The hIE girl “Kouka” swung her weapon around, something between a giant blade and a large cannon, her excited smile illuminated by the firelight.
〈Type-002 Code: “Snowdrop”〉
A girl in a white dress, who looked even more childish than the others, had sat her butt down demurely on a pile of scrap that had once been humanoid combat drones. Her dress was decorated with luminous green accessories, and all around her, flowers from every season were blooming in an abundance that was completely unthinkable for the location.
〈Type-003 Code: “Saturnus”〉
A girl with disheveled flaxen hair had stabbed something that looked like a spinning wheel into the ground, and was turning some kind of lever on it.
〈Type-004 Code: “___”〉
There was a shadow, moving too quickly for the realtime video to capture it. All that could be seen were dancing lines of radiance, drawn by the hIE’s shining orange lights. Humanoid drones around the shadow didn’t even have time to react before they were shattered like fine china.
〈Type-005 Code: “Lacia”〉
The final hIE looked like a girl about to enter the time of her life when she would be the most beautiful. The expression on her face was straight and pure. She was lifting something that looked like a black coffin in her delicate hands, and using it to deflect incoming bullets with no sign of effort. Cracks ran down the length of the coffin, and it released an explosion of pale blue light.
In that instant, the control center screen was disconnected. At the same time, the tactical control system went down as well. The helicopter was kicked out of silent flight mode, and air turbulence shook the vehicle. The sound of the rotors, which were no longer being controlled by AI, echoed in the night sky, sounding like a giant electric mixer in the air.
Sest grabbed onto a nearby machine to prevent himself from falling within the suddenly stalled helicopter.
“The HMD’s dead!” Thomas, the pilot, swore as he tore off his HMD-equipped helmet with one hand.
Then the stalled vehicle entered a freefall. Luckily, the feeling of falling only lasted for a second. Sest had to cling to the equipment to keep from being thrown to the floor as the auto-recovery system jolted the vehicle back into equilibrium.
“Youssef, get our network back online,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”
When the 3D screen flickered back to life, they were no longer looking at a battlefield; all surveillance video of the battle had been blocked.
“Something jumped our connection with MemeFrame and crashed our system,” Youssef reported. “I’m not getting responses to my queries.”
“Electronic warfare? Shit,” Sest swore.
To a drone unit utilizing advanced tactical commands, wireless signals were vital lifelines. If these ‘girls’ were able to break military encryption and hack the team’s system, they were a whole new breed of monster.
The girls were no longer anywhere to be seen. The HOO tactical AI informed Sest and his team that all hIEs had jumped into the sea.
It was the worst case scenario Sest had been afraid of — normal drones wouldn’t be able to function underwater, where wireless signals couldn’t reach them. But the five target hIEs were able to make advanced decisions on their own, without relying on a network.
Which was exactly why they had chosen the sea as a perfect means of escape. With Tokyo close by, and Japan completely surrounded by water, the thought of trying to pin down the hIEs again was completely hopeless.
Thomas let out a dry laugh.
Youssef’s fingers were still.
There were still ten minutes left on their permit to fly in Tokyo airspace. With no marine scanning equipment in the helicopter, Sest could do nothing but stare down at the face of the sea, an endless pool of darkness itself under the night sky.
“What the hell did we just let loose?” he questioned.
The hIEs they had just encountered were stronger and stranger than Sest ever could have imagined. When the implications of what had just happened started to sink in, Sest broke out in a cold sweat, something he hadn’t done since being a green recruit.
As a veteran, he had often come face-to-face with the evolution of weapons technology; humans were always happy to climb right over walls once thought insurmountable. To bring about change, all it took was someone deciding that a wall was worth climbing over. Take, for example, the invention of the atomic bomb: there are many famously pithy quotes from the scientists of the day about it, but the reality was that many people were quite happy with its completion and the end it brought to the war. They were happy because the atomic bomb had fulfilled its purpose, which was to protect the lives of their soldiers and countrymen.
Five hIEs, each a work of art. Sest glared down at the sea where they had escaped, then he turned an unsettled gaze to the evening cityscape where millions more hIEs were currently in operation. A sudden shiver ran down his spine at the thought that, at that very moment, humanity was climbing over yet another wall. He had no idea what the units that had escaped were capable of, or even what they were created to do.
The fault lay squarely on the shoulders of the client: MemeFrame. They had refused to disclose the information they had, and their initial response had been wrong. But that wasn’t even worth worrying about now. One of the five had ‘equipment’ that easily surpassed the power of a tank. So what about the equipment of the other four hIEs; did they have poison gas, or weaponized viruses? One of them could have a weapon worse than a nuclear bomb.
Sest and his team may have just witnessed the beginning of a disaster that would shake human society to the core.