt.

  “Aren’t you going to let him go?”

  –Not yet.

  Oeufcoque realized immediately what Balot meant by this. He was genuinely impressed.

  She was waiting for the right moment. If Boiled was trying to ensnare them, she’d ensnare him back. Shrewd tactics—it was a gamble that relied on split-second timing.

  She confirmed that Boiled was just about to enter through the front door, and she knew the moment was right.

  –Bye-bye, Shell.

  Balot snarced the words into Shell’s brain and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

>   At the same time she let go. Shell’s body slid down the chute, making a screeching sound as it did so before landing with a dull thud at the other end.

  Boiled stopped still outside the front door. He touched the wall with his hand so that he could grasp what was going on, and it was clear he was considering what had just happened. Boiled understood Balot’s intentions. He also understood just how serious she was. Boiled walked closer to the front door.

  Suddenly Balot’s knees started to wobble. She was gripped with the fear that came from knowing that she had burnt her last bridge—thrown away her last chance to escape. She opened her voiceless mouth to breathe in deeply, bringing herself back from the verge of panic.

  Oeufcoque called out to her. “Balot.” Balot squeezed her bodysuit tight.

  –There are lots of people I’ve wanted to be loved by. But you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to love myself.

  She spoke to Oeufcoque as she sensed him covering her whole body. She showed him her will, and her courage.

  –I know the person we’re fighting now used to be a friend of yours, so I’ll do my best to stop him without hurting him too much.

  Oeufcoque seemed to be inhaling Balot’s very intentions. To face an enemy as powerful as Boiled with the handicap of merely trying to disarm him—that was virtually suicide, a death wish. Boiled would ruthlessly exploit any perceived weakness to drive his advantage home.

  Balot hugged her bodysuit still tighter. It was the weapon that covered her. Snug and tight.

  –I won’t kill him. I won’t be killed. I won’t let him kill.

  This was what she had learned from Oeufcoque, after all, and it was the only answer that she could give.

  “We won’t kill. We won’t be killed. We won’t let him kill,” Oeufcoque repeated, as if it were some sort of mantra. “That’s an extremely difficult task we’ve set ourselves. But…it’s worth trying.”

  Slowly Balot took her hands away from her shoulders and placed them back at her sides.

  “I’ve got a good partner.”

  With that, Balot felt Oeufcoque turn again. He wrapped Balot thoroughly, to protect her and to be her weapon, ready to respond instantly to her snarc.