Against a Perfect Sniper (17 page)

Many times the lethal amount of anesthetic…?

The doctor and nurse exchanged looks, as if the next part was hard to say. “There is one thing we must tell you, Satomi. About your Initiator’s body’s corrosion rate… The process involved to heal the large wound from this time made it rise slightly.”

Rentaro made a fist, grinding his teeth and looking down.
It’s my fault
, he thought. Finally, biting his bottom lip with regret, he lifted his face. “How long before Enju wakes up…?”

“I’d like to keep an eye on her for two days.”

“Two days…”

Something was strange.

As Rentaro tried to find the source of his discomfort, he pressed his temple, but suddenly his vision blinked, and his body swayed. The next thing he knew, Kisara was holding him up. Now that he thought about it, he was on the verge of death himself. Since he had remembered, he couldn’t figure out how he had been standing up. He felt languid and exhausted, attacked by the pain of his wound, and his vision faded into darkness.

Rentaro sipped the rice gruel, but when he forced the porridge into his mouth, his stomach was surprised and started contracting. He wanted to recover as soon as possible, so he forced the food down through the nausea, consuming half of the hospital food in several sittings, and had them give him more saline in his IV drip.

Holding Enju, he dozed off next to her, and when he woke up, he was feeling much better.

The doctor said, “You need to be hospitalized, too,” but Rentaro smiled bitterly and left.

Then, Kisara held her nose and pointed out, “You stink! Satomi, you have terrible BO!” So on his way home to pick up a change of clothes, he stopped by the public bath to wash his hair and wipe down his body.

When he got out of the bath, he rewrapped the bandages over his recovery patch in the changing room and lightly touched the wound in his side. It still throbbed painfully, but he decided he could bear it.

Rentaro put his hands on the large vanity and stared at himself. His cheeks were hollow, his lips were cracked and dry, and his hair had lost some of its shine. However, his mind was working again, and the vague discomfort he felt earlier finally became clear.

The doctor had said Enju had many times the lethal amount of anesthetic injected into her, but Rentaro wondered if it really was chance that kept her from dying from the excess anesthetic.

It would have been easy to kill Enju. Her head or heart just had to be destroyed. However, Tina had not done that. Why not?

In the first place, using injection as her method of choice was strange. When giving an injection to one of the Cursed Children, who had threatening powers of regeneration, one usually used a pressure-style injection that didn’t require a needle, or a Varanium needle that prevented the wound from healing itself. These were the two main types. Even if a regular needle was used, the moment the needle pierced the skin, regeneration would begin, so the needle could break, get stuck to the skin, or something else bad could happen.

After checking Enju’s arm, Rentaro saw needle marks. This was the second type—in other words, it was evidence that a Varanium needle had been used.

Why would Tina go through all this trouble?

Rentaro kept staring at the mirror.

Just then, the ruins of the police car thought to have been destroyed by one of the Cursed Children crossed the back of his mind. The police car had been thoroughly destroyed, but the police officer had miraculously survived.

It was similar—even though one whole wall around Enju had been covered with bullet holes from a heavy machine gun, Enju’s life had been spared.

Rentaro thought about it carefully one move at a time.

Tina was definitely trying to kill the Seitenshi and Kisara. The person who hired Tina, or her Promoter, had probably told her to kill them by name directly. However, it was possible that Tina was trying her best not to kill people not on the list to be assassinated. That was
why Enju and that police officer did not die. Was that too big a leap to make?

Of course, this act was contrary to the opinion of the person who hired her and her Promoter. It didn’t make sense for those twisted enough to order an assassination to have any hesitation about getting rid of the witnesses.

Pressing forward with that line of thinking, Rentaro put his chin in his hand. Tina wasn’t a bad person at heart. Was it his desire to believe this that was skewing reality?

Just then, he saw Tina’s face in his mind, smiling softly and eating
takoyaki
in the sunny park, and shook his head hard.

Damn it. What am I thinking? She’s a professional killer.

In his head, he turned over what the doctor said about it taking two days before Enju would wake up. There was something this assassin didn’t want Enju to wake up and say so badly that she put Enju to sleep.

Tina Sprout was probably planning on finishing all the assassinations and leaving Tokyo Area in the next two days. There was hardly any time left.

What will you do, Rentaro Satomi?

Irritated at the unanswered questions, Rentaro changed and left the bathhouse. On his way back to the hospital, Rentaro stopped by a vending machine under a humid-smelling overpass and pushed in some coins, pushing the button consecutively several times. Twisting off the cap of the carbonated drink the machine spit out, he gulped it down and emptied the plastic bottle in a second.

Perhaps because he was distracted, he didn’t notice he was being followed until he heard his name.

“Hey, Rentaro Satomi.”

Rentaro looked back with a sinking feeling. What he saw was Yasuwaki and the other Seitenshi personal guards grinning, riding in a black Benz.

“What do you want…?” Rentaro slammed his plastic bottle into the
trash can with unconcealed displeasure and started walking. The car was going so slowly to keep pace with Rentaro that it made him angry.

“The third conference has been decided.”

“I know.” Rentaro said it without looking at Yasuwaki, so Yasuwaki pulled out a thin bundle of papers and started fanning himself with it.

Yasuwaki laughed. “However, you can’t guard her anymore. Why? Because your last ray of hope, your Initiator, was beaten by the sniper and sent to the hospital, right? That’s unfortunate. That means the new guard plan is useless to you, of course.”

The guard plan for the third conference?

“Give me that!” Rentaro stole the papers out of Yasuwaki’s hands and leafed through them quickly, ignoring the enraged Yasuwaki as he burned the escort route into his memory.

Suddenly, a hand stretched out from behind him and stole the papers back. Crushing the papers as he got out of the car, Yasuwaki looked at Rentaro with eyes frozen with hatred. “Bastard… You aren’t planning on stepping down from guarding the Seitenshi?”

Those words surprised Rentaro. Why did he look at the guard plan? Was he planning on continuing this job? Even after going through all that?

Kisara had been half-killed, Rentaro suffered a serious injury, and Enju was in a state of unconsciousness. In addition, the enemy was an unprecedented IP rank 98. To put it bluntly, she was way beyond the capacity of the Tendo Civil Security Agency. The money was not worth their lives, and in this case, the risks had already far outweighed the returns. The Seitenshi had likely promised a large sum in compensation, but even so, if the enemy was ranked 98, even ten times that wouldn’t be worth it.

Of course, this was where they should return the advance and wash their hands of the case. The Seitenshi would probably be sad, but she would not stop them. They would walk away from the job on good terms. Yasuwaki would also stop holding strange grudges against him. Enju would wake up eventually. The Tendo Civil Security Agency would continue on. It would be wonderful.

Rentaro shook his head softly.

That was the one thing he couldn’t do.

What would happen if he were to step down from this job right now? It was obvious. That prideful-but-honorable leader of the nation would surely be destroyed. Even if they were to hire a stand-in civsec officer other than himself, there was no way they would be able to stop the peerless Initiator with her super-precise, long-range shooting abilities.

Rentaro sighed as he lifted his face and looked at Yasuwaki straight on. “I will continue with the job. I will protect Lady Seitenshi.”

“Stop messing around, asshole! It all,
all
got messed up after you came!”

Seeing Yasuwaki’s arm move toward his holster, Rentaro’s right hand also moved at the same time. The next instant, Yasuwaki’s Luger P.08 gun and Rentaro’s XD gun were pointed at their opponents’ brows.

The other members of the personal guard who were riding in the Benz jumped out in a flurry. At the same time, a train came by on the overpass, and there was a shrill sound as it passed.

Yasuwaki’s persistent eyes blazed brightly as they looked at Rentaro. “Rentaro Satomi, do you really like being by Lady Seitenshi’s side that much?”

“Don’t make me the same as you. More importantly, are you planning on proceeding with this plan? The information’s gonna get leaked again.”

“You’re the one leaking the information, bastard!”

“Bullshit! Did the internal investigation of the Seitenshi’s palace come up with any information about the person who leaked the information?”

“The list has been narrowed down quite a bit, thanks to the efforts of the internal investigation team. Your name is at the top of the list, of course.”

“Then give everyone on that list a fake copy of the guard plan.”

Yasuwaki’s hand holding the gun shook with anger, and the hand on the trigger was white as snow. “
Don’t
, tell
me
, what to
do
………!”

Just before the sound of Yasuwaki’s gunshot, Rentaro brushed Yasuwaki’s arm away and swept his feet out from under him. After he pushed Yasuwaki down with his knee, Yasuwaki made the anguished croak like that of a frog being squished.

“I’ll tell you just one more time! Give everyone on that list a fake copy of the guard plan! I’ll take care of the rest.”

She slammed the desk with all her strength, and beakers and flasks jumped noisily.

“No!
Hell
no!” The queen of the basement, Sumire Muroto, was livid, with her lab coat trailing behind her as she paced inside the basement room.

Rentaro had a faint idea of what would happen, but this was a reaction way beyond what he had imagined. This was probably the first time he had ever seen Sumire so worked up.

Using her own authority, the Seitenshi had printed out information about Tina Sprout and her rank and given it to Rentaro. On that piece of paper, Tina’s Promoter’s name was also printed out.

Rentaro remembered hearing the name before.

“Ain! Have you fallen so far, Ain Rand?!” Sumire shouted.

Rentaro said, “Then this Ain Rand is that person you were talking about after all, Doc? Your—”

“Yeah, that’s right. There’s no mistaking it. Someone who was once called one of the Four Sages with me, as hard to believe as that is.”

“W-wait a minute, Doc. Why are you so angry?”

“How can I
not
be angry about this? He’s sold the last pride he had as a doctor to the devil. Rentaro, how did you end up getting the surgery for the New Humanity Creation Project?”

“That was…” When Kisara’s parents were eaten by a stray Gastrea, and Rentaro protected her, it resulted in his right arm and leg and left eye being eaten. Near death, he was brought to Sumire’s lab.

“In other words, you had only two choices: undergo the surgery and live, or die,” said Sumire.

Rentaro lifted his face with a start, and Sumire nodded once before continuing. “Kagetane Hiruko was the same. He sustained a serious injury to his internal organs, and he was left with only two choices: undergo the surgery, or wait for death. The four of us, including Ain and me, swore one thing before establishing the mechanized soldier
project in our respective countries: ‘We are doctors first and scientists second.’ Of course, that was because of the extremely low success rate of the surgeries, but more than that, we wanted to respect the wishes of the patient, and we did not want to forget our respect for human life. After hearing that, I’ll ask you this, Rentaro. Have you ever heard of one of the Cursed Children sustaining so grave an injury that she was near death?”

Rentaro shook his head. In exchange for having shackles on their lifespans called corrosion rates, the Cursed Children had overwhelming muscle strength, agility, regenerative ability, and they did not get any of the diseases or impairments of normal humans.

Like how Enju did not die even after being injected with a lethal amount of anesthetic, the Gastrea virus inside their bodies was extremely sensitive to dangers to its host’s life and rendered foreign objects nontoxic. In reality, Rentaro had never even seen Enju catch a cold.

In other words, it was unthinkable that they would ever be in a situation where they only had the choice between surgery and death.

“You get it already, right, Rentaro? Ain, that brute, broke his vow and brought healthy Children into his lab.”

Rentaro was astonished. How in the world did Rand perform surgery on the Children? It wasn’t something Rentaro could wrap his head around then and there, and he shook his head.

Rand would have had to use Varanium scalpels, forceps, and other surgical tools to open their bodies. Of course, since Varanium inhibited their regeneration, using it to injure the Initiators would mean their healing abilities would drop significantly, as well.

As a result, wouldn’t the success rate be much lower than that of an ordinary person? Just how many dozens of Children disappeared into the operating room? No, how many hundreds?

Rentaro started to imagine the grotesque scene of Children’s bodies being opened and had to put a hand to his mouth. After all this time, he understood that that small assassin was standing atop a large number of corpses.

“Rentaro, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Ain Rand has pretty much no combat ability to speak of. I can guarantee that as someone who worked with him in the past. They are pair in
name only, and he probably isn’t more than the person giving commands regarding the assassinations. You don’t have to worry about him coming out into the front lines.”