[System error.]
The message hovered in the air before Atsuko.
[Critical system failure.]
[root-001 failure.]
She swallowed hard as the messages cascaded.
[Attempting system reboot.]
[Attempting system reboot..]
[Attempting system reboot…]
[System reboot failed.]
[ma1n-01.os corrupted. Reboot impossible.]
An explosion rumbled in the distance. The ground shook violently, and Yui fell to her knees, bracing herself against the pavement. Around her, cadets cheered obliviously. Only squad leaders had access to the simulator's terminal. Only they knew its safeguards had just disengaged.
Atsuko's hands trembled as she reached for the pistol strapped to her thigh. Movements she'd drilled a hundred times now felt impossible. Her fingers slipped on the grip. She ejected the empty magazine. The fresh one clattered against the well twice before she slammed it home.
The crack of a skull pierced by drone fire echoed ahead. Atsuko whipped her head toward the sound and saw a classmate collapse backward, face bloodied. She recognized him—Théo. The one who'd guided her through the academy's maze-like halls on her first day.
The Combat Simulation and Analysis System "SPARTA" (Strategic Preparedness & Augmented Reality Tactical Academy) was a virtual training program designed to drill cadets in live-combat scenarios. Its revolutionary breakthrough had been neural safeguards—letting users feel death while convincing their brains they lived. A technology perfected through human trials.
Time seemed to freeze. Atsuko watched the scene unfold frame by frame.
"Get up, Théo! Damn it—" snarled Kariya, another cadet. He fired suppressing shots at the advancing drones before staggering toward his fallen friend. "Not this crap again. I'll drag you up—"
Kariya yanked Théo's shoulder. Blood gushed from Théo's mouth onto Kariya's hand. When he looked down, he met only glassy, vacant eyes.
Kariya's smirk twisted into a rictus of horror. His hands convulsed. He fell backward, shoving Théo's corpse away with a scream.
Other cadets turned at the noise—just as the drone horde opened fire.
Bullets ripped through flesh. The lucky ones dove into roadside ditches. The rest dropped lifeless onto asphalt.
Without the safeguards, their brains no longer recognized the simulation. When "killed," neurons fired authentic death signals. To resolve the paradox, the mind simply... stopped.
Atsuko crouched helpless in the tall grass, watching under the blood-orange sunset. Gunfire and splintering bone drowned beneath the drones' metallic tread.
Dozens of bodies littered the road, trampled underfoot as the machines marched on.
The air reeked of iron. The world burned crimson, the dying sun casting long shadows behind the mountains.
This simulation was meant to train them without battlefield risks. Yet before Atsuko's eyes, her classmates lay with extinguished gazes—truly dead.