Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter 3.7

 A two-century black box

Once our car dropped us off, Natsunagi and I walked through the Diet Building together.

Only the bare minimum of lights were on in the corridors, and there were no people. We opened a few doors, checking the rooms behind them, and finally found a lone man in one of the main chambers.

I wasn’t sure if man was the right word for him, though. The figure seated at the desk in the heart of the vast chamber belonged to a demon, not a human.

“It’s been a long time, human—no, Kimihiko Kimizuka.”

Should I call him the true leader of Pandemonium? As the Vampire Scarlet looked at us, his golden eyes narrowed in a smile. Natsunagi and I hung back by the entrance, keeping our distance.

“I’ve met the woman once before as well, haven’t I?” As Scarlet gazed at Natsunagi, the corners of his lips rose in an alluring way. “I see. You’ve come to take Daydream’s place as my bride, then?”

“Bride? What are you talking about?” Natsunagi looked dubious. Scarlet had called Siesta his bride candidate or something before, but Natsunagi probably hadn’t heard about it. Still…

“You know no one could ‘take the place’ of your bride. The reason brides are the prettiest thing in the world is because they get to join their lives with someone they truly love,” Natsunagi said, flatly rejecting Scarlet’s suggestion.

“Ha-ha. Now there’s a thought that hadn’t occurred to me.” Scarlet seemed to have been caught off guard; he smiled slightly.

“Never mind that, Scarlet. How did you get in here?” I said.

“Hm? The same way the detective did, I believe.”

“You’ve got a pass, too, huh?”

In other words, he’d used his Tuner qualifications. Those gave the heroes unlimited access to most public institutions.

“That seems weird, though. Why haven’t they pulled your Tuner qualifications now that you’ve done all this?”

“Ha! What are you saying?” Scarlet dismissed my question. “You speak as if I have become an enemy of the world.”

“Didn’t you make that undead army?” Natsunagi pressed him. If Scarlet had caused this situation, it had to be enough to cost him his Tuner qualifications.

“I merely attempted to restore the world to its proper shape.” Scarlet shook his head. “After all…”

“…those undead are Gluttony’s victims.”

Natsunagi and I both gulped.

“When Gluttony devoured them, he absorbed all their DNA. Therefore, I was able to resurrect them as undead by using his blood.”

…Was that why Scarlet had come to Gluttony a week ago, when the monster had been near death? Not to save him, but to raise a crowd of undead from his body?

“In a way, this is an act of charity.” Scarlet spread his arms wide in a theatrical gesture. “I’ve used my vampiric abilities to save innocent unfortunates who ran afoul of the supernatural’s jaws. What cause would anyone have to strip me of my Tuner qualifications?”

I didn’t have a ready answer for that.

I wasn’t allowed to find fault with the act of resurrecting the dead. Not when it was something I’d wished for myself.

“But even if you followed your conscience in bringing them back to life, why are you making them march on the Diet Building?” Natsunagi’s criticism was reserved for what Scarlet had done afterward instead. She wanted to know why he was controlling them.

“Everyone who became undead had strong wills or wishes. That was the only type of person Gluttony killed and ate,” Scarlet told her. “Therefore, while they are now undead, they should each have returned with their strongest instinct from life intact. However, they have forgotten those instincts and wishes, and they’re acting as if their wills have been overwritten by another’s. Souls, the consciousness of living creatures—what do you suppose they are?”

Scarlet fell silent and looked up at the ceiling. For some reason, his golden eyes seemed vaguely melancholy.

“So you’re not running an experiment?” I asked him. Hadn’t he raised the dead to see if they’d follow his orders?

Scarlet just kept gazing at the ceiling. In that case… I asked another question.

“Are you planning to start a rebellion?”

Scarlet’s eyes returned to me. “Against whom would I rebel?”

“The Federation Government,” Natsunagi answered. “Because they ordered you to wipe out the vampires.”

“So you knew that much, did you?” The white demon smiled thinly.

What Stephen had told us had been true.

“Yes, I may have a motive for revenge. Two hundred years ago, the government ordered their Inventor to make vampires as biological weapons. Then when they determined they were too much to handle, they promptly resorted to genocide.”

That was why the vampires were being destroyed; even Stephen hadn’t mentioned that. The reason was far too simple and stark: The Federation Government was afraid of them. The vampires were too strong.

“And that’s why you’ve been working to kill your own kind on the government’s orders for two centuries?”

“You seem to be operating under a misunderstanding. I was born a mere thirty years ago.”

“…So you’re actually only as old as you look? I just assumed vampires live forever.”

I’d once seen Scarlet’s severed arm promptly reattach to his body, the cells regenerating themselves. I’d always just assumed his kind were immortal, but…

“Regenerative abilities and immortality are different things. No living creatures on this earth have transcended their natural lifespans. Vampires are at the mercy of their limited lives, just like everything else. There is no immortal king.” The corners of Scarlet’s lips curved in self-mockery.

“Wait a second, though. If you were born thirty years ago, does that mean the Inventor is still making vampires? That seems like it would go against the Federation Government’s code of conduct…,” Natsunagi said.

“No, the vampires the Inventor made two centuries ago were the last,” Scarlet told her.

But if Scarlet hadn’t been made by the Inventor, where had he come from…?

“It is true that the Inventor still provides me with technology, but my body is not the product of science. Did you perhaps assume that vampires do not reproduce?”

That word hit me hard. I’d unconsciously assumed that vampires were a completely different species, that they weren’t human. …I’d been led to think that way.

The vampires—even Scarlet—had family.

“It is true that vampires were initially an artificial race created by the Inventor. However, they subsequently obeyed their survival instincts as living creatures and have continued to reproduce voluntarily.”

Survival instincts. That term triggered a memory from the past.

“Once they began to flourish independently, the Federation Government feared them. Gradually, it began to work toward their annihilation. For more than a century, various Tuners have been charged with that mission, and for over a decade, it has been mine.”

“Why?” Natsunagi asked, taking a step forward. “How do you justify it to yourself? What circumstances would make you kill your companions?”

Companions.

The moment Natsunagi said that word, Scarlet’s eyes changed ever so slightly.

“Why do you think?” the vampire asked her.

His golden eyes widened, and his blood-drinking lips posed a question:

“Why do you suppose I would curry favor with the government, betray my few remaining brethren, and continue to soil my hands with their blood? Can you solve that mystery, Ace Detective?”

The demon’s voice echoed in the vast chamber. Then for nearly a minute, silence fell.

That meant we’d lost.

What was the vampire really fighting with? What did he wish for, and what had he spent his life seeking? The detective and her assistant still didn’t know.

“Have no fear, humans.” His expression suddenly softening, Scarlet rose to his feet. “No doubt it will not be long now, but I will not truly make my move tonight.”

As he started to leave, I realized I’d heard that line before.

“……! Wait! Stop that undead army. You can do it, can’t you?”

Natsunagi ran after Scarlet. That was why we’d originally come here. We couldn’t let Scarlet leave yet.

“As I said, have no fear. There’s no need for that. They’re already…”

An image was projected into the hall.

It looked like drone footage of the spot where Natsunagi and I had been just a little while ago. In other words, it was showing the undead army, and they were under attack.

But what was attacking them?

“Gluttony,” Natsunagi murmured, her voice trembling.

He looked completely different than he had when we’d seen him last week.

He was huge, over seven meters tall. An armored shell covered his whole body. His six enormous wings stirred up a wind, and his protruding red eyes rotated 360 degrees, searching for prey.

Sometimes running on two legs, sometimes on four, he grabbed any undead within reach, crushing them with his powerful jaws and swallowing them down. The monster truly was the Lord of the Flies.

For a moment, it reminded me of my old enemy Betelgeuse, but I was far more afraid of this than I’d ever been of that monster. At least Betelgeuse had never smiled like that while eating people.

“Kimizuka, look!” Natsunagi pointed to a corner of the image.

There was Ookami, charging at Gluttony with his great sickle. Had he defeated Envy already? But then Gluttony had appeared. Ookami’s greatest enemy.

Still, in that case…

“Rill’s definitely going to show up.”

She would be just like Ookami, or maybe even more intense.

The Magical Girl was bound to appear and kill her sworn enemy.

“Let’s go, Kimizuka.”

Natsunagi held her right hand out to me.

She wasn’t shaking now.

“Let’s go pick up our companion.”

With no hesitation, I took her hand.

Even a hundred years from now, I doubted I’d regret that choice.