A huge hill blocking the space between the buildings.
A mountain of corpses stacked from slender female bodies that, except for their torsos, usually measured no more than twenty centimeters from the abdomen.
Judging by its size, this horrific scene of utter disregard for human life had undoubtedly used hundreds of Nikke.
The two who saw it first did not speak.
There was no need to say anything about this situation.
It would have been easy to spit out curses right here and now.
But if a Rapture hidden somewhere nearby, beyond the reach of signals, heard the noise, that would be a mistake they could not afford to make in a place that might very well be the nest of such creatures.
That did not mean they felt nothing at the sight before them.
The anger at those women, who had met a noble death on the battlefield only to be discarded like trash, was already boiling hot inside him.
Honestly, if Raptures attacked right now, he might even welcome it just to vent his rage—but with his comrades beside him, he kept those feelings hidden.
“Eunhwa. What do you think this is?”
“I don’t know. But... to say it was simply gathered here... that’s too sloppy. It’s safe to say this has already been used.”
Normally, Raptures did not treat Nikke like toys.
If they met, they fought. If they won, they killed.
It was literally a battle for survival, and on that battlefield, life laughed while death wept.
Nothing should have existed to wedge itself between those two sides.
So this scene was far too bizarre.
The fact that the warriors lying here had no heads was only the first thing that stood out.
Looking closer, some Nikke were missing arms, some legs, some upper bodies, and some were hollowed out inside.
To Eunhwa and Bill, who understood Rapture behavior, there was no way to interpret this as anything other than someone’s intervention, even if another person saw it too.
“How vile. Today’s the first day I’ve ever wanted a cigarette this badly.”
Bill sighed and shoved a hand into his pocket.
He had sworn, ever since his previous life, that he would never smoke.
It was because the smoke his father exhaled had been so foul, but now he wanted to breathe in that acrid haze that stung the nose.
More precisely, he wanted to calm the extreme emotions surging inside him, and the shock he felt now was beyond words.
“Commander. What did you see that made you react like that?”
Rapi, having asked her question in ignorance, walked toward him.
Bill remembered that only the three of them had seen this so far, and looked at the two especially soft-hearted Nikke.
Their faces were full of questions too.
But they could not bring themselves to come closer, thanks to Anis’s expression.
Thinking it was better this way, Bill gave an awkward order, his first one of this kind.
“Emma. Take Neon and Vesti and get outside the city. Anis, you too.”
“Huh? O-okay?”
“Commander, me too?”
“Shifty’s been quiet, so she’s probably busy with her hands too, but now that we can’t hear anything, this is the time to pull out. And... you’d be uncomfortable seeing this up close too, wouldn’t you?”
Anis still looked uneasy, but she nodded as if to say, Right...
She had seen comrades die beside her countless times.
But most of those deaths had been ordinary ones—headshots, core shots, or fatal wounds.
Death was never truly ordinary, of course, but the reason most of them could be treated as such was the power of the nanomachines called NIMPH.
Even so, this situation was impossible to brush off.
No matter how much she tried to control her emotions, the atmosphere seemed to infect her, and those corpses kept surfacing in her mind.
And yet she felt calm.
That strange sensation kept gnawing at her insides, and she wanted to empty her stomach at any moment, but because he was beside her, she did not show it.
Thinking this was as good a chance as any to be sent away, Anis accepted the order at once.
“Got it. Be careful, Commander.”
“Yeah.”
Anis and Emma nodded, then took Neon and Vesti with them and left.
Vesti kept looking back with tears in her eyes, as if she was angry that her question had been ignored, but there was nothing she could do except trust the others to explain it to her.
Once their shadows had completely vanished from Bill’s sight, his eyes returned to the hill.
“All right... let’s take a look.”
“I’ll check whether there are any more of these nearby. I’ll contact you immediately if anything happens.”
“Do that. You be careful too.”
Eunhwa said there might be another pile of corpses somewhere else, and vanished in an instant just like the others who had left earlier.
And then.
“The clouds... have cleared...”
Right after she left, moonlight came pouring down from the moon, which had been unable to shine through the clouds.
As if an angel had descended, it illuminated the place they wanted to inspect with a fierce brilliance.
Was even the moonlight mourning them?
Feeling his pity deepen, Bill lifted one of the detached arms.
“Commander. Would it be all right if I looked around a bit farther away? I think it would be more efficient if we spread out rather than stay in the same spot. Eunhwa won’t be back right away either.”
“No. If you see me alone, I have no idea what she’ll say. Just search here.”
“Ah...”
Hearing his words, Rapi imagined the tirade Eunhwa would unleash if she saw him alone.
It would only drag the mood down even further.
And she would probably keep nagging for several minutes after that.
There was no doubt she was an annoying woman in many ways.
And then.
“Still, Commander seems to know Eunhwa very well.”
“Well... I did just go through this once earlier...”
His tone sounded faintly jealous, but Bill, who was focused on the corpses before him, did not catch it.
Rapi suppressed the emotion that had slipped out without her noticing and looked at his back as he examined the bodies.
—You’re lying.
That statement just now.
There was something off about saying it was because he had experienced it once before.
The reason was simple.
Even when they first met, he had shown no difficulty dealing with her, despite how unfamiliar she was to him.
If Eunhwa had been an ordinary Nikke, if she had been gentle and not as fierce as Emma, Rapi might have understood and let it pass.
But what had she said from the very beginning?
She had denied the Counters squad itself.
Who would not get angry at someone saying their comrades were useless?
And yet he had not gotten angry at all.
Instead, he had answered with an expression of understanding, and Eunhwa had been the one to panic.
In the conversation that followed, he had even thrown in provocations that, to Rapi, seemed designed to hit all the weak points in Eunhwa’s personality, as if he had calmed her down many times before.
His achievement in instantly making even her fierce temperament and deeply suspicious gaze turn to his side was something Rapi, who had been with him, could not help but rate highly above almost anything else.
—And...
That was not all.
For some reason, the Commander knew about the rift between Eunhwa and herself.
A secret she had never told anyone, or at least not one she had intended to reveal yet.
Of course, since they were entangled now, he could investigate her past.
The Commander had more than enough authority to inspect the records of the Nikke under his command.
At any time, if he requested access, her past would be delivered to him in less than a minute, and all that information would become his.
—There’s no way.
Rapi shook her head.
Accessing it would be easy.
But just because he had the chance did not mean the Commander had actually opened that box.
The end of the day when she first saw his secret.
He had said that after speaking with the deputy commander, he went home and fell asleep right away.
The tiredness on his face as he rode the elevator down to the Ark meant he was not lying.
And even in the words she had read, she had not sensed any intent to deceive her, unlike just now.
And the next day.
Since he had woken up late, he was busy preparing to go out in the morning, and from noon onward he spent time with them.
In the evening, he had a private meeting with two high-ranking officials, and afterward she followed him around, eventually spending the night with him.
Setting aside the fact that she had been on top, he had fallen asleep first, so that too could be overlooked.
Over the past two days, there had not been a single chance for him to look into her past.
If she forced the schedule, there might be about two free hours that morning, but given his usual lazy nature, it was obvious he would not have touched it, let alone cared about it.
—More importantly...
Slowly, Rapi recalled the memory from two days ago, sleeping inside NIMPH.
A normal person would not be able to reconstruct the details, but she was a Nikke.
The memory was drawn so vividly on the canvas of her mind it was as if she had just seen it.
And she could confirm it.
At the time, the situation had been too urgent for her to notice, but if she thought about everything he had done until now, there was definitely a secret of his that fit all the pieces together.
The look in his eyes when they first met.
It was not the gaze one gives a familiar person, but the emotion of meeting a comrade he had not seen in a long time.
Even though, just like in Eunhwa’s case, this was their first time meeting the Commander.
When she thought about that, Rapi’s conclusion came down to one thing.
He already knew them.
Not just Anis and Neon, but even the Nikke in Absolute too, there was no other way to explain it.
Of course, that was an almost impossible theory.
It made no sense chronologically, and no matter what assumptions she projected onto it, it was impossible.
Normally, Rapi would have dismissed such conspiracy-like thoughts, but even her own judgment was insisting that this was the truth.
The problem was the evidence to support it.
There were too many things that could not be explained if it was true.
But there were also too many things that could not be explained if it was false.
Her head hurt.
Not literally, but that was how it felt.
Still, Rapi soon found one piece of evidence that almost served as a rebuttal.
Come to think of it, wasn’t the Commander, who claimed to be human, already operating at a level of capability that was close to impossible?
—Commander... what exactly are you, and who are you?
She wanted to know his identity, but she did not suspect him.
She did not want to.
Still, she could not stop a separate question from rising.
Curiosity draws interest.
That was one of humanity’s greatest strengths, and the inability to control such emotions was also a human trait.
Rapi was organizing her thoughts when—
“Rapi, what are you doing? Just going to stand there and watch?”
Feeling her standing quietly behind him, Bill turned around and asked her.
“Ah, n-no. I was just thinking about something for a moment...”
“What, were you thinking about me?”
“Th-that’s...”
Bill smiled and tossed out a joke, but because it was true, Rapi could not answer properly.
But he seemed to think it was just a flustered reaction between a man and a woman, so he did not give it any special meaning and quickly turned back to inspect the corpses.
“Honestly, I don’t see anything here... You look too. Like you said, Eunhwa won’t be back right away, and she’ll probably say something when she returns anyway.”
“Understood.”
Rapi was relieved that her feelings had not been exposed, and focused on the corpses before her to shake off her stray thoughts.
[I looked around, but I didn’t find anything unusual in the other area. I’m heading back.]
“Yeah, come back safely.”
Bill answered lightly to Eunhwa’s voice over the radio, then pressed the button and cut the connection.
At the sudden sound of his voice, Rapi came up beside him and asked, “A message from Eunhwa?”
“Yeah. It’s ridiculous, really. She says there’s nothing like this anywhere else.”
“I see...”
Hearing that, Rapi once again thought about the meaning of it.
A unique form not seen anywhere else, and its contents.
Eunhwa had called it something already used.
If she said that, there had to be a reason.
—Used... something no longer needed... could it be...
Everyone knew what we called a place where things that had outlived their usefulness were kept.
But because the meaning was the worst possible one, Rapi hesitated before reporting it.
“Commander... maybe...”
“Maybe?”
“It may just be my own thought, but... perhaps this sandpile-like shape... doesn’t actually mean much.”
“Doesn’t mean much?”
“No matter how I look at it, that shape seems more like a display of power, or a way to commemorate the effort that went into it. In any case, to put it bluntly... I think it would be more accurate to call this a trash heap from their perspective.”
“A trash heap... huh.”
Bill slapped his forehead.
He let out a laugh of disbelief.
They had abused those women for some purpose and mutilated their bodies.
If, in the end, they had thrown them away for such a ridiculous reason...
Then there was no choice but to smash that bastard’s head in.
“It’s a little awkward for me to say this, but... I’m not the type to get angry easily. And yet... I can’t unclench my fist.”
“I feel the same. To use them however they pleased for their own benefit, then pile them up like stones... They may have intelligence, but there isn’t even a speck of morality to be found.”
Both Rapi and Bill.
Just like when they first saw the grave of corpses, they could not hide their anger.
But for now, they had to set that aside.
Their mission was to secure energy from the power plant.
Of course, the importance of this place could not be compared to mere energy, but the power plant itself was inside the radius of an area free of Raptures by virtue of its location.
It was right to assume the two were connected.
Since two months’ worth for the Ark was more than enough to use, it was understandable that someone would get greedy.
In fact, the reason this grave had been created might have been there too.
The hill had probably already been reported to the Ark.
Shifty would be diligent enough to make sure of that.
Let the Ark handle the rest.
Having neatly sorted out his thoughts, Bill looked up at the sky.
“Bright...”
Through the tiny hole torn in the sky, the shining moon showed itself off.
The light that had once illuminated only the grave gradually widened until, before they knew it, it bathed the entire area.
It was a warm light, as if telling them that someone had come to find them and that they could finally rest in peace.
“I’m back. Anything unusual?”
“Nothing. Let’s go back to the others. If we’re going to enter the power plant tomorrow, we need to get some rest soon.”
“Right.”
Eunhwa answered indifferently.
But Bill thought that was just her way of hiding her emotions.
Her anger would not be calmed by a single walk.
Bill gave the hill one last glance, then followed Eunhwa, who was at the front, and walked toward where the others were.
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