Phantom Bullet 2

  I knew that the more I revealed, the less Sinon would believe me, but I couldn’t stop. I clutched my hands together on the table, stared into those navy-blue eyes across from me, and urged the words out of my choking throat.

  “But…I’ve tried to hide from the responsibility I bear. I haven’t been thinking of the meaning of my actions. I’ve been trying to forget them. So escape is no longer an option. This time, I have to face it head-on.”

  These words were meant for myself. Sinon couldn’t have understood. I shut my mouth, and she looked down. No doubt she was cursing herself inwardly for getting involved with such a head case.

  “Sorry for being weird. Forget about it. Basically, it’s an old score,” I summed up, trying to put on a wry smile. But Sinon interrupted.

  “ ‘If that bullet could actually kill a player in real life, could you still pull the trigger?’”

  “…!”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. She’d just quoted an emotional question I’d posed to her in the final battle of the preliminary tournament block last night. Even now, I didn’t know why I asked her that. I’d shot that question back to her when she asked me how I’d gotten my strength.

  An attack in a virtual game that could kill a real-life player. Common sense said this was impossible—it was why no one really believed the rumors about Death Gun. There was only one world where that statement was true, and it didn’t exist anymore.

  I held my silence as Sinon stared into me with her sharp eyes. Her mouth finally opened. “Are you saying, Kirito…that you were in that game…?”

  The question, barely more than a breath, melted into the dry air of the tavern. Her navy-blue eyes wavered and looked down, and she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “…No, it’s okay,” I responded to her surprising apology. A hard, uncomfortable silence settled between us as we maintained eye contact.

  I hadn’t planned to reveal my background as a Sword Art Online survivor to Sinon. But she would never understand what I was talking about earlier if I didn’t explain that part.

  Sinon understood what I meant now. When I said the word “enemy.” When I spoke of a “battle to the death.”

  I waited for her eyes to fill with fear and loathing. But…

  Sinon never looked away, and didn’t stand up to leave. Instead, she leaned over a bit and stared right into me. Those sapphire eyes were filled with something. Was she…seeking help from me, or was my mind playing tricks on me?

  The next moment, she squeezed her eyes tight. Her lips trembled, and she bit them hard. Before I could even marvel at this change, her tension loosened. The sniper girl let out a long breath, then smiled wanly.

  She whispered, “We ought to move over to the dome. We’re going to run out of time for checking gear and warming up.”

  “Uh…yeah, good idea,” I agreed, and stood up after her. According to the simple digital watch on my wrist, it was nearly seven o’clock already. There was only an hour left until the event began.

  Sinon pressed the DOWN button on the unremarkable elevator in the corner of the massive tavern. The mesh door creaked open, revealing a metal box. We filed inside, and I pressed the bottom button.

  As we stood in the cramped elevator, surrounded by metallic sounds and a virtual dropping sensation, Sinon mumbled, “I understand that you have your own baggage.”

  I sensed her take a step closer to my backside. Something poked me in the center of my back. Not a gun barrel—but a finger.

  A little bit louder, she said, “But our agreement is a separate matter. I’ll get you back for what happened yesterday. You’re not allowed to get shot by anyone else.”

  “…Understood,” I agreed.

  My greatest reason for diving into GGO was to contact Death Gun and solve a mystery. Not only was I hired by Seijirou Kikuoka for the job, it was now personal to me. So thinking rationally, I knew it was in my best interest to avoid the dangerous sniper Sinon and prioritize my primary goal.

  But in coming here, meeting, and fighting with her, I’d forged a new personal connection. I couldn’t just ignore that now. No matter which virtual world I was in, “Kirito” always had to be a swordsman. Even if that sword happened to be made of light without substance.

  “…I’ll survive until I run across you again,” I announced. The fingertip left my back.

  “Thanks.”

  Before I could ask what she meant by this, the elevator came to a violent halt. The door opened onto a darkness that surrounded me with the odor of steel and gunpowder—the smell of battle.

  10

  A long, slow breath in. Once the virtual lungs were full of cold air, they expelled it at the same slow pace.

  With each relaxed breath and the rhythm of the heartbeat, the green bullet circle expanded and contracted in time.

  Within the rifle scope, a single player moved through the brush in a low crouch. In his hands was a compact Jati SMG. While no sidearm could be seen, his entire body seemed to be oddly rough and bulging. He probably kept the weapon weight to a minimum and decided on a high-powered, anti-optical defense field, plus effective live-ammo composite armor to fill out his weight limit. The thick helmet with custom face guard made him look just like a giant boar. His name was Shishigane, a Vitality-first defensive player; he had appeared in the last tournament, but she’d never faced him.

  At nearly twelve-hundred-meter range, even her super-powered Ultima Ratio Hecate II would have difficulty breaking through that armor to deliver a fatal shot. Landing two hits would do the trick, but he was no rookie. As soon as she shot him, he would find cover to hide behind, and she wouldn’t see him again anytime soon after that. And if she waited around for him to emerge, other players would wander over to investigate the sound of her first shot, and she’d be pumped full of machine gun bullets.

  Sinon was on her stomach between a large boulder and some shrubbery, finger on the trigger. She delivered a silent challenge: Come on out.

  If her target came within eight hundred meters, she knew for a fact that she could hit him on the face, where his armor was weak and the damage modifier was much higher. She’d knock him clean out of the stage.

  But her telepathic message didn’t reach him. He moved in a different direction and steadily distanced himself from her. Even his back was fully armored—there was no weakness to exploit. She’d have to give up on him and wait for the next target to approach. Just before she took her eye off the scope, Sinon noticed something round hanging from the man’s right hip.

  A large plasma grenade. Two of them, in fact. Possibly a good-luck charm in lieu of a sidearm. It would be a handy weapon in a short-range battle with plenty of cover, but in this game, every cheap but effective item had its risks. Sinon felt the tension return, and she squinted into the scope.

  She moved the pointer slightly down and to the right from the man’s back. The reticle caught the waving, metallic orbs.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in—hold it.

  All of her distractions disappeared. The moment the metal in her arms became a part of her, the bullet circle shrank abruptly to a pinpoint of light. Her finger pulled the trigger without her thinking about it.

  A shock stung her body. For an instant, the muzzle flash turned her vision white. Her eyesight recovered at once, and through the scope, she saw one of the grenades on the man’s waist explode. Sinon pulled her head away from the gun.

  “Bingo.”

  A brilliant blue fireball erupted from the center of a distant hill, flattening the brush around it. After a few seconds, a blast like thunder reached her ears. She didn’t need to check to know that the man’s HP was entirely gone.

  Sinon was already on her feet, bipod folded up and Hecate over her back. The few minutes after a shot were the most dangerous to a sniper, given the revealing nature of the gun’s tremendous sound and exhaust flare. She checked left and right and took off running down the route she’d chosen ahead of time.

&nbs
p; There was thick brush around her that made visibility difficult. She told herself that any nearby foes would be more distracted by the boar-man’s explosion than her gunshot, and the possibility of a sneak attack was very low, but she didn’t slow down either way. After more than a minute of sprinting, she finally reached the roots of a massive, dead tree and stopped for a breather. When she looked up, she saw a blood-red sun passing through a gap in the heavy clouds.

  Nearly thirty minutes had gone by since the start of the Bullet of Bullets final match.

  The boar-man was the second of Sinon’s sniping victims so far. But the total number of survivors at this point was unknown until the satellite data updated every fifteen minutes. She pulled the thin Satellite Scan terminal out of her waist pouch, brought up the map indicator, and waited for the locational update.

  When the chronograph on her left wrist showed the real-life time as 8:30, a number of blips appeared on the finely detailed map. There were twenty-one in all, which meant nine had been eliminated already. She stared closely at the map, hammering the details into her brain.

  The special stage for the final was a circular island about ten kilometers across. The north side was desert, while the south was forests and mountains. Sitting in the center was the ruin of a large city. Sinon was presently at the foot of a rocky mountain looming over the very southern end of the map. A large river ran to the north of her, cutting between the mountainous region and the forests.

  There were three dots within a kilometer of her. She touched each one to check their names. The closest was Dyne, about 600 meters northeast, moving westward. Following slightly from the east of him was Pale Rider. And blinking quietly nearly the peak of the mountain 800 meters to the south was Lion King Richie.

  Richie was a high-firepower type with a Vickers heavy machine gun. He’d found the highest point on the map, and was going to stake out that point and clean out anyone who came after him. He had tried the same strategy last time and ended up dying because he ran out of ammo—a very lame ending. He probably had some trick up his sleeve this time, though. At any rate, she could ignore an enemy who refused to move.

  The problem was Dyne, who seemed to be fleeing at top speed, according to the movement rate of the dot, and the pursuing Pale Rider. Dyne was the leader of the squadron that Sinon had recently been active with, and a veteran soldier who’d placed in the final of all three BoBs so far. With his excellent SIG SG 550 assault rifle, he was a master of midrange combat. She didn’t respect him much as a person, but he couldn’t be discounted in battle.

  Meanwhile, this Pale Rider who had Dyne running like a timid mouse was someone Sinon had never fought, much less seen in person. Was he really that good, or did he have an advantage based on terrain or equipment? At that moment, the aerial satellite passed out of range, and the dots on the map began to blink. In another ten seconds, the information would be gone.

  Sinon instinctually lifted her right hand and started to tap on the other eighteen, more distant blips, one after the other. But just before her finger brushed the screen, she clenched the hand into a fist—she realized that she’d been about to search for one name in particular.

  “…Forget him,” she muttered. She had no obligation to be worried about the present fate of Kirito the Despicable Lightswordsman. All that mattered was the prey within her Hecate’s range. If Kirito appeared in her sights, she would aim, fire, and destroy him without emotion. That was all.

  The blinking lights turned off. Sinon returned the terminal to her pouch and stood up, taking note of the surroundings. On the other side of the gentle hill facing her was a thick forest. Dyne and Pale Rider were making their way through from her righthand side to the left. In the direction they headed was the great river that split the map, and a bridge spanning it. Cautious Dyne probably preferred the open, clear views from the bridge as a setting to fight Pale Rider to the risky and unpredictable forest.

  Sinon was closer to the bridge than they were. If she ran now, she could set up in sniping position before they got there. She would observe their battle and take out the winner in the moment that he let his guard down.

  She shouldered the Hecate, crouched down, and dashed again through the brush.

  When Sinon made it through the reddened hillside and leaped under the last bush at the edge of the zone, she was met with a red ribbon of reflected light.

  It was the river. It flowed from the southern mountains, winding its way through the center of the map to the north, and vanished in the distant ruined city. On the far bank was a forest of massive, ancient trees. A narrow, stone-lined path could be seen twisting away beneath the thick branches. The path hit the river just 200 meters to the north of where Sinon hunched, forming one end of a crude metal bridge. The two players should be racing at full speed down that path toward the bridge.

  Just at that moment, a figure burst out of the shadow of an especially large tree at the forest’s edge, very close to the bridge. She hurried to place the Hecate on the ground, impatiently flipped up the scope’s cover, and peered through it.

  Woodland camo, top and bottom. Square chin beneath the helmet. SIG in his hands. It was Dyne. He raced down the stone path with smooth, veteran form. Within a few seconds of leaving the forest, he was on the rusted bridge. Just as he was finished crossing the fifty-meter bridge to the riverbank where Sinon hid, he threw himself to the ground and took up a firing position.

  “I see what you’re doing,” Sinon noted, impressed. He was well situated to blaze down any target who tried crossing the bridge. On the other hand, his sides were defenseless. His back was wide open to anyone on this side of the bridge.

  “Check your six at all times, Dyne,” Sinon muttered into the scope, catching the side of his face in her reticle. She could just shoot him now without waiting for the end of his fight with Pale Rider. Although her shot would alert the other player to her presence, he’d have to cross the bridge to attack her. It was only 200 meters to the bridge, so even were he to run at full speed, she knew she could hit him.

  I’d feel bad for the audience watching on the screen, she added silently, tracing the Hecate’s trigger.

  Suddenly, Sinon felt a cold shiver run down the back of her neck. Someone was right behind her.

  You idiot! You were so wrapped up in your own chance to snipe that you neglected to check your own back! she mentally screamed at herself, taking her hand off the Hecate. She sprang 180 degrees and pulled her MP7 sidearm over. Even in the process of that smooth movement, her brain was working. But nobody can be here. When I checked the Satellite Scanner a few minutes ago, the only person behind me was Lion King Richie. He wouldn’t leave the peak of the mountain, and I couldn’t have missed his approach with that heavy machine gun.

  On the other hand, no one aside from Richie could have snuck up on me in such a short time. So how—and who?

  She raised the MP7 to point behind her, stunned with shock, at the same moment that the black gun barrel appeared. It wasn’t her imagination—someone had pulled up right behind her.

  At this point, escape was impossible. She just had to keep spraying bullets until someone’s HP was gone or their magazine was empty. Sinon depressed the trigger—

  —but just before the firing pin could strike the first bullet, the attacker held up a hand to stop her and murmured, “Wait.”

  “…?!”

  Her eyes went wide, and traveled from the point of the gun to the enemy’s face.

  Shiny black hair down the back. White skin, even in the setting sun. Stunning, shiny, slender black eyes.

  Her archenemy Kirito was leaning over her, Five-Seven gripped in his left hand. A number of conflicting emotions rose within Sinon and burst apart. She forgot about the muzzle pointed at her face and bared her teeth in a snarl, ready to open fire with her MP7.

  But again, Kirito whispered, staying Sinon’s trigger finger at the last moment.

  “Wait. I have a plan.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she w
hisper-snarled back, seething with fury. “There are no plans or compromises at this stage! Someone dies, and that’s that!”

  “If I wanted to shoot you, I could have done it anytime!”

  The surprisingly desperate note in Kirito’s words caught her off-guard. What could be more important than the present situation, where their guns were drawn at one another?

  Though it frustrated her to admit it, Kirito’s statement was truth: If he was good enough to sneak into point-blank range against her, he could have shot her in the back or sliced her up with the lightsword.

  “…”

  She waited in silence for him to speak again.

  “I don’t want to go blasting now, and have them hear us.” For just a moment, Kirito’s glance leaped up over Sinon’s shoulder to the scene by the metal bridge, which would soon turn into a firefight.

  “…? What do you mean?”

  “I want to watch what happens in the battle on the bridge. Don’t interrupt them until it’s over.”

  “…What are you going to do after watching? Please don’t be an idiot and say we resume our gunfight.”

  “Depending on the situation…I’ll be leaving this spot. I won’t attack you.”

  “Even if I snipe you in the back?”

  “If you do, that’s your choice. Do me this favor; they’re about to start!”

  Kirito looked back at the bridge again, clearly distracted. To her surprise, he lowered the Five-Seven and put it in his waist holster, even as she had her submachine gun pointed at his forehead.

  More exasperated than angry, Sinon slumped back. If she put just the tiniest bit more pressure on the trigger, the MP7’s 4.6 mm, twenty-round chamber would eliminate all of Kirito’s HP. But even Sinon had to admit she didn’t want the battle against her archenemy to end with such an absurd, one-sided result.

  She’d been thinking of strategies so hard, steam shot out of her ears—Kirito might be able to evade the Hecate’s shot, even without a visible bullet line. She’d rather deal with all of the other finalists until it was just the two of them, and she could focus on expending every last ounce of energy on beating him.