Chapter 48 - 1.5

Chapter 48: Chapter 1.5

The real enemy

Several weeks later...

"Ow! Siesta, you just stepped on my foot."

Siesta and I were walking through a dark building, side by side. "Huh? No I didn't."

"...You're kidding me. Then what just..."

It was so dark. A sudden chill ran down my spine, and I caught Siesta's arm.

"Yes, I'm kidding."

"That's just mean! Why would you do that?!" I swear, this girl... You'd think she was born just to tease people. I really couldn't handle her, and I

prayed fervently that someday she'd find somebody who could take over for me.

"And? Is the enemy really this way?" I asked, lowering my voice.

"Yes, definitely. All the cameras in the building are currently under our control."

We'd remotely hijacked the surveillance cameras, and we knew exactly who was in the building and where. Ali was keeping an eye on the situation and giving us directions. She was back in the strategy HQ, watching over us to make sure nothing went wrong.

"This is finally it," I said, psyching myself up. nove(l)bi(n.)com

"This is our answer," said Siesta. "We won't do as we're told anymore." "...Right."

For the past few weeks, we'd investigated this facility under Siesta's leadership. We'd taken sneaky pictures, placed wiretaps, and done all kinds of recon. We'd used Ali's inventions to gather information until finally we made our big discovery. Today, Siesta and I were going to confront the enemy with it.

Of course, that was going to change the way we lived.

Because I was physically fragile, I'd hardly ever played with friends. Lately, though, I'd made two friends I could count as partners in crime. If we turned this facility against us, we might get split up. And I couldn't deny that idea made me feel a little lonely.

"Do you want to back out?" Siesta whispered sweetly, as if she'd read my mind.

"You're such a jerk." I let her have it. Really I just needed to get the thought out of my head.

Yes, I'd hesitated. I'd thought maybe it would be better to leave this to the other two. If I ran now, though, I was sure I'd regret it later.

This is my chance, I thought. My very last chance to fly away from that hard bed. From this birdcage.

And so I—

"I'm doing it. I won't forgive you two if you leave me out of this."

As I spoke, I slipped my hand into my pocket, and my fingers touched something hard. I really hope I don't have to use this.

"Honestly. You're both such children." Siesta smiled gently.

After we'd walked a little farther, we reached our destination. It was an elevator that led to the basement. We nodded to each other, stepped in, and went down.

When the doors opened, the first thing we saw was several big tanks. They were filled with green liquid, and there was something inside them, hooked up to tubes.

"Well, well. Visitors?"

A voice spoke from somewhere near the back of the room. "It's a little too soon for the experiment, though."

The speaker stepped into view—a bespectacled man in a white lab coat: my doctor, and the director of the orphanage.

"Are those pseudohumans?"

Siesta pointed at the contents of the enormous tanks.

"...Oh-ho. You've done your homework." The corners of his lips rose, silently acknowledging that Siesta's hypothesis was correct.

That was the secret of this facility.

Those weren't actually clinical trials. They were human experimentation.

It was an attempt to grant extraordinary physical abilities by implanting a certain unknown energy source in human bodies. They were conducting this experiment on children who had no families, over and over, with the goal of eventually creating a "pseudohuman."

"Is that what you are, too?" Siesta pressed the director. "I am Seed."

Suddenly, the man's tone changed. At the same time, his appearance shifted through several different stages. First he was a blond man with his hair combed back, and then his body distorted into a voluptuous woman with long hair. Then, finally—

"This is the form I'm most accustomed to now."

He transformed into a slim young man with white hair.

Well, I couldn't tell whether he was actually male. His symmetrical features could have been feminine as well, if you wanted to see it that way... I'm not sure how to put it. There was something almost holy about that lack of gender, that total androgyny.

"That said, it is just a temporary shape. The ones in there are also not the

real thing." The youth who'd called himself Seed gazed at the contents of the tanks with clear eyes. "They're copies I created from pieces of myself."

"Then you're trying to use the children to make a real pseudohuman?" "Well, for now, that's accurate in a general way," Seed replied. "Although

I'm not partial to the word pseudohuman."

"What for?" Without thinking, I broke into their conversation. "Is it for war? Money? ...Why did you have to sacrifice us?"

I'd lived at the facility for twelve years, but there was something I'd never realized.

Many of the children had disappeared.

Kids who'd been right next to me during a clinical trial one day had been gone the next. They must have died during the experiments...and then our memories of them had been erased with some sort of drug.

"Some try to use my power to gain money or military might. However, personally, I don't have the slightest interest in them. The only thing that motivates me—is a tenacious instinct for survival." Seed's face was expressionless. Swaying lightly, he blocked our way. "Well? What now? You've learned the truth of this facility, and my objectives. What's the point of confronting me?"

"We'll stop you, of course. No matter what it takes."

In the next moment, Siesta had taken the musket from her back and pointed it at him. It was another of Ali's inventions, naturally.

"An empty threat?"

"It's real." As I spoke, I took a detonator switch out of my pocket.

This facility stood on an isolated island, far out in the ocean. We knew we couldn't run, so we'd have to fight. "All I have to do is push this button, and I'll blow the laboratory to bits."

I moved my thumb toward the red button. If I pushed it, we wouldn't escape unscathed either, but it should make for a decent negotiating tactic.

"—You really are still green." Something like disappointment flashed across Seed's blank face. "The plan begins now, though."

"Wh-what are you talking about?!"

He wasn't taking us seriously at all. I held the switch out one more time, making sure he'd seen it.

"You'd sacrifice yourself, hm? It's no use. I can tell from one look at your trembling fingers that you aren't brave enough to push it."

"I—!"

Just as I was about to argue back... "Then why not push it?"

...Seed's eyes flared red. "...Huh?"

For some reason, my thumb moved on its own. It was being drawn toward the button. "Wait, wait-wait! What?! No...!"

My thumb was going to press the switch. And I knew this bomb was real... "—!" Noticing the emergency, Siesta pointed her gun at Seed and pulled

the trigger.

"...? It...didn't fire?"

My friend wasn't compatible with the seed. She died in a welter of blood right there in front of me. Only her name was etched in my mind forever.

"—Alicia!"

Finding mistakes and comparing answers

"That's right. Six years ago, the three of us fought SPES at that facility on the island. The ace detective...well, Siesta, and me, and Alicia." Natsunagi said all of that in a rush, as if it was flooding back to her.

One year ago, Charlie and I had encountered the enemy leader at a laboratory. That had to be the test facility that had come up in the story. Six years ago, SPES had been attempting to create pseudohumans there, using children as guinea pigs.

That story had given us two new pieces of information.

The first was that Siesta and Natsunagi had known each other as kids.

Siesta hadn't initially given her the name "Nagisa" last year, just before she died, but six years ago. Had she given her that name again, five years later, because she'd realized Hel was actually her former friend Nagisa?

And the other fact was—

"Alicia actually existed. She wasn't just part of Natsunagi."

One year ago, when I'd met Alicia in London, I'd assumed that her appearance was made up, something Hel (or Natsunagi) had created with Cerberus's seed. There had been a real Alicia, though—a girl with pink hair. Natsunagi had met her at the facility six years ago. Then she'd seen her die.

The image of her must have been indelibly imprinted on her mind, and when she used Cerberus's seed several years later, she'd unconsciously assumed her appearance. Then, even though she'd lost her memories, the name Alicia had still been somewhere in her mind.

"I never once called my master 'Alicia,' you know." In the mirror, Hel narrowed her eyes.

She was right. Hel had kept all of Natsunagi's memories in her place. She had to have known that "Alicia" was someone else.

"Still. I suppose you can't even imagine it, but there was a time when that ace detective was young and inexperienced," Hel went on.

Siesta had still been a child, and she'd gone up against Seed without a plan. Chameleon alone had been too much for her. Maybe it was those experiences that had molded her into the flawless ace detective I knew.

Even so...

"By last year, Siesta wasn't the type of person who'd fail easily. Why didn't she notice that Natsunagi looked like Alicia in London? Why didn't she notice something was off?"

Siesta, Alicia, and Natsunagi had met six years ago. Five years couldn't have been enough to make Siesta forget her friends. I really couldn't imagine that she'd see those pink ponytails and not realize it was Alicia.

"It's simple," Hel said. "The ace detective was missing memories as well." "...! Siesta? Missing memories?"

Well, actually, that made sense. Natsunagi had just told us about it herself: At that test facility, the children's memories had been erased on a regular basis. After Alicia's death, Siesta must have been forced to forget some of her memories from the facility, including SPES, Natsunagi, and Alicia.

"What happened to Siesta after that?"

"She fled the island." Hel gave a cold smile. "Even after they'd partially erased her memories of SPES and her friends, that ace detective slipped out of the facility... She wasn't running away, though. She did it to fight. She stole Seed's seed, and one day, without warning, she was gone."

"Siesta took a seed?"

Maybe that shouldn't have surprised me. Siesta's combat abilities were superhuman. And then there was her heart...

Just like Bat's ears, Chameleon's tongue, and Cerberus's nose, Siesta's heart had had a special ability. When Natsunagi had acquired the heart, she'd

picked up her memories as well. Maybe that had been due to the seed's power.

"...Why?" I couldn't wait for Hel to continue her explanation. "If Siesta's memories had been erased, then why did she steal the seed and escape from the orphanage?"

"You're going to make me say it? Me, your enemy?" In the mirror, her lips twisted. "It's simple. Even if she forgot why she was fighting, or who her enemy was, she remembered the mission she'd been given. That's all," she said with a bitter, dissatisfied smile. "All right. I think I've told you most of what there is to know about the past. You certainly have it rough, dredging up stories that are over and done with from a year ago, or four years, or six."

...She had a point. Natsunagi, Siesta, and I had forgotten all sorts of things, and they were all vital memories. Lately we'd been spending most of our time gathering the fragments of them, one by one.

This settling of accounts with the past must have started on that day.

The day when Nagisa Natsunagi woke me up, in that classroom after school.

The day when she'd set this story in motion again after it should have ended.

This story in which the detective was dead.

"Nagisa." SIESTA took a step forward and finally spoke to Natsunagi's back. "Are you sure it's all right to end this story this way?"

Those blue eyes were unwavering. Even as part of a mechanical doll, they hadn't changed. I knew this gaze—it was the one directed at me a year ago, when I'd guessed that Hel and Alicia were the same person and then tried to pretend it wasn't true. She wouldn't let you lie or run away.

"Hel."

Acknowledging those feelings, Natsunagi spoke to her reflection in the mirror.

"What happened to me after that? After I saw Alicia die." Natsunagi's story hadn't ended yet.

Alicia had died, Siesta had escaped from the facility...but what had

happened to Nagisa Natsunagi?

"That's when I was born," Hel told her.

This tale had begun when Natsunagi said she wanted to know more about Hel; it would end with her, too.

"Well, my consciousness was already inside you, dormant. To be more accurate, that was the first time I became your dominant personality, Master." And ever since then, Natsunagi's body had been under Hel's control? The shock of Alicia's death had destabilized her memories and personality, and

Hel had seized her chance.

"After that, I became a formal member of SPES. I didn't mind letting them experiment on me. The other children were in the way, and I ran them all out of the facility. After that, I was special to Father, his one and only."

Was that what had happened...? Then Siesta and I had encountered Hel in London last year, after she'd risen through the ranks to become one of SPES's officers.

...Still, there was something in that explanation that just didn't ring true for me.

"Why would you go that far for SPES? For Seed?"

Seed had said it was his survival instinct that was making him attack humanity. Since SPES's officers were all clones of him, they were cooperating because that was what their instincts demanded.

Hel was different, though. She was human, and she was also an acquired personality that had grown in Natsunagi's mind. There was no logical reason for her to align herself with Seed.

"Heh. Are you a sadist?" The red eyes in the mirror narrowed. "Look, don't make me embarrass myself over and over. —It was love, all right? Love." The girl gave a self-deprecating smile. "That was the core I needed."

"The core...?"

"That's right. You could call it a tether, there to keep me in this world.

Without it, I felt as if I'd disappear. I am just a fake, after all."

Oddly enough, her master Natsunagi had confessed to having the exact same worry. She'd been suffering after she'd lost her memories and identity too. However, the pain had been the same for Hel. As an alternate personality who had no physical body, she was an extremely vague concept.

"Will you laugh at me for seeking love for such a reason? For sidling up to Father and trying to win his affection because I didn't want to disappear? For blindly believing in his love, and deceiving my comrades, and tormenting innocents? For losing the battle and losing my power after all I'd done? —

Will you laugh?" she asked us, smiling. "No. I won't," said Natsunagi.

"How could I?" she continued. "More importantly, I'm sorry. And thank you."

"...What are you saying?" Hel hadn't been expecting to hear that from Natsunagi, and she grimaced.

"First, the things I was never able to say to you directly. You shouldered all my pain and suffering, didn't you? I'm sorry... I'm so sorry."

Hel was an alternate personality Natsunagi had unknowingly created to help herself escape her pain. In a way, she'd been born just to take over someone else's suffering. Now, Natsunagi was telling this other self what she felt for the very first time.

" 'Thank you'? I—I don't want thanks from—!"

"Well, I mean..." Before Hel could work herself into a rage, Natsunagi spoke to her from the heart. "You protected me."

"From pain and hardship, you mean? I really don't want the person I had to shield thanking me."

"No, not that." Rejecting Hel's assumptions again, Natsunagi gazed into the mirror.

"You became a member of SPES in order to protect me. Didn't you?"