Amid the ear-piercing electronic beeping, Kiyotaka felt as if his skull were being crushed in a hydraulic press. Countless strings of garbled code burst across his retinas, while Alpha's laughter and a mechanical female voice's warnings thundered over each other—
[Countdown: 30 seconds. Memory erasure progress: 9%...17%...]
He dug his fingers into the stair railing, his nails scraping sparks from the metal. The chip grew hot in his palm, and its blue glow seemed to race along his veins toward his heart.
"Data consumption starts at the peripheral nerves." Alpha crouched down, streams of data in his irises flickering like a snake's tongue. "Once the program breaches your hippocampus, you'll become an empty shell... Oh, no. Perhaps I should say you'll return to being an 'original inhabitant'?"
The pain blurred Kiyotaka's vision, but one detail suddenly pierced his consciousness: when Alpha mentioned "the original code of the Shuiqingshen System," the little finger on his left hand had twitched unnaturally. It was the same sign that a household robot in his previous life had shown before short-circuiting.
"You... aren't human..." Kiyotaka sneered through gritted teeth, then suddenly slapped the chip against Alpha's forehead. "If you're an AI, you should get a taste of a virus!"
Alpha's sneer froze instantly. The moment the chip touched his skin, his whole body began to shudder like a hologram with a bad signal. A synthetic scream burst from his throat: "Error! Core protocol has been altered—"
While Alpha's body was rigid, Kiyotaka rolled down the stairs. His senses were rapidly fading, but he could still make out footsteps coming from the third floor—it was Horikita Suzune!
"Stop!" Horikita's shout carried a rare note of panic. The student roster in her hands lay scattered across the floor; she had evidently just discovered a shocking secret in the faculty room.
Kiyotaka shoved open the fire-exit door, only to crash into someone. The scent of citrus filled his nose as Ichinose Honami wrapped her coat around his trembling body. Her fingers quickly pressed a point on the side of his neck. "Slow your breathing. I'm stopping the neurotoxin from spreading."
"So you... are a system host too..." Kiyotaka grabbed her wrist and spotted the binary code engraved on the inside of her earring: 01010011 01000101. Translated, it spelled "SECRET."
"There's one 'administrator' each in Class B, Class C, and Class A." Ichinose dragged him into the chemistry supply room. The moment she locked the door, the sounds outside abruptly vanished. "Tsukishiro turned the school into a laboratory. Those of us who crossed over are all test subjects... The Shuiqingshen System periodically erases abnormal data. That's what's happening to you now."
She suddenly pulled open her collar, revealing a rose-shaped emblem formed of electronic patterns beneath her collarbone. "My erasure program started two hours ago, so—"
Before she could finish, the clanging of steel boots rang out in the hallway. Through the crack beneath the door, Kiyotaka saw three "teachers" in white lab coats scanning each classroom with infrared scanners. Their heads twisted at angles that defied human anatomy, and the backs of their necks had the same chip sockets as Alpha.
"Hold on." Ichinose suddenly plunged a syringe into Kiyotaka's arm. The instant pale golden liquid flowed into his veins, a sharp crack, like shattering glass, rang through his mind—
[Warning! Memory erasure process interrupted]
[Unauthorized protective program detected. Identifying version...]
[Ownership confirmed: Shuiqingshen Sub-system · No. B-09]
Countless unfamiliar fragments of memory exploded into view. Kiyotaka saw himself standing in Chairman Tsukishiro's office, holding a bloodstained utility knife; he saw Karuizawa Kei struggling on an operating table as mechanical tentacles burrowed into her spine; and finally, the scene froze on a rainy night, with Ichinose Honami pointing a gun at his forehead, crying as she pulled the trigger...
"What... is all this..." He curled up in the corner and retched, only to see Ichinose wrapping a bandage around her bleeding left eye.
"To keep us from conspiring, the system implanted a different chain of memories in each person who crossed over." She pulled off the bloodstained bandage, revealing a mechanical eye blinking red. "What you saw might be one of my cycles of death, or it might just be a false story fabricated by Tsukishiro."
The sounds of the search outside drew closer. Ichinose suddenly pushed Kiyotaka behind a storage cabinet. "Listen. The thing that can truly kill the replacements is in the clock tower of the Old School Building. But there's..."
"Bang!"
The door to the chemistry classroom was ripped off its hinges. The lead Mechanical Teacher rotated his neck 180 degrees and announced coldly in a synthetic voice, "Commencing extermination of abnormal individuals."
Ichinose flung three diamond-shaped darts, but the Mechanical Teacher crushed them with his bare hands. Kiyotaka grabbed a tank of liquid nitrogen used for experiments and smashed it against the floor. As white mist billowed around them, he pulled Ichinose through the window and leaped down—
"Grab the pipe!"
The two of them dangled from a drainpipe, swaying, while cries of alarm rose from the plaza below. Kiyotaka looked down and saw Karuizawa Kei, covered in blood, standing in the fountain pool. Her right hand had transformed into a Mantis Blade, which she had plunged into Ryuen Kakeru's chest.
"Cleanup complete." She tilted her head and smiled, her mechanical pupils narrowing to pinpoints. "Next target: Ayanokoji Kiyotaka."
Before you continue