Sumire sat beside Betty with a lazy smile, a pen in her hand, tapping the page now and then and needling the girl about her mistakes. When she caught the look on Satoru's face after he ended the call, her hand went still. The smile faded, and something puzzled took its place.
"Something bad has happened."
His voice stayed level, but Betty caught the difference underneath it.
"Come on. We're going to the 39th Area."
He said nothing more, turning toward the window with a stride that held no hesitation.
"The 39th Area?"
Sumire's confusion deepened. She set the primer down, stood, and hurried a few steps after him. "What's going on now? Wait, weren't we supposed to be heading somewhere else? What are you doing over by the window..."
Betty offered no comment. She walked to Satoru without a word wasted.
Something had happened. She knew that much. He wouldn't be acting like this otherwise.
Satoru didn't bother answering. He reached the window, paused, and then, while Sumire stared, pushed off in a single light spring and sailed straight out. His shape blurred into a streak cutting toward the 39th Area, gone against the sky within seconds.
Sumire stood at the opening with her mouth open, staring after him. It took a while before she found words.
"He... he just flew out of here?"
Her eyes were huge. She knew Satoru was powerful. She had never once watched him take to the air like that, and the shock of it sat beyond describing.
"Honestly. He dumps the tiresome parts on me every time."
Betty frowned, mouth pursed around the grumble.
Sumire hadn't recovered enough to answer, hadn't even opened her mouth, when the girl launched out after him. Something invisible caught Sumire and lifted, peeling her feet off the floor.
A shriek tore through the room a heartbeat later, splitting the quiet.
She had no chance to brace before that unseen force carried her through the open window and straight up into the sky.
Wind slapped her cheeks, cold, whipping her hair loose so it plastered against her neck and itched.
Her hand shot out and clamped onto Betty's arm, knuckles going pale with the grip, panic flooding her eyes.
The two of them tore along behind Satoru, faster with every second.
"Aaaaah!"
The scream rang out across open air, terror and helplessness in it, and beneath that something she couldn't quite hide.
"I'm... I'm flying?!"
Loosening her grip slightly, she lifted one foot with great care and looked at the ground streaming past below, eyes round, disbelief plain on her face.
All these years alive, and she'd never imagined she would one day sail through the sky like a bird. Terrifying and brand new at once.
"What exactly do you two think you're playing at?"
Sumire dragged in a breath, trying to steady herself, voice still rattled around the edges with a thread of complaint running through it.
"Warn a person first. This could stop someone's heart!"
She raised her head and watched the city pour past beneath her feet, streets and houses and cars shrinking away. Her face was still bloodless, fingertips still trembling.
Look closer, though, and past the panic in her eyes there sat something bright, and her voice was climbing toward excitement.
Soaring like this was nothing she'd ever felt. Half scared to death at the start, sure, but wonder was creeping in and taking root.
"It won't. From the look of you, you're adapting perfectly well."
Betty gave her a flat sideways glance, unmoved. Flying was ordinary to her, hardly worth remarking on.
She even let go with one hand to brush windblown hair off her face, irritation still tugging at her expression, as though hauling Sumire through the air were an enormous inconvenience.
"And if it did stop your heart, that fool could bring you back anyway."
That fool needed no explanation.
Satoru's power ran past anything reasonable, in Betty's estimation. Whatever accident befell Sumire, he could drag her back from death's gate. Nothing to worry over.
"You could at least have let me change my shoes."
Sumire rolled her eyes, embarrassment thick in her voice, and glanced down.
The slippers she'd been wearing had come off somewhere during the sudden liftoff and all that thrashing.
Nothing remained but thin black stockings hugging her small feet, swaying in the air. Cold wind licked past and raised a shiver she couldn't suppress.
Flying barefoot at altitude felt strange past all reckoning, and mortifying besides.
First flight, no experience whatsoever, screaming and flailing from the start.
Yet Betty had called it right. Sumire adjusted with unexpected speed.
Within a few minutes she'd gone from shrieking and grabbing at anything solid to something close to calm, and then to enjoying herself outright.
Her fingers uncurled from Betty's arm. She spread her arms wide, feeling the cold rush over her fingertips, watching a city she knew and didn't know at all slide underneath, and a grin spread across her face.
Most days she lived in the lab or the apartment. Chances to look down on the whole of Tokyo came rarely, and this angle on it delighted her.
Even so, she hadn't forgotten why they were up here. Her brows drew together as she turned toward Betty and started working the question over aloud.
What had happened that would send Satoru, of all people, lazy and self-indulgent as he was, rushing for the 39th Area without explanation?
She watched the landscape below and turned possibilities over in her head, striking them down one by one.
Tokyo's biggest news lately was the Civil Security sweep for the Stage 4 Gastrea and Kagetane Hiruko, but the look on Satoru's face hadn't matched that kind of urgency.
Round and round, and only one answer fit. The Cursed Children living in the sewers of the 39th Area. Nothing else would rattle him like that.
Something had happened to those kids.
Once the thought surfaced it wouldn't leave, and her mood sank with it. The excitement drained out of her face.
She might look lazy most days, indifferent to anything outside her research, but coldness wasn't in her. Not toward children with lives that pitiful, thrown out by the world that made them.
Ahead of them, Satoru slowed and turned back, closing the distance until he hung alongside.
He reached over and took Sumire from Betty with an easy motion, tucking her against his side, sheltering her from the wind.
"Flying's too slow."
His tone stayed even, though something impatient ran beneath it. He'd run out of patience for the leisurely approach. He wanted to be there, and he wanted whatever waited in the 39th Area finished.
"Too slow?"
Sumire blinked at him, lost.
They were already moving at a speed that beggared belief, faster than any vehicle she'd ridden in, faster than the most advanced fighter aircraft. And he called it slow?
"What other options could you possibly..."
She still had no idea what he meant to do, and the question never finished. Something powerful folded around all three of them.
They vanished from the sky between one breath and the next, as though they'd never been there, leaving only a faint stir of air to settle.
No dizziness. No drop in her stomach. Not a trace of discomfort.
Then they were standing on solid ground in the 39th Area, broken stone and weeds beneath their feet, ruins spread out on every side.
Her sentence died half-spoken. Sumire's head came up and she took in the completely transformed world around her, struck silent, mouth slightly open, disbelief flooding her eyes.
Moments ago she'd been high above the city, savoring the novelty of flight, wind on her skin, downtown Tokyo sprawling underneath.
An instant later, this. Ruined ground, desolation everywhere. The gap between the two was more than her mind wanted to accept.
She pinched herself. Pain answered, sharp and clear. Not a dream. This had happened.
"Go down to the sewers. Find Elder Matsuzaki and the children and keep them safe."
Satoru paid her shock no attention, speaking to Betty with a hard edge, his gaze already past her and fixed deep into the ruins beyond, sharp, as though he'd caught something.
Malice sat out there, thick and heavy, and threaded through it a faint trace of a Cursed Child. And the malice was spreading.
"Mm."
Betty asked nothing. She nodded once, irritation gone from her face, replaced by something serious.
Taking Sumire's hand from him, she started toward the sewer entrance with quick, certain steps. She clearly knew exactly where it lay.
Satoru didn't linger. His outline flickered into a smear of motion and shot off through the wreckage toward the source of that malice, fast enough that only a faint disturbance marked his passing.
Only then did Sumire catch up to what had happened to her.
One second, high above the city, thrilled and curious, tasting flight for the first time.
The next, standing here on cold rubble amid crumbling walls, dust and rot heavy in the air.
She looked up on instinct. No sign remained of the flight at all, as though she'd imagined the whole thing.
The 39th Area and their apartment both sat within Tokyo, but the distance between them was no small thing.
The fastest car, every road clear, would still need something like an hour.
The 39th Area lay at the city's outer edge, near the Monolith, far from anything thriving, abandoned by mainstream society long ago. Only ruins remained.
Sumire frowned, running the distance and the speed in her head, and the shock only mounted.
The most advanced fighter in the world, several times the speed of sound, could not cross that gap in a single instant. Not remotely.
This exceeded what she understood. It exceeded science.
One explanation fit.
Teleportation.
Once the word appeared in her mind, it refused to go.
She was a scientist. Supernatural claims should have drawn instinctive doubt from her, or contempt. Nonsense, she'd have called it.
Science had been truth to her for years. Teleportation, psychic powers, all of it belonged to fantasy. Things that could not exist.
Even in a world that had produced the Gastrea Virus, even with people out there who could command Gastrea, teleportation still sat beyond imagining.
Impossible, she'd have said. A violation of everything the laws allowed.
Reality had left her humiliated.
She'd felt it herself, moments ago, the sensation of crossing hundreds of miles in a heartbeat, clear and undeniable.
And if it wasn't teleportation in the strictest sense, whatever speed Satoru had shown made no practical difference. If anything it was eerier still, more staggering.
"That's... that's beyond belief..."