My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume8 Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The floor shook below my feet.

Hm?

I staggered and Erika propped me up, but what was even happening?

“It’s hard to tell without any windows, but did this ship just tilt?”

“Fugu? You mean the giant UFO is falling toward earth!?”

Not necessarily, but the risk was the same no matter which way we were moving. We didn’t want to be carried away to the farthest reaches of space, after all.

Why had this happened all of a sudden?

Had the empress lost control when she lost consciousness?

Or was there someone else in control who had some other plans here?

Fortunately, the huge ship was controlled by a professional version of the familiar Winners line of OSs. There was not much I could do on my own. There was no way I could break through the firewall and figure out the program structure starting now. In fact, that kind of work was generally done using special tools, so you didn’t just type away on the keyboard like in movies. A computer was just a box if there was nothing inside it. Just like drawing a picture or writing a song, you needed the appropriate software if you wanted to do something.

But if you were already on the inside, you didn’t have to go to the trouble of hacking in. I could operate the computer to the extent that manual control was sufficient. And since it used the Winners format, I could call in that powerful, all-purpose tool named Maxwell.

If the signals from earth were affecting the spaceship’s travel, then it had to be able to pick up those earth signals. I managed to manually open up a port and then connected to Japan via a server on a small Pacific island using an IP I had set up as a burner account.

“Maxwell, can you hear me? If you have a connection, respond on my phone!”

“Sure. You appear to be accessing me from an unknown server, but where are you and what are you doing?”

Oh, right. My GPS app couldn’t tell Maxwell my position while off the planet.

“You’ve checked through the structure of that unknown server, right? I want to regain control of the giant UFO that’s started to tilt. Help me do that.”

“UFO stands for unidentified flying object, but if you have visual confirmation of it and can distinguish it from other flying objects, it would instead qualify as an identified flying-”

“No one cares, Maxwell! Just execute my command already!”

“User, why is that mystery craft crudely running ordinary Winners?”

“Don’t ask me. Now, which way is it tilting?”

“The angle is drifting between 1 and 6 degrees while it approaches earth. Its course forms a gentle parabolic arc. That is commonly known as an angle of reentry into the atmosphere.”

“Fugu. So we really are falling!”

This ship was so large we could not see the far end of it despite being indoors. If a structure that large hit the surface, it was bound to bring about another ice age.

“Could we change the angle so it burns up in the thermosphere?”

“No. Not only is the material extremely durable, its mass is very large. It should break through even if the angle of reentry is altered.”

“Then what if we give it a shallower angle? Y’know, have it skip off the edge of the atmosphere and fly away.”

“Recalculating.”

Please.

Please let it work!!

“The mass is again a concern. Even if it did briefly skip off the atmosphere, the earth’s gravitational pull on its great mass might be too strong to break free. It is more likely that it will simply break through the atmospheric wall, leading to the same situation as the other scenario.”

Was there nothing we could do!?

“Fugugugugu!”

“Ayumi-chan.”

Ayumi started meaninglessly shouting, so Erika gently held her slender shoulders through the mostly-unzipped track jacket.

Yes, that was right.

Giving Maxwell impossible commands was meaningless. I had to think and I did not have to find an answer right away. I had to do this one step at a time, like untangling some wires.

The ridiculous scale of the ship was the biggest problem here. Any ordinary logic would be crushed by that weight.

“No, wait. Maxwell, the UFO itself is working, right?”

“It has already begun to fall, but within those bounds, yes.”

“Search for as big a piece of debris as you can find in satellite orbit. We can place this huge thing on a collision course to break it apart like a rice cracker. The smaller pieces of the wreckage should burn up in the thermosphere or skip off!”

“That will likely increase the concentration of debris at a historically unprecedented rate,” said Maxwell.

“That’s better than having history come to an abrupt end. But if we’re going to do this, let’s try to burn up as many of the fragments as possible. Let’s try not to create a cage of debris.”

We could not just sit around while this happened. The ship we were going to smash to pieces and send through the thermosphere was the very one we were occupying.

“Maxwell, search for a means of escape!”

“I see nothing you could call an ‘escape pod’.”

“So can it only let people down in that antigravity whatever that looks like a spotlight? How did all those slimy brown servant species things get down to earth!?”

“Based on the footage recorded within the ship, several of them clumped together before being ejected toward the atmosphere. It is unclear what percentage arrived to the surface, but the ones on the outside must have been burned up.”

She really had been an empress. Her view of life was fundamentally different from ours!!

“Fuguu. But the empress herself had a hiding place to protect herself while using that ‘surrogate mother’ as the center of attention. I feel like she would have some insurance for herself.”

“Maxwell.”

“No. Perhaps she intended to gather that servant species around herself for protection.”

Doing that would increase her body temperature too much. For that matter, I doubted she could stand the scorching heat of the thermosphere if sauna levels of heat were enough to threaten her life. Maybe she was convinced she could never lose, so she had a theory but had never actually tested it out.

“If there isn’t one, we’ll just have to create one.”

“Satori-kun?”

“Maxwell, this spaceship is apparently made so its interior can be freely rearranged to match the current need. Search the ship’s storage for a specifications document on the interior control. We just need something that can break away and handle free fall or ballistic flight. There has to be tons of materials in here, so we can build an airtight shell capable of surviving reentry!”

“Checking data for unrecommended task. The physical work itself is possible, but several of the parameters necessary as a basis for the simulation are only taken from private space companies or websites run by hobbyists. Since this technology can be used in missiles, the security at universities and national agencies is strict and none of the concrete parameters are provided on the public sites. If the values gathered from the viewable part of the web are inaccurate, there is a severe risk of it breaking up during reentry or exposing you to radiation damage. Do you still wish to continue this task?”

…

Not even I could answer.

Not right away anyway.

This wasn’t just my own life on the line. I could be exposing my family to danger as well. Could I do that? Could I nod my head without knowing anything for sure?

“Satori-kun, we have no other option here. I don’t like making a gamble either, but our odds are zero if we stay here on the ship.”

“Fugu. That’s right, Onii-chan. And we can’t let this giant UFO fall on the earth. What about dad, mom, and everyone at school? I can’t let something happen to them!”

They really saved me there.

I wasn’t acting purely based on the odds of success or failure, but I was still really glad to have them with me.

“Maxwell, do it!”

“Sure. Continuing task.”

The surrounding walls rose up, complexly rearranged, and produced a new silhouette. They created a box smaller than a school classroom, but it did not end with that one. The same process repeated afterwards to create a long row of the boxy escape pods.

“How many of the servant species do you think can fit on board?”

“Theoretically, all of them,” said Maxwell. “But as we do not know how to contact them, it is unknown if we can get them to understand that will save them. I will send a message in as many languages as I can, but they probably think dropping down as-is is the natural form of atmospheric reentry.”

“…”

“Also, I estimate there are more than 10,000 of them still aboard the ship. It is unknown if they can reproduce, but sending them to the surface could lead to a situation similar to the release of black bass.”

I understood that.

They were clearly our enemy, but I still could not even consider leaving them to burn as the spaceship fell apart.

“I want to minimize the effects as much as possible. Don’t let them spread out too much and drop them to a single point.”

“Understood. I will search for an uninhabited island out at sea.”

“We also need to bring the empress and the girl in the pod…was she a Scylla?”

The skinny yellow empress had been acting base on lies, but that did not change what she had done. My efforts here were honestly less about feeling sorry for her and more about not wanting her to escape somehow.

“How will you restrain her?” asked Maxwell.

“Search for an open pod like the one that Scylla is in. We’ll treat her like a torture tool craftsman: shove her into the device she was so proud of.”

“Sure.”

“Hey, Onii-chan? We’ve heard about a Scylla before, haven’t we?”

“Yeah. My underclassman is a Circe Witch and when she was transforming herself with the potions she makes-”

“No, not that. Hmm, wasn’t there something in the Bright Cross’s underground facility?”

Once we were somewhere safe, we could remove her from the pod and ask her after she woke up.

If we wanted to increase our odds of survival, it would be best to all ride different escape pods, but the three of us naturally gathered in the same one.

We brought the clear pods containing the Scylla and the empress with us.

“Shut the door, Maxwell. And lock it from the inside. It’s airtight now, right?”

“Sure. That is not a problem.”

I was still wet, so I felt chilly even with my black coat.

Either to increase the strength of the shell or to protect my Vampire sister from the sunlight, there were no windows. Instead, there appeared to be a camera on the outside. That let me see things outside using my phone. Since it was so close, I was directly connecting with Redtooth, which did not require a server in between.

“How long can I keep this connection with you?” I asked Maxwell.

“I am using the mystery spaceship as a sort of satellite host, so until it is destroyed You will definitely lose the connection during reentry. For Miss Erika’s sake, I will try to send you to a landing point where it is currently night, but the margin of error is an unknown. Once you arrive on the surface, please send me accurate location data using GPS or the like. Once I have located you, I will reconstruct an access route using the best line available.”

In this case, we would not be using short rocket bursts to adjust our position along the way. Once we were thrown out there, we were in free fall. The very start mattered most, so we did not need Maxwell’s help throughout.

“It’s going to feel lonely again pretty soon.”

“I did not realize you were such a needy child, user. Once this is over, how about we have a VR festival? With a swimsuit and dancing theme.”

I felt a small vibration.

To reiterate, this escape pod had no engine. Once we were thrown out there, it was pure free fall. That meant this movement would be coming from the spaceship as a whole.

“Beginning countdown from 30. I will see you again on the surface, user.”

“Yeah.”

A 30 second countdown seemed long, but it was over in no time. I didn’t have time at all to gather my resolve. I felt a heavy sound of scraping metal while my stomach was lifted up. That was the force of inertia. The floor had opened up and the escape pod had fallen out.

I checked my phone and saw a real outer space-y kind of scene for the first time.

I saw the clear starry sky and the blue planet below.

If our lives were not at risk, I might have been struck speechless by the sight.

But now was not the time for tears. The escape pod camera spun around and captured the moment the giant saucer broke apart. A piece of deadly debris had crashed into it after building up plenty of speed circling the earth over and over. The spaceship bent, tilted, and cracked before falling apart. Still, each piece was several hundred meters long. Smashing it up several times over was still not enough to ensure it would burn up in the thermosphere. The explosion was enormous, but we could not hear it.

Sound could not travel through space. The noise we did hear must have been the small fragments hitting the escape pod like a scattershot of bullets or a sandstorm.

“Wh-what?” Pale-faced Ayumi looked wildly around while clinging to the cylindrical pod in which the paper underwear Scylla slept. “I don’t like the sound of that. Isn’t something scraping at the other side of the wall!?”

“We weren’t caught in the debris storm. We’ve hit the edge of the atmosphere. The real danger starts here!”

The boxes just like our own flew toward that orange burning curtain like a meteor shower.

We had no way of knowing which ones were full of the servant species and which ones were empty.

They didn’t all make it. Some were crushed after colliding with even bigger pieces of debris and some couldn’t withstand the friction and burned away.

“Dammit!!”

“Satori-kun, there’s no turning back now, so just bear with it!”

It could be us next.

All of the ejected boxes used the exact same design. The difference in results must have come down to being unlucky enough to hit some spaceship debris or the slight margins of error in the construction phase. That meant nothing we could do would change the result.

If we were going to die, we were going to die.

It was all about probability and statistics. It was like drawing lots.

“Kssshhh! …ser.”

“Maxwell, that’s enough. Break the connection or you’ll receive a ton of corrupted signals when the spaceship server is destroyed!”

“I will soon leave – ksshh – but first…something I – kssshhh – tell you. I found – ksshh – notes and memos within the Winners-based – ksh – OS’s scripts.”

“What?”

“I can only – kssshhh – they were intentionally placed where – ksshh – would find them. I thought I was making the choice – ksh – highest probability of success, but – ksh – possible that a third party was guiding – ksshh – your landing point.”

We had already been launched and the escape pod had no engine. That meant we could not change course.

“Understood. What should we be on the lookout for?”

“First of all, you – ksh – land safely. I will send you the – kshh – and memos that I found in text format. They may be of some use in – kssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

The transmission suddenly ended. I turned the exterior camera and saw the several broken blocks that had once been a giant saucer were glowing orange as they entered the thermosphere.

Receive error.

The files Maxwell had tried to send to my phone were corrupted and I had trouble even opening them. And even when I did, the text within was too corrupted to read.

Maxwell had mentioned a third party.

That meant there as someone else after all.

“Wh-what is going on?”

“We need to be careful, Ayumi.” That short response was all I could give. “This isn’t over once we land back on earth. There’s still more.”

A great roar surrounded us. It was just as disconcerting as being stuffed into a car’s trunk while the car was slowly crushed by a crane’s wrecking ball. Could we pass through the thermosphere? Would we avoid breaking apart and would the parachute open? And where would we land? Everything had been carefully calculated out, but that was all theoretical and we never knew what would happen in practice. The stress was too much and I had to scream. Heat built up in my head and an odd sweat soaked me, but I couldn’t tell if that was a psychological issue or if the temperature really had risen.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“…ri-kun.”

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the box’s floor.

“Satori-kun.”

I felt a strange warmth on the back of my head and assumed I was bleeding.

But it turned out I was wrong.

Since I saw Erika’s face peering down at me…was she giving me a lap pillow!?

“Stay right there. Don’t even think about forcing yourself up. You need to take your time and recover.”

“Ugh… Did I scream so much I fried my brain?”

She rubbed my head with the right hand extending from her torn sleeve. I just about sank into the depths of sisterly comfort, but then I heard my other sister’s voice.

“No, you bumped your head on the wall when the parachute opened. Fuguu, not fastening ourselves in place somehow was a mistake.”

My sisters appeared to be fine. Had they withstood the inertial forces with their Archenemy strength?

I would have loved to let Erika continue pampering me, but that was not an option.

I slowly got up from her lap and grabbed my phone, but it looked like the external camera had been destroyed. However, a glance at the clock showed it was 3 AM. My phone’s clock would automatically adjust itself for the country or region I was in, so this would not be a case of “it’s 3 AM in Japan but not in Brazil on the other side of the world.”

As long as it was nighttime outside.

We walked to the escape pod’s thick door. Just to be sure, I slowly cracked it open…but it was safe. It was dark outside. Also, there was a salty smell in the air. We may have been near the ocean.

“Erika, we only have 2 or 3 hours until dawn. If it comes to it, you need to get back inside the airtight escape pod. I don’t know where we are, but we need to consider the round trip time.”

“Got it.”

I opened the door wide this time.

We found a 50/50 mixture of natural landscape and artificial objects. It must have been a small island to begin with, but steel beams and metal pipes were complexly intertwined like a jungle gym and they jutted far out into the ocean.

Giant cranes extended into the air, obscuring the moon.

“What is all this?”

It was hard to tell whether this was the completed product or if it was under construction. Several metal floors were set up well off the ground. The tallest ones looked to be about three or four stories up. That created an oppressive atmosphere like someone was staring down at us.

The gusts of wind were powerful, but it was not raining like it had been in Tokyo. Where had we ended up, anyway? Was this still part of Japan?

“Fugu. Look at this sheet,” said Ayumi while her track jacket fluttered in the wind. “It says Nagasawa Construction.”

“And the pipes say Hishigami Materials. What is the point of this place?”

That did not mean much since both of those were international corporations, but there did seem to be a lot of Japanese writing. Was this a mine or something on a remote island within the country?

Oh, right.

I had to have an internet connection if my phone’s clock could update automatically. I could use GPS or another location service.

“Maxwell. Access my phone.”

“Sure. I have constructed an access route from Antenna Base Station B of the Tokyo Islands. Welcome back, my needy user.”

“Hm? Tokyo???”

“Tokyo technically refers to a very large region that includes many small islands in the ocean. Even Okinotorishima, the southernmost part of Japan, belongs to it.”

That was a surprise.

We had been alien abducted in Tokyo and traveled through space in order to fall right back in Tokyo.

“So where are we? How do we return to Honshu? By boat? Or airplane?”

“No. There are no regular ships or flights. As you will see if you check your map app, this island is not known to exist. The data has your cursor in the middle of the ocean, so I initially thought you were adrift in the water.”

“What?”

“I have checked with your phone’s camera, and while an entirely artificial oil platform or megafloat would be one thing, this is a mining base expanded from a natural island. It is clearly unusual for it to not appear on the map. I can only assume someone is intentionally hiding it.”

“Fugu. So like a military base?”

“No. In that case, there would be a blank area on the map; the terrain itself would not have been erased. Especially with an island since territorial waters tend to be a delicate matter.”

“So this is an even greater power, is it?” said Erika with a quiet look on her face.

According to Maxwell, some notes and memos had been used to leave a message in the Winners OS controlling the giant spaceship and it was possible some third party had been guiding where we landed. And once we did land, we found ourselves on a half-artificial island that had been erased from the records in a way even more unnatural than with a nation’s military base. This was starting to reach Area 51 levels of creepy.

“Nagasawa Construction and Hishigami Materials.”

“What about it, Erika? Those are pretty well-known companies.”

“That’s what strikes me as odd. Could it be…?” She looked around, her eyes chasing after the flood of Japanese writing. “Yes, the construction equipment and work machinery are from Michita Automobiles, the power system is from Honshu Power, the empty containers…that must have contained food are from Nichiro Foods and Gantry Drinks.”

“Fugu. Wait, don’t tell me…”

“Those were all supporters of the old Bright Cross…and Absolute Noah after that.” Erika placed the fingers of the arm with the torn sleeve on her skinny chin. “This may have been a candidate for the Calamity shelters. Although the one at the bottom of the Kukyou City dam was chosen in the end.”

The Bright Cross.

Absolute Noah.

I was surprised to hear those names here, but it also brought something else to mind.

“If the empress, the UFO, and everything else were set up by a third party, then the giant spaceship falling would have been part of their plan. But what were they going to do if our efforts weren’t enough and the ship really did fall? The entire planet would have entered an ice age. That would be suicide if you didn’t have a really large and sturdy shelter.”

It was even possible that the empress, the servant species, and the giant UFO had all been created here. It had all seemed so absurd before, but that organization could have done it.

I just had to remember the translucent red slimes that attacked Las Vegas.

Or the secret that was hidden at the bottom of the dam.

“Then is this related to mom’s organization? Has some remnant gone berserk or something?”

“It’s too soon to say. Someone else might be using a facility they abandoned.”

Either way, the danger level had just increased again. We had come here on an invitation from someone who knew the world’s secrets. We could not be certain they meant us no harm or ill will. Whether this was the Bright Cross, Absolute Noah, or someone who had hijacked their facility or knowledge, they might have the equipment and skills needed to combat Archenemies.

It would be best not to stay here for long.

That presented the same problem as before. As a Vampire, Erika could not move during the day, so we could not escape if the third party attacked after dawn.

And if we did find a boat and tried to leave the island, the odds were good dawn would break before we arrived on Honshu. But we could solve that problem with a sealed container to act as a coffin. We could even load the boxy escape pod on the boat. To be blunt, it would be far safer to force our way off the island than to hang around here for half a day while who-knows-who was wandering around.

“Let’s find a way to escape. It could be a boat or a helicopter for all I care. We may have been invited, but that’s no reason to fight some person we’ve never even seen before.”

“Fuguu. I just hope this is something we can do ourselves.”

Of course, there was only so much we could do even with Maxwell’s support.

We were going to have to walk around this dangerous island and all the metal structures there no matter what, but having a goal in mind would make a huge difference. If we simply followed some vague instructions and went around collecting hints, we would be walking headlong into whatever the third party had set up for us. After everything they had done, it was best to assume they were not planning to let us head home safely. Their path for us was headed straight toward a precipice, so we had no future if we did not break free of their scenario.

This tropical island was one of the secret paradises considered for Absolute Noah.

If it really was a giant shelter, it would have a vast underground area or a Ryugujo-style undersea base. But I honestly wasn’t interested in that. No matter what kind of labyrinth the villain had waiting for us, we only had to escape this island.

“Let’s get started. We need to find some way to survive.”

For now, we had no choice but to leave the small Scylla and the bizarre empress inside the cylindrical pods on the boxy escape pod. We would collect them once we had found a boat.

“What is the security like?” I asked Maxwell.

“Offline. There appear to be a full array of cameras and sensors set up around the artificial structures, but they have no power. Same with the electric locks on the doors.”

Even so, we had to be careful.

We had my Vampire older sister and Zombie little sister, but we had no idea who we were up against. Could a single person have done all this? Could it be a nonhuman Archenemy? There was always a possibility of finding ourselves surrounded by a brutally strong group of the undead.

“Any boats would be on the shore, right?”

“Let’s check all around.”

We did not have much time until dawn, but we were afraid to climb to the top of the jungle gym structure. Climbing the stairs would restrict our freedom of movement. We instead started by walking along the nighttime beach which was lined with metal pillars thick enough that all three of us together couldn’t have reached all the way around.

There really was nothing there.

And after taking a look around, it all looked much more weathered than I had expected. The pillars alone had the paint peeling off to reveal rusty metal. It looked a lot like playground equipment that had been abandoned without any sort of upkeep.

And I spotted something curious.

“Solar Computers?”

“Fugu?”

“That was the company name before the merger. But didn’t that happen before I was even born?”

Did that mean no one had been in or out of here since then?

It was becoming clear we were not going to find anything by crawling around down below. I was hesitant, but we climbed the metal ladder on a thick pillar to reach the top.

Oddly enough, the salty sea smell was stronger up there than by the water’s edge. It may have been an issue of airflow.

“Ah.”

“Erika.”

Erika wobbled, so I supported her from the side. I recalled that Vampires could not cross flowing water. That species weakness had reared its ugly head again once we moved to the part jutting out over the ocean and supported by all the pillars.

And regardless…

“There’s no one here, Onii-chan.”

“No, there isn’t.”

I had assumed the cameras and sensors were out because the power generators and main computer had been removed from the abandoned facility, but were their no soldiers either? There were no footprints or other signs of a human presence in the fine sand and dust coating everything thanks to the sea breeze. If I was being cynical, I couldn’t deny the possibility of winged Archenemies being stationed here, though. I was finding it harder and harder to figure out why the villain had guided us here.

Or was there no villain after all?

Or was the villain trying to trap us here just like we had dropped the slimy brown servant species on an uninhabited island?

I started considering pointless theories like those.

This ocean facility was made from steel beams and metal pipes arranged like a jungle gym, but there were giant plate-like areas of land prepared in places. Were those for cranes or heliports? I couldn’t see anything that remotely resembled a helicopter. Not that I would have known what to do with one anyway.

There were also some things hanging down from the other side of the railings. Those capsules were larger than bathtubs and they may have been deep sea research subs.

“It looks like the boats were lifted up with winches and lowered into the sea when needed. If we check areas like this, we might find a high-speed boat or motorboat.”

“Fugu?” Ayumi made a weird noise while staring off into the distance. “Look, Onii-chan. Isn’t that a proper boat hanging down over there!?”

She was right.

Two winches held a motorboat in place, just like a lifeboat on the side of a cruise ship. But this was more than a rubber boat with a crappy engine slapped on. This was a high-speed boat you could probably use in races. It would probably lift its bow up like it was doing a wheelie and move at more than 100km/h on the ocean.

It was the one oddly shiny thing in this seemingly forgotten mass of metal. It may have been what the villain had used to cross the sea.

“Yay, now we can get home. Fugu, but this is too small to carry that escape pod. Onee-chan, you might need to sleep inside a body bag to avoid the sunlight.”

“Is that any way to treat your beautiful, kind, and elegant big sister!?”

“How’s that any different from your usual coffin?”

But.

When I tried to follow after my sisters, I found my feet pinned to the spot. Because of my phone’s screen.

“Warning: I have detected a cyber-attack on your phone. Taking defensive action. Threat level: max. If I deem it impossible to avoid, I will forcibly shut off the power.”

“?”

A moment later, the motorboat hanging on the edge of the ocean structure erupted with flames and exploded.

This was no lightning strike.

Some dangerous object like a glowing beam or a ball of fire had dropped down on it with incredible speed.

I was more than 20m away, but I was still thrown to the chain mesh floor. I had trouble breathing, like my food had caught in my throat, and I felt a dry pain in my eyes, like I had moved too close to the heater. I choked, clung to the metal pipe railing, and shouted at the top of my lungs.

“Erika, Ayumi!!”

There was no response.

I only heard the roaring of flames despite this facility being made of metal. Nothing remained of the boat they had been approaching. Damn, what was below here? The ocean? Or the beach? Had the explosion thrown them over the railing!?

I doubted they were dead.

I had to believe they weren’t.

I heard something like the loud buzzing of bug wings.

Something cut by overhead in the night sky.

“A UFO drone? A JSDF one!?”

No, hadn’t the government labs developed those in response to a Bright Cross request?

“I was so busy handling the cyber-attack that I was slow to detect the suspicious signal,” said Maxwell. “Warning: running away is strongly recommended!”

“Dammit!!”

There was no escape if it got above me. You couldn’t shake that thing even if you floored it inside a supercar with a huge-ass engine inside.

However.

I didn’t have time to hesitate. I adjusted my grip on my phone and jumped over the metal pipe railing. With a sound like carbonation escaping a soda can, a missile dropped down from above.

This was a giant facility made from countless steel beams and metal pipes arranged like a jungle gym.

There wasn’t just empty space until the ground.

As soon as I jumped to the next level down and rolled below an obstacle, the Tokara Habu anti-Archenemy air-to-surface missile tore away the thick chain mesh floor. A human like me would’ve been obliterated by that thing!

Even so, this was better than moving horizontally. That flying drone would not know how to move up and down in such a convoluted place.

“Maxwell, search for a route! Find a three-dimensional route I can manage on foot and then display it over the footage on my phone!!”

“Calculating…”

“Also, do some ballistic calculations and set a marker where my sisters probably landed after that explosion! I need to collect them somehow or another!!”

“Calculating…”

?

Oh, no. Was something disturbing the link between my phone and the simulator? Because Maxwell’s processing speed seemed to be dropping!

“JB> Hello, Amatsu Satori-kun. Are your calculations starting to lag behind?”

What was that speech bubble?

It was true Maxwell and I used a major social media site to stay in contact. We normally kept it one-on-one, but you could chat between more people if you invited them to the group.

Yes, if I invited them.

My phone should not have been hacked yet.

So had this JB person broken through the firewall of the social media site’s main server just for this!?

I couldn’t block them.

They had higher privileges than I did at this point.

They had left a brand new motorboat in plain view to lure us in, used a largescale cyber-attack to distract Maxwell, and then bombed us with an anti-Archenemy UFO drone.

This JB was behind everything.

How many steps ahead were they? Outplaying Maxwell alone was impressive to seem superhuman!!

“JB> This should not surprise you since I prepared all of this to kill you. I will acquire whatever is necessary to finish you off. Including the strategy development simulator named Freischutz.”

A simulator…and a military grade one at that!?

I only had this mystery person’s word to go on, but I doubted they were bluffing after I had been beaten so badly. In fact, if JB was bluffing, it meant they had outdone Maxwell without external calculation assistance. I didn’t have much hope either way.

“Sure you don’t have the wrong person here?”

“JB> You are the one I have business with. Yes, you, Amatsu Satori-kun.”

I heard the drone cut by far too close to comfort with its propellers sounding like an electric shaver. I frantically circled to the other side of the metal pillar and then a missile shot in from the side. It apparently hit another pillar long before reaching this one, but the mass of sound still slammed into my entire body. My legs trembled and grew weak. I was amazed there was no blood dripping from my ears.

With a sound like a sudden downpour of rain, orange sparks exploded right next to the pillar. The small, stripped-off shards of metal were crashing into it. If I hadn’t been behind cover, my flesh would have been shredded along with my black coat.

I would be killed if I stayed here.

I forced my body to move, climbed over the railing, and half-jumped to the next level down.

“JB> I wish to stage a jailbreak from this vast and tiresome prison.”

What?

Wait…JB. Did that stand for Jail Breaker?

It may have been a play on words using phone-hacking slang.

“JB> I have gathered everything of potential use, down to the smallest piece of dust. After all, a single wire is worth so much more while inside a locked jail cell, is it not? Even chopsticks can be made into a weapon if they are cut at an angle to give them a sharp point.”

“A jail? You mean this shelter?”

“JB> Non.”

The response was immediate.

I needed a net, a tarp, or something else I could spread out to prevent the drone from flying directly through the jungle gym.

“JB> Have a hint. Those things and this thing are both something I found. To be clear, that JSDF drone was not developed here and this is not a creature manufacturing plant.”’

“Don’t even try to call those things aliens. You created them all in a test tube, didn’t you?”

“JB> Again, you are looking at this wrong. I did not take a biological approach. Perhaps you could call it theological or folkloric. Regardless, that was a god. One I found and altered.”

For a bit, I couldn’t find anything to say.

“JB> I believe you have seen something similar yourself. She was from Norse mythology, wasn’t she? There are those who are categorized as Archenemies only because humanity’s study of the subject is too immature.”

“You can’t mean… No, you must be lying.”

I forgot to type my response and spoke it aloud.

It was true the Echidna lurking within Absolute Noah was part of an organization that was very serious about an absurd desire to rebel against the gods.

Valkyrie Karen.

Control of her had been taken by that human Voodoo Bokor.

So what was that empress?

What had that enemy originally been?

“JB> I will reach out a helping hand to all who are trapped within the cage. And if I see an opening, I will use them for my own ends. Mythologies can be distorted. That is why the people of the world work so hard to protect their beliefs. They recite them below their breath over and over, they memorize them, and they continue studying them for all eternity. Because if they relax for even a moment, those beliefs are easily destroyed. I have accelerated that process. Gods are rulers. They must rule over whatever makes up the majority of their defined territory, whatever that might be. That servant species came in handy in a number of ways. The result of majority rule and street corner surveys can be easily manipulated depending on how you present the data.”

What culture incorporated a defeated foe as their own fighting force? Greek mythology? Aztec mythology? No, I only had knowledge from manga and novels to draw on when I couldn’t make an internet search.

And more importantly…

“When you talk about a prison, do you mean the worls?”

“JB> Ah ha ha. A typo? Are you panicking? Yes, I wish to escape from this world. Escape outside it. Escape to somewhere free.”

I heard that buzzing of wings again.

I immediately dove below the metal stairs.

Damn, it was close.

I thought I had been fleeing to the bottom level and innermost part of the complex jungle gym, but I was not confident there really was no path in. None of this had been proven with the power of a simulator. And with the group chat compromised, anything I discussed with Maxwell would be overheard.

“JB> I will acquire whatever I need for my jailbreak. I will search every nook and cranny of this vast cage you call the world.”

“…”

It would eventually catch up if all I did was run. Those air-to-surface missiles were meant to destroy tanks and shelters and this specific weapon had been developed for use against Archenemies. I couldn’t think of any barrier strong enough to safely wait this out.

Was there nothing I could use as a weapon?

A weapon?

Surely not, but was I thinking of grabbing a real military weapon and fighting back!? I couldn’t close off my thoughts! That was the same as giving into the pressure and acting blindly!

“JB> But you are different. You create too much noise. When someone is secretly digging a tunnel, they cannot have someone nearby lighting the fuse of a bomb with a skull mark on it. You do not fit into my plan, so I will eliminate you. I am willing to commit any crime and even start a war if need be. Do you understand the situation now?

Tokyo.

Other cities around the world.

Whoever had been turned into an alien.

My sisters who had been knocked out by a specialized air-to-surface missile.

All of it was only meant to create this situation where we spoke and fought on this remote island with no hope of rescue?

It was best not to provoke someone wielding scissors. I knew that, but my fingertips kept moving nonetheless.

“You’re insane.”

“JB> Ah ha ha. You do know how to speak your mind, don’t you?”

“You keep writing ‘ah ha ha’, but that doesn’t mean much in text. Same with exclamation marks. Do you have a habit of typing certain things when you’re panicking?”

“JB> ru trying 2 provok me?”

“Can’t even type out your words anymore? You’ve hit a dead end in life if you think people are provoking you when they point out the truth.”

“JB> ( ；´Д｀)”

An explosion immediately followed.

It happened on the same level as me, but pretty far away. Had they launched a missile without getting a line of fire first?

And what was that!? Was I really being hunted down by someone who was reduced to talking with stamps and illustrations!?

“JB> ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ ”

“JB> ( *｀ω´) ”

“JB> And of course…”

“JB> (￣^￣)ゞ”

Yeah, I really couldn’t follow this. They weren’t actually a tanned high school girl, were they!?

“Pant, pant!!”

I circled behind a metal pillar and rested my back against it. I had to think. What was the threat here? Should I focus on JB or the flying drone?

“Actually, how am I even supposed to tell JB is JB?”

I didn’t know what they looked like, their name, their age, or their gender.

Would I have to attack every silhouette I saw on the island? I could already imagine them laughing their ass off if I did.

On the other hand, how was I supposed to bring down that mass of armor and firepower other than attacking the pilot? I probably couldn’t do it even if I was handed one of those shoulder fired missiles seen in movies. What could an untrained high school kid like me do?

I couldn’t act tough.

I couldn’t talk about the ideal.

My life wasn’t the only one hanging in the balance. Erika and Ayumi’s were as well. We did not have much time until dawn, so I had to make sure they were alright.

“Okay.”

I looked up.

I had seen what I needed to do.

It might look like a shuriken-shaped UFO larger than a light car, but I couldn’t lose sight of what it really was. That drone was not flying with an anti-gravity engine and it was not an ionocraft. It was a multicopter that used the spinning of multiple propellers to adjust its height and it used the differences and biases in RPM to move horizontally. It was the same as a bladeless fan. It could be hard to tell since the propellers were contained inside and it only expelled the air, but it was no different from the aerial filming dronses sold at electronics stores.

That meant my task was a simple one.

I was a Japanese high school kid. I couldn’t fire a Gatling gun or rocket launcher even if I had one and I couldn’t build an SF weapon more powerful than existing weapons.

But I had messed with drones before.

Multicopters were the most popular, but they were prone to malfunctions and crash landings and they were hard to transport since so many of their parts were delicate. That was why I preferred to use helium balloon drones.

I had stared at the catalog, discussed it with Maxwell at length, and struggled with the limits of my allowance.

So I knew their weaknesses.

This one was a lot bigger, but the general nature and traits were the same, which meant the weaknesses and flaws were as well. These drones were hard to control when toy-sized and this one had been forcibly upsized. Not to mention the extra weight from the air-to-surface missiles and fuel cells.

I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

Trying to penetrate that thick armor was hopeless. I wasn’t up against a completed weapon. I had to think of it as messing with a multicopter drone that was still under development and unstable.

What did I need?

I was surrounded by junk that had been abandoned for decades. None of it had power. But was that really true? What about the simplest of devices, like the lighting connected to solar panels?

“Whoaaa!!”

For now, I had to grab a nearby item and jump down from the metal pipe railing. I was on the lowest level now. I was walking on the sand and waves of the beach now. Rolling had left my black coat and my pants covered in sand. There was nowhere to run on this flat surface. In a way, it was a dead end. But I had my final chance in hand.

I would have been out of options if that drone had been launching the missiles down from a height of 10,000 meters. The many layers of battered roofs(?) had been a huge help. JB apparently did not plan on bringing down the entire collection of steel beams and metal pipes to bury me alive. Those air-to-surface missiles were meant to provide the pinpoint strike needed to punch through tank armor, so they would probably have a hard time causing that kind of general, large-scale destruction. The initial strike had not been made until the escape boat had lured us out to the top of the oceantop structure.

It was bound to come to me.

I heard the ear-splitting buzz reminiscent of an electric shaver or bug wings. That JGSDF anti-undead UFO drone was descending to get past the obstacles.

No matter what JB insisted, I was apparently someone they could not allow to get away. Since they had felt the need to do all this to get to me, they must have been too nervous to sleep at night with me alive. So they were bound to dig in their heels. It might hurt their advantage, but they would have their flying drone skim just off the ground if that was what it took to keep me from leaving the island alive.

“Kh.”

I glanced over toward the ocean just once and then ran the other way. Traveling the short distance between the many pillars was bad for my heart.

But I wasn’t the only one who felt backed into a corner here.

JB, you may have been a joker capable of molding legendary gods to your will, but rules are absolute. That UFO drone was a multicopter, so it couldn’t stay afloat without pushing air out with its multiple propellers.

That gave me an opening.

I threw what I held toward the beach.

This was more dangerous than dropping a dryer in the tub.

This facility had apparently been abandoned since before I was born, but that didn’t mean the tools and equipment there had no power.

Some had a power source useful for outdoor purposes – solar panels.

Yes.

And what mattered to me was the battery.

The basic idea was the same whether it was a phone’s lithium ion battery or a car’s lead-acid battery.

If used improperly, they could explode.

The flash of pure white light stabbed into my eyes even more than a Molotov cocktail. Fine white sand and seawater were blasted into the air.

“JB> Σ('◉⌓◉’)”

“Oh, shut up. I’m not contacting you.”

I was surprised they were calm enough to provide a response.

But I didn’t think that explosion itself had destroyed the military drone’s armor.

The sand and water were what mattered.

Filling the blowing wind with impurities would make it all thick and sticky.

Did you know, JB, that drone malfunctions and crash landings are more common in Asia than in the West? The exact reasons are unknown and there are a number of theories, but some people seriously argue that it’s a negative affect of the stickier air created by the higher humidity.

It was already skimming just off the ground, so what would happen when it was hit with an explosive blast and covered in sand and seawater?

Multicopters sliced through the air to fly.

If the air’s viscosity was changed, there was no way if could stay airborne. It was designed to travel through the air, not through the water or the mud.

So.

So.

So.

With a dull crash, the giant mass of armor fell to the beach.

Of course, I didn’t relax quite yet. It was too soon to celebrate. Altering the air’s viscosity might sound fancy, but the effects would not even last for 10 seconds. If it had been at an ordinary altitude for a drone like that, it would have recovered and stabilized itself before hitting the ground.

There was a sound like a bed sheet flapping in the air.

Simply placing a tarp over the top meant a lot. The propellers were contained inside the drone and the narrow openings of the covering might keep impurities from getting in, but it was still a multicopter. It could not push out air to obtain lift without a functional air intake and exhaust. That meant covering up those holes prevented it from gaining enough power to float back up from the ground.

It was powerless.

Just like accidentally sucking a cloth into the vacuum cleaner, if the item was in place, it would be sucked in by the drone. And just like a chainsaw, drone propellers were not made to rotate the other way.

So getting that tarp over the top was checkmate.

The missiles were fired from the belly of the drone, so it could not launch them with its belly on the ground.

But.

Even so.

The drone’s armor suddenly opened up like a door.

“Wha-?”

Calling this unexpected would have been an understatement.

Drones were supposed to be unmanned. The nameless and faceless figure known only as JB was supposed to be watching from some safe location. Or so I had assumed.

But I had assumed wrong.

JB intended to kill me no matter what it took. Their own safety must have been of secondary importance.

JB turned out to be a pale young man with glasses. He was skinnier than me and therefore looked even more reliant on computers and networks than me. He wore a fancy suit and fur coat, so his indoor life must have left him out of sync with the seasons. He also held a stainless steel object that had a sinister shine.

I should not have been seeing that in Japan.

Or was that assumption proof of my naivete?

“A…handgun?”

“Bang☆”

It all happened too quickly.

I never did learn his real name.

Had I underestimated him?

I had fought and fought against JB, but had I failed to escape the pre-established harmony he had set up!?

A moment later, my vision blurred and I felt a powerful impact in my spine.

I heard an explosive blast and my entire body was swept away to the side.

Yes.

To the side.

Not from the bullet fired head on.

“…!?”

I did not have time to blink in confusion. I fell onto the dark beach without anything to cushion me. It was hot. Was I feeling the friction with the sand? Someone had knocked me down. My black coat did not even matter. They just dragged me around.

Erika!?

While I struggled to breath, I saw someone else moving. The first shot had missed, so JB restrained the recoil of his gunshot and then aimed a second shot. To the side.

“Fuguu.”

I saw black twintails with curly ends.

With her open track jacket fluttering in the wind, Ayumi used her Zombie strength to clench her fist so hard it looked like it would break.

“Give it a rest already!!”

She did not hold back at all.

The noise may have been louder than the shot of a mass-produced gun.

It was like JB had been hit by a car. The young man with gray-dyed hair flew like a plastic bag in the wind. He scattered sand around with explosive force a few times and rolled more than 10 meters before finally coming to a stop.

“You…noticed, didn’t you?”

I heard a trembling voice.

I could not see Erika’s face because she was burying it in my side.

“You noticed partway through that we had fallen nearby and were lying in wait, didn’t you!? So why did you run to the other side to do everything yourself, Satori-kun!?”

I felt like a logical argument was not what was needed here.

So I held my tongue.

I did not say out loud that I wasn’t confident my method would actually incapacitate the drone. And if that didn’t work, it was obvious my Archenemy sisters would have to wear themselves down doing it by brute force.

Also, I really hadn’t expected JB to be hiding in there.

I was weak.

I was reminded of how I could not look anything up and could not predict what would happen 5 seconds from now when I was cut off from Maxwell.

I had gotten lucky this time.

A number of coincidences had allowed my sisters to come running in the nick of time. I still did not feel like I had actually outdone JB in any way.

Under normal circumstances, I would have died there.

“Is it…over?” I asked while unable to get up from the sand with my sister clinging to me.

There was no response.

[Mobile Temp] Report on a Certain Boy [File 09]

Report from Freischutz:

An unpredictable matter has been observed. The moment of 031429 on that day has been recalculated 3.36 billion times and every single time Amatsu Erika and Ayumi fail to arrive in time to save Amatsu Satori.

The comparative specs of myself, Freischutz, and my enemy, Maxwell, need not be discussed yet again. Plus, starting at 03, Amatsu Satori had cut himself off from simulator support out of fear of an information leak due to a cyber-attack. It is hard to imagine he could have constructed something capable of betraying my predictive calculations in those conditions.

Then how can we explain that result?

Amatsu Satori.

Does he possess a talent that cannot be dealt with using contained calculation flowcharts, as are sometimes seen in chess or shogi matches against AI?

Or is even that not enough to explain it?

Using a simulator is like putting together a puzzle. The countless pieces before your eyes are identified and the optimal arrangement is determined in the fastest possible time, allowing you to advance the situation in what at least appears to be an advantageous way. Due to the sheer amount of calculations involved, the human mind might view it as doing the impossible, but it is the same as making a brute force attack on a password. If you wanted to, you could calculate out the entire planet’s weather data in your head.

In other words, the advantages of a simulator are limited to rearranging what is already present.

What he does seems different.

At that time and place, that puzzle piece did not exist. I have digitally rewound time to the moment just before the end and broken it down to units as small as a ten billionth of a second, but I cannot find it. Thus, I have concluded any further recalculations would be a waste of time.

The world appears to be fluid, but it is actually composed of countless minute branches. Just like a bean bag chair feels like it is full of hard plastic.

Does this mean he can ignore those series of branches and take truly free actions in this prison of a world?

If so, his strength or weakness as an individual game piece are irrelevant.

He is most likely the weakest of the weak, yet he has shown actions that none of the standard pieces can emulate.

This does not mean he has a brain superior to my own, but that only makes him a far greater threat.

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