Baccano! - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.5

Interlude I The Camorrista Speaks Reluctantly

Alcatraz Penitentiary Special underground cell

The Dungeon was a set of unique isolation cells, built underground on Alcatraz Island.

Dark though they were, something else lay deeper below.

In the very depths of the prison, not noted on any of the facility’s blueprints…

…were them.

The special cell had been created for just one man.

It was roughly the size of a modest hotel room, too spacious for a cell—but considering the number of people in there now, it was feeling rather small.

“You bastards…”

The resentment was palpable in this spacious yet cramped-feeling room.

Hearing the concentrated malice filling that voice, Firo Prochainezo thought to himself:

If a curse could actually kill somebody, this is probably what that feels like.

A chill ran through him, as if the very sound of the voice had shaved years off his life. His eyes moved across the source, Ladd Russo, and took in the state of the room.

As he did, he was forced to review his current position.

Firo’s place in this sequence of events was truly hard to pin down. Simple or complex didn’t really cut it.

Firo had become immortal due to a chain of events some time ago, and his involvement in more recent trouble had attracted the attention of Victor Talbot, another immortal who belonged to the Bureau of Investigation.

Then, on the condition that his sweetheart Ennis’s crimes would be overlooked, Firo had agreed to investigate Huey Laforet, yet another immortal imprisoned here in Alcatraz. However, just thirty minutes ago, some complications had arisen.

The guard who’d been showing him the way—a spy Huey had smuggled into Alcatraz, and his supposedly loyal subordinate—had proposed a deal to Firo.

“Would you cooperate with me…no, with us…and gouge out one of Huey’s eyes?”

The request had been completely incomprehensible.

What’s the point of gouging out an immortal’s eye? Firo had wondered, but the man didn’t give him a moment to ask.

He’d brought up Ennis—and had used her safety as bait.

As a result, just as Firo had grudgingly obeyed Victor’s order, he’d reluctantly thrown in his lot with the man who’d introduced himself as Sham.

The whole time, his own powerlessness infuriated him, and he made no attempt to hide how much he loathed being in this position.

And now…

The guard who’d brought him here was near the door. He should have been out cold, courtesy of Ladd’s fist, but he was back on his feet as though nothing had happened.

There was another guard inside the room, and the two of them were currently facing each other with Ladd in the middle.

In addition, three inmates stood around Ladd, albeit at a slight distance.

A small white guy. A heavily scarred black man. And an Asian man with tattoos on both arms.

Besides them, the room was occupied by two prone, motionless figures.

One was a man in white lying at Firo’s feet. The other seemed terribly out of place in this prison: a young girl with black hair.

Firo let his eyes drift to the man at his feet—Huey Laforet, an immortal with a knife jutting from below the nape of his neck that had left him only unconscious—and thought for a little while. In his right hand, the eyeball he’d just gouged out squirmed, attempting to return to its owner and leaving his palm with a creepy sensation he wouldn’t forget anytime soon.

So what do I do about this?

The men who were currently surrounding Ladd were a group that had called themselves Sham. Also known as the former Felix Walkens.

However, the depths of Firo’s memories—well, the extremely unpleasant depths of someone else’s memories—had told him that apparently “Sham” wasn’t the name of a group. It was a being that was both a group and a single entity.

“Hey…”

As Firo attempted to calmly analyze the situation, the deadly-sounding voice addressed him.

A chill ran through him, and when he raised his head, he saw Ladd glaring at the Shams. There was a hint of unease in his expression, but the malice was still overwhelmingly clear.

“Hey, Firo. It sounds like you’re not really in cahoots with these fellas.”

“…Well, not really, I guess.”

Since he’d helped them gouge out Huey’s eye, he wasn’t sure he could claim to be uninvolved— But the men were so creepy that Firo decided to believe he wasn’t.

And right then, Sham reminded Firo why exactly he found them so unsettling.

The five men spoke in perfect sync, and their words echoed in the room as if they belonged to one being.

“““““My, my. That’s rather unkind of you.”””””

“““I don’t think you can say you aren’t with us.”””

“““Temporary though it may be, we do have an agreement.”””

“““I would like to stay on good terms with you in the future, Firo.”””

At first, all five men had spoken together, but then they began speaking in synchronized groups of three, like the sound was being played at random from various speakers around the room, and Firo was getting increasingly disturbed.

However, there was one man who wasn’t confused by the weirdness.

Ladd was very close to brimming over—not with anger or sadness, but with pure desire to kill—as he asked Firo a question. He phrased it as casually as he always did, even if the emotion behind it was far from normal.

“Yeah, so, I’ve got a real simple question for you.”

“…”

“These guys. What the hell are they?”

“Well…”

It was an extremely simple question, but for a moment, Firo was unsure how to reply.

On the other hand, the five men in question urged him on.

“““““It’s all right, Firo.”””””

“““Go ahead and tell him.”””

“““You can explain it in layman’s terms, can’t you?”””

“““““You’re the one with Szilard’s memories, after all.”””””

The five Shams spoke in unison and grinned at the exact same time.

Five men of different races, different ages, and with different faces wore the same fearless grin.

Feeling indescribably repulsed by both what they said and how they looked saying it, Firo gritted his teeth, sucked in a big breath, then heaved a deep, deep sigh.

“Fine. I’ll tell you.”

“Keep it short, all right, Firo? And if you happen to know of a fun way to beat these guys to a pulp, I couldn’t ask for more.”

Ladd was smiling, too, but his smile was more like very tightly gritted teeth.

His arms and legs were oddly loose, but if something set him off, a heavy fist would probably come flying at the five Shams immediately. Under normal circumstances, that would have already happened and brains would be flying across the room, but the Shams had said a name—“Lua”—that had checked Ladd’s lunacy right before it went critical.

“Keeping it short’s a tall order, but… You already know about immortals for some reason at least, so that’ll help.”

Ladd was undeniably the one itching for blood the most. However, Firo’s disgusted glare was directed not at Ladd and the feral light in his eyes, but at the perfectly calm quintet.

Slowly, he began to relay what he knew about them.

“This old guy named Szilard was researching a liquor of immortality…a kind of drug, I guess you’d call it. He had trouble completing it, but these guys are guinea pigs for a by-product. If you drink it, your mind and memories get completely taken over.”

“…By who?”

“Nobody. Well, if I had to say…”

“Um… By the drug itself. It’s conscious.”

Szilard Quates and the researchers who worked with him had conducted their research in pursuit of two objectives: a perfect homunculus and immortality.

In the process of reconstructing the formula for the liquor of immortality, a formula that existed only in the memories of a man named Maiza Avaro, Szilard had created a failed version of the solution.

It was an unrefined product that bestowed an incomplete immortality: It repaired any and all physical damage, but didn’t stop the aging process.

In the end, failed though it was, it still had its uses.

It had given Szilard an idea for a new homunculus.

He’d wondered whether the immortality granted by the demon’s liquor—perfect or failed—might be the result of fusing cells with something from a different dimension.

He realized immortality might be brought about by inducing possession—to borrow a term from the arcane—by a colony of something that regenerated infinitely.

Like a school of sardines taking the shape of a single creature, was it possible that an alien colony took possession of human cells, or even smaller units, then always regenerated them as its own flesh whenever they were damaged?

At that point, Szilard had flipped the idea on its head.

If it was possible to possess a human body with something from a phase-shifted dimension—something that might or might not even be a living creature…

…would it be possible to make that being possess multiple bodies here?

For example, if he created a solution based on that theory, then made multiple people drink it simultaneously, would the being who had been forcibly pulled from its space and bound to this world be able to move several people at once?

And if so…would these people, bundled into a single entity through that other world, be able to share all their sensations and experiences practically instantaneously?

According to Szilard’s dormant memories inside Firo, that research was still incomplete, and now it was being continued by Szilard’s descendants.

The results of this research had yet to be seen, but the knowledge of the many alchemists Szilard had assimilated surged in his mind, creating a vague certainty in Firo.

This theory—which would create a godlike puppet master, a single mind that controlled multiple people—would probably eventually be borne out.

And what he was seeing right now was the result.

“So then…lemme get this straight.”

After hearing the gist, Ladd asked Firo a question. His arms still dangled limply.

“You’re sayin’ these fellas are a buncha puppets all possessed by the same ghost?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Which means…these guys have friends with— These guys are with Lua in person, and the second I do anything to ’em, they’ll know about it over there?”

Ladd’s words sounded a little strangled, and the five men, who were really one and the same, all smiled at him.

“““““You’re quick on the uptake. That’s a great help.”””””

The voices came at him from all directions, and for just a moment, Ladd lowered his eyes. Then, grinning, he flung his arms wide, and his steel-colored false arm awkwardly rose, gleaming eerily in the light.

“Ohhh, ohhh, ohhh. Yeah, yeah, I follow. I’ll follow ya all the way to the bottom of the ocean and all the way up to the stars…well, that’s what I’d like to tell you, but there’s two things, just two things, that I really gotta check.”

“““““And what would those be?”””””

“First, you’re tellin’ me you people…you yourself won’t die, no matter what. Is that what you’re saying?”

“““““Not unless I decide to commit suicide, or the earth itself is destroyed.””””” the Shams answered with an easy, confident smile, and in that instant—

?! Firo, listening to the conversation at a distance, felt an awful chill run through him. What…is that?

It wasn’t that the Shams had said something horrifying.

Firo’s entire body was reacting to a more fundamental change.

Earlier, this room had been nothing more than a simple dungeon cell, but now it was like a cage he was locked in with a starving, ferocious animal. He could sense terrible danger approaching.

Oh, that’s it. I know what changed.

Right now, one of his five senses had to be picking up on some sort of difference, something that made his instincts freeze over. Firo immediately concentrated, searching for the anomaly making him feel so cold, and spotted it right away.

He’s smiling…?

This bastard Ladd…is smiling.

That was all. The only thing that had changed.

The curve of Ladd’s lips was terribly cheerful, although the malice rolling off him was the same as ever.

Firo had seen that smile before.

Earlier, when Ladd had decked the large black Sham in the dining hall, he’d been wearing a smile just like this one.

Except back then, it wasn’t layered with anger or bloodlust, and even though this smile was the same type, looking at it felt like something completely different.

If the earlier one had been a carnivore’s smile, the feel of this one was nearly impossible to describe. Sham didn’t seem to be alert to any danger, and the difference between Firo’s acuity and his was patently obvious.

Probably… Well, I dunno, but I bet… If you could make some tool for a smile that kills, like a guillotine or a rifle, it might look like this.

With enough lunacy in his expression to make Firo back away, Ladd quietly continued with his questions.

“Second one: How’s Lua? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?”

“““““For the moment, yes. It’s entirely up to you.”””””

Yikes, I wouldn’t say that if I were you.

As he watched Sham taunt his opponent, Firo privately became certain of something. He couldn’t begin to guess at the specifics, but any more provocation and something nasty was bound to happen.

It was probably best if he stuck to watching from the sidelines and stayed out of it.

Just as Firo made the call, the dread-inducing aura around the actor on the stage in front of him swelled even greater.

“I see. So that means…this is one of those times, huh? All I can do is believe in her.”

“““““Yes, pray for her safety and cooperate with—”””””

“Okay then! I believe!”

““““Huh?!””””

The voices spoke as a quartet.

The words should have come from five mouths at once, but one of the mouths—the one belonging to the guard who’d first brought Firo here—had been plugged with Ladd’s right fist and the force of a pile driver.

Yanking out his hand, Ladd used the recoil to slam a clean backhanded fist into the Asian Sham who stood behind him.

His face crushed, the guard slid to the floor, and in almost the same moment, the Asian man flew headfirst into the wall.

“Hey, it’s nothing big.”

“““Wai— Wait just a—”””

Ladd ran up the black man’s torso, leaped through the air, spun around, and slammed the sole of his shoe into the face of the other guard.

“I just shuffled my priorities around a little.”

““Don’t you care what happens to the hostage?!””

The Shams had finally gotten a handle on the situation, but Ladd was still grinning, and—

—he sank a straight punch with all his weight behind it into the throat of the big man he’d used as a springboard.

There was a mixture of two sounds—a belch of escaping air, and the light crunch of something being crushed—and the black man toppled over backward like a falling domino.

Ladd turned to face the remaining man, the little white guy, looking truly refreshed.

“Like I said, I believe in her.”

“Y-you can’t be serious…”

The small man’s eyes grew round. Ladd rolled his head, popping his neck, and replied, “Sure I am. I believe more in her than I believe the big blue sky won’t come tumbling down! As modestly as I believe I’m really me right here and now! With dreams as great as Jack Dempsey! That’s how solid and sure I believe in Lua!”

“Wha…?”

The solitary Sham scooted back as if he couldn’t comprehend the creature in front of him, but Ladd stepped forward enough to close the gap and close in, yelling.

“Aah… This is bad, this is real, real bad. Aaaaaabsolutely. Sheesh. Y’see, when you’re my age, people start callin’ you pops and you can’t even argue back. You gotta settle down, and I was gonna do it, too, but instead I hear Lua’s name and now I just can’t. It’s all your fault, so how’re you gonna make it up to me? Goddammit. It might be hard to believe, but I was tryna be a model prisoner. Except for a little break to kill Huey over there.”

“Y-your logic makes no sense!!”

“It makes no sense? Well, don’t worry about that, pal; I don’t get what passes for logic in this world, either, but the sun still rose in the sky and sank across the ocean today, didn’t it? See, what’s important—you listenin’ to me? What’s important ain’t gettin’ the logic behind the fact. It’s seein’ it in front of you, seein’ that inescapable reality, and choosin’ whether you wanna take it as it comes, fight it, or pretend you never saw it at all. Am I wrong? Well, you can say I am, but I ain’t buyin’ it!”

Ladd was even more wired than he’d been when he first appeared in the room, and he kept dancing back and forth between his feet.

As Firo watched Ladd babbling with the force of an angry torrent, it struck him as somehow surreal. However, the sensation of Huey’s eyeball wriggling in his hand told him in no uncertain terms that this was reality.

Yeesh, get a load of this guy. And I thought Isaac and Claire were hyper.

At this point, this was about the only emotion Firo could muster. In front of him, the ludicrous exchange between the enlightened and the utterly confused went on.

“W-wait, don’t you care what happens to your girl? To Lua?!”

“Close your mouth, fella. I told you, I believe in her. What, somethin’ wrong with your ears? Somethin’ wrong with your mind that can’t figure out what I’m saying? No worries. A few good whacks should fix that. Or if it doesn’t, you might die, and then you won’t have to worry about being dumb anymore. You’ll be free. Okay?”

“Hold on a minute! The conversation’s not making any sense!”

“That’s fine. As long as it makes sense to me. There may be a few barriers between us, but it’s so fine it’s almost too much. We just have to take ’em down one at a time, ain’t that right? ‘Vwip,’ ‘zip,’ ‘zoop,’ ‘blurrr,’ and down they go! For starters, yeah, let’s—”

Then, abruptly, he broke off.

“Aaaaah, y’know what? Never mind. Pain in the ass.”

Ladd swung his arm in a powerful uppercut, right into the little guy’s half-open mouth.

“Mguph!”

The arm didn’t slow down at all, and the man shot into the air like a missile launched from a catapult, sketching an arc through space.

An arc that ended with Firo.

Hey, whoa. Don’t throw stuff into the audience.

As that thought went through his head, he immediately retreated a step.

But not to evade. Instead, he reared back and rammed his head into the man who was flying his way.

“Gah!”

Their skulls connected, and the little man bounced back and fell to the ground, where he lay still.

“……Ow.”

Firo rubbed his forehead. Ladd waved his right hand at him, looking incredibly refreshed.

“Whoops. Sorry ’bout that, fella.”

“Nah. I was just thinkin’ I wanted to deck him myself. Now I have plausible deniability.”

Firo gave a small, wry smile, but he immediately pulled himself together and asked Ladd a question. The Martillo executive had been wondering about his incoherent conversation with the small man, too.

“So this Lua… What was it about her that you believed in?”

“Hmm? Oh. Oho. You want to hear me get all sappy about my girl? Sure thing, pal. I’ll assume you’re a friend and tell you all about it! I’ll regale you with every last detail of the saccharine goodness in the sweet, sweet tale of success we’ve woven together, all the syrupy little—”

“Keep it short, all right, Ladd?” Firo retorted, using the same words Ladd had said to him a moment earlier.

Ladd shrugged, looking disappointed— But then he nodded in agreement and calmly began explaining his relationship with Lua.

“Well, here’s the short version, then. I promised her I’d kill her; she promised me she’d let me. Even though I’m the scum of the earth, she was nice enough to say I could kill her. There ya have it.”

“That’s too short.”

The explanation had left out far too much, and Firo was as bewildered as a man could get, but Ladd didn’t seem to care as he went on energetically.

“Well, that part’s a long story, so fill in the blanks yourself. Anyway. She promised that she’d let me kill her! Me and me alone! That means she’d never let herself get killed by these crazy goons! I just believed, and that’s all there is to it. Do you get it now?”

“And how do you know this?”

“Instinct.”

“That’s it…?!”

Aaaaargh, I give up. This guy really does have a few screws loose.

Firo was getting a headache, although it was different from the ones he got when he was talking with Isaac and Miria. He gave an exasperated sigh, then launched into a lecture.

“Listen, just think about it. She can try to not get killed all she wants, but if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen. If it does, are you ready to bear the consequences?”

At Firo’s question, Ladd put a hand to his chin and thought for a while.

“Oho… So if that happens, it’ll be like I killed her indirectly, huh? …Does that sound about right?”

“I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

His answer sounded exasperated, but Ladd wasn’t listening.

“I’d like to say yes, but then Lua would get all the fun. Although maybe if I got my kicks tearing these guys apart instead… AAAAAaaaaaah! Nope, no way, no way! A Dempsey Roll of negativity just put my heart down for the count! I can’t even think about not getting to carefully torture Lua to death with my own hands, and I bet Lua wants her life to end with me slowly breaking her neck… Well, that’s what I think. What about you, Firo?”

Firo looked even wearier after this new question. He pondered the other man’s words, and when his brain finally managed to decipher them, he responded slowly, with a different question.

“Lemme ask you a more basic question: Is there no option where nobody’s killing each other or getting killed, and you both just live happily ever after?”

“Nope… No, hang on a second…… Yeah, no, there isn’t.”

“Waitwaitwait, remind me what your relationship with Lua is again.”

“Friends, lovers, fiancés,” Ladd declared easily, leaving Firo even more at a loss. “Right… Now that you mention it, I’m getting real worried about Lua. Who should I kill for now to make sure she’s safe…? Ha! This is getting kinda fun, ain’t it, Firo?!”

“No.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m having fun! Okayokayokay… This is a kill-or-be-killed situation, and now, the option of Lua getting killed is on the table, too! No, that really ain’t fun, is it…? Here’s some more food for thought. If I can’t stand fellas who think they’re never gonna be killed, is it a crime to assume my own lover’s never gonna get killed? What do you think?”

“…I’ll…get back to you on that.”

He was standing among several bodies, accompanied only by a bloodthirsty killer with bats in the belfry.

C’mon… Come on…

What am I supposed to do, here?!

Firo felt like crying. In his hand, the eyeball was still squirming.

The twitching, twisting eye seemed to be sneering at him.