148

“—That was a joke.”

My mind stopped keeping up with the sudden confession, and just as understanding began to sink in and my emotion-suppression function finally started kicking in again, he hit me with that.

The strength drained out of me on the spot. My knees buckled, and an exasperated “Eeeeh… seriously?” slipped out.

“Think about it. There’s no way I could decide how military technology gets used just because I’m one sponsor of a corporate federation, is there? And it wasn’t peacetime—it was wartime. Try refusing to repurpose a technology that can be militarized. You should be able to imagine what would happen.”

He leaned in, peering at my face with concern, as if to say I might be a little too easy to fool.

His tone was so smug it made me want to release the arm I’d just barely restrained—but given what I could already guess about him, doing that might be exactly what he wanted.

“To be precise, I was only one of those who approved it. Even if I’d refused, the outcome probably wouldn’t have changed. And for the record, what I was first told was only something like ‘we’ll take advantage of Dr. Zeta’s interference.’ I doubt anyone imagined it would turn out like that.”

My suspicion that he loved to talk was right—he kept going even when I stayed silent.

Granted, if you lived alone in a place like this, you’d probably want to talk the moment a conversational partner appeared.

He was the first human I’d met from my own era.

I had countless things I wanted to say too.

Even so, I let him talk because I’d realized my remaining time was probably far longer than his.

“—That said, back then I’d just been hit with the reality that my illness might not be curable. If you told me it would hinder research that was originally meant for medicine, then even if I’d known all the details, I probably would’ve approved anyway.”

In the end, even if he’d objected, the plan would have proceeded, and the moment I hadn’t refused the scientist’s offer, this outcome was already set.

Once I understood that, Lark’s words couldn’t shake me anymore.

“Oh, right… If I’d managed to win Mireina over, that would’ve made me your brother-in-law, wouldn’t it?”

He spread his arms wide with an infuriating grin, full of mischief, like You can call me that if you want. I answered by making a fist, and Lark shook his head.

“You really don’t get jokes, do you.”

“More importantly, I’ve got a lot I want to ask.”

Whatever respect I’d had earlier was long gone—my speech wasn’t even polite anymore, and I decided to ask what I wanted to know.

I didn’t need to look to tell he hadn’t talked enough yet.

He accepted my proposal readily, leaning back in a body that couldn’t be called healthy.

“Ask anything you like.”

“First question. About Type Goliath.”

“Huh? You’re asking that?”

He said he didn’t know many details, so I briefly told him about when I’d awakened. Lark nodded.

“I see…”

“That said, I don’t know that much either. If I recall correctly, Type Goliath was a genetically enhanced soldier developed to capture enemy strongholds alone by switching between Stealth Mode and Assault Mode.”

My reaction to learning the concept behind me-as-a-weapon for the first time was a simple, satisfied: “Yeah, that tracks.”

Stealth Mode didn’t even need explaining.

So did that mean my normal state was called Assault Mode?

As I started to feel a little excited—So I might be able to power up?—Lark continued.

“As far as I know, it was the newest model of genetically enhanced soldier, and the best overall in total specs. Back then, the front against the Republic wasn’t going well, so I remember hearing something like, ‘We gave it abilities that let it throw their own tactics right back at them.’”

Hearing that, I assessed my own specs coolly. “Yeah… I can’t say I can’t do that.”

‘So I was the latest model at the time—and top specs, huh…?’

I grinned to myself.

My facial muscles still didn’t work, but I nodded as if to say go on.

“And then… yeah, right. There was something you’d be interested in—about the Ultimate Lifeform Project. Like you know, it was an attempt to create the strongest biological weapon, building on the Chimera Project and the Genetically Enhanced Soldier Project. But as the war situation worsened and time ran out, the engineers decided to develop that biological weapon using genetically enhanced soldiers as the base.”

At that point, I could tell where this was going.

“And the one chosen for that was—”

“No, I don’t know which one was chosen.”

My knees nearly gave out again.

“I went into the sleep device around that time. Sorry, but I don’t know which type became the base.”

He laughed and spread both hands slightly to either side. I gave Lord Lark a dubious look, and he stared up at the ceiling and added,

“But—”

“I do know there were three candidate types. One was, of course, Goliath, like you. Next was Behemoth, specialized even more heavily for combat… and the last one was… what was it again?”

He thought for a while, then threw in the towel.

“Nope. Can’t remember.”

“Well… if I know that much, it’s probably enough.”

Apparently this Type Behemoth was an even bulkier heavyweight version of me—during a demonstration, it had hugged a tank and crushed it flat.

“Yeah, I definitely never want to meet that,” I muttered, and moved on to the next question.

Or rather, this was the main one right now.

“Next question. Do you know where any research facilities exist besides this one?”

“That’s a hard question to answer.”

Lark said it with a wry smile. I stared at him.

“The answer is yes. But I don’t know if it’ll help you. I don’t know whether anyone at the places I know has the Nemesis Code, and I don’t even know if those facilities still exist.”

“All right,” I replied, just that.

Among what I’d expected, it wasn’t a very good answer.

Knowing only rough points where facilities might be didn’t change the fact that finding them from inside this forest would be difficult, and even if I had a detailed map, it would be useless in the current situation.

In other words: I could narrow the range, but had almost no way to pinpoint the location.

Still facing hardships and unable to move forward—given that even the terrain had changed by now, the information wasn’t worthless… but it also wouldn’t dramatically change the situation.

“Oh, right. When I got here, you mistook me for someone, didn’t you?”

“Inos-kun, you mean? He was… Type ‘Ogre,’ I think. A mid-stage prototype of a genetically enhanced soldier that assumed it would be armed. He and I were from neighboring facilities, you see. After we talked about what we needed to, he left—and I haven’t seen him since.”

It was a side question, but it turned out to hold a surprising amount of useful information.

“There’s another facility next to this one? And how much do you know about what’s in the Nemesis Code?”

“Calm down. One question at a time. First—this facility was where Inos-kun was sleeping, and the one next door was where I was. If there’s anything you need, go ahead and take it. Second—about the Nemesis Code, it’s as I said earlier. Most people involved knew it existed. As for the content, only a tiny handful of the people involved knew. If you’re talking details, it was probably only a few people in the upper ranks…”

He then bragged that he was part of that tiny handful.

But he still didn’t seem to know the core details. At best, he only had the by-now unsurprising information that “it was rigged so subjects would kill each other, and by eating the other person, you advance to the next stage.”

I was about to move on to the next question, but the topic drifted and his bragging just kept going.

Still, I didn’t feel like stopping him.

‘He definitely said it—“a life that might end tomorrow.”’

As if proving it, Lark carried the clinging smell of blood.

A chemical stench mixed into it, telling the story of his despair.

There was no way any medicine here would still be intact.

Even so, life wasn’t something you could simply give up on—something I understood myself.

So I kept listening in silence.

As someone in a similar situation, as a compatriot from the same era, I still had enough humanity left to want to do what I could for him.