Baccano! - Volume 10 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

THE CRYBABY CRIES

Inside Chicago Union Station

Chicago Union Station stood grandly in the city for which it was named, a major terminal on the transcontinental railroad.

The station building had been completed recently, in 1925, and it was such a novel sight that first-time visitors felt as though they’d just arrived in a freshly minted opera house.

With majestic columns like something out of a Grecian temple, the building itself had the beautiful symmetry of a museum, and today, as always, travelers were passing through its solemn atmosphere.

Later, this station would make its existence known across America and around the world as the setting of the infamous gunfight scene in the movie The Untouchables, but…

At present, there were no detectable signs of an impending gun battle. Only the sounds of a pitiful whine.

“Ngh, what’ll I do? I lost him…”

A young man trudged through the station, which was emptier than usual.

He had a big tattoo of a sword on his face, but he wore the expression of a boy shouldering all the despair in the world, and the people passing by him would have found him hard to describe.

He was heading toward a big group of more than twenty delinquents.

Some of them had the hard faces of people who had killed before, and some of them were even toying with knives, in broad daylight, out in public. An enormous man who seemed to be Mexican had a very strong presence without even trying, wordlessly intimidating the people around him.

The onlookers thought the tattooed boy might be heading to his own death at the hands of those delinquents, but their fears turned out to be groundless.

“Jacuzzi, was everything okay?” Looking concerned, a scarred girl wearing glasses over an eye patch ran up to the tattooed kid.

“Ngh… H-he disappeared… Where could he have gone…?”

“Never mind that, Jacuzzi, just calm down. It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be fine.” As she spoke, the girl, Nice, looked mildly exasperated.

Jacuzzi Splot—the tattooed young man, and the leader of the gang of delinquents—pleaded with her in reply, his face crumpling even more. “Nice, what should we do? Maybe he hid because he noticed us…! Luh, l-l-let’s hurry and find Isaac and Graham and then get outta here!”

“I already told you, Isaac isn’t gonna be here until tomorrow.”

Nice took Jacuzzi’s hands, as if she were trying to calm a child. Behind her, several of the delinquents peeked in at the sniffling Jacuzzi, insensitive to the mood.

“Hey, what’s up? Why’d you just run into the train like that?”

“For a second there, I thought you were actually lamming off.” “I was half-sure he was!” “I was one hundred percent positive you were, so why’d you come back? Gimme back my money!”

“Huh?! What money?!”

“Fine, sheesh, if you don’t remember, I’ll loan you some now.” “Me too.” “Me three.” “Pay me back five times the amount ten days from now.”

“Whaaaaaa…?! Wait— I—I can’t take that!”

The ridiculous suggestions flustered Jacuzzi even more, and his gaze was darting around even worse than usual.

“Well, joking aside, who was that guy?” one delinquent asked in an easygoing voice.

“Wh-who was…? That was a Russo Family executive!” As the tattooed boy warned his companions about the impending danger, his eyes filled with tears. “I—I didn’t notice until Nice told me, either, but… Wh-when she did, that scar on his face… I’m pretty sure he was a Russo executive.”

The Russo Family.

They were a mafia syndicate that claimed part of Chicago as their territory, and they had a bone to pick with Jacuzzi’s group. They were long past the point of unfavorable relations; both parties had seen fatalities, and not only were amicable settlements or alliances out of the question, more deaths seemed far from unlikely.

For that very reason, Jacuzzi had resisted the idea of coming to Chicago to the very end, fearful that he and his friends were putting themselves in danger, but…

…the friends in question were surprisingly free of any sense of crisis as they spoke their minds.

“What? The Russos?”

“Well, lucky us.” “Let’s get ’em.” “Hya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“And hey, what were you thinking, going after somebody like that all by yourself?”

“You’re lousy in a fight, fella. Don’t do nothin’ crazy!”

“Before you go tryin’ to figure out who people are, first you gotta figure out what you are.”

All he heard were extremely belligerent views and criticism, and Jacuzzi crouched down on the spot, no longer sure what he should do.

“Ngh, you’re all so mean…”

“What are you talking about? I said, take another look at what you are.”

“You ain’t made for fighting. You’re made to take charge of us, get me?”

“Yeah, let us handle the dirty work.” “You may be dumb, Jacuzzi, but you’re smarter’n us!”

“Hya-haaaw!” “Nothin’ wrong with being a crybaby. After all, you’re lousy in a fight.”

The amount of relative compliments had increased, but Jacuzzi was hugging his head and covering his ears so firmly he didn’t hear them.

In the midst of it all, Jacuzzi reviewed his current circumstances.

Aaaaah, why did this happen?

Lunchtime yesterday, we were still in New York…

At noon the day before, the news had come bursting into his gang’s home base in Millionaires’ Row.

The radio had informed them that there had been explosions in three hundred locations in Chicago. The police were viewing the incidents as a premeditated crime, and although the particulars weren’t clear, Placido Russo, the don of the Russo Family, had been identified as a suspect.

In addition, that same day, a total of two hundred people had gone missing, and an ominous atmosphere currently hung over Chicago.

At that point in time, he’d been able to limit his worrying to Graham Specter, an acquaintance of theirs who was currently in the city— But right after they’d heard the report, two visitors had come to call.

Yeah, Tim and Adele told me Graham had gotten into some trouble…and then I got even more worried, and then…

Their hearts had begun to waver, and the finishing blow had come in the form of a telephone call to the mansion from all the way on the other side of the continent.

Their friend Isaac Dian had been arrested for theft a little while back, and he’d called to tell them he’d finished serving his time and had been released without any trouble. The news had made Jacuzzi and the others so happy that they’d temporarily forgotten their earlier unease.

However… As the sight of Miria Harvent talking with her sweetheart on the phone warmed his heart, the situation had begun to drift in an odd direction.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh! Okay, Isaac! I’ll go to Chicago right now and wait for you!”

Yes, that’s how it was… Back then, I didn’t realize what Miria was saying at all.

Apparently, Isaac hadn’t had the train fare to make it all the way to New York, and he could just barely afford a ticket to Chicago.

…Which was why he wanted Miria to take his wallet and meet him there.

At first, Jacuzzi had desperately tried to stop her, but she was already blind to everything except Isaac, and he knew immediately she couldn’t be dissuaded.

It was the worst possible timing because Nice, a natural-born bomb fiend, had taken an interest in the bombings, and then their friends had jumped in as they always did and started kicking up their usual ruckus, and then—

The next thing I knew, I was on a train.

Feeling disgusted with himself for going along with this, Jacuzzi spent a little while reexamining his present situation— And then he clapped his hands together in realization, bolting to his feet like a spring-loaded doll.

“I—I know! L-let’s just go to San Francisco to pick Isaac up! Wh-whatever we do, we have to get out of from Chicago as fast as we can…”

Convinced of his own genius, Jacuzzi was positively radiant. However, Nice looked at him curiously.

“If we leave for San Francisco now, won’t we just miss each other along the way?”

“Oh—”

“Besides… If we board that train, we’ll be traveling with that Russo executive, you know.”

“Aaaaaah?!”

It was an argument even a child could follow, and Jacuzzi choked on both his tears and any further arguments.

“Plus, what about Graham?”

“Aaaaaaah, what do we do? D-do you think we could maybe find him in the next five minutes or so? I-if Graham was here, Russo Family executives wouldn’t scare me…maybe… No, we can’t do that; this is our problem, and we can’t drag him into it.”

As Jacuzzi whimpered, the castigation of the delinquents around him fell heavy on his ears.

“Man, I was just about to chew you out for finally stooping to leaning on others, but then you stopped yourself, huh, punk? Well done.”

“Geez, quit crying already!” “Find him in five minutes? Quit talking crazy.” “Hya-haah.”

“Jacuzzi, man… Five minutes? Is that all Graham’s worth to you?!”

“Think back! Remember the stuff he did for us! Remember the morning when we slugged away at each other on a hill, by the light of the setting sun!”

“Mgh, but you people just say you never meet Graham.”

“Don’t remember that part!” “You’re trashing our plan for messing with Jacuzzi!” “Donny, you moron!”

“Nugah, sorry.”

“So what, you’re planning to run into him in five minutes and drag him out of Chicago?” “He didn’t include the time he’ll need to talk him into it.” “Actually, if Jacuzzi started blubbering and telling him a sob story, I get the feeling it would probably go pretty fast.”

“Actually, somebody should go look for my little sister.”

“Actually, you don’t have a little sister.”

“Actually, you should find a girl who’ll agree to be my new little sister…”

“Actually, shut up.” “Shut up.” “Shut up.” “Hya-haaah.”

“Never mind that, I’m worried about that laundry I forgot to take in… Aaah!”

“What?!”

“That thing you just said! ‘By the light of the setting sun’ in the morning? Doesn’t that seem off?!”

“Man, you’re slow!” “Shut up!” “Go home!” “Lam off!” “Lam!” “Lam?!”

“Honestly. They’re playing around like little kids…”

Ignoring the rowdy chaos of the boys, Nice spoke to Jacuzzi calmly.

Her glasses aside, between her eye patch and her scars, Nice really didn’t look like an upstanding citizen. However, her mild expression and gentle comportment contrasted so strongly with her appearance that she seemed kinder than she actually was.

“Listen, Jacuzzi. It’s fine; I mean it. He didn’t notice us at all!”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. He looked flustered…almost like he was running from something…,” she told him, remembering what had happened a short while ago.

For a moment, her words almost reassured Jacuzzi, but then…

…he abruptly realized something, and anxiety crept into his expression again.

“Running…? From what?”

“Huh?”

Jacuzzi’s question left Nice unsure how to respond. With a troubled smile, she began searching for an answer.

“Good question. Probably from the police, don’t you think? You know; the radio did say they were after the Russos…”

“I-in that case, wouldn’t Don Placido be the only one the police are looking for?”

“I suppose that’s what it would mean.” As far as Nice was concerned, she’d given a perfectly natural answer.

But it didn’t get the results she expected.

Jacuzzi’s already pale face grew even paler, until the color of his tattoo struck a brilliant contrast against his white skin.

“Th-that’s awful! Then we really do have to find Graham fast!”

“? Why…?”

As he answered Nice’s question, Jacuzzi looked blank.

“Huh? Well, I mean… Graham went to help out the Russo Family, remember?”

“…?!”

“That means the police might be after him… So we’ve got to find him and escape together, right now…”

“…You knew? You knew Graham had ties to the Russo Family?”

As far as Nice was concerned, Jacuzzi’s answer was a bolt from the blue.

Just after she’d arrived in New York, she’d done her own investigation into Graham and the other local power relationships, and she’d learned he was involved with the Russo Family. She’d been wary at first but eventually decided he wasn’t a bad guy. She’d confirmed the information with him herself, too, so there was no mistake.

Apparently, Graham had been cooperating with them despite the wanted poster the Russos had put out for Jacuzzi. As a result, Nice had decided to trust him for the time being, and not wanting to make Jacuzzi uneasy, she’d kept quiet about the whole thing.

So why did Jacuzzi know?

But Jacuzzi looked even more bewildered at her simple question.

“Huh? Of course I know… Oh, come to think of it, nobody talks about it, do they? Did you muzzle them, Nice?”

“…” Nice fell silent, her face puzzled, and Jacuzzi realized what she was trying to say. He gave an awkward smile.

“Aww, c’mon, Nice. Sure, the Russos are our enemies, but Graham’s a good guy. You know that.”

“…Is that what’s bothering you?”

“Huh? D-did I misunderstand…?”

Jacuzzi was acting worried again. A little chagrined, Nice opened her mouth to speak…then smiled.

“Jacuzzi, I think this side of you is really something.”

“I-it is…?”

Jacuzzi lowered his head in embarrassment, recognizing the compliment. However, despite the mood of their conversation, the situation nearby hadn’t changed at all.

Bowed as it was, Jacuzzi’s head was now easier to smack, after all, and his friends’ hands gave him some good loud thwacks.

“Hey, check you out, Jacuzzi. Just rubbin’ it in our faces…”

“I don’t really get it, but I’ll give you crime.”

“I’ll give you punishment.” “In exchange, I’ll take your wallet.”

“In other words, die, ya Casanova bastard!” “Hya-haah!” “Dammit! I’m jealous…!” “Are Jacuzzi’s tears some kind of potion that attracts chicks?!” “Arrrgh! Gimme a few of those tears!”

“How could I—?! Yeeeeeeeep?!”

When they started in with some fairly painful knee kicks, Jacuzzi’s shrieks echoed through the station.

“Aah, like anyone would actually cry?!” “Hey— Who was that? Who just kicked him for real?!” “Geez, come on, fella!”

“Who was it?!” “It was you!” “Me?” “Yeah, you!” “Uh, whoops.” “Hya-haw!”

The boy who’d kicked him solidly in the pelvis was shoved out of the surrounding group. Timidly, he apologized to Jacuzzi. “S-sorry about that, Jacuzzi. You can kick us a little to pay us back.”

“Hey, what’s with the ‘us’?”

“Pipe down! If one of us goes down, we all go down!”

Ignoring the whispered arguments of the delinquents, Jacuzzi asked with watery eyes, “Ngh. Nnngh… Seriously?”

“A little. Just a little.”

“Well, I’m sort of too sad to move, so, Donny, you kick them for me.”

At Jacuzzi’s tearful remark, all the delinquents around him froze up.

“Whoa, Jacuzzi, hold up!! No, uh, Mr. Jacuzzi?! I mean, President Jacuzzi?!”

Meanwhile, finding himself abruptly addressed, their big friend responded without understanding the context. “Nugah. Little confused, but got it. Small kick. That okay?”

“DooooOOOOooh?!”

Seeing Donny lumber into motion, the delinquents scattered in all directions like a bunch of grade school kids.

“J-Jacuzzi, you lousy little—! You pick now to act like a leader and delegate?!”

“He’s tougher than you’d think!” “Waaaugh!” “Hya-haaaaaaaaaaah!” “Hya-haw!”

As bedlam broke out, a short distance away from the group, a lone girl was looking up at the sky.

It was the young woman who was the cause of this journey: Miria Harvent.

Her features still seemed young enough to count as girlish, and illuminated by the clear light of a cloudless sky, her whole body shone with intense hope.

Miria, who had come to Chicago to meet her beloved, made her wish in a cheerful, singsong voice. As she did, she visualized her sweetheart’s face in the sky.

And her wish included the name of the individual she loved so dearly.

“Let me see Isaac soon!”

Children of God. Your petition has been rejected.

However, as if the heavens had grinned and given their unfavorable reply…

…the Chicago sky sent a heavy, piercing roar rumbling through everyone’s ears.

“?! Wh-what was that?!”

Amid the uproar on the platform, Jacuzzi trembled even more violently than the rest, concerned about the source of the sound.

“…It was an explosion,” Nice murmured calmly.

Her companions all looked around at once— But the people in the station were all reacting the same way they were, or ducking and taking cover, or standing stock-still. There were no visible flames or smoke nearby.

The idea that the bombings might have spread into the city was threatening to set off a mild panic. If smoke had actually been rising anywhere, they might have had an instant riot on their hands.

“Aaaaaaaaah, wh-what’ll we do?! E-everybody calm down! No, we can’t! First we’ve got to run, then calm down, then find Graham and tell him to calm down or we’re all gonna diiiiiie! What do we doooo—? Aaaaaaaaah what should we do?! Calm doooooo— Ouch!”

“You calm down!”

His friends Jack and Nick kicked him from the front and back, and all the air left Jacuzzi’s lungs in a groan.

However, unsurprisingly, this wasn’t business as usual even for the delinquents. Most of them were anxious about that noise, and the ones who seemed calm were actually just clueless.

All except for one: a dyed-in-the-wool bomb fiend who was feeling a swirling heat behind her eye patch.

“…The radius was…about ten yards.”

Quietly focusing, Nice had picked up the distant explosion with all five of her senses, then estimated the scale of the huge blast from the state of her surroundings and her past experience.

“About five hundred yards to the west…?”

When a scorched smell from the explosion drifted to her on the wind, she stopped abruptly, midguess.

She realized that it was the scent of familiar explosives.

Feeling a cold sweat break out on her palms, Nice opened her left eye—the only one she had—very, very wide.

“These explosives… Why…?”

A few minutes earlier In Chicago

In the end, I’m on my own.

As he walked past the side of Chicago Union Station, Rail was quietly looking up at the sky.

His hood was pulled far down over his face, hiding his distinctive suture scars in its shadows.

Ordinarily, he couldn’t have cared less if the scars showed, but under the current circumstances, he couldn’t expose anything that would broadcast his identity to the people around him.

Even after the previous day’s set of bombings, he didn’t know where Frank had been taken.

Actually, Frank wasn’t the only one unaccounted for. Sham had agreed to help yesterday, but Rail hadn’t seen him at all since immediately after the Elleson Hill bombings.

As a result, he’d been forced to strike out on his own. He might have been a member of Lamia—an organization that worked directly for Huey—but except for his explosions, Rail had nothing in the way of power.

He didn’t seem particularly worried about this, though. As far as he was concerned, running was no longer an option.

The cause of “saving Frank” didn’t exist for him anymore, and he didn’t know what he should do. A neutral observer might say he’d grown desperate and reckless, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

Still, it wasn’t a simple matter of abandoning his own safety. At this point, he wasn’t able to stop himself. He was dangerous. The bomb fiend no human could stop had become a ticking time bomb himself wandering through town.

What Christopher had said to him the night before last echoed in his mind:

“I’m not sure how to put it… I’m already broken, so I can’t put you back together. If you’re going to break like we have, I can give you as much of a hand as you like. But you know, right now, I think you’re at a crossroads… I think you need to make this decision on your own.”

Decide? What’s to decide?

We never had the right to decide how we were going to live, remember?

“I just hope…somebody who’s still whole can pull you back from the edge.”

What do you mean, “somebody who’s still whole”? I…I’ve never even seen anybody like that. And help from them? That’s just…

If you’re going to say stuff like that, then I don’t mind breaking. Put me back together? When was I ever together?

“You see, if that happens, I’m sure you’ll be able to live as a human, Rail.”

Shut up, shut up!

Why did he say a thing like that?

I don’t give a damn about lousy humans.

I don’t care if the whole world says I’m crazy.

I just…I just wanted Chris to take my hand and lead me, that’s all…

Like a distant observer, Rail watched his feelings bubble up inside him and then disappear.

I think…I’ve probably thought that way for a long, long time.

I don’t feel anything now, though. I wonder why.

Maybe I laughed and cried too much the night before last.

To Rail, everything—smiles and sadness—felt elusive at this point.

The only thing in his heart that was clear and distinct was a gloomy irritation, and he kept himself going by letting that annoyance and anger lead him.

He knew he was doing this to himself, too, which upset him even more.

What is this? What the hell is happening to me?

What do I do if I meet someone when I’m all weird like this?

That won’t make anybody happy, you know?

Even if I run into Frank or Chris again…will I stay stuck as this nasty version of me?

If so…I don’t care if I’m alone forever and ever and ever.

But apparently God really had it in for Rail: Less than a minute after the thought crossed his mind, someone laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Rail.”

“!”

Leaping back involuntarily, Rail shoved a hand into his coat.

The face he saw when he turned around was unfamiliar. The individual wasn’t wearing a lab coat like the researcher lady’s hangers-on, but Rail definitely couldn’t let his guard down. After all, it was more natural to assume they wouldn’t be wearing those coats around town than to assume otherwise.

As Rail warily considered the situation, the man gave a tired smile and waved both hands at him.

“It’s Sham. Good, I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Sham! …What gives? Why show up now?”

He’d never seen this guy before, but he was apparently a friend.

Rail’s speech instantly reverted to normal, but both his tone and his eyes were completely emotionless, as if they were showing a glimpse of Rail’s slow, darkly wavering madness.

It wasn’t clear whether the man calling himself Sham noticed Rail’s unsettling look, but he pulled him over to the side of the alley and started talking to him, sounding rather troubled. “Well, you see, things have taken a fairly nasty turn…”

“What things?”

“Hilton and I have ended up in a rather unpleasant situation… Oh, I have a message from Master Huey as well; would you like to hear it first?”

“No, I don’t, and you can go ahead and tell him to die again for me,” Rail responded instantly.

Sham shook his head, smiling wryly. “It’s been a long while since you acted so openly rebellious. Well, that doesn’t matter. I’m going to tell you anyway… It’s from a little while ago now, but he says, ‘I’ll come to give you orders directly in the near future. I’m looking forward to seeing you, Rail.’”

“…Huh? What’s he talking about? He’s buried deep in prison.”

Huey Laforet, an immortal and the master of Rail’s group, was currently incarcerated in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, and his hands were all but literally tied.

That was why Sham, Hilton, and Leeza were acting as messengers and relaying his orders to them.

And yet, he’d said he was going to come and issue orders directly, which meant…

“Is that idiot planning a jailbreak?”

“Oh, I almost forgot: When I delivered your message quite a while ago for him to ‘go die,’ his answer was ‘I am an immortal, so I can’t die.’ And I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you anything about a jailbreak.”

“…You actually told him to ‘go die’ from me, verbatim… You’ve got guts, you know that?”

Rail was speaking as sarcastically as ever, but his conflicting feelings toward Huey churned inside him: the bitterness and hatred he’d harbored for long years, and fear.

And now the mixture of emotion was joining the waves of his irritation.

Aah, what am I thinking? What do I feel about Huey?

This is more trouble than it’s worth…

His frustration grew.

Argh. Somehow, I just don’t care about anything anymore.

And grew.

Right now…I just gotta blow it up…

“Wait— Rail? Why did you take out a bomb?” Sham asked in a panic, and Rail came to himself with a jolt.

He looked at the egg-shaped weapon gripped in his right hand, then realized just what it was he’d been about to do.

“Um, if you’re that offended by what I did, I apologize…”

“…Uh, no, sorry. I was kidding.”

Rail hastily put the bomb back inside his coat. Now that he was paying attention, he could feel a nasty sweat all over his body.

Ever since his sense of pain had faded from the vivisections, he didn’t sweat all that much, either. The researchers had said something about the effects on body temperature regulation, but apparently the symptoms weren’t that severe yet.

Cold sweats, on the other hand, were different.

Every time he remembered the various experiments he’d been subjected to, a greasy sweat invariably formed on his palms and his neck.

He could hardly believe what he’d done—he’d even broken out in a cold sweat over it—and Rail felt…nothing, except that slowly writhing irritation.

Vaguely disturbed by the thought that something weird might be happening to him, Rail spoke to Sham to distract himself.

“…Sorry. So what was it again? Why did you suddenly drop off the face of the earth?”

“Well, it’s…”

Sham nodded, looking as if he was finally about to broach the main topic—

—but he never finished his sentence.

“Hey, there he is!” someone suddenly called.

“Huh?” Sham reflexively turned, and—

—two men in black were standing on either side of him in the narrow alley.

“Oh no!” Sham seemed to recognize the men. Plainly shocked, he tried to twist around, but…

…before he could manage it, one of the men in black brought out a syringe in his right hand and plunged it into Sham’s neck.

“Ghk…?!”

The other man pinned him, and although Sham struggled a bit, it wasn’t long before his movements gradually grew duller, as if the drug was kicking in.

“Huh?”

The whole thing had taken only a few seconds, and for a moment Rail just stood there, stunned. However…

The first man pulled the syringe out of Sham, looked at Rail, and muttered suspiciously. “…Hmm? So is this the brat with the bombs from the day before yesterday?”

“Yeah,” replied the man holding down the struggling Sham. “Take off that hood and check. If you see scars, it’s him for sure.”

“Right.”

The man with the syringe nodded firmly, then slowly reached for Rail.

This only took a few seconds, too.

But in that interval, a whole mess of thoughts raced across Rail’s mind.

Who’s this? Why Sham—? A syringe? Black clothes… The mafia? No— They know me? “If you see scars”… What happened the day before yesterday? What…? What…? Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat—? Bombs…Explosions…Smithereens…

They should be— Blew them apart… Twice… Russo… Took Frank… Took…Frank…? …?  ? —……

 !

As Rail’s thoughts made sparks in his mind, the image of the group in lab coats and the bespectacled woman at the center of it swelled and burst into nothing.

In the next instant— He’d taken the bomb he’d almost put away back out of his coat, and his fingers were heading for the pin.

“Hey! He’s—!”

“Hold it! If you detonate that here, forget this guy, you’ll go, too—”

The alley was narrow, and he was far closer to his targets than he’d been when he blew up the woman in the lab coat and her entourage.

It was obvious to anyone that if he used a bomb here, none of them would escape unharmed.

However—

Aah, I wonder what these guys are saying.

It’s no good; I can’t get it into my head.

I’m so mad. I’m so mad. I’m so mad.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah—

He was screaming furiously in his mind, but inside the hood, his face was cold and blank.

Then, with no hesitation, no pause, no attempt to even try to get any distance, he yanked the pin out of the grenade.

Through his drugged haze, Sham saw the sight at the exact same time as the men in black suits who were holding him down.

As they focused on the egg-shaped object that had been slowly tossed at them, all three gulped simultaneously.

Consequently, right before that object exploded—Sham realized something.

Rail couldn’t see anything around him anymore.

Not the life of Sham, his companion.

Not the men in black, their enemies.

Not even his own life.

As the roar and the heat and the light stole his vision—Sham, who had stayed conscious in another body, was certain of one thing.

It was…

…Rail was already beginning to lose his mind.

A few minutes later

In the midst of the smoke and the clamor, a wail echoed through Chicago no different from usual.

“Aah, wh-what thick smoke. We might die just from breathing it, so we need to hurry up and run! C-c’mon, I mean it, Nice, it’s dangerous; you really shouldn’t go closer…”

“I’m sorry, Jacuzzi. There’s something I need to check!”

When Jacuzzi’s group arrived at the smoke-filled scene, the rubberneckers who’d gathered at a distance were gazing into an alley that was probably ground zero for the explosion.

The police and firemen hadn’t yet raced to the scene, and due to the possibility of a secondary explosion, nobody had set foot in the roiling smoke of the alley.

Amid the chaos, Nice pushed her way through the onlookers and plunged unhesitatingly into the alley.

Jacuzzi followed her, crying all the while about how dangerous it was. After him, a group of unapproachable-seeming delinquents entered the alley.

The onlookers watched them dubiously, but no one considered following them. As a result, the first ones on the scene of the bombing were a group of delinquents who’d just returned to their hometown— And thus the confusion grew even more.

“I knew it. The smell of this smoke… There’s no mistake.”

“Y-you’re right, Nice, this place is dangerous for sure! Let’s hurry and go back!”

As Nice, murmuring to herself, headed deeper into the alley, Jacuzzi responded with a virtual non sequitur.

The residual smoke made for poor visibility, and the one-eyed girl looked carefully with her remaining eye.

Something… Some kind of clue… I’d settle for a fragment of the bomb…

Nice examined her surroundings, trying to identify the exact location of the blast, but—

—suddenly, she noticed a small figure moving farther down the alley.

“H-huh? Somebody’s walking this way…from over there.” Jacuzzi seemed to have noticed it at almost the same time. Uneasy, he focused on the approaching figure.

The shape was clearly unsteady, walking as if it might collapse at any second.

“A child?” Nice muttered to herself. Sure enough, the figure appearing from the smoke belonged to a young boy in gray clothes.

His face looked heavily scarred, but what caught their attention more was how much red was covering it.

“This is awful! He— He’s hurt!” Despite his previous fright, Jacuzzi was the first one to run over. When he got close to the boy, coughing from the smoke, he hugged his shoulders and asked him in a shaky voice, “A-are you okay?!”

The boy stayed silent. The doll-like eyes in his bloodied face gleamed vacantly.

It wasn’t clear whether Jacuzzi’s question had gotten through to him or not. The emotionless eyes gazed at Jacuzzi, Nice, and the group of delinquents who’d come after them, but then…

“Got…to go…”

“I-it’s okay; we’ll get you to a hospital right away!”

Jacuzzi gave the best smile he could muster, doing everything he could to set the boy at ease. Still, his expression was trembling, and the delinquents watched the scene unfold with some trepidation.

“Got to go…blow them up.”

“Huh? Wh-what? What’s the matter?”

Jacuzzi hadn’t quite caught the boy’s murmur, and as he held the child’s shoulders, he involuntarily responded with a question.

He decided getting the boy to a doctor came first and tried to take him away, but just then, the kid seemed to register Jacuzzi and the others for the first time.

“Mister…? Who are you people?”

“Oh, uh, um… Don’t worry! No worries, so don’t worry!”

Jacuzzi wasn’t thinking clearly, so his murmured reply didn’t quite make sense. Ignoring him, the delinquents were checking the path to the alley’s mouth and seeing whether there were any other injured people.

Before long, they spotted what appeared to be police officers and firemen approaching from the far side of the alley, and Jacuzzi and Nice sighed with relief.

However, just then…

…the boy, who was watching the policemen approach with vacant eyes, muttered something strange.

“Don’t…get in the way.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t…get in the way!”

Jacuzzi and the other delinquents thought the boy was just confused, but—

—Nice noticed it.

The boy had slipped his right hand into his coat, and she saw him pull out a small round object.

Then—his fingers went straight to the silver pin protruding from it.

“…?!”

Was it fate that Nice had been the one to notice, or was it inevitable given they were at the site of an explosion and she was already on high alert? There was no way to know.

But one thing was certain—if she hadn’t been the one to notice, the following event would have most likely resulted in fatalities.

Her instincts, backed by long experience, created an instantaneous, extreme spike in her blood pressure.

Not good.

The boy’s movements, that shape, the color, the mood, her instincts— All of them were warning Nice of danger, and that alarm made her sure of one thing.

This scarred-up boy was the culprit behind the explosion.

And what he was holding was a bomb.

But in the very moment she realized all this, the kid pulled the pin out of the “egg.”

Immediately, Nice ran up to the boy and snatched it away from him.

“Wha—?! N-Nice?!”

Ignoring Jacuzzi, Nice immediately scanned her surroundings—then flung the object as hard as she could into the deserted depths of the alley.

Please don’t let anyone be back there…! she prayed silently, then screamed at her companions.

“Get down!”

That was all.

At her shout, the policemen who’d been heading toward them from the mouth of the alley stopped, wondering what was going on… But they didn’t duck and cover right away.

However, one of them did notice Nice’s extremely unique appearance, and she heard him mutter, “I-is that—Nice?”

Oops.

As Nice hit the deck herself, she inwardly cursed in irritation.

When she was a child, she’d often triggered bomb scares in this area and ended up in custody. They’d let her go since she was a kid, and because there hadn’t been any injuries or real material damage, but naturally, in the process, her profile had become fairly well-known around the station.

How could she have run into one of those people who recognized her here, of all times and places?

“Hey, were those explosions yesterday your—?”

Nice had seen the question coming a mile away, and she bit her lip and denied it tersely. “No, sir, they weren’t! Never mind that—please just get down!”

As if to say there was no time for further explanations, she was already lying on the ground.

Meanwhile, the delinquents were operating on a certain conditioned reflex.

And that reflex’s “condition” was plain and simple.

Nice was telling them to get down.

Nice, a true bomb fiend, was giving them the crystal-clear command to get down.

That could mean only one thing.

In the past, they’d been through this again and again.

And they’d learned.

The delinquents had learned what Nice’s words meant not with their memories, but with their bodies— And on reflex, they all hit the dirt, bracing themselves for the inevitable result.

“Aaaaaaaaah?!”

A little later than the others, Jacuzzi screamed and covered the boy’s body with his own, and in that instant—

—the second explosion of the day screamed mercilessly through the alley.

Turn back the clock just a bit.

Miria had reached the scene after Jacuzzi’s group, anxiously watching the alley with the crowd of rubberneckers.

“I hope they’re okay…”

Just as she’d tried to follow them into the alley, the police had arrived, and then it hadn’t been possible for the onlookers to enter the site anymore. Miria thought the police would probably chase Jacuzzi and the others back out right away, but—

—immediately afterward, a violent explosion echoed from within the alley.

The rubberneckers screamed and scattered, getting away as fast as they could.

Miria stood dazed for a little while, but before long, she came to herself and remembered that Jacuzzi and the others were still in there.

“Oh no…!”

She made for the alley where she’d heard the explosion, running upstream in the scattering crowd.

As she did, a huge cloud of smoke billowed out of the alley’s mouth. The police officers and firemen who’d just raced to the scene seemed to be in an uproar as well.

Miria wove her way through, trying to get to the alley, but—

—from within the unusually large cloud of smoke, she saw a huge, familiar figure running toward her.

“Donny!”

As she called the enormous Mexican man’s name, Miria realized he was carrying two people over his shoulders. One seemed to be Jacuzzi, judging from his clothes, and the other figure was the size of a child.

There were several children in the group of delinquents, so she worried that one of the kids and Jacuzzi might have gotten hurt.

However, Nice was running alongside Donny when she spotted Miria. She grabbed her hand and kept going without even attempting to explain.

“Huh?!”

Miria didn’t understand what was happening at all. Pulling her along by the hand, Nice raced breathlessly through the smoke.

“Oh, good…! I was afraid we’d get separated… I’ll explain all of this later. Right now, we’re getting out of here!”

Overwhelmed by the tension in Nice’s face, Miria obeyed without protest.

As Miria watched, Nice took a single cylinder with a threadlike string on it from the pouch she wore on her hip. She yanked the thread out with her teeth, then threw the object behind her without looking back.

A moment later, there was a light pop and the whoosh of escaping air. Glancing back, she saw a wall of smoke expanding with incredible speed.

When she looked, the other delinquents were also scattering, fleeing under the cover of the smoke or mixing with the rubberneckers and generating mild chaos.

Miria had seen this exact same thing a year ago at the mansion on Millionaires’ Row. Nice apologized somewhat guiltily after throwing the smoke bomb.

“I’m sorry, Miria. I really wish this hadn’t happened…”

After checking behind them to make sure they weren’t being pursued, Nice slowed down a bit and let go of Miria’s hand.

For her part, Miria was now sure that they were all fleeing from something, and she asked about it directly.

“What happened? What’s everybody running away from?” she timidly inquired.

Nice smiled weakly, a little embarrassed. “Um, well… From the police.”

“Huh?!”

Miria was bewildered. Nice’s wry smile grew more self-deprecating, and she sounded weary as she continued.

“One thing led to another, and…

“…if nothing changes, they’ll probably assume I’m the culprit behind the bombings.”