Vengeance Is Mine

by Shiden Kanzaki

  I know two things about you.

  One is that you were born.

  The other is that you will die someday.

  —Hyrum Smith

  BLACK BULLET 4

  CHAPTER 03

  THE THRESHOLD OF VICTORY

  1

  “It’s begun, Satomi.”

  At Kisara’s reverential whisper, Rentaro frowned. But before he could say another word, she spoke again.

  “Look at the Monolith.”

  Rentaro raised his gaze from the ground to look. A ripple of shock went from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. First, a corner of the rectangle collapsed. But that immediately led to the next collapse. Finally, the enormous body of the cracked Monolith couldn’t stand up against the Varanium corrosion fluid any longer and let out a scream, and then nothing could stop the chain reaction of structural failure.

  From where Rentaro was, he couldn’t hear the sound of the actual collapse, but that made the shriek of the Monolith a moment before even clearer. Abruptly, the whole bleached pane became fatally splintered, and the Monolith looked like it was shrugging its shoulders as it disintegrated. Chills went down his spine with it.

  The Monolith fell like time-lapse photography, starting from its base with fragments flaking off the top. In no time, it would crash into the ground. As he watched, there came a roar, and then they were hit with a shock wave rumbling the ground, forcing Rentaro to raise his arms and grit his teeth. The vibration shook Rentaro from his feet to his guts, and the shock wave blew away the surrounding debris, rotting signs, and sheet metal that had fallen.

  When Rentaro lifted his face, he saw the sky was covered by a cloud of dust and fine particles. “No way…”

  It was starting. The Third Kanto Battle was starting—and not when they were planning for it to start.

  “Satomi!” Kisara yelled.

  “I know!” Rentaro fixed his eyes on the broken Monolith once more and ran toward the battlefield. No matter what, he couldn’t leave Enju, so he ran down the stairs from the roof and through the police station. Inside the station was chaos, with everyone pointing and screaming at Monolith 32 in the window.

  “Enju!” He found her sitting in the waiting room, looking down dejectedly.

  “Rentaro…” Enju looked at him and slowly tried to put a cheerful expression on her face. It was painful to watch.

  “Enju, let’s go.”

  Enju looked like she didn’t understand. “Go where?”

  “What do you mean, ‘where’? To the base at the front lines! The Monolith collapsed!”

  The girl turned her head, seemingly noticing the frantic screams and fleeing bodies around her for the first time. “It…collapsed?”

  Rentaro shuddered. “You… Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed?”

  Even though it was so loud…

  Enju shook her head. “I noticed. It’s just…I was just a little spaced out, is all.”

  Rentaro didn’t reply; he simply closed his eyes. Enju had just heard the news of the death of her classmates this morning. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t want to put her on the battlefield. However, the current situation was not so kind.

  “Rentaro, I’ll jump with you on my back,” said Enju.

  “No, that’s okay… Let’s run,” said Rentaro.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.” Rentaro took Enju’s hand and they hurried outside. He tried to flag down a nearby taxi but soon realized it was futile. The cars were fleeing, scattering whether or not there were passengers riding in them, and now all he could see were people running around screaming.

  When they hit a thoroughfare, the conditions were even worse. The six-lane street was in a state of confusion, with cars at a standstill and horns honking in a loud chorus; all the while people were abandoning their cars to get just a little farther away from Monolith 32.

  Rentaro and Enju bumped into shoulder after shoulder as they ran through the crowd, running in the opposite direction as everyone else. No matter how much time passed, they could not find a ride. There was no train station nearby, and even if they had been able to make it to a station, there was no guarantee that trains would be running on their usual schedule in this state of emergency.

  In the meantime, they passed through to the neighboring District 40. There were fewer people there, and it was mostly filled with abandoned buildings. As they ran, he swept his gaze left and right: Even though Rentaro’s body was moving at full speed, his brain was calmly analyzing their current situation.

  There was still quite some distance between them and the civil officers’ base at the front lines. So, it was obvious that he would not be able to continue running at the speed he was now, overexerting himself. Wasn’t there anything he could do?

  There were scooters, motorcycles, and cars around them, but the former two were covered in rust and pretty much totaled; the latter were missing tires and had their hoods open, their parts looted.

  But shortly after, he glimpsed a bicycle hidden in the crack of a building. After a quick inspection, he found it in usable shape despite showing its age; it had air in its tires and had had maintenance done. A resident of the Outer Districts had fixed it and had been using it, no doubt. It was a granny bike with thin tires and a child seat strapped to the back.

  However, a joint-type bike lock connected the body of the bike to the pole next to it. Rentaro looked left and right and apologized silently to the owner, vowing to return it later. Drawing the gun from his hip, he took three steps back and aimed. He carefully pulled the trigger and fired, and the bullet blew the lock away.

  Sitting astride the saddle, he put Enju behind him and pedaled hard. The bike seemed to stretch as it accelerated, shooting through the streets of the Outer Districts. A sudden warning siren rang in his ears, and he lifted his face in surprise, looking around him. The siren roared high and low, coming at them from all directions.

  “A biohazard warning?” he said. In the ten years after the war, no matter how dangerous a Pandemic crisis Tokyo faced, this warning had never been sounded, but now, it was echoing around them, ringing like crazy.

  Then, another strange thing occurred: After a loud screech pierced his ears, a large black mass came toward them from the northern sky. Suddenly, the street was covered by a dark shadow, and Rentaro and Enju, who were going full speed on the bike, were completely surrounded by it, their world turning dark. It was so dark that it could have been mistaken for night.

  He soon realized what the black mass was. Birds. A group of birds of various species and sizes screeched noisily as they flew away in the opposite direction of the fallen Monolith. So even the birds had started their escape—they seemed to know instinctively that Tokyo Area had no future.

  Enju made a fist with her hand, which was wrapped around Rentaro’s waist from behind, and he could feel sweat on his palm. Rentaro pedaled even harder and shifted into high gear. Before he knew it, the handlebars, too, were slick with sweat. He naturally lifted his pelvis as he sat and rounded his back to reduce air resistance, rising into a racer’s stance.

  He raced around the utility poles that were bent back and forth and the useless traffic lights, weaving his way through the cars lying around like an obstacle course, leaning this way and that to avoid them. Avoiding the traffic signals enabled him to save more time than he expected.

  After the Monolith collapsed, they would definitely see Aldebaran’s troops start moving. Unfortunately, the self-defense troops who were stationed downwind had been showered with the dense mineral dust from the collapse and were probably in a state of panic. The problem was whether or not they would be able to regroup and attack before the Gastrea arrived.

  Getting onto a highway, Rentaro stood up and p
edaled to climb the small hill. There was a cliff to his right with a guardrail next to it. Climbing the hill required a lot of stamina, and he was soon panting, his calves straining, but he finally made it to the top, where a cool breeze whipped around his body.

  Looking over, he saw that the tracks of the overhead train line running parallel to them were blocked with piles of clay roof tiles and blocks that had been blown over. He was right to not head toward the train station after all. It would be impossible for them to run.

  Abruptly, he thought he felt a tire hop and gave a small yell. His inattention brought calamity, and he ran over a rock on the curb. The bike fluctuated wildly.

  “Rentaro! In front of you!” Enju shouted.

  Before him, the guardrail in front of the approaching cliff had been scraped away. The cliff below was steep, and the forest beyond seemed very small and far away. If they fell, it would be instant death.

  He yanked the handlebars to the left and released the power of his artificial leg. The artificial skin and his uniform on his right leg were torn off as he fired cartridges out of the limb. From the thruster, there was an instant of bursting sparks as their inertia adjusted. Resistance in the pedals disappeared as he lifted his feet, and they accelerated so much that it seemed like they were going to be thrown off. But they turned at the last minute, and followed the curve of the guardrail.

  Rentaro was in shock from the close call. They definitely couldn’t afford to be injured in a place like this. Still, he didn’t slow down as he continued.

  Finally, the base at the front lines came into view. Even from far away, he could see clearly how the civil officers were flustered. They were trying to make the formations they had learned in a hurry, but they were confused, and their lack of experience was already being exposed.

  By the time Rentaro had left the bike in front of their tent and rushed to the front of the squad tent, the rest of his team members were already talking things over in a circle.

  When Kisara saw Rentaro, her eyes widened. “Satomi, how did you get here? Even Tina and I just got here a minute ago—”

  Rentaro’s whole body was covered in sweat, and he tried to calm his ragged breathing. He placed both hands on his knees and somehow managed to raise his head, then wiped his mouth with a sleeve. “I’ll tell you later. We’re going, too!”

  It took some time for the civil officers to recover from the confusion caused by the unexpected destruction of the Monolith. The destruction of the enormous rectangular structure standing 1.618 kilometers high and 1 kilometer wide produced an enormous amount of dust and ash that was blown upward into a heavy cloud. In little time, it covered the sky of Tokyo Area and hid the sun.

  The prediction from the Japanese government office had included the shock wave from the collapse, the ashes, and the irregular weather, but there was a big difference between hearing about it and actually seeing it in person, and the strangeness of it forced Rentaro into feeling like the world was ending. Even so, he and the other civil officers managed to complete their battle formation in about three hours, but that did not seem to be the case for the self-defense force on the front lines. Because of the wind, the ashes from the Monolith were blown directly at the self-defense force’s camp. But even with that, they were able to rally because of their regular training and their reputation as defenders of the country.

  At around 7 p.m., even though it was summer, the sky had turned an indigo blue, and it was finally time for the invasion of Aldebaran’s troops. From where Rentaro and the others were, the back of the SDF formation was too far away to see Aldebaran’s troops beyond them, but the clouds of dust their enemies kicked up as they marched forward in lines blurred the horizon, and the low, beastly roar of their voices gave Rentaro goose bumps. They had probably gone around the fallen Monolith before finally making it inside the city.

  It was the omen of an unavoidable Great Extinction. He’d watched the scene on a video-streaming site many times—when Gastrea invaded a broken line of Monoliths, the possibility that the people living in that city would all be killed was 100 percent, and up until now, there had been no example of any city avoiding the Great Extinction once a wall went down.

  The next instant, someone opened fire.

  The self-defense force’s long-range weapons—self-propelled guns, tank guns, and automatic cannons—all fired at once, drawing a dazzling arc as they rushed into the enemy Gastrea. The next instant, there was an explosion. The first lines of Gastrea were blown away spouting flames, and the next line of them plunged in deeper than the first.

  A crimson battlefield appeared, and the sky burned. The shock wave came later and reached even Rentaro, and the hot wind of the battlefield hit his whole body. Rentaro lifted his arm to shield his face and narrowed his eyes beneath his hand. Looking at the scorching-red sky, Rentaro felt a throbbing pain at the base of his artificial right arm.

  It was the same. He had seen the same sky ten years ago. It was the hell that the young Rentaro had seen at the end of the Gastrea War: Gastrea had invaded the area where he had been living, and he had been pushed onto a train and sent to live with the Tendo family. On the way to Tokyo, he’d seen different battlefields from the window of that train—burning cities, burning farms, burning people. At the boundary between the jet-black sky and the red flames, the endless indigo blue gradation had warped and burned its image onto Rentaro’s retina.

  The passengers had shoved in close together and were all shaking and crying inside the train car, finally resorting to prayer—quietly, to themselves, of course. The fact that the train had arrived in Tokyo without being overturned or derailed by Gastrea was a miracle in and of itself.

  Rentaro squeezed his chest and tried to check the unpleasant sweat pouring out of him with all his might, trying desperately to put a lid on the terrible memories.

  Five hours passed in the way, until the time read midnight. The battlefield was locked in night, and it became a night battle in earnest. The sky was closed off with the ashes of the Monolith, so there was no moon, and there were no streetlamps in the Outer Districts, so it was surprisingly dark.

  From the midst of all that, Rentaro could intermittently hear the deafening roar of tank guns and shock-wave blasts that shook the atmosphere. There were the flames of 25-mm machine guns firing rhythmically like a typewriter. In the spaces between, he could hear the groans of Gastrea, followed by their angry cries and screams.

  And, just as he had predicted, the self-defense force never asked for support from the civil officers no matter how much time had passed.

  Rentaro was growing impatient. What were they thinking? Did they really think that they could win this war holding on to worthless things like distinguished service, territoriality, and pride? Shouldn’t they attack the Gastrea as one right now? Who was even winning? What was the current state of the war?

  When Rentaro turned his head to look at the civil officer troops’ battle formation, he saw that even though they had built campfires, many also watched the proceedings anxiously.

  From atop a small hill, Rentaro and his group could see the situation of all the squads clearly. His group was a kilometer in front of where the frontline base tent had been built, and they were spread out to the side as they waited. The troop, made up of a little over a thousand civil officers, was grouped into adjuvants, and they were placed under the charge of a company commander in sets of ten. The one in charge of the company commanders was Troop Commander Nagamasa Gado.

  Diagonally in front of Rentaro to the right, he could see the superior officer directly above him in rank, the company commander. Apparently, all the company commanders had been selected from Gado’s adjuvant, and this one was a young man equipped with a lead-colored, Japanese armor-type exoskeleton. His name was Hidehiko Gado, and he was the biological son of the general commander, Nagamasa. He had a pale face with hollow cheeks, with a long, thin face and glasses. He looked like an academic who was always shut up in research labs that didn’t get any sun, or
perhaps a librarian.

  Next to him was an Initiator named Kokone. At training the day before yesterday, Hidehiko had rubbed her shoulders, lifted her chin, and stared at her profile entranced. It looked like he had feelings for his Initiator beyond that of a partner or family member.

  Looking at Hidehiko, Rentaro couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Even in just these last few days that the civil officer troops had spent training together, Hidehiko’s clumsiness was apparent. It wasn’t just that he passed down orders slowly—he seemed to lack the ability to make decisions, and Rentaro didn’t feel any confidence or dignity from the man’s orders.

  Even now, as he held his partner Initiator’s shoulders, he looked like he was desperately mumbling a prayer. He was probably praying that the SDF would win and that he would not have to take his turn.

  Behind adjuvant leader Rentaro was the president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency, Kisara Tendo, and her partner, Tina Sprout, who was holding an antitank rifle almost as tall as she was. And then there was the president of the Katagiri Civil Security Agency, Tamaki Katagiri, and his little sister, Yuzuki Katagiri. Also waiting were Rentaro’s senior disciple in the Tendo Martial Arts, Shoma Nagisawa, and his partner, Midori Fuse. They were all filled with nervousness, and they were holding their weapons at the ready so they could rush out and fight at any time.

  And right next to Rentaro was—

  “Rentaro, do you think the self-defense force will win?” Rentaro stole a sideways glance at Enju Aihara’s profile, her nervous face staring far out over the horizon.

  Even as Rentaro felt impatient, he closed his eyes firmly and tried to change his thinking. Right now, he could not prioritize Enju. He had to prioritize what they were doing.

  How much time had passed?

  The gunfire slowly grew sparse, and the voices of the Gastrea faded. And then abruptly, both of those sounds disappeared.

  On the flat plain in front of him spread darkness that seemed to absorb the stillness of night. Agitation spread noisily, like ripples, among the civil officers. Rentaro overheard people saying: