Chapter 76

16 “We made it! The server room should be just through here!” “Through here, you say…?” asked Bisco dubiously. Having finally ascended the staircase of buildings, he, Milo, and Hope came face-to-face with the polished, lustrous surface of the spherical structure floating above Tokyo. There, they paused. “And how the hell are we meant to get inside?!” “Milo, put me down. Both of you, step back!” Hope approached the gently glowing surface of the sphere and placed his hand to it. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and pink particles surrounded him, sending his braids aflutter. “Erase:Wall:Protect!” At Hope’s incantation, a pink crack opened up in the wall. “Bisco!” he said. “Right!” Bisco replied, and he fired an arrow into the crevice. With a Gaboom! the wall was blown apart, revealing the inky darkness within. “Apollo should be in here somewhere…,” said Hope, peering inside, when suddenly, he was engulfed by a stream of deep-blue particles. “Wh-whah?!” “Hope!” What had appeared to be nothing but darkness was in fact thousands of tightly packed indigo particles, which now poured outward like an avalanche. Then, as if possessing a will of their own, the particles swallowed all three of them and dragged them into the sphere with a Whoosh! Smack! “Owww! Wh-what’s going on?” “Bisco! You didn’t need to slap him! That’s Tirol’s face, you know!” “I woke him up, didn’t I? No need to bust my balls over it.” Bisco swiveled Hope around and pointed him forward. “This ain’t the time to be nappin’, Hope. Is that the thing we’re after? What’re we supposed to do with it?!” “…! My…!” They found themselves in a completely black, hemispherical room. Only an intermittent green light coming from the center of the room occasionally illuminated their surroundings. Floating there was an enormous green cube, suspended in a cylindrical glass tank, whose surface constantly shifted, and which emitted a strange buzzing noise, like flying mosquitoes. “That’s it!” said Hope excitedly, squinting a little at the intense green light. “That’s the server! On there is a perfect backup of Japan, taken just before the fall, on April 9, 2028!” He turned to Bisco. “Leave it to me! You two locate Apollo, and—” “But there’s something I want to show you.” A voice from behind the tank froze the room. The three turned and took up combat positions, and there they saw a man with gleaming red eyes and billowing red hair, wearing a lab coat. How long has he been standing there…?! Bisco, we can’t let our guards down! Apollo slowly stepped out of the darkness and toward the two boys. His voice was quiet, subdued. “There’s no one left to show,” he said. “You destroyed them all…Rage…and Joy.” “Yeah, sounds rough,” retorted Bisco as though it were none of his concern. “But no point puttin’ on a show if there ain’t nobody watchin’. Let’s just get this over with.” “Oh, but there is somebody watching. You. That is why I brought you here.” Apollo spoke without a shred of emotion, his voice like ice as he raised his arm in the green glow of the server room. As he did, the blackness that surrounded them receded, as though it were little more than ink on the surface of a glass ball. Now the dome was completely transparent, and the four hung in Tokyo’s dark night, looking down at the city below. “Never in my wildest predictions did I foresee the spontaneous emergence of a new particle that would oppose the restoration.” Apollo looked over at Hope, into the eyes of his own clone. “However, the antidote program is now complete, and as we speak, I am deploying it to the server. Very soon now, this…this false Japan will be wiped away and be replaced by a clean slate: the Japan of 2028.” “What…?!” yelled Bisco. “I wanted to offer you a glimpse of what will be. Starting with poor old Tokyo here.” The boys’ adventure so far had left the city of Tokyo completely devastated. Half of the city lay crushed beneath Joy’s wall. Apollo waved his hand and whispered: “Launch:City:Maker.” “…?! Whoa!” The entire city rumbled and quaked, then disintegrated into tiny particles before their very eyes. Those particles rearranged themselves, re-forming into a brand-new Tokyo. “H-he’s recreating it all!” said Milo in amazement as he watched the run-down Tokyo Station become good as new, the buildings squashed flat by Joy’s wall rising once more from the ground. Looking at the pristine, finely engineered buildings, it was easy to believe Apollo’s claim of victory over the mushrooms. Even Bisco and Milo could see that the integrity of their construction was far beyond anything they had already witnessed. “…It’s beautiful. Yes. This is the way it’s meant to be…” Apollo breathed a sigh of relief as he surveyed his new domain. “Hope, do you understand me now? Give up on your futile dream of saving humanity. Those two standing beside you… Why, they never had any right to exist in the first place. Rejoin me, Hope. It’s not too late.”