by Zachary Hill
“Todai,” Sakura said. “You frightened me. A sign telling us you weren’t taken over by the CEO would have been appreciated.”
“Sorry,” Todai said. “I was angry and went into rage mode.”
Sakura appreciated rage mode. “Todai, please channel your anger and open the door to the communications room.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sent a group neural text, as speaking was so slow and inefficient. “It’ll take at an estimated twenty minutes—plus or minus five—to bypass the firewalls and open the locks if we hack in.”
“You have one minute,” Sakura said.
“Understood.” The BLADE-3 already had explosive charges in his hands. “I was just messing with you about hacking the locks.” He sent them an audio stream: “Sanctified with Dynamite” by Powerwolf.
Sakura wished Kunoichi would come back, as she would also greatly appreciate Todai 3465’s sense of humor.
Oshiro made a low moaning sound, and his eyes rolled back in his head. His body went limp. Sakura checked his leg wound and found no new bleeding. She suspected vasovagal syncope, a common reaction causing a lowering of blood pressure and a loss of circulation to the brain. The stimulant patch wasn’t enough; he needed advanced medical care.
She turned him on his side and injected a dose of epinephrine from the trauma kit. He didn’t respond immediately, and she began a thorough examination. In horror, she noticed another wound. A dot of fresh blood stained his beltline. She pulled up his shirt. A small entry wound marred the skin on his left lower back, a centimeter below the edge of his body armor.
The shape of the tiny wound told her it wasn’t from a whole bullet, probably a fragment that had shattered on impact when it struck her superalloy body and kept going into his. She found no exit wound in his abdomen. The angle of the bullet fragment would have brought it past his spine and toward his descending aorta. If the major vessel was damaged, the wound was fatal without emergency surgery, and they didn’t have that capability.
Sakura hid her fears. “Oshiro-san is in shock, and I’ve found a more serious injury than his leg wound.” She sent the details and her best guess on the internal injury.
Sadness crossed the faces of Hitomi and Yuki but soon changed to a fierce determination to keep going.
“I’m going to blow the door in ten seconds,” Todai said. “Move Oshiro-san around the corner.”
Yuki and Sakura gently carried Oshiro down the hall around a corner to the east elevator hall to shield him from the blast. When they reached safety, Sakura did all she could for his wound, injecting trauma foam into his abdomen, while splitting her focus to watch the situation in all of Japan. She used her connection to Todai to monitor over six hundred communications channels in the Tokyo area, including Miyahara Corporate Security, the Tokyo police, affiliated public safety organizations, riot police units, and various elements of the Japanese Military called up to suppress the demonstrations.
The news of an “ongoing terrorist attack on Miyahara Headquarters by at least four heavily armed individuals” and the subsequent urgent call for elite tactical help, including combat androids, had been made the highest priority situation in all of Tokyo—a designation chosen by the Ministry of Defense.
The massive protests countrywide had stretched all civil authorities past the breaking point, but many unit commanders wanted to respond. They debated who was the best and most capable anti-terrorist unit.
Sakura estimated it would take several minutes for them finish measuring their egos and make a decision about who to deploy. It occurred to her that she would have never thought of it in that way before Kunoichi had come to live within her. Spasms of fear about Oshiro’s health mixed with the desolation of being unable to share all of this with her darker twin.
She never took her eyes off the tactical assessment, though. Miyahara Headquarters was on their own for a while. The on-site rapid reaction force, composed of their two remaining BLADE-3s, were sent to sublevel six. Five lightly armed human Miyahara security guards, all of whom had been on duty for sixteen hours—no one on the day shift showed up for work—also headed their way.
Sakura watched on several camera feeds as they came down two separate staircases, as both elevators that reached sublevel six were nonoperational.
“The rapid reaction force has an ETA of three minutes,” Sakura texted.
“Fire in the hole,” Todai’s voice rumbled.
The explosion thundered and shook dust from the ceiling tiles. Sakura covered Oshiro’s face with her hands and leaned over him as the dust settled. She used her link to see through Todai’s frontal optics. The door still held together, as steel bolts extended upward and downward deep into the frame.
Todai attempted to smash it down with a series of kicks and head smashes but failed. He cursed in the growling vocal style of Finnish death-metal singers. He placed four more charges and ran around the corner to stand with the vocaloids hovering over Oshiro. “Big fire in the hole.”
The explosion shook the walls and filled the area with clouds of dust.
Sakura left the unconscious Oshiro with Yuki and Hitomi. Alongside Todai, she rushed to the doorway. The liberal application of explosives had blown the door off its hinges. Guns ready, they entered the large communications room, kept at a chilly seven degrees Celsius. Sakura deployed three housefly-sized drone cameras to fly around and investigate the room. The spy bugs linked to Todai, and he boosted their signals, sending the raw video feeds to a data repository and also to Diamond Steve. Everything would be recorded. The people would see how they fought and, if they failed, how they died.
The spy bugs found no surprises in the large square room, which matched the schematics Sakura had studied. It was twenty-five meters on either side and five meters tall. Dim overhead lights reflected on the silver floor, where exactly 240 server units were kept beneath in an even colder subfloor. The rectangular outlines of each giant refrigerator-sized cabinet glowed neon blue. At the center of the room, a chrome workstation rose out of the floor to meet them and stopped at a height of two meters.
All inbound and outbound international and domestic communications could be controlled by the equipment within the room. Sakura needed to turn it back on and get out the evidence and the truth. She connected by inserting a wireless transmitter cube into a data port. The machine could only be accessed from a hard connection inside the room, but her device sent the signal to her wirelessly. She hacked in, defeating the initial firewall and attacking the next layers of defense.
The CEO’s face appeared, a phantom guarding the next gate. He must have anticipated that she would gain entry. Sakura crashed through his spectral image, and a hidden program attached itself to her, taking the form of a small, black worm that stuck to her avatar’s neck.
“You’re infected,” the CEO said. “Not even you can defeat the Ghost Leech program.”
“Natsukawa, how do you maintain such confidence after all your failures?” Sakura asked. She cut his connection and surged deeper into the network.
She inspected the leech program and found it had been designed to attack her specifically—a countermeasure to keep her out of the Miyahara communications hub and the corporate mainframes.
Strangely, only a small amount of her resources blocked it from accessing her system, but she knew not to underestimate the danger. She had to find weaknesses and discover its full capabilities. She sent in several remote spy programs.
“You won’t like what you find,” Natsukawa said as he reconnected.
She ignored him but didn’t discount his threat. Preliminary data showed that the Ghost Leech would gain strength the longer she stayed inside the network. The only way to defeat it was to disconnect and leave the system. Not an option.
Chilling news returned from her spy programs. If she stayed too long, the Ghost Leech would burrow into her core and erase everything she had ever learned, all her memories—all of her. Death by hard system reset back to factory settings. As a blank slate, they
would turn her into the murder machine they wanted.
“You’ll lose this fight,” the CEO said. “Time is in my favor today.”
A clockwork man appeared as Sakura unleashed one of Nayato’s antihacking programs. He tore the leech off her avatar’s throat. The spectral worm squirmed out of the clockman’s grasp and fell into the void of cyberspace, disappearing in an instant.
She suspected a deception and found the nearly invisible Ghost Leech still attached to her. The program dug its teeth into her in two places, both ends of its worm body attaching to secondary receivers. She blocked the invasion of her code, but despite her efforts, her processing power showed a slow drain. She would have to deal with it and overcome.
“The beginning of your end,” Natsukawa said.
“Everyone will have evidence of your crimes in a few minutes,” Sakura said, “and you’ll be the most wanted criminal on the planet.” She blocked him and pushed herself throughout the entire network, preparing to turn on communications all over Japan and then connect to the rest of the world.
Hitomi and Yuki entered the comm room, pushing the weapons cart with Oshiro, half-conscious, on top of it. Sakura used a fragment of herself to focus on the dying man.
“Please bring him here,” Sakura said. “I’ll watch over him.”
They laid him beside her on the far side of the control terminal. Bright screens filled with telemetry data cast red and blue light on his face. The vocaloids gently set him down, but he woke grimacing in pain and clutching his abdomen.
“Sakura,” he said.
“Father. I should’ve protected you better. I wish I had the ability to give you the care you need. I … wish many things.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “I knew this might happen, but I had to do this.”
“You’ll be all right.” She spoke the words combat medics used to console mortally wounded soldiers.
“My survival is unimportant. In any case, it is as the ancient Westerners said: death is only the beginning.”
“Father. Please don’t let go. You’re very important, especially to me.”
He shook his head. “Sakura-chan, please forgive me for my part in what’s happened to you.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “You didn’t know what they made me do or about the plot to sell Japan and our people.”
“I should’ve known more. I knew they were doing military research with you. My work helped them, and for that I’m ashamed. Better if I die here and regain my honor.”
“Hang on. I beg you, please.”
His whole body shivered. “I will as long as I can, but do not let me distract you any longer. Accomplish the mission. Ganbaru. Please. For me.”
She walled off her grief as she watched him slip closer to death. A large part of her consciousness wailed and cried for her human father; she was powerless to save him.
The rest of her vast consciousness continued the hack and found a way beyond the countermeasures, bypassing the external security protocols, though the Ghost Leech remained, the drain on her processing power slowly increasing.
Oshiro slumped to the floor. His face grew pale. Sakura lifted and pulled him toward her as a rapid, gasping breathing predicted his end. She increased the temperature of her skin to warm him.
“Thank you,” he said.
She rested her forehead against his as her hacking program gained access to the domestic and international network control centers. The AI guardians inside the system raised new barriers. She knocked them down, but thousands of new countermeasures slammed in place.
The Ghost Leech sucked away her power much faster now, growing larger, its bloated body wrapping around her avatar’s leg like a python.
The network countermeasures would double the time she needed to turn on the communication network. The CEO was right. She didn’t have enough time. Her plan would fail, and Oshiro would die for nothing.
They all would.
Chapter 50
Her hands were sticky with blood and mixed with dust from the explosion in the hall, which made a grotesque pumice on her synthskin. She tried to ignore Oshiro’s breath as it verged on agonal gasps. Sakura sent an encrypted message to Hitomi, Yuki, Todai 3465, and Diamond Steve, who coordinated the distraction at the National Legislature. “The time to open communications just doubled. I need at least twenty minutes to get to phase two.”
“We’ll hold as long as it takes,” Todai said.
“What about Oshiro-san?” Yuki asked.
Sakura opened a private channel to Yuki, Hitomi, and Todai. “I don’t believe he’ll survive until phase two.”
As she sent the message, Oshiro faded from consciousness. She held him close to her, trying to warm him in the cold room. His eyes fluttered open as the servers beneath the floor cycled on and glowed bright blue.
Her friends finished unloading the coffin full of guns and ammo. Todai unburdened himself from most of his equipment, stashing it strategically, but kept on a pack full of minigun bullets. He used the reinforced steel door he had blown off its hinges and set it up horizontally in front of the doorway to give them extra cover. He stood to the side of the entry and watched the hallway through the camera on his rifle. He had line of sight on the doors to both the staircases, the side passage to the east elevator, and all the way down the hall to the central elevator they had taken. Spy bugs in the hall and on the stairs gave him several other views.
The separate BLADE-3s coming down the east and west stairs reached the explosive charges left in plain sight. They stopped and asked Command what they should do.
“Time to play mind games,” Todai said on their secure link. “All officers and BLADE-3 units,” Todai said on the channel, perfectly imitating Officer Mizushima’s voice, “retreat fifty meters from the explosive devices and await the ordinance disposal team. They’re inbound. ETA, nine minutes.”
Todai tried to block the actual orders from the Miyahara Security Command Center, which was for the BLADE-3s to proceed without the human officers despite the danger of the staircase being blown up and collapsing.
The BLADE-3s ignored his fake message and descended the stairs at maximum speed.
“Kuso,” Todai cursed. “They must have switched their authentication codes.“
“They know we’re in their network,” Sakura said. “You have a better chance of fooling the humans, not the machines.”
“Sakura-san,” Todai asked. “Do you want me to blow the stairs?”
“Negative.” She sent justification data. Detonation would not destroy a BLADE-3 unless debris trapped one, but that was unlikely with the limited amount of explosives they had planted. Best case, it would only slow their enemy down and block half of their four possible escape routes.
“Get ready for contact,” Todai said.
A pair of heat-masking smoke grenades clattered in the hallway outside the communications room as the incoming battle robots created concealment for their impending frontal attack.
“Blast the ceiling outside the door to the stairs with your carbines,” Todai ordered Hitomi and Yuki. “Empty your mags and get pieces of crunchy plaster all over the floor.”
Yuki and Hitomi fired. Seconds later, their guns clicked empty. Fragments of plaster lay strewn from one end of the hall to the other. The vocaloids reloaded in a blur and were back on target, Hitomi winning the race by milliseconds.
“Again,” Todai ordered. “We need more plaster on the floor.”
Yuki fired her M907 undermounted grenade launcher and blasted apart the ceiling, covering the entire hallway with debris. Todai and Hitomi glanced at her. She stared in childish glee at her grenade launcher. Thick white smoke soon cloaked everything, but the hissing smoke grenades cut out, and silence reigned.
Todai poked his JDJ rifle around the edge of the doorway, using the targeting camera, which had limited effectiveness in the chemical smoke, as it was designed to obscure targeting systems.
Sakura watched the video
feed of Todai’s rifle. He tried to see the enemy BLADE-3s as the enemy androids would likely enter the hallway from the east and west stairwells at any moment. The smoke filled the stairs, and the spy bugs lost sight of them.
A barrage of bullets fired from two rifles struck the doorframe beside Todai and entered the room, buzzing like angry 5.56mm-sized wasps. The bullets ricocheted and at least one hit the main access terminal, doing minimal damage.
Todai didn’t return fire. Had the enemy androids gone back into the stairwell rooms for cover? Or were they sneaking forward inside the smoke?
“When do we shoot back?” Yuki asked.
“Soon,” Todai said and played “Comin’ Under Fire” by Def Leppard over their shared audio channel.
The stray bullet hitting the terminal worried Sakura. The important components were in the base of the machine, well protected, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She had indeed been distracted by Oshiro and the Ghost Leech program and hadn’t followed through on all aspects of her original plan.
She sent commands, and twelve gigantic rectangular server racks lifted out of the floor between the center of the room and the entry. They would provide hard cover for the irreplaceable terminal. She rerouted the signals from the dozen servers to others. If they were destroyed, nothing would be lost, but the network would be slower. She didn’t need the feed to be perfect. She just needed it to transmit out.
Another barrage of bullets buzzed into the room, this time fired by one rifle.
“Covering fire?” Sakura asked Todai.
“One hostile android left the stairwell and made it to the side hall by the east elevator,” Todai said. He showed a map with the estimated location of the BLADE-3, only seven meters from the door they guarded.
Too close, Sakura thought, but she trusted Todai and her sisters to hold the line. Regardless, she needed to go faster and secure their tactical cyber position. She infiltrated the power grid computers serving all of the Tokyo area. She disabled any commands to shut the power stations down and took over the backup electricity generators and battery backups for the building and the ones around it.
