Vengeance Is Mine (9 page)

Among them, the irises of Kisara’s slightly smaller, cat-shaped eyes took in the light and reflected it in a bewitchingly beautiful way. Before he knew it, Rentaro was driven by the impulse to stare at it, but he didn’t want to seem impolite, so he quickly turned his head to the side just when it seemed like their eyes were about to meet.

Most of the time was taken by the girls complaining about wanting to take hot showers. On the other hand, the boys’ conversation was extremely pragmatic as they tried to calculate how much of the emergency stores were left after the fire at headquarters. Rentaro joked that
at this rate, they would run out of provisions and have to hunt lizards and snails to eat, and Kisara, who had been raised a proper lady, said with her eyes half-closed, “You’re the worst.”

Tamaki brought some wine stolen from the wine cellar in the basement, and he had a cup with Shoma, who was also old enough to drink. Rentaro didn’t think that the boisterous Tamaki and reticent Shoma would get along, but he seemed to be wrong. Shoma was nodding quietly as he listened to Tamaki’s nonstop talking.

The gloomy, defeated mood had been blown away, and it made them forget for a while that they were in the middle of a war. Rentaro also started to feel better and had fun without worrying about the time. The party broke up in the wee hours of the night, and everyone went to their respective hotel rooms.

The hotel was small, with just three floors, and the windows were mostly still intact. Rentaro even tried going onto the roof, but it was submerged, possibly from a clogged pipe.

The third-floor room Rentaro and Enju were assigned had two beds with a side table sandwiched between them. Part of the ceiling was broken, and insulation material was sticking out. The floor was covered with a thick coating of dust, but Rentaro saw that the dust on the bed had been brushed off.
Tina probably cleaned here
, he thought. The smell of mold that had been the room’s inhabitant for the last ten years seemed to be a little like incense.

Rentaro lay on the bed and talked with Enju until the lights went out. She went on about various topics unchecked, adding exaggerated gestures as she spoke, and Rentaro nodded in response.

For some reason, Rentaro felt that he had to treasure this time.

Finally, Enju got tired of talking and fell asleep, and the sound of her breath echoed into the darkness. Rentaro’s heart gradually grew colder.

And so, Rentaro Satomi realized that the last hours he had spent with his friends signaled the end.

Staring at the darkness in the ceiling, he waited a while longer, just in case, and then got up slowly. For some reason, the air that hit his body seemed much colder than earlier, but still he put on his shoes and his jacket.

Just as he quietly walked to the door and put his hand on the doorknob, a voice called his name, and he startled.

Looking back, he calmed his pounding heart. Enju seemed to be talking in her sleep. Rentaro didn’t know what kind of dream she was having, but there was a part of her voice that seemed sad. Enju’s expression was hidden by the covers, so he couldn’t see it.

“Sorry, Enju.” Looking downcast as he said this, Rentaro left the room. He went down to the dining room without encountering anyone else, and there, Gado’s messenger was waiting by the fireplace. When Rentaro saw that the messenger had come into their temporary residence without taking off his shoes, he felt disgusted but was careful not to let it show on his face.

The messenger casually threw Rentaro a backpack. Taking it silently, Rentaro upended it on the table, and the contents fell out. The first thing he saw was a heavy, rectangular mass. Feeling it over its wrapper, he saw that it was soft and pliable like clay. It was a C-4 plastic explosive.

In a former age, when nitroglycerine was first discovered, scientists of the time were troubled by how even the slightest shock could make it explode, but current explosives were so stable that they would only burn down when thrown into a bonfire and did not explode accidentally. Instead, they were detonated through the fuse and combusted with a large blast. They combusted at over eight thousand meters per second and could cause an astounding number of casualties. This was probably custom-made to work against Gastrea, with powdered Varanium and the like mixed in.

Besides that, there were portable rations, a canteen, a compass, a beta light, and various other survival goods.

Rentaro took off his jacket and hung his pouch and back holster from his belt and made a small adjustment so he could attach the silencer onto the XD gun at his hip. After pulling back the slide so it could fire, he stored it in the carbon-fiber holster made by Blackhawk! He checked the fit of the holster by practicing a few quick draws. He also hung the combat knife from his belt with the scabbard still on, then refitted his jacket over it all and grabbed a strap of the backpack.

Leaving behind Gado’s lackey’s indifferent look, Rentaro departed the hotel. He looked at the sky, pitch-black and starless, and heaved
a sigh. The air outside had gotten even colder, too. In fact, it was cold enough that he would have believed it if someone had told him that it was late fall. He had not expected the Varanium ash to make the surface temperature of the earth lower this much. They were lucky, at least, that it was summer right now.

Rentaro looked straight at the fallen Monolith and started quietly toward it. The regular crunching sound of his footsteps on the ground sent Rentaro into the depths of his thoughts. In the end, he’d left without finding the right time to tell Enju and the others what was going on. Of course, he had thought about the option of telling at least Enju the truth and having her go with him. But after thinking it over, Rentaro had decided that it was his responsibility alone to take care of this and had chosen to go alone.

He had his reasons, of course—

“Satomi…”

Rentaro hid his backpack quickly and turned timidly toward the voice. He hadn’t been hearing things.

Shoulders hunched, standing stock-still and crestfallen with a shocked look on her face, was Kisara Tendo.

“Kisara, how…?” he asked.

“When I woke up to use the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of you leaving your room, and when I followed you, I saw your exchange with the messenger, and…” Kisara lifted her face and continued. “Where are you going?”

Rentaro quieted his heart and tried to put on an air of nonchalance. “I was going to the bathroom, too. What, Kisara, do you want to come with me?”

“S-stupid! Of course not!”

“Then don’t follow me. I’m just taking a walk after taking a leak.”

“Toward the Monolith?”

A freezing summer wind blew between Rentaro and Kisara. It sent Rentaro’s hair and Kisara’s skirt fluttering.

Kisara shook her head hard. “I can’t believe you. Haven’t you noticed, Satomi? I’m sure you’ve been given a crazy mission, but going alone is like going to your death.”

That was something he slowly understood after hearing the details of the mission. Ostensibly, this was a secret mission Gado entrusted
to Rentaro, but in actuality, it was different. Rentaro’s name at least was known in the world as that of the hero who defeated the Zodiac Scorpion, so if Gado had punished Rentaro in any way, Gado probably would have faced internal criticism. For Gado, who wanted to unify the civil officers because they were at a disadvantage, that could possibly work against him. In other words, Gado was in the difficult position of losing unity whether or not he punished Rentaro.

That was probably why Gado came up with the plan to give Rentaro amnesty in exchange for defeating Pleiades. Of course, it was a mission that he was unlikely to return alive from. Rentaro would be finished off by the Gastrea in the forest, so Gado wouldn’t have to dirty his own hands, and Gado would be able to keep up appearances in front of the other civil officers.

In other words, Rentaro’s mission was none other than a prettily decorated trip to the gallows. That was also the reason why he had not brought Enju. There was no way he could bring Enju along on a journey that would lead to her death.

“Why just you, Satomi? Don’t we all share the blame for following you?” said Kisara.

It became hard for Rentaro to look at her face, so he turned his back to her. “Someone had to take responsibility. That’s why I’ll go.”

“Let’s run away.”

“Where?”

He heard a sharp breath behind him as she faltered. “Well…”

“There is nowhere left to run in Tokyo Area. If we don’t hold them back here, we’ll die no matter where we run. I must avoid that, at least. Thank you, Kisara. But I’m going to go.”

Rentaro strode forward without looking back.

“You really are stupid!” Her voice followed close behind him and seemed to pull at his hair. Desperately trying to control the feelings this stirred in him, he attempted to leave as quickly as possible.

Because of the black rain that had been streaking down since the morning, his boots scraping along the undergrowth were soon soaked and felt uncomfortable. His nostrils were filled with the strong smell of earth after the rain.

After walking a while, the fallen Monolith 32 grew large in his field of view. Its pieces had crumbled and formed a mountain of white debris, and only the pillarlike structures of the frame that had not been bleached remained standing in the mountain. The current spine-chilling remains seemed like some sort of grave marker.

What Rentaro found unexpected was that even after it became like this, the Monolith still seemed to evoke some sort of reverence in his chest. It was a massively enormous structure that surpassed UV rays, acid, attacks, and human intellect. He didn’t know what to say now that it had collapsed, but thinking it appropriate to thank it for its hard work, Rentaro mourned it in his heart.

Rentaro made a large detour around the grave marker of the Monolith and finally stepped into Unexplored Territory. Although, since Monolith 32 had collapsed, the boundary between what was within the Monoliths and what was Unexplored Territory had become ambiguous.

Animals from the ocean could not live on land. Animals from land could not live in the ocean. At the water’s edge, there was the undeniable boundary between life and death.

This was the same thing.

Humans could not live outside the Monoliths. Gastrea could not live inside the Monoliths because they would be exposed to the strong Varanium magnetic field. At least, that was how it was supposed to work. That rule was currently being overtly infringed upon.

This was a battle with the lives of the Aldebaran troops and all the survivors of Tokyo Area on the line. There was no way he could afford to lose.

Rentaro tried imagining what Aldebaran looked like, but no matter how hard he tried, it looked hazy and blurry. Even in the first picture he got from the Seitenshi, only the mouthparts had been lit up by the searchlight and could be seen clearly. He had not been able to see the other parts.

It would not age or die, it had the ability to corrode Varanium, and it could command other Gastrea using various pheromones. Even though he kept finding out about its fearsome abilities one after another, he did not have the least bit idea what it looked like.

And Gado’s adjuvant wouldn’t even be able to sleep well tonight because they had encountered Aldebaran.

The darkness of the night sent Rentaro’s imagination in the wrong direction, and he gave a start at the silhouette of a parabolic antenna
in his peripheral vision. Rentaro shook his head.
Get ahold of yourself, Rentaro Satomi.

Meanwhile, he had passed the expanse of flat plains and could see the ruins of the area destroyed by the Gastrea War. Just about when he passed the wreckage of a railroad crossing that was forever open, Rentaro started to think that maybe this area had once been a factory town. The abandoned pulp factory had pulp plastered everywhere and was becoming a grayish white, and the roof thatched with galvanized zinc sheet metal had turned red with rust. The beams seemed to be giving up on supporting the roof, and looked like they were inviting a collapse. Electric cables were tangled on the ground and looked like they would wrap around his legs. Of course, there was no electricity running through them, so there was no danger of getting electrocuted, but he was still careful. The adjacent roof that protruded as much as it could seemed to be entwined in a complicated way, and they looked like a single organism that had combined.

Rentaro tried his best to not make any sound with his footsteps, stepping slowly on the ground heel first. He stopped and strained his ears at even this slightest rustle of a mouse. He used his beta light to read his map and compass, checking his direction as he walked. Narrowing his eyes and looking far ahead, he could faintly see something that looked like a forest. Apparently, past these ruins was the forest where Gado had said the Gastrea were hiding. However, if he didn’t go straight through and pass this long stretch of ruins, he would never reach the forest.

Rentaro thought over Gado’s explanation inside his head. Ten kilometers one way. Twenty kilometers round trip. Assuming Rentaro walked at a speed of four kilometers per hour, he could make it back in less than five hours, but of course, it would not be that easy. Even now, he was using all his senses as he slowly marched forward with Gastrea in his surroundings, and even after he got out of this place, he would have to successfully find Pleiades and defeat it to return alive. No matter how well things went, it would take at least three times as long.

In addition, he did not know what Pleiades looked like. All he knew currently was that it was ten meters long and that it probably had funnel-shaped mouthparts that it used to shoot compressed mercury. He didn’t have much to go on.

Rentaro hesitated, but he decided to go into the factory and move forward by weaving from door to door. He decided that it was necessary in order to lower even slightly the possibility that he would get caught by one of the flying Gastrea since he had no way of knowing where they were observing from.

He had been prepared for it, but he started to see strange things here and there inside the building. There was a giant rusting gear of unknown use, and below that was a bloodstain from some unknown animal’s entrails that looked like they had been splattered and painted on the wall, and the handrails in the hall had handprints of blood clinging to them.

Looking carefully, Rentaro saw that there were white objects dropped here and there on the floor. He picked up one of the bigger pieces and shone his MagLite on it. It was a piece of femur that had marks from where it had been chewed on and stripped of its flesh by some kind of animal.

This is bad
, he thought as he forced his fear down. There was some sort of Gastrea that counted this whole ruin as part of its territory. He was probably smack-dab in the middle of that monster’s property right now. He had to get out of here as soon as possible, but if he ran into the Gastrea before getting out of the forest, it would be bad.

He told himself that his first priority was to figure out what kind of Gastrea it was. He hadn’t noticed until he turned on the MagLite, but he could see faint footprints of mud at his feet. They were pretty big, and each one was about as big as Rentaro’s palm. From the looks of things, it walked on four legs. Also, stuck to the handrail that came up to about Rentaro’s waist in the hallway was a piece of an animal’s whitish fur. If it was already that tall on four legs, then it was probably pretty big. Leaning in and bringing his nose close to the fur, he could smell traces of animal. The leavings weren’t that old.

Rentaro passed through a number of buildings until he entered what looked like a cement factory. He stopped at the strong scent of animal—it hit him like a wall. Passing a hallway with piping all over the place, he carefully put an ear to the rusted iron door beyond a broken conveyer belt.

Confirming that there was no sign of anything alive beyond, he opened the door slowly and quietly. When he got it partway open, the
stink from the crack was so strong that he had to cover his nose. This was it. He was sure of it.

The stink of animal, rotting meat, mold, rust, and other things he couldn’t name mixed together into something so strong it made his eyes water. He fought desperately against the desire to immediately turn around and run out of the factory. Chanting to himself to calm down over and over in his head and taking a deep breath, he opened the door with all his strength and shone his MagLite inside. The ring of light he slid from right to left exposed a vast number of dried-up human bones in the dark and made them disappear again. Before Rentaro knew it, he had covered his mouth and was desperately feeling around in his pocket for a handkerchief.

He had no room to doubt that this was where the Gastrea had feasted.

As if begrudging the opening of a secret room, the place seemed to respond with a sullen silence.

Rentaro made up his mind and stepped inside. His gaze was drawn to the flecks of dust dancing in the air as his light revealed them. Countless chains dangled from the ceiling, and a large, complicated machine was attached to the pipes.

Timidly taking a step inside, his shoes squished something damp, and he was surprised by the creak of deteriorating floorboards. Even though he knew it was impossible, he couldn’t shake the wild idea that the next second, the skeletons would start laughing boisterously and stand up to attack him.

While leaning over to pass the pipes, he inspected a corpse that had not been completely bleached yet. It had received serious damage and most of it had sharp bite marks, large and small. It looked like this wasn’t just one or two Gastrea.

Is it possible that the Gastrea is even raising young here?

Rentaro started to have an idea of what kind of Gastrea had claimed this area. If Rentaro’s predictions were correct, then he needed to get out of here as soon as possible. He felt the urge to bury the corpses abandoned between the cold boards, but he didn’t have time for that. He had no choice but to ask them to wait a little longer until they were able to reclaim their country’s land from the Gastrea.

When Rentaro left the cement factory, he froze, panting.

The forest where Pleiades was lay right in front of him. However, his impatience spurred him to move more than before.

Rentaro continued on the jet-black pathway. The beam of the MagLite that he’d left on shook, and the silent road changed into something suffocating. When he got out of the town of dilapidated factories, it was all wild, and there was nothing left to take cover in until he got to the forest. He just had to get across.

Just then, there was a quiet sound he normally would have ignored, and steady footsteps coming from somewhere. Rentaro pricked his ears, making sure to not look back. It wasn’t just one. There were at least five. And they were increasing.

Naturally, his pulse quickened and he sped up his walk. Pulling his gun out of its holster, he attached the one-touch mountable silencer. It would be another hundred meters before he reached the forest in front of him. Even if he got away, he didn’t think his pursuers would stop chasing him, but he had hope that some might give up.

Rentaro wanted to start running immediately, but he desperately controlled himself, knowing that it wasn’t time to provoke his pursuers yet. Apparently, they seemed to stop trying to hide their existence, and he could hear beastly howls from behind him.

He was getting damp with sweat as he grasped the grip of his gun. For just one second, Rentaro glanced behind him. They were enveloped in darkness, so he couldn’t see details, but he confirmed silhouettes with four legs and rounder eyes than usual for a carnivore. The pairs of eyes amplified the trace amount of light and glittered dangerously, with vertically slit pupils shining red. From the position and height of the eyes, he predicted that each Gastrea was about the size of a lion.

They were all bigger than normal. Rentaro chanted prayers to Buddha.

They were wolves.

Actually, the Gastrea that gave civil officers the most trouble were not the grotesque-looking ones or the poisonous ones. When what would have eaten humans in nature—in other words, their ultimate predators, the animals at the top of the food chain—became Gastrea and formed packs, they became the greatest threats to the corps. And here in Japan, the wolf undeniably occupied part of the food chain’s top rung. The horror of wolves becoming Gastrea was unbelievable.

They were called “wolves in sheep’s clothing” after the men who pretended to be gentlemen and escorted women home, only to make passes at them, and just so, these Gastrea wolves followed after their human prey persistently.

Nine times out of ten, normal wolves would not attack humans. However, that wasn’t true after they became Gastrea.

After seeing the settlement at the cement factory, how could he have optimistically believed that wolves would not attack humans? These guys definitely killed humans and ate them.

“Arooooooooooooo!”

Suddenly, a wolf’s howl shook the night and Rentaro’s body was struck by metaphorical lightning.
Crap!
he thought and started running. The thin, almost sad howl was communication with the other members of the pack. In this case, it was without a doubt a command to attack.

Rentaro heard countless footsteps and ragged breathing behind him. He gritted his teeth and fired off shots, half turning, the kickback hitting him in the shoulder. Because of the silencer, the whole gun was longer, and it was harder to turn and aim; he ended up firing randomly as he ran. He kept running, without checking to see if he hit anything.

Rentaro ran through the animal trail he had turned into his own path and ran into the giant forest, pushing his way through the rough forest dense with prehistoric Jōmon cedars. Grasping at the rotted leaves and scattered puddles, he jumped over the intricate roots protruding from the ground.

Making sure to shine light on the ground with the hand holding the MagLite, he told himself,
Be careful.
If his feet got caught and he fell, then he would be surrounded and tortured to death.

The sound of footsteps ran alongside Rentaro in a fan shape. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel the pressure of their terrifying, high-powered pursuit.

Suddenly, he heard panting from directly in front of him. When he pointed his light toward it, his vision was filled with a large, open mouth full of fangs lunging toward him. Reflexively, he bent his upper body back, and the massive jaws clamped the air where his neck had been. As the large body passed by, he froze.

When did it get in front of me?

Just then, his feet tangled in fright and he tripped on a root.
Shit
, he thought, as his torso pitched downward and the tree root approached him frighteningly fast, giving him no time to take a defensive stance. The world shook, and he suffered a blow to his brain. He didn’t even have time to groan in pain as one wolf Gastrea bit his artificial leg and shook it ferociously. He hurriedly cut off the pain sensors, but his nerves had already sent the shock straight into his brain.

Rentaro sighted his XD gun even though he was still lying down, knowing it would be almost impossible to hit. He pulled the trigger three times. The 40-caliber Varanium bullets pulverized its fangs and jaw, and one shot hit an eye. Seeing the wolf retreat with a shrill canine yelp, he thought,
I did it.

However, there was a sudden heavy attack to his chest. His sternum grated loudly as a body that weighed at least two hundred kilograms leaned on top of him. A wolf’s massive front paws sank into Rentaro’s chest almost amusingly, and Rentaro let a groan out from between gritted teeth. A wolf other than the one that had mounted his chest opened its mouth wide and blew its beastly breath and drool toward his face.