Volume 3 Chapter 3 (1/2)

As soon as I made that announcement, the unmanned weapons that looked like motocross bikes with attack helicopter wings began to move. My vampire older sister and zombie little sister stood on either side of me to face them.

”Ayuuumi-chan?”

”Uuh… S-sorry, okay? Fuguu. But you really were keeping his Cla.s.s Rep to yourself, Onee-chan! And you turned her into a Dhampir!!”

”Only because a completed anti-Archenemy theory is what the Ghost wants more than anything and it wasn't clear where Satori-kun had gone. Why wouldn't I want a bargaining chip in case my cute little brother was taken hostage?”

Wait. What? Huh?

”I'm really confused, but what is the Ghost!?”

”As you can see, it's the system agent in charge of this abandoned hospital. Even after everyone left, it continued searching for a completed theory, just as it was programmed to. It would be a tear-jerker in an SF story, but it's only a nuisance in real life.”

”Then what was that about you two bringing in a diesel generator to power the place?”

”Have you found any reason at all to trust what it's telling you?”

”Wh-what about the Cla.s.s Rep becoming a Dhampir!?”

”That part's true. A high-quality artificial hunter is exactly what the Ghost would want, so it wouldn't want to let that get away, right? But at the same time, this is no more than a coincidental success. It would probably want to chop her up and thoroughly investigate this success to find a way to ma.s.s-produce them.”

Kh…

I felt dizzy. Was I really in reality here? I felt like I was wandering through endless game worlds set up like opposing mirrors.

Meanwhile, my smartphone did not receive even a word from Maxwell…no, from the Ghost pretending to be him. Was that because I had revealed its ident.i.ty or because the act was no longer necessary now that its hostage (me) had reached my sisters.

A storm of destruction swept across the roof.

On one hand, the Horse Knight unmanned motorcycle weapons used their machineguns and gas-operated pile drivers to push back the highly-infectious Archenemies.

On the other hand, the vampire and zombie stars could spread their infection across continents if they tried.

As the steel vanguards approached from every direction, the Archenemies stood back-to-back with me at the center and they danced. They danced with a crazed beauty. Each time their shoulders and hips turned or their arms or legs twisted, the precise industrial products built to military standards were split, crushed, or smashed.

…Had my sisters always been this strong?

Strong enough to overwhelm the enemy while also protecting a frail human like me from the many machineguns surrounding us?

At that point, I brought a hand to my forehead.

Don't let it overwhelm you. Trust them. Don't reject reality just because it doesn't seem to fit your a.s.sumptions. This isn't a virtual reality.

I crouched down and operated my smartphone while my sisters fought. But I wasn't just swiping with my index finger like normal. I opened a system developer mode and checked the background information.

…Where had Maxwell been replaced?

It was obvious once I checked. Maxwell was a handmade system filling up a container in Kukyou City, but all I had was a commercial smartphone. Someone had intercepted the signal from the container to the smartphone and overpowered it with a signal of their own.

It was like crossed signals on a TV or radio. They hadn't actually broken into the system and given Maxwell a virus.

I set up a random change to the frequency band and for the time being used pi for the random pattern. If Maxwell was using every single frequency to break through, I was sure to catch his sample signal.

”Maxwell! What's my fetis.h.!.+?”

”Sure. A dancing swimsuit forehead gla.s.ses childhood friend cla.s.smate cla.s.s rep. You pervert.”

Good. It seemed I had connected to the usual Maxwell. The abandoned hospital's Ghost would be working to drown him out again, but it was too late. While it was scanning for the band being used, we would be continually jumping to the next candidate band out of a hundred or even two hundred options. The Ghost could never interfere unless it could predict the random pattern we were using.

”Use encryption sync Dr09. Cut off all other signals.”

”Sure.”

Even if there was some crossed signals, this would help distinguish between them to an extent. But most of the commercial apps wouldn't work in this handmade mode, so the increased security had its downside. Even the SNS I was using only barely worked.

”Maxwell, my recent memories are a mess thanks to the abandoned hospital's Ghost continually overwriting my short-term memories. I need your support. Does it look like you can win a cyber-battle?”

”If you mean taking control of the entire system, then no. But if you mean a less permanent solution, then yes.”

”What exactly do you mean?”

”Sure. Based on what I can see through the smartphone camera, Miss Erika and Miss Ayumi are going a little nuts trying to show off to you, but I could interfere with the signal controlling the unmanned weapons and cause them to stop moving.”

”Do it.”

The result was as dramatic as sticking a thick wire along a fish's backbone. The deadly motocross bikes gave an unnatural jerk, lost their balance, and collapsed one after another.

”Huh?”

”Ow, ow, ow, ow… Onii-chan, did you do something?”

My sisters brushed back their hair or let their hands dangle down as they viewed Maxwell's shockingly perfect handiwork.

The current threat was gone.

I felt like I had greatly simplified the information and situation.

In other words…

”So we have to fight the abandoned hospital's system over the Dhampir-ized Cla.s.s Rep, huh?”

We had to explore the eerie abandoned hospital, rescue the captured Cla.s.s Rep, and remove the curse placed on that princess.

It felt like the plot of a video game. Was that because the mastermind who had set it up was a program?

”Erika, where is the Cla.s.s Rep?”

I had found a secret room in the virtual reality, but that had been for hiding the Polish Vampire Princess's cursed coffin.

And since the Peace Committee Convalescent Hospital's Ghost had plenty of those Automatic Hyahah! Bikes (as I feel like calling them), there was most likely a much larger hidden area.

”On the top floor.”

”Hm? That's a pretty conspicuous location…”

”Oh, is it really? Satori-kun, do you know how many floors this convalescent hospital has?”

Huh?

Now that you mention it…

”Isn't it four or five floors?”

”But no one knows exactly. No one really cares even if the elevator never stops there. They're satisfied just speculating that it's the director's office or VIP rooms, so the hospital can easily set up another world so close by but so far away.”

We had been guided there by the Ghost, so we had not made any detours on the way to the rooftop. We hadn't paid any attention to the top floor and we wouldn't have thought it odd if it had been closed off by a fire door.

We all left the roof and descended a floor to the abandoned hospital's top floor. My sisters could see in the dark, so only I was reliant on my smartphone's backlight. They got to work on the fire door blocked by a pile of trash. There was apparently a trick to the spring holding the door in place, so Erika reached up and messed with the gearbox that had an arm attached to the top of the metal door. Then I heard the small metallic click of something unlocking. …The structure of the lock and the material of the door were different from a normal fire door, so this had apparently not been installed in case of a fire.

I s.h.i.+ned my smartphone's light inside and found an awfully clean hall.

There was no avoiding the normal deterioration that came with time, but that was all. There was no trash lying around and there was no dust. Almost like someone had been cleaning it over and over like a machine.

There was something like a blue will-o'-the-wisp at my feet.

I quickly aimed my smartphone down and saw what looked like a thicker frisbee crawling along the floor like a bug.

”Onee-chan, are there cleaning robots in here?”

”Seems that way. Although there are a lot that died after failing to reach the charging boxes.”

It reminded me of a mall coldly playing its welcoming announcements even after the destruction of the human race.

”Hm? Didn't the hospital only have power because someone from outside - in other words, one of you two - brought in a small generator?”

”Are you still believing anything the Ghost said after all the lies it told you, Onii-chan?”

”You lied to him too, Ayumi-chan. But to get back on topic, the hospital seems to have a few power generation systems: things like solar, hydro, and wind power. Those facilities exist here and there where the forest has been unnaturally cleared. I couldn't track down exactly how many there are, though.”

I wanted to ask what those were for, but the answer was obvious enough when I thought about it.

…To keep it off any official records. Even if you made a few secret rooms or underground chambers, you couldn't hide them if the water and power usage were recorded. There was no hiding that data when reliant on the city government and facilities, but the only alternative was to set up some self-defense against the data.

”But this feels a lot different from the Bright Cross. They were a lot more blatant in what they did.”

Erika and Ayumi must not have liked to hear me mention the Bright Cross because they both sighed.

”Fuguu. Well, that's obvious enough from the fact that this place isn't connected to the underground tunnels and that it's way out in the forest leaving it barely even inside Kukyou City. My guess is it was a frontline data-collection base for a rival company of the Bright Cross.”

”It means the anti-Archenemy industry isn't a monolith. That said, it feels like the Bright Cross had the upper hand when it came to actual and effective methods of killing Archenemies. This place seems more like it was reliant on a weird mixture of technology and talismans.”

Yes.

Even if all the people were gone, this was an anti-Archenemy research inst.i.tution. And yet my sisters were calmly walking through it. The unmanned deadly motocross weapons may have been a step in the right direction since machines weren't infected when bitten, but they were no use in actual combat. The flesh-and-blood Bright Cross combat members they had fought in virtual reality had been stronger. At the very least, both Erika and Ayumi had been hit by them.

…We might just be fine here.

Unlike those dark tunnels, I didn't sense that sticky darkness that threatened to drown you if you peered too deeply into it. Unlike the Colosseum, I couldn't spot that human ugliness that swallowed up common sense and encouraged crazed pa.s.sion and excitement while watching immortals fight to the death.

I had a vampire and zombie who had been too much for the Bright Cross. If this convalescent hospital was on a smaller scale than the Bright Cross, it was possible the Ghost would be entirely helpless. In fact, it might have been that helplessness in a direct battle that had led it to confuse things by impersonating Maxwell.

”Oh, right, right.” Erika clapped her hands together in front of her large chest and sounded like she had just remembered something. ”As I said, I think Cla.s.s Rep-chan is on this floor, but, um, be careful, okay?”

At first, I had no idea what she meant.

But…

”Cla.s.s Rep-chan is on a bit of a rampage right now. Enough so that she can probably break free and escape even with her arms and legs chained to the bed.”

A loud sound of destruction came from the side. I s.h.i.+ned my smartphone's light that way in surprise and saw something charging my way. It was a red ma.s.s with an oppressively powerful rosy smell and wearing a b.l.o.o.d.y dress. No, no, wait! This is…!?

”Cla.s.s Rep!!”

It was surprisingly hard to tell when every last centimeter of the thing was soaked red. Something seemed off compared to what I had seen in the virtual reality, but then it hit me: the skirt was a lot shorter. And that led to the realization that what looked like a red dress was actually a girl's school uniform. And that led to further realizations: her hair wasn't silver and she was wearing gla.s.ses.

And as the forehead gla.s.ses Cla.s.s Rep from next door charged at me with enough force to not just bite me with her fangs but tear the flesh and bone from my throat, my sisters took an extremely simple action.

They kicked her.

They moved simultaneously as if kicking down a door.

The tremendously deep noise was a lot like the beat of a drum larger than I was tall. The Cla.s.s Rep's small body doubled over as she flew backwards. She rolled backwards and even destroyed a counter sectioned off by a transparent acrylic panel, making it look more like something from a dangerous country's bank than a nurse station.

”C-Cla.s.s Reeeep!?”

I shouted without thinking, but there was no human response. Also, her skirt fluttered up as she flew, revealing her panties quite spectacularly, but she showed no sign of caring. …Hmm, but what color were they? They were soaked with red, but I doubt that was the original color. This feels like scoring a goal in soccer but having the ref say it didn't count. I can see her panties, but it just isn't the same…

But this told me something.

In the virtual reality, the Cla.s.s Rep and the b.l.o.o.d.y dress girl had been separate people. Since the Ghost that ran the Peace Committee Convalescent Hospital had repeatedly overwritten my short-term memory with false information, it must have wanted to hide this fact. That way, it could keep the Dhampir Cla.s.s Rep as the fruits of its research and dissect her to find a way to ma.s.s-produce her.