Free Will

With a sigh, Karyl drove his blade into someone's heart.

He didn't care what the man's name was, or whether he felt any pain. In fact, Karyl had already rushed toward another target before his victim even hit the ground with a groan.

He sprinted, still remembering to dodge sideways as bullets came at him. They roared past, angrily punching holes in the wall behind him. The instant they struck the wall and sent dust spraying, his blade plunged into a body.

Then he cut. His left hand slashed open a belly, while his right sliced a throat. The human body was so fragile; it was riddled with vital spots.

"It's that Ghost!" someone shouted in the darkness, his voice stripped bare by fear. "The Vengeful Wraith!"

He must be trembling, Karyl thought. The realization almost made him laugh.

Yeah. I'm here.

And you...

A low laugh slowly echoed through the dark, shadowy corridor.

Killing was far too easy for Karyl. He was good at it; it came as naturally as breathing, easier than breathing, almost like instinct.

To him, killing was like solving a simple math problem. Did anyone really need pen and paper to work out that one plus one equaled two?

Of course not.

But that didn't mean he liked it.

He didn't kill for the sake of killing.

Five minutes later, Karyl beheaded the last person in the long corridor.

He stopped and looked back at the corpses and chunks of flesh strewn across the floor, then took several deep breaths. He tasted the air, thick with blood, and began to wait.

When he sensed a tremor coming from the far end of the corridor, Karyl leaped up without hesitation and used his blade to cling briefly to the ceiling.

Gunfire erupted. Autoguns, shotguns, machine guns—even someone was firing a Lasgun at him. He couldn't help narrowing his eyes and licking his lips.

Half a minute later, after the deadly hail of bullets had swept past, he dropped back to the floor.

He landed softly, but they still spotted him. It couldn't be helped. He couldn't move as silently as Wraith, and the gangs were sharp-eyed.

In fact, Karyl thought that for a bunch of lunatics who spent all day snorting hallucinogens or anything else that could cause hallucinations, they were a little too sharp.

Once they realized he was still alive, someone immediately yelled and hurled a shoddily made grenade at him. Karyl smiled and kicked it back, as naturally as if he were kicking a ball.

The gangs had sent him a gift. Karyl considered himself a polite man, so he returned the favor with a violent explosion and a burst of flames—and, of course, the chaos that followed.

The sudden blast took care of a dozen little nuisances that would otherwise have required his blade and brute force. But he didn't consider that a good thing.

It was too loud.

Well. A mistake.

As he sprinted away from the scene, he thought that over.

There was no arguing with it. This was his job: catching people off guard and surprising them when they least expected it.

You never knew what the gangs might pull out to blast you with.

A homemade grenade was already one of the less dangerous options. It was better than a rocket launcher capable of bringing down an entire building in one blast.

Karyl took a deep breath and tensed his leg muscles, preparing to leave.

He couldn't stay long unless he wanted to enjoy a wild party like Wraith had.

Half a second later, that cold blue light shone in Karyl's eyes again.

Then he nimbly leaped out the window, bending his knees the instant he landed. His muscles bulged, and with just a few bounds, he reached the rooftop of a building hundreds of meters away.

As he moved, the wind howled in his ears. The frigid air nearly numbed his skin, but he kept his eyes wide open.

Quintus swept past beneath him. Only when the view had completely disappeared did he finally smile.

Then came the sensation of touching down. He had landed.

He took another deep breath, a little weary, and slowly sat down against the wall. His back was uncomfortable; he needed something to lean on.

More than a dozen Air Purifiers ran quietly on the rooftop. They were in excellent condition, clearly maintained not long ago. The people living in this building must have had some connection to the nobles; otherwise, they could never have enjoyed such comfortable living conditions.

Karyl committed that to memory, then turned his attention to himself. But whenever he did, pain was unavoidable.

It was always like that.

After examining himself closely, Karyl noticed that his leg muscles were aching badly, and his bones were groaning.

Clearly, after a battle like the one he'd just fought and a mad dash beyond what an ordinary person could imagine, his body was protesting.

In other words, his physique was holding him back.

But that didn't matter.

The rain had stopped.

Karyl shook his head and decided to tell himself another joke with the humor he hated most, hoping to ease his foul mood.

"Look on the bright side," he said to himself. "At least you returned those two motorcycles, didn't you? You should be polite and keep your word. Return what you borrow, and you'll be able to borrow again."

After telling the joke, Karyl waited three minutes.

He couldn't laugh. He never did.

My sense of humor really is awful. I hate telling jokes, Karyl thought.

He sighed, then began to think. As he did, he kept taking deep breaths.

The Great Purge was coming soon, he thought.

Once every twenty years, it was almost a cruel law of nature—and the nobles profited from it. In truth, whether or not the Great Purge took place, they always had something to gain.

This cruel affair was more like a form of entertainment, something to pass the time. What else could he say? On Nostramo, it wasn't unusual. At least it was more normal than sewing living people together to use as mattresses.

The former still brought profit. The latter... If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Karyl would have thought it a deranged fantasy.

Karyl smiled.

There were nearly seven hundred gangs in Quintus. He couldn't kill them all; he could fight until he died and still never finish them. As long as the nobles continued to oppress them, more and more impoverished workers would abandon their humanity.

This world had changed. It had been changed beyond recognition. How could he, alone, set everything right again?

He couldn't even build a decent organization to recruit allies. The people of Nostramo had been completely warped in their thinking. There was little room for kindness in this world.

But killing to stop killing isn't the answer, Karyl.

Yeah. I know.

Karyl closed his eyes, shutting out every distraction, and sank into the depths of his thoughts, digging ever deeper. Making plans in a place like Nostramo was difficult, but he had to try.

The gang whose leaders Wraith had killed was called the Sons of Union.

A strange name for no apparent reason.

They were no different from all the other gangs. These people were always trying to imitate the nobles.

Giving themselves bizarre, awkward names was part of that. They thought it would someday let them join the ranks of the nobility. Only a few were clear-eyed enough to realize that gangs were nothing more than dogs kept by the nobles.

Sons of Union—Karyl searched his memories for the name. He shouldn't have had these memories. But that didn't matter, did it?

Soon, he found the answer.

One of the Sons of Union's leaders had recently joined Tremor-Tooth.

Good.

Tremor-Tooth, and the Skraivok Family.

These were two ancient noble houses. They must have both taken notice of Quintus by now. What a stroke of luck. I wonder if I'll be lucky enough to meet those exalted lords?

Karyl sneered.

The Skraivok Family had lost an interrogator. They might have hundreds of people like him, but the death of even one of them was no small matter.

The Skraivok Family was much like every other noble house of the upper class, except for one thing that made them somewhat unusual.

They cared deeply about "rules" and "honor."

Ironic, wasn't it?

But it was true.

Those who served them could gain a great deal. If they gave their complete loyalty, they could have almost everything they wanted before they died.

That meant the Skraivok Family would certainly try to find out who had killed the interrogator.

As for Tremor-Tooth, they were a bunch of lunatics who loved feasts of flesh and craved sensory pleasures. They wouldn't pass up this chance to come down to the Underhive and hunt with a legitimate excuse, either.

Karyl opened his eyes and smiled.

He knew what he had to do. If Tremor-Tooth was going to join forces with the Skraivok Family and hold an early banquet in Quintus, then he had already gotten his invitation before the hosts.

Standing again, Karyl braced himself against the cold wall and let out a long sigh, its tail end still trembling.

The pain still kept him from standing comfortably. After a brief respite came an even greater, ceaseless tide of agony. It was always like this. This power was awful, but it was useful, too.

There was a reason he had chosen to retrieve that battered chair from the trash heap.

First, nobody wanted it anymore, so he could take it. Second... he really needed a chair.

Nostramo had no daytime, only eternal night. Standing at the edge of the building and looking down at the view, Karyl thought.

Every city on this planet had rotted. They had been built from warped materials from the very beginning. He was only an ordinary person; he couldn't change them or their inhabitants.

He also knew that forcing Wraith to shoulder everything was incredibly selfish—but what choice did he have?

"I only just realized that saying was true."

Karyl chuckled as he spoke to himself. "Free will doesn't exist at all, unless you swallow a gun barrel, turn on the gas, or jump off a pier."

+He refused again.+

+Is that so, my lord?+

+Yes. It seems he has misunderstood me rather badly.+

+You cannot expect someone on the other side of the Milky Way to accept your call for no reason, my lord.+

+Perhaps. But I will try a few more times. Konrad Curze's fate now rests in his hands.+

+Then I wish you luck, my lord. Also, I recall you said only yesterday that the word 'fate' was utterly absurd.+

"Yes, my friend."

A giant clad in golden armor opened his eyes and spoke. "But sometimes, it does exist."

Who knows what happened? For now, I'll just leave a bowl here.

Please, I'll take anything—even a comment.

The author's going to die if no one leaves a comment (sob).