18. A Dagger Flies and Pierces My Chest
Using the Cube, I temporarily patched over the hole in the isolation chamber wall.
It took a while, since I had to put on a little sleight of hand to keep the Facility Director from catching on.
I'd have to call the maintenance team in later and order them to slap some adhesive over it. They'll probably glare at me and ask why the hell we're calling them in to fix a perfectly fine wall, but….
Pretending not to know anything is my specialty, so I can just brush them off.
Research Team 1's budget is about to be restored, after all — one measly wall is well within our means.
Anyway, with that done, I headed back to the observation room.
Time to come face to face with the woman inside the stained glass in the isolation chamber.
A woman with long white hair trailing all the way to the floor, her crimson eyes glittering as she stared straight at me.
Even though the entity was made entirely of stained glass, her expression came through remarkably clearly. With the corners of her lips raised just slightly, and her hands clasped piously in front of her nun's habit, she looked… the very picture of a saint.
I could almost understand why such an overly generous name as "saint" had been attached to a monstrosity.
Behind me, Sirin stood with a sour look on her face, arms crossed, glaring long and hard at the woman in the glass.
"Sirin."
"Yes."
"Start recording. I'll conduct the interview, and you just take everything down word for word. Got it?"
"…Got it."
Sirin switched on the recording device and readied her notebook and pen.
Click.
The red light came on, and the CCTV inside the isolation chamber started up — the signal that recording had begun.
I pressed the microphone button.
"Can you hear me?"
"…Perfectly well, Researcher."
A clear, melodious voice.
I immediately raised the mental-attack defense and interference functions by one level.
Inaudible soundwaves radiated toward the interior and exterior of the chamber — a feature designed to block anything that wasn't human speech.
"I will now begin a basic interview. If there are any questions you'd rather not answer… feel free to refuse them, but be aware that lying may carry consequences."
"I'll answer honestly. Hehe…."
"What is your name?"
"Aisha."
"Hmm. No family name?"
The only reason I bothered to ask her family name was that her status in the other world appeared to have been rather high.
What is the criterion that separates an anomaly from a mutant?
It's this: were they human once, or not?
If something that used to be human was mutated by the Black Gate, it's classified as a mutant. If something that never existed at all suddenly manifests out of nowhere, it's treated as an anomaly.
Naturally, beings that crossed over from other worlds also fall under the anomaly classification — they aren't of our world, after all.
The woman inside the stained glass answered.
"In the land of my birth, we do not use family names. People simply called me the Saintess — or the Light."
Screeech.
Sirin's ballpoint pen gouged hard across the paper.
I muted the microphone for a moment and called out to her.
"What's the matter? You're going to tear the paper."
"…The pen isn't writing well."
"Huh? That pen's brand new."
"……."
Sirin chucked the perfectly good pen into the trash bin and fished a fresh one out of her pencil case.
Press.
I pressed the microphone button again and resumed the record.
"Where are you from?"
"The northern reaches of the Arkenia Continent — the Lematis Holy Kingdom."
"……."
Definitely not a place on Earth… so, the fantasy type, huh? What are her abilities?
A nagging premonition told me I'd drawn the short straw with a particularly thorny entity.
'Ha… I should've expected at least this much the moment it came up Black.'
It takes this much to qualify for the highest rating. Abilities and all, I'd dig everything out into the open, get it properly contained, and then finally take my vacation.
"How did you come to be here?"
"I followed a path someone opened for me. I was merely swept along."
"…And how did your body end up in that state?"
"I don't know. This stained glass isn't my true body — it is a remnant of my soul. A sacred relic capturing my form at the moment of my final prayer."
"Can you leave it and come out here?"
"It's difficult. Although… inviting someone else into the glass would be possible."
A twitch.
That's ominous.
"Did you pull Yukel inside?"
"I did."
"…What did you do in there?"
"I can't say what Yukel is doing here, but she recognized me. We were old friends, reunited after so long, and we settled our accounts. That's all."
"Can you be more specific?"
"I washed away the filth. The handprints of another — the traces left behind…."
Yukel is Team Leader 2, with considerable combat strength. Aside from me, she holds a decent win record even against other Team Leaders.
There was no way an anomaly could have left marks or contamination on someone like Yukel.
"What exactly do you mean by that?"
"…Who can say."
The woman in the stained glass shifted her gaze to the space behind me.
…She was looking at Sirin.
That meek manner of speech, that cooperative attitude — she'd completely played me. So this is how she's been manipulating people all this time.
'…Making comrades doubt each other. How cheap.'
I kept the interview going, tense and wary.
"Describe the abilities you possess."
"The power to heal wounds and cleanse impurity. I can also bestow blessings to strengthen things. And within my domain, I am able to read the hearts of those who enter."
"I doubt that's all."
"Those who first encounter my power are made to remember the wrongs they have committed. Those burdened by great guilt lowered their heads of their own accord — I did nothing at all."
Contradictory.
'How did the Facility Director put it again?'
I recalled the brief conversation I'd had with him a moment ago.
There were seven initial contacts. The moment they touched it, they fell to their knees and began worshipping the entity. Those who laid hands on her body "in impious defiance" bit off their own tongues and attempted suicide, while the transport personnel who had directly confined her insisted that the "Saintess" must be released at once.
Self-harm.
People who touched the stained glass directly had turned that violence on themselves.
And right now, that thing was deliberately omitting part of its abilities. It's an intelligent one.
Uncontainable. High intelligence, a demonstrated will to escape, and a nonzero probability of hostility toward humans — a high-risk entity. Unmistakably Black.
The woman inside the stained glass — Aisha — began studying me closely. An unpleasant gaze crawled over my body.
Those eyes of red-colored glass started at my face, then slowly traveled down — chest, stomach, fingertips.
Prick. Prick. Prick.
My right ear and my lower abdomen stung.
"Stop that."
"…My apologies. It was simply fascinating, so I looked a little."
"Do you require food or water?"
"No."
"Sleep?"
"No. I do close my eyes and rest while I pray, but it is fundamentally unnecessary."
"Your age?"
"A lady's age is a secret."
She covered her mouth with one hand and said it with a ticklish little laugh.
Even with the interference functions raised, my head felt as though it were floating faintly off my shoulders. This was mental contamination of a very high grade.
Rustle.
Behind me came the sound of paper being crushed.
Oh no—!
Sirin doesn't have as high an object compatibility rating as I do.
Exposure to mental contamination of this grade could brainwash her outright or inflict damage on her brain. This was my lapse…!
"Sirin, you okay?"
"Yes. Senior."
"……."
Sirin crumpled the paper in one hand, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it into the trash bin.
She seemed to have held out against it through sheer willpower. As expected of the Facility Director's hand-picked future Team Leader.
The record resumed.
Just as I opened my mouth to ask the next question, the woman in the stained glass spoke first.
"You're being awfully guarded. And you don't even care."
"…What?"
"There's no need to concern yourself."
"What did you just say?"
"Who knows. It's a conversation you're incapable of understanding."
I had absolutely no memory of what Aisha had said moments ago. Not only mental contamination, but short-term memory erasure as well….
I turned to look at Sirin, but she seemed to have lost the memory too — she shook her head side to side.
"…Last question. Are you willing to cooperate with the Facility?"
"Yes. Yukel is here already, and I suspect I'll need your help if I'm to find my body."
"……."
"Shall we bring this tedious interview to a close, Researcher?"
"The terms of your cooperation will be settled in a follow-up session. That concludes today's interview."
"May your day be a peaceful one."
Click.
I shut off the device right then and there.
I snatched up the interview record Sirin had written and checked whether the document itself had been contaminated. Fortunately, it seemed the text and information were untouched.
Which meant it didn't need to be destroyed on the spot — but I still couldn't let my guard down.
Range of abilities: unknown. Intensity: unknown. She can invite anyone who touches the glass somewhere else, and anyone who damages the stained glass comes to harm themselves.
For now, the classification stays Black, audio gets double-blocked, and contact with the glass or direct interviews are restricted to Team Leaders only.
I figured I'd need to recommend a mental evaluation for Yukel, too.
Sirin and I headed out into the corridor together.
.
.
.
Even after we stepped into the hallway, Sirin seemed uncomfortable with something, trailing a few steps behind me instead of at my back.
Someone who would normally have wrapped her arms around me from behind without a second thought had suddenly put distance between us, and I couldn't get used to it.
"…Why are you suddenly walking so far away?"
"Senior."
"Yeah?"
"Do you… have feelings for that woman?"
"What kind of bullshit is that…? Who the hell gets turned on by an anomaly? And she's a woman, for starters."
Two problems arise here.
Problems that the Seolrin who'd uttered those words moments ago couldn't possibly have imagined.
One: Sirin is an anomaly.
Two: Sirin is a woman.
So, a pop quiz.
How did Sirin take Seolrin's remark just now?
"Aha, is that so?"
"…?"
"Senior — you and I are lovers, aren't we?"
"Uh, yeah? That's right?"
Throb. Throb. Throb. Throb….
Sirin coveted me once more.