Promise (6)
“To monsters…?”
Platon asked in a trembling voice, staring at the bloodstains.
“Have they… already been attacked?”
But the commander and I both shook our heads at once. The commander seemed to have recognized the nature of the bloodstains just as I had; I waited a moment for him to speak, yet he only looked at me, as if telling me to explain.
I let out a quiet sigh.
“This isn’t the work of monsters.”
Platon recoiled in shock.
“If it isn’t monsters, then what are these bloodstains?”
“You wouldn’t know. You’ve never shot a person.”
“What?”
For a second he only tilted his head, not understanding. Then the meaning hit him, and his eyes went wide as he stared at the blood again.
“Then you’re saying that is…?”
“Yeah. Not monsters. Those are the marks of people shooting people.”
“People… not monsters…”
Platon’s gaze flicked back and forth between me and the commander.
“Your Excellency seems to think the same. How did the two of you even recognize that?”
“Look carefully.”
I pointed at the stains with the muzzle of the rifle I was carrying.
“The blood is sprayed out like mist. Small droplets mean the blood was flung outward at high speed—exactly what you get from a firearm. Droplets that fine can only come from a gun. Monsters don’t shoot people with guns, so this is people shooting people.”
When I finished, the commander nodded in agreement. Platon’s mouth fell open a little.
“Even if Your Excellency can tell… how does Haydam know? You’ve never shot anyone either, have you?”
“I’ve never pulled the trigger on a person, but I’ve seen plenty of people who got shot.”
“Ah…”
He must have remembered that I had been present at Lieutenant General Bartom’s execution. I had been spattered by the blood of men killed by gunfire; I had even taken a bullet myself from a Unicorn Area operative. Of course I would recognize the spray pattern. It also helped that the same kind of scene had shown up constantly in the crime dramas I used to watch before the possession.
The commander’s face held not the slightest doubt; he clearly assumed I had witnessed things like this countless times before my regression.
“An attack from another zone, then?”
The moment he heard that people had shot people, his mind jumped straight to a raid from outside. I had thought of Unicorn Area players myself, but we had been heading north chasing monsters. The Cola Area sat farther north than any other zone. There was no reason for outsiders to strike us from still farther north—beyond that lay only the crevasse fields. And the shape of the bloodstains suggested a single exchange of fire, nothing more.
“If it had been an ambush the blood would be all over the place, chaotic. This was people who knew each other.”
Platon stared at me in disbelief.
“You’re saying they shot soldiers from their own zone?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“How could they…?”
He gazed at the blood splattered across the snow with a dazed expression, then scraped together a last scrap of hope.
“Could it have been a friendly-fire accident? They took the bodies with them, after all.”
“There isn’t much blood, so whoever was hit is probably still alive.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
This time the commander spoke.
“The blood trails point in opposite directions… After they traded fire, Team Two seems to have scattered in different directions.”
I crouched and examined the snow beneath the fresh powder. What the blizzard had half-hidden now became clear. Just as the commander said, the bloodstains ran off in separate ways. Boot prints that had not yet been buried were visible as well—none of them belonging to soldiers from another zone. Footprints and blood both led away from one another, as if the wounded had staggered off in opposite directions while still bleeding.
“If it had been an accident there would be no reason for them to head different ways… Something is definitely wrong with Team Two.”
Good thing we came after them.
If we had not followed, these traces would have been buried under snow, and when the new officers never returned everyone would simply have assumed monsters got them. The Team Two leader had specifically picked Lucas and Bones to come along; he had had another purpose from the start—something other than promotion.
“Shit…”
Supporting the bleeding Bones as they walked, Lucas muttered a quiet curse. Bones gave a weak snort of laughter.
“Didn’t know you even knew how to swear.”
“You think this is funny right now?”
Lucas and Bones had been selected by the Team Two leader for the search. It was one of the veteran soldiers who first realized the leader was taking them in a strange direction.
“Leader, this doesn’t seem like the right way. Team Three is over there, isn’t it?”
When the soldier pointed out the mistake, the leader answered:
“I have separate orders. We’re carrying them out.”
Because the leader had once been on the commander’s own team, the others followed him, half-convinced. Only when the return signal went up and the leader still refused to turn back did the team finally understand something was wrong and confront him. He only barked at them.
“Didn’t you learn anything watching Haydam? If you’re men, you should be thinking about earning merit and going home!”
He had intended to hunt monsters from the beginning, he said; anyone who wanted to leave was free to do so. Naturally Lucas, Bones, and a few others insisted they return at once—but a majority of the team declared they were men too and would earn their glory first. The atmosphere shifted toward continuing the search a little longer.
By then the naturally suspicious Bones already felt something was off. He stuck close to Lucas and whispered.
“Lucas.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Be careful. We’re surrounded.”
“Surrounded?”
Lucas flinched and scanned their surroundings, but all he saw were their own teammates.
“It’s just us.”
“I’m talking about them.”
“What are you saying?”
“Look closely. They’re walking in a circle around us.”
Lucas made another casual sweep of the area as if checking for monsters. The formation was far too conscious of him and Bones to be a normal search line. At that moment he too realized the situation was wrong. The men who had argued for returning walked along behind them without much thought; the ones who had pushed to keep searching carried their muzzles pointed at Lucas and Bones.
What the hell was going on?
While Lucas was still trying to make sense of it and opened his mouth to question the leader, the man at the front spun around with his weapon raised.
“Halt.”
Bones immediately chambered a round and trained his rifle on the leader. The leader, who had been about to shoot Bones, froze for a split second at the speed of the reaction—just long enough for a bullet to come in from the side and graze Bones’s arm. The shooter swore and raised his weapon for a headshot, but Lucas fired first, hitting the man’s arm so that the bullet only whistled over Bones’s head.
Bones clenched his teeth against the searing pain racing down his elbow and the scream that wanted to escape, never letting go of his rifle. He pulled the trigger; the leader took a round in the shoulder and flew backward. Another teammate swung his muzzle toward Bones; Lucas stepped in front of him—only for several more men to form a wall in front of them both.
They were the ones who had argued for returning the moment the signal went up.
“Why are you shooting the new officers?!”
Apparently they had been given no orders at all. Aside from Lucas and Bones, the team had been reorganized by the commander and Meursault; not everyone was the Team Two leader’s personal man.
While others bandaged his shoulder, the Team Two leader scanned the faces of the men who had blocked him, then found one he recognized and spoke with a sneer.
“You got your commission under Lieutenant General Max’s sponsorship too, didn’t you?”
He forced himself upright, still holding the dressing to his shoulder.
“The lieutenant general said the little dog he used to dote on has started acting like a wolf… so we should just boil him and eat him.”
Every eye on the team swung toward Bones. No one present was unaware that Bones was Lieutenant General Max’s most fervent admirer. Bones and the men shielding him all wore faces of total disbelief.
“That doesn’t make any sense. A kid who just graduated from the academy—how badly could he have screwed up that Lieutenant General Max himself would order him killed?”
“You all heard about the rebellion at the graduation ceremony.”
This subjugation force was a small elite unit, mostly academy graduates. Word had already spread among the senior officers that the newest crop of junior officers had pushed to abolish the recommendation system and institute entrance exams. Even so—
“You’re going to kill a young officer over something that small? You expect us to believe that?”
“It’s not small. If you don’t want to die too, lower your weapons and step aside.”
“Bullshit. Even if Lieutenant General Max ordered it, we can’t do that.”
In the end Team Two split cleanly in half, each side leveling weapons at the other. One of the senior officers glanced sidelong at Lucas, who was still propping Bones up.
“Lucas. Take Bones and run.”
“But—”
“No buts! Run until your feet blister and link up with another team!”
Lucas clenched his jaw, hooked an arm under the deathly pale Bones, and started running. After a while he had to admit they were lost on the open tundra. Endless white stretched in every direction. Worse than being lost, though, was the distant gunfire they had heard while fleeing. How many of those men were still alive?
“Fuck!”
Lucas spat the curse the way Bones would have. Bones, who had been groaning in pain, gave a weak laugh and shoved him feebly.
“Hey… stop trying so hard and just get lost.”
“Get lost?”
“Leave me here and go. You’ll find the way easier without me.”
“Don’t talk crazy. You’ll die.”
“That’s the idea. Let me die.”
“Bones!”
Lucas shouted, but Bones roared back louder.
“Lieutenant General Max wants me dead!”
That shut Lucas up cold. Even now he could not believe the general had ordered soldiers to kill Bones. Lieutenant General Max was famous for treating both his adopted sons and ordinary soldiers without pretension. Lucas himself was sponsored by a different officer, yet he had always respected the man. And now that same man had supposedly ordered a newly commissioned officer dragged out into the wilderness and murdered simply for not listening?
“He wants it. My father wants me dead… So the only way to repay his kindness is to die for him…!”
“Is that something you say when senior officers just sacrificed themselves to save you?”
Hearing Bones still babbling about Max’s kindness, Lucas flared and let go. Bones collapsed face-first into the snow and began to sob.
“How…! How could Father do this to me…!! Being recognized by him was everything—I became an officer for him…!!”
“Bones…”
Normally Bones always said “Lieutenant General Max.” Even though he thought of the man as a father, he never used the word, as if something terrible would happen if he did. Only now, at the edge of ruin, did “Father” finally slip out. Lucas knew how completely Bones had regarded Max as his father, so he could not find anything to say. If the officer who had sponsored him had ordered his murder, Lucas would have been the one face-down in the snow wailing right now.
Bones kept sobbing into the ground.
“Just leave me here to die… There’s nothing left for me even if I go back…”
Lucas understood the despair, but he could not simply abandon Bones the way the words suggested.
A low rumble rolled through the earth. The unknown quake stole Lucas’s balance and dumped him onto the snow beside Bones. As if answering Bones’s despair, the ground shook again and again. Only after the tremors stopped did a long shadow fall across Lucas.
“Uh…”
Dread prickling the back of his neck, Lucas looked up—and found a colossal monster staring down at them.
“What…”
For a moment Lucas lost the power of speech. The large-class monsters they had fought that morning suddenly seemed like nothing at all; the sheer mass of this thing was like standing before a living cliff. White fur covered it from head to foot. Blood was smeared thickly around its mouth as it regarded them with idle curiosity.
Lucas barely managed to force out Bones’s name.
“Bon…es. Get… up…”
The monster watched the ant-sized voice, then curved its lips into an unpleasant smile.
“Bones! Get up, you bastard!!”
Lucas snapped back to himself, raised his rifle, and stumbled backward, but Bones only lay there with a face of pure resignation.
“Snap out of it, Bones! Are you really going to die in a place like this?!”
He shouted, though he doubted his voice even reached Bones now. Even if he abandoned Bones and ran, could he actually survive? He already knew that running would not save his life—yet instead of fleeing, Lucas leveled his trembling muzzle at the monster.
And then—
“Get down.”
A familiar voice came from beyond the creature. A deafening crack split the air; the monster’s midsection erupted outward. Through the gaping hole Lucas could see all the way to the other side—where Haydam stood holding a thick, heavy rifle that no child should have been able to control the recoil of.