Loups-Garous (53 page)

“No, Ayumi. I want to go too.”

“You can't.”

“I will.”

“Why?!” Ayumi said in probably her first emotional outburst ever.

“Because I'm your friend.”

“No you're not.”

“What?”

“I hate human interaction,” Ayumi said. She turned her back to Hazuki.

“You lie. Then why are you going into that building? Why don't you just ignore this?”

“They started it. I'm going in to stop this so I never have to deal with them again.”

“Then why did you bring me here?” Hazuki said.

It took her till now…now, to ask that question.

To wonder.

“Because it's dangerous.” Ayumi returned to speaking in her usual voice. “This place…”

“What about this place?” Hazuki looked around herself. What was it about this place?

“This is where
I stopped being human
.”

“Stopped being human?”

“Thank you, Hazuki,” Ayumi said, and she fled down the slope.

Her figure soon disappeared, swallowed by the living brush.

Hazuki felt slightly defeated.

“No.”

Hazuki started after Ayumi.

As soon as she set out she felt dizzy. The strength of her legs had been sapped, and her arms wouldn't do as she wanted. She was sure she'd just lost self-awareness and that her body was exhausted. What kind of body wouldn't listen to the commands of its master? Whose body was this?

This is my body.

This body is mine.

Hazuki slid down the slope covered in dead leaves and then tumbled. She hit a tree root. She inhaled the tremendous scent of mud and earth. She choked on the odor and clapped a hand over her nose. The smell intensified.

“Ayumi!”

Hazuki was momentarily stuck in the brush. She cut through it, pulling out grass from the roots, caked with dirt. She jettisoned it.

Calm down. Breathe. Stand up. My body won't do what I tell it to. My feelings are ignoring my body. It's my feelings that won't listen to me.

I can do what I can do. I can't do what I can't.

It would be wrong to want to do something I can't.

I can stand up.

It's still there.

The building is still there.

It was obvious, but when she faced it she didn't know what was what.

To get to that building, she had to continue down the slope. By descending, Hazuki would find herself at a lower altitude.

The distance between herself and the building was shrinking, so the building
should
appear larger.

But then the blanket of tree cover should appear larger as she approached as well.

The trees in the distance were probably the same size as the ones growing right in front of her. Hazuki fired her imagination. The building probably stood as high as Hazuki was now. If only the building were on the same plane as her. The space between her and the building…

In other words, the forest…the green area surrounding the center…The building was just past it. It was much bigger than the community center.

I can see it
.

As long as she could see her destination she was fine. It couldn't be very far.

It was about the distance between Hazuki's own home and the community center. If she calculated the height correctly she could divide the distance in measure. If she calculated the time it would take the distance would grow. That was okay so long as she was going in the right direction.

It shouldn't take more than an hour.

Still. She could still make it. Hazuki could make it.

Just don't rush
.

The human body lives by moving. Hazuki had learned that.

The ability to see outer space, to see foreign countries without being there, to communicate with people whose language you did not know, these were all illusion. What sat in front of the monitor was an animal, and animals only knew the world in the context of its own size. The reach of your arms. That was the extent of your movement.

Hazuki climbed another slope, carrying the bag of water Ayumi left behind, and confirmed her orientation. She couldn't situate herself. She had only her compass. She looked up. The sun was bright.

This was how she would find herself.

She descended the hill, one step at a time.

Just descend.

Lift the leg. Lower the leg. She pressed her foot into the earth.

The self she left at the top of the hill somewhere eventually caught up with her body.

Now she couldn't see much more than half the building. This meant Hazuki had descended to a lower altitude.

She looked up. She could tell the sun had moved.

She eventually reached something like a road.

The kind of road people used to travel on, she thought.

She got on this road and started moving.

Did Ayumi take this road?

How far ahead was Ayumi?

Was Ayumi still alive?

There were flowers abloom.

It was like in the pictures of nature preserves she'd seen.

The road curved wide. One side of it was walled by a cliff held back by a flimsy metal fence, painted white. It was rusted brown in patches. She could reach its edge, which made it a short fence: of no real use.

The asphalt under the fence had deteriorated; grass grew through the cracks.
Roads made of asphalt become unsightly with time
, Hazuki thought.

There was a fork in the road ahead. One side kept curving and the other kept along the side of the hill.

Which way?

Hazuki looked at the sun again. The hill was shaded. The shadows had lengthened significantly. Would she make it to the building before it set? The rays were certainly descending. Hazuki thought about how her shadow moved and stretched, comparing it to the sky.

This way.

She had walked straight toward her objective but got turned around by the curving road.

This curve would probably lead her to the city.

Hazuki chose the road that branched off.

Not ten meters into her decision did she stop. There was a metal beam.

A do not enter sign. An indication not to go forward. A sign insisting that there was no farther to go.

But the road kept going.

This is the right road.

Hazuki placed both hands on the bar and climbed over, trying to hop over as quietly as she could.

She tried to follow Ayumi's scent.

Hazuki had learned that an animal's sense of smell was very advanced. She was not smell deficient, but she wasn't able to distinguish all smells. For starters she had no reason to have to distinguish between smells. All noxious smells were erased. The food her helper prepared was simply to be eaten, and all scent of it was simply the scent of food. She'd never made distinctions.

Anyway the smell of synthetic food was added after the fact. Without the smell, the food would all taste the same. That was all Hazuki ate.

The blocked road did not end, nor was it demolished. In fact it turned into a new road, one still well maintained. It was made of newer compound asphalt, no different from the regulation transit roads in Section A. There were street lamps and they were all lit. The greenery on either side of the road had been tended, looked almost man-made.

That the road was blocked meant it was private.

This must have been a private road used only by SVC.

Hazuki rounded a curve in the road and raised her face, then gulped.

A giant white building thrust up from the green landscape.

She suddenly lost her sense of direction.

She could contextualize where she was now to where she had started, but barely. Her position had turned with the road and was now completely confused. Losing all sight of her objective for a moment was certainly one cause. She tried to remember what the building looked like from atop the hill. How was Hazuki positioned in relation to this building now? Any guess on the matter was just that. She couldn't remember the image.

Refuse processing center.

That was where Ayumi had said Rey Mao was. This road probably went all the way to the building.

But though this road may have been connected to the building, she shouldn't be walking dead center down it.

There were two hundred members of the area patrol waiting.

Merely thinking the words scared Hazuki. Her legs trembled.

Up ahead. Up ahead were two hundred enemies.

In the green.

She'd probably be safer walking in the greenery. She'd be better hidden there than on the road. If she stayed on the road and ran into a patrol officer it would all be over. With her eyes still on the building, Hazuki took several steps back and moved to the side of the road, entering the brush.

A sensor.

Hazuki hurriedly withdrew her leg.

It was too late.

Definitely.

On either side of the road were laser sensors with cameras.

No.

What am I doing?

And that was when Hazuki stopped thinking.

In her blank mind, fear crept in.

The self and the body that had finally gotten in sync suddenly broken, her self taking flight with tremendous speed.

Hazuki's body screamed and took off at full speed toward the white building and the two hundred-strong area patrol force surrounding it. Reason and judgment had fled.

Hazuki, disjointed, was sending her self and her body straight to their deaths.

And for some reason this calmed her.

CHAPTER
024

SHE LOOKED AT
the edge of the desk.

There was nothing for her to look at.

Neither amazed nor frightened, Shizue's gut was full of a terror about to drive her insane.

A black metal body. A metal tube sticking out from it. Facing it was Shizue, with Kunugi beside her.

She smelled high-quality leather. It was made to look exactly like the real thing, so the smell was, no doubt, just like the real thing as well. It was perhaps even real animal hide. She wanted to vomit.

She had to flee this sense of evil.

A soft voice murmured near her.

“How was your nap?”

It was an articulate voice, very serious.

“We let you stay in our finest guest suite. Only important people who've come from very far have stayed in that room.”

“It'd be a lot nicer if we weren't bound and watched,” Kunugi said.

Shizue looked at her hands.

They were still bruised.

“A little room service and permission to leave would be nice too.”

“You're staying here free of charge, so consider the loss of these luxuries…a compromise.”

Sitting in an expensive-looking chair behind the large lacquered desk was a man of weak constitution.

It was Ishida.

Standing to his side was a man wearing a surgical mask and white clothing. Next to the desk was Takasugi, who had changed into something more formal. Standing next to him was a man too thin for his great height. He wore an area patrol uniform and pointed what appeared to be a gun at Shizue.

Standing behind Shizue and Kunugi was a man with a tattooed head, looking ready to do harm.

The room felt antiseptic.

The ceiling, the walls, and the floor were all polished. There wasn't one speck of dust.

“Well, I was polite enough to have this wait until I personally arrived.”

“Real polite. I'm sitting in this nice chair and everything. No complaints here, Lieutenant.”

“How's it feel? Those are chairs we reserve for VIP residents, you know.”

“It doesn't suit my ass,” Kunugi said. “Probably because my ass is caked in mud. Oh, shoot. See how I'm ruining the chair?”

“Yes, I do,” Ishida answered.

Such an awful voice.

“Not even children are this filthy anymore.”

“You're right. But you know how old I am. I'm close to getting my pension and everything.”

“That's all right. We're allowed to exchange the chair in the event it gets soiled. A lot of people come through here. Children, the elderly. We can't be worried about things getting dirty all the time.”

“Where the fuck are we?!” Kunugi yelled.

“You don't know? I thought you grew up in this region,” Ishida said.

“Of course I don't know. I haven't been here in fifteen years. I don't remember anything like this from back then.”

“That's really no good. This is the central database center for SVC headquarters.”

“SVC? Here? When I lived here there was nothing this pretentious. It was just bronze statues and factories. It was a dead-end town.”

“Well now. The way you talk about this city I wouldn't figure you were from here,” Ishida said, shaking his head. “It was here that my great-grandfather, Yutaro Suzuki, built the first synthetic food processing factory for SVC, which was then known as Suzuki Food Science Laboratories. This building commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the new corporate identity, and also honors my great-grandfather. It's a hybrid intelligent building, equipped with the same technologies as the community center.”

“Did you say the community center?”

“Yes. The first floor is designed to house a community center agency. Floors fifteen through nineteen are dedicated to the latest advanced medical research.”

“I see. It's a high-class hospital for upper-income individuals.”

“You're wrong. Anyone who lives in this area is allowed to use this facility for free.”

“Free, eh?” Kunugi said.

“Only those from outside the area have to pay a fee, but we seem to be prospering. The rest of the building is filled with the archives of the achievements of Yutaro Suzuki. There is a museum, a relaxation area, an amusement space, sports facilities of all kinds—even lodging. And of course, a restaurant. We have the best quality foods crafted by the people of SVC themselves. In this age of little human interaction, it's priceless. We're proud to be able to provide these facilities for even those coming from other areas. Though you won't see anyone here today because we're closed to the public,” Ishida said.