And Then There Were None

Credits

Official translation from Grimoire NieR: Revised Edition.
Written by Jun Eishima
Concept by cavia/Yoko Taro
Translated by Casey Loe

Characters

• Grimoire Weiss
• Grimoire Rubrum
• Grimoire Noir

And Then There Were None ver.1.00

See also: And Then There Were None/Fan Translation

The curtain rises to the tune of the Pied Piper's flute,
And the fate of humanity plays out on a Hamelin stage.

I'm in a room with no windows and no doors.

It's huge and brightly lit, despite there not being any visible lights—somehow the ceiling seems to be functioning as a source of illumination. The other people around me are all roughly the same age and a variety of different races. I count nine men, including myself, and four women. Some are still out cold, but others are on their feet, readying themselves for what might come next. A single book lies on the ground next to each of us.

What happened? What am I even doing here?

I feel dizzy. Drugged. It's never a good idea to get up quickly in situations like this, so I reach for my gun as I slowly study the room. It's gone, which is no real surprise—wouldn't make sense to kidnap someone and then leave them a weapon, after all. But my abductors have done an unusually thorough job of it, removing everything from the wire woven in the hem of my pants to the explosives secreted in the sole of my shoe. They found everything I had, which is how I know I've been abducted by the very organization to which I belong.

I'd figured something like this was coming ever since they started talking about a sketchy "secret mission" I was apparently free to accept or refuse as I saw fit. But not only did they offer an incredible sum of money, they also promised a full discharge when it was over. They claimed I'd finally be able to kiss this whole shitty lifestyle goodbye. You'd have to be a moron to refuse an offer like that—or else some kind of deranged sociopath who actually enjoys the killing.

Anyway, it was obvious the mission wasn't on the up-and-up—not with that kind of reward waiting at the finish line. I figured it'd be the sort of thing where they send a hundred guys and maybe one comes home. Or hell, maybe just one out of a thousand. Because you only offer that level of compensation if you're damn sure you won't end up having to pay it. And yet, even having known all that, here I am. Just thinking about it makes me chuckle.

A voice calls out, interrupting my musing, and I turn to find a man who looks to be a year or two my junior. But he's unfortunately from some other country, and I can only shake my head in response to his words. That response seems to do the trick, because he doesn't try to talk to me again.

The group I belong to is a multinational organization, but most of the members only know their mother tongue. There's no time to study foreign languages; as soon as our age hits double digits, we're pushed into round-the-clock combat training. Most of us can barely read and write in our own language, much less a second one. And sure, there are a few bilinguals in the org—folks with parents from two different countries, a handful who were born in one place and raised in another—but they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

Because I'm curious, I call out a greeting in my native tongue to the man sitting across from me. He responds with a shake of the head, as does the woman seated to his left. She looks groggy; I'm guessing her sedative just wore off. Those things affect people differently, but as a general rule, folks like her are usually the first to die. The slow don't tend to survive for long.

Suddenly, the woman locks her gaze on me, her eyes widening in surprise. Well, this is interesting. Who the hell is she? She looks familiar somehow, but I can't place her. As I ponder, she struggles to stand on a pair of unsteady legs, then immediately crashes back to the floor with an epic thud. But her clumsy pratfall finally knocks loose a memory.

"You survived, eh?"

The woman nods as she pulls herself to her feet once more. She's one of the rare polyglots in the organization. Her mother must hail from my homeland; children always remember the language of their mothers.

"I'm glad to see you survived as well."

"'Course I survived. But you? Now that's a surprise."

We'd met three years ago. We were both in the 13th Crusade, a large-scale offensive against the Legion. We'd been assigned to different units, but once the fighting started, organization collapsed and things like who was in what unit didn't matter for shit. And yeah, war's always like that, but that one was especially bad.

I was sixteen at the time—already a hardened veteran—and I'd pegged my odds of survival at a respectable fifty-fifty. But then, in the midst of all the chaos, I saw this dimwit standing in front of one of the Legion, completely frozen. Not knowing what else to do, I knocked her out of the way and torched the whole area. Not because I was trying to be some kind of hero—it wasn't anything so high-minded. It's just that soldiers are a valuable resource, so we gotta take care of each other. Or to put it another way, we can't let each other go to waste.

Anyway, believe it or not, that dimwit was the same age as me—but unlike me, she'd been thrown onto the battlefield without the benefit of years of training. No wonder she went into shock the moment she had to go toe to toe with one of the Legion.

See, the Legion look like people because that's what they used to be. White chlorination syndrome kills damn near everyone who contracts it, and the few who survive turn into psychopathic monsters. But that aggression isn't even the main reason we're so desperate to wipe them out—the bigger issue is that they're still contagious, which means even one of them could start a new outbreak. We're three years into this strange pandemic, and we still have no idea how to cure it. I guess it all started with some white giant that isn't even from this world? I dunno. Something like that.

But while we don't have a cure, we do have Luciferase, a medicine with protective properties. Problem is, no one's been able to mass produce it. Plus, it seems to only work on kids—and the younger they are, the more effective it is.

Long story short, that's how we ended up here. The strongest kids are drafted, given what little Luciferase there is to go around, and sent to fight the Legion. The international group responsible for training and deploying these child warriors is called the Hamelin Organization. The name comes from that fairy tale about a pied piper who lures a bunch of kids away, which has always struck me as being in poor taste.

"So what are you doing here?"

"I was told it was a top-secret mission."

"High compensation, full discharge, completely free to accept or refuse, right?"

She looks taken aback for a second, then immediately nods like she's just put the pieces together. She goes on to tell me how she'd been attending school until that day three years ago—just kicking along like everything in the world was perfectly normal. Guess it stands to reason she'd be sharper than me, given that she got to go to school.

"I imagine everyone here was given the same offer?"

I nod as I scan the room again. It's a diverse group of participants, most likely chosen to represent a wide variety of nationalities. Even at a glance, it's clear this girl and I are the only ones managing to communicate with each other.

"I suppose it was an offer no one could refuse."

Oh, she's right about that. Anyone who does what we do would leap at a chance to escape this life. I mean, we're mass murderers, plain and simple. And sure, they tell us our enemies are monsters completely devoid of intelligence, but they still look like people—and our job is to burn them alive.

Yep. We burn 'em. See, the blood and saliva of white chlorination syndrome victims are supposed to be contagious, so they don't want gunshots spattering fluids around. We're actually ordered not to fire guns unless it's absolutely necessary—and since none of us want to be inhaling anything that dangerous, it's one order we're happy to obey. Still, it doesn't feel good to see creatures that look like human beings wreathed in flames and burning to death. I was barely ten years old the first time I torched one of the Legion, and nine years later, I'm still not used to it. Each time is just as terrible as the first.

"So what do you think these things are?" asks the woman, pointing at the tome next to her. "They look like books, but they don't open."

Said books are thick, with covers that are somewhere between black and dark gray in color, and have nothing written on them. After a moment, the woman picks hers up and tries to pry it open.

"Hey, stop!" I cry. "Don't touch that!"

She drops the book like it's on fire, and I respond with a loud sigh. In this respect, she hasn't changed at all in the last three years. See, we were stuck together for a while after I saved her—considering how green she was, I wasn't about to abandon her. Luckily, she proved to be a quick learner. I gave her the occasional pointer as we moved, and that was all she needed to keep up. She was tough too. If she hadn't been, she wouldn't have been drafted at sixteen, no matter how well she responded to the Luciferase. But eventually we had to part ways, at which point I figured she was done for. Once the battle was over, there was no way for either of us to know if the other was still alive.

Eventually, the Legion surrounded us, and the only chance for survival was for us to book it in different directions and hope one made it out. Since I was both more likely to survive and had greater value in future skirmishes, it made sense for me to run for safety—and yet, I immediately took off right into the jaws of danger. It's like I was possessed by something; I can't think of any other explanation. But it makes me uncomfortable whenever I remember it, so I usually try not to.

"Can't believe you survived," I say. "You got lucky."

She shakes her head to indicate otherwise. "I'm alive because you covered my escape."

"Wasn't trying to. Just made a bad choice, is all."

She opens her mouth to speak again, but is interrupted when a man and woman start raising their voices in the corner of the room. At first, I assume they've also lucked into finding someone who speaks their language, but it quickly becomes clear that isn't the case. I don't know what they're arguing about—some trivial offense, most likely—but they're going at it hard, spewing vitriol in languages the other can't comprehend.

Finally, the woman has enough and slaps the man across the face, and he grabs her with an angry snarl. No one moves to intervene. We've all had training in how to fight the Legion in hand-to-hand combat, and we know how dangerous it would be to get between them.

Just then, the book at the arguing woman's feet suddenly springs open. She didn't touch it, didn't accidentally kick it—it just opens. The moment it does, a gigantic black hand explodes out from its pages, grabs the man she's been arguing with, and crushes him to death. He looks sort of confused when it happens, like he can't believe it, and the woman shares an equally dumbfounded expression.

A second later, the man's copy of the book starts to emit a brilliant light. I figure there's another hand on the way, but instead, the book just sucks the man's body into itself. As soon as the corpse is gone, the light vanishes. The cover of the book changes from blackish gray to a brilliant blue, and some sort of pattern emerges on it—a pattern that looks uncomfortably like a human face.

The shocked silence that ensues is brief; the uproar that follows immediate.

"What was that?!" cries the woman next to me.

"How the hell should I know?!" I reply as I reach for my copy of the book. While I'd initially been hesitant to touch something I knew so little about, things have changed, and I now feel like it's imperative to learn as much about it as possible.

There are no words or illustrations on the cover, not even a single scratch or mark, and it also doesn't feel like it's made of any paper I'm familiar with. Also, as my recent acquaintance had discovered, it's sealed up tight, almost like the pages have been glued together.

"How did she even get this thing open?" I muse.

And that's when it happens. As if to answer my question—or maybe to mock me for having asked it—an unseen speaker suddenly begins to blare the same message in thirteen different languages simultaneously. At first it's just a cacophony, but I finally manage to locate the one speaking in my language. It's an important announcement, but hardly what I'd call helpful:

EACH OF YOU HAS BEEN GIVEN A MAGICAL GRIMOIRE. USE THEM TO KILL EACH OTHER. ONLY TWO WILL SURVIVE.

That's the entire message, looping over and over again. There's no explanation or anything. Just the message.

"Top-secret mission my ass..."

As I spit out the words, my eyes are already scanning the environment. There are no windows or doors, no path of escape. If I want to survive, I'll have to fight. But starting a giant melee in a place like this means it'll be nearly impossible to ensure two people survive. At best, you'll probably have one survivor—and that number could easily drop to zero. Still, I don't want to be the one to make the first move.

The woman in the corner reaches for her book, but a man beside her is faster. He wraps his hands around her neck and twists it. There's a soft snap, and her limbs go limp. One down.

I figure her murderer will be the next to die; you're the most vulnerable when killing someone else. And just as expected, two men are already coming at him from behind. They strike simultaneously, and I can tell it's not something they worked out in advance. They just intuitively understood it's the most effective tactic.

But the two attackers aren't the ones who kill the man. As the woman's corpse is being sucked into her book, his face twists with anguish and he collapses to the ground before being sucked into his own. Soon the two grimoires are all that remain: one with a jade-green cover, the other the color of amber. As I watch, patterns in the shape of strange faces emerge on both covers.

"Use the grimoire..." murmurs the woman at my side, and I understand what she means. Apparently the lady who used the black hand from the book had been acknowledged as a victor. But the man who killed her with his bare hands? Not so much.

"So that's the deal, huh?"

I'd clearly been right not to make the first move, and she'd been right to follow my lead. Now we understand the rules and have a better grasp of the situation. But the problem is, I have no idea what to do with the book. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to just start using magic?

I feel my lips curl into a grin, even though there's nothing remotely amusing about the situation, and it finally hits me how shaken I really am by all of this. Even the first time I had to face the Legion, I managed to stay relatively calm. I knew if I just followed my training, a solution would eventually present itself. But this? I haven't trained for this, and I have no idea if a solution is going to present itself. Hell, I just watched three people die in front of me because of books.

Thinking of that makes me want to slam my copy into the ground, but before I can, someone grabs my arm. "I'm so glad there can be two survivors," says the woman. "That means you and I don't have to fight each other. We're lucky! We can both survive!"

Not sure I'd call anything about this situation "lucky," but she smiles at me regardless. And not the weird half smile of someone losing their shit like I am, but a true smile you can tell comes straight from the heart.

"So relax," she continues. "Everyone else is on their own, but we're a pair. If we work through this together, our two heads will figure it out before anyone else."

She might be right. Having an ally you can communicate with could be a powerful weapon in a situation like this. "Okay, fair enough. Gotta tell you, though, I ain't exactly the brightest bulb in the lamp."

She chuckles before placing her hand on the cover of her book, but her expression turns serious as she examines its stack of sealed pages. "The woman before was angry. Also, she was moments away from being killed. The black hand has to be connected to one of those two factors."

Or maybe both, but let's set that aside for the moment. Still, having to be at the brink of death to use this thing seems like a pretty high hurdle. Maybe just being told to kill each other is enough to satisfy the requirement?

"So in that case, perhaps..."

She lifts her head, as if an idea has occurred to her, but the excitement on her face dissipates immediately. And I never get the chance to ask what happened, because her body suddenly lunges forward as she reaches out for me.

I feel the impact in my back and immediately understand I'm being knocked away. Within my spinning field of vision, I see massive black lances piercing her body, and all sound disappears. She must have seen the incoming projectiles from over my shoulder and moved to shove me aside. Maybe it was payback for what I'd done for her three years earlier. Or maybe it was something else.

The book beside me lights up as I frantically scramble over to her. If I don't do something, she'll be sucked into that book and disappear forever—so I grab her hands tight and start yanking as hard as I can.

"Don't disappear! Don't you dare disappear on me!"

Her lips quiver. What is it? What is she trying to say? It's in her native tongue and I'm not bilingual like her, so I can't understand it. Hell, for that matter, I don't even know her name. We didn't think we'd live to see each other again, so neither of us had bothered with introductions.

Suddenly her weight slips from my arms. The hands I'd been clutching so tightly are gone, sliding through my fingers like water. All that remains is a book with a deep red cover reminiscent of blood. The face that appears on it doesn't look like hers at all.

The world fades. Goes white. I scream. I just... scream. Strange letters in a script I've never seen before appear in front of my eyes, blotting out my field of view. But I just keep screaming.

Abruptly, sound returns to the world. I hear shrieks, then moaning. Countless sharp black spears protrude from the floor. As my hazy vision sweeps the room, I see that everyone has been impaled simultaneously. The strange script still envelops my field of vision, making the whole spectacle feel somehow unreal, but when it finally clears, I see a single man standing at the end of the room. He beams with pride as he clutches his book in his hands, pleased with his apparent victory. I'm guessing the spears came from him, just like I'm guessing that strange script is the reason I'm alive right now.

I survived.

The thought brings me no joy. I have no impulse to grin victoriously like the man across from me. Which is not to say I have any particular desire to mourn the dead either. To be perfectly honest, none of it matters to me.

Suddenly, I see bright lights out of the corner of my eye. Two books have lit up—the one belonging to the man who is the ostensible victor of this whole affair, and the one given to me. The other man is screaming something, his voice thick with dismay. I can only imagine it's something along the lines of "Hey, we're the last two! We're supposed to get to leave here alive!" Thing is, while the voice had promised that two could survive, it didn't say anything about letting us leave.

Well, I'd figured as much. The higher-ups at our organization aren't good people. In fact, I already know they're lying when they claim Luciferase will protect us from white chlorination syndrome. All it does is delay the onset of symptoms—it doesn't actually stop anything. We'd all been deceived, and they were using us. They gave us medicine that couldn't protect us, then sent us into the heart of the contagion. The children the pied piper had led away were all going to get sick and die sooner or later—or else become monsters and get killed. And this? This book thing? Probably just another one of their human experiments. Our fates were sealed the moment they gathered us here.

The man's screams finally stop, and I see a face rise up on the jet-black cover of his book. It doesn't resemble his face any more than the face on the red book resembles hers—or at least, I don't think it does. The reason I'm not sure is because I've already been sucked into a book myself. As to what color that one becomes, I won't be able to see it, but...

Ah. White. So I'm the white book: "Grimoire Weiss."

God, what a stupid name. It's all so ridiculous I can't help but laugh. So this is the beginning of some new farce? Now that we've been given new faces, what part are we meant to play? I don't know, so I just keep laughing.