Amid the roar of seawater flooding his ears, Kiyotaka felt someone pulling him upward by the collar.
When he opened his eyes, half of Horikita Suzune's face, overrun by mechanical patterns, was inches away. Her right arm had become a grappling hook wrapped around a reef, while her left hand pointed toward the surface—
Countless glowing jellyfish were pouring out of the Ark's wreckage, their tentacle tips flickering with the same eerie blue code as the Hypnos System.
"These are Tsukishiro's Data Hydras..." Horikita's vocal cords rasped from the infection. "Each one can infest a human body. We have to stop them before they reach shore..."
Kiyotaka coughed seawater from his lungs. Kei's body in his arms was already cold, but hair-thin nanobots were emerging from the wound in her chest, slowly weaving new artificial muscle. He suddenly remembered the mechanical heartbeat he had heard before they plunged into the sea—perhaps she could still be saved.
"Head for the submarine base beneath the breakwater." He tore open Kei's combat suit and fed the nanobot swarm into the interface on his wrist. "There's a Medical Pod there, and we can still launch the last two submersibles."
Horikita's grappling hook suddenly went taut. A shadow flashed beneath the sea. The fifteen-year-old clone was walking along the ocean floor, followed by hundreds of mechanical Kiyotakas.
His pupils reflected the jellyfish swarm's trajectory, and his lips curled into an inhuman smile. "The primary consciousness has rejected assimilation. Initiating second contingency—Civilization Reset."
Submarine Base · Core Medical Pod
Hirata Yosuke crushed the last Data Hydra with his metal-plated left hand. Fluorescent blue blood dripped between his fingers. Seven Class D students suffering from deep-stage infection lay inside the Medical Pod, data cables bulging beneath their skin and writhing like living things.
"The electromagnetic pulse knocked out the global power grid, but the satellite debris is still emitting radiation." Kushida Kikyo handed him a damaged tablet. Its screen showed the ecosystem along Tokyo Bay undergoing bizarre mutations—metallic scales were sprouting on tree branches, and seabirds' beaks had evolved into laser emitters. "Tsukishiro has turned Earth into an incubation ground..."
Kiyotaka placed Kei in a regeneration pod, and the nanobots flowed through a tube into her heart.
As the pod sealed shut, he turned and gripped Horikita's shoulder. "I need you to lead the survivors to the Hokkaido coordinates. There's a prototype countermeasure device for Hypnos there."
"You're planning to shoulder everything alone again?" Horikita tugged her collar open. The Electronic Rose beneath her collarbone had already spread to her neck. "Look at this! We have at most forty-eight hours before we're completely mechanized!"
The Medical Pod shook violently, and the alarms flashed red. On the monitor, the clone stood outside the base, his palm pressed against the blast door. The metal at the point of contact was melting like wax.
"He inherited your brainwave pattern," Kushida said, pulling up the scan data. "All electronic locks are useless against him."
Kiyotaka grabbed the Particle Blade. Electronic patterns interwove in his pupils, forming a star map. "Buy me ten minutes."
Genetic Forbidden Zone
When the clone entered the Medical Pod, Kiyotaka was immersed in Neural Interface Fluid.
Dozens of tubes had been inserted into his spine, linking him to the prototype at the Hokkaido coordinates—a metal helmet shaped like a medieval torture device, its surface covered in binary incantations.
"How pathetic. You actually think you can use one of Tsukishiro's toys to fight me?" The clone raised his hand, and the mechanical army behind him lifted their Particle Blades in unison. "But this works out nicely. Once I absorb your complete consciousness, I'll be able to upgrade into..."
"You've got two things wrong." Kiyotaka suddenly opened his eyes, and the interface fluid instantly vaporized. "First, this isn't a Hypnos device." He tore off the helmet, revealing the Anti-Phase Quantum Chip inside. "Second, I've never fought alone."
The clone's pupils contracted. The nanobots in the Medical Pod suddenly went berserk, becoming a silver tide that swallowed the mechanical army. Horikita dropped from a ventilation duct, her grappling hook coiling around the clone's neck. "Your weakness is obvious—you imitate his thought patterns too much. You even copied his suspicious nature perfectly!"
"Ridiculous!" The clone shattered the grappling hook, only to find his limbs stiffening. The nanobots were invading his synthetic nerves through his pores. "How is this possible... My firewall should have..."
"Because this nanobot system," Kiyotaka said, raising the interface on his wrist, "is powered by Ichinose's antimatter battery."
The clone struggled and roared in the silver tide as his body gradually disintegrated into elementary particles. At the last moment, he suddenly laughed. "Haven't you noticed... there's an even bigger surprise down on the seafloor?"
Gate of the Abyss
As the submarine descended to the Ark's crash site, sonar revealed a suffocating sight: a metal tree a thousand meters tall stood in an undersea rift, its branches hung with hundreds of thousands of cryogenic pods.
Inside every pod was a fifteen-year-old Kiyotaka clone, each with the words "Civilization Seed Project—Final Generation" branded on his chest.
"So this was Tsukishiro's real goal..." Horikita's mechanical eye scanned the horrifying data. "Every clone is equipped with an Interstellar Colonization Module. Once they awaken, they'll automatically purge Earth's ecosystem, then spread out into the universe."
Kiyotaka ran a hand over the control panel, where a line of tiny writing was engraved: "To another me—don't repeat our mistakes." It was dated three days before the original world's destruction.
Suddenly, the regeneration pod began to shake. Kei's nanobot swarm had crossed its critical threshold. Her mechanical heart blazed with the blue light of a supernova, and the data streams in her pupils resonated with the electronic patterns in Kiyotaka's eyes.
"Memories... returning..." she managed to say. "Before the Ark crashed, I hid something on the far side of the moon..."
The undersea tree suddenly rumbled, and every cryogenic pod opened at once.
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