City of Darkness (1)
The two of them were waiting at the top of the stairwell that led down to the first floor. Thankfully, neither of them showed any sign of injury.
[Zzzzz (You did well)]
｢Big Baby is hurt. Bleeding.｣
[Zzzz (I'm fine)]
Seeing the holes punched all over my body, No. 26 worried over me, and when Adhai thrust her tentacle forward to lick my wounds clean, I hastily backed away.
[Zzzz Zzzzzz (My blood is dangerous)]
｢?｣
When she just tilted her head at me, I pointed to the spot where a drop of my blood had fallen. Watching the concrete sizzle and eat itself away amid a thick, acrid smoke, she nodded meekly.
｢Understood.｣
[Zzz (Good)]
Before the enemies could catch up, I took stock of my body. The tentacles had taken heavy damage — recovery would take at least an hour. The puncture wounds were already knitting themselves shut with new flesh, but a full repair would need another ten minutes or so.
My injuries are worse than I thought, but the operation went exactly as planned.
The remaining enemies numbered two police officers and one android — one man fewer, thanks to the parasite-controlled officer gunning down his own comrade. Unfortunately, the android had reacted too quickly for me to claim anything more than that.
Three enemies left.
Part of me wanted to split it three-on-three, one duel apiece, but that was impossible. We had butchered the first floor by ambush, yet our enemies were no fools. By now they knew we were many, not one, and they would come prepared accordingly.
I have a regeneration trait. They don't.
Unlike me, No. 26 and Adhai couldn't recover from a mortal wound. A single bullet could be critical; at worst, fatal.
The Sea Demon possesses a trait that surpasses regeneration, but...
With no way of knowing whether No. 26 actually had that trait, I couldn't lightly order her into a fight.
Should I use the Monster's Tentacles?
The first floor was already cleared; the survivors had all retreated to the second. They couldn't scuttle up walls and roam freely the way I could — they would have to come through the corridor. If I unleashed a Psychic Breath down that corridor through the Monster's Tentacles, annihilation would be unavoidable.
The only problem is that I can't react to surprises while I use it.
After firing the Psychic Breath, I would be temporarily incapacitated. Roughly three to five minutes.
The enemy knows the tide has turned against them — they'll have called for reinforcements ages ago. If I waste more time and their numbers swell, things get ugly.
The incoming force would unquestionably be many times larger. Wiping them all out with my current strength would be no simple feat.
Then I'll use the Monster's Tentacles.
As it happened, the enemies were even now tracking the spilled Acid Blood toward us.
Before I greeted them, I gave No. 26 and Adhai my instructions.
[Zzzz Zzzzzz Zzzzz Zzzz (After this attack, I will be weak for a while)]
｢?｣
[Zzz Zzz Zzzzz (Protect me while I am)]
｢Big Baby growing again?｣
[Zzz Zzzzz Zz (No. Different this time)]
｢Okay. I will protect Big Baby.｣
｢Me｣｢No understand｣
｢Big Baby sleeps sometimes, because Big Baby is a baby.｣
｢Understood.｣
It wasn't actually sleep, but there was no need to correct her.
After moving the two of them to the rear, I poked my head out toward the corridor to check on the enemies. They opened fire with AP rounds the instant anything so much as poked out.
My head's rugged carapace kept it from being turned into a honeycomb, but that didn't mean the pain went away with it.
...I need to do something about bullets too.
A few Genetic Essences I might plausibly extract in this city came to mind, but I was in the middle of a battle. Shaking off the stray thoughts, I used the wall and my own carapace as cover and rained down suppressing fire on the enemies with my bone spines.
"Damn it!"
"Please use my body as cover and open fire."
"Yeah, I know!"
As the bone spines came shrieking in, the officers spat curses. The android, having lost its firearm, was using its pile bunker to pry an entire slab of concrete out of the wall and holding it up as a shield.
A clever idea — but it had drawn the worst possible opponent. In the face of a Psychic Breath, cover meant nothing.
I activated the Monster's Tentacles. The long tentacles spilling down past my shoulders began to move, slowly.
Wha—?
Strength drained from my entire body in an instant, and I nearly crumpled where I stood. The carapace that had gleamed until a moment ago turned dull and lusterless, and my powerful tail flopped lifelessly against the floor.
...The energy cost is enormous.
It felt as though every ounce of energy coursing through me was being sucked toward the back of my skull. My claws, my tail, my four combat arms — even the small arms on my chest — every scrap of power I had was being dragged in and devoured.
The tentacles, gorged on nearly all the strength I possessed, burned a vivid, translucent purple. So much psychic power had gathered at their tips that even a human with no gift for sensing psionics could have felt it plainly.
With energy thick enough to make the air itself ripple, the tentacles all swung their tips forward in unison, aimed straight ahead of me.
"Ultra-high-risk psychic power detected. Evacuate this area immediately."
"What the hell?!"
A violet stream poured from the tentacles' tips and converged on a single point in the air.
The enemies scrambled to fall back — but it was already too late.
A soft purple radiance sank down over the dark corridor, and at last, the energy gathered in the void was released.
A heat ray of pure psychic energy swept the length of the corridor. The concrete wall that had been shielding half my body vanished without leaving so much as a trace, and everything the beam so much as grazed met the same fate.
There was no sound. Psychic power makes no noise. Only the wreckage of the shattered corridor, collapsing a beat too late, raised any din at all.
Nothing remained in the wake of the violet storm.
The android was reduced, quite literally, to dust along with the wall it had been holding, and one of the officers, who had belatedly thrown up his shield, collapsed with half his body simply gone.
The one exception was the officer who had been standing on the outer-wall side of the corridor — his shield had deflected the blast and hurled him clean out of the apartment, and so he lived.
"Guhk!"
He had fallen from the second floor, but thanks to the combat enhancers, he was back on his feet in moments. I wanted to give chase as he fled — but my body wouldn't listen.
｢Me｣｢In awe｣｢Great Young One!｣
Listening to Adhai's thought-bursts of admiration for the majesty of the Psychic Breath, I lost consciousness where I lay.
"G-Goddamn it! Goddamn it! This is impossible! It's impossible!"
Dragging his half-shattered leg along, William kept repeating the same words over and over as he fled. Reality had stopped making sense, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not steady his mind.
I need the military! The full military!
That thing was a new breed of weapon.
What a laughable conclusion. What an arrogant one.
It was a demon. A demon that would burn this city down to ash.
They shouldn't be calmly preparing some board of directors meeting. They should have thrown the entire defense fleet into the Residential District.
Are they insane? The Yujin family thinks it can control a monster like that?
A catastrophic misjudgment.
Sander hadn't made a deal with that monster. No — the man had been a slave. He must have fallen to the same parasitic thing that had seized the police.
"I don't care how many casualties we take! That thing has to die!"
His mind thoroughly broken, William was shouting things the old him would never have conceived of. He had always been the rational one, but the human mind has its limits. In the presence of something beyond all bearing, everything is useless.
As he fled, limping on that ruined leg, he caught sight of a convoy of police buses approaching in the distance.
S-Six of them? There's no stopping it with numbers like that!
Six buses loaded with armed police would have been a formidable force — but William, who had already traded blows with the thing, knew better than to believe it.
"Stop!"
When a man in an enhanced combat suit leapt into the middle of the road, the buses ground to a halt. Androids disembarked and helped him up.
"We will verify your identity. Are you Detective Team Leader William?"
"Don't go! You must not go in there!"
"Delirium confirmed. Judged unfit to continue combat. We will transfer you to a hospital."
"Listen to me! If you go in there, every one of you dies!"
The android silenced him with a chop to the throat, then carried the docile William aboard.
By the time the bus departed and reached the apartment, the target was nowhere to be seen.
All that remained there was the wreckage of shattered androids and scattered fragments of human bodies — along with the officers lying dead with holes bored through their abdomens, and those lying unconscious where they'd dropped.
"Are you awake?"
"...Where am I?"
William opened his eyes and looked around. He was inside a medical capsule. Beyond the translucent glass of the capsule, a medical android bowed to him with practiced courtesy.
Behind the android, banks of electronic equipment glowed softly, and through the room's window he could see nurses and androids hurrying down the corridor outside.
"...So it's a hospital."
"Correct."
"What happened to the others? The operation? Is everyone safe?"
"By the time reinforcements entered Complex C Building 3, the target had already fled. No further casualties were sustained."
At the android's words, William felt his consciousness waver.
"...Losing that thing is a blunder beyond what words can describe."
"There is no cause for concern. We have already recovered the androids' secondary memory storage. The District General Security Team will locate the target before long. Please rest assured."
"......"
The android's reassurance did nothing to ease him.
And with good reason — M01, which had held the complete record of everything, had been vaporized without a trace by the enemy's monstrous psychic attack.
The memories preserved in the other androids were fragmentary at best, and he could not be certain HQ would truly grasp how dangerous the creature was from them.
Which meant the only being alive who carried the full, unbroken memory of that night was William himself.
"I have to report to my superiors right now!"
"You are in the middle of treatment. Discharge is not permitted."
"Damn it! This can't wait a single hour!"
"Not permitted. You must remain under observation until at least tomorrow."
"Hey! Hey, listen—!"
With that, the android operated the device beside the capsule. Through the IV line running into William's arm, a drug flowed in automatically.
William tried to rip the needle out, but the crushing wave of fatigue the drug brought on dragged him back under before he could manage it.
How much time had passed after that? William jolted awake.
"Hah!"
Night had fallen, and the hospital room was dark.
Someone else was there in the darkened room with him.
When he pressed the button on the console, the capsule's lid hissed open with a rush of escaping air.
"You are...?"
"HQ sent me. You're needed to give your report immediately — will you be well enough?"
"No problem."
The one who had woken him and opened the capsule was a police officer. Apart from the bandage wound around his neck, there was nothing particularly remarkable about him in his standard police uniform.
Hm? I feel like I've seen him somewhere.
Working in the detective division, William's memory for faces was excellent. He couldn't quite place the man's features, but his build was familiar.
He's not stationed in the Port District... where have I seen him?
He was certain they'd met recently.
"A car is waiting outside. Follow me."
"Just let me grab my things."
He needed to report to HQ as quickly as possible, so William packed light and went along. The night-shift medical androids tried to stop them partway, but nothing came of it — the man escorting him simply produced a police electronic badge and authenticated it.
When they reached the parking lot outside the hospital, the officer pressed his key fob. A car flashed its headlights from a distance — an ordinary civilian vehicle.
"Get in."
The officer slid into the driver's seat first, and after that one word, said nothing more at all.
Reporting to HQ, and it's not even a police car?
Was he off duty, then? William was baffled.
The other man stared straight ahead with a blank, expressionless face. It was far too indifferent a demeanor for someone plotting to deceive him.
William brushed his hand over the laser pistol tucked inside his coat.
That badge he showed the android was District General Security Team.
Different in format, but William carried one of those electronic badges too.
As an emblem of state authority carried by the police, each badge recorded a unique ID and authentication pattern, making duplication and forgery impossible. And since an alarm sounded instantly if anyone other than the registered holder tried to authenticate with it, stealing one was out of the question as well.
His behavior was strange, no doubt about it — but the badge was genuine. He was definitely police.
After a moment's deliberation, William got into the car. The vehicle carrying him pulled out of the pitch-dark parking lot, left behind the hospital blazing with light on every face, and ran on through the midnight streets.
The car was quiet as it drove. The officer merely watched the road, while William kept turning over the question of who he was.
Someone I've seen recently from the District General Security Team... wait — the armed police?
"You there—"
"We've arrived."
Just as the memory finally surfaced and William opened his mouth to ask, the car stopped.
He looked outside. This was not the Administrative District.
A silent street without a single soul in sight, a dark alley — and close by, a manhole cover.
This is the district boundary, isn't it?
He knew the place — the strip between the Residential District and the Port District. No cameras, no streetlights; a chronic headache of a spot where robbery calls came in every time you turned around.
"Get out."
"What is the meaning of this?"
William drew his laser pistol in a flash and leveled it at the officer's temple.
Now he remembered. The man was one of the armed police who had deployed with him to Complex C Building 3 to take the monster. He'd been wearing a helmet and mask at the time, so William had never seen his face properly — that was why the memory had come so late.
"Get out, and everything will become clear."
"Clear how?"
"......"
The man — no, Unit 103 — offered no resistance whatsoever. He only kept repeating that everything would become clear if William got out.
Could it be...?
William had seen what had happened to 103. How he'd been puppeted by an unidentified parasite into gunning down his own comrade.
"...I'm sorry, Team Leader."
"What?"
"It's already too late."
In the darkness of the car, the man turned his head toward William and grinned. And 103 wasn't looking at William's face — no, to be precise, he was looking at something behind him.
Behind?
The instant he tried to turn, the passenger-side window shattered, and in the same breath something sharp drove into the back of William's neck.
Before he could even register the pain, his entire body went numb. It was as though someone had snapped a padlock over the part of his brain that commanded his limbs — he could not move so much as a finger. He strained to pull the trigger of the laser pistol, and nothing happened at all.
Then an iron grip hauled him out of the car and slammed him down against the ground. There was no pain.
And at last, William came face to face with It.
At a glance, its four thick toes might have been mistaken for hooves, and its digitigrade legs — nothing like a human's — were sheathed in layer upon layer of muscle to bear up its massive frame.
From its hindquarters stretched a long, thick tail, easily several times the length of its own body.
Above the legs, carapace like a suit of armor wrapped it from the haunches all the way up to the chest, leaving only part of its abdomen bare. Set into the breastplate of that carapace was a cluster of small arms.
And the arms didn't stop there. Two more pairs of limbs were anchored where a human would keep its shoulders and armpits.
They resembled the small chest-arms in shape but were vastly larger — and of them all, only the lower arm on the left was built differently, a long rod-like limb serving in place of a hand.
The remaining arms ended in four fingers apiece, tipped with claws large and razor-sharp as fishhooks — deeply, viscerally threatening.
Even this much was a nightmare made flesh, a monstrosity straight out of bad dreams. But what chilled William to the marrow was the thing's head.
The shape of the skull brought reptiles to mind — but the two horns jutting from it, the carapace capping the entire head like a knight's helm, and the dense cluster of tentacles sprouting from the back of its skull meant it could never be mistaken for any ordinary beast.
Unit 103 stepped down from the car and knelt before the monster.
"I brought him, as you commanded."
The monster spared him a single glance, then fixed its gaze back on William.
It opened its jaws, baring fangs like broken blades.
"I don't let my prey escape."
The voice that flowed from the monster's mouth was astonishingly familiar. It was the voice of Unit 112 — the officer who had gone into the building alongside him during the operation.
As the creature's head closed in, William screamed.
And there was no one left in the world to hear that scream but himself.