The White Reaper lit a cigarette.
Whether at the Academy, on the imperial front lines, with the Alliance Army, or behind a hangar, smoking was the same everywhere.
"White Reaper…."
"Simon."
"Huh?"
"Call me Simon."
'White Reaper' couldn't really have been a person's name, after all.
Leaning against the hangar wall, my back felt cold.
I tried to push myself off with my cane, but it wasn't easy.
Giving up, I leaned back.
"I'm—"
"Deep, Pilot Deep. I know. You're famous not just in the Empire, but in the Alliance, too."
Honestly, I hadn't known I was that famous in the Empire.
I had thought I might be famous in the Alliance.
"Because of Fafnir, right?"
"Oh, you knew? Yeah, it's because of Fafnir."
Simon nodded.
The human from the Empire who had fought Fafnir twice and made it flee twice.
And a commoner, not a noble. A cadet, not a proper soldier.
The line between proper soldiers and cadets was blurry in the Empire, but the fact remained that he was a cadet.
Simon held out a cigarette.
"Smoke?"
"No."
"Just take it?"
"I decided not to."
"You don't drink either?"
"No."
"Then there was no need to save you. You're a corpse."
Simon put the cigarette back and spat out the butt.
The cigarette buried in the snow went out quickly.
Then he lifted the canteen at his side, took a few gulps, and met my eyes again.
"I can't lend you the Titan."
Thinking about it calmly, it was obvious he couldn't.
I was from the Empire, and Simon had simply saved me because he didn't hold life cheap.
Moreover, after I'd wreaked havoc on the western front and wrecked the Alliance Army in the north, there was no way he'd look kindly on me.
"I suppose so."
"Heal your leg first. You know an amputation takes at least a month in the hospital?"
Simon looked down and grimaced.
I belatedly lowered my head.
Blood was seeping through the bandages.
"Doesn't that hurt?"
"It hurts."
No wonder it had been hurting like hell.
I had forced myself up the moment I regained consciousness, so it was a natural result.
"This isn't the Empire. If it were, they'd finish treatment in a week with all sorts of suspicious drugs and fit you with a prosthetic leg, but we don't have that here."
"That's a shame."
With that hollow feeling in my chest, I couldn't think of anything to say.
Ailee wasn't here.
Even when I raised my wrist, there was no smartwatch.
It might have been destroyed, or the Alliance might have taken it to analyze.
Either way, I wasn't in a position to ask for it back.
Like demanding luggage from a drowning man you'd just fished out.
It was much better not to bring it up.
"I'll hear more from you during treatment and decide then whether to lend you the Titan."
It wasn't a complete rejection.
"Your Titan—more precisely, the person inside that core—you're trying to save them, right?"
"Yes."
"Yeah. Quite a few people remember owing you a debt, anyway. Don't worry so much. You haven't killed anyone, after all."
Simon waved his hand lazily and walked away.
To think there were people who owed me a debt.
I'd only just come to the north.
While leaning against the wall wondering what grace even meant, I heard approaching footsteps.
"TB13?"
TB13.
A name I'd heard in my dreams.
"It's really TB13?"
TB13 had escaped only after being unable to refuse Ailee's request and smashing through the laboratory wall.
Because of that, the escape had failed—one side died, and the other became used goods.
Still, some of the test subjects must have gotten out through the broken wall.
But there was no way anyone had survived the blizzard intact.
Necrosis in some limbs from frostbite was expected; surviving at all was a blessing.
Clack.
The palm was intact, but the fingers were prosthetic.
The hand gripping my shoulder shook me a few times, as if delighted.
"Do you remember me?"
"Who are you?"
In TB13's memory, the only clear face had been Ailee's.
***
TB10.
His name was Locke now.
He told me to call him casually, but the situation of him telling me that felt uncomfortable.
The stuttering had disappeared, and the urges to kill or harm himself were gone, too.
Still, he was an otaku, introverted, and had low self-esteem.
He'd just been born that way.
There were things effort couldn't change.
"You look like you don't remember."
"Yeah."
He had every right to feel bad, but Locke smiled as if he'd expected it.
"It doesn't matter! Anyway, it's true that I owe you a debt!"
Locke said he'd grabbed the other test subjects and escaped the moment the research facility wall broke.
Since he had been TB-10, the most stable one, his judgment must have been the fastest.
He'd omitted a lot about the escape, but to summarize, about three of them had survived.
Nearly dead from cold and starvation, they had happened across the Alliance Army.
"We test subjects all know how to pilot Titans. So we offered ourselves as Alliance Army pilots and asked them to save us."
For revenge.
Or for the other test subjects still trapped in the cores.
And in fact, they had rescued three Titans containing experimental subjects, so now six of them were alive in total.
"Then those three…."
"They're still in the cores."
"Why?"
"Even here in the north, only Mr. Simon can pilot without a core AI."
Piloting a Titan alone without an AI was incredibly complex.
Directly controlling a Titan without AI assistance was limited to the Imperial Family, and occasionally me when I piloted without Ailee.
Even my reaction speed dropped drastically without her.
If Imperial Princess Saya had used an AI, the results of the final exam might have been different.
Not using one meant she was that confident.
Conversely, it could mean the Imperial Family pursued a different direction than the House of Count Luna.
Of course, that was just my wishful thinking.
I didn't want to think that House of Count Luna represented the average of all nobles.
"So first, we raid Count Luna's research facility, or steal a Titan from the household, remove the awakening drugs being injected into the AI, and ask the person themselves what they want."
"Whether to join the Alliance Army as a Titan, or come out of the core?"
"Right. But more of them than you'd think say they'll remain as cores."
It was hard to understand that mentality.
Was it because most people who entered the cores were of commoner origin?
Click.
I bit my nails without thinking, then pulled them away.
"Your expression is just like when you were in the facility."
"Me?"
How could that be, when there was a different person inside the same body?
"It's a hounded expression."
"I'm being chased?"
"I heard your Titan was captured. I don't know which one, but did you get it at the Academy?"
"Ailee."
"Huh?"
"TB12."
"Ah."
Locke nodded.
"We have to save her. We must. We have to, of course. You liked her, didn't you?"
Objectively speaking.
TB13 had shown a lot of signs of liking Ailee.
And looking at it even more objectively.
I had shown a lot of signs of liking Ailee, too.
"I like her."
I'd never once told her.
I'd thought it would be too much, given she was a machine.
Now there was nothing holding me back.
***
"Turn it on."
Mani Luna gestured.
In the adjutant's office appeared the hologram of a child.
Or perhaps a witch wearing a child's guise.
"It is an honor to see you in good health after so long, Chairman Paraya."
"No need for formalities."
Even in a child's form, the ferocity remained unchanged.
She didn't use that joking tone, either.
It meant the reason she had called Mani Luna wasn't solely because of the Academy matter.
"That ferocity with which you swept the Empire's foundations remains the same. Should today's matter be regarded as Freya's doing? Or is it Praia, who was honest in nothing but her ferocity?"
"You want to die."
"Even this body is a creation of House of Count Luna, yet you take a comrade's joke too seriously."
"I…."
Paraya clenched her teeth, then slowly relaxed them.
"The Imperial Family has not forgotten House of Count Luna's grace, providing great freedom and a shield for that freedom."
"I am grateful for that."
"The Imperial Family has repaid a grace far greater than what House of Count Luna bestowed. And what has come in return?"
"A mighty Titan."
"A promising hero of the Empire has disappeared in the north!"
Bang!
It seemed the child's small hand had struck something.
She seemed to have forgotten that the strength was not that of a child.
"How can you speak as if that is House of Count Luna's responsibility?"
"You expect me to believe your report?"
Operation Failed.
The Alliance Army succeeded in infiltrating the research facility, and some of the test subjects inside were captured.
During this process, the Titan of Academy Cadet Deep was lost, and Cadet Deep is missing, presumed dead.
The cause of the operation's failure is judged to be Cadet Deep.
Cadet Deep's Titan will be repaired and used for the House of Count Luna's research facility.
The report, which had been written in numerous languages, was worthless.
That was all there was to it.
"Didn't you use the research facility as a pretext to lay hands on my Academy's cadet?"
Paraya clenched her teeth.
Pale blue eyes looked up at Mani Luna.
They were eyes far too clear to be looking up at someone.
"Aren't you being overly emotional? It is difficult to think of you as Chairman Paraya. Have you taken that cadet as your disciple?"
"He saved the Empire's Imperial Princess, humiliated Fafnir, and turned the western front upside down. Could a more important cadet exist?"
"I wouldn't know. I have little interest in the Academy."
The locked gazes broke.
The static in the hologram grew louder.
It seemed what had been struck earlier was the hologram device.
"I didn't tolerate your deviation so that you could do this."
"Did you not establish an Empire at the center of the continent and gain the power to drive out the remnant Alliance Army?"
"...If the missing cadet reappears and can reveal the truth, and if that truth involves your deviation."
Fzzt.
The hologram cut off.
Mani Luna, staring into empty air, tapped on the table.
"Did you find TB13's body in the facility?"
Beep.
"No. Only blood traces were found."
"If we secure TB13, we won't have much need for live combat subjects to test AI in the north."
"We will replenish troops and resources to sort it out."
"Do it within two months."
Beep.
The connection cut.
It was the sound of the decision to wipe out the northern Alliance Army.