by Yusuke Kishi
The cross fell to the ground and broke open. A plume of grayish-white powder burst from it, slowly expanding outward…
Ah, so this was the end, I thought. We were about to fulfill our mission. Regardless of what happened to us, at least the fiend would be destroyed. Kamisu 66 would be saved and peace would be returned…
No. That was a lie. I couldn’t let it happen.
At this distance, Satoru would be infected by the psychobuster as well.
A maddening thought took over the logical parts of my mind.
One by one, I’ve lost my loved ones. My sister. Shun. Maria and Mamoru…
If I lost Satoru too, I’ll be all alone. I would be the only left from team one. Was that really the will of the gods?
No! I screamed silently to myself.
As the white powder swirled slowly through the air like paint dropped into water, it sparked and blossomed into flames.
The flames spread rapidly, greedily licking up every spore. The anti-PK weapon that had survived for over a millennium was destroyed in the cleansing fire…
Time returned to normal and everything started happening at once.
Satoru fell to the ground, dumbfounded.
And the fiend…
It shrieked and staggered away. The fire seemed to have injured it somewhere.
“Satoru! Run!”
I pulled him up by the arm.
“Saki, what…?” he murmured, still unable to process what had happened.
“Forget about it and run!”
As we turned, a frightening roar rang out behind us.
Glancing back, I saw the fiend glaring at us with a look of rage. It hair had been burnt, and both hands were red and raw.
This was really the end.
Numb with fear, I simply stared at the fiend.
I had no doubt that my life was about to end.
Because of my impulsive action, all our efforts until now, and all the people whose lives were sacrificed for our cause, were for naught. We couldn’t kill the fiend, and now we were going to die in this hell…
I had already accepted death. That’s why I couldn’t immediately comprehend what happened next.
A rock came shooting through the air from behind, almost hitting the fiend before it was blocked by cantus. For some reason, the fiend backed away with an expression of fear on his face.
Kiroumaru came running out of the darkness.
“This way!” he shouted, grabbing us by the collars and turning away from the fiend.
Time hung suspended. As the three of us ran, our backs were completely open, and the fiend could easily have burned us all. Amazingly, nothing happened.
As we rounded the corner, I slowly began to comprehend how miraculous our rescue had been.
Still, it wasn’t over yet. The god of death was quickly descending upon us.
But now we were stuck between a rock and a hard place.
We had narrowly avoided death, but had also lost the chance to defeat the fiend.
We ran desperately through the tunnel.
“It doesn’t appear the fiend is following,” Kiroumaru said, sniffing the air.
Now that the fiend was upwind, we would know immediately if it got near.
“It appears he was burned quite badly. He might be treating his wounds first,” Satoru said faintly.
His head was still bleeding.
We slowed to a walk.
“Where are we going now?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Kiroumaru looked troubled. “Let’s just put some distance between us and the fiend for now.”
“I’m sorry, it’s my fault the psychobuster…”
“There’s no time to lament that. Concentrate on the path ahead. Yakomaru’s soldiers might be lying in ambush.”
We made it most of the way back without encountering anyone. My spirits lifted as I thought that this was only natural. The enemy had used its trump card, the fiend, but we had left him behind. Being the smart tactician that he was, Yakomaru would never choose to fight humans with queerats…
But as we neared the mouth of the tunnel, Kiroumaru suddenly stopped. Since we were upwind, we weren’t able to tell who was coming. But Kiroumaru’s sensitive hearing seemed to have picked up something. The enemy appeared to be hiding nearby.
He raised his hand to stop us. As we slowly backed away, there came the sound of rapid gunfire and bits of rock exploded from the walls.
We backed twenty or thirty meters down the tunnel. Then came the second wave of gunfire. This time, the bullets came deeper into the tunnel.
Since we couldn’t see them, we couldn’t counterattack. And if we tried to get a glimpse of them, we might be shot. If we just attacked blindly, we risked bringing down the entire tunnel and burying ourselves alive.
Just as we had thought we were safe, we were driven into another corner. This time, there was no way out.
When the third wave of bullets came, I knew that the enemy was just firing blind. But there was still the chance of getting hit by a stray bullet, so we retreated down one of the side tunnels that led to a dead end.
There was a sharp whistling sound inside the main tunnel. Yakomaru was probably communicating with the fiend.
“…I smell the fiend. He’s coming,” Kiroumaru said casually, as if the fiend was a friend coming for a visit. “There’s a burnt smell, as well as the smell of blood. I also smell fear in his sweat. He’s moving very carefully, possibly because of his wounds. And at the moment he’s stopped about thirty or forty meters away, probably trying to get a good look at us. Somehow, he knows we’re here.”
Why didn’t he slaughter us all in one go?
“This is it,” Satoru said, sitting down with his head in his hands. “There’s nowhere to go. We’ve lost our trump card. Now we’re…”
I felt a sharp stab of guilt for wasting the psychobuster, but Kiroumaru seemed to think differently.
“It might be too early to give up.”
“Why? Do you have an idea?” I asked, clutching desperately to the tiniest shred of hope.
“No. I don’t think there is a way out. …however, Yakomaru does not seem to have an immediate solution for this either.”
He seemed to have the answer to the question I had earlier.
“But they have nothing to worry about. They’ve got an overwhelming advantage. In fact, they can just wait for us to kill ourselves,” Satoru said.
“No, that is not the inevitable end,” Kiroumaru explained calmly. “We still have our last resort. If you can accept being buried along with the enemy, you can collapse the cave with your cantus.”
“Is that Yakomaru’s fear? Is that why he’s not attacking us?”
If that was it, then all we could do was hope that the collapse would be big enough to kill everyone.
“That may be one reason. Even though he has the advantage right now, he might be having trouble coming up with the final move. His soldiers won’t enter the tunnel because of your cantus, and the fiend is probably also hesitant to come alone.”
“Why?”
“One reason might be because I’m here. Even though I have no cantus, I would not hesitate to attack him. …and he might also be having other doubts.”
“Like what?”
“The fiend was badly burned. He had overestimated the protection afforded to him by having cantus, and now might be having doubts about his powers.”
“In that case…” Satoru looked up. “Saki burning the psychobuster was a way of attacking the fiend. How was she able to do that?”
“Because…” I thought for a moment. “Probably because when I burned the psychobuster, my goal to save Satoru also included saving the fiend. If I’m trying to save someone, but they get hurt in the process, I’m not attacking them intentionally.”
“I see…” he said quietly. “Can we use that to our advantage? If we make it seem like we’re trying to save him, we could use our cantus…”
“It won’t work,” I said, shak
ing my head. “You can’t do it if you’ve already had the idea of attacking. It would never work. …you can’t deceive yourself into bypassing attack inhibition or death feedback.”
If it was that easy, we wouldn’t have had to descend into this hell to find the psychobuster.
Suddenly, Yakomaru’s voice came from outside the tunnel.
“Let us negotiate! I am the supreme commander of the Robber Fly colony, Yakomaru. Shall we try to avoid any more unnecessary bloodshed?”
“What kind of bullshit is he trying to pull now?” Satoru muttered angrily. “Who was the one who attacked and killed hundreds of innocent people for no reason?”
“Please answer me. Humans and queerats may be different, but we are of equal intelligence. Our interests may differ, but surely negotiations can overcome them. Engaging in dialogue would be the first step.”
“Don’t answer,” Kiroumaru warned. “He wants to use our voices to locate us.”
“…if this continues, it will only lead to more deaths,” Yakomaru continued. “That is not my intention. I swear upon my own name. If you surrender now, I promise to spare your lives and to treat you humanely in your capture.”
“That’s like a haythatcher promising other birds that it won’t eat their eggs even if they lay them in its nest,” Kiroumaru scoffed. “That double-tongued bastard doesn’t really think he can win us over with his words. He’s just trying to get us to respond.”
Once he realized he wasn’t going to get anything from us, Yakomaru’s voice stopped abruptly.
We waited for the attack to come.
The silence was stifling.
“Satoru… I’m sorry. I was stupid. I thought that you would be infected by the psychobuster too. But…”
“It’s fine. I understand,” Satoru said distractedly. “The fiend probably would have been infected, but he would have killed me before I was infected. …so you’ve saved me, in a sense.”
“…in the end, it’s all going as you said,” I said ruefully to Kiroumaru. “I ruined our chance to deal with the fiend. I’m going to die regretting it.”
“There’s a saying we have that goes, ‘Complain to the grave worms when you are lying next to them’,” Kiroumaru said, his eye glittering. “You are too fond of giving up. Our kind seeks to turn the tables until our dying breath. Though those efforts may be in vain, we lose nothing by trying. This attitude isn’t limited to soldiers, but should apply to all living beings.”
I should have been impressed at his will in the face of all the odds. But at the moment, I thought his words were mere bravado.
We had exhausted all our options and were soon to be buried deep beneath the earth. What plan could he possibly have?
“Kiroumaru, there’s something I want to ask you.” Satoru looked up.
“What is it?”
“We’ve fallen squarely into Yakomaru’s trap. When it happened, I honestly thought you had betrayed us.”
“I see. It’s not surprising to think that when you’ve had a severe mental shock. You would like reassurance that I haven’t deceived you,” Kiroumaru said calmly. “If you think about it, there’s no reason I would. First, betraying you two would mean working with that bastard, and I have no motivation to do so. My goal for living now is to rescue the queen, and destroy Yakomaru. Second, if I was working for the enemy, I would have killed you long ago. When you split up, that would have been the perfect opportunity. I could have done it in the blink of an eye.”
“Yeah, you have a point.”
I looked Kiroumaru squarely in the face. No matter how many times I did it, I still couldn’t help suppressing a shudder.
“You risked your life to save us from the fiend. To doubt you even after you’ve done that… But I want to ask something too.”
“I will answer as long as I have the breath to do so.”
“You said you came to Tokyo years ago with your soldiers, and your knowledge of the area proves that. But why did you come? What was so important that you would risk losing a third of your men?”
Kiroumaru’s mouth split into a wide grin. “I see. That is the root of all your misgivings about me. I had not wanted to tell you before, but there’s no reason to hide it now.”
He stood up, sniffing the air and twitching his ears to make sure the enemy had not moved.
“We came for the very same reasons we are here now. We wanted to find weapons of mass destruction left behind by the ancient civilization.”
“…what for?”
His smile faded. “What for? Not to add to our hobby collection. To use. The psychobuster might not have enough power, but with nuclear weapons, we might have been able to replace humans as the dominant species on the planet.”
“Why? Doesn’t the Giant Hornet colony have good relations with humans? And yet you’re just like Yakomaru in your desire to dominate,” Satoru said disbelievingly.
“First of all, please look at it from our perspective. Every creature wants to live and reproduce. For us, our entire life revolves around the continuation of our colony. So we needed a way to ensure our survival. The Giant Hornets are allied with many other colonies, but we still have enemies, and the need to go to war can arise at any moment,” Kiroumaru explained. “In the same vein, it’s easy to imagine that the existence of humans is a huge threat to our colony. What exactly are ‘good relations’? By being loyal, obeying your every whim, and doing your dirty work, we are allowed to live. But all that can change in an instant. It’s not unusual for entire colonies to be annihilated for no discernible reason.”
“So you wanted to kill humans before they could kill you?”
“If our victory could be guaranteed simply through a preemptive attack, we would have done so. Like what Yakomaru has done. But since we did not find any nuclear weapons, we naturally had to abandon the idea.”
“But how did you know about the nuclear weapons to begin with?”
“You’ve probably already guessed. The library terminals you call false minoshiro or fake false minoshiro. We’ve known for a long time that knowledge is power, so we put forth a lot of effort to catch one. The terminals have long since evolved defenses to make them accessible only to humans, and recently a new type has appeared that are even harder to capture. …unfortunately, the one in our colony was taken by Yakomaru and now he has at least four terminals in his possession.”
We had relied too heavily on the absolute power of cantus. In every era, those in power inevitably fall because of arrogance and neglect.
“Thank you for answering honestly. But do you think we can still trust you after what you’ve said?”
“Of course. You have no choice, and because of that I have not hidden anything from you,” he said matter-of-factly. “Although we view humans as our enemies, we have no desire to dominate them. All we want is for our colonies to thrive. But now, the Robber Fly colony has threatened our continued existence by imprisoning our queen.”
Kiroumaru’s eye glittered with hatred as he spoke.
“That bastard has lost the basic instinct to live and die for the colony and turned into a power-hungry monster. Under the guise of democracy, he spreads his treacherous ideals and attempts to consolidate all power under himself,” he said, a gutteral growl entering his voice.
Dropping his voice, he continued, “Although our kind is made to serve humans, we have always been allowed to have our own traditions and culture. However, if Yakomaru becomes dictator, that will be the end of us. We cannot let him create a society where queens are lobotomized and turned into slaves.”
I remembered the horrors I had seen in the “farmhouses” in the Robber Fly colony. For the first time, I felt a sort of empathy toward Kiroumaru that transcended our species.
“…so I must kill the fiend through any means possible and stop Yakomaru’s treacherous plans. On that point, I believe we are in complete agreement.”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Yeah, I agree too, but…”
Satoru didn�
��t continue, but his meaning was clear. We could trust Kiroumaru, but that didn’t help our current situation in the least.
There was nothing we could do. All of us believed that, even Kiroumaru. Yakomaru must be thinking the same thing.
But that wasn’t the case. If we had realized that, we might have been able to win without further bloodshed.
However, none of us could have imagined that we actually had an overwhelming advantage at the time.
…strange.
That voice in my head again.
Shun? What do you mean, strange?
In order not to arouse Satoru and Kiroumaru’s notice, I asked the question silently in my mind.
It’s Kiroumaru. He’s the joker…or rather, the trump card.
I don’t know what you mean. Explain it to me.
I told you before. That’s not a fiend. Think about it…
Shun’s voice faded away into the distance.
Shun. Shun! Why? Tell me.
…you know…I showed you…aboveground…my…
Then there was only silence.
I still didn’t understand.
“Saki, what’s wrong?” Satoru asked, seeing the expression on my face.
Just as I was about to explain what Shun had revealed, Kiroumaru spoke.
“He’s coming…the fiend.”
We all looked toward the entrance with bated breath. The dead end we were in was around a large bend so we couldn’t see the main tunnel.
“He’s walking slowly to keep quiet. He’s probably close; another two or three meters…”
Had the fiend really found us? If it came down toward the dead end, we would have nowhere to run. I started concentrating in preparation for collapsing the tunnel. But this wasn’t only suicide, it was also an intentional attack on another human. At the last second, attack inhibition would probably prevent me from doing anything.
Would it be better to do it now, before I saw the fiend?
I looked up at the ceiling. …and couldn’t do it. A wave of despair washed over me.
If I brought down the tunnel, it would kill Satoru as well. As I expected, I still couldn’t use cantus.
I closed my eyes and waited for the end to come.
Kiroumaru whispered calmly, “He’s passed by. He’s probably on his way to rejoin Yakomaru.”
