The Trancer

by Reki Kawahara

Minoru’s protective shell. For a long time, he’d thought that this ability, which he had gained from a jet-black sphere that came down from the sky three months ago, was the physical manifestation of his rejection of the world around him.

  But that didn’t seem to be true. After all, he had been able to bring Yumiko inside the barrier, then Suu. If the source of his power was the emotional wound that made him reject other people, that should have been impossible.

  So the emotion inside the shell wasn’t rejection or fear. It was the opposite.

  It was love.

  The one place on this earth that he could believe in and a place where he could feel at ease. This quiet world was a gift to him from the one person he had truly loved and trusted, his older sister Wakaba Utsugi.

  “S…sis…” His face twisted in pain that ran from his right arm through the rest of his body, Minoru whispered intently, “Please…lend me your strength. I want to save her…to save everyone. I…I don’t want to lose them…!”

  Of course, there was no reply. But Minoru continued to cry out to his sister deep in his heart.

  Eight years ago, a home invader had slaughtered his sister and their parents. Wakaba had hidden Minoru in a storage space under the floor of the pantry and gone to call for help.

  But she hadn’t made it. As she’d passed through the living room, she was spotted by the murderer and killed with a dagger. The last time Minoru ever heard her voice was in a whisper as she was closing the hatch above him. Her voice had been tense, but he could still hear that she was smiling.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you, Mii. Trust me and just count silently to yourself in there, okay?”

  She had kept her word. The perpetrator had searched the kitchen for Minoru, overturning all the cupboards and cabinets, but he hadn’t opened the hatch to the storage space beneath the floor where Minoru was hidden.

  Minoru’s protective shell was an imitation of that cramped hiding place. A place where he was completely protected, just as his older sister had wished. A world that couldn’t be invaded by any threats or malice.

  “Sis…I-I let you die without doing anything to save you. I…I don’t ever want to do that again. So please…give me strength…to save Suu and Yumiko and the others…!”

  As he spoke, Minoru heard a sharp cracking sound from inside his right hand—most likely, he’d broken a bone. Intense pain pierced from his right shoulder to his brain, sending sparks across his vision.

  But at that same moment, a crack like a single thread from a spiderweb formed in the concrete wall before his eyes.

  “Hngh…aaargh!” Holding Suu’s body tightly against his own, Minoru mustered all his strength and pushed his right hand even farther forward. The tip of a broken bone pierced through the back of his hand, scattering fresh blood.

  Crack! Snap! More breaking sounds came from his right arm. He could feel his finger joints disconnecting, a crack forming in one of his thicker bones. At this rate, it felt like his right arm was going to explode before he could break through the concrete. But Minoru didn’t slow down, focusing desperately on a single mental image. The space in his shell that he’d always thought was limited to three centimeters was expanding wider, farther.

  One by one, more cracks radiated out from his hand in the concrete wall. But at the same time, he heard more crushing noises from his own arm, his tendons snapping apart.

  “AAH! AAAAHH!!”

  Brought on by sheer pain, tears began to stream from both his eyes, warping his vision. Cracks were forming in the body of the LED light in his left hand, too, and he could dimly see the white light flickering.

  Finally, just as the light was completely destroyed and the space was plunged into darkness, Minoru saw it.

  Someone’s arm, illuminated with a faint golden glow, reaching over his right shoulder and gently placing a hand on his bloodied one.

  Reaching into his jacket, Mikawa pulled out a simple sphere of ice, less than eleven centimeters in diameter.

  There wasn’t anything hidden inside it. He had simply shaped some snow into a ball and frozen it solid. Anyone could make the same exact thing with a freezer at home, given enough time.

  Brandishing his combustion-coated flaming sword, Divider moved to attack. Mikawa tossed the ice ball at him with his right hand. At the same time, he breathed on it strongly with his mouth wide.

  Narrowing his eyes slightly, Divider attempted to strike the ball as it approached in midair. Most likely, he had guessed that his sword could divide a ball of ice this small simply by touching it. And he was right.

  However, the moment the flaming blade made contact with the ice and began to cut through it— BANG! The ball violently exploded.

  Mikawa had instantly turned the water molecules in the center of the ball into vapor—in other words, transitioning it into steam. The resultant internal pressure turned the ordinary ball of ice into a tiny hand grenade, scattering countless tiny shards of ice toward Divider at point-blank range.

  “Nngh!” Divider gave a low grunt as his upper body reeled back. Thin streams of blood began to leak from the cuts on his face and shoulder. Still, he stood firm, bracing himself without falling.

  Mikawa reached into his left pocket and produced another ball of ice, hurling it at Divider’s abdomen. At the same time, he fired off a short, broad breath.

  This time the sound of the explosion was much lower, mostly absorbed by his opponent’s body. Divider was blown back violently, falling toward the ground, when Mikawa huffed out a third large breath of air. This time, however, his target was not the enemy himself but the snow on the ground where he was about to land.

  The white snow in that spot disappeared in a two-meter radius, turned not into vapor but water, so that Divider splashed down into a tiny pond when he landed. Immediately, Mikawa shot out a sharper breath.

  There was a loud creaking sound, like a live tree being split apart.

  The pond had frozen back into pure white ice, capturing Divider in the middle. Mikawa gave another long breath, but this time it was just a sigh, not another attack.

  “…Well, it looks like that went pretty well,” he muttered. “It’s not easy to go back and forth between freezing and melting, you know. I have to keep jumping back and forth between imagining one or the other. Not that I expect you to understand that, since all you do is cut everything up.”

  He stepped toward Divider, who seemed to be ignoring the pain and struggling with all his might to force his way out of the ice. Coming upon the sword, which was still slightly aflame, Mikawa kicked it as hard as he could into a far-off snowdrift.

  Kshh! A small sound turned his attention back toward the ice that held Divider. Small cracks had appeared in the ice’s surface. “Oh, wow. Trying to break through my ice with brute strength alone, huh? But unfortunately…”

  He grinned and blew another thin stream of air, and the snow that had already piled up on top of his frozen opponent and melted from his body heat promptly turned into more ice. Kshh. Kshh. Mikawa continued to spray breath around him, gradually entrapping his enemy in a thick shell of ice.

  “Well, it was always going to end up this way, Divider. I’m sure even you must have known from the start that you wouldn’t stand a chance against me on a snowy day like today. Was your colleague we caught in our trap there that important to you? Or maybe you just can’t abandon a comrade no matter who it might be. That’s the problem with you Jet Eyes…”

  At this point, Mikawa wasn’t sure whether Divider could even hear his rambling anymore. After all, his opponent’s entire face, except for his mouth, was now completely covered with ice.

  If I keep freezing more snow over him like this, will he eventually stop being able to breathe and die quietly? I don’t know where his Third Eye is, but as long as it doesn’t leave through his head, his brain should be perfectly preserved like this. I didn’t even wind up having to use the gun, Mikawa thought to himself while looking back over toward the other battle.

 
; It appeared that the two black hunters were utilizing Accelerator’s speed to attempt some kind of disturbance strategy. The one in the camouflage hat would shoot at Liquidizer, and while she was dealing with that bullet, Accelerator would change positions at ultrahigh speed and fire from there.

  It seemed like a decent strategy, but Ruby Eyes like Liquidizer who were qualified to be leaders in the Syndicate far exceeded ordinary humans even in basic physical ability alone. As if she had eyes in the back of her head, Liquidizer easily followed Accelerator’s position and liquefied both black hunters’ bullets with both her hands. It seemed as though this back-and-forth had been going on for a while.

  The man in the camouflage took a large jump back and reached into his jacket. Presumably out of ammo, he shook the magazine out of the pistol in his right hand and attempted to replace it with the new one he had just produced.

  At that moment, Liquidizer dashed forward with a speed that seemed to rival Accelerator’s, closing in on the male Jet Eye. Leaning forward and stretching her hand to its limits, she managed to brush a fingertip against the suppressed muzzle of his gun.

  That was all it took. The metal of the gun from the tip of the muzzle to halfway down the slide melted into steely blue liquid and splashed onto the snowy ground. As her opponent’s eyes widened in surprise, Liquidizer turned in midair and started to bring her hand down toward the nape of his neck.

  However, just as her lethal fingertips were about to make contact, a black shadow slid up by her left. Accelerator was trying another close-quarters attack. This time, her left hand held not a knife but a black baton-shaped device.

  Watching from a distance, Mikawa’s mouth dropped open in surprise. It was an extremely high–voltage stun baton. Even Liquidizer couldn’t do anything to electricity. She would get hit by the shock before she could touch the weapon itself.

  Giving up her attack on the camouflaged opponent, Liquidizer ducked her body downward and nimbly leaped back. But however impressive her physical abilities might be, her movement was no match for Accelerator’s. The Jet Eye caught up in a single step and doused her in an electric shock.

  Or so it seemed, but moments before the strike landed, Accelerator’s body suddenly wobbled and pitched forward.

  On closer inspection, the sole of the speedster’s right shoe had suddenly sunk three centimeters into the asphalt that had been exposed by the raging battle. As she retreated, Liquidizer had touched the ground’s surface for just an instant, liquefying just a bit of the asphalt. As soon as Accelerator stepped onto that asphalt, the pavement had most likely rehardened, fastening her shoe to the ground.

  The Jet Eye’s face froze. She bent over quickly, trying to unfasten the buckles of her waterproof boot. However, presumably to support her ultrahigh-speed movement and braking, Accelerator was unluckily wearing tight ankle-length boots instead of ordinary shoes.

  Before Accelerator could get out of her shoe, Liquidizer’s right hand pushed down on the asphalt.

  Gloop.

  Accelerator’s leg sank into the pavement up to the knee, and the ground immediately hardened again. The technique was similar to how Mikawa himself had trapped Divider, but undoubtedly even tougher to escape.

  “Damn…!” Tossing aside his melted pistol, the camouflage-wearing young man pulled out a small revolver.

  “Don’t move!” Liquidizer ordered sharply, freezing him in his tracks. Her right hand was still level on the asphalt as she continued, “Drop your weapon. Unless you want me to bury this girl up to her head.”

  “…” He stayed frozen for a second but obeyed before long, tossing aside his revolver.

  “There’s a good boy.” Liquidizer gave a thin smile. “Now, as long as you’re here, tell me something. That friend of yours caught in my trap over there…the boy who makes the invisible barrier. How does that ability work? It’s been more than thirty minutes, so why on earth hasn’t he died of suffocation by now?”

  She really is terrifying, Mikawa thought. I’m sure she plans to kill these two—no, probably all three of them, counting Divider—but she’s still trying to get information out of them while they’re alive.

  Standing stock-still, the camouflaged young man visibly set his jaw.

  “Don’t say anything! Get out of here now!!” the trapped Accelerator cried out despairingly.

  Her other leg sank into the ground. Presumably, Liquidizer had used her ability again for just a moment. The other Jet Eye grimaced and started to open his mouth.

  Then, suddenly, Mikawa heard a mysterious noise.

  Rrrrg… Something creaked heavily. Coming up from the ground, it was almost more like a tremor than a sound. Alarmed, Mikawa looked around for the source of the noise. Then he gasped when his eyes fell on an unexpected scene.

  The Syndicate’s five-story safe house building about eighteen meters away. Snow was tumbling over the sides of the roof. The cause wasn’t wind or an earthquake. The building itself was trembling, shaken by some enormous unknown force.

  In his shock, Mikawa was momentarily distracted from the frozen Divider behind him. As a result, it took him a moment to notice what was happening. Divider had managed to work free a single finger, and dangling from it was a sharp object, an icicle less than eight centimeters long, with which he was slowly cutting up the ice around his hand.

  Crack! The sound made Mikawa whirl around, and his eyes widened. Divider had already broken his arm free of the icy pond. His hand now gripped a much larger weapon—a pointed shard of ice more than a half meter long. Before Mikawa could freeze his arm again, Divider slashed it horizontally with a flash.

  Don’t tell me his ability even works on a blade of ice? I thought it had to be metal!

  As panic flashed across Mikawa’s mind, Divider broke free and leaped toward him, cutting from his chest to his left shoulder with the icy blade.

  “Uuugh…” Mikawa groaned and jumped back, but Divider didn’t follow him. With fresh blood gushing from the wounds that covered his body, he held the icy sword aloft and bellowed, then threw it toward the outside wall of the trembling building.

  Sparkling brilliantly, the white shard of ice rotated in the air as it flew toward its target. When it struck the concrete of the building, instead of breaking, it silently cut right through the surface. Then, as Mikawa collapsed to the ground, he saw some kind of energy burst forth from the deeply cracked cement.

  BOOOOM!

  An overwhelming sound reverberated from the building as a large portion of the front wall was blown to tiny pieces. It seemed like it could have been caused only by some kind of explosives, but then the person inside would have presumably been blown away along with the wall.

  However…as he clutched his fresh wound, Mikawa heard something.

  Out of the darkness of the hole that was almost two meters in diameter, the faint but unmistakable sound of footsteps approached.

  Mikawa wasn’t the only one who’d heard it. Divider, who had returned to a crouching position; the trapped Accelerator; the camouflage-wearing Jet Eye; and even Liquidizer all stared transfixed at the hole in the building.

  After a few moments, a figure appeared beneath the falling snow. It was, indeed, the young man who’d appeared in the spirit photography video.

  There was no way that the building should have exploded just from the shard of ice Divider had thrown at it. It was hard to imagine how he could have broken free from the middle of the concrete, but it looked as though it had cost him, as his right arm was clearly wounded and bleeding. And in his left arm, he was carrying a young woman Mikawa had never seen before, who was in far worse condition than even he himself was. Half her face was covered in blood, and she looked to be near death.

  In other words, these two posed no threat in the current battle, he thought. It would be easy to take them out with a preliminary attack from a distance. But there was one problem…

  His eyes. At first glance, the boy’s eyes looked weak, but there was something in that look that made Mik
awa hesitate. Liquidizer, too, backed about three meters away from the trapped Accelerator and surveyed the situation intently.

  The first person to move was the one closest to the building, the camouflage-wearing Jet Eye. As if a switch had been flipped, he suddenly rushed over to the boy, took the unconscious girl into his arms, and laid her gently on the ground. Producing something like a first aid kit from his jacket, he began to treat her wounds. The other boy watched this for a moment and then continued to walk forward.

  Finally, Liquidizer spoke in a low voice. “So, you actually managed to break out of my trap… How very interesting. What’s your name, boy?”

  The young man wore a black jacket, and his hair was tinged with gray.

  “Isolator,” he replied shortly, not slowing his approach.

  “Hmm. As in separating yourself or as in being alone, I wonder…” Her split low ponytail bobbing behind her head, the powerful woman of ambiguous age smiled slightly. “A pitiable name. But perhaps a fitting one, since you can’t protect anyone but yourself with your power.”

  The boy stopped in his tracks. Perhaps Liquidizer’s words had hit a nerve. But a faint smile appeared on his face, albeit one tinted with transparent sadness. “I’m sure you’ve realized this by now, Ms. Liquidizer, but all of us Third Eye users—Jet and Ruby Eyes alike—all our powers, without exception, originate from a fear of the world beyond ourselves.”

  For once, Liquidizer didn’t have an immediate comeback. The boy spoke to her again, his voice as quiet as the falling snow.

  “The power to enact violence on the world. The power to run from the world. And the power to learn about the world. Their forms may be different, but they all come from the same source… We’re all afraid of the world that has hurt us so badly. In that sense, every Third Eye user is an ‘isolator.’

  “But…despite all that, I still have people I want to protect. A world I want to protect. What about you, Ms. Liquidizer? Is there anyone you want to protect with that incredible power of yours? If nobody comes to mind, then…” Pausing for a moment, he gazed at the Syndicate executive with even more sadness…no, perhaps even pity in his eyes.