Vengeance Is Mine

“It’s begun, Satomi.”

At Kisara’s reverential whisper, Rentaro frowned. But before he could say another word, she spoke again.

“Look at the Monolith.”

Rentaro raised his gaze from the ground to look. A ripple of shock went from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. First, a corner of the rectangle collapsed. But that immediately led to the next collapse. Finally, the enormous body of the cracked Monolith couldn’t stand up against the Varanium corrosion fluid any longer and let out a scream, and then nothing could stop the chain reaction of structural failure.

From where Rentaro was, he couldn’t hear the sound of the actual collapse, but that made the shriek of the Monolith a moment before even clearer. Abruptly, the whole bleached pane became fatally splintered, and the Monolith looked like it was shrugging its shoulders as it disintegrated. Chills went down his spine with it.

The Monolith fell like time-lapse photography, starting from its base with fragments flaking off the top. In no time, it would crash into the ground. As he watched, there came a roar, and then they were hit with a shock wave rumbling the ground, forcing Rentaro to raise his arms
and grit his teeth. The vibration shook Rentaro from his feet to his guts, and the shock wave blew away the surrounding debris, rotting signs, and sheet metal that had fallen.

When Rentaro lifted his face, he saw the sky was covered by a cloud of dust and fine particles. “No way…”

It was starting. The Third Kanto Battle was starting—and not when they were planning for it to start.

“Satomi!” Kisara yelled.

“I know!” Rentaro fixed his eyes on the broken Monolith once more and ran toward the battlefield. No matter what, he couldn’t leave Enju, so he ran down the stairs from the roof and through the police station. Inside the station was chaos, with everyone pointing and screaming at Monolith 32 in the window.

“Enju!” He found her sitting in the waiting room, looking down dejectedly.

“Rentaro…” Enju looked at him and slowly tried to put a cheerful expression on her face. It was painful to watch.

“Enju, let’s go.”

Enju looked like she didn’t understand. “Go where?”

“What do you mean, ‘where’? To the base at the front lines! The Monolith collapsed!”

The girl turned her head, seemingly noticing the frantic screams and fleeing bodies around her for the first time. “It…collapsed?”

Rentaro shuddered. “You… Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed?”

Even though it was so loud…

Enju shook her head. “I noticed. It’s just…I was just a little spaced out, is all.”

Rentaro didn’t reply; he simply closed his eyes. Enju had just heard the news of the death of her classmates this morning. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t want to put her on the battlefield. However, the current situation was not so kind.

“Rentaro, I’ll jump with you on my back,” said Enju.

“No, that’s okay… Let’s run,” said Rentaro.

“Why?”

“Just do it.” Rentaro took Enju’s hand and they hurried outside. He tried to flag down a nearby taxi but soon realized it was futile. The cars were fleeing, scattering whether or not there were passengers
riding in them, and now all he could see were people running around screaming.

When they hit a thoroughfare, the conditions were even worse. The six-lane street was in a state of confusion, with cars at a standstill and horns honking in a loud chorus; all the while people were abandoning their cars to get just a little farther away from Monolith 32.

Rentaro and Enju bumped into shoulder after shoulder as they ran through the crowd, running in the opposite direction as everyone else. No matter how much time passed, they could not find a ride. There was no train station nearby, and even if they
had
been able to make it to a station, there was no guarantee that trains would be running on their usual schedule in this state of emergency.

In the meantime, they passed through to the neighboring District 40. There were fewer people there, and it was mostly filled with abandoned buildings. As they ran, he swept his gaze left and right: Even though Rentaro’s body was moving at full speed, his brain was calmly analyzing their current situation.

There was still quite some distance between them and the civil officers’ base at the front lines. So, it was obvious that he would not be able to continue running at the speed he was now, overexerting himself. Wasn’t there anything he could do?

There were scooters, motorcycles, and cars around them, but the former two were covered in rust and pretty much totaled; the latter were missing tires and had their hoods open, their parts looted.

But shortly after, he glimpsed a bicycle hidden in the crack of a building. After a quick inspection, he found it in usable shape despite showing its age; it had air in its tires and had had maintenance done. A resident of the Outer Districts had fixed it and had been using it, no doubt. It was a granny bike with thin tires and a child seat strapped to the back.

However, a joint-type bike lock connected the body of the bike to the pole next to it. Rentaro looked left and right and apologized silently to the owner, vowing to return it later. Drawing the gun from his hip, he took three steps back and aimed. He carefully pulled the trigger and fired, and the bullet blew the lock away.

Sitting astride the saddle, he put Enju behind him and pedaled hard. The bike seemed to stretch as it accelerated, shooting through the streets of the Outer Districts. A sudden warning siren rang in his
ears, and he lifted his face in surprise, looking around him. The siren roared high and low, coming at them from all directions.

“A biohazard warning?” he said. In the ten years after the war, no matter how dangerous a Pandemic crisis Tokyo faced, this warning had never been sounded, but now, it was echoing around them, ringing like crazy.

Then, another strange thing occurred: After a loud screech pierced his ears, a large black mass came toward them from the northern sky. Suddenly, the street was covered by a dark shadow, and Rentaro and Enju, who were going full speed on the bike, were completely surrounded by it, their world turning dark. It was so dark that it could have been mistaken for night.

He soon realized what the black mass was. Birds. A group of birds of various species and sizes screeched noisily as they flew away in the opposite direction of the fallen Monolith. So even the birds had started their escape—they seemed to know instinctively that Tokyo Area had no future.

Enju made a fist with her hand, which was wrapped around Rentaro’s waist from behind, and he could feel sweat on his palm. Rentaro pedaled even harder and shifted into high gear. Before he knew it, the handlebars, too, were slick with sweat. He naturally lifted his pelvis as he sat and rounded his back to reduce air resistance, rising into a racer’s stance.

He raced around the utility poles that were bent back and forth and the useless traffic lights, weaving his way through the cars lying around like an obstacle course, leaning this way and that to avoid them. Avoiding the traffic signals enabled him to save more time than he expected.

After the Monolith collapsed, they would definitely see Aldebaran’s troops start moving. Unfortunately, the self-defense troops who were stationed downwind had been showered with the dense mineral dust from the collapse and were probably in a state of panic. The problem was whether or not they would be able to regroup and attack before the Gastrea arrived.

Getting onto a highway, Rentaro stood up and pedaled to climb the small hill. There was a cliff to his right with a guardrail next to it. Climbing the hill required a lot of stamina, and he was soon panting, his calves straining, but he finally made it to the top, where a cool breeze whipped around his body.

Looking over, he saw that the tracks of the overhead train line running parallel to them were blocked with piles of clay roof tiles and blocks that had been blown over. He was right to not head toward the train station after all. It would be impossible for them to run.

Abruptly, he thought he felt a tire hop and gave a small yell. His inattention brought calamity, and he ran over a rock on the curb. The bike fluctuated wildly.

“Rentaro! In front of you!” Enju shouted.

Before him, the guardrail in front of the approaching cliff had been scraped away. The cliff below was steep, and the forest beyond seemed very small and far away. If they fell, it would be instant death.

He yanked the handlebars to the left and released the power of his artificial leg. The artificial skin and his uniform on his right leg were torn off as he fired cartridges out of the limb. From the thruster, there was an instant of bursting sparks as their inertia adjusted. Resistance in the pedals disappeared as he lifted his feet, and they accelerated so much that it seemed like they were going to be thrown off. But they turned at the last minute, and followed the curve of the guardrail.

Rentaro was in shock from the close call. They definitely couldn’t afford to be injured in a place like this. Still, he didn’t slow down as he continued.

Finally, the base at the front lines came into view. Even from far away, he could see clearly how the civil officers were flustered. They were trying to make the formations they had learned in a hurry, but they were confused, and their lack of experience was already being exposed.

By the time Rentaro had left the bike in front of their tent and rushed to the front of the squad tent, the rest of his team members were already talking things over in a circle.

When Kisara saw Rentaro, her eyes widened. “Satomi, how did you get here? Even Tina and I just got here a minute ago—”

Rentaro’s whole body was covered in sweat, and he tried to calm his ragged breathing. He placed both hands on his knees and somehow managed to raise his head, then wiped his mouth with a sleeve. “I’ll tell you later. We’re going, too!”

It took some time for the civil officers to recover from the confusion caused by the unexpected destruction of the Monolith. The destruction of the enormous rectangular structure standing 1.618 kilometers high and 1 kilometer wide produced an enormous amount of dust and ash that was blown upward into a heavy cloud. In little time, it covered the sky of Tokyo Area and hid the sun.