Syringe Headquarters.
"Confirm that the life signs have disappeared."
The girl responsible for the Syringe organization's computer systems delivered the report with a hint of astonishment.
She turned her gaze toward the other technicians beside her. They were not IT staff, but the developers of that special combat suit.
She wanted them to interpret the satellite-transmitted data—what it actually meant.
Judging from their expressions, the situation seemed to have become more serious again.
This operation had originally also been meant to collect experimental data along the way. Yet after what looked like a full activation, the host's life signs stopped responding in under ten seconds.
Was there a problem with the drug inside the suit? Did it kill the user outright?
"Go on. What happened?"
The tone sounded relaxed, but it made both of them stiffen badly—because the owner of that voice was the Princess, the master of Injector.
"Princess, this data…"
The developer explained the meaning of the currently received, satellite-relayed data in terms everyone could understand.
In broad strokes: the drug activation was fine. The subject's transformation matched the projections.
However, the sudden termination of life signs was not because the drug malfunctioned. Rather, the subject may have suffered an instantly lethal external factor.
"So even after gaining a boost, he still got killed in just a few moves? Is the other side really that strong?"
"I-I don't know. And because he died too fast, we couldn't capture the subject's final vital-activity data…"
The developer explained with sweat pouring down his forehead.
In truth, there were still things he had not said.
The transmitted data included the test subject's heart rate, breathing frequency, blood oxygen, and several hormone secretion indicators. From that, they could infer the subject's condition.
They could even tell whether the subject had entered a combat state or not, because the physiological metrics differed drastically.
But the feedback here showed that after entering combat, in under two seconds he immediately used that half-finished drug—a close-combat boost that enhanced his own strength.
That was a problem.
Shouldn't he have traded blows with the target first, confirmed he couldn't win, and only then used it?
Using it immediately from the start?
Did that mean he was certain that without it, he would lose?
Or was it possible that in the very first instant of contact, he realized how terrifying the opponent was and had to use it at once?
And the result was that after using it, he still couldn't last even five seconds before his life rapidly withered away and vanished.
That implied two possibilities.
One: the drug really did have an issue, and the subject couldn't endure it—dropping dead on the spot.
Two: the opponent was simply too horrifying.
If it was the latter, it was hard to imagine what kind of monster the enemy was.
It would mean they had truly provoked an extremely dangerous existence.
Of course, he didn't say any of this. A Princess as clever as the one before him would be able to see it anyway.
"Enough. I'm not here to blame you. After all, I was involved in developing that drug as well."
That line from the Princess made the developer finally let out a breath.
The next second, the girl responsible for IT suddenly lunged toward the computer and began hammering the keys.
"What is it?"
"Princess, th-this… I'm not sure, but it looks like we've been breached?"
She said that, yet she couldn't find any evidence of intrusion at all.
But the anomaly she was seeing on the computer should have been impossible.
How to describe it?
It was like the computer had briefly "rolled back" its data—restoring everything to what it was one second earlier.
A one-second anomaly like that could be used as a rollback to erase every trace of the intrusion.
And that same one-second anomaly could also mislead people into thinking it was nothing more than lag—an ordinary stutter or delay.
But she was sensitive to data. She was a genius hacker. She had still caught it—within a window, in the briefest instant, her program code had changed.
So if this really was an intrusion, then the attacker's skill was beyond her imagination.
This was very bad.
There was a good chance this place had been exposed too.
…
After arriving on scene, Mikoto also saw a corpse that looked distinctly abnormal.
The body was horrifying, as if it had been flayed, but the limbs were stranger still.
First, horns had grown from its head. Around the mouth, beastlike fangs had formed. The eyes had become vertical slit pupils.
Then there was the body. The arms had grown long—almost like an ape's limb proportions.
Especially the hands: the fingers now looked like claws.
Put simply, the corpse gave the impression of a horned demon from a ghost story.
And this corpse was clearly one of Injector's people. Beside it was a shattered mask—the kind of oni-style mask the Injector organization liked to wear.
The monster also looked obviously powerful, because Mr. Kain had even injured one of his arms.
But none of that was what shocked Mikoto the most.
It was what Mr. Kain was wearing right now.
A flight-capable powered armor suit this sci-fi—was it really something this era could develop?
"I'm heading out. I'll be back within an hour at most."
After leaving those words, he rose into the air.
Once he reached a certain altitude, he vanished into the night sky at an astonishing speed.
"Th-that was a sonic boom, right?"
The fat man beside them spoke with a trembling voice. Mikoto also stared blankly at the receding silhouette.
Supersonic flight.
Was this really a product of this era?
"As expected. He's a super soldier from the future. Awesome!"
"Huh?"
Mikoto looked at the fat man in disbelief. His name was… Hirano Kouta, right?
"Those two barrels on the flight wings—just looking at the shape, there's no way they're meant to fire physical shells. Those are laser cannons, right? And to support energy weapons at that scale, miniaturized like this, it definitely wouldn't be chemical fuel. Micro fusion?"
The fat man seemed to be a technician of some sort, excitedly analyzing as he spoke.
"Wait. You said he's a super soldier from the future. How do you know that?"
Mikoto cut him off.
"Isn't it obvious? It's just that—"
After listening to the fat man's explanation, Mikoto roughly understood and stopped paying attention to his ever-expanding, self-fueled delusions.
So that's what this was.
A military-otaku fat guy who'd watched too many movies and was filling in the gaps with his own imagination.
Even so… it wasn't entirely unreasonable.
At this point, even if an alien popped out next, Mikoto didn't think she would be that surprised.
But there was one thing she could be sure of.
The people of Syringe had done it to themselves.
They had provoked an existence they absolutely should not have provoked—and it was now on its way to deliver a "return gift."
Serves them right.
(End of Chapter)
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