Mike had always been a simple man. Simple enough to be easily overwhelmed by anything more complex than a fishing trip. So when the big white robots appeared, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at—except that they reminded him of giant bugs. One of them had a humped back covered in strange, dark holes. It made him uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite explain. The facility around them felt too clean, too white, like a hospital that had swallowed up every bit of life and spit it back out sanitized.
Haji-Haji’s scream snapped him out of his daze. She was yelling at him in Japanese. “Hyaku, run!” But then Emily’s voice cut through, barking her own order in her English lilt. “Stay where you are, Mike!”
What now? He glanced down, realizing he was holding Federico’s NPU between him and the looming robot. This must be too heavy for her, he figured. Haji-Haji had practically shoved it into his arms. But his understanding of the situation was skin-deep at best. He did what he thought was right—he rushed to the ENCEPHALON and inserted the NPU.
The reaction was immediate. Haji-Haji let out a cry of despair, hurling a string of furious Japanese at him, the word "baka!" unmistakable. Mike blinked, stunned. He hadn’t realized what he’d just done. The NPU... it was supposed to go in there, wasn’t it?
Before he could grasp the full consequences, a loud crash rang out. Emily had blasted one of the Dotour robots with a sonic wave, sending it flying backward. The glass door behind it shattered, and the robot toppled out of the doorway, ending up in a tangled heap on the floor. But even as it writhed to get back up, something held it down. Its leg was locked in place, anchored to the ground by one of Emily’s magnetic boxes.
From where Mike lay, he watched Emily poke her head out of the window, her back to him, speaking to someone outside. “Good work, lad,” she called out, her voice tinged with amusement. “I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a reply, she stepped through the broken window and disappeared from his view, leaving Mike and Haji-Haji to deal with their own mess.
Mike, too distracted by Haji-Haji‘s rising panic, barely registered Emily’s departure. Haji-Haji , her face twisted in frustration, turned to him.
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“Distract it!” she shouted. “Sing, dance—just do something!”
Mike hesitated, but then, true to his nature, he tried. He flailed his arms awkwardly, humming some old tune his daddy used to sing. The robot paused, almost confused by the bizarre display. It worked... for all of two seconds.
Haji-Haji, gritting her teeth, ran up to Mike and dragged him toward the nearest bunk. “Get on!” she commanded. “If it wants our heads in the simulation, maybe we can beat it by logging in ourselves.”
“Which one?” Mike asked, bewildered.
“The bottom bunk!” she yelled, slapping his shoulder. Mike threw himself onto the bed, feeling the cold metal beneath him. Hajime quickly locked a headset onto his head, flipping a switch. Almost instantly, everything went black.
EPILOGUE TO THE INTERLUDE: MIKE’S BODY
Mike's PoV may have slipped away into the virtual simulation, but his body–and its AVP, remained in the real world, lying unconscious on the bunk in the sterile, white room of NERVOUS. But that didn’t mean it was safe.
He didn’t know when the small, cloned figures appeared. Four of them—tiny, identical creatures about a meter tall. Long blonde hair, wrapped in strange tubing-like suits, moving like animals on all fours. They sniffed around, fighting over discarded trinkets, poking at him like curious little monkeys.
It wasn’t long before they started sniffing at him. The scent of something buttery clung to his suit, drawing them closer. His inertial shielding systems held up at first, repelling their touch, but they were clever little girls and persisted until the battery ran out. And when it did, they grew bolder.
Primitive tools in hand, they tore through the leg of his suit. His unconscious body didn’t register the pain as they carved into his flesh, dividing it amongst themselves like some primitive feast. But in their attempts to pull apart the suit, they inadvertently dragged him out of the bunk, disconnecting him from the headset.
That’s when the Dotour robot lunged.
Its long, mechanical arm snatched Mike’s limp body, lifting him up to examine his face. The blue panel glowed faintly as it scanned him, cold and unfeeling. Satisfied with what it found, it reached back into one of the cells on its hunchback, withdrawing a long silver cylinder—an NPU.
The robot placed the device over Mike’s head, and his body convulsed briefly before dropping limp once again, his consciousness already gone.
The little creatures resumed their feast, undisturbed, as Mike’s AVP feed ended.