Phantom Bullet 1

by Reki Kawahara

And yet in real life, Shino still couldn’t hold a simple model gun.

  Was it really what she wanted…?

  Behind her glasses, the girl in the mirror’s eyes wavered, lost and afraid.

  There was no refraction to the lenses in the frames she’d been wearing since last year. They weren’t a visual correction tool, but a type of armor. They were made of hardy NXT polymer, strong enough to hold firm against a bullet—according to the pamphlet. She didn’t know if that was true or not, but the expensive lenses gave her a slight feeling of security, at least. She couldn’t be at ease walking around without them now.

  But that only meant that she was addicted to the meaningless little accessory.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and felt the pitiful pleading question rise to the surface again.

  Someone…help…What should I do…?

  No one’s going to help you!! she roared to herself, trying to drive the voice of her weakness away, and bolted upright. On the small end table next to her bed, the silver AmuSphere circle glowed.

  She just didn’t have enough yet. That was the only issue.

  There were twenty-one gunners stronger than Sinon in that world. Once she’d bested them and sent them all to the underworld so she could reign supreme over the wasteland, only then…

  Only then could Shino and Sinon merge into one, making that true strength available to her in the real world. Only then would The Man and The Gun disappear into the midst of the countless targets she’d buried, never to surface in her memory again.

  Shino reached for her air-conditioning remote, turned on the heat, and stripped her uniform jacket off. She undid the hook on her skirt and pulled her legs out, then tossed it onto the floor. Last, she removed the light blue glasses and set them carefully on the edge of her desk.

  She lay down on the bed and put the AmuSphere over her head, feeling for the ON switch.

  A quiet electronic tone signaled that the boot-up procedure was finishing. She opened her mouth.

  “Link Start.”

  The voice that came out was weak and ragged, like a child who had cried herself hoarse.

  5

  As the browser launched, it loaded up the preset URLs, spawning several layers of tabs. These were largely Gun Gale Online–oriented sites, particularly those that collected information on Death Gun.

  He controlled a 3D mouse with his right hand, switching to the site that was most active at the moment. The banner identified it as the Death Gun Information Repository, with the words Death Gun colored in red.

  The recent history showed that the site administrator hadn’t uploaded any details tonight, so he moved to the message board. A number of posts had been made since he checked the site last night—a blinking NEW icon appeared here and there throughout the posting tree. He read them in order.

  —Haven’t seen Zexceed or Tarako in a while. What’s it been, a month? Aren’t their accounts about to expire? If anyone can get in contact with them IRL, that’d be great plz

  —I told you, no one knows. Even their own squadron members don’t know their real contact info. I mean, anyone who reveals their private info on GGO is an idiot

  —We know the date and time that Death Gun shot them, so shouldn’t we be able to look up any stories about people who died at those times to see if any of them were VRMMO players?

  —Read the backlog, quit repeating the same topics. If you die while living alone, no one will notice, and we already know from experience that the police won’t tell us anything. And if you try writing to Zaskar in English, they just give you their canned response about private customer information.

  —I bet I know what this is. It’s all a big retirement prank from Zex and Tara. You guys better come out and spill the beans before everyone stops caring anymore!

  —In the end, I think someone will just have to do the research with their own eyes. Anyway, I’ll be waiting outside the Central Bank of SBC Glocken at 2330 hours tomorrow night with a red rose pinned to my shirt. Come and shoot me, Death Gun.

  —A hero arrives! But you need to reveal your name and address before you die so we can actually check.

  —Actually, you should probably just dive in public from a net café.

  —………

  He clicked his tongue in irritation and spun the mouse wheel, activating the next tab. But no matter which site or forum he visited, he did not find the precise kind of article or post that he sought.

  After the second one died, the rumors wondering if Death Gun’s power was real should have swept the Net, leaving every GGO player trembling in fear at the thought that they might be next, followed by waves of players deciding to give up the game for good.

  But in reality, the idiots on the Net still hadn’t recognized the true terror of Death Gun. They still thought it was all a big joke. The total number of active GGO accounts had barely taken a hit.

  He hadn’t counted on there being no real news coverage of the deaths of Zexceed and Usujio Tarako. Apparently there were enough unexplained deaths in the big city happening on any particular day that if there wasn’t an obvious criminal angle, no single one would make the news.

  Of course, he knew that the hearts of the two men he’d shot did stop in real life, and they had died. Because that was the power of Death Gun.

  The temptation to post that information directly onto one of the message boards was overwhelming. But providing a proper source would be extremely difficult for him, and more importantly, it would diminish the Death Gun legend. He was the alpha and omega, the true absolute power in that wasteland—a grim reaper whose ability surpassed the game’s management.

  Well, whatever.

  He sighed and calmed himself down.

  The third Bullet of Bullets would begin soon. Death Gun planned to eliminate the lives of two players during the tournament, maybe three if he could manage it. Of course, he needed to get through the preliminary round without using the gun’s powers, but with the twenty hours a day he spent logged in, he knew his stats were good enough.

  The attention the BoB commanded was absolute. The livestream on MMO Stream attracted viewers far and wide, not just from GGO but from all manner of VRMMOs. Once he was both the unquestioned champion of the greatest stage and the people he shot disappeared from the Net, none of the fools would ever doubt the power of Death Gun again.

  After the attention that would garner, he wouldn’t be able to use his current account anymore, but that wasn’t a problem. As long as he had the gun, it would be easy for a new Death Gun to descend upon the sands.

  And he would kill more. His plans called for the number of victims to rise to seven. By then, players would be leaving in droves, and Gun Gale Online itself would eventually succumb to death.

  Death Gun would become a legend.

  It wouldn’t match up to the sheer body count of the cursed Sword Art Online, but that was simply the act of a madman frying his players’ brains with microwaves.

  The power of Death Gun was much more than that. The virtual bullets he shot could stop a heart in real life. No one understood the secret of how he worked aside from him and his counterpart. Death Gun was supreme. The Black Swordsman who was rumored to have beaten SAO was nothing. The moment would come very soon that he took his rightful place as the greatest VRMMO player in existence.

  Absolute power—legendary tyrant—supremacy—supremacy—supremacy…

  He eventually noticed that he was clenching the mouse so hard, he might crush it. Slowly, he relaxed his shoulder, breathing heavily.

  The day couldn’t come soon enough. Once the legend was his, he had no use for this worthless world any longer. Never again would he be plagued by the asinine cretins.

  He closed all of the browser tabs and opened up a local HTML file. It contained a vertical list of seven mugshots—screencaps from GGO cut and pasted. To the right of each picture was a name and list of weapon information. The pictures of Zexceed and Usujio Tarako at the top were dimmed out and covered with a large X t
he color of blood.

  This was Death Gun’s target list. Or put a different way, it was the number of Death Bullets loaded into his magazine. All seven of them were famous, powerful GGO players.

  He scrolled slowly through the file until the bottom picture came front and center. It was the only female player of the seven.

  The screenshot was taken from a right diagonal angle. She had short, pale blue hair tied into tufts that framed her face and covered the line of her cheek. Unfortunately, the sand-yellow muffler hid her mouth from view, but the catlike indigo eyes held a bright allure to them.

  The information to the right said her name was Sinon. Her main weapon was the antimateriel sniper rifle, Ultima Ratio Hecate II.

  He had seen her in person within the game many times. Shopping in the market district of Glocken, chewing on cart-sold hot dogs on a park bench, and running into battle with that enormous rifle strapped to her back. Every one of these actions was infused with a coquettish charm that stoked his desire to own her. She almost never smiled, and there was always a note of some kind of lament in her eyes, but that only increased his interest.

  He was conflicted about including this Sinon girl on his target list. If she could made to be his in body and spirit, not just in the game, but in real life as well…

  But his other half, Death Gun’s matching arm, would want her dead. Sinon was famed throughout GGO as the cruel, bloodless sniper, the goddess of the underworld. No flower could be more appropriate to sacrifice to the legend of Death Gun.

  He reached out and stroked the image of Sinon with a fingertip.

  Within the sensation of the slick, glowing panel, he felt the softness and warmth of her body.

  6

  I turned on my blinker, leaned the frame sideways, and passed through the large gate.

  Instantly, I felt the accusing stares of the pedestrians on either side of the tree-lined street, and abruptly slowed the motorcycle down.

  In the midst of the increasing use of electric scooters, the crappy old Thai 125 cc two-stroke dirt bike I got through Agil’s help made an astonishing amount of noise. Every time Suguha sat on the back, she complained that it was noisy, smelly, and uncomfortable. I tried to tease her by saying that she couldn’t be like the wind if she didn’t understand that sound, but secretly I wished that I had bought one of the four-stroke scooters made after the exhaust regulations kicked in.

  Especially when I was riding it on the grounds of a hospital.

  I puttered along the street with the speed of a donkey pulling a cart until eventually a parking garage came into view. With a sigh of relief, I drove inside and stopped the bike at the special motorcycle section in the corner, pulling out the archaic ignition key and pulling off my helmet. The chilly winter air brought a faint scent of disinfectant with it.

  It was the Saturday after my high-priced-cake meeting with Kikuoka.

  He sent me a message saying that the location was prepared for me to log in to Gun Gale Online. I made the trip with heavy heart, but was surprised to find the address was for a large municipal hospital in Chiyoda Ward.

  I hardly ever had a reason to visit the city center of Tokyo, but I didn’t get lost along the way. The physical rehabilitation center attached to this hospital complex was the place where I’d rebuilt my strength after escaping SAO.

  Even after the monthlong stay there, I had to make the trip time after time for tests and other procedures. I hadn’t been here in six months, but the sight of that familiar white building filled me with a strange, confusing mix of nostalgia and loneliness. I shook my head to brush off the sentiment and headed for the entrance.

  The conversation I had with Asuna six days ago at the Imperial Palace nearby, where I first explained the situation, played back in my head.

  “Wh-whaaat?! K-Kirito, you’re…quitting ALO?!”

  Asuna’s wide, shocked eyes were beginning to well up, so I quickly shook my head to put her at ease.

  “N-no, no! It’s just for a few days! I’ll convert back as soon as it’s done! A-as a matter of fact…I need to go and observe this other VRMMO for a bit…”

  Asuna’s panic melted away, to be replaced by a skeptical look.

  “Observe…? Haven’t you been just making new accounts up until now? Why would you need to convert?”

  “Well, it’s because…of the four-eyes in the Ministry of Internal Affairs…”

  With great difficulty, I explained how a large part of the reason I’d chosen the palace for our date spot was based on Seijirou Kikuoka’s summons, intentionally leaving out certain details of the story.

  The story finished up just as we reached the gate. We returned our tickets there and were crossing the Hirakawa Gate bridge when Asuna gave voice to her feelings, looking conflicted.

  “Well, if Mr. Kikuoka’s asking you, I guess you don’t have a choice…but sometimes I wonder if he can really be fully trusted. I mean, I know we owe him a lot, but still…”

  “I completely agree with you.”

  We grinned wryly at each other. The smile quickly vanished from her face, and she squeezed my hand.

  “…Just come back as quickly as you can. There’s only one home for us.”

  I nodded and looked down at the surface of the moat.

  “Of course. I’ll be back in ALO before you know it. I’m just doing a bit of research on what’s happening inside Gun Gale Online.”

  …That’s right.

  I did not say a single word to Asuna about the true nature of Kikuoka’s request—that I would be making contact with the player Death Gun, who (supposedly) wielded a mysterious power beyond the bounds of the game. I knew if I explained that, she would either stop me or demand to infiltrate the game with me.

  I knew it was a selfish desire, but I had no intention of letting her anywhere near any virtual world with a hint of real danger about it.

  Of course, I was sure the stories about Death Gun were 99 percent fictionalized.

  A man who could kill a virtual player in real life.

  At no point could I bring myself to believe it was true. The AmuSphere was nothing but an extension of the classic television set. It was easy to think of the full-dive virtual worlds as a kind of technological magic, but in reality, they were simple, useful tools—not magical items that transported the user’s soul to a far-off land.

  But it was that last 1 percent that had brought me here.

  Several months ago, I was organizing some old digital magazines that had built up on my PC’s drive, and I stumbled across a short interview with Argus’s development director, Akihiko Kayaba, just before SAO launched. In it, I found the following quote.

  THE NAME AINCRAD IS AN ABBREVIATION OF “AN INCARNATING RADIUS,” MEANING AN ACTUALIZED WORLD. WITHIN THIS WORLD, PLAYERS WILL SEE THEIR DREAMS COME TO LIFE. SWORDS, MONSTERS, LABYRINTHS—THIS WORLD NOT ONLY BRINGS THESE SYMBOLS OF GAMING INTO REAL FORM, IT HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE PLAYER HIMSELF.

  I had indeed changed. So had Asuna. And Agil, and Klein, and Liz, and Silica. Everyone who experienced those two years inside the game had changed to a degree that they could never be their old selves again.

  But what if Kayaba’s “change” was more than that…? Thanks to The Seed—the VRMMO creation package—there was now a VR Nexus made of infinitely multiplying virtual worlds. Was it possible that somewhere, in some tiny corner of the Nexus, there was some element that freely overwrote the boundary between virtual life and real life?

  The automatic door buzzed open and brought a wave of heated air and disinfectant that cut through my uncollected thoughts.

  In any case, if two players had died in the real world, I couldn’t guarantee with absolute certainty that there was no danger in contacting Death Gun. If I admitted this to Asuna after returning to ALO, she would be mad, but in the end, she would understand.

  She would know that as Kirito, the man who prematurely ended the Aincrad time line and unleashed The Seed upon the world, I didn’t have any other choice in th
e matter.

  After a quick stop in the restroom, I followed the instructions on the printout of Kikuoka’s e-mail to reach a third-floor room in the hospital’s inpatient ward. There was no patient name in the placard on the wall. I knocked on the door and opened it up.

  “Hey! Good to see you again, Kirigaya!”

  It was a familiar nurse I’d known while I was in rehabilitation.

  The long hair beneath her nurse’s cap was tied into one thick, three-strand braid with a little white ribbon waving at the end. Her tall frame, packed into the light pink nurse’s uniform, created a tempting silhouette for any new patient to behold. A small name tag on her left breast read AKI.

  The put-on smile she wore was as purifying and welcoming as an angel’s, but I knew that she could be every bit as frightening as the situation warranted, and I wasn’t fooled. After a second of paralysis and surprise, I hastily bowed.

  “Ah…h-hello, it’s been a while.”

  Nurse Aki stretched out her arms and abruptly grabbed my shoulders, squeezing my upper arms and the sides of my stomach.

  “Wh-whoa!”

  “Look at you, you’ve got some meat on those bones again. But not enough yet. Have you been eating properly?”

  “I-I have, I have. But why are you here, Ms. Aki…?”

  I looked around the cramped room, but she was the only one inside.

  “I got the story from that government man with the glasses. He says you’re doing some kind of virtual…network? Research thingy? And not even a year after you got out, you poor boy. Well, he said that since I was in charge of your physical rehab, he wanted me to monitor your condition here, so I’m off my regular shift for today. Those government agents really do have that national power to push people around—he cleared it with the chief nurse and everything. So here’s to some more time together, Kirigaya!”

  “Ah…i-it’s a pleasure, ma’am…”

  Very clever of you, knowing I can’t argue back against a pretty nurse, Kikuokaaaaa, I cursed the absent agent. Instead, I was all smiles for Nurse Aki as I shook her hand.