24. Into the Fire
The zombie pursuit was far from over.
The ones closing in from behind had already collapsed in their slapstick self-destruction, but from ahead came another swarm—and more were tumbling down the hillside like an avalanche.
I finally realized that the ones we'd outrun before were just the tip of the iceberg."We can't outrun them anymore…"
Panting, I checked the watch on my wrist.
Battery remaining: 0.5%. One spark away from total shutdown."You idiots," muttered Headless Girl.
"The Venusians may be high-performance, but their detection systems are actually pretty sloppy. They rely mostly on visual sensors—and only visible light at that."
"You could've said that earlier!"
I squeezed Oto's hand and darted toward the rice fields spreading to our right.Rows upon rows of tall stalks stood there—rice plants filled with ripened memory chips.
Bathed in the midsummer sunlight, they seemed exhausted from waiting to be harvested.
I pulled Oto close, and with the momentum of diving off a cliff into the sea, I leapt into the undulating navy-blue waves of rice.Inside the field, it was deeper than I'd imagined.
No—unfathomably deep.
It felt like being swallowed by a black hole.
If we kept falling, would we reach Venus's core itself?
Would we be crushed, compressed down to something less than a single nanopixel?
That fear pierced straight through me.Holding Oto tight, I reached out with my other hand and grabbed a bundle of stalks.
Clutching it with desperate strength—as if clinging to a straw, or tearing out the hair of someone I hated.
The inertia of our fall didn't stop right away.
But by the time the friction had burned my hands raw and sparks were flying, our speed began to slow, and at last, stopped completely.Unfortunately, those sparks ignited the dry rice.
Flames spread instantly, and the whole field turned into a sea of fire.
Venus was a planet of heat to begin with—it was as if the planet itself was laughing, whispering in delight: "A fitting scene for my children."
I could almost hear that voice reverberating deep inside my head.Relying on my body's built-in heat resistance, I struggled to crawl out of the inferno.
Even with some tolerance, prolonged exposure meant certain damage.
I was sure I'd been tested for heat endurance during manufacturing, but no such data existed in my memory.
So I had to get out—fast.Oto, being Venusian-made, should have greater heat resistance than I did.
Even so, she couldn't last long in this sea of flame.
—Funny, I thought, that someone born on Mars would be so bad with fire.
That absurd thought kept me going as I forced my way through the whirlwinds of flame."Oto!"
I shouted.
But the roaring blaze drowned everything out—the crackling explosions, the popping of oxygen igniting—turning the air into a deafening blast zone.
Unlike underwater, in fire the air itself expands with heat, vibrating like a shockwave.
Sound vanished, swallowed by the heat. Even someone standing beside you couldn't hear a word.
—Sound wouldn't reach her anymore.So I tried telepathic transmission instead.
Even though electromagnetic waves were unstable here—the superheated air ionized into plasma, scattering every signal—it was still better than shouting."Oto!"
"Min-kun!"
Her voice echoed instantly inside my head.
Not with panic, but filled with sorrow."I'm sorry, Min-kun… I'm so sorry. It's my fault you're going through this…"The fiery air shimmered like a hundredfold mirage; I couldn't see her.
But I knew she was crying.
Her tears touched the flames and evaporated instantly.
A wisp of steam brushed my cheek—and in that faint warmth, I felt her presence.I took her hand—what was left of it, now half-melted metal—and held it tighter.
Our palms fused together in the heat, sealing us as one.
I couldn't have let go even if I'd wanted to.
But I didn't care.
I wanted to use this very sea of fire like a molten crucible—to merge with her completely.Then—suddenly, Oto tore her hand away.
The fused joint snapped with a metallic crack."No, Min-kun," her telepathy rang out, unnaturally calm amid the flames.
"You can't merge with me. If you do, the village will target you too. You'll become a sacrifice as well."Her rejection burned through my chest.
Defiance flared like sparks, passion bursting into an inferno.
The flames only fanned my emotions further, beyond control.With what remained of my fingers, I grabbed her hand again.
And with a love hotter than the fire itself, I sent one last telepathic pulse:"For love, I'd swim through a sea of fire."