Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 9===

And so…

“Who would think this thin card could turn into the antidote?”

After retrieving their spare weapons buried in the beach, Heivia held the laminated card up to the moon in the night sky.

Quenser shook a glass device.

“Mixing a drug is a lot like making a cocktail. If you know the ingredients and the ratios, you just need to know how and in what order to mix them together. And it’s safer to keep that on a card in your wallet than to leave it out on the cloud. And it won’t raise any questions when a police officer searches your possessions because it doesn’t have any special equipment. They won’t know if it has a military encrypted IC chip inside.”

Just like before, he had combined things like a vacuum coffee maker and a bowl full of ice to build his own chemistry set that looked like a glass roller coaster. He used that to separate and recombine ingredients from the cold medicine and pain medicine he had acquired at a drug store.

Instead of rushing back to Second Venice with the card, they were hiding out in the dangerous reclaimed land to do the work in advance. They had a simple reason for that.

“It’s crazy that we can’t just send an email now that we have it right here. Well, I do get that we can’t let the Rush and its largescale communications equipment notice us.”

“And if that Veneto bastard was lying a second or third time, we need to turn right back around, shove some Hand Axe in his mouth and up his ass, and turn him into a human firework.”

“You’re one scary big brother.”

“It is a citizen’s duty to risk his life for his cute little sister.”

“Well, you’re definitely an only child. There’s no way I’m throwing my life away for a ‘little sister’!!”

The finished mixing up the antidote as they argued.

It was a translucent and somewhat yellowish liquid.

“But how do we test it?”

“I brought this with me. It’s the impurities built up in the filter to the gas mask Catherine gave me. In other words, it’s the primary component of Argeiphontes.”

“Are you insane!?”

“Inject me with the antidote. If it doesn’t work, go kill that Veneto bastard for me. Adios.”

Quenser dropped the white powder on the back of his hand and snorted it. It may have looked like a different sort of scene, but then he started wobbling and fell to the side.

“Are you kidding me, you pervert!? Did having little Catherine by your side bring out a new fetish inside you!?”

“Let’s be nice and at least call it an interest! Here’s the syringe!!”

“Heivia, wrap a belt or something around Quenser’s upper arm. I think we need to make sure the blood vessel is bulging out!”

“Dammit, do we really have to make this look even more like that kind of scene!?”

Quenser had collapsed with fever, so they borrowed his right arm, rolled up his uniform’s sleeve, sterilized the area with some alcohol, and passed the needle through his skin. Surprisingly, Heivia looked away when the needle pricked him. He did not hesitate to slit an enemy soldier’s throat from behind, but he apparently had trouble with this.

“Well? What happened? Did it work?”

“Please wait a moment. This isn’t instant glue, so it isn’t going to take effect so soon.”

“…Is it just me or is his breathing growing shallow?”

“Not good!! Prepare for a heart massage!!”

Meanwhile, Quenser’s eyes opened a little as he lay on the ground. Light entered them. The antidote seemed to have worked.

And as he prepared to tell the others that as they peered down at him.

“Okay, start! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5!!”

“Bweh!? Gbah!! Aghah!!”

(I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!? Wait, why are they doing chest compre-…gweh!?)

“Ah, Quenser’s reacting!”

“Let’s keep him here on this filthy planet. It’s too soon for this idiot to visit the luxury resort in the sky!!”

“Bh…ah…”

As Heivia relentlessly continued the chest compressions, Quenser grabbed the boy’s neck and sprang up like some kind of trap.

“Are you trying to kill me!?”

“Is that anything to say to the guy who saved your life!? H-hey, stop! Don’t crush those soap-like rations below your dirty boots and throw them at me!”

Myonri and Evans could only sigh as the two idiots got into a fight. There had been some trouble along the way, but the antidote had proved effective.

Thus…

“I’m the proof. We don’t need to fear Argeiphontes anymore. Let’s get back to Second Venice and wake up Sleeping Beauty.”

“Cough, ugh. That’s fine. Catherine’s the only one infected, so the Rush will lose its justification for the blockade if we save her.”

“But how do we get back? Borrowing a cruiser is easy enough, but the Information Alliance’s Rush is still watching over everything.”

“Y-yeah. And Quenser, we can’t float past as driftwood this time. The direction of the current is fixed. Since we used it to get here, we’ll be fighting the current this time.”

Quenser shrugged at Myonri and Evans’s comments.

“We can just take a cruiser back.”

“What?”

“We don’t need to hide. The Rush’s job is to keep us in. She can’t restrict us if we’re going back in. Since we already left, she’ll be curious where we were out having some fun, but forcing us back out wouldn’t make sense since we might be infected.”

“…”

“…”

The more normal two among the idiots exchanged a bitter glance.

And the extraordinary idiot had more to say.

“Now, let’s make a triumphant return right past the Information Alliance who won’t have a clue what’s going on.”