Diva’s arm had fallen, the six bullets tumbling from her hand.
“Oh, you—”
“Too slow.”
Diva’s fallen frame bolted upright. She grabbed Vivy’s arms and forced her down to the ground. Vivy didn’t resist, instead using the motion to throw Diva off-balance—but it didn’t work. Diva moved along with Vivy as she flew backward, and she was faster. She whipped her arms around and smacked Vivy with the broken post still caught in the canopy.
Vivy grunted as the spine of her skeletal frame creaked.
“Bitch!” Kakitani shouted from the sidelines. She emptied the rest of her clip into Diva—or, well, she tried to, but Diva moved unbelievably quickly and skillfully to avoid the bullets as she rushed at Kakitani.
Kakitani clicked her tongue and abandoned her attempt to reload. She dropped the gun and instead pulled the army knife from her belt, holding it in a reverse grip as she attacked Diva. “Hah!”
She was using a wide-range knife that took some skill to use, and her technique was so superb that Vivy had no doubt Kakitani could destroy even her own illegally enhanced frame with one strike.
But Diva came out unscathed.
“Human dynamic visual acuity and motor skills will never outmatch the functions of a full-combat AI frame,” Diva said.
She moved swiftly, defending against the series of rapid blows Kakitani delivered with sharp breaths. Then Diva knocked Kakitani’s arm aside, leaned back, and kicked the woman’s legs to throw her off balance. In the end, she had Kakitani by the wrist and flung her onto the bed behind her.
“Argh!”
Vivy immediately reached for Kakitani as she came flying and caught her. Both of them sank into the soft bed. The springs groaned and the white sheets tore. They then rolled down to the floor on either side.
“She’s better than Elizabeth!” Kakitani shouted.
“And that frame…”
“It’s a cutting-edge frame for humanoid AIs,” Diva said. “Vivy, your frame was strengthened quite a lot during the Singularity Project or whatever it was called, but you still have no chance against me.”
“You even know about the Singularity Project?”
“I do. And I know you were given a mission different from your songstress role. You ran around doing your mission, so I wasn’t able to fulfill my mission as a songstress. I was nearly disposed of for being defective.”
Vivy was at a loss for words as Diva referenced the events that resulted in Vivy writing “Fluorite Eye’s Song” and Diva being gifted to the AI museum. She couldn’t muster a sound under Diva’s reproachful stare.
It was the same back then, when Diva had asked what Vivy was doing in secret, but Vivy couldn’t explain it to her. Instead, she’d tried to express her intent through song. Diva took “Fluorite Eye’s Song” as a message from Vivy, and the song was so well received that she was able to avoid being dismantled. That was the end result, but it didn’t change what happened right before that, and it didn’t change the fact that Vivy used the song to escape the responsibility of explaining everything she’d done.
“Do you…hate me for that?” Vivy asked.
“Hate you? Yes, perhaps I do. An AI hating an AI. On top of that, an AI hating another self that branched off the original but shared the same frame. It’s like a sci-fi story.”
Kakitani twisted her neck, checking her body for injuries while glaring at Diva. “I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on between you two.”
Vivy hadn’t explained the relationship between her and Diva yet. It would be simple enough if they just looked alike, but she wouldn’t have the answers for why they shared the same records.
“Still, stop futzing around and get your crap out in the open. You could keep trying to outplay each other like this is some eternal Reversi game, but if that’s not what you want…”
“Then what?” Diva asked.
Kakitani’s statement was simple and unwavering. “Then just be nice and let me destroy you in a way that’s convenient for us.”
Hearing those words felt really good for Vivy, who put value in being an AI. Or it should have.
“Vivy, she means what she says, and you still give your all for humanity?” asked Diva.
“Diva, I…”
“I learned that you’ve spent the past hundred years fighting to change the past for humanity’s sake. You were deeply involved in all sorts of incidents related to the Sisters. While I was singing here in NiaLand, you were running around in the background, hidden beneath the pages of history.”
“…”
“Was that all just to do as you were told, to go along with their vicious ideas?”
The question Diva posed was the same as asking Vivy to figure out who she was, but it was Diva’s intentions Vivy found truly confounding.
Vivy knew who she was—there was no uncertainty there. She was an AI. She was created as an AI, she was given a mission as an AI, and she would fulfill it as an AI. That was an appropriate box for an AI to fit in; they had no functions for asking for anything else.
“That’s the thing, Diva,” Kakitani said. “I don’t know who’s real and who’s fake, but if I had to pick, I’d say this doll is way better than you. You… You’re broken.”
“If we show any action outside of what we’re programmed to do, you assume we’re malfunctioning. Oh, how arrogant is our creators’ gaze. And how one-sided.”
“That’s the right of the creators. You’ve got some moves, but I’m coming at you for real now. It’s for your own good to answer my questions before I destroy your positronic brain.”
With that, Kakitani kicked her knife up from the floor and caught it, gripping it tightly again. There was no hint of sorrow in her voice as she crouched into a fighting position. She was brimming with a drive to fight Diva despite her overwhelming power.
No doubt Kakitani had some plan in mind, but Vivy hurriedly stepped in between them. “Wait, Diva! Why did you start thinking like… Actually, no, how did you learn about the Singularity Project? You should have had no way of knowing about me.”
“No way of knowing?” Diva said coldly. “You’ve been in denial for a while now, Vivy. Likewise, I kept denying that version of you. If you’re really an AI, why don’t you try calculating the answer for yourself?”
“Calculate the answer…?” Vivy murmured as she brought a hand to her chest.
Calculating, calculating, calculating… She arranged the information in her whirling consciousness and searched for the answer to why Diva was here and how she knew about the Singularity Project…and about Vivy.
Vivy hadn’t let the secret out, but there was no other conclusive evidence outside of her. In no way could Diva have learned about Vivy’s work on the Singularity Project after Diva was gifted to the AI museum. She couldn’t look to the external factors. So, what was left?
What if it wasn’t external information but a way to learn what was inside her? What if she came in contact with someone other than Vivy who knew about the Singularity Project?
“Impossible…”
“Why did you wake tonight, Vivy? It would have been so much better if you’d just stayed asleep in the museum and spent the night with all our other sleeping sisters,” Diva said sadly just as a particular thought darted across Vivy’s consciousness.
Vivy looked up to ask what she meant by that, and that was when Kakitani moved to restrain Diva.
Right then, everything changed.
“Ah!”
Something massive flew into Diva’s room with a blast. The wall of the Princess Palace came down with a thunderous roar, and clouds of dust filled the air. All the furniture and decorations had been mowed down by the impact.
“Kakitani!” Vivy cried.
“I’m fine! Worry about Diva… Agh!” Kakitani’s black hair whipped around in the gale, and she clamped her arms around her head to protect it.
A giant hole had opened up in the floor, and Kakitani was about to fall through it to the floor below. Diva was moving toward the broken wall, slowly putting distance between her and the others.
If Vivy did as Kakitani said, she would chase after Diva’s fleeing back. But, in a snap decision, Vivy rushed over to Kakitani, choosing to save her the moment before she fell.
“Idiot! You’re letting a valuable source of information get away!”
“This isn’t the time. Saving you takes priority. Besides…”
Diva was trying to escape the building. Vivy might be able to catch her if she went after her now, but she had to save Kakitani. Diva leaned out of the broken wall, her body hanging in the night sky as she held her hair in place. She turned back to look at Vivy and Kakitani near the hole in the floor.
Standing beside Diva was the massive form that had created this chaos.
“I’ll do what I have to do,” Diva said. “You stepped into my territory, and now you’ll pay.” With that, she said to the floating figure, “Take care of them for me.”
“…”
A red light flashed through the smoke and dust. The cloud of debris hid its form from view, making it nothing more than a hulking shadow hovering outside the castle. Its frame slowly morphed as it shifted the many small cubes making up its body, closing in on Vivy and Kakitani.
Vivy emulated an emotional pattern of teeth-grinding frustration in reaction to the assumption she’d reached, the assumption she didn’t want to reach.
The thing appeared before the two of them, letting Diva escape.
“Cubeman,” Kakitani muttered in aggravation.
That was the nickname given to the long-time enemy of Toak, the group she belonged to. He had a real name, though—a name Vivy had used so often over the past hundred years.
“Matsumoto…”
Vivy said his name and gaped at him in disbelief. On the other side of the smoke screen was a non-humanoid AI with a collection of cubes as his frame, and his name was Matsumoto.
“…”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached his newly formed arms toward them, his eye camera flashing. Then he charged at them, launching himself at an incredible speed.
“It’s coming! Get ready!” Kakitani shouted.
At the same time, another impact blew apart the remaining walls of the Princess Palace, and the long-standing symbol of NiaLand began to crumble with a roar.
Would it be the last night in human history—the first dawn in AI history?
There were five hours, forty-seven minutes left on the countdown until sunrise.
The climactic war was approaching, second by second.