Chapter 78
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 78
I wanted to draw my Shock Pistol Ruina and blast the entire hallway to pieces. With Ruina's destructive power, there'd be nowhere to run in a corridor this narrow—no matter how fast the enemy was.
But the objective of this mission was capture and interrogation. I couldn't kill him. Hold back, Luka.
Hiss!
The smoke grenade the enemy had thrown was still spewing thick clouds. Combined with the concrete dust from the collapsed ceiling, the air was suffocating.
Thump!
I lunged into the smoke. The distance between us vanished in an instant.
Swoosh!
Through the haze, the enemy dropped into a stance, bracing for the clash.
We were within arm's reach now. He and I collided.
Whoosh!
Our arms crossed. His sharpened fingers stabbed for my face. I barely dodged, whipping my upper body back.
Just a couple of exchanges were enough to piss me off.
'Slippery bastard!'
I couldn't kill him. Couldn't aim for anything vital. That alone gutted half my options.
The enemy knew it too, and it made his attacks brazen. His reactions were disgustingly quick. So this was how it felt to be on the other end of me all this time.
Rustle!
He faked a kick and retreated, melting back into the thick smoke without leaving so much as a shadow behind.
"Click-clack."
There it was again—the sound of his tongue clicking.
And I finally understood what it was.
'Echolocation.'
A method of mapping his surroundings through reflected sound. Not something you master overnight.
'He can read the whole room without moving his eyes.'
In high-speed combat where vision was choked off—where a single stolen glance could be fatal—it was a devastatingly useful skill. I should learn it myself.
'Tricky bastard, damn it.'
The enemy wanted to run. Even if he was lying in wait inside the smoke, I had to take the risk and go after him.
Every condition was stacked against me. My skill was superior, sure, but the victory conditions were so tight that this wouldn't end cleanly.
Whir, whir.
I cycled through the visible light spectrum of my right prosthetic eye, again and again. The rapid shifts split my skull with a headache, and the strobing in my right eye left me nauseous.
Then—finally—I found the wavelength that gave me a clean view.
'You piece of shit! Found you!'
His silhouette snapped into focus. He was clinging to the ceiling, coiled to drop on me.
Crack!
I braced my legs. Channeling maximum output into my right leg, I kicked a chunk of concrete debris.
Clatter!
The rubble sprayed over him like buckshot. He groaned and dropped from the ceiling.
Whoosh!
I dashed, spun, kicked off the wall, and vaulted behind the falling man.
'Got you, you bastard.'
His back was wide open. Defenseless.
Crunch!
I landed, driving my knee into his spine to pin him down. Then I tore straight into his shoulders.
Riiip!
Components and wires spilled out with his ripped-off arms. He wasn't a full-body prosthetic, so blood sprayed and flesh shredded at the joints.
"Argh, ughhh!"
A scream tore out of him. I smiled. Somehow, hearing him scream soothed my headache.
But this wasn't the time to savor victory.
I drew my pistol fast and jammed the muzzle against the back of his neck. If this bastard was the contact, he'd try to kill himself.
Thwip! Zap!
An electric stun round buried itself in his neck. As the current surged through him, the light of consciousness drained from his eyes.
"Captured him alive," I said, catching my breath as I glanced toward the stairs.
Thud, thud.
Heilas was coming down from the second floor, dragging an unconscious man along by the hair. It seemed he'd caught someone suspected of being the contact too.
"Which one's the contact?"
"It's either the one you caught or the one I caught."
"And if it's neither?"
Heilas scratched his chin before answering.
"I doubt we're that incompetent."
Fair enough.
* * *
Heilas and I slung the two captives over our shoulders and slipped away from the chaos. A crowd was already gathering, drawn by the racket.
Clack.
We entered the sewer and retraced our path.
"Lord Heilas, I've wiped our tracks clean. Nothing on the cameras either," Paigon said, tapping away at his terminal. Shabby as he looked, he was clearly a master of electronic warfare.
"Good work, Paigon. You too, Luka."
Heilas gave Paigon no further instructions. I could feel the deep trust between them. If he'd doubted the man even a little, he'd have grilled him with questions to double-check.
"Interrogating this one won't be easy," I said, tapping the temple of my unconscious captive.
The man I'd caught had mastered the Akies Combat Style to a considerable degree. Those trained in it were also skilled in psychological defense. Getting anything out of him through ordinary means would be a nightmare.
"You don't need to worry about that. There are plenty of ways," Heilas said with a smile. I didn't ask what those ways were.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened as we moved through the sewer. It looked like a clean getaway.
I let myself relax a little. So did Paigon and Heilas.
"You were young once too, Master. Just like Young Master Lucaus is now."
"I wasn't young back then—I was just a kid."
"True. Back then, you had me look into the young lady of the Itanori family—"
"Now, now."
Heilas and Paigon reminisced about the old days.
I couldn't even begin to picture Heilas as a young man. When he was my age, he must have had his flaws, made his mistakes. He couldn't have been forged from steel from the very start. At first, he must have been a creature of flesh and blood—both literally and figuratively.
And yet, I couldn't conjure an immature Heilas in my mind. That was how perfect a commander and exemplary a soldier he was to me.
Step.
Paigon sidled up beside me.
"Master Heilas must cherish you deeply, Young Master. Enough to reveal my existence to you."
"...Or maybe it's because he can silence me whenever he pleases."
I knew Heilas was listening. But he wasn't the type to bristle at a remark like that. If anything, he'd appreciate my constant caution.
Assuming the worst, running the darkest hypotheticals—that was one of my specialties. It was the only way I'd survived this long. I always had to be ready for the absolute worst-case scenario.
"Excellent, Young Master. That is a soldier of Custoria," Paigon said, grinning to bare his yellow teeth. "When I look at the noble children these days, so many of them believe the world revolves around them. A baseless, sunny little delusion, heh."
"Paigon, you talk too much now that you're getting old."
"That's because a certain someone won't let me retire."
"What can I do, when there's no one else half as capable as you?"
Heilas stopped at a fork in the sewer. He passed the man he'd been carrying to Paigon. Taking the cue, I handed over my captive as well.
"Have the 'processing' done by the time I get back," Heilas said. I had a vague idea what 'processing' meant. A rather gruesome image flashed through my mind.
"Understood."
Paigon vanished into the darkness, a man slung over each shoulder.
Unease crept over me. The one Heilas caught was one thing—but the man I'd taken down was strong. If something went sideways, Paigon might struggle to handle him.
"If Paigon cut loose with everything he has, even you would have a hard time beating him," Heilas said quietly, as if reading my worry.
"Couldn't we have Paigon investigate Kinuan? He seems highly capable across the board," I ventured. With someone like him around, did I really need to be the one digging into Kinuan?
"Luka, the only reason you're still breathing is that Kinuan took a liking to you. Even Paigon would end up dead if he pried into Kinuan's background without permission. And... Paigon may only be used for Custoria family matters. He must never be deployed for official public duty. That's the rule."
Heilas said it with emphasis. I nodded and grabbed the ladder leading to the surface.
"Haaah!"
Reaching the top, I drew a deep breath in—and let it out.
I finally felt like I could breathe again. After so long in the sewer, even the gritty, sand-laden air of the surface was a relief.
We headed for a different ruin instead of the empty lot where we'd landed. Before long, a Custoria family aerial vehicle arrived to pick us up.
'I have completed the Custoria family's mission.'
Heilas would believe we'd carried it out in absolute secrecy. But the Empire would learn of today's events.
...Because I am the Empire's Watcher.
* * *
Three days had passed since the secret mission.
Heilas and I hadn't been chasing shadows. The man I captured was an imperial fugitive, and the one Heilas caught was indeed Nemesis's contact.
Since Heilas was buried in his duties as Imperial Guard Captain, I went to meet Paigon in his place. The meeting spot was a dark basement. There, with my own eyes, I saw how the contact we'd captured had been 'processed.'
Bubble, bubble.
I stared at a cylindrical container filled with a viscous green liquid. Inside floated a human brain, electrodes sparsely threaded through it.
"It's a 'Brain in a Vat.' A tedious method, but very few can hold out under interrogation in this state," Paigon said, tapping the cylinder. A hologram display sat atop the container. As he tapped, part of the brain's anatomy diagram flickered across it.
I frowned.
'He's still alive like that.'
Stripped of its body, the brain was utterly powerless to affect the physical world. Every scrap of external information and stimulus it perceived was under Paigon's absolute control.
"It certainly seems... effective," I said, covering my mouth with one hand. Admiration and disgust warred inside me. Keeping a human alive in that state took immense skill.
Humans go mad without an appropriate level of stimulation. A brain floating alone, bodiless, can't last long.
'Paigon's skill really is something.'
He subjected them to endless torment while feeding just enough stimulus to keep their minds from breaking. The most crucial part of torture was driving the victim to the brink of death without ever letting them slip over the edge.
In that, Paigon was a master. He tracked every metric in real time, tuning the stimulus signals as he went.
'Just how many people has Paigon reduced to this?'
It was a level of expertise you could only earn through vast experience.
"With this device, we can wring memories and information out of even the subconscious. Humans know far more than they consciously realize, Young Master," Paigon said proudly. Ally or not, it sent a chill down my spine.
"Ah, my apologies, Young Master. I've grown too accustomed to this work," he added, as if sensing my discomfort.
"...It's fine," I said quietly.
Paigon draped a cloth over the cylinder and handed me a data chip.
"You can deliver this to Master Heilas."
I nodded and took it. Without a word, I left the basement.
For all the emotional control my Imperial Guard training had drilled into me, I couldn't shake the foul feeling. Like sticky residue crusted at the bottom of a cup—no matter how hard I shook it, the negative emotion refused to come loose.