The corridors of the mining barge wound through its hull like the insides of some rusting beast. Pipes lined the ceiling, dripping occasionally with condensation as the engines rumbled somewhere far below. The whole vessel creaked and shuddered with every blast of the storm outside, sand grinding against the metal walls in long, rasping shrieks.
The four moved through it in silence.
Ryuu led at the front, one hand resting near a pistol at his side as he slipped from corner to corner. Kanesaki followed just behind him, while Yasuko and Sho brought up the rear, their footsteps muted against the vibrating floor. They passed through intersections like shadows, never breaking pace, never speaking.
The first major chamber they entered was one of the storage bays, and it was enormous. Towering stacks of ore crates filled the room, all chained down to the floor against the rough movement of the barge. Between them stood pallets of dusty fuel canisters, old mining charges, and half-disassembled drilling rigs. The air smelled of oil, metal, and dry earth – sharp and suffocating in equal measure.
One crate had split open at some point during the storm. Jagged blue crystal spilled across the floor from within, glowing faintly in the dark like frozen lightning. The group stepped around it without slowing, their shadows briefly fractured by its cold light before swallowing back into the dim.
Beyond the storage bay lay the equipment hall, dust-coated and hollow. Mining suits hung from racks along the walls, each one heavy and thick enough to survive the freezing caverns beyond the desert. Their empty visors stared blankly into the dark as the four passed between them, giving the strange impression of being watched by something long dead.
Rusted drills sat abandoned on worktables beside rows of cracked helmets and broken lamps. Pickaxes, cutting torches, and old excavation tools had been tossed into corners without care, as though the people who once used them had simply stopped existing mid-shift. The room looked less like a workplace and more like a graveyard for machines.
At the far end of the hall, a pair of miners hurried past, shouting to one another over the storm. Their voices cut through the otherwise dead space like cracks in glass.
'Engine three's jammed again!'
'Then fix it before we all die out here!'
The four froze between the hanging suits until the voices faded into the rumble of machinery and wind. Only then did they move again, slipping forward as if the interruption had never happened.
The next corridor opened into the armoury. Its heavy steel door had been left slightly ajar, likely in the panic caused by the storm and whatever intrusion had put the crew on edge. Inside, racks of weapons lined the walls – rifles, shotguns, shock batons, and boxes of ammunition stacked almost to the ceiling.
A guard stood near the back of the room with his back turned, hurriedly loading magazines into a crate.
Sho slowed immediately. 'Oh, come on,' he whispered through his mask. 'We can take just one thing.'
'No,' Ryuu said flatly.
'One grenade?'
'No.'
'Tiny grenade?'
Ryuu shot him a look through the pale mask, leaving Sho to sigh dramatically and keep walking.
Beyond the armoury, the corridor narrowed and roughened, the clean industrial plating giving way to exposed stone and support beams, as though this section of the barge had been built directly into the caverns it travelled through. The air grew colder, heavier.
Ahead, voices echoed from somewhere deeper inside – laughter, glasses clinking, the careless noise of men who felt safe.
Their target was close.
The voices drew them onward through the narrowing corridors until, abruptly, the barge opened into a larger chamber near its centre.
It was a lounge, though one so lavish it felt absurd within the rusting shell of a mining vessel. Thick carpets covered the steel floor, their deep reds and golds dulled by dust and bootprints. Expensive bottles sat along polished shelves behind a small bar, some unopened, others left half-empty beside crystal glasses. A long table occupied the middle of the room beneath a swaying lamp, littered with cards, ashtrays and plates of food that had long since gone cold.
The room looked as though its occupants had fled in the middle of a celebration.
The door stood slightly ajar.
Ryuu raised a hand without a word, stopping the others behind him. Beyond the walls, the sandstorm still battered the barge hard enough to make the metal groan, but inside the lounge there was only silence.
No laughter, no voices, only the faint creak of the hanging light and the distant shudder of the engines below.
Kanesaki stepped forward and pushed the door open fully. The room appeared empty at first.
Then he saw the body.
The crime lord lay sprawled across the carpet in the centre of the chamber, one arm stretched uselessly toward a pistol that had fallen from his grasp. His expensive coat was soaked black with blood. His eyes remained wide, frozen in a final moment of disbelief.
A single cut had killed him. It ran across his stomach in one clean, merciless line, deep enough to open him from one side to the other. There was nothing wild about it, no hesitation. Whoever had done it had known exactly where to strike.
Blood had already pooled beneath him, sinking into the carpet in a dark, spreading stain.
Yasuko recoiled instinctively. 'Shit…'
'Someone already got to him,' Sho muttered, his voice suddenly tense.
As if in answer–
WEEEEOOOONNN
The alarms erupted throughout the barge. Red lights flashed to life overhead, turning the room into a pulsing nightmare of crimson and shadow.
'Intrudersdetected!'
'Sealthelowercorridors!'
'Allunitsrespond!'
Boots thundered somewhere outside, growing louder by the second.
Sho turned sharply toward the hall. 'Damn it – we've been set up!'
'No,' Ryuu said.
He was already crouched beside the body, studying the wound in silence. The red light flickered across his pale mask as his eyes narrowed. Then, slowly, he stood.
'That cut…'
The others looked between one another uncertainly, but Ryuu did not.
He turned toward the far side of the room, toward the corner where the light failed to reach and the shadows pooled thickest against the wall.
'Enough,' he called, his voice carrying cleanly over the alarms. 'Showyourself.'
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the darkness shifted.
A figure stepped out from the corner with the quiet ease of someone who had never been hiding at all.
He was tall and slender, dressed in a dark grey, high-collared jacket cut close through the shoulders and slightly loose through the body. A concealed zipper ran up the center, hidden beneath a narrow strip of fabric. When drawn shut, the collar rose over his mouth and nose, blending seamlessly with a dark mask beneath until only his eyes remained visible. The jacket was stark and unadorned, sleeves pulled up just past the elbows, its heavy matte fabric giving it a severe, almost military neatness. Black fingerless gloves covered his hands, the worn leather exposing his knuckles and fingertips while still leaving him free to move with precision. His trousers were loose through the hips and thighs, then narrowed sharply below the knee, bound at the calves and tucked neatly into dark boots.
Draped across his shoulders was a dark brown cloak, weathered and half-torn along the hem as though years of hard travel and fighting had left their mark on it. The hood had been thrown back and tied loosely around his neck, hanging there like a forgotten shadow. Frayed strips of cloth shifted faintly with every step, giving him a rough, restless silhouette.
Above the mask, his black hair fell in short, uneven layers, almost spiked where it framed his face, some uneven strands falling over one eye. His eyes were the only vivid thing about him: bright yellow and unnervingly sharp, cold yet somehow luminous against the muted colours of the rest of him; not cruel, not angry – simply empty in the way only a practiced killer could be. They moved across the room lazily, settling on each of them in turn, as if measuring how difficult it might be to cut them apart.
Ryuu went still.
'SugimotoSatoshi.'
The name seemed to make even the room quieter.
Kanesaki glanced toward him. 'You know him?'
Ryuu's jaw tightened beneath the mask.
'He's one of thePrince's assassins.'
Chapter 70 – end