Chapter 56

Lieutenant Erabelle Vermilion opened her eyes and turned away from the drone ejection port.

She had already wasted too much time.

Moving quietly to the end of the corridor, she slipped into the ventilation shaft. With one optic nerve damaged, her depth perception was completely gone.

She groped her way upward, then leaned against the wall of the duct to catch her breath.

Her hastily reset ankle trembled beneath her.

The pain was gone now that she had severed the nerve signals, but that did nothing to make the injury less dangerous. It was something no one should ever do if they intended to live a long life.

Which meant...

She could do it now without regret.

Four hours left.

Roughly 14,400 seconds.

And if the Empire’s agents searching below found her in the ventilation shaft, she would not even have that long.

Erabelle burned through every Spell Disk she had saved—Detection Defense, Illusion, Heat Signature Suppression, Hide, and more—slipping past the search teams while studying the building’s interior.

Every scrap of patience she possessed was being consumed.

It seemed the Second Prince was serious about dragging Commander Dezeb Avganis before a military tribunal.

This was no longer a matter of simply putting pressure on his brother.

He meant to tear off an entire branch of the tree.

Whether the Thirteenth Prince abandoned the 41st Division or chose to protect it, either outcome benefited the Second Prince.

There was no reason for him not to proceed.

The evidence was not decisive yet, but if they supplemented it with her confession, it would be more than enough to disgrace Dezeb.

The 41st Division had been involved in more than one incident here.

And she had been the officer responsible...

She had nearly brought ruin upon the entire division.

Suppressing the chill that crawled down her spine, Erabelle studied the hacked internal surveillance feed displayed across her retinal interface.

Her heart was beating too fast.

The auxiliary gear was steadily devouring what little bio-energy she had left.

She silenced the warning alarms and began probing the security protocols protecting the Second Prince’s main server terminal.

Not that she had many options.

She would have to break through by force.

Unless someone suddenly gave her another forty days, there was no quiet way in.

If she wanted even to touch the terminal connected to the main server, she had to tear through the security head-on.

Erabelle closed her eyes for a moment and slowly exhaled.

Her heart hammered against her ribs.

She could smell blood.

Rust from the ventilation shaft.

A faint trace of oil.

Her trembling fingers tightened around the hem of her pants.

From somewhere far away, she could hear Miro crying.

Why are you crying now...?

Erabelle gritted her teeth.

12,400... 399...

As she counted down, she disabled every safety protocol in the APU.

Dozens of red warnings flooded her vision.

She ignored them all.

Then she removed every limiter.

Her trembling fingertips went still.

Calm returned.

Erabelle drew another deep breath, pulled out the transmission device, and wedged it between her clenched teeth.

Once she broke through the protective layer and made physical contact with the terminal linked to the main server, 066 would extract the data through the device.

The APU would handle the connection itself.

Good thing 066 turned out to be useful after all.

Maybe this is what I worked so hard for.

She remembered something she had once heard.

Time did not flow only from the past into the present.

The ending was always written.

I knew it would come to this.

Facing death made her sentimental.

It was terrifying.

Those dark moments in life were always the ones you had to be most careful of.

Her vision blurred with tears.

A sob slipped from her throat, and she clenched her jaw harder.

The sharp edge of the transmitter dug into her gums and drew blood.

This was the only thing she could trust now.

Her body would move regardless of what she felt.

Her equipment would take over.

I just have to trust that.

Drawing one final breath, Erabelle pushed herself up from the duct.

***

“Prepare the warp gate.”

At Commander Dezeb Avganis’ order, Processing Team Leader Feather hesitated before carefully asking,

“You intend to go personally, sir?”

“It has to be handled.”

“Handled... Sir, if we simply leave it alone, things will resolve themselves.”

Less than four hours remained.

Feather’s voice trailed off.

He flinched when he saw Dezeb smiling and immediately fell silent.

“Then I’ll contact the operations team leader.”

“Virgo?”

“Yes. He’s nearby.”

Feather, like Virgo Hag, was not someone who trusted easily.

More than that, Feather had spent his entire life clearing away whatever troubled his master.

This was no different.

Just another mess to clean up.

“Oh, right. I left it behind last time, didn’t I?”

He had forgotten.

Still smiling, Dezeb reached out—

and tore away half of Feather’s face.

“Do you want to have a chat with me or something?”

Feather immediately dropped to the floor and bowed, pressing his forehead against the blood-slick surface.

“Go prepare it. Now.”

The final cleanup should be mine, after all.

They had known each other for more than two years.

Aside from the prince, Erabelle was the only person Dezeb had dealt with for that long.

She had been a good woman.

She knew her place.

She followed orders.

How perfect she had been.

She always exceeded his expectations.

Every single time...

Her mind was so simple.

So easy to read.

Just thinking about it made the back of his neck burn.

...She must be planning to die.

She was a woman who had survived among the Dogs for years.

There was no chance a mere warehouse could hold her.

She really is incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

The moment the Dogs finished their preparations, Commander Dezeb Avganis stepped through the gate.

Alone.

Tracking her was easy.

Temporary Warehouse No. 9.

Molin City.

He had done this sort of thing countless times before.

Everything always unfolded the same way, like rereading a book he had already memorized.

But even if it had not, finding her would still have been easy.

The moment he entered the 2155 planetary system, the Artificial Soul Erabelle had installed began transmitting her location to him in real time.

Because the master access rights did not belong to its creator.

They belonged to him.

Incredible...

Truly incredible.

He murmured to himself in admiration as he slowly approached the warehouse.

Hooooom—

The figure walking forward could barely be called human.

It was something wearing the shape of a man, and the planet’s atmosphere warped around him in response.

Hoooooommmmm—

The distorted air gave off a low, eerie moan.

As he drew closer, thick black smoke from an explosion rose into the sky like a beacon.

Almost as if it were waving him over.

“...”

By the time he reached the blast zone, Lieutenant Erabelle Vermilion was already sprawled across the ground, slowly dying.

Three of her limbs were gone.

Apparently, losing body parts when she was not paying attention had become something of a specialty.

Only her right leg remained attached.

And even that was barely true, with little more than part of the thigh left intact.

She was a wreck.

Yet the remaining APU continued clinging desperately to her failing body, forcing it to stay alive.

“Erabelle.”

Her unfocused eyes slowly drifted toward him.

“What are you doing here?”

***

Erabelle had made her decision quickly.

There had only ever been one choice.

There was only one thing powerful enough to break through a Shield barrier and vaporize everything beyond it until nothing remained but debris.

Her signum tag.

She threw herself at the terminal and detonated it.

The agents recognized what she was doing only at the last instant.

“W-Wait—!”

“Stop her—!!”

“No—”

Their voices vanished beneath the overlapping roar of explosions.

To buy 066 enough time to extract the data, Erabelle carefully controlled the blast even as her body was torn apart.

It was only possible because she detonated before the overrun.

Years of experience implanting signums helped.

But more than anything else, it was the APU that made it possible.

As she tore through the protective layer and 066 established a connection to the main server, Erabelle watched her limbs burst apart one after another.

It was not a pleasant sight.

...Ah...

No.

Definitely not pleasant.

Still, she told herself it had worked.

Then she lay still and stared up at the darkening sky.

There was nothing else she could do.

It was bittersweet.

But at least she had managed to see the sky one last time.

Even so...

She missed the blue.

People always wanted more.

When they were standing, they wanted to sit.

When they were sitting, they wanted to lie down.

And so she found herself longing for the blue sky.

A sky with only one sun.

Maybe a little haze.

Nothing more.

“...Erabelle...”

A voice drifted through the air, calling her name.

“...What are you doing... here...”

Erabelle slowly turned her eyes toward the sound.

She saw him.

Him.

Commander Dezeb Avganis.

It was him.

His black hair stirred in the cold wind, his skin pale against it, sharp features drowned in deep shadow.

That flawless beauty looked almost artificial.

As though something that was not human had carefully sculpted a human form and then slipped inside it.

And yet—

he was beautiful.

Even now, as Erabelle lay dying, he was still beautiful.