Purgatory Strider

by Shiden Kanzaki

  It was a curt explanation, but one good enough for Hotaru. She nodded. He turned toward Miori again.

  “The enemy’s after all three of us. You go to some other room and run the simulator for me. Shut off the door completely so no one can get in.”

  “All right. I just explained the results to Hotaru. She’ll give you the story once we’re clear.”

  “Got it.”

  Rentaro pushed the elevator button, and then set his hand on a gracefully hesitant Miori’s shoulder.

  “I really hope you don’t have to die, Satomi dear,” she said in reply.

  “Already happened once, apparently. Don’t really feel like having it happen again.”

  He nodded at her, conveying his resolve and thanks at the same time. The door closed.

  “Let’s go, Hotaru.”

  With new determination, Rentaro began to run. Taking three steps at a time as he tore downstairs, he checked the nameplate by the fifth underground floor’s entrance and jumped inside.

  Beyond the doorway was a locker room with two Shiba-branded assault rifles. Rentaro grabbed them both and tossed one to Hotaru. Next, he pushed open a nearby door that had a card reader mounted to one side.

  Although he was expecting it, the brightness made him raise up his arm in self-defense.

  It was a clear white space, so white that it was hard to tell the walls from the floor. It was completely empty, not a speck of dust at their feet. It was surreal, like nothing of this world—and, to someone experiencing it for the first time, a jaw-dropping experience.

  Hotaru gingerly took a step forward. The result was enough to convince her the floor was really there, but stupefaction was still written all over her face. Rentaro beckoned her over.

  As they walked across the vast cavern, the white began to twist and turn before them. Rentaro felt a sharp sense of dizziness for an instant, then the view around him changed 180 degrees.

  It was now dark, humid, and musty. Rentaro could smell dust, and no light came in through the windows, which were framed by bare wood. The scent of rust and decomposing forest matter indicated this “building” had been abandoned for a while.

  They were inside a dark, high-ceilinged space. Some kind of storage facility.

  “Wh-what’s this?” a wary Hotaru asked.

  “The name of the stage is ‘the warehouse,’” Rentaro replied as calmly as possible. “That’s the cool part about VR battle training. You can change the entire combat environment at the push of a button.”

  Presumably this stage was Miori’s decision.

  “This is…virtual?” Hotaru asked as she curiously poked at a nearby storage crate. Beside her, Rentaro took a penlight out from his hip pocket and swung it around. Large piles of square crates sprung out from the darkness, carelessly layered in haphazard stacks or piles, all covered in a fine coating of dust.

  The space seemed resentful of being awoken from its slumber; the only environmental lighting was slight and came from the opposite wall, a surprisingly long distance away. The chamber itself was about as large as a decent-size factory.

  Rentaro placed his rifle on top of a nearby crate, deploying its bipod for stability as he aimed at the door they had arrived through. He peered into the dot sight as he gave Hotaru a quick rundown of how to operate the rifle.

  “All right. So the enemy’s gonna open this door and run through. He’s using optical camo, so expect him to be invisible. Once it opens, start firing, whether you see anything or not.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Through the gunsight, Rentaro could see a pale red dot in the center of his view, jiggling to and fro in response to his pinpoint adjustments.

  After a few moments, there was a faint clanging sound. The door was being pushed from the other side.

  Rentaro’s pulse raced. He sharpened the corners of his eyes, put his finger on the trigger, and pushed down enough to eliminate the play on it. The door opened enough to be slightly ajar.

  “Hotaru!”

  Full-auto fire ensued. The door was instantly pockmarked with holes, the blinding flash and concussive noise continuing on for what felt like eons. Eternity didn’t last long, however, because the ammo was soon exhausted. A small moment of silence, and then a figure fell forward, onto the warehouse floor, the now unhinged door doing little to break his fall.

  Rentaro gave a hand signal to his partner, took out his handgun, and approached. Gradually, he could see a silhouette via the glare behind him—a fully visible one. Either he’d turned off his optical camo or it was destroyed in the barrage.

  Rentaro went up to the body, giving it a slight nudge with his foot. No response. Taking that as a cue, Rentaro crouched down and turned the body over. Then he froze.

  “It’s not the guy, Hotaru,” Rentaro shouted behind him. “We’ve still got an active hostile!”

  The man, presumably in his early thirties and dressed in nothing but a shirt and his boxers, was the security guard who lost his life just a moment ago. The enemy threw the corpse through the door to attract their fire.

  “—I’ve been looking for you, ‘New Humanity.’ My name is Swordtail.”

  The voice came from behind.

  Rentaro turned around just in time to see a knife, floating in the air, descending rapidly upon him.

  “Shi—”

  Rentaro immediately pictured it—the knife piercing deep into his chest cavity and skewering his heart. But before it became reality, there was a gunshot. It tinged against the knife, sending it across the floor.

  Support fire from Hotaru. Rentaro crouched down as she continued the salvo without any rest, firing blindly with both hands.

  The bullets carved the warehouse’s walls, but they were just a moment too late. The enemy’s ghostly form had vanished again.

  Hotaru grabbed on to Rentaro. Before he could ask why, he felt another powerful acceleration, as if being blown away by an explosion. The girl, reasoning it was too dangerous to remain there, had leapt upward.

  “How the hell’re we gonna beat that?!”

  “I’m trying to think of something, all right?!”

  The two landed in the central area of the warehouse, Rentaro on Hotaru’s back.

  “You murdered Saya Takamura, didn’t you?!” he shouted into the unfathomable darkness.

  “Hohh,” a voice echoed across the expansive warehouse space, its position impossible to detect. “You’ve dug yourself in that deep and you’re still breathing, huh? No wonder the group’s running itself ragged trying to find you.”

  As he spoke, Rentaro’s mind raced for a potential solution. His enemy was invisible, and yet his knife wasn’t. His invisibility was the result of some kind of cloak or vest, perhaps, but whenever he attacked, maybe that meant his weapon had to be exposed for that one moment before the strike.

  And it wasn’t like the camo could nullify his footsteps or sense of presence. If the enemy didn’t have any close-quarters weaponry besides that knife, Rentaro could always use his five senses to figure out where he was. If there was a handgun or something on his person, though, that complicated things.

  But who is this Swordtail guy, anyway…?

  “Lemme guess what you’re thinking right now. It’s something like How’s he able to camouflage his entire body? Right?”

  Rentaro’s mouth snapped shut.

  “You know how Dark Stalker has a copy of Sumire Muroto’s 21-Form Varanium Artificial Eye. Hummingbird had an upgraded clone of Ain Rand’s Shenfield tech. Meanwhile, I’m installed with something called the ‘Marriott injection,’ something originally meant for mechanized infantry. My nanomaterial-infused skin can bend the light around it at will. It’s the most powerful skill a robot soldier can have, and Arthur Zanuck made it practical for real-life use.”

  “Wha—?!”

  Arthur Zanuck… He’d heard that name before. One of the so-called Four Sages alongside Sumire. So Swordtail was another one of their skill mimickers… But what did that mean? Whoever was behind the New
World Creation Project, what were they trying to—?

  Amid the mazelike piles of metal containers strewn all over the place, Rentaro turned his attention left and right, guard ever on the ready. Nobody seemed to be nearby. The sound drained itself from the shabby warehouse, and he felt completely alone. Every cell of his skin was attuned like radar, ready to pick up so much as a pin dropping.

  Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  “Nice try.”

  The human hand that came out of the darkness set a gun to rest comfortably against Rentaro’s temple.

  Rentaro reacted. Just before the trigger was pulled, he brushed the gun away and darted his head to the side. There was a loud crack from the gun, then a rush of heat as the bullet grazed his temple.

  Rentaro dropped to the floor, executed a forward roll, then got right back on his feet. He drew his gun on the enemy, but he was already gone.

  “Don’t you know about me? You would if you’d done your research.”

  A half-pitying, half-chiding voice sounded off, this time in point-blank range of his ears. Rentaro was taken by surprise—it was exactly like before, except this time the point of the gun was right at his back.

  “You can try as many times as you want. But you can’t win.”

  But there, faster than the naked eye could see, Hotaru plowed in.

  “Nrh!”

  Turning around, Rentaro found that Hotaru had deftly made her way to the giant man’s hand, using her entire body to squeeze the gun out of it. The optical camo flickered out—perhaps not as effective when grappling with a foe like this—revealing an eerily large man in a coat. Rentaro could hear his muscles creaking, screaming for help, all the way from his vantage point.

  “God damn—”

  But their enemy was still up to the task. His muscles grated one another as he jerked his wrist back, not caring if he dislocated it or not, and shook Hotaru off. Hotaru slammed against the ground back-first. Swordtail drew his gun on her.

  By the time Rentaro thought Oh crap, his body was already running, all but slamming into her. As he did, two gunshots overlapped each other. Pain wrenched his back. He gritted his teeth.

  Hotaru, held down on the ground, opened her eyes wide in surprise, her eyes shaking. “Rentaro…! What are you—?”

  The blood dripping out the back of his school uniform fell upon Hotaru’s face. She shook it off in disbelief and screamed.

  “You’re so stupid! I can regenerate myself at will! You didn’t have to—”

  “—Shut up!”

  Hotaru instantly fell silent.

  “I really don’t like that attitude of yours.”

  “Stop it! You’re gonna die!”

  Swordtail fired another flurry of bullets. They all struck home on his back.

  “Gaaaaaahh!!”

  Hotaru shook her head back and forth again. “Stop! Please, just stop!” she barely managed to whisper, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

  “At least let me protect my partner this time!”

  “It’s over, kid,” came a voice from behind. There was no way to instantly react to it. The end was near. Rentaro’s body tightened, anticipating the heat from the bullets coming the next instant.

  Then he was tossed aside without warning.

  Gunshots. Blood sprayed from Hotaru’s left breast, right on the heart. For a moment, Rentaro didn’t realize what had happened.

  But Hotaru was dead. The moment he realized it, rage seared him from head to toe.

  “You piece of—”

  He couldn’t afford to have the enemy go invisible again. He got up, spewing blood, and with all his might, planted his feet on the ground and calmed himself. A cartridge spat itself out of his leg, spinning, and propelled his foot upward.

  Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 14—

  “Inzen Genmeika!”

  The midlevel kick, launched from a low, near-crouching position, found its mark. It hit cleanly on the chest area of the giant, a look of shock burned onto his face.

  The force seemed to blow the air in all directions, the propulsion from Rentaro’s leg sending the man flying like so many dead leaves in autumn. He collided with a stack of crates in the center of the room, kicking up plumes of dust as the collapsing pile tumbled over his body.

  “Gnh!”

  Rentaro’s response was to vomit a thick splatter of blood across the floor. Firing a cartridge with open wounds on his body succeeded in ravaging all his injuries. But he could still move. And if his Tendo Martial Arts skills—further powered up by the jet turbine–like cartridges in his leg—found their target, it would be the same as being struck by a semitruck at full speed. In fact, it was a miracle his adversary’s limbs didn’t get blown off.

  As he smelled something pungent among the dust, Rentaro used his free hand to cover his mouth so he didn’t breathe it in. A moment later, he spotted Swordtail’s brown coat. He was lying facedown, surrounded by a carpet of wood splinters, and his coat was the only part visible.

  Rentaro went up to his enemy’s feet and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger on his Beretta twice. If the man was playing possum, well, now he wasn’t.

  The bullets shredded the coat, sending fabric fibers flying, but there was no blood.

  Something was off. Rentaro nudged at the coat with his fingertips, then decided to simply rip it off.

  Before he could even consciously acknowledge surprise, his body had already planted itself against a nearby crate. Gingerly daring another look at the coat, he saw a pile of vaguely body-shaped splinters under it, and nothing else. No body.

  Rentaro felt something to his left. He pulled his chin back, his body falling in reverse, and a fist the size of a boulder thundered past his head. He was now out of position, and he had no way of evading the foe as he advanced upon him at astounding speed. He, and his combat boot.

  “Gah!”

  “That wasn’t a bad idea,” a monotonous voice said from across the dark warehouse. By the time Rentaro’s bleary vision focused itself again, he realized Swordtail was standing no more than a meter away from him.

  The man was damaged. The cuffs of his pants were frayed, and he was bleeding. Breathing, for him, required heaving his shoulders up and down. Without the coat, he could see that the man, his hulking body shaped something like an inverted triangle, was wearing a black tank top.

  “But you just had to go around thinking I was on the same level as somebody like Hummingbird.”

  Swordtail aimed his handgun at Rentaro’s head. A bottomless abyss awaited within it.

  “You lose.”

  “And that arrogance just made you lose.”

  No one was more surprised than Swordtail to see a figure perched on top of him, as if he was giving her a piggyback ride.

  “You… Why are you…?!”

  Hotaru had both feet laced around the bucking Swordtail’s head, using her free hands to draw her twin pistols from behind her back.

  “I hope you taste even a tenth of the suffering Kihachi did.”

  The next moment, a continual cycle of explosions and muzzle flashes swarmed the area. Fresh, warm blood fell upon Rentaro’s face.

  “Aaaahhhhh!”

  With a beastlike roar as he desperately tried to peel Hotaru off, Swordtail found himself the target of a merciless pair of .45-caliber handguns as they thudded their payloads into him at point-blank range.

  The otherworldly sight didn’t last long. Soon the slide stops popped up on both weapons, indicating they had exhausted their ammo. Hotaru leapt out of the way.

  “Ngh…ahh…!”

  Swordtail fell to his knees, then face-first onto the ground with a mighty, earth-shaking foom.

  “Rentaro!” Hotaru shouted as she all but threw herself at him, embracing his head. He couldn’t feel the sensation, which wasn’t exactly encouraging, but Rentaro weakly nodded nonetheless. The chill from the blood loss was making his eyes heavy. Hotaru shook him as hard as she could.
r />   “We need to get out of here and get you treated!”

  He got back on his feet, Hotaru lending him a shoulder, and forced his knees to not buckle. He was cold. He’d lost too much blood; he felt like he’d freeze to death before anything else.

  Rentaro took a side glance at Swordtail—only to have the sight shoot a jolt of reenergizing surprise into him.

  The huge man was gone without a trace. In his place were bloodstains, with a trail of droplets following out of the room.

  “Hotaru… He ran on us…”

  “How?! How could he have moved after that?”

  “I don’t know…but looks like he did.”

  Anyone involved in either the New Humanity or the New World Creation Projects were people with strength beyond all reason. Applying Varanium to human bones and organs had the terrifying power to turn mortal wounds into not-so-mortal ones.

  “We gotta go after him… We can’t let him leave with the info we have.”

  Swordtail, also known as Jugo Katake, slammed a fist against the wall as he entered the shower room, all but ripping the curtain off the pole as he stormed into a booth. He used the knob to set the temperature to 36 degrees Celsius—suitable for washing blood spatter off his body—and immersed his head in the lukewarm water.

  It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Not this, Jugo whispered to himself as he struggled to take hold over his consciousness.

  His powerful carbon-nanotube muscles, combined with a spinal column made of self-repairing Varanium alloy, had stopped all the bullets. His blood vessels had constricted themselves to prevent excessive blood loss. The organic transistors implanted in his body had monitored all medical statistics relevant to keeping him alive, making adjustments as necessary.

  And yet the flurry of handgun fire Jugo took at point-blank range wasn’t anything he could ignore. Especially given how physical brawn was such a key part of his battle strategy.

  The blood now washed off his body, he checked to make sure his optical camo still worked as usual, then flew out of the shower and began his escape. On the elevator he went, jumping over the dead security guards still decorating the first-floor lobby, and soon he was outside, greeted by the murky, humid night air.