Phantom Bullet 2

  She desperately searched for reasons to discount it, unable to accept the ramifications of this theory.

  “But…even if they knew the real address…how would they get inside without a lock? What about the victims’ families?”

  “Both Zexceed and Tarako lived alone…in old apartment buildings. They probably had real outdated electronic locks with weak security. Plus, they’re guaranteed that any target logged in to GGO will be completely unaware of their presence. Even if breaking in proves difficult, they don’t have to worry about being detected.”

  She took another deep breath. It was only in the last seven or eight years that home locks had followed car locks in transitioning to keyless electronic models. It made lockpicking impossible, but she felt like she remembered reading about the early models having “master signals” like master keys, that were cracked and rearranged into unlocking devices that were traded on the black market. Since then, she used not just an electronic lock, but a physical one and a keypad as well. That reassurance did not eliminate the cold crawling up and down her back, however.

  Death Gun was not a vengeful spirit from the past, or an avatar with mysterious powers, but a normal, real-life killer.

  As the theory took on more and more weight in her mind, a different kind of fear settled over her body. Urged onward by a sense of resistance that she didn’t understand, she came up with the last possible rebuttal.

  “Then…what about the cause of death? You said ‘heart failure,’ right? Can they stop the heart using some method the police and doctors can’t detect?”

  “They probably inject some kind of drug, if I had to guess…”

  “But…wouldn’t they find that? Like the injection mark, or—”

  “The bodies were apparently discovered after a significant amount of decomposition. Plus…sad to say, it’s not that uncommon for VRMMO players to die of heart attacks. After all, they’re just lying around all day without eating or drinking…As long as the killer isn’t ransacking the house or stealing anything, the authorities are going to assume it was a natural death. Still, they took a close look at the state of the brains, but from what I understand…if they didn’t expect that the victims were drugged, they wouldn’t detect something like that.”

  “…No way…”

  She clutched Kirito’s jacket, shaking her head like a child having a tantrum.

  Killing for the sake of killing, using such incredibly thorough means…The mind of someone who would do such a thing was beyond her understanding. All she felt was unlimited darkness, filled with tremendous evil.

  “…It’s insane,” she whispered.

  Kirito nodded. “I know. It’s crazy. But…while I can’t understand it, I can imagine it. He was willing to go to those lengths to stay a ‘red player.’ I know that…because there’s also a part of me that still feels like the swordsman who fought on the front line of Aincrad…”

  The name was unfamiliar, but she soon processed that he was referring to the castle floating in the sky that was the setting of Sword Art Online. For just an instant, she forgot her fear.

  “I think…for whatever reason, I understand, too. There are times when I think of myself as a sniper…but then, what about the other one, not the player in the cloak…?”

  “Yes, I think it’s likely that they’re another SAO survivor. Possibly even a fellow survivor of Laughing Coffin…You can’t pull off a murder like this without significant teamwork…Oh, wait. Maybe…”

  She gave Kirito a quizzical glance, prompting him to explain.

  “Oh, it’s nothing serious. I was just thinking about the cross gesture. It could be both a sign for the audience, as well as camouflaging a chance to check his watch. After all, he’s got to coordinate things with the accomplice in the real world in a very tight window. And he can’t just keep checking his watch every time he shoots—it would stick out.”

  “I see…If he hid a small watch on the inside of his wrist, he’d be able to see the time when he touches his forehead.”

  Sinon couldn’t help but be impressed at the ingenuity of the idea. Suddenly, Kirito grabbed her by the shoulders. His face was more serious than ever as he slowly asked, “Sinon…do you live alone?”

  “Y…yes.”

  “Do you lock up? What about a door chain?”

  “I have both an electronic lock and an old-fashioned cylinder lock…The lock itself is one of those early electronic types. And the chain…”

  She stopped, frowning as she tried to recall what she did before diving in.

  “…might not be on.”

  “Okay. Listen carefully, then.”

  There was deeper concern on Kirito’s face than she’d ever seen before. Her body went as cold as if ice had been poured into her chest.

  No, I don’t want to hear what comes next, she thought, but his lips didn’t stop.

  “Death Gun tried to shoot you while you were paralyzed next to the ruined stadium. In fact, when he was chasing us on the robot horse, he did shoot at you. That must mean…his preparations are complete.”

  “Prep…arations? What kind of…”

  Her voice was barely audible. Kirito paused for the slightest of moments and whispered back.

  “I think it’s possible that…at this very moment, Death Gun’s accomplice is in your room back in the real world, watching the tournament and waiting for the moment you get shot.”

  It took quite some time for his words to penetrate her mind and form a tangible meaning.

  The sights around her faded as the familiar sight of her room came to her mind. She stared down at the small room from a height, like some kind of out-of-body experience.

  There was the tile flooring that she vacuumed regularly. The pale yellow rug. A small wooden table. The black writing desk on the west wall, next to a black pipe-frame bed. The plain white sheets. On top of the bed, dressed in loose sweater and short pants, was herself—eyes closed, a double-ringed metal device around her forehead. And…

  Standing at the edge of the bed and watching the sleeping Shino, a dark figure. Its form was blacked out into a simple silhouette, but one thing in its hand was clearly visible: a cloudy glass syringe with a silver needle extending from the end, filled with a fatal substance.

  “No…no…”

  She turned her tense, creaking neck, moaning. The vision disappeared, replaced by a sandy cave, but the glinting of the intruder’s syringe still flashed in her eyes.

  “No…it can’t be…”

  It was more than just “fear” at this point. A seething impulse to reject the idea raced through her, sending her entire body trembling. A stranger was standing right next to her, looking down at her helpless, unaware body. In fact, it might be worse than that. He could be touching her…looking for the right spot to inject the needle…

  She felt something block her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Her back arched, squirming in search of air.

  “Ah…aaah…”

  Her vision faded. A rushing roar filled her ears. Her soul was ripping away from this temporary body—

  “No, Sinon!!” bellowed a voice in her ear, deafeningly loud. Someone clutched her arms. “It’s too dangerous to disconnect on your own! Hang in there…try to calm down! It’s all right, you’re not in danger yet!!”

  “Ah…ah…”

  Her eyes were wide open, but focused on nothing, so she reached out blindly, clinging to the source of the voice. Her arms circled around the warmth of the body, clinging desperately.

  A powerful arm reached around her back and enfolded her, holding her tight. His other hand tenderly, softly stroked her hair.

  The whisper again: “The intruder can’t do anything to you until you’re shot by the Black Star, Death Gun’s pistol. That’s the rule they created. But if your heart rate or internal temperature causes the unit to log you out automatically, you’ll see the intruder’s face, and that puts you in danger. So you need to stay calm.”

  “But…but, I’m scared…I’m scared??
?” she pleaded like a child, burying her face into Kirito’s shoulder. She squeezed harder and eventually felt the faint but regular rhythm of Kirito’s pulse.

  Sinon focused with all her might on the pulse, trying to blot out the terrifying image hanging over the back of her mind. Tump, tump, tump. About once a second, his heart beat, the pulse blending into her body. Like matching a metronome, the wild allegro of Sinon’s pulse slowly synchronized with his.

  As though she had become one with Kirito’s mind, the symptoms of her panic faded. The fear was still there, but she could tell that the reason and rationality to control it was returning to her mind.

  “…You feel calmer now?” Kirito asked quietly. He started to remove his arm from her back, but Sinon shook her head.

  “Stay…just like this, a bit longer.”

  He didn’t respond, but she felt the solid warmth return. With each stroke of her head by the delicate hand, she felt the ice at her core melt a little. Sinon took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and let the tension flow away.

  After most of a minute, Sinon mumbled, “Your hands feel like my mom’s.”

  “Y-your mom’s? Not your dad’s?”

  “I don’t know anything about my dad. He died in an accident when I was a baby.”

  “…Oh,” he said simply. Sinon buried her face in his chest.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said, her voice much firmer than she expected.

  Kirito stopped stroking her hair and answered promptly, “We beat Death Gun. If that happens, his accomplice in the real world will have to disappear. In fact, you can just stay back here. I’ll fight. He can’t kill me with that gun of his.”

  “Are you sure…it’ll work?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t write my name or address on my entry form, and I’m not even diving from my own home. There’s someone watching over me, as well. So I’ll be fine. I’m just going to beat him according to the rules of the game.”

  “But…he’s still really tough, even without the Black Star. You saw him dodge my Hecate shot from just a hundred yards, didn’t you? He might be your equal when it comes to dodging.”

  “True, I’m not perfectly confident in my chances…As far as other options, like you said earlier, we can hide out here until there are only three players left, then commit suicide, but…”

  He glanced at his watch. Sinon looked at the numbers as well: 9:40 PM. They’d already completely passed the nine thirty Satellite Scan. Nearly twenty-five minutes had passed since they had entered the cave.

  Her eyes traveled from his watch to his face. She slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I can just keep hiding in here. Pretty soon, the other players will realize that we’re hiding in the desert caves. There aren’t that many to choose from, so they could toss in a grenade at any time. In fact, we’re pretty lucky to have survived nearly half an hour in here.”

  “Oh, I see…” Kirito murmured, biting his lip and glancing at the mouth of the cave.

  She told him, “We’ve been working as a team for this long. Might as well fight together to the end.”

  “But…what if he shoots you with the pistol…?”

  “It’s just an old-fashioned single-action handgun,” Sinon claimed, surprised at how easily the statement slipped out of her mouth. For years, the Type 54 Black Star had been The Gun—the very image of terror that plagued Shino.

  But it wasn’t that the fear was gone. If it was coincidence that Death Gun had chosen the Black Star to be his symbol, then The Gun really was the very curse that haunted Shino’s life. But the one thing that she could say was that as an item in this game, the Type 54 was not very powerful. If she feared the gun more than the threat it actually represented, she would be passing up her chance to fight back.

  “Even if he shoots it at me, you can use that sword of yours to knock it away with ease, right? Its firing rate is barely a tenth of a proper assault rifle, after all,” she noted, suppressing the trembling of her voice.

  Kirito grinned, a combination of worry and relief. “Yeah… I won’t let him shoot you. But in order to ensure that, I think it’s best if you don’t expose yourself to him.”

  She started to argue, but he held up a hand. “Trust me, I’m grateful that you’re offering to fight alongside me. But you’re a sniper, Sinon. Long-distance shooting is the entire basis of your style, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “Tell you what. When the next scan comes, I’ll jump out into the map to expose my location and draw Death Gun’s interest. My guess is that he’ll hide in the distance and try to shoot me with his rifle. You use that information to detect his location, and shoot him back. Deal?”

  “…So you’re going to act as a decoy and spotter?” she asked, shocked by the reckless bravado of his plan, but based on the combination of their builds, that was probably the most effective plan they had. It was clear that in a combination of extreme close-range and long-range fighters, one of the two would be ineffective.

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Deal. Let’s do it. But you’d better not die on his very first shot.”

  “I-I’ll try…but his rifle is silent, and there’s no bullet line to detect.”

  “And who was it that bragged about predicting the prediction line?”

  Sinon noticed that the fear hanging over her back was fading as they teased each other, still holding each other tight. In truth, she was just trying not to think about the horrifying possibility that a murderer was inside her apartment at that very moment. She had no choice but to cling to Kirito’s notion that defeating Death Gun would render him helpless. In fact, perhaps it wasn’t his words that she clung to, as much as his virtual body heat. When they left the cave and she split off from Kirito to find a sniping position, she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to maintain her current state of mind. So she leaned against him one last time, feeling the warmth of his avatar while she still had the chance.

  Kirito murmured suspiciously, “Um…anyway, Sinon, I can’t help but notice that some weird red circle has been blinking in the bottom right corner…”

  “Huh?”

  Her eyes glanced over and saw the indicator he was talking about. For a moment, she had to remember what it meant—then her eyes shot up. She found what she expected to see on the ceiling and was about to leap up from his legs before she realized it would be pointless after that much time. She sighed, “Oh…crap, I didn’t think about that…”

  Floating up in the air was an odd, pale blue group of concentric circles. It was not a tangible object, but a symbolic glowing light effect. Kirito had spotted it, too, and he was quite confused.

  “Umm…what was that thing, again…?”

  Sinon shrugged and answered, “It’s a livestream camera. It usually only follows players engaged in battle, but since we’re running low on combatants, it’s had to come after us.”

  “Uh…crap, do you think it heard what we’ve been discussing?”

  “Don’t worry, it doesn’t pick up voice unless you really shout at the top of your lungs. Go on, give it a wave,” she suggested, her tone of voice presenting a cool challenge. “Or is there someone you’d prefer not to see this?”

  For a second, Kirito’s face went cold with fear, which was quickly covered with a nervous, stiff smile. “Uhh…no…well…wouldn’t that be you? Besides, wouldn’t most people watching this just assume we’re two girls?”

  “Uh…”

  He had a point there. In either case, it seemed that Sinon would be required to make some uncomfortable excuses. But that could wait until they had survived the current crisis.

  She snorted and said, “It would be more pathetic to freak out the moment you see a camera watching you. And I don’t mind…If people want to start rumors about my tastes, at least it will cut down on the number of times I get hit on.”

  “Does that mean I have to pretend I’m a girl from now on?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve conveniently forgotten that you pretended to be a girl
to get me to guide you around town…Oh, it’s gone.”

  Just as it occurred to Sinon that no one watching could possibly guess that they were having such a witheringly sarcastic conversation, the visual effect that indicated the presence of a camera left in search of a new target.

  She sighed with relief and finally sat up. “So…it’s time. Only two minutes until the next satellite pass. I’ll stay down here and you’ll check your terminal outside the cave, right?”

  She got to her feet and offered a hand to her human chair, helping him up. When she took a step backward, the chill of the desert embraced her body, causing her to wince. She picked up her rifle and clutched the cold steel, feeling the faint core of warmth within it.

  “Oh, by the way,” Kirito prompted. She looked up to see that the lightswordsman’s fine brows were furrowed in thought.

  “What is it now? We don’t have time to change plans.”

  “No…the plan is fine. What I’m thinking about is…Death Gun’s real name, or official character name. It was Steven, right?”

  “Oh…right, that was it. I wonder what the meaning of that was…”

  “If I do come into close range, I’ll have to ask. Well, time to dip outside.”

  The black-haired swordsman gave her a resolute nod, turned and started for the entrance of the cave. Sinon couldn’t tell if the chill on her skin even with the Hecate in her arms was from the tension of the imminent final battle, the peril that threatened her in real life—or the loneliness of being separated from Kirito.

  She hunched her shoulders, drew in a deep breath of dry desert air, and called out to the back of the man walking away.

  “…Be careful.”

  His answer was an upward thumb, visible over his shoulder.

  13

  Asuna battled with the dread that welled up endlessly from within her, awaiting the moment.

  She logged out from the virtual apartment in Yggdrasil City and returned to the second floor of the Dicey Café in the real world. Three minutes ago, she had called a cell phone number. She accosted the person who’d answered and demanded a meeting in ALO at once, then jumped back into virtual space to rejoin the others. It had been less than a minute since she dove back in, but each second felt like an eternity.