Moving silently, Danan climbed the seemingly endless stairs, his breath heavy with exhaustion as he reached the level marked B1.

  Even for a young man who prided himself on above-average stamina, ascending an almost infinite staircase was both mentally and physically grueling. The silence, like a ringing in his ears, and the sound of metal-eating centipedes crawling within the walls filled the emergency stairwell with a mix of danger and tension. At the landing, Danan gripped the doorknob of an electronically locked door, pulling with all his strength despite knowing it was futile.

  The harsh sound of metal and the immovable door… Of course, the doors and bulkheads of the ruins remained sealed by electronic locks unless someone disengaged them. Extending the hack cable from his mechanical arm, Danan pried open the metal panel hiding the control interface, brushed off the dust, and plugged the cable into the socket.

  “Danan.”

  “…What?”

  “You always do things like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Killing people.”

  Eve, who had climbed the stairs at the same pace as Danan without so much as a hint of breathlessness, flicked the blood from her silver wings and fixed her prismatic eyes on the young man.

  “It’s only natural. If I don’t kill, I’d be the one killed. Eve, you’ve killed too, haven’t you? People.”

  “Sure. But I think talking could’ve solved things. Simply.”

  “Rather than relying on something as uncertain as that, if someone points hostility and a gun at you, you kill them. If you let an enemy go and face them again, they’ll think, ‘This guy’s soft.’”

  “Even so—”

  “There’s no ‘even so’ or ‘what if.’ Listen. Showing half-hearted kindness like you do, acting soft—down in the lower city, that’s just begging to be preyed on, like saying, ‘Kill me, rob me.’ Trusting others is how you get screwed.”

  Running the hack program and completing the unlock protocol, Danan cracked the door open slightly, wedging the muzzle of his assault rifle in the gap.

  “The environment, the value of life—it’s all different up here and down there. Eve, whether you came from the mid-city or the upper city, don’t bring that upper-city sensibility down here. Got it?”

  This wasn’t a joke or a threat—just plain fact. In the lower city, where the brutal law of survival of the fittest reigned, sympathy or kindness was seen as weakness, devoured by the desperate ghosts of the vulnerable. Those who laid cunning, fragile traps to prey on others from a position of weakness fed on human compassion, begging for mercy.

  “…You—”

  “…What?”

  “Have you ever been betrayed? Deceived, set up?”

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  “I killed anyone before they could, if the conditions and rewards didn’t match up.”

  “You haven’t always been alone, have you? Foster parents, birth parents?”

  “Don’t know my birth parents’ faces. My foster parent, some old man, went out for work and ended up dead in an alley. Satisfied?”

  There was nothing more to say. If the girl wouldn’t share information about the ruins or her own background, Danan wouldn’t divulge more than necessary either.

  Taking a step back, Danan and Eve—bound by a mutual agreement based on clear terms—fell silent again.

  Trust, and you’ll be betrayed. Spare, and you’ll be killed. Hesitate, and you’ll be outmaneuvered. Others were both enemies and pawns to be used. Human relationships in the lower city were built on explicit mutual interests, maturing and festering into dependency with a rotting stench. To survive in the lower city, one had to chain their emotions and view others through eyes warped by suspicion.

  Stepping into the vast expanse of the data archive, Danan swiftly scanned left and right, leveling his rifle straight ahead. The grand space had been reduced to a chaotic ruin, shattered beyond recognition, the electronic waves that once flowed beneath reinforced glass now gone.

  “…What a mess. No need to destroy it this badly,” Eve remarked.

  “…The work of that man and kid?” Danan asked.

  “Only they could’ve done this. But there’s no data here they’d need to erase, not in an upper-city archive like this. It’s baffling.”

  “…You.”

  “What, Danan?”

  “What do you know, and what’s your connection to them? Answer me, Eve.”

  The muzzle of his assault rifle swung toward Eve, his eyes filled with suspicion and killing intent as he slowly backed away.

  “Does it matter to you? I don’t think it does.”

  “…If I stick with you, I’ll end up fighting them again, won’t I?”

  “That’s possible. Because I have to kill them.”

  “Kill? Which one?”

  “Both.”

  “Both?”

  “Yeah. Talking might be the easiest way to settle things, but that girl… Canaan’s already crossed a line. If she’s an obstacle to my father’s goals, to everyone’s goals, then even if she’s my sister, I have to kill her. Right, Danan?”

  With a self-mocking smile, as if it were only natural, Eve declared her intent to kill her own kin, leaning against a collapsed pillar. “Guess that makes me no different from you.”

  “I have something I have to do, a mission I’d trade my life for. I don’t expect you to understand or share it. Danan, just as you want to survive, achieving my goal is what gives my life meaning.”

  Clad in resolute determination, her eyes shining with beautiful conviction, the girl glanced around and pointed to a single pillar that had escaped destruction.

  “I won’t ask why you came here. But the data and information left in this place are worthless, unrelated to the ruins. If that’s fine with you, connect your mechanical arm to that last pillar. This place… it’s got nothing to do with me anymore.”

  Her face, claiming detachment, was filled with sorrow, as if regretting an unbearable past, clinging to faint hope despite wanting to abandon everything.

  “…”

  Keeping his rifle trained on her, Danan approached the pillar, pried off the iron cover, and plugged his hack cable into the control panel.

  “…A long time ago,” he began.

  “…What?”

  “The old man who raised me… some nameless geezer once said—”

  Extracting the data and information stored in the pillar, Danan copied it to his mechanical arm’s storage.

  “‘Don’t trust people easily. Don’t be fooled by a woman’s tears. But… be the ally of someone crying without shedding a tear.’ Sorry if that hit a nerve, but the old man’s teachings were usually right.”

  “You say the weirdest things,” Eve replied.

  “Get that sometimes.”

  “From who?”

  “My clients.”

  “Even someone like you can build normal relationships? That’s surprising.”

  “Is it?”

  For some reason, Danan couldn’t shake the feeling that Eve was crying—silently, without wailing, as if weeping quietly. It was just how she appeared to him, and he couldn’t help it.

  He didn’t know what to say or how to approach her. Even if he tried to smile, how would he look in her eyes? Did he even need to show compassion for someone else?

  “…What?”

  “You’re staring at my face.”

  “Nothing. Let’s go.”

  Value Standards

  Noticing Danan’s gaze, Eve gave a faint smile, as if hiding tears, and followed the young man as he moved forward.