Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 10===

The meditation lasted until four in the morning this time.

Putana Highball slowly opened her eyes.

After concluding she had completed her combination with the Second Generation Object named Sarasvati, she slowly moved her hands and legs while still bound by her harness like a butterfly trapped in a spider web. The surrounding interface writhed like tentacles as it used its infrared lasers to detect the minute changes in her skin and send signals to the digital controls.

“Hm?”

She then realized a clear discrepancy in the scenery and readings displayed in the giant screen when compared to her artificially enhanced senses acquired through the combination.

Putana chose to believe her own senses which she had honed so thoroughly.

She sent a few commands in quick succession, but something was clearly wrong.

Namely, the Object was slowly turning, but the scenery on the screen remained entirely unchanged. The familiar vision of the Object construction and maintenance facility was a fake that looped every few minutes.

“What…happened!?”

She became painfully aware that everything inside the cockpit was just series of zeroes and ones. She checked through the entire system much more quickly than a mechanical virus scanner could and swiftly found the source of the problem.

“External interference. The source code was illegally overwritten. …Dammit. A cyber attack!?”

She instantly deleted the malicious line and manually typed in the proper source code.

The data network that rivalled the data link of an entire fleet was back up and running.

The view on the large screen changed.

“Eh?”

She saw nothing but ocean in every direction. There was no land to be seen.

She was sitting exposed in the ocean with no protection from the Faith Organization.

She sensed countless gazes. Dozens of wires were attached to the air cushion float, those wires were attached to small submersibles, and unknown soldiers  were clinging to the Object, performing some unknown work.

And to top it all off, a First Generation Legitimacy Kingdom Object sat outside her main cannon’s movable range with the muzzle of its own cannon essentially pressed to the back of her head.

The Baby Magnum sent an open radio transmission to the Sarasvati.

“I will fill you with molten lead.”

She did not say where and that seemed to corner Putana Highball all the more.

“More importantly, I am much faster than you from this position. I can hit you three times in the time it takes you to turn around, so surrender. If you do, I can at least guarantee your survival.”

What had happened?

The Faith Organization Pilot Elite was so confused that she forgot to even breathe.

However, this was not a bad dream.

No matter how long she waited, she never woke up.