Free Mercenary Road by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page A

she clearly wouldn’t have been able to steal a car from right under the supernatural soldiers’ noses and make her escape, either.
    “While I was getting my stuff together, everyone else took off, so I headed toward town on foot. Then those jerks came, and they captured me.”
    Putting her in the old-fashioned motorcar she was driving earlier, the supernatural soldiers had brought Irene back to the abandoned factory. On seeing its interior, Irene had been stunned. When she was little, she’d gone out to the abandoned building any number of times and peeked inside, but now it seemed like an entirely different place. The rusting, derelict machines and power transformers had all vanished, and now gigantic devices of unknown purpose were being assembled. Electrical discharges coursed through the air, striking some soldiers during their labors and knocking them to the floor. Most likely they’d been constructing a reactor or something similar. The terrible devastation the group had witnessed lent credence to this.
    Irene had been brought to a room within the factory.
    “Oh? And what happened to you there?” Strider jeered. His expression as he licked his chops made clear the perversions he was imagining.
    The girl’s gaze bored through his face. Her eyes were like fire.
    “What do you mean by that ?”
    “Exactly what I said,” Strider replied, his tone even more mocking now. “Those guys had no damned need to keep you alive. Which means they could only have one use for you. You’ve got a tight little body there, you know.”
    Irene started to pounce as soon as she noticed that the warrior’s eyes were focused on the impressive mounds straining against her shirt. However, before she could strike Strider in the chest, he gave her wrists a little twist and the girl let out a scream.
    “You’re kinda tough, but don’t let that go to your head, missy. If we have to, we’ll be only too glad to hand your ass back to those lousy soldiers.”
    But the warrior’s reprimand abruptly halted.
    Stanza turned around with such speed, it was as if she’d just received an electric shock. Following her gaze, Strider’s eyes also went wide with terror.
    What radiated from D was a hair-raising air of the supernatural.
    “She didn’t finish her story,” he said, his voice that of a gorgeous specter. Perhaps that was exactly how he appeared to everyone else there.
    “Well, I just thought this cheeky little bitch needed to be—”
    “Later,” D replied curtly.
    A short response would suffice. But what if it was the wrong response? What if the warrior wouldn’t cooperate?
    “Sheesh,” Strider spat, letting go of the girl.
    As the girl turned her malice-tinged eyes toward him, D told her, “Continue.”
    —
    II
    —
    The rest of Irene’s tale was brief. After being kept in the room and provided with food and water for five days and nights, she’d finally managed to escape.
    “One of them forgot to lock the door. What an idiot!”
    As Irene wore a look of contempt on her face, the other three rapidly fired questions at her. Most important among those were the questions of who’d resurrected the supernatural soldiers, and for what purpose.
    Irene’s response was three simple words: “I don’t know.” She told them the soldiers hadn’t said a single word about it.
    “Did anyone other than you survive?” Strider asked.
    “When I was pretending to be asleep, I heard the two guards outside my door talking about somebody fleeing to the grand duke’s castle. I don’t know how many fled or who they were. I just pray it wasn’t my family.”
    “If they escape to the castle, the soldiers won’t follow them. It’s a kind of sanctuary.”
    No one there disputed Strider’s statement.
    “Okay, that settles what our next move is. It’s off to the castle.”
    As Strider got a reckless look on his face, Irene’s color drained, and she asked him, “Why do we have to go all the way out there? Wasn’t the plan for you