Baccano! - Volume 19 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13 Violence Creates Nothing

It had been more than two hundred years since Maiza Avaro lost his younger brother, consumed by Szilard Quates’s hand.

The brothers had been born and raised in Lotto Valentino, a port town in southern Italy. Both the town and their father had been trammeled by aristocratic conventions, and Gretto was the one who’d most wanted to escape them. However, before they reached the New World, he’d lost everything.

Meanwhile, after his brother had been stolen from him, Maiza had come up against the stark fact that no matter how many decades or centuries he spent on regret, there were some things he could never recover. He’d been forced to see, in the worst possible way, that immortals weren’t all-powerful.

Even now, he could remember his brother’s face clearly.

At the very least, those who’d survived had to keep their memories of his brother forever—that was why he would never forget his brother’s face.

Or so he’d thought until half a day ago, when he’d encountered that young man in the casino run by his subordinate.

That was definitely Gretto’s face…

The more he recalled it, the more his memories distorted Gretto’s real face. Now he couldn’t remember the differences between it and the fellow he’d met the previous day.

It was as if that man’s face was overwriting his brother’s features, and Maiza was racked with guilt.

His brother had been killed in a time before photographs, so his face remained only in the memories of the immortals who’d known him. He wished they’d at least had a family portrait painted—but no amount of regret would make that nonexistent portrait a reality.

If a skilled artist from the group on the ship is still alive… Victor said he had confidence in his memory, but…

Even as he wondered whether his old friend had the skill to draw a portrait based on memory alone, Maiza was eating his breakfast, just as he always did.

Maiza’s apartment was on the outskirts of Little Italy. The neighborhood had always been a poor one, home to many immigrants with few resources, but his building had been built before the Depression and was relatively new.

Maiza had enough money to buy a house on the edge of Manhattan, but since he lived alone and didn’t see the need to take up that much space, he’d continued to shuttle between a handful of apartments.

It had begun as a habit he’d developed while hiding from Szilard Quates, living in places where he would blend in. Szilard, his greatest threat, had died in the fall of 1930, but Maiza still hadn’t moved in the five years since. After that, he hadn’t needed to hide. That said, he’d gotten used to living this way, and he had no desire for a big house. Living somewhere pointlessly spacious would have reminded him of their aristocratic mansion in his hometown.

What happened to that house after I fled the town in 1711? he thought out of nowhere. He couldn’t claim to have no memories there, but the only things it reminded him of were things he’d rather forget.

His father had been possessed by a lust for aristocratic power and been the cause of many of the town’s tragedies. However, the fact that those events had occurred was what had made it possible for him to be here, more than two hundred years later, eating breakfast in a foreign land.

I never thought I’d end up remembering them like this.

He ate a few scraps of cheese for dessert, then slowly got to his feet and went to brush his teeth.

As he went, he was turning his own past over in his mind.

Afterward, he got ready in the usual way. He pulled on his coat, preparing to head for the Martillo Family office—and by then, his mind had already switched over to that of the contaiuolo, the family’s treasurer.

All right. First, how are we going to compensate for the damages to the casino?

After making himself presentable like always, he opened the door as he did on every other day.

A tailor said he’d made some counterfeit brand-name bags and asked us to buy them, but even if we sold them off cheaply, there’s no telling how many we’d move in a recession like this one…

Just like always, he kept running calculations in his head.

Even after the disturbance at the casino the night before, and even though the city had just been thrown into an uproar by the mysterious air raid, his steps as he made for the office were as regular as ever.

After all, he was an executive. If he let himself feel disturbed, it would affect the entire organization, and that wouldn’t do. He understood this, so he made sure to act calm and collected.

He went down the hall in the usual way, descended the stairs normally. There was one thing out of place, though.

As he walked downstairs from his room on the third floor, just as he passed the second-floor landing…

…a figure appeared from the hallway and brought a metal pipe down on the back of his head.

At Fred’s clinic

“Say, Isaac?” said a woman in an old-fashioned nurse uniform.

“What is it, Miria?” Isaac Dian responded. He was wearing a white lab coat, but he really didn’t look like a doctor.

“Why are we dressed like doctors?”

“Well, because we’re assisting one. We have to look the part.”

This seemed to stir up more doubts in Miria Harvent. “But we can’t heal anything, you know?”

At that, Isaac puffed out his chest confidently. “It’s fine, Miria! I’ve caught colds before, but after I got some good, solid sleep, they cleared right up!”

“Oh! Me too! I got a bump once, but I put ice on it, and it got better!”

“There, you see?! We can heal ourselves, so you could say we’re terrific doctors!”

“You’re right! That’s amazing!”

Isaac and Miria were the same as ever. However, the man who was standing behind them looked rather harried. “I think you two should probably get your heads examined.”

“Huh?! Really?! But mine doesn’t hurt.”

“Yes, mine’s fine, too.”

They hadn’t picked up on the sarcasm and only blinked in confusion.

“Still, if you’re worried about us, you must be a real swell guy!”

“Yes, Nightingale! Hippocrates! Hideyo Noguchi!”

They’d begun thanking him instead, which only made him feel guilty.

“Huh? No, uh… Sorry,” he apologized on reflex.

“Why are you apologizing, Who?”

“Yes, why?”

“Nah… Just forget it.”

Sighing, the man they’d called Who went back to his work, thinking, We sure got some weird ones this time. They started wearing old uniforms all of a sudden. It’s weird that Mr. Fred let ’em do that. They don’t seem like bad people, though.

The three of them were in a clinic run by a doctor named Fred.

In addition to the clinic, Fred operated a welfare lodging house. The lodging house was short-staffed, so he’d asked his supporters if they could recommend any reliable assistants, and a restaurant proprietor named Molsa Martillo had sent this couple over.

“Well, well. If I recall, you two were…”

“Aaaah! It’s the magician from the train!”

“Yes, the gray one!”

“I see… This must be fate. If Mr. Martillo has recommended you, then I really mustn’t turn you away.”

Following that conversation, Fred had hired them on the spot.

The majority of the cargo that went to the lodging house was food, and due to the recession, workers occasionally just made off with it. As a result, the job required people whose backgrounds had been checked pretty carefully.

Well, they don’t look like the type who’d snatch groceries, Who, Fred’s assistant, thought.

He didn’t have an inkling that Isaac and Miria were burglars who’d had a very small part of America in an uproar until just a few years ago. He’d assumed they were good people who could teach the average child a thing or two about innocence.

“The doc’s going to take you over to the lodging house in just a little while. Until then, help me load up this cargo. While you’re out, Lebreau and I will hold the fort.”

Lebreau—just as he’d mentioned that name, the clinic’s front door opened and the man himself poked his head in. “Well, well. Dr. Fred isn’t here yet?”

“Hey, Lebreau. You showed up, huh?”

“Oh! Mr. Lebreau, was it?! We haven’t seen you in hours!”

“Yes, what a pleasant reunion!”

Lebreau Fermet Viralesque turned a brisk smile on the people who’d greeted him. “Good morning. Isaac and Miria, starting today, I look forward to working with you.”

He’d gotten to know Fred the other day, and since he had medical knowledge, he came to help out at the clinic from time to time as his assistant, like Who.

Who had begun as an amateur and learned on the job. Conversely, this man had had a vast amount of medical knowledge to begin with. He was also skilled with a scalpel, which made him very useful during surgeries.

“Well, now we just have to wait for the doc.”

Who had just finished packing groceries for the lodging house kitchen into boxes when a shadow fell across the clinic’s entrance.

The door glass had gone dark, so he assumed Fred had shown up, but the shadow was too big. A car had stopped in front of the entrance.

“Oh, come on. They can’t park there. They’ll block the door,” Who said with a scowl.

The clinic entrance was a simple gate, and the car was right up against its pillars. Visitors wouldn’t be able to get in without climbing through the vehicle or going over it.

“I’ll go ask them to move,” Lebreau said, already walking toward the entrance, but as soon as he opened the door, a man appeared out of nowhere and slugged him in the stomach.

“Ghk…?!”

Lebreau bent double, and the intruder kicked him over.

Then four men got out of the car and piled into the clinic. Including the first man, that made five. At first glance, they didn’t look unusual, but there was a unique hard edge to them that made Who guess they had underworld connections.

“Wh-who are you fellas?!” Who ran over to the floundering Lebreau, trying to help him up.

The men completely ignored his question and asked one of their own instead. “There’s only one jane, so Miria is obvious. Which one’s Isaac?”

“Huh? Me? N-never mind that. What do you think you’re doing to Lebreau?!” Isaac said, pointing to himself on reflex. Despite hearing his name so suddenly, he was more concerned about the sudden violence.

“We’re against violence!” Miria protested.

The men exchanged glances and started whispering among themselves.

(“…Looks like that’s him.”)

(“It don’t matter. We’re snatching everybody here anyway.”)

(“All of ’em?”)

(“Yeah, they said it’d work better if we pulled in a few people who had nothing to do with this.”)

They were conversing quietly, but they were so close that Who heard them loud and clear. He felt a chill run down his spine.

Hey, whoa, no, c’mon! What the hell is this?! What did I just get dragged into?!

That bus… Did they block the gate so we couldn’t make a break for it?! Did Isaac and Miria pull something sketchy?!

Several questions surfaced in his head, but Isaac and Miria didn’t seem to know anything about this, either. They were wary of the intruders, but they went on kicking up a fuss.

“Wh-what are you people?! Kidnappers?!”

“Yes, the kidnapping industry! ’Ndrangheta!”

“Too bad for you, though! Right now, we don’t have a dime!”

“You’ll end up working for free!”

The thugs didn’t respond. Impassively getting down to business, they reached into their jackets and took out leather bags packed with sand: blunt weapons commonly referred to as blackjacks or saps. They were obviously planning to knock out the entire group. One of the men hefted up his sap for a swing at Who’s temple.

“Wh-whoa, hold up a minute! Okay, okay! We’ll go with you quietly! Just don’t hurt us, all right?! Please?!” Who begged, sitting flat on the ground, but his plea fell unheard.

Silently, they raised their weapons.

Without a scrap of mercy or hesitation, they brought them down hard.

Who, Isaac, and Miria, and even the men—none of them noticed Lebreau curled up, hugging his stomach with his face turned away to hide his gloating smile.

Meanwhile The restaurant and bar Alveare

“Huh? The place seems kinda empty today.”

After ordering his men to clean up the casino, Firo had stopped by the restaurant to make a report to Molsa and Maiza. However, things were quieter than he would have expected.

Ronny had said he’d tell Molsa about the previous day’s incident, so Firo had thought Molsa might have some new orders for him today. He’d been a little nervous, and the uncommonly quiet restaurant was making his nerves worse.

“Oh, Firo. Annie hasn’t come in yet, either.”

“Huh, that’s unusual.”

As far as Firo knew, Annie had never been late or skipped work before.

Seina, the proprietress, seemed worried that she’d taken ill. Firo knew what Annie really was, though, and he was worried about something else.

Did she get some sort of Huey-related job?

Hilton was a group of women who all shared a mind with one of Huey’s daughters, Leeza Laforet. Their knowledge and wills had been completely absorbed into her, and their individual minds no longer existed.

Annie was one of those women. If she’d deviated from her normal routine, he had to guess it was because she was performing some sort of task on Huey’s orders.

It might have something to do with yesterday.

He did think that making connections willy-nilly might not be wise, but after all, the trouble with Melvi involved immortals. It wouldn’t be odd if they were connected somewhere.

Firo felt strangely uneasy, but for the moment, he sat down and waited for Maiza and Molsa to come in.

About five minutes later, the door opened. The newcomer was Kanshichirou Yaguruma, a high-level executive.

“Yaguruma, good morning!”

“Hey, Firo. Glad to see you’re looking well. You didn’t run into any trouble?”

“?” Perplexed, Firo hadn’t expected that from Yaguruma. “Trouble…? What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe it’s this lousy economy. The public seems to be on edge after that business with the airplanes yesterday. Some folks were saying, ‘We’re at war now’ and ‘It’s the end of the world.’ I even heard some women gossiping that Martians had attacked.”

“Oh…” Firo felt vaguely that the incident with the airplanes was linked to the immortals as well, so his feelings about this were complicated.

“I got jumped by some of those twitchy folks on my way here.”

“?!”

“Oh, they came at me from behind, swinging some weapon around. They probably thought they’d caught me by surprise, but I grabbed the fellow’s arm and threw him. The others got spooked and took to their heels.”

Yaguruma laughed, but to Firo, it was no laughing matter.

Right on the heels of the previous day, his superior had been attacked.

He hadn’t been naïve enough to think the enemy wouldn’t try anything until the day the Runoratas’ casino opened. Under these circumstances, he had to suspect there was a connection.

His premonition proved to be correct in the worst possible way.

The door opened again, and in walked several men who obviously weren’t on the right side of the law. That said, they also didn’t seem affiliated with the Martillos.

They all went up to Seina, who ran the restaurant. The first words out of their leader’s mouth were, “Say, is there a fella named Firo Prochainezo here?”

“What’s with you boys? What brought this on?” Seina raised an eyebrow.

The man sat down at the counter in an overly familiar way and went on asking questions. “We know this is where the Martillos hang out. If you hide him, you’re gonna regret it.”

“Hey, you need me for something?” Firo called from the end of the counter.

The new visitors glanced at one another before striding over to him.

“So you’re Firo, huh? You look like your photo… Now that I’ve got you in the flesh, you really are just like he said.”

“…You wanna tell me what you heard and the name of the guy who told you?”

“Agent Noah told us you had a girly little punk face.”

Firo scowled for two different reasons. Edward. That lousy bastard. So that means…these guys are from the BOI?

Edward Noah was on the side of the law, and Firo had never liked him. In any case, messing with him would cause trouble for the family, so Firo did his best to just steer clear whenever he could. Unfortunately, they tended to run into each other whenever there was an incident. The ties that bound them were the sort that both would have loved to shake off, but neither could.

“Well, you tell that bastard something from me. Tell him, ‘You be careful you don’t get your face beaten in one day. It’d be a real shame if nobody could tell if you were a woman yourself afterward.’”

He’d meant for the line to be witheringly sarcastic. However, the Bureau men exchanged glances.

“…Your warning’s a little late.”

“Huh?”

“This morning, Agent Noah got jumped and hurt bad by some thugs.”

“…He what?” This was a bolt from the blue. Firo’s eyes went wide, and he hauled the nearest man up by his shirtfront. “Hey, what’s this about?”

“According to the drifter who saw it happen, they jumped him this morning when he left his apartment building. Agent Noah was on the ground, and several men were whaling on him.”

“Sure, the guy’s an asshole, but… Did somebody have it in for him?”

“…If I were you, I wouldn’t be playing innocent.” The man glared at him.

Firo drew his eyebrows together. “What?”

“There was a hat the same color as yours at the scene.”

“What?! Hey, you’re not telling me you suspect me, right? Over that?!” Firo yelled, irritated and anxious that he might have stumbled into a trap—but the agent shook his head.

“No, we don’t think you’re the perp. Victor said so, too.”

“?”

“The hat had ‘You’re next’ written on it, and it had been cut in half. We think it was a message for you.”

Firo frowned, confused. “Hey… Whoa, wait! That can’t be right! A message for me…? It’s not even like Edward’s my pal; we’re enemies! Why’d they jump him?!”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” the agent told him. There was hatred for both Firo and the culprits in his eyes. “All we do know is that Agent Noah got dragged into your mess, scumbag. I’ve got absolutely no idea why they chose him when he’s your enemy.”

Their message delivered, the agents turned away from him. “Listen up, Firo Prochainezo. If you figure anything out, let us know ASAP. Don’t forget that, as far as the assistant director’s concerned, you’re just a pawn.”

“Maybe so, but remember I’m not your pawn.”

“…In that case, make sure you keep your head down.” After muttering one last comment, the agents left the restaurant. “Unless you’d like to take another naked stroll down Broadway over in Alcatraz?”

Even after they were gone, Firo kept glaring at the entrance.

“Good grief. If it was the same crew that attacked me. I should have nabbed at least one of ’em,” Yaguruma remarked.

Switching gears, Firo turned to Seina and asked in a serious tone, “Where’s Mr. Molsa today? …And Maiza?”

“…Now that you mention it, Maiza’s not here yet,” Seina said. “Mr. Molsa came in, same as always; he’s in the back now. I think Ronny’s shuffling papers at the office.”

Firo was relieved their boss was safe, but the fact that Maiza wasn’t there made his expression cloud over. “I’ll go check up on him.”

Yaguruma spoke up, admonishing him. “Firo, wait. What good will it do if you wander around out there yourself?”

“But I’m nervous…”

“You should go check on Annie first, then. Don’t worry about Maiza.”

“Huh? But why…?”

True, if Edward had been attacked because of his connection with him, then he should’ve been worrying about Annie, Isaac, and Miria, too. And yet, when he thought about what had happened the previous day—the man who’d been a dead ringer for Maiza’s kid brother—it made him fear that Maiza was the one most likely to get pulled into this mess.

Firo couldn’t keep his anxiety hidden, and Yaguruma tried to calm him down. “It’s fine, Firo. Yes, Maiza’s the contaiuolo, which means all he does is count money. On top of that, your knife skills are better than his now.

“But in combat, Maiza’s several times stronger than you. I guarantee it.”

Little Italy The stairs of Maiza’s apartment building

“Wha…?”

The startled cry came from the man who’d tried to bring the iron pipe down on Maiza’s back. He’d swung the weapon with all his might, but his target had simply vanished.

Of course, it wasn’t as if Maiza had evaporated like mist. Maiza had simply slipped into his blind spot.

“Beg pardon.”

Just as the assailant thought he’d heard his target’s voice from somewhere on his right, pain ran through his chin.

“Gwuh…!” he sputtered, swearing he saw a thick square bar of lumber being shoved straight through his face from one side to the other. For a moment, a visual of his torn-off jaw sailing away flashed through his mind, and then pain raced down his spinal cord—and before it even reached his fingertips, his rattled brain shut down.

As a matter of fact, his jaw had been dislocated, but it hadn’t been torn off or flung across the hall, and he hadn’t been stabbed by anything. It was the overwhelming impact of the high-speed palm strike that had put the image in his head.

The man crumpled from the knees, like a marionette with cut strings.

Without sparing him a glance, Maiza walked into the second-floor hallway. His steps were calm and measured.

The two men who were waiting there glared back at him, startled and wide-eyed. They hadn’t expected him to emerge completely unscathed.

Are they amateurs? Maiza wondered, noticing they hadn’t planned for unexpected contingencies. Regardless, carelessness led to mistakes. He wasn’t overconfident enough to assume his own victory.

As Maiza tried to puzzle out who his opponents were, one of the men took a roscoe from his jacket.

“…Don’t move.”

Obediently, Maiza stopped in his tracks and slowly raised his hands. “Calm yourselves, please. I’m unarmed, and I don’t intend to resist.”

“……”

“Didn’t the first fellow attack me with a blunt instrument because gunshots would attract attention you couldn’t afford? Since we have the chance, let’s resolve this peacefully,” Maiza proposed.

The remaining men turned to each other. After a short pause, the man with the gun tightened his grip on it. “Face the other way, then lie down on the floor.”

“All right.” Slowly, Maiza turned his back to the men and got on his knees.

The attackers exchanged nods. Then, as Maiza set his hands on the floor, the man without a gun walked over to him, took out a blackjack weapon from his jacket, and raised it high. He took another step forward in the narrow hall.

The gunman realized they’d made an awful blunder. Now that the second man had stepped forward, he was blocking his line of fire. His partner was inadvertently obscuring their target, and he had a really nasty feeling about what was going to happen. Although he understood that, he didn’t know what he should do, and that hesitation blunted his thoughts at a crucial time.

“Gah…!”

By the time he heard his companion scream, it was too late. A sharp pain ran through his right hand. He looked over to see something shocking…

His trigger finger was lying on the hallway floor like a discarded cigar butt.

A few seconds earlier, as Maiza had lowered himself to the ground, he’d propelled himself back to his feet using only the muscles in his arms and kicked the closest man in the stomach. Using his groaning enemy’s body as a shield, he’d pushed him forward. At the same time, he’d drawn his knife, then reached out from behind his human shield and severed the finger of the man with the gun.

“Ghk…!”

When Maiza watched the finger fall and heard the resulting scream from the gunman, the contaiuolo struck again. He slashed at the man’s hand a second time with his bloody knife, making him drop the gun.

“GwaaAAAAaaah?!”

Once Maiza confirmed the gun wasn’t in his opponent’s hand anymore, he caught the ear of his shield and yanked it to the side.

“Eep?!”

With an ugly crunching noise, the ear began to tear away from the man’s face.

As if his instinct compelled him not to let his ear be severed, the man’s whole body toppled over in that direction. Maiza swept his feet out from under him, sending him to the floor, then promptly stepped on his throat.

“…! ……?!?!  !”

Maiza heard the crushing of the man’s Adam’s apple and blood bubble between his lips as he writhed on the floor.

Without thinking, the remaining attacker bent over, trying to retrieve his gun with his left hand. Maiza promptly sent his knee squarely in the man’s face.

“Bwugk!” he cried as his back arched. Blood spurted from his broken nose.

However, Maiza didn’t ease up; he kicked the man into the wall, back first. The impact knocked all the air out of his lungs.

“Gah…!” The man gave a bloody groan, and the next thing he knew, the blade of a knife was resting against his chin.

“All right. Let’s have a peaceful little chat,” Maiza said.

Two men lay unconscious, their eyes rolled back, one on the landing and the other in the hall. The remaining man was bleeding heavily from his mouth and nose, with a knife pressed to his throat.

Then there was the finger that lay at Maiza’s feet.

Peaceful, indeed. What struck the attacker as scarier than anything was the serenity in Maiza’s voice after all that bloodshed. Even the smile on his face was the wry sort a parent might wear when watching their mischievous child. His sharp eyes were watching calmly.

The assailant thought back on when they had held Maiza at gunpoint and then when Maiza had cut off his finger. He might have had that same expression then.

Through his pain, the man felt a chill work its way down his spine.

“Now, then. Why did you three attack…?” Maiza began. “No, that’s too roundabout, isn’t it?”

“…?”

How was getting the answer to a direct question roundabout? That was concerning, but fear had paralyzed him, and he couldn’t give too much thought to what it meant.

“Which side do you belong to?” Maiza asked.

“…???”

“By ‘which,’ I mean, did you attack me because of my connections to the immortals, or was it for something else?”

“……—!”

At that, the man’s face changed color slightly. However, he still didn’t speak. He trembled, and his eyes darted around, unsure of where to look.

“Answers don’t come more foolish than silence, you know. If you stay silent and hostile, I’ll have to conclude…” Maiza’s placid expression was at odds with his behavior. With the knife still held against one of the man’s vital spots, he bent down and dexterously retrieved the index finger from the hall floor. “…that you are picking a fight, not with me as an individual but with the Martillo Family.”

Maiza locked eyes with him, and in that instant, an even more powerful chill struck the attacker’s spine: The face of the man who was torturing him was perfectly still.

It wasn’t twisted with hatred or dominated by sadistic desires. Only an endlessly deep, cold emotion seeped out of his half-open eyes.

“……” The man’s lips and knees trembled, but even then, he didn’t identify himself.

Maiza tossed the severed finger toward him. There was a flash of light, and the knife pinned the finger to the wall next to the man’s face.

Now cut in two, the finger fell, but Maiza caught the pieces in his free hand before they hit the floor. This would have been a perfect opportunity for the attacker to make a run for it, but because of the blow to his back, his body wasn’t responsive enough.

Maiza held the two pieces in front of the man’s eyes and spoke, his expression unchanged: “I’m going to shove this finger in deep enough that they won’t be able to extract it without surgery. Which would you prefer: your nose or your ear?”

“H-huh?” The attacker didn’t understand. The bleeding from his nose hadn’t stopped.

Maiza went on impassively. “If you can’t choose, let’s make it your eyes.” He brushed the man’s eyelashes with the severed finger.

“WaaaAAAaaaaAAAh! Aaagh, no! I dunnoooooo! I just—! I’m just following orders…!” the man screamed, shaking his head from side to side like a spring-loaded doll.

“From whom?” Maiza asked calmly.

The man’s mouth flapped futilely as he tried to give some sort of answer. “Wha—…? Duh…duh-d-d— D-d-d-d-d-d-duh-d— L-lo-ra— Ra-ruh-ruh— AaaaAauAAaah…” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out.

“Drat. I must have frightened him too much,” Maiza muttered. Then he heaved a sigh. “I just can’t seem to do it the way the Gandors’ Tick does…”

With no other options, Maiza decided to wait until they woke up. However, he was traveling on foot, and he really couldn’t walk through town carrying an unconscious man.

I’ll put one in my room for now, then.

As he was pondering which of the unconscious men seemed likely to know the most about the situation, he heard a soft clack from a corner of the hall.

“?”

When he turned around, a small tube was lying near the border of the hall and the landing, emitting billows of thick smoke.

“What’s that?!”

Maiza leaped back, guessing that it might explode. However, instead of an explosion, it spit out an even larger cloud of smoke. On top of that, multiple sets of footsteps echoed from the stairs.

“!”

Reinforcements, hmm?

If they were planning to charge into this smoke, should he assume they had a way to move even when visibility was bad? He was wary of this, and he also considered the possibility the smoke was poisonous gas. He backed away, keeping out of the smoke screen, and hid around a corner of the hall.

In the end, nobody struck at him from inside the cloud.

And when the smoke cleared several minutes later, there was nothing in the hall but bloodstains and the pieces of finger. The voices of rubberneckers echoed up from the floor below.

Maiza had thought those footsteps had belonged to reinforcements, but they hadn’t been coming to attack him. They’d only retrieved their unconscious comrades.

Realizing this, he sighed heavily. He was frustrated with himself for not taking one of them outside the smoke screen with him when he retreated.

“I really can’t talk like an expert in front of Firo, can I…?”

Fred’s clinic

“Hiyaaaaah!”

Just before the sap connected with Who’s back, Isaac threw himself between them.

He’d probably been planning to shield Who and Lebreau by catching the blow on his own back, but he was a moment too late, and the hard leather weapon walloped his wrist.

“Yagh?!”

His momentum pitched him to the floor, and he rolled around, shrieking.

“Waaaaargh?! What the…? Ow! Ow! Seriously, that hurt! What the heck is that thing?!”

Isaac flopped around, cradling his stinging, numbed right hand, and Miria screamed.

“Aaaaaaah, Isaaaaaac!”

However, the attackers’ reaction to that fragile shriek was merciless. “It’ll be bad news if they hear her outside. Get the doll first.”

“Right.” Without hesitating, another man took the same type of weapon his companion had used out of his jacket and started toward Miria.

“H-hey! Even if you’re the only one who makes it, get out of here! Run!” Who yelled in a hurry. No matter how he thought about it, though, she wouldn’t be able to escape. Even if Miria knew where the back door was, they’d probably catch her before she got to it. Maybe he could keep their enemies pinned down while she ran outside and called for help; Who scrambled to his feet.

Another man loomed behind him with a bludgeon.

As the back of Who’s head was about to take a vicious blow—

—the shrill sound of a collision pierced their eardrums.

It was nothing like the noise of leather striking flesh. It was the sharp screech of metal against metal.

“?!”

Nobody in the room could figure out what was making that noise, but it seemed to be coming from outside the clinic, directly in front of the main door.

The noise didn’t stop after just one time. It rang out at regular intervals—for a second time, then a third—and the intervals between the sounds gradually grew shorter.

“What’s that…?”

The attacker who was closest to the door opened it suspiciously, and saw a man in blue coveralls swinging around a giant wrench and wrecking the car they’d used to hide the entrance. The heap had already been partially dismantled, and components littered the road.

“Wha…?! H-hey, you! What the hell?!”

This was weirder than anything the men could have imagined; they were suddenly much less confident, and a lot more pissed off. But even when they started yelling, the man in the coveralls didn’t apologize or shrink back in fear.

“Let me tell you a real sad, sad story…,” the man in the coveralls said, twirling his wrench.

“Huh…?”

“My man Ladd is eating breakfast in that restaurant over there. He told me, ‘Go see if the clinic’s open yet,’ so I had my orders, but my way was blocked by a fateful ordeal… There was a car parked right in front of the clinic, and I couldn’t see what was going on inside.”

Smacking the wrench into his left palm, the man in the coveralls kept going.

“But, see, if I’d climbed over some total stranger’s car with my muddy boots, it wouldn’t just be on me; they’d think Ladd and my pals had no class, either… I wasn’t strong enough to pick up the car and carry it, though, and I didn’t have the key to move it. Oh, what could I do to overcome this ordeal imposed on me by God?! What lay beyond this trial?! That’s right, the clinic!”

The man kept on shouting incomprehensibly, and the attackers shared frowns with one another.

One person understood, though. When Who heard the newcomer’s voice and unique phrasing, his eyes widened. “Uh… I’m pretty sure that’s…Ladd’s underling… Is that Graham?”

And actually, did he say something about Ladd just now?

As Who watched him dubiously, Graham Specter looked up at the building and, with a sudden burst of energy, pointed his wrench sharply at the clinic entrance. “Yes, it’s the clinic! Say a guy who’s gonna save the world someday has a heart attack, and he can’t get in because this boiler is in the way! This bus is a threat to all humanity and life! What do I have to do to save the world? If I get this heap out of the way, the world will be saved! In other words! I’m the one who’s going to save the world! And right now, I can’t get into the clinic! That proves that this car is indeed the enemy of the world!”

Continuing his gibberish, Graham hooked the enormous wrench onto the front of the car and skillfully removed the bumper.

“Fun… Let me tell you a fun story! If I’m the savior of the world, and this car is the world’s enemy, then I can do whatever I want to it without repercussions!”

Oh yeah, now I remember. This guy is an idiot, Who thought, quirking an eyebrow. He took the chance to help Lebreau up and move him to a corner of the room, away from the attackers.

Meanwhile, Graham went on with his huge, self-contained argument.

“In that case, this is easy. If I can’t pick the bus up, I can just break it down into its component parts and carry those! Then, if I put them together again over there, the car will be saved, too… True, this heap is the enemy of the world, but it’s also part of the world. Thus, as the world’s savior, I decided I should save its enemy, the car, as well. Is that clear?!”

He threw his wrench into the air for no reason, then caught it with a thwap, pointing it at the attackers.

The situation was far too surreal, and the men were confused for a little while, but Isaac and Miria broke the stunned silence.

“This is big, Miria! Apparently, that guy is the savior of the world!”

“Do you think he’ll save us, too?!”

“Let’s hope we’re part of the world!”

“What if he thinks we’re Martians…?”

When the attackers heard Isaac’s and Miria’s enthusiasm from behind them, they came to their senses. Isaac had apparently recovered from the pain in his hand, and he hugged Miria close to protect her from them.

The group’s leader screamed at his men, his face beet red. “Somebody go shut up that imbecile in front of the car! We’re drawing a crowd!”

Thanks to the air raid the previous evening, there were already more police on the streets than usual. If the noise didn’t quieten down soon, it wouldn’t be long before the cops came running.

After he’d watched two of his men climb over the car and head for the man with the wrench, the attacker said, “We’ll ditch the bus. Scram out the back door or a window; we’ll just take Isaac and Miria and run.” Then he glared at Who and Lebreau. “Lousy luck, fellas. We’re getting rid of you two here.”

“What the hell?! That ain’t right!” Who protested.

The leader ignored him, taking a knife out of his jacket.

However, the advantage he’d won through violence ended right there.

It was wiped out by another, even more unfair form of violence that appeared out of nowhere.

As the knife wielder walked toward Who, a loud crash and screams rang out behind him. Once he realized the screams belonged to his goons, he whipped around.

One of the men had somehow been hoisted up on top of the car. He’d collapsed, and his limbs were bent in all the wrong directions.

The other lay beside the vehicle, with a sizable dent in the neighborhood of his nose and front teeth.

“Theeere we go!”

One of the car’s remaining doors came off with a sharp crunch, and a man climbed through the half-demolished vehicle, stepping inside the gate. He cracked his neck, then turned his eyes to the scene inside the clinic.

He saw three remaining assailants—one of whom was holding somebody familiar at knifepoint.

“Heya, Who. You busy?” he called.

When Who heard that voice, his eyes went from the knife to the door. As he registered the man who stood there, his expression shifted into a complicated mix of 50 percent shock, 40 percent worry, and 10 percent relief.

“L…Ladd! If it ain’t Ladd!”

“Looks like you’re still getting dragged into trouble, huh.”

“Wha—?! What are you doing here…?”

“Well, your ‘Closed’ sign was out yesterday, so I sent Graham over to take a look-see, and then I heard bangs and clangs all the way over at the restaurant where I was. That’s the sound he makes when he wrecks cars, so I figured there was a party goin’ on and came running over. And I was right.” Ladd shrugged.

Who thought, What the heck is he doing in New York?! Where’s he been all this time?! and sundry other things, but then he remembered the knife was still right in front of him. He backed away slowly so as not to provoke the guy who held it.

“What’s with you? You wanna die, pal?” said the man with the knife, but cold sweat had broken out on his face.

Ignoring him, Ladd took a closer look around the room. Then he saw somebody unexpected, and his eyes went wide. “Huh…? Hmm? Hey. Isaac? Don’t tell me that’s Isaac?”

“Huh? …Aah! Ladd! It’s Ladd!”

Seeing that they were both startled, Who muttered, “What, you know each other?”

Ladd chuckled at the quiet comment. He didn’t seem to care about the guy with the knife anymore as he filled Who in.

“Well, we did a little time together at Alcatraz.”

“A…Alcatraz?” Who asked, surprised.

What’s he talking about? Alcatraz? As in the prison? Ladd’s one thing, but there’s no way Isaac was in a place like that.

Who decided it was either a mistake or some sort of code word. However, he wasn’t bold enough to pursue the question with a knife right in front of him.

Meanwhile, the goon holding that knife had gotten scared. Did he say Alcatraz? he thought.

Of his two companions who were on the ground outside, this guy had apparently taken out one of them. He could tell that much, but he didn’t know who the guy was, apart from the fact that he was obviously dangerous.

If that guy had spent time in Alcatraz, there was a good possibility he was a criminal—and highly dangerous. Maybe he belonged to a big-time mafia syndicate. If that was the case, tangling with him wouldn’t bring about anything good.

On that thought, the guy slipped the knife back into his coat and slowly put some space between himself and the other people around him.

“Huh? What gives, fella? You’re at a party, and you’re putting your piece away?” Ladd complained, still smiling.

In contrast, Who breathed a sigh of relief. “I—I’m glad you changed your mind. I dunno what you’re after, but let’s talk it out first, all right?”

However, the attackers ignored Who. Instead, they exchanged wordless glances, signaling one another.

Ladd didn’t like this. He stepped in, preparing to take out the remaining three, but then the man who’d stowed away his knife took out a grenade-like object from his jacket instead.

He pulled the pin and dropped it on the floor.

A smoke screen billowed out of it with abnormal force, and white darkness filled the clinic almost all the way to the gate.

When the smoke cleared, the attackers had vanished. Even the two Graham and Ladd had KO’d were gone.

“Huh. Damn. They ran off.” Ladd didn’t sound particularly surprised or frustrated by this. He glanced around. “Well, they looked boring anyway.”

“A-are we…saved?” Who timidly scanned the area, but his head was still all muddled. “Hey, Ladd, what are you doing in town?”

But Ladd was too busy talking to Isaac. “Hey there! It’s been forever and a half, huh, Isaac! I knew you and Firo were pals, but who’d have figured I’d run into you when I came looking for Who!”

“Oh, we just met Who yesterday ourselves.”

“Say, Isaac? Is this man your friend?” Who asked, trying to cut in.

Ladd ignored him. “Oh, is this sweet little lady your girl Miria?”

They were having a nice, friendly chat, and Who couldn’t get a word in. From behind, Lebreau set a hand on his shoulder.

“They seem to know each other. We shouldn’t disturb them. I’ll go check the back door and the patients in the clinic.”

“Huh? Oh, right. Be careful. Those guys might still be hanging around.”

“Yes. If it comes to that, I’ll scream very loudly.” Lebreau left the clinic lobby, disappearing down an inner corridor.

Who listened both to Isaac and the others talking and to Graham continuing to demolish the car outside.

Even though he couldn’t have been more confused, he quietly shook his head before muttering to himself with a wry smile, trying to breathe out the nasty chill welling up inside him.

“What the heck is going on in this city…?”

Somewhere in New York A room in a large hospital

At this hour, the sun wasn’t quite up yet.

The single-occupant hospital room was exclusively for VIPs, but the man who lay on the bed was just a rank-and-file agent. The Bureau of Investigation had cut a deal with the hospital and had him placed in this room so they could talk about the top secret aspects of their inquiry in there.

“…I’m very sorry, Assistant Director Talbot.”

The man in bed, Agent Edward Noah, had a bandaged face.

“Don’t push yourself,” Victor Talbot said, having just appeared in the doorway.

“No, I can talk without trouble. Breathing deeply or coughing makes my ribs ache, though.”

“Then don’t talk yourself hoarse, at least.”

No doubt Edward was wrapped in bandages under the covers as well. He was black-and-blue all over, with multiple broken bones. Victor had heard it was going to take him at least six months to heal.

They said he hadn’t even been conscious up until just twenty minutes ago.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have been in any shape for visitors yet. However, Edward himself had requested this visit, and so Victor had come running over from the Bureau’s New York investigation headquarters.

“Whaddaya think? Wishin’ you’d drunk that elixir of immortality you seized from Szilard’s boys?”

“Of course not.” Edward had to be in terrible pain, but he smiled and answered easily. “If I were an immortal, I wouldn’t be able to get time off this way. Aren’t you the one who’s jealous here, Assistant Director?”

“……Could be.” Victor gazed out the window at the view.

Since Edward couldn’t see his expression, he couldn’t tell whether that had been a perfunctory response or whether he’d really meant it. After a short silence, he brought up the main topic. “Assistant Director… About the guys who jumped me…”

“Sorry. We’ve got an eyewitness report, but we haven’t nabbed ’em yet,” Victor said, lowering his gaze. Then he told Edward as much as he was able to: that a hat like Firo Prochainezo’s had been found at the scene, as well as that it hadn’t been evidence that Firo was the culprit but a warning aimed at him.

When he heard that, Edward smiled wryly. “Me? Of all people? He and I can’t stand each other.”

“Yeah, apparently the messenger was a complete dolt.”

After that light exchange, Victor’s tone went cold. “Rest easy. I’ll make sure those screwballs swing for this.”

“You aren’t a judge. You don’t have the authority for that, Assistant Director Talbot.”

“Nobody was asking for sarcasm there.”

His boss looked away, embarrassed, and this time Edward’s face turned serious. He took a different angle. “…Have there been any developments with regard to the aircraft fire last night?”

“Nope. If I’d known this was gonna happen, I would have made you pull an all-nighter instead of telling you to get some rest.”

As a matter of fact, most of Victor’s men had worked all night, investigating that incident. However, he’d been planning to send Edward and a few others all around the port before this afternoon, so he’d ordered them to nap for a few hours. Since the investigation headquarters was cluttered and Edward lived nearby, he’d sent him back home. Now, that was a blunder he deeply regretted.

“You think Prochainezo’s involved in that incident, too?”

“If it’s okay to let my instincts do the talking, then yes, probably.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too. Actually, with immortals—well, with Huey being here in town, he may end up involved whether he wants to be or not. Not as many of us around these days, thanks to old Szilard.”

Victor’s remark sounded rather lonely.

“Assistant Director, every so often, it sounds as though you respect Szilard Quates.”

“……”

“If it’s hard to talk about, you don’t have to.”

“No… Frankly, back when Szilard started eating us on the boat, it was a shock, but…a part of me wasn’t surprised at all. I didn’t know anybody as greedy as that old guy. Knowledge, money, power—he took everything he could get.”

Even Victor didn’t seem to know how to arrange his face while he talked about this. He stared out the window, shifting through various expressions, smiling, then tensing. He probably thought he was hiding it, but the slightly grimy glass reflected him dimly, and Edward could see everything.

He didn’t point this out, though. He just kept listening to what his boss said.

“The thing is, I appreciate that boundless greed of his. Respect it, too. I’ve got a habit of giving up on my own desires, see. Of course, I know the old guy wasn’t right, not in the least. His greed was true to basic human instinct, and the only things that could stop it were products of human intelligence: the law and its organizations… Or that was what I figured anyway. Who’d have thought the old guy would get eaten by a young gangster punk…”

“It’s the same thing. If Firo gets greedy, we’ll deal with him. There’s no difference.”

“Dedicated, ain’cha.” Victor smiled faintly, but his face was still turned toward the window, and he didn’t let his subordinate see.

His boss’s very human behavior almost elicited a sad smile from Edward, but he realized he hadn’t finished stating his opinion, so he got back to being serious. “The guys who jumped me… Who do you think they were?”

“We’re short on intel, but…probably Huey’s henchmen from Larva or Time, or maybe Runorata flunkies; there are rumors he’s teamed up with the syndicate. Or, as a dark horse, they could have been Senator Beriam’s pet thugs.”

Arbitrary assumptions weren’t great, but Victor’s men had thought these angles were likely, so they were investigating along those lines. However, since they couldn’t think of a reason any of those factions would have a personal grudge against Firo, they hadn’t made much headway.

“We checked into other people who might have a beef with the punk, but Szilard’s former underlings must be pretty close to tapped out. I bet they think Maiza’s the one who ate Szilard. I hear he also worked some of the local punks over real good. That Dallas kid was always saying he’d slaughter Firo one of these days.”

“Dallas… Oh, he’s just a thug; he’s not worth bothering with. Although, I haven’t seen him since I moved to my current post.”

“So there’s no way he would attack an agent like you, huh.”

Nodding in agreement, Edward gave his own theory. “I only saw them in the moment after I fell, before I blacked out, but their shoes looked oddly expensive. It didn’t seem as if they’d just hired local muscle.”

“Yeah, these aren’t your average goons. The guy who saw them run off said they were awfully well-dressed. That’s where the theory about Beriam’s pet thugs came from.”

Edward paused to think. “This is just a hunch, but…”

“What?”

“The day before yesterday, we drew up a list of related organizations at that meeting, remember? I have a feeling the bunch who attacked me didn’t belong to any of them.”

“…Mind if I ask why?” Victor didn’t tell him he was overthinking things. Instead, he prompted him to go on.

“It really is only a hunch, but… Their methods didn’t seem to match the ones used by any of those groups. What would you call it…? Pointless provocation? Since we haven’t met directly, I can’t say for certain, but I didn’t sense any of the aggressive weirdness Ladd Russo and the members of Lamia would have. The Nebula staff seems like the closest match, but something feels wrong about drawing that conclusion.”

A dark shadow came into Edward’s eyes. His tone was grave, filled with self-loathing over having abandoned the front line at a time like this.

“It’s possible the roots of this incident go deeper than we’re assuming.”