Baccano! - Volume 9 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

MISFITS OUTSIDE THE CITY

The Russo mansion Evening

“And…? How does the vice president of a New York newspaper and his apprentice journalist know those brats?” Placido Russo asked solemnly.

The room’s walls were lined with old-fashioned antiques. They weren’t chintzy trinkets or ostentatiously luxurious; they simply displayed their owner’s power by being there.

The atmosphere of money and desire coiling in here might have made even someone with a clear conscience shrink down involuntarily.

However, the man currently facing the owner of this room responded to his questions calmly, with no sign of nerves.

“Hmm… The fact of the matter is that we merely met in passing today. From the look of the situation, though, I doubt that answer will satisfy you.”

The vice president’s monocle gleamed as he spoke, and he glanced at Carol beside him.

The girl’s camera had been confiscated, and she was shivering hard and holding back tears. Although no one had asked her any questions, she seemed ready to tell them anything, right down to the embarrassing things her parents had said in their sleep.

When he looked farther back, he saw Carol’s camera sitting on a table. The man with the scarred cheek who’d brought them here stood beside it.

Once the vice president had pieced together the situation in his mind, he spoke without letting himself be cowed.

“If you contact our company in New York, I believe you will be able to confirm our identities. If you are searching for the pair who joined us for lunch, and you initiate an official transaction with us in our secondary capacity as an information brokerage, we can supply you with information.”

“Information brokerage? Did you say ‘information brokerage’?”

The term sounded like it belonged in a stage play, and in spite of himself, Placido chuckled at its sudden appearance here.

“Ha! Did you hear that, Krieck? He says he’s an information broker, in this day and age! That’s a new one on me!”

“His little predicament must have spooked him. Made his head go funny.”

When the conversation turned to him, Krieck—the man with the scarred cheek—walked over to the vice president, smiling in mild disgust.

“Hey, newshound. Don’t joke around too much, all right? If you’re in the newspaper business, I bet you do know a thing or two, and you’re probably real proud of your book learning compared to us thugs, but… Do you actually think the info from some no-name newspaper like yours is enough to deal with us?”

He sounded casual enough, but the force his voice exuded was extraordinarily heavy.

If the vice president cracked an ill-considered joke at this point, he shouldn’t be surprised to find a fist, a knife, or even a bullet coming his way.

The atmosphere was almost palpable, but the vice president bore it and gazed back at Krieck coldly. He showed no sign of distress, either in his expression or his posture.

“…”

Maybe the sharp light in those eyes intimidated him, because Krieck clammed up for a bit.

When he was sure the other man had fallen silent, the vice president continued speaking, calmly and at his own speed, this time with the intent of shutting up Placido, the most powerful person in the room.

“True, what we know may be limited. For example, the fact that the white suit worn by your nephew, Mr. Ladd Russo, during his arrest for his involvement in the Flying Pussyfoot incident on the final day of 1931, originally belonged to you.”

“…!”

Placido caught his breath involuntarily at the abrupt revelation.

Even when he saw this, the vice president didn’t ease up. He continued with a merciless torrent of information about his buried past.

“It appears that, since the name embroidered on the lining of that suit differed from Ladd’s, it nearly became the subject of a police investigation. If you had given it to him, it would imply you were possibly aware of his plans to rob that train.”

“Why, you… What are you?”

Placido was no longer smiling.

He’d thought he was doing the threatening, but now he was the one covered in sweat.

When he realized that fact, he glared at the vice president with eyes that were clearly wary.

For his part, the vice president gave a deferential bow, responding courteously to the question.

“As I mentioned earlier, my name is Gustav St. Germain. I serve as the vice president of the DD newspaper, and I am a humble information broker. I have just been intolerably rude to you. However, I determined that, had I not been so, I would have been unable to impart an accurate understanding of my identity to you.”

“…I see. So what, you play Peeping Tom, blackmail the other guy for cash?”

“Perish the thought. We provide our customers with the information they desire in exchange for either new information or currency equivalent to its value. That is all. Naturally, the information I have just related to you is too trivial to charge for.”

Carol looked at the vice president, who was gradually growing more polite, and even as her shoulders quivered, she thought:

Oh. The vice president is planning to turn this gangster man into a customer.

When the vice president dealt with customers, his speech grew more courteous than was strictly necessary. Carol had seen far too much of that aspect of his personality before now, and she was familiar with another of his characteristics as well.

The vice president…is never picky about who he takes on as a customer.

Carol’s mouth was working uselessly in panic. As usual, she couldn’t tell what was going on behind the vice president’s keen eyes. She’d had no idea what he’d been thinking when he’d introduced her to the Nebula chairman, either.

He probably just dealt in information like a machine, with no regard for justice or evil.

Carol idolized that aspect of him and simultaneously feared it— But none of that would improve her plight now, so all she could do was watch it unfold.

She gritted her teeth, frustrated at her powerlessness, but when she glanced at Placido’s face, she immediately began to tremble in fear again.

Meanwhile, Placido glowered for a while, but then…

As if he’d hit on an idea, he narrowed his eyes and made a business proposition to the information broker.

“Hypothetically. You mentioned Ladd getting his elbows checked by the cops. The day before that…somebody robbed our outfit, and some little shits killed a few of my valued employees.”

“B-boss.”

“Shut up.”

Krieck spoke up, but Placido checked him, mentally organizing what he needed to ask the information broker.

“The punk who killed my men is Jacuzzi Splot. I know his name and his face, and that’s it. The pair of robbers who lifted our cash, though… I don’t know a damn thing about them, names included.”

As he took a risk and revealed his organization’s disgrace, his voice grew even heavier as he slowly spoke to the vice president.

“I ain’t got a lotta details, but if you check into it, can you get me the perps, fast?”

The mood seemed to imply that if he said it couldn’t be done, under the circumstances, they were liable to be silenced forever, but…

The vice president bowed politely, lips curving, and switched over completely from his journalist face to his information broker one so he could talk business.

“In that case, let us negotiate the rate—most valued customer.”

“…When you get handed info that easily, it actually makes you nervous, doesn’t it?”

As he gazed at the memo he’d scribbled down, Placido hemmed quietly.

“Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent… So you’re saying these robber clowns are pals with Jacuzzi Splot?”

“That information is from approximately one month ago. Naturally, they may have fallen out in the meantime; I request that you keep that in mind as well.”

The vice president answered with the meticulous phrasing of an information broker.

Although Placido had accepted the deal, he was watching him skeptically.

“…Frankly, this doesn’t mean I trust you. I’ve never met an information broker I could trust. You might’ve just come up with a bunch of baloney to give me. At the very least, until we catch that scarred-up kid and the big one, I think I’ll have you spend a few days here as my guests.”

“Hmm. Very well,” the vice president responded briefly. He’d already gone back to his journalist persona, and the air of courtesy had faded away.

Picking up on this, Carol sighed in relief. Then she thought about the meaning of what they’d just said, and she gave a short scream.

“V-Vice President?!”

“Compose yourself, Carol.”

The vice president was completely back to his usual self, and both relief and resentment welled up inside her.

“I mean, Vice President! That means we won’t be able to leave this mansion! Besides, Rail and Frank…”

At that point, Carol timidly addressed her question to Placido instead.

“U-um… What are you…going to do with them?”

On suddenly finding himself spoken to, Placido narrowed his eyes for a moment. Then he responded slowly.

“Before I answer that question… Let me ask you one of my own, young lady. To keep things fair, see.”

“Y-yes?!”

“This Rail and whoever it was. What are they to you?”

“They… They’re my friends!”

Carol had stumbled over the words for a moment, but there was no uncertainty in her voice when she said them.

“Oh? Your boss here said you’d just met them today.”

“Th-that’s true, but… Still… We… We’re friends! I—I can’t think of another word for it, so…! I don’t really understand the idea of ‘passing acquaintances’ or things like that! S-so, um…”

Carol’s hands wandered through space as she answered, and the vice president exhaled quietly, but he sounded a little pleased as he spoke.

“That was clumsy, Carol. While foolish, it is also a virtue. I give you very nearly full marks.”

“V-Vice President!”

Carol’s face crumpled so badly that a bystander would have been unable to tell whether she was embarrassed, frightened, or about to cry.

Placido watched the young girl, thinking quietly, and finally said to her, “Uh-huh. I see, I see. In that case, when your friends come here, I’ll let you meet them. We may be able to use you to get them to behave.”

He wore an unpleasant smile as he spoke, which frightened Carol, but she nodded vigorously.

Once she had, Placido turned to the unflappable vice president and threatened him, bluffing with everything he had.

“Just to make sure you don’t try anything funny, I’m putting you and this young lady in separate rooms. We can’t have you colluding on us, see… Krieck!”

“Yes, boss.”

His subordinate bowed smoothly, and Placido issued an order, his expression cold.

“Get some sort of room ready for the guy. As for the girl… Put her in Lua’s room, and keep an eye on both of ’em.”

“My… What a lovely little guest.”

A woman spoke to Carol inside the room she had been taken to, deep in the Russo mansion.

She seemed to be the room’s current tenant. Apparently, like Carol, she was a prisoner.

When Carol looked at her, she sensed a sort of decadence about her. Her skin seemed nearly transparent, and her sad smile looked ready to shatter at a touch. The initial impression she gave was rather ghostlike.

“U-um… I’m sorry to intrude like this. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Lua. It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“Oh, yes! I’m Carol! It’s a pleasure!”

It wasn’t clear what was “nice” or “pleasant” about this, and the other woman’s gentle demeanor made Carol more nervous. Just how long had she been trapped in this room? She wouldn’t go mad, would she? Or was she already insane?

The utter calm of the woman who’d introduced herself as Lua inspired such anxiety.

“Why have they brought you here, Carol?”

“Huh? Um… Well, it sounds like I’m a kind of hostage. I think…”

“My. In that case, you’re just like me.”

Lua smiled softly, and Carol looked at her blankly.

In the end, the girl didn’t know what to talk about and stayed uncomfortably silent. Lua simply gave her that gentle smile.

However, the smile did nothing to help Carol…

And so began the apprentice journalist’s life under house arrest.

Several days later Night Somewhere in Chicago

A few days had passed since the explosions in the city. Nothing else of note had happened.

Chicago seemed to be the very picture of peace, and the explosions Rail had caused the other day had all been tidied away as “accidents.”

“I don’t like it.”

With a scowl on his already grim face, Chi grumbled openly about the aftermath.

The arm Graham had dislocated probably still hurt or felt strange, and he rolled his shoulder every so often to check on the joint.

“So there’s clearly some force at work here, huh?” Sickle murmured.

Leeza’s disembodied voice echoed from the darkness. “Nebula, or Senator Beriam… Still, it looks as though the New York contingent has been exquisitely duped, so it’s probably best to assume Nebula.”

“O powerful numeric progression that drifts in the universe we call God! We a— Blaugh!”

“Close your mouth. We don’t need your bushwa right now.”

The Poet had been about to launch into some grandiose tirade, but Sickle had slammed the outer edge of her foot into his neck, and a temporary silence descended over them.

It was the same meeting spot from when they first came to the city.

The members of Lamia were gathered in a corner of the port near the forest, just as they had been a few days ago.

The only difference was that Rail wasn’t there.

On the day they’d first fought Graham, Rail’s smoke bombs had helped them get away for the moment— But he hadn’t shown up that night, not even when today became yesterday.

Thinking Graham must have gotten him, Chi and the others had enlisted the help of the twins and had them track him. However, they hadn’t gotten any information at all, and time had passed in vain.

Graham himself was striding around town with jaw-dropping boldness. He might have been worried his friends would be taken hostage; he never had any of them with him.

Not only that, but at night, he made the rounds at the pubs—to the point where it wasn’t clear when he slept—and he always sobered up in public squares or abandoned factories.

It was a blatant trap. And he was provoking them.

However, as a result, even when they tailed him, they hadn’t been able to find out anything about the organization that was backing him, and if they tried to mess with him, they’d have no chance of winning. He almost never gave them an opening, and it was hard even for Leeza to target him with a chakram from behind. And worse, if they killed him, they’d lose everything.

“That monster in the coveralls is probably waiting for us to approach him.”

Chi sounded irritated. Then he brought up the name of a certain man.

“I can feel it. Christopher could most likely win. However, it’s pointless to talk about someone who’s not here.”

“If you’re going to take that line, Rail’s not here, either,” Sickle answered sharply, and the conversation broke off for a little while.

The wind from the lake blew through, until the awkward silence was suddenly broken by a powerful whimper.

“Ngh, R-Raaaail… When I… When I ran away, if I’d only carried him, too, then…”

Frank was crying, his back shuddering, but Chi and the others didn’t reproach him for it.

“It’s over; don’t dwell on it. Unlike you, Rail can hide, and we had to scatter to escape.”

“That’s right. Either way, he’s the one who said to split up to make our getaway. I heard him, you know? That means whatever happens to Rail isn’t your fault, Frank. We’re only in this mess in the first place because Rail went ahead and—”

“Knock it off, Leeza,” Sickle snapped at thin air. “Quit trying to push the blame onto somebody. What is this, a corporation? The capitol building? Are we kids?”

“My! We are an organization, after all. You can’t tell me there’s no point in clarifying where responsibility lies.”

“If it wasn’t so patently obvious that you wanted to shove it onto Rail, I wouldn’t stop you. You’re free to hate him, Leeza, but right now, we have to either confirm whether or not he’s safe or prioritize Master Huey’s orders and get to work on the mission. One of the two.”

Leeza fell silent for a moment, and Sickle continued to glare into the night.

“W-wait. Don’t fight, okay?”

As Sickle had her stare-down with the darkness, Frank only dithered, and the Poet was still clutching his throat and rolling around on the ground.

Chi gave a heavy sigh, probably tired of the whole mess, then spoke to Leeza, although there was no telling where she was.

“Never mind. Let’s just move on. Leeza, we assembled here today either because there’s been some sort of development regarding Rail or because Master Huey’s issued instructions, correct?”

“…Bingo, Chi. Both of the above.”

The tension between her and Sickle relaxed, and Leeza reverted to her usual self.

“The day after Rail disappeared, Master Huey gave permission. He’s designated this city as the subject for the experiment instead of New York…he says.”

“…Is that right? In that case, what have you been doing for the past few days?”

“My, you mustn’t be impatient. If I hadn’t gotten everything ready before I told you, you might have gone off on your own, like Rail.”

After that snide remark at a certain someone’s expense, Leeza reported a single result to the group.

“Then, over the course of several days, I put the twins to work, and they sent in some interesting information today. It’s about that vile workman… Listen, Chi. Do you remember the man saying something about how he ‘learned how to fight from my man Ladd’?”

“Hmm… Yes, he did shout something like that, didn’t he?”

“Does the name ‘Ladd’ ring a bell?”

“What?”

“Well, I’d completely forgotten, myself, until I had Sham check into it. We heard that name just about a year ago, in this very city.”

“What…?”

At Leeza’s revelation, Chi slowly searched his own memories.

It was true. One year ago, they’d visited this city for their side business, and during that time, they’d tangled with…

“…The Russo Family?”

Once, Chi had taken out several members of that mafia syndicate in the course of his work around here.

As he’d brutally slaughtered them, one of the wretched victims had screamed something.

“If Ladd were… If only Ladd were here, you two-bit hoods wouldn’t…”

Chi remembered that he’d responded, “I don’t know who your Ladd is, but he’s not here now… That’s all that matters.” He quietly raised his head.

“In other words…this ‘Ladd’ is connected to the Russo Family, and so that man in the coveralls is as well?”

“Bingo.”

Giggling happily, Leeza calmly began to relate the information she’d obtained.

“The fellow in the coveralls is Graham Specter. He was in the city several years back, and at the time, he acted as a sort of bodyguard for the Russo Family. It sounds as though he was in New York until just a little while ago, but he started some trouble with a mafia organization over there, so it’s possible that he took the opportunity to return to the Russos.”

Leeza was laughing merrily and issued orders regarding their next actions, as if that was the natural sequence to follow. Because she was their liaison with Huey, she was technically in a position to take charge. However, in this motley group, the word leader didn’t carry much value or real power.

Even so, no one argued with what she said, possibly because they agreed with the course of action for the most part.

“Tomorrow night, let’s go to the Russo mansion and ask their boss directly. We’ll find out exactly where he got that information on us.”

“D-do you think they have Rail there, too?”

“If he was snatched by the Russos, then yes. It’s also possible that another organization took him, or that he’s disappeared on his own, but… Even if he wants to rebel against Master Huey, I’d hope he isn’t stupid enough to betray him here.”

“R-Rail wouldn’t turn traitor. I-I’ll go, too. If Rail’s been caught, we have to save him.”

Frank was unusually enthusiastic about this, and Chi and Sickle wordlessly agreed with him.

“That’s settled, then. Either way, we’ll have to properly remove all obstacles in order to thoroughly execute Master Huey’s instructions.”

Leeza sounded satisfied, but Sickle spoke up, still seeming cross.

“Yeah, but… Having that information doesn’t change the fact that this Graham guy is a tough customer. Are we going to poison him? If we want to set a bomb, we need Rail, and Rail’s missing.”

“Dear me. That’s the trouble with people who only know how to fight. We’ll just do it when he’s not around, and besides…”

With a musical, mocking laugh, Leeza coolly revealed her trump card.

“…we have a hostage.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t sound as if he has a sweetheart, his family’s dead, and he doesn’t seem to have any important people in his life. According to the twins, though, he has a sworn little brother of a sort in New York… And then I hear he has so much faith in that Ladd fellow that you’d think the man was a god,” Leeza said calmly.

Looking dissatisfied, Sickle muttered, “I see. Larva’s in New York, so we’ll have them move, huh?”

“No. We’ve got the perfect opportunity to take Ladd hostage.”

“Wait, but that’s… Isn’t he the guy who taught that monster how to fight?”

They wouldn’t be able to catch him that easily, would they?

As if making fun of Chi and Sickle’s doubts, Leeza giggled.

“It’s fine. Actually, he’ll be easier than the one in New York.”

“?”

“It sounds as though the boy in New York has a scary bodyguard, as well as my big sister…”

What’s this “big sister” business?

Before Sickle could ask, Leeza confidently went on in the darkness.

“Our boy Ladd is very close to Master Huey right now.”

“He’s an inmate in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.”

He was dreaming.

One long memory, from the time he’d been given the name “Rail,” from when his ego and memories had begun to grow, up until now…

The dream simply flowed on.

He and the others were created beings, and even within Huey’s organizations, their position was unique. That was how Rail understood it.

Neither human nor truly immortal. They were incomplete homunculi who only refused to age, negating natural laws in a half-hearted way. It hadn’t yet been fifteen years since Rail’s creation, and his mental age was only slightly higher than his appearance suggested.

He’d realized he was something that should not exist about five years ago.

That was when Huey Laforet had cut up his entire body.

He would almost rather have been sliced apart by a murderer who enjoyed the sight of blood.

Rail’s mind had been hazy, but he’d seen the researchers who worked under Huey performing their tasks with perfectly normal expressions.

They had less emotion about this than they had about dissecting an experimental frog, and the work was extremely simple, like boiling a saline solution and extracting the salt. That was the look he saw in the men’s eyes as they made their incisions, dispassionately, silently, with no joy or sadness.

Huh? I’m…a thing.

That was what Rail thought as he was anesthetized and lacerated, while the pain gradually disappeared.

If their eyes had been smiling or hate-filled, at least, like children who were cutting a doll apart, it might have helped a little.

He’d felt he was alive up until that moment, when the fact was utterly negated.

The boy was still young, and his heart wasn’t able to process the idea very well. He wouldn’t know it was actually true until several years later.

He didn’t even have the right to live.

Apparently, this world gave them special treatment, in a bad way.

I’m not a person. I’m a thing… At least, I am as far as Huey’s concerned.

Rail had gradually begun to understand the relationship between himself and the world, and in the darkness of the laboratory, he thought and thought.

In that case, what if I think about it like this?

“We’re a breed completely apart from Nature.”

As a matter of fact, the beings like himself whom he’d met at the research facility had seemed far superior to ordinary humans. Granted, the only ordinary humans Rail had been exposed to were in the newspaper or on the radio, the researchers, and the people in the little town he was permitted to visit under guard.

Still, even when his first job took him to a big city, none of the humans in it were beyond what he’d imagined.

Hunh. They can’t surpass my imagination. So that’s all humans are.

To Rail, that was everything, and it was safe to say that he’d been able to live and thrive for this long because of that sense of superiority.

And that was why he’d had so much trouble believing the rumor that Christopher had lost to a human last year.

When he’d first heard about it from Leeza, he’d thought she was lying. However, Chi had told him, The man who defeated Christopher is probably some sort of cryptid or legendary wizard. Don’t mess with him, so he’d had no choice but to believe it.

Chi wasn’t a liar, and more troublingly, he hadn’t seen Christopher since.

Right after Rail’s dissection, Christopher had been the one who’d looked after him the most, and Rail’s young eyes had watched him up close for a long time. He had come to hold a deep conviction that Christopher was the strongest person in the world.

And he had lost.

Even worse, he’d lost not to an immortal or another homunculus—but to a mere human.

The fact was difficult to accept, and Rail had brooded quietly.

My big brother Christopher lost…?

Leeza had said, “Chris still has a long way to go, too. That’s all,” but Rail had never felt disappointed in Christopher. After all, he’d prided himself that he understood Christopher’s true skills better than absolutely anybody else.

In that case, he’d have to raise his opinion of humans.

Confronted with a reality that was hard to swallow, Rail had made it his life’s goal to deny it. He’d always assumed he was superior to humans, but—

That Graham guy had shattered his belief.

As dream and memory mingled, Rail sensed the man in the blue coveralls stirring—and the woman in the lab coat peeked out from his shadow.

Stop it… Stay back, get away…

“Sto…it… Stay…back…way…”

Help me, help me…

“…lp…he…lp m…”

Save me…Christopher…Christopher!

“…me…ris…topher… Christopher!”

Just then—

As Rail screamed in his dream, without warning, a response reached his ears from reality.

“What?”

Save… Huh?

“…Save… Huh?”

Then Rail woke up.

When his eyes, which were just barely open, caught sight of crimson eyes and rows of fangs—he thought he’d woken into another dream.

The Russo mansion

When he saw Christopher’s face, Rail murmured, completely unable to understand the situation.

“Huh? Am I…dreaming?”

As it dawned on him he’d been reliving memories in a dream, Rail began to doubt what he was seeing now— But it all seemed much too real for that.

His whole body groaned, but he forced himself to sit up. At that point, he realized he was lying on a bed.

A familiar figure in an unfamiliar room.

Even as he wondered whether this were a dream after all, Christopher’s mouth full of fangs curved into a grin.

“Oh, you’re up, you’re up, you’re finally up. You started talking in your sleep, so I thought you might be waking up soon, and I’m so glad you didn’t let me down! For starters, I’ve prepared three options for demonstrating my delight. One, catch a random girl and kiss her. Two, catch a random frog and kiss it. Three, with a little effort, kiss myself. Which would you prefer? Parenthetically, with regard to three, I could actually just kiss the palm of my hand, which wouldn’t involve any hard work at all. I recommend One. What’ll it be?”

“…Two…?”

“Right, thank you for your cooperation with this survey. Winners will receive their prize upon implementation of their choice… Well anyway, that’s great. If you’ve got the judgment to pick the very worst answer, you’re probably fine now, in several ways.”

“Never mind that… Christopher?”

Gradually waking from his daze, Rail opened his eyes wide and asked the man sitting in a chair in front of him.

“Is that…? Is that actually you, Chris?”

“If it’s not, I’ll be really surprised. If it’s a doppelgänger, I’m extremely curious about how it’s going to haunt the actual me to death. Besides…having a doppelgänger seems pretty human, and I like it.”

His senselessly nutty words and behavior convinced Rail that this really was Christopher—

And the next thing he knew, his eyes were tearing up a little.

“Wow. I know this is a touching reunion, but really? Is it momentous enough to cry over?”

“Chris… You’re alive! I knew you were alive! Ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha!”

Rail awkwardly sat up, faced Christopher, and smiled from the bottom of his heart. This wasn’t his usual, hedonistic, sarcasm-filled smile. His face was filled with honest, childlike delight, and the tears he shed were genuine.

For his part, Christopher patted Rail on the head, gave a wry smile tinged with a hint of surprise, and murmured:

“…That’s a bit of a shock. I’m positively nonplussed. Hmm? What? Am I supposed to be dead? Says who? Leeza? It was Leeza, wasn’t it? I can’t think of anybody else who’d hold a funeral for someone who’s still alive without telling them. Well, what’s done is done. Let’s trust that the judgment of Nature will fall on her someday. That cave crickets specifically will judge her by always jumping straight at her.”

“This is no time for judgment. Seriously, where have you been up till now?!”

He was the same old Christopher, to an infuriating degree, and Rail wiped away his tears, yelling angrily.

“You cry, you smile, you get mad… Are you emotionally unstable, Rail?! Actually, I’m the one with questions! Why were you literally hoist with your own petard and injured so badly back there?! Why are you even in this town?! Frank was always with you; where is he?! Does the Poet still have bats in his belfry?!”

“My questions come first! Where have you been?! What’s the deal with you losing a fight with a puny human?! And actually, where are we?! How did you find me?! What happened to the corpses of that group in lab coats?! Also, the Poet’s got even more bats lately!”

They each interrogated the other, and just as it seemed as if things were never going to get anywhere…

A coolheaded interjection came sharply between them, clearing the mood in the room.

“Quiet down.”

Startled by the sudden interruption from a third party, Rail looked in that direction.

His eyes landed on a kid who seemed to be about his own age. He was sitting on a wood-frame sofa, pointedly turning up the volume on a radio.

“There’s almost nobody in the mansion right now, but even so, they’ll notice if you’re noisy. There’s only so much I can cover up, you know.”

“…Wh-who’s that?”

Could he be a new Lamia member?

Rail had directed his question at Christopher, but the blond kid answered it before he could.

“I’m Ricardo Russo. Nice to meet you.”

“Huh…? Um, nice to meet you, too?”

As Rail responded involuntarily, the question marks in his head multiplied.

Completely ignoring Rail’s curiosity, Ricardo spoke, as expressionless as ever.

“If you’re awake, that’s good. From now on, though, it’s best if you hide in there to make sure no one from the house finds you.”

As Ricardo spoke, he pointed to a stairway that led to an attic storage space.

Completely unable to process the current situation, Rail gazed at the darkness beyond the ceiling.

“You tell some pretty funny jokes. Ha-ha…”

“No, shockingly, that wasn’t a joke, Rail.”

“You too, Chris? Hang on a minute, um… I don’t really get it, but I do know you saved me, all right? I’m grateful, but…frankly, I have no idea what’s going on.”

Rail’s mind was inundated with questions, and his smile was acquiring a cynical edge.

In response to Rail’s complaint, Christopher picked up a piece of paper from the bedside table.

“Hmm. I’m not sure how to put this, Rail. See, I don’t understand the situation, either.”

Rail’s body was still waking up, but when he saw that piece of paper—he froze.

“What on earth did you people get up to while I was gone? If Ricardo hadn’t seen this wanted poster, they would have caught you, you know.”

The paper Christopher had shown him held the same information as the wanted poster Rail had blown up the other day, the one that had featured them.

“Why do you have this, Chris?!”

Then something occurred to Rail, and he gasped.

The wanted poster described them in detail—but although Christopher was a lot more distinctive than the Poet or Sickle in terms of looks, he wasn’t mentioned at all.

A certain horrifying idea flickered through his mind, and Rail fearfully asked:

“No… It can’t be. You didn’t… Chris, did you sell us out?!”

“Wow. Your imagination is impressive. Still, I hate that I can follow your train of thought to that conclusion. I understand how it happened, so I can’t argue with it. Is this…the judgment of Nature?!”

Chris was clearly troubled, and Rail squeezed his hand. His eyes were shining.

“Why didn’t you ask me to join you?! If you’re selling out Huey, I’ll do that all day! I was thinking I’d blow him up one of these days anyway!”

“Whoa. Your optimism is also impressive. Actually, it looks like you hate Huey even more than you did last time I saw you. I bet Leeza’s real upset with you about that.”

The conversation had begun to veer off track yet again, and neither Rail nor Christopher was any closer to understanding the other’s situation.

As he watched the two swapping new questions and self-centered delusions, Ricardo gave a great sigh, and—

“I’m only saying this because I don’t think you two will be able to come back if you keep this up.”

In a sullen voice, he told them how to move the conversation along.

“For now, why don’t you start by each describing your own situation?”

The Russo mansion Placido’s room

“Dammit… So since then, you haven’t found even one of them?”

At the sound of Placido’s low voice, the small group of men in the room looked at one another uncomfortably.

“I hear that bastard Graham thrashed them good. You’d better not tell me they got cold feet and skipped town.”

“We do have people watching the stations and the major streets, but…”

Krieck and the others also seemed rather anxious about the stalemate, less sure than they had been a few days ago.

“Tch! If the Nebula crew thinks we’re useless, we’re all washed up. Do you understand that?”

Placido sounded irritated, and on an impulse, he called to one of his subordinates.

“That monocled gink says he’s an information broker; go ask him if he has any ideas.”

The vice president of the information brokerage, who’d been summoned immediately, spoke calmly.

“I do not know what it is you are looking for, but—my contact with the outside world has been severed. How do you suppose I could obtain information regarding the present situation? With all due respect, sir.”

The position he’d been placed in didn’t seem to bother him in the least. As a matter of fact, he behaved as if he had the advantage.

“…In that case, go pick up sources or anything you want. Just don’t forget: We’re holding the little girl and the camera hostage.”

“I am well aware.”

Even when Placido reminded him of Carol’s circumstances, he didn’t seem the slightest bit daunted.

As if to signal the end of the discussion, he marched out of the mansion without a wasted step.

Once Krieck was sure the vice president had left the room, he spoke to Placido, lowering one eyebrow in a frown.

“Boss, can we trust him? He might leave the kid and make a break for it.”

“He’s probably been a phony all along anyway. If that happens, just sell off the kid and the camera.”

Admitting he’d simply grasped at straws, Placido settled farther back in his chair.

“That rat Ladd will be back next month. We’ve got to pull our shit together before then.”

“Do you think Nebula will actually keep that promise? You know… About that drug or liquor or whatever it is, for perfect immortality. Will they really get it for us?”

“At this point, promises don’t matter. Ultimately, we just have to get as many cards in our hand as we can. And to that end, hurry up and bring me those brats from the wanted poster.”

Holding onto his bullish attitude to the end, Placido gave a relaxed, confident smile meant to reassure his henchmen.

“Hey, if it comes down to it, we’ll get Nebula to listen to us even if we have to threaten ’em.

“They don’t know jack about this side of the law. We’ll just have to show them, loud and clear, that we’ve got the bulge when it comes to fighting.”

The Russo mansion Attic room

It might have been an attic, but it was hardly cluttered with junk. The space was rather roomy, and it still smelled like wood.

Chris lay in the center of that room, while Rail was leaning back in a corner.

It had been several hours since he’d woken up. After they’d each given the other their story, Rail had gone rather quiet, and for a little while, all he’d done was sit silently in a corner of the attic room.

Finally, puzzled by the silence, Christopher got up, then crouched down in front of Rail.

“Say, Rail? You look a little cranky.”

“I’m not.”

Rail averted his face as he answered, and Christopher smiled with amusement.

“Let me guess why you’re in a bad mood: ‘What the hell?! What’s wrong with that stupid Chris?! He showed me potential that surpassed humans and let me believe we were superior to humans, but now…! Now he’s made friends with a mere human kid! If Chris ends up on equal footing with humans, what are we—? What am I supposed to do?!’ Is it something like that? I’m pretty confident in the theory myself.”

On hearing Christopher’s monologue, Rail gaped uselessly for a little while. Then, he heaved a big sigh of defeat and shook his head.

“…Thanks for putting my frustration into words. You made me feel better. I didn’t really understand why I was feeling so dismal.”

Rail finally turned to look at Chris, and his eyes were just a little angry.

“If I were going to add to that, I’d say, ‘Not only that, but why would he make friends with a sulky, dainty little guy like him, of all people?!’ Ha-ha!”

“Rail… He can hear you down there, you know?”

“Like I care? And anyway, what is this room? At first I thought it was a hotel or something, and you’re telling me it’s a kid’s room? What’s up with that? He’s just about my age, but he’s got his own personal bathroom… Ah-ha-ha-ha! So, what, you really did want to live the rich life, Chris?”

“Well, of course.”

As the pupils in those red eyes focused on him, Rail fell silent in spite of himself.

Exhaling slightly, Christopher grinned with his mouthful of fangs, then went on.

“I want to live like the rich, and the poor, and the sick, and the soldiers, and the commoners, and the powerful. If it’s a natural human activity, then no matter what the ‘it’ is, I’ll probably keep longing for it. Being able to yearn for something is a really, really good thing, you know?”

He stopped smiling then and stroked Rail’s head a little awkwardly.

“Without dreams…living a long time hurts too much for unnatural beings like us.”

Looking embarrassed, Rail sighed and slowly brushed away the hand on his head.

As they were talking, they heard a creak from a corner of the attic room.

When they turned to look, Ricardo had climbed up the ladder, and his upper half was poking into the room. He must have heard them talking, but his expression was cool as he spoke to them, as if to say he didn’t care.

“Rail, wasn’t it? Tomorrow, I’ll make up another errand and carry you outside. Until then, I wouldn’t wander around inside the mansion if I were you. The syndicate’s all worked up because they can’t find your group.”

“…Carry me outside?”

“Yeah. When we brought you in here, we bought that traveler’s bag and packed you and your stuff into it.”

When he looked, he saw a big suitcase sitting in the corner of the room with Rail’s things peeking out of its open mouth.

What a cheap-looking ambulance. I should be laughing, but it’s not even funny.

Rail sighed, and Ricardo coldly told him, “We bought it specifically to transport you, so we’ll have to be careful not to let it go to waste.”

“You sure do rub folks the wrong way, don’t you? Want me to set off a bomb right here and start a big stink in your house? If they find out you’ve been harboring the guy from their wanted poster, you’ll be in trouble, too.”

His sarcastic comment could have been taken as a threat, but Ricardo gave a small sigh and left the attic room with a retort that wasn’t the least bit flustered.

“Maybe for me, but you wouldn’t want to cause trouble for Chris, would you?”

When the sound of the ladder was gone, Rail spat out a comment without bothering to lower his voice.

“I’m really not gonna like that guy.”

“Oh? I thought you’d hit it off perfectly. I’ll have to introduce Frank to him one of these days, too.”

Christopher snickered, and Rail puffed his cheeks out and protested.

“Don’t you dare! Sure, I’m grateful he helped me, but…there’s no reason to cop an attitude with a guy he just met!”

“Well, he’s still a kid, and he probably has trouble keeping his actual feelings separate from his public mask. Although, personally, I don’t even try.”

“What sorts of feelings, huh?” Rail asked with an unsettlingly steady gaze, but Christopher answered with confidence.

“I bet he thinks you’re going to take me away, his one and only friend, and he’s jealous of you!”

“…”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s really great that you’ve got the nerve to say something like that about yourself straight out. Not only that, but it sounds like it could be the right answer. It’s scary.”

Rail smiled thinly, breaking out in a cold sweat, and Christopher responded.

“What did I tell you, Rail? It’s all due to my aspirations.”

“I’ve spent decades idolizing humans and Nature…and I was always observing them.”

That night In front of the Russo mansion

The Russo mansion stood on the outskirts of Chicago, and as far as the public was concerned, it looked like a castle built on success.

The grand residence had been built with a wide margin between it and the surrounding houses.

While its yard wasn’t as spacious as a park, there was enough room to build another house both in front of and behind the mansion, and a sturdy double wall made of bricks surrounded the perimeter.

At that moment, on the darkened avenue…

Gatekeepers stood around the Russo mansion, with only the light from the streetlamps to rely on.

Naturally, the mansion didn’t have guards posted at its entrance like a royal palace or a checkpoint would. Several small groups of the family’s men were just stationed under streetlamps nearby, pretending to shoot the breeze with one another.

They had guns inside their jackets, of course, and although they seemed to be having a casual chat, they were keeping a wary eye on everything in sight.

And on one corner… A group of men talking fairly close to the back entrance spotted a man walking their way, even though it was the middle of the night.

For a little while, they thought he might just be a passerby and watched him as they feigned conversation, but…the man, who wore his hat pulled down low, was making a beeline straight for them.

“…”

Warily, the men watched him, waiting to see what he’d do.

The man in the hat abruptly stopped right in front of the group and spoke to them.

“May I ask you a question? Is this the residence of Mr. Placido Russo?”

“If you’ve got a question for somebody, take off your lid, buddy.”

“…My apologies.”

No sooner had he spoken than the man ever-so-naturally pushed up the brim of his hat with a finger…

…and revealed his eyes from its shadow.

The next moment, a pale, unsteady light leaped into the men’s brains.

It was coming from the man’s eyes after he raised his hat.

They washed out the light of the streetlamps, reflecting it at the men.

The pale light flickered strangely, quietly touching their retinas, stealing into the men’s minds, and into their time.

“Huh…uh?”

In time with the wavering light, the man with the hat began to speak, slowly.

“Good work, men. Your shift is over.”

“…Wha…? Oh…uh…huh… Uh-huh?”

They seemed half-asleep. The moment they saw his pale eyes, the three men felt as if they’d been trapped in a daydream.

“The keys to the back gate, please.”

“Uh…sure.”

Dazedly, the leader obediently took the keys out of his jacket.

Accepting them, the man with the hat kept his eyes on the others and slowly intoned:

“…You are at ease. You’ve been to the bathroom, and you won’t get dirty if you sleep here. Most important of all…I’ve taken over your guard duties for you…so you have nothing to worry about, do you? Go on… You’re…”

The men realized that the man’s voice was gradually receding…

But the urge to sleep that welled up inside them completely pushed away all further thought.

Sickle, Chi, and Frank had been watching the Poet talk to the men, who seemed to be guards. When they saw the men slowly lean back against the wall, they walked over to the Poet as well.

He’d already resettled his hat low over his eyes, and—in the presence of the unconscious men—he inebriated himself on his own words in a voice that was quieter than usual.

“Ohhh, ohhh, ’tis the apple on my back that extended these keys to me. The apple calls to me: ‘With these keys, open the wheel of the verdant caterpillar and bring my heart to its conclusion.’ My sin is—”

“Forget that; just fork ’em over.”

Without listening to a word he said, Sickle snatched the keys to the back entrance out of the Poet’s hand. There were two different keys; one seemed to open the big gate for cars, while the other was for the service entrance beside it.

“Still… We didn’t have to do this. We could have just had Leeza tell us the enemy’s positions and taken them out one by one. Where the heck is she anyway?”

Chi responded to Sickle’s mechanical-sounding question with a sigh.

“Well… I don’t know why, but I’ve been calling Leeza over and over for the past hour, and there’s no response.”

“…Isn’t that…bad?”

“My thoughts exactly, but…” Chi scowled.

Behind him, Frank was trembling. “D-do you think they caught Leeza, too?”

The moment he turned his frightened eyes on his surroundings…

…Leeza’s voice reached them, although it was softer than usual.

“…I-I’m…here. I’m here…”

“Oh, so you are here… What’s wrong?”

The voice was clearly Leeza’s, but it was definitely not her usual tone. Ordinarily, she spoke like a confident, composed adult woman, but now she seemed extremely anxious, like someone cornered.

“Nothing! There’s no point in telling you about it when you’re all the way over there!”

Her response to Sickle was slightly delayed, loud, and hysterical.

“Never mind… You just focus on doing your job! I’ll… Oh, oh, hurry, I have to hurry and wake up… I have to wake up…”

“?”

The odd voice echoed in thin air for a little while, then disappeared.

“…What was that about?”

Sickle and the others were still gazing into empty space, but Frank spoke up, fidgeting restlessly.

“A-anyway, for now, rescuing Rail comes first.”

Realizing he was right, Sickle sighed and issued orders to her comrades.

“We’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do. Let’s get on with the job. The question is: Are there guards inside…? If they see you or me opening the gate, Chi, they’ll catch on to the fact that we’re outsiders right away. Poet, it’s all on you.”

She wasn’t the provisional leader, but somebody had to speak up or they’d be dead in the water, and no one objected.

Nodding obediently, the Poet took the keys and headed for the rear service entrance.

Thinking of Frank’s huge build, he’d considered opening the gate to the driveway, but—

“Don’t do anything obvious.”

The driveway gate was clearly visible from the mansion, which made Chi uneasy. He issued orders to the Poet and Frank.

“You wait here for a bit, Frank. If they’re holding Rail in there, it would be better if we avoided calling any attention to ourselves until the very last minute. Poet, open the service entrance.”

“Oh…okay.”

Frank very nearly made a face that said he wanted to go to the rescue himself, but he shut his mouth and nodded firmly. There were no objections from the Poet, either, and he unlocked the service entrance.

There was a tiny click, the door creaked, and Chi quietly sized up the situation inside.

No one seemed to be around, and they’d probably be able to use the garden trees as cover all the way to the house.

“Right… Poet, you wait here with Frank.”

“Once we’ve cleaned up inside, we’ll call you and get them to cough up Rail’s location.”

After Chi and Sickle had gone, the Poet and Frank waited on the corner near the sleeping gangsters from a few moments earlier.

“The dark night is lunacy, a strongbox with heaven and earth inverted. It locks away the sin of the purified streetlamp, softly working it into the light of the stars…for that is the will of the venerable old gentleman’s wife.”

“Uhhh… I-I’m sorry. I can’t understand a word you’re saying, Mr. Poet.”

The Poet gazed into thin air as he spoke, and Frank expressed a fairly average opinion.

However, the Poet didn’t mind a bit. While insane words were leaving his lips, in his heart, he was calmly analyzing himself.

This power is as eerie as ever.

Looking at the trio asleep at his feet, the Poet thought about his own eyes.

After all, even I don’t understand the principles behind it.

That didn’t get in the way of his work, though.

As usual, as long as he accomplished his behind-the-scenes tasks, Chi and Sickle, who specialized in the rougher business, would take care of everything else.

The scene was the same as always. Nothing about it had changed.

However… Today, somehow, the atmosphere was different.

An enemy tougher than any they’d faced in the past. Rail’s disappearance. Leeza’s strange condition.

And despite the string of oddities, he was still under orders to stand here with no reservations.

Something is…off. What is it? This feels wrong…

It was as if they had been called to this mansion not by their own wills or destinies, but by the hand of someone completely unknown to them.

That creepy sensation lingered around the Poet, and it refused to go away.

The Russo mansion Front entrance

About the time the Poet was putting the guards near the rear entrance to sleep…

…something strange was happening at the front entrance as well.

Right in front of the guards, a large, oddly shaped vehicle that looked like a cross between a bus and a truck was slowly approaching the Russo mansion’s main gate.

The big vehicle sported a shining Nebula logo, and it came to a temporary stop in front of the entrance.

A woman got out of the passenger seat…

…and took a dramatic tumble, possibly because she’d misjudged the distance between the truck and the ground.

“Yeek?! …Ow, ow, ow… I-I’m sorry.” After an apology that wasn’t clearly addressed to anyone, she brushed the dust off her clothes and said to one of the guards, “Um… I think Mr. Placido’s probably told you, but…”

“Oh… The ‘regular checkup.’”

“Yes, yes, that’s right!”

Several men had begun collecting near the main gate, little by little, and they took a good look at the woman.

Realizing that this was a guest who stopped by from time to time, they shared a glance.

“Russo did mention you might drop by, but… What’s the truck for?”

She’d only ever driven up in a passenger car, and her arrival in a rugged truck was perplexing.

Finding herself the subject of doubt, the guest—Renee—cocked her head, looking troubled.

“Um… I need quite a few people for today’s checkup, so I brought my subordinates along!”

No sooner had she spoken than the truck’s cargo door opened—and a man in a white coat emerged from the fully enclosed interior.

“Wha…?”

After that first man came another, and another, and another, and…

“H-hold the phone…”

Even as the guard spoke, the endless stream of people continued climbing out of the back.

They all carried medical bags, and at first glance, they looked like doctors or pharmacists on a business call.

For that very reason, the group of more than twenty of them exuded the spooky, intimidating air of the impossible.

“H-hey… What’s…?”

The guards were clearly dismayed, and Renee flashed them an artless smile from behind her glasses.

“Oh, we’ll be taking the truck onto the grounds, too, but please don’t worry about it, all right? We may have quite a lot of things to collect today!”

“Well, I mean, maybe you do, but you can’t do this, we’ve got…got…got…”

The guard who’d been beside Renee suddenly repeated the word several times, and then he crashed to the ground.

“Huh? What happened?”

Renee looked past the fallen man to the figure in the lab coat behind him. The person was holding a syringe, and when she looked around, all the assembled guards had fallen like the first one.

“Director, this was going to be a pain, so we just knocked them out.”

The man in the lab coat gave his report indifferently, and Renee’s reply sounded flustered.

“Uh, um, wait just a minute, please! You need to report that sort of thing to me, or—”

“I just did.”

Renee thought about that for a little while. Then she clapped her hands together lightly and spoke with a gentle smile.

“…I see! That’s all right, then! Take the truck inside, then around to the back!

“After all, if we end up transporting corpses or something, we’ll get in trouble if they spot us.”

Placido’s room

“Dammit… That information broker just isn’t coming back…”

The situation was showing no signs of improvement, and Placido’s frustration was growing, but…

The telephone abruptly rang, and he immediately reached for the glossy black receiver.

“…It’s me,” he answered imperiously, and a perfectly calm voice responded from the other end of the line.

“Well, well. I’m pleased to find you in such excellent spirits, valued customer.”

This phone call from the man he’d just been talking about left Placido a bit nonplussed.

He isn’t watching me from somewhere, is he?

Suspicious, Placido stayed silent, but the man on the phone—St. Germain—ignored his state of mind and spoke indifferently.

“Now, then… As it happens, I have acquired some information that must be relayed to you promptly, so I have taken the liberty of contacting you by telephone.”

“What is it?! Do you know where they are?!”

“No, no, sir. This matter is of far greater importance to you than that standing issue.”

He spoke in an affected manner, but there was a fluent rhythm to the words. After pausing for the space of a breath, the vice president gave Placido a brilliantly smooth warning.

“If you value your life, you should flee the mansion immediately. Trust no one.”

“What…?”

“I recommend you distance yourself from the state of Illinois as speedily as possible.”

“What do you mean?! Get back here and explain yourself!” Placido yelled—he had no idea what was going on—but the vice president responded courteously.

“Our business relationship, while brief, was truly fulfilling as far as I am concerned. I intend to come and collect Carol immediately. Should we happen to meet while you are still among the living, I will give a detailed explanation at that time.”

With that, the information broker hung up on him.

“Dammit, what the hell is he playing at?!”

It had seemed as if the information broker was trying to alert him to some sort of danger, but—

The way I am now, I don’t need stuff like that!

As he remembered his own physical state, Placido’s irritation about the information broker’s telephone call grew.

“Come to collect her…? Don’t gimme that bullshit…”

It looked like he was going to have to give him a little reminder about the position he was in.

Should he bring that little girl here and punch her lights out right in front of him?

He began to call for one of his men, planning to order him to bring Carol to him, but—

Before he could say anything, the door opened, and a strange figure stepped out of the shadows.

It was an Asian man, dressed in the clothes of some foreign country, with iron claws on both his hands.

Wha…?!

His heart thudded, once.

Another shape emerged from the Asian man’s shadow—it was a woman in a green dress, and her murmur landed an additional blow.

“So you’re Placido, huh?” Her voice was female, but her manner of speech was masculine.

Placido ground his molars together.

“You… You’re from the wanted poster…!”

“We came to ask you who gave you that wanted poster,” Chi muttered calmly, closing the distance between himself and Placido little by little.

“S-somebody…”

“Everyone who was near this room is asleep.”

As Sickle responded to Placido, she began to circle around his desk from the side opposite Chi’s. They had him caught perfectly in between them, and Chi shook his head, as if he hadn’t wanted to take the measures he did.

“Although several of them may never wake up.”

“Rrgh…”

Slowly, Chi’s blades bore down on Placido, and just then—

With a creak, the large double doors that led to another entrance—not the one that Chi and Sickle had used—opened, and a peculiar group marched right into the tense atmosphere the pair had created.

The woman at the center of the group in white softened the mood around her with a carefree smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Placido! I’m sorry to be so late… Um, huh?” Somewhat disconcerted as she belatedly registered the situation in the room, she asked, “Um… What’s going on here?”

Any ordinary person would probably have thought, Are they making the rounds of some big hospital or something?

However, both Sickle and Chi were remembering something they’d seen before: the group of researchers in lab coats at Huey’s facility.

While the two of them froze up at the unpleasant memory, Placido’s face shone as if he’d seen a ray of hope.

“Oh, ohhh, you’ve come at an excellent time! These guys are from that wanted poster, ain’t they, ma’am?”

—?!

Hearing how politely Placido addressed the woman, Chi and Sickle’s intuition led them to one conclusion.

This group might be the masterminds who’d given that wanted poster to the Russo Family.

“Don’t move.”

As if to say that this would save them time, Chi set the tips of his iron claws against Placido’s neck, just to see what would happen.

He’d meant to watch how the others responded, in order to find out whether the man would work as a hostage or not, but—

That group in lab coats really wasn’t playing along.

“Um…”

Placido had blades pressed to his neck and couldn’t even talk, but Renee, on the opposite side of the room, took a look at him, tilted her head to one side, and spoke to the white-clad group around her.

“In situations like this, what are you supposed to say before you start something?”

Renee’s words sounded troubled, and the individuals in lab coats began to give their opinions in incredibly laid-back tones.

“Wouldn’t ‘Fire’ work okay?” “Kind of bland, though.”

“Try ‘Showtime,’ Director!” “Don’t you need an It’s before that?”

“I’m partial to ‘Shall we dance?’” “Nice.” “Yeah, maybe that.”

“Erm, possibly ‘Now then, gentlemen, let us commence.’” “What movie is that from?” “Could be a book.”

“For now, I think it would be best if you stripped off your coat and gave a few pants.” “Agreed.” “Agreed.” “Agreed.” “Agreed.” “Agreed.”

“Eeeeeeeeeeep?!”

As Renee shrieked at that last suggestion, another white-coated individual ignored her and spoke up.

“Uh, Director?” he said nonchalantly, reaching into his lab coat. “Why don’t we just go ahead and shoot?”

Right as the man finished speaking, fire erupted from the pistol that had emerged.

“Oh.” “He fired.” “Director, what should we do?” “Oh, she’s plugging her ears.” “Eh, never mind.”

No sooner had they spoken than…

…as if there was no hostage at all…

…the men in lab coats took guns from their coats one after another, firing all at once at Chi and Sickle by the window.

The attic room

As he listened to the sound of water that filtered up through the ceiling, Rail grumbled with a smile that didn’t go past his lips.

“You know, I gotta say, having a shower in your own room is ritzy. There’s nothing else to call it.”

“I think you’re right.”

“And not only is it indulgent, but if even your shower is detached, you’ll lose your emotional attachments to other humans, you know?”

Rail shook his head wearily, and just as he was about to start complaining again—

—another noise mingled with the sound of the water.

The source was outside the room, somewhere distant…but it was very clearly not part of the daily routine. That said, to Christopher and Rail, it was deeply familiar.

“Gunshots…?”

“Yep.”

Christopher nodded in response to Rail’s murmur, and his eyes sparkled in enjoyment.

“Maybe somebody’s come to take you back, Rail.”

The moment the muttered joke left his mouth, they realized the sound of water downstairs had stopped.

Next, they heard the bathroom door open, and Rail took that as his signal to start down to the lower floor.

“It sounds like something’s up, doesn’t it? I bet even you can’t keep up that poker face about everything, right?”

With that sarcastic question, Rail jumped down from the ladder. Ricardo, who was briskly toweling himself down, responded with his usual impassive expression.

“They may have come to take you back. Someone might have seen us transporting you.”

Rail had been hoping to see him anxious, frightened, and trembling, and he was utterly disappointed by what he’d gotten instead. Ricardo didn’t seem to care how the other boy looked, though, and he calmly began to get dressed.

He quickly pulled on his underwear, headed for the hanger with his jacket and trousers, and took the ones he used for going out. Given that he’d opted not to put on the pajamas he’d had ready in the bathroom, he must have grasped that the situation was urgent.

Boring.

Rail was annoyed by Ricardo’s cool attitude, but on the other hand, he had noticed an incongruity. He turned to Christopher and fell silent for a little while.

“…”

Beside Rail, who was being oddly quiet, Christopher’s red eyes and fangs glinted with energy.

“Well? What do you want to do? Should we shut ourselves up in the room and hide? Should we go see what’s up and figure out a way to make a run for it? Or— If an enemy’s here, should we kill them before they kill us?”

Christopher posed unpleasant alternatives—siege, retreat, or ambush—and Ricardo fell silent for a few seconds.

Then he issued instructions to Christopher, as his employer.

“Either way, it would be bad if they found Rail after an uproar like this, so…let’s run for it. The three of us.”

That was an unexpected answer for Rail, and it ended up pushing him into an even deeper silence.

Ten minutes earlier The ruins of an abandoned factory Somewhere in Chicago

It was an industrial area relatively near the Russo mansion.

Inside one of several factories that had gone under due to the Depression, a man was waiting for his enemies once again.

All alone, Graham sat on the hood of a car minus all its tires and toyed with his beloved wrench.

Several days had passed since he’d begun to use himself as bait, but so far, the enemies he’d fought that day had failed to bite.

His friends had warned him, “You’re about the only idiot who’d fall for a trap that obvious, Mr. Graham!” but he’d insisted, “No, I believe in them. I only crossed wrenches with ’em once, but I could tell; they’re like me!” …And this had been the result.

“Aah… Sad… How incredibly sad… I arbitrarily believed in my enemies, and they let me: I bet that tactic has never been used in any war, ever. Actually, I feel like it maybe isn’t a tactic, but I bet that’s my imagination. I’m not that dumb.”

At that point, a familiar voice rang out.

“This isn’t the time to be saying dumb stuff, Mr. Graham!”

“…I seriously respect the way you never read the mood, Shaft, to the point that it’s sad. Why do you think I’ve been going around by myself? If you saunter in here, and they’ve been tailing you and take you hostage, I’ll get stressed out about what I should say when I abandon you.”

“What, you already decided to abandon me?! N-no, seriously, this isn’t the time for that!”

As Shaft rushed in, he kept his comebacks to a minimum and described the current situation to Graham at a yell.

“Russo’s house… They’re attacking it! On top of that, this weird group in lab coats showed up, and I have no idea what all’s going on!”

Smack.

On hearing his friend’s scream, Graham stopped spinning his wrench. Then he muttered, “I screwed up,” and whacked himself lightly on the head with the hunk of iron.

“Mr. Graham?!”

“…This is what makes life fun.”

In response to Shaft’s yelp, Graham’s lips curved as if he were enjoying himself. An edge on the wrench must have cut his skin; a little blood trickled down from his head. The crimson blood dripped onto the blue coveralls, creating a dark, nearly black stain on the fabric.

With a smile that was even darker, Graham muttered as if he was truly happy.

“What makes life so fun is how you can’t predict it. Ain’t that right, Ladd?”

Beside the Russo mansion In an alley

“I—I—I just heard gunshots.”

At the sound of a storm of gunshots from inside, the Poet and Frank looked at each other, still on standby. Frank turned uneasy eyes toward the mansion, while the Poet let his gaze travel through the empty air around them.

“S-Sickle and Chi must be fighting. Do you think they’re okay?”

“Hey, Leeza. Can’t you at least tell us what’s going on in there?”

The Poet spoke to Leeza normally, most likely sensing that this was urgent. There was no response, though, and just as he was about to call her again…

…a woman’s piercing scream echoed through the alley.

“Nooo… NOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOOoooOOOooOOooo!”

“?!” “H-huh?”

For a moment, Frank and the Poet shivered at the sudden screaming around them, but…

“Nooo… No, nooOOOooo! Father…his eye! …Fatherrrrrrr, AAAAaaaaah…”

Just as they realized that the voice was Leeza’s—

“Whyyyyy?! Aaaaaaah! Wh… ?”

The scream broke off sharply.

The echoes of the shrill wail were absorbed into the night, and after that, not a trace of Leeza’s presence remained.

Only lukewarm air drifted around them.

“What’s…happening?”

Leeza’s shriek had come out of nowhere, and then her presence had vanished.

The Poet was unable to parse the situation his group was in, and cold sweat was trickling down his spine, when…

…a short distance away, he heard a dull whudd.

“…?!”

When he turned to look, the kid was already gone. Apparently, that had been the sound of Frank scaling the wall and landing on the mansion’s property.

“Frank, wait!”

He raised his voice without thinking, but there was no response from the other side of the wall.

After hesitating a little, the Poet took off running toward the rear entrance, but—

—when the gate came into view, he saw two figures tearing this way.

“Chi! Sickle!”

“Run!”

Sickle’s yell was drowned out by the gunshots behind them.

However, that was enough to tell the Poet what was happening inside the walls: something serious enough to make these two take to their heels.

“Wait, Frank just went in…”

As he was about to tell them, the big door beside the rear entrance opened—and he saw a swarm of men in lab coats.

He noted that all the men in white had guns in their hands…and after about two seconds of hesitation, he ran off into the darkness with Chi and Sickle.

This is a complete digression, but…

At that moment, a mysterious phenomenon was taking place all across America.

In every corner of the country, though their lives had never crossed paths…

…certain women, who were all different ages, who lived in different areas, who had never even met…

…all screamed in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time.

Some of them were taken to hospitals because they were panicking, but no one realized the simultaneous nature of the event, and it was tidied away as a simple bout of hysteria or auditory hallucinations.

In the end, this bizarre phenomenon faded into the shadows of history without ever becoming public knowledge.

Lua’s prison-room

A moment ago, things had suddenly gotten very noisy outside, and Carol was shivering violently in her hiding place under the bed.

She was clutching her camera—which had been returned to her during her imprisonment—and with every bang she suspected was a gunshot, she gave a little scream.

It’s a chance for a scoop! It’s a scoop, but still!

In her mind’s eye, she could see herself rushing gallantly to the scene and snapping photographs. However, her full-body shivers thoroughly shattered that fantasy.

As she quaked with her own wretchedness and her terror of the gunshots…

“It’s all right.”

…a gentle voice embraced Carol.

“Nghhh… Miss Lua…”

As Carol took a few deep breaths and looked up, a new noise came to startle her—the sound of someone banging on the door. The girl’s hands naturally tightened on her camera.

“M-M-M-Mi-Mi-Miss Lua, I-I-I-I-I’ll pop the flash and blind them, so you t-t-t-t-take that chance and…”

Unable even to speak clearly, Carol loudly fumbled her way through an abrupt show of bravery, but just as she stood up, the door opened— And when she saw the face behind it, Carol had no qualms about wailing this time.

“Vuh! …V-V-V-V-V-Vice PresideeEEeeeeEEEEEEnt!”

“Hmm. Carol. What did I tell you just the other day?”

Giving her a troubled look from behind his monocle, the vice president patted the sobbing girl’s head and lectured her.

“You mustn’t look at people and then shriek at them.”

A corridor of the Russo mansion

“By the way, Chris…”

“What, Rail? Looks like something’s on your mind.”

As they hurried down a long corridor at a trot, Rail morosely spoke to Christopher, who was ahead of him. Ricardo was bringing up the rear, but there was a little distance between them; they were making sure it was safe before they advanced.

With his backpack on now that they’d left the room, Rail lowered his voice so Ricardo wouldn’t overhear and said…

“A minute ago, when I saw Ricardo changing, I noticed something.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Ricardo’s, uh…”

Despite the tension, Christopher bit back a smile as he nodded. He’d probably predicted what Rail was going to say.

Rail narrowed his eyes at this, but he still asked his question, straight-out.

“…a girl?”

He seemed extremely hesitant to say the word, and Christopher swallowed his smile entirely, responding with a perfectly calm expression.

“Yes. What about it?”

“…You knew?”

“Well, I mean, we’ve lived together for more than a year.”

Flashing his fangs in a grin, the red-eyed young man seemed to be enjoying his reply.

“That said, Ricardo didn’t say anything and I didn’t ask, so it was more of a tacit understanding. I’d say the only people in the syndicate who know are the boss, a few old-timer executives, and the housekeeper.”

“…”

They were approaching a staircase, and the gunshots had gotten closer, so they were walking carefully. Even then, Christopher kept talking.

“Does that private bathroom make sense to you now?”

“More than I’d like,” Rail agreed briefly.

The joy in Christopher’s expression grew deeper and deeper, and he cackled like a mischievous little kid.

“Originally, I wanted to have you walk in on Ricardo during a shower, to see if the kid would scream. She changed clothes right in front of us without a blush, though, so I doubt she would have.”

“Chris…? Mind if I blow you away?”

Rail smiled, an angry vein bulging, and took an egg with an attached pin out of his breast pocket.

While Christopher watched him with amusement, he listened closely to the noises in the mansion—and noticed that there was a lull in the gunshots.

Then he took off running toward what seemed to be the heart of the uproar: Placido’s room.

“I think you might want to hang on to that bomb for a bit!”

Placido’s room

The door to the living quarters—not the entrance, nor the door that Chi and Sickle had used—was kicked open, and a red-eyed monster and a boy with scars like train tracks burst in.

Chi and Sickle already seemed to have made their getaway. The moment they entered, the monster and the boy made eye contact with the bespectacled woman in a lab coat, who was eyeing them curiously.

“Oh! Rail! I thought you’d run off. You’ve been here?”

“Huh…?”

The woman in the lab coat sounded pleasant enough—but Rail had frozen up completely.

Aha, so this is the group in lab coats that Ricardo was talking about? Christopher thought, but then he noticed Rail had begun quivering violently next to him.

“What’s the matter, Rail?” he asked, puzzled.

“Wh…why…?!”

Though his lips were pulled into a tense smile, his eyes were astounded, hateful, and terrified.

“They’re… Back then… Back then, I know I… I blew them to bits!”

“Huh?”

That was when Christopher suddenly realized something: The group that had tried to snatch Rail when he was alone had also been wearing lab coats. Back then, Rail had made his escape by throwing a ton of explosives willy-nilly, prepared to take himself out along with them. This had resulted in his rescue by Christopher and Ricardo, but…

When Christopher saw Rail’s expression, he was sure the boy really had blown them to bits.

At the same moment, he was convinced that these people in white were not normal.

Meanwhile, a memory from a few days earlier surfaced in Rail’s mind (although, since he’d woken up just a few hours before, it was a very recent memory for him).

This woman. Her appearance and manner of speech were completely different… Yet, for some reason, he had seen Huey superimposed on her figure, and before he knew it, he was throwing bomb after bomb.

He’d wrapped himself in his fireproof coat, and in the instant the blast flung him away, he’d seen something quite clearly.

The group in white was ripped to pieces, and the white-clad woman’s neck was broken.

And yet… Right now, here she was, alive and well.

“She’s…immortal?”

His whole body was shivering slightly, and his teeth were chattering audibly, but even then, he forced the word immortal out of his lungs.

The solemn answer reached Rail’s ears. “The incomplete kind…but yes.”

The response had come not from the group in white, but from Placido, who was crouched at a table by the window.

His clothes were peppered with holes—from bullets, by all appearances—but there wasn’t a scratch on him.

“However… Kid. If we put that and you together…we’d have a perfect liquor of immortality, right?”

Placido’s smile was filled with greed, and the individuals in white smirked at one another.

Christopher didn’t think they were just a group of researchers who happened to be immortal. The only one acting thoroughly blithe was Renee, and while the remaining members did crack jokes, they constantly kept a wary eye on their surroundings.

It didn’t look as if there would be much teamwork here, but each one seemed to have endured training that would, at the very least, have enabled them to hold their ground in a war zone.

Christopher seemed delighted as he addressed Renee, who was surrounded by those immortal soldiers.

“I see! It all makes sense now… So those twelve hundred failed guinea pigs in New York were your stock farm, and you used it to pick out your guard dogs?”

Last year, in Nebula’s branch headquarters in New York, Christopher had seen twelve hundred “failed” immortals.

Recalling his own personal involvement in the event, he had brought it up with the intent to buy time.

However, Renee only tilted her head in utter bewilderment.

“Huh? No, that isn’t it.”

“Really?”

“Well, I mean… Guinea pigs are rodents. You can’t pick guard dogs out of a bunch of rats, could you?! I wouldn’t do anything that inefficient.”

“…”

Renee’s answer left Rail speechless as he listened to the conversation from Christopher’s side. When he saw her puff out her chest with a proud little chuckle, a terrible chill ran down his back.

She’s… That wasn’t sarcasm or anything…

That’s what she really and truly thinks!

She wasn’t playing the fool, even if it had sounded that way. She had been perfectly genuine.

Christopher didn’t want to admit he’d been outplayed, so he shrugged and retorted, “What, didn’t you know? In India, they train rats and turn them into guard rats. They’re stronger than elephants.”

“Huh?! R-really?!”

Renee was completely taken in, but she was subjected to a flood of comebacks as she looked around at the others: “Of course not.” “Please have a little common sense, Director.” “Go to hell, Director.” “Raise our salaries, Director.” “Strip, Director.”

Ignoring the white-clad individuals and their lack of anxiety, one lone person—Placido—struck the table with his fist and flung intimidating words at Christopher.

“Christopher, what are you doing? Hurry up and grab the kid next to you!”

Apparently, he didn’t understand why Rail was there with him.

Christopher felt a little sorry for the old guy, but… With a wry smile, he decided to add a little spice to the man’s life. After all, like himself, Placido was no longer human.

“Unfortunately… That isn’t what my employer wants.”

“What…?”

The next moment—

Shing. The sound of metal against metal reached the ears of everyone in the room.

The emotion in Rail’s soft voice had been almost completely stifled.

“I’m gonna blow you away.”

And with that icy murmur—several eggs scattered into the air.

A sudden roar echoed through the mansion, and the hallway rocked as if there had been an earthquake.

“Aaaaaaaaaah! Vice President! Wh-wh-what was that?!”

“Calm yourself.”

“I can’t!”

“Then do so not for your own benefit. Still the confusion in your heart for the sake of someone else,” the vice president muttered to her as they ran down the hall, and Carol looked back in spite of herself.

Lua was following them after Carol had dragged her out of the room by force.

She must have been uneasy after all. She’d even asked Carol if she would get in their way.

“Um… May I escape with you?”

The moment she saw Lua’s face, Carol felt a burst of courage, and she threw out her chest as she answered, “Please don’t worry! We may not look like it, but we’re information brokers. We’ll find a safe place for you until your special someone is released!”

As Carol firmly pulled Lua along by the hand, the vice president spoke quietly.

“I won’t say that volunteer work is wrong. However, unless it is commensurate with what you can afford to give, the results will be unfortunate for both of you. If you’ll remember that, then I shall cooperate with you this time.”

“It’s all right! I’m always cool and calm if you’re here, Vice President!”

“…That audacity is rather well suited to our establishment.”

The garden Near the front entrance

“She’s not here.”

“What should we do? You think she ran off after that explosion?”

Christopher and Rail had launched themselves away from the blast, rolling into the entrance.

They’d looked for Ricardo with the intent to get out of there right away, but Ricardo was nowhere to be seen.

They’d gone out into the garden, figuring the kid might have run outside ahead of them, but found no one.

“I don’t think she got hit by the explosion, but…” Rail muttered uneasily.

“Guess I’ll have to try looking again.”

Christopher headed back into the peril of the mansion, but he didn’t seem especially pessimistic.

Rail didn’t try to stop him.

Ricardo chose to run because I was there.

On that thought, Rail started back toward the mansion’s entrance, but just then, a familiar voice called to him from behind.

“Interesting… Let me tell you an interesting story.”

He froze.

Rail had grown so used to the physiological reaction that he started wondering how many times it had been just this week.

“What the heck is going on here?”

Rail turned around. The person he’d expected to see was standing there.

“So you blew up my boss’s house, huh? You’re really, uh…asking for it.”

I see… So this guy has ties to this place, too.

As he watched the shadow of the spinning wrench, Rail’s blood gradually drained. Even he could tell that his color was growing worse. Should he use a smoke screen to get out of this?

However, if he went back in to look for Ricardo afterward instead of running away, would he be able to get out again safely?

Dammit… Looking at this guy makes me see how little I can do!

He had the urge to challenge the guy in front of him, but another part of him was screaming at himself to run for it, fast.

That hesitation would create a lingering vulnerability, and he’d probably lose again.

Rail had seen his own future, a handful of seconds ahead, and it made him miserable about everything. He began to tear up, but—

“Hey, you! What the hell are you doing there?!”

That was when some newcomers arrived.

It was a group of three gangsters, led by a man with a scar on his cheek. Rail had never seen any of them before.

“Oho… So this is the brat? Not bad, for a sea slug. When the mansion blew up, I wondered what the hell was going on. That was you, huh?”

Krieck sneered at the scar-faced boy as he spoke, but abruptly, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

When he turned around, there was a beaming Graham.

“Hunh? Whaddaya want, sea slug bastar—”

“You’re in the way.”

Krieck disappeared into the garden shrubbery headfirst, along with the rest of his sentence.

The wrench had whistled right into Krieck’s head, knocking it away and his body with it.

“G-Graham! You sonuva—”

A thrill of tension ran between the two remaining gangsters, until a clear voice from behind cut through the strain.

“You really are.”

Just as they heard the voice, the two men began to flip, sketching beautiful arcs in the air.

The men’s heads were flung to the left and right with considerable momentum. Their skulls were rotating in opposite directions, and in the next instant, they slammed right into each other just above the ground.

The force was less like a clacker toy and more like two flints being struck. The men’s brains rattled, and they dropped very unsafely to the stone pavement.

Then, without sparing them another man, the red-eyed man faced Graham, and—

—bowed respectfully to the enemy that frightened Rail.

“Good evening,” he said. Just that.

For his part, Graham whistled at the other man’s deft skill in taking out two opponents in the same instant. As he retraced his memories, he began to talk terms with his opponent.

“Hey. You’re Master Ricardo’s bodyguard. I’m a little confused about all this, but… If you’re standing there, it means you’re protecting that kid from me. Is that right?”

“Well, that’s about the size of it. Rail was telling me that you took real good care of my friends Chi, Sickle, and Frank, too.”

“In other words, we’re gonna fight?” Unusually, Graham was keeping his tone under control.

“Wow. That’s quite a leap. Not that I mind.”

Seeming unsure, Christopher murmured, “What should I do…? Should I kill you or run? I can tell you’re tough, that much is obvious, but frankly, at the moment, I don’t know if I’m tough or not.”

It was an odd thing to say, and Christopher had no qualms about exposing his own disgrace.

“After all, a year ago, I got in a fight to the death and lost spectacularly. Not only that, but the guy wasn’t even giving it his all. He was pitying me. Since then, to be honest—I’ve been too scared to handle mortal combat. So just to get my instincts back…I do think maybe I should do a little killing.”

“Then as far as you’re concerned, I’m…”

Remembering the resounding defeat he’d suffered in New York, Christopher finished Graham’s sentence for him with a self-mocking smile.

“…Rehab.  ”

“Interesting. You’re interesting… Ha! Fascinating! See, I was just feeling bored, too! Breaking people isn’t my thing, but…when I could finally manage to break somebody after giving it everything I’ve got, then that’s different.”

With a light smack, smack, the rotating wrench sped up as Graham’s high energy began to condense.

For his part, whether his opponent was an immortal or some being that surpassed even them, Christopher wasn’t at all nervous even as he acknowledged his strength.

The miscreants closed in on each other, forming a strange reality that existed only between the two of them.

It was eerie and gloomy, composed of nothing but bloodlust and the desire to destroy, but…

At the very least, the two inside seemed to be enjoying it.

And yet… Why can’t I move?

As the worlds of the two deviants collided, off to the side, the boy lowered his eyes sadly.

Where is it…that I want to go?

He felt as if he’d been left out of everything happening around him, and his mind and body could do nothing but waver there.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…

In Placido’s room

“Dammit!”

The explosion had completely trashed the room’s interior. Placido slammed his fist into the miraculously unscathed table.

Only he and Renee were in the room. Most of the remaining white-coats had gone to the rear entrance in pursuit of Chi and Sickle, who’d fled out the window a moment ago.

Renee gave a small, startled cry of recognition as the situation unfolded.

“Oh!”

“Wh-what’s wrong, ma’am?” he asked politely, following Renee’s gaze.

When he did, he saw the two information brokers escaping with the girl he’d meant to use as a trump card against Ladd.

“Th-those two… They ran off! And they took Lua!”

As he watched his trump card slipping away, Placido felt something dark and heavy bear down on his spine.

Even though Placido was immortal now, Ladd’s malice weighed on his heart like a curse. As if to drive off the chill, the don railed angrily against what he was seeing.

“Damn that broker! So he stabbed me in the back, huh?! Was he the one who leaked the info on this place?!”

Unlike Placido, Renee was watching the receding information brokers through the window with a cheery smile.

“Oh, I wondered what Mr. Gustav was doing here. Does this mean you captured him, Mr. Placido? It’s a shame he got away,” commented the woman in the lab coat.

Placido said, “You… You know that monocled gink?!”

“Hmm? Yes, of course! Don’t you? Even among the mafia, he’s terribly, terribly famous.”

“Nuh, no… I dunno him.”

Placido shook his head uncomfortably, sensing that he’d been informed that his information-gathering abilities as a mafioso were lacking. Oblivious to this, Renee puffed out her chest proudly and began to tell him about Gustav.

“Mr. Gustav is the vice president of one of the most distinguished information brokerages in the whole country! If you give him money or information for it, he’ll sell you almost any knowledge there is; he’s an incredibly capable broker.”

“Wh-what…?”

“There are no mistakes, and sometimes it even helps the police find the culprits in cold cases!” she crowed, as proudly as if his achievements were hers.

Placido hastily began rifling through the contents of his desktop.

In a corner of the cluttered desk, he found a scrap of paper. As he reread the information from Gustav on that paper, his eyes gleamed with a feral kind of pleasure.

“I—I see… So all this stuff is accurate, huh?! Heh-heh… Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Interesting. First I’ll slaughter these Isaac and Miria jokers, and then I’ll strangle the tattooed kid and the rest of ’em with my own hands!”

“Um, erm, uh…”

As Placido shouted theatrically, Renee timidly raised her right hand in apology and broke into his monologue.

“I’m sorry. You can’t do that.”

“What…? What do you mean?”

“Excuse me. Let me see your forehead for a minute, please.”

“…?”

Had some side effect of the failed liquor developed? Immediately uneasy, Placido hastily exposed his forehead to Renee.

“Wh-what, is there some kind of bruise or something?”

“No. Immortals can’t get bruises, not even incomplete ones.”

“? Then what’s—?”

Renee’s blasé voice, and the touch of her hand on his forehead, cut off Placido’s dubious question…

…forever.

“Thank you for the meal.”

Those were the last words that the temporarily immortal Placido Russo ever heard.

Huh?

Frank had been peeking in through the window, and at first, he couldn’t believe the sight he was suddenly faced with.

Wh-what in the world was that?

The woman in the lab coat had set her hand on the elderly man’s head, and then—

In the next instant, the man’s body began disappearing into her palm.

Like water rapidly draining from a bathtub, his human body undulated wildly. And like jelly being sucked through a straw, it was absorbed into the woman’s slender frame. If you’d expressed it with a noise, the sound effect shloop would probably have fit perfectly.

From what Frank had seen, at least, the only way to put it was that the woman’s right hand had eaten someone. He was used to outlandish sights, and he was aware that he himself qualified as such, but even to him, it was shocking.

I—I have to tell everybody…

Frank’s huge body shrank in on itself… But his ears picked up a voice from somewhere below him.

“Don’t move.”

Just as Frank heard the command, a violent bang came outside the window. The vibration traveled into his eardrums and his brain, and a powerful punch landed on his thigh.

“O-ow…?”

However, a punch was just Frank’s mistaken interpretation.

When he looked down at his feet, red flowers had bloomed on both sides of his thigh. Numbness spread from the crimson bursts to the rest of his leg all in a rush. After the dull ache…incredible agony ran through Frank.

“Waah… Waaah-ah-ah-aaaahh-aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

He gave a scream that sounded a bit sluggish. Then, around him, he heard several extremely laid-back male voices.

“Wow, that’s really something. Not only did it not go through, it might not even have reached the bone.”

“I shot as I told him not to move. That’s okay, right?”

“No problem. It’s not like we’re soldiers; those rules might as well not exist.”

The sound of the window opening joined their conversation, and a woman’s frightened voice rang out.

“H-hello? What is it…? Oh! That big child— He’s, um… Frank, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right, Director. The other ones, the guy in the hat and the doll with the kicks—they ran off. We couldn’t catch up, and when we came back here, this huge kid was peeking in through the window.”

“Huh?! Did he… Did he see what just happened?!”

Renee blanched, and the men in lab coats replied calmly.

“He saw you real good, Director.”

“That’s why we keep telling you to pay attention to your surroundings.”

“Learn a little, all right?”

“Read the mood, too, all right?”

As they berated her, Renee turned her attention to Frank’s enormous frame, as if trying to distract them.

“Still, he really is big, isn’t he? We’ll have to use the truck’s whole bed!”

As she gave Frank a carefree once-over, Renee clapped her hands together lightly and smiled, issuing instructions to the men in lab coats.

“Oh, if the tranquilizer wears off while we’re in transit and he starts to fight, the driver might get into an accident, you know? So let’s give him another three or four shots, and then— Cut all the tendons in his arms and legs. Just in case, please!”

The men in white had no questions whatsoever about that cruel order…

…and several of them surrounded Frank’s huge body, preparing to do as they’d been told.

When he saw the blades pointed at him—a memory rose in Frank’s mind.

Researchers in Huey’s research facility, wearing the same white lab coats, holding scalpels, closing in on him and Rail.

He also remembered the pain and the terror that had accompanied them—

—and the next thing Frank knew, he was screaming the name of the boy who’d endured it with him.

“R-Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaail!”

“…Frank?”

The cry echoing through the mansion sent an electric shock through Rail.

It was the scream of someone who’d been his friend for as long as he could remember, whose life had been damaged by Huey and the researchers along with his own. His body was immediately drenched in cold sweat.

Before he knew it, he’d already started running toward the scream, and he distracted Christopher during his face-off against Graham.

“Oh— Hey, Rail!”

Christopher tried to stop him, but Rail didn’t listen. He dashed off, toward the back of the mansion.

Graham didn’t let the opening escape him and thrust the end of the wrench at one of Christopher’s joints—but Christopher noticed at the last moment and jumped away to put extra distance between them.

“Time-out for a second. Listen, I don’t have any weapons on me today. I lost my knife-guns last year.”

“At the moment, I’d love to shout back ‘Not my problem,’ but let’s hear what you’ve got to say. What do I have to gain by letting you go?”

“Next time you’ve lost your wrench, I won’t mess with you. Would you call that a win and let me go now?”

“…You say some interesting stuff.”

Graham spun his wrench, narrowing his eyes as if he was entertained.

“And since it is so interesting, you oughta play with me a bit more, a’ight?”

“…Guess I’ve got no choice, then. This is more trouble than it’s worth, so… I’m going to kill you for real, okay?”

Christopher smiled cheerfully, gritting his rows of fangs, and in the next moment—

The headlights of a car swept over the two, and they heard the sound of an incoming engine.

When they reflexively turned to look, they saw a passenger car bearing down on them at a terrific speed.

“?!”

They both jumped back at the same time as the car came between them to forcibly separate them.

Deciding it must be somebody from the wanted poster, Graham was about to hurl his wrench at the driver, but—

“Young master Ricardo…?”

Realizing that the figure in the driver’s seat was the Russo grandkid, he retracted his wrench hand.

“Ricardo.”

“Get in!” Ricardo shouted firmly, and Christopher obediently jumped into the passenger seat.

The next moment, the car sprang into motion, pressing him hard against the seat.

The driving was rough, but Christopher calmly pointed out the more fundamental issue.

“…You can drive?”

“I can work the gas and the brakes, at least!”

The reply was unusually animated. When Christopher turned to look, he saw the kid was half-standing, jamming a foot down onto the accelerator. If Ricardo leaned back in the seat, the pedals would probably be out of reach.

Smiling dryly at the sight, Christopher spoke as a hint of cold sweat began to form.

“…I’ll switch with you. Stop for a second, okay?”

The backyard

“Frank…?”

Rail had run off toward the scream, and there he found—

—the body of his giant childhood friend, stained red with blood.

His hands and feet were bloodied, and he seemed almost lifeless. A crowd of men in lab coats was loading him into the bed of the truck they’d arrived in.

“Fraaaaank!”

At the boy’s scream, the men in white all turned around at once.

Rail thought he saw Frank look in his direction, but it was just his imagination. Frank’s mind had gone completely dark already.

“Frank… Let him go…!”

Rail took an egg-shaped bomb out of his jacket, preparing to throw it at the men who were far enough away from Frank that the blast wouldn’t hurt him.

He saw the men draw their guns, but Rail didn’t seem to care as he set his fingers on the pin—

And then he froze.

The military guns the men had taken from their lab coats…were all trained on Frank.

“…!”

Rail shuddered, then went still.

“Oh? You’re… You actually came back to us?”

The happy-go-lucky question seemed completely oblivious to the mood. When he looked toward the source, a bespectacled woman poked her head out from the shadows of the truck where Frank was being loaded.

“You…!”

“Did you come to save your friend?”

Though she looked mildly startled, the bespectacled woman sounded perfectly at ease.

“That’s a little unexpected. To think that Mr. Huey could raise a guinea pig who cares about his friends…”

“…!”

“Oh, were you created so he could research human emotions or something like that? Or did he convert someone who was originally a normal human?”

The question was too much, and for a moment, Rail was speechless.

Renee gazed at the silent Rail curiously, but the white-clad men around her rolled their eyes and began giving their boss candid advice.

“Director Renee. There’s no point in asking the test subject about the intent of an experiment.”

“Look at that little smirk. He’s laughing at you, Director.”

However, the interpretation missed the mark. For Rail, the men’s thoughts bled into his past memories at the research facility, and he felt a faint despair. His hand trembled around the bomb.

As for the bespectacled woman they called Renee, still oblivious to the mood, her face fell when she heard the men’s accusations. But then…

As if attempting to recover, she struck both hands together lightly, then pointed at Rail.

“Um, ummmm. Anyway, perfect timing! If we take him along, too, we’ll double our results! Besides, unlike the Poet and Sickle, it sounds like Huey gave instructions to tinker with their bodies in some very special ways!”

That childlike perspective made the men in lab coats smile amiably—

—and in the next instant, they coldly turned on Rail.

“Roger that, Director.”

Break time was over, and they were back on the job. The men were already seeing Rail as a guinea pig.

“Ungh…!”

All kinds of memories turned into flashbacks, assaulting Rail’s heart, and he almost fumbled the bomb he was holding.

As he watched the men come closer, step by step, guns at the ready—a hopeless nausea welled up from his gut. His knees began to quake.

He couldn’t just stand here.

He wanted to blow all these people away.

He wanted to run.

But he had to save Frank…

These contradictory impulses intersected, and in the end, he couldn’t act on any of them.

Was this it, then?

Rail was about to scream, and in that moment—

—instead of a scream came the roar of an engine, and a car burst into the backyard.

“Hey, Ricardo, it’s about to get a little bumpy. Be careful.”

As he spoke, Christopher abruptly stood up in the driver’s seat.

“…Huh?”

Beside him, Ricardo gave a yelp of surprise. Still standing on the accelerator, Christopher skillfully flung the door open and wrenched the steering wheel to the side. The car skidded sideways, its open door slipped neatly in front of Rail—and he scooped the boy up with his left hand and yanked him into the car.

When he saw that Rail was gripping a bomb, Christopher passed his slight frame to Ricardo in the passenger seat and tore the egg-shaped object out of his small hands.

Then he stomped on the gas and sent the car barreling forward, away from the white-clad group at top speed.

The group in lab coats turned their guns on the car and started forward, intending to fire at it, but—

They hastily jumped back when they noticed an egg tumbling out of the retreating vehicle.

Just as they all hit the dirt, the explosion roared out.

“Yeeeeeeek?!”

The bespectacled woman hadn’t taken cover quickly enough, and although the flames didn’t reach her, the blast wind knocked her over backward.

Rail didn’t even see it. The car had already made its escape through the rear gate, but he looked back from inside and screamed.

“Frank… Fraaaank!”

“It’s better if we rescue him later. If we start a fight now, Frank’s bound to get hit by a stray bullet or something else. He’ll die!”

Unusually for him, Christopher’s words were forceful. Rail’s mouth worked as if he wanted to say something— But before long, just as the mansion disappeared from view, he closed his mouth, hanging his head. After that, only an uncomfortable silence filled the car.

“They got away…”

Renee climbed to her feet, coughing lightly, then tried to encourage both her white-clad subordinates and herself with false cheer.

“It’s all right, though! I’m sure they’ll come to save this large boy…um…Frank, and when they do, we can just catch them all at once! As a matter of fact, that was the plan all along!”

“Uh… Why would you lie now?”

Her subordinates glowered at her, but Renee stuck to her guns, insisting that this was her strategy—

—and while her attitude seemed out of place, what she said was not, in a way.

“So you see, even if the test subject dies, you mustn’t tell anybody!”

“…He is going to die, then?”

“Mm… It’s fifty-fifty. Still, do your very best to keep him alive, please.”

Renee’s smile was soft, and her words were firm.

Firm, and cruel.

“After all, we’ll have more ways to experiment if he’s alive!”

Outside the front gate

“…Is this…a sad story? Or is it a fun one?”

“Mr. Graham! This place is bad news! Let’s get out of here, right now!”

Gunshots and explosions were reverberating from the Russo mansion.

Graham had been standing in front of the gate, but Shaft grabbed his hand to drag him away.

“I’m still confused, but that bunch of doctor-types doesn’t seem interested in us, so let’s go!”

As if to say that this was their chance, Shaft tried to make his escape with Graham—but Graham didn’t even register the group in lab coats anymore.

“That red-eyed bastard… He’s interesting. Truly interesting. It really gets me, right here.”

Remembering what he’d felt during their momentary clash a little while ago, Graham turned his back on the mansion and began spinning his huge wrench in delight.

“It looks like I’ll be able to tell sad, fun stories until my brother Ladd gets out of the slammer. Right?”

Cracking his neck audibly, he spun the wrench faster and faster.

“Enough of ’em to keep from getting bored, at least.”

On and on and on.

Twirl, twirl, twirl, twirl…

Spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, spiraling into insanity—

Somewhere in Chicago

When they were a good long way from the Russo mansion, Christopher took the car into a lakeside park.

He was just thinking that they could probably stop worrying about pursuers at this point when Rail, slumped in the back seat, murmured in a barely audible voice.

“…I’m sorry… Let me off…here.”

“Huh?!”

“I’m not going with you… I’m grateful to you for saving me. Thanks… So let me off.”

At Rail’s sudden request, Ricardo glanced at Christopher with concern.

Christopher thought it over for a few moments, but…

…he went on until the road widened a little, then stopped the car without a word.

“…Thanks.”

Rail opened the door on his own and got out of the car, then began walking deeper into the park, toward a forest. He didn’t get far before he slowly crumpled to his knees, as if his strength was gone.

“…Ngh…”

The boy knelt in the dirt of the park, breathing raggedly. Christopher got out of the car, too, and spoke to him from behind.

“You okay, Rail?”

Instead of answering, Rail asked Christopher a question of his own.

“What’s…gonna happen to Frank?”

The boy’s eyes were pleading, but Christopher didn’t sugarcoat anything.

“Hmm… I think they’ve probably taken him to Nebula’s headquarters, or to a factory somewhere in Elleson Hill. In my opinion, they seemed a lot like the people at Huey’s research facility. They’ll probably treat him the same way, or…if he’s lucky, they’ll kill him quickly. That’s the impression I got.”

“…That’s what I was thinking, too.”

As Rail remembered the woman and the group in lab coats, he was recalling his own past.

“That woman… She may not talk the same way, but…she’s just like Huey. She… She really just looks at us like we’re under a microscope. Seeing her reminds me of…what happened, way back then… When they turned me into this…!”

Rail’s shoulders were trembling. There was an unnatural smile on his lips, but his eyes were filled with tears of frustration and terror.

“What are they…? What are they…? Those immortals… Chris—Chris, tell me… What are those people—those immortals anyway…? First Huey, and now that woman… What the hell are they?! And what about us…? What are we…?”

He tried to sound angry to disguise his own fear, but the fear won, and his voice was shaking before he was finished.

“If we aren’t human, if we’re unnatural creatures…then what—what are they? …What are they?! They used to be regular humans, unlike us, but now… Now they’re way, way more unnatural than we are, and they’re crazy! Waah… Aaaah… AaaaaaaAAAaaaaaaaah…”

Finally unable to hold back any longer, Rail’s face twisted, and he wailed.

“AAAAAAaah… AaaaaaAAAaaaah! AAAAaaaaaAaaAAaaaaah!”

He cried and cried…

“AaAAAAaaaaah… AAAAAaaaaaaAAah! …Aaah! …Ha… Ha-ha…”

And eventually, the tears turned into a laugh like a broken instrument.

“Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Rail…”

Rail’s eyes were glittering brightly, and Christopher gazed down at him sorrowfully from where he stood next to him.

Ricardo was waiting in the car, but Christopher didn’t pull Rail to his feet and take him away. He only turned his red eyes to the night sky, irritatingly full of stars, and listened quietly to Rail’s shouts.

“Hey… C’mon, this is weird. How come…I can laugh like this when I’m so sad? Say, Chris, don’t you think it’s funny? Aren’t you gonna laugh? C’mon, tell me! Ha-ha! …Ha-ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“I laughed like that once, too, a long time ago. I forget what it was that set me off.”

“Ha-ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Hee… Hee…! Hee…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Maybe Rail had laughed too much; the suture scars on his face creaked, and blood was seeping out in places.

He didn’t care, though, and he kept right on going. He just laughed and laughed, with tears streaming down his face.

“It’s weird, but when you’re really in trouble, you start wanting to laugh. I wonder if ordinary humans are like that, too.”

Christopher paid no particular attention to the blood, either. He just kept talking, though Rail may or may not have heard him.

“But…that was the trigger, and afterward, I think I did go crazy, in the real sense of the word.”

“Ha-ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“So listen, Rail. I won’t stop you. I won’t. I can’t.”

“Ha-ha…ha-ha…ha…ha-ha-ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”

“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.”

“Ha-ha…ha…ha-ha…”

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

He ended the speech with an honest expression of his feelings and started back toward the car, where Ricardo was waiting.

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

“Ha-ha…huh…? Ha-ha-ha…”

“I idolize them, so I guess I may be a little jealous of you, Rail. Ha-ha.”

“…”

“I’m planning to do something, too, but… Well, I’m still technically Ricardo’s bodyguard, so I guess it’s up to her… If you want to come along, I won’t stop you. Right now, though, I don’t think I can make you.”

Slowly, Christopher walked away. Rail watched him go, unable to follow. His attitude had seemed cold, but Rail couldn’t curse him, nor could tears make him stay, either.

Gradually, his laughter ran dry in the night air.

Then, when he heard the car’s engine, and he was sure he couldn’t see Christopher anymore—

“A human? Did you say ‘as a human’…?”

Rail burst into tears one final time, and his scream echoed through the night.

“That joke’s not funny. I can’t laugh at that, Chris… Christopherrrrr!”

How much time had passed?

Rail’s laughter had eventually stopped. He’d fallen to his knees like a broken doll, but…

…slowly getting to his feet, he muttered to himself, “You’re going to help me out. Sham… Hilton…”

As usual, his lips were drawn up into a smile by the sutures, but the look in his eyes was nothing like what it was before.

“Frank…if you’re alive…I promise I’ll come and save you.”

His eyes were fixed on some faraway point, but his words were focused steadily forward.

“We’ll blow up every last one of that group in lab coats…”

And all that lay before him was indelible darkness.

“And then we’ll take that bastard Huey, and the ones who cut into my body and your skull at the lab…and we’ll blow them all away, too.”

Rail was aware of this, but it actually gave him a pleasant feeling, and his monologue continued into the chilly winter air.

His voice was very faint. However, the will in those words was strong.

“And then…let’s blow up all the people who didn’t accept us…and create a legend. We’ll blow up the town…spread the story around other towns ourselves…and then we’ll blow up those towns, too.

“We’ll blow up all our nightmares. Every last one.”

At noon that day—it happened.

Wild gouts of flame burst up in locations throughout Elleson Hill, and the roar was heard all the way in Chicago. The location of the first explosion wasn’t identified until a very long time afterward, and it was determined that some sort of timer had probably been used to trigger the explosions simultaneously.

All the damage was to facilities that had connections to Nebula. It was considered a clear act of terrorism against the Nebula Corporation, and a peculiar tension ran not only through the town of Elleson Hill, but through the neighborhood around the company headquarters in Chicago.

The anxiety that gripped the town was unprecedented, and smoke and flames were still rising in Elleson Hill.

To the citizens, this bombing had come out of nowhere…

…and it seemed to be not an incident in its own right but the harbinger of one to come.

On the outskirts of Chicago…

In a corner of a run-down tavern, the Poet had been listening to the news about it on the radio and spoke quietly to Sickle beside him.

“…Do you think it was Rail?”

“Wow, that’s new. How many years has it been since I heard you speak properly?”

Sickle responded sarcastically, her expression as sullen as ever, but she did answer the question.

“It’s gotta be Rail. Can you think of anyone else?”

“Was it an attempt to save Frank? If so, it was careless. Besides…it wouldn’t have been possible for him to set three hundred bombs by himself, not in such a short time. Sham or Hilton probably helped.”

Sickle’s scowl deepened as the Poet calmly summarized the situation, and she brought up another problem that was affecting their immediate vicinity.

“Sham, Hilton, and even Leeza have vanished. What does it mean?”

“I expect it’s just in Chicago… Or so I’d like to think.”

In an attempt to break out of their current predicament, Chi had left Chicago early that morning to meet with Tim and Adele in New York.

They’d settled on this nearly deserted bar as the place they would make contact to plan for their reunion, but neither the Poet nor Sickle had any idea whether the situation would develop further in the meantime.

After the bombings, the radio touched on the mass concurrent disappearances.

“What do you think of these disappearances?” the Poet asked.

From Sickle’s answer, she felt he shouldn’t even need to ask.

“I’ve got no proof, but I bet they’re Sham and Hilton.”

“They seem to assume the bomber and the kidnapper are the same person. To think that it’s actually opposing forces tearing at each other… It’s rather comical.”

“To the average joe, we are the same. Us and that bunch in lab coats. All just monsters.”

Even though the situation seemed fairly hopeless, Sickle didn’t seem the least bit disturbed.

Perhaps amused by the current state of affairs, the Poet chuckled and began to wax lyrical.

“We’ve been captured. Checkmate.”

“…What is?”

“It isn’t this city that will be Alice. It’s us, and the Russo Family. Rail and Frank, and that man in the coveralls—we already were Alice. We followed Nebula’s white rabbit, and now look: We’ve found ourselves completely trapped in an alien world.”

“…”

“Where, then, is the exit? What must the captive Alices do in order to awaken? Who is the Queen of Hearts? Is it the woman leading that group in white?”

The Poet was growing more and more affected, but…

…ultimately, he closed with a question directed at himself.

“And most important of all… Should we wake up?”

The Poet ended his speech there, and then he only drummed his fingers on the table. After a short silence…

…without even looking at him, Sickle murmured, almost to herself.

“You’re starting to talk like yourself again.”

They thought they might have heard another explosion, far away, but…

The Chicago sky was vast and high, and the sound was immediately absorbed into the spaces between the clouds…

…and as if nothing had happened, only the infinite vivid blue looked down over the city.