The Trancer

by Reki Kawahara

“…It doesn’t really matter to me, since you’re older than me either way.”

  “What a boring answer.”

  Perhaps to avoid her intense gaze, Mikawa looked over their surroundings again. The site of the abandoned factory stretched around the safe house building to the south and west—or perhaps it was more accurate to say that the hideout was nestled into the northeast corner of the factory. It seemed as if it had once been a metalworking factory, with milling machines covered in rust tossed aside underneath an overhang. The building itself was half-rotted, too, its roof dotted with holes.

  Why was a ruin like this in the Aoyama area, even on the outskirts? According to Liquidizer’s explanation, the real estate company that had owned this land had gone bankrupt, so the unused building had been abandoned. Thanks to this, there were no homes in use in the area, and in this weather, especially on New Year’s Eve, there was nobody around to interfere, no matter how violent things might get. There was only one problem left…

  “…Are they coming or what?” he muttered. The black ones were always prancing about like self-proclaimed knights in shining armor, but it was still hard to imagine they would casually show up knowing that the enemy must be lying in wait. If they had decided to cut their losses and abandon the spy caught in the trap, Mikawa and Liquidizer would be waiting in vain in the cold. Besides, the spy was almost certainly dead by now, anyway.

  However, Liquidizer’s response was simple. “They’ll come.”

  “They’d come in the face of danger and go through all the trouble of breaking through the concrete just to recover a dead body?”

  “Oh no, they’re still alive in there. Otherwise the Third Eye would’ve disengaged by now.”

  “…”

  Mikawa frowned and took another look at the building. Its roof was higher than the factory’s, so he couldn’t see for sure, but it was true that there were no broken windows or anything. The Third Eye exodus phenomenon tended to leave destruction in its wake, since it would break through any obstacles in its way, so it was doubtful that the fifth floor would be completely intact if it had occurred.

  “…Alive? But it’s been at least thirty minutes, hasn’t it?”

  “Indeed. Either they were carrying an air cylinder as a precaution, or maybe…” Liquidizer narrowed her eyes under her thick black glasses, and the rest of her sentence faded into a thin smile. Having long since learned that this expression meant she wasn’t going to elaborate, Mikawa thought for a few moments before figuring it out on his own.

  “Ah, I see. Or maybe it was that hunter from the spirit photography video who…” Before he could finish, Liquidizer suddenly placed a white fingertip over his lips.

  “They’re here.”

  “What? Really?” Following his former master’s pointing finger, Mikawa saw a black van approaching rapidly from the south in the falling snow.

  “Right there. Stop them.”

  “Understood.” Right away, Mikawa inhaled deeply and blew the air out sharply toward the van that was still at least forty-six meters away. The snow that was piled up unevenly on the street froze at once, icing over the road. The van began to swerve left and right, its tires losing their grip on the road. But it didn’t slow down, stubbornly careening toward the safe house.

  “I don’t think so,” Mikawa muttered, this time aiming an airy breath toward the trees that lined the right side of the street. Instead of vaporizing the ice that had piled up on the dried leaves, he gently urged on just a bit of molecular movement, turning it into liquid. Once the water poured down onto the street, Mikawa quickly froze it back into ice.

  The car’s tires hit the freshly made ice slope on the road, and it quickly began to spin out. The driver recovered quickly, but the van was still off its original course, sliding left and right.

  CRASH! The van smashed through a pair of locked gates, sliding not into the safe house but on the site of the abandoned factory.

  “…Oh dear, they’re in here now,” Mikawa remarked. The van was scattering snow as it hit the brakes, and it screeched to a stop, its front bumper crashing into the wall of the factory. As he watched, the side doors of the black van opened, and three of the black hunters jumped out into the snow.

  “Here we go. You take care of the one on the right, boy. Feel free to kill him, but try not to damage the brain. I’ll have Empathizer get some information out of it.”

  Liquidizer’s voice revealed no excitement as she gave orders. When Mikawa took one last glance at his former master, there was a cool smile on her lips.

  “All right.” Mikawa jammed into his jacket the object he’d made out of snow while waiting on the roof and leaped off, after Liquidizer. Landing for a moment on the rusted emergency staircase, he jumped down again to the ground five meters below. Immediately, he spotted a fast-moving shadow charging at him from the right out of the corner of his eye.

  Mikawa dove to the left. Milliseconds later, a sharp silver light flashed through the spot where his body had been moments before, and the snow on the ground flew into the air in two straight lines.

  Mikawa gave a thin smile, watching the double-edged blade warily. It was glittering intensely, as if it were wet. “What’s this? No time to chat with me today, Divider?”

  The gangly, handsome Jet Eye shifted his blade back into position. “I’m not letting you steal anything else away from me,” he spat in a low voice. “If you want to freeze stuff so badly, try freezing yourself in hell for eternity!”

  Divider’s blue eyes glinted, but Mikawa held his smile as he responded. “Goodness, how rude. I’m just following orders here, like always. Unlike you, still knee-deep in your own grudges…”

  A fragment of a memory projected itself onto the screen of the thickly falling snow. Two months ago, shortly after joining the Syndicate, Mikawa and two of his colleagues had attacked a car that Divider had been in. Their target, however, was not him but the passenger in the backseat. Mikawa’s job was to freeze the target in ice and capture them unharmed.

  “…You know, Divider, I didn’t even know anything about that girl when we ‘stole’ her…although I don’t know if you could really call it that. After all, unlike you, she—”

  “Not another word,” Divider interrupted sharply, cutting through Mikawa’s remark. Then, suddenly, he launched himself forward with a roar. Mikawa aimed a thin stream of air at the blade, just as he had a few days before.

  He froze the water molecules inside the snowflakes as they touched the sword, expecting to see the blade turn into a dull stick of ice. But instead, he saw a small spark appear on the handle of the sword.

  Whoosh! Suddenly, the blade was engulfed in orange flames.

  So it looked so shiny before because it’s coated in some kind of combustion agent, huh? But he couldn’t come up with a countermeasure for it right away. The snow that would hit the sword as it swung through the air wouldn’t be nearly enough to counteract the intense quantity of heat produced by the blade.

  Quickly, he opened his mouth wide and blew. Instead of freezing, the water in front of him transitioned into steam. The pure white mist took over his field of vision immediately, but his lungs ran out of air after that. He couldn’t produce steam hot enough to damage his opponent.

  Passing through the steam, the fiery blade swooped toward him at a terrifying speed.

  Mikawa bent his body backward as far as he could, trying to dodge the strike. A spasm from the wound he’d received from the same sword just a few days ago, still scarcely healed, slowed his movements a little. Luckily, the steam he’d created served as a smoke screen, obstructing Divider’s aim. The tip of the flaming sword only nicked his left shoulder lightly, and Mikawa was finally able to catch his breath and release another cloud of steam, retreating as he did so. Divider, likewise, jumped aside, creating distance between them.

  “…Well, that was a shock. As if that giant sword wasn’t tacky enough on its own, now it catches on fire! What’s the coating? Sesame oil?”

 
“Trioxane,” Divider replied flatly. Mikawa had never heard of it. It was probably a chemosynthetically created high-efficiency combustion agent. This was just further proof of how advanced the black group’s product development was.

  “…Hmm. Well, it’s too bad you weren’t able to take me out with that strike. Looks like your party trick doesn’t last very long.” The flame that had engulfed the blade was already going out. No matter how effective the combustion agent, the small amount that could be coated onto a blade’s edge was unlikely to last much longer than ten seconds.

  Now it’s my turn.

  Mikawa reached his right hand into his jacket. However, before he could grab the object inside, Divider made an unexpected move: He quickly slid the now-flameless sword back into its sheath.

  Shiiing! When he unsheathed it again with a sharp, metallic noise, the sword’s blade was once more shining with fluid.

  “…I see,” Mikawa said darkly, the smile finally vanishing from his lips. Keeping a careful eye on his opponent, he glanced around to assess the other battle unfolding nearby.

  On the other side of the car that had crashed into the factory wall, the sailor suit–clad Liquidizer fought against two black combatants. One was a young woman with long hair and a blazer-style black uniform—most likely the one whose code name was Accelerator. The other was a short male in a camouflage jacket, whom he’d never seen before. Both held suppressed automatic pistols in their right hands. A few empty shells lay scattered in the snow, suggesting that shots had already been fired.

  Neither one was much farther than nine meters away from Liquidizer, so it was hard to imagine that all those shots could have missed, but somehow she was completely unharmed as she stood calmly between them. Just as Mikawa was wondering whether she had somehow dodged all the bullets, the two Jet Eyes fired again.

  Pff, pff, pff! They fired at least ten times, the muted shots sounding like those of an air gun. In the face of such a merciless onslaught, Liquidizer casually raised her right hand and simply stretched it out in front of her, palm facing front.

  Then Mikawa’s eyes widened in shock, and he imagined that Divider’s did, too.

  Every one of the bullets that had been fired at Liquidizer’s body with murderous intent, whether they made impact with her hand or not, melted in midair into lead-colored drops of liquid and fell to the ground.

  Mikawa was all too aware of how terrifying Liquidizer’s powers were. But he’d had no idea that she could use them on an object without directly touching it with her hand. It looked like the effect had a radius of only a half meter around the palm of her hand, but that was more than enough to protect herself from shooting.

  As he thought it through that far, Mikawa hit upon a small problem. Even if she could liquefy a bullet, it should still have kinetic energy. Shouldn’t the liquid stay clumped together and carry on forward to hit Liquidizer and deal some degree of damage before scattering into the air?

  But this question, too, was answered once he saw the dissolved bullets forming a whirlpool in midair. Inside the barrel of a gun, there are spiral-shaped grooves called rifling. This causes the bullet to spin as it’s fired from the gun, improving its accuracy. However, this spinning turned in Liquidizer’s favor when she liquidized the bullets, the centrifugal force overwhelming the liquid and scattering it in all directions.

  In other words, in order to shoot Liquidizer, a gun with a smooth, unrifled barrel—which Mikawa wasn’t sure even existed—would be far more effective. The Jet Eyes were sure to have realized this by now. Unfortunately for them, they would never have the chance to act on this information. Because now that they had seen her trump card, she was certainly not going to let them escape with their lives.

  All ten bullets were turned into little silvery droplets, the heat from the transformation diffusing into the cold air and creating little white clouds of steam.

  At that moment, the girl, Accelerator, dropped her gun and pulled a knife from inside her skirt—perhaps thinking she had nothing to lose.

  Fwoosh! She launched herself at Liquidizer with an explosive sound, snow whirling up around her. She was using her acceleration ability. All that Mikawa could see of her was an inky black shadow as she dashed forward at inhuman speed.

  However, far from the metallic sound of steel piercing flesh, the sound that rang out was a simple splash of water. Liquidizer had pushed the fast-approaching knife away with the back of her right hand. The blade was liquefied immediately, drops of liquid steel scattering in the air.

  This time, Liquidizer’s left hand shot out toward her opponent, her white palm pushing against the right side of Accelerator’s abdomen.

  She’s a goner, Mikawa thought with grim confidence. Her whole torso would be turned into liquid, collapsing into a puddle of protein soup.

  However, the liquid that sprayed into the air from Liquidizer’s left hand was pure black. All that she had liquefied was her opponent’s blazer.

  At the same instant, there was another explosive sound, and Accelerator retreated across an enormous distance. Once she stopped again, he could see that all that was covering her upper body now was a tight gray bodysuit.

  “…You didn’t really think you could beat me just by firing a bunch of bullets and hoping for the best, did you?” Liquidizer addressed the two Jet Eyes calmly. The faintest hint of a smile danced across her lightly colored lips and her eyes underneath the black-rimmed glasses. Somehow, that smile was even chillier than when her face was layered in makeup.

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Watching his former master step forward smoothly, Mikawa concluded that her victory was only a matter of time and turned his attention back toward Divider. His bitter enemy’s handsome features showed more killing intent than he had seen in any of their previous encounters as he lit another spark on his long sword.

  Watching as the sword burst into flames again, Mikawa reached into his jacket with his right hand and pulled out a secret weapon of his own.

  If Minoru had deactivated his shell even a split second later, Suu Komura probably would have died instantly. Pushed into the tiny three-centimeter space between the barrier and the concrete wall, every bone in her body would have instantly broken and her internal organs ruptured.

  But as soon as Minoru felt her being ejected from the shell, he deactivated it almost unconsciously. As a result, he had prevented the instant destruction of Suu’s body and the resultant exodus of her Third Eye, but this may have just been delaying the inevitable.

  The sound of Suu’s back crashing into the concrete at a violent speed was still reverberating as she collapsed forward into Minoru’s arms. Her body crumpled, and Minoru saw a frightening amount of blood gushing from the back of her small head.

  “Ah… Ahh…!” Minoru cried hoarsely. Desperately pressing his right hand against the area of the wound, he reactivated his protective shell. He could feel a weak heartbeat from her chest, but the bleeding showed no signs of slowing, and the color was draining quickly from her face, her eyes closed.

  The injury wasn’t only to the back of her head. A trickle of blood bubbling from her lips showed that it was much more extensive. Her lungs or alimentary canal must have been damaged.

  “Suu…Suu!” he called desperately, but of course, there was no response. At this rate, it probably wouldn’t be long until her heartbeat stopped, and the Third Eye would sense the death of its host’s body and burst out through her head when it disengaged.

  If he couldn’t prevent that…then there was only one thing for Minoru to do. He would have to end Suu’s life himself, right now, to force the Third Eye to disengage.

  Because right now, the worst possible situation he could imagine was this: Suu’s Third Eye would burst through the concrete and allow him to escape, only to find that Yumiko and the others had already been killed. If that were the case, Suu would have sacrificed herself for nothing. She had laid down her own life, entrusting Minoru with the task of rescuing Yumiko
, DD, and Olivier—her family.

  But…

  But he couldn’t do it.

  There was just no way. Suu had said that since they’d met only three days ago, it should be easy for him to forget her—but by that logic, he had still met Yumiko and the others at Akigase Park only three weeks ago. He couldn’t choose which of them to save and which to let die. Never.

  “…I’ll find a way. I’ll save them. Yumiko and the others…and you, too.” Minoru gritted his teeth, forcing out words in a wavering voice. “And if I can’t…I’ll die here, too. I don’t care about fighting to save the world. I just…I just want to protect what’s within my reach, what’s close to me. And you’re close to me too now, so…so…”

  Unable to put the rest into words, Minoru instead held the unconscious Suu’s head close to his chest with his left hand. If her Third Eye were to leave her body right now, it would put a hole in Minoru’s body, too.

  But he wasn’t afraid. The feeling that resounded strongly in his chest was one he wasn’t accustomed to. Unlike the burning heat he’d felt in his heart when he protected Yumiko from Igniter’s explosion, this was more like a calm blue silence. Pressed on by this feeling, Minoru raised his right hand and pushed it firmly against the concrete in front of him.

  He was already well aware that if he were to deactivate his shell now and then activate it again, all that would happen was that he would be pushed back. So in order to put more pressure on the concrete wall, he would have to expand the barrier itself. Currently, the invisible, unbreakable shield was projected three centimeters around his body; he would have to find a way to increase that radius to eight centimeters—no, even more.

  It was something he’d never attempted to do before. But he felt certain it was the only way he could break out of here.

  “Nn…nnngh…” With a low groan, Minoru pressed his right hand against the concrete wall with all his strength. The palm of his hand wasn’t actually touching anything, but he could feel the joints in his wrist and elbow creaking.