After my mind, which had wandered off for a moment, came back, we were still inside the whale's belly.
The boat was moving forward with a powerful roar.
Quieter than I expected, and eerily calm.
After a few minutes like that, my dazed mind finally returned to normal.
...Maybe it was because I was peeking into the past for the first time in a while, but this felt more unfamiliar than I expected.
Or maybe my condition had just gone seriously downhill.
As I idly fiddled with the few pills in my pocket, something began clattering beneath the boat.
- Clatter!
"Whoa!"
...Yeah, I figured something would happen soon. It had been too peaceful until now.
"What is it...?"
"Sounds like something's scraping against us!"
"...This is bad. We should check it."
Dante seemed to start thinking after hearing Ishmael's opinion.
There was nothing to think about, really. Of course we should check. It wasn't like we were insane.
"Let's check it."
"Of course."
- BOOM!!!
The moment Dante decided to inspect beneath the boat, a violent impact burst out from the stern.
"Merfolk! They're trying to climb up from below..."
"If we can shake them off before one of them gets all the way up, we can minimize the losses."
The moment Faust said that, Otis and Ishmael sprang to their feet and rushed toward Dante.
"I'll go, Manager!"
"No, this is the kind of thing I should handle."
A faint tension crackled between Otis and Ishmael.
They were both capable enough prisoners, so Dante must have been torn. His gaze drifted back and forth between them.
For a moment, I think he looked at Meursault and me too, but let's ignore that. Yeah. I didn't see it.
"Ishmael. Please."
After thinking it over, Dante chose Ishmael, the one with experience in this sort of thing. She shot forward like an arrow and smashed the head of a merfolk that had just begun to climb into the boat.
Wow, that was brutal.
"I can't waste time on merfolk like this."
As Ishmael said that, a piece of something familiar fell with a wet splat behind her.
I stepped forward first and picked it up.
LCCB...
"It's an employee ID card from the before-team. Then maybe..."
The merfolk she'd just killed might have once had a face we could have recognized, if we'd wanted to.
My stomach turned. We shouldn't have checked after all.
I handed the ID card to Dante and went back to my seat.
The mood on the boat seemed to grow a little heavier.
After that, merfolk attacked us a few more times. Of course, our dependable allies and the prisoners with real strength shook them off before they could even fully climb aboard.
I just spent my time aimlessly on the rocking boat.
...Do I look that bad? No one was bothering me, which was unusual in itself.
Even Dante wasn't saying anything, so maybe things were more serious than I thought.
Trying to recover even a little, I closed my eyes and leaned back for a moment, only for the boat to start lurching more violently than before.
When I opened my eyes, we had entered a narrow waterway at some point.
Looking at the merfolk clinging to the walls... this was no time to be closing my eyes.
As I shook my head and tried to steady myself, Otis's voice came from beside me.
"...Manager."
Otis was on guard, watching the merfolk on the wall and the ones swarming beneath the surface that I had almost missed.
"Rough. Steering. Hard. At same time."
She meant it was hard to drive the boat and keep it on course at the same time. Someone would have to guide the direction first.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, Dante looked at me. What. What is it.
"Saramago."
"Yes... I'll do it. I will..."
I hauled my heavy body to my feet and wiped my face once with both hands.
I'd better take a pill. In this state, I wouldn't be good for much.
After taking a painkiller from my pocket, the medicine kicked in quickly and cleared my head. This is why expensive stuff is nice.
"Left! Then two o'clock!"
I was so good at this kind of thing that I couldn't even ignore Dante's gaze.
"...These things just keep coming, don't they."
But as Gregor said, the end of the waterway still wasn't in sight.
This was getting rough.
"Still. Far. From exit."
I'd have to switch people if I wanted to preserve my condition.
As I casually glanced at Dante with that thought in mind, the assigned prisoner changed almost immediately. This time it was Otis.
"Straight ahead here! ...Now! Take a right!"
Haa... Giving instructions while accounting for every variable really is exhausting. I wanted to do it properly if I could.
For some reason, there seemed to be a little more trust in Queequeg's eyes when she looked at me. Like, "I underestimated you."
...Maybe I should have just half-assed it. Whatever. Let's rest. We'll probably run into an Abnormality soon anyway.
After dozing for a few minutes with Otis's instructions as background noise, Queequeg again called out our current position.
"Almost there. Soon. Next space."
So this was the finish line. Otis seemed to be getting tired too.
It's no easy thing to give precise, gapless commands in real time like that.
For that reason, the person giving directions changed again, and in the end Ishmael stepped forward.
"Open space... Ah! A waterfall dropping below! Hug the surface!"
- BOOM!!GRRRR...!
"Hah... Ah! More rocks ahead! Left, keep left... and then right!"
As expected from someone with experience, her commands were fast and precise.
The final stretch, which had seemed like the hardest part, passed cleanly without any major crisis, and after that only a leisurely route remained.
"...It's been a while since we did this."
"Often. Starbuck, hold key. You and me, shout..."
"Yeah..."
All over the boat, after we'd made it through the rough route, merfolk blood and oil had soaked deep into the hull.
Queequeg looked at it for a moment, then at us, and said, "Can use. These. Put in barrel."
So she meant to collect it. Annoying, but we had to do it...
The prisoners started pouring the oil into a barrel in one corner of the boat.
By the time we'd gathered up all the oil sloshing around like liquid, we'd probably be at our destination.
Haa... I should gather some too.
After we reached a certain point, we stopped traveling by boat and continued on foot.
According to Queequeg, our current location was the right atrium.
So from here, we just had to find the artery, cut it, and move on to the whale's true heart.
However, there were quite a few obstacles in the way.
For example, that clam-shaped Abnormality Queequeg was pointing at.
"That thing. It's not merfolk or whale. A monster from somewhere else in the Outskirts?"
"It's called an Abnormality. It used to be contained in a Lobotomy Corporation branch, but it was swallowed by this whale."
"Different, but I've seen it before. No, not it. Abnormalities."
"Yes. In the Outskirts, it wouldn't be strange to encounter anything, so you may well have seen beings similar to Abnormalities."
"Abnormality. How were they born?"
"They were once human. They were artificially produced for a new form of energy generation."
I feel like I just heard a piece of old L Corp confidential information with total confidence.
It's a fallen Wing, so it doesn't matter, but still. Wasn't there somewhere that used old L Corp Singularity for something? That insane energy efficiency would tempt anyone.
Hmm... At the very least, it must not have succeeded. Otherwise I'd have heard about it long ago.
After hearing Faust's answer, Queequeg stared at them with an expression that suggested she could feel something.
"Seems like there is. What I want."
"Are you asking whether Abnormalities have specific desires?"
"Do they know? Themselves. What they want. What they wish for."
"Well, they do seem like creatures with nothing left but that."
As Gregor said, Abnormalities did seem like creatures that chased desire with almost no intelligence at all.
Every specimen we'd encountered so far had been like that, and unless there was something unusual, the others would probably be the same.
Queequeg gazed at them with a distant look, then spoke with a strange expression.
"Envious. To know. What you want. Properly..."
She was scratching at her own arm obsessively.
She scratched so hard that white, sticky mucus and blood ran together down her arm.
"...! Queequeg, stop. Your body's getting torn up... You never broke that habit?"
"...Shedding. Couldn't. Become. Chrysalis."
A habit, huh. That sounded like there was a story there.
I'd like to hear more, honestly, but for now I'd say we should deal with that clam first, the one shaking itself around and staring at us.
A harsh, stinging smell drifted over from far away.
No, not a smell. This was... poison?
"It's poison! Everyone, be careful!"
This thing... doesn't look like it's going to let us through easily.
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