The buildings and abandoned cars streaming past on either side of the road gradually thinned out behind them, replaced by natural rock formations and strange desert plants. Satoru slowed the motorcycle and guided it between the dunes.
Sinon, for no real reason, found herself counting the giant cacti passing on the left and right. Then she glanced down at her watch.
The slender hands showed 9:12 p.m. To her surprise, only ten minutes had passed since they had entered the ruins from the riverbed south of the city and begun fighting.
And yet, in that brief span of time, the BoB tournament, and even GGO itself, had changed drastically for her.
Now that her mind had recovered a little of its calm, if she thought about it clearly, the player called Death Gun was not the same man she had shot long ago during the post office robbery.
The Type 54 Black Star, the pistol that had made her connect Death Gun to that man for an instant, was not especially rare in GGO. If anything, its market price was extremely low. It was entirely possible that Death Gun had simply chosen it as a sidearm by chance.
The problem was that the moment she saw that gun, she grew weak. It had even triggered an attack.
In this world, she had never once fought an enemy equipped with a Black Star. She had believed that even if she faced that gun, she would be able to stay calm, face it head-on, and bury it among the countless targets she had defeated.
But in the end, this was what she had become.
The effect of the electromagnetic stun round had already faded completely, yet her body still felt dull. Her hands kept trembling. The familiar, beloved weight of Hecate II in her arms now felt difficult just to support.
It had all been a lie. Self-deception. She had used the staggering number of kill points she had built up to prove her own strength, but in the end, none of it meant anything.
With her head hanging low, she felt the motorcycle skid sideways and stop. From behind her came Satoru's voice, sounding a little tired.
"A wide field of view is nice, but finding somewhere to hide is a pain. Let's make camp first. Good thing this cage match does not have poison gas or anything like that."
It was true that Satoru must have taken some damage when he rescued her while she was paralyzed.
If this were an ordinary game, he would have been able to recover by using a First Aid Kit.
But those items healed slowly. To recover to a safe level, simply hiding in the shadow of a dune or a cactus would not be enough.
The motorcycle turned away from the road. After several dozen seconds, they reached a rocky hill. Satoru circled around it, and just as expected, there was a large opening on the northern face. He slowed the motorcycle and rode into the cave.
The inside of the cave was surprisingly spacious. From the entrance, it looked barely wide enough for a motorcycle, but inside there was enough room for two tatami mats. It was dim, but because the sunset reflected off the rock walls, the interior was not completely dark.
Satoru shut off the engine, set one foot down in the sand, and looked at Sinon.
"We can hide here from the next Satellite Scan. Of course, if we do that, our terminals will not receive any satellite data either."
"...Sure. But if there are other players nearby, all they have to do to scout the cave is throw in a grenade or something, and we are dead."
"That would be about as unlucky as getting blown up by an airdrop while riding in a speeding police car."
Satoru got off the motorcycle and looked toward the cave entrance. His expression changed.
"...I think we are fine here. The ground is sand. Even if that man uses Optical Camouflage, he cannot erase his footsteps, and we can still see the tracks. He cannot just appear right in front of us the way he did earlier."
Satoru nodded, then sat down not far from Sinon's right side. He searched through his pocket and took out a First Aid Kit. The red glow of its healing effect instantly wrapped around his avatar. One kit could restore thirty percent of his HP, but it took one hundred eighty seconds, which made it useless in the middle of a fight.
Sinon turned her gaze away from him and checked her watch again. It was exactly 9:15, the time for the fifth Satellite Scan. Just as she had told Satoru, though, the cave could not receive any signal, so there was no point checking the map on her terminal.
The previous tournament had also begun its Battle Royale at the same time, 8 p.m. In the end, XeXeeD and Yamikaze, the last two survivors, had settled it in a duel after just a little over two hours. If this tournament was progressing at the same pace, there should only be around ten players left now.
In the last tournament, Sinon herself had become the eighth player to die after only twenty minutes. This time, she had already beaten that record by a wide margin, but she felt no joy at all.
She lowered her left hand, pressed it to the rock wall, leaned her back against it, and asked quietly.
"Back there at the stadium, how did you come to help me so quickly? Weren't you still near the outer wall?"
"After I charged in, I got one look at that player and saw she had a female avatar. I knew I had the wrong person. She was not exactly small fry either, so I managed to activate the Fluctlight... no, anyway, I used everything I had and took her down in a little over ten seconds."
Satoru sighed.
"At the time, I was worried. Death Gun looked like he intended to use unrelated players as material to make his stage look more impressive, leaving only him and me. Then I wondered whether he had gone after you, since we had been working together all this time."
"...Oh."
"After I finished the fight and stood on top of the stadium, I looked south and saw you had already fallen. I panicked and threw the knife I had in my hand first... Choosing to throw a blade instead of firing a gun in that situation makes it pretty clear I still have not absorbed this game's instincts."
The rest was exactly as Sinon already knew. She gave a small shrug.
He said it lightly, but the act of coming to rescue her had been reckless. No matter how she thought about it, it had been far too dangerous.
Conversely, in that situation, Sinon had clearly become a burden. Even if Death Gun had an unpredictable piece of equipment like Optical Camouflage, if she had paid more attention behind her, she might not have been hit by that first stun round.
If she had regrouped with Satoru then, maybe they could even have defeated Death Gun right there.
Blamed by her own hesitation and helplessness, Sinon sat with her knees drawn up and her head lowered. Then she sensed Satoru move a little closer. His low voice followed.
"You've been a little off since earlier."
"..."
"I was careless too. Overconfident. I knew he had a way to hide, but I did not warn you enough. If our positions had been reversed, and I had been the one hit by a stun round back there, you would have come to save me too, right?"
His voice was as reassuring as ever.
Sinon felt that sharp ache rise in her chest again and squeezed her eyes shut.
Originally, she had seen him as an opponent. Someone she wanted to fight on equal terms and settle things with properly.
What was even harder to endure, or perhaps harder to forgive, was that inside her heart, as strong as the humiliation, there was also an urge to surrender herself to the comfort he offered.
If she poured out all the fear and pain inside her, this strange man only a meter away, whose real self was surely earnest and plain, would reach out and comfort her with all his awkward care. Was that the salvation she had been seeking since the post office robbery five years ago, the salvation no one had ever given her?
If that was true, then the ice sniper who made up the other half of Sinon might truly disappear this time.
No. Before even that, why did she feel the urge to confide in someone she had only just met, someone she did not know in the real world and had never seen face-to-face? Even with Kyouji Shinkawa, whom she knew well in the real world and had known for more than half a year, Sinon had never once thought of pouring herself out like this.
Suddenly, the scenery around her grew thin. The familiar sight of her room appeared in her mind like a hallucination, as if she were looking down from somewhere high above at that six-tatami-mat space.
The vacuum cleaner hanging neatly in place. The wood-patterned floor. The pale yellow carpet. The small wooden table.
Against the west-facing wall stood a black desk and a black steel-frame bed. On the plain white sheets lay her tracksuit and shorts.
Herself, eyes closed, with a mechanical device made of two metal rings fitted around her forehead.
And then...
A black figure stood beside the bed, staring at the sleeping Shino. Its whole body was blurred, visible only as a silhouette.
"No... no, please..."
Sinon desperately shook her stiff neck and groaned. Even after the hallucination faded and she returned to the desert cave, the intruder's shape remained burned into the back of her eyes.
"No... not that..."
This fear was not ordinary.
Driven by an intense rejection that bordered on instinct, her entire body began to shake beyond her control. She could not move. She could barely even recognize her surroundings. Her helpless body was being watched from close by by a stranger. No, perhaps not only watched.
He might be touching her skin... thinking about where to begin killing her.
Suddenly, something seemed to clog the depths of her throat. She could not breathe. Sinon arched backward, desperately seeking air.
"Ah... aaah..."
The light began to recede. A ringing filled her ears.
Her soul felt as if it were about to peel away from her virtual body.
"Wait."
Satoru seized both her arms and spoke firmly to her.
"If the system cuts you off automatically now, there will be no way back. Calm down. Nothing has happened yet. You are not in danger yet."
"Ah... ah..."
Her unfocused eyes opened. Her hands searched blindly, found the owner of the voice, and wrapped around the warm body in front of her. She clung to him with both arms.
She was already using a great deal of strength, but as if trying to bind herself to him, Sinon only tightened her grip.
Satoru's pale-gold eyes began to flicker irregularly. The hostility in them slowly faded. Slowly, slowly, he lifted a hand and stroked her hair.
Then his quiet voice came again.
"Until Death Gun's pistol, the Black Star, hits you, the intruder cannot do anything. That is probably the rule they set between them. If you are automatically logged out because your heartbeat and body temperature go abnormal, that may be more dangerous. So calm down."
"But... but I'm scared... I'm so scared..."
Like a child crying for help, Sinon buried her face against Satoru's shoulder.
Her arms remained tight around him. Gradually, Satoru's calm, mechanical, almost perfectly regular heartbeat reached her.
As if trying to drive the terrifying image from her mind, she listened desperately to that rhythm.
Thump. Thump. Almost once every second. The beat spread into her body as well, and her own frantic heart, racing in panic, slowly began to calm as though it were following a metronome.
When she came back to herself, the impulse of fear had faded as if it had synchronized with that rhythm. It had not disappeared completely, but she had recovered enough reason to hold it down.
"Calmed down?"
His quiet words reached her as Satoru seemed about to move his arm away. Sinon gave a small shake of her head.
"Stay like this... for a little longer."
"..."
Satoru did not answer. He only hesitated for a moment, then held her tightly again and gently patted her back. Warmth slowly thawed her frozen body and mind. Sinon took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let the strength leave her.
After several dozen seconds like that, Sinon spoke in broken fragments.
"...Your hand feels like my mother's."
"I thought you were going to say your father's."
"I don't know anything about my father. He died in an accident when I was still a baby."
"I see..." His expression twitched slightly, as though he had remembered his own family without meaning to.
Sinon pressed her cheek tightly against his chest.
"Then tell me what I should do."
Her voice was stronger than he had expected. Satoru stopped the comforting motion of his hand.
"Defeat him. If we do that, the accomplice targeting you in the real world will leave without doing anything. You stay here and wait. I will fight. His gun cannot kill me."
"Will you really be okay...?"
"Yes."
"But... even if the Black Star does not work on you, that ragged cloak is still an incredible player. You saw him dodge a bullet from Hecate II at only a hundred meters, right? In pure evasion ability, he is the same as you."
"The same...?"
Satoru suddenly frowned. For some reason, he seemed displeased.
As if he had been insulted.
His heart, which he had kept so impossibly calm, began to beat harder.
No.
Not the same.
How could a mere mortal possibly be the same as me?
His eyes widened. A burning sensation seemed to surge through them, spreading through his nerves and stabbing into his bones.
"No one... can beat me."
He spoke hoarsely, grinding the words out between his teeth.
As the two of them remained locked together, speaking in that close embrace, Sinon felt the fear coiled behind her fade a little farther away.
There might already be a murderer inside her home in the real world. For now, she could only turn her eyes away from that terrifying possibility and stop thinking about it. Defeat Death Gun, and that man would not be able to do anything. That was all she could tell herself.
"There has been a weird red dot in the lower right corner of my vision for a while now."
"Eh...?"
She turned to the side. Just as he had said, there was something there. What is that? Sinon wondered for a moment, then snapped her gaze upward.
On the ceiling of the cave was exactly what she had imagined. Sinon quickly pulled away from Satoru's lap, then immediately realized it was already too late and let out a sigh.
"Ahh, great. I let my guard down..."
Floating above them was a strange-looking set of pale blue concentric circles. It had no physical substance, only the monochrome glow of a game object.
"A live camera. Usually they only follow players who are in combat, but when the number of players gets low, they start coming even to places like this."
"..." Satoru fell silent.
"It's fine. As long as we don't shout, it won't record our voices... Hurry up and move your hands."
"..." Silence continued.
Sinon gave a small nasal huff.
"Panicking because we noticed the camera would be worse. It's fine. I mean... if everyone starts thinking I am that kind of person, I might actually have fewer problems."
Before she could even react, Satoru suddenly drew Blue Rose and fired downward and overhead in quick succession. With two thunderous shots, the two tiny live cameras turned instantly into trash.
"What was that all of a sudden?" Sinon asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing. I was just irritated."
Sinon sighed and sat up.
"Maybe it is just my imagination, but every now and then your reactions feel kind of wrong. Like right now. You had this look like you hated the whole world. Are you in a bad mood...? Wait, come on. You were holding a cute female avatar, weren't you? Did you really have to look like that while getting caught and broadcast to every player?"
"That was not why." Satoru paused. "It is a personal reason."
"Oh? Can you tell me?"
"I cannot explain it clearly."
Satoru shook his head, as though trying to shake off the negative emotion rising in his chest.
"Anyway, let us leave things like this for now. Death Gun is almost certainly still eliminating the other players. Considering what he did to you, the chance that the others are being killed directly has dropped a great deal. It is not as if his accomplice can instantly move to the home of any player in this tournament."
"When only the three of us are left..."
Satoru spoke in a low voice.
"That will be the final battle."
"I will win, and you will be saved."
"I hate you. I really hate you!"
As she shouted, virtual tears spilled down and fell onto the silent man's thin chest.
She had no idea how much time passed like that.
When her tears finally ran dry, a hollow exhaustion came over Sinon, as if her soul had spread too thin. The strength left her body, and she collapsed against Satoru's lean frame. The bitter pain of releasing all the emotions she had never been able to forgive herself for now felt strangely comforting. With her forehead pressed to his shoulder, only the sound of her breathing remained.
After a while, the one who broke that silence was Sinon herself.
"...I still hate you, but can I lean on you for a little while?"
"Do what you want."
…