I Clean Gods to Pay the Rent

0011 Plague and Pride

    Though it may have sworn an oath it would sooner or later have to take back, the Soot Bishop was, after all, an archdemon with principles — and it actually kept its word, going mic-off on the spot.

    No matter what price Cassius named, it stubbornly held out in total silence, even shutting its eyes — absolutely, immovably closed to all reason.

    With the hospital gnawing at his mind, and the bandaged woman having changed her tune and agreed to act, Cassius — seeing there was no moving this troublesome goat — simply ignored it and hurried straight for the hospital with the bandaged woman.

    But something was clearly going on nearby: even though it was fully night now, the streets kept producing people hurrying somewhere.

    Most of these pedestrians wore bizarre masks like giant crow beaks; they clustered in twos and threes, carrying someone lying face-down on a pair of metal stretcher-poles or a litter, heads down and moving fast.

    Strangely, though these people were clearly in a rush, whenever they ran into Cassius's group at intersections or in narrow alleys, they'd scramble to clear a path, waving their arms for the two of them to pass first — as if they wanted no contact with them.

    Desperate to check on his sister, Cassius had no energy to spare for these cagey pedestrians; he just took a hard look at the state of their souls, confirmed nothing was off, and was about to hurry past — when the bandaged woman threw out an arm and stopped him.

    "Wait a moment."

    Sizing up those strange figures with a grave expression, the bandaged woman opened her traveling case, bent down, rummaged briefly, took out a mask of much the same design, and put it on. Then, voice muffled, she instructed Cassius:

    "Stay right here and don't move. Until I get back, do not under any circumstances go near them!"

    What? Something wrong with these people?!

    Meeting the bandaged woman's eyes through the lenses of her beak mask, and finding that this cautious "veteran" seemed deeply wary of those strange figures, Cassius's own guard shot up to match.

    Staying put as the bandaged woman had told him, he gripped the goat head in his arms tightly and studied those strangers' souls with total focus, ready to call out a warning to her the instant anything looked wrong.

    But what Cassius hadn't expected was that those oddly dressed, furtive figures — their souls in a none-too-"stable" state, stuffed with unease and agitation — didn't seem hostile at all.

    After a few quick words with the bandaged woman, those people even produced a new mask and pressed it into her hand, then pointed in his direction — as if... they wanted him to wear one of these strange masks too?

    Sure enough, the moment the bandaged woman got back, she stuffed the mask into Cassius's hands and urged him, dead serious:

    "Something's happened. Put this on, quick!"

    Seeing how grave she looked, Cassius didn't dare dawdle; following her instructions, he pulled the whole thing — mask sewn onto a black hood — over his head, and the already-dark world went another shade blacker.

    Only now did Cassius realize this leather beak mask was fully sealed — pitch black all over without a fleck of other color, even the two small lenses at eye level deliberately painted black. Only through a tiny ball-shaped lens at the center, like a pupil, could a little of the outside light faintly seep in.

    In daylight it might've been fine, but right now it was like wearing a pair of sunglasses — his vision was badly hampered, so much he couldn't even see the road under his own feet.

    "I can't s—"

    "Don't move!"

    Before Cassius could explain his situation, the bandaged woman reached over and smacked the beak of the mask hard; the mask, which had still been sitting a little off his face, pressed flush against it, and the tiny pupil-lens came right up against his eye.

    Startled, Cassius instinctively tried to shut his eye, only to find his lids propped open by the lens; a few pale-yellow, cold oil-drops squeezed out from a corner of the lens, and in a blink they coated his whole eyeball.

    The patterns on the bandaged woman's traveling case, the seams of the paving stones underfoot, the textures of the street-side buildings — the whole world was forcibly plated in a strange thin yellow...

    Wait! I can see?!

    ...

    "This is a night-raven mask the Plague Office uses to ward off pestilence — you can see the road clearly even on unlit streets at night. Remember: don't look out with your own eyes. Press your pupil tight against that pupil-lens, and learn to observe through it.

    "And wear the mask snug — keep your mouth and nose breathing inside the beak. It holds herbs, spices, and special smelling salts that'll protect you from most plagues."

    Coaching him on the mask's use, the bandaged woman explained to Cassius at top speed:

    "I've just asked those Plague Office people. Last week's heavy rain swelled the sewage river, the dam the Department of Roads built was washed out that same day, and a branch of the sewage river ended up connected to Smoke City's water-intake river.

    "That alone might have been harmless. But the contracted-out Kobb Hydraulic Company, to save money, skipped the mandated twelve-stage purification: after pumping the water from the river, they filtered out only debris and silt, ran one crude disinfection to kill the smell, and poured it straight into the municipal water pipes.

    "The people being carried are those who drank the foul water. Main symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, violent abdominal cramps — purging until dehydration and unconsciousness. People who touched their vomit started showing the same symptoms, and there are already some five hundred cases.

    "The Plague Office people suspect a plague may be starting, so they're shipping the symptomatic patients to Bellfounder Memorial Hospital in whole waves, hoping to contain it."

    Bellfounder Memorial Hospital? Isn't that the one Mira's staying at?

    "Are they out of their fucking minds?"

    That anything this insane was happening was too much; Cassius couldn't hold back his fury:

    "What about Central Hospital? Royal First Hospital? If it comes to it, the hospitals on Psalm Street and at Mercer University would do!

    "Those hospitals start at a thousand beds each; Bellfounder Memorial has maybe one or two hundred in total, and they're packed full around the clock — sometimes there are patients lying in the corridors. Why send people there of all places?"

    "Because of location."

    As if she'd seen this kind of thing too many times, the bandaged woman said evenly:

    "Central Hospital sits in the rich quarter, Royal First Hospital in the noble quarter, Psalm Street is where the clergy live, and Mercer University is surrounded by the Kingdom's future elite. The Plague Office certainly wouldn't dare send patients there — which makes Bellfounder Memorial in the Old Quarter the obvious first choice.

    "Besides, the mass pipe failure was confined to the Old Quarter in the first place — the New Quarter's Kobb Hydraulic Company intake is farther upstream and untouched by the sewage branch. The Old Quarter's problem, of course, gets solved by the Old Quarter."

    "Says who?!"

    "Says the water bills they pay — five times the Old Quarter's."

    "..."

    Money! Money! Money! At the bottom of it all — still money! Still fucking money!

    "Don't dwell on it."

    Seeing Cassius's mood going somewhere dark, the bandaged woman hurried to counsel him:

    "Even if those hospitals agreed to take patients, the Old Quarter's people wouldn't go. They couldn't afford the prices there."

    "And what about the Department of Roads and the Kobb Hydraulic Company?"

    Cassius asked through gritted teeth:

    "The Department of Roads' dam collapsed after one rain, and the Kobb Hydraulic Company broke the rules too — by the Kingdom's law, shouldn't they be the ones to answer for this...? Fuck!"

    This time, before the bandaged woman could answer, Cassius cut his own question short — because it really was too stupid a question.

    Never mind a "natural disaster" like this rainstorm — even when the alchemy factory they'd approved for a residential district leaked waste fumes and gave Mira her lung disease, didn't the Department of Roads find excuses to dodge compensation all the same?

    As for the corner-cutting Kobb Hydraulic Company: issue the dividends, sell off the equipment, report a big loss from mismanagement, declare bankruptcy and closure — done and dusted.

    Even the little property that was left would probably be claimed first by their upstream and downstream companies and the shareholders, as penalties for breach and loss — what finally reaches these victims won't even be a drop in the bucket!

    Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!

    It felt like a chunk of burning coal was scorching inside his chest; Cassius had just gritted his teeth to say something when the bandaged woman gave his arm a light tug.

    "Let's go. We've been blocking the road long enough — don't hold up their work any longer."

    Pointing at those "crow-people" around the corner, the bandaged woman said softly:

    "Their job is to treat the sick and stop a plague from breaking out at scale; our job is to clean up the anomalies that appear and keep the ordinary world from being devoured.

    "If I'm not mistaken, the runaway Contaminated you found must be tangled up in this business. If these people keep going forward, they may well be walking into danger.

    "So if this kind of thing sickens you, and you want to do something for them — then this is when we move."

    "..."

    "Mm..."

    Drawing a deep breath of the beak's acrid herb-scent, Cassius ducked his head in answer, then followed behind the bandaged woman at a jog toward Bellfounder Memorial Hospital.

    But just then, the long-silent goat head stirred, and quietly butted its horns against his chest.

    'Hey!'

    "Hm?"

    'Shh! Shh! Don't say anything!'

    Seeing Cassius about to ask, the Soot Bishop hastily instructed:

    'Yours truly talks, you listen. If I ask you a question, don't answer either — one look at your soul and I'll know whether you're agreeing or not!'

    "..."

    One glance at the bandaged woman's back, and Cassius understood at once: this so-called demon, the Soot Bishop, wanted to do a little business with him on the sly, out of the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's sight.

    Was this what a demon's temptation looked like?

    At the thought, Cassius's expression went sharp; his first instinct was to report it to the bandaged woman — to have her and the Oddity Cleanup Bureau behind her keep an eye on this demon that wanted to make trouble. However...

    'Relax. Yours truly won't ask any price of you, and you won't need to do anything for me.'

    After one look at Cassius's soul — blindingly bright on top, yet pressed beneath with sky-flooding black flame — the Soot Bishop, sulking only a moment ago, said with a beaming grin:

    'Once we find a suitable target, yours truly will teach you how to steer human malice — how to lure them into slaughtering each other. Well? Interested?'

    "..."

    ???

    Didn't you just say that even if you got tossed back into the sheep pen in Wales, you'd never teach me one thing more?

    'That was then. This is now.'

    Reading the doubt in Cassius's soul, the Soot Bishop split its mouth into a cheery grin and said, utterly without shame:

    'Just tell me — do you want to learn or not!'

    At that, Cassius's brow furrowed hard.

    Of course I want to learn — it costs me nothing, so why refuse? But... since when is a demon this charitable?

    ...

    Charitable, my foot — not this lifetime, not ever. When a demon skips the bargaining and turns uncharacteristically generous, dying to help you...

    Heh. That just proves it wants more!

    Watching Cassius — wary to the bone, yet still not reporting it to Agnes (the bandaged woman) — the Soot Bishop couldn't keep a gleam of self-satisfaction out of its eyes.

    Its eye for people really was flawless!

    The kid barely passed for a "good person" — his moral sense even ran a good deal stronger than most — but whether he was too naive, or the world too dark, or some of both, an awful lot of something formidable had piled up inside him. A man like that was born to fall into the abyss.

    Nuzzling into the running Cassius's chest, enduring that demon-repulsive morality and goodwill, drinking deep of the boundless rage hidden beneath the brightness — and of that extreme madness that longed to destroy everything and build it all over again — the Soot Bishop closed its eyes, utterly intoxicated.

    Take up the blade, and the will to kill rises all on its own.

    You can barely hold out for now only because you're still weak. Once you've gained power strong enough — will you still be willing, like this, to let rage roast your soul unchecked?

    Keep at it, kid! Yours truly will absolutely help you every step of the way! Help you dispose of that tiresome trash, help you harvest those sinful souls, even help you realize that ridiculous dream buried at the bottom of your heart.

    But once you think you've achieved your ideal, once you're sinking satisfied into happiness — if you then find everything quietly returning to how it was, the world's base coat the same old color as before, or even worse...

    The abyss welcomes you aboard.

    ...

    "Cough cough... would you mind going and asking for me?"

    Peering through the ICU's glass door at the corridor now strewn with people lying everywhere, the girl in the hospital bed couldn't help tugging at the sleeve of the nurse beside her, and asked, her face full of worry:

    "Has my brother come back? And has something happened outside? Why are there so many people lying in the corridor?"

    "That's... maybe we shouldn't go out?"

    Glancing at the ever-growing crowd of patients outside — nearly piled up to the ICU's door — the pretty young nurse said, a little afraid:

    "For this many patients to arrive at once, it's either a mass poisoning or some acute infectious disease. If it's the former, fine. If it's the latter..."

    "If it's the latter, then it's already too late."

    Glancing outside the room, and seeing a slick of vomit already lapping at the door, the other, older, middle-aged nurse sighed and shook her head:

    "For them to stack patients up to the ICU's door means our hospital has probably hit its limit. If it really is something infectious, staying shut up in the ICU won't save us — we may already be infected."

    "In that case... we can't avoid it anyway, so why not open the door and let them in?"

    Watching those patients twitching on the cold floor tiles, some even howling as they clutched their stomachs, Mira bit her bloodless lips and said, a look of pity on her face:

    "There's only one bed in here, but there's a whole row of sofas, and the floor is carpeted — no matter what, it beats lying on stone tile... May we?"

    "Of course you may!"

    Giving Mira a slightly astonished glance, the older nurse's eyes flashed with warmth; she smiled kindly and said gently:

    "This is your room. If you're willing, there's no problem at all."

    With that, she beckoned the young nurse — whose face had gone rather sour — opened the ICU's door, and bent down to help a nearby patient inside. But...

    "Huh?"

    Staring at the little boy — small and slight, yet as immovably heavy as if he'd been welded to the floor — both nurses' eyes went wide at the same time.

    They were both women nurses, but working in a hospital, hauling heavy things came up constantly, and neither of them was weak.

    If it had been a burly man, fine, they couldn't lift him. But this was clearly a child barely past ten — how could... the Grand Bell preserve us!

    Amid the boy's cries of pain, the two nurses discovered in utter horror that the "feel" in their arms just now had been no illusion — this small, skinny boy really was "welded" to the ground!

    "This... this..."

    Staring at the boy's arm, already sunk into the floor tile, the young nurse collapsed onto her rear, lips trembling, just about to say something — when the middle-aged nurse's face changed violently, she seized her off the tiles, and hauled her back into the room with startling roughness.

    *Rrrip!* "Aaahh!!!"

    The rip of shredded cloth and the woman's scream rang out together; clutching her blood-drenched right hand, the young nurse crashed backward onto the room's carpet with a wail.

    And where she'd been sitting, apart from a shred of white from her nurse's uniform, there also lay a layer of mangled skin — by its size an exact match for her palm, plainly just torn off from the center of her hand!

    Looking at the patients in the corridor — who knew since when — sinking bit by bit into the hospital's floor tiles, the older nurse, whose quick hands had just saved her colleague, felt her legs give out; she too dropped onto the carpet, murmuring to herself in naked terror:

    "What... what in the world is happening?"