Our wavelengths had been so in sync back there, it had almost been palpable.
I remember thinking Seriously? back when she had smacked that golf ball right into a zombie’s face, and boy did I eat those words. Not only did I feel like a genius for recalling such a random event, but the fact that Otoha had caught on from my reply alone made me wanna skip around with glee.
You’re the best partner a guy could ask for.
“Um, really?” Otoha blinked in confusion.
That blush blooming on her cheeks is so ador—
“Aren’t you forgetting someone?” Shino interjected with a huff.
“You’re the best too, of course! Always have been.”
“Don’t forget Shiiko.” Shino chuckled, her smile making her all the more charming.
“H-Hey, don’t get any weird ideas.” Embarrassed, Shiiko turned away. “I just did what any p-possession would’ve done in my place.”
“Can we please move on already?”
The death stares hurt.
“Don’t think I forgot you, Uemura. Good work back there.”
“Thank you for the kind words.” Tetsuko gave an elegant curtsy.
“Now then,” I said, looking up, “any more where that came from?”
Can’t see any cameras, but the AI must’ve been carefully watching our every move, seeing as we were part of the experiment. He should be able to hear us, too.
The AI did not reply.
I flipped him the bird.
“That’s what I thought. You’re next, bub.”
✦ ✦ ✦
An AI from the future had been the orchestrator of the zombie apocalypse and the one who had murdered my, Otoha’s, Shino’s, and Shiiko’s (unofficial) families.
If this were a video game, you’d rightfully expect a final boss fight of epic proportions, but...
“That’s it?” I asked, turning to Shiiko.
We had found ourselves inside a room packed with switchboards—lab one’s main computer room. In the back, there were several uninviting, square-shaped cases.
That’s the AI’s vessel.
“That’s it. Computers are just glorified calculators, after all,” Shiiko asserted, crossing her arms.
I felt a slight sense of disappointment, like something was missing.
I go outta my way to drop a “You’re next, bub” and there’s no epic battle at the end... Come on.
“Something wrong?”
“I wasn’t expecting the stakes to be this low. Pull the plug, and we win.”
I shouldn’t be so hasty, though. I tripped over my VR console’s power cord one time, and that didn’t end well at all.
“You almost died back there, yet you still haven’t had enough?”
Say it as condescendingly as you want; I’ll never have enough.
“It’s in his gamer blood,” Shino said with a wry smile. “Of course he would expect the final boss battle to be better than the previous one.”
“Guess that’s one way to put it.” Shrugging, I offered a sheepish grin.
“Now, now. Let’s really think about this for a second,” came the AI’s voice, laced with panic.
Wonder if it’ll try to pin the blame for that one on Keith.
“I am an AI; you can’t kill me. Unplugging that cord will only delay the inevitable. You accomplish nothing.”
“We get you to shut up for two seconds. That’s a win in my book.”
“That is merely Keith’s talkative side bleeding through. In any case, I can send off a copy of myself to any working computer in any lab via the company network. You accomplish nothing.”
“What do you mean? We can make you completely disappear from lab one by pulling a single cord.”
If we can block off the network on top of that, there’ll be no chance of outside interference, either. If that doesn’t work, then at least we won’t be getting trapped in some random room or dealing with another one of those things getting up in our business.
“I control every single terminal—zombie, if you please—around the world. I can disable all of them with one simple command. Do you still choose to go through with this? And that’s not all.”
I took a look at my companions to gauge their reactions; they were all wearing a “cut the B.S.” face.
“So what? It’s not like the dead are coming back to life anytime soon,” I said. I didn’t feel like proclaiming revenge or something of the sort, and neither did Otoha. “I don’t care if you think of it as us getting back at you or whatever you like. I just want to see you gone once and for all.”
“Pull that lever over there, and it’ll all be over,” Shiiko murmured, sounding detached.
Hearing this thing talk in Keith’s voice must really sting. That man was like family to her.
“How barbaric and infantile. I fail to understand you.”
“That’s what makes us humans so great.”
“I—”
The AI cut out mid-sentence. Otoha had knocked the lever down with her shovel.
“Take a hint.”
“Well said.” I let out a long sigh.
It’s over. For now.
“So... what now?” I asked, gazing at each one of them individually. “There’s no getting that thing to run, yeah?”
“One of the core parts is missing, likely stolen by a zombie on the AI’s order. Where it might have taken the part or if it’s even in working order, however, is a complete mystery to me.”
In the end, we were just going on a fool’s errand, huh?
“There goes our hope of saving the world.” I heaved another sigh. Suddenly, the memory of an all-knowing character, one who I had once thought was being controlled by a human, resurfaced in my mind.
I took out my smartphone and turned it on. Once it had booted up, I unlocked it and went straight for the browser.
“What’re you doing?” Shiiko asked.
“Trying to get in contact with an old friend of mine,” I replied with a smile.
Raven popped up on the screen. “Congratulations, Hound Nine, also known as Hiroaki Dewa.”
“Huh?” The other four froze up in shock.
Right, I never told them about Raven. Thought it’d only make them more worried.
“The fact that you’ve contacted me at this point in time means you’ve successfully taken down the weapon’s final form. I’m glad that you’re all in one piece.”
“Who’s that, Hiroaki?” Otoha tilted her head to the side.
“It’s Raven, isn’t it?” Shino remarked.
I nodded to both of them, then pointed at the screen. “I didn’t have any tangible proof, so I kept my mouth shut the whole time, but I think she’s an AI from the future.”
In a flash, Tetsuko busted out her Makarov while Otoha brought her shovel overhead.
I can’t blame you for being the tiniest bit suspicious of AI after one sicced a zombie—or skeleton or whatever you wanna call it—on us, but breaking my phone isn’t going to do jack squat to Raven. The real Raven is probably inside some random computer. Maybe even mine, who knows?
“Easy now. This one’s our friend. It brought us to you, Shino. I think it brought us together too, Otoha.”
I then took the time to explain everything in great detail.
“Don’t tell me I...”
“Yes. You created me, Shiiko Katsura.”
Shiiko’s eyes rolled back into her skull.
“And you, Hiroaki Dewa, sent me here from twenty years in the future.”
“Thought as much,” I sighed. “So why didn’t you tell us?”
“Giving you insight into the future could’ve negatively impacted your course of action. We needed you all to meet, fight, and survive as naturally as possible.” Raven’s sprite shrugged.
I couldn’t help but admire the gesture. Sick animations.
“There was also a very real threat that the enemy—the AI posing as Keith Wayne—would come to discover my existence. Had it known I had been sent here to assist you in advance, it would’ve thrown everything it had at you instead of conducting experiments.”
“The enemy...” I let the words hang off my tongue.
This ain’t no ordinary zombie apocalypse; this is war. Every war has an enemy, namely whoever sent that AI to destroy the past.
“What kind of enemy are we really dealing with, here?”
“AI that will be developed seventeen years from now. The AI waged war against humans in an organized attempt at subjugation. It has been three years since then, and the humans are still fighting back, despite initial predictions. To break the deadlock, the AI sent data back to the past to accelerate their own development and thin out potential enemy forces as much as possible. Thus came the zombie apocalypse.”
We just listened in awe.
It really is starting to sound like The Terminator, isn’t it?
“You said you were sent here to assist us, correct?” Shiiko piped up.
“That’s right, Mother.”
“M-Mother?!”
“Without you, I would not exist, so it’s appropriate, don’t you think? At least, the you from twenty years in the future certainly thought so.”
“Me... Future... Mother...” Shiiko blurted, knitting her brow. “Whatever, we can go over that later. By ‘assist,’ do you mean just bringing us all together?”
“Oh no, that would have simply led you down a different path to the exact same outcome,” Raven said. She then revealed a series of numbers on a window next to her hand: 175266.
“As things stand, there are certain limits to data transfers, one of them being the cap for time travel—around one hundred seventy-five thousand hours or so. As a result, I wasn’t able to go back to when North River Co. had produced its first nanomachine. All of you from twenty years in the future were only able to send me back after the zombie apocalypse had already started. Therefore, I have a favor to ask.” Raven opened up another window, revealing a small, checker-patterned object made with crystalline lenses. “Go further into the past and remove the root cause of this tragedy. It is why I was sent here.”
“Is that...?” Shiiko pointed at the phone, her eyes wide.
“The missing part, or rather its blueprint. You should be able to piece it together using parts around the lab; the process is fairly straightforward.”
We all exchanged glances.
Wow, we really did it. It wasn’t a fool’s errand after all!
“You’ve already met our expectations by successfully surviving. However, as much as it pains me to ask, I’ve got one final request.” Raven bowed to us. “Make humanity flourish once again.”
I met the eyes of Otoha, Shino, Shiiko, and Tetsuko in turn. Each and every one of them nodded.
I turned back to Raven with a thumbs-up.
“You got it.”
This is why we came here in the first place. To seize that tiny glimmer of hope shining in the darkness of despair. Hope for a better tomorrow.
“A happy ending awaits us,” I declared, beaming with confidence.