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.
"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?"
No bullet came from the muzzle. And in the meantime, my thumb had pressed the red button, but—
"Nothing's happening?"
At first glance, it looked as though we'd been saved, but it did mean we had another big problem.
Both of Ali's inventions were duds.
Was it coincidence? Just bad luck? Or...
"I've known of this future ever since the distant past," Seed murmured.
And then...
"Ooh, you two are being so bad." Someone else spoke behind us.
Fearfully, I turned around to see a girl with pink hair. "You can't point those weapons at my boss."
The last name I called was...
"Ali...?"
I couldn't accept what I was seeing, and I fumbled and dropped the detonator switch. Ali passed right by me and went to stand beside Seed. She was smiling faintly.
"Why are you...?"
Next to me, Siesta was watching her too. Her expression was grim, and her eyes were narrowed. I was sure she was praying that the explanation she'd
just thought of was incorrect.
"Ah-ha-ha! So sorry. I've been on his side the whole time," Ali said, forcing us to face the cruel reality. "I've known kids were disappearing from the facility for ages."
That was something we'd only found out recently—the deaths of the children involved in failed experiments and the drugs to erase them from our memories.
But Ali said, "I've kept a journal for years and years; I've never missed a day. When I compared my faulty memories to it, I realized that kids were vanishing and nobody knew."
Come to think of it, Ali's secret base had so many dolls and stuffed animals in it that I hadn't been able to believe they were all hers. Had those belonged to the kids who'd died? Apparently, she really had known about the disappearances long before we found out.
"...If you knew that, then why did you join them?" She should be able to see who the bad guys were here.
"Well, it's only natural to side with whoever's strongest, isn't it?" Ali had used similar reasoning to reach a completely different conclusion. "You have to live smart, you know." She gave us a teasing smile. "Anyway, these kids won't do at all." Her attitude changed abruptly, and she pointed at Siesta and me as she advised Seed. "Any girl this easy to fool won't be any use to you. Don't waste seeds on them."
Seeds? I hadn't heard that term before.
However, from what we'd learned so far and the direction the conversation was heading, I could guess. "Seeds" must be the unknown energy source that was supposed to turn children into pseudohumans. Ali was saying Siesta and I shouldn't be allowed to have them.
"You should give me one instead, please," she said, trying to persuade Seed that she was worthy. "As an inventor, I'm gonna be interested in pseudohumans. Obviously. Besides, I've given you all this help. Okay? C'mon, won't you?"
She sounded exactly like the childish Ali I knew as she pestered Seed for the seed like a spoiled little brat.
—But.
"I think it's too early for you." Seed rejected her proposal, still blank-faced. "It's fine." I didn't know why she was being so stubborn, but she doubled
down on her request. "It's fine, I know I can handle it. I'll master the seed for sure."
"Then what shall we do with these two?" Seed asked, almost as if he was testing her.
"These two" were me and Siesta, of course. We'd learned the secret of this facility and what Seed really was, and he was asking how to dispose of us.
"Just take some of their memories, the way you always do," Ali replied. "After that, you can let them go. I really don't think they'll be useful anyway." She kept on talking a blue streak, without sparing a glance for us. "Oh, right, make them forget me too, would you? Kinda gross to think about them remembering me the whole time."
...Oh, is that what this is, I thought. Ali was Ali after all.
"Also, while we're at it, I doubt we need the other kids either. I mean, you were using this place to create a pseudohuman, right? If I become your first success, you won't need this lab anymore—"
While Ali was still chattering away, Siesta interrupted. "Are you really okay with that?"
Her voice was very sharp.
"To summarize what I just heard, you're planning to sacrifice yourself to save us."
"...!"
For the first time, Ali's face twisted.
That's right. I'd had the wrong idea. When something you believed in turns out to be wrong, you have to ask yourself what you're going to believe in again. I should have trusted Ali's emotions instead of her actions. I should have trusted her nature, the same way I always had.
"...This is fine," Ali murmured quietly. "If somebody's sacrificed, this experiment will end. If I master the seed properly, no one else has to go through this again! Isn't that right?!"
Ali had only been pretending to be Seed's ally, in order to protect us. She'd picked up on the facility's secret before anyone else, and I'm sure she'd initially planned to do something about it on her own...but then Siesta had begun doing the same thing.
And Ali knew that once Siesta set her mind to something, she wouldn't stop. She'd pulled us into this, but at the same time, she'd acted as a double agent to keep us safe.
"So please..." Laying a hand on her chest, Ali shouted at Seed, "I'll do it!
I'll inherit that seed for you! So these two can be—"
"Fine." Seed, whose face was still expressionless, accepted her plea. The next moment, a single, long tentacle sprouted from his back.
"...! I won't let you do it!"
Something supernatural was playing out right in front of me, and I almost cringed back. But the tip of that tentacle was sharp, and it was easy to imagine what was about to happen. Even though I had no weapon, I ran to Ali.
"...!"
But that was when a terrible pain shot through the left side of my chest. My heart... Not now!
"Nagisa!"
"G...go..." I'd crouched down. Siesta was focused on me, but with a glance, I told her to go to Ali.
—But then.
"This is a prime opportunity for an experiment. We can't have you obstructing it."
Even though none of us had spoken, we heard a voice. "...!"
Almost immediately, Siesta crashed to the floor. It was as if something had fallen on her.
"Come on, no struggling."
"! No... Don't...!" Siesta's back arched. Her voice was trembling.
"Ha-ha! Do you like the feel of my tongue that much?" Unpleasant laughter echoed from the empty air. Our opponent must have made himself invisible. Even Siesta hadn't predicted a being who wouldn't show up on a security camera.
We were powerless. In front of us was an enormous enemy with a tentacle that moved as if it had a life of its own, and one solitary girl.
"All right. Let us conduct the last experiment," Seed said evenly. "This is my seed. Accept it."
The pointed tentacle closed in on Ali's chest, over her heart. It was the
worst possible way this could end.
She twisted halfway around, calling back to us. She was wearing her usual artless smile.
"Hurry up and forget me."
I don't have any clear memories of what happened after that. Was the shock so great that I lost them?
Or did I force that pain and suffering onto someone else?
It was as if I'd been locked up in the dark. I lost all sense of myself as a person.
At the end, I screamed a name.
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?"
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