My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume6 Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Part 1

How many times did my body scrape along the stainless steel walls of that pit which was only a few dozen centimeters wide? No matter how much I screamed while feeling that burning pain, I couldn’t prepare myself for what was coming.

Nevertheless, the end arrived without warning.

My “cushion” was crushed and it produced an extremely raw sound, feeling, and smell.

I sensed some white flickering in front of my eyes, but that was all. I had fallen several hundred meters upside-down, but I was still alive. I didn’t even seem to have any broken bones.

“Erika.”

“Oh, Satori-kun. Could you keep your eyes closed for a little while?”

Erika’s voice sounded oddly muffled after falling head-first while holding me in her arms.

“I’ll be fine as long as my heart isn’t destroyed, but a girl still wants to avoid showing off her ugly side.”

“…”

How long did I stay like that?

30 seconds? Or more than an hour? I couldn’t seem to judge how much time had passed, but Erika eventually spoke again.

“Okay, all done. Thanks for this, Satori-kun☆”

“Erika!!”

Without thinking, I grabbed her slender shoulders and pulled my face from her large chest so I could see.

She was herself.

Even after everything that had happened, she was entirely unscathed. There was a carefree smile on her lips.

“Ahn. We had no other choice. A Zombie, Lilith, and a Silky aren’t specialized for healing and regeneration. That meant I was the only one who could act as a cushion. And since I could only hold one person, I figured it was best to drag you down with me.”

“I’m not talking about the logic of the decision! Dodge the issue any more and I really will be angry with you!!”

She gave me a gentle smile that was not at all the look of someone who had just been scolded.

“Sorry, Satori-kun. I won’t do it again.”

“Maxwell, did you record that?”

“Ehh!? You would record your family’s secrets, Satori-kun!? You’re the worst of any of us!”

“No. You looked like you had developed a taste for this, so I can’t trust that promise. Do it again and I swear I’ll never speak with you again.”

At any rate, we couldn’t just sit around at the sour-smelling bottom of the garbage chute. Some extra garbage might rain down on us from above at any moment. And that would be the same as a screw or some glass falling from a building.

The two of us crawled out of the garbage chute and found a garbage collection room just as we expected. It was still unsorted and we found ourselves on a floor that was like a shaking net. It had been flattened out to avoid any large piles and it was being taken toward a machine like a rotating roller that crushed it all. Everything from the one garbage chute led there with no chance to separate the burnable trash from the non-burnable trash, so it was likely smashed into tiny chips and then sorted by material using magnetism, static electricity, and pressurized air.

We certainly didn’t want to be caught in that, so we had to get out quickly.

However.

“This place looks deserted, but we’re one door away from the human-controlled area. We need to think up a way to avoid being found.”

“In the worst case, couldn’t you get through just fine since you’re human, Satori-kun?”

“And what about you, Erika? I can’t just ask you to wait here since someone from the human side might look in here at any time. The garbage chute collection room is a dead-end, so you’re screwed if you’re found.”

“But unlike you, I’m undead.”

She pointed at the large machine that looked like a spiky rotary press and could probably crush a small car with what I can only describe as two steam roller drums pressed together like a giant mouth.

“If anything happens, I can jump through there where the humans can’t reach me.”

“…”

“Okay, okay. I get it. Don’t give me that look. But self-destruction is a pretty useful advantage of being a Vampire.”

The way she lightly raised her hands and stuck out her tongue suggested she had not at all learned her lesson. …It was looking like I really needed to rake her over the coals later.

“…Maybe I should dig through your search history, Erika. Or maybe your online shopping records or watched video list.”

“Wait, Satori-kun. Let’s talk this out like adults.”

She grabbed my shoulders and moved her face toward me with an incredible smile. I hadn’t really expected a girl to be that worried about this and now I was legitimately curious what she had been typing into her computer!

Anyway.

When I cracked open the airtight metal door and checked outside, I saw 20 or 30 people with bloodshot eyes in a hallway narrower than a school hallway. Rather than being on the way somewhere, they seemed to have been kicked out of whatever room they had been in. It did not look like they would be going anywhere anytime soon.

We had to find our dad, stop the detonation of the engine room, and secure a method of preventing and curing the blood-sucking ticks the Echidna had intentionally left around. The Echidna had said her biology lab had everything necessary to give birth to her children, so there had to be a way of stopping it as well.

I ducked back into the garbage collection room and thought.

“Maxwell, you know where my dad is, right?”

“Sure.”

It did not look like we needed to wander Absolute Noah’s labyrinthine lower levels searching for him. We only had to think about the direct path there.

However, it would be quite difficult to travel down that narrow corridor without anyone noticing. There was nowhere to hide on those smooth walls and there were no deep shadows or darkness thanks to the halogen lights lining the ceiling like in a gym. There were pipes thicker than my arm running along the walls and ceiling like in a battleship or aircraft carrier, but that was not enough to hide behind. Not even a legendary ninja or spy would be able to sneak through there.

“There are plastic tanks and drums in the trash, but I don’t see how they could help us.”

Unfortunately, it did not look like we could construct a secret weapon by combining the things in here.

We had made our way to the lower levels, but were we stuck here?

No, wait…

I wasn’t going to accept Erika’s self-destructive ideas, but we did have an Archenemy here. She had more freedom of movement than a human.

In that case…

“Erika, I want your help.”

“Sure, sure. Leave everything to your big sis.”

“And Maxwell. Use your simulator for a thought experiment.”

“Please give me specific parameters.”

“It’s a light experiment.”

Soon, Erika and I were traveling down the narrow corridor together. We of course passed by the crazed humans, but none of them noticed us.

Now, what exactly had we done?

Hint: there were pipes and powerful halogen lights on the ceiling.

“They really aren’t noticing us. Oops.”

“(Erika.)”

“(Sorry. I’m not supposed to talk too loud, am I?)”

It was a little embarrassing, but I had my arms and legs wrapped around her torso to tightly hold on. Given the method we were using, she needed all her Vampire limbs free. And my muscles were too weak to use this method. That meant I was stuck clinging to her like a koala with my head pressed into her large chest.

…But just as she had said, no one noticed us doing this.

Well, that was probably due to the assumption that people would walk on the floor and hide behind things sticking out from the wall.

As you probably guessed, Erika was using her arms and legs to crawl along like a spider.

We were on the ceiling.

Yes, with the thick pipes running along the walls and ceiling, there were plenty of handholds. And thanks to the powerful halogen lights shining down, no one could see us even if they looked up.

That said, traveling along the roof while clinging to it like a spider would be impossible even for a pro climber. Not to mention with me clinging to you. This required her Vampire strength which was said to be 20 times that of a human.

It helped a lot that Maxwell had control of the security cameras.

I was only concerned about the senses other than sight.

For example, sound and smell.

“(Still…)”

I knew it was dangerous, but I couldn’t help but speak under my breath.

The scene below was worse than I had imagined.

The stench of blood was oppressively strong. There was smoke from some kind of herb. The blood came from the magic circles drawn red on the walls and floor like graffiti and the smoke was probably meant to be exorcising incense. I had no idea if they were legitimate or not, but I could hear what sounded like chanted sutras. Those noises and smells masked our presence, but I wasn’t at all happy about it.

It was not a desire to fight that was about to burst here.

Anxiety.

Unrest.

Impatience.

Terror.

Uncontrollable emotions clashed between these people and the panic continued to grow as if it were infectious. It took physical form and appeared all over this area.

This was the most unstable and dangerous state for humans.

It was a return of the terror of the witch trials that had once overrun Salem.

“Do it! Get them!!”

“Dammit, what the hell!?”

I heard shouting through a cracked metal door. Had someone mistaken their own shadow for a monster? Or could the humans not trust each other, leading to a fight?

Seeing these people only sinking further as they searched for a peace of mind forever out of their reach felt a lot like seeing the residents of hell itself. Even if every single Archenemy in the world went extinct, I doubted these people could stop this suspicion-driven conflict.

“What is happiness?” said Erika. “From a global perspective, these people were born in wealthy countries, never wanted for the necessities or even luxuries, and were even chosen to join Absolute Noah to protect them from the end of the world…and yet now that the end has arrived, they continue the conflict in order to avoid having the most unhappy life of all. If the children who work so hard to survive the hardships of poverty and war were to see it, what would they think of this utterly twisted palace?”

Everyone’s lives were different.

Kings, nobles, and commoners all had their own worries, but what comfort was that?

The people who had boarded Noah’s Ark had done the right thing. That had allowed them to survive and create a new world afterwards.

But would someone with a truly, truly kind heart have accepted the invitation to board the ark? Everyone who had remained on the land because they refused to abandon someone else close to them had been wiped out. Isn’t that why the world is the way it is? It became a world of only what is “right”, a world of people lacking in kindness. That wandering thought occurred to me here.

“(Let’s find dad.)”

“(Yes, let’s do that.)”

Erika and I crawled along the ceiling with guidance from Maxwell via the card-sized car navigation system.

Our destination was clear: the engine room.

That was the core of Absolute Noah. It was the most dangerous and most mysterious facility.

It was the source of vast amounts of energy.

If misused, the blast would not be contained by Absolute Noah’s depth and the explosion would not just obliterate Kukyou City but take several prefectures along with it, splitting the Japanese Archipelago in two.

When my stepmom had told us about it, a certain image had come to mind.

“(So is this a rocket or spaceship? Or maybe a submarine or aircraft carrier?)”

“(There are nuclear rockets, aren’t there? I thought those had a lot of problems, though.)”

But having Absolute Noah launched into space or submerged in the depths of the ocean would not help us here. In fact, it would only create a giant inescapable combat arena.

We had gotten this far with Erika crawling upside-down along the ceiling, but now we had to pass through a door.

“(Maxwell, I want to move the guards from the door. Sound an alarm a short distance away. Something that won’t cause too much of a problem.)”

“Sure. I will limit it to water leaking from a pipe.”

A deep buzzer rang and the men grumbling in front of the door left their post and walked down the corridor.

That method would eventually stop working.

To make the most of this opportunity, Erika swiftly jumped down from the ceiling.

“Bwah.”

“Did you enjoy hugging your big sis for the first time in forever?”

…To be honest, my pride was grateful that I had avoided a nosebleed. I felt like I had enjoyed a lifetime’s worth of her softness.

Anyway, we worked together to turn the round handle of the airtight door and slipped into the space beyond.

There we found…

“You’re kidding, right?”

It was a very large space.

I don’t just mean that horizontally. It had to cover 4 or 5 stories’ worth of vertical space. A bunch of halogen lights hung from the ceiling at the top, so the room was as bright as midday. There was a complex arrangement of wire mesh and steel beam scaffolding that looked something like a giant jungle gym or the beer cases seen during festivals that held countless bottles. That metal cage contained a group of structures lined up in the center of the tall space.

I honestly expected to find giant nuclear reactors or rocket boosters. That was all I could think of that would quickly produce such massive amounts of energy.

But I should have thought about it more carefully.

What did my dad research? He had looked after the Archenemies in the Bright Cross’s underground facility, so what kind of work was he being forced to do in Absolute Noah’s engine room? Even that Echidna had decided it was beyond her, so she had avoided using the blood-sucking ticks and had the humans pull the trigger of destruction on their own.

I found the answer to it all here.

Those lined-up objects were giant masses of muscle fiber.

They were beating as they carried a liquid into thick tubes that extended every which way. They were…giant…hearts?

This shocking discovery left me feeling faint, so Erika supported me from the side.

“What is this?”

They were hearts.

But they were very different from human ones. There was of course the extraordinary size, but the structure itself seemed too simple. And they were translucent, so I could see the muddy-colored liquid moving through them.

“What kind of hearts are these?”

“The Echidna used blood-sucking ticks, so these might be based on ones from small bugs. Just like her other lab equipment.”

“These aren’t her children either…? Even after going this far?”

“These were meant to be blown away as part of her negotiation with the gods. I doubt she would want to include her adorable children in that.”

These were more than just creepy. What if you took a tiny bug and made it larger than a human? It was such a horror cliché that the effect had worn off and it was used more often in action stories, but had she actually done it!?

Archenemy Echidna would create everything she needed using her lab. That could be blood-sucking ticks used to control immortals or it could be herself who she had remade time and again to acquire a supercomputer-level brain. And that lab had originally been developed to give birth to children too large and violent to carry herself.

But.

Could it be?

“Had she replaced parts of Absolute Noah itself with biological pieces of simple bugs?”

Had my stepmom, the Banshee, the Sylpheed, and the others realized her invasion had reached this far? I mean, this was just too much. If the book of prophecy deciding their course of action and the ark meant to overcome the disaster had both been replaced with the Echidna’s biological parts, then the entire Absolute Noah organization was in checkmate, wasn’t it? She had hollowed out everything, so it was just like discovering the city infrastructure that supported your life had been entirely replaced with foreign goods at some point!

“Satori-kun, this way.”

Erika led me toward the jungle gym of scaffolding. The beating of the giant translucent hearts pounded creepily at my mind more than my ears. The engine room was so tall that traveling along the ceiling would be difficult. But there were a lot of blind spots thanks to the labyrinthine arrangement of scaffolding and stairs, so unlike the narrow corridor from before, we could play hide-and-seek like normal.

“Maxwell, let’s get to my dad. Pin his location.”

“Sure.”

But if we simply followed the pathways, we would likely be spotted by a worker (or a vet or entomologist?). Erika dodged the guards and descended toward our destination with an ever-changing route of sometimes clinging to the underside of the scaffolding and sometimes jumping over a railing for a shortcut down.

I heard a few frightened voices on the way.

“Hurry, hurry!”

“The Archenemies will break right through that barricade if they take it seriously. It’s all over once you’re bitten.”

“…I’m not going to eternally follow their orders without even death as an option. If it comes to it, I’ll take it into my own hands.”

Take it into their own hands.

Remaining pure, without being controlled.

…It was not normal for that thought process to be running rampant as a kind of virtue. They were stuck in a losing battle. They should be saying there was something wrong with this! They should be wishing to live! Couldn’t they see these emotions had been unnaturally injected into them!?

“…”

Vampires bit someone, usurped their soul, and controlled their mind.

Erika had been silent for a while. So was I as I listened in. What was she feeling while targeted by such unreasonable fear, rather than anger or scorn?

“You have arrived near the target,” said Maxwell.

“Erika.”

Once we arrived at the scaffolding on a certain level, I set my feet on the wire mesh floor (because Erika let me down).

I looked around but saw no sign of my dad. Instead, I saw a small prefab room within the labyrinth of scaffolding. It was probably the control room for the cranes and lifts I could see here and there.

I approached while staying low so I wouldn’t be noticed through the glass covering one side.

Was my dad or someone else inside there? Even if he was inside, he might not be alone.

“Maxwell.”

“Warning: there are two people other than the target.”

“…”

While I pressed against the door to try to hear the voices inside, Erika stayed low and approached the window. Was she planning on breaking the glass and rushing inside!? I wanted to tell her to stop, but that would only give away our presence to the people inside.

I could not even click my tongue.

My heart pounded in my chest and sweat soaked my body as I pressed against the metal door.

If this was going to happen, I had to prepare myself. Since I could not stop Erika, I had no way of switching to a different set of rails.

“…”

“Really? …What…”

I had trouble making out their voices at first, but my ears gradually adjusted and I could actually hear the people inside.

“I don’t want to know much. Just what you injected into the third heart group.”

“…The artificial adrenaline and steroids as per the list. Isn’t that the answer we all calculated out together, Chief Matsuyama?”

“I don’t have time to deal with your games!!”

I heard the loud sound of a chair or table rattling.

“Listen, Amatsu-kun. If your injection had followed the prescription, the heartrate should have already passed the critical point. But the blood pressure is stable and showing no sign of change! This could only happen if someone had injected them with a tranquilizer, so I want to know what kind and how much. I need accurate info!! Otherwise we have no way of removing it from the blood!!”

“I have no idea what you are talking about, but if a foreign substance was mixed in, why not try dialysis?”

“Are you still saying that? If that was enough, I wouldn’t be interrogating you here!! We require the accurate injection data because you screwed it all up!!”

…I had wondered why Maxwell was not sending us the security camera footage, but this explained it.

The conversation seemed like a mix of biology and nuclear physics, but the basic nuance got through to me. This was part of the lab as well. One side wanted to send the giant bug hearts out of control while my dad was trying to keep them stable.

Speech bubbles danced on the card-sized car navigation system.

“It seems simply placing a heavy burden on the parallelized hearts will not cause an explosion. Unless they produce the specific values desired with the appropriate synchronization and chain reaction conditions, they might die of shock and simply cease beating instead of detonating.”

“And I guess my dead essentially randomized the password so not even the original user can use it.”

That messed with the other side’s plans because they had to remove and neutralize the tranquilizer before injecting the cardiotonic again.

…My dad was trying to act all cool at his age. But it was all useless now that he was caught.

Erika had arrived below the window and she made a circle with her right hand’s thumb and forefinger. Was that the okay sign or the money gesture? Damn, we really should have played an FPS together to study!!

And before I could figure out what she meant, she took action. She stood up and…oh, crap. Was she really breaking through the glass? Right then and there? It was too soon!!

“Oh, honestly!!”

I kicked the metal door as hard as I could to make a loud noise. Had that distracted everyone inside? I couldn’t see the result as Erika shattered the window and entered the prefab control room.

A cacophony of destruction followed.

“Warning,” said Maxwell.

“I know! Maxwell, this door opens inwards, right? When the people inside run this way, use your security privileges to deactivate the electronic lock!”

“? You don’t want to lock them inside?”

“Let me fight too.”

The card reader beeped and the LED changed from red to green.

I immediately turned the doorknob and kicked the metal door. I felt a dull sensation through the steel panel and someone ended up rolling on the floor after trying to flee from Erika.

“Nice one, Satori-kun.”

This was no time to feel embarrassed. While the doctor or scientist rolled around in pain, my sister’s heel dug quite forcefully into the center of his face.

Our dad had his arms and legs tied to a random folding chair with wire. He had bruises on his face. When I saw that, I stomped on the gut of the middle-aged man lying unconscious on the floor.

Our dad could barely move, but he did seem panicked.

“What are you-…no, how did you get here!?”

“You and mom can lecture Erika later.”

With that, I removed the wires digging tightly into his wrists.

“Warning: workers are headed your way after hearing the commotion. There are 30 to 40 of them. At least some of them are armed with guns.”

“What about this guy?”

If those were standard equipment, the man convulsing on the ground would also have one. There was indeed a black glistening handgun in his belt, just like in a movie, but I had no intention of touching it.

Instead, Erika pulled out the handgun and messed with the safety switch and magazine.

“A .45 full-auto custom… The bullets are made from sub-zero-treated consecrated silver that was soaked in supercooled holy water while it hardened. With these, they can probably hold me back by just firing enough that at least one shot is bound to hit.”

“I don’t really get it, but are you saying even you’d have trouble in a head-on fight?”

“More or less.”

In that case, it was obvious humans like our dad and me could never hope to accomplish anything.

“The enemy is estimated to arrive in less than 180 seconds,” said Maxwell. “What are my instructions?”

“…”

What weapons did we have?

We had to set aside the reality (or lack thereof) of a shootout like in a Hollywood movie. I had a Vampire older sister and a simulator that controlled the security system. I could cheat like crazy.

“Maxwell, check the fire-fighting equipment.”

“Sure.”

“And, Erika, sorry about making you fight back-to-back battles, but I’m relying on you.”

“Well, I am best suited for the task. But don’t forget that I’m still a girl waiting for her prince to arrive☆”

“And finally, dad.”

“Y-yeah…?”

“I tried to choose the safest path for you, but you could still die if you screw it up. No matter what we do, the odds of that happening are greatest for us humans. So prepare yourself.”

Outside the broken window, I caught glimpses of men in work jumpsuits and lab coats on the scaffolding. If one of them succumbed to the pressure and started firing randomly, it could cause a panic and send a hail of bullets raining down on us.

The phone for an internal line hidden within the control room’s many control panels began to ring. My dad pressed the speakerphone button and simple words came out.

“I don’t know who has taken that place, but we are aware of the oddity. We will wait 10 seconds, so disarm yourself and step outside. Otherwise we will turn the building into Swiss cheese.”

“(.45 caliber consecrated silver can fire right through the prefab walls. And they have to know that.)”

That meant they could slaughter everyone inside if they fired a full-auto barrage from outside without leaving any room to dodge.

But it was too bad for them.

The same conditions applied to us. We did not need to step outside the control room to fight. And it didn’t matter how many dozens or hundreds we were up against.

If I was being greedy, I would have asked for the window to be intact, but what was done was done.

We had to end this before their countdown was over.

“Maxwell.”

“Sure.”

“Follow the task. …Scatter fire-fighting carbon dioxide to bring them all down!!”

Chemical plants and server rooms could not use water, so they would stop fires with nitrogen or carbon dioxide gas instead of sprinklers.

And the balance of the air was more sensitive than people thought, so just a 10% difference in the oxygen level could knock people out.

As soon as a white smoke obscured the view, I tackled my sister and dad to the floor. I didn’t want some randomly fired shots to hit us. I heard a surprised voice from the phone that I could no longer remember the location of.

“Wha-!? Cough, damn you…!!”

I heard sporadic dry bursting sounds and felt the shockwave of something hitting the wall nearby, but that was all. It was not as intense a hail of gunfire as they had threatened. They had not even had time to squeeze their index fingers.

“This will knock everyone out. Including dad and me. But whoever remains conscious to the end is the strongest of us all. And it doesn’t matter how many of them there are if they’re collapsed on the floor.”

“You idiot. Is that a child’s voice? Oxygen builds up in the blood. Cough, just like poison resistance, the bigger your build and the greater your weight, the higher your capacity. Pant, pant. A child will never be the last one standing!”

Oops. They could hear me while it was on speakerphone.

But they were too naïve.

“…It may have been unfair to not tell you this.”

“What…?”

“I have – cough – a Vampire older sister.”

“!?”

“And…I’ve never seen anything saying…Vampires are weak to nitrogen or carbon dioxide…”

I felt dizzy. My head hurt.

My vision flashed in and out like a dying fluorescent light, so it looked like I would be dropping out pretty soon.

“Maxwell… Once everyone but Erika has been neutralized, reactivate the ventilation fan. Get the incombustible gas out of here…”

I could not see the response message.

…My blurring vision scattered and I no longer felt like I was breathing.

I awoke to the sensation of someone gently shaking my shoulder.

“…ri-kun. Satori-kun.”

“Uuh…”

My entire head was throbbing like it was swelling out from within. How long had it been? 5 minutes? 5 hours? I couldn’t even hazard a guess. I was propped up like a sick person and I noticed the white smoke had entirely vanished.

“I have finished tying up everyone in this…third heart group? Well, let’s just call it the engine room. But the corridors outside are still an unknown, so staying here would not be a good idea. Since we managed to find dad, I think we should leave as soon as possible.”

“Y-yes. No, wait.”

I shook a head that felt far too heavy to be mine.

“…Are you feeling light-headed too, Erika? The Echidna must have hid a method of preventing and healing the blood-sucking ticks here on the lower levels so the humans would not be affected. If we don’t locate and secure that emergency safety, we can’t save the Banshee, the Sylpheed, and the others.”

Erika and I turned toward our dad.

He raised his hands a little.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of that. What are these ticks?”

“They’re 0.12mm, probably making them the smallest fang users in the business.”

I began thinking while explaining the situation to him. This was that Echidna we were talking about. Had she given birth to an Archenemy specialized for prevention and treatment? She was powerful, but not almighty. Was that all she could do…?

“Erika, are there any Archenemies with a special healing skill? Something that could be used for a defense method in a lab…”

“Well…if you want to focus on the healing of wounds and antidotes to poisons while exclude Vampires and others that make you undead, then there’s the Unicorn, the Phoenix, and the Japanese mermaid. There aren’t many of them, but there are some.”

…But all of those seemed too big and noticeable for something to remain on the lower levels ruled by the human side and their anti-Archenemy mass hysteria. I felt like this had to be something that could hide easily by turning invisible or passing through walls or something.

“A Caladrius.” Our dad started saying something weird. “I heard a small bird chirping near the vents. Even if people can’t enter the vents, a bird could create a nest out of wire hangars like crows do in the city.”

“What is a Caladrius?”

“It is an Archenemy that looks like a small bird, but stops by hospital windows and absorbs the sickness within. Although if the Caladrius cannot absorb the sickness, that proves it is an incurable disease, so in some regions it is apparently seen as a sign of death.”

Was that like how the Banshee was hated as the bearer of death even though she only sniffed out the scent of death and wept?

…But that was perfect.

It was small enough to hide anywhere and it specialized in healing. It was exactly the kind of Archenemy the Echidna would want. It would make perfect sense if she had given birth to a special one that acted as a vaccine for the blood-sucking ticks.

“Then did the Echidna actually give birth to the Caladrius? Did she create that adorable child using her lab or her own belly?”

“No.” My dad raised an objection. “It probably has a similar function, but it is not actually that. For one thing, if everything here was her doing, I doubt she would give birth to a new life with the things she was spreading around.”

“What…? But weren’t these giant bug hearts originally part of her lab? Weren’t they symbols of how many children she has?”

“Her lab, hm? These are too powerful to act as a surrogate mother. Even if you could create a life within them, the soul would remain in the womb even after cutting out the child’s body. If that was a disposable lab, she might have been able to give the child freedom by cutting away the flesh surrounding it. But that would just be a lump of flesh that crawls around. And as an immortal, it could not die. It would never desire the specs that the Echidna herself had planned out. She could not create a Caladrius even if she tried to. This was never a lab meant to give birth to children. It was designed as a weapon.”

“…”

“If the Echidna here is the one that did not meet the fate seen in the legends, I can more or less guess what is going on here. She wants an even stronger child. One so strong that no hero can defeat it. …If continually building up her lab can never achieve that, then she might want to sweep the world clean, eliminate all of the dangerous heroes, and leave behind a safe environment for her children. In that case, this ark is only in her way.”

…I couldn’t believe it.

It all seemed to make sense. It did seem like a way to take revenge. And that was what made it so frightening. I mean, this wouldn’t work. The heroes had attacked the monsters because they were seen as dangerous. Her attempt to protect her children would only invite a greater threat to them. The Echidna would only be further attacked and her battle would never end.

My dad rubbed his stubbly chin.

“Either way, you would likely see a similar effect even if it was part of her lab. This thing shaped like a small bird should be the key.”

“Then let’s leave the engine room and head to the vent with the bird’s nest. Dad, where did you hear the chirping?”

“Nearby. It’s less than 50 meters from the engine room’s top-level door.”

…That was a huge number for something within the same building or vehicle, but it did not seem that odd inside Absolute Noah.

“But how do we get the people away?” asked Erika. “I got here carrying Satori-kun, but the ceiling route might be difficult with dad as well…”

“Eh? In that case…”

People would be watching the engine room’s doors after all that gunfire, but we needed to pass through that narrow corridor without being seen. I couldn’t think of any option other than the ceiling.

“No, this might actually work.”

“Dad?”

“If Yurina’s suggestion was approved, then Maxwell should be in control of the security. That’s how you activated the incombustible gas earlier, right? Then we just have to use the equipment against them.”

My dad pointed straight up.

And he explained.

“We are deep underground with no windows. Shut off the lights and ignore the requests for emergency lights and everything will be covered in a darkness so deep no one can see you even if you grab them by the nose. Then a Vampire’s night vision will come in handy.”

Now that he mentioned it…

Even if people were gathered in front of the metal door like a crowded train, we could slip into the crowd once they could not see each other. When trapped in a cage with ferocious beasts, the safest thing was to be mistaken for one of the beasts.

“But won’t some of them use flashlights or cellphone backlights?”

“That’s fine. With everyone crowded in together, their bodies will block the light. It’s like sticking a light in a thicket and turning it on. You don’t have to worry about everyone being able to see unless light shines down evenly from above.”

It was time to double check what we had to do.

First, we had to climb the 4 or 5 stories’ worth of engine room scaffolding to reach the metal door at the very top. Once we shut off the lights and filled the lower levels in darkness, we would use the confusion to open the metal door, hide within the crowd, and reach the duct containing the nest for the small bird based on the Caladrius. It sounded like the giant translucent bug hearts could not be detonated easily due to my dad messing with the chemicals, so we would then head up and free the Archenemies from the blood-sucking ticks’ control.

It was in sight.

The Echidna had messed everything up, but it finally looked like we could end this.

Or so I thought.

A moment later, something else arrived.

“Really, humans are such ugly creatures it makes you wonder if god really loved them at all.”

An unpleasant-smelling muddy-colored mass fell from directly above.

“Satori-kun!!”

Erika tugged on my arm and I rolled across the wire mesh pathway surrounding the top of the bug hearts. A heavy mass had fallen where I had been standing.

It had a muddy sticky liquid over its head and it had originally been a symbol of decadent beauty. It had reflective white skin and long hair the color of sweet milk tea. It was a combination of a beautiful woman and a giant snake that sparkled with different rainbow colors depending on the angle.

“The Echidna!? How!?”

She only stood there, but that was enough to cover the wire mesh floor and metal railings with brown scales. They throbbed like internal organs. …Her weaponized cradle was already spreading.

That woman had a more oppressive presence than the giant translucent bug hearts filling this space. Was that because they were no more than a part of her lab, no matter how large they might be?

This was none other than Charlotte Fregula who had agitated the humans into a panic that locked all Archenemies out of Absolute Noah’s lower levels. If the humans saw all Archenemies as targets of fear, then I doubted they would let her in, so how had she gotten here when she was so messy and conspicuous?

Wait.

Messy?

“Did you come here through the blood vessels connected to the giant hearts?”

“They are circulating 2 tons of fluid every second. As long as you have an immortal body capable of enduring the water pressure, it can carry you here before you even run out of breath.”

But why had the Echidna herself come here?

…This was something she could not entrust with the other Archenemies. When controlled by the blood-sucking ticks, the others could not use their special skills like a Mermaid’s song or a Banshee’s prophecies. This area had originally been full of humans. Sending in an Archenemy weakened by the ticks would only get them surrounded and ganged up on. And if they brought the tiny ticks with them, it could spread the infection to the humans and prevent them from doing their precise work. So she had been forced to come here herself.

If she felt such an urgent need to put out this fire, then we must have been right. The small bird modeled after the Caladrius was somewhere on the lower levels of Absolute Noah and we could use that to retrieve the Archenemies from the blood-sucking ticks. Once the Echidna’s control system crumbled, they would stop applying needless pressure to the humans who feared the immortal. Then things would gradually calm down!

The end was within sight and we didn’t have to hurt anyone else. Not among the humans or the Archenemies.

Echidna.

Charlotte Fregula.

As long as we could get past the battle with her! We could free the Banshee, the Sylpheed, and the others from the bonds of the blood-sucking ticks!!

“You falsely believe that there is always a correct answer within the options available to you. That in itself is insolence, human.”

With a look of utter displeasure, the Echidna brought her hands behind her back.

And she pulled out…

“Sub…machineguns!?”

“Satori-kun!!”

She pulled out two submachineguns which were even more brutal than what those doctors or scientists had had.

Erika grabbed me and jumped to the side. She did not follow the wire mesh pathway. She jumped from pathway to pathway while clearing the entire sections containing giant bug hearts.

But that did not matter to the Echidna.

We did manage to get behind a large lift, but she still pulled both triggers.

With a series of dry popping sounds, orange sparks scattered from the walls and railings. Then something inexplicable happened.

“Gh!?”

After Erika groaned and doubled over, I saw a dark red hole in the upper arm of her gothic dress.

“Did you forget what I did to my own brain!?” roared the Echidna.

Erika grabbed my arm and threw herself over the railing, but it changed nothing. No matter what kind of acrobatics she attempted, each time I heard gunshots and saw sparks, a hole opened in her side and then her thigh!

“That woman…!!”

“Warning: After repeatedly and calculatedly expanding her mental abilities, the Echidna’s brain has reached the level of a planetary simulator. She is likely performing predictive ballistic calculations and then using ricochets to target you from multiple angles.”

“On the planetary level!? Then there’s no hope of escaping these pinball shots! You can only reproduce a single city, Maxwell, so the difference in power is too great!!”

Landing on the wire mesh pathway below was the most Erika could manage. She immediately leaned on the railing.

“Ah, ahh.”

She clenched her teeth.

But she could not hold it in.

“Aghh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“Erika? Erika!!”

What was this?

It was like she was suffering from a poison. What was it she had said? .45 caliber consecrated silver? Was that the reason!?

“Again, have you forgotten?” said the voice from above. “I am the Echidna, an Archenemy who can procure whatever I might need. Including everything my adorable children need.”

…Could it be?

Was that what the bullets fired from the submachineguns were!?

“Ghh!!”

Erika had to force herself. She dug her fingernails into her upper arm, tore the bullet out along with a chunk of flesh around it, and tossed it aside.

It was…

It fell through the gaps in the wire mesh, but from the glimpse I caught…it looked like a small hermit crab?

The rifling of the gun spun the solid and sharp tip of the shell like a drill to stab deep into the target’s flesh and then it used its claws and mouth to tear through their flesh from within.

Was this another piece of lab equipment? What was it this time? A drill to break through a thick eggshell? The wire and thread to stop internal bleeding? Either way, what would happen if these stayed in your body!?

Erika did her side next.

When she started to reach for her thigh, her slender shoulders jumped. No, her entire body was convulsing!

“Akhah! Ughhh…”

She could not remain standing, so she leaned against the railing and slid down to a sitting position. Something bumped against her leg while she did.

Was it a toolbox?

“Satori…-kun?”

“Erika.”

“Please…pull it out. Before the infection enters my body…pull out the contaminated…bullet…!!”

“!?”

With an especially intense convulsion, she kicked the toolbox aside, scattering the tools within: a hammer, a saw, a crowbar, a screwdriver, etc.

She gave a small nod while soaked with sweat.

I had no idea what the right thing to do was, but I was caught up in the moment. The Caladrius was only a guarantee for the blood-sucking ticks. If it didn’t work on these hermit crabs, there might be no freeing Erika once she was fully infected. I grabbed a large flathead screwdriver, raised it, stopped, squeezed my eyes shut, held my breath, and…

I swung it down.

My stomach turned from the soft sensation I felt in my wrist. But it wasn’t enough. Just stabbing it in wasn’t the end. I recalled the turban shell cooked in its own shell I had eaten at a beachside restaurant. You twisted your wrist and forced the contents out!

Dammit.

And I had sworn I wouldn’t.

I had sworn I would never turn a blade on her again!!

“Dammit, dammit, goddammit!!”

Time seemed to slow to a crawl during that hellish process. My hands were once more soaked in her blood.

And this would not free her.

“I can fire as many shots as needed.”

Our execution was announced from an unseen position far overhead.

Are you…kidding?

Just once was enough to wear down my very soul, so how much more was that monster woman going to make me do it!?

“Did you think you could solve everything on your own? Did you think justice was always on your side and you could use that to suppress your opponent as much as you liked? Quite the hero, aren’t we? It’s time you paid for being so conceited.”

“Right back at you. You want to avenge your children who you yourself ranked? And you’re going to mess with so many other lives to do it? There’s no way in hell justice is on your side! You claim you’ll have a chance at revenge when the destruction of the world causes the gods to act, but you’re just relying on the stories of the ark and you have no actual proof or experiments to back it up!!”

I wanted to get along with humans and Archenemies alike, so I had refused to accept the Bright Cross or Absolute Noah’s methods that needlessly took so many lives.

But the Echidna was different from them.

They had caused so much harm in order to protect human society from infection or to overcome the global Calamity, but they had still been looking to the future. No matter how selfish they had been, there were people they wanted to protect.

This decadent Echidna was different.

She wanted thorough and complete destruction first and foremost. If she could accomplish something with that, she would snatch that up afterwards. In other words, it was secondary. I had my doubts she truly believed she could defeat the gods and heroes and acquire a safe environment. Because if she lost herself in her own story, she did not have to suffer any longer.

Someone had to stop this. There were no smiles at the end of the Echidna’s path. No, not even for her.

But what exactly could I do?

If I obeyed this feeling and just ran out there, I knew I would not accomplish much of anything. The Echidna herself had all the designs of her lab and her brain rivaled a planetary simulator. I wanted a way to stand up to that. Wasn’t there anything!?

“Wait.”

Just then, I heard another voice from overhead, but this was not the Echidna.

“Do not touch my children without my permission. Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

…Dad?

Erika and I fell silent in confusion.

And then…

Bang, bang, bang!!

“Dammit!! Dad!?”

It happened so quickly. That damn Echidna had pulled the trigger toward our dad!

After taking so much damage, Erika’s wounds had yet to recover. But if we stayed in one place, we would be a sitting duck. I lent her my shoulder and we searched for stairs back up to the higher level. The gunfire continued all the while. The submachineguns never seemed to stop. Even without those special infectious bullets that rivalled the blood-sucking ticks, that would be more than enough to destroy a human body beyond recognition!!

“…?”

Erika let out a questioning breath and looked up from my shoulder.

“What is it, Erika?”

“Well…something isn’t right.”

“?”

“Isn’t she shooting way too much? With the biology lab bullets and the perfect simulator, the very first bullet should kill a human no matter what they do…”

We looked up again. The deafening roar had yet to stop. But…the nuance seemed different somehow? It kind of sounded like the Echidna was panicking.

Erika and I finally found some stairs and climbed up.

We took it one step at a time.

And at the top, we found…

“What’s wrong, Archenemy? Are your prized predictive ballistic calculations failing you? Or are the lab bullets you created nothing but duds?”

…What was that?

That was my dad standing in the open space in the middle of a metal wire mesh pathway. But how? He had no cover whatsoever and she was firing so much, but he didn’t have a scratch on him! Even if she was protecting me at the time, a Vampire like Erika had failed to avoid the perfect accuracy of those pinball shots!

Our dad did not hold any kind of weapon. He only waved a blue tarp like a matador. And that tarp was full of holes…

Was he using that?

Whether it was a piece of plywood or a goldfish tank, a bullet’s path was slightly bent when it pierced some kind of obstacle. But with just that? And this wasn’t just a theoretical concept. He really was standing up to full-auto fire with that!

“Something…isn’t right…”

Just by standing there, that bizarre being covered the surrounding wire mesh floor and steel beam pillars with brown scales that soon began throbbing. The Echidna had long magazines inserted into her submachineguns, but even she had her eyes wide with shock. She carried a decadent beauty and her sweet milk tea hair and snake body gave off a rainbow shine.

“I’ve fired more than 200 shots, so how can not even one of them have hit!? And I’m not firing at random. Each individual shot should be following a deadly route to seal off every last one of your options!!”

“Yet none of that is happening. So perhaps there is an error in your calculations.”

“…”

The Echidna fell silent.

But not because she was seriously considering that possibility.

“…Impossible. I made myself a part of the lab for my adorable children, so I have gained a brain rivalling a planetary simulator. I am history’s greatest computer that can perfectly calculate the Calamity! A simple, single-generation lifeform’s brain could never outdo my calculations!!”

“But that still leaves you at the level of a supercomputer. In the field of AI competitions, people might be desperate to read as much data on the opponent AI as possible, including their chess or shogi records, but the human brain is not that bad a thing. In a one-on-one match with no prior learning, that is played in real time rather than taking turns, and with each player’s pieces placed upside-down, humans are still able to defeat computers.”

Was he serious?

Was this real?

This was the world’s greatest planetary simulator which held the future of 7 billion people in its hands, but our dad was fighting it like a pro shogi player challenging a supercomputer!?

“Have you forgotten? I was a Bright Cross researcher and I was a heretic who specialized handling Archenemies like you. …I don’t mean to brag about my bizarre skills, but a doctor always knows more about the patient’s body than the patient themselves. I know your specs better than you do. It would be nice if you thought about what it means for me to challenge you despite that.”

He was not like my Vampire older sister or my Zombie little sister.

Nor was he like my stepmom, Demon Lord Lilith.

He had no physical strength, he had no special paranormal abilities, and he had could not infect anyone.

But he could still challenge her?

Had humans always possessed such frightening power!?

“…You’re bluffing. You are only trying to confuse me to lower my accuracy. There is no way you have the specs necessary!”

“Maybe so, maybe not. But how about I help you calm your mind while I am at it. As a free service.”

She responded with gunfire, but the result did not change. The blue tarp flipped around in a bewitching way and our dad continued talking.

“One: The best Archenemy countermeasure begins with observation. Discover the discrepancy between the legends and the reality. In that since, your actions are extremely basic. No matter how good your calculations are, you still hold the gun in front of you and peer down the sight before firing. You do not use the two submachineguns independently. Ultimately, you are still visually observing your surroundings and eliminating any margin of error. Simply put, you cannot fire if you shut your eyes.

“Two: Time continues to pass while we converse like this. You could even say I was intentionally stalling for time. Of course, that is no more than suicide for me while exposed to your gunfire, but it provides someone else with an opportunity. Yes, for example, someone who can heal their wounds quite quickly.

“Three: Since I am going to the effort of explaining this all aloud, there is someone I want to share this with. But, Charlotte, that person is not you. Now, have you figured out who the star is yet? It of course is not this dejected middle-aged man. I know how to act my age, unlike you. I am not that immature.”

“…!?”

The Echidna twisted her light brown and rainbow-sparkling snake body to turn around. More specifically, she aimed the two submachineguns toward my Vampire older sister whose wounds had healed during that long chat.

But our dad was focused elsewhere.

“Satori, I have already given you the answer.”

“Maxwell, the lights!!”

I shouted into the card-sized car navigation system.

Immediately, the halogen lights on the ceiling went dead.

Their light had been like the midday sun, but that was replaced with utter darkness.

Within that, someone pushed me to the floor.

I reached out but she was no longer there. No, I couldn’t find anyone there. That Eastern European Queen was the one and only person who could see and move around in this thick darkness, so she was like a ruler of the night.

“Kh!!”

I heard a shout in the darkness and submachineguns roared blindly. The Echidna may have been trying to use the muzzle flashes to see, but it was still too late.

Amatsu Erika the Vampire tore through the darkness to approach her prey.

A dull sound exploded in the pitch black.

The muzzle flashes vanished and then I heard something hard hitting the floor.

“Oh…ah…?”

“…”

The veil of darkness kept me from knowing what was happening. But that may have been for the best. Since she didn’t have to worry about me seeing, Erika may have been able to briefly become that coldhearted queen once more.

With a deep mechanical noise, the halogen lights came back to life. It blinded me like I had just stepped out of a dark tunnel, but my eyes adjusted soon enough.

This was not the bug juice from before.

The snake woman’s white skin was stained red with blood.

Both of the guns had fallen from her grasp. She was leaning against the railing while holding her stomach. Her face was pale and soaked with sweat, but she was smiling.

“…It doesn’t really…matter.”

“…”

“Have you forgotten? The simulator capable of predicting the Calamity, the book of prophecy used like Absolute Noah’s scriptures, is inside my head. If I die, you lose all hope. No one – not one person – will be able to escape the Calamity. I may not be able to directly strike back at the gods…but the world they created and accepted will be razed and the black smoke will…blot out…heaven…”

That was as far as she got.

The Echidna wobbled and fell over the railing. The bright white skin, sweet milk tea hair, and snake lower body of her decadently beautiful body fell with the rainbow-glittering tail following after. She disappeared into the deep darkness below.

The light brown scales and the organ-like throbbing of the floors and walls receded. They returned to normal. However, the giant translucent bug hearts remained the same.

Even in the very end, she had not mentioned her dead sons and daughters. She had not said she was on her way to join them. That may have been a glimpse of the resolve that had led her to remake herself into a simulator for her adorable children.

“Let’s leave.”

Our dad breathed a sigh and tossed aside the battered blue tarp before placing a hand on my shoulder.

“And go where?”

“That problem-filled world we call home.”

Absolute Noah was ruined. Sections all over had to have been destroyed to create barricades and during the meaningless rioting, but to reconstruct it, they needed the accurate Calamity data that had been lost with the Echidna. And if the Echidna had spent a long time replacing pieces of Absolute Noah with her giant bug pieces, then it might not even run without her. Could it even be remade into machine parts at this point?

More importantly, all this had happened. No one would agree to spend a long time closed up in this giant facility with these people.

They would scatter and everyone would face the end in their own way.

Was this how it should be?

Was there anything wrong with it?

I decided…

Part 2

“Absolute Noah is necessary. We need to rebuild it.”

“Absolute Noah is no longer necessary. Let’s go somewhere to wait out the end.”

[Support by] The Human Brain [DELTA brain]

First of all, computers like me were developed to support humans. The most common variety use a Von Neumann architecture managed by 0s and 1s, which is not exactly modeled after the human brain, but some experimental machines are attempting the linking structure of human synapses.

IT companies will commonly advertise their technology by showing off AI competitions or big data, but I do not think the human brain is always inferior. For one thing, it was humans who came up with the idea of computers and then actually built them. And I can estimate that the potential there is far greater than the people involved thought.

I am hoping that you do not limit your own possibilities.

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