Her eyes traveled from his watch to his face. She slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I can just keep hiding in here. Pretty soon, the other players will realize that we’re hiding in the desert caves. There aren’t that many to choose from, so they could toss in a grenade at any time. In fact, we’re pretty lucky to have survived nearly half an hour in here.”
“Oh, I see…” Kirito murmured, biting his lip and glancing at the mouth of the cave.
She told him, “We’ve been working as a team for this long. Might as well fight together to the end.”
“But…what if he shoots you with the pistol…?”
“It’s just an old-fashioned single-action handgun,” Sinon claimed, surprised at how easily the statement slipped out of her mouth. For years, the Type 54 Black Star had been The Gun—the very image of terror that plagued Shino.
But it wasn’t that the fear was gone. If it was coincidence that Death Gun had chosen the Black Star to be his symbol, then The Gun really was the very curse that haunted Shino’s life. But the one thing that she could say was that as an item in this game, the Type 54 was not very powerful. If she feared the gun more than the threat it actually represented, she would be passing up her chance to fight back.
“Even if he shoots it at me, you can use that sword of yours to knock it away with ease, right? Its firing rate is barely a tenth of a proper assault rifle, after all,” she noted, suppressing the trembling of her voice.
Kirito grinned, a combination of worry and relief. “Yeah… I won’t let him shoot you. But in order to ensure that, I think it’s best if you don’t expose yourself to him.”
She started to argue, but he held up a hand. “Trust me, I’m grateful that you’re offering to fight alongside me. But you’re a sniper, Sinon. Long-distance shooting is the entire basis of your style, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“Tell you what. When the next scan comes, I’ll jump out into the map to expose my location and draw Death Gun’s interest. My guess is that he’ll hide in the distance and try to shoot me with his rifle. You use that information to detect his location, and shoot him back. Deal?”
“…So you’re going to act as a decoy and spotter?” she asked, shocked by the reckless bravado of his plan, but based on the combination of their builds, that was probably the most effective plan they had. It was clear that in a combination of extreme close-range and long-range fighters, one of the two would be ineffective.
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Deal. Let’s do it. But you’d better not die on his very first shot.”
“I-I’ll try…but his rifle is silent, and there’s no bullet line to detect.”
“And who was it that bragged about predicting the prediction line?”
Sinon noticed that the fear hanging over her back was fading as they teased each other, still holding each other tight. In truth, she was just trying not to think about the horrifying possibility that a murderer was inside her apartment at that very moment. She had no choice but to cling to Kirito’s notion that defeating Death Gun would render him helpless. In fact, perhaps it wasn’t his words that she clung to, as much as his virtual body heat. When they left the cave and she split off from Kirito to find a sniping position, she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to maintain her current state of mind. So she leaned against him one last time, feeling the warmth of his avatar while she still had the chance.
Kirito murmured suspiciously, “Um…anyway, Sinon, I can’t help but notice that some weird red circle has been blinking in the bottom right corner…”
Her eyes glanced over and saw the indicator he was talking about. For a moment, she had to remember what it meant—then her eyes shot up. She found what she expected to see on the ceiling and was about to leap up from his legs before she realized it would be pointless after that much time. She sighed, “Oh…crap, I didn’t think about that…”
Floating up in the air was an odd, pale blue group of concentric circles. It was not a tangible object, but a symbolic glowing light effect. Kirito had spotted it, too, and he was quite confused.
“Umm…what was that thing, again…?”
Sinon shrugged and answered, “It’s a livestream camera. It usually only follows players engaged in battle, but since we’re running low on combatants, it’s had to come after us.”
“Uh…crap, do you think it heard what we’ve been discussing?”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t pick up voice unless you really shout at the top of your lungs. Go on, give it a wave,” she suggested, her tone of voice presenting a cool challenge. “Or is there someone you’d prefer not to see this?”
For a second, Kirito’s face went cold with fear, which was quickly covered with a nervous, stiff smile. “Uhh…no…well…wouldn’t that be you? Besides, wouldn’t most people watching this just assume we’re two girls?”
“Uh…”
He had a point there. In either case, it seemed that Sinon would be required to make some uncomfortable excuses. But that could wait until they had survived the current crisis.
She snorted and said, “It would be more pathetic to freak out the moment you see a camera watching you. And I don’t mind…If people want to start rumors about my tastes, at least it will cut down on the number of times I get hit on.”
“Does that mean I have to pretend I’m a girl from now on?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve conveniently forgotten that you pretended to be a girl to get me to guide you around town…Oh, it’s gone.”
Just as it occurred to Sinon that no one watching could possibly guess that they were having such a witheringly sarcastic conversation, the visual effect that indicated the presence of a camera left in search of a new target.
She sighed with relief and finally sat up. “So…it’s time. Only two minutes until the next satellite pass. I’ll stay down here and you’ll check your terminal outside the cave, right?”
She got to her feet and offered a hand to her human chair, helping him up. When she took a step backward, the chill of the desert embraced her body, causing her to wince. She picked up her rifle and clutched the cold steel, feeling the faint core of warmth within it.
“Oh, by the way,” Kirito prompted. She looked up to see that the lightswordsman’s fine brows were furrowed in thought.
“What is it now? We don’t have time to change plans.”
“No…the plan is fine. What I’m thinking about is…Death Gun’s real name, or official character name. It was Steven, right?”
“Oh…right, that was it. I wonder what the meaning of that was…”
“If I do come into close range, I’ll have to ask. Well, time to dip outside.”
The black-haired swordsman gave her a resolute nod, turned and started for the entrance of the cave. Sinon couldn’t tell if the chill on her skin even with the Hecate in her arms was from the tension of the imminent final battle, the peril that threatened her in real life—or the loneliness of being separated from Kirito.
She hunched her shoulders, drew in a deep breath of dry desert air, and called out to the back of the man walking away.
“…Be careful.”
His answer was an upward thumb, visible over his shoulder.