Once they reached the next access door, Murayama made a quick sign with his hand and Ikusaki readily opened the door, the other soldiers pointing their rifles to the inside of the corridor in unison. As there was no one in sight, they exited the access stairs and started walking through the dark corridor.

“Yup, just like I said upstairs,” said Mizusaki as he skirted his eyes through the corridor. “This floor was built in a reverse way compared to the one above us. So to find the ‘jackpot’ door, we just have to go the opposite way~”

“Got it,” acknowledged Murayama, all of them walking in the direction Mizusaki had indicated to be the correct one. “All of you remember what we talked about, right? About the occupant of this floor and what M2 warned us about him?”

“Yes, sir,” acknowledged the other three soldiers in unison.

“Ah! Yes, understood,” suddenly said Mizusaki while pressing the button on the communication device strapped around his neck. “I’ll report it to the other members of my squad. Good luck with the rest~”

“What did Umiko-san tell you?” asked Miue as soon as Mizusaki stopped speaking.

“She said that the target on the floor -1 has been sent to the main hall. It seems both that target and our own are there together since they refuse to leave the building without the others,” reported Mizusaki, shifting his hold to his rifle just the slightest. “The doors to the cells of the targets on floor -2 and -3 have also been opened, but it seems they are having a hard time convincing those two Ms to get out of their cells. They have divided their own squad in two and that’s why they have reached the two doors pretty much at the same time.”

“That’s a shitty technique, if you ask me, but to each one their own,” pointed out Miue as he rolled his eyes around. “They will be the ones to blame if something goes wrong and they get themselves killed because they foolishly reduced their firepower and numbers.”

“Aren’t we doing the same, though?” pointed out Ikusaki.

“It’s similar, but not in the same sloppy way the other squad is doing,” explained Murayama, opening a door and pointing both his rifle and a flashlight to the insides of the room. He quickly surveyed it with his eyes and closed the door once again. “We aren’t dividing ourselves per se. We ‘extract’ one of our members so that we can safely transport the target to the delivery spot, but we maintain the squad itself with more than two members together at all times. A far safer approach than the one the other squad is taking.”

“I see,” acknowledged Ikusaki, maintaining his eyes in the corridor as they continued walking through it. Suddenly, the light of his flashlight shone brighter than before when it hit a new big metal door. “Oh, found the second target.”

“Guys, you know what to do, then,” whispered Murayama, receiving from the other soldiers a nod of acknowledgement. They quickly walked to the door and stopped in front of the electronic panel. “M1, can you hear us?”

They waited for a few seconds but only got silence as an answer. All the soldiers exchanged quick glances in between themselves and then looked back to the door.

“M1, we're going to open the door now, okay?” tried Murayama a second time, giving a step forward to get closer to the hatch covering the electronic panel. “We would like to request your cooperation in our mission to bring you to the first floor above the surface, where you’ll be able to meet with the other Ms. All of them.”

“Through me the way into the suffering city, through me the way to the eternal pain, thought me the way that runs among the lost,” started speaking a male voice from behind the door, leaving all of the soldiers completely lost on what was going on. “Justice urged on my high artificer; my maker was divine authority, the highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, and I endure eternally. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!”

“Huh?” ended up interjecting Miue, turning to look to the other soldiers with a slightly flabbergasted expression on his face. He pointed to the door with his thumb. “Isn’t that from ‘The Divine Comedy’?”

“Correct,” acknowledged the voice. “Which canto?”

All of them continued to look to the door with an uncertain semblance in their features. A couple of seconds later, they all mutually agreed to continue corresponding to this weird dialogue by nodding their heads. It seemed that this M liked to play games.

“Ah… Inferno… canto… 2… no, 3, maybe?” hesitantly answered Murayama as he sought for confirmation from his subordinates with his eyes. He wasn’t really sure what would happen if they gave a wrong answer but he preferred to not run that risk.

“Correct,” acknowledged the voice once again, making the soldiers sigh in relief.

“Can we open the door now?” tried asking Murayama once again.

“Which is the sentence that is different from the rest?” asked the target to finalise.

“Huh?” interjected all of the soldiers in unison. The target had completely screwed them with this last question, by the looks on everybody’s faces.

“Shit… Another weirdo…” cursed Ikusaki as he ruffled his hair in frustration.

“The last one,” suddenly answered Mizusaki, gaining from the other soldiers a surprised look. When he saw those expressions, he shrugged his shoulders. “What? It’s the only sentence that uses a more archaic dialect.”

“Correct,” acknowledged the voice. “The first sentences came from the translation done by Mandelbaum in 1980. However, the last sentence came from the translation done by Longfellow in 1867. I would have liked to ask you that too but I don’t think this door would ever open if I had done so. You should be thankful.”

“I will take that as you giving us permission to open the door,” announced Murayama, opening the hatch and readily inserting the corresponding password.

They started hearing the already familiar clicks and clanks of iron locks grinding metal and the door started to slide to the left. Behind it, a second metal door started to slide upwards and, only then, white smoke began to exit the cell. Taking into consideration that this target needed not one but two doors to contain him inside, all four soldiers readily pointed their weapons to the cell, cautiously waiting for the smoke to dissipate.

Once most of the smoke had disappeared, their eyes darted to the ceiling, where a male was being suspended upside down with what looked like titanium chains, dozens of them circulating his body and then connecting to the walls, the floor and the ceiling. With a meter of distance away from each other, round bombs ticked with a red intermittent light while stuck to the titanium chains by an extremely thin wire. On the target’s face remained a blindfold.

“Fuck… this is sick…” softly mumbled Miue, an angry frown creasing his brows.

“There should be a button on the same place as M2’s cell,” explained M1. “That button will deactivate all of the bombs at the same time.”

“Right,” acknowledged Murayama, motioning over to the wall that usually laid parallel to the first door. He touched around its corner, searching for the button with the pads of his fingers, but he came to a sudden halt and looked up to the target. “How do you know we found the button in M2’s cell?”

“Heh… You wouldn’t know the code of this door otherwise,” explained M1 after snorting softly. “M2 is the most susceptible of all of us. It seemed that the energy bars that soldier talked about managed to convince him into cooperating with you.”

“Okay, how do you know about the energy bars too?” suspiciously asked Miue. It was understandable to be aware of how a person they knew behaved but it was plainly freaky that M1 knew the exact method and ‘baits’ used to persuade M2.

“Because I heard the conversation,” shortly answered M1, a smirk popping up in his lips. “All of you soldiers are surprisingly loud when speaking. I’ve been listening to all of your conversations up until now. All of us have been listening to your conversations, actually. M3 is currently extremely angry because your fellow soldiers interrupted him while he was on his resting period. Too bad that your little scheme to persuade me into doing what you want won’t work because of your obnoxiously loud voices.”

“It’s been working so far,” pointed out Murayama, searching around with his hand for the button once again. “You let us open the door.”

“Yes, I did. Because it suits my own plans,” answered M1, his smirk widening even more. “As I said, I’ve been listening to all of your conversations. You plan on opening the bottom door, correct?”

“We do,” acknowledged Murayama, finally finding a small white button hidden in the gap where the iron lock was connected to the wall. “Excited to see your friend?”

“Friend? Hehehe… Well, you could say so,” cryptically answered M1 after a short laugh. It sounded more like an evil laugh rather than a happy or excited one.

“Then behave like a good boy and you’ll get to see them,” added Murayama, pressing the white button. The red lights on the bombs flickered for brief seconds and then went off. However, the chains remained in the same place. “Ah… The bombs have been deactivated but the chains didn’t—“

“For as long as the bombs are deactivated, then there’s no problem at all,” answered M1 while slightly wiggling his head left and right. All of a sudden, a loud crack resounded through the entire room and the soldiers immediately got on their guard once again. One of the chains circling M1’s body had burst open. Then a second and a third one. When his entire torso had been freed, M1 flexed his upper body up and broke the rest of the chains binding his legs barehanded. When his body started to fall down, he gave a quick and almost delicate somersault and gracefully landed on his two feet.

“Yup… No problem at all…” softly repeated Mizusaki as he kept M1 under the aim of his rifle, just to play safe after the incredulous display of monstrous strength.

M1 motioned his hand up and took off the blindfold covering his eyes, dropping it to the floor with a soft thud. Then he turned around to face the soldiers, his face was totally unreadable as he analyzed the four men with his grey eyes.

“I'll have to handcuff you and then take you upstairs, where you’ll be able to meet with your friends,” explained Murayama as he took a pair of handcuffs from this vest’s pocket and cautiously walked closer to M1.

“You will?” asked M1, a sly smirk surfacing in his features yet again. “What if I said no to that?”