Mardock Scramble

–Will you let me borrow something? I’ll be sure to return it safely.

–What’s that? Borrow? Are you talking about…

The Doctor gulped.

Oeufcoque took advantage of the small pause to interject. “Doctor, if Balot says she needs something, you trust her judgment and hand it over without further ado. Got that?”

Something seemed to have got the Doctor’s tongue for a moment, but eventually he managed to speak.

–Fine, I’ll leave Shell’s security completely in your hands. The pair of you. Come over to the Broilerhouse to—

His tone of voice changed abruptly.

–Just in! The first information disclosure on Boiled’s whereabouts. Shell called Boiled from a pay phone on the banks of the East River. At around seventeen hundred hours. I’m going to publish the fact that we’ve just had some negotiations with OctoberCorp ourselves, okay?

“Do it, Doctor. Force their hand, make them give us as much information as possible.”

–There’s every chance that Shell is now hiding out somewhere in the vicinity of the phone booth. Let’s use the pretext that he may be armed and dangerous in order to force the other side into disclosing his exact location. I’ll get the DA to gather what information he can, top secret. So… Balot, I’ll have what you need ready for you—just come on over to the Broilerhouse to pick it up.

–Thank you.

The phone cut off. The car sped on toward the Broilerhouse, and the monitor already showed a map that displayed the likely whereabouts of Shell.

03

Shell arrived at the hotel room that Boiled had told him to come to. He sat down on the bed, and the first thing he thought was Now I can become a different person again.

He was even prepared. Thoroughly. Or so Shell thought, at least.

He had his overnight Boston bag on his lap, and he pulled out a bottle of Heroic Pills from inside his jacket pocket and washed them down one by one, chugging a bottle of scotch as he did so. The Blue Diamonds on the seven rings on his hands shone brilliantly.

The lenses on his Chameleon Sunglasses were a fawn color.

Before long the bottle of pills dropped out of his hand, and the bottle of scotch tipped over onto the floor, its contents seeping into the carpet.

Why am I here? The question arose as Shell’s mind passed into an increasingly euphoric state. Is it a good or bad thing that I’m here? Bad, if you consider that I’ve lost the battle that I’ve been fighting for the last few months. But also good— that having lost the battle, I’m still here now, safe and sound.

He’d managed to run away. He had left the horrors firmly behind him and was now in a safe place.

The slate would be wiped clean. The past, so disagreeable—all that would be washed away. There were no cracks in his shell—only the contents had been removed.

Shell hugged his Boston bag tight as he was filled with desire for his new life.

What good friends he had! That burly friend of his had proven himself indispensable in helping him to acquire another one of these. Helping him turn that crazy woman into another one of these. While Shell was strangling the woman in the bath, his burly friend had taken care of all the details. It was wonderful. That other girl might still be chasing after him, but now he would always be able to repel her, destroy her, subsume all thoughts of her.

Shell opened up his bag at one end and stuck a hand inside to feel its contents—newly minted bills. He flipped through a wad of notes, and as the bills brushed against his fingertips he muttered. You like that, don’t you, my little ones? You want some more, don’t you? Then he stopped suddenly and withdrew his hand in haste. The corners of the bills had given him a number of paper cuts on his fingertips, and blood was welling up.

Shell put his bleeding finger in his mouth and sucked away. The taste of his own blood spread to the corners of his mouth. The taste brought to mind vestiges of an old memory. A memory that should have been long since erased, but that clung tenaciously to the void of his inner mind nonetheless.

A giant shadow loomed over Shell as a young boy. Trace memories—all sorts of indecent things being done to him. But he’d always managed to submerge the memories, the feelings, everything, in the girl, whoever she was. He had repelled all, killed all, and turned everything that was dirty clean. He was proud of this. This was his life.

He giggled out loud. Uncontrollably, as if his lungs were going into convulsions. Huhh huhh huhh. He scrambled around for the bottle of scotch that lay on the floor. “See! That’s how I find what I’ve dropped. I never lose anything. Shell never drops the ball. Ever.”

Gleefully, he gulped down the last of the liquid. Then he collapsed face-up on the bed and fell asleep in his euphoric state.

In Shell’s dreams, the faces of all sorts of women appeared and disappeared.

Shell tried to remember each of their names, but the harder he tried the more elusive they became.

Eventually the girls’ faces swarmed together in a bizarre montage, and girls would appear with three eyes or with nipples growing out of their noses. Then the melee of body parts all converged into one face. Shell thought that he cried her name out, in his dream.

He felt an emotion welling up—love, the sort that makes you want to stick your chest out and hold your head up high. It was for the first woman he had ever truly loved, the one he met only after he’d finally put his mother to rest. Not so much a woman as a girl. But the girl herself had long since disappeared from Shell’s memory, leaving only a lingering scent of her in his dreams. A scent full of sorrow. He wanted to make everything clean. What was it that brought the two of them together, that caused their fates to be intertwined so? The fearful, fearsome past?

Or were they simply in love? The sad smell seemed to reject every possible explanation.

A new shadow floated across—the shadow of the girl, dying and wasting away into nothingness. Shell’s ire was turned toward the girl’s father. Shell spent many years tracking him down, and when he’d finally found him, he killed him. But the father’s mind had been completely addled by drugs by then, and he couldn’t even remember the things he had done to his own daughter.

His memory was gone, just as Shell’s was now. Shell had beat him to a pulp before finally snapping his neck.

As Shell did so, he remembered his own memory disappearing. He had already forgotten what he was doing even as he did it. I’ll make everything clean. I’m going to clean you up. All sorts of possibilities occurred to him at that moment. He thought up a scheme to launder money. He thought of turning the girl into a Blue Diamond. He thought of making the girl clean again.

Shell turned the desiccated remains of the girl into a Blue Diamond to wear alongside his mother, and his mind gave up the ghost and his memories faded away completely. His mind may have been in deep turmoil, but he knew how to use people.

By the time the diamond was ready, Shell’s mind was completely clear. He was relaxed again.

The Blue Diamonds that shone resplendent in the open air—they were Shell’s last hope.

In Shell’s dreams, the light shining off the diamonds suddenly changed.

The spirits of the girls who were to become diamonds. The ghosts of girls whose names he had long since forgotten. Their faces were closed and expressionless, but this only made them seem more alluring than ever. They stared down at their own laps with dark eyes, as if they were looking for a place to hide themselves. Shell’s task was an easy one. All he had to do was give them an appropriate container, a final resting place. He would lead the way for them, guide them.

Turn them into the most beautiful thing in the world. But it didn’t always go according to plan.

The girl who had been engulfed by flames came back to life. It was as if she didn’t want to become clean again.

In his dreams the girl was ablaze and walking toward Shell, step by step, until she finally grabbed hold of