Mardock Scramble

duralumin surface, and as he peeled his hands off it a string of liquid lingered behind.

He charged the shutter again.

The gunfire had already stopped, but he was no longer interested in that.

Then, without warning, the shutters opened, retracting into the ceiling.

Mincemeat became vaguely aware of a small, shadowy figure.

Gathering the last of his strength he screamed and charged at the silhouette.

He became aware that the figure had multicolored hair dangling down over a pair of sunglasses.

By the time Mincemeat realized that he knew the face under the hair, the figure’s butter knife was already embedded deep in his heart.

?

Rare was overcome with shock, but he managed to wriggle himself out from under Mincemeat’s dead body, which had collapsed on top of him.

He looked at his own knife, then screamed into the transmission device in the piercing voice of a little girl.

–What’s going on? I thought you’d managed to trap the PI in there? Why is it little Minty? Do you want me to come over there and kick the shit out of you? What were you thinking, Flesh, you stupid fuckwit!

–Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.

–What?

–That is the PI, right there.

Rare’s pale face darkened as the blood rose to his head.

–You fucking hacker! I’ll tie you down and have you gang-raped by pigs, you piece of shit!

Rare ranted on in this vein for a short while before bursting into tears of anguish and pulling the Hutchinson Knife from Mincemeat’s chest.

“Oh, you poor, poor thing, little Minty, all because that fuckwit Flesh didn’t notice that we’d been hacked…you poor, poor little darling.”

Suddenly there was a click in his ear, and a transmission began.

–Come in, Rare.

–Is that Well? The real one? Not the piece-of-shit hacker?

–Yeah, it’s me. Flesh is doing all he can to restore our secure line. What’s the situation over there?

–Little Minty…

–They got him?

Rare howled an unearthly wail as an answer.

–…I see. According to Medi, the target has run down to the basement along with the PI. They’re protected by thick shutters—Flesh is trying to find a way to open them. You head downstairs and meet us.

–Okay, Boss. Are we going to sell little Minty’s body off for parts too?

–No, we’re a band of brothers. We don’t sell our family members off. Those of us who want to use Mincemeat’s parts have the right of first refusal. Right?

–Of course. That’s right, Boss.

Rare gripped his knife tightly and meandered down the corridor.

–I’ll see you downstairs in the basement, Boss. Could you beam me through the floor plans, please?

Rare’s eyes glinted red. Tears fell, blood-red under the reflection of the colored light.

He followed the route toward the basement, wobbling from side to side, all the strength drained from his arms.

–Head into the room to your left, Rare. There’s a shortcut.

Rare did as Welldone said, opening the door on the left-hand side. He descended the stairs and entered the room.

–Lock the door behind you.

Rare was about to do so, then came to with a jolt.

“What did you say?”

Rare looked around, grinding his teeth.

A large number of lockers lined the wall. Evidently some sort of storage room for corpses—and no sign of anything that could resemble a shortcut.

Gripping the hilt of his knife even tighter, Rare glared at his new surroundings.

The electronic lock on the door behind him shut automatically.

Rare snapped back to look at what had happened, and he saw a ridiculously long release code flash up on the display of the electronic lock.

He tried the numbers several times, but there was no trace of a response. He kicked the door with a high- pitched whine.

“How dare you, you piece of shit! Where the hell am I? Flesh! Flesh!” He carried on kicking at the door, apparently not even noticing that he was now yelling out loud.

–You’re in the Archaeozoic Era.

Well’s voice—no, a voice identical to Well’s—from deep inside his own ear.

–And now you’re in the Proterozoic Era. And now Paleozoic, Cambrian, Mesozoan, and finally the Diluvial Epoch.

Rare spun around in surprise.

–You’re in a sea of fossils.

Countless numbers of spirals flashed before his eyes.

Ancient shells that had become one with stone were now appearing here and there and everywhere—all around the mortuary, buried in the lockers—giving the distinct impression that they were in some sort of prehistoric deep sea graveyard.

Rare jumped into action, bringing the knife in his right hand down on the nearest wall.

The metal melted where the blade touched it, and part of the locker slid to the floor with a thud.

The spiral shells kept on appearing and disappearing as before. Proof that there was a projector somewhere, sending the images around the room.

“You and your fancy tricks! Come on out, you pig! I’m going to rip you to shreds and fuck the pieces!” Screaming, Rare raised his right hand, now balled into a fist.

The unusually thick bracelet that he wore on his left wrist started jangling. Without warning it fired strands of metal in every direction.

A crackling noise, and blue-white sparks followed.

Thin strands wound back into the bracelet, and the pieces of metal clinked and subsided.

In a few moments the lockers in Rare’s vicinity had been reduced to pieces, collapsing into heaps on the floor.

“Wire whips.” A voice from the shadows of the lockers. “Wires that emit charged particles. What a brutal weapon.”

Rare turned toward the voice and without any hesitation pointed the bracelet in its exact direction and fired his weapon again.

A blue-white flash tore through the room, and with the sound of a dozen screaming whips, the fossils were ripped to shreds over and over.

For a second he saw a white figure caught in the wires, but it disappeared back into the darkness.

A hit, a palpable hit…

But Rare’s facial expression tensed. The bracelet’s rewinding function failed.

The display on the bracelet was going haywire, flashing randomly, and it wouldn’t respond to Rare’s