[95]
Yuri and Chris arrived at Northern Light’s safe house in the Spring Continent.
Before they could even knock, the door opened by itself.
Chris saw the vine attached to the handle on the other side and understood the situation.
‘It seems Anong was watching us.’
He went down to the basement with Yuri.
In the basement were a middle-aged man tied up and Anong.
Anong looked up and spoke.
“You’re here.”
“It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other face to face.”
She nodded perfunctorily and looked past the two men.
“Where’s the mental Esper?”
“Just a moment.”
Yuri stepped back and created an empty space. He operated a terminal and Peter’s face appeared.
Though he looked a bit more haggard than usual, his expression wasn’t bad.
[Should I open the door now?]
“Yes.”
With those words, the space in front of Yuri began to move.
A black line extended to form a rectangle, the inside of which was completely dark. And from within, a person abruptly stepped out.
It was Peter.
Behind him followed a woman with a pale, lifeless impression.
“This is Peter Garrett from Barrel Society. And here…”
Yuri subtly passed the introduction to Fortuna.
“…I am Fortuna of Northern Light.”
A hint of disappointment crossed Anong’s face.
‘That damned Yuri Sobolev.’
She had no intention of forcibly extracting the mental Esper anyway, but he made the Esper declare her allegiance herself.
As if to show that she wasn’t being forcibly detained but was following him voluntarily.
This was natural behavior for him, but from Anong’s perspective—who lacked mental Espers and had to reach out externally—it was quite bitter in many ways.
“So. Who is the person I need to examine?”
“Ah, here.”
Anong, who had been deliberately blocking Herbert Raine because of Peter’s ability, stepped aside.
Anong’s reflexive movement was impressive.
In fact, before becoming the interim Alliance leader, she had been in charge of security for the entire building. Though she preferred to avoid fights, she wasn’t just a desk-bound administrator.
“His name?”
“Herbert Raine.”
Anong spoke in a tense, rigid tone.
“Is he unconscious? Or did you use drugs?”
“Both, I suppose.”
It seemed they had knocked him out and then used drugs to keep him from waking up.
Anong silently rolled her eyes.
Though Fortuna hadn’t made much of an expression, it felt like Anong’s inner thoughts—”This is why Espers…”—were somehow readable.
Anong felt indignant.
‘She’s an Esper herself.’
She had momentarily forgotten that mental Espers were so rare that many had such personalities.
“Let me wake him.”
“No, I’ll do it.”
Fortuna stepped forward resolutely.
“Herbert.”
Unlike her lackluster first impression, it was quite a resonant call.
“Herbert Raine.”
There was a strange resonance in her voice. As if it were shaking the listener’s mind.
Anong looked at Fortuna with newfound amazement.
But the sleeping man remained still.
Anong signaled Chris with her eyes, suggesting failure. He shook his head slightly.
“Huh!”
The fallen man raised his body.
His cloudy eyes showed no particular intelligence.
“Can you hear me?”
The man slowly nodded at Fortuna’s question.
“Your name?”
“Herbert… Raine…”
“Where do you live?”
“Babel… City. Outskirts…”
Fortuna asked a few questions for verification.
Anong had Herbert Raine’s profile open and checked each answer, nodding to indicate it was correct.
“I have something I want to ask.”
Fortuna, judging she had penetrated deep enough into his consciousness, opened her mouth to ask.
“About Neulbom Orphanage.”
At those words, Herbert’s cloudy eyes rolled back. His entire body began to tremble.
“What!”
It was clearly not a normal reaction.
Fortuna gritted her teeth.
“There’s a… barrier. I’ll try to break through.”
The mental restriction they had mentioned was indeed the work of a mental Esper.
Fortuna’s eyes blazed.
If it was another mental ability, she absolutely had to win. Being useful was Fortuna’s long-standing compulsion.
If she hadn’t been one of the few functional mental Espers, could she have even attempted revenge?
Fortuna dug into the dense network and tore it apart mercilessly.
Then she split her mind in two and approached from the opposite side where defenses were relatively loose.
While she penetrated very subtly and slowly, her mind and body in reality entered a state of deep concentration, not even moving slightly.
Due to her overall drained appearance, Fortuna looked bizarrely like a statue.
“…Got… it.”
Chris felt Yuri releasing the guiding.
Though it was non-contact guiding, Fortuna’s complexion visibly improved. Like vegetation meeting spring rain.
“Ah.”
Herbert Raine’s head twisted bizarrely before fixing forward.
“Connecting to terminal.”
Unlike his initial slurred speech, his pronunciation was now clearer.
With a mechanical tone.
Everyone in the room, including Fortuna, was surprised.
“Unidentified user.”
“What… what is this…”
Anong stuttered.
“What did they implant in this person’s head?”
She had snatched Herbert Raine because he was connected to Rosenhauser.
But seeing a person output speech like a machine entering information made her feel sick.
“Unidentified user.”
Even in that brief moment, Herbert Raine was repeating the same words like a broken doll.
And then.
“…Unidentified user.”
Everyone’s heads turned sharply to Fortuna as a woman’s voice suddenly emerged.
The mental Esper who had been “connected” to Herbert Raine had dazed, vacant eyes.
“Did it transfer? But how?”
Anong muttered.
But before they could grasp the situation, Herbert Raine began to strangle himself.
“What!”
A startled Anong wrapped vines around his wrists, securing them to the wall.
Simultaneously, Chris tore a piece of cloth and stuffed it into Fortuna’s mouth.
At a glance, Herbert Raine seemed to be attempting suicide.
But it was clearly murder.
The spell planted in his head had ordered Herbert to die.
‘And Fortuna almost died too.’
Yuri clenched his fist.
“It seems they prepared for a situation where a mental Esper might probe the ‘terminal’s’ mind.”
Chris muttered. It had been quite a while since he’d experienced such a chill down his spine.
If Herbert Raine had died, their lead would have been cut off.
Not only that, but the brainwashing lurking inside him would have affected Fortuna too.
“…Is a mental Esper higher than Fortuna involved?”
Yuri muttered.
“And calling him a ‘terminal’… his bad taste remains the same.”
He strode forward.
“Yuri!”
Chris shouted with a pale face.
But Yuri paid no heed as he grabbed the man’s hair and lifted his face.
“Answer me. The rose…”
“…is protected by thorns.”
The voice became docile, as if by magic.
“What’s this now?”
Anong muttered in an astounded tone.
“It’s a keyword Rosenhauser often used. The fact that he implanted it here confirms that Herbert Raine is also that man’s creation.”
Yuri examined the man’s face from various angles before letting go, as if he found it repulsive.
“Kuhk. Hack…”
Fortuna, who had detached her mind to access the terminal and nearly suffered disaster, awoke.
Peter patted her back through her continuous coughing, and Anong handed her a bottle of water.
“…I almost got caught. Thank you, Boss.”
“No need to apologize. Without you, we couldn’t have pressed the keyword trigger in the first place.”
Fortuna bowed her head.
“If you have questions, now seems like a good time to ask.”
Yuri turned to Anong, then absentmindedly felt his chest before pausing.
This was the Spring Continent. The clothes were thinner, not his usual coat. He hadn’t brought his favorite cigar case either.
At that moment, Chris took something from his pocket and handed it over.
“Hmph.”
It was the cigar Yuri enjoyed smoking.
Chris also took out a lighter and made a familiar gesture. Yuri looked at his dog with meaningful purple eyes, then lowered his head with the cigar to his lips.
Until he took a slight breath, the shadow of his neatly settled eyelashes danced in the flickering flame.
Despite having seen this many times, Chris unconsciously forgot to breathe.
Looking back now, Chris had liked this moment for quite a long time.
Yuri’s gaze as he raised his head left a meaningful afterglow.
‘I wonder when he managed to sneak this out.’
Chris always had a corner of him that Yuri couldn’t predict.
“…Then, I won’t hold back.”
Feeling as if she’d glimpsed an intimate moment between lovers, Anong sharply turned her head to look at Herbert Raine.
It felt somehow strange to describe that as a “clear” gaze.
Just as no one thinks they’re facing a terminal screen directly just because the screen quality is clear. What lay beyond felt empty.
“Who was the child Rosenhauser tried to adopt?”
“Jack…”
The man opened his mouth.
“Yohan, Grizzly, Kemal, Diane, Alex, Shuran, Fernando…”
“…It wasn’t just one person?”
Anong muttered with a skeptical face. The ‘terminal’ responded immediately.
“There were sixteen final candidates.”
Candidates.
That was almost like…
“Did they bring children and make them compete?”
“Talented individuals in various fields were selected and put on the adoption candidate list in order of their excellent performance.”
“How many passed?”
“Zero.”
It was a mechanical answer, without a hint of hesitation.
“You selected sixteen people, and in the end, none of them remained?”
Anong asked again with a dumbfounded face.
She knew Rosenhauser was a perfectionist to the point of being obsessive.
But to carefully select and nurture geniuses only to reject them all—what extreme inefficiency was that?
And what happened to those children?
“The question is wrong.”
Anong turned her head.
She could see cigar smoke flowing from between Yuri’s lips.
“You should ask who remained ‘until the very end.'”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
