One Percent
One survivor…?
Beyond the simple inability to breathe, the vacuum of space held one more terror.
The absence of sound.
That was why I never registered the mutant's howls — cries that should have carried even from a distance — or the scrape of tentacles raking across metal.
This was nothing like the earlier situations, when the Life-Conditioning System had simply shut down and the oxygen ran out.
The entire corridor was already half-destroyed. Through shattered glass and warped gaps in the hull, every last scrap of air had already been sucked away.
"We have to run!"
The red blips on the radar multiplied exponentially, and I shouted in urgency.
The moment the warning tone sounded, Sera caught on to the mutants as well and broke into a sprint straight ahead.
Unable to tear her gaze from the ceiling, she muttered in a voice thick with disbelief.
"This is impossible. It wasn't like this last time…!"
"Don't stop. Keep going!"
They must have been clustered near the entrance, where a little air still remained — the instant we spotted them, our retreat was already cut off.
I kept scanning fore and aft with the life-detection sensor as we pushed forward.
I crushed the skull of a mutant dropping from the ceiling ahead of us with my bare hand, only for three more to latch on from behind.
I was mid-lament that a combat suit of this caliber was reduced to bare-knuckle brawling when Sera drew her sword.
"Where's the exit from the bridge?"
I put distance between us again before I could even finish off the ones thrashing in soundless screams with their limbs sheared off.
At my question, her face twisted with despair as she bit down on her lip.
"It's far! I was planning on at least several days of travel!"
"If you managed that even without me, is there a safe zone?"
"Yes! But nothing near here…!!"
It was as bad as a situation could get.
A straight tunnel with nowhere to hide, nowhere to put our backs to the wall and fight.
Granted, even mutants couldn't last long in an environment this close to open space — some of them tumbled away and fell.
But the bigger problem was this: at this rate, my power would hit bottom long before those things gave up.
Caution: Avoid excessive power consumption. Severe strain may be placed on mobility systems.
Current remaining energy: 8… 7… 6%
Oxygen demand double the usual rate.
Core rotation pushed to absolute maximum for mobility.
Life-detection systems running to counter mutants ambushing from blind spots.
And on top of all that, cognitive processing strained to the limit hunting for any way out.
The power residual was plummeting exponentially — far beyond anything I normally absorbed from Sera's body.
"Hah… hahh… hah…"
As the oxygen ticked steadily lower, her breathing grew ragged.
She still hadn't noticed, but if this kept up, we were both going to die.
At the critical moment when power dipped toward four percent —
I seized a mutant by the head and smashed it into the wall, and something familiar caught my eye.
This is…
A long silver groove cut into the floor, the walls, the ceiling.
Different in scale, but the same kind of line had been etched at the entrance when we first entered the bridge.
"Sera — can you drop the bridge bulkheads?"
"Hah… hhek…! What!?"
Security infrastructure mandatory in case of fire or emergency.
Like the Life-Conditioning System in the airlocks, this would still function even with the ship's main systems down.
"I-It's impossible!"
"You don't have the clearance?"
"No — the hull is already warped. Touching the security console won't do anything…!"
Looking at the crumpled gate we'd seen at the entrance, that was probably inevitable.
But she had already given me the answer I wanted.
"Then what about the gravity?"
"Excuse me?"
Of course — the Hermes, adrift in deep space, wasn't under the gravitational influence of any star.
And in a ship where every last molecule of air had been bled out, the only reason those things and we could still stand on two feet was one thing.
Artificial gravity.
"Artificial gravity! Just a moment…!"
Catching my intent, Sera hurriedly sealed her oxygen mask.
As she opened the suit to input the security console code beside the shutter, I checked the last of my remaining power.
2… 1%
The terrible truth: I am a combat suit.
The moment the wearer steps outside, I cannot so much as twitch a finger.
If she died here, I would drift through this ship forever like so much space junk.
I curled my body as tight as I could, shielding her from the mutants.
"Even if the gravity vanishes, inertia remains for a moment! There could be a Kessler Syndrome-level impact, so — Jin! Jin!?"
As consciousness flickered out, her final cry reached me.
The massive pipeline running along the outer wall of the bridge was a long corridor used to haul refuse to the collection depot.
On either side of the halted conveyor belt, garbage had built itself into walls, and the ceiling was high enough for large-scale waste to pass through.
The collection bins where cleaning robots dumped scrap were more than large enough to serve as the sole entrance and exit.
The heat given off by rotting trash kept the cold at bay, which was why it had originally been a rest stop along the route toward Ebon Square.
"You actually did it! Jin, you're incredible!"
Sera chattered in a voice more thrilled than anything she'd shown so far.
The moment artificial gravity vanished, the mutants lost all balance.
They crashed into each other, got battered by flying debris, and died in clumps.
Seizing that opening, Sera had tumbled free and, the instant she spotted the yellow collection-bin entrance, dove straight in.
"I've thought this for a while, but Jin — you're brilliant! I can't even count how many times you've pulled me through a brush with death!"
The flood of praise spilling out on a surge of adrenaline was, in truth, something she'd been thinking all along.
He was inventive, sharp, and genius-level in ways no ordinary AI had any right to be.
The countless suit functions, the perfectly timed support, the razor-edge judgment in dangerous moments —
If not for him, she would have been dead long ago. She was certain of it.
"He does have a streak of wanting to mess with me, but my old comrades were the same. Ruffling my hair, pinching my cheeks. Well — I can overlook that much with my generous nature!"
Words that had nothing to do with survival — words she would never normally let out — tumbled free on their own.
Slackened facial muscles awkwardly tugged the corners of her mouth upward, coaxing out a smile she couldn't even remember the last time she'd worn.
"We'll rest properly, then move on. As long as Jin is here, I'm not afraid anymore."
But as the excitement gradually settled, she noticed something wrong.
The familiar mechanical voice never came. She was alone — sitting in a dark, foul-smelling corner of the ship.
"Jin…? Are you there? Why won't you answer?"
She lifted her arms and checked the suit over, and damage she'd never noticed before jumped out at her.
Scratches from mutant attacks. Fractures from slamming into the hull.
"Ah — the oxygen…?"
Through the cracked display, the remaining oxygen read a mere three percent.
In that instant, the terror that Jin had powered down before her — more than the dread of her own approaching death — flooded every part of her body.
"You're joking… right? No. Jin is an AI. He wouldn't leave me. He wouldn't leave me and… ah."
Tears surged out all at once.
She tried to wipe them away, but with the suit sealed, it was impossible.
"Hic… hhuh…"
In the end, she left the tears to fall, wrapped her arms around her legs, and squeezed her eyes shut.
"Hnn… hm?"
Just then, something rose along her cheek.
"Jin?"
It was the mechanical arm that had come out before, when treating her wounds.
She still had to move with the suit sealed nearly flush against her body, but it didn't seem to care.
"H-How is this possible! Don't tell me you were just messing with me…"
Without so much as a reply to her cry, the shower-hose-thick mechanical arm had a single purpose.
— Slurp, sip.
It was sucking up the tears running down her cheek.
"W-Wait a second! Hn — th-that tickles! Aaah! Don't latch onto my cheek like that!"
Besides the one absorbing everything through a round aperture like a tiny vacuum cleaner, there were others.
A mechanical arm that had been tickling her underarm with soft bristles soon moved to her left shoulder.
The wound that had split open again from the pressure differential when she stepped outside the suit to work the security console.
It dabbed away the blood with cotton-soft taps, and another arm peeled off the scab.
— Ziiing.
A small light bloomed from the arm fitted with a camera and began inspecting her here and there.
When her eyes met the round lens, Sera felt her cheeks flush for no good reason.
Not because she was embarrassed that he was tending her wounds — something else entirely.
"Um… you're not actually conscious right now… are you?"
Her forehead and cheeks were fine, but even a brush against her lower back or the nape of her neck sent a jolt through her body.
The arms rummaged freely under her clothes, leaving her underwear and socks in complete disarray.
For simple care, the movements were a little too thorough.
As the ones roaming every corner to absorb sweat and moisture passed her lower abdomen and climbed over her ribs, a strange feeling began to take hold.
Synthetic fiber with zero aesthetic value beyond breathability and ease of washing.
When the elastic thin fabric was lifted just slightly, a part of her that always ran damp with sweat was exposed.
The same part of her body that friends who used to toy with her hair while looking down at her would occasionally regard with envy and a baffling hostility.
When a tickling — even a suckling — stimulation was applied beneath it, Sera couldn't take any more.
"N-Not there! Stop…!"
She twisted, trying to pull free — and in that moment, something unbelievable entered her vision.
The oxygen that had been nearly depleted only moments ago was now climbing toward ten percent.
"No way."
It was a situation she couldn't begin to understand — but when it came to Jin, she had been through this countless times.
She remembered how strange it had felt the first time the suit's inner lining, faintly adhesive unlike any other powered suit, touched her skin.
"Nn…"
In the end, Sera leaned back and surrendered herself to it.
For better or worse, this place was sweltering.
And the suit's temperature regulation wasn't functioning either.
The oxygen climbed rapidly, then plateaued at a certain point — but the mechanical arms did not stop.
They especially favored her neck, the backs of her ears, the insides of her forearms.
"Haa… hhuh."
Under that repetitive, never-quite-forceful stimulation, she began to grow restless.
At some point her thighs tensed and slowly drew together.
A tickling sensation began to spread from her lower abdomen outward.
She pressed her forehead against the display again and again, trying to pin down the mounting tremor in her body.
Even so, when she held her breath as tightly as she could, certain she couldn't last any longer —
— Ziiing.
"Ah… huh?"
Every mechanical arm withdrew to its original place, and blue light bloomed before her eyes once more.
In a trembling voice, Sera carefully called for him.
"Jin…?"
Three seconds passed that felt like three hours.
"I've been thinking — what if Sera tried learning to draw from me? At a glance it might seem worthless, but I'm certain it would help in ways that aren't immediately visible."
That flat voice. That self-serving proposal. That nonsense she couldn't tell was a joke or not.
Hearing it again, she let out a sigh of relief so deep it felt like the ground might give way beneath her.