An Abomination Among You (2)
Tokyo's Sekiguchi Church—or, as it was also called, Tokyo St. Mary's Cathedral.
Among the many chambers beneath it was a room fitted with a direct hotline to the Holy See. There, Han Seoyeon Margarita drew a steadying breath, lifted the receiver, and spoke.
"Rooting out every splinter of the Necromancer isn't realistic. But slaughtering every suspect without distinction is impossible, too."
Not even the Church could simply erase more than half the world's population. It was not that they lacked the means. Do a thing like that, and they could no longer go on existing as a Church at all. That was the dilemma the Necromancer had set before the Church in the present hour.
"This problem can be solved. If there is a way to extract only the Necromancer's self, without harming civilians—and if that way can be turned upon the citizens of the entire world."
Said aloud, it sounded simple. It was nothing of the kind. Had spiritual beings been something one could sever as cleanly as a knife through cloth, what need would there ever have been for exorcists? Forcibly tearing a possessing soul free of its host had never been an easy thing, and it was harder still when the blow had to fall everywhere at once, before the enemy could answer.
…If this were truly possession, that is.
"At present, the Necromancer exists in the form of information."
There was nothing spiritual about it. It amounted to nothing more than data. Anomalous power might have gone into injecting that data into other people, but the data itself was only a record and a signal, with no anomaly in it at all.
"So we erase it wholesale. Using Mr. F's Hypnosis App."
Wipe away every scrap of information bound to the Necromancer, and the problem could be solved while doing almost no harm to the possessed themselves.
"…Certainly. That's a sound idea."
Through the receiver, an old man's voice came back braided with static. It belonged to Dionysius II, Pope of Rome.
"If we can only bring it about, then this time we may finally erase the Necromancer from the world."
What rode in that voice was close to admiration. A solution had turned up from a direction no one had thought to look.
"But it won't be easy. This does little unless it comes as a surprise attack, so the Church can't move its hand in any large way."
Abraham-Delta was, for all practical purposes, already in the enemy's grasp. Considering the sheer volume of intelligence he had overseen, it was no exaggeration to say the enemy already saw nearly straight through the Church. And the ones holding that information were two geniuses of the age—the Necromancer, and the Doctor. Attempt any half-baked intrigue along the usual channels, and it would be exposed at once.
The means the Church ordinarily relied upon were, in other words, almost entirely sealed off. In that state, subjecting nearly the whole population of the world to a memory wipe was exceedingly difficult.
"As far as possible, we'll have to borrow strength from outside."
"The question being whether we can trust them."
"That is a problem as well, yes."
Of course, hardly anyone was mad enough to clasp hands with terrorists set openly against the Church. And yet Abraham-Delta had proved more than well enough that information could leak with no regard for anyone's will. If the very party you approached for help had already been seized by the enemy, the farce would be complete.
The Pope granted the point only in part. Caution was warranted, yes. But the Church had long since gathered, in no small number, people who could be trusted with certainty even when that risk was taken into account.
"Before that—can we obtain their cooperation at all? That is what we must consider first."
"Why? Frame it as keeping the Church's order, and they ought to cooperate…"
"Because it would mean placing the citizens of the entire world under hypnosis."
Dionysius let out a short sigh, and went on.
"I imagine the partner you have in mind is the Hyakurenno Group."
"…Yes. That's right."
"They could manage it, certainly. We needn't look any further than that. Apply the hypnosis to the displays they manufacture alone, and half the world's population could be dealt with easily."
If the Hyakurenno Group brought the full measure of its capacity to bear, carrying out Han Seoyeon's plan would not be especially difficult.
"But what follows? What becomes of them then? From that day on, every display made by Hyakurenno Electronics will be regarded as a thing that can trigger the Hypnosis App whenever they please. If you were a consumer, would you go on using that product?"
"That… would be unsettling, in a number of ways."
Unless the gap in performance was overwhelming, one would simply choose the other option among products of the same class. Seoyeon had no choice but to concede it.
"Precisely. This plan requires the strength of a vast organization, and a vast organization, by its nature, cannot shoulder a risk of this size. To put it bluntly, from an organization's point of view this is a fool's scheme—possible only if the one at the top loses their mind entirely."
By corporate logic, it was an idiotic act that ought not even be attempted. A still-small organization might gamble on it for the sake of forging a tie with the Church, but an organization of that scale could not put the plan into practice in the first place.
"It becomes possible if the blue blood of Hyakurenno gives the order in person. With one condition: it cannot be your good friend, Miss Hyakurenno Yuri. She has already stepped a pace back from the succession, and she holds very little real authority."
That even her scant authority could bring companies of considerable size to their knees was a measure of the Hyakurenno Group's enormity… and still it was not enough to resolve what lay before them. That was why he met Seoyeon's idea with such reluctance. If it could be done, nothing would be better. The trouble was that actually doing it was far too difficult.
"Ah… it isn't Miss Yuri."
Han Seoyeon, who had been listening in silence, carefully opened her mouth again.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It isn't Miss Hyakurenno Yuri. The person I meant to ask for cooperation, I mean."
"You intend to persuade the Hyakurenno Group, and the one you'd be dealing with isn't that young lady?"
Doubt thickened the voice that carried the question through the receiver. This was a risk of a degree that even Hyakurenno Yuri—with whom Seoyeon was on close terms—might or might not accept if asked. And the young lady of the Hyakurenno house was surely the single greatest line Han Seoyeon had into the Group, and very nearly the only one.
Seoyeon, however, went on with her explanation in a voice utterly certain. From the far end came the sound of a breath drawn long and hard, as though the answer had caught him entirely off guard.
"…Is that true?"
"Yes. It isn't widely known, but there's no mistake."
"If that's the case, then we can draw Hyakurenno's cooperation after all. They'll have gone so far out of their minds that running the company will scarcely matter……."
Only then did the Pope nod, convinced. If what Seoyeon had said was true, their cooperation could be secured without fail. If anything, it was strange they had endured in silence and held themselves back until now.
"Good. Then we'll set the plan in motion as swiftly as we can. Do take care with the concealment."
"Of course. I'll apply every measure of security available to me."
"And we will run the Herem Protocol alongside it. The moment calls for it in any case, and as misdirection it should more than suffice."
"Herem, then."
At those words, Han Seoyeon's hand tightened of its own accord around the receiver. It was a word that lived in her memory as knowledge alone—an operational plan that had not once been set in motion since she became a Holy Knight.
No. It was necessary. Of that there was no doubt. Seoyeon let out a small breath.
"Understood. I'll end the call here."
"Yes. …May the grace of the Lord be with you."
At last she set the receiver down and left the room. Two solidly built men stood to either side of the door.
"The talk is finished."
When she gave them the words in sign, the men bowed their heads and thumbed the selectors of the firearms in their hands.
"Is there anything in particular we should report?"
One of them asked it, a little halting in his speech.
"Please convey this to His Excellency the Archbishop. Herem has been forecast. He ought to prepare in advance."
Seoyeon nodded and signed once more, and the men's faces set hard. Given their years, they might well have lived through a Herem before.
"Understood."
They accepted it soon enough, and answered so. They were Holy Knights, after all. Ignoring a decree issued in the Pope's name had never been among their choices.
Under the Pope's name, a great wave was drawing near.
Force on the order of an Apostle carried weight simply by occupying a place. Call it, if you like, a kind of fleet in being.
Even so, there came times when personnel of that kind had no choice, by the turn of events, but to leave their post.
The Roman Catholic Church, as a rule, answered this problem with the Peace of God. That proclamation—a papal ban on combat reaching back to the Middle Ages—had come, in the present age, to mean something closer to a recommendation: for this span of time, cause no great incident, and keep quiet.
Of course, "recommendation" was only a courtesy. In practice it was no different from an order.
Ignore the proclamation and stir up an incident grave enough to require special measures, and the Church would turn every capacity it possessed toward grinding that person, or that group, underheel. No qualifier ever attached itself to the act—not inefficient, not excessive. They simply crushed the offender at full strength, for the sake of the example.
And so even those with one foot already in crime passed that season quiet as church mice. Now and then someone direly lacking in either sense or wit would cause trouble, only to be put down by the Church almost at once.
…And this time, that great principle had broken.
In the midst of the Peace of God, war had been declared upon the Church in the open. Even so, the Church had failed to punish them. The terrorism was continuing even now, and the Church could do nothing but scramble, too late, to clean up what had already been done.
"So the Roman Catholic Church isn't quite as formidable as people thought?"
That anomalies harboring such thoughts should begin to appear here and there was only the natural next step.
"The Church taking one solid blow from someone strong doesn't mean the rest of you have gotten any stronger."
"My, old man. You do scare easily."
"…Fine. Do as you please. Just don't come complaining later that no one tried to stop you."
Watching those hot-blooded youths, a few of the older anomalies lamented, but they made no particular effort to hold them back. They knew well enough that these were not the sort who would stop just because someone hemmed them in with words.
There had been a season when they themselves were just as aggressive, and they had kept plenty of friends whose confidence speared the sky. Measured against that experience, it was obvious the young ones would not listen however they were warned.
Most of the friends who had given themselves over to confidence in those days were already gone from this world—and even if you said so, these would not be of a mind to hear it.
They did not tell them to consider why. Why the Church was laying its own condition bare, without the least thought of concealment. Why it had opened its shame so cleanly that even ears the likes of theirs could catch it.
They only pressed themselves to the earth, far flatter than they ever had when the Peace of God was proclaimed, and waited for the storm to pass.
The hour of Herem (חֵרֶם) was drawing near.