Editing City Series:Volume3a Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 3===

As the sun rose to the top of the heavens on the surface, Akira and Rin were underground.

This was not Hong Kong Cave. Just as that great pit had been created in Hong Kong Island, a layered sealed space existed below the Kowloon Peninsula.

However, no one lived there anymore.

Instead, the Yard used it as a morgue and catacombs for murder victims.

The concrete corridor was fairly wide and about four people could walk abreast. The side walls had doors embedded in them like on a ship.

“No one’s really maintaining the place, but it still doesn’t fall apart.”

“That’s because it was originally made for people to live in, just like Hong Kong Cave. They drilled through the volcanic rock and everything. …Oh, get a light ready. We’re heading down to the second level.”

“Sure, sure. We’re there already? We’ve walked a good ways from the entrance in the Kowloon Walled City.”

As she spoke, Akira attached a charm to the blade of her Device spear. It had a Tune Emblem written on it.

“Oh, you Lives concealing an Octave of 40,000. Oh, you mutterings of the light. Can you hear my Live?”

Then she let out a distinctive voice.

“La.”

As soon as her short and high-pitched Live rang through the air, the charm on the blade vanished.

Instead, light filled the blade. The light’s Live was white and with a quick Tempo.

''It looks a lot like fluorescent light,'' thought Akira.

“The problem is you can’t get rid of the charm’s light if you want to.”

“I need you to light everything up, so forgive me.”

“I don’t really mind. It’s a nice change of pace from the usual investigations. Let’s go.”

A staircase landing was located on one side of the corridor. The stairs heading up were sealed off with a shutter, but the ones heading down led into the darkness.

That was the darkness that continued deeper underground and Akira began to take a step in that direction.

…''?

But she stopped.

She focused on her ears and looked around.

“What is it, Akira?”

“You didn’t hear that, Rin?”

“What…kind of Live was it?’

“I think it was Tuning. I heard a Tempo much like a human pulse.”

“They’re probably doing something up above. There’s a university on the surface around here.” A bitter smile entered Rin’s voice. “Or are you afraid of the dark?”

“Of course not,” replied Akira with a shrug.

She tilted her head and focused her ears again, but the Tempo was gone.

…''I could have sworn it was coming from below.

But she had no proof, so she quickly caught up with Rin.

Her Device swept away the darkness and revealed the stairs and the second level’s landing below.

She briefly hesitated but started down ahead of Rin. She also glanced down at her wristwatch.

“It’s been that long? We’ve been down here for almost half an hour.”

“We had to pass through several Emblem Seals on the way here, remember? If the corpses transform, we can’t have them getting out to the surface like with the Second Divine Punishment War’s…”

Rin trailed off and hung her head.

“Sorry.”

“Eh?”

Rin’s Live was emitting an indigo light.

Akira smiled a bit, stepped down onto the second level’s landing, and spoke to Rin.

“Don’t worry about it. That happened over a hundred years ago, so it has nothing to do with me.”

“Well, there is that. But there’s also our meeting this morning.”

“You mean my brother? I don’t really mind. He was a weird brother,” she commented. “He’s always been weird. You know the Flight Song? It’s written on a monument at the very bottom of Hong Kong Cave and he would check on it every single day.”

“The Flight Song? Why?”

“He said it contained a contradiction. …Hm, how should I put it?” She thought for a moment. “When you sing the Flight Song, it’s a pretty cheerful song, right? But he said it didn’t match the state of Hong Kong Cave.”

“That’s for sure. I’ve heard that historians claim it’s so bright and hopeful specifically because it was created in the darkness.”

“My brother’s a pessimist, so he said he couldn’t believe that. And…just between you and me, I kind of feel the same way when I’m underground like this.”

Akira did not turn to look at Rin. She kept her eyes on the stairs leading down to the third level.

Those stairs were also sealed with a shutter, but the shutter was shaped differently from the one on the first level.

The steel shutter had been transformed.

It had swelled out and bent like a giant had punched at it from within.

“Don’t look at it. It’ll only make this harder.”

“The sixth level is supposed to connect to Hong Kong Cave, isn’t it?”

“These are only ruins. Keep that in mind.” Rin worked to keep all emotion out of her voice. “This is an afterimage of Hong Kong’s terror. When Hong Kong became British territory, the people fled underground in fear of the Glossolalians, but they sealed off the underground once they heard bacteria were spreading through it. These are the scars of the city’s foolish history.”

Akira hung her head, kept her eyes on the illuminated wall, and followed the markings forward.

“His name’s J-Gun, so is he in Block J?”

“No, it’s determined by species and then by surname, so Area 1 Block M.”

The two of them walked side by side.

“I’ve always wondered. Isn’t it a lot of work to carry the bodies down here?”

“This is the most practical option. If I have to choose between exhaustion and danger, I’ll go with exhaustion every time.”

“What if the choices are fame and fortune?”

“I’ll take them both and then take a break.”

“That’s about what I expected from you, Rin. Are you really going to do this with J-Gun’s corpse?”

“I got the medicine from Kouga’s house, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Rin pulled a small bottle from her pocket for Akira to see.

“Who would have thought we’d be communicating with the dead in this day and age.”

“It just uses Tuning, right? All you do is try to replay as much of a vanished Live as possible.”

“It must be nice being able to accept everything so quickly.”

“But doing this counts as procuring evidence. England’s Royal Law is really convenient.”

Directly speaking with the victim was a necessary part of a criminal investigation.

That was usually not too difficult when they were still alive, but forcibly questioning a spirit of the dead was considered inappropriate.

British Territory was connected to heaven, so the dead had their own civil liberties.

They were only able to summon J-Gun’s soul because of everything that had happened between Rin, Kouga, Akira, and Gunmal and because J-Gun was confirmed to be the victim of a crime.

“At the very least, we can summon Genius Elias, Lee Leed, and Fei Garland as persons of interest. …We don’t have much time.”

“Why not?”

“Hong Kong Cave is not a part of Hong Kong, so no data on them officially exists. The only direct connection between those three and us is Archs RDC.”

“Oh, right. And Archs RDC was broken up yesterday.”

“That’s right. In another three days, all of the remaining data will be swallowed up by the firms that take over. Then it will all be erased from every last corner of the internet.”

“Wow, Rin. You really know your stuff.”

“I have to as a Searcher. …Oh, not that way. Area 1 is this way.”

They took the corridor left and reached an open area.

The cramped shadows of the corridor suddenly grew into a vast darkness.

The two of them used the spear’s light to walk through it.

After one, two, and then three steps, they stopped.

“…?”

On the large room’s side wall, they saw a stairway landing much like the one they had used previously.

All of the stairways down had supposedly been sealed off and the Yard only used the second level for their catacombs.

But this one was open.

No, “open” was not quite the right word.

The shutter had been blown away down to the very bottom.

The steel panel lay in the middle of the room and it contained a deep depression in the very center.

“Was it destroyed by a fist?”

“Of course not. Not even a Hard Wolf or a Bigfoot could destroy that door. You saw that other one, right?”

“Unfortunately, the truth is right in front of us.”

“Rin, are you the type to meticulously keep track of your finances?”

“Of course.”

Rin stuck both her hands in her pockets and pulled something out.

She held a handgun in her right hand and a bundle of Tune Emblem charms in her left.

Both weapons gave off powerful Lives of destruction.

Rin began to resonate with them and identical Lives appeared and disappeared across her suit.

“Why do you have all that? Were you planning to start working as a Hound?”

“A true woman uses her entire body as a weapon.”

Her tone made it clear she was not at all joking as she faced forward.

The charms were held together by a metal ring like flashcards and she attached the ring to her watchband.

And with a hand on the charms, she was ready for a quick-draw.

Akira held her glowing Device in both hands and glanced over at Rin’s handgun.

“You’re using a different one again, aren’t you?”

“It’s a Henry Ball 90 my grandfather won in a duel.”

“Last time it was your father. Why do you feel the need to use your entire collection like this?”

“My collector of a grandfather was Chinese, you see.” She chose her words carefully. “And he was a totalitarian.”

“That’s not funny.”

As soon as Akira said that, something moved ahead of them.

“!”

Before she saw it, she heard the offensive Live.

Something flew out of the darkness in front of her.

The Word Color was red, the Tempo was cold, and the Message was as sharp as a scythe.

It was the Live of…

“A shockwave!”

Rin reacted to Akira’s shout by activating her charms.

With a single snap of the wrist, she threw three of them at once.

They flew straight forward and transformed into explosions of light.

They collided with the shockwave approaching through the large room.

With a great impact, the charms’ explosions negated the shockwave.

A heavy wind and a deep noise shook the room.

Akira squinted at the wind and placed her Live in her Device.

“…!”

Before the wind could die down, she amplified the Device’s light to help it grow.

The extended range of the light revealed the entire concrete room that measured fifteen meters on each side.

It was a little cramped to move around it.

…''Where’s the enemy?

Akira’s thought was cut off by a gunshot near her ear.

Rin had fired her Henry Ball.

The stench of gunpowder contained a hint of calcium, meaning she had fired an anti-demon round.

Instead of aiming in the direction the shockwave had come from, she fired into the wall by the opposite corridor entrance.

The anti-demon round grew into spear of light in midair and stabbed halfway into the concrete wall.

“This is Hong Kong Yard! Your ridiculous defenses are meaningless! Come out with your hands up!”

Akira glanced over at Rin.

“You’re so cool, Rin.”

“Shut up. …I won’t tell you again! You have ten seconds!”

No one answered, but they did hear something.

“Footsteps,” said Akira. “Two sets.”

Rin nodded, so she too must have heard with her ability as a Tuner.

However, she did not seem to understand what Akira said next.

“They both have hard Lives. They might not be human!”

“What?”

Akira was unable to answer.

Just as she had said, the Lives she heard in the darkness down that corridor were hard.

They were as harsh, flat, and unwavering as steel.

…''Sein Fraus? No, then I would see mechanical Lives.

Which meant…

“Who are you?”

The answer came almost immediately.

Two men stepped out of the corridor and into the lit room and both women cried out when they saw them.

“J-Gun Maldrick!?” “Fei!?”

The Buster and Galgallin faced them and said nothing.

Fei’s prosthetic eyes glowed red beyond his mirrorshades and J-Gun’s eyes were lifeless, but both men stared intently at the women.

The chilly Lives of their gazes caused Akira to shrink back.

When she saw Rin take a mindless step forward as if being lured in, Akira panicked.

“Rin!?”

Rin did not respond.

“What is this? Why is Fei here and why is J-Gun alive?”

“Rin! Don’t lower your gun!”

Akira’s warning did not reach Rin.

…''Not good.

Akira saw the Lives drifting through the room.

Normally, those hard Lives may have been called tension.

The Lives making up that space were waiting to see just what kind of Live would be played her and by whom.

And whatever it was, it was not going to be peaceful.

The Device in J-Gun’s hand was visibly vibrating ever so slightly, so it had to have been what fired the previous shockwave.

…''They’re our enemies.

With those silent words, Akira nodded.

However, Rin had yet to come to her senses.

“Rin!”

Akira included her Live in her shout this time and Rin finally gasped. But instead of feeling relieved, Akira said more.

“Look carefully! Those two are-…”

Before she could say “enemies”, the men made their move.

J-Gun raised his Device high while Fei raised his right arm to shoulder height.

The latter’s forearm opened and a mortar protruded from the wrist.

“!”

The men attacked in unison.

The Live of destruction blew through the room and it all collapsed in an instant.