BATTER 23

Trixie, still caught by the scruff of her neck, thrashed about. Seeing her two legs paddling in mid-air, Bijou belatedly rushed over and clung to Baron’s arm.

“Please stop. That statement sounds like you are encouraging a child to actively engage in violent situations. It is an inappropriate suggestion.”

“Pity, my home schooling was exactly like this.”

However, Baron Lin was a detective by trade, and he was well aware that recommending types of lethal weapons to minors was not exactly a universal educational standard. He obediently let go of Trixie and added in a whisper:

“If we get the chance later, I’ll gift you a much better gun.”

The moment her feet touched the ground, Trixie bolted like a lightning strike back to her siblings. Between her clothes, which had been stretched out from her struggling, the back of the child’s neck was briefly exposed. Just below the scalp, amidst the short hair, were regular and peculiar scar marks. Tattoos etched artificially for a specific purpose. Barcodes.

Baron recognized their meaning at a single glance. His brown eyes lingered on each of the children’s necks. The irises behind his lazy eyelids grew cold, as if coated in frost. He stood leaning against the shoulder of Bijou, who was still hanging onto his forearm. A voice like smoke drifted through his languidly parted lips.

“Where did you kids come from?”

“We don’t know…”

The one who answered this time was a little tot clutching Trixie’s hem.

“Is that so? I think I might have an idea.”

Glances of various colors tangled together like a ball of yarn. He traced each thread back. He gripped the end of the knot. Just before he could pull, the sound of a sharp, dry cough scattered the tangled threads. Everyone turned their heads toward one spot at once. The teacher, who had been lying unconscious the whole time, was pushing himself up, supporting his upper body with his left arm. Groaning as he struggled to right himself, the teacher spoke in a raspy voice.

“The adults… will do the talking.”

“Teacher!”

“Teacher’s awake!”

The kids, who had been huddled together unsure of what to do, swarmed toward him. The teacher, finally getting both feet on the floor, gestured for the children to step back. A narrow path opened through the crowd. With eyes that had turned brittle, he staggered forward until he was right in front of Baron.

“Wait… Let’s talk just between us.”

Baron shrugged as if to say have it your way. The teacher guided Baron and Bijou to container number one at the very end of the building. When they finally reached the last unit, he closed the entrance to the corridor and stood with his back against the door. Baron crossed his arms and scanned the bleak interior of the container.

He noticed a dingy stuffed animal that a child from a bygone era might play with and a pressure-sensitive chalkboard. Listed on the board were simple words like “Apple,” “Bear,” and “Cat” in alphabetical order. His brown eyes, which had been wandering among the traces of grimy fingerprints everywhere, settled on the teacher’s young, hollowed-out eyes.

“Those kids—they’re all clones.”

There was no rebuttal. Instead, the teacher bit his chapped lips hard and glared at Baron. Baron couldn’t help the thrill of feeling like a villain. He casually picked up a teddy bear that had fallen onto a pile of blankets. The cotton of the doll, stained as much as it had been loved, held deposits of young, obsessive affection. A cloth shell that had become excessively soft from being rubbed endlessly against hands and cheeks smoother than vinyl. Baron knew this doll would likely outlive its owners. He continued speaking.

“There’s a certain type of person. People who find it unsettling to put machinery in their bodies, so they grow clones in a lab to raise…”

“But the act of cultivating and possessing clones for private gain is illegal,” Bijou interrupted.

Just as he said, private cultivation of clones was illegal. But then again, murder and robbery were also illegalities older than history itself. Baron smiled faintly.

“That’s why they only use them in unavoidable cases. For instance…”

“Right.”

The teacher leaning against the door looked straight at the two of them. It was that sharp gaze that cut off Baron’s words. However, that blade wasn’t aimed at Baron or Bijou. Deep wrinkles etched themselves between the teacher’s still-young, firm eyes. It was a face enduring a pain that was chronic yet could never be grown accustomed to. The teacher’s lips moved.

“They are children who were being raised for organ harvesting.”

No matter how much technology advanced, an irrational affection for the “natural” always existed. About two centuries ago, back when the Mars terraforming project was just gaining momentum, mechanical implants were a major trend—not just in medicine, but as a facet of fashion. Had it not been for the war-era war crime where civilian body implants were hacked to cause mass suicides, many aspects of the modern world would be different.

Even after the armistice was signed, people remained wary of mechanical implants that directly affected the nervous system. The fear of losing free will outweighed all the benefits artificial organs provided. Consequently, many expressed a revulsion toward artificial organ transplants that had nothing to do with hacking. Among them, those with sufficient wealth could risk legal punishment to create illegal clones and secretly receive the necessary organs.

The children they met a moment ago were, in essence, spare tires. Tires that thought, spoke, moved, and loved. Tires that liked to hug dolls. Baron noticed the joint between the doll’s torso and arm had loosened. Tucking the cotton that had slipped out between the frayed threads back inside, he asked in a calm tone:

“Did you steal them? Alone?”

“Back then, two of us stole them. But now, it’s just me.”

The teacher’s voice as he answered was laced with a harsh, wintry wind, making it sound almost like a sneer. Baron didn’t have a bio-scanner eye to measure hormone levels, but he could clearly smell the scent of pain and shame permeating every trembling laugh.

Stains on the fibers of skin and muscle—shame, pain, fear, loathing, the kind of memories that cannot be erased—seeped into every grain of the cells as they decayed. The indelible stench of this city likely came from here. From the human body that cannot be separated from the soul, from the flesh.

From the body of a sinner!

Baron’s gaze clung to the teacher’s pallid face. It was a relatively smooth face, though it had grown rough. Baron traced a life prior to being a thief on that surface and continued his questioning.

“You’ve got some nerve. I heard they plant tracking chips in clones. How did you handle that problem?”

“I… I extracted them myself.”

“You were a doctor then. Or a staff researcher.”

As if his previous position were a dagger itself, the teacher turned his face away in agony, looking as though his cheek had been sliced. Some secrets are so lethally prominent that one cannot protect them even if they wish to. However, since pain was already piled as high as skyscrapers in this city, Baron decided to touch on a more practical matter.

“I’m not particularly curious about why you stole the kids. Let’s hear why you felt the need to press a gun to my head.”

“Is there a need for that?”

“Trixie mentioned that there’s a massive bounty on my blonde sweetheart here.”

Bijou’s blonde hair stood out regardless of light or shadow. The teacher crouched his upper body, murmuring the name of the over-brave child under his breath. His hunched back also looked like a plea regarding the pain in his broken arm. After whimpering like a dog for a moment, the teacher snapped his head up.

“How much… did she tell you?”

“Well, just the bounty amount. And I gathered that she cares for you a great deal.”

“Haha…”

“Just so you know, that 100 million dollars is what personally treated your arm, too.”

The teacher turned his head unconsciously. The 100-million-dollar blonde beauty was smiling brightly like an old painting.

“If there is any discomfort, please let me know. I will help as quickly as possible.”

“That’s what he says. You heard him, right? That’s the kind of guy he is.”

Baron gestured while holding the teddy bear. It was around then that the lump of an arm, which had been hanging precariously by a rotten thread, plopped right off.