Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8 (section)

===Part 5===

Skuld Silent-Third awoke on a shaking stretcher.

Her legs were filled with an intense pain that felt like the dentist scraping at her teeth but increased several times over. She worked her hazy mind, searched through her memories, and finally realized her legs must have been destroyed by the blast of the explosion.

She felt no fear or hatred.

She wanted to feel human death, so she joyfully accepted the pain. That was as true of pain given to others as it was of pain given to her.

She was not outside.

She seemed to be onboard a transport helicopter.

Urd and Verdandi were looking down at her.

“Hey, she’s woken up.”

“So it seems.”

Those two sisters holed up in their nuke-resistant armor and drowned in a sea of the powerful anesthetic known as “safety”. They used the simple idea of justice to burn away target after target on their screens, so those poor empty shells had lost sight of the meaning and value of a life. Skuld only felt pity for them. She knew she was insane, but her two older sisters did not know the same about themselves. They were the “proper” monsters who everyone praised. In that case, who was truly worthy of contempt?

“It doesn’t matter,” carelessly concluded Skuld.

What she had done and what she would do had not changed. She would continue to make the choice that would bring about the most deaths in the moment. It did not matter if her own name was on the list of the dead. What awaited her if she was court martialed and thrown in prison? She might be tormented and killed inside prison or someone might find her useful enough to release her. But that did not matter.

Whatever the situation she found herself in, she would pour all of her efforts into choosing the option that led to the most death.

“That isn’t happening, Saint Skuld.”

A young man spoke as if he had read her mind.

Instead of a Pilot Elite, a normal soldier peered down at her. It was Eric Kingsvalley. He had acted as her assistant while they were POWs.

“Our Norn was destroyed. An Elite’s value is linked to the Object, so you will temporarily lose the many military protections you had. ..In other words, the entire system protecting you is no longer functioning.”

A normal Elite might have gone mad.

Their entire life had been denied and they had been dragged down from the throne of genius to wallow in the mud of mediocrity. They seriously might have bitten through their tongue at that announcement. There was even a slight but definite movement in the cheeks and eyebrows of Urd and Verdandi as they listened.

But Skuld remained carefree.

“What does that matter?”

She saw no meaning in being a Pilot Elite. Objects and the Norn were not absolute. She wanted to know the feeling of a life. She had only ended up here in search of that answer. So she was satisfied if she had that position, but its loss did not particularly matter. Just like before, she only had to continue down her own path.

She was truly a monster.

An incomprehensible genius.

“Are people with a grudge against me going to be coming for me? Then why not open the helicopter’s cargo door and shove my stretcher out? I don’t care if you do. After all, I can sense the breath of life there. I’m sure to see something when I die.”

“…No.”

Eric gave her a complicated look.

For some reason, there was some pity in it.

“Saint Skuld. …No, Skuld. You truly don’t understand your situation, do you?”

“?”

Just as she questioned that comment, she heard a metallic sound. She had tried to move her arm, but it would not budge. She looked down at her body and saw thick belts around her wrists and arms. No, that was not all. Her broken legs were excluded, but there were belts around her waist and neck to bind her entire body to the stretcher.

And a needle was sticking into the inside of her elbow.

Her eyes followed that up to an IV bag on a metal pole. What was inside that? It was clear, but the view through it was distorted like it was sugar water.

Urd breathed a heavy sigh.

“This might be the last time, so we were thinking about having a final farewell.”

“But it looks like that was a waste of time. She really was born this way. She wasn’t some poor victim of her environment, upbringing, or any other conditions.”

Was it poison?

Were they killing her?

That was not enough to scare Skuld at this point.

But that was not it.

“It’s an antimanic agent,” said Eric with a shake of his head. “The drug is used in psychiatry to artificially calm a state of mania. But if you are given it around the clock, you will be unable to think and you might as well be a doll that simply stares up at the ceiling.”

For the first time, a bad feeling entered Skuld’s chest.

“We knew you would be satisfied with both killing and being killed, so we won’t give you either. You can drift in a drug-induced haze forevermore. You can rot in the eternal peace you hated more than anything.”

“Wait…no… That’s…you can’t do that! Then how will I know what a life feels like!? Everyone always told me to treat life wih cyare…”

Even as she spoke, she rapidly lost her ability to enunciate.

She had to do something. She had to remove the belts and escape. She could feel that intense impatience, but her thoughts never reached the next step. The more she thought, the more scattered those thoughts became and her soul was trapped inside a prison of barely moving flesh.

She could no longer even tell one direction from another.

She simply heard Urd and Verdandi’s voices echoing through the ether.

“Don’t worry about anything. It seems the Faith Organization will use its tax money to pay for your care.”

“But as a living sample for a failed attempt at a mass-produced Elite. Doctors will occasionally be opening you up and poking around while you sleep, but you’ll just have to pray that none of them are perverts.”

Skuld desperately tried to hold her thoughts together.

Once she fell asleep, a century-long slumber would begin.

But that thin thread of consciousness was under attack.

It could snap at any moment.

“What a pain. So this ends the 5th Norn Program.”

“And I thought we’d finally stabilized everything after using our actual sister this time. We’ll have to find another new Skuld and some Object or another.”

(…Wait…what…?)

A mass-produced Object and a mass-produced Elite.

They were seeing which fit best with which as if she were nothing more than the ultimate artificial organ.

(There are other Objects being used…besides our Norn…?)

The Norns of North Mythology were the three goddesses of fate, but there were actually more than one group. Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld were the most well-known, but there were records of countless other Norns, some better known than others.

So if this too was following the myths…

(The three of us…aren’t the only…ones? There are other…trios…and Urd and Verdandi join the other groups…when the timing is right…? Oh, I see… The three sisters…can be freely rearranged…)

Skuld remembered something.

And that may have pushed it over the edge. She thought she heard a thin thread snapping in her mind.

“Find us a tougher Skuld for next time. The distortion always seems to concentrate there.”

“While we’re at it, how about I be Verdandi and you be Urd next time? I’m getting pretty sick of this role.”

“Honestly, I can’t believe any of this, Saints Urd and Verdandi. They’re going to make me sign something swearing to take this information with me to the grave, aren’t they? But anyway…”

…

…

…

“Goodbye, Skuld.”

“Goodbye, Skuld.”

“Goodbye, Skuld.”