The Trancer

  Once again, the wrist communicator gave off a shrill alert. Minoru stopped pushing for a moment and looked with dread at the blinking number on the LED screen: 3.2 sieverts per hour. Or in the units of measurement they’d used back at SFD Headquarters, 3.2 million microsieverts.

  …It reached that high a level just from opening the door five centimeters?

  Minoru planted his right foot in the opening and, after double-checking that his protective shell was activated, pushed the door open with all his might.

  The headlamp’s white light shone faintly into the gloomy darkness. He had been warned that the inside of the containment vessel would have very high heat and humidity, but there was even more steam than he’d expected. The goggles he was wearing were supposed to be fog-proof, but he still saw some white blooming at the edges of his vision.

  “…So this is the inside of a nuclear reactor containment vessel…” In an effort to keep himself calm, Minoru commented out loud, but there was still a bit of an audible tremor in his voice. But he could still move his legs, and there was no numbness in his hands. So far, he didn’t feel any headache or stomach pains to indicate that anything was wrong with his body, either. Compared to the fight against Biter on the rooftop of the Saitama Super Arena, he was still pretty calm…at least he hoped so.

  Moving on, he carefully scanned around the room with his headlamp. He could more or less make out the grating on the floor but wasn’t able to see the wall of the nuclear reactor pressure vessel that should be in the center of the room. A few bolts that had probably come loose in the aftershocks of phreatic explosions were rolling around on the floor, but there didn’t seem to be any serious damage.

  Looking down between the gaps in the grating beneath his feet, he could see the light from his headlamp reflected in the water far below. Underneath that water, the atomic fuel that had melted through the containment vessel and the pressure vessel was most likely still radiating huge amounts of heat. He had been told that the most difficult part of the nuclear decommissioning process would be retrieving that debris, and indeed, Minoru had no idea how they would go about removing something that no human could get anywhere near.

  According to Professor Riri Isa, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare had indeed expressed the opinion that, if he could retrieve the robot, Minoru might also be able to investigate the debris in the contaminated water below. However, apparently Chief Himi had firmly refused, even going so far as to threaten to remove the memories of this operation from everybody involved if the request was not retracted. Even then, he had bowed his head deeply to Minoru, apologizing for “asking him to do a job like this.”

  True enough, this mission had nothing to do with eliminating Ruby Eyes, but Minoru’s bargain with Chief Himi was only that he would work as a member of the SFD in exchange for the use of the chief’s memory-altering abilities once the organization was dissolved. If this was part of his duties as an SFD member, Minoru would simply have to do it.

  “…Now then, where are you, Mr. Robot…?” Since he wasn’t being recorded in order to protect the secret of his Third Eye, Minoru was free to mumble to himself as he slowly circled clockwise around the diaphragm floor, installed to protect the structure of the reactor from seismic activity.

  The diameter of the room was about twenty-four meters, meaning the room’s outer circumference was a little over seventy-six meters. Minoru had seventeen minutes left to locate and retrieve the robot.

  Fortunately, since the floor was relatively free of debris, it should be fairly easy to locate the large form of the robot. If he couldn’t find it, there was a high likelihood that it had fallen through some hole into the water below, so there would be no choice but to give up.

  Please be here…

  Minoru pleaded silently as he walked, while the number on his wrist communicator continued to rocket upward, soon surpassing ten sieverts per hour. If for some reason Minoru were to drop his protective shell for even a moment, the tungsten suit and even the restorative powers of his Third Eye would almost certainly not be enough to keep him from dying of radiation exposure.

  As Minoru continued forward, he imagined that he could see the high-energy radiation flying all around him as small, countless sparks.

  Navigating around the pressure vessel, Minoru arrived at the opposite side of the room from the double doors he’d entered through. Then, at last, the white light of his headlamp illuminated a promising shape not far away.

  It was a cylindrical object that lay curled on the grating of the floor, about a meter in length. Attached was a long series of metal rings, which he assumed expanded and contracted to move the robot like a snake. This part looked to be about ten centimeters thick and seventy-six centimeters long. On its head was a sensor comprised of several lenses, but it didn’t look to be functioning at the moment.

  The reason the robot had stopped moving was obvious at a glance. A large gash in the center of its body had damaged three or so of the rings, exposing the mechanisms beneath. The mysterious cause of this damage was nowhere to be seen nearby, but Minoru’s job was only to retrieve the robot, not to determine what had happened to it in the first place. Reaching out with both hands, he gathered the little metal snake into his arms.

  Suddenly, the indicator on the robot’s head blinked green, and at the same instant, a small beep from Minoru’s headset indicated a request for a new connection.

  “Huh…?”

  Without thinking, he automatically looked around the room, but of course, nobody was there.

  Then the request must have come from the robot in his arms. Dubiously, he tapped the button on his wrist communicator to accept the request. The standard Bluetooth icon flashed, confirming that the connection was established, and in the next moment…

  “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

  Muddled with noise though it might have been, there was unquestionably Japanese speech flowing through Minoru’s earpiece. He blinked, startled, and looked around once again, but there was still nobody else in the room. Looking down at the metal snake in his arms, he spoke up timidly. “Was that you who said something just now?”

  “I AM PROBE ROBOT MARK-22. MY NAME IS MUSER. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

  On closer inspection, the indicator on the robot’s head was blinking erratically in time with the voice in the earpiece. It really is this little snake that’s talking to me.

  Thinking back, Minoru had been told that the robot he was here to retrieve was completely autonomous, able to function without any human control needed. But he hadn’t expected it to have such an advanced AI system that he would have to tell it his name.

  Minoru wondered for a moment if it was all right to ignore the robot’s query and simply carry out his mission. But after three seconds of silence had elapsed, the metal snake—Muser—spoke up again.

  “YOU ARE NOT RECOGNIZED AS AN AUTHORIZED USER. FOR SECURITY PURPOSES, CONTROL CIRCUITS WILL NOW SELF-DESTRUCT.”

  With some difficulty, Minoru tried to translate into words the noisy synthetic voice in his mind. “Not recognized as an authorized user”…“security purposes”…“self-destruct”?!

  “COMMENCING COUNTDOWN. TEN… NINE… EIGHT… SEVEN…”

  “Whoa, w-wait a minute!”

  In a panic, Minoru leaned down to address the robot, pressing his goggles against its biggest lens. “I-I’m from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare Industrial Safety and Health Department, Specialized Forces Division…” After a second’s hesitation, he used his real name instead of his code name. “Minoru Utsugi. I came here to retrieve…to rescue you.”

  “…TO RESCUE ME?”

  Interrupting the self-destruct countdown, Muser’s indicator blinked rapidly and adjusted the focus on its lens. Despite being a robot, the uncertainty was palpable in its voice as it spoke. “THE RADIOACTIVITY LEVEL IN THIS ROOM SURPASSES THE MEDIAN LETHAL DOSAGE FOR A HUMAN. WHY HAVE YOU COME TO RESCUE ME?”

  “The median lethal dosage…” That most likely meant th
e level of radiation that would kill at least half the humans exposed to it. If one thought about it logically, it did seem like there would be no reason for a human to risk death just to rescue a probe robot. Unless, of course, that human was capable of completely protecting himself from radiation. However, Minoru doubted that the robot’s AI would understand if he tried to explain about his protective shell.

  “Umm, well, that’s…” He trailed off for a moment, trying to come up with a satisfactory answer. “Because…you are very important. We couldn’t afford to lose you here, so I came to rescue you.”

  The robot’s indicator light flickered for a few moments before it responded in its artificial voice. “…YOU HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED AS AN AUTHORIZED USER.”

  Breathing a sigh of relief under his mask, Minoru checked the time. Twelve minutes had already passed since he first entered the containment vessel building; another eight, and Yumiko would come charging in to rescue him.

  “All right, we’re going outside.”

  Cradling Muser in his arms as carefully as if it were a wounded animal, Minoru returned to the set of double doors. In the opposite order from before, and with a little more difficulty, as he was using only one hand, he made his way back out. Turning the handle again and locking the outside door, he took a deep breath.

  With the headset automatically having reconnected to the repeater, Minoru spoke into it loudly. “This is Isolator. I have successfully recovered the robot!”

  Yumiko responded without a moment’s delay, as if she’d been awaiting the news with bated breath. “Roger that. The repeaters can be left where they are. Please make a speedy exit from the building.”

  “All right, I’m on my—” Minoru started to respond but was quickly interrupted.

  “WHO IS SPEAKING ON THIS CHANNEL? STATE YOUR NAME,” the robot in Minoru’s arms cut in abruptly. There were a few seconds of silence, and then Yumiko responded in something of a shriek:

  “ME?! Who are you?! Utsu… I mean, Isolator, is there a girl in there?!”

  “A…a girl?!”

  Minoru sputtered, wondering why she had leaped straight to that conclusion, but he supposed that if anything the robot’s synthetic voice was somewhat high-pitched.

  Muser responded to her question in a cautioning tone.

  “YOU ARE NOT RECOGNIZED AS AN AUTHORIZED USER. FOR SECURITY PURPOSES, CONTROL CIRCUITS WILL NOW—”

  “Wh-whaa—?! Both of you, please just wait a minute, I’ll explain as soon as we get outside!”

  Minoru quickened his pace through the hallway. This time, it was Kakinari’s bemused voice that cut into the conversation.

  “What in the heck is going on in there, kid?”

  “I…I don’t know, either!!” Minoru wailed. Straight ahead of him, he saw the light of winter shining white through the open air-lock doors.

  Thus, the probe robot recovery mission, Minoru’s first job for the SFD outside of fighting Ruby Eyes, ended more or less successfully.

  The damaged robot Muser was returned to Eastern Electric Power Company, and its recordings from inside the nuclear reactor containment vessel before its signal was lost were uploaded to the Internet. However, there were no images of whatever caused the recording to be interrupted.

  What was the cause of the damage “she” had sustained?

  And what effect had her first contact with Minoru had on her AI?

  It would be a little while longer until Minoru would find out.

  Interlude I – End

  Sect. 003 THE TRANCER

  1

  Rain is wonderful.

  When you stop to think about it, rain is actually pretty miraculous. Water that previously existed only as humidity in the air turns into liquid when the atmospheric pressure drops below a certain point, gathering together into droplets, and is finally pulled down to earth by gravity. Depending on the atmospheric temperature, it can even cool on the way down, freezing into beads of ice before hitting the ground.

  No other substance found in the course of everyday human life alters its phases so drastically. Water is nearly imperceptible in vapor form, drenches the world in liquid form, and in solid form, bares its fangs at humanity.

  And so, humans everywhere should devote more of their thoughts to rainy days.

  About the mystique of water. About the deep question of why, at that specific temperature of one hundred degrees Celsius, it enters such a chaotic state.

  And yet, those people…

  Ryuu Mikawa shook his head slightly as he looked at the group of four high school–aged boys, who were making a racket three tables away from him.

  Since it was winter vacation now, there wasn’t much to be done about the fact that high school students were flooding into family restaurants in the middle of the afternoon, but he wouldn’t allow them to ruin this precious, solemn, quiet, rainy New Year’s Eve.

  Crowded into their booth, the young men were screeching like monkeys as they took huge gulps from different glasses of foul-looking liquid. It seemed that they were making a game of mixing different drinks from the soda machine and tasting the results. It was bad enough to take perfectly colorless water and add gobs of sugary, artificially colored syrup, but to mix those already disgusting beverages together and not even finish drinking them afterward was simply unforgivable.

  Swallowing a sigh, Mikawa closed the paperback he’d been reading with a snap.

  Should he call the waiter and complain so that they would be given a warning, or should he use his powers to teach them a lesson himself? Mikawa thought for only a moment before choosing the latter. As a member of the organization known as the Syndicate, he had to be careful about unnecessary bloodshed, but he had gotten permission to use his powers when he went into town today. And more importantly: It was a rainy day.

  He lowered his head so he wouldn’t be seen by the young men about nine meters away and glared at them, focusing not on any of their faces but on the glass that one of them was holding. The other three were pounding on the table and chanting, “CHUG! CHUG!” as he held up the murky brown liquid with a grin, then brought it to his lips.

  The boy tilted the glass; the liquid that could hardly be called a drink anymore poured over the brim and into his mouth. At that moment, Mikawa pursed his lips and blew a tiny puff of air in that direction.

  Kshh. Though he should have been too far away for the sound to reach him, Mikawa was sure he heard a small, sharp cracking sound from the young man’s mouth.

  The high school boy’s Adam’s apple swelled up suddenly, and his eyes widened, his pupils rolling back. The glass slipped from his hand and smashed into pieces on the table.

  “Hey, man, what are you doing?!” one of his friends yelled, the other two bursting into laughter. But all three of them quickly fell silent.

  The boy who was now standing moved to clutch his throat and suddenly coughed up a frightening amount of blood. Then he keeled forward onto the table, knocking over a myriad of glasses as he let out a strange, strangled scream. Blood spilled over the table and into the drinks that remained, adding a tinge of red to the mixtures.

  Still listening to his victim’s screams, Mikawa stood up quietly. He tucked his paperback into his coat pocket, picked up his umbrella and receipt, and began to walk away. Behind him, the restaurant was in an uproar. The screams had reached the ears of the other customers, and a waiter was rushing over with blood draining from his face, but none of them seemed to know what to do.

  It was certainly a showy amount of blood, but the young man wouldn’t die. The instant the liquid had entered his mouth, Mikawa had simply frozen it into sharp spikes, which cut up the mucous membrane on the inside of the victim’s mouth and throat as he swallowed. At most, he would be unable to eat for a while and could possibly lose his voice.

  Of course, there was nobody at the cash register, so Mikawa put his silver tray, receipt, and a thousand-yen bill on the counter and left the restaurant.

  Opening up the umbrella he was carrying
today—one of his favorites from his collection—Mikawa spun it in his hands as he walked down the wet sidewalk. The rain made a pleasant noise as it pattered against the water-resistant material, drowning out the clamor from the restaurant behind him.

  The rain was so wonderful.

  A blessing from the skies soaking, enveloping, covering everything.

  Unfortunately, one of the few people who might have fully understood this sentiment had been hunted down by them a few days ago. If only he had accepted the Syndicate’s invitation, things might not have ended with his powers and memories being snatched away, then forced to live in disgrace as an ordinary human once more.

  Today would be his memorial. Though he might still exist as a living creature, the person who had shared the same will, Igniter, was dead.

  Once again, Mikawa lamented the stupidity of humans. Their powers, based on oxygen and water respectively, were not the same by any means, but they carried the same will: to wash this polluted world clean.

  And so, diminishing the numbers of the car-and motorcycle-driving humans whom Igniter had so detested was the least Mikawa could do in his fallen comrade’s memory.

  Lifting his umbrella, he looked up at the dull gray sky. The low-hanging winter storm clouds were beautiful, still dark and heavy with the promise of more rain.

  “Good work today, Utsugi.”

  Minoru gave a slight bow to Yumiko, who had accompanied him down to the first floor of the SFD building to see him off. “Thanks, Yumiko. You, too.”

  “Make sure you go straight home today without any loitering around, got it?”

  Minoru couldn’t resist a wry smile at Yumiko’s usual bossiness.

  “I don’t have the energy for loitering right now anyway, considering that we just got back from a nuclear power plant.”

  “True enough… All I did was stand outside and wait, and I’m still absurdly tired.”