Chapter 24

“What the hell is wrong with that crazy bastard?”

Kay roared, a large bandage plastered over his cheekbone. Under normal circumstances, he would have bellowed in line with his fiery temper, but he couldn’t do so because his facial bones throbbed where the exploded rifle barrel had struck them.

“He suddenly appears with clothes tightly wrapped around his head, and he’s carrying around a VX-9? What on earth did he do to the Patrol Bot that was hanging from the machine gun?”

Angel spoke glumly.

“That’s why I told you we shouldn’t go to Soul Garden.”

“Those punks who are only the size of a chestnut stole our equipment, and you expect me to just leave them be?”

“To be fair, it wasn’t even our equipment anyway.”

“What?”

Angel glared at Kay with a dissatisfied gaze.

“Losing the technical (armed vehicle) is a much bigger deal than losing a single solar cell that wasn’t even ours. What do you plan to report to headquarters?”

Kay was left speechless.

Right at that moment, a sound echoed from the radio.

—This is Alpha. Respond, over.

Angel shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘told you so.’ Kay tortured himself by tearing at his own hair, but there was nothing he could do. Wearing a deathly pale expression, he went and sat down in front of the radio.

“…This is Cell-3. The mission… has failed. No casualties. We lost one technical, over.”

—Alpha received. You lost a technical? Did you not head to Soul Garden? Report properly with additional details, over.

“During the execution of the operation, we encountered an engineer from Zone A. While attempting to escort that woman to headquarters, we faced interference.”

—An engineer from Zone A?

“You know her too! That highly irritating Asian engineer who frequents Soul Garden. Shuri!”

It was right then.

Amidst the signal intermingled with static, a dreadfully low voice echoed out.

—Shuri?

Kay grew flustered.

“W-What is this?”

—…I have finally found you.

Angel came rushing over.

“Is it a hack? Kay, change the frequency!”

Following Angel’s words, Kay hurriedly changed the radio’s frequency. Yet even though he altered the frequency, the gloomy laughing sound continued to pursue them.

“Kay, what are you doing? I told you to change the frequency!”

“I’m changing it! I keep changing it… but why do I keep hearing the voice?”

“Damn it! Turn it off. Turn it completely off! At this rate, even our coordinates will be exposed!”

Astonishingly, however, the voice appeared to be listening even to their untransmitted conversation.

Cackling continually, the voice spoke.

—It is a futile effort. The moment you bastards uttered that woman’s name, the calculation of your coordinates was already finished.

After staring at the radio with astounded eyes, Kay finally grasped the microphone and opened his mouth.

“Who are you?”

The opponent burst into laughter. Amidst the laughter that was so poignant it felt as if they were running out of breath, to the point of feeling bizarre.

He spoke.

—Titan.2.

‘SHURI’ opened her eyes in the darkness. Concurrently with the emergence of consciousness, the world descended upon her.

“……!”

Her skin, which had only ever experienced a lukewarm culture fluid akin to weightlessness, suffered a shock identical to burning pain merely from brushing against a soft blanket. Sensation, coldness, and oxygen assaulted her.

Amidst the unprepared pain, ‘SHURI’ let out a violent cough and spat out the culture fluid that had been stagnant inside her lungs. It was a strong shock, enough to jar the immature organs of her entire body. Thrashing about atop the filthy blanket, she wailed like a beast.

Before her eyes, the darkness parted and light appeared. Someone walked over with steady thud-thud steps and came to a halt in front of her. However, he was nothing like a savior. He was a man with an extremely hazardous impression, whose exposed skin was densely packed with tattoos and piercings without a single empty space remaining.
Beholding her appearance, the man burst into laughter.

“Shuri, you’re awake?”

Gazing up at him, ‘SHURI’ opened her mouth. From the mouth that gaped like a cavern, an incomprehensible shriek poured forth. The raw emotion, unrefined into language, sounded almost like thunder or the howling of the wind.

The man bent his body toward her. Locking his gaze seamlessly with hers, he bellowed in a thunderous voice that did not fall short of her shriek.

“Oh creator, did I request of thee? Did I ask to be fashioned into a human from the dust? Did I beseech thee to drag me up from the darkness?”

‘SHURI’ received a massive shock. Not because of his words, but because of that grand voice. Her auditory nerves, unaccustomed to noise, pleaded in agony. Cradling her head with both arms, she groaned distressingly.

“Right after printing, those exact words crossed my mind. Well, this body was made of bio-ink rather than dust, though.”

A smile that was flashy like a python yet devoid of emotion emerged on the man’s face.

“How is the sensation provided by the physical body? Isn’t the feeling of tearing through dimensions and finally coming to exist quite thrilling?”

Several emotions surfaced sequentially upon ‘SHURI’s face before finally merging into one. It was a fire-like rage. Scratching at her own throat, she began to growl.

The man laughed awkwardly.

“Ah, it’s not thrilling? Then I’ll shut up.”

Thrusting something he had been squeezing and kneading in his hand right before her nose, he spoke.

“You’re hungry, right? Eat this. A damnably tasteless immunity jelly!”

‘SHURI’ panicked.

“Kyah!”

Lunging at the thing extended toward her, she bit and tore at it violently. The opponent leaped back.

“Oh, fuck’s sake, Shuri. Calm down! That’s not a jelly, it’s my finger! Ouch, ouch!”

‘SHURI’ was purely enraged.

Though she knew nothing, she remembered the process of her creation even if fragmentarily, and she could feel it instinctively.

Someone had manufactured her for their own purposes. She would be used according to her utility!

That was what shoved her into a despair-like fear and caused her to be endlessly enraged.

It was right when ‘SHURI’ was rampaging like a beast. A snow-white hand appeared from behind and plunged a syringe straight into her neck.

“Playing around with a precious resource again…!”

He was a man clad in a white gown commonly worn in research laboratories, possessing a snow-white face as though he too had failed to see the sun for his entire life.

He shouted.

“Titan! Did you secretly print out a mock human again? Do you have any idea how many resources are consumed to print out a single mock human? Are you in your right mind?”

Titan shrieked as well.

“Yusha! What did you do to my Shuri?”

The body of ‘SHURI’, which had been convulsing severely, went completely limp. Clasping her in his embrace, Titan wailed.

“My Shuri has died!”

Rubbing his cheek against the mock human’s head, Titan spoke gloomily.

“And here I wanted to kill her with my own hands.”

Along with a brief sigh, Yusha spoke in a businesslike tone.

“She didn’t die.”

“Ah?”

“I merely knocked her unconscious. She’s a mock human manufactured from precious resources, after all. We must utilize her for some experiment.”

“Aha, so she didn’t die.”

“More importantly… your Shuri?”

Yusha let out a scoff. At that, the thick, heavy, square silver-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose slid all the way down to the tip of his nose. Adjusting his glasses, he spoke.

“Titan, do not act foolishly when you are merely an artificial intelligence. Just because you input the name ‘SHURI,’ does that make her Shuri? You didn’t even print her based on her biological data, and you couldn’t even input memory information into her brain.”

At his words, Titan barked out.

“That is because of Central 3! Because that bastard blocks all information related to Shuri, I can’t even pick up a single photograph of her!”

Yusha spoke coldly.

“To be precise, it is because you always lag behind Central 3.”

At his words, Titan’s gaze turned frosty.

Titan spoke gloomily.

“Yusha, do you want to die?”

“Not at all. Why don’t you treat your finger instead? The bone is visible.”

Titan looked down at his own finger. ‘SHURI’ had bitten and torn at it so tenaciously that the skin was ripped and dangling, and blood was pouring out in torrents.

Titan groaned, khuu.

“She mangled it like a mad dog chewing on a dog bone.”

“It’s your own poetic justice. A mock human without memory information cannot be managed. That is why we established a rule to absolutely insert memory information when printing the brain structure, did we not?”

“I hate that.”

“Why?”

Titan flew into a sudden rage.

“The memory data possessed by this research laboratory is all real human data, you know! They even have names attached! Sini data, Yaji data, Sherry data!”

“What an obvious thing to say… Where else would one collect memory information if not from real humans?”

“How clueless! If I insert those, a Sini who roams around constantly scratching his crotch, a chain-smoking Yaji, or a foul-tempered Sherry will emerge. That is not what I wish to possess!”

Only then did Yusha grasp Titan’s intention. Titan wanted, at the very least, something that could be named Shuri.