"Some weapons are built to fight. Others are built to forget they ever were."
The creature burst from the corridor like a wraith.
It was smaller than the first synthetic Initiator—barely ten years old in appearance—but its speed was blinding. One moment, the corridor was empty. The next, the air howled as it launched itself toward Rentarō, eyes glowing like twin searchlights.
Karasuma fired first—two bursts of armor-piercing rounds that slammed into the child's shoulder and thigh.
She didn't even flinch.
She twisted mid-air, absorbed the momentum, and kicked off the wall, slamming into Karasuma's chest like a battering ram.
He hit the ground with a gasp, winded.
Hotaru moved next—blades flashing from her wrists, slashing for the girl's legs. The strike was clean, precise—
But the child blocked with her forearm, metal screeching against metal.
"She's armored!" Hotaru yelled, recoiling.
Rentarō grabbed the child by the back of her synthetic collar and hurled her into the wall with a crash, dust and tile raining from the ceiling.
"Enju, now!"
The red-haired girl leapt, ribbon trailing, her heel crashing down toward the stunned target—
Only for the girl to vanish mid-movement.
She reappeared behind Enju in a blur and punched.
Hard.
Enju was sent flying into a support pillar, coughing blood.
"Dammit," Rentarō growled, scanning for a weakness. "She's not as strong as Chrysalis, but she's faster."
The synthetic child turned toward him, crouched low.
She was trembling.
Not from fear.
From strain.
Her limbs jittered unnaturally, as if overloaded.
"Warning," she muttered, eyes flickering. "Cognitive integrity… unstable…"
Karasuma forced himself up. "She's breaking down."
Rentarō's breath caught.
It wasn't combat design.
This girl wasn't a finished prototype.
She was a failed one.
An unstable experiment abandoned underground, left in the dark.
She turned toward Enju, still groaning on the floor.
Then her voice changed.
It wasn't mechanical.
It was… human.
"Fireflies…" she whispered. "I remember… fireflies…"
Everyone froze.
Rentarō stepped forward slowly. "You remember something?"
She flinched.
"I was… I was in a house. There was a man. He gave me… soup. My name was…"
She blinked.
"No name. Error. System fault."
Her hands trembled violently, metal protruding from cracked skin.
Hotaru's voice was quiet. "She wasn't meant to survive this long."
"She's deteriorating," Karasuma added. "Fast."
Suddenly, the girl turned her head and listened.
Not to them.
To something else.
A faint mechanical buzz echoed in the walls.
Rentarō's communicator crackled.
"Satomi," came a voice—Seitenshi's aide, frantic. "Long-range radar just picked up multiple incoming signals. A Council retrieval squad is en route to your location. ETA eight minutes."
Karasuma cursed. "They're not here to rescue her. They're here to clean up the mess."
"Pull the files!" Rentarō ordered Hotaru.
The girl was already extracting the drive.
The synthetic child stared at them, confusion twisting her face.
"You're… not them?"
Rentarō stepped forward, slower now.
"No. We're not."
"I… don't want to die here."
"You won't."
Lie.
She didn't say it aloud, but Rentarō saw it in her eyes.
They made it to the exit tunnel before the retrieval squad arrived.
Gunfire echoed behind them, short and clinical.
No one spoke as they emerged into the gray daylight, dragging Enju and carrying the prototype on a stretcher fashioned from a collapsed shelf.
They didn't make it far.
An armored drop-craft was already descending from the sky—unmarked, matte black, no Council insignia.
Karasuma raised his weapon.
Rentarō held up a hand. "Wait."
The cargo bay opened.
And out stepped a woman.
Long dark coat. Short-cropped hair. A cane in one hand, a sealed medical kit in the other.
She looked… old. Tired.
But her presence sent a ripple of tension through the air.
Rentarō recognized her.
Doctor Misono Kayuri.
The neural architect behind the aborted Artificial Initiator Project.
Officially dead three years ago.
"Don't shoot," she said.
Rentarō didn't lower his gun. "You're supposed to be a ghost."
"I've been one for a long time," she said, kneeling beside the synthetic child. Her hands moved gently. Familiar. Like a mother. "She wasn't meant to last this long. None of them were. But she survived."
"You created her?"
"No," Kayuri said softly. "I tried to save her."
The girl opened her eyes.
"Doctor…"
"I'm here," Kayuri whispered, brushing a synthetic eyelash from the girl's cheek. "Sleep now."
The child's chest stilled.
Her final breath left like a sigh.
Rentarō stepped forward. "What was her name?"
Kayuri stood slowly. "She never had one. But she used to ask me about fireflies. So I called her Hotaru."
Hotaru blinked. "You named her after me?"
Kayuri turned away. "No. I named her after what she reminded me of. A light that shouldn't exist in a world this dark."
Back at the underground base, Karasuma secured the data drive.
Seitenshi would know what to do with it.
Enju sat alone on the roof, arms wrapped around her knees.
"They were trying to replace us," she said.
Rentarō sat beside her.
"No," he said. "They were trying to erase the part of you that makes you human. And they failed."
Enju looked at him.
"You sure?"
"No," he said quietly. "But I'd rather believe in you than in them."
Below, Tokyo stirred.
But in the shadows of its towers, somewhere deep and silent, the next phase had already begun.
Not in a lab.
But in the decisions of people who thought they were gods.
And far away, unseen—
A door slid shut in a Council bunker.
A voice crackled through a speaker.
"CHR-08 successful. Retrieval complete.
Begin awakening sequence.
Project Chrysalis is far from over."