All those aberrations they had felt — the sensation of time skipping forward — were, of course, Inori Yuzuriha's doing. From the waterfront to this point, she had activated King Crimson's Time Erasure at least five times, and that was her restraining herself.
King Crimson's area of effect was the entire world — the entire universe. Whenever she triggered the ability, every living being on earth experienced that peculiar lurch, as though time had jumped. The only one who could act within the erased interval was her alone.
——She and King Crimson made two.
"Intruder! Move, move — intruder in the building!"
"Two of them, one tall, one short — the elevator's been cut off, they're trapped on the fourth floor!"
"Move to intercept!"
A white-clad soldier clutching a rifle sprinted down the corridor, calling into his comms to summon reinforcements toward the fourth floor, where the intruders had been pinned.
Every word of this reached a small soldier crouched in the shadows of a nearby corner.
That small soldier was, of course, Inori. She had slipped in, knocked out an ordinary guard, stripped him of his white tactical uniform, and put it on herself. The man had been on the shorter side — about 170 cm — and the fit was just about passable on Inori.
She had pulled the helmet down to cover her face, then used the security card she'd lifted from the guard to navigate freely, making her way up to the nineteenth floor — the level housing the Void Genome laboratory.
The building's internal layout was nothing like a normal high-rise. The special elevators only accessed designated floors, and Inori had to transfer three times before she found one that went to the nineteenth. Fortunately, no one had questioned her — every soldier in the building was currently stampeding toward Gai's position. Who was going to notice her?
"Which unit are you from?"
And yet, as luck would have it, at exactly this moment a figure in officer's uniform stepped into her path and blocked the way.
"T-3 Squad, Second Class Petty Officer — Richard P. Wilson."
She dropped her voice into a young male register and delivered the soldier's own name.
"Ordinary soldiers are not cleared for this floor. You weren't informed of that?"
He took a step toward her. Then another.
Inori felt a prickle of irritation. The whole way up, there hadn't been a single checkpoint — damn it. The laboratory was right there. How could her luck be this rotten?
The original Inori hadn't had these abilities, so how had she managed to steal the thing?
"My apologies, sir, but HQ has reported intruders. I'm here under orders from Major Rowan to reinforce security in this section."
"I don't recall issuing any such directive."
The officer was drawing closer. Inori lowered her head further, and King Crimson materialized behind her, already preparing to move.
"Why are you keeping your head down? Can't look me in the eye?"
His voice sharpened into a bark.
"Take off your helmet — now."
——This is bad. About to be exposed.
No — the more critical it got, the calmer she had to be. Even if she was discovered, he was already within King Crimson's range. One thought from her was all it would take for him to lose his head.
Inori exhaled a barely perceptible breath, then slowly removed the helmet. Her brilliant pink hair spilled free all at once, lighting up the dim corridor — though she'd coiled it tightly into a bun at the back of her head before putting the helmet on, precisely to prevent the hair from giving her away.
"Is there a problem, sir?"
She maintained the boy's voice and met his gaze squarely.
Predictably, the rigid man's expression snapped taut the instant he saw her face.
"..."
Approximately two seconds of silence passed. Inori watched his throat work in a hard, effortful swallow.
Then he let out a sudden shout and drew his sidearm at speed, thumb already flicking off the safety.
"Don't move! Hands up!"
"?" Inori tilted her head slightly in genuine puzzlement. "What is this, sir? Why are you doing this?"
"I have every soldier's face in this headquarters memorized — I've never seen you before. And furthermore…" He narrowed his eyes and studied her pale white throat for a long moment. No sign of an Adam's apple. "You're a girl, aren't you?"
"Ahh~"
Inori exhaled softly and pressed two fingers to her forehead.
"I'm impressed. A senior GHQ officer, and you could actually see through my male disguise."
"I spotted it immediately!"
"Hands up! Right now!"
Emboldened by what he took to be her capitulation, the officer's tone grew louder and more arrogant. He kept his gun leveled at her and reached his other hand toward her hair.
——Oh?
The first thing he registered was the large bloom of blood spreading across his own palm. The pain — the kind capable of shattering a soldier's nerve in an instant — reached his brain only a moment after, delayed. He stumbled back a step, dazed, and looked down to find a gaping wound the size of a rice bowl torn open in his chest. Strength was draining away fast. His organs were ruptured.
"You saw my face. Did you really think you'd live?"
The girl couldn't have been eighteen yet. Her pale face was lit from behind by the corridor lights, white as wax. Her softly tinged lips parted and closed in perfect calm as she said this to him.
"You… you are…"
He managed to mouth the words, a desperate need to understand how she'd struck him — but his destroyed organs could no longer support any further action. His vision was already blurring. Consciousness receded into darkness.
Inori had made it a habit to avoid killing whenever possible — except when circumstance left no other option. This was one of those times. This man had memorized her face. Leaving him alive would be an unacceptable threat. That could not be allowed.
From the day she first awoke, Inori had decided to be the master of her own fate. No more being a tool in someone else's hands.
To climb to the highest peak, if she didn't even have the resolve for this much — then she was nothing but a joke.
D-19 Laboratory.
The Void Genome was right in front of her. Inori already knew the ordinary soldier's security card she'd taken wouldn't open this coded door, so she simply triggered a brief Time Erasure and stepped through the door. Inside was a small room — metal floor and walls formed a seamless whole — and the object that had been the target of every battle fought tonight lay quietly in a glass case.
A dark red biological helical crystal, sealed inside an injector tube. The surface was labeled SAMPLE 02.
There should only be three Void Genomes in the entire story, and this was the one Shu Ouma used in the opening.
"King Crimson."
The red Stand erupted from Inori's body, drove one fist through the glass, and retrieved it.
Inori had worried that touching it without entering the door code might trigger some hidden trap — the kind of thing where you reach for the treasure and a concealed mechanism skewers you with arrows. The classics.
It seemed she'd been overthinking things, though. Even with the glass shattered, nothing at all happened.
Inori curled her fingers around the Void Genome and gave it a few shakes — the way you'd shake one of those drinks with bits floating in it before opening. She had, honestly, mixed feelings about using this. Every drug had its side effects, and this was something even its creators called "trespassing on divine territory" — the pinnacle of genomic science. Rendering human genetic code into tangible matter. At its core, it wasn't entirely different from what her Stand could do.
And besides, from what she already knew, injecting the Void Genome would necessarily produce one of those blinding pillar-of-light spectacles — every person within a hundred-li radius would know immediately that someone was using it, and the process itself was both lengthy and agonizing.
Still, she hesitated for only a moment before deciding to do it now and be done with it. Less chance of complications later.
Until she truly stood on unassailable ground, no power was ever too much.
She pressed the button at the base. A fine needle slid out, glinting coldly in the dark room.
"Call it the King's Power or whatever you like."
Inori bit her lower lip and pulled open the collar of her uniform, baring the elegant line of her collarbone.
"The true peak has to exist within my own ability. But I suppose… I'll accept you anyway."
"King Crimson — erase this interval of time. Don't let anyone see me."