She weakly closed her eyes, as if falling into a brief nap. Arato was sure she was fighting a huge battle, somewhere he couldn’t see, through the network. While she was out there fighting, her physical body was just a shell that couldn’t react to anything or anyone. But, to Arato, she was still smiling for him when he was happy and giving him strength when he worried. They were united, two companions sharing a single heart. For a while, he just wanted to be with her, feeling the warmth of her presence by his side.
He wasn’t sure if it had really been ten minutes when she opened her light blue eyes again. Feeling his eyes on her, Lacia blushed lightly. “I was able to bring things in the external network back from dangerous levels,” she said. “Due to the lag time in the markets, I wasn’t able to completely nullify the economic attacks yet, but I can at least dedicate enough resources to the here and now to fight again.” She stood.
Is she really okay taking on all the other ultra high-performance AIs outside and fighting with Methode in here? Arato worried. “I don’t really want this whole place to go up in flames,” he said. “Is there any way to just slip past her?”
Lacia was checking the conditions of her pseudo-devices. “I can’t win against Methode in a direct confrontation, so we need to get her to change her course,” she said. At some point, the sound that had been blasting over the speakers had stopped. Lacia’s noise attack was no longer in effect.
Lacia moved to stand in front of Arato. “Methode’s movements have changed,” she said. “She’s coming this way.”
An instant after her warning, the warehouse floor shook violently. Apparently Methode’s device could also transmit energy through the ground if she slammed it down. Everything in the warehouse was tossed around by the shaking of the floor, and neat rows tumbled over into chaos. The concrete floor roiled like waves on the sea, and Arato was forced to his knees.
Sensing danger, Arato rolled away from where he had fallen.
“So that’s where you are!” Methode roared. The pillar Arato and Lacia had been leaning against exploded, and some of the floating shields intervened to protect them from a storm of rubble. Lacia grabbed Arato and tossed him onto one of the shields that wasn’t in the defensive array.
“Arato,” Lacia said his name once, before the pseudo-device he was riding on accelerated, taking him away from her. Without a sound, Lacia slipped over to Methode’s left side. Just as silently, she shifted the device in her right hand to its giant cannon mass projection mode.
〈On your left, Methode,〉 a sudden voice intoned from a speaker on the ceiling. Methode reacted to the voice, instantly lashing out with a blast of fire right at Lacia, who managed to avoid it by leaping backwards.
〈Straight back fifteen meters,〉 the voice said, following Lacia’s movements. 〈She’s going around to the left again.〉
Lacia’s sensory hacks were still shutting down Methode’s sight and hearing, but the optical deception had only worked on Methode herself. Methode’s greatest weakness, and the one Lacia had been hoping to exploit, was her limitations as a lone unit. At that moment, someone was plugging this hole in her capabilities.
〈Lacia has strung the computers from the objects in the warehouse together into a private local cloud for herself. Destroy anything in there that is equipped with a computer,〉 the voice instructed.
Arato started to panic. The voice over the speaker knew things about Lacia’s actions even Methode wasn’t aware of. Despite the distortion through the speaker, Arato thought he knew whose voice it was.
“Is that you, Ryo?!” he shouted.
Flames swirled in Methode’s palms. “That sounds good, owner. I’ll get right to that!” she shouted. Flames roiled across the room like a writhing dragon made of fire, spreading out in every direction.
The flames rained down over the warehouse and, as if someone had lit a thousand fireworks, explosions bloomed and popped. To Arato, it was as if everything in the warehouse was alight, super-charged past its flashpoint by the dispersed particles from Methode’s device, Liberated Flame.
As if this, too, had been anticipated, one of the floating shields drew close to Arato and opened a hatch on its side. Inside, Arato found three objects that looked like spray-cans with mouthpieces attached. He realized they were air-tanks. He took one, stuck the mouthpiece in his mouth and twisted the air nozzle. His mouth was suddenly filled with scentless air.
Lacia’s eyes were shining bright.
Ryo’s voice continued to direct Methode from over the speakers on the ceiling.〈Lacia’s taken control of everything with a computer, down there. Don’t get close to anything that can move on its own power,〉 he instructed.
Once again, Arato thought, we’re being caught up and tossed around by these huge things going on in the world. It was because neither of them would back down, though Arato was sure Ryo would say it was just because neither of them knew when to quit.
An automatic vehicle leaped from the parking area of the warehouse and barreled toward Methode. Without turning to look, the orange-haired hIE roasted the vehicle with a torrent of flame. Ryo was reading ahead of Lacia’s tricks.
Before Arato could issue an order, the floating shield picked him up and flew back to Lacia’s side. She jumped on it, flying out of Methode’s way. It was clear to Arato that she was doing everything possible to avoid a head-on confrontation.
“Higgins is predicting the future, and using a human as his mouthpiece,” Lacia explained. “It’s the most logical way to use Higgins to support Methode.”
It sounded like exactly the kind of thing Ryo would do.
Methode was on their tail at incredible speed, following the directions from the speakers. The floating shield bore Arato and Lacia away just as fast.
Arato’s hands were slick with sweat. He had burned through ten minutes of their time to help Lacia fight against the other ultra high-performance AIs. But with each moment that went by, Snowdrop’s broken body was getting closer to Higgins’ warehouse. If she were to absorb all of the items Higgins had in stock, Arato was sure she’d get stronger than ever before.
However, his worries seemed to roll right off of Lacia, who seemed to be enjoying the feel of the wind as they rode the flying shield. “Please don’t worry,” she said. “Even if she burns everything on this floor, my performance will not be affected.”
“That is why time is on our side,” she added. It seemed, to Arato, that Lacia could read the future just as well as Higgins.
While dodging Methode’s attacks, Lacia calmly gathered up her own raggedly flailing hair. With what seemed like no effort, she protected Arato from Methode’s tsunami of flame. He had no idea what kinds of methods she was using but, somehow, she had arranged items in such a way as to provide a safe space for them to pass through between whirlpools of burning flame too bright for Arato to look straight at.
“And now her time is up,” Lacia murmured.
〈Methode, you’re out of time,〉 Ryo’s voice came over the speaker, overlapping with Lacia’s. 〈You can’t spend any more time on Lacia.〉
“All she does is defend!” Methode yelled. “Look at her! I’m stronger than her! Stronger by far!”
〈I pulled the facility data out of the security system with my clearance, and it’s telling me you’re out of time. Up above you, Snowdrop is devouring the security system with insane speed. You can’t waste time on Lacia,〉 Ryo said.
With her freedom brought into question, Methode slammed her fist into a nearby pillar in anger. “You think I care what you think!” she shouted.
〈It’s not me, it’s Higgins. I think even you would have to admit that he knows what he’s talking about,〉 Ryo replied.
The red box hIE clenched her fists and ground her teeth so hard that even Arato could hear it; he was surprised by how human her actions seemed to be. She was raging against something that was threatening her place in the world and her reason for existing, just as any human would.