What Did You Say? (3)

Alongside the super-heavy cruiser Valkyrie.

Aboard the medical ship Archaea, in the captain's quarters.

"Elia's surgery was completed successfully."

"Well done, Rin."

Commander Rin Esmeralda, captain of the Archaea, bowed her head toward the hologram of Luden, then took a few steps back. A routine report, no different from any other. And yet something about it felt strange. Luden's eyes lingered on the surgical progress report she had submitted, but his thoughts seemed to be somewhere else entirely.

"…Did you speak with Elia?"

Rin hesitated at the question before she found her voice.

"I'm sorry. Not yet…"

"It's all right. I would never force you."

Luden turned his gaze back to the report.

"Just… continue the investigation I asked of you."

Once the report was finished, Rin fixed her eyes on the enormous screen that dominated the interior of the captain's quarters. Nearly eight months had passed since she had begun the investigation, and she still could not find a single lead. No… it would be more accurate to say she had no idea where to even begin. This was a problem whose answer could never be obtained without asking the person herself.

But I can't do that. It's a promise I made with Eve.

With Luden's full backing, she had scoured every last scrap of Londinium's top-secret files related to Sector 09. She had not hesitated to gather information through dark channels, slipping past the Senate of Elders' surveillance net. And then, by chance, she obtained a recording she might have been better off never seeing. The shock at the time had been so great that she could barely tell whether what she was looking at was reality or a dream. Rin hesitated for a long while over whether to play the footage again.

"System control. Activate full soundproofing."

"Play video number seven."

"The Wolf and the Three Little Goats."

Rin drew a long, deep breath.

"…Hh… nngh…"

"Welcome, Third Elder."

There was no mistaking it. That voice…

It belonged to the Captain she had met after the trial, all those years ago.

A man in crimson judicial robes entered next.

"It's been a while, monster. Feeling talkative today?"

"I… don't know… Please… keep… your promise…"

"Didn't you say we'd get an answer out of her today?"

"Heh-heh. My apologies, Third Elder."

The man they called the Third Elder reappeared holding a steel rod heated until it glowed. He forced a gag into Elia's mouth, then laid the rod — cherry-red, heated to its limit — against the flesh near her shoulder. A hideous hiss of searing meat filled the room as her shoulder melted like candle wax.

A strangled, wordless scream tore out of her.

"Talk, monster. Do that, and I'll show you mercy. I'll kill you."

The gag in her mouth would not even let her scream. Elia thrashed from side to side, tears streaming endlessly down her ruined face. Sitting there in her chair, Rin felt the blood in her entire body freeze solid. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The atrocity unfolding before her was unlike anything she had ever witnessed, and even her always-cool reasoning seized up, going blank.

The Elder pulled the gag free and put the question to her again.

"Changed your mind yet? Ready to talk?"

"I… hh, nngh… I don't… know. The… promise…"

"A promise, is it… If you talk, I might consider it."

He ignored her words as if a promise meant nothing at all, and forced the gag back between her teeth. This time he pressed the steel rod to the soles of her feet. A thick, acrid smoke billowed up and filled the chamber.

Wordless, gagged screams. Again. And again.

"Even this is getting tedious. You're stubborn, I'll give you that."

Unable to endure the pain, Elia loosed another silent scream and wrenched her whole body against the bonds. When the soles of her feet — already a slurry of pus and blood — had melted past the point of recognition, he brought a freshly heated rod and laid it across her thigh. The torture went on like that for several minutes.

"—Is this the secret, then? This thing?"

A long, broken howl.

The Elder drove a rusted steel spike deep into the parasite nested near Elia's right breast. The parasite shrieked — a thin, terrible, keening sound — and black ichor burst from the wound. He spat in her face with the expression of a man who had seen something he wished he hadn't.

"Damn it, monster. You said you wanted the corpse of a woman named Eve, didn't you?"

Even in her state of utter exhaustion, Elia's head snapped up at the sound of Eve's name. The man promptly unfastened the gag.

"Want to know? Where her body is?"

"…I… completed… the mission… please… keep… your promi—"

The Elder let out a long sigh, then drove his fist into Elia's face without warning. Dark blood burst once more from features already too ruined to recognize.

"Don't you dare get above yourself. Would you keep a promise, if you were me?"

He wiped the blood from his hand and went on.

"A promise made with a monster, no less."

"The promi…se… Eve… just… once… more…"

Rin clenched her fists so hard the skin split and blood welled up between her fingers. A grief sharp as a blade — the kind that felt as if it would tear her heart apart then and there — dissolved into her veins.

"Captain Kirov. I believe I told you to break her by any means necessary. Why is she still in this condition? Are you unaware that the public trial is in two days?"

"Heh-heh. As you well know, she's a monster — she heals fast. Drugs and poisons don't work on her, either… and with that hideous parasite stuck to her body, no one particularly wants to lay a hand on her."

"Then why not throw her to the monsters?"

"We tried. Even the monsters reject her on instinct."

The conversation that followed was vile. A choking sorrow closed around Rin's throat. The air inside the captain's quarters grew heavy and still. Elia's face flickered through her mind without end. Behind the mask of composure she wore, her tears dried, and welled, and dried again, until they hardened into black crystals of despair.

"I… hh… Eve… to Eve…"

"A monster obsessed with a corpse. How fitting."

Eve.

The person Elia had been willing to give her life to protect. And the "promise" she had made with that man. She would have clung to it even knowing it would never be kept — staking everything on the smallest of wishes: to see, one last time, the person she had held so dear. Even if all that remained was a body growing cold.

"Eve… Eve… hh, nngh, Eve—"

"How is the research progressing?"

"We're short on time. Heh-heh. A full analysis would take at least two more years of dissection experiments."

How far could the Elders of Londinium sink? The price paid to a national hero — a woman who had stopped a catastrophic biological disaster and imprisoned an alien parasite inside her own body — was merciless torture and live experimentation. Rin felt shame even at the fact that she belonged to the same race of High Elves as those men. She no longer had the courage to look Elia in the face and speak to her kindly.

"Eve… I… Eve's… grave… hh… I need…"

"At this rate that bastard Luden is going to snatch her away. Damn it. Damn it! You worthless monster bitch!"

Having failed to extract a proper answer no matter what he did to her, the Elder struck Elia again with everything he had. The gag had come loose; she screamed and screamed, but there was no one in that room who would help her. The fists kept coming — pitiless, relentless, one after another. The dark blood soaking the floor looked as if it might splash through the screen itself. He beat her until he was winded, then, as if something had just occurred to him, gestured to Kirov standing behind him.

"A moment, Captain Kirov. Does the research require the monster's eyeballs?"

"Ah. Of course. We need ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them, most certainly."

"N-no… hh… not… that… at least… that… plea—"

"Then extract them now. You have my permission."

"As you wish."

"Two days left. If that thing dies, Her Majesty Iris will grow suspicious, so just dump her somewhere out of the way. I'll go find a method ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to keep this monster chained here before the trial begins."

With that, the Third Elder left the torture chamber.

"Well then…"

Captain Kirov approached Elia with a leer.

"Those eyeballs of yours… you don't need them, do you?"

"Ah, ah, aah, p-plea…se"

"What, scared now? Afraid I won't keep the promise? You should have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thought of that before you crossed the Elder. Heh-heh."

"Hh, nngh, plea…se, aah, ah—!"

Elia worked her ruined mouth with desperate effort, her voice cracking into something barely human. With every second of the recording, Rin's heart was trampled under a cruelty that had no bottom. The man touched a magical device on the shelf, and music exploded through the chamber at a volume that made the walls themselves seem to ring.

"Shall we start with the left eye, First Lieutenant Elia?"

"P-hh, lease, I beg… you, plea, ah, please! Please! Ah, nngh—!"

"Cry for me in a happy voice, First Lieutenant Elia! Tum-tada-dah, tada-dah~"

An ugly laugh tangled with the reeling piano. Elia, still bound to the chair, thrashed and rolled across the floor in blind terror.

"They're like rubies, those eyes! Once I pop them out, I ought to use them as ornaments, don't you think?!"

She clawed and kicked, dragging herself toward the door. He seized her by the hair.

"Heh-heh, heh-heh-heh-heh. Scream all you like — nobody's coming. Now be a good girl and come back over here."

He caught her face and forced her eyelid wide. Her shriek filled the chamber. A wretched, keening wail that would never reach anyone struck Rin's ears like a blow.

The rusted steel spike drifted slowly toward her left eye.

"Goddamn it — stop playback! Stop the playback!"

Rin slammed her fist down on the desk and shouted at the empty air. She gasped like a wounded animal, dragging in the breath she had been holding. Hot blood ran from the hand she had clenched into a fist. The face of a woman who had kept her composure in every circumstance was twisted now with a hatred so complete it left no room for anything else.

Rin sat down and tried to steady herself, turning over in her mind the weight of the secret Elia had kept. Even as the trials of darkness ate into her body — even when she was nothing but blood and filth, rotting like refuse, discarded like trash, a hole driven through her eye — she had not abandoned the things she had sworn to protect.

"…End."

There were seven of these files. Seven. The thought of taking them in one by one, in order, and packing them into her skull felt like being dragged by the ankles into some grotesque space whose nature she could not name. She sank deep into her chair and clenched her teeth. There was no color left in her face at all.

And beyond the window, as if none of it had ever happened —

the universe was perfectly still.