Chapter Twenty-Nine What Sōta Believed #2
Mori looked towards him. Several Accord officers did the same. Renji did not turn.
"It cannot survive unchanged," he said. "But ending it is not the same as preparing for what follows."
Sōta's eyes narrowed.
"What preparation would ever satisfy them?" He indicated the Accord.
"None," Haruki said.
Sōta looked towards him. Haruki shifted his weight. Pain moved beneath his ribs. Ken tightened his grip without comment.
"The Accord will never decide the world is ready," Haruki continued. "Readiness threatens the reason it exists."
Mori's expression closed. Sōta studied Haruki.
"Then you agree with me."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because you decided their refusal gave you the right to choose for everyone else."
Sōta looked towards the crowd.
"They chose to come."
"They chose to witness. You have not told them what they are witnessing."
"I was going to."
"When?"
"Tonight."
"Here?"
"Yes."
"In the middle of a battlefield."
"I did not create the battle."
Haruki looked towards Isao.
"No. You created the movement that entered it believing violence would prove commitment."
Sōta's jaw tightened.
"Then stop me."
The words were quiet. Not challenge. Invitation. Haruki stared at him.
Sōta stepped towards the centre of the floor. The cameras above followed automatically. So did the phones beyond the glass.
"Stop me," he repeated. "Arrest me. Kill me if that is what the Accord requires. But do it where they can see."
Mori moved. Haruki raised one hand. The movement pulled at the wound beneath his collarbone. He ignored it. Sōta saw. His gaze dropped to the blood spreading beneath Haruki's coat.
"You should not be standing."
"Neither should you."
A faint, tired smile appeared. Perhaps the first expression Haruki had seen from Sōta that was not selected for effect.
"You still think I am dangerous."
"Yes."
"You still admire me."
Haruki did not answer. Sōta nodded.
"That is why you are dangerous too."
The words were not cruel. They contained familiarity. The orphanage neither remembered correctly. The same lessons learned in different directions. Usefulness as survival. Control as safety. Leadership as a refusal to let anyone else define the frightened child beneath it.
A sound came from the western side of the Casino.
Metal. Small. Haruki turned. Isao had twisted against his restraints.
One hand remained ruined. The other had reached beneath the back of his belt.
An Ishida guard moved towards him. Too late.
Isao pulled a narrow device free. Not a firearm. A remote.
Sōta saw it. So did Renji. Every body in the room reacted differently. Mori reached for his weapon. Renji lifted one hand. Haruki searched the room for what the device controlled.
Isao smiled.
"You think this ends with apologies?"
His thumb pressed down. Nothing happened. Renji had stopped the blood to his hand. The remote slipped from numb fingers. Isao laughed harder.
"You still don't understand."
Sōta's face changed. He looked towards the Casino doors. Then towards the crowd.
"Outside," he said.
Haruki heard it. A faint electronic tone beyond the glass. Not inside the Casino. Outside. Among the witnesses.
"Move them!" Haruki shouted.
Mori raised his radio. The glass doors exploded inward. Not from a bomb. From panic. People surged back as someone screamed.
A man near the front of the crowd lifted his coat.
Wires crossed his chest. Mrs Okada stood beside him.
She looked down. Did not understand. The man's hand closed around a dead-man switch.
Not Unveiled. Haruki knew from the stillness in his face.
No grief. No fear. Shibata contractor. Placed among the crowd before Sōta arrived.
A final contingency. If the truth could not be contained, it would be discredited through massacre.
The crowd would become the weapon. Human deaths blamed on vampire conflict.
The public revelation beginning in blood.
Renji moved. Too far. Glass and bodies between him and the device. Sōta was closer. He ran. Not away. Through the broken doors. Haruki shouted his name. Sōta did not look back.
He reached the contractor as the man's fingers loosened around the switch. Sōta caught his wrist with both hands. The crowd scattered. Mrs Okada remained frozen. Sōta pushed her away.
"Run."
She fell backwards. Someone pulled her clear.
The contractor struck Sōta across the face. Sōta held on. No combat skill. No hidden strength. Only human hands gripping another human wrist because releasing it would kill everyone around him.
Renji reached the doors. His blood magic caught the contractor's arm. Muscles locked. The switch remained compressed.
"Do not kill him," Sōta said.
Renji stopped.
"He releases it if he dies," Sōta continued.
Rain ran across both men. The contractor smiled.
"You cannot hold circulation forever."
Renji could. Perhaps. Not while weakened. Not while preserving every frightened person pressing against the street. Not while silver remained in his own wound. Haruki saw the calculation move through him. Sōta saw it too.
"What is the blast radius?" Haruki called.
The contractor laughed.
"Enough."
Sōta looked down at the wires. Then towards the Casino.
"Can it be removed?"
Mori came through the doors with an Accord specialist behind him. The specialist looked once.
"No."
"Disarmed?"
"Not here."
"How long?"
"The switch is live. We cannot know the secondary trigger."
The contractor's pulse moved visibly in his neck. Renji held his arm motionless.
Haruki looked towards the road. Cars abandoned. Crowd moving in every direction. Not far enough. The blast would reach the entrance. Perhaps the gaming floor. Riku. The wounded. Everyone unable to move quickly.
"Take him underground," Sōta said.
Mori looked towards him.
"What?"
"The service ramp beneath the eastern road."
Haruki understood. The old drainage tunnel. Reinforced concrete. Designed to channel floodwater towards the river. Deep enough to contain part of the blast. Too far for Renji to maintain control if the contractor struggled.
Sōta tightened his grip on the man's wrist.
"I'll take him."
"No," Haruki said.
Sōta looked at him. There was no triumph in his face. No certainty that death would prove him right. Only fear. And decision.
"You cannot move fast enough," Sōta said.
Haruki hated him for making the observation.
Renji stepped forward.
"I will go."
Sōta shook his head.
"You are the only one holding his hand closed."
"I can move with him."
"And if your concentration breaks?"
"It will not."
Sōta looked at the blood staining Renji's side. Then at Haruki's bandages.
"You both still believe survival is something you owe only to other people."
The words landed between them. Sōta turned towards the contractor.
"Walk."
The man resisted. Renji closed the vessels supplying his legs just enough to control movement without collapsing him. Sōta dragged him towards the eastern service ramp. Mori signalled the specialist to follow. Sōta stopped.
"No."
"He may be able to disarm it."
"Then he stays at the tunnel entrance."
"You will need help."
"No."
Haruki moved forward. Pain folded the world. Ken caught him before he fell.
"Sōta."
Sōta turned one final time. Rain softened his face.
Haruki saw the man from the garden. Quiet.
Patient. Asking questions more dangerous than threats.
The man whose reports Haruki funded. Whose discipline he admired.
Whose movement he had been forced to oppose.
A child from the same orphanage walking towards a death neither of them remembered learning to expect.
"What did you believe?" Haruki asked.
The question came without planning. Sōta looked towards the crowd. People clutching photographs while running for safety.
"I believed humanity deserved the truth."
"You still do."
"Yes."
"Even now?"
"Especially now."
Haruki's chest tightened. Sōta continued.
"I was wrong about what truth would make us." The admission trembled once in his voice. "I was not wrong that it belonged to them."
He looked at Haruki.
"Do not let them bury this too."
Then he walked into the rain.
The service tunnel ran beneath the eastern road.
Haruki watched through the Casino security feed.
One camera survived near the entrance. The image flickered with water.
Sōta and the contractor moved deeper into the concrete passage.
Renji remained at the upper ramp, one hand lifted, holding the contractor's muscles under control from the edge of his range.
Mori's specialist crouched beside the drainage gate.
"Forty metres," he said into the radio. "Minimum."
Sōta heard. He kept walking.
The contractor began speaking. The camera carried no sound from that distance. Haruki watched his mouth move. Perhaps threats. Perhaps ideology. Perhaps the final explanation of a man who believed massacre would preserve a system already dying.
Sōta answered once. Then stopped.
The contractor tried to pull away. Renji's hand shook. Blood ran from his nose.
"Renji," Haruki said through the radio.
"I can hold him."
"Not much longer."
"I can."
Sōta looked back towards the camera. As though he heard them despite the distance. He moved one hand from the contractor's wrist to the dead-man switch. Placed his own fingers over it. Took the pressure. The contractor's hand came free. Sōta now held the trigger alone.
Renji immediately stopped the man's heart. The contractor collapsed. Sōta remained standing over him. His hand closed around the switch.
Mori's specialist swore.
"He transferred control."
"Can he release it safely?" Haruki asked.
"No."
Sōta looked down at the device. Then towards the tunnel wall. He began walking deeper.
"Stop him," Mori said.
Renji did not move.
"Renji."
"He knows."
Sōta reached the final bend before the river channel. The camera could see only part of him. One shoulder. The side of his face. He lifted his free hand. Not a wave. Perhaps simply balance against the wall.
Then the feed vanished.