“Yes, ma’am!” Togami replied.

  “As for you on the line,” she added, “try and hold out the best you can until we get there!”

  “O-Okay!” came the voice.

  “Everyone ready? All right then—Togami, go!”

  Akira and the rest concentrated their fire to clear the way for Togami as he rushed into the enemy lines. Though the gunfire from the seemingly endless swarm grew even more intense, it was no match for the rescue squad’s teamwork.

  ◆

  Togami raced forward in desperation, ignoring the enemy gunfire whizzing past his ears and suppressing his fear through sheer willpower.

  The wasteland swallowed up relic hunters who braved great risks for small returns. Even if you weren’t a hunter, one wrong choice in the wasteland—on the battlefield, at the side of the road, or in a back alley somewhere—and you’d be dead a moment later. Having grown up in the slums, Togami knew that well.

  But here, the potential reward had been too enticing for him to resist. The situation was so dire that even his team leader had hesitated to go to the trapped hunter’s rescue. If Togami could make it to the other side of the enemy swarm and save the person on his own, he’d certainly be able to take pride in himself again. Before his dazzled eyes, he saw his goal within reach—and to obtain it, he was willing to risk everything.

  Thanks to his team’s support and his own determination, Togami managed to break through the horde and reach the entrance of the other room. Now all he had to do was smash the door and rescue the hunter. He couldn’t help but grin in anticipation.

  But in his haste, Togami made two mistakes. First, he neglected to check the situation in the room before barging in. Second, he assumed that the hunter in distress had already brought the enemies in the other corridor under control. When he kicked the door down and charged in, Togami saw a woman collapsed on the ground—and a multilegged tank’s gun already pointed in his direction.

  As Togami stared into the sentry’s muzzle, that split second seemed to stretch out, slowing down everything around him. But it was too late to evade, and he only felt more acutely that he was about to die.

  A gunshot rang out, and Togami felt certain he had lost his gamble.

  Then a bullet smashed into the sentry, annihilating it.

  Dazed, Togami gave a grunt of surprise, even as a hail of gunfire burst from behind him.

  “Grab her and get out of there now!” came Akira’s voice. He fired several more CWH rounds into a handful of other multilegged tanks farther back in the room, destroying them instantly.

  Realizing the path before him was now clear, Togami quickly recovered from his shock. He stayed low as he darted across the room, grabbed the woman, and half-dragged her to the exit. The moment the two were out of the room, Akira switched to his A4WM and fired a salvo of grenades behind him as he raced after Togami. Trapped in the room, the pursuing machines had nowhere to run as the shells exploded all at once, blowing them to smithereens. Shattered machine parts and roaring flames erupted from the doorway behind Akira.

  Togami heard the explosions behind him and ran faster, the woman still in his arms. His face was wracked with humiliation.

  “Dammit!” he said through gritted teeth. He was still alive, and he’d successfully rescued the woman. But he’d lost all the same—he hadn’t done anything on his own. If Akira hadn’t stepped in at the last minute, Togami would have been dead. That was nothing to be proud of. So Togami kept running, all the while regretting that he’d failed to even regain the former level of pride he’d had in himself.

  With the hunter rescued, Akira and the others had no reason to stick around any longer. The team regrouped and retreated, calmly and composed, under Elena’s command.

  ◆

  Once they’d retreated to a much safer place within the ruins, the group breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  The woman they’d rescued bowed. “Thank you so much for rescuing me!” she said to her savior, Togami. “Honestly, I would’ve been a goner if you hadn’t showed up!”

  “Right... Well, at least you’re safe, I guess,” Togami replied, somewhat reluctantly. He still felt humiliated at his own failure and couldn’t bring himself to accept her gratitude wholeheartedly.

  Elena, on the other hand, looked stern. “So, Monica, mind telling us why you were alone? What happened to everyone else?”

  “W-Well, about that...” Monica—the same woman Akira had previously met in the factory district—hesitated to answer.

  Carol cut in cheerfully. “Hey Elena, let’s save the interrogation for when we get back to base. What if she says she knows where everyone else is and we need to go back and save them right this instant? That’s not really something we can handle at the moment, right?”

  Elena considered. “That’s a fair point. All right, back to base it is!”

  For some reason, Monica breathed a covert sigh of relief. Shikarabe caught this, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  Carol tapped Akira on the shoulder and grinned. “Hey, let’s do our best to watch their six on the way back too.”

  “Hm? Yeah, sure.”

  For the return trip, Shikarabe took point, followed by Elena and Sara, then Monica, and finally Akira and Carol in the rear. As they went along, Carol appeared completely unconcerned by the circumstances surrounding Monica’s rescue. But as she chatted with Akira, she casually mentioned Monica’s name several times, subtly directing his gaze toward the other surveyor—though the boy never realized what Carol was trying to do.

  ◆

  They reached the outskirts of the base without incident. Elena reported over the comms that they’d returned, and the same city official from before appeared almost immediately.

  “Make no mistake,” he said. “I’m glad that you’re back safe and sound. But I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. Did you run into trouble somewhere?”

  “You could say that,” Elena replied. “But we did manage a rescue.”

  “You don’t say! That’s wonderful! Then forgive me for cutting to the chase, but let’s hear the details right away.”

  As Elena shared with the official what her team had learned, Monica looked increasingly uncomfortable. And by the time Elena handed over the data from her scanner, the survivor’s suspicious demeanor had become impossible to ignore.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the official told her. “I’m sure it’s something you’d rather not recall, but we need to know what led to you getting separated from the rest of your team. Can you share the data you have?”

  Monica hesitated, but eventually complied. “S-Sure.” After sharing her scanner’s records with the official, she hung her head as though resigned to her fate.

  The official had intended to ask Monica for the gist of what had happened as he did a quick analysis of her records. But when he realized what the data was saying, he glared at her sharply. “You abandoned your team and made a run for it on your own?!”

  Monica flinched so hard she almost took a step backward, but she didn’t deny his charge.

  Elena had finished making her report. Even after restocking their ammo, the team wasn’t ready to head right back into the ruins, but it was too early to call it a day. So they were taking some downtime at the base. In a break room, open only to hunters and city officials, Akira was relaxing at one of the tables. Elena, Sara, and Carol had joined him and were discussing what had happened.

  Elena wore a troubled expression. “Honestly, it’s not like I don’t understand why she did it.” Her gaze traveled to the corner of the room, where Monica was sitting all alone.

  “Yeah, I get it too,” Akira agreed, with a furtive glance in the same direction.

  He wasn’t just agreeing with whatever Elena said—he really did “get it.” He could still hear what Monica had shouted at the official after he’d criticized her: Then was I supposed to try and fight all those monsters on my own?! How?! You rather I’d died like everyone else?! Ridiculous! I’m just a surveyor—I can’t fight! I hide in the shadows and gather information! I’m not some musclehead who can charge headlong into the fray and come out all hunky-dory!

  Her passionate outburst had brought her right up into the official’s face. She’d seemed to believe that unless she pleaded her case—selfish though it might have been—the guilt in her heart would have destroyed her. But the moment she’d finished, she’d hung her head and dropped to her knees, as if the last thread supporting her had snapped, leaving her a pitiful figure on the ground. Since then she had only spoken in a strained, timid voice.

  Remembering her expression at that moment, Akira looked conflicted. “It’d be one thing if she’d willingly agreed to the job, but that wasn’t the case this time, huh?” Hunters were always putting their lives on the line during the dangerous, often deadly, jobs they took on. Naturally, their clients tacitly understood this when putting up commissions, so it was frowned upon for a hunter to abandon a job merely because they feared for their own safety. But that only applied if the hunter chose the job willingly—if the city’s DLS made a request, hunters didn’t have the right to refuse and were forced to work with complete strangers, on top of the usual dangers. Akira could certainly see why that might have made her less motivated to complete her task.

  Sara also looked mildly troubled, but Carol sat unperturbed as though it didn’t concern her in the least. Akira turned to her curiously. “Doesn’t look like all this bugs you much, Carol, even though you’ve teamed up with her before. Or maybe that is the reason it doesn’t bother you?”

  “More or less,” the surveyor responded. “I mean, if I was in her position—roped into a job I couldn’t refuse and expected to perform like a pro hunter—I’d be just as discouraged, you know? Of course, with the right guidance, even a team of strangers who don’t trust each other can function just fine. So I feel like this is all a result of poor management on the city’s part.”

  “That’s a fair point.” The boy could see where she was coming from, and understood that Carol’s point of view diverged from Elena and Sara’s simply because they held different ideas of what was ethical or natural. He felt his own stance to be closer to Carol’s.

  Carol gave him a big grin. “Right? But you didn’t abandon me when we first met, and even ended up saving my life. So I’d like to build an even stronger relationship with you going forward. I’m gonna need help getting out of a jam again sooner or later—and hey, I’d also rather you didn’t kill me.”

  “For the first one, it depends on the price,” said Akira.

  “And the second one?” Carol probed.

  “Just don’t do anything that I’d have to take responsibility for by killing you.”

  “Well, no worries there, then.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Like I said, don’t worry.”

  Though all four were all sitting at the same table, their faces bore witness to their diverging values, reasoning, and philosophies. Akira and Carol exchanged knowing smiles as they spoke, but their lighthearted banter belied their utter seriousness. Akira would kill her if he ever deemed it necessary, and Carol knew it. And though Elena and Sara grasped this, the two women couldn’t just laugh it off. After all, trust had to grow between two parties over a long time, which was what made it so valuable—especially for a boy who normally didn’t trust others at all.

  Monica sat all alone at a table in the corner of the room, wearing a dark expression. From the melancholy sigh she let out, anyone could have guessed how she felt.

  Togami had been observing her from his own table a short distance away, with a troubled look on his face. He gave a sigh to vent his own feelings, then put on a neutral expression as if to set aside his worries and stood up. He went to the vending machine, bought a drink, walked over to Monica’s table, and set the beverage in front of her.

  She raised her head in surprise, and their eyes met.

  After a brief hesitation, he finally spoke. “Um, well, I get that you’ve probably been through a lot, but you did make it out alive. So I think you should, y’know, at least be happy about that.” When Monica looked at him in genuine astonishment, Togami gave her a tight smile and continued, “I mean, I did risk my life to rescue you and all. Seeing someone I saved look so down, well, just doesn’t sit right with me. That’s all.”

  “Thank...you,” Monica replied with a hollow smile—but a smile nonetheless—and bowed her head.

  Togami’s face stiffened a bit, as though to keep his embarrassment from showing, and he turned away without another word. When he got back to his table, he couldn’t help but smile wryly—such behavior was hardly typical of him. But thanks to this, he’d been able to forget—at least for a moment—that he hadn’t rescued Monica on his own, and he felt a little better.

  Meanwhile, as she observed him closely, Monica smiled—this time for real.

  ◆

  Once the break was over, Akira set off for the Mihazono factory district once more with the rest of the team.

  Their roster had undergone a few changes—Monica, Reina, Shiori, and Kanae were now accompanying them, as well as two powered armor units, known as Hex and Hound. The main goal this time was not investigating the district, but rather recovering the hunters who’d failed to return to base. Based on the information the city had obtained from Monica, several of the hunters had likely managed to survive and were holed up in a building somewhere.

  The city provided hunters with maps ahead of time for several key reasons. One, obviously, was to help investigations go more smoothly. The maps also made it easier for hunters to gather in a single area in the event of an emergency (like an overwhelming monster ambush) or if a team got separated—they could pick out a place ahead of time to rendezvous at. This had the added benefit that hunters in such situations would have better morale if they could take refuge together rather than alone. Any rescue teams that got involved also found it more convenient if the hunters they were looking for were in groups, since the rescuers could simply head to specific locations rather than combing the ruins hoping to stumble across survivors.

  With all these factors in mind, the team had marked several refuge areas on their maps. Currently they were headed to the one marked “A89.”

  Monica had been permitted to accompany them as their guide. Having learned that she’d abandoned her teammates and escaped on her own, the city wasn’t quite sure how to handle her case. So in the end, they’d decided to put her with Akira and the others.

  Monica’s actions had constituted a clear breach of contract. But if the city had decided to give her the death penalty for abandoning a job she’d been forced to take in the first place, the other hunters would have revolted—news like that traveled fast. More and more hunters would have started rejecting mandatory jobs, even if it meant making an enemy of Kugamayama.

  But the city couldn’t just let her off the hook either. So it had settled the matter by sending her back to the place she’d just escaped from. The powers that be intended to send a message: her escape had been in vain, and if she tried it again, they’d just send her right back. They also hoped to cover up the severity of her transgression—if they told the hunters she’d abandoned that she’d escaped on her own to go fetch help, the hunters would be less angry and dissatisfied. And in this way the city itself could also save face—it had to report that someone had breached their contract, but by framing it as a difficult and altruistic decision, the city would be able to sweep the issue under the rug and preserve its authority.

  But Elena had been strongly opposed to this decision. She understood Monica’s reasoning, but as the team leader responsible for everyone’s safety (not to mention on a personal level), she found it hard to approve of a deserter tagging along. Still, she hadn’t been able refuse a direct request from Kugamayama, so she’d come up with a counterproposal: She’d told the city that a team member who ran away to save her own skin at the drop of a hat was a clear liability—if such a person fled, they’d deprive the rest of the group of critical firepower in battle. So if Monica absolutely had to come along, Elena had at least wanted additional personnel to make up the difference in case she ran away again—and she’d also requested that the city make sure any potential takers knew what they were getting into beforehand.

  Of course, she’d known it would be hard to fulfill her request on short notice—even for the city, which hadn’t been obliged to do so in any case. So Elena had fully expected to be ignored. And the official hadn’t seemed very optimistic about her proposal, only saying that he’d do what he could and then stepping away from the negotiation table to check.

  Contrary to her expectations, however, the official had returned with the news that he’d managed to find some personnel after all—Reina and her entourage.

  Under a direct request from the city, Druncam was actively participating in getting the Mihazono situation under control. As long as they weren’t already out on another job, all Druncam hunters were strongly encouraged to participate. Reina was of course no exception, but Shiori had been concerned for Reina’s safety, making up an excuse on the fly to decline. But pressure from the syndicate to participate had gotten stronger with time, and the leadership had eventually threatened to kick Reina out of Druncam entirely. For reasons of their own, Reina and her maids needed to remain in good standing with Druncam, so in the end Shiori had been left with no choice but to comply.

  Druncam was primarily working within the business district. Katsuya’s unit, in fact, had been instrumental in securing the area around the Serantal Building. But Shiori had feared to approach a building that even someone as strong as Akira refused to go near—permitting Reina to visit such a place had been unthinkable to her. Yet she’d also heard that the fighting in the factory district was growing more intense by the day, so that option had also been out of the question. As she’d been agonizing over what to do, Druncam had forwarded a request from the city asking them to join the rescue team Akira was on. While she had frowned at hearing the circumstances, her only options were to head either to an area Akira wanted to avoid or an area where he’d be nearby. In the end, she had decided the latter would be more preferable.

 

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