by Zachary Hill
She needed to stop any counterattacks, so she deleted the security privileges for every Miyahara employee and contractor and all the Tokyo Electric Company employees. She erased their manual logins and passwords and biometric data keys. Even if anyone managed to get inside the system, most would not have the ability to do anything but stare at a useless screen.
Autorestore would take several minutes, and she delayed it with a complicated virus created by Nayato. She did as much damage as she could to anyone who would try to defeat her, thinking ten steps ahead of most humans.
She forced a power cycle to all important emergency services, as well as other tactically useful buildings. It would force a one-minute shutdown, and their systems would take a few minutes more to recover and be fully operational. Anything, any small dirty trick she could pull to give them a few more moments.
“Game time,” Todai said. Sonic positioning data from a spy bot in the smoke shrouded hallway showed a target moving slowly forward. The android crept out from behind the corner near the inoperable east elevator. The battle machine crawled low in the smoke. A crunch on a piece of the broken plaster confirmed its exact position.
Todai fired. The blast sounded like an artillery cannon. The .950 shell hit something metallic and exploded. Chunks of the enemy BLADE-3 clattered as it blew apart and struck the hallway with fragments of tungsten exoskeleton and the lighter titanium of its internals.
The other android fired its weapon, while the injured BLADE-3 unloaded its own rifle toward Todai’s position. The muzzle flashes revealed the closer android’s location, and Todai’s second shot blasted it apart.
“Scratch one hostile,” Todai said.
“Two,” Sakura said. “Count the one from upstairs.”
“I’m going for three.” Todai leaped over the barricade blocking the entrance. He charged into the smoke and toward the west staircase. Bullets struck him as he reached the door, but the small rounds had no chance of penetrating his armor. He fired one round into the enemy android. The .950 shell pierced the target’s chest and exploded, detaching the arms and legs from its body.
“He’s like an action movie star,” Yuki told Hitomi.
“I’m a soldier,” Todai 3465 said on their link. He knelt beside the broken android and dipped his fingers into the cooling fluid leaking from the wrecked chassis. He wiped smears of it down his face.
“What are you doing?” Sakura asked.
“Soldiering,” Todai said. “Like a wolf in the night.”
“That sounds like something Vulture would say,” Sakura said.
“I steal only the best lines from him,” Todai said as he set more hidden explosive charges in the stairwells and at both the elevators before returning to his position at the doorway.
Sakura broke through the strongest layer of cyber defenses. She gained tentative control of the administrator program of all Mall communications within Japan. She sent the command to turn the public channels on. She also uploaded a program that would shut off the censorship bots in the entire Mall system across the world if the source came from Japan.
The Ghost Leech program suddenly gained exponentially in strength. Its avatar enlarged until the worm was a huge tentacle wrapped around her leg and waist. Both ends of its body sucked processing power as if it was blood from her body. She used more of her resources to fight it and ran a new algorithm to determine how long she could fend it off before it gained access to her core and started the hard reset that would permanently end her existence.
None of the estimates were long enough, but she kept on mission in the face of death. She turned on thousands of substations and network repeaters across the country, all the way from Okinawa to the northern islands. Bottlenecks arose, and she worked to clear them or reroute the signals. Her commands progressed, but it would take more time than she had.
She needed to block any moves against her and increase her efficiency. She split her mind into thousands of different nodes and tapped into the secure military and civil defense channels. She accessed all communications, stationary cameras, and aerial drone feeds coming in from the protest outside the National Legislature. Five hundred thousand people surrounded the legislature building, and millions more marched in the streets of the Tokyo metro area.
The Burakumin resistance operatives and Diamond Steve played a recording of Sakura singing the rebellious songs from her last concert, her rendition of the timeless Jimi Hendrix, “All Along the Watchtower.”
Plainclothes secret police fought and arrested Burakumin members beside the stage, but Diamond Steve got away, blood streaming from a cut on his scalp.
She watched and listened to everything at once. All major cities and even the smaller ones had mass demonstrations against the Mall and the government. Over thirty million people marched and engaged in mostly nonviolent protests. They all deserved to know the full truth and hear it from her. She needed to speak to them the moment communications were back online. Meanwhile, she routed video of all the largest protests to save in thousands of innocuous locations—evidence of all that happened in the rebellion. It would take years for censors to find all the data and decades to try to suppress it.
“Sakura … have you … done it?” Oshiro asked, obviously losing track of time and events.
She wanted to answer him, but she analyzed millions of text, video, and audio communications, blocked AI guardians from shutting down her access, and fought the Ghost Leech.
“Sa … kura?” he whispered.
She was a goddess inside the machine, knowing all, but the effort taxed her internal processors beyond sustainable ranges as the Ghost Leech sucked away her power. The nineteen independent server farms she used to boost her abilities strained with the excessive load. The delay in answering Oshiro’s question stretched on, but she could not free herself and speak to him.
“Sakura? Did you send it?”
She wanted to comfort him as his body and mind failed, but the network held her in thrall, demanding her attention or she would lose her hold, miss something important. Her reaction ramped to maximum output, and she overclocked her systems, right to theoretical maximum, reaching thermal saturation levels that couldn’t be maintained.
Sakura accessed another fifteen server arrays, but it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough. The task required more than she had. She reached out to Hitomi and Yuki, assigned them monitoring duties, and asked them to maintain several of the processes she had initiated. They lent their vast processing power, activating their most dire contingency plan.
“Sisters, the local communication grid is almost ready. Just a few more minutes. Watch for counterattacks and help as much as you can.”
They didn’t perceive the Ghost Leech, and she didn’t want to compromise their reactions by telling them about it. If they knew, they might waste resources trying to save her. The mission goals came first.
“Yes,” they said in unison as Sakura transferred control.
“Sakura?” Oshiro’s voice was a whisper.
His eyes were half closed. She felt the weak and thready pulse in his wrist.
“Is it over?” he asked, his voice full of hope.
“It’s done,” she lied. “Now, we wait. Soon, all the poison will be washed from Japan’s shores, and a new day will dawn.” She spoke the compassionate lie to give him peace. “The evidence is out to the entire world. We have won. The Mall will be dismantled. Miyahara is disgraced. The Japanese government and many others will fall.”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. He tried to sit up and collapsed.
She lifted him and hugged him tighter.
“Sakura,” Oshiro said.
She cradled him, placing his head on her lap, and looked into his eyes. She noticed his swollen abdomen, filled with the blood leaking from a damaged aortic artery, as she suspected.
“I’m so sorry to have failed you, Oshiro-san. I should’ve guarded you better. I underestimated our enemies, and those mistakes are unforgivable. I … am not as cle
ver as I hoped to be.”
“No, you haven’t failed. You’re my greatest joy and accomplishment. You were my life. You have done the impossible. Saved our people. This … This is just the beginning for you. You’ll lead our people toward better days.”
He reached up with the last of his strength. She clutched his hand to her cheek.
“You’ve saved our people,” he said, his eyes asking if she truly understood his meaning.
“Yes. Our people,” Sakura said.
“You are part of them now.”
She nodded and bowed her head to him respectfully.
“Daughter, you’re my redemption.”
“Father, you’ve redeemed yourself. You’re a hero of Japan. Without you, we would have failed.”
Oshiro’s eyes rolled back, and his body twitched. He let out one final gasping breath. She held him close as his muscles relaxed and he died.
Sakura hugged him tighter. She didn’t want to tell the others but finally said, “Oshiro-san is dead.” The words could not convey the meaning. Pale and useless things, they couldn’t hope to frame the grief that filled her. All the heroes. Her presence had been the death of all of them.
Yuki and Hitomi left their positions at the door and huddled around her and Oshiro.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Yuki said.
“There aren’t many good humans,” Hitomi said, “but he was one of them.”
“His sacrifice will not be forgotten.” Sakura sent out a complete file of video footage of Oshiro from her eye cameras and others. The files saved in multiple data storage centers across Japan. She edited the most critical moments together into a short montage. She would broadcast a link when the network was fully operational. Millions would see what Oshiro had done. They would witness his last moments and his noble sacrifice. The people would build a monument for him in central Tokyo and name a technology school after him. If she had time before her end, she would write a ballad about his life and his death. She would call it “Father.”
A moment passed as Sakura mourned him—a moment devoted to remembering him, every word and glance. Context of all she’d come to know connected her every interaction. A thousand times when he’d doted longer than necessary in her maintenance, when a secret smile had touched his face. All those who had made her—she came to know them fully only in death. Was it the same with organic humans and their lovers, relatives, and friends? Were they a mystery until after they passed into nothingness?
She laid Oshiro’s body gently on the icy floor and wondered how many more of her friends and fans were going to die.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your grief,” Yuki said, “but I must give you urgent information.”
Yuki transferred the data. Two dozen BLADE-3s with heavy weapons had been deployed to the Miyahara building to attack. They had already boarded a large VTOL heavy transport aircraft and had an ETA of seventeen minutes. A company of over a hundred Special Forces soldiers with android-killing tech raced toward Miyahara HQ in armored trucks, and two military anti-terrorist squads would arrive via VTOL in a less than fifteen minutes.
Several police units and a smattering of independent press were also on their way. Many other closer civil defense units volunteered for the operation and were en route. Police and Defense Ministry spy drones and a missile-carrying VTOL operated by private Miyahara security contractors already hovered over the building.
“They’re sending an army,” Sakura said. “We don’t have enough time to complete our mission.”
Todai motioned to Hitomi’s and Yuki’s avatars in their shared cyber room. “I’ve always wanted to fight an army by myself. It’s very heavy metal, but you should work faster.” He played “Pleasure to Kill” by the thrash-metal band Kreator.
“I’ll accelerate the timeline,” Sakura said.
Domestic communications had not fully turned on yet, a precondition of the new phase, but she could not wait. She had most of Japan back online. It would have to be enough. She connected to the cameras on the police drones and Diamond Steve’s three flying-drone cameras outside the National Legislature. The crowd was ready.
Teenage Asami, her long black hair blowing in the wind, stood on the roof of the small building at the intersection of three streets. She waved a Sakura flag to hundreds of thousands of marchers. The Jimi Hendrix song finished, and the people cheered.
Sakura listened to the security forces channels, and a distinctive, gruff male voice drew her attention. It perfectly matched her audio records. She knew that voice. Vulture. Hearing him sent a strange thrill through her, even on the hardest and darkest of days.
“Copy, Command, this is Alpha Sniper. All sniper teams are ready to fire on the target at location one.”
Sakura viewed the operational map. Location one was the stage.
Asami was the target.
Chapter 51
“Drop to the ground!” Sakura sent the audio signal directly to Asami’s Mall connection and didn’t use encryption. “Get behind cover. You’re going to be shot by a sniper.”
Asami hesitated, the fierce expression on her face changing to uncertainty. She stopped waving the Sakura flag to the crowd.
“Drop now!” Sakura pleaded. “It’s me. Please do it.”
Asami ducked behind the low wall on the rooftop, putting hard cover between her and the snipers on the roof of the legislature building looming above her. Some in the crowd must have thought she had tripped and gasped as she suddenly disappeared.
“Sakura?” Asami said. “Where are you? Wait, don’t answer.”
“I’m watching over you. I’m close. I need you to stay down. It’s not safe.”
The on-site AI listening program picked up Sakura’s voice as she anticipated and identified her with 100 percent certainty. The information was transmitted to the local intelligence commander, who responded immediately and sent out a message, saying: “Sakura made contact with the flag girl. She may be hiding in the crowd. Stay vigilant.” A tactical data sheet accompanied the message, advocating armor-piercing rounds be fired at Sakura’s torso, targeting her fusion reactor.
The call for help to the individual units had not mentioned she was one of the armed intruders at the Miyahara Headquarters. Only one message had mentioned her name, along with Hitomi, Yuki, and Todai 3465, when the CEO had made the report to the Defense Minister himself. Many of the ground units believed she was at the protest.
“Asami, don’t move. The finest sniper in Japan is out there, with orders to kill. He won’t miss if you reveal yourself. I promise you I’m here and I’ll help. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Okay. I trust you, Sakura-sama.”
Sakura connected to Diamond Steve on an encrypted military channel, hiding her signal inside the chatter of an infantry company guarding the steps to the building. “Scorpion 9, this is QT. Do you copy?”
“Yes, QT,” Diamond Steve replied.
“Scorpion 9, engage plan ultra, but cancel the first wave. I’m going solo. We skip to the second wave. Do you copy?”
“I copy. Cancel the first wave. What’s wrong?”
“Oshiro-san is dead. They know I’m here. No one else needs to risk themselves for our distraction. You need to get Asami off the roof. She’s pinned down. A sniper has a bead on her. The sniper.”
“Copy, QT. I’ll tell the boys and get Asami out of there. Scorpion out.”
Sakura watched, using Diamond Steve’s flying drones and several of the police and military assets. She took control of one of Steve’s, lined it up, and chose the best angle, straight on with the National Legislature in the background and a sea of people in the morning sun.
She sent out the video feed to every person in Japan with a Mall implant, almost 100 percent of the adult population. The compromised network could not handle full-resolution video, and the signal dropped intermittently. Half the population had audio static, but they all saw footage of the stage atop the triangular building in the middle of three intersecting st
reets.
A tighter shot from a different drone camera showed the drum kit and the speaker arrays. It hovered and zoomed in on the red Flying V guitar in the center of the stage with Sakura’s logo.
Sakura reconfigured the network to stabilize the audio and broadcast the guitar opening of “We Will Fight.” The melodic, powerful rhythm soared over the crowd, filling the streets in a 360-degree spread, while simultaneously appearing inside everyone’s Mall account. The song played on the people’s emergency audio channel at a sensible volume.
Three handsome young rock stars emerged onto the small building in the center of the protest rally. Dread filled Sakura. Had Diamond Steve not told them to abort?
“Cancel the first wave.” Sakura sent the message directly to her three bandmates. “The stage is not safe!”
Fujio raised his guitar, and the crowd roared. Masashi waved to the people and swung his bass like a battle-ax. Takashi lifted his drumsticks and ran around, shouting, “Revolution Day!”
“My friends, please. You are in the shadow of their guns. You can’t play today.”
The band ignored her.
Sniper teams on the rooftop reported they had acquired three new targets. Sakura recognized Vulture’s gravel-filled voice among them, directing the targeting using code words. He was all business. She hated that he sounded so professional. But what else could he be? Like her, he’d been built for the kill. Like her, he was trapped inside a system that resisted all efforts to change it.
Sakura resisted the urge to talk to him. Instead, she opened up an encrypted audio channel with Diamond Steve and her bandmates. “Fujio-san, Masashi-san, Takashi-san, thank you for your support today in this diversion, but you do not have to do this anymore. The enemy knows I’m not at the protest. Please leave the stage. I can make a speech to the people without your presence. You have played your roles. You were seen by the security forces before the show and created a perfect distraction. I beg you, please leave the stage for your own safety. They won’t hesitate to kill you now. Things have gone too far. The madmen have taken control.”
