SAO 15 - Alicization Invading

by Reki Kawahara

  A mansion guarded by flawless security, a skilled cook to prepare each day’s meals, and a school filled with affluent white children; these privileges would vanish from Alicia’s life forever, replaced by poverty and manual labor. And what Gabriel couldn’t stand most, was how Alicia’s soul, which should have been his one day, would be hurt by some unknown person and lose its brilliance.

  So, he thought to kill her.

  On the day Alicia said her farewells at school, Gabriel invited her to the forest behind his home after she got off the school bus home. Deftly dodging every security camera set up along the road and fences, he ensured no one was looking while he entered the forest and walked over fallen leaves to avoid leaving any tracks, guiding Alicia to his «secret laboratory» surrounded by thick scrubs.

  Utterly unaware of the countless insects that had died there, Alicia immediately returned the gesture when Gabriel wrapped his arms around her slender form. With soft sobs, Alicia mentioned how she didn’t want to go anywhere else, how she wanted to live on in this district with Gabe forever.

  Whispering that he would grant her that wish in his heart, Gabriel stuck his right hand into his shirt pocket and took out the tool he prepared in advance. What his father had used to deal with the insects: a four inch needle made from steel with a wooden grip.

  Gently inserting the sharp point into Alicia’s left ear, he first held her right ear with his left hand before penetrating through to its base without the slightest hesitation.

  Alicia blinked her two eyes, not comprehending what had happened, before her body underwent violent convulsions. Her open blue eyes abruptly lost their focus seconds later, and—

  Gabriel saw that.

  Something like a small cloud, glittering brightly, appeared from the middle of Alicia’s smooth forehead. That drifted, airily, as it approached Gabriel’s brow and entered, just like that, without any resistance whatsoever.

  The fine sunlight of that spring afternoon that had engulfed his surroundings disappeared. It seemed as though rays of white light had descended through the branches of those tall trees; he could hear even faint chimes.

  Tears poured from Gabriel’s eyes from the inexpressible exaltation. He was now looking upon Alicia’s soul… that was not all, he could see even what Alicia’s soul could, that was what Gabriel’s instincts told him.

  The small, glittering cloud passed through Gabriel’s head in several seconds that felt like an eternity and continued on its ascent, as though guided by the light from the skies, before vanishing at last. The spring sunshine and the chirps from small birds returned to his surroundings.

  Hugging onto Alicia’s body, with both its life and soul now absent, Gabriel pondered on whether that earlier experience was reality or a hallucination brought about by overwhelming stimulation. And knew that no matter which it was, he would spend the rest of his life in pursuit of what he had just seen.

  He threw Alicia’s corpse into a deep pit that opened up at the roots of a giant oak spotted earlier. Next, after a careful inspection of his own body, he pinched up two strands of blonde hair stuck on himself and tossed those into the hole as well. The needle was washed clean before returned to his father’s toolbox.

  Not even the local police’s earnest investigation found any clue to the Alicia Klingerman Disappearance Incident and the case eventually went cold.

  Having awoken from his short and deep recollection, the twenty-eight years old Gabriel Miller took his sight off himself, reflected in the mirrored glass, and walked to his work desk by the wall in the west. The moment he sat on reclining chair made in Norway, a phone icon lit up on the thirty inch display panel embedded on the desk’s glass surface.

  With a tap, it showed his female secretary’s face while her voice flowed out.

  [Mister Miller, I apologize for disturbing your rest. COO Ferguson had requested for you to accompany him for dinner tomorrow. How shall I reply?]

  “Tell him I have prior plans.”

  Gabriel immediately replied and his usually collected secretary showed a somewhat troubled expression. The COO was the executive vice-president after all, the second-in-command at Glowgen DS. As one among the over ten officers, Gabriel could hardly afford to turn down this invitation for a meal—normally.

  However, his secretary’s bewildered expression vanished before a second passed and her calm voice continued.

  [Understood. I will do as you say.]

  The call ended, and Gabriel sank deep into the chair with his legs crossed.

  He could guess at what Ferguson wanted. It must have been to stop Gabriel from participating in that particular «operation» he had already scheduled.

  But the COO must think otherwise inside. That old fox must be wishing for him to nonchalantly set off to some dangerous place to earn a spot on the KIA list. After all, Gabriel was the previous president’s own child and the majority shareholder.

  Of course, Gabriel himself was aware of how foolish it would be for an officer to participate in an operation where live bullets flew about. Even if he did have prior experience, a CTO’s job was to plan out the entire operation from the safety of the main office without any need to expose himself to the dangers of the battlefield.

  However, no matter the costs, he had to participate in this operation that had to be kept under complete and utter secrecy. After all, it was an issue related to what Gabriel had staked his life to seek out ever since that day he saw Alicia’s soul.

  The operation’s client was not the Department of Defense regardless how they would benefit. It was the National Security Agency—the NSA—with whom they had few prior dealings with.

  The two NSA agents who visited this room a month ago managed to surprise Gabriel, who could hardly claim to be emotional, numerous times.

  Firstly, the operation was completely unlawful. After all, a combat team from Glowgen would board a navy submarine and launch an assault on a warship belonging to Japan, an allied nation. There was no need to concern themselves over any fatal casualties of that ship’s crew either.

  And the objective of the operation was to steal a certain technology.

  Upon hearing the details, Gabriel’s voice leaked out slightly, overwhelmed by surprise—or perhaps delight. It was fortunate the agents did not notice, however.

  «Soul TransLation technology». A wondrous machine capable of deciphering humans’ souls developed by a small organization called «Rath» in the JSDF.

  Gabriel had held a strong interest in the full-dive technology born in Japan for some time now in his pursuit of souls. That was why he fought with the players from Japan in Gun Gale Online and studied Japanese. He even obtained a set of the «demonic device», the Nerve Gear, that should have been disposed of without a single one remaining by spending several tens of thousands of dollars—of course, he didn’t intend to use it himself, however.

  Gabriel expected development on full-dive technology to wane due to the commotion caused by that death game. However, they had quietly continued their research and finally drew near the secrets of the human soul.

  The request from NSA felt like destiny to Gabriel.

  Glowgen DS might be one of the larger private military companies around, but that was all they were; they could hardly decline the NSA who now held even more power than the CIA in the first place. The vote for the contract was passed with a lead of two in the emergency board meeting. To prevent information from leaking, it was decided that the combat team would consist of contract employees specializing in wet work with their own dark histories to cover up—

  Gabriel volunteered himself as the operation commander.

  Naturally, the fact that Gabriel was an officer in Glowgen was hidden from the combat team. Those people would likely betray the company at the drop of a hat if they knew, abducting Gabriel for a ransom.

  Gabriel had to go even with such risks.

  The NSA agents mentioned. That Rath had succeeded in not just deciphering the human soul, but also cloning it through
STL technology. That if that artificial soul given the codename «A.L.I.C.E.» was completed and loaded onto Japanese unmanned weapons, it would destroy the military balance in East Asia.

  He didn’t care if disputes arose in the Far East—or anywhere else in the world. But Gabriel was convinced the moment he heard the name Alice.

  He would make that his own.

  He would procure that small media storage device, known as the light cube, with that soul on board at all costs.

  “Alice…… Alicia……”

  Leaning against the chair with its back down, he softly murmured the two names. A faint smile appeared on his lips without his notice.

  The name of the company established by Gabriel’s father, Glowgen, was coined together with the meaning of «bringing forth light». It seemed his father had the light of happiness in mind, but what came to mind for Gabriel, his successor, was no other than that golden brilliance drifting out from the dying Alicia’s brow.

  Bringing forth light. Or the soul, in other words.

  It was fate, all of it.

  Gabriel and the eleven in the combat team would fly to Guam a week later and invade Japanese waters on a nuclear submarine from a naval base there. Before the operation began, they would switch to a small submarine onboard and carry out an assault on the objective, the giant ocean research mother ship, «Ocean Turtle».

  They might occupy it without shedding blood, or with casualties resulting on either side—or perhaps both, even. Still, Gabriel’s beliefs were unshaken. He knew he would get his hands on «Alice» and the STL technology. He just needed a simple copy of the light cube and documents from the NSA.

  A little longer… it was just a little longer. He would grasp the true essence of the soul that eluded him despite his multiple experiments on other humans, since Alicia, in just a little longer.

  He would be able to see that beautiful, gleaming cloud once again.

  “……Your soul… will be so sweet……”

  Gabriel whispered once more, this time in Japanese, and shut his eyelids.

  Part 2

  Captain Dario Giuliani who commanded the Seawolf-class nuclear submarine, Jimmy Carter, was a submariner down to his bones, rising to his current position from cleaning the torpedo tubes. The first he rode was an antique Barbel-class diesel vessel where the stench of oil and noise followed along no matter where one went in her stiflingly cramp space.

  In comparison, the Seawolf-class that cost more than any other submarine in the world was practically a Rolls-Royce. Giuliani had showered the ship and her crew with love ever since he was appointed as her captain in 2020. Through tough training, the high yield strength steel hull, her S6W reactor, and the hundred and forty crew members were bonded like a single being, capable of swimming as she liked in any ocean as long as it had the depth.

  Jimmy Carter was practically Giuliani’s daughter. It was a pity he had to step down from active duty soon, forced to either work on land or an early retirement, but the successor he recommended, the executive officer, Guthrie, would definitely command the ship brilliantly.

  Nonetheless—

  As though to disgrace Giuliani’s last years, a single, curiously perilous order was handed down a mere ten days ago.

  Jimmy Carter was a ship planned for support on special operations and possessed a variety of methods to cooperate with the SEALs. The midget submarineASDS carried on its afterdeck was one among those.

  There were countless times she cruised deep in foreign waters with those from the SEALs aboard. But the objective was always for keeping the peace of the states or the world and those men on board definitely felt the same sense of duty as Giuliani’s subordinates as they went into the jaws of death.

  However, as for that bunch who boarded from Guam two days ago—

  Giuliani went to see the faces of his guests at the rear section only once, but that was enough for him to get on the verge of ordering his subordinates to kick them out into the deep sea. The tens of men lay down on the floor without any sense of order, some blared noise from their headphones while others made merry, gambling over card games; not to mention the empty cans of beer scattered everywhere. There were no proper seamen in that bunch. It was doubtful they were even from the military.

  There was only one who seemed to have some notion of courtesy, that tall commanding officer who apologized to Giuliani for their disturbance in order.

  However, that man with those shockingly blue eyes—

  While holding the right hand he offered and meeting his eyes, Giuliani tasted a sensation he had forgotten for a long time.

  That was from, yes, long before he entered the navy. He was swimming in the ocean at Miami, his homeland, when a giant great white raced straight past his side. He was fortunately unharmed, but Giuliani saw that shark’s eyes right before him. Those eyes devoured all light like a bottomless pit.

  That same hollowness extended out deep within that man’s eyes…

  “Captain, a reading from the bow sonar!”

  The sudden noise from the sonar technician pulled Giuliani out from his thoughts.

  “It’s the turbine from a reactor, we’re matching now… it matches, it’s definitely the target mega-float. Fifteen miles.”

  Bringing his mind back, he quickly gave instructions from the combat command post, the captain’s seat.

  “Right, keep this depth and drop her speed to fifteen knots.”

  The order was echoed and he felt an instant of deceleration.

  “Where’s that Aegis-equipped escort ship?”

  “There’s a gas turbine sound confirmed three miles west-southwest of the target… matching done, it’s the JMSDF’s Nagato.

  Giuliani stared hard at the two light points shown on the large display in front.

  Putting aside from the Aegis-equipped warship, he heard the mega-float was an oceanic research ship without any arms. And the order this time was to let those armed thugs invade that. Not to mention how it was a ship from Japan, an allied nation. It hardly seemed like a legitimate operation with the approval of the President and Secretary of Defense.

  The words from those men in black suits who brought the directive directly from the Pentagon resurfaced in Giuliani’s mind.

  —Japan is conducting research on that mega-float for reigniting war on the states. There is no choice but to bury that research in order to maintain the friendship between our two countries.

  Giuliani was no youngling capable of eating up their words at face value.

  Still, he was already old enough to understand he had no choice but to obey those orders.

  “Are our guests prepared?”

  The executive officer standing at his side confirmed in a deep voice.

  “They are standing by in the ASDS.”

  “Alright… maintain this speed and bring her up to a hundred feet!”

  Compressed air pushed the ocean water out from the ballast tank and the produced buoyancy lifted Jimmy Carter’s gigantic frame. The distance from the light points gently yet surely decreased.

  Would there be casualties among the Japanese researchers? That seemed likely. He would probably carry the memory of cooperating in such an operation until his deathbed.

  “Five miles to the objective!”

  Shaking off his hesitation, Giuliani commanded with resolution.