And now she was directing an angry tirade at the man somewhere beyond the window: foolish, trash. As if she were singing. Then she inhaled, choked on the acrid air. Tears welled up. Her head went hazy. Her hands were yanking at the door as if her life depended on it. A lingering memory of the man was still burning deep inside her body.
Foolish, trash, ash, cash.
The little ditty spun around in her head. That’s all I am. Was there a version of myself who thought that? she wondered for an instant and looked out, but only a sad reflection stared back at her. Even now her hands continued to grapple with the door handle.
Josh, fish, gash, hash.
A wave of despair assaulted her, and the part of her that had up to that point remained hidden behind the thin layer of skin suddenly emerged.
“No! Help me, please!”
At that moment the pressure inside the car suddenly dropped, and a high-pitched buzz sounded. Something, somewhere, caught fire.
Flash.
The pain lasted only an instant. A terrible roar and an explosion assaulted her, and her vision was flooded with a blinding white light.
“I don’t want to die.”
That was the last sound the girl was ever to voice.
In the next instant the driver’s seat was blown backwards by the force of the blast, slamming her body against the rear seat before the raging flames flared up and everything became a single mass of fire.
≡
“Are you in pain, Mr. Shell?” the man in the driver’s seat asked of the man now sprawled in the front passenger seat.
“Just stressed.” The man—Shell—took his hand off his forehead and moved it to his breast pocket. He pulled out the flask of scotch and the bottle of pills he kept inside his suit. He took a swig of scotch, put two of the pills in his mouth, and then followed with another gulp of the whiskey, as though forcing down something bitter.
“Heroic Pills, are they?” the driver muttered. Shell nodded and sighed a deep sigh. His Chameleon Sunglasses were now glinting a deep blue, almost the color of lead.
“When I was a child I had A-10 surgery on my brain,” Shell said. “When my stress levels rise above a certain level, my brain automatically switches to a state of euphoria. It was one of the Social Welfare Department’s crime prevention schemes they tried out in the slums. But when I was in my teens they discovered a flaw and halted the scheme.”
Shell looked at the driver, who nodded as if to say I’m listening.
“There’s a chance your brain goes haywire. Back when I was a kid, a friend went blind the moment his stress levels rose. The part of his brain that controlled his vision was destroyed in the chemical reaction that induces happiness. In my case, my memory goes in a bad way. So, these pills are the backup plan. Absolute perfection. Take these and there’s no stress, no side effects. Right?”
“Well, at least you know how to deal with misfortune. That’s what allowed you to hire me,” said the driver. These weren’t words of consolation. His tone was devoid of sympathy. His pale, glassy skin seemed strange on a man so solidly built. His hair was closely cropped and mostly gray. Shell thought of him as a revolver.
“Exactly right, Boiled. It means that I can cope with this little ritual. And, step by step, I’m able to climb the road to glory in Mardock City.”
Shell laughed. He had a simple faith in the man sitting next to him. Even better, the drugs were kicking in. He glanced at the side mirror, noticing again how much contrast there was in the way the two of them looked. His own dark skin, long black hair. A feeling of satisfaction was spreading throughout his body—satisfaction that he was able to hire such a keen professional, get him to do the driving…
It gave him confidence that his plans, his scheme for life, were all working out.
“And every time I take another step toward glory I gain another beautiful Blue Diamond.” Shell gazed at his glittering rings as happiness flooded his senses.
Boiled interrupted Shell’s euphoria. “I’m concerned about something.” Shell shrugged his shoulders.
“What?”
“Back there in the park I noticed a car that was…incongruous.”
“Incongruous?”
“There’s a big baseball game at the dome at seven tonight. It’s strange that a car with tires would be in this park.”
“What’ve tires and baseball got to do with each other, Boiled?”
“Electromagnetic waves are blocked within the park to keep it a quiet zone, right? Their car wouldn’t be able to pick up a radio signal. What do you think people of that class would be doing skulking in the shadows of the boathouse during a time they should be enjoying themselves?”
Shell smiled a thin smile and shook his head. “Whatever. There’s no proof of what I did today. No memory. And even if there is any trouble, you’ll take care of it for me, Boiled. Trouble is your business, after all.”
04
The girl was already unconscious from the impact of the blast before the flames enveloped her body.
This meant her lungs avoided the worst of the fiery smoke—in other words, she avoided, by the narrowest of margins, dying of smoke inhalation. Even so, when she finally awoke in a dim haze the cells in her mouth had been burnt through, and she was barely being kept alive by a tube that was shoved down her throat to her respiratory organs, forcing her lungs to breathe to an automated rhythm.
A voice abruptly leapt into her still-indistinct consciousness. “She’s still alive, Doctor! The girl, Rune-Balot, she’s alive!”
A voice as if the speaker were rejoicing from the bottom of his heart. And then, in time, a different, more leisurely voice:
“She’ll be okay for now, Oeufcoque—her whole body’s enveloped in the protective foam. Even so, this is horrific. She’s burnt to a crisp. Her skin’s lost, and her sense of taste and smell could go too…”
“The poor thing. Do you think she’ll resent us for rescuing her, Doc?”
“Well, humans—females in particular—are such illogical creatures. They start to lose the will to live and hate the world the moment something affects their sense of worth. We’ll just have to try and reason with her.”
“Will she choose the path of Scramble 09, do you think? Or will she give up on life?”
“Probably best not to let her know the latter option exists.”
The girl—Balot—felt nothing of the world, but just then she saw a curious thing emerge.
The one called the Doctor: a tall, lanky man. Splotchy hair, Tech Glasses, a reddish-brown half-coat that covered a colorful patchwork of a doctor’s gown, with syringes, portable microscopes and all sorts of other contraptions hanging from the chest and waist. It was as if the lead singer in a psychedelic band had suddenly decided to say Look at me, I’m a doctor now. And then—
Even more bizarre than that. A golden mouse perched on the Doctor’s shoulder.
“Anyway, look after her, will you—she could turn out to be a new buddy.”
“Yup, though at the moment she’s more body than buddy.”
The golden mouse just looked at Balot, completely ignoring the Doctor’s reply.
The mouse’s dim red eyes seemed to contain hidden depths, as if he were a mature, older man. The tiny pants that he was wearing as if to cover up a bulging belly—held in place by a tiny pair of suspenders hanging off his shoulders—seemed hilarious to the girl.
Sharp, focused golden whiskers. And she could see in his solemn face a gentleness that she’d never encountered before.