Mardock Scramble

cracks running across the concrete walls. A number of large windows lined one of the walls, and there was a cross marked out in tape.

Shell suddenly realized that he was standing on something soft. He looked down and noticed that various objects were scattered across the concrete floor. He hoisted one of them up with the tip of his gun.

It was a dull piece of cloth. He looked closer and realized that it was a skirt.

Farther along was a blouse. Even farther along—and his eyes came across a sight that made him jump.

A white coat, fluttering in the darkness.

He thrust his gun out quickly, and the skirt on its end fell to the floor.

At the end of his muzzle was a girl.

A girl encased from top to toe in white. She was looking his way.

“Rune-Balot…”

Shell called out the name of the girl that should have died in his dreams.

?

Shell’s Chameleon Sunglasses were in the middle of transforming from blue to red.

“Why, here… Why are you in a place such as this?” Shell’s inflamed red eyes stared at her in shock from behind the sunglasses. He kept his gun trained on her.

Without a word, Balot raised her hand for Shell to see.

In her hand was a cell phone. She tossed it over to him.

The phone bounced off his bag, and he caught it reflexively. Its monitor showed that a second had already passed since a call had been initiated. It was on. Shell frowned, puzzled, and put the phone to his ear.

–This is PI Oeufcoque here. Hand all your weapons over to the girl in front of you. Do so and you’ll be recognized as a cooperating witness for our second case, and the Life Preservation Program will take effect in order to protect you.

“Where are you? Why won’t you show yourself?”

–I’m near enough. Don’t trouble yourself. Or would you rather take your chances with your old Trustee, now that your contract has been well and truly broken? He’s under a new contract with OctoberCorp now, and I imagine he will take your life the moment he gets the opportunity.

“You say you’re ‘near enough’? Well, can you see what I’m doing now, then?” Shell’s glinting eyes were on Balot. A crooked smile crossed his lips, and he stretched out his gun hand so that the muzzle was pointing straight at Balot’s face.

Balot stared at Shell and his gun. She seemed, if anything, a little disappointed.

–What are you hoping to achieve by doing that? Do you really want to die? This is your last chance to save yourself, you know.

“That’s right! This is my last chance! A woman is a gambler’s jinx!” Shell was shouting, like a drowning man calling for help. “Oeufcoque. I remember that name. Boiled called you a talkative mouse. Who gives a shit anymore why you don’t want to show yourself? Anyone who’s so dumb as to leave a girl unprotected like this needs to be taught a lesson on how to negotiate.”

–You can try negotiating if you like, but you won’t get what you want, not that way. We have so much more firepower than you.

Shell’s face warped into another sneer. He looked like he’d been hit in the face with a sledgehammer.

“Stop fucking with me! Come on out and face me like a man! Fuck me about any longer and I’ll shoot the little bitch!”

–Oeufcoque. He’s threatening me. My life is in danger.

The cell phone suddenly spoke in a girl’s voice. A cold, indifferent voice.

Balot’s left hand rose up toward Shell. Her white glove squelched and became something else. It took only a moment, and then, as if by magic, Balot was holding a gun in her hand.

Shell froze in shock. The trigger of Balot’s gun clicked into place of its own accord. That was all it took. A shot rang out. From Shell—he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

Balot didn’t flinch. She just pulled the trigger quietly.

There was an explosion of sparks. Shell had no idea what was happening. The bullets met in a flash of steel fragments, acrid smoke filling the surrounding space.

Balot fired again. And again. Shell managed to fire another shot back, not that it had much effect. Balot allowed it to hit her body at the top of her shoulder, where it disintegrated into another mass of sparks. It was as if she were deliberately showing him how impenetrable her defense—her shell—was.

In the meantime, Balot fired coolly and repeatedly at Shell.

Shell staggered backward in a grotesque dance. His Boston bag was pierced by the bullets, but the thick wads of notes shielded him, saving his life. His money was protecting him to the end, keeping him out of harm’s way quite literally.

Balot fired again and again, always aiming precisely for where the bundles were the thickest.

Shell was like a sandbag now and took the volley of bullets, not even allowed to fall down.

Balot’s supply of bullets was virtually inexhaustible. Shell’s supply of banknotes was not.

Eventually, Balot brought her volley to a close. Shell collapsed backwards, and millions of tiny fragments of what used to be his bag were scattered around the area, mixed with the confetti that moments before had been Shell’s money.

Balot closed in slowly on Shell, now a pathetic figure on the floor taking sniveling breaths.

Suddenly Shell raised his head, gritted his teeth, and thrust his gun out again. His hands and face were covered with scraps of banknotes, pasted to him with his own sweat.

His trembling hand pulled the trigger, but Balot could see his movement as if it were in slow motion.

She shot the bullet down in front of her as easily as if it had been a balloon.

The bullets met, and the impact caused red and yellow sparks to fly.

Before the sparks had even finished dying down, Balot had put three bullets into Shell’s hand with lethal accuracy: through the grip and into his index, middle, and ring fingers respectively.

The rest of the bullets in Shell’s magazine exploded, bathing the room in their incandescent white light. His fingers were torn off, and the Blue Diamonds glistened like tears as they rolled to the floor, still attached to their fingers.

Shell collapsed.

His Chameleon Sunglasses were a deep scarlet as they smashed against the floor, and their fragments scattered like blood. His quivering right hand no longer had a single finger attached to it. His days as a sharp—a professional gambler—were over. The right side of his face was shredded by steel shrapnel from the explosion.

Balot stared at Shell and the state he was in.

Shell could barely breathe. The right side of his face was drenched in black and reflecting light. Perhaps he was crying.

Balot knelt down next to him and reached out with her left hand, the one that held the gun.

Shell tried weakly to wriggle away from her. As he did so, the gun in Balot’s hand squelched and disappeared. Something else appeared in its place.

Shell’s eyes focused on it with trepidation.

It was the thing that Balot had received from the Doctor at the Broilerhouse. Or rather, things. Four of them. The four storage devices used in Shell’s Clapping, his memory extraction operations. The chips. Shell’s eyes grew wider and wider.

–Here you are. I want you to have these back.

Shell’s eyes moved slowly from the chips up to Balot’s face. Balot touched Shell’s temple with her right hand. She located the terminal. The fiberoptic circuit that connected straight to Shell’s brain.

Balot snarced.

Shell’s body bent backward and went rigid. His eyes opened so wide that it seemed as if his eyeballs might pop out of his skull, but instead they started flickering rapidly.