by Satoshi Hase
Rage throbbed dully within Kengo. He and his comrades, exhausted from their long battle, had been greeted by screams. Yet the people trusted this hIE, who was automating their world, to guide them. These people had no problem following the orders of an hIE. Both the evacuees obeying Mikoto and Kengo’s comrades blindly following Kouka seemed the same in Kengo’s eyes. He was sick of it all.
Steadying his gun, he pointed its muzzle at Mikoto. “Everyone, open your eyes,” he said into the chaos around him. “Everything dear to us is being stolen away by these things pretending to be human.” He wanted to destroy them all. Even if this hatred consumed everything else, he wouldn’t mind.
***
Arato ran over to Kengo as soon as he saw his friend point his gun at Mikoto.
〈Kengo! Stop!〉 he tried calling out. But his friend, a white demon in Arato’s monochrome world, didn’t hear him. Arato was still invisible and still biting down on the mouthpiece speaker.
He couldn’t just leave his friend to get lost in the chaos of the moment, so he grabbed Kengo’s gun from the side. Kengo, who suddenly had his aim thrown wide by an unknown force, tried to shake him off.
“What the hell?!” Kengo yelled.
Arato forced Kengo’s resisting hands apart so he could tear the gun away. He was invisible, but the gun was not, and the sight of his gun floating freely in the air made Kengo freeze. Arato turned and threw it, so it landed and skittered underneath the podium.
Lacia’s voice echoed in his head through the mouthpiece speaker. 〈We are currently hidden from the eyes of the other Antibody Network members by the rain of flowers. We should take him now,〉 she said.
〈If we grab him right now, like this, he’ll never want to talk to me again!〉 Arato yelled back, without opening his mouth. The attack by the hIE Kouka had called ‘Snowdrop’ was something Arato and Lacia hadn’t planned for. But Arato couldn’t just ignore what was happening.
White waves of acoustic imaging flowed outward from around the little girl’s stomach, which was round with baby fat. It seemed to Arato that the sound was actually coming from her stomach.
“Dance, dance,” Snowdrop chanted, using both of her little hands to gather a pile of white petals to the stomach of her white dress before scattering them. Every time her dress moved, petals scattered from it, like feathers falling off a bird taking flight.
〈What’s going on with her?〉 Arato asked.
〈I believe there is an instrument within her clothing to produce the child units. They are constructed of foaming resin, so I would wager that Snowdrop still has the means to produce many more flowers,〉 Lacia said, squeezing one of the petals between her fingers. The child units, which were light enough to float on the wind, continued to dance around in the air.
〈Hurry up and get out of here! That kid is dangerous!〉 Arato tried to warn Kengo again. He tried to open his mouth and actually yell it out, but it still didn’t reach Kengo’s ears.
Kengo was looking around to the left and right within his limited frame of vision. He turned to look at Kouka, possibly hoping for new orders. His movements were so mechanical and awkward, and he couldn’t hear Arato’s voice. To Arato, it was like they were in different, lonely worlds. He felt like they had both become something inhuman.
So, Arato decided to go back to being human. 〈We’re not going to get anywhere like this. I’m taking off my helmet,〉 Arato said.
But Lacia’s eternally calm, rational voice stopped him. 〈There is a possibility that you will come under attack from both Snowdrop and Kouka,〉 she said.
〈Fine, but I’ve got to do this. If I don’t, this whole place could burn down,〉 Arato responded. The sprinklers weren’t working. In fact, Arato couldn’t even hear a fire alarm. Most likely, it had all been disabled by Snowdrop’s flowers.
Aside from that, since Snowdrop appeared to be a Red Box, Kouka was using her laser and heated blade with wild abandon. With each attack, she filled the air with more and more burning petals, which spread fire wherever they came to rest on the carpet. The fire had probably already penetrated the carpet, and started burning the floor itself.
It was unbearably hot. Arato tried to pull his helmet off, but found that the neck area expanded when he pulled at it. No matter how he tugged, it pulled at his skin but he couldn’t get it off his head. It was probably a safety feature.
〈Arato, I believe our goal here was to rescue your friend, not put a stop to the terrorist attack of the Antibody Network,〉 Lacia said.
He wasn’t getting anywhere with getting the helmet off, so Arato just pulled open the visor and spat out the mouthpiece speaker. “Lacia! Put out the fire in the meeting hall,” he ordered.
“You will take responsibility for whatever happens?” Lacia asked.
For a moment, Arato was mystified by the change in her voice. Since he had discarded the mouthpiece, she was no longer speaking directly into his head. “Fine!” he yelled. After a few more desperate tugs, he finally got the helmet off. Then, he peeled the retinal display goggles off his sweat-drenched face. His field of view transformed from a monochrome world where anything that didn’t make noise was practically invisible to a sinister, burning garden.
“What the hell?” he said. He hadn’t been able to see the light from the flames with his stereo vision, and it was bright enough to hurt his eyes. Snowdrop’s petals, a silent grey before, now stood out. Each one was vivid and unique, with its own coloring.
“Snowdrop’s child units have a composition very similar to living creatures, so they burn well,” Lacia commented. “So, she continues to create new ones to replace those lost in the fire, which Kouka in turn continues to light on fire.”
Arato saw that his head was no longer invisible, and felt like he had returned to humanity once more. “So one of them is creating endless fuel, and the other is lighting it up,” Arato summarized. Looking around to see if all the humans had made it out, Arato couldn’t see Kengo through the thick curtains of flowers.
“You may have forgotten this fact in the moment, but you will die if you are shot, Arato,” Lacia said. She hadn’t removed the meta-material rendering her invisible, and not being able to see her shook Arato’s confidence.
“I’m aware of that!” he shouted.
Every member of the Antibody Network infiltration team was carrying a gun. Now that he thought about it, he found that his legs were frozen in place with fear.
“Kengo!” he called as loud as he could.
In the middle of the meeting hall, an especially huge flame was blazing. In the midst of it, Arato saw Kouka kick off of the burning carpet and rush at Snowdrop. Her blade bit into the shoulder of the eight-armed combat machine Snowdrop had created from flowers and parts from the busted security hIEs. Burning red as it cut through metal, the blade sank deep into the innards of the stitched-together creature.
Kouka then stabbed the thing with the piercing anchor that shot out of the heel of her shoe, and sent it flying with a kick. Flowing from one motion to another, she pushed off the ground with her feet and dove straight for Snowdrop. The large accessories set with green stones that were wrapped around the little hIE girl’s body stopped Kouka’s shining red blade.
Snowdrop was sent flying, smashing through desks and turning expensive equipment into scrap as she flew. Like a stone skipping on the surface of a pond, she bounced three times off the desks of the seating in the hall before crumpling to the ground.
“Looks like even my device can’t get through that defensive power,” Kouka said, scratching her head in consternation.
At that moment, the storm of flowers that had been falling all that time stopped and vanished, as if someone had taken an eraser to the world. Arato had seen this phenomenon before. The night he met Lacia, she had rendered a large amount of the petals invisible, to prevent radio control signals from reaching them.
Snowdrop was pulling herself up. Like a puppy that had lost its toy, she swung her head back and forth, looking for her hidde
n child units. “Lacia’s playing hide and seek,” she said. Even as she spoke, more petals were pouring out of the hem of her white dress, turning the carpet beneath her into a flower garden. It was a fantastic sight, far divorced from the reality that Arato had once known.
With the storm of artificial flowers abated, Arato looked for Kengo in the meeting hall. All the other members of the infiltration team had apparently fled. Only Kengo remained, looking confused by the rapid changes to the scene around him.
“Kengo, over here!” Arato called, but Kengo still didn’t notice him. Arato knew he didn’t have the power to stop Kouka and Snowdrop. The only way he had gotten there at all was relying on Lacia’s orders; Arato’s strength was essentially meaningless. Even the fact that he was standing there on the front line at that moment was nothing but a hindrance to Lacia. But Arato still wanted his presence there to mean something.
Kengo must have noticed his voice, since he started heading toward Arato. But his head was turned to the side by Kouka, who had come to stand beside him. “Do you want to get out of here alive?” she asked. “Then become my owner. This could be our only chance to roast that little duckie over there,” she said, indicating Snowdrop, who was standing barefoot on the carpet.
“Is that why you brought me here?” Kengo asked.
“Get down, please!” Lacia yelled out a warning, and Arato automatically ducked low.
Snowdrop spread both of her arms wide. “Look what else I can do,” she said.
Alarm bells sounded in Arato’s head, and he covered his head with both hands while burrowing down into the flowery carpet.
A blast of wind swept everything in the room off of the ground. Arato was screaming at the top of his lungs, but he couldn’t hear his own screams. A flying desk flew over his head, and the floor appeared to be rippling like water. Arato was slammed to the ground hard enough to rattle his skull, and he couldn’t stop screaming. It seemed like his mind would shatter from the fear if he stopped. His vision clouded with tears, and a spasm of tension ran through his body, making all of his muscles strain taut.
When he managed to get his head up, Arato saw a wide night cityscape spreading out in front of him. Whatever had happened, it had ripped huge holes in the walls of the building, allowing him an unhindered view of Tokyo at night.
A strong wind whistled through the holes, and Snowdrop had a contented look on her face as she enjoyed the feel of the wind. The green stones set into the accessory wrapped around her delicate body — which must have been her device — were glowing.
“Lacia, are you all right? Where’s Kengo?” Arato asked. He could see the now visible Lacia in front of him. She had shielded him using her coffin-shaped device.
“Snowdrop took control of a helicopter and arrived here by ramming it into the building,” Lacia explained. “Kouka destroyed that helicopter, but Snowdrop brought another one in through the hole the first one created.”
Snowdrop had noticed Lacia, and was looking at her now with a tilted head. “So your invisible stuff goes away if it gets attacked?” she asked. Then, the small green-haired girl started picking pieces of the security hIEs, who had been split right down the middle, out of the debris from the explosion. “I thought these would be strong enough for me to use for a long time.”
Arato couldn’t help but see the broken machines as the corpses of soldiers, and looked away. Very little in the meeting hall retained its original form. The whole place was a pile of rubble. Looking for Kengo, Arato saw that Kouka had stuck her blade into the ground to protect the both of them. Despite her having saved him, Kengo was backing away from her.
“What the hell is all this? What do you want with me?” he asked, his voice bitter.
The changed form of the room was a chilling metaphor to Arato’s eyes. In the early days, hIE hadn’t needed to speak; they were just there to automate the requests of their owners. But here were three of them — Kouka, Snowdrop and Lacia — who moved humans with their forms, rather than being moved. It was one big analog hack. Kengo was only talking with Kouka because she, a machine, had brought him there and was now leading him along, controlling his actions.
“Kengo!” Arato yelled, drawing his voice from deep within. After seeing the things Mikoto was trying to automate, Arato felt he understood Kengo’s fight. He couldn’t just stand by and watch his friend being manipulated. “You’re always telling me hIEs aren’t human. You’re here to fight because you are human, right? So think about what you really want to do right now. If you let her string you along, everything you’ve done will have been pointless,” Arato said. It may not have been convincing, but if Arato coming all the way there had a point, he decided it would be to say this to his friend. Of course, Arato himself still couldn’t bring himself to see Lacia as nothing but a tool, so he hoped his words would get through to Kengo.
Kengo wiped his face, muddy with dust and sweat, on the sleeve of his urban camo clothing. “Shut the hell up!” he shouted at Kouka. “I hate every single one of you!” Perhaps it was an ungrateful statement, and made in a fit of rage, but Arato could tell that it was coming from Kengo’s heart. Kengo had no weapon to beat Kouka down, so instead he used his words. “I don’t care if you’re the enemy of my enemy. That doesn’t make you my friend. I want all of you hIEs gone!” he yelled. Then he barked a short, ironic laugh. Perhaps he was laughing at himself. His mouth twisted into a wry smile.
Arato also couldn’t keep a strange smile off of his face. The circumstances weren’t ideal, and the content was rough, but it was the first time his friend had expressed his true feelings.
Snowdrop hugged the wreckage of the security hIEs to her chest and petted its head. “He turned you down. Poor Kouka,” she said, as if to comfort the other hIE. Then, with her thin arms, she lifted the head of the security hIE up into the air. “Humans are more trouble than they’re worth. They’re always messing up the Frame,” she said. The emerald accessory wrapped around her began to glow faintly. It stretched out its joints and came undone. It shifted in the air until it had formed a large circle in front of Snowdrop’s stomach, and the green emeralds all over it relocated to the inside of the circle.
Snowdrop pulled the remains of the security hIE into the ring formed by her device, with a movement that seemed to Arato like she was hugging the scrap to her dress. The emerald crystals on her device moved like the teeth of an animal, grinding up the pieces of the security hIE with a loud crunching noise. Arato started to see the ring-shaped device as a mouth with emerald teeth, which chewed up and quickly disgorged the scrap into Snowdrop’s waiting hands. She took each piece and slid it into her open dress, where it was swallowed up and vanished. Tiny bits and pieces of scrap fell from the hem of the dress like crumbs.
It seemed that only an instant had passed before Snowdrop had devoured the entire hIE in this manner. When she was done, she re-fastened the bracket that closed the chest of her dress. After letting out a cute little burp, Snowdrop murmured, “I see now, Emerald Harmony. You use these things like this.”
Arato heard the sound of rubble tumbling away from something behind him. Turning to look, he saw the muzzle of a gun peeking out from beneath a pile of destroyed desks. His instincts, which had become sharper ever since that first night he met Lacia, screamed at him. He dodged, and a bullet punched a hole through the wall where he had been standing.
Up until then, the hIEs controlled by the flowers, including the armed security hIEs, had just tried to grab their targets. But now, it seemed, Snowdrop had grasped the use of firearms.
As gunshots began to echo in the hall, Arato saw Kouka shove Kengo out of the way. Dashing to the pile of desks with incredible speed, she sliced off the muzzle of the gun, but Snowdrop had been aiming for just such an opening. A flower-covered hIE wearing a burnt flight jacket grabbed Kengo from behind. Arato realized it was the pilot hIE from the helicopter. It pulled at Kengo as he violently resisted, finally twisting the lower half of his body almost completely around to get him to mo
ve.
There was a giant hole in the wall and, through it, nothing but the night sky. Kengo vanished through the hole. Arato was running before his thoughts had time to catch up.
“Lacia, stop him!” he yelled. He ran into the strong wind blowing in from the burnt hole, heading toward the night beyond. For a moment, as he ran, he locked eyes with Snowdrop, and a shiver ran up his spine.
He knew that, somewhere, she had guns trained on him right then. All it would take was one shot. But he kept his eyes open, clenching his teeth, and put his faith in Lacia, who was there fighting alongside him.
Snowdrop went flying, together with the sound of something hard hitting something very soft. Before she could pull herself up, she was struck again. Lacia had apparently gone invisible again, and was taking advantage of having landed a surprise attack.
From the confines of the hall, Arato ran out into the open under the night sky. With each step, feelings of liberation and terror grew within him.
“Help me.” He heard a voice from beyond the hole in the wall, and it told him that Kengo hadn’t given up hope. He knew his friend was searching for a human hand to save him. So, not caring what lay ahead, Arato ran past concrete rubble and pieces of the destroyed helicopter. He saw fingers clinging to the outside of the thick, cracked glass walls. Kengo had just barely caught himself, and was hanging on with a drop of twenty-two stories below him.
“Hang in there!” Arato yelled. He stretched out his hand, and barely managed to catch Kengo’s wrist. It was sweaty, but it was also warm and human. After going invisible, sneaking in, and getting himself caught up in a battle, Arato had finally managed to reach his friend.
He held desperately on to Kengo’s arm, which was slippery with sweat. “You still alive?” Arato asked. Wedging his foot against the cracked wall, he pulled at Kengo’s arm until he felt like his own arms would fall off. The hIE that had tried to take a dive with Kengo had already fallen.