Baccano! - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr3

PROLOGUE III

ASSASSIN

ChicagoNebula headquartersBasement

It was an odd room, though it might have been more accurate to call it a facility of some sort.

Score upon score of books and documents lined the walls, were strewn messily across several wooden work desks—and a few were even scattered across the floor.

Microscopes and strange implements sat here and there among the documents, and the room felt like a combined laboratory and reference room.

Were that all it was, the place could easily have been mistaken for an abandoned building, but several people were bustling around inside, performing trivial tasks, jotting things down on the documents, and answering the ringing telephones.

“Aaaaaaaah, ummm… What’ll I do, what’ll I do…?”

The words had come from a bespectacled woman. As she dashed around, she tripped on a book that had been lying near her feet, and she took a spectacular tumble.

“Yeek!”

Documents flew everywhere. Her colleagues looked disgusted.

As this scene played out, like something from a university laboratory—

—in a corner of the room, on the other side of a thin dividing wall, the mood was completely different.

A young man in a suit sat in a chair.

He was resting his clasped hands on the desk, and his gaze was focused on a corner of the room, where a hanging curtain cast deep shadows.

A figure stood there, breathing quietly, erasing its presence in the gloom.

It wasn’t even possible to make out the figure’s features clearly, and the man in the suit sighed as he spoke to it.

“I don’t think there’s any real need to hide your face here. Is the ambience really so important?”

However, the figure stayed silent, holding absolutely still.

Seeing this, the man in the suit sighed again. Then, as if he’d given up, he broached the subject of work.

“Regarding our request today… While it is an important job, it is simultaneously one that would ordinarily be impossible. However, for that very reason, we believe there is value in requesting it.”

The shadowy figure’s only response to the man in the suit was more silence.

Even so, the man decided that his audience was listening, and he continued.

“Well… About the target’s name…”

“……”

“It’s Huey Laforet.”

As before, the shape in the shadows showed no reaction.

“He’s inside the notorious Alcatraz prison, and in a rather unique spot, on top of that. In addition, well… Frankly, he doesn’t die.”

At the man’s words, the expression of the figure in the shadows contorted slightly.

However, the man in the suit didn’t let that bother him. He kept speaking in a matter-of-fact voice.

“…I’m sure you understand that isn’t a joke. Since you’ve worked with this division for a long time, you’ve seen several experimental cases, haven’t you?”

Silently, with a glance, the shadow prompted the man in the suit to continue.

“Thanks. Well, the thing is…this man is different from those guinea pigs. He’s a true immortal, and he’s been alive for more than two hundred years. He’s also a rather enigmatic fellow: He controls hordes of hand-raised followers, and he’s currently issuing a variety of orders from jail.”

“……”

“Yes, well, we do have a reason for sending you after someone who doesn’t die. But no, we aren’t asking you to dispose of him, not in this case.”

Just as he’d finished his roundabout preamble and was about to get to the heart of the matter—

“Excuse me, I’ve brought tea… Eep?!”

—a woman in a white lab coat who’d carried in a tea set struck her little finger on the edge of the dividing wall, shrieked, and fell over dramatically, throwing tea and dishes into the air.

“?!”

“!”

The man in the suit and the figure in the shadows registered the situation at the exact same moment—and thus, the suited man took a direct strike to the temple from the corner of the flying tea tray while the figure in the shadows swiftly retreated out of range of the incoming hot water.

“Gwaaaaagh!”

“Aaah! I—I…I-I’m sorry! Are you all right?”

Eyes tearing up, the woman in the lab coat apologized, bowing repeatedly.

Above the lab coat, she wore black-rimmed glasses and a distracted expression, and long bangs hung loosely over her forehead. In contrast, the white coat encased a figure whose curves were rather too extreme, the sort that should have earned her the label of “model” or—in a different era—“Playmate.”

Every time she bowed her head, her bosom—which was emphasized in spite of her plain clothing—came into view, and the sight would have probably improved the mood of an ordinary man, but…

…the man in the suit sent a nasty glare at the woman in the lab coat. Then, resuming his seat as though nothing had happened, he spoke to the figure in the shadows.

“…Ask her about the rest.”

“Hmm? The rest of what?”

The curious question had come from the woman who’d spilled the tea.

Showing clear irritation at her attitude—

“Of the request you spoke about this morning, Director Renee!”

—her subordinate’s voice was prickly, and the woman clapped her hands lightly in realization.

Although you never would have guessed it from her appearance, the woman—Renee Parmedes Branvillier—was apparently in charge of the room. She turned to face the shadowy figure and, recognizing it, bowed respectfully.

“My! Imagine that! I haven’t seen you in ages! If only you’d said something, I would have made sure we had some nicer sweets to offer you!”

The woman in the lab coat had suddenly begun to speak like some sort of noblewoman, and her subordinate, the man in the suit, completely lost the composure he’d had up to that point. He shouted, and the temple that had been struck by the tea tray twitched.

“You’re the one who said to call him this morning!”

“Eek! I-I’m sorry. I just didn’t think he’d be here so soon…”

The scientist shrank into herself, the man in the suit heaved a sigh, and the shadowy figure stayed silent.

Renee checked to make sure her subordinate was finished reprimanding her, then raised her head and spoke to him in an easygoing tone.

“Um, how much have you told him?”

“That we want him to go to Alcatraz and do something about Huey.”

The man in the suit replied sullenly, and Renee clapped her hands again, then addressed the shadow.

“Oh, I see! Um, yes, well! What I’d like you to do is go to Huey Laforet, and…”

In a carefree, honest voice, without the slightest change in attitude…

…the woman murmured:

“Gouge out one of his eyes for me!”

“All right, thank you for your help, Mr. Felix Walken!”

In an attempt to restrain Renee, who was waving and seeing the visitor off, the man in the suit spoke sharply.

“Don’t call his name out loud!”

“Aaaaaaah, I-I’m sorry!”

The bespectacled woman hastily covered her mouth. In response, the shadow sighed once—then finally managed to open its heavy, reluctant lips.

“Don’t make me repeat myself—I sold that name to someone else a long time ago.”

That was all the figure said. Then it started briskly down the corridor, as if it wasn’t interested.

“Oh my, my, that’s right, you’re so right! I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Hitman!”

“Don’t say his occupation out loud!”

“Eep?! I-I’m sorry!”

Although this was the ninth job the figure had taken from these people, he’d never asked what sort of work was being conducted in that paper-filled space.

The Nebula Corporation was one of America’s leading conglomerates, and its operations were diversified. What was the purpose of Renee’s division, and why was the room located in an isolated area of the building? An ordinary person would have been curious about these things, but the shadow asked no questions.

Today as well, with the lady researcher and company kicking up the usual ruckus behind him, the shadow didn’t ask any questions—he simply, quietly, read Renee.

Renee was certainly not subjectively evil.

She didn’t have the faintest idea that she was bad, but viewed objectively, she was an undeniable villain.

Of course, there probably weren’t many people who thought I am evil! while they did evil deeds, but hers was a particularly unique case.

She was a perfectly innocent person, the shadow decided.

A being who could strike others into the depths of hell without any malice whatsoever.

Once, he’d happened to walk in on her while she was conducting human experimentation.

When he asked where she’d kidnapped her subject from, she’d responded immediately:

“Oh, no, no, I didn’t kidnap her!”

As she injected something into the little girl’s arm with no hesitation—

“I bought her!”

—her smile hadn’t even faltered.

The white-coated “researcher” merely said what was in front of her, with no hesitation, confusion, or doubt.

Hearing her voice at his back…

The man she’d called Felix disappeared into the depths of the corridor, and there were no doubts in his expression, either.

It was as if the lunacy he’d just felt in this world was common sense.