The words came out of Sumire broken and uneven, shock all over her face, her eyes lost. Years of scientific certainty had shattered in a single moment.
She patted at her own body without thinking, glanced at Betty, then at the ruins spread around them, still unwilling to believe any of it.
"Stop stammering. You'll get used to it."
Betty cut through the fumbling, unbothered.
"There's a great deal in this world that your precious science can't explain."
She kept hold of Sumire's hand and walked on toward the sewer entrance without breaking stride.
Being towed along, Sumire gradually collected herself, the shock on her face giving way to curiosity.
She studied the unruffled girl beside her and wondered how many more secrets and abilities Satoru kept tucked away.
Deeper in the ruins of the 39th Area, Takuto Yasuwaki closed on the small girl one step at a time, a cruel, delighted grin stretched across his face, bloodlust bright in his eyes.
He walked slowly. Every footfall ground the rubble beneath his shoes, and the crunching carried through the silence, harsh and awful. Hands clasped behind his back, he kept his stare fixed on the girl ahead like a man admiring a plaything he intended to break at leisure, and his smile turned uglier by the second.
Whatever strength had carried her this far was gone.
Three grown men with firearms had run her through the wreckage until her legs gave out, and at the end of it she'd been shot.
Blood traced her path across the ruins, drops scattering over cold stone, blooming into small red points against all that gray.
Her legs buckled and she dropped to the ground. The wound in her calf still poured, soaking the frayed hem of her trousers dark.
Moments earlier, one of Yasuwaki's men had put a round clean through that calf.
The pain shook her whole body. Every movement drove needles into the wound, dragging her toward the edge of blackout.
Any ordinary child would have lost the ability to move entirely, unable even to sit upright. A Cursed Child's body recovered and endured far past human limits, and it was the only reason she remained conscious.
Even so, little was left to her. She sat crumpled on the stones, chest heaving, exhaustion and hopelessness in her eyes.
Her lips had split. Her face was paper white, sweat beading across her forehead.
Watching the three men close in from all sides, she shrank back and curled into herself. Tears had cut two clean lines down her filthy cheeks, mixing with dust as they ran, leaving dark streaks behind.
She didn't know what she'd done. Didn't know where she'd gone wrong, or why this was happening to her.
All she'd wanted was firewood. Something to burn tonight, so sleep wouldn't come cold, so the dark wouldn't frighten her so badly.
She'd done nothing. She only wanted to keep living quietly, to have one warm night.
So why hurt her? Because she was a Cursed Child? Because Gastrea blood ran through her?
Questions and grief and a deep, settled despair filled her. She raised her head and watched Yasuwaki come closer, watched that cruel smile, watched the black muzzle already lined up on her.
Cold spread through her chest. She wouldn't survive today. She understood that.
Terror and refusal rose together, and her tears came harder, though she barely had strength left to weep.
"Filthy mongrels. None of you should ever have existed in this world."
Yasuwaki halted and looked down at the girl heaped on the ground, his voice cold, disgust and contempt in his eyes, as if the child before him were garbage rather than something alive.
He bent forward slightly, mouth splitting into something worse, the killing intent thickening.
"Hurry up and die. Stop sickening people with your presence."
The words came out flat and freezing, and watching her cry lifted his mood higher.
Holding another life in his hand, watching someone beg and break, sent everything sour and pent-up inside him rushing out in a rush of pleasure.
His finger tightened on the trigger, the tip going pale with pressure. One more ounce and the girl's life ended.
Then, with no warning at all, a pressure came down over the ruins. Formless, enormous, suffocating.
It had no shape and no substance, and it fell on Yasuwaki and his men like a mountain set on their backs.
Thud.
The sound landed dull in the silence.
The man who'd stood over her with a gun a heartbeat before now lay pinned flat to the ground like roadkill, unable to shift an inch.
His face slammed into cold stone. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth and spread across the rubble under him.
The pistol clattered away, ringing off the rocks before rolling to a stop.
Even the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose crushed inward, splinters driving into his cheek. Blood streamed down his face while he lay there in a heap.
That invisible weight held him fast. He fought it, threw everything he had into moving, and couldn't manage so much as lifting his head.
Helpless. Meat waiting for the knife. The terror flooding him mirrored the girl's exactly.
His two subordinates fared no better.
Both were crushed against the ground, bodies curled, faces bloodless, blood at their mouths, shaking so hard they couldn't get out a single groan.
None of them understood where the pressure came from, who they'd offended, why this had fallen on them out of nowhere.
The scene terrified the men caught in it, and it left the girl, who'd already accepted her death, frozen in place.
Her crying stopped. She lifted her head, tears still on her cheeks, staring in complete bewilderment.
Seconds ago that man had held a gun on her, smiling. She'd been certain of her own death.
Now he and his men lay flattened by something she couldn't see, ruined and helpless. How?
While she sat stunned, a figure descended into view.
Tall and straight-backed, with a shock of white hair impossible to mistake.
Whatever confusion had filled Yasuwaki drained out at the sight of him. His face went bloodless, his shaking worsened, and the blood at his mouth flowed faster.
Because the man standing there was Satoru Gojo.
The one he envied and never dared provoke. Untouchable power, and no leash on it at all.
Never once had he imagined Satoru turning up here. Or witnessing exactly this.
After parting from Betty and Sumire, Satoru had swept the ruins of the 39th Area with speed.
He'd opened the Six Eyes, the vision behind that blindfold catching every falsehood, every flicker of movement.
Nothing on the ground escaped him. A small shape tucked behind a collapsed wall, a thread of presence drifting on the air, all of it came through sharp.
So he'd found this place quickly, and found Yasuwaki's men running down a small Cursed Child.
He'd come at once, fast enough that arriving took barely an instant.
What he hadn't anticipated was the identity of the man hunting her.
Takuto Yasuwaki. Sent out by Seitenshi herself to search for Cursed Children and arrange their care.
Back at the Holy Residence, the man's behavior had already left Satoru with no warm feelings toward him.
Ambitious. Small-minded. Easy enough to read.
But that had been the extent of it. A captain of Seitenshi's guard, unpleasant to be around, nothing worse. Not worth Satoru's attention.
He hadn't expected the man to be doing something this cruel, this low, out of sight.
Carrying Seitenshi's orders, wearing the search and resettlement of Cursed Children as a mask, and using it to hunt innocent children through the ruins to bleed off his own resentment.
That crossed a line.
"Didn't expect to run into you here, Captain Yasuwaki."
Satoru touched down and stood over him, tone mild, and the weight behind it stopped the breath in Yasuwaki's throat. Each word went in like something cold and sharp.
The scene had a familiar shape.
Only the roles had changed places.
A moment ago Yasuwaki had stood above his victim, and the child had been the one waiting to be cut apart.
Now the man with the gun lay in the dirt, unable to move, fish on the board, while another stood over him holding everything.
"A misunderstanding... Mr. Gojo, this is all a misunderstanding..."
Fear wrapped around his heart like creeping vine, tight enough to choke him. He stammered the excuse out, voice quavering, sentences falling over each other, groping for any way to slip free with those two words.
He knew perfectly well what Satoru was.
Power past imagining, and no restraint on it. Not law. Not Seitenshi's authority. Nothing bound him.
The man did as he pleased, exactly as he pleased. Whatever he disliked, whatever crossed his lines, he dealt with and never softened the blow.
Like those two who'd tormented a Cursed Child before.
They'd carried a badge and it hadn't mattered in the slightest. Satoru had killed them and never paused to weigh it.
A guard captain would count for nothing more than a pair of thugs in those eyes.
"A misunderstanding?"
Satoru let out a short laugh, thick with scorn. He believed none of it, and had no patience left for listening.
Turning his back on the wreck of a man behind him, he walked toward the wounded girl.
She shrank away as he approached, fear and wariness in her eyes, her body trembling.
Every adult stronger than her meant danger. Every one of them hurt her. This one looked nothing like the men who'd hunted her, and still she couldn't set the fear down.
Adults that far above her terrified her. She'd escaped one set of jaws. Falling into another seemed likely enough.
"Easy. I'm here to help."
He said it lightly, and something gentle ran beneath the words, an attempt to coax the fear out of her.