86 - Volume 10 - Chapter 2.1

CHAPTER 2

FRAGMENTAL NEOTENY: MISERICORDE

3

He drew the pistol from the holster on his right leg and used his left hand to move the slide. With this one, he didn’t have to worry about the safety. It was a double-action pistol, but pulling the slide back cocked the hammer.

With the power of a string, the slide popped back into place, drawing the first bullet from the cartridge and loading it into the chamber. This series of actions turned the pistol from an 845-gram lump of metal to a tool for manslaughter.

At the end of the barrel were the front and rear sights. By looking between them, he could see his comrades littering the battlefield.

Isuka couldn’t call this a weapon.

After all, an automatic pistol wasn’t something the Eighty-Six could aim at their enemies, the Legion. No, this weapon had only one role.

To kill his fellow Eighty-Six.

He unceremoniously fired his gun. Three shots, certain to meet their marks. Since this gun was built to be portable, its barrel was short, making it a pistol with unreliable penetrating force and accuracy. But when aimed at a target lying at one’s feet, it wouldn’t miss.

Nor would any of its bullets stray and hit the idiot right next to the target. That one had gone to the trouble of dragging a dying moron out of their Juggernaut into the open.

The boy likely had no idea what Isuka was doing when he’d drawn a pistol on their dying friend. He stared at the fluid hand motion of him cocking the gun in what bordered on curiosity, his bloodred eyes widening as blood began pooling over the concrete.

He likely didn’t know that once the heart stopped, blood didn’t spurt out of the body anymore. He probably didn’t realize this person had just died.

“Wha…?” the boy uttered.

“Next time, don’t pick anyone up like this, Shin,” Isuka said bluntly, looking down at him.

With the pistol having performed its task, he set the hammer back into place and holstered it. The battle with the Legion was over, it seemed. Even if there was a bullet left in the chamber, it wouldn’t matter.

The child soldier sitting on the ground continued gazing blankly at the fresh corpse sprawled next to him on the ground. It only made sense he’d be dumbfounded. Despite his small physique, even for an eleven-year-old, he’d dragged an older, heavier Processor out of his unit. And Isuka had casually rendered all his toiling into wasted effort.

Or maybe he was just pointlessly shocked at the sight of seeing someone die. Isuka didn’t really know. He’d long since cast away that kind of sentimentality, so he could only hazard a guess.

After looking up at him for a moment, Shin gradually contorted those distinctive bloodred eyes into a reproachful, accusatory gaze. They were the color unique to a noble Rubela bloodline—the despicable Pyropes of the Empire’s nobility. Beautiful crimson, ruby eyes.

“…Why?”

“Ha.” Isuka breathed out indifferently, curling his lips up into a smirk, as if to say the very question was absurd.

But then suddenly, Isuka roughly reached for Shin’s slender throat.

“…!”

In the two weeks since Shin had been assigned to his squadron, Isuka had learned that Shin hated when people reached for his throat and reacted viscerally when someone touched it. Isuka didn’t know the reason, and he honestly didn’t care. All he knew was that it was a convenient way of keeping the boy under control.

Taking advantage of Shin freezing up, he grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down, showing him the corpse. This Processor’s legs, which had certainly been there before they sortied that day, had been ripped off. And he forced Shin to look at the gruesome wound.

Shin swallowed nervously, and Isuka whispered into his ear.

“I’ll tell you why, so listen up, moron. People have these things called veins and arteries. Guess newbies like you never went to school, so you don’t know. Anyway, they’re these thick blood vessels.”

All the new child soldiers who were sent to Isuka’s squad—the fifth ward’s second defensive unit, Stiletto—were all kids who’d been thrown into the internment camps five years ago, when they were seven or eight years old. There were no human schools in a pigsty for subhumans. Which meant kids at Shin’s age, who were only entering their teen years now, never got a proper education.

Isuka didn’t care for that, but some of the education they lacked included vital knowledge. And he’d seen plenty of idiots who’d lash out at him over this kind of sentimentality. He kept talking, throwing a venomous gaze in the direction of their squad mates, where the ones in charge of teaching the newbies were.

“And those blood vessels run through the arms and legs. So if those blood vessels tear…”

When a blood vessel circulating large amounts of blood is damaged, it leads to a lot of blood leaking out of the body.

“…people die. If not on the spot, then soon after that. Painfully. That’s why…”

…we put them out of their misery.

After spitting out those words, as if to etch them into the boy’s mind, he pushed him away. Isuka was eighteen, and Shin was eleven, so their physiques and strength were all too different. Shin helplessly fell with his hands sinking into the blood puddle, then he looked up at Isuka gravely. Desperately.

“But if him bleeding out was the reason, we could have stopped the blood. If we treated him, we could have saved…!”

Isuka couldn’t help but laugh at his thoughtlessness. Such a dumb, unperceptive brat. Didn’t he understand? The other squad mates looking on didn’t step in to stop Isuka. They watched indifferently, like it was some kind of boring spectacle they’d already seen countless times over.

“Treating him…? You think there’s medical treatment in the Eighty-Sixth Sector?”

“…”

There were no military physicians in this hell. After all, it was a “humanitarian” battlefield, where “drones” did all the fighting instead of humans. A battlefield of zero casualties—where only pigs in human form died in place of people—had no need for doctors or military hospitals.

Of course, it would be a problem if Processors couldn’t participate in battle because of nonlethal injuries, and so each of the frontline bases had automated machines called medical units. But those only treated light injuries—injuries that wouldn’t prevent one from returning to active duty. And any wounds that weren’t critical and only required rest and recuperation were written off as non-life-threatening and otherwise ignored.

As Shin said, if they could have stopped the bleeding and treated this Processor, perhaps he would have recovered. As unlucky of an idiot as he’d been, it had been, in truth, quite possible to save him.

…At least, it would’ve been, were the Eighty-Six still considered human.

Feeling that oddly sentimental thought rake over his mind, Isuka clicked his tongue. Disgusting. Talking to Shin reminded him of emotions he was better off forgetting.

With that comment, which was too casual to sound like a sneer, he glared down at Shin’s bloodred eyes and said:

“If you still don’t understand, I’ll explain it one more time, brat. We Eighty-Six are pigs in human form. We’re not human. So don’t bring up sensibilities from when you were human ever again, or else…”

He turned around, stomping on the puddle. The Eighty-Six had no graves, and so they couldn’t retrieve any corpses. That was one limitation the Republic’s white pigs forced on them, but Isuka was actually grateful for it.

The Eighty-Six need no graves. They depart for battle with nothing but their aluminum coffins and absolutely no support, and each time, they die meaninglessly. That’s their lot in life. Digging them graves and mourning them…would only dredge up the kinds of emotions they lost when their humanity was taken from them. And if he did that…

“…you’ll die.”