The announcement tightened every nerve in the cabins.
Air went heavy in an instant.
Operators who'd been dozing snapped their eyes open, faces hardening. Hands went to gear, checks ran quick and practiced, fingers closed around weapons. Whatever hit them, they'd be ready.
Sumire kept her eyes on the Monolith beside them, and something in her chest climbed.
She stared up the length of that towering slab, curiosity and awe mixed together. She'd never seen it from this angle before.
For years she'd been the crown jewel of the program, wrapped in protection.
Her life had been the lab, floor to ceiling, day after day. She'd barely gone outside at all, let alone past the Monolith's range.
So watching it now, knowing she was minutes from crossing into what lay beyond, left her pulse running faster than she'd have admitted.
The desolate stretch of countryside in the distance did nothing to slow it.
"Tell me honestly. We're not going to have any problems out there, right?"
She turned to Satoru, wanting it confirmed one more time. Her voice came out thinner than intended. She'd never say she was scared, but her fists were clenched tight enough to sweat, and her eyes gave her away.
"Relax. I'm here, so it's fine."
The chocolate was gone. He produced a lollipop from somewhere, peeled the wrapper off, and stuck it in his mouth, tone easy and absolutely certain.
That smile hadn't shifted. Nothing tense in those blue eyes at all, like they were dropping in on a park rather than a Gastrea breeding ground.
"With me around, they could throw every last one of those things at us and not a hair on your head gets touched. Sit back and enjoy the view."
Keeping everyone on this operation alive hardly registered as difficult to him.
"Will I get to see your shadow technique soon?"
Not a trace of worry on Betty. The Ten Shadows Technique he'd mentioned had lodged in her mind and stayed there. She turned to him, curiosity plain.
Ever since he'd told her he could summon shikigami, she'd never once seen him do it, and the wondering had been building.
What the technique looked like. What the summoned things could do.
"Oh? You're interested? You never said anything before."
He blinked, surprise crossing his face. He'd assumed the whole subject bored her, and here she was asking outright.
"Are you trying to start a war between the Zenin Clan and your Gojo Family?"
She looked at his picture of innocence and delivered an enormous eye roll. The man said stupid things sometimes, with no sense whatsoever of where the lines were.
The shadow technique belonged to the Zenin Clan. A Gojo using it would offend them badly, and offense between the families didn't stay small. It escalated.
As heir to the Gojo Family, he knew that perfectly well. He just carried himself like it didn't matter, because to him it didn't.
"Ah, right."
He scratched at his white hair, wearing the expression of someone remembering something he'd misplaced. "Almost forgot about that."
The Zenin Clan meant nothing to him. A war between the families wouldn't have cost him a night's sleep.
The Gojo Family had never been the weaker house, and his own strength had left every Zenin behind long ago.
"Still, if you want to see it, you'll see it."
The easy smile came back, softened at the edges. He never turned down anything she asked for. If it upset the Zenin Clan, so be it.
"You asked, after all. You know I'm not going to say no to you."
"Ugh. That's revolting..."
Betty's brow creased faintly. She let the subject die, still hauling Sumire along at his side, picking up speed.
He didn't care in the slightest. The lollipop stayed in his mouth, the smile stayed put, and his mood stayed excellent.
While they talked, the formation slipped past the Monolith and out into the open world.
Everything changed at once. Desolation rolled over them, thick and suffocating, nothing like the noise and light behind them.
The sky greyed further. A faint smell of blood mixed with turned earth hung in the air, unpleasant enough to turn a stomach.
Animal bones lay scattered across the ground below, along with pieces of Gastrea, torn and ugly.
Every person aboard felt it. Operators tightened their grip on their rifles.
Sweat slicked their palms. Eyes swept in every direction, shoulders drawn taut, bodies waiting for something to come.
This was Gastrea country. An attack could come from anywhere, any second.
Some kept their gaze on the sky, watching for the shape that would drop out of it.
Ready for the flyers.
Fast things, aggressive and clever with it. Bringing one down took skill, and a single mistake got you killed.
The Gastrea didn't keep them waiting.
Less than a few minutes past the wall, black specks appeared on the horizon and began closing.
They swarmed thick across the distant sky, a cloud of black flies driving straight at the formation, covering ground fast enough to shrink the gap in seconds.
"Contact!"
A soldier spotted them first and shouted it, voice cracking with urgency, shattering whatever quiet was left.
"Prepare to engage! Prepare to engage!"
The call went up across cabin after cabin, overlapping, rising. Weapons came up. Wariness turned to grim focus, muscles locked, everyone braced.
Pilots brought fire control online. Guns along the fuselages swung up and tracked the incoming mass.
Nobody fired. They wanted them closer.
Kill them before they reached the aircraft. Once those things got in among the helicopters, everything got much worse.
Then, with every gun trained and every breath held.
A shriek tore the sky open, cutting clean through the roar of the rotors.
The sound scraped like metal on metal, half beast-howl, and it crawled up the spine and settled at the base of the skull.
Hands went to ears. Faces twisted.
Instinct said the same thing to everyone: something had come at them from a direction nobody was watching.
Heads whipped around, scanning, dreading the strike that would catch them blind.
But no.
Light bloomed at the head of the formation instead.
It came out of nowhere and burned bright enough to drag every eye toward it, hands frozen mid-motion.
Blue-violet.
Brilliant, too bright to look at straight on, leaping and forking through the open air, radiating enough force to set the atmosphere trembling.
Except the sky was clear from edge to edge. Not a cloud anywhere. Lightning made no sense at all, and confusion spread through every cabin.
Brows furrowed. Eyes strained wide, following the impossible thing, trying to make it resolve into something explicable.
And while they looked.
What came next hit them harder.
Satoru had moved to the front of the formation at some point, unnoticed.
Ahead of him, electricity danced and coiled on itself, blue-violet strands winding into a vast globe of light.
The color held sharp against that grey sky, impossible to ignore. Crackling static wove into the thunder of the rotors, ugly and magnificent at once.
Out of the light, an enormous head burst free and screamed into the open sky.
The thing was bigger than a helicopter.
Its beak opened on rows of teeth. Its eyes burned blood-red, cold and vicious.
Brown feathers covered its body, blue-violet current writhing through them.
"What... is that?"
In the cabin, Rentaro's artificial eye came alive, pale blue light flickering across it.
He stared at the shape ahead, swallowed hard, and got the words out rough. Shock sat plain on his face.
He'd seen Gastrea of every kind. Flying, ground, aquatic.
Never anything like this. Not Gastrea, not any animal he could name, wrapped head to tail in lightning and radiating power.
"It... it can't be a Gastrea... none of them carry a charge like that..."
Enju spoke half under her breath, eyes huge, fixed on the thing. Wonder and disbelief warred across her small face.
She felt no trace of the Gastrea Virus on it. What she felt instead was strength, strange and enormous, and it shook something in her.
Across the whole formation, the reaction was the same.
Cabins fell silent.
Every eye locked on the shape outside the windows, shock and tension and curiosity all tangled together.
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even breathing turned careful.
They had no reference for it, nothing to compare it to. Minds went blank.
"So this is the Ten Shadows Technique?"
Betty studied the massive bird hanging in the air ahead of him, surprise coloring her voice, curiosity sharper than before.
She'd guessed the summons would be strong. She hadn't guessed this.
Blue-violet current wound around its bulk, and the presence coming off it, from nothing more than standing there, raised the hair on your arms.
"Right. Ten shadows, ten shikigami, and every one of them does something different."
He nodded, smile relaxed, entirely at ease.
He looked at the thing in front of him with clear satisfaction. Nue, one of the more aggressive members of the set, built for lightning and speed.
"There's more to it than that. You'll find out later."
He left it there, deliberately vague. Showing her everything at once would spoil it.
"Can... can I study it?"
Sumire stared at the impossible creature and felt an itch she couldn't scratch.
Researcher to the bone. Anything unknown pulled at her the same way.
Gastrea were common enough in this world. Something like this was rare past the point of rarity, unheard of.
Gastrea absorbed cells from other organisms and inherited their traits.
Which traits was never directed and never selected for. The process was pure chance.
Nature had electric eels, sure.
But Gastrea with that ability were scarce, and the ones that had it barely produced a charge worth the name.