(æ)lohim

by Kim Chang-Ra

Three minutes, twenty-two seconds. That's how long it takes for a simple test run at the Leo Corporation to go horribly wrong. In the midst of the chaos, a programmer has disappeared, and his creation is the only witness. As Kōtsu Masumi and her friends investigate, however, they soon discover more sinister forces at play—and its source could very well be among their inner circle.

11. XI

A/N: Well, so much for shorter.

Have a nice holiday season, folks; I plan to spend mine writing out the Duel for next chapter—and hiding from my inbox for this chapter. $#!& is going down. That's all I'll say for now.

Thanks for sticking with this after so long, and I hope you enjoy! – K

---

XI

Leo Duel School

3:55 P.M.

"That takes care of that," Akaba Himika said, pushing herself back from her monitor with the satisfaction of a job well done. "Seika's out of the picture." At least, she decided against adding, for now.

Once she knew what to look for, the task had been outlandishly easy; most of the delay in the time since had been caused by the virus' attempt to hijack her computer. It had been a serious setback, yes, but not a mortal one. Once the reboot had completed, Himika had wasted no time in re-accessing her computer's command-line interface, and redoubling her efforts while her LID continued their more physical fight against Seika.

This interface still rested on her monitor, displaying the fruits of her efforts:

Vg1 = GetHandl {tool•exe} tempCall {itm•temp}

Vg2 = GetHandl {assembler•exe} tempCall {itm•temp}

› if Scale(Vg1, Vg2) set Lvl Lim(Vg1, Vg2) input \u00e6_lohim•obj alert root

› if Scale(Vg2, Vg1) set Lvl Lim(Vg2, Vg1) input \u00e6_lohim•obj alert root

› on \u00e6_lohim•obj link set qprot (Vi1), qmass (Vi2), rsv (Vi3)

› on lohim•obj call {qprot, qmass, rsv, termec} set to off

› on lohim•obj set {qprot, qmass, rsv} restore

› on lohim•obj kill \u00e6_lohim•exe

› on lohim•obj delay {30} delete line rf \u00e6_lohim•obj, \u00e6_lohim•exe, lohim•obj

"It was an ingenious setup," remarked Shirai Toshio over her speakerphone, "though still a noticeably flawed one. The command was specifically set up to deactivate the link created by \u00e6_lohim•obj, then restore the affected systems to their original state. After that, it shut down \u00e6_lohim•obj—the same executable file that was initially introduced with seika•exe—and finally, after a short time—about thirty seconds—it erased any sign that either it or the virus was ever there. Everything down to the reference files—gone. No loose ends."

"Well done, Shirai." Himika allowed a flicker of authenticity behind the smile that graced her lips. "I'll be sure to note this in your record, when the board discusses your future with the company."

Shirai was quiet for just long enough to bask in the praise, before he was back to business as usual.

"Thank you, Himika-san—but I would not be so premature," he said. "What I did was only a temporary stopgap. As I said, the protocols in Seika's code erase all sign they existed after every termination. While this means the virus must therefore be input manually, so must our countermeasures against it. It is a losing battle."

"Except now that we know the kill code," Himika said, glancing at her screen, "we can thwart any attempt it makes on the lives of innocent people from here on out."

"Therein lies its flaw," conceded Shirai. "But we cannot assume that this will stop Seika's offensive against us. It is being aided by the processing power of LDS' most powerful supercomputer—one of the most advanced of its kind on the planet. I see no reason to believe Seika will not force Q's systems to rewrite its programming in the interim, thereby bypassing ours with little to no trouble. Even a zap program might do us little good against it now."

Himika grimaced. Zap programs—often disguised as normal thumbnail drives that stored data—could also store capacitance as well, siphoning it from the power supply of whatever system they were plugged into. Then, after a certain amount of voltage had been leeched, or upon some prearranged signal, that capacitance was swiftly force-fed back into that system—overloading its circuits, fatally damaging its processors, and largely reducing the entire thing to a smoldering pile of scrap. It didn't matter if it was a personal computer, or a company server—or even a supercomputer; the whole thing would be rubble. All with a single, simple "zap"—hence the name.

It spoke volumes of the crisis LeoCorp faced that the thought of "zapping" Q—a significant investment of company resources and manpower—was entertained by Akaba Himika for slightly longer than a split-second. Even if Seika hadn't somehow managed to anticipate and counter such methods of destruction, Q had earned a special place in her heart, insofar as her heart could allow such things. It didn't matter that Q was a prototype—that other, derivative units existed elsewhere in the world for future use (how she hoped that would be the case!). What did matter to her was that Q was a prototype that, once, had existed as a gleam in the eye of Reiji—a brainchild of no less a mind than that of her own son.

In that sense, albeit a broad one … to kill Q would be tantamount to killing her own grandchild.

Himika blinked. What was that train of thought she'd been having just now? To equate a company asset with her own flesh and blood? To weight its continued survival—their only hope from keeping the disappearance of one of her employees from going completely cold—against that of a city now under siege from a foe who'd done it more efficiently than Academia ever had, a month and change ago?

What had this crisis done to her, to provoke such feelings of attachment within herself?

She grumbled at the conundrum, both within and without, as she gazed at Shirai. "You might as well have handed Seika the city on a platter," Himika told him.

There was a pause. "I'm beginning to think," Shirai said darkly, "we might have indeed."

No one said anything for a few long moments after that bleak response. When the gruff voice of Himika's aide finally cut in, it was with the heaviness of an old soldier who'd been through an equal amount of war and pain.

"We got lucky this time, Himika-san," said Nakajima. "Right now, eyewitness reports are saying only fourteen injured, two bodies unaccounted for. That said, both of those bodies are our Americans—and the LID reported them as deceased personally—so I'll hazard that'll be the first call you receive tonight."

Himika swore under her breath. She was not looking forward to talking with the Americans' Secretary of Defense again—especially since this time, the cat that was Seika had finally been let out of the bag for the world at large to see. Already she could imagine the footage being replayed over tonight's news, the questions that footage would bring—who were her students fighting, and why?—and the damage those questions could do to her reputation, if they weren't answered perfectly.

"We may have managed to avoid the worst-case scenario this time," Nakajima went on, "but we've seen how little that virus cares about collateral damage in its confrontations with the LID. I believe that Seika will attack again. And if it is able to infiltrate the city's RSV network the way it did before—if we are unable to thwart its assault prematurely—then I would advise a general order of evacuation."

Silence. The air in Himika's office seemed to have solidified. Some part of her knew this was the moment of truth—the moment where she knew she would have to prove herself to the people in her city, however many or few, that she meant the best for not only the children who were fighting this battle—but the entire town that had become Seika's unwilling battlefield.

She bit her tongue. "Nakajima … patch me through to the mayor's office. Have him arrange a conference call with myself, and the Bōei-shō in Tōkyō. I'll discuss your recommendations with them."

Nakajima was incredulous. "You want to call in the JSDF on this?!" The country's self-defense force was the closest thing Japan had to a standing army. For Himika to personally ask the Minister of Defense to assist her in ending this threat spoke volumes of just how dangerous she thought Seika was—to say nothing of her furious desire to see it expunged from the world.

"I have a duty to this city and its people, Nakajima." The chairwoman's voice was sharp as freshly hammered steel. "I will protect them—no matter who or what I have to sacrifice."

No one spoke at this for some time. Both Shirai and Nakajima knew that to dissuade their boss, especially in times of crisis such as this, was tantamount to insubordination.

Then, "I'm already inbound to recover the LID," Nakajima informed her. "I'll contact Maiami General. Hopefully there's still enough of our serum in their bodies that the right medical treatment will have them back on their feet by the end of the day."

"Keep me posted," Himika told him after a moment's thought. "I'll be contacting Sagisaka at system security for an update on his progress. Drop off Shirai at LDS along the way; I have a task or two for him that may require his expertise."

"Understood, Himika-san." The line clicked once, and went dead.

The chairwoman took a deep breath, and swiveled her chair back to her computer screen. It was time to turn her attention to other matters now.

She opened her email account. As expected, many new messages greeted her—not all of which warranted a positive response from her: questions from news reporters as to any incoming statements on the latest attack. Himika would address those when the situation better demanded it—for right now, only one email in her inbox held her attention.

The headmistress recalled her secretary being contacted by the housing complex where J.D. Crowley had lived—and more importantly, who had been his roommate. It was a shot in the dark, to be sure, but this was not a situation where Himika could simply leave even one stone unturned. She needed to be thorough.

So she pulled up the email in question—and what she saw made her purse her lips in concern.

The content itself wasn't the concerning part; Crowley's residence manager had sent over a simple file on the man's roommate, with the more personal details edited out. He'd also taken the time to send over a picture of the woman as well—and this was what troubled her so.

What in the world?!

She leaned in a little closer. "Restore previous window," she dictated—the window still displaying the database of LeoCorp's temporary workers she'd been examining before the LID's Duel. It was time to conduct an experiment.

"Scan facial morphology," she muttered, half to herself, though still loud enough for the computer's voice-activated software to register her voice. "Catalog results and cross-reference with current database parameters. Display any results with a margin of error of ten percent or less."

WORKING, flashed her computer screen.

It was still working her request a few minutes later, when her phone suddenly rang—her private line to Nakajima.

"Yes?"

"I've reached the Duel site." Nakajima's tone was dutiful in spite of his disbelief. "The LID are still here—I'll set up a cordon so the medics can get to them."

Himika felt herself exhale a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "They're alive, then?"

"Looks that way—all five of them. But their bodies have been … I don't know."

"Are they injured?"

Nakajima didn't say anything for a full second—which worried Himika.

"If these are injuries, they don't look like any I've ever seen," he answered her. "Without knowing what exactly happened to them, I don't want to risk moving them in any way until an ambulance gets here."

"Send for one, if one's not on the way already," Himika told him. "How's the Duel site itself?"

"Minor to moderate damage throughout. The road can be repaved soon enough, and none of the buildings seem to have lost structural integrity—though I'd hate to be the insurance agencies right now. Lot of shattered windows and totaled cars out here."

"Leave that to me," said the headmistress. "What about Shirai?"

"Dropped him off a minute before I contacted you."

"Good." Himika turned towards the skyline, watching the last few wisps of smoke spiral from what had once been J.D. Crowley's apartment. "I have some questions to ask him about this so-called intern of his."

Especially since the computer had now finished working her request—and the results that were currently splashed across her front page, staring right back at her, had confirmed Akaba Himika's worst fears.

---

Maiami City General Hospital

5:00 P.M.

The hospital was starting to feel like a very familiar place to be, thought a very small part of Masumi's mind—the one remaining part of her that was cogent enough to recognize where she was.

Every other part of her was presently occupied with the unpleasant throbbing sensation that had spread across every square centimeter of her body. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be the Dueling arena in Trampo-Land, with a million tiny Hotenes bouncing endlessly off her skin like just another trampoline, Dueling each other without regard for what or who might be under their feet.

So numb was she as a result that Masumi could not feel anything else beyond the slight rustle of sheets beneath her fingers, and the starchy clothes covering her body, yet surely were not her own—and something ice-cold spreading out from beneath her skin, right at the crook of her elbow. But her senses—or what extent of them she could access right now—were still left to her; one sniff of the too-clean air, and the faint but steady beeping tone from somewhere behind her, was enough for her to guess where she'd come to.

Fragments of images whirled past her, like the stars of a galaxy racing by at light speed: Reed and Moss cornering her and her friends; their escape from the Americans, only to be caught by Seika—who'd then murdered both men in cold blood while an entire crowd watched in horror; the Tag Duel to which they'd challenged the virus, only to learn firsthand the depths of the malice Seika possessed; the blue fire of its Field Spell, like a personal slice of hell; the damnable Soul Absorption card it had used against them, how it had altered the card's coding to torture them repeatedly, while it grew even stronger every time; then, finally, the gigantic duo of Infernoids that Seika had Summoned to finish them off—the serpentine Lilith and the draconic Nehemoth—and likely would have for good if not for some unexpected twist of fate causing the virus to vanish once more …

Suddenly, that galaxy burst at its core—and her eyes snapped open.

The fluorescent light above her was blinding; Masumi instantly squished her eyes shut as quickly as she'd opened them. But she'd seen enough of the bland, off-white ceiling around that light to guess that she was in the same hospital as earlier today—maybe even the same room.

"Oh, good—you're awake." It took her ears some time to register the relieved tone of Nurse Fujiwara.

The Fusion Duelist could only answer in a long, drawn-out groan. Her tongue felt puffy against her palate, and a size too thick for her mouth; it felt just as deadened as the rest of her.

"Don't do anything too quickly, now," Fujiwara cautioned her. "You're on an IV drip—and the five of you have been through a lot today as it is. Best that you rest up and let your bodies heal."

The five. Masumi had seized on the two words subconsciously—so Yaiba and the others had made it there, too. They must be in the room with her, she thought; otherwise she wouldn't have brought it up.

"Whu … hu … penned?" slurred the Fusion Duelist through her numb mouth.

"One of Headmistress Himika's associates was en route to LDS when he found you and your friends about five blocks from the campus, lying in the street," said Fujiwara. "He called for an ambulance on the spot and waited until it showed up to collect you. That was … about an hour ago."

Just an hour? If Masumi had been fully cogent, this bit of news might have left her more surprised than she felt right now. Instead, it became little more than a passing note of interest; apparently they hadn't been hurt enough during the Duel to warrant sedation.

She opened her eyes again, more slowly this time, gradually allowing more and more light to filter in before she judged it safe to see the fullness of her surroundings.

There was no telling if this was the same ward the LID had been admitted to last night, the first time Seika had attacked them; for all Masumi knew, they all looked the same in this hospital. Two people lay either side of her; to her left, she saw the tangled brown mane of Yaiba; to her right, the bald purple head of Shen. Both boys were showing signs of life, and Masumi relaxed inwardly at this before turning her neck as far as it could go, trying to catch a glimpse of Hotene and Fuyu—

—purple?!

Suddenly, Masumi had forgotten that she was lying in a hospital bed. Her tongue didn't feel quite so numb anymore. She'd sat bolt upright—and instantly cringed as the shocks of her previous Dueling injuries, and the twinge of the needle still in her elbow, rebounded doubly throughout her body. She bit back the urge to swear.

But she didn't care about any of this—she'd just gotten a better view of Shen, and realized she hadn't been seeing things after all: the Synchro Duelist's skin was indeed a vivid shade of mottled purplish-blue, like black currant ice cream gone horribly wrong. He looked just like the girl from that Willy Wonka movie her father had rented once—and only once; Masumi, then a tender seven, hadn't touched bubblegum for a whole month after seeing it.

At once confounded and horrified, Masumi looked around, and felt her shock redouble. Yaiba, who was resting with his back to her, had most of his hair blocking her view of him as a result. But the Fusion Duelist could see a slice of his face from where she was now—and it, too, looked just as purple as Shen—

Her eyes swept from left to right, seeing Hotene and Fuyu for the first time. Both Duelists were feebly stirring, equally purple in the face. Then, slowly, as if her gaze had taken on a life of their own, she felt it travel downward, as if dreading to find what she might find on her own skin—

The scream she let out woke everyone in the room with a start.

"What the actual hell?!" she blurted out, past the point of caring that there was a child and an adult in the room. "Why's their skin purple?! Why am I purple?!" she demanded at Nurse Fujiwara, gesticulating wildly with the mottled purple arm that wasn't hooked up to the IV drip.

It spoke something of Fujiwara's experience that she hadn't so much as flinched during the outburst—though she looked inwardly thankful that she hadn't been holding anything glass at the time. The same could not be said for the rest of the LID, however; each of them were struck dumb at the bizarre changes that had been wrought upon their bodies.

"The f—?!" Yaiba just barely managed to hold in his language when he saw Hotene across from him.

Not that the tiny Duelist would have heard anything. "We look like aliens!" she wailed over the Synchro Duelist, her blue eyes naught but pinpricks as they took in her blotchy skin.

Fuyu did not speak, but the blue eye his hair didn't conceal was shaking in its socket so badly that it was painfully apparent all power of speech had been choked out of him.

"It's a byproduct of systemic microtrauma and post-traumatic paresthesia," the nurse replied. There was a faint rattle and rustle as she went over to inspect the drip tube. "That's what Dr. Yayoi calls it. It's a more common injury than you'd think in Dueling, but yours is by far the most widespread case we've ever seen in this hospital."

None of that made any sense to Masumi. Maybe she hadn't heard Fujiwara right. She was prepared to say as much, but the nurse must have noticed her confusion.

"Normally, Real Solid Vision can take the form of any object or location that fits within the parameters of its programming," she explained to them. "The reproduction is almost totally accurate, too—weight and texture, even aroma and taste, depending on the program."

Masumi—and the others as well, she didn't doubt—knew this already from her basic education, both at LDS and in her science classes from junior high school. She raised her brows at the nurse, hoping that was enough to signify her understanding so far.

"But the program's subroutines can only allow for so much tactile interactivity between the Duelist and the Dueling field," Fujiwara continued. "For example, let's say there's a patch of brambles made of hard-light. A Duelist goes inside that patch to look for an Action Card. Depending on how fast or slow he acts when he reaches inside, these subroutines can account for this, and move about as if it were a real thicket being pushed aside.

"However, if the Duelist is going too fast—say, if he's evading an attack, and runs headlong into the brambles—then the subroutines cannot account for this. As a result, the Real Solid Vision that composes them then can "clip" under his skin, causing the individual photons of the projected surface to, um … interact with the flesh underneath."

An involuntary shudder passed through Masumi at the words "interact with the flesh", and the mental image that followed.

"It's not as dangerous as you might think," Fujiwara told her. "At such a small scale, human skin is too pliable for something so tiny as hard-light particles to cause any serious injury. So all the Solid Vision really does here is pinch you hard enough that it leaves some discoloration and numbness behind, even after a few moments of exposure."

Shen—whose dark eyes had hardly wavered from his purplish skin, taken in the sight with a detached sort of surprise—finally spoke up for the first time. "You mean to say … like a bruise?"

"Exactly like one—just more evenly distributed throughout the body."

No one spoke a word. So this, then, was how Seika had tortured them, thought Masumi. After activating its Soul Absorption Spell, the virus had used its control over Solid Vision to repeatedly attack her and the LID at the cellular level, all at the same time. The receptors in their skin would then interpret the alien sensations—the microtrauma inflicted on each skin cell of her body—as the extreme pain to which they'd been subjected. So alien was that pain, in fact, that even while it was being inflicted upon her, Masumi had attempted comparing the experience to a hundred different methods of torture, known and imagined alike—and found no suitable equivalent throughout it all.

"Dr. Yayoi says this bruising is actually starting to subside, believe it or not," Fujiwara continued. "The unevenness in the coloration means that your skin is starting to return to normal. When they first brought you in," she added, "each of you looked like you'd been dipped in dye. We'd never seen anything like it before."

Masumi doubted anyone ever had. Because no one would ever have dreamed to use Solid Vision so cruelly before.

But something was starting to niggle at her brain again. "Then how do you know all this?" she asked. "I can understand needing to treat Dueling injuries in your profession. No doubt my friends and I aren't the first, or the last. But you seem to know an awful lot about this specific kind of injury. How?"

"Because she asked Dr. Yayoi—and Dr. Yayoi asked me."

Even before the ominously familiar voice had issued from the speaker grid above them— even before she had noticed the upside-down plate sitting innocuously on the cabinet behind and to the left of Hotene—and even before the hologram had begun to flicker to life from the domed surface of that plate, Masumi had had an inkling as to the source of Nurse Fujiwara's inexplicable knowledge of Solid Vision.

The appearance of all three of these things in their hospital ward had only confirmed her suspicions.

"Good evening, Himika-san." Fujiwara, for her part, looked far less rattled than when the LDS Headmistress' hologram had appeared to them earlier today; Masumi wondered if this was due to experience, or if the nurse had been responsible for making this conference in the first place. "Everyone regained consciousness just a few minutes before you made contact. As you can see, no lasting harm has been done to them."

"You have my gratitude, Fujiwara-san." Himika sounded gracious enough, but there was a bite of impatience to her words. "Have you administered the appropriate care to my students, then?"

"Y-yes, I have." Masumi noted the stutter in the nurse's reply. "There was enough residual serum already inside their bloodstream that their bodies are mending more quickly than expected. The next few minutes should give us enough information to that end that we can provide you an estimated time of discharge."

Himika waved it off. "Thank you, but that can wait for a moment. If you would please give us some privacy; I wish to discuss some sensitive matters with them."

Fujiwara blinked. "A-as you wish," she stammered—but she recovered quickly. "Please keep it brief; we would like to run our tests shortly." She left the room without further preamble, turning the lock behind her.

The click had scarcely faded from Masumi's ears before Himika spoke again. "I will not tarry. The five of you have shown resolution and dedication beyond anyone I have ever known in my time—as an employee or as a Duelist. There is no more I can ask of you after what you have done for Maiami City today. I hope I am right."

"With all respect, Headmistress?" groused the Fusion user. "You're tarrying."

Silence. Himika's hologram was scrutinizing her with a look that Masumi could still feel boring into her skin, like more of Seika's Solid Vision. But she found she didn't care—ever since her confrontation with Himika this afternoon, she had come to see the woman before her as something else besides a headmistress, a chief executive … or, indeed, any authority figure her mind could conjure up. The events that had led to this point had humbled them to a one, but her most of all, she suspected.

Whether it was because of this newfound humility, or simply the fact that she had stared death in the face twice in as many days, Akaba Himika seemed more … human to her, now. Cold, calculating—and definitely just as in charge of her academic standing at LDS as she had been before—but still undeniably human.

"Look—whatever plaudits you have for us can wait until we're in the condition to actually hear them for ourselves," Masumi said, ignoring the looks of shock from around her at her brazen tone of voice. "So, what was so important that you had to call on us in hospital again?"

Himika was not moving. For one brief moment, Masumi wondered if the image had frozen. But the headmistress soon broke the spell, shifting slightly in her stance to something only marginally more relaxed than was her usual.

"I am pleased to say that Seika has been neutralized," she answered her. If she felt any annoyance or anger at Masumi's attitude, she didn't show it. "While you were keeping the majority of the virus' attention focused on yourselves during your Duel, I successfully located and implemented the abort code for Seika's program.

Masumi recalled the flashes of lightning that had fizzled into existence around Seika, right after it had beaten the LID—and right as it'd been about to murder them. Had this, then, been a result of Himika saving their lives?

"Impeccable timing," she could only say.

"Then … it's over?"

"Not quite," Himika replied, and Fuyu's hopeful expression faded as quickly as it had come with his question. "Seika must still be purged from Q's systems before I can declare the virus truly destroyed. There are several ways as to how I can, but I must consult with my lead programmer before I make a decision. As far as you are concerned, however … yes, it is over. You need only concern yourselves with recuperating from your ordeal."

"Will that be all, then?" But even as Shen's own query faded from his lips, his gaze looked narrower than ever. Masumi had no doubt the shrewd boy knew as much as she did—that no, this most certainly was not all.

Sure enough: "There was one other matter that arose while you were Dueling Seika," Himika told them. "I received an email from the residence manager for the apartment complex you visited earlier today. It would seem that J.D. Crowley did indeed have a roommate in his time there."

Masumi's brow lifted up a good inch. So she'd been able to find an actual lead?

"Her name was Nina Kowalski," said the headmistress. Her hologram made a few motions, as though typing on a keyboard they couldn't see—before a hollow rectangle of blue light shimmered to her right. Lines of text scrawled across the transparent surface, too quickly for them to read. "The residence application she submitted claims she's another American—an art student from Rice University out of Houston, Texas, studying abroad to complete her master's. I'll be checking that later."

Yaiba looked almost as skeptical as Himika sounded. "You think she lied to them from the day she moved in?"

"I'm almost certain of it—and this person is the reason why." Himika's fingers played another rallentando with invisible keys, and suddenly a second holographic page leapt out at them, this time on Himika's left. But where the first document had been little more than a form, this was a picture: an Asian woman, maybe twenty-five, with bobbed black hair, a beauty mark between her lips and right cheek—and a downcast expression in her dark, strangely sloped eyes that made Masumi think of a sad puppy—now stared back at them.

"Koen Nene was with LeoCorp R&D until her internship expired five days ago," Himika explained. "My lead programmer, Shirai Toshio, recently had her fetch him a new key card to replace his old one. That new card had been tampered with to register an authorization code that wasn't his. When I learned of this"—Himika raised her voice here against the murmurs of disbelief from the LID—"I immediately suspended Shirai pending investigation for illegal possession of personal information. He has since been provisionally reinstated, in light of recent events."

Masumi felt completely lost. Something wasn't adding up here. "Why?"

"He claimed his card had been working perfectly until he used it to open testing bay three earlier today. So I had it inspected—and what turned up leads me to believe that Nene was more than just an intern. Shirai's new key card concealed a transmitter that, when activated, overwrote his personal information with that of J.D. Crowley."

"What?!" It was impossible to tell which of the LID had blurted the word out first, such was their collective shock.

But amidst the consternation, the Fusion user was deep in thought, even as Fuyu and Yaiba gaped like twin fish. A transmitter? "But," she gasped, "that means—"

Himika's hologram nodded. "Someone activated it remotely—most likely from outside LeoCorp premises, too. And I'm almost certain it was this Kowalski woman." She tapped at her invisible keyboard again. "Crowley's residence manager was kind enough to include a picture of her along with her housing records. Look familiar?"

And a third rectangle now shimmered in between her and the LID, taking its place next to Nene's photo. This one was another picture: a thirtyish, freckled woman with green eyes and a chest-length plait of red hair. These eyes were half-closed in a way that Masumi guessed had been meant to accentuate her sex appeal—why she needed to do this for an apartment picture, she couldn't say—but the eyelids were either so swollen, or the pose so amateurish, that this Nina Kowalski looked like her picture had been taken either in mid-blink, or while she was half-asleep.

She frowned. There was something about those eyes that didn't sit right with her. The puffiness around them made it look like Nina had suffered some kind of allergic reaction, or that she'd been crying—but that was strange … it didn't have any of the redness associated with either of these …

The notion of her crying made her look back at Nene, whose eyes she'd described as 'sad' … there was indeed some swelling here, too …

Fuyu had narrowed his visible eye into a wafer-thin slice of electric blue. "I don't know … " he rasped. "It's hard to tell with the glare in here, but … if I squint, the faces kind of look the same … "

"That's because they are."

Masumi's jaw went so slack that it was in danger of bouncing off the tiled floor of the ward. She wasn't alone; everyone else in the room was now looking back and forth at the pictures of Nene and Nina with barely a second of pause in between.

"Considerable effort was made to disguise it," said Himika, unable or unwilling to acknowledge the confusion she'd sown. "Cleverly applied prosthetics, for a start; I believe you mentioned something about makeup being found in Crowley's apartment?"

The Fusion Duelist, through the fog that had suddenly clouded her spinning head, thought back to earlier today, when she'd seen the dozens and dozens of different cosmetics in that one bathroom. A part of her was visualizing Nina Kowalski—or was it Koen Nene?—applying all that makeup, with each somehow turning into the other and back again—

"Even then, though," Himika continued, not waiting for an answer, "you can only go so far in altering your facial morphology; there are always going to be markers left behind. Yes—I believe that Koen Nene and Nina Kowalski are in fact the same person. The software in my personal computer registered a sixty-five percent similarity in physical characteristics between Ms. Nene and Ms. Kowalski."

She tapped at her keyboard; slowly, the two pictures of Nene and Nina merged together to form a hybrid photograph, one superimposed over the other. Blotches of green appeared all over the face—uniform in some places, not so in others, but each one was a testament to the statistic Himika had just quoted them.

"When you consider the fact that the two of them hail from different ethnic backgrounds," the headmistress said as this took place, "this becomes much more than coincidence—let alone happenstance.

Yaiba nodded grimly. "It's conspiracy."

"And one that may go deeper still." Himika's tone was ominous. "This is my working theory so far: some time ago, the CIA tapped Crowley via the Department of Defense to conduct industrial espionage inside the Leo Corporation, while he was still an undergrad at California-Berkeley. This espionage had the ultimate end goal of successfully reverse-engineering our technology—especially Project #1610217, the supercomputer you know to be Q—for the Americans' own military applications.

"This Nina Kowalski, who I am presuming for the moment to be a second DOD agent," Himika went on, "either went with Crowley, or was sent after him, to oversee his efforts. So intent was she to do so that Kowalski disguised herself as an ordinary intern at LeoCorp—Koen Nene—to keep tabs on him, and make sure he followed orders. But after the incident in testing bay three took place, and Crowley vanished as a result, the Americans went straight into damage control; they knew that if we began our own investigation, it could expose their entire operation. So Kowalski, still disguised as Nene, sabotaged the person who could lend the most weight to such an investigation—Shirai Toshio—before her internship so conveniently expired."

"Why him?" Hotene asked.

"He was Crowley's superior within the company, and multiple accounts placed him in the vicinity during the incident," Himika replied. "This, combined with the man's disappearance—and the unfortunate stereotype of our culture being discriminatory against foreign gaijin," she added with a huff, "would have made Shirai a prime suspect in this entire mess. For a time, I even pondered myself if Shirai might have been the one responsible for creating Seika in the first place, and disseminating him into Q—he certainly has the background, and the expertise."

"He's not, though, is he?" Yaiba ventured to say. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be saying as much right now."

Himika nodded. "He had to prove it to me—but I can assure you that Shirai Toshio is not behind these crimes."

"Then it has to be Reed and Moss," said Fuyu quietly. "Or … had, I guess … " he hastily added.

"Those two are the only reason mine is merely a working theory; I don't know enough about them to be certain." So furrowed was her brow in frustrated anger that the headmistress' eyes were naught but narrow slits. "The fact that Seika killed them only makes their roles in this even more confusing.

"My current suspicion," she continued, "is that the Americans sent them as a plan B; at that point, they must have decided their espionage angle was untenable. So, Reed and Moss conveniently let slip that Crowley had been a DARPA asset before joining LeoCorp, and that he'd been part of his government's attempt to incorporate Solid Vision into their armed forces. It was equal parts confession and obfuscation—and then those two men had the gall to try and snatch Q's schematics directly.

"Huh?!" Hotene's eyes bugged. "When did they do that?!"

"You were there in the room with them." When Hotene still looked puzzled, Himika added, "Do you remember when they gave me that order from the Secretary of Defense earlier this afternoon? Telling me to turn over any relevant information about Q to the American government?

Slowly, the little girl nodded.

"I know a power grab when I see it." There was the faintest trace of a sneer to Himika's words. "But Reed and Moss showed too many cards in their hand; I knew they were trying to strong-arm me into surrendering vital evidence into their custody—so I strong-armed them back."

"Which forced them to turn their sights on us," said Masumi, thinking of the guns they'd been carrying.

"Quite literally." Himika's face had contorted in an ugly grimace. "I'll be contacting the Secretary of Defense later. For his sake, I hope he sounds sorry for what's happened today."

Masumi failed to repress a shudder at the amount of raw venom her headmistress had put into emphasizing the last words. Well did she remember how Himika had lost her temper at Reed and Moss; the notion of Himika blowing her top at someone even higher up on the chain of command was as riveting as it was frightening.

"And what of this Kowalski woman?"

Himika was silent for a long moment as she digested Shen's query. "Whether she and Nene are the same person or not," she eventually said, "neither has been publicly seen since the incident occurred. I've already talked to the authorities—as of fifteen minutes ago, Koen Nene is officially wanted for questioning with regards to yesterday's terrorist attacks. I expect they'll circulate her picture and last known whereabouts by day's end. As for Kowalski, once I get through to the Secretary, I'll … persuade him to grant an order of extradition, if she's returned to American soil."

"You don't sound too optimistic," said Masumi.

"This isn't a time for optimism, Masumi," Himika replied tersely. "It's a time for action. I spoke with the Ministry of Defense before I contacted you. They will be sending a detachment of the JSDF before nightfall, to assist in evacuating the city."

All the air went out of the room.

"Evacuating?!" Yaiba spoke the single word as if it was being choked out of him. He was white in the face.

"I don't fault you for not knowing," said Himika. "The order won't be going public for another five minutes. Per the Ministry of Defense"—she held up a tablet, clearing her throat—"'All able-bodied residents of Maiami City are to immediately vacate any section of the metropolitan area that is within fifteen meters of a Solid Vision generator. All residents are strongly advised to switch off any technology that is reliant on Solid Vision, and leave it behind until further notice. Local authorities and the Ground Self-Defense Forces 1st Division will be overseeing all evacuation efforts.'"

Masumi felt a great pit opening up in her stomach, wider and wider with every word she heard. She needed a phone yesterday—she had to call her parents, make sure they knew all was well—

Hotene beat her to the punch. "I hafta call my mom!" she shrieked, making as if to leap off her bed and zoom for her Duel Disk—but Himika's tone stopped the little girl in her tracks.

"I'm afraid that would fall under the definition of 'technology that is reliant on Solid Vision', Hotene." Her voice was unexpectedly gentle, but still as firm as ever. "The hospital's already reached out to your families—they know you're all on the mend, and they wish you a speedy recovery as I do. But for your safety and theirs, we cannot allow you to contact them until we are absolutely certain that Seika's viral code has been permanently deleted from Q."

Her eyes flashed. "No one else will die in my city tonight." It was hard to tell if that was a trick of the hologram—but there was no embellishing the cold resolution in the headmistress' words.

Masumi managed to bite back a curse; while it assuaged her to know that her parents had been contacted in her absence, she also had a suspicion that there would be a large amount of messages on her Duel Disk, imploring her to get in contact with them about everything that had happened today.

Yaiba, however, still remained reluctant to acquiesce. "Can't you do a sweep of our Duel Disks—get rid of Seika that way?" he protested. "If it's using that patch you installed as a backdoor into our own tech, then wouldn't we be safer if you just got rid of that door?"

"We won't need to," said Himika. "Shirai Toshio is on his way to Research and Development as we speak. I've personally instructed him to restore every last one of Q's systems to their factory settings. This way, the virus inhabiting Q will be expunged without harming any of its hardware—or any of yours."

"I'm glad to know that our lives are worth just as much as a rogue supercomputer," Masumi said sarcastically.

Himika narrowed her eyes. "I am not overly fond of your tone, Kōtsu Masumi," she said evenly. "You would do well to remember that you're in a hospital, and not the morgue, because of my efforts."

Masumi opened her mouth to retort … and stopped. Her jaw was hanging open, dangerously close to unhinging itself from her skull.

"Say that again … ?" she heard herself murmur, as though from very far away.

The Headmistress frowned. "You would do well to remember … "

"No—no, before that." Masumi was beginning to see another rock in her mind's eye.

The frown deepened even further. "I am not overly fond of your tone … "

" … Kōtsu Masumi," the Fusion Duelist finished. "That's it! That has to be it!"

"Masumi," Yaiba asked, eyeing her as though she'd gone mad, "what … ?" But Masumi didn't hear him.

Grind—

—put an end to this farce of a battle, she heard Seika scream at her, as a restaurant burned and collapsed around them, attack Masumi Kōtsu's Life Points directly!—

—sand—

—Kōtsu Masumi, the cold voice of Himika hissed at her, you would do well to revise your tone and address me more appropriately—

—lap—

—As of now, Masumi Kōtsu, that's no longer your decision to make, Agent Moss' velvet-laced voice sneered—

—polish—

—Burn their bodies into your mind, Masumi Kōtsu, growled the virus, moments before that fateful final blow—

Masumi closed her eyes—

Goodbye, Masumi Kōtsu.

Goodbye, LID.

—and opened them again.

Et voilà.

"Masumi?" Now even Himika was looking confused. "What does your name have to do with any of this?"

It took the Fusion user a moment to reply; the momentum of her discovery was such that she felt as though the world was spinning around her.

She took a deep breath. "I think Seika's more than just a virus," she replied. "I think it's a puppet."

"Puppet?" Himika blinked. Then, very slowly, Masumi saw the first traces of comprehension flicker across her headmistress' face, and knew she'd just reached the same conclusion.

"What if I told you," Masumi asked, her voice shaking, "that Nina Kowalski might be in this city right now?"

---

Leo Duel School

5:30 P.M.

There was nothing to be said after that. The moment that the best Fusion Duelist in her school had voiced her suspicion, Akaba Himika had immediately terminated her call to Maiami General, leaving the LID to finish recuperating without even saying goodbye or good luck.

Now, the headmistress of LDS had dialed zero. "Connect me to Washington," she said, in the most imperious voice she could muster in her fury. "Inform them that Akaba Himika wishes to speak with the U.S. Secretary of Defense."

"Yes, ma'am." The pause that preceded this suggested that even the anonymous operator didn't want to know why.

After a much longer pause, the call connected, at which point Himika punched a switch on her desk and swiveled round in her chair to face the back window of her office. Moments later, the enormous pane of glass shimmered into the image of a Caucasian man in his seventies. The high-definition resolution did his appearance no favors; while his silver-white crew-cut looked neatly trimmed enough, he still looked as though he'd just been roused out of bed. Himika could still see every last one of the liver spots on the man's face, and bit her tongue to fight off the disgust.

"Miss Himika, this is very irregular," said the Secretary of Defense. "As you may know, it is half past three in the morning, and there are protocols in place for contacting the Pentagon—"

"Spare me," Himika spat. "This isn't a social call, Mr. Secretary. Are you aware of the events that have taken place in Maiami City today?"

"I am," said the secretary. "I was very grateful to hear that no fatalities were sustained on your part. Your students fought like heroes; I do not believe I am stretching the truth when I say God was with them today."

Himika ignored this. "One of those students believes the virus called Seika was engineered and disseminated by your people. Specifically," she added, watching the secretary's expression very carefully, "by one Nina Kowalski."

She was hoping to see even the man's liver spots go pale, to find some inkling of betrayal in his face to suggest that perhaps he'd known that this had happened under his watch—but no; there was only a blink and a slight frown.

"One moment, please," he said. He pulled out his phone, and pressed a button. The image suddenly froze—no doubt, Himika thought, to give him some measure of privacy.

After a few minutes of having to stare at the man's liver spots for a few minutes longer than she wished to stomach, the image of the secretary suddenly jumped back to life once more. "This … Nina Kowalski," he said. His voice was a little more hesitant now. "You're absolutely certain that's the name your student mentioned?"

"Without a doubt," said Himika.

The secretary folded his hands. "Then," he said solemnly, "I suspect there has been some … miscommunication."

Himika felt her face crease in a frown again. "Your government has been making pawns of my own employees," she hissed. "I see no miscommunication here, Mr. Secretary."

"I just talked to the CIA's Office of Security and the head of DARPA," the secretary said hotly. "Neither of them has any record of a Nina Kowalski who is or ever was employed with their organization!"

"Īkagen ni shiro! Namerunayo!"

Suddenly Himika was on her feet. She had no memory of standing up so quickly—such was the fury into which she had just exploded. Her vision was tinged with red, and her ears throbbed either from the blood pumping through her, or the volume of the echoes around her office that made it sound as though a dozen of her had just lost their collective temper at a powerful government official.

That government official, at present, looked appropriately surprised at how the LDS headmistress had shouted at him. The pen he'd been fiddling with in his hand had dropped onto the pile of papers beneath, and his eyes had widened just enough for the more analytical side of Himika—despite taking a backseat for the moment—to register his shock. She felt a savage sort of pleasure in this; after the hell that both her company and her school had been dragged through this week, it felt so satisfyingly cathartic to let out all the steam that had been building up since.

"Do not dare to stonewall me here, Mr. Secretary," she continued to storm. "My prized students are in hospital, my company is in crisis—and all who live in my city are fearing for their lives! If you have even a shred of proof that Nina Kowalski or any of your people are not involved in this, I would suggest that you show me yesterday."

The secretary was silent for a long time. He shifted in his seat, and softly clucked his tongue. " … I'm afraid we do," he finally said.

"Hontōka?" Himika poured as much disdain as she could into each syllable of her question. Somehow her voice was still able to stay level.

The official produced a laptop from beneath his desk. "If we're going to continue this conversation," he said, "then it's off the record. No recordings, no relays to anyone. As of now, this is a confidential matter. Understand?"

Himika made an impatient gesture. "Just tell me."

The secretary sighed. "All right," he said as he began to type. "Twelve hours ago, a local TV station in Honolulu aired a thirty-second news report on their evening broadcast."

Then he looked at Himika, and she saw the grave look on his face. "There have been some … recent developments on that report," he said, "that you may need to know."

Himika's brow furrowed further still. "What kind of developments?" she asked.

The Secretary told her.

---

LeoCorp R&D

Testing bay three

The door was two-inch-thick Grade 38 titanium alloy, but Shirai Toshio opened it with the gentlest of movements. He did not bother to close it behind him as he stepped inside—not that he was expecting anyone inside to be disturbed in the first place, but the room sounded so unbelievably quiet that any louder noise than that would have made him feel more tense than he already was. A little background noise from the massive chamber outside, even if it was just the HVACs that kept it at the desired temperature, were welcome to his nerves right now.

His hand brushed against the pocket of his lab coat, and he very briefly felt the pair of flat rectangular shapes inside. One he had already used, to disable the security that protected the door he had just opened. But the passcode was only valid once, and Shirai had no designs about requesting his boss for a second one; in more ways than one, this was his only chance.

Of greater concern was the second card in his pocket. Shirai knew it was far too valuable to be wasted, for not only had it come from the headmistress herself as well, but it was also effective once—and only once. Meaning that he was quite literally holding the one thing that could save him, his company, and his city from the threat of Seika.

Himika had authored it on the fly after a quick read-through of the printout Director Sagisaka had sent her. When she'd told him as much, Shirai had been impressed against his will; even though he knew the company's future now rested within his lab coat pocket, the program was an incredibly devious piece of work. It was a pity she'd placed him under a stringent non-disclosure agreement immediately after giving it to him; otherwise, the first thing he would have done when Reiji came back with the Lancers would be to compliment him for inheriting his mother's intelligence and quickness of mind. He probably could still do that anyway, he thought with a small chuckle—just not in so many words.

And so, bolstered by this, Shirai strode into the testing bay.

Because the reason for J.D. Crowley's disappearance had not yet been solved—and the fact that Seika was still an active criminal threat—Himika had decreed that the chaotic mess that the virus had caused inside was not to be disturbed without her personal say-so, and that any employee who dared tamper with this would wish—in her exact words—that they'd 'gone the way of Crowley' before she was done with them. She had been flexible only once, when Shirai had ordered maintenance to tidy the place up enough that the LID could freely move around the place, but the piles of junk that littered the room hither and thither still towered over Shirai. Otherwise, the scene was quite as undisturbed as before; even the cameras that had been wrecked in the initial incident had yet to be replaced.

Himika, knowing that there were definitely some blind spots in the security net of the testing bay as a result of this, had provided Shirai with a drop phone as well—much like Nakajima's, though much more disposable, in that it only contained one number. He was to call that number immediately after he'd accomplished his task—Himika-san had emphasized immediately—after which his job would be done, and Shirai could go toast his newly recovered fortune at the Roost near the docks, for all his boss cared.

He passed by one mountain of crumpled scrap metal, and saw his objective directly off to his right—where it had rested ever since this mess had started.

LED lights, set above in their recesses, glinted ominously off the black glass of Q's monolithic form, masking the many circuits and processors concealed within. The supercomputer looked like nothing more than a giant door either made up of—or leading to—nothing more than darkness in its basest, purest form. It stood there before Shirai, silently waiting—perhaps even begging—to be opened.

It was an eerily apt analogy, enough so to make Shirai's steps falter for a second—but only a second. Himika-san was counting on him, after all; for many people, that was enough to dispel whatever fears and doubts they might still harbor within them.

He could do this, he thought. Already Shirai could see himself inside the Roost, watching waitresses and dancers dressed like Harpies flit about around him. He relaxed.

Then he reached for the card in his pocket—the one that had been printed for this exact purpose—and had just brushed the edges with his fingers, before something off to his right caught his attention.

He did a double take. What in the world?

The Roost disappeared from his mind's eye, replaced by the scene before him. It looked innocuous enough—but it was still out of place from what he'd remembered seeing previously.

He took out his phone, and dialed the one number on its contact list.

"Are you finished?" Himika's voice, tinny as it was from the phone's speaker, still managed to leave minor echoes in the gigantic bay.

"Nearly, Himika-san," said Shirai. "There's something in here I wanted to ask about first … "

---

"Make it quick," said the headmistress from her office, head still swimming from the torrent of information she'd received from the Secretary of Defense. "I didn't send you down there to dawdle, Shirai."

"Y-yes." But her lead programmer recovered quickly. "You mentioned earlier that this entire testing bay has been undisturbed since Kōtsu Masumi Dueled Q, correct?"

"Correct."

"Then," said Shirai, "we may have a problem. Remember that living space we found inside one of the recesses in the testing bay?"

Himika did; she and the LID had long since agreed that Crowley had been using that recess during one of his marathon quality control sessions with Q. "What of it?"

"Do you remember the mini-fridge in one corner? All the food inside that had spilled when the incident occurred?"

"Yes?"

There was a pause. "It's all gone."

Himika froze. "Excuse me?"

"The food's gone. Nothing's left in here—not even crumbs."

The headmistress suddenly felt very lightheaded. "And you said yourself," she barely heard Shirai say, "that the only time maintenance came by was to clear the rubble from—"

He broke off; Himika was too busy in her unease to immediately process why. Something was wrong here.

Something was very, very wrong.

"Shirai." Her voice was low, terse. "Get out. Get out of there—right now."

There was no reply—only a noise; the smallest of noises, one easily discarded by the average human ear. Even to those with highly acute senses of hearing, it might have sounded innocuous through the phone's reception: a brief click of metal against metal, then a second and third, like a small piece of junk from the piles inside the testing bay had been slightly dislodged.

But Himika—and so, she suspected, did Shirai—had had far too many dealings with Americans this week not to know what that sound was.

She leapt out from her desk chair. "Shirai!" she bellowed. "I order you to get out of that room NOW!"

Her outburst had spurred her lead programmer into motion—but likely too late. Moments after she heard the pitter-patter of Shirai's shoes speeding for the door, three more noises—one after the other—were the last thing she heard from her phone before the line went dead. All of them were surprisingly brief, and weren't nearly as loud as she'd been expecting them to be, like the echoing slams of so many doors.

But Akaba Himika still remembered the day she found Reira. And she knew the sound of gunfire when she heard it.

---

6:00 P.M.

The passage of half an hour's time found Kōtsu Masumi unceremoniously squashed into the backseat of a luxury sedan, between an equally squeezed-in Fuyu and Hotene. Both Duelists were clutching at her sides for dear life, refusing to tear their eyes from the road ahead of them.

No one had spoken since they'd left the hospital ward; Shen had buckled himself in to the left of Fuyu, appearing very deep in thought indeed. Yaiba had taken the passenger's front seat—and appeared to be regretting his decision immensely, if his white knuckles were any indication.

Nakajima was behind the wheel, and driving as if the city streets—filling more and more with traffic thanks to the evacuation order that had just aired on every station—were his own personal Suzuka International. Traffic signals flashed red to no avail; Himika's aide flew through each one, mounting curbs and scattering crowds without so much as slowing down. Even the leather seats offered no comfort to her backside from the rough trip through town.

He'd been like this ever since Masumi had seen him enter the closed ward, brush aside Nurse Fujiwara as though she wasn't even there, and declared gravely that they had to leave "right now". The way he'd emphasized this had left no room for debate—and even if it had, Masumi wasn't about to argue with a man about half as broad at the shoulder again as most of the orderlies in Maiami General. So she'd stayed put long enough to let the nurse detach her from the IV drip, clean her up, and then get dressed from there. She'd retrieved her Duel Disk as well—and told Yaiba, Hotene, Shen, and Fuyu to take theirs along with them, too—but they did not activate them, and had yet to do so even now, as they sped for LDS with the speed of a fallen angel.

Finally, Nakajima eased his foot off the gas just enough so that he could be heard over the roar of the engine.

"Nineteen minutes ago," he said, "Headmistress Himika contacted the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and relayed the events of the past twelve hours to him. Two minutes before that, Shirai Toshio entered LeoCorp R&D in an attempt to restore Q's factory settings so as to purge Seika completely from its memory banks, and allow its hardware to remain intact."

"Did he have to go inside testing bay three?" Masumi asked.

The aide nodded.

" … Then I'm guessing it didn't go well?"

Nakajima held his silence for too long—immediately, Masumi felt worried. "Fifteen minutes ago," he said, "emergency services responded to a 119 call on LeoCorp premises from the headmistress … reporting shots fired inside Research and Development."

Shen was very, very quiet. Meanwhile, what little color still remained in Yaiba's face from the breakneck speed of the car ride had now left it completely.

"Shots?" he echoed in disbelief. "Actual gunshots?!"

Another nod. "All nonessential personnel have already been evacuated from the building; city police and JGSDF have already set up a joint cordon around the premises. But Himika won't risk them breaching the building while Q is still inside. So she instructed me to collect you from Maiami General and escort you into LeoCorp from there."

When Masumi put two and two together, she almost lurched out of her seat—restraints be damned—to be sick out of the window. "Wha—she's sending us to take out an active shooter?!" she spluttered.

Nakajima shook his head. "Leave that to me." He turned to Yaiba. "Open the glovebox, would you?"

Yaiba did—and immediately did a double-take that Masumi could see even from behind him. "Is … is that supposed to be a Duel Disk?" The incredulity in his voice was growing by the second.

Nakajima didn't answer as he reached inside. When he withdrew his hand, Masumi saw—for the split second that the gap between his seat and Yaiba's afforded her—a rectangular construction of gunmetal gray; substantially larger and longer than any Duel Disk she'd ever seen, but of similar proportions, and balanced carefully (almost reverently, even, she thought) in the aide's hand even as he continued to push the sedan past all manner of speed limits.

"I was part of the JSDF myself before I was attached to either LDS or LeoCorp," Nakajima explained as he clasped the device to his left wrist. "I was specially trained to engage in scenarios such as these—so if the shooter is still inside, I'm far and away the most qualified of us to handle it. You're to stay behind me at all times."

Masumi didn't dare to disagree. She watched as the aide pressed a switch, causing what might have been the Deck slot to pop out on a hinge—but whatever he was putting into it didn't look remotely like a Deck, Masumi thought, even with what little she could see.

"What about Shirai?" Yaiba was still eyeing Nakajima's device apprehensively as he voiced his question.

"We don't know if he managed to get to cover in time," the aide replied, closing the slot with a click, "but whether he did or not, he has no real way to defend himself; therefore, we can no longer count on him to neutralize Seika. So you'll have to do it yourselves; Himika-san has set up a direct line from her office so she can guide you personally."

"Do we know who the"—Fuyu gulped audibly before he stammered the next word—"sh-shooter is?"

Nakajima shook his head. "I don't—but someone in America does. I would guess the Secretary of Defense … and probably the headmistress as well. She's told me that much of their conversation has been declared classified intelligence, so even I don't know specifics. All I can tell you for certain is what Himika-san told me."

He swallowed, blinked, and spoke. " … Captain Reed and Agent Moss may still be alive."

The LID had only a split second to look at each other, and thus see the collective blank shock splashed all over their faces. Then, without waiting for a reaction, Nakajima hung a left onto the next road that would have shamed a drift racer—forcing Fuyu's head to whack Masumi in the chin, and Masumi's outburst back into her windpipe so quickly that she spent the rest of the drive coughing and cursing under every other ragged breath she took.

---

By the time Masumi had recovered her breath, the front drive to the Leo Duel School was in sight—but Nakajima turned away with another sharp left at the same time that the Fusion Duelist noticed the ocean of red-and-blue lights coming from what looked like half the city police. And that wasn't all; green-and-brown camouflaged trucks had driven up by the dozen, from which similar-clad soldiers were now spilling out of the back. Together, trucks and cruisers formed an ominous-looking blockade that Masumi had always hoped she'd only ever see in those monster movies of old, and never in real life.

"The JSDF certainly didn't waste any time," Nakajima was heard to remark under his breath.

"So why does Himika think those Americans are still alive?" Masumi had to talk very fast before Nakajima's driving knocked the wind out of her again. "There were witnesses—with cameras, even—on that street who saw that virus snap their necks and fling their bodies into a building!"

"After Himika-san called Washington, she called MCPD. They told her that building was searched top to bottom right after your Duel with Seika," said Nakajima. "Both Reed's and Moss' bodies were nowhere to be found. No sign of a struggle—no sign that anyone could have carted them off in that time. They just … vanished."

Without warning, he jerked the wheel again—swerving so violently into a nearby parking garage that Masumi had to grab Hotene by the collar of her romper dress to keep the girl's still-bandaged head from hitting the window.

"Employee parking," he explained to the LID, finally slowing the car enough to where the tires only skidded as he maneuvered the sedan downward through each tight curve. "We can access R&D from there; I'll message Himika and tell her to deactivate the security protocols between there and here. But it's a long way, even at a run."

Masumi gulped. Already she could feel her bruised body screaming in protest. Hotene had clutched her tightly by the arm; her flyaway blonde hair had lost its usual bounciness, and hung limply from her scalp in untidy strings. Fuyu's eye had instantly alighted upon Shen, who was still acting unnaturally quiet, even for him.

"This is gonna su-u-uck … " Yaiba dragged out the last word by sagging in his seat and stealing a glimpse skyward, as if divine intervention would help him now. But it was too late for a petition; Nakajima had already stopped the car next to an elevator, and motioned them all to make for it without bothering to properly park the car.

Shen was first to the doors, pressing the DOWN button before Masumi had even unbuckled herself. Nakajima was composing a text on his phone, presumably to Himika; the rest of the LID followed.

The aide looked up from his phone long enough to give Shen a look of admonition. "I know what they taught you before Shanghai," he said. "I know you're capable of pulling your own weight around here, and then some."

He lowered his voice. "And I also lost people dear to me when I served in the JSDF, too. What I said in the car still stands: you're to stay behind me at all times … and you're to consider that as if Himika-san ordered it herself."

Shen blinked, but still said nothing. Masumi was starting to get worried about him—and Nakajima's exchange with the Synchro Duelist had only intensified that worry. Fortunately for them—and, in some way, unfortunately—the elevator opened at that point, at which point all six of them filed in.

Nakajima twisted a key, much like the one Himika had used yesterday, and the elevator immediately began to hurtle downward. Masumi felt a jolt reverberate through her that she thought had little to do with the cramped car's sudden descent.

One surprise after the other in such a short time had become too much to bear for her: it had started with the LID's first-ever loss as a group to Seika, and torture that had marked their bodies and caused intense pain unimagined ever before. Now, she had learned that Japan was calling in their armed forces, such was the threat that Seika posed; that an active gunman, whose identity yet remained a mystery, was inside the very building they were about to infiltrate; and that two people she'd thought had been killed right in front of her were quite possibly still alive …

"Hey."

She felt Yaiba's hand on her shoulder even before her racing mind heard his voice. "You're gonna be okay. We're not doing this on our own anymore."

Masumi looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see them shaking. She hadn't felt that at all before. And yet this did not feel as though it was caused by fear—she certainly felt afraid; how could she not?! But the fear that continued to mingle with her shock and confusion had now been encased within a shell of pumping, surging adrenaline that she'd only felt before the biggest Duels in her career—Duels where that career, or something more, was on the line.

Something more … She suddenly felt more aware of her body, and everything happening inside it, than she ever had at any point in her life before. Perhaps it was the thought of losing it so quickly that had made her newly appreciate what she had been given—her mother's skill in Dueling, her father's eyes for precious jewels—and again, she wished dearly that Himika would have given them a chance to contact their families before sending them off into a place from which they might not come back out.

"Shirai was given a card that contained a program pertaining to Q's restoration protocol," Nakajima was saying. "If we're lucky, he'll give us that card. Then, if we let Q scan it, then the program will remotely activate that protocol, and cleanse Q's software of Seika once and for all."

The way he said it made Masumi even more rattled than before. "And … what if we're unlucky?"

Nakajima rolled the shoulder of the arm that bore his would-be Duel Disk. "Then we're going to have to find some way of creating an entirely new program from scratch that's capable of purging a supercomputer's entire software while leaving its hardware intact."

"In a shooting zone," said Masumi flatly.

"In a shooting zone." Nakajima replied.

The Fusion Duelist fixed him with a glare nearly as flat as her voice. "Remind me again," she said testily, "why this is supposed to make my parents believe Himika's a good person to be in charge of a Duel School?"

Nakajima paused for barely a fraction of a second. "You're Lancers, aren't you?"

"No, we're LID."

"Which she explicitly said," said Nakajima, "when she gathered you in her office yesterday afternoon, was a new group of Lancers."

It was Masumi's turn to briefly pause. "I don't get why that should matter."

"Because to Himika, to be a Lancer means she has faith in you," the aide told her. "You know what they had to do to earn that distinction—they saved our city from invasion, and hope to save all Dimensions from the same as well."

"We didn't do anything like that—"

"It's not about what you did," said Nakajima. "It's how you did it." A pause. "There was a time, you know, when we were at war with the Americans. Towards the end of that war, their leader made the decision to use a devastating weapon on us. When they were asked why they used it at all, instead of attacking us the way we had them, they explained that an invasion of Japan would have killed even more of us than those two bombs ever did."

A somber mood settled over the elevator. Masumi wasn't quite sure what to say to that—but she had a go anyway.

"But … that's not who we are," she managed to choke out. "We're kids—we don't kill people, let alone drop bombs on them!" She decided not to mention anything of Kurosaki Shun's methods at the Maiami Championship.

"Precisely," Nakajima nodded. "When the world learned of Academia, and the way it had attacked Maiami City, there were some calls from the world for them to be eradicated from existence with one fell swoop. America wasn't the loudest of them, either. They didn't care that the vast majority of the school was … well, schoolchildren. But Himika did—and she knew that if we'd let hotter tempers take hold of us, there might not be an Academia."

He sighed. "But there wouldn't be much else left, either."

Masumi's throat felt as though she'd swallowed a handful of ash. "So, sending kids to fight this war for us … "

" … was Himika-san's way of expressing her belief in your generation," finished Nakajima. "Barbaric it may sound, but something you kids have that a lot of people my age don't is imagination. Machines may be intelligent, and humans may be cognizant—but children can be inspired. For someone like Himika-san to have faith in the Lancers—it lets them start to think 'We can do anything'. Even ending this war before it really gets out of control."

No one said anything.

"One month ago, you and your friends proved yourselves worthy of the Headmistress' faith when you defeated a terrible threat to Maiami City—from under her nose, no less," Nakajima went on. "This may be the first time you and I have ever talked before—but I can tell that, as time has gone on … Seika has shaken that faith."

He glanced down at Masumi. "So what do you do now, Masumi? Do you stand, firm and tall, against a threat to your very way of life? Or do you let it consume you, as it's already consumed thirty-three people?"

The Fusion Duelist let his words echo in her brain, soaking them up, drinking them in. She could feel five other pairs of eyes fixed squarely on her, like so many laser beams.

This was the moment, she knew. There would be no turning back after this.

She felt her left hand clench into a fist—then, almost automatically, she felt her right hand reach inside the holster strapped to her waist, and pull out the Duel Disk inside. A split-second later, the loud click of the navy blue device echoed in the elevator as it secured itself to her arm. Four more clicks around her—one right after the other—told her that her friends had mirrored her movements.

No one spoke. No one needed to. Masumi breathed in—breathed out. She closed her eyes—opened them again. "Well," she finally quipped, in spite of herself, "we've nearly died twice already. Maybe the third time won't be the charm, either."

"I don't wanna die, Masu-chan." Hotene was gripping her arm so tightly that if Masumi had been a doll, it would have popped out of her socket a long time ago.

At any other time, the Fusion Duelist would have felt tears swimming in her eyes to hear such a thing from her Junior counterpart. But the audacity of the past several days' events had produced a strange, reckless sort of confidence in her; it was, perhaps, this sort of confidence that made her turn to Hotene, and say,

"Then you won't die, Hotene." She smiled at the tiny Duelist. "It's as simple as that. None of us want to die either, do we?" she asked no one in particular.

There was a general murmur of dissent.

"Then none of you will die, either," grinned Masumi. Yaiba's earlier words of reassurance now flowed through her like warm drink. "We're going to be okay." We will be, she added to herself.

We have to.

The elevator dinged. The doors creaked. And in the brief moment in between, Masumi felt time slow around her yet again—felt the world shrink around her to this tiny metal box, the gigantic floor of Research and Development, and however much hallway that separated one from the other.

She thought of her mother, how her job involved catching would-be jewel thieves, and wondered how she might react if she could see her daughter now, rushing recklessly into certain danger in some slim hope of saving the city. She thought of her father, whose eyes and memory she had inherited, and—in another time—had hoped to put to use in his jewelry shop; idly, she wondered if that future had been closed off to her now, or if the time was yet to come.

Then, she thought of the dozens of faceless men, women, and children that Seika had killed—and she felt that fury course along her body again, wrapping itself around her limbs, sinking into every joint, every tendon … every bone. She thought of Shen, now without the only family he'd known in Japan, feeling her anger sharpen her senses—

She whirled at the Synchro user, still silent and resolute—and she realized, quite suddenly, why that was the case.

It was the only thought she could make before the elevator opened—and Nakajima sprinted down the hallway like a charging rhino, at a speed that belied his burly frame. Shen followed close behind—almost dead even with the aide—with Fuyu on his back, his eyes closed and lips silently moving as if in prayer.

Then, Yaiba took Hotene by the arm, hoisting the tiny Duelist atop his own back—before launching forward himself, leaving Masumi to bring up the rear.

---

They sped through the hallway, barely noticing the gray walls flowing past them. All that occupied their minds was their destination, how long it would take to get there—and the hope that they might not be too late.

"You've been quiet," Masumi remarked as she summoned enough speed to draw level with Shen. It was very hard work; she was ignoring her third stitch already, while the Synchro Duelist—who Masumi had seen make leaps and bounds that not even Gravity Sixteen could help Hotene accomplish—seemed to be treating this as a light jog in comparison.

"I apologize. But I must concentrate." She knew from the tone that Shen meant what he said—but the words was still unusually clipped, even for his Chinese accent.

"Is it about Seika?"

"In part," grunted Shen. "But not entirely." He spared a moment to summon enough speed to draw almost level with Nakajima. "Do you remember when we first met?"

Masumi did. After surviving her first two grueling hours in Trampo-Land with Hotene last month, she had been stunned to encounter someone as athletic as the little girl was energetic. Shen had greeted her by appearing right behind her without a sound, disappearing almost as silently in the blink of an eye, and reappearing almost as quickly nearly twenty feet away. Shen was far from the only Duelist she had seen whose body was capable of incredible feats—but he'd been the closest standing to her, and to see such feats for herself made the experience all the more unbelievable.

"Was there ever a time," the Synchro Duelist pressed on, "when you wondered as to how I could achieve such feats of strength?"

She shook her head. "You mentioned you lived most of your life in a temple near the Himalayas," she said, "that most of what you learned, you learned from there. I guess I assumed that included your athletic training."

"And you would be correct," Shen told her. "But that does not yet answer my question in full. How can a human being leap as high and far as I can? How can they move as fast—or lift as much—as I can?"

Masumi shrugged. "Practice?"

"Years of it. The techniques my sifu taught me, both there and here, required years of both practice and rigorous training simply to understand the basics. Even I have yet to achieve full mastery of luóhàn shíbā shǒu, the most elementary form of Shaolin kung fu." Even as Masumi's mouth fell open in shock, his eyes narrowed. "However, even the most skilled of bodies is useless if it is not governed by an equally skilled mind … one that has been fully released from all manner of distraction and exultation."

"And that's why you've been so quiet?" said Masumi. "You're trying to psych yourself up?"

"In a sense," Shen nodded. "It would be more appropriate—if also more self-aggrandizing then I would wish—to say I am building myself up. I believe the Americans have a phrase for such moments—the calm before the storm."

Masumi felt a sudden thrill of emotion in her heart. She could count the times she had ever seen Shen angry on one hand—and half of those moments, the Synchro user's emotions had not been his to control. And there was one occasion Yaiba had mentioned to her in passing, after he'd lost to Kachidoki Isao by way of being knocked left, right, and center by that relentless Duelist. He had told Shen of that loss as well, and Shen, in what Masumi guessed was, in his mind, not one of his finer moments—had severely damaged a five-hundred-kilogram piece of training equipment with his bare hands.

She gulped, not even daring to speak. Fuyu, still clutching Shen's chest like a lifeline from where he rested, was staring in a sort of wonder-filled fear, and Masumi knew they were thinking the same thing: was Shen about to—

Nakajima threw out his hand at that moment, and the LID slowed to a jog with him. They'd just reached a door; Masumi could see the enormous warehouse-like space of LeoCorp R&D through a thin slit of window just beyond.

The aide produced a keycard, sliding it over a hidden sensor; the door beeped, and clicked open. He paused just long enough to put a finger to his lips, then draw it across his neck, before motioning them to follow him.

Masumi had never seen the gesture before, but she assumed enough to know what it might mean: from here on out, Nakajima wanted the LID to be as quiet as the grave.

She failed to repress a shiver as she stepped through the door.

---

The gigantic main floor of Research and Development had changed little from the first time Masumi had seen it. Dozens of projects, many of which served a purpose she could not immediately fathom, were still set up in their assigned grids. The only difference was the lack of people working on them; aside from Nakajima and the LID, the floor was completely deserted—completely quiet.

But the six of them only had eyes for the door to testing bay three, ahead and to their right—and slowly getting closer.

She felt a lump form in her throat. Was the shooter still inside? Masumi thought. Whoever it was couldn't have moved into another location, or else Nakajima would have said as much. Nor could they have escaped the complex itself—not with MCPD and what looked like an entire JSDF brigade waiting for them.

Her heart began to pound as they reached the door. She heard Nakajima curse under his breath. "Locked," he whispered. Masumi noticed he was gripping his Duel Disk in an odd way.

"Stand back," he said tersely. They did so, eyeing the device on his wrist as he extended it outwards, towards a corner of the door before them.

"Two-inch-thick titanium; completely soundproof," Nakajima told them. "But every door has a weak spot. If I can weaken the hinges just enough … "

He steadied his arm, aiming it at an upper corner—and then Masumi had the shock of her life as Nakajima's Duel Disk exploded with a BANG.

But even as she felt her heart stop, she was stunned to find that it hadn't exploded at all; it was smoking at one end, and the sound of a tiny metal cylinder falling to the floor only served to redouble her disbelief.

Nakajima wasn't wielding a Duel Disk. He was wielding a gun.

The aide fired twice more—once at a lower corner, and again at where an ordinary door might hold its lock—before stepping back to observe whatever he'd done.

He grimaced. "Damn. It wasn't enough."

Then Li Shen stepped forward—and before Masumi could properly steel herself for what was about to come, the Synchro Duelist had jumped up, uttering a wordless roar most unlike him—and lashed out with a single hook kick hard enough to physically and noticeably dent the two inches of titanium that composed it.

This in itself robbed Masumi—and no doubt everyone else with her—of the power of speech. Shen did all that with just his foot?! she thought wildly. He'd had no protection save his simple shoes, and yet walked forward without even the slightest hint of a limp.

Shen laid a hand on the door, and gave a simple push; the titanium door fell like a domino, hitting the floor with a sonorous CRASH.

No one said anything. Even Nakajima looked as though his brain, hidden behind his sunglasses, was still trying to process what had just happened. Hotene and Fuyu were slack-jawed; Yaiba had a smile playing about his face that told Masumi he'd seen exactly this sort of thing before—but, like the rest of them, hadn't expected the sheer force behind what Shen had done.

"Remind me to never make you angry," he murmured to his companion as they stepped inside testing bay three.

---

The LID got as far as ten paces before they forgot completely about Shen's feat of superhuman strength. They stopped as one, unable to believe the scene that lay in front of their eyes.

"Oh, my God … " Yaiba's face was white. Shen's was ashen; Fuyu's was green. Hotene's was buried in Masumi's stomach from the moment both Fusion Duelists had made sense of the grisly sight.

Shirai Toshio lay slumped on the floor a few meters from where they stood—face-down, but clearly dead. Two blotches of red bloomed like macabre imitations of flowers from the back of his once-pristine lab coat. The shattered remnants of a phone were held in his outstretched hand. His other hand was clutched inside one of his coat pockets; why, Masumi was too terrified to guess.

"Shot in the back—right through the shoulder blades, and again through the heart," Nakajima muttered, inspecting the body while Fuyu was sick in the nearest pile of junk. "A third bullet must have hit his phone; there's no way a drop from that small a height could break it this badly."

"He didn't even have time to call for help." Masumi's voice was high-pitched, and fast approaching hysteria.

Oh god it's a dead body someone actually killed this man oh my god I'm going to be seeing this in my nightmares forever

"I don't think he even knew the shooter was here," commented Nakajima, reaching inside the pocket where Shirai had buried his free hand. He frowned briefly. "There it is." His hand was quickly withdrawn.

Masumi frowned. "There what is?"

But before Nakajima could answer her question: "I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the body, please."

Hotene screamed. Yaiba and Fuyu spun round so quickly they nearly overbalanced. Masumi felt as if she'd been electrocuted; the gunman was still in the room with them—

The voice was not Japanese, so it wasn't Koen Nene, she thought. It was male, so it couldn't be Nina Kowalski. It wasn't growly and mechanical, either, but airy and quite pleasant—so it couldn't even be Seika. So who—?

The Fusion user felt her eyes travel along the floor, from Shirai's body to—for the first time she'd noticed it—the smooth slab of obsidian that was Q. And standing less than a meter away from Q was a man pointing a gun right at them—a man whose face, though one Masumi had only seen once before, had been burned into her mind forever.

She gaped. "Crowley?!"