Chapter 4: Revenge

Paper Hero woke to the commotion. He checked his watch. Evening again.

When he fell asleep at his desk, people generally left him alone, unless something like a parcel bomb had been mailed to the station.

“All right, everyone squat down! Behave yourselves! Hey! You! Get the one foaming at the mouth to a hospital! Are you new here? Don't bring someone who's overdosed in here in cuffs! What if he dies in the corridor?” Deacon's shouting came from outside the door.

Two more gangs of young thugs had been hauled in after an armed brawl. Even handcuffed, the hoodlums with bloodied heads wouldn't settle down, trading insults in the corridor. Local crime was a constant headache for the officers. Almost every night, from evening until dawn, the station bustled.

Paper Hero sighed. There was no getting back to sleep now, so he shook his head, unlocked his computer and resumed his investigation. His eyes watered as he yawned again and again. He couldn't muster the slightest interest in this office work. Ask an officer like Paper Hero to chase a criminal on foot for dozens of kilometers, and he'd be full of energy. Make him sift through information and analyze it, and it was sheer torture.

“This many people coming and going every day by air alone... Damn tourist city,” Paper Hero grumbled as he browsed the arrival and departure records obtained from the airport.

Since names gave him no leads, his only option for finding Blood Owl was to examine the identity-card photographs of arriving passengers one by one (the world was divided into regions rather than countries, so passports did not exist). Paper Hero began with the records from seven days ago, carefully studying every arriving passenger's face. HL could have assigned plenty of people to work on this at once, but his old friend Malone had turned him away. As an ordinary policeman with limited authority, he had no choice but to go it alone. He really couldn't trust the others at the station to help. There was no room for the slightest error in hunting this criminal. If someone overlooked him, Paper Hero might lose his chance to catch him forever.

After another three hours of uninterrupted work, Paper Hero still hadn't made the slightest progress.

“Sir!” The door suddenly opened, and an officer stumbled in without knocking, shouting, “Steel... Steel...”

“Stop stammering like a panicked civilian. You're a police officer,” Paper Hero replied evenly.

His calm authority steadied the officer somewhat. At least he could get his words out now. “Sir! It's Steel Commandment! You need to come outside and look!”

Paper Hero stood and headed straight out without another word. In fact, he was rather pleased. He didn't know exactly what had happened, but at last he had a reason to get out for some air.

Outside the station, pedestrians were all gazing up into the northern sky, their faces frightened or bewildered.

A vast, incandescent white cross hung in the night sky. It was neither fireworks nor a hologram, but a shape formed from some kind of burning energy.

“You've got to be kidding...” Looking at the cross, Paper Hero actually began to smile. “Even someone as important as the Holy City Inspector has come. Trying to start a war?” Layer upon layer of white paper slowly drifted out of his trench coat, spreading beneath his feet of their own accord to form a flying carpet. It carried him swiftly into the air and off toward the distant cross.

...

HL Northern Second Branch.

The large screen in Jim Malone's office showed the white cross in the sky. Malone stared, his mouth half open, ash from the cigar in his hand falling onto his gleaming leather shoes.

“What were you saying, Colonel?” The man asking sat across the desk from Malone in a black HL uniform, his blond hair neatly trimmed. His face would have been handsome, but a knife scar running across its entire width divided it in two, giving him a rather ferocious appearance.

Malone turned his chair toward him. “Well... don't worry, Mr. Faru. Everything is under control. I'll send someone over immediately.” As he spoke, he reached for the radio on his desk.

Faru waved him off. “No need. I'll go alone. It's not that I distrust your branch's fighting strength, it's just... there are a few people in Steel Commandment I'd like to see. They might turn up at something like this.”

“Mr. Faru,” Malone said hastily, “you only got off the plane a few hours ago. And the general sent you here to...”

“Say no more, Colonel. The general's orders and HL's duties do not conflict.” Faru rose from his chair. “A criminal rated danger level four must be killed. All the more so for rebels who dare to parade openly through the streets.” He turned away, as though to remind Malone of something with the words “Royal Authority Above All” on the back of his uniform. “As highestlaws, we execute any and all deemed a threat to the Empire's stable rule, without reporting to the throne and without pardon.”

...

North of Venice.

An ice floe a hundred meters across had appeared on the sea less than two kilometers from Murano Island. Even its white color was strangely eerie. More than ten people stood on it.

They wore heavy metal boots and white tunics and trousers, the tunics falling straight to their knees. Their leather belt buckles bore a cross emblem. Rigid material covered their shoulders up to collars that rose to their cheekbones, concealing the lower halves of their faces. An unmistakable emblem marked the chest of each long white coat. The large, lurid red cross was the symbol of Steel Commandment.

Leading these heavily armored knights was Holy City Inspector Camo Bottrini. A full two meters tall, he carried a cross taller than a streetlight pole diagonally across his back. His white robe had broad gold satin trim, but he wore none of their metal armor. He took a pocket watch from inside his robe. Its hands were trembling wildly, yet he merely sneered. “It seems there really are quite a few formidable people here.”

A dark-faced man, gaunt as a skeleton, stood beside Bottrini. “My lord, the chief priest sensed earlier that the deaths of our hundred-odd brothers were the work of just one man. If this draws him here, well and good. But what if he doesn't come, and we get HL's main force instead...”

Bottrini replied, “The Crown Commandery is our heartland. Venice may be a small place, but over a hundred of our brothers here were slaughtered in less than half a day, and by one man. I don't care who he is or which faction he belongs to. Whatever happens, he must not live to see tomorrow's sunrise.”

...

Beneath Venice, Reflection City.

During the day, after seeing Zuo Dao, Blood Owl had visited a good many shops himself, buying large quantities of preservatives and other materials to mix into a chemical spray that would mask the stench of corpses. He had also found time to modify the ventilation systems in two rooms in the underground tunnels, using supplies from a hardware store. Then he had gathered all the corpses and severed limbs into those two rooms. After a whole day's work, the cleanup could be considered truly complete. As for the bloodstains and assorted unidentified bodily fluids, he simply treated them as wall paint. He didn't mind the smell anyway, so he did nothing whatsoever about them.

He still had to wait for word from Zuo Dao about the laboratory and computer equipment, and he hadn't had time to get ordinary furnishings such as a bed and refrigerator. Blood Owl therefore decided to find a hotel on the surface and make do for another night.

He picked an exit at random and went up. After several rounds of searching and clearing the tunnels, along with learning the geography of Venice above, Blood Owl generally knew which area he would emerge in. This time, though, he spotted something more interesting before he could even make out the street sign beside him.

Blood Owl stood in the street, looking into the northern sky and laughing wildly. A white cross was reflected in his pupils.