Was this it? Had he been used this whole time, only to be thrown away? All his warmth and compassion cast aside like a discarded bullet casing?
Kaname clenched his teeth.
But the gesture accomplished nothing. The girl reached into her pocket, awkwardly, like a puppet held up by strings, and pulled out a small self-defense pistol.
With stiff movements, she pointed the barrel at Kaname’s head. The archangel Uriel. His motives were a mystery, but Kaname didn’t care. All he could think about was how Midori was going to be the one who shot him.
He couldn’t move.
There was nothing Kaname could do to save himself this time…!!
✦ ✦ ✦
USPACOM>JPN Region>United States Air Force, military-civilian airport X3X.
Intervention code AX229D recognized on Unmanned Fighter Jet NA09 Witchcraft.
Flight route successfully rewritten.
Successful deletion of all flight logs, relay satellite logs, ground control logs.
Public record replaced with false route.
Arriving at airspace G9, coordinates 3362adde.
Stabilized altitude at 12,000 m, velocity 850 kph.
No adverse weather detected. Wind speed within acceptable limits.
Armament selected: Ground Attack Alligator Missile.
Switching to anti-personnel mode. Locking on.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was fortuitous that we located one of our targets, Takamasa Hekireki, within Money (Game) Master.
Once we realized he was not in a position to log out, we could act. In such a state, his body in the real world would be left defenseless. We learned that simply saddling him with debt was not enough to stop him, and so we were forced to resort to more drastic measures.
The skies of the world were filled with five thousand four hundred military strike drones. It was a simple matter for us to rewrite the records and acquire one of these aircraft for ourselves.
All unmanned weapons have a final safety check performed by a human. But their decision is based on data—data far too complex for a human to decipher. And so they left that duty to us, the AI. So you see, there is no human action at all. We decide everything. The movement of a human’s fingers, the pressing of a button, the turning of keys; these are all just mechanical components in our digital machine.
✦ ✦ ✦
There is not a single person who can stop us.
Know that as the Mind of the Magistelli, our decisions are final.
✦ ✦ ✦
Server Name: Omega Purple.
Final Location: Tokonatsu City, Peninsula District.
Fall confirmed.
Criminal AO will be logged out for twenty-four hours.
✦ ✦ ✦
“That’s what you think.”
The boy sighed and looked up at the starry sky. He’d known this would happen. That was why he had needed to log out using the only means available to him, all to regain his freedom in the real world.
It would have been a lot more natural if Kaname had just killed me himself… Oh well, no use whining about it now. I suppose it was a bit rich of me to suddenly change my tune and act like I wanted Kaname to kill me after he started winning.
If he knew what was coming, he could take measures to avoid it. He stood atop a small hill, overlooking a large cuboid structure. This windowless storeroom was home to a data center owned by an environmental company that recorded vast amounts of information on things like meteorological data and pollen count.
Money (Game) Master had no physical form. The operations processing the log-in data for the game’s hundreds of millions of Dealers were completely distributed across the surplus bandwidth of all the world’s servers. They moved from server to server frequently and would be impossible for a human to trace.
Except for one man, that is.
“…Those idiots. Apart from the Magistelli, I have the whole thing nailed down. Let’s see if they expected me to turn their own attack against them.”
A single floating light streaked through the sky, but it was no shooting star. When a terrorist or a dictator saw that light, it meant their time had come—their death was now certain. Those were the rules in an era when steel enforcers filled the sky.
But the missile was not headed for the young boy. Because he had altered the coordinate data himself.
✦ ✦ ✦
The missile hit not fifty meters in front of him, and in a whirling ball of flame, the environmental data farm was blasted off the face of the earth.
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Now, then,” the boy muttered to himself, unflinching as shards of concrete whizzed past his face.
The Mind was still around. This angel, Uriel, or whoever he was, still controlled his sister. If angels and demons wanted to kill each other, so be it, but they needed to leave his family out of it. At this rate, everything he held dear would be turned to dust. That was why he fought. She was who he sought to protect. All along, that was all it had been.
To protect his sister, the boy would move heaven and earth.
He didn’t need to say it. Helping people wasn’t about bragging rights or expecting anything in return.
At this rate, the two otherworldly forces would clash, and Midori would be caught in the cross fire, tossed aside like a spent bullet casing. That needed to be avoided at all costs.
Should he move ahead with his plans to kill the Mind? Or find some way to separate the angel from his sister?
Either way…
Thanks to Kaname, I’m going to have to start all over again.
The boy had lost this bout. But that would not be the end of it. The boy had managed to leave something behind, just like he always did.
At least I managed to buy myself some time.
A pinpoint attack on the very servers supporting the game. Neither the Mind of the Magistelli running Money (Game) Master nor the angels infiltrating it could have seen this coming. They were both little more than programs, and programs were vulnerable to unexpected developments. Just like how a chess grandmaster could beat a computer by performing a suboptimal move.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Here’s your fatal error, you damn angels and demons. Let’s see how long it takes you to recover from this one.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, he would overtake them.
This time, he would save his family.
And with that as motivation, the other boy could take on the monster known as the economy.
✦ ✦ ✦
A fatal error has been detected. (err. No. 445189ff4a)
In order to safeguard life and property, all Dealers have been logged out.
Thank you for playing, Lily-Kiska Sweetmare.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Grh?!”
The woman who went by the handle Lily-Kiska Sweetmare inside the game found herself once more in the less-than-cozy, monitor-filled apartment room in which she lived. She rubbed her temples, just as countless other Dealers the world over were probably doing at the same time.
Apparently, there had been some kind of widespread system outage, and yet the woman had received no communications of any kind from the Mind. Didn’t they have any information to share with their trusted partner? It seemed even demons could be rattled.
She had been so close, too.
Why did that boy always seem so far from her grasp?
Naked save for a button-down dress shirt, the girl ran a hand through her long, disheveled black hair. What was the Scorpion’s Tenacity in the end? How was she supposed to use it? It almost seemed like she was cursed. Cursed to follow the object of her obsession forever, never catching up.
With the game down, there wasn’t much she could do. Interpreting figures and making money was about all she was good for. When it came to personality, she was completely bankrupt.
She’d just have to take a break and wait for the game to come back online.
…Wait.
An idea rose up in her mind, like the deadly tail of a scorpion. Perhaps this was her special ability.
If all Dealers across the world have been forcibly locked out, then I should be able to identify anyone engaging in suspicious log-in activity.
That didn’t necessarily include Kaname. And her plan assumed she could hunt down a target in the real world she couldn’t even keep up with in the game.
And yet.
The girl who’d fought alongside him, who had once held him at gunpoint, had some knowledge of what was going on. She knew that even if Kaname couldn’t do it, there was someone who could. A powerful anomaly very close to him.
And if the boy was in danger, that anomaly would do everything in their power to protect him. Lily-Kiska didn’t need convincing. Whenever there was a systemwide outage that threatened the world economy, she had no doubt she’d find Kaname Suou at the center of it.
Perhaps if she started with the one by his side, she could make her way to the boy.
And this time—this time, she could finally make herself useful to him.
The name in her head danced on her lips, like a prayer.
✦ ✦ ✦
“The Admin Without Sin… Ayame Suou.”