Against a Perfect Sniper (20 page)

Checking to make sure the fire alarm was working, she left the apartment. The fire truck appeared soon after, and shouts from curious onlookers started.

From a slight distance away, Tina watched the burning apartment as the flames pierced into the night sky. When a pillar burned down, the apartment building collapsed in the cloud of ashes.

Even if Rand was a scientist, he was now taking orders from someone above him. There was no way he would change his mind just because she voiced her dissatisfaction to him. If that was the case, then all Tina could do was what she was ordered to do.

And even if the guard plan was a trap, what of it? Her own combat history as an Initiator was currently at a hundred straight wins. There was no one who could reach her.

However, when she fought the boy dressed in black, Tina had once thought that if there was someone who could defeat her, then it could possibly be—

Just recalling his face made her chest hurt with emotion. Even though the waves of heat on her skin were hot enough to burn, Tina hugged herself, shivering with cold, looking down.

“Please, don’t come…Rentaro…”

It was the night of the final showdown. In the hospital room that had fallen silent, Rentaro stared at the sleeping Enju in the bed. Like yesterday, Enju was breathing healthily in her sleep, and her sleeping face was peaceful. In the end, the faint hope he had that the anesthetic would wear off early and that she would wake up did not come true.

He had no choice but to imagine the fight she had against Tina and how she had been defeated, but based on the crime scene riddled with bullet holes, there was little doubt that she had received an antitank rifle bullet to the stomach. She must have been scared and frightened.

Rentaro looked at the full moon shining outside the window and patted Enju’s head.
Enju, if you were conscious, would you have been opposed to this like Doc was?

But
, he thought, raising his gaze,
Tina Sprout was a victim of this twisted world. If I have the power to straighten out the world, then I think it’s worth risking my life, Enju.

Rentaro put his hand softly on the head of the sleeping Enju. Then, he left the hospital and took the last train out to the Outer District. Rentaro got off at District 39. He had brought Tina here once. When he hadn’t even dreamt that the two of them were mortal enemies.

As he went farther from the station, the surrounding sounds starting disappearing, and the sound of Rentaro’s steps and breathing
seemed too loud. It was neither hot nor cold. The wind was strong, but he continued walking, knowing this would barely count as a handicap for that sniper.

Perhaps because of the lack of streetlights, it took his eyes a while to adjust to the darkness, but eventually, the ruins of the Outer District that had gone through death emerged in front of him.

Buildings covered in vines that had cracked the pavement, buildings that had been burned down. The fires were not the work of the Gastrea. In urban areas, after people leave, dried branches and fallen leaves would pile up with no one to gather them. When lightning struck, it is a simple matter for that to develop into a raging fire.

Man-made environments crumble quickly when humans stop taking care of them. Rusted vehicles were crashed into one another, and abandoned cars could be seen everywhere. Inside cars and cell phones, there were small amounts of rare metals like silver, palladium, and gold, so these were called “city veins” and were an important source of income for the Manhole Children.

Just as Rentaro stepped into the center of District 39, his cell phone suddenly vibrated. He had been planning to look here and there until he had covered all of the Outer District, but this was much faster than expected.

Of course, he had no doubt who the person on the other end of the phone was.

“There’s nothing here after all, huh? You got me,” she said.

Rentaro looked around him while holding his phone to his ear, but he could not see Tina anywhere. Still, it was likely that the young sniper could see him. Rentaro set his eyes on the group of dilapidated buildings standing tall in front of him.

“Is this your idea of preventing the sniping? I know the location of the unofficial conference. If I leave now, I can still make it in time to go after the Seitenshi when she leaves the meeting.”

“My job is to keep you from doing that,” said Rentaro.

“My job is to kill the Seitenshi,” said Tina.

“Why, Tina? Why do you kill?”

Tina hesitated slightly. “This is the only way left for me to prove I have a reason for existing.”

“That’s sad, Tina. You’re sad. Are you okay with that?”

Tina did not reply.

“If you’re saying that if I don’t fight, then you’re going to go kill the Lady Seitenshi, then I can’t let you go! The future of this country lies on the shoulders of that princess. If you want to kill her, then go after you kill me!” Rentaro rolled up the right arm and right leg of his uniform and stretched his arm straight out. After feeling some slight pain, there was a creaking sound, and fissures ran through his right arm and leg as the artificial skin warped and peeled off. His artificial limbs appeared to be black chrome, reflecting the light of the moon.

“I do not understand. The swordswoman, Kisara Tendo, was defeated. The ace, Enju Aihara, was defeated. You alone are left. You cannot defeat me.”

“I won’t know until I try, right?” At the same time, Rentaro unleashed the power of his artificial eye. The inside of his artificial left eye started spinning, and geometric patterns emerged on the iris.

A pungent smell hit his nose, and his body became hot. After unleashing his power, Rentaro lowered his hips and held his stance quietly. The Tendo Martial Arts Infinite Stance was a battle form filled with the meaning of the eternally limitless existence of the heavens and the earth.

“Now, let’s settle this, Tina!” Rentaro gazed at the darkness, still in his stance. He was attacked by a suffocating thirst for blood, and he gritted his teeth and gripped the dirt hard with the bottom of his boots.

The enemy used a Bit from the thought-drive interface, Shenfield, to scout his location. The second he was caught by the Bit, he was sure he would see a perfectly precise sniper bullet flying toward him.

The scene of the final showdown was the block of land where the dilapidated buildings were lined up. Of all the places in District 39, this was an urban area, but it was of course all ruined, so there was no fear of damaging the surrounding areas.

Rentaro had been given various secret plans by Miori. But there was no way Tina had come empty-handed, either.

Sharpening his five senses, he extinguished himself and became one with nature. The wind howled, caressing him from the back of his neck to his cheek. Rentaro didn’t move an inch, focusing all his concentration on his senses of touch and hearing.

There was a flicker, and for a second, he saw light coming from the
roof of a tall skyscraper far away. There was a slight vibration in the air, and his sensitive skin, radarlike, felt a round object flying through the air.

Here it comes!
thought Rentaro. “Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 3—” The sound of an explosion rang in the air, and the extractor that ran along Rentaro’s fake ulnar nerve on his artificial arm picked up empty golden shell casings and kicked them out as they rotated. “Rokuro Kabuto!”

His fist, sped up through cartridge propulsion, grasped the superfast antitank sniper rifle bullet. The explosive sound of impact rang throughout the ruins, and the shock wave blew away all the gravel around him. The fist he sent out twisting crashed into the sniper bullet, smashing it to smithereens. He had pulverized a .50-caliber armor-piercing bullet with a jacket made of tungsten carbide with over thirty times the kinetic energy and destructive power of a 9-mm handgun bullet.

He should not have been able to hear it, but Rentaro was sure he heard Tina gasp in astonishment.

Rentaro activated the range finder in his left eye and had it calculate the position of the shooter from the direction of the shot. The distance to Tina—1.5 kilometers directly in front of him. It was hard to believe how far away she had shot from.

He quickly took his smartphone out of his pocket and glared at the screen. There was a small golf-ball-size attachment installed on his phone. It was a supersmall sound sensor installed to use with a sniper detection application that Shiba Heavy Weapons had spent an enormous amount of money developing.

As if confirming Rentaro’s prediction, the cursor indicated a sniper bullet approaching from the front. There was no mistaking it.

Rentaro put both hands on the ground abruptly and raised his hips, taking a stance like that of a sprinter. He raised his eyes with a roar, glaring at the skyscraper soaring high above its surroundings in front of him.

Target, 1.5 kilometers ahead—
Fire
.

The next instant, the bottom of the cartridge hit the striker of the fake hidden nerve and exploded. An empty cartridge was ejected. The
mobility thruster in his leg fired, accelerating him almost to the point of being blown away, and he sprinted forward.

He didn’t have time to worry about the sniper bullet that flew in at a great speed and gouged out the area Rentaro had just been. In the midst of such strong headwinds that he could hardly open his eyes, he barely evaded the large rocks and cars that were coming at him with terrifying speed, plunging into the crack in the stone wall, dashing into the dilapidated building with a whirlwind behind him.

The skyscraper grew steadily bigger in front of him.

There was a faint glimmer of light on the other side of the building, and Rentaro realized that a third shot had been fired. He gave himself another boost by firing off another cartridge in his leg. Immediately afterward, a sniper bullet gouged out the area behind him with a high-pitched screech.

Rentaro was shocked as he felt intense pain that seemed to rip his body apart. When he used his leg thrusters, he reached a top speed of a hundred and fifty kilometers and could barely even be seen.

Tina not only followed his movements, but she also predicted where he would be and shot after calculating enough lead time. Rentaro and Tina were both using techniques beyond the abilities of humans.

There were only six hundred meters left between him and Tina. Rentaro fired a third cartridge and rode it quickly into the skyscraper with violent momentum, but as he got closer, his heart beat hard, recalling a different type of worry.

When a sniper bullet was fired from a kilometer away, there was about a second between seeing the light of the muzzle fire and having the bullet approach him. He knew this because he had experienced this many times firsthand.

Up until now, he had always started taking evasive action after seeing the light, but the closer he got, the shorter the time would be between when he could see the muzzle fire and when the bullet came flying at him.

As if Tina could miss at this distance.

Just then, he saw another flicker of orange muzzle fire from the roof of the skyscraper and gasped in surprise.

Shoot
, Rentaro thought as it hit his Super-Varanium right arm. He
fell from his superaccelerated state and rolled once, getting chills. He was going to be smashed into the wall. Would he be crushed to death? No, he had to stand back up.

He changed the position of the thruster in his leg so that it stuck out to the side, and fired. Gritting his teeth, he forcefully twisted against the inertia, crossing his arms in front of his head and aiming to crash through the entrance of a nearby building headfirst.

With a loud crash, he smashed through the glass and rolled a few times on the floor of the entrance before forcing himself to stand up. There was damage to his inner ear that caused him to lose his sense of balance, and his legs danced like those of a groggy boxer. The joints in his body were in pain, and blood spread inside his mouth. Apparently, he had a cut somewhere in there.

It took some time before he was able to calm his ragged breathing and look around to survey his surroundings. Tilting his head, he could see that even though the building was dilapidated, the atrium that reached the ceiling looked pretty nice. It had probably been a state-of-the-art intelligent building before the Gastrea War. It wasn’t as tall as the building Tina was shooting from, but it was still pretty tall.

He couldn’t just stay here. She had the Shenfield.

Rentaro quietly slid under the decaying marble reception desk. Soon after, a fist-size round object turned silently into the entrance. There was no mistaking it; it was a Bit that Tina was controlling. It was his first time actually seeing it, but it must have been what had been observing Rentaro and his surroundings before. It barely made a sound as it flew, and was probably built for clandestine activities.

The Bit acted like a living thing and floated mysteriously as it scanned the area around it with lasers, investigating the topography. The Bit neared Rentaro slowly but surely.

As Rentaro carefully pulled his gun from his holster without making a sound, he pressed the safety to be ready to fire. Calming his wildly beating heart, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As he flew out from under the reception desk, he was caught by the Bit’s sights, and the Bit turned sharply to face him.

Rentaro fired without missing and shot out the Bit’s camera eye. In an instant, the Bit was flying around lopsidedly. Before long, he had
thrown it to the floor, scattering sparks, and after some slight death throes, it ran out of power and was completely silent.

This was good. Rentaro smiled inwardly. This Bit was Tina’s eye. If he destroyed all three of the Bits Tina controlled with her neurochip, then he would be able to shut down her unparalleled precise shooting. If he destroyed the other two like this, hiding under the reception desk—

Just then, his breast pocket vibrated, and he pulled out his phone. He was dumbfounded when he saw that the caller was Miori Shiba. What was she thinking? She should have known full well that he was in the middle of a battle.

No
, he reconsidered. She must have thought he hadn’t started yet and had something she just had to tell him. He pushed the button and picked up the phone.

“Satomi dear, are you alive? I have the results of the analysis of the machine gun!” said Miori’s familiar drawl.

He frowned, wondering what she was talking about, and then remembered the pieces of the heavy machine gun that were collected from the scene where Enju had been shot. If he remembered correctly, Inspector Tadashima had said that Enju had been shot from four different directions. He knew that one was a shot from Tina. But the remaining three—“Did Tina have help after all?”

“No! The machine guns retrieved had remote control modules installed. In other words—”

There was the faint buzzing of a machine operating, and Rentaro looked up with his phone still on his ear. He froze as he came face-to-face with another Bit looking down at him.

The second one? When did it get here?
Rentaro muttered in shock, “This is bad, Miori… It’s found me…”