Chapter 90: A Late Dinner

Now that I thought about it.

The quack doctor who had accidentally cut off my left leg and turned it into a steel one was at the campsite.

“Cutting it off would be faster.”

“Um, could you be a little more careful…?”

With my body, perhaps?

Of all things, Endo had crushed my dominant hand. My right one. Apparently, the grip strength of a design child modified down to the DNA level was about the same as a gorilla’s, and my hand was a mess. Terrible, really. At this rate, I would not be able to do the job three days from now.

So I went crying to the quack doctor.

As a result, he proposed an extremely crude solution. Cut it off and grow it back, or reattach it.

A solution as slapdash as something for a cancer-ridden American comic book hero.

Please do not.

“Ehhh… Then how about I shoot you up with accelerant and heal it?”

“Please do that.”

I bowed my head, and he told me to roll up my right sleeve. I did. A needleless ampoule was pressed against me, and its contents were injected.

“!?”

My raised right arm immediately went limp and dropped.

It felt like it had been cut away. No nerves were connected, so I could not control it. No nerves were connected, so I could not feel it either. I lifted it with my left hand, but I could not even feel myself touching it. It felt less like lifting my arm and more like lifting a lump of meat.

“…”

I could more or less tell this was part of the treatment.

I could tell, but it was an extremely worrying sight. As if to make that worse, the quack doctor started fiddling with my hand. Crack, pop. Sounds rang out as he set the bones back into shape.

“Come to think of it, you got any accelerant on you?”

“I believe the Sheep Unit has been making some.”

“Then call it over.”

“Yes.”

I operated my terminal with my left hand and called the Sheep Unit. It must have been waiting nearby, because it came right away. With a beep, the Sheep Unit opened its mouth. Inside was a viscous liquid the color of blood.

I picked it up. It was in a test tube, and the contents tilted thickly inside. A cell division accelerant the Sheep Unit had produced inside its internal lab using my blood as the base.

The quack doctor took it, checked the contents, and went back to reshaping my hand.

My swollen, red, squishy hand should have hurt just from touching the air moments ago, but now I felt nothing at all. Once he had arranged its shape, he fitted my hand into a cylinder filled with something like jelly. Then something like a handcuff was fastened around my wrist, making it impossible to move easily.

“Right, from here on out, it’s gonna hurt like stupid for a full day. Or more like, burn.”

Haha. What a ridiculous thing to say.

I could not feel a thing. There was no way I could feel pain or heat.

“―――――――!”

What followed was so horrible I could not even scream.

***

It was a military research facility from around a hundred years ago.

I did not know what had been researched there, back when the concept of countries still remained.

For me, living in this era, the important parts were these: Abacus researchers had fled into that facility, so we had to eliminate them and destroy the facility along with their research results. Also, the area around the research facility lay along a Bubble migration route.

It was not that there was a nest there. This place merely served as a relay point connecting one of their nests to another.

So if left alone, they would drift off somewhere eventually. The wind was not especially strong. Nothing obstructed their movement.

The Abacus researchers had probably waited for a gap when the Bubbles cleared out, then slipped into the facility.

The facility had only one floor above ground, with the rest underground. That was convenient too. In a place like that, the threat from the Bubbles was almost nonexistent.

We decided to follow the enemy’s example and launch our assault when the Bubbles thinned out.

At two in the morning, we reached the rest point we had chosen halfway up the mountain. The Bubbles were expected to clear out at two in the afternoon, exactly twelve hours later.

Monoz were no different, with their tree-crystal cores. When sunlight was your energy source, night made you sluggish, and the Bubbles were no exception.

Looking down, I saw a swarm of Bubbles floating lazily around the ruined facility as if they owned the place. Some had eaten local wildlife, and those dark red lumps of meat sat inside their bellies.

As always, they moved sluggishly.

As always, there were too many of them.

There was no way we could deal with that. Thinking that, I ate dinner. It was not my usual dry block ration, but a soft type that came in a pouch. A new product from Abacus.

“…”

The taste was not bad, but the soft meat, slick with glossy oil, reminded me of slightly fancy dog food. The moment that thought crossed my mind, my appetite vanished. After eating about half of it, I stopped.

“Not eating?”

“…I don’t want to eat it, you see.”

I looked up at the voice.

Standing there was Endo-san, who had not said a single word to me since we joined up.

The voice wasn’t his.

The voice belonged to Rikan, the four-armed lion.

The head armor of his chitinous enhanced exoskeleton, reminiscent of a beetle, had been removed. He must have been eating too, like me.

If you don’t want it, give it here, he said, holding out a hand, so I handed it over. He squeezed the bottom of the pouch, pushed out the contents, and took a bite. His eyes widened in admiration.

“Humans are skilled at making things like this.”

“Are we?”

“Do you have more?”

“…I do, but…”

What’s going on? I tilted my head slightly, and Rikan pointed behind himself. There stood Friege and four Tooth, including the cat-eared glasses girl.

And Friege was staring very hard in my direction.

With insect-like compound eyes, it was hard to tell where she was focusing, but somehow I felt I knew what she was looking at.

“…”

Silently, I handed four pouches to Rikan.

But Rikan did not leave.

“…What is it?”

“What I ate was your leftovers.”

“…”

So give me another pouch.

Rikan said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and I looked at him half-lidded.

“Then I’ll take this as your payment for this job.”

“That is a separate matter.”

We said that and laughed.

I was a sniper. I was not suited to taking control of a base.

Then I just had to use someone who was.

Shinzo was cavalry, so he was not suited to it either. That was why I had prepared an exceptional Heavy.

“Our positions are reversed from last time, Ratchet.”