I am forced to wake up by a rumbling that makes the whole cabin tremble. Then, I find my head lying on Mirai's lap. The weird softness makes me startled and sits up directly from the sleeping pose. So it is not a dream.
- Good, you are awake. I think there is no need to explain right?
- Besides the lap pillow, I would assume that the Intruders decide to level the whole central area.
- Yes. Quickly gear up, we will bring this place down today.
I wear the protective suit and put on my backpack. As soon as everything is ready, Mirai dismantles the barrier and we get out of the cabin.
The place is like a mess, which is not what we saw before we entered the cabin. Besides the small buildings and stuff, the roads and plots of land have been completely ploughed up. They even go to the point of searching the underway. It is a miracle that they do not detect us.
- Move with the way highlighted on your spectacle vision. We will head to the biggest tower in the exact centre of the town.
Under the intense scrutiny from both the Intruders' forces and the drones patrolling above, we sneak under the ruins of the tower, between the trees and bushes, occasionally shooting down some drones and low-level Intruders that somehow detect us. After getting away from the most dangerous area, we stand in front of the tower that Mirai mentioned.
Mirai takes out a remote control. Although I know that everything can be done with her central processing unit, I think she is just trying to flex sometimes.
- Now, just for ten minutes at most, but observe!
The button is pressed with full force.
Right after the press, sirens all around the town are simultaneously honking, with red alert lights setting up and blinking incessantly. The malware is released and starts attacking the cyber-facilities.
- For ten minutes, hopefully, more than ten minutes, all of their defence mechanisms will be down. You know the protocol.
- Yes.
The engines of the propellers in my suit and her agility module start making some humming, which becomes louder over time. After the maximum power is reached, we blast into the tower like two bullets.
- Do not care about the mobs here. Charge forward, all the way towards the highest floor.
- Yes, ma'am!
Using the randomly arranged metallic rods placed across the tower, we fire chained hooks that grab the rods and ascend upwards. As the altitude increases and new floors are reached, Intruders start showing up, as soon as they receive an infiltrator alert. Mirai raises her arm towards the Intruders that are firing at us and in an instant, several unpinned smoke grenades are launched at them. The smoke screen quickly covers their sights.
Drones also show up and charge at us. With a photon pistol, I fire at them. The energy orbs fly in the air and disrupt the electronic connections of the drones, making them fall.
- Seventy-five per cent through. Keep it up, Yuusha!
- Yes.
Several chained hooks are fired and they grab the higher metallic rods. I swing upwards as the chains retract, dodging the tracing bullets of the Intruders. Directly controlled by Mirai, our aerial units appear in the air, providing retaliating fire to distract the Intruders. In an indoor environment, the smell of gunpowder, oil and other things slowly piles up, making the place a real mess.
After a few minutes of hanging in the air, we finally see the top. There is a room surrounded by a balcony structure.
We approach the door, and Mirai pushes open it. The door is unlocked.
- There. Here we go. - Mirai stretches her arms and shoulders.
The room is mostly empty, except for a big table sitting in the centre of the room. On the table, there is a purplish, shiny sphere, protected with a glass dome. Mirai uses her elbow and slams it at the dome. It shatters into pieces. She then carefully extracts the sphere from the table, cutting the connection wires.
After finishing, she inspects the sphere and puts it back into the archive.
- Mission accomplished. Let's leave.
- But what is that? - I ask out of curiosity.
- It will explain itself later. - I receive an answer that is good for nothing.
We step out of the room with the sphere. Then, a powerful tremor sweeps through the whole town, making everything tremble, and almost making us lose our stand. I look up, and cracks start to appear on the tower. The cracks quickly run down the tower in lightning patterns.
- So, as you can see, this is one of the most important technologies we manage to "acquire"... - Mirai makes her two fingers into the double inverted commas shape - ... from the Intruders, and it seems that we are just lucky to get it in our early phase. The Sphere of Gravitational Charge. This thing is like a battery that generates a whole gravitational field to keep this underwater dome standing against immense pressure. Without it, their technology will only be able to keep this structure lasting for not a long period, before a total collapse.
- Yes, you can explain it later. The place is going to collapse. We need to run.
- We cannot, Yuusha. - Mirai uses the most chill tone that she has. - Ten minutes is up, and the Intruders are already here. And speak of the devil...
At the other end of the balcony, a mid-sized Intruder with a scepter in its right hand is already standing there, with a fleet of advanced drones behind his back. My spectacles show a number which I would never like to see until at least fifteen years later.
- You do not see wrongly. That is an overall rating of seventy right there. - Mirai pats my shoulder as if she is trying to cool me down.
Definitely that chill tone in her speech is the type that a dying person is giving out.
- Secure the tower. If we die here, we bring them down with us. - The scepter is pointed at us, and in the brief moment, the drones start firing.
- Now, we run.
Mirai grabs my whole body with my left hand and uses her right hand to shoot a chained hook. We quickly jump off the balcony and dive straightly downward. The bullets from the drone hit the glass walls of the top floor, further damaging its structure.
In the air, Mirai releases me.
- What was that for?
- We need an element of surprise here.
The Intruders have surrounded every floor and tried to shoot us. However, I manage to throw a few spheres into the air, which expand into a straight line of Force Field barriers that blocks every projectile coming at us as we plunge downwards.
Swinging chained hooks and grabbing metal rods skillfully, we quickly and safely descend to the bottom floor. I switch back to a photon submachinegun. It is just charging forward at the moment.
- Yuusha, just slam through the Intruder's formation. Let me handle the rest.
- Noted.
Mirai switches to a rocket launcher and fires without hesitation. The rockets blow up the rows of Intruder entering the gate, making a large hole. We pass through the hole and get outside the main tower.
I can see that up above, instead of the blue shade of the artificial sky, black cracks have appeared and water starts flowing in. Until the pumping system here is overloaded and water fills in the enclosed dome, it will be about one hour.
- Here. The path to the nearest exit has been mapped out through your spectacle vision. We will...
- Not so fast.
A voice intterupts Mirai's speech, and not long after that, a shadow has caught up with our pace and is already besides us. It makes a ground-breaking punch with its gigantic cybernetic arm.
- Watch out!
I quickly realise that something is catching up and raise my hand. A plate appears in the little space between me and the shadow, and it emerges into a Compact Shield just in time, before the punch is delivered. It shields me from most of the physical damage, but I am still sent off my path. The shield is completely deformed.
I quickly recover my stance, and in front of us, a seventy and a few sixty-five figures pop up, in red colour. The low-level minions have also reached us with their weapons and drones.
- Now, let's see, how you two would escape from this graveyard specially digged for you. - The middle one with the scepter raises his voice.