Old Testament: The Book of Evaristo (4)
The thrum of two spinning rotors reverberated through the helicopter's cabin.
Listening to that sound, three people sat huddled together along one side, eyes fixed on a tablet screen.
At the heart of a vast glacier, a shadow stood. Its silhouette bore a striking resemblance to the Gravekeeper's habit they themselves so often wore. The design had changed along the way, of course, so a closer look would surely have revealed differences—but they had no way to confirm that. As already noted, what the screen showed was a shadow, nothing more than a silhouette painted black. The footage was being censored in real time by Abraham's clones, who were dying even as they did the work.
"The Transfiguration is complete. No particular movement yet."
Han Jihan murmured it, watching the screen.
Evaristo, the man they had set out to put down, was a holy knight who had once inherited the seat of Bartholomew—vacant now. As one would expect of someone chosen as an Apostle, he too could wield miracles that overwhelmed any ordinary opponent, just as Seoyeon and Giacomo could. That power traced back to the miracle Christ had performed on Mount Tabor, the mountain also called the Mount of the Transfiguration. Strictly speaking, what Evaristo manifested was a considerably distorted version of the original, but there was probably no need to belabor the point. Even Han Seoyeon had no tale attached to her of abusing the miracle of resurrection in that fashion, wrung out of a verse of Scripture.
"Then we'll get off here first. I'm counting on your support, Seoyeon."
"Yes. I'll do everything I can."
Giacomo spoke a moment later. They were still a fair distance out, and there was no need to attempt the madness of a parachute drop directly in front of the enemy. This was an assault, so being fired on during the descent would hardly constitute a violation of international law—and even if it did, that Necromancer was not about to honor it. Better, then, to start from a little farther off. Having judged as much, the helicopter soon set down upon the glacier.
One might wonder what business a glacier had in India, a country tropical across most of its breadth, but considering that the headwaters of the Indus rose in the famous Himalayas, it was not so strange. The cabin could hardly have been called warm to begin with, and the moment the door opened, the cold pushed farther in. At temperatures sunk well below freezing, their breath froze solid in an instant.
Only two people climbed out of the helicopter: Han Jihan and Giacomo. They gathered a portion of the gear and transferred into a vehicle that had been sling-loaded beneath the helicopter for the flight. Besides what they had taken from the cabin, various other equipment had already been stowed inside. With her two masters sent on ahead, the helicopter lifted off once more.
Seoyeon watched their figures dwindle, then opened her mouth as if something had only just occurred to her.
"I realize this is hardly the moment to be asking, but... you're walking into a death trap. Are you all right with that?"
At the end of her gaze was the helicopter's pilot. Not a holy knight—a soldier, though a Christian.
"What's the worst that happens? I die."
"If you die here, it may truly be beyond undoing."
"You spend so much time governing who lives and who dies that you seem to have forgotten. Death isn't something you can take back in the first place, is it?"
The man turned his head just slightly to look at Seoyeon, and smiled as if it were a joke.
"I don't mean the mere death of the flesh. The death Evaristo deals through that miracle is sometimes regarded, theologically, as divine punishment."
Not the death of the body, but the death of the soul. From a Christian perspective, that meant severance from God—suffering without end.
"And that's still only a guess, isn't it? Nothing certain."
"That... is true."
"Then I'm fine. I believe in the Lord's grace."
He gave a light shrug and went on.
"I don't think for a moment that Christ's love would be cut off over something this trivial. Even if I die here... well, this counts as martyrdom too. So even if it all goes wrong, I'll still get to heaven."
"...I see."
If his resolve ran that deep, pressing any further would be nothing but an insult to his faith. Thinking so, Seoyeon said no more.
"A radio to command, please."
"Yes. What should I send?"
"Request from Margarita. Katekae, katekae, katekae... That is all."
She looked out past the doorway they had left open in flight, then dropped prone before the gun fixed along one side of the floor and settled into her stance. It was not a range at which anything would show to the naked eye. It was not even a situation a scope could salvage. The calculations, in any case, were not hers to make. She had only to carry out, in person, data on which the computation was already finished.
A moment later, orders came through the radio. Against the chance that something had been passed along wrong, the pilot repeated them back. She was adjusting her point of aim to match command's instructions when a grotesque noise began to arrive from outside. A savage wind already filled their ears, and still this was loud enough to cut through it. Seoyeon lifted only her eyes and looked to the sky above the helicopter. Stitching white tails behind them, several missiles swam through that frigid, lead-gray heaven.
In a low voice, Seoyeon recited the lessons of her adoptive father.
One: gunpowder is always honest.
One: a silver bullet is equal unto all.
One: a muzzle is valid anywhere.
To bring the maximum firepower to bear, within whatever limits physics, money, and ethics would allow, was always right.
She watched the missiles' trajectories for a moment, then slowly laid her finger on the trigger.
The glacier had been smashed to pieces. Even atop the ice, flames could be glimpsed burning. The result of the Church's bombing, no doubt. Confirming as much, Han Jihan slowly brought the vehicle to a halt.
The riverbed below had not been laid entirely bare, but the ground was so broken and uneven that going any farther would have to be on foot. He gathered the assorted gear and climbed out, and Giacomo Marchisio followed after him. The twin swords belted at one hip clinked softly against each other. They walked on for a while, and then something began to show through the pale fog. No—it began not to show.
At some point, as if static had crept across the lens, a pitch-black shadow appeared beyond the goggles. Abraham had censored the enemy's appearance. It was Evaristo.
He seemed to have picked out their party as well, for he slowly raised an arm. In that hand was an old rifle. The muzzle trained on them—and then both men's vision flooded black. When their sight brightened again, their bodies were already riddled with bullet holes, blood dripping steadily from them. The agony was not only from the front; a searing pain lanced through the back of the head as well. When he reached up and touched the spot without thinking, a single round was buried there.
They had been killed once by Seoyeon, sniping from afar. The question of why on earth she would do such a thing did not last long. The bullet scars left all over them gave the reason.
Among the quartet that had once traveled together, the man named Giacomo Marchisio—Apostle Thomas—had drawn no small amount of talk to the effect that he was nothing short of a landmine, and it was because of that peculiar countermeasure of his.
Ordinary weapons did not work.
Anomalous weapons did not work.
It did not hold true always and everywhere, but in most situations the proposition applied, which made engaging this generation's Apostle Thomas exceedingly difficult. Bullets and everything else turned to bread and wine in mid-flight—so how, exactly, was one supposed to attack him?
"So the flesh you carved away... you used it on these."
He spat the blood climbing his throat and glared at the man across from him. Evaristo swapped magazines with unhurried hands, then cocked his head just so and let a bullet screamed in from far away slip past.
"What do you mean?"
"If it is already the divine body, Transubstantiation will not occur. A countermeasure much like the one Chairman Yu Yan showed us back then."
"In short."
"Merely being grazed by those bullets would mean instant death."
Giacomo murmured it in answer to Han Jihan's question. A round, in other words, that even he had no means of stopping. Not that this was a situation in which they could withdraw. Giacomo drew the swords at his waist and dropped into a low stance. His opponent likewise shifted the rifle to one hand and drew the longsword slung across his back.
"How many times do you think we'll die, Jihan?"
"Hm. Three?"
"Three hundred?"
"Two... one..."
"...No, I clearly asked how many ti—"
Bang! A round from behind burst Giacomo's skull and sprayed his brains, and in the next instant Evaristo, having already closed the distance, drove a blade deep into his abdomen. Watching the man rest the rifle atop Giacomo's shoulder and swing the muzzle their way, Han Jihan set the pistol in his hand beneath his own chin and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Even so, isn't three hundred still too few? That was his last thought before the blackout.