Literally Burned Out
“Wh-what the hell are those things?”
“We don’t know, sir. We’re rushing facial analysis to pull any intel we can, but nothing clear has come up yet…”
“Damn it! Speed up the investigation! And throw every remaining hand into evacuating the civilians! We have to save as many lives as we can!”
“Yes, sir!”
“And you lot—get the word out, now. Police, military, I don’t care who. We can’t just sit here while a full-scale disaster unfolds in the middle of Paris… and right here at Hamilton Plaza, no less!”
Even the hunters who had scrambled into action were being butchered without mercy by the two attackers. The face of Hamilton Plaza’s managing director twisted into a bloodless mask of growing dread.
He had nearly doubled the security detail specifically for the art exhibition, never once letting his guard down, determined to keep the place locked down tight. He had even hired hunters—men and women who demanded astronomical fees—to make the security airtight.
And yet… every single one of those efforts was being smashed to pieces right now by nothing more than two raiders who had stormed into Hamilton Plaza.
They were cutting down even hunters of equal rank as if they were nothing. On top of that, they slaughtered every living soul in sight without the slightest hesitation—a cruelty so absolute it turned the stomach. Looking at them, monsters wearing human faces, De Gaulle fought to keep his composure.
At least their movement isn’t that fast… Thank god for small mercies. Because of that we got most people out the moment the chaos started. Roughly half the building’s occupants have already made it clear. Even so… I never imagined a full tenth of them would end up dead…
His relatively swift response had let a great many escape, yet the endless corpses still filling the monitors made the managing director’s chest ache—not as an official, but simply as a human being. At the same time, a hotter, sharper hatred for the two monsters who had committed this insanity began to burn inside him.
Then—
“Th-they’ve stopped!”
“What?”
The sudden change left them all reeling. On the screens, the terrorists could be seen setting something up in one corner of the exhibition hall.
“Th-that’s… no way…”
“Damn it!”
The managers recognized the objects the instant they saw them and spat curses. Yet even with the truth right in front of their eyes, there was nothing they could do. Broadcasting the fact would only spark greater panic and snatch away any remaining chance of control. The sole, bitter consolation—that no living people remained in that sector, so further casualties were unlikely—brought them no comfort at all.
And a moment later—
“Kh…”
—KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM!!!!
De Gaulle’s face contorted as the bombs detonated in a thunderous chain. The blast tore the entire outer wall of Hamilton Plaza’s thirtieth floor clean away. Flames and smoke swallowed the cameras; the sector vanished from every monitor.
“Wh-where are they? Those bastards—where the hell did they go?”
“They’re… gone, sir! Nothing on any of the other cameras either!”
“Find them! I don’t care what it takes—locate those animals!”
The managing director roared at his subordinates, but from the moment of the explosion the terrorists simply vanished. In the end the managers never found them. Even the police and the French military hunters who raced to the scene failed to turn up a single trace.
In less than an hour the Hamilton Plaza attack had left hundreds dead—including countless of the world’s wealthiest—and the failure to catch the perpetrators painted the faces of both the plaza’s management and the French government itself with shame.
But what the terrorists left behind did not end there.
“Th-this is…”
“Damn it… Call the director right now!”
Guards shouted in frantic voices. Sitting before their eyes was a problem even more catastrophic than the slaughter that had just ended.
It was…
“…The artworks?”
“Yes. The vault beneath Hamilton Plaza that held the highest-value pieces. The moment the building was blasted, bombs went off down there as well.”
Bones’s subordinate—a woman who introduced herself as Bolshoi—answered my question in a voice tight with tension.
“They’re thorough bastards, aren’t they…”
“Slaughtering people like that and then reducing the artworks to ash as well…”
“Just who the hell are they? To pull something like this in the middle of Paris—during a major art exhibition, no less!”
People who had been on security detail now voiced pure, personal rage. Are and Gwon-sun stayed silent, letting their fury speak through quiet stillness, but Glass’s face burned with open hatred for the terrorists. Being French, he seemed to feel the outrage more deeply than the rest of us.
Watching their anger, Bolshoi kept her own composure and continued the briefing in a calm tone.
“Their objective still isn’t clear. But according to the latest word, we do have a rough idea of who they are.”
She worked the laptop again and opened a downloaded file. Two female hunters appeared on the screen, smiling as they carried out the massacre.
“This one here, the one with the machine gun. Her name is Hoof Eldra. Originally an Italian hunter; after some operation she retired and dropped off the map. Virtually all of the hundreds of deaths this time are attributed to her.”
The massive machine gun in her hands made me nod automatically.
Astrape MK 6… the Italian-made machine gun designed to handle Lower-class Abyss. Each round’s stopping power is a bit light against Abyss, but against humans it’s pure overkill. Who the hell would open fire with a monster like that in the middle of a city…
Weapons developed to fight Abyss monsters were almost universally banned for use against people. Turning one on unarmed civilians was an unforgivable atrocity—and proof of just how far gone the perpetrator had to be.
“And this one… the woman carrying what looks like a monomolecular cutter. She focused less on slaughtering civilians and more on cutting down the hunters who tried to stop them, covering for Hoof. Her nationality is French. Her name is…”
“Ro…”
A thin, trembling voice came from behind me. I shifted my eyes just enough to identify the speaker, then pretended I hadn’t heard and kept listening to Bolshoi.
“Ro Dae-seung. A hunter produced by France. She later served for a time with the Korean military under her parents’ nationality, then was discharged after a desertion incident. She worked as a Black Hunter for a short stretch after that, but even that didn’t last long, and she completely disappeared for a while.”
“Hmm…”
A complicated history, but the fact that she had once belonged to the Korean military left a sour taste in my mouth. Black Hunters causing trouble wasn’t unheard of, yet cases that drew this much global aggro were rare. Having someone with Korean military ties mixed up in it didn’t sit well with any of us.
Then—
“Yes, hello? …Ah… yes. Understood.”
Another call came through Bolshoi. She let out a heavy sigh and turned to face us.