CH 51

The walls and ceilings of the huge treatment plant’s corridors are lined with a network of piping for liquid waste that may or may not contain any kind of poison, and the dim red emergency lights make the metallic inorganic objects look like organic blood vessels.

The air conditioning was supposed to be working to prevent contamination, but for some reason, the air smelled foul with the scent of blood and grease, giving Louise the illusion that she was inside a living creature’s body.

[……You lured me here, didn’t you?]

Not expecting an answer, Louise called out to the darkness behind her.

Just as she expected, her question received no answer from the old man lurking in the darkness, but somehow, she was certain that the old man would have the same gentle smile he had when they met.

Is it possible to escape through these countless piles of drums?

Louise’s brain quickly simulated her next course of action.

If she could kick over some of the drums and climb over them, she might be able to get through the gaps between the drums and escape to the other side of this wall of drums.

No matter how good the old man’s endurance is, she has an advantage because she has longer legs and has been trained to climb over collapsible cliffs and obstacles.

She would be able to escape.

Waiting for the right moment, Louise stepped back.

[……You’re very fast for your age, aren’t you?]

[Thanks to it, I’m much healthier now.]

Suddenly, she sensed the old man coming toward her from the darkness.

[Step back!]

Louise pointed her gun at the old man and with her other hand, she tried to knock down one of the drums that were piled up behind her and blocking the passage.

She did this both to gain an initial foothold and to have the drum tumbling towards the old man and see how he would react.

If someone had stacked the drums to block her passage, there was no way they could have stacked so many in such a short period of time and with their contents in them.

Many of them would probably just empty drums, and the numbers were probably just a bluff.

“Kuhh……”

It was surprisingly heavy, but Louise managed to do it with the arm that wasn’t holding the gun.

At that moment, mixed with the sound of the drum making contact with the hard floor, she heard a man groan.

From inside the drum, which she had just knocked over and should have been empty……

“Eh?”

Her gaze, which had been fixed on the old man at the end of her gun barrel, was involuntarily drawn to the drum.

Was she just hearing things?

Were this darkness and the unusual situation tormented her to the point that she started hearing things?

[You weren’t hearing things, Louise-san. Good grief, that was terrible of you, doing such a thing to your friend.]

As if he was accusing her of throwing garbage on the side of the road, the old man called out.

Her friend.

Which means……

A thought popped into her mind, but she couldn’t believe it.

She refused to believe it.

[You…… What did you do?]

[What do you mean?]

[Don’t play dumb! Answer me!]

Louise’s voice was almost a scream.

[I was just doing my usual job, the same as when I stuffed a stray boar into a drum. Look, the one you tumbled is a white drum for harmful animals and it has a serial number, doesn’t it?]

The white drum Louise knocked over had the number “87” written on it in black paint.

[A boar? You say this is a boar!?]

[Do young ladies these days think it’s rude to call them boars…… Should I call them a deer instead? Well, in any case, my job is to drum the beasts that have run into the fence and died.]

The old man spoke happily of his job.

[I think I have a knack for this job…… The longer I do it, the better I get at it. Thanks to that, the company has extended my employment. I can even give my grandchildren an allowance now. Quite a grateful matter it is.]

[……Are you saying that what’s in this drum is a person?]

The gun she was holding and the end of her words trembled slightly.

Behind her stands a huge pile of drums.

At the foot of that pile was a drum filled with a human, labeled “87”.

Faced with this question, the old man didn’t deny it at all.

[Yes. Well, I suppose you could say that.]

[For this…… For all these drums?]

[Yes. Day after day, there are so many of them coming here after all.]

Saying this, the old man had a broad, friendly smile on his face, just as he had when he first met her in the maintenance corridor and offered her a cup of tea.

[What in the world are you…… No, what in the world are you people?]

[I dunno…… I never thought about it. It mustn’t be that difficult of a matter of Foreigner-san though? Can we settle this already? It would be rough if I’m late to pick up my grandson.]

Emerging from the darkness, the old man casually closed the distance between them, one step at a time.

“Hyiiihh……”

Louise, realizing the futility of the situation, continued pulling the trigger until the magazine of her small pistol was empty.

The gunshots echoed off the hard, veiny red corridor, before it eventually died away.

★　★　★　★　★

The meeting between the European joint inspection team, impatient because they weren’t getting the results they had expected, and the MCTBH management, who was dodging and dodging requests, dragged on.

Even though they weren’t informed of the details, the bureaucrats of the inspection team were competent enough to sense that some kind of maneuvering by their home country was going on behind the scenes, and they knew that continuing the meeting would be a diversion in itself.

However, the tearful efforts of the European bureaucrats went unrewarded.

“Excuse me for interrupting the meeting.”

One of the officers came to Hiroki and Ishida with a note in his hand and whispered into their ears, signaling the end of the series of events.

[The damage from the cyber attack was limited. There was no damage to the radioactive waste treatment line. Also, I heard that all the operatives who infiltrated the plant have been dealt with.]

[I see.]

That was all Hiroki said. Soon after, the bureaucrats of the joint European inspection team received the same report, and turning pale, they informed Hiroki that they would be leaving.

As a result, there were no concrete results from the joint European inspection team, but only a bureaucratically-written, characterless, and meaningless joint statement.

The only damage to MCTBH was a slight delay in operations due to the cyber attack and the reprimanding to a certain young male employee who was found passed out and tied up in the women’s restroom.