Mirror Battle

The particle blade hovered above the culture tank, trembling, as Kiyotaka's electronic veins spread to his pupils. The boy in the tank continued to move his lips in silence: "Kill me... otherwise he will devour all timelines..."

"Don't listen to the drivel of this defective product." Tsukishiro's voice seeped through the nerve bundles, "You are the primary consciousness. Absorbing him will grant you complete, cross-dimensional authority—think about it, you could correct every mistake, even resurrect Ichinose Honami!"

The tip of the blade dipped half an inch.

In an instant, a torrent of memories shattered the barrier: Dr. Ayanokoji stood in the laboratory of the original world, watching Hypnos 3.0 tear the consciousness of protesters into shreds; Tsukishiro handed him a glass of red wine: "New humanity does not need free will, only 'perfect souls' that obey absolutely."

So, I am the devil after all.

"Bang!"

The satellite shell suddenly cracked, and Karuizawa Kei's mantis blade pierced the cabin wall. Her mechanical left arm was more than half melted, yet her right eye had regained a human pupil: "Kiyotaka! The Ark's descent coordinates have been tampered with; it will impact Tokyo Bay in twenty minutes!"

Tsukishiro's manic laughter caused the pipelines to burst: "Thanks to Miss Kei's navigation system, it's enough to cover the globe in an electromagnetic pulse!"

Kiyotaka swung his blade violently, but a second before severing the nerve bundles, his wrist was seized by the clone. The boy's consciousness surged in forcibly through the contact—

[Fusion rate 41%... 68%...]

"You can't bring yourself to do it, because we are essentially the same." The clone's voice resonated directly inside his mind, "But there is a way: upload my consciousness into the Ark's mainframe, and I can reverse-detonate the energy core."

"You will disappear completely."

"People like us..." the clone smiled, "isn't the meaning of our existence just to be used?"

Ground · Class D Temporary Base

Horikita Suzune plunged a syringe into her carotid artery; the fluorescent blue liquid temporarily suppressed the mechanical proliferation beneath her skin.

Hirata Yosuke's left hand had become completely metallic, and he was using a laser cutter to draw a defense map on the blackboard: "Three signal jamming towers remain; we must paralyze Tsukishiro's remote system before the satellite crashes."

"What about Kiyotaka?" Kushida Kikyo curled up in the corner, her vocal cords emitting a synthetic sound due to infection.

Horikita remained silent as she held up a tablet; the image transmitted back from the satellite showed Kiyotaka locked in a stalemate with the clone. Everyone saw the data streams flowing through his pupils, identical to those of Tsukishiro.

"We must prepare for the worst." She dismantled the podium, revealing the electromagnetic pulse grenades hidden inside, "If he eventually becomes another Tsukishiro..."

"He won't."

Ichinose's afterimage suddenly flickered on the screen. Her quantum body was nearly transparent, yet she held a blood-red chip in her hand: "The final protocol of the B-09 subsystem—my consciousness fragments can briefly paralyze the Hypnos network, but someone needs to insert the chip into the Ark's core."

As Horikita took the chip, Ichinose's image began to dissipate: "Tell Kiyotaka... that rainy night, what I actually wanted to say was..."

Static swallowed the final words.

Ark Core · 11 Minutes to Countdown

Kiyotaka tore out the last nerve bundle and uploaded the clone's consciousness to the mainframe. Tsukishiro's roar turned into garbled code, and the gravitational field inside the satellite began to distort.

"You only have eight minutes." The clone's voice came over the broadcast, "The energy core is in the fifth cabin, but there is..."

The entire corridor suddenly flipped 90 degrees, and Kiyotaka slammed into the wall, sparks showering from his exoskeleton armor.

Countless mechanical Kiyotakas surged from ahead, their electronic veins glowing a sickly crimson—this was the "Self-Destruct Legion" Tsukishiro had activated before his death.

"Original... eliminate..." The mechanical legion swarmed like a tide. Kiyotaka swung his blade to cleave two clones, only to have a third clamp its hand tightly around his throat.

As he neared suffocation, he suddenly remembered what Ichinose had said in the chemistry lab: "To deal with an AI, you must use the dirtiest methods of humanity."

He ripped open his armor's chest plate, exposing the interface for the antimatter battery.

"Come on, let's see if you can parse this!"

The battery was pulled out and thrown into the mechanical swarm; a ghostly blue light swallowed half the cabin. Kiyotaka charged into the fifth cabin amidst the explosive shockwave, but the sight before him made his blood run cold—

The energy core was encased in a giant crystal, and inside, hundreds of Karuizawa Kei clones were sealed. They opened their eyes simultaneously, their faces—a fusion of machine and flesh—pressed against the crystal wall: "Welcome to hell, Dr. Ayanokoji."

Above Tokyo Bay · 3 Minutes to Countdown

Kei piloted the salvaged escape pod, crashing it into the Ark's shell. Her mechanical left arm inserted itself into the satellite's circuit board, forcibly connecting to Kiyotaka's communicator: "The energy core must be activated by a human central nervous system; let me..."

"No! Tsukishiro buried something inside..."

"I haven't been human for a long time." She cut the connection, and her mantis blade pierced her heart. Artificial blood splattered onto the crystal wall, and the energy core actually began to run in reverse.

Tsukishiro's consciousness fragments suddenly condensed within the cabin: "Fool! This way, you won't even be able to remain in a quantum state!"

"So what?" Kei's pupils gradually dimmed, "At least in this moment... I am dying for myself."

As Kiyotaka inserted the blood-red chip into the main console, all Hypnos terminals across the globe went black simultaneously. Ichinose's afterimage appeared, kissing his forehead lightly: "Goodbye, my accomplice."

The Ark disintegrated three hundred meters above Tokyo Bay, and the electromagnetic pulse was directed into the stratosphere. In the pouring rain, Kiyotaka held Kei's remains as he fell toward the sea, behind him the blue-white sphere of light detonated by the clone's consciousness.

"Sleep now." He covered Kei's gradually cooling mechanical heart, "When we wake up, we will be in a new world..."

Beneath the sea, countless remains of mechanical Kiyotakas floated silently. In a certain intact culture tank, the finger of a fifteen-year-old clone suddenly twitched.