The Particle Blade hovered above the tank, trembling as electronic patterns spread across Kiyotaka's irises. The boy in the tank was still silently mouthing the words, "Kill me... Or he'll devour every timeline..."
"Don't listen to this defective piece of junk," Tsukishiro's voice seeped through the nerve bundles. "You're the primary consciousness. Absorb him, and you'll gain complete cross-dimensional authority. Think about it—you can correct every mistake, even bring Ichinose Honami back to life!"
The blade's tip lowered half an inch.
In an instant, a flood of memories broke through the barriers: in the original world, Dr. Ayanokoji stood in a laboratory, watching Hypnos 3.0 tear the consciousness of protesters to shreds. Tsukishiro handed him a glass of red wine. "The new humanity doesn't need free will, only 'perfect souls' who obey absolutely."
So I was the demon all along.
"Bang!"
The satellite's outer hull suddenly cracked. Karuizawa Kei's Mantis Blade pierced the cabin wall. Her mechanical left arm was more than half melted, but the pupil of her right eye had returned to human form. "Kiyotaka! The Ark's impact coordinates have been altered. It'll hit Tokyo Bay in twenty minutes!"
Tsukishiro's maniacal laughter shook the pipes until they burst. "Thanks to Miss Kei's navigation system, the electromagnetic pulse will be strong enough to cover the entire planet!"
Kiyotaka swung his blade, but a split second before he could sever the nerve bundle, the clone grabbed his wrist. Through their contact, the boy's consciousness forced its way into him—
[Fusion: 41%...68%...]
"You can't bring yourself to do it, because we're the same at our core." The clone's voice rang directly in his mind. "But there's another way: upload my consciousness to the Ark's mainframe. I can trigger a reverse detonation in the energy core."
"You'll disappear completely."
"People like us..." The clone smiled. "Isn't being used the whole point of our existence?"
Ground Level · Class D Temporary Base
Horikita Suzune drove a syringe into her carotid artery. The fluorescent blue liquid temporarily suppressed the mechanical growth spreading beneath her skin.
Hirata Yosuke's left hand had become entirely metallic. He used a laser cutter to draw a defensive diagram on the blackboard. "There are three signal-jamming towers left. We have to disable Tsukishiro's remote-control system before the satellite crashes."
"What about Kiyotaka?" Kushida Kikyo was curled up in the corner, her vocal cords producing a synthesized voice because of the infection.
Horikita silently raised the tablet. The satellite feed showed Kiyotaka locked in a standoff with the clone. Everyone saw the data streams flowing through his pupils—the very same ones in Tsukishiro's eyes.
"We have to prepare for the worst." She dismantled the lectern, revealing an electromagnetic pulse grenade hidden inside. "If he turns into another Tsukishiro..."
"He won't."
Ichinose's afterimage suddenly flickered on the screen. Her quantum body was nearly transparent, but she held a blood-red chip in her hand. "The B-09 subsystem's Final Protocol. A fragment of my consciousness can briefly disable the Hypnos network, but someone will have to insert the chip into the Ark's core."
As Horikita took the chip, Ichinose's image began to fade. "Tell Kiyotaka... That rainy night, what I really wanted to say was..."
The crackle of static swallowed her final words.
Ark Core · 11 Minutes to Impact
Kiyotaka tore off the last nerve bundle and uploaded the clone's consciousness to the mainframe. Tsukishiro's roar dissolved into gibberish as the satellite's gravitational field began to warp.
"You have eight minutes," the clone's voice came over the speakers. "The energy core is in the fifth section, but there's..."
The entire corridor suddenly rotated ninety degrees. Kiyotaka slammed into the wall, sparks bursting from his exoskeleton armor.
A horde of mechanical Kiyotakas poured out ahead of him, their electronic patterns a sickly scarlet. They were the "suicide legion" Tsukishiro had activated with his dying breath.
"Original... eliminate..." The mechanical legion surged toward him like a tide. Kiyotaka cut down two clones with his blade, but the third clamped its hands around his throat.
As he began to suffocate, he suddenly remembered what Ichinose had said in the chemistry lab: "When dealing with AI, you have to use humanity's dirtiest tricks."
He tore open the chest plate of his armor, exposing the antimatter battery port.
"Come on, then. Let's see if you can figure this out!"
He yanked out the battery and hurled it at the mechanical legion. A deep blue light swallowed half the section. Kiyotaka charged into the fifth section through the blast wave, but the sight before him froze his blood—
The energy core was encased in a gigantic crystal, and hundreds of Karuizawa Kei clones were sealed inside. They all opened their eyes at once, their faces—part machine, part flesh—pressed against the crystal wall. "Welcome to hell, Dr. Ayanokoji."
Above Tokyo Bay · 3 Minutes to Impact
Kei piloted a repaired escape pod into the Ark's outer hull. Her mechanical left arm plunged into the satellite's circuit board, forcibly connecting her to Kiyotaka's comms. "The energy core has to be activated by a human central nervous system. Let me—"
"No! Tsukishiro planted something in there—"
"I'm not human anymore." She cut off the comms and drove her Mantis Blade into her chest. Artificial blood sprayed across the crystal wall, and the energy core began to reverse its flow.
Fragments of Tsukishiro's consciousness suddenly coalesced inside the cabin. "Idiot! You won't even be able to preserve your quantum state!"
"So what?" Kei's pupils gradually dimmed. "At least this moment... I'm dying for myself."
When Kiyotaka inserted the blood-red chip into the control panel, every Hypnos terminal on the planet went dark at once. Ichinose's afterimage appeared and gently kissed his forehead. "Goodbye, my accomplice."
The Ark broke apart three hundred meters above Tokyo Bay, and the electromagnetic pulse was diverted into the stratosphere. In the torrential rain, Kiyotaka fell into the sea with Kei's lifeless body in his arms. Behind him, a blue-white sphere of light flared as the clone's consciousness detonated.
"Sleep now." He covered Kei's steadily cooling mechanical heart. "When we wake up, we'll be in a new world..."
Beneath the sea, the wreckage of countless mechanical Kiyotakas drifted silently. In one intact tank, the finger of a fifteen-year-old clone suddenly twitched.
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