At the command post two blocks from the building.
A man is staring at the screens with a dark and grim expression.
Communication with the squads on the sixth and seventh floors has been cut off and the only thing coming in are reports from the second and third floors, which aren't useful.
"Why isn't he escaping...?"
The young man with black hair and a stern, severe face mutters that.
He has been hunting ghouls alongside his mentor for a long time, and until now he believed he knew quite well how they behaved. Ghouls run when they're cornered, because it's a basic instinct, the same as with any animal.
Even S-class ghouls, as dangerous as they were, when they saw the situation turning bad they looked for an escape route.
Any ghoul with half a brain would have tried to flee through the rooftop or the sewers given the force deployed tonight. They have him cornered, even if it's Chimera, he should be afraid, right? He should be looking for a gap to slip through.
But this Chimera, who two years ago unleashed mass terror on the population, walked into the building and stayed there.
"Doing it voluntarily... Is he waiting for us to come inside? I see... the inside of the building is advantageous terrain for him."
Narrowing his eyes, the young man clenches his jaw.
He hears footsteps from behind, and a familiar voice addresses him.
"Ah, young Amon. Lost in your thoughts again?"
The young man called Amon turns and sees his mentor walking toward him with his hands in the pockets of a white coat.
He is an old and disheveled man with gray, unkempt hair. He has one eye visibly larger than the other, which gives him a disturbing appearance that made new CCG recruits look twice whenever they saw him for the first time.
But Amon knows him well, and he knows that behind that eccentric old man appearance is an investigator with decades of experience hunting ghouls.
"Mado-san."
Amon straightens slightly as he speaks.
"I've lost communication with the upper squads. The teams haven't responded for eight minutes and the security cameras are showing images that don't match the radio reports."
Mado walks up to the screens and studies them with an interested expression. His uneven eyes narrow, and from the way he tilts his head slightly, he looks like an old crow watching something shiny on the ground.
"Hooo. What curious screens. One shows a clean wall, another shows a soldier standing there doing nothing, and this one here shows an empty hallway..."
Mado points at one of the screens with a bony finger.
"...while on the radio for that same hallway we're hearing someone beg for their life."
Amon tightens his fists watching Mado seem to enjoy himself while the others are probably dying inside.
"Whether it's Chimera or one of his associates helping from outside, someone is manipulating what we see."
"Manipulating? Hoo..."
Mado runs his tongue over his lips and smiles.
"I've known many strange ghouls, but a ghoul who gets into security systems without hacking them... hoho."
"Mado-san, now isn't the time to..."
"It is, it is, Amon-kun. When a ghoul does something new the whole world trembles a little, doesn't it? Heh heh, like that night two years ago."
Amon takes a deep breath and shakes his head as Mado asks.
"What else do we know?"
"A soldier from the team that went up to the seventh floor came down a few minutes ago. He says that ghoul has hundreds of eyes capable of inducing madness, that the walls were covered in pulsing flesh, that there were eyes in the walls, and that a mouth in the floor swallowed one of his companions."
Amon said all of that, but as the words came out of his mouth he realized how ridiculous they sounded. All of that... If he didn't know the soldier who gave the report, he would have thought the man was drugged or had lost his mind from stress.
"Marvelous!"
Amon's eyes open slightly at Mado's exclamation.
"A ghoul that transforms the entire environment... No, it goes beyond what a kagune can do. Chimera is fascinating."
He brings his hands together in front of his face and his fingers tremble with excitement.
"Don't you find it fascinating, Amon-kun?"
"Mado-san, with all due respect, there are soldiers dying in there."
"Makes me want to capture and study it..."
Mado ignores Amon.
"Mado-san, we have to do something. If we keep sending regular squads we'll just be feeding it. And if we don't hurry his associates could show up and we might have another incident like the chaos that devastated Kyoto."
Mado turns toward him and a crooked smile spreads across his face.
"That's why I already sent in the Black Quinque Series users."
Amon's eyes open a little wider.
"You already sent them?"
"They should be entering through the west side right now."
Amon looks at the screens and on one of them sees three figures advancing through the third floor. Unlike the conventional Quinque users who seem to hesitate, these figures move with confidence.
"Do you think it'll be enough?"
Mado scratches his chin.
"Well, that depends on how strong this Chimera actually is. But the Black Quinque Series are different. You know that."
Amon nods as Mado scratches his cheek and says.
"Let's go downstairs."
"Downstairs? Shouldn't we go and assist them against Chimera?"
"We're going to the armory in the basement. Without going there, forget about facing Chimera."
"...I don't have authorization to enter there."
"You've had it for three months. Nobody just told you."
×××
They go down a service staircase that leads out from the back of the command post. Assistants salute as they pass before quickly looking away.
Probably because of Mado, the hunched-over old man.
Concrete walls form the hallway of a basement lit by fluorescents, and at the end of this hallway they reach a thick steel door.
The old man with the strange eyes pulls a key from the inner pocket of his coat, made of black metal with a head carved in the shape of an inverted cross.
Seeing this key...
'This is... strange. It gives me chills.'
Amon makes that comment in his head.
Why does the key to the CCG armory have an inverted cross? The CCG has no religious tradition that he knows of.
The old man with the sinister smile turns the key.
As the door opens, a burst of cold air comes from inside.
Inside, the room is long, with four vertical display cases of thick glass running along the central hallway. Three are empty, though one is still occupied.
Amon walks toward the empty ones. Each has a nameplate on it.
"I see..."
Those are the names of the Black Quinque Series users.
The fourth display case is at the far end and he stops in front of it.
Inside is a double-edged black spear. A spear with thick and wide blades, probably weighing tens of kilograms on each side. Fortunately the grip is long and it can be wielded with both hands.
On the blades and even along the grip there are engravings that look like writing, though it's a language neither Amon nor Mado knows. The engravings pulse, looking like veins connected to a heart.
"Please tell me that's not moving."
"That's not moving."
Mado answers from behind him.
"...Mado-san, it is moving."
"I told you what you asked me to tell you."
Amon suddenly feels the urge to throw himself out a window, though unfortunately they're in an underground room.
"Anyway, that one is yours."
Mado raises his hand and his bony finger points at the spear.
"It's been waiting for you for three months. As the top graduate from the CCG academy, you're being granted permission to wield it. Though I should warn you, it's probably hungry."
"Hungry?"
Amon's face twists at Mado's words.
"All of these special Quinques are like that?"
"Of course. Interesting, isn't it? Huhuhu... Kagunes always fascinated me, experimenting with them and creating Quinques. But what these people have accomplished is even more impressive. Putting living things inside weapons... I'd love to try that myself. Tsk, tsk..."
"Really? Living things inside weapons? Ghouls?"
"Ghouls? No, no..."
Quinques are weapons made from ghoul kakuhou. They take the organ from which the kagune emerges, process it, stabilize it, and it can be of great help in fighting ghouls, which cannot be killed with conventional human weaponry. But a normal Quinque is still, at the end of the day, something dead that has been shaped into a weapon.
"Demons are imprisoned in the processed Kakuhou. That is how this series of Quinques is born. You could say they are now living weapons."
A year ago when the CCG announced internally the development of the Black Quinque Series.
At the time they presented it as a technological breakthrough capable of taking Quinques to a higher class, specifically designed to face extremely dangerous ghouls.
However, very few people actually know the full information. Like Mado, who is now telling Amon the rest of it.
It turns out these new Quinques are Cursed Gears, and it wasn't the CCG who developed them. They received them from an outside source.
They came from the Hiragi family.
From the weapons development branch of the Hiragi family, operating out of an underground base in Osaka under the name Order of the Imperial Demons.
An organization that officially doesn't exist in Japan. The Hiragi family, who are quite influential with several powerful families, keeps it hidden.
"When you grab it, you'll feel something in your head. A voice will try to negotiate with you, offering you power and revenge. Demons are vile things and it will attack your weak point..."
The Hiragi family found a way to seal demons inside weapons and hand them over to humans capable of enduring the demon's mental influence without losing their minds.
Mado looks at Amon and smiles.
"You know what I mean, don't you?"
Amon tightens his fists and thinks of his adoptive father.
Donato Porpora.
"If you're weak, you'll fall under the demon's influence and end up as a puppet wearing your own face. It almost happened to me. So be strong, Amon-kun, huhu..."
Amon closes his eyes and lets out a long, heavy sigh.
He remembers the chaos ghouls can create. Without this special weapon he would be unable to fight Chimera.
"...Understood."
"Good boy."