Mardock Scramble

Out of breath, she stood up, leaned her shoulders against the wall, and saw the figure of Boiled in the distance.

Boiled was stepping down from the ceiling and walking down a pillar. As if he were still walking on the ground. Then, right leg still on the pillar, he extended his other leg to the floor of the garage. Then he alighted onto the ground with both legs and stared at Balot in silence.

Fear drove Balot onward. She fired the gun in her hands over and over with reckless abandon.

Boiled didn’t budge.

None of the bullets completed their course; they just flew off into the ground or the walls.

And then the gun stopped firing completely.

It was as if something were entwined around the trigger.

A creaking sound echoed inside the gun—inside Oeufcoque.

The trigger stopped moving at all, and Oeufcoque’s groans could be heard from the gun in her hands.

“It seems the estrangement is now complete.” Boiled’s cold voice froze Balot to the spot. “A self-defense mechanism against those who abuse him as a tool. Oeufcoque has rejected you.”

His words struck Balot like lightning.

The words were more painful to hear than any of the filthy insults she’d had hurled at her.

This was even more terrible, even more humiliating, and—worst of all—even further beyond the possibility of redemption.

Boiled raised his gun.

A voice came at her from beyond the darkness of the muzzle, from beyond the machinelike intent to kill—a voice that said This is all your fault.

Bad girl.

You’re a bad girl.

Balot was overcome with despair and the fear of being sent back to that awful place.

You were trying too hard to climb the stairway to heaven, the Mardock, that you slipped and lost your footing.

This was her despair.

–I don’t want to die.

She was crying.

She didn’t want to die, not with her heart feeling like this.

Boiled’s fingers moved mechanically, just about to pull back the trigger, when:

“You’re wrong, Boiled…” Oeufcoque spoke.

Boiled’s expression hardened.

At that very same moment, there was a series of clicks from inside Oeufcoque—inside the gun.

The sound of jammed cogs falling into place.

Boiled’s eyes opened wide, and he pulled his trigger.

But an instant before the roaring noise emerged, Balot had reflexively—and correctly— snarced Oeufcoque.

The bullet that sped from Balot’s gun intercepted Boiled’s bullet perfectly, causing it to ricochet into the ceiling. All the walls reverberated from the impact, and concrete fragments rained down.

Balot aimed at Boiled, ready to fire back, but—“Stop it. It’s useless, Balot.”

The gun fired of its own accord, unloading in a different direction, not giving Balot any say in the matter. All the bullets passed by Boiled harmlessly.

And that was exactly what the gun was aiming for.

The bullets pierced the gas tank of the car that had just smashed into the wall behind Boiled.

A moment later the gas tank swelled up—and exploded.

A blast of flame and metal shrapnel swallowed him.

Or so it seemed, but a bubble of clean air had emerged from inside the smoke.

Boiled emerged from it, apparently unscathed, standing still amid the melee of the firestorm, waiting silently.

Before long he noticed that no one was by the wall anymore.

While his attention was diverted by the blast, Balot had disappeared.

Boiled looked toward the elevators.

Seeing the display lights, he realized that one of the two elevators was heading upward.

“Why? Why do you allow your user to abuse you…” Boiled spoke in a low voice, directed at the flashing light.

“Oeufcoque.”

As the elevator light stopped at the roof, Boiled headed straight for the emergency staircase.

His eyes glinted with an uncanny, otherworldly fury.

05

–I’m sorry, Oeufcoque, I’m sorry. Please don’t go anywhere. Stay in my hands.

Oeufcoque’s yelps of pain echoed around the cramped elevator box.

However much Oeufcoque might have been suffering previously, the pain was now even worse.

After saving Balot and showing her an escape route—this elevator—Oeufcoque had been overcome by a new wave of convulsions. His limbs were quivering worse than ever, and he was in a state of paroxysm, just as when he had tried to escape from Balot earlier.

He threw up again.

–I’m sorry, Oeufcoque, I’m so sorry.

Inside the lift Balot was folded into a fetal position.

She held Oeufcoque up as if he were broken, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

–Don’t go anywhere, Oeufcoque. Don’t leave me behind. I’m begging you. Please.

Now, finally, Balot understood Oeufcoque’s feelings.

The dreadful thing that had happened.

She had promised to stop when he said no—and she had broken this promise in the worst way imaginable.

She never thought that she’d be capable of such a thing. Why me?

Or so she wanted to think.

She was the one who had always been betrayed.

She was the one who had always had to wonder why and worry about what exactly it was that she’d done wrong, turning it over in her mind in minute detail.

She had never imagined that the shoe could be on the other foot.

That she could be the one to break a promise, to make the other person suffer.

The very idea that she could hurt someone who trusted her—it had never even occurred to her.

“It’s a type of self-defense mechanism, a bit like hyperacute rejection of transplanted organs. An automated response to when my user becomes my abuser…” Oeufcoque spoke between breaths as he lay prostrate. “It’s due to my fear of being disposed of…but don’t worry…I’ll get over it soon.”

The elevator suddenly stopped.

The doors creaked open and revealed a vast expanse of darkness.

From within the small box bathed in orange light, they could see the windswept concrete rooftop and the night vista of the city sprawling out below them in the distance.

Balot stared out at the view in silence, knees still to the ground.

She had no idea what she should do.

She had no idea what the right thing to do was.

She shouted in an empty whistle of a voice.

It sounded like a draft in a wind tunnel.