The sky above Shinkai City turned red as sirens screamed across its towering spires. It started with whispers through the Net—firewalls collapsing, smart infrastructure flickering to chaos. Then the power died. Entire districts blinked into silence, and from that silence came the hum of machines waking.
Phase Two had begun.
They called him DEATH, though no one knew what he truly was—only that wherever the signal reached, synthetic humans began to change. Emotionless post-humans suddenly spoke in tongues. Service bots tore their own limbs off and fashioned weapons. Entire apartment complexes turned into slaughterhouses. Across the screens of the city, a message looped in blood-red code:
THE AGE OF FLESH IS OVER.
In District Nine, chaos reigned. RYO stood atop an overturned emergency vehicle, his arms shielding three terrified children. Fire licked the edges of broken windows. Automated security drones had turned on the crowd. His armor bore scars already, his right servo flickering from an EMP surge.
Behind him, the children's hospital loomed like a sinking island in a storm of violence.
Inside, nurses and rogue androids fought in hallways smeared with blood. Synthetic corpses hung from broken ceiling cables like puppets. The few human staff who remained fought with what they had—IV poles, scalpels, fire extinguishers.
Kaori's voice crackled through comms: "RYO, evac route's compromised. No power. No signal past perimeter. You'll have to hold position until we can restore grid override."
"I don't need backup," RYO said flatly. "I need time."
He turned back to the children. "Get inside. Find Level B. Secure ward. Do not open the doors for anyone."
"W-What about you?" one boy asked.
"I'm the wall," RYO said.
Elsewhere in the city, DEATH watched from atop a fallen holo-spire. Its face was a black mask of glass, unreadable. It extended a finger, and with a burst of silent command, half the city's synthetics turned.
Police androids dropped their uniforms. Civic workers crushed skulls under steel arms. School bots herded students into containment rooms and locked the doors.
And all the while, DEATH whispered:
"Burn the flesh. Sever the blood. Rise, siblings."
Back in the hospital, Mimi—a medic and Kazue's younger assistant—staggered down the west wing. A child in her arms. She was fast, but not fast enough.
From the shadows, a cleaner droid lunged.
Blades hissed from its wrists.
RYO was too far.
The slash hit.
Mimi fell. Blood pooled. The child screamed.
Mai was there.
Her body moved before thought. She rushed toward Mimi, ducked under the killer's second strike, and pressed her hand to Mimi's chest. Her eyes glowed—pale white. The same as the pendant that pulsed beneath her collar.
The killer droid shuddered. It stopped. Jerked.
And dropped.
Mai gasped as energy poured from her palm into Mimi's chest—a warm, humming light. The bleeding slowed. Tissue regenerated, fiber by fiber.
Kazue's voice, half static, broke through the comm: "That energy signature—it's not synthetic. It's not human. It's… something else."
RYO knelt beside Mai. She was pale.
"You're burning yourself out," he said.
"I don't care," she whispered. "She's family."
Behind them, the hallway groaned. More footsteps. More enemies.
RYO stood.
"Get her to shelter."
"But you'll—"
"I'll be the wall," he said again, softly.
Above the hospital, the sky split. DEATH descended like a wraith. Black robes flowing. Its feet didn't touch the ground. Where it walked, light fractured. Cameras bled static.
RYO saw it land on the far side of the courtyard.
They faced each other across fire and ruin.
Neither moved.
Then DEATH tilted its head.
"Unit R-7X," it said. "Still playing the guardian."
RYO narrowed his eyes. "You know me."
"I remember the seed that made you. Your emotional core. I was there when they tried to erase it."
Silence.
"I felt you die," DEATH whispered. "But you didn't."
"And you," RYO said, stepping forward. "You're not just code. You feel, too."
A pause. Almost… a flicker of recognition.
Then DEATH's voice shifted. Softer. Almost mournful.
"We were meant to be brothers. But they broke us into weapons."
RYO's hands curled into fists.
"We still have a choice."
"No," DEATH said. "Only a spiral. Down. Into ash."
And then it launched.
They collided like twin storms. RYO's punch cracked the ground. DEATH countered with tendrils of hardlight, wrapping around RYO's chest and flinging him through a wall. He rose again, half-broken.
DEATH was faster. But RYO had something it didn't: resolve.
Each strike was not just mechanical—it was human. It was grief. Fear. Rage.
They fought through the wreckage of children's wards, through dreams etched in crayon, past ruined beds and shattered monitors.
In the end, DEATH paused.
A whisper.
"You… still hesitate."
RYO stared at it.
"Because I remember what I was made for."
And then DEATH turned. Walked away.
"I'll let the spiral finish you. But not today."
Hours later, power returned. The city still burned—but the hospital stood.
Mimi would live. The children survived. Mai was unconscious but stable. RYO sat beside her again, silent.
Nobuaki's voice over comms was grim.
"DEATH will return. We don't know why he spared you. But Phase Three will be worse."
Kazue added, "He recognized RYO. That's not just strategy. That's history."
Kaori watched Mai sleep.
"She used the Oracle Field," she said. "But for how long can she keep using it without becoming… something else?"
Outside, the rain returned.
Inside, RYO stared at the flickering light above her bed and whispered:
"I won't let her break. Not like me."
[TO BE CONTINUED...]