*
Dana's hideout was as quiet as the heart of the night.
Darkness had piled up in every corner of the room, as though it might swallow the very air from her lungs at any moment, but the fluorescent glow spilling from the laptop screen stubbornly illuminated its small domain of concentration.
Sunk into her chair, Dana was digging through GenTek's classified documents. As her fingers tapped endlessly at the keyboard, she wandered through the lingering echoes of the message her brother had left behind.
Then, a shadow rippled soundlessly behind her and spoke.
"Find anything?"
"Ah! You scared me! Don't sneak up on me like that...!"
Dana spun around so sharply that her chair nearly crashed into something. Alex let out a single word with an expressionless face.
"Sorry."
"Whew, yeah. I was looking through your laptop."
After that brief, dry apology, his hand lightly touched Dana's shoulder.
"Laptop?"
"Yeah. It came with your stuff the day after you ran."
Dana tapped at the keyboard with practiced ease, and photos extracted from inside GenTek appeared on the screen one after another.
First—
A woman with brown hair and green eyes. Someone with an air that was both worn-down and unyielding.
Then—
A white-haired boy with mismatched eyes. A child whose face was shadowed by a darkness too deep for his age.
The moment those photos filled the screen, Alex's breathing wavered almost imperceptibly.
"I... think I've seen them before."
Dana turned the laptop slightly toward him and added,
"Well, that makes some sense. There were only two names in the files. One is Elizabeth Greene. The other is Minazuki Kiria. They should both still be trapped inside the GenTek building. Do you know who they are?"
"Whoever they are, they know more than I do."
Dana turned back to the laptop screen. Elizabeth Greene and Minazuki Kiria's photographs stared back at her. Then she let out a small, disgusted sigh.
"...Jesus, they're still kids. What kind of monsters are these bastards?"
At that moment, a sharp headache tore through Alex's temples again.
Flash—
A fragment of memory: a dark crimson vial shattering, an ash-gray laboratory, a silence like a scream.
"...I can't remember."
He spoke in a low voice.
As though she had already expected that answer, Dana calmly closed the screen.
"We'll have to go to the GenTek building and find out."
Alex gave a short, firm nod. His unextinguished gaze already held something called resolve.
*
Meanwhile, at Kir's hideout...
The hideout was quiet. Not a single light was on, and old dust lay coldly settled across the room.
On the bed, the white-haired boy—Minazuki Kiria—opened his eyes. His gaze was hazy, as if he were only half-awake, but the other emotion beneath it was clearer than anything.
Anxiety. And irritation.
"I've waited this long, and they still aren't coming... Did they surrender already?"
He tossed out a pointless joke. Naturally, it was a lonely echo with no one there to hear it.
"...Say something, will you?"
A whining joke directed at his father and mother, but there was no one to answer. Kiria knew it himself. No matter how long he waited here, that door would never open.
Unable even to call their names, he rose from the bed.
As he slowly looked around the hideout, a small PDA on the desk caught his eye.
The last trace his father had left behind.
Kiria picked it up and switched on the screen. There was data stored on the PDA. He tried to look through it, but...
"It's encrypted...?"
Left with no choice, he stopped investigating the data and opened the map. The layout of Manhattan Island appeared at a glance. He flipped through it once more.
"Huh...?"
An indoor map appeared. He could see a place that looked familiar. Kiria immediately understood. This map was undoubtedly...
"The GenTek building..."
The map unfolded, and a single red dot marked upon it blinked quietly. Kiria gave an incredulous laugh.
"The hideout, this thing too... Father, are you telling me to go on some kind of treasure hunt?"
Even as he grumbled, the hand that slipped the PDA into his pocket was careful.
The corner of his mouth crooked upward.
"Then I suppose it's a son's duty to go."
Kiria flowed biomass over himself, forming a coat and hood, then walked to the front door.
Just before opening it—he paused, only for a moment, and looked back.
"...Neither of you is really coming."
Then, as always, he gave a light laugh.
"Haah, seriously. Honestly..."
The door opened. The boy's footsteps vanished into the darkness.
*
At Manhattan's southern tip, a green park that had once carried tourists and city dwellers by the thousands—now mud-colored grime and the stench of iron had settled over it like the headquarters of a battlefield.
Battery Park was no longer a place for citizens to rest.
What cut through the night wind was not the whispering of lovers, but the harsh crackle of Blackwatch soldiers' radios crossing over one another.
Black body armor, specialized gas masks fitted with double filters, the mechanical smell of bullets, warheads, and shields all tangled together.
Blackwatch had already spread across Manhattan as though gripping every joint in the city's bones.
They had not come today to "reclaim" the city. Perhaps—they had come to clear away a civilization that had already ended.
*
At the center of Battery Park, the temporary command post stood like a massive armored tent. Command vehicles, communications towers, and drone launch platforms had been packed tightly together, forming a structure like the heart of a battlefield.
And at its center stood an old general who had lost an arm, wearing silence around himself like a sword.
Peter Randall.
A man who sought not to save this city, but to dispose of it.
His face was rigid as scrap metal, and his one remaining eye burned with a cold, rusted silver gleam.
Before the command post's main monitor, he was issuing orders like an ultimatum.
"Axiom moves along the river. Brimstone, surround the entire sector and detain every civilian passing through it. Have this finished by dawn."
Randall's voice carried the distinctive vibration of blood and steel possessed by a man who had commanded death for a long time.
The colonel on the monitor spoke as though swallowing hard.
"But, General, there are close to a hundred thousand people in the Green Zone."
Randall exhaled in irritation. The sound was as harsh as old gears turning. He mechanically raised one hand and pointed toward the monitor as though stabbing at it.
"I don't want to hear excuses. Do it!"
As he finished speaking, Randall slowly turned his head.
Within his sight stood a woman with long black hair and a scar at the corner of her mouth like a blade cut.
Specialist Gina Cross.
Her face was cold and perfect, as though she had suppressed all emotion and been carved into a soldier. Yet her presence also resembled that of a predator that had lingered too long near a battlefield.
Randall acknowledged her presence with his eyes, then addressed her in a low, deep voice.
"Your team seems quite well assembled, Captain. How long until your subordinates are ready?"
Gina dipped her chin slightly and answered in a soldierly posture.
"We are ready and awaiting orders. We can deploy helicopters and tanks and seize the city within fifteen minutes."
For a moment, a question appeared in her eyes.
"General, with all due respect, an operation to suppress twelve million people inside the city appears to be far beyond what my men can handle."
Randall raised a hand, briefly but weightily.
"The situation has already changed, Captain. You will not be participating in the suppression operation."
He pushed a thick dossier from atop the desk toward Gina. Paper rustled softly beneath Randall's fingers as he slowly turned the pages.
Then—
Click.
His fingertip stopped on a page.
On it was a photograph and profile of a boy.
Long white hair and luminous mismatched eyes. A face too chilling to belong to a boy, too beautiful to belong to a monster.
"You have one target only."
Gina's eyes trembled almost imperceptibly. But that tremor was quickly suppressed and vanished like something bound in barbed wire.
"Minazuki Kiria. Codename M-01."
Gina Cross examined the contents written in the dossier. Kiria's information and combat data gathered from every test thus far were listed inside.
"He is a variant of a new virus. He displayed astonishing combat power in testing and has a record of neutralizing five personnel armed with anti-virus weaponry."
Randall added,
"Interested?"
Gina closed her eyes for a moment.
In that instant, something human passed briefly across her face—whether fear or instinct, it was impossible to tell.
But when she opened her eyes again, she was once more a soldier through and through.
"...I will follow your orders, General."
Randall gave a short nod and said,
"I needn't tell you it won't be easy."
There was neither threat nor consolation nor consideration in those words. Only the merciless declaration that was always present when a war began.
*
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