by Satoshi Hase
Then the stalled vehicle entered a freefall. Luckily, the feeling of falling only lasted for a second. Sest had to cling to the equipment to keep from being thrown to the floor as the auto-recovery system jolted the vehicle back into equilibrium.
“Youssef, get our network back online,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”
When the 3D screen flickered back to life, they were no longer looking at a battlefield; all surveillance video of the battle had been blocked.
“Something jumped our connection with MemeFrame and crashed our system,” Youssef reported. “I’m not getting responses to my queries.”
“Electronic warfare? Shit,” Sest swore.
To a drone unit utilizing advanced tactical commands, wireless signals were vital lifelines. If these ‘girls’ were able to break military encryption and hack the team’s system, they were a whole new breed of monster.
The girls were no longer anywhere to be seen. The HOO tactical AI informed Sest and his team that all hIEs had jumped into the sea.
It was the worst case scenario Sest had been afraid of — normal drones wouldn’t be able to function underwater, where wireless signals couldn’t reach them. But the five target hIEs were able to make advanced decisions on their own, without relying on a network.
Which was exactly why they had chosen the sea as a perfect means of escape. With Tokyo close by, and Japan completely surrounded by water, the thought of trying to pin down the hIEs again was completely hopeless.
Thomas let out a dry laugh.
Youssef’s fingers were still.
There were still ten minutes left on their permit to fly in Tokyo airspace. With no marine scanning equipment in the helicopter, Sest could do nothing but stare down at the face of the sea, an endless pool of darkness itself under the night sky.
“What the hell did we just let loose?” he questioned.
The hIEs they had just encountered were stronger and stranger than Sest ever could have imagined. When the implications of what had just happened started to sink in, Sest broke out in a cold sweat, something he hadn’t done since being a green recruit.
As a veteran, he had often come face-to-face with the evolution of weapons technology; humans were always happy to climb right over walls once thought insurmountable. To bring about change, all it took was someone deciding that a wall was worth climbing over. Take, for example, the invention of the atomic bomb: there are many famously pithy quotes from the scientists of the day about it, but the reality was that many people were quite happy with its completion and the end it brought to the war. They were happy because the atomic bomb had fulfilled its purpose, which was to protect the lives of their soldiers and countrymen.
Five hIEs, each a work of art. Sest glared down at the sea where they had escaped, then he turned an unsettled gaze to the evening cityscape where millions more hIEs were currently in operation. A sudden shiver ran down his spine at the thought that, at that very moment, humanity was climbing over yet another wall. He had no idea what the units that had escaped were capable of, or even what they were created to do.
The fault lay squarely on the shoulders of the client: MemeFrame. They had refused to disclose the information they had, and their initial response had been wrong. But that wasn’t even worth worrying about now. One of the five had ‘equipment’ that easily surpassed the power of a tank. So what about the equipment of the other four hIEs; did they have poison gas, or weaponized viruses? One of them could have a weapon worse than a nuclear bomb.
Sest and his team may have just witnessed the beginning of a disaster that would shake human society to the core.
***
10:30 PM.
Arato Endo was lecturing his little sister. While he’d been trying to get things ready for dinner, Yuka, the little sister in question, had been gobbling down the ingredients intended for their meal.
“Is your brain working properly?” he scolded. “You couldn’t even leave me enough to cook with?”
It was just Arato and Yuka in the Endo household. Their dad was busy with work and almost never came home, and their mom had passed away while they were still small. So, Arato had dedicated himself to raising his little sister. Unfortunately, he may have overdone it, as she was now hopelessly spoiled.
“What were you thinking,” he moaned, “when I was right here, trying to make dinner for you?”
“I was thinking, ‘Yay, meat!’” Yuka squealed happily.
“You belong in a zoo,” Arato told her.
“Well, dinner was taking too long,” Yuka whined, flipping the channel on the TV away from the game she had been playing. She was fourteen, three years younger than Arato, but she still had the happy-go-lucky personality of a younger child.
A news program came up on screen.
“Woah, cool,” she exclaimed. “Something blew up.”
On the 3D screen rising from the floor of the dining room, great tongues of flame were bursting from a burning building. It was an image from just 30 minutes ago.
“‘The No. 2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Island Group’... That’s kinda close,” Yuka worried. “Or, wait, isn’t it kinda far?”
“It’s close, ya dummy,” Arato scoffed at her. “Well, if you go in a straight line, at least.”
Grabbing the remote, he called up the guide function and asked it the question. It analyzed his spoken request and replied. According to the guide, the incident had happened fifteen kilometers from the Endos’ apartment.
“Hey, that’s pretty close,” Arato said, feeling unsettled. “Crazy.”
The sound of an explosion rang out from the 3D display.
“Wonder if they’ll close school tomorrow,” Yuka mused.
“Of course they’re not gonna do that.”
“Yeah, guess you’re right,” she agreed. “I hope no one around there got hurt or anything.”
Yuka may not have been good at studying, but she had a kind heart, and that wasn’t just Arato’s bias as her brother. She settled down cross-legged to watch the news, while Arato went back to the kitchen to restart dinner.
Dinner didn’t actually require much cooking; it was a simple matter of pouring the frozen food pack and spice pack in together, and then frying them in some oil. That evening, Yuka had ruined his plans by scarfing down the fried sweet and sour pork, so instead he decided to just pour it all over some carbs and call it good.
“They’re saying it was an hIE robot company,” Yuka commented. “Arato, go get a job so we can buy one of those. We could have it cook for us and stuff.”
“Crap, outta rice,” he said. “Guess we’re having fried udon tonight.”
“What?! No way, we are NOT having fried udon two days in a row,” she whined. “C’mon, do rice instead.”
“Well,” he said, “we don’t have any rice, so one of us will need to go buy some.”
Yuka bounced off the couch and turned to face him. If human strength came from enjoying eating and playing, she would be a superwoman.
“Arato, will you buy some ice cream for me too?” Truly a fearful specimen of youngest child, she showed no hesitation while making her spoiled request.
“Why is it automatically me who’s going?” Arato asked.
At his question, Yuka gave him a brilliant, innocent smile. “Cuz I wuv you,” she said cutely.
“Words can’t convey how little I care,” he sighed. Despite the season, it was still cold outside at night, so Arato grabbed his heating jacket from where he had it draped in the entryway.
“So you’re gonna go?”
Arato had already come up with an excuse, just so Yuka didn’t think her cutesy act had worked on him. “Well, there’s stuff blowing up tonight,” he said, “so I figured it wasn’t safe for a girl to be out there alone.”
Yuka put her hands together like she was praying. “Please let there be some more explosions tomorrow. Amen.”
“I feel like this is going to turn into one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ things,” Arato r
emarked. That said, he still thought that his sister was a cute kid. She saw him off with an expression that said she’d rather have just stayed on the couch, and Arato headed out into the night.
The feeling of being dear to someone, of being accepted, was one that made Arato very happy, which was why he wanted his little sister to be able to feel that way. Though, it could also be said that he’d just gone all in on spoiling her.
Shin Koiwa, the neighborhood where the two of them lived, had been built as part of a Tokyo Bay restoration project. It was constructed near a transfer station set up to connect railway lines from the bay to the land side. From the transfer station, one could get to the Endos’ apartment by heading south on the Urayasu subway line; their residential district was conveniently located for easy access. Further south, toward the bay, there was an area heavily impacted by the Hazard. But Shin Koiwa was a comfortably normal residential district. Many of its residents lived there specifically to get away from life at the heart of the metropolis, so at that time of night there was hardly anyone on the street.
“But seriously, an explosion?” Arato worried to himself. “Are we really gonna be all right?” The danger he’d used as an excuse for Yuka lingered in his mind. Off in the distance, he thought he could hear a siren.
The No. 2 Landfill Island Group was one of the areas where his dad used to work.
It was about a ten minute walk to the grocery store. He didn’t want to spend the whole walk worrying, so he took out his mobile terminal to listen to some music.
“Oh, out running some errands?” a middle-aged woman asked, as Arato walked past her. The slightly plump woman, who looked to be in her late forties, was actually an hIE named Marie who worked for a local landlord. She had been running for over ten years, which was old, for a machine. Arato had seen her face around all the time since he was a kid.
“Yep,” he replied. “You too, Marie?”
“That’s right. We managed to run out of food, too.”
The night walk suddenly felt a little more enjoyable. With someone to talk to, the trip to the store seemed quick. At the little store, run by a single hIE, Arato picked up the same frozen rice and ice cream as always.
Then he headed toward home, walking alongside the road where autonomous cars had eliminated the need for most traffic signals. Marie, shopping bag dangling from one arm, walked alongside him with a gentle gait.
Then, Arato saw them: flowers, falling everywhere.
“Woah,” he wondered, “what the heck?”
Flowers of five colors were raining down. No, perhaps it would be better to say that they were falling all around like snowflakes. Since it was April, Arato first thought they were cherry blossoms. But, when he caught one in his hand, he saw it had long, thin petals like a chrysanthemum. It also felt strangely dry in his hand. The sight was so odd that, even though it was very pretty, Arato felt uneasy.
“Oh my, how lovely. I wonder what’s going on?” Marie, apparently judging that the falling flowers weren’t dangerous, raised her voice in excitement and kept walking down the street.
The neighborhood hIE left Arato behind and continued on, not bothering to brush off the flowers that settled in her hair. Arato just watched as her calmly walking figure grew smaller in the distance down the dark road. Then, he brushed the flowers off of his own head and went after her.
When he caught up to her, Arato saw that Marie had paused unnaturally mid-step. Her well-rounded figure was completely still, as if she had been frozen in ice. He was about to call out to her, but a sudden, intense feeling of wrongness stopped him.
Marie’s knee was stretched out in a random way, like she had forgotten how to take normal steps. Her whole body was trembling violently, as if she was about to burst apart at the seams. Then, her loose, medium-cut hair swished, and her neck creaked in protest as her head spun around 180 degrees.
The hIE’s face was expressionless as the shopping bag slipped from her fingers. With her joints still frozen tightly in place, Marie fell to the ground like a doll with a dull thud.
The hyperpigmented flowers continued to fall.
Arato felt something touching his neck. Reflexively, he grabbed at whatever it was, and held the thing in his hand under the light of the streetlamps. It was a colorful flower petal that had sprouted legs like a centipede.
The petal bug started walking around on Arato’s hand, and he screamed. He flailed his arm like a madman to get it off before it could crawl up his sleeve. It was late, but he didn’t have the presence of mind to keep his voice down.
“What the hell?!” he yelled in panic. “What the hell is that?!” The five-colored petals that now paved the ground were all crawling around like insects. Arato’s common sense told him to reject the reality before his eyes, because it was impossible. Reality itself had become a fairy tale.
Arato couldn’t believe what was happening; his mind was on the brink of complete chaos. He was worried about Marie. The fact that she was an hIE, not a human, sprang to mind. But he couldn’t just leave her there; she looked too human for that.
Strong light suddenly shone on him from the side as he stood there, dazed. A sedan that had been parked nearby suddenly roared to life, its wheels squealing on the pavement. As it came straight for him, he threw himself to the road to avoid it. His arm landed at an odd angle, and a sharp pain shot through his shoulder.
As he went to stand, the ice cream he’d bought for Yuka rolled out of the shopping bag. Reflexively, he grabbed it and returned it to the bag. Then he put his hand on the wall of a nearby house to stand.
The car, which Arato had thought would keep going, instead shifted into reverse and came straight for him. He tried to dodge again, but didn’t make it. A powerful blow struck him at waist level.
In that moment, he got a quick look at the interior of the car. Where the driver should have been, there were just flowers of every color, blooming like a giant bouquet.
Arato couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening. He simply slid into a narrow alley to get away from the car. “What the hell is going on... This, this is...”
Looking up, he watched as the falling flowers continue to blot out the night sky.
It was such an impossible sight, but his senses were so keenly aware of the reality around him that Arato started to doubt his own sanity. It was as if the whole world was suddenly out to get him; as if everything he had accepted as reality had been revealed as an illusion. Only his pain and fear were real. His mind could do nothing but rail against the threats to his life that were all around him.
Frozen food was moving out of Marie’s shopping bag; the frozen packs had flowers with bunched petals blooming from them. The petals made a dry scratching at the ground as they sprouted legs.
A dark shadow stretched out under the lamplight. Footsteps approached from behind, each step painfully loud in his ears. Arato’s eyes were on the ground, and his breath was coming in ragged gasps. The shadow was wearing the same clothing as Marie. Whatever the flowers bloomed on became a monster; a monster out for human blood.
Headlights flooded into the alley that Arato had ducked into from the opposite side, followed by a whole car. The vehicle was out of control, rending its body as it scraped along the narrow alley toward him before it came to a stop, with white smoke pouring out of its underside. Countless flowers bloomed from its chassis.
Arato wished this was a nightmare, from which he just needed to wake up. But this was reality, which made it all the worse. His mind was stuck in an endless loop: make it stop, please just make it stop, he thought, fear rooting him to the spot.
Finally, he managed to get his body to move. Wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he tried to retreat from the danger all around him. But before he could get very far, the car that had just charged into the alley after him violently burst into fire. Arato froze on the spot again, his vision filled by a whirlpool of red flame. It was the same scene he had seen in his nightmares night after night. He knew, without a doubt,
that he was about to die. So he screamed. He screamed like he hadn’t since he was a child. “Help me!”
A human figure appeared in Arato’s view.
The figure was facing away, but he could tell that the person was female. She appeared between Arato and the fire, seeming to melt right out of the heat haze. The coffin she held in one hand was pulled into segments by a skeletal framework, then reconfigured with incredible speed. When the reconfiguration was complete, the figure between Arato and the fire held a giant hemispherical umbrella.
Then, the burning car exploded. She remained there, standing between Arato and the fiery nightmare, as if to say ‘I will protect you.’
After the blast from the explosion blew away, it seemed to take his fear with it, and Arato finally got a good look at the young girl in front of him, and was struck speechless by her simple beauty. Her pale violet hair danced in the hot wind left behind by the explosion. She didn’t have a hint of makeup on, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her glowing skin and stunning face.
She turned to look at him. “You requested help,” she said, in a clear voice. She was a little shorter than Arato, but she wasn’t showing the least bit of strain at holding her massive black device in one hand.
Arato couldn’t help but feel intimidated by her. “Uh, thanks,” he said.
Her umbrella reconfigured again, returning to its coffin form. She looked a little older than him. When she opened her lips again, he noticed how pale they were. “My name is Lacia,” she told him, and her ice blue eyes fixed on him as if waiting for a response.
It took him a moment to realize what she was waiting for. “I’m Arato Endo,” he said, voice quivering with fear that still sent tremors through his body. But the expression on her face was so calm that it helped to still the turmoil in his own heart. He realized, then, that she was beautiful enough to steal his breath away.
The black and white bodysuit she was wearing was so tight that he could see every line of her body underneath. From the way she was easily hefting her giant equipment in one hand, he could tell she wasn’t human.
Arato didn’t care who or what she was. He reached out his free right hand to take one of her hands. “We need to get out of here!” he told her. “If these flowers get you, you’ll go crazy.”