“Okay. I’ll leave this to you.”
2B jumped over the stair railing and ran. She grabbed onto 042’s arm in midair, and glided into the hallway. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in her actions.
“Pod! Take over the enemies by hacking!”
“Roger: Initiating support.”
9S ran up the stairs and closed the distance between the flying types. Fortunately they were one of the types that were sluggish. It wasn’t hard to infiltrate their cyberbrain dimensions.
Once he was inside, the Machines were powerless. They knew various ways to counter physical attacks, but hadn’t adapted to handle internal attacks.
He found the control unit and wrote over the system. Even taking over one enemy would make things a lot easier.
He attacked the remaining five units with the one he took over. Perhaps they didn’t have the resolve to attack an ally, as none of them retaliated. Even when 9S’s unit attacked, they didn’t evade and were obediently shot down.
After shooting down all five, 9S made the one he was controlling self-destruct, and left the digital dimensions. He raced up the stairs and headed to the hallway that 2B was in. He thought he would run in as support, but there was no need.
“It looks like you’re done here.”
There were a great number of metal fragments on the ground around 2B. They were the remains of walking types. There might be more on the top floor so they couldn’t let their guard down, but it looked like the vicinity was clear of enemies.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not at all.”
He felt relieved to hear that. All of a sudden, 2B’s military sword dropped to the floor. 9S ran toward 2B. He had a bad feeling.
“2B!”
“It’s okay. My hand just sl1pped, that’s all …”
There was a strange noise mixed into 2B’s voice. Her hands clawed at her throat.
“Logic virus?”
2B fell to her knees with a thud. 9S quickly tore off 2B’s goggles. 2B’s eyes were glowing red. There was no mistake. She was infected by the enemy.
“I’m going to eliminate it by hacking!”
“Wait … no …”
2B shook her head with great anguish.
“What are you saying? We need to get rid of it quick!”
It was a race against time. If infection of the personal data progressed, there was no saving her. 9S initiated hacking while 2B lay on the floor, still shaking her head.
Various areas in the hacking dimension started to turn black. It was a typical logic virus infection.
The logic virus would take over the memory block and processing circuits, seizing control of the victim. Sometimes the victim would begin to indiscriminately attack their surroundings and comrades. I’m okay if Command has me executed, but I don’t want to die at the hands of a berserk 2B, thought 9S.
“I need to hurry …”
Fortunately, he’d seen this type of virus. He’d succeeded in eliminating this one before.
“But it’s progressed so far. And …”
An orange ball of light whizzed past 9S’s personal data. It was an attack from the virus.
“This makes it tricky.”
But the virus didn’t look like it had evolved since last time, so its attack patterns were probably still the same. Which meant that he could carry on his task of eliminating the virus while dodging the attacks.
It didn’t take too long for him to eliminate the virus. All that was left was for him to check for any other dormant viruses in the logic circuit. It was a simple task of running a high-speed search.
“Hm? That’s weird.”
He realized as he was searching that 2B’s personal data was filled with blemishes. Usually the hacking dimension was perceived as a flawless white room. But this one looked rather shoddy, like one of the rooms in the ruins. He hadn’t noticed until now because it had been covered in black because of the virus.
“Symptoms from the virus?”
He needed to go in deeper to investigate. Just then, he heard the sound of blowing wind and several words filled the space in front of him.
“We order you to assassinate 9S.”
It was a fragment of 2B’s memory. This was probably a line from an email. The sound of blowing wind was probably because she was in a desert. 9S pictured 2B receiving the email at the access point. This happened recently.
9S halted the search operation, and accessed the memory. His name had come up. Even if he wanted to forget that this ever happened, it was probably a good idea to see for himself.
“There were several attempts at unauthorized access into the main server. The other day traces of him were discovered in the memory blocks we use to keep top secret information.”
The words were distorting. The sound of wind had disappeared. 2B had most likely been shocked in the moment.
“As such, we order you to assassinate 9S.”
2B probably didn’t want him to eliminate the virus because she was trying to hide this memory from him.
“You didn’t have to worry about that. I knew already—that you were sent by Command as an assassin.”
The only thing he didn’t know was when she was going to kill him. That’s why he had a suspicion the time had come when they met up at the access point in the desert. As he watched 2B read the message from behind, he sensed it was grave news. To top it off, 2B didn’t notice him approaching from behind until he called out to her.
“Head destroyed.”
He was caught off guard. There was a random memory fragment stuck inside this one of 2B reading the message. It was a low voice with no inflection. But it sounded so much like 2B’s, he had to clarify.
“This is 2B. The task has been completed.”
It was the same voice. If those were 2B’s words, whose head had she destroyed?
He moved toward a mess of memory fragments.
“What’s this?”
The memories looked disheveled at first glance, but upon further inspection they twisted and entwined in an unnatural way. Every fragment had thorns sticking out of it. He had never seen memory data that looked like this.
Thorny, twisted, and entwined—memories of 2B.
Maybe he shouldn’t look. Maybe he shouldn’t know. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was a little spiteful toward the tremendous curiosity that Type S’s had.
The moment he touched a fragment, an immense pain cut through him. That pain ironically cleared 9S of any doubt. He had to go on.
“But a Type S could never beat a Type B.”
This voice. This was 9S’s own voice. This was from 2B’s memory, so he must have said this in 2B’s presence. But he couldn’t remember at all. It seemed his memory had been erased.
Who? Why?
9S accessed another memory to find the answers.
“Bye, 2B.”