The central tower was dead ahead. At this distance, they were too close for the laser cannon to get a clear shot.
Armored cars were parked outside the entrance, along with rows of soldiers. They formed a quick-and-dirty shield line, with assault rifles at the rear, but their lack of self-preservation told Kaname these were not human Dealers but AI PMCs.
And I bet Takamasa’s done something to them…
Before they could act, Kaname raced the bike up a short staircase in front of him—about three steps high—launching himself into the air and over the heads of the PMC blockade.
Not even batting an eye as he flew through the air, Kaname said, “Midori, get #lockpick.err ready!”
“O-okay!!”
Ahead of them was a glass door reinforced by a metal shutter, but it surrendered after a single blast from the simplified shotgun in the girl’s hands. The metal lattice immediately shot upward like a clockwork toy.
There was no logic at work here. Any kind of lock the Legacy touched simply flew open. That was all there was to it.
Tires screeched as Kaname skidded through the entrance hall. By the time the PMCs had turned around and pointed their rifles, he was already driving up an escalator headed to the next floor.
“Do you know where my brother is?!” Midori asked.
“With #flash.err.”
“You mean the shipping container on the top floor? But he can’t use that up close. Would he really stay with it? The Legacies aren’t that special to him, remember.”
“Quite right, Midori.”
Just then, they heard the sound of something chopping the air. It was right above them.
“The truck parked near the top of the tower was only a platform for #flash.err. Once it becomes clear it’s no longer useful, he’ll switch up his methods. For example, he might suspend it via wires from a transport helicopter or tilt-rotor and use that to take me out, even if it means slicing this very building to ribbons.”
“…Do you think he might try to escape?”
“Probably not. If that was his top priority, he would have started acting the moment he used #flash.err to intercept my sea-to-earth missile.”
The tower was a combination aquarium, shopping mall, and animal research laboratory, but as the lower levels saw the most foot traffic, they had been built primarily with beauty in mind. PMCs flooded the room to seal off the stairs and elevators, but Kaname rode up onto the railings, jumping from chandelier to chandelier in the building’s central well, trying to reach the upper floor.
The PMCs were tough, and if they called for reinforcements, they could keep attacking endlessly. But they could only move according to the building’s blueprints. By forging his own shortcuts, Kaname could lead them on an endless wild-goose chase searching for the quickest route to reach him.
…This was a trick Kaname had learned watching Takamasa after the fight with Bloody Dancer.
“There’s still some on our tail,” called out Midori.
“Those must be human Dealers,” Kaname replied.
Kaname jumped the bike off the swinging chandeliers and onto solid ground, purposely sending its tires into a skid as it landed and taking out the Dealers’ legs with a single sweep. At the same time, his silent .45-caliber bullets severed the chains holding up the chandeliers, both erasing the path he had just come by and sending them crashing down on top of a separate group of Dealers who had just run into the lobby below.
“Did their guns look a little strange to you?” Midori asked.
“They might be Takamasa’s Legacies,” replied Kaname. However, their priority right now was finding Takamasa himself. They could return for the loot afterward. If the weapons slid across the floor, they wouldn’t disappear along with the Dealers’ bodies, and AI soldiers weren’t programmed to pick up items off the ground.
Kaname clicked his tongue as they blasted open another iron shutter with Midori’s #lockpick.err and launched into a stairwell. It seemed like Takamasa wasn’t taking this seriously enough. The Legacies’ strength lay in their quirks, in the ability to catch your opponent off guard with a type of attack they had never seen before. They broke the established rules, and that was what made them such terrifying weapons, capable of bringing a whole nation to its knees.
There was no point handing them out willy-nilly to Dealers—no matter how strong or capable—if they weren’t in the correct environment to take advantage of those quirks. All they were doing was standing in the path of the bike and getting run over before they could fire off a single shot. It was ridiculous. They had in their hands weapons that could defy the laws of physics, and yet they were setting themselves up to be knocked down by those very same laws.
Had Takamasa even taught them how to use the weapons correctly? Maybe the only reason he was happy to hand them out was because he knew they would all return to him in the end. In that case, he didn’t care what became of the Dealers he was using as pawns.
There was a short, metallic clang. Farther up the stairwell, something about the size of a baseball bounced down the steps.
“No way! A grenade!!” Midori screamed.
Kaname drove straight through a set of iron shutters and exited onto the nearest floor. The blast radius was somewhere in the region of six to eight meters. By the time it went off behind them, they were already out of range of the shrapnel.
The tenth floor seemed to be where the aquarium was located. Leaping over the security gate on the bike, Kaname entered an underwater tunnel constructed from clear plastic.
Midori did a double take when she spotted a painted image on one of the nearby support pillars.
“That was Mr. Shark! Wasn’t he the mascot for that soccer team?”
“I guess they had a crossover promotion,” replied Kaname.
There was little sense in fighting the PMC guards head-on, so Kaname shot a few water tanks and let the incoming sharks and killer whales take care of them. Then he hightailed it out of there before getting caught in the flow.
Next, he headed for the emergency stairwell on the other side of the building. Once there, he drove straight through another metal shutter and up toward the higher floors.
“Floor twenty already…,” said Midori.
“This should be where the research labs are. They’re closed to the public.”
It was then that Kaname heard the chopping sound once more. There were no windows in the emergency stairwell. That meant whatever was on the outside making that noise must be very close.
Kaname felt a tingling sensation—the Lion’s Nose.
“Here it comes, Midori! Get down!”
Trusting his reflexes, Kaname twisted the handlebars. He left the stairwell and exited straight out onto the next floor. The very next moment…