Is it odd that despite the psychopath standing in front of me, staring me down with the barrel of my own shotgun, the only thing I notice is the light of the morning sun pouring through the window to my right? I guess whoever said 'your life flashes before your eyes' when you’re about to die is dead wrong. As it turns out, you appreciate the tiny, everyday details that you don’t usually notice.
Arturo, getting tired of me admiring the sunrise, jabs the barrel of the shotgun into my nose hard enough that it pushes me back a step or two.
“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Arturo says, still trying to put on the good-cop persona. A bit too late for that.
“If you don’t answer my question honestly in twenty seconds, I’m going to blow your brains out.”
A psychopath with no patience . . . great combo. Arturo begins the countdown, and after taking in a deep breath, I tell him what I’ve seen.
“He didn’t tell me anything you don't know.”
I thought he’d interrupt me and tell me to call him Art, but I guess what I have to say is more important than his naming preferences.
“Don’t give me that cr—”
“He showed me that this world isn’t the only one. That this is just one of the thousands of interconnected worlds, linked by a complex grid created by a team of programmers, containing the souls of people that died in some great disaster outside.”
Arturo is nodding and saying, “Um-hum,” while I am answering his question.
I guess being honest and straightforward is the best policy, especially when trying to avoid the question almost gave me the most fatal broken nose ever. Arturo still hasn’t lowered the shotgun, so I’m not out of the woods yet.
“Anything else?” Arturo asks.
Should I keep talking? I’ve just revealed the big secret to everything, and the only other thing I can tell them may be too close to home for him and his teenaged coworker. How do I know he won’t just pull the trigger as soon as I say what I’m about to say?
“Got something on your mind?” Arturo asks in the most intense yet chilling tone of voice I’ve ever heard in my life, or this life anyway. Once again pressing the shotgun against my nose and rubbing the barrel slowly against it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Maria looking away. She may try to act tough, but regardless of whether it’s for show or not, she is still a teenager from a world where this kind of brutality is rare, if nonexistent, or at least, I'd like to think so. Well, I guess my choice is made then. I either say something and risk getting my brains scattered on the floor or don’t say anything and get my brains blown out for sure.
“I also know that you and your friend are not human in the traditional sense. You are beings created by the system to protect it and prevent people like me from finding out the truth. If this place is an afterlife, then that would make you guys angels, wouldn’t it?”
Arturo is once again nodding and saying, “Um-hum,” after every sentence. “Beautifully put . . . That all?” he says again, in an almost-emotionless voice.
“Yes, that's it,” I confirm while waiting to see what this . . . thing decides to do with my second life.
Arturo turns his head to Maria and asks the girl, “Think he’s telling the truth?”
“Yes,” she replies, though I’m not sure if she believes me or just wants this all to stop. I can honestly relate because I am telling the truth and want to get out of this mess. “It seems that the corruption builds up strength the longer it stays in the server,” Maria says very clinically.
Again? I get that 'server' is just what these guys call the different worlds. They're computer programs, I can’t blame them, but “corruption”?
“Damn. So this guy is patient 0?” asks Arturo in a stern, foreboding tone.
“Corruption!? Patient zero?! What the hell are you—”
Before I can even finish, Arturo once again jabs the barrel of my shotgun against my nose.“Speak when you are spoken to,” he says with a cold, impassive voice.
“No, he deserves to know the truth,” Maria interrupts Arturo as he continues holding the shotgun at point-blank range.
I have to respect the teenager for standing up to the armed psychopath, though maybe the assault rifle helps.
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“Lower your gun and stand down. Let me handle the rest.”
Finally, Arturo lowers the shotgun, takes two steps back, sighs, and says, “Fine. Take it from here, Maria-san.” The “Maria-san” is said in a biting, irritated tone.
Maria returns his tone by giving Arturo an angry, piercing glare as she walks past him.
I appreciate the change in conversational dance partners. Not only is she finally throwing me a bone for once, but she hasn’t even pointed her gun at me. I can tell this savagery is not something she's used to; otherwise, she won’t have been looking away and she would know how to handle a gun. It makes it more plausible that she has come from a posh, peaceful world.
Maybe there is a “Japanese high school world,” like how this is a “zombie apocalypse” world. No time to think about all that. I’ve got to focus on getting out of this ever-evolving mess. My opponent is a teenage girl with a gun that she probably doesn’t even know how to fire. I could always try to overpower her and take her hostage, especially since my side seems to be doing better since Atsushi has done his weird cyber magic on me.
On the other hand, that crazy bastard still has my gun, and I wouldn't want to mess with someone carrying that in a cramped hotel room. Add to that my morals tugging at me when I think of the prospect of holding a kid hostage and . . . shit. Anyway, I have a feeling the information she’s about to reveal is something I’m going to need. Let’s hope I made the right call here.
“Hello?” Maria asks in a pouty and impatient tone while I'm still deep in thought.
The suddenness of her question makes me gasp, and I stumble backward onto the table set between the head of the two beds. After realizing it’s just Maria trying to get my attention, I stand back up, clear my throat, and say, “Yes?”
All the while, Arturo is laughing his ass off in the background. Guess he finds it funny that I can be cool as a cucumber or at least, as cool as someone can be while having a shotgun pointed at their nose, yet get surprised by a teenage girl.
“Oy, Maria-san, I guess you should have been handling this the whole time,” Arturo snickers, his laughter continuing even after sharing his thought. He’s laughing so hard he’s slapping his knees and stomping his feet while leaning on the TV stand. Jesus, it isn’t that funny.
Maria, whose anger has been building up like a tea kettle, shouts, “Are you done already?” It takes me aback a little, although not enough to stumble backward this time, and instantly shuts up the laughing man.
“Anyway, where was I?” Maria says, quickly regaining her composure after just blowing up a second ago. If she’d originally come from this world, the rest of the gang leaders wouldn't stand a chance, especially considering how she's keeping Arturo the Artist here on such a tight leash.
“Oh right!” Maria seems to remember her train of thought. And with that, her expression changes from excitable to one of deep sadness, like she is longing for someone she’s lost who is important to her, or maybe that’s just me projecting.
“That boy, he is not who he appears to be,” Maria says, stating the obvious. “Atsushi, the child you were talking to in this room, is a virus.”
“Virus?” I respond in shock.
Now that I think about it, that would explain the eye with the computer code. Though, how the hell do I now know about computer coding anyway? I might be good with old equipment like DVD players, but computers are on a whole other level. Most of them got wreaked during the plague anyway. Anybody who knows how to fix and operate those out here is the equivalent of a wizard.
“What do you mean?” I respond, trying to make sense of everything.
“I mean that he’s a dangerous being, created by a terrorist organization from outside, whose sole purpose is to destroy the system.”
Shit, this is all starting to sound like some weird sci-fi movie.
“So then, if he wanted to destroy . . . whatever this all is, then what would be his point in telling me about it and only giving me the basics? How does that help his cause?” I ask, trying to find some plausibility to this story.
I mean, I’ve just found out we all live in a computer system made up of multiple worlds secretly controlled by superpowerful beings that pose as influential people within them. I’m not too sure why I’m even worrying about plausibility at this point.
Before she can answer my question, we hear shots from outside. Just like that, the interrogation ends, with all three of us turning our gazes to the door, followed by Arturo yelling, “What the hell is going on?”
Almost immediately, a bloodied soldier opens the door and falls onto the floor, face-first. Arturo rushes over to the man and kneels beside him while Maria and I stand close behind him.
With a concerned expression on his face, Arturo asks the bloodied soldier, “Ramirez! Goddamn it! Hang in there!”
What the hell? Who is this guy? Thirty minutes ago, he was threatening to shoot me in the face with a shotgun, and now he’s concerned for his underling’s life . . . even while there is a battle going on in the hall? He’s not even human, so why does he care? Maybe he and the rest of the Admins see us as nothing but pets, helpless animals that can’t protect themselves.
The bloodied soldier, with all his strength, tries to tell Arturo, “G-g-go! We’ve bee—”
Just before the soldier can finish what he is about to say, a bullet flies into the back of his head, killing him instantly. Standing in front of the door is his killer, holding a smoking pistol. I recognize him as the soldier who blew away Jumpy’s head off of his corpse, but now I notice dark purple lines running down from the top of his hair to the tip of his boots. Arturo, still on his knees, looks up at the soldier with a sad and shocked expression while Maria stands next to me, glaring at the soldier like she’s straining to put together a tough puzzle.
Arturo struggles to find the words to say to his former friend, but the man holding the pistol speaks up first, “Sorry, boss. Some of us decided that we don’t need you or your kind anymore.”
As I try to figure out what to do, I hear Maria mumble something like, “So the corruption is spreading faster . . .”
Wait, so he’s like me? But I don’t seem to have any dark purple lines on me.
The soldier then points his gun at Arturo and says, “Your erasure is nigh!”