Mardock Scramble полностью

Balot stood there like an idiot. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do—and Oeufcoque, the very person who was supposed to tell her, was frantically trying to escape from her hands.

Desperate now, she tried to pin Oeufcoque down, tried to stop his limbs from writhing around.

“Stop it! Leave me alone!”

Balot shook her head, determined. Her eyes were soon overflowing with tears.

She desperately searched for an escape route from the horrible feeling that overwhelmed her, the feeling of being plunged into a pit of darkness, and Oeufcoque was the only person she could think of that could save her.

Oeufcoque vomited still more copiously, then collapsed limp and senseless.

Balot stood there silently, waiting for Oeufcoque to speak.

She was more scared than she had ever been. She felt like she had been turned down, with stinging words of rejection thrown into her face.

Tears flowed, but all she could do was wait.

But when he did finally speak, it was to tell her something completely different.

“He’s coming…” Oeufcoque spoke in the reediest of voices. “Go to the roof. The Doctor will…quickly.”

Confused, Balot tried to work out what he meant. And also how she could best apologize to Oeufcoque. Her thoughts flew from one place to another.

Then she noticed the presence of something coming toward her—something large.

She raised her head. Her tears had stopped.

An incredible mass of something was charging toward the shutters at the other end of the car park.

A threat.

Balot snarced Oeufcoque as a reflex action.

Oeufcoque let out a cry of pure anguish.

A loud crunching noise silenced his cry.

The shutters exploded open, and a giant trailer rushed into the parking lot. It smashed through a number of pillars, a wake of sparks behind it, zigzagging across the space and scraping up against the walls, before finally running aground on the rubble.

The coupling connecting the vehicle to the container split, and the giant container was thrown toward the pillar where Welldone lay prostrate.

Sandwiched between the concrete and the giant silver container, Welldone’s body burst like a balloon.

Balot stared at the monstrosity that had just emerged from the blazing inferno, still holding Oeufcoque, her back to the wall.

The air was fizzing with tension.

She could see a man getting up from the driver’s seat.

She heard the door swing open, and a man came toward her, walking over the flame-flickering rubble.

“Run away…” A cracked voice emerged from Oeufcoque’s lips.

But Balot stood still, staring at the overwhelming figure of the man. Not out of fear. Compared to what had just happened to Oeufcoque, she wasn’t afraid in the slightest.

On the contrary, she felt excited—uplifted, even.

The flames from the fires lit up the man’s features.

The blank features of the giant man.

The man who had threatened Balot on the roadside, at the courtroom.

His name was Dimsdale-Boiled, and he was stepping over the body of the man he had just crushed and coming right at her, an enemy and a true threat.

“She knows nothing about weapons, Oeufcoque. You shouldn’t allow yourself to be used by such a person,” Boiled said.

Oeufcoque pulled himself up in Balot’s palm. “So, after sending your hit men you’re going to interfere directly, are you? You’re no different from these assassins yourself, Boiled. Forever absorbed in your own private vendetta.”

“Come back to me, Oeufcoque. You deserve to be utilized more effectively,” said Boiled.

Balot glared at Boiled.

Boiled wasn’t even looking at Balot.

“Effectively, you say! Have you forgotten what you did with me?” Oeufcoque was shouting now. A voice steeped in anger, one that Balot had never heard before.

“It’s all the same, Oeufcoque. That little girl’s hand, my hand—we’re all looking for exactly the same thing.” Boiled’s eyes were so dark he could have been asleep.

Oeufcoque shouted, “No! This girl’s different!”

Hearing his words Balot suddenly felt extremely sad.

Oeufcoque whispered to her. “You have to run away, Balot. In this sort of situation, discretion is the better part of valor…”

Balot stared straight ahead at Boiled.

–No. I’m going to stay and fight. I don’t want to run away.

“It’s no use, this guy is…”

–This person is a threat to me. I need to fight him.

Boiled slipped his hand inside his jacket.

“Boiled, wait…”

Balot reflexively wrapped Oeufcoque around her fingers and snarced him.

“Balot!”

–Please. Try and understand my feelings.

The man standing in front of Balot’s eyes had once terrified her so completely that she had lost all hope of living.

Now, standing in front of this man—and despite Oeufcoque’s words—she simply couldn’t run away.

She knew that if she fled now, she’d never be able to stand up for herself again.

But that didn’t necessarily mean that she had made the right decision.