"Oh, damn! What happened to me?"
Simmons rubbed his head and got up from the ground, feeling as though his brain had been physically rebooted. Before he passed out, a powerful force had rushed into his head—or rather, into his thoughts—throwing his cognition into confusion. Then, under his body's protective response to trauma, he had passed out completely.
"Looks like you're awake." A pleasant female voice sounded nearby. Simmons and Sam, who had climbed to their feet almost at the same time, turned toward its source.
It was the wine-red-haired woman who had remained silent all along. Her expression was still cold to the point of cruelty, and her gaze held neither kindness nor goodwill. Instead, it carried an unsettling arrogance, as though she were looking down on them. Yet unexpectedly, she did not attack them again.
"What happened? Weren't we fighting you? Right, why were we fighting you? Because you were trying to take the Supreme Intelligence from us, so we had to strike first."
Simmons muttered to himself in confusion, answering his own questions. He felt as though his brain was no longer working properly. He now had a dazed sense that his mental state earlier had been somewhat wrong—that he had been far too impulsive and reckless. At the time, those impulses and rashness had seemed perfectly normal under the cover of the situation and his emotions, but now, he could not shake the feeling that something about the whole process had been off.
That strange feeling was impossible to explain and seemed to have no basis at all, because every decision and action appeared to have followed its own logical consistency.
"You were brainwashed by the Supreme Intelligence. Them too." The burgundy-haired woman's voice carried a faintly ethereal quality. Following her gaze, Simmons and the others