Is Anyone Truly Exempted From Contempt

After realizing Pestilence’s betrayal, it was a cakewalk to find her. There were attempts at biological attacks scattered across the city, but those seemed too straightforward. People who were obviously lackeys of War had addressed those crises one after another without fail. Pestilence wouldn’t waste all this effort for something so trivial. Her plan must have been grander. And to do something large-scale in the modern day, the best way was through magical programming.

Which meant she would be at a data center.

That seemed likely, judging by the gas leak reported at the Kensei Data Center, which sounded like a hastily created cover-up by War. The armored box truck that was parked a street away from the building all but confirmed my theory. A team of magical programmers worked within, assessing the state of the data center from their laptops and discussing plans to breach its defenses.

I flew past the police perimeter, straight through the aluminum wall, into the giant dark-gray cube that was the Kensei Data Center. Each second was crucial, since I had no idea when Raven would wake up.

Checking the rooms in the building one by one, I found Pestilence sitting in the somber control room. She stared blankly at the screen, motionless as a statue. Tear marks cut across her otherwise dry cheeks. This could be a tactic to make her appear innocent.

I took a deep breath. “Pestilence, what are you doing?”

Pestilence turned around to me. But she didn’t speak. Her dark red eyes looked rigid, as if they were made of plastic.

“I saw Hideka’s body. You promised me you wouldn’t kill her.” As I spoke of the subject, my heart sank, even though I didn’t ever have a single genuine interaction with Hideka. Only Raven would care. Only she would…

The flat look in Pestilence’s eyes sharpened. “Don’t pretend that you cared about her.”

“Did you?”

“I also didn’t, but I hate it when you act like such a hypocrite.” Quite the aggression for someone who supposedly didn’t care. But voicing this observation would merely take me two steps backwards.

“You can’t defeat both me and War together,” I said instead.

“I can’t envision you two working together. World peace would happen first.”

“It’s not that we will work together, just that you will have to fight the both of us at the same time.”

“So what? Just look at the defense here.” Pestilence pointed at the ceiling, more specifically at the server units on the floors above. She had written instructions for the servers to detect their surroundings and rewrite their own code to adapt to intruders. Basically, she had armed an artificial intelligence with magic.

“This is dangerous,” I said coldly. There was no telling what magical effect the server would generate; one misstep and Koto Ward would become the second Nohato Village.

Pestilence merely shrugged. “But it means none of you can get in. Not for some time, anyway.”

“Why are you doing this? I give you plenty of stability and things to do. I’ve proven to you that I’m reliable. You have no reason to betray me.”

Pestilence burst into sarcastic laughter. “Reliable? You can’t even speak to a young girl. Why did you stay silent all the time while she cuddled up with her boyfriend? Why didn’t you kill her and take over her body? You put her in constant danger, but not killing her outright; do you even know what you want?”

“That’s part of my strategy. Have you heard the saying about how patience is a virtue?”

“It isn’t. And throwing big claims around won’t work on me.”

“Then why did you agree to work for me? You promised to help me.”

“Did you think you owned me just because I called you ‘mistress’ a few times? I simply had nothing better to do. Also, it was an entertaining pastime trying to figure out why you hid as a spirit for thirty years. But it doesn’t matter anymore, because War told me the truth.”

I felt as if I had gazed into Medusa’s eyes. “What did War tell you?” Surely, no matter how powerful War’s information network was, there would be limits to his reach.

“I know about Palermo and Kodama Zoe.” Pestilence’s words raided my consciousness; memories billowed to her call, forcing me to recall a past life that I wanted to forget.

***

Zoe was late. This was the worst day for her to have overslept. She had set an alarm the night before, but when the time for it to ring came, she turned it off in her half-asleep state.

The posters of J-Pop idols and Italo Pop icons cluttering the walls didn’t help, because they would only drag her away from the land of reality. She eventually found the strength to get out of bed; more specifically, she rolled off it in her sleep. The impact forcefully shoved her out of her dreams.

“Don’t say anything,” she said to her mirror while brushing her teeth. Her amber eyes scanned her face, perhaps searching for any flaws. She put on her shirt and jeans, choosing a darker color. This day demanded a duller outfit, which she claimed was a special kind of torture. Try telling that to medieval criminals.

“Dio mio! I almost forgot.” She unlocked her drawer with the key she always kept at hand. She dug through the trove of keepsakes, many of which were souvenirs and letters from her grandparents in Japan. But they were just her excuse for hoarding. She still found what she was looking for… after three minutes of searching. It was a golden hanging balance scale. She dumped it into her purse.

“Yoi yume o, Father,” she yelled while rushing by her yawning father. “How was your shift?” She left the corridor before her father could answer.

“Mia cara, eat properly.” Her mother sighed while Zoe swallowed the whole bread as a snake would. Maybe snakes would still have better table manners than she did.

“Scusa, duty calls,” Zoe said, voice muffled by the food still in her mouth.

Her mother crossed her arms and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Fine, tell Macaria I say hi.”

“You just did.” Zoe wiped her mouth with a towel on the table.

Her mother reached out to snatch it away. “What are you doing? I used this to clean the table.”

Zoe smiled and hopped out of her seat. Her dark red hair flipped with her action, and she rushed to the front door with her purse and camera bag in hand. “Ciao! Ittekimasu! See you later!”

“You don’t have to say it three times.” Mother put her hand on her forehead, close to having a fever from exasperation.

Zoe stuck her tongue out. “Too bad I’m a trilingual.” Then she should have at least three ways to say the word ‘hygiene’.

While embracing the morning breeze with open arms, she skipped to her black sedan, parked on the side of the road.

Speed kept just above the limit; she threaded the gap between cars, navigating the traffic amidst angry honks directed at her. The fact that she had managed to keep her license was nothing short of a miracle.

She arrived at her destination thirty minutes later than she had planned to. Her heart pumped so loudly, as if she had just exited a haunted house.

The car cruised between trees in a sparse forest; its wheels rolled in the dirt. Zoe had gotten off the main road. A grass field was just in sight, but it didn’t provide any sign of her precise location. Something else had been feeding her the directions.

“Please tell me the meeting is still going on. You said it would take place around here, right?” Despite being alone in the driver’s seat, her words were meant for someone.

Once she heard the reply, her mouth hung open. The meeting was in an hour. She slammed her hands onto the steering wheel. “Death, you tricked me.” Despite her complaint, a smile stayed on her face.

“Think of it this way. You would have been thirty minutes late if I hadn’t done this,” I said to her telepathically. And I had been speaking to her like this for a while already, because…

Zoe was my host.