1

<Today’s temperature stands at −7°C. Attire index A, warm clothing, is recommended>

Despite it being eight in the morning, the stars continued to faintly twinkle in the sky. With the psychological-horror movie she’d watched during her flight still burned into her eyelids, Echika stood at the roundabout by Pulkovo Airport, located in northwestern Russia.

Her jet-black hair, typical of her Japanese descent, was styled in a bob cut that reached down to her jawline. Her thin frame was covered by a sweater, short pants, tights, and boots—all of them black. People had ribbed her countless times about being a raven in the body of a human.

Cars flowed into the roundabout, their headlights activated. Buses with Cyrillic letters written on them pulled over to spew out their passengers before sucking in more people. As Echika’s eyes met with a few of the riders’, their personal data—like their names and professions—danced through her field of vision in a pop-up display.

Ever since the popularization of Your Forma, this kind of personal information had become visible just by looking someone in the face. Not for the average citizen, mind you, but for people whose professions granted them the necessary permits to access it. Names, dates of birth, addresses, lines of work… These were all visible to Echika without even a command.

At any rate…

Despite it being fifteen minutes past the agreed time, Benno hadn’t shown up.

Fine, Echika thought, licking her dry lips as she decided to call him. Audio call to Benno Kleemann.

Converting her thoughts to a textual command, she issued that order to the Your Forma inside her head. The boring ringback tone buzzed through the earphone she’d left on her ear.

She knew Benno hated phone calls, so she didn’t expect him to pick up. And despite that, she’d made the call anyway. Sometimes, he’d answer if he was in a decent mood. Besides, she had half a mind to complain to him about his perpetual tardiness.

But today wasn’t a good day, it seemed. The call timed out and automatically closed. A moment later, she received a text from him. She opened up the message window floating at the corner of her field of vision.

“I’m still at the hospital. When Chief Totoki said yesterday I’d be arriving on the scene, that was a lie.”

She lied? Echika knit her brow.

“The chief ordered me to keep quiet about it, but our partnership ends today.”

Figures.

She’d seen this coming. Her partnerships got canceled pretty often, so she wasn’t disappointed or dejected by the news. The problem was that Chief Totoki had kept it a secret from her until today. That gave Echika a vague, ill premonition.

“Someone from the local branch should be in the airport to pick you up. Stay at the roundabout.”

“Understood. Did you hear anything about my new aide, by the way?”

Echika replied with a question, but Benno didn’t answer it. That pissed her off a little, but she was the one who’d gotten him hospitalized, and he hadn’t liked her to begin with. Him turning a cold shoulder to her didn’t come as a surprise.

A new partner, huh?

She wasn’t enthusiastic at the prospect, to say the least. After all, no matter who showed up, they wouldn’t last long. Most electronic investigators worked with the same aide for a year or so, but in Echika’s case, her partnerships lasted only a month at best. Her data-processing abilities were so outstandingly high that no one could match her, so her aides kept failing and getting hurt.

Feeling a wave of melancholy creep in on her, Echika took out her electronic cigarette and sucked on it. As she was about to blow out a wisp of water vapor that contained neither nicotine nor tar, an alert popped up from her Your Forma.

<Smoking is prohibited on airport grounds>

Restraining the urge to click her tongue, she turned off her cigarette and instead resorted to fiddling with the nitro-case necklace hanging from her neck in an attempt to distract herself.

The person picking her up arrived only thirty minutes later. As Echika stood there, almost freezing over, an SUV pulled up in front of her. It had a squarish body with a stylish maroon coating, and its roundish headlights seemed like an expression of how this car was meant for driving off the road.

Her Your Forma swiftly analyzed the car’s make. A Lada Niva. An ancient, respectable model that hadn’t seen a full makeover in some forty-odd years. An artistic city like this had a unique taste in automobiles, indeed.

“Good morning. Are you Electronic Investigator Hieda?”

The driver’s-seat window rolled down, revealing the face of a young Caucasian man. But despite looking him straight in the face, no personal information popped up in her field of vision. That alone instantly made Echika that much more depressed.

The person at the wheel was an Amicus. Though they were once called androids or humanoid machines, they were now considered an indispensable part of human life.

“Did I keep you waiting long?” he asked, holding up an ID badge identifying him as an Amicus working with the local police. “I was told to meet you at nine AM…”

“We were supposed to get here at eight.” Benno had relayed that to her, so this was another one of his petty attempts at harassment. Typical. “Never mind, let me get in.”

No sooner did the Amicus unlock the door than Echika slid into the passenger seat. Finally, she could warm herself up a little…or so she thought, but her expectations were dashed when she found the interior of the car was terribly cold.

“Oh, excuse me. The cold helps my processing speed,” the Amicus said, flipping the switch for the heating with a friendly gesture.

As far as Echika knew, it couldn’t tell the difference between hot and cold. Being a machine fashioned in human form, it was compelled, by its system, to act “human.”

“But if I was to catch a cold because of this, it would be a breach of your Laws of Respect.”

“Right you are. Of course, I take care to watch over my behavior accordingly.”

To respect humans, obey the orders of humans, and never attack a human being—all Amicus were programmed in accordance with these Laws of Respect.

Honestly speaking, Echika didn’t like these machines much. Or rather, she flat-out hated them.

The semiautomatic vehicle slowly started moving and drove out of the roundabout. The streets of Saint Petersburg sailed past in all the glory of their anachronistic architecture. It was an elegant, beautiful sight, but it was blotted out as advertisement holograms unfurled over the walls.

One of the Your Forma’s features was an augmented-reality advertisement system. By reading the user’s tastes, it displayed business advertisements tailored to their preferences. These days, buildings around the globe were covered in commercials, and no matter where one went, one couldn’t appreciate the view. You could opt to turn them off, but it came with a steep fee.

After all, the developer of the Your Forma, Rig City, was mostly funded by ad revenue. What’s more, the Your Forma installation procedures were performed free of charge for all users, which was also thanks to this revenue source.

“According to today’s schedule, you should be heading for the Union Care Center next. You’re to Brain Dive and identify the source of the virus today, yes?”

“Correct.”

“After Washington, DC, and Paris, there’s a third incident here in Saint Petersburg.”

“Forget the schedule—what about my new aide?”

“He’s ready and waiting for you. Would you like to hear more about him?”

“No, I’ll find out when I meet him.”

Cutting off the conversation there, Echika used her Your Forma to browse the news. Lines of headlines tailored to her interests danced before her eyes.

<AI author to be final nominee for literary prize>

<Massive cold wave hits Japan’s Kanto region>

<Notre-Dame Cathedral restricts end-of-year countdown event>

<Switzerland announced as the leading country in number of assisted suicides>

<Bookstore networks to increase year-end sales of paper volumes>…

The identity of her new aide didn’t interest her per se. She’d just do the work laid out before her regardless. Echika had stopped thinking about her partners a long time ago; that way, she could shield her heart from all kinds of guilt.

<The age of the pandemic is behind us. Won’t you grasp the thread of your new life?>

That was the slogan for the first advertisements.

The invasive augmented-reality device, Your Forma, was an information terminal fashioned after a sewing thread that sat within one’s head. After being shaped into a three-micrometer smart thread, the device was inserted directly into the brain using laser surgery.

With the Your Forma, one could do almost anything, from monitoring one’s health to online shopping and updating social networks, via thought alone.

It all started thirty-one years ago, the winter of 1992, when a virus that came to be known as The Spore caused a worldwide pandemic. The development of vaccines and antibodies couldn’t keep up with the virus’s rapid mutations, which swiftly paralyzed society. The death toll climbed to thirty million, with the most frequent cause of death being viral encephalitis. As such, preventing brain inflammation became a matter of urgent concern.

Under a World Health Organization initiative, different corporations and groups cooperated to create a prototype of a brain-machine interface, which they eventually rolled out for general use.

Over the next several years, they developed the invasive medical-thread device Neural Safety. With its help, treating the encephalitis symptoms became easier, and the mortality rate was greatly curbed. Future iterations could outright prevent the disease.

And the population, exhausted from years of fighting the virus, had no reason not to be drawn to this new thread.

And now, long after the pandemic’s conclusion in the year of 2023, Neural Safety had since been reborn under a new name, evolving into the Your Forma, the cutting-edge, multipurpose, multifunction information terminal.

One of its most noteworthy features was Mnemosynes—records of real events, plus the emotions and impressions of the user at the time. They were formed through converting the memories in the hippocampus into binary data and producing a visualization of the heart.

Mnemosynes went on to revolutionize the face of criminal investigation. Interpol’s Electrocrime Investigations Bureau became the sole organization with the authority to investigate Mnemosynes, which they exercised to solve major offenses. There were, of course, rare instances of criminals tweaking or erasing Mnemosynes to escape judgment. Still, since it was impossible to falsify Mnemosynes with current technology, they nevertheless contributed greatly to the solving of criminal cases.

The people who plunged into Mnemosynes were electronic investigators—also known as Divers—like Echika.

Divers connected to a victim’s or perpetrator’s Your Forma to quite literally plunge into their minds in search of key clues for solving crimes. Mnemosynes were stored in a stand-alone environment that was disconnected from the network, which meant you had to interface physically with them through a wire. On top of that, Mnemosynes were housed in a multilayered structure resembling a mille-feuille. This ensured people with average processing speed couldn’t so much as view the surface level of this data.

As such, the job had very specific compatibility requirements. These basically boiled down to a genetic resistance to stress and an affinity with Your Forma.

When brains grew accustomed to using Your Forma from the early stages of development, some would, in rare instances, adjust themselves to the device to an extreme degree, spurring a formation of myelin. In simple terms, the brain grows too used to the Your Forma and exponentially increases its information-processing speed as a result.

Those kinds of slightly distorted people were selected to become electronic investigators. And Echika stood head and shoulders above her peers, to the point where even now, no aide had ever been able to match her processing speed.

In other words, people calling her a genius wasn’t a compliment but sarcasm of the highest degree.

2

Her destination, the Union Care Center, was a building designed in the style of Gothic Revival architecture. Echika couldn’t help but stare at it, but that soon prompted ads to flash into life on the outer walls. Her Your Forma automatically read their data matrices, instantly opening the products’ purchase pages in her browser.

Ugh, stop that.

Needlessly exhausted, she arrived at the center’s lobby with the driver Amicus in tow. The lobby was full of haggard outpatients, and none of them looked like the kind of person who might work as an electronic investigator aide. Echika exhaled hard. Her partners being late wasn’t anything new.

“Maybe I should tell you about him anyway,” the Amicus started again. “Your aide’s name is Harold Lucraft, and he recently transferred to your department from the city police. He has blond hair and is about 175 meters tall.”

“I said it’s fine. I’ll just check his personal data when I see him—”

But as Echika turned to the Amicus to complain, she got her first good look at him, then froze up in amazement. She didn’t care much for him because he was a machine, but his features were incredibly handsome.

His age had been set to his mid to late twenties. He had blond hair held in place with wax, and he had uniform brows and gentle eyelashes. The bridge of his nose was perfectly straight, and his lips were thick in just the right way. The back of his hair stood up a little, and he had a faint mole on his right cheek, granting him a very human appearance.

From top to bottom, he looked like a work of art that a craftsperson had put their heart and soul into. He clearly wasn’t a mass-produced model but a customized one that cost a great deal of money.

“As for Lucraft’s attire, today, he’s wearing a tartan scarf and a melton coat.”

Echika couldn’t even blink anymore because the Amicus in front of her was wearing exactly that. Even his coat, with its mundane design, somehow accentuated his slender, well-proportioned physique.

“No way…,” she uttered, her mouth feeling awfully dry all of a sudden. “You’re joking, right?”

He smiled serenely—a smile so sophisticated, it almost gave her heartburn.

“My apologies for not introducing myself sooner. I’m Harold Lucraft,” the Amicus—Harold—said, extending his hand for a shake.

Hold on. No. Stop messing with me.

“That can’t be. I’ve never heard of Amicus working as electronic investigator aides. You just do the chores—”

“True, Amicus in investigative organizations usually manage evidence-storage rooms and security. Humans and analysis automatons handle the investigations themselves. My title isn’t official, either.”

Since their productivity didn’t match that of industrial robots, Amicus were usually charged with routine tasks. As AGI—Artificial General Intelligence—they stressed human appearance over efficiency. Back when AGI was still a theoretical concept, scholars dreaded the possibility of them becoming a hyper intelligence that could overshadow humankind. But once they actually came to be, they didn’t amount to anything more than “clever but obedient robots” that served as reliable partners to humankind.

The Amicus traced their origins to the height of the pandemic. They were developed by the England-based Novae Robotics Inc. as a humanoid machine. Much like the Your Forma, the fields of robotics and AI research had made great strides during that time. With risk of infection discouraging physical contact between people, investments were made into robots that could work in their place.

And so the English government sunk vast funds into Novae Robotics Inc.’s research, allowing them to make their humanoid machines a reality. The first androids were supplied only to medical institutes. Though they were the spitting image of humans, they were also incredibly expensive.

Not only did the robots perform their assignment well, but they also behaved the way people sought; they comforted, encouraged, and sympathized with them, caring and relieving the stress of both the patients suffering from the virus and their healthcare providers.

The machines were later rebranded and put on sale as Amicus, and they soon spread throughout society, both in home and business environments. It only made sense that at present, clashes between the Amicus sympathizers and the luddites were creating frequent problems in society.

Yet as “human” as the Amicus were, and despite how flexible and capable of adapting to different situations they could be, they were jacks-of-all-trades, masters of none. Their depth of understanding of any specific field was shallower than industrial robots.

That was why analysis ants were preferred over Amicus when it came to specialized tasks like criminal investigations. And yet the Amicus gazing at her had nevertheless introduced himself as her new assistant.

“If you really are my aide, then why didn’t you tell me you were when we met?”

“Oh.” Harold retracted his hand in a carefree manner. “My apologies. It’s just that I wanted to observe what kind of person you are… Did you happen to watch a movie on your flight?”

“Huh?” She had. “So what if I did?”

“It was The Third Cellar, correct?”

Echika blinked a few times. He was dead-on, but how did he know that?

“No way. Who told you?”

“Oh, no one told me. I assumed you were taking an Étoile France flight. And if you check their home page, The Third Cellar is highlighted as one of their recommended in-flight pictures.”

“…And?”

“If you’re someone who isn’t particular about their tastes, you’d likely pick the recommended title. And given your profession, only a very thrilling story would draw you in. Your eyes are congested on account of you blinking less, and your lips are dry because you lick them more when you’re frightened. Meaning the movie was likely a psychological-horror thriller, and the only recommended movie of that genre in their catalog was The Third Cellar.”

“What the hell are you…?” Echika muttered, taken aback.

“Which makes me think that you’re something of an indifferent person, aren’t you, Investigator? I’m picking up the scent of an electronic cigarette’s flavor on you, too. And if I may be so bold, a very cheap flavor, at that. That makes me think you don’t have any preferences when it comes to smoking, either—you only do it to distract yourself. People like you don’t usually have any interest in their daily lives. You care little for fashion or romance, and you’re married to your job.”

She was speechless. And as Echika stared at him, stunned, Harold regarded her with a satisfied smirk.

“It’s basic human observation. I think that demonstrates my aptitude as an investigator, don’t you?”

This isn’t funny—what is this thing?

Amicus knew how to read people’s emotions so they could communicate effectively, but this level of accuracy was abnormal. Just what was going on?

“Investigator Hieda,” Harold whispered, his lips curled into a soft smile that left no room for argument, “I will do my utmost to be a suitable partner until we solve this case.”

Give me a break.

An Amicus investigator aide? With skills so honed, they could violate her privacy?

“I, hmm… I need a minute,” Echika managed somehow. “Let me call my superior.”

<Holo-call to Ui Totoki>

Stepping outside the Care Center, Echika immediately called Chief Totoki. The temperature was as low as it had been earlier that morning, but for some reason, she couldn’t feel the cold; that was how shaken she was.

Holo-calls, or Holographic Telepresence, were one of the Your Forma’s features. It used holographic models to make it feel as though you were standing directly across from your conversation partner.

“Oh, good morning, Hieda.”

The call connected, and Chief Totoki’s image appeared before her eyes. She had sharp facial features, so she gave a rather stern impression despite being a woman. Her black hair was bound and reached down to her waist, and her gray suit didn’t have a single wrinkle on it.

This woman in her midthirties led the team that managed all the electronic investigators. Totoki’s official title was senior police investigator, and she’d worked her way up the ladder through a different route than electronic investigators and their aides.

“Do you have any idea what time it is right now here in Lyon? Eight AM. People are only getting out of bed this time of day.”

“My apologies.” Echika held back the urge to snap at her. Keep your cool. “Did you stay quiet about my partnership with Benno being annulled because my new partner is an Amicus?”

“Not at all. I was just busy, so I forgot to get around to breaking it to you.” Lies. Totoki wasn’t above tricking people like that. “I get that you hate Amicus. It’s just that we only have a limited number of investigators. And with you causing your aides to go kaput and sending them to the hospital every so often, we’re starting to have holes in our investigations.”

“But that’s because—”

“Yes, I know. No aide can match you, and I’m also to blame for turning a blind eye to the disparity in your abilities. But we finally found you a better partner.”

“And they’re an Amicus?” How is that better? she almost asked. “Besides, the Your Forma and the Amicus’s AI operate on completely different standards. He probably can’t connect to the Lifeline anyway.”

“We’ve prepared a special Lifeline with an HSB to USB converter for him. He can definitely connect to it.”

“And if his processing speed doesn’t match mine, I’ll just end up frying his circuits regardless.”

“He’s a special model, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

“What, because he’s bespoke? Don’t tell me you had that thing made to order.”

“Originally, he was working for the Saint Petersburg police’s detective division. He was put in charge of this incident and assigned to our office instead, that’s all.” Totoki said it so matter-of-factly that the more Echika listened, the more she doubted this was true. “He’s a special model, but we didn’t order his production. As you well know, we don’t have that kind of budget.”

“But you just said you had a special Lifeline prepared for him.”

“Because that’s a necessary investment. We’re not just doing this for you; this could end up benefiting many electronic investigators in the future.”

Was she saying she wanted Amicus handling the aide duties in the future? Absurd.

“Hieda, his computation rate is a match for your data-processing speed. The numbers don’t lie,” Totoki insisted, trying to persuade her. “There was talk of sacking you in the general meeting, you know. But I fought tooth and nail to reject that suggestion. You’re a rare talent, and the fact that you’re the world’s youngest electronic investigator is proof of that.”

The world’s youngest electronic investigator, a prodigy. Thinking back to the time when the media had made a big deal out of her and kept calling her that made Echika quite bitter. She’d entered this job three years ago. She was sixteen at the time, having skipped grades to graduate high school early. People calling her a genius had put quite a bit of pressure on her, but at least when they called her that back then, it didn’t reek of sarcasm like it did today.

But all that changed when she unintentionally fried her first aide’s brain.

“Besides, this method won’t end up hurting any human aides.”

She couldn’t deny this was good news. That one point alone seemed to drown out any other counterarguments.

“And if you have any other complaints, figure out how to Dive in and escape by yourself.”

“That’s impossible. No one can do that, which is why we have the partner system in the first place.”

Divers like Echika specialized in data processing alone, so when they’d begun Brain Diving, they couldn’t control it. It was like skydiving in the sense that once she plunged in, she could only continue plummeting straight down. This was why she needed the Belayer to hold on to her Lifeline, carefully monitor her condition, and pull her up in time.

“Are you satisfied now?”

Totoki clearly wasn’t going to budge on this. Echika didn’t think she could really refuse, either. More than anything, the fact that the chief had covered for her in the general meeting was big. Any normal person would feel grateful and indebted after that.

But the price for that was partnering with a machine.

Echika apologized to Totoki for the sudden disturbance and hung up, then ruffled her bangs. She understood now that she had no choice but to give in. That Amicus would break before long anyway. Totoki seemed convinced that his abilities would match hers, but it wasn’t like his compatibility with her had ever been tested.

And it couldn’t possibly be as simple as letting an Amicus robot take over that role.

“That was a pretty long call, Investigator Hieda.”

The Care Center’s hospitalization ward was dark and quite old-fashioned in style. As a human doctor led Echika and Harold down the hall, they passed by hospital visitors and nurse Amicus.

“So what?” Echika retorted bluntly.

“I can tell even if you won’t say anything. You asked for a change in partner, right?”

“No,” she replied on the spur of the moment. Dammit. “I didn’t go that far.”

“That’s good.” Harold smiled. “If I may ask, do you hate Amicus?”

So he noticed. That question felt like he’d just lunged at her throat. Given her attitude earlier, it was an obvious thing to inquire about, but having it pointed out so plainly did make her a little embarrassed.

“No offense to you, but…yes, that’s right.”

“I don’t mind; things like that don’t bother me. What makes you despise us, though?”

“I’m not interested in sharing my personal history. Don’t ask me about it again.”

“I see. Well, I’m fine with the stoic sort. Those kind of people are respectable.”

“No…” What’s with him? Is he not gonna get it unless I say it to his face? “What I’m saying is, I’m not going to pretend like we’re friends.”

“Hmm, excuse me… Can I start giving you the details about the infected patients?”

Echika stopped with a start. The slender doctor walking in front of them turned a reproachful glare at their pointless chatter.

“My apologies.” Aah, time to switch gears. “You said the first patient was hospitalized two days ago, right?”

“Correct, and this morning, we’ve gotten to the point where we have twelve others hospitalized. More than half of them are students of the ballet academy, and they were brought in for hypothermia symptoms. They all say that they see an intense blizzard.”

The doctor gestured with his chin toward the window, where they could see a dimly lit, almost sleepy sort of sky. There wasn’t a speck of snow to be seen, and the only things dancing busily through the air were delivery drones.

“The patients’ minds really are seeing a blizzard,” Echika noted. “That shared delusion is one of this sensory crime’s distinctive features.”

Sensory crimes were caused by cyber viruses that infected the Your Forma. The first of these serial offenses showed up in Washington, DC, followed by Paris, and now Saint Petersburg. Common symptoms included seeing an illusory blizzard, followed by signs of hypothermia.

“I’ve only seen the patient records and past cases on the news, but this seems to be a new strain of a self-propagating virus.”

“Yes, and even a Your Forma’s full scan can’t detect it. The developers in Rig City have organized an analysis team to look into it.”

As of now, only two things had been made clear about the new infectious agent.

First, it started with a single infected source and spread to others via Your Forma messages and phone calls.

Second, the virus had a very short incubation period, roughly fifteen minutes, which was the only time it was contagious.

Thus, the disease’s problem wasn’t so much its infectious capacity but rather the fact that after its outbreak, the Your Forma became inoperable, which hampered its capacity to spread.

At present, no one had discovered a means to remove the virus yet. There were only limited ways of dealing with it: either applying a suppressant drug that made the Your Forma’s functions shut down or undergoing a surgical procedure to remove the Your Forma altogether.

“Delusions of a blizzard are one thing, but why would imaginary snow actually affect the body…?”

“The Electrocrime Investigations Bureau is grappling with that question, too,” Echika remarked. “At the moment, we suspect it’s a nocebo effect. Like the old water droplet experiment.”

“What’s that?”

“Briefly speaking, it’s an experiment that proved a person can convince themselves to die. The subject is blindfolded and strapped to a bed. The doctor tells them they’ll die once they lose two-thirds of their blood, then makes a small nick on their big toe with a scalpel, causing a bit of blood to trickle out.”

“But in truth, they never actually made an incision, and what the patient thought was the sound of their blood was droplets of water.” Harold continued the explanation from where Echika left off, despite not having been asked to do so. “The experiment goes on to give the patient hourly updates on how much blood they’ve lost. And a few hours later, when they’re told they’ve bled out two-thirds of their blood, the patient passes away, despite being physically unharmed.”

“You’re well informed,” Echika snipped peevishly.

“I read it online once. Once we’ve seen something, we never forget it.”

“Oh yes, our nurse Amicus are like that, too,” the doctor added. “Whenever crucial clinical records end up getting lost along with their backups, they can output them from their memories and reproduce them.”

“That’s simple work for us.” Harold smiled. “But, Investigator, isn’t that experiment a little too forceful of an explanation, rationally speaking?”

“The brain is surprisingly easy to fool,” Echika said, lowering her voice. “And since the Your Forma is integrated with it, the experiment is considered a viable explanation.”

The three of them arrived at a large hospital room housing fifteen beds. On them lay the infected patients, sleeping soundly under the effect of the suppressant. Every one of them seemed to be in stable condition.

“Per your request, we’ve attached Brain Diving cords to each person,” the doctor said.

The Brain Diving cords and Lifelines they used were all HSB cables. HSB stood for Human Serial Bus, the unique standard the Your Forma used. Possession of HSB cables was legally forbidden for individuals due to privacy-abuse issues, but certain medical institutions and investigative organizations were allowed to use them.

“Oh, so you’re going to discover the source of the infection from here,” Harold mused. “Do you think you’ll discover the culprit, too?”

“I’m not sure about that. I’ll only know once I Dive in.”

In Washington and Paris, they’d traced the sources of the infection—Ogier, in Echika’s case—but that didn’t reveal any clues about how the patients had been exposed to the virus to begin with or the identity of the culprit. And since there were no vestiges of the infection in the Your Forma and Mnemosynes of the source patients, it proved that the people suffering from it had no idea where they’d contracted it.

So this time, she had to pray this Dive wouldn’t turn out to be in vain, too.

“That being said,” the doctor started, looking around the room anxiously, “processing twelve people in parallel. I’ve never seen electronic investigators handle more than two at once… Won’t it impact your mental faculties and scramble your ego?”

“Don’t worry. They requested me because I can handle it.”

Since electronic investigators experienced the memories and emotions stored in the Mnemosynes as if they were their own, their Dives resulted in many cases of ego scrambling that required mental care. In Echika’s case, however, she could handle processing multiple people in tandem. Not once in her career had those emotions engulfed and overtaken her.

If there was anything to be worried about in this situation, it was Harold’s processing abilities.

“So.” Echika glanced at the Amicus. “Aide Lucraft, where’s our Lifeline?”

“I was told to use this one.”

Harold took out an Umbilical Cord meant to connect electronic investigators to their aide. Its design was a bit different from a typical Lifeline, though. It looked like it was made of golden and silver threads woven around each other, and it gave off a faint glint.

“It’s…custom-made.” Echika knit her brow.

“Yes. It converts the data sent to me when monitoring you into a protocol I can understand.”

Chief Totoki had deemed this a necessary investment, but Echika still had her doubts about things working out. She’d had one negative experience too many until now, and they’d left a lasting impression on her.

Despite her lack of enthusiasm, Echika plugged the Lifeline into the port in the nape of her neck. Harold approached her to connect the cord himself and stood right in front of her, prompting her to look away and suppress the urge to pull back from him.

It’s been a long time since an Amicus has gotten so close to me. If this wasn’t for work, I’d never be doing this.

“I’m connected, Investigator.”

“Aaah, yeah.” Echika glanced at Harold before freezing up.

He slid his entire left ear out of place and plugged the cord into a USB port behind it. “Is…is there anything wrong?” Echika asked.

Moments like these were stark reminders that Amicus were nothing more than machines in human form. And honestly, it was a little… No, it was very unsettling.

“Nothing in particular, though I’m a bit nervous,” he said with a relaxed smile that belied his words. “You look like you’re doing all right, too.”

“…I’m used to this.”

That was a lie. Her heart was rumbling with anxiety. And of course it was—she’d never been wired to an Amicus’s head before. There was no going back now, though.

It’ll be fine. You’re good at shutting off your thoughts, aren’t you?

With the triangle connection complete, Echika took a deep breath.

Just do it like you always do.

“Let’s begin.”

As soon as she whispered that word, it felt as if her senses tilted for a second—and the next moment, she was plummeting into a cybernetic ocean.

She started with the surface Mnemosynes. The feel of a pet dog’s fur against her cheeks—a desire to protect it. The sight of a friend raising their voice—heart-wrenching sorrow. The feel of a new pair of toe shoes in her hands—excitement, a longing to dance. Browsing through a friend’s social media timeline out of boredom. A photo of coffee with cheese scrolled by. The Mariinsky Theatre, shining beautifully, even when covered in ads—admiration…

The daily lives and emotions of a dozen people as recorded by their Your Forma swirled around like fragments of glass. This hail of human emotions haphazardly pelted Echika. But none of them was hers. She cloistered herself, wrote them off as the emotions of another, and let them flow through her.

“If they died, I would have hated you for the rest of my days.”

A sudden whisper reached her—who was this?

“I almost keeled over because of you.”

“I’ll never partner with you again.”

No. These were Echika’s memories. Why was she Diving into her own Mnemosynes? She was falling in the wrong direction… Right, this was a countercurrent.

This is bad.

She could see it. A dark hallway. She shuddered. It was a hospital, and outside the window was a town bathed in starlight. The moans of all the partners whose lives she’d ruined emanated from somewhere. She heard sobbing. It was from their families, friends, lovers.

“You’re terrible.”

“She’s like a machine.”

“I shouldn’t have paired with her.”

“Apologize.”

“And they call her a genius?”

I’m fine. This is fine. Nothing they say hurts. Because they’re the ones who are really in pain, and I’m the one who hurt them.

She told herself this time and again.

Shut it down. Get away. This is unnecessary.

The world stiffly shifted around her as she somehow managed to change course. Using the network, she traced the infected patients’ action history, from their mailboxes to their social media accounts. Good, she was back on track. Countless exchanges passed her by like a storm.

See you at school tomorrow. I had a fight with Dad. My friend bought a new Amicus. I got brand-new toe shoes. About the countdown party…

They rushed past her like a current. Points of scattered information, Mnemosynes, gathered, clashed, and connected. And little by little, they formed a path to the source of the infection.

Suddenly, sparks obscured her field of vision. Her sister’s nostalgic face came into view, her cherubic features forming a mature smile. White teeth peeked between her peach-colored lips. This was another one of Echika’s Mnemosynes.

“Hold my hand, Echika. I’ll cast a spell to take the cold away.”

I want to see her. To hold her hands again. And this time, I won’t ever let go. I won’t let anyone separate us—

No. Calm down. Don’t let your own feelings get the better of you. Shut them off.

Echika flailed about. She’d picked up too much speed, and now she wanted to stop. But she couldn’t. No, she had to turn rudder, to make her way toward the source of the virus. A convulsing sensation filled her mind. It was hot. She turned back to the twelve Mnemosynes. The dozen sets intersected. There, she searched for the origin of the infection.

And finally, she saw it.

And then Echika’s field of vision shook. An old scent filled her nostrils as she found herself back in the hospital room. She panted, her forehead dripping with sweat. She steeled herself, preparing to hear the doctor scream, just like the other doctor had done when Benno collapsed.

Go on. Scream.

But she waited and waited, and the scream never came.

“You found it, didn’t you?”

Breath catching in her throat, she turned her gaze to the beautiful voice. Next to her stood Harold, calm and composed, his expression as serene as it had been before she Brain Dived. He held the Umbilical Cord, which he’d pulled out of Echika’s neck, in his hand. He didn’t collapse like Benno did, nor did he seem any worse for it. In fact, he looked totally fine.

She couldn’t believe it.

“What’s the matter, Investigator?”

Aaah. Chief Totoki was right.

This was the first time this had ever happened in her career as a electronic investigator. Any other aide would perhaps not collapse after Brain Diving, but they’d definitely look exhausted. And after experiencing several instances of that fatigue, they’d eventually break down. Without exception.

But not only was Harold fine, he also didn’t even look mildly tuckered out. Echika was flabbergasted. How was she able to successfully Dive while connected to a machine? That made no sense. It shouldn’t be possible. She couldn’t accept it. But reality, it seemed, was not without an ironic streak.

She’d finally found a partner to match her, and of all things, they were a bloody Amicus.

“Investigator? Did I pull you up at the wrong time?” Harold peered at her dubiously, his eyes as cold as a lake at dawn.

The depth of his artificial irises, the clear blood vessels tracing behind the whites of his eyes. Beautiful, cold, perfect eyes.

“No…,” she managed in reply, her voice somewhat raspy. “Your timing was…perfect.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m shocked,” the doctor uttered in an overwhelmed fashion. “You really processed twelve people in tandem… How’s your head doing? Are you in any kind of pain?”

Echika replied she was fine and licked her dry lips, forcing her train of thought back to the investigation at hand. She looked up at Harold to put the information she’d obtained in order.

“The source of the infection is called Clara Lie, a student from the ballet academy. But…she’s not in this room.”

3

Saint Petersburg’s index case, Clara Lie, had been absent from the ballet academy on the day she was infected. Based on the Your Forma’s records, Lie was an eighteen-year-old Norwegian girl, hailing from Kirkenes in Finnmark county. She had joined Saint Petersburg’s ballet academy as an exchange student and lived in the student dorms. Lie had no criminal record and, much like Washington’s and Paris’s index cases, was an upstanding but otherwise ordinary civilian.

But for some reason, she had disappeared somewhere.

“As far as I can see, she’s nothing but a victim. So why would she need to run?” Echika mused.

“Guilt at infecting her friends, perhaps,” Harold replied. “I’m looking through Lie’s social media accounts right now.”

Echika and Harold were currently sitting in the Niva. It had been two hours since they left Saint Petersburg, and the border checkpoint for entering Finland from Russia was coming into view.

After inquiring about her at the academy, they learned that Lie took time off from her studies due to her grandfather’s funeral. But according to the database, her grandfather had passed away several years ago. In other words, Lie lied.

By cross-referencing Saint Petersburg’s security drones, they found out Lie rented a car from the closest parking lot to the dorms. After following its route, they confirmed Lie had taken it to the city of Kautokeino, which was some four hundred kilometers away from her hometown.

They didn’t know why she went there, but they were at least able to confirm her current location, which made things quick.

However, her infected Your Forma’s signal seemed to have shut down, leaving Echika with no choice but to track her by foot, the old-fashioned way, which was why they were driving to Kautokeino now. Being crammed into a car with an Amicus for hours on end did leave her rather dejected, though.

“Look at this, Investigator. A perfect dance,” Harold told her, holding up a holo-browser window. Inside was a video of Lie, clad in a tutu and engaged in a flexible, graceful performance. Harold probably found it somewhere on her social media. “It’s a variation on Flames of Paris, but she doesn’t so much as tremble on tiptoe. Her technique puts some pros to shame.”

“She might be talented, but I don’t see how that has any bearing on the case.”

Echika placed her hands on the steering wheel to distract herself from the cold. The car was currently in automatic-driving mode. Harold was in the passenger seat, fiddling with his wristwatch-model wearable information terminal to browse through Lie’s social media. Amicus were always online, but that connection was limited to IoT (Internet of Things) purposes. They still needed information terminals to browse the web.

“How about this, then? Don’t you think it’s a weird way of drinking coffee?”

He showed her a picture of a mug of coffee with a generous amount of cheese in it. It was accompanied by a caption reading, “my favorite.” Echika had seen a glimpse of it earlier in the Mnemosynes. She had the Your Forma analyze the image, and it only took a moment for it to look up the answer.

“Coffee with goat cheese… That’s part of the indigenous Sami people’s culinary traditions,” she remarked, as additional information flowed into her field of vision. “And apparently, Kautokeino, the city Lie is in right now, has many Sami residents.”

“That area is a technologically restricted zone populated by luddites, who object to the use of machinery. And the Sami also make a living off reindeer husbandry, but some of them work as back-alley doctors behind the scenes.”

“Yes, that’s a pretty famous anecdote back in the office. But to be exact, they’re not back-alley doctors; they’re bio-hackers.”

Bio-hackers were those paid to use cyborg technology to modify, or bio-hack, their clients’ bodies. To accomplish this, they utilized illicit drugs and muscle-control chips, which was why they were sometimes referred to as back-alley physicians.

Many bio-hackers were minority people hired by underworld organizations. Their struggles to maintain their culture drove them to poverty, and so there were many observed cases of such bio-hackers working for large sums of money.

Needless to say, this was all highly illegal.

“So Lie went to a bio-hacker to have her infected Your Forma removed…?” Echika asked, puzzled. “But wait, why not just go to a normal hospital for that? Why take that risk?”

“Yes,” Harold said, nodding. “I believe Lie is under the impression the hallucinations she’s seeing are the result of some other machine malfunctioning inside her body. Don’t you think that’s plausible?”

“What do you mean? The database says she’s healthy and has no chronic diseases. She shouldn’t need any machines inside her body except for the Your Forma.”

“Incidentally, Investigator, have you ever watched ballet?”

Echika blinked. What’s this all of a sudden?

“Do I look like a dance fan? You’re the one who called me indifferent.”

“Allow me to apologize for that, even if it is belated. That wasn’t appropriate to say to a lady,” he said, bowing his head.

“That’s not the issue.” She didn’t want him to treat her as anything but a coworker anyway. “But what about ballet?”

“It’s just…” Harold hesitated for a moment. “Never mind. I’ll explain later.”

Following that, silence settled over the Niva. It was awkward. Feeling uncomfortable, Echika lowered the window. The freezing wind cut into her cheek, but she ignored it and placed the electronic cigarette between her lips.

Harold knew she hated Amicus. Things would be so much easier if he was like Benno and openly expressed his feelings, but Harold wasn’t like that. He was always calm and collected, which made it hard to tell what was on his mind.

Echika blew out a wisp of smoke outside the car’s window.

“How long have you been smoking, Investigator?” Harold suddenly asked, making her jolt.

Leave me alone.

“I told you not to ask about my private life. If the cigarette’s bothering you, I’ll turn it off.”

“I don’t mind. I like the scent of mint.”

“…Some people say it doesn’t taste much like a cigarette, though.”

“Well, you should tell those people that it’s much healthier than nicotine.”

As part of their Laws of Respect, Amicus always have to behave amicably toward humans. He won’t act any different, no matter how much I try to close my heart off to him. That’s how they slither their way into people’s hearts.

Like I’ll fall for that.

“Let me ask you about work,” Echika brought up curtly. “Did functioning as my Belayer really not cause you any damage?”

“None at all. My abilities are verified as equivalent to yours. Can’t you believe the numbers?”

It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t believe them as she didn’t want to. Much as she hated to admit it, his data-processing speed was a startlingly close match for hers, and to prove it, she’d experienced a countercurrent during the Brain Diving earlier.

When their affinity with their Belayer was high, a Diver could sometimes accidentally draw on their own Mnemosynes. Since she’d never worked with an aide who matched her before, she’d experienced it for the first time in the hospital just then.

“I had a countercurrent earlier… Did you see anything?”

“No. The Belayer only sees the Mnemosynes of the targets the Diver is exploring. Even then, I only see it like a movie on fast-forward.”

“That much I know.” And when they can’t catch up to that quick current of information, their brain fries over, like with Benno.

“When you slipped into your own Mnemosynes, the footage cut off, and all I saw was static noise. In other words, I could tell you were going through a countercurrent, but I couldn’t make out your Mnemosynes.”

“I see… Well, I’ll try to keep the countercurrents to a minimum.”

The fact that Harold couldn’t glimpse into her Mnemosynes was honestly a relief. By contrast, the fact that she was so highly compatible with an Amicus of all things was far less encouraging. Scratch that, it was terrible.

“You don’t have to act so fed up.”

“I’m not acting fed up.”

“It’ll take us thirteen hours to get to Kautokeino,” Harold said with a graceful smile. “That’s enough time for you to overcome your aversion to Amicus and get to know me.”

Echika grimaced. What is he thinking?

“I told you, we aren’t friends.”

“Because I’m an Amicus, right?”

“No, that would be true for anyone. I’m not going to go out of my way to play nice.”

“Well, I, for one, would love to get to know you.”

“Well, good for you, but I refuse.”

What’s his damage?

If a human said no, an Amicus was supposed to respect that and keep their distance. She’d felt this way since she met him, but there was something oddly cheeky about Harold. It was like he had his own unique personality.

“What’s the point of us getting chummy? Letting our personal feelings get involved in this will just make it harder to do our jobs.”

“I’m shocked,” he said, widening his eyes in deliberate surprise. “You were thinking of getting that close to me?”

“Huh?” What is this bucket of bolts saying?

“I mean, personal feelings that would get in the way of doing our jobs refers to a very particular kind, right?”

She mentally gave herself a weary pat on the back for not knocking the Amicus down on the ground for that one.

“Aide Lucraft… Can you see what’s strapped to my leg?”

“Yes, it’s a Flamma 15, the Electrocrime Investigations Bureau’s standard-issue automatic pistol.”

“Correct. And being an Amicus, you’re forbidden from possessing weapons. In other words, you’re defenseless.”

“It was just a joke; you don’t need to get worked up,” Harold said, placing his hand on the window frame with a composed smile. “You’re a pretty interesting person. I’m sure we’ll get along swimmingly.”

As she contemplated the pros and cons of pumping a round into him, Echika angrily switched off her electronic cigarette, closed the window, and grumpily turned on the heating.

“It’s been five minutes, so it’s my turn to warm up.”

“Yes, I’ll put up with it for five minutes, then.”

Harold preferred the cold, while Echika had a normal human body temperature, so they’d decided to alternate between switching the heating on and off every five minutes as a compromise. Folding to a damn machine’s demand was humiliating, though.

“Listen to me, okay? Stop teasing humans.”

“I wasn’t teasing. I really do want to get to know you.”

“Say one more weird thing, and I’ll be claiming the right to keep the heating on for three hours.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, but if you’re so cold, why wear tights instead of something thicker?

“These fibers produce heat and are easy to move in. They’re warm, but they’re far from perfect.”

“So you’re just sensitive to the cold.”

“No, you’re the weird one here. You’d have to not be human to be fine when it’s below freezing.”

“How well-informed of you.”

“…That’s not what I meant.”

What a pest!

Their destination, Kautokeino, turned out to be a rather deserted rural settlement. Its buildings weren’t even built densely enough to really be called a town. The main road was paved in the middle of the snowy field, the residential houses looked like nostalgic mountain shacks, and a church, a post office, and a school dotted the area.

Technologically restricted areas like this one were populated by luddite minorities, who’d rejected all manner of technological devices during the era of the pandemic, including thread devices. These segregated communities spanned the globe.

The pair had arrived during polar night, so the sun wouldn’t be rising even at nine AM. The sky just barely lit overhead, the Niva pulled into a parking lot adjacent to the only supermarket in town.

“We can’t do anything,” Echika bemoaned, seated at the driver’s seat as she sucked on a jelly pouch. “Without any surveillance drones in the area, we don’t have any way of tracking Lie down.”

The most dependable method of locating targets who Your Forma couldn’t detect was to rely on surveillance cameras or drones set up around a city. That hadn’t changed in years. But much to her displeasure, Echika realized that Kautokeino had neither cameras nor drones. Even deliveries had to be made by hand. Some restricted zones still had surveillance cameras set up, strictly to maintain the public order, but this section wasn’t one of them.

“This town is simply sticking to the principles of a restricted zone,” Harold said, tearing a jelly pouch open. “Why don’t we enjoy this serene scenery a while longer?”

“What’s so interesting about looking at a town from the Stone Age?”

“Oh, no, this is Bronze Age at worst.”

“You really meant that, didn’t you?”

“Let’s stay on the lookout here,” Harold said, glancing at the supermarket. “This place is the only food source in the city. And without any drones flying around, I doubt e-commerce sites deliver to the area, so if anyone needs to shop for food, they’d have to come here. There’s a high probability Lie will show up.”

Something that convenient couldn’t possibly happen. To begin with, Lie had only gotten out of the rental car in Kautokeino, so they didn’t know for sure if she was even staying in its limits.

That being said, the fifteen-hour drive had been exhausting. Echika’s body felt like mud as she leaned against the car seat. She glanced at Harold, who was sucking on his jelly pouch. Much like humans, Amicus could ingest food, but their energy source was a power-generation system based on liquid circulation, so it wasn’t like they converted what they ate into energy.

Eating was simply an option for them, included for the sake of making them look and feel more human, and their artificial stomachs simply broke down and disposed of anything they consumed.

“When we get back, I’d like to have some hot borscht,” he remarked. “This jelly is just nasty.”

“Nasty?” Echika asked indifferently. “It’s got all five major nutrients included, and you can finish it in no time. It’s convenient.”

Harold knit his brow in a clear gesture of disappointment.

“Are you sure you’re not hiding a charging port somewhere under those clothes, Investigator? Like some of the early Amicus models.”

“Huh? If anything, why are you going on about whether food tastes good or not? Act more like a machine.”

In all the time she’d spent with him on the way here, Echika had come to a single conclusion—she’d never get along with this robot. That would be true for any Amicus, but in his case, he was her polar opposite.

Either way, Echika pulled herself together. She’d need to come up with her next move. Using her Your Forma to deploy her data on this case, she scavenged for any clues she might have overlooked. Meanwhile, Harold continued observing the customers entering and leaving the market. Did he have some basis to believe Lie might pass through? Echika hoped so but couldn’t bring herself to expect much.

Time ticked by, and the cold air seeping in through the window sapped the warmth from her fingertips little by little. The sky brightened slowly before gradually fading away. Then the lights of the settlement flicked on.

Echika had already thrown in the towel and started to doze off when it happened.

“Investigator, wake up.”

“Nn, no… Nothing’s getting me out of bed today… Nng…”

“You’re half asleep, aren’t you? I found Lie.”

What?!

Echika awoke at once. Peering through the Niva’s windshield, she saw a blue jeep parked near the entrance of the market. The door of the driver’s seat had just slammed shut, and she couldn’t make out who had settled into the car.

“It’s that jeep. To be exact, it’s not Lie herself but a Sami who’s sheltering her.”

“What are you talking about?” That didn’t make any sense. “We didn’t get any information on someone sheltering her …”

“No, there’s no mistaking it. You know about my eyesight, right? Trust me.”

How could she trust him? Was she really supposed to believe he could discern, just by glancing at someone, not only their ethnicity but also if they were sheltering Lie in their house?

That couldn’t be, but she was too groggy to piece together a logical argument. As they spoke, the jeep’s taillights flickered red, and the vehicle began driving away.

“Tail her, please. And you should probably wipe your chin off as soon as you can. You’re drooling.”

“I’m not. I wasn’t sleeping that deeply! Besides, even if I was, I wouldn’t drool!”

“Investigator, the jeep is getting away.”

“Ugh, fine!”

If this is just a wild-goose chase, you’ll never hear the end of it!

Switching the Niva to manual, Echika stomped down on the accelerator. She pulled out of the parking lot, sliding onto the main road in pursuit of the jeep. But there were no other cars around, and visibility was too good.

“We’re in plain sight. How is this tailing them…?”

“Well, there aren’t many streets the residents can take, so it’s not that suspicious.”

“Like you can say that with such an obviously Russian vehicle,” Echika noted, exasperated.

After driving roughly five kilometers, the jeep suddenly decelerated, cutting a left turn without turning on its blinkers before entering the premises of a residential dwelling, where it parked.

Echika passed the residence and stopped the Niva at the shoulder of the road a few meters ahead.

“She got out of the car,” Harold whispered, using his superior Amicus eyesight to observe the house. “See, she didn’t notice us.”

Echika reached for a pair of binoculars sitting on the dashboard and stared at the jeep. Thanks to the night-vision scope outfitted to the binoculars, she could see clearly even amid the darkness.

The jeep’s driver was a relatively young girl, about the same age as Echika. She was petite, and her chestnut-colored hair was tied into adorable braids. She was just barely carrying a hefty paper bag. All things considered, she resembled a perfectly ordinary girl, and nothing seemed to imply she was sheltering Lie, of course.

“So why do you think she’s the one? Did you find a picture of her on Lie’s socials?”

“No, let me explain. Look at her closely,” Harold instructed, and Echika reluctantly obeyed. “See that jewelry on her wrist? That’s a Duodji bracelet, made of reindeer horns, tendon, and skin weaved together with pewter. It’s a traditional Sami handicraft.”

“So she’s Sami. But you can’t assume they’re all bio-hackers. It’s jumping to conclusions to presume she’s sheltering Lie just because of the bracelet.”

“But she bought a lot of instant food, and she was the only customer I saw who was doing that. Maybe she avoided buying perishables to minimize the number of times she has to go grocery shopping? What if, for instance, she had a reason to avoid going outside and being seen?”

“Wait… How can you tell all she bought is instant food?”

“Based on the way her bag is swollen, I’m sure of it.”

Just as she was about to tell him this was absurd, she saw the girl trip and spill the contents of her bag—packages of instant food—onto the snow. Echika clicked her tongue quietly. She’d felt this way since she’d met him, but this Amicus definitely had some kind of X-ray vision feature.

“But what stood out to me most was the way she acted in the parking lot. She kept looking around and had her hand on her neck. Touching one’s neck is a nonverbal gesture for trying to calm nerves, but why would she be so stressed by visiting the local supermarket?”

“I don’t know… Did something else catch your eye?”

“Yes, she was acting suspicious. It was especially striking when she loaded the bag into her car after she finished shopping. She stood at an oddly open stance, and one of her legs was always turned to the entrance of the parking lot. It was like she was mentally priming herself to bolt at any moment. Why would she want to run, then?”

Beats me.

“If nothing else, she didn’t shoplift. It’s a small town, so the clerks probably know her personally,” Echika stated.

“Exactly. So she was wary of someone realizing that she was sheltering Lie.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. We don’t even know if Lie came to a bio-hacker for help—”

“You said you’ve never watched ballet before, right, Investigator?” Harold cut her off. “Lie’s dancing was perfect. Too perfect, actually. The way she danced didn’t fit her musculature… Need I say anything else?”

Echika put down her binoculars. Finally, she arrived at the answer to the question that had been weighing on her mind for a while now.

“So you’re saying Lie was using bio-hacking to cheat from the start?”

“Indeed. And that girl right there operated on her. That’s why she’s sheltering Lie.”

That did make for a coherent explanation. From the very beginning, Lie had modified her body to become a ballet student. Bio-hacking was judged as harshly as doping, and it was heavily restricted in the sporting world. So if Harold was correct, Lie had mistaken the viral infection for a malfunction in her bio-hacking, hence why she went back to her Sami bio-hacker instead of going to a hospital.

But they didn’t have any decisive proof yet. Absurdly arrogant as she was, Echika refused to acknowledge that an Amicus was this capable.

“But what about this?” Echika countered, forcibly coming up with another hypothesis. “Something bad happened to the Sami girl recently. Like, she was bullied or something, and that made her dread contact with people. It makes her so anxious that she can’t even go to her local supermarket. She’s too depressed to bring herself to cook, so she bought instant foods that last and take little effort to prepare… Hey, are you listening to me?”

“I am. That’s a possibility, yes,” Harold acknowledged, peering into the rearview mirror and fixing his hair. Why this all of a sudden? “I thought I should make sure I look right before we go confirm the truth.”

“Uh, sure.” Like a machine needs to worry about appearances. “Well, the hair on the back of your head is standing up, though,” Echika pointed out venomously.

After blinking a couple of times, Harold smiled.

“That’s intentional. Leaving a few flaws in my appearance makes me come across as likable.”

God help me, I want to sock him in the face.

4

As they got out of the Niva, fleeting snow began to sprinkle down from above. The girl’s house was very much an old-fashioned lodge. Icicles dangled down from its triangular roof, and its vividly colored outer walls were frozen from the snow blowing against them. Echika stepped onto the sundeck and knocked on the front door a couple of times. A few seconds later, the girl opened it.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The girl was visibly wary, but upon closer inspection, she was surprisingly pretty. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her unwavering eyes were a clear shade of green. Her beauty wasn’t the artificial, fabricated sort belonging to a city girl but rather the dignified presence of a fruit tree hidden deep within the forest, away from the prying eyes of humans.

“We’re from Interpol’s Electrocrime Investigations Bureau.” Echika flashed her ID. “We’re questioning people around the area with regard to an ongoing investigation. Can we have a few minutes of your time?”

“…What kind of investigation?” the girl asked, still wary.

“We’re not at liberty to elaborate, but it’s an electrocrime,” Echika answered, picking her words carefully. “It seems someone involved with the incident is hiding in the area.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the girl let them inside. If Harold’s story was right, Echika would have expected her to resist a little more. Or maybe she thought rejecting them would just come across as suspicious? Echika couldn’t tell.

She led them into a living room with a country-like interior. Duodji bracelets woven with silver threads hung over the hearth, and the sofa she had them sit on was furnished with reindeer fur.

“Can I ask your name?” Echika asked as she took a seat on the sofa.

“It’s Bigga,” the girl said, placing a tray on the table. “Hmm, I’m sorry, but I’m the only one at home right now… My father went out to the mountains, and he won’t be back for a while. There’s a lot of ice fog this time of year, so the reindeer herds tend to separate.”

1

She could remember it even now. That despite the refreshing scent of spring filling her lungs, she couldn’t shake off her nervousness.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dad.”

Cherry blossoms blew in from somewhere, flying into the mansion’s common hallway. Echika, then five years old, was carrying a rucksack roughly her size as she looked up at the large front door. And the person peering down from the gap in the entrance was none other than her father.

Today was the first time she’d ever met him.

“No, it’s not the first. I saw you in the hospital nursery,” her father remarked, not a smile on his face. “Who did your mother remarry?”

Echika hung her head and fell silent. Her mother would often fly into hysterics, but she was kind sometimes. A young man had delivered her to her father’s place. She didn’t know his name.

“A different question, then. How did you get injured?”

Her father’s gaze raked over the Band-Aids on Echika’s cheek and knees. She tried to hide them with her hands, feeling as though she was being scolded, but she couldn’t cover every one of them.

“This is, I…um, I tripped, that’s all.”

“Listen to me, Echika. I probably won’t ever love you.”

And this was why her father had emphasized that they would have to make a promise if they were going to live together.

“Remain a machine for my sake. Never speak to me unless spoken to. Want for nothing, don’t show your emotions, and never make a fuss.”

Echika nodded. She had no choice but to. She got the ominous impression that miserable days were ahead of her, but that was what things had been like until now anyway. In the end, no matter where she went, it was all the same. She only came to realize a single thing—for whatever reason, no one cherished her.

Her father let her into the house. The entrance hall was beyond clean and organized—it was sterile. As Echika took off her shoes, her heart heavy with melancholy, a woman approached them.

“This is Sumika. She will be looking after you starting today.”

Sumika was about the same age as Echika’s mother. Her features were flawlessly fair, and she had braided black hair. She wore a one-piece dress blue enough to burn itself into one’s memory, and her limbs were slender. Echika’s first impression was that she was a very pretty lady.

“Hello, Echika,” Sumika said with a smile, extending a hand toward her.

Echika accepted it and shook. Her smooth, well-proportioned fingers felt slightly colder than they should have been. And that’s when she realized—Sumika was an Amicus.

“And you also have an older sister, Echika. You’ll get to see her soon.”

“Huh?” Her eyes widened in surprise.

Her father’s words glowed with enough magic to blow away any anxiety toward her new life or her doubts about Sumika. Her heart, which had felt as heavy as lead just moments ago, jumped for joy.

She’d been alone for so long, but now she would finally get a sister.

During winters, California’s moist air took on a certain chilliness.

The taxi carrying Echika and Harold ran down a freeway along the San Francisco Bay. The cityscape was lined with skyscrapers, and drones buzzed through the air like flies. Standing right beneath them would no doubt make the sky look pure gray and blot its stars out of sight.

“Once we get to Rig City, we’ll Brain Dive straightaway,” Echika said. “Thankfully, we have some company employees willing to cooperate with us. Once that’s done, we— Aide Lucraft? Are you listening?”

Harold sat next to her, his arms crossed gently and his head hung. He was wearing a thick sweater today, but it clearly wasn’t part of the Amicus clothes the bureau had provided. She had to wonder where he got it…before shaking the thought off. That didn’t matter right now.

Their flight to California was decided after they left Bigga’s residence, on their way back to Saint Petersburg. The electronic investigator from Washington called back and answered their question.

“The index case here was part of a study tour of Rig City, too. They took a few days off for the Fourth of July and went on a trip to California.”

It did seem that the common denominator among the index cases was that they’d all taken a study tour of Rig City. Echika quickly contacted Chief Totoki and arranged for an investigation there. She’d just spent a total of thirty hours being rocked around inside a car, and then she had to put up with a daylong flight. If this was a business issue, they could settle it with a holo-call, but Brain Diving required her presence on the scene.

“Given the virus’s traits, we can probably assume the culprit behind it has some advanced technology,” Totoki said through the holo-browser, as stone-faced as ever. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the culprit happens to be one of Rig City’s programmers. The company does gather capable manpower from around the globe, after all. For all we know, we could be dealing with multiple culprits.”

“Yes, we have to account for every possibility.”

“The situation’s getting worse, but the fact that we found that Rig City is the common point to all the cases is our one ray of hope.”

Apparently, while Echika and Harold were going after Lie, virus outbreaks were confirmed in four other major cities: Hong Kong, Munich, Melbourne, and Toronto. Each branch’s electronic investigators were in a hurry to identify the sources of the infection, but their progress was terribly slow. Few investigators could handle parallel Brain Diving like Echika could, which inevitably made their investigations lag.

“That’s why we’re counting on you, Investigator Hieda.”

“Rest assured that I’ll dig up some kind of clue.”

But even as she said this, Echika couldn’t contain the bitter emotion filling her heart. Honestly, just hearing Rig City’s name filled her with dread.

“By the way, Chief, will Aide Lucraft be accompanying me there?”

“Of course. I have him registered as one of your belongings.”

Harold, who had remained silent so far, furrowed his brow.

“Are you telling me to sit in the cargo hold?”

“The cargo hold? Why? There are Amicus compartments in the plane.”

“I am aware, yes. They stuff us into a dark, cramped, closed space. It’s effectively a cargo hold.”

“Just give it up. Even with more and more Amicus sympathizers cropping up, the world nations still consider Amicus to be objects.”

“But… Please, could you reconsider and let me travel first-class, like a human?”

“Excuse me?” Echika raised her voice in disbelief. “I don’t get to travel first-class, so why should you?”

“I want the results of the viral analysis and the personal data for Rig City’s employees, understood?”

At this, Totoki closed the call with little fanfare, leaving Echika alone with a clearly distraught and despondent Harold.

After that, the two arrived in California and took a taxi to Rig City, bringing them to the here and now.

“Aide Lucraft, wake up already.”

Harold was depressed and hadn’t said a word ever since he got off the flight.

“Hello?” Echika peered into his face.

She then recoiled a little. He was sitting there, with his eyes wide open.

At least blink. It’s creepy.

“What’s gotten into you? Don’t tell me you malfunctioned or something—”

“Good morning, Investigator Hieda.”

“Yikes!”

Harold suddenly sat up, as if someone had flipped a switch inside him, prompting Echika to pull away from him so quickly that she bumped the back of her head against the taxi window.

“Oh?” he asked, his expression nonchalant. “What’s the matter?”

“I should be asking you that!” Echika shouted, feeling as if her heart had nearly just jumped out of her chest. “Don’t startle me like that!”

“My apologies. Being in the cargo hold was so terrible that I had to switch my thoughts off.”

“Ugh.” The hell? “So you were…sleepwalking the whole time?”

“That would be a suitable analogy, yes.”

“You got off the plane and got into the taxi with your own two feet. It really looked like sleepwalking.”

Echika was clearly being sarcastic, but Harold simply smiled. If nothing else, it was a relief that he hadn’t broken down or whatever. The last thing she needed was for the investigation to get held back because of something like that.

The taxi eventually turned off the freeway and entered the gate leading into Rig City. Echika had learned of the sheer size of the premises from looking the place up on the internet, but seeing it with her own two eyes was overwhelming nonetheless. It had an integrated sports facility, a golf course, and even a private beach. It was like a small resort.

Rig City was a multinational technology enterprise whose main office was located in Silicon Valley. During the early stages of the pandemic, they bought out the developers of Neural Safety, contributing to its production and distribution using their vast funds and production plants. The corporation went on to create the Your Forma.

In addition to that, they also became the providers of all manner of internet services. It was no exaggeration to say that Rig City was the largest technological driving force on the globe.

They got off the taxi at the roundabout in front of Rig City’s headquarters, where they were greeted by a woman Amicus clad in a suit.

“We’ve been expecting you, Investigator Hieda and Investigator Aide Lucraft,” she said, flashing a smile that showed off her perfectly aligned teeth. “My name is Anne, and I’m in charge of showing visitors around.”

Echika nodded at her vaguely and looked up at the building. She saw the streamlined roof she’d witnessed in Ogier’s and Lie’s Mnemosynes, with the distinctive circular monument shining atop it.

Aah. I really ended up coming here, didn’t I?

Although it was her first time visiting Rig City, she didn’t have many good memories of the company.

“Is something wrong?” Harold suddenly asked, prompting her to jolt.

But he didn’t pose that question to Echika. It was directed at Anne instead, who was staring fixedly at him for some reason.

“Not at all,” Anne replied, flashing a perfect, mechanical smile. “Allow me to show you the way. Follow me.”

The two of them went with her into Rig City’s main building. The entrance hall was unusually wide, and it was adorned with a chiseled statue of the company’s logo. The employees passing by were clad in casual outfits, and Echika could see Amicus walking among them. Everyone they passed by called out to Anne to say hello.

“I see everyone here knows you, Anne,” Harold noted.

“Oh, not particularly. Everyone is very friendly toward Amicus here, is all. And not just within the company, mind you. Most of the citizens around here act the same way. Many people even want to give us time off.”

“Huh?” Echika made this surprised utterance. “Time off?”

“Yes. Many of California’s representatives are Amicus sympathizers, and Congress is considering granting Amicus basic human rights. The request to give us time off will undoubtedly become reality in the near future.”

What the hell?

That was the first Echika had heard of that. The times were progressing at an almost terrifying clip. Harold, however, seemed to have known about this already and didn’t look very surprised.

“Silicon Valley really is our home turf, isn’t it? Maybe I should consider moving here.”

Anne regarded him with apprehension.

“I don’t feel much of a need to take breaks. Do you feel differently about it?” she asked Harold.

“Well, yes, I think taking time off is important. Anne, could you give me your number for when I move in here?”

Wait, what is he doing?

Echika poked Harold in the ribs, but he pretended not to notice it. She could overlook it when he did this to Bigga—though not for lack of misgivings—but why would he try to curry favor with Anne? Weren’t conversations between Amicus just shams they kept up for the sake of seeming human?

“I don’t have a personal terminal, so simply call the office and ask for me. I’m sure I’ll be able to help you.” She smiled at Harold, though Echika couldn’t tell if she understood his intent here.

“Thank you kindly, Anne. I think I’ll do that.”

“Aide Lucraft,” Echika chided him. “Watch your behavior. Investigators need to set a standard.”

“Of course,” he said.

Liar. You’re not listening at all.

Meanwhile, Anne led them to a nap room, where four employees who had agreed to cooperate with the investigation were waiting for them. They were all young programmers working on the same team.

Of course, they weren’t the sole people Lie and the other index cases had come into contact with. But all the other employees had refused to assist with the investigation and only agreed to go through questioning.

After all, Brain Diving was, first and foremost, a violation of one’s privacy, and many people disliked the idea of it. So long as you weren’t a direct suspect and the electronic investigator didn’t have a warrant, you had no legal obligation to allow it.

Thankfully, these four weren’t terribly opposed to the idea.

“If anything, I really want to know more about Brain Diving.”

“How does it feel to have someone look into your Mnemosynes?”

“I heard you’re just asleep and don’t feel anything. Is that true?”

“Don’t you get pulled in by other people’s emotions?”

This flurry of questions gave Echika a look into the intellectual curiosity driving the people who worked on the Your Forma. But she didn’t come here to explain what Brain Diving was like.

“We’re grateful for your cooperation. Please sign the letter of consent and lie down on the bed.”

At Echika’s curt statement, the four of them exchanged disappointed looks but did as they were told. A nurse Amicus—who was dispatched from the local hospital to remain on constant standby in the office infirmary—showed up a few moments later to inject the four of them with sedatives. Brain Diving was clearer when the recipient had a lower level of consciousness, so using sedatives was indispensable for the process.

Echika only hoped she’d find some kind of clue to the source of the virus and how it originally infected people. After confirming everyone had gone to sleep, she set up the triangle connection like always.

“I’m ready, Aide Lucraft—”

She suddenly cut off. Harold had just moved aside his ear to reveal the connection port and plug the Lifeline into it. This wasn’t a sight Echika could ever get used to, and as she stared in surprise, their eyes suddenly met.

“What’s wrong, Investigator?”

“Nothing,” she replied, unable to mask her displeasure. “I have to ask, couldn’t they have put your port somewhere better?”

“Oh, is seeing my ear slide away that uncanny?”

“Of course it is.”

“I see,” he said with an amused smile for some reason. “Would you like a closer look at it, then?”

“Stop that—get away from me! I’m starting the process!”

Sooner than Harold could bring his face closer to hers, Echika Dived into the cybernetic ocean as if trying to flee from him.

Did they really program the Laws of Respect into him? He teases humans a little too frequently. Forget that, though. I have to switch gears…

The four employees’ Mnemosynes unfurled before her eyes. She traced them back to the study tours, passing through their daily routines in Rig City. Lines of code fluttered by. Then there was a Christmas tree covered in shining ornaments. It was an enchanting sight, but a sudden feeling of annoyance filled her consciousness.

Periodic mental examinations. They plugged an HSB cable into their necks, but the emotions recorded in their Mnemosynes were all stable. There were hardly any records of anger or sadness. There was mostly just enthusiasm toward work and composure.

Most employees of this leading firm were people with balanced mental states. Thanks to the sizable budget of the company’s mental health care program, the office environment had been crafted so people could work without getting overstressed, which meant there weren’t many disputes among the employees.

Echika didn’t find the Mnemosynes she was looking for, so she Dived faster down. But then suddenly, she passed by something—a negative emotion that throbbed like a festering wound.

What’s this?

She turned her eyes to it. It was a scene in a bar. A bunch of employees were gathered in one place, drinking and chattering. It looked like a farewell party.

“See you, Salk.”

“Take care.”

“The office will feel empty without you.”

She saw someone—a man who looked to be Russian—sitting at the center of these exchanges.

This must be Salk… Wait, what?

This was the only Mnemosyne she saw where all four of them were overcome with hatred that bubbled up from the pits of their stomachs. This made Echika stare. On the surface, the four of them didn’t seem to regard Salk with disdain at all. If anything, they acted like they were sad to part with a friend.

Their feelings and behavior were mismatched. And while everyone had times when what they said didn’t line up with what they felt, these were all emotionally stable human beings, all four of who seemed to dislike this specific individual. Despite feeling off, these Mnemosynes appeared to be unrelated to the index cases. Connecting them to the incident would be difficult.

Salk took another sip of his beer and discussed programming with his colleagues. The noise of the scene washed over her like a wave, and somewhere behind the breezy jazz music, she could hear someone utter a word—Matoi.

“We were working on the Matoi at the time—”

But the rest was drowned out. Echika felt a shiver run down her spine.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dad.”

She felt a countercurrent settle in.

Calm down. Keep it suppressed. Don’t touch on the wrong place, Echika reminded herself, straining her thoughts.

Matoi. She wished she could flush that word out of her ears and mind, but it clung to her persistently. She found her way to the study tours and began going through the Mnemosynes one by one.

First, she looked at Ogier, then Lie, and after that, Washington’s index case—and saw, much to her surprise, that Salk was among the employees guiding them. He proudly told them about cutting-edge programming technology. And these Mnemosynes didn’t include the deep-seated hatred that had been present before. It felt wrong. But apart from that, there was nothing suspicious about the Mnemosynes of the people who’d attended the study tour. No clues that might link the index cases to a culprit who’d infected them.

“Matoi.”

The name nudged at her again.

Aah, just stop it. Shake it off.

“—Investigator Hieda?”

Her head felt awfully heavy when she was pulled back up to reality, and her breathing was a little shallow. Echika forced herself to suck in a lungful of the nap room’s dry air and then realized Harold was looking at her with concern. She pulled out the Lifeline as calmly as she could, attempting to hide her disconcerted state of mind.

“I didn’t find anything,” she told him, her voice raspy. “Nothing seemed suspicious.”

“Yes, the Mnemosynes seemed perfectly peaceful. Did you possibly overlook something?”

“No, that can’t be,” Echika said, ruffling up her hair. “Anyway, let’s stick to schedule. You go around and question the other people who came in contact with the index cases. I’ll go obtain the employees’ personal data and the results of the virus analysis.”

“Understood.” Harold nodded, but his expression remained concerned. “You look pale. Do you want to take a rest before we continue?”

“I’m fine. Oh, and while you’re out questioning people, could you ask for details about an employee named Salk?”

“You mean the Russian man who was with them? He didn’t look related to the case.”

“I agree, but something’s bugging me about him… Anyway, see you later.”

Harold seemed like he had something else to say, but Echika left the nap room without looking him in the eye. She wanted to be alone before he noticed anything.

Matoi. Matoi. Matoi—the word echoed time and again inside her head.

Aaah. This is why I didn’t want to come to Rig City.

2

The lounge in the first floor’s southern area was full of employees who’d brought their work over. Echika sat alone on one of the sofas, puffing out smoke from her electronic cigarette. Since the room had an ozone generator, the minty smell of the smoke soon faded away entirely.

She’d finally calmed down a little. It had been a long while since the last time Brain Diving left her this shaken up. That might have been back when she’d still been a rookie and needed to Dive into the Mnemosynes of a murderer. That had made her lose her lunch. What she saw just now was nowhere near as gruesome.

This is pathetic.

Heaving a sigh, Echika switched off her cigarette and glanced around the lounge. After she left the nap room, Anne had instructed her to wait here, but no one seemed to be showing up. But after five more minutes of idling…

“Investigator Hieda, yes? Thank you for waiting.”

Echika gazed up at the voice that called out to her…only to find Harold standing there with his back straightened out, his expression uncharacteristically hard and stiff.

“What, are you done questioning them already? That was awfully qui—”

But then she paused. Upon closer inspection, he wasn’t wearing a sweater but a neat business shirt and vest. He had an Amicus’s employee’s badge dangling down at his chest that read Steve H. Wheatstone.

This wasn’t Harold but another Amicus produced using the same appearance preset as him.

What is this?

Echika couldn’t mask her bewilderment. She knew, of course, that Amicus could share the same appearance, but she didn’t imagine she’d run into one with the same model as Harold. Wasn’t he custom-made?

“Ummm…,” she finally managed to utter. “I’m sorry. I mistook you for someone else.”

“I don’t mind,” Steve said without a smile. “Our company’s adviser wishes to speak to you directly about the virus-analysis results. Please follow me.”

“Adviser?”

The company’s busy CEO had sent her a video message prior to this, so she didn’t expect an adviser. But before Echika could say anything, Steve walked off. She was quite unhappy with this, but she had no choice but to follow him given the circumstances.

The two of them went to the elevator hall and entered one elevator that was more gaudily decorated than the rest. The doors closed, and a thick silence filled the elevator. Steve was almost frighteningly sullen, and seeing someone with Harold’s face make that sort of expression was kind of suffocating.

Generally speaking, Amicus were supposed to act as friendly and presentable as possible to humans, but Steve was different. He was extremely polite, but his lack of expression was the very image of a soulless machine.

“Investigator Hieda.” He suddenly spoke up just as that thought crossed her mind. “Your partner is the same model as me, correct?”

1

“Chief Totoki, do you think Salk…I mean, Uritsky is the culprit behind the sensory crime?”

“I wouldn’t have flown in from Lyon if he wasn’t.”

A silent sense of tension hung over the Saint Petersburg branch office’s meeting room. Chief Totoki stood in front of a flexible screen set on the wall, and seated before her were the branch head, members of the intelligence department, and investigators from the electronic-drug criminal investigation department. No one made an attempt to hide the grave expressions on their faces.

“We’ve discovered Uritsky’s whereabouts,” Chief Totoki announced, placing a marker on the city map displayed on the screen. “Slavy Avenue 45, apartment 32. According to the intelligence department’s report, he moved into this apartment under his alias last month after resigning from Rig City. He’d been using this apartment as his base of operations to sell electronic drugs—”

Uritsky’s true identity turned out to be an electronic-drug manufacturer with deep connections to the Russian mafia. For the last six months up until the month prior, he’d posed as Cliff Salk, a Russian-American, to infiltrate Rig City. His motives weren’t clear yet, but there was no doubt it was somehow related to electronic narcotics.

And luckily, or perhaps unluckily for him, Uritsky was currently in Saint Petersburg.

“We at the Interpol Intelligence Department have assigned a civilian cooperator to stay in contact with Uritsky already,” one of the intelligence personnel said. “We’ve let him go free for now, since we were hoping to expose what route he uses to sell his drugs to the mafia, but…”

“Since the virus infections have been spreading worldwide, resolving the sensory crime takes precedence,” Totoki said. “We have a warrant for Uritsky’s arrest, so our top priority is taking custody of him.”

“Where is he right now?”

“He’s returned to his apartment this morning and hasn’t left since.”

“Then make preparations to bust in.”

“Keep the surrounding area under police supervision.”

The people involved hurriedly left the meeting room. It seemed the talks were over, and as an electronic investigator, Echika had nothing more to do until they brought him into custody. And so she got to her feet, but…

“Investigator Hieda.” Harold looked up at her, still seated in his chair. “Shouldn’t we check Uritsky’s room before the police comb it for evidence?”

His suggestion was reasonable. No matter how convenient Brain Diving was, they couldn’t do much if the culprit willingly wiped their own Mnemosynes. That meant examining the scene and getting a grasp of his personality was quite important.

“Understood. You should go get permission from Chief Totoki, just in case,” Echika said while reaching for her coat, which sat draped on the back of her chair. “I’ll wait for you at the entrance hall.”

She parted ways with him and left the meeting room. As soon as she stepped into the corridor, she felt her shoulders sag powerlessly. Thank goodness. She could still converse with him normally.

Neither of them had touched on their argument from the night prior since the meeting that morning. Echika had decided to act like nothing had happened, so as to not interfere with work, and thankfully, Harold seemed to have the same idea.

And it’d be for the best if we could keep pretending nothing happened.

When she stepped out to the entrance hall, she found a familiar German man sitting on the sofa. Echika stared at him in silent surprise—it was her former partner, Benno Kleemann. She didn’t imagine she’d see him here and hadn’t been informed he’d even left the hospital.

Benno noticed her stare and regarded her with a blatantly fed-up expression.

“I’m not quite back to normal yet, thanks to a certain someone. But the chief dragged me here. Said that I should help if I’m good enough to sit at my desk.”

“I…see,” Echika replied, at a loss for words. “Ummm… Get well soon.”

“Hey,” Benno said, clicking his tongue. “Isn’t there something else you should be saying?”

Yeah, I know.

Like her former partner had implied, this should have been where she apologized. But an apology wouldn’t change the fact that she had hurt him. All it would achieve was giving her peace of mind.

“Oh yeah, I heard your new partner is an Amicus,” he said, his lips contorted into a sarcastic sneer. “The chief told me about it. Go ahead—use that Amicus until it falls apart. That’s the kind of partner that suits a machine like you.”

“Echika, what was your role here? To be my machine, right?”

“Investigator Hieda.”

Echika turned around to the voice calling out to her. It was Harold. He’d stepped into the entrance hall and approached her with a smile, waving the Niva’s old-fashioned car key.

“Chief Totoki gave us permission. Let’s go. This is our chance to witness the police break into a criminal’s hideout.”

“O-oh yeah…” Echika nodded, throwing a glance over at Benno.

He eyed Harold suspiciously, clearly sizing him up. Harold simply looked at the two of them, a bit confused, and cocked his head with a smile.

Thank god he didn’t hear what Benno just said…

“Right, let’s get going,” Echika remarked, pulling herself together and stepping forward.

But then…

“Oh, you’re Aide Kleemann, right?” Harold suddenly called out, causing her to stiffen up.

Amicus obviously didn’t have the authority to view personal information. So how did he recognize Benno?

“Huh?” Benno seemed as perplexed by this as Echika was. “Who told you my name—?”

“Chief Totoki told me about you in the meeting room. It’s an honor to meet you.”

Harold jauntily approached him. The other man stood up reflexively, only for Harold to clasp his hand in a firm handshake. Benno looked absolutely astonished, and Echika didn’t know what Harold was up to, either, of course.

What is he thinking?

“My apologies for not introducing myself sooner. I’m Aide Lucraft from the city police bureau. Of course, that’s not my official title, but…”

“Don’t touch me; we’re not friends,” Benno spat, pulling back his hand in clear disgust. “You’re an Amicus, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m Investigator Hieda’s new partner,” Harold said, sneaking a glance in her direction and smiling at Benno. “You had an argument with your fiancée last night, right? You promised to spend New Year’s Eve together, but you had to fly over here to Saint Petersburg instead.”

Wait, what? Echika felt her head spin a little.

“Huh?” Benno muttered, visibly confused. “What are you saying—?”

“She must have been very upset with you, but I’m sure you two will make up so long as you don’t act stubborn. I wouldn’t throw away the ring if I were you.”

“What the hell? How do you know that? Were you watching us or something?”

“My eyesight is quite good, yes, but even I can’t see all the way from Russia to France.”

“Of course you can’t. So who told you?”

“Nobody told me. We’ve never met before, and I only heard your name for the first time a few minutes ago.”

“Right,” Benno said, glaring fixedly at Harold. “So what…? You got something to say?”

Harold smirked, as if he’d been waiting for that question, then whispered. His voice was faint, but Echika could make it out.

“I know your secrets. So I have to ask that you never insult my partner again.”

Hey, what the hell?!

“What were you thinking?”

Uritsky’s apartment was in an old-fashioned, six-story apartment building reminiscent of a Russian Khrushchyovka complex. The parking lot was lined with police cars, and electronic drug investigators were filing into the building. Security Amicus stood guard, preventing the citizenry from walking by. The pedestrians exchanged anxious looks, and Echika and Harold could hear their murmuring from where they’d parked the Niva.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Harold replied quizzically, sitting calmly in the driver’s seat. “I saw my partner being insulted. It’s only natural for me to defend you.”

“I never asked you to stand up for me,” Echika said, gritting her teeth. “Benno has good reason to resent me, and I’m at fault here. You have no right to stick your neck into this.”

“I wasn’t aware. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. Plus, Benno isn’t engaged. He does have a girlfriend, though.”

“Then he probably got engaged to her without you knowing it. There was an indentation on the ring finger of his left hand.”

“Oh, really?” How did he notice that in that split second? It’s creepy. “So what secrets does Benno have, then?”

“Everyone has something they don’t want people to find out.”

“So you basically threatened him with a bluff?”

Echika felt a headache coming on. It was clear Harold had only acted as recklessly as he did because of the previous day’s argument. This might have been his way of making things up to her, but she would have preferred it if he just ignored the matter altogether and acted like it was water under the bridge.

“Listen, I can manage my own relationships with people, okay? Stay out of my business.”

“Understood. But it did make you a little bit happy, right?”

“Is this your idea of a joke?”

Harold intentionally blinked. Not so much as a hint of regret. Echika opened the window and placed the electronic cigarette in her mouth in an attempt to shake off her gloomy mood.

“Never insult my partner again.”

She unintentionally bit down on the cigarette. Even if his kindness was just a thin veneer, this was the first time someone else had ever stuck up for her.

So what? He’s an Amicus. What he said was just part of his programming. And most importantly, I really did torment my aides. Benno is right.

It didn’t take long for Uritsky to be apprehended, carried out, and forced into a police cruiser. Echika and Harold got out of their car and headed to the apartment as planned. Upon reaching the second floor, where Uritsky’s room was, they found a security Amicus working for the police barring their way,

“I’m afraid you have to turn back. Once the chief investigator arrives, the room will be scanned by analysis ants,” they told them.

“We have permission to go inside.” Echika flashed her ID card, which was enough to convince the Amicus into silence.

According to the lease, Uritsky’s dwelling was a typical two-room apartment. The pair made their way to the kitchen first and found it in quite a terrible state of disarray. The table was overrun with opened pouch containers, and the stained floor was littered with empty beer cans. The sink was covered in mold and full of unwashed dishes, soiled with rotten vegetable scraps.

It was terrible. The central heating was on, and the warmth of the room was likely hastening the garbage’s decay. Their only solace was that the place wasn’t infested with worms and insects yet.

“I always ask myself this when I see these kind of spaces, but what drives a person to live this way?”

“Some kind of talent, maybe. Or perhaps an unstable mental state.”

“Do you think Uritsky did drugs himself?”

“Who’s to say? Let’s take a look around.”

While Echika paused outside the door, Harold thoroughly examined the apartment. He opened the fridge and cupboards, read the labels on the empty beer cans, checked the stench rising from the sink, and felt the underside of the table. He picked up the decorative potted plants by the window, examining them before placing them back where they were. Amicus came in handy at times like these; they didn’t leave any fingerprints.

“In all likelihood, he didn’t use himself. But he was clearly under major stress,” Harold remarked, wiping the dust from his fingers. “These beer cans all have the same date of production. In other words, he bought all these in bulk at the same time, and based on the smell, he hammered every one of them in a single day.”

“Uritsky’s personal data didn’t mention alcoholism,” Echika noted.

“Maybe something recently increased his stress,” Harold said, looking around. “He still had a stock of fresh food in his fridge. And as you can imagine from how his kitchen looks, he’s probably not the cooking type. Uritsky is registered as a bachelor, but do you think he has a partner?”

“The intelligence department isn’t aware of any significant others. He does seem to pay for sex workers, though…”

“And I doubt he’d call them over to make meals for him,” Harold said pensively. It didn’t look like he was hurrying to draw a conclusion. “Let’s check his bedroom.”

The bedroom was as cluttered and dirty as his kitchen. A wrinkled blanket had been thrown over his bed, and both his desk and the floor were littered with discarded clothes and assorted trash. A scratched-up armoire stood against the wall, and cloth curtains covered the window.

But most striking of all were the countless cards hanging down from the ceiling, every one of them full of data matrices. It almost looked like some kind of pagan altar.

“Using electronic drugs as interior design. That’s a novel idea,” Harold mused, touching the cards dangling down from above. “Investigator, be careful not to look directly at them. The Your Forma might end up actually reading them.”

“Don’t worry—I’m too short to do that.”

Electronic drugs were a type of noninfectious computer virus that was sold via data matrices like these. When the user read the codes, their Your Forma would contract the virus, producing a sense of euphoria and release. The virus deleted itself after a certain period of time, forcing addicts to repeatedly pay their dealers for more. The very production of electronic drugs was illegal in most countries.

“But if Uritsky really is the culprit, the question is when and how he infected the index cases with it. I know from Lie’s Mnemosynes that he didn’t use electronic narcotics to do it.”

“There were no signs of anything suspicious in the study tours, either. And even if we account for the virus’s incubation period, it’s not likely they were infected during the tour itself. This implies he transferred the disease without anyone noticing, not even the index cases themselves.”

“If he had a way of doing that, he’d have to illegally access the index cases’ Your Forma, but there were no traces of tampering in any of them. What kind of magic did he pull to do it?”

“Any magic has a trick behind it. And thankfully, we can peer directly into his mind to find out.”

“But what if Uritsky tweaked or wiped his own Mnemosynes?”

“Then this Pandora’s box might come in handy,” Harold said, opening one of the desk’s drawers and pulling a laptop out of it. “He probably used this to write the virus, so it’s highly probable his method of sending it to his victims is on here, too.”

“Is it really going to go that smoothly? Well, if all else fails, there are other ways to force him to confess…”

But suddenly, the sound of something being kicked shook the room.

What?!

Echika whipped around in surprise, only to finds the doors of the armoire swinging open to reveal a silhouette stepping out of it. It was a young woman wearing a thin one-piece dress. Her pale face was contorted into a ghastly expression, and she had a sheath knife gripped in her slender hands.

1

Saint Petersburg spread out before her, like a mirror’s reflection of a silvery snowscape. The streetlamps and headlights of vehicles danced over the roads covered in white, and a trail of ivory smoke lingered in the sky above her.

Echika sprinted through the back alleys, evading the gaze of the surveillance drones, but there was more pedestrian traffic than she expected. Street stalls packed with customers, young people lying on the pavement hugging bottles of vodka, people walking alongside families and loved ones. Echika suddenly heard a rumbling blast that echoed deep in her stomach. When she looked up, she saw blazing fireworks burst in the sky.

The date changed over, and the New Year began.

The civilians were sharing in their joy as she passed them by. Echika ran, hugging herself and rubbing her arms vigorously. Her teeth had begun clicking moments ago. Just taking a breath made her feel as though her throat might freeze over.

She couldn’t believe no one but her could see this snow.

The illusion was simply that vivid. Her freezing cheeks, her throbbing fingertips, all these were real sensations. She couldn’t believe everything was a hallucination a suture inside her brain was showing her.

Your Forma.

How long have I experienced reality solely through the filter of that thread? The form of this machine is the very form of this world. And that might just be a terrible mistake.

As she gazed at these snowflakes, which were either flittering down from above or rising up from below her feet—she couldn’t tell—that thought crossed her mind for the first time.

And yet thanks to this virus, she’d been able to shake off Totoki’s pursuit. All that was left was to go to Bigga and have her apply the suppressant, and after that, she’d have to figure out a way to clear her name.

Of course, Bigga hated Echika, so there was no telling if she’d even cooperate with her, but she had no one else to turn to. With that in mind, she tried to look up on the map where Bigga would be staying, but since her Your Forma was malfunctioning, she got lost. Even if she tried finding her way to the hotel the old-fashioned way, she couldn’t read Cyrillic characters without the Your Forma’s translation function.

Suddenly, she saw a surveillance drone in the sky above the path before her.

No good.

Echika changed directions and slid into a narrow alleyway. The snow was especially deep here, and her boots sank into it. She lifted her legs out of the cold, crunchy surface, pushing herself forward, but her legs were getting heavier and heavier. Her thoughts, meanwhile, were becoming dimmer and hazier.

I shouldn’t have left my coat at Harold’s place…

She rubbed her cheeks, which had grown numb from the cold. Either way, she’d have to keep going while relying on her intuition.

A few minutes after she left the alley, the snow grew more intense, turning into an outright blizzard blowing against her. The hazy cityscape was dotted with molten neon lights. Echika deliriously walked through the streets, with people celebrating the New Year bumping against her shoulders every now and then.

Echika usually liked the snow. When she was little, her big sister had often made it snow. But she would have never wished for such a strong blizzard. The sensation in her hands had long since gone. She could see why those infected with the virus developed hypothermia symptoms; her legs were numb, and she couldn’t tell where she was anymore.

When she finally came to, Echika once again found herself in an alleyway. She sat squatted on the snowy ground, her back resting against a filthy wall. She couldn’t recall how she’d gotten here. Her mind felt sluggish, like her head was full of sludge. The core of her body burned from the cold. But somehow, she’d stopped shivering.

The tumult of the city was distant; she’d been enveloped by silence. Her shallow breathing echoed loudly in her ears. This was painful. She cursed her own stupidity. She’d been foolish. So foolish that if she ended up dying here, she would have earned it.

A particularly strong gust of wind blew through the alley. Unable to withstand its intensity, Echika fell down, her cheek sinking into the snow.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t cold anymore. If anything, it felt…warm. Kind. If she had to describe it, it was like she was in her father’s arms… No, she never knew that man’s embrace, so she was probably just assuming that was what it felt like. She could hardly remember her mother’s warmth, either.

But she could remember her sister. She alone would embrace Echika, pat her on the head, hold her hands… Her sister was the only one who loved her.

Being exposed to the blizzard had chipped away at her pride and left her dispirited. Maybe she’d have actually been better off quitting a long time ago. Echika had only gone along with becoming an electronic investigator because of the results of the compatibility analysis and the opinion of her father, though she didn’t hate the work.

But if all she was going to do was keep hurting her colleagues, she may as well have just shut herself off in her room and withered away. Some part of her felt that fading like that would be for the best, for everyone’s sakes, but…sadly, she wasn’t that kind of person.

After her sister was gone, she’d been left all alone in her frozen home, with little alternative but to remake herself into a machine that obeyed her father’s wishes. That was how Echika had shielded her heart. She allowed things to just carry her away, never showing a will of her own and never allowing herself interest or attachments.

Acting like that had been the first time she’d ever felt at peace. And as she’d kept up that frigid facade, she started hiding herself. That way, she could lock those precious memories of her sister away in her heart, memories of the days when she truly felt loved and at ease.

Those memories were the one thing she would refuse to let anyone look at. No one would take them away, not even her father. No one would tarnish them. No one would touch them. That way, she wouldn’t let anyone kill her sister again.

But every so often, it hurt. Echika didn’t know how long she should keep this up. Her father was already dead, yet she still remained a machine. That way of life had seeped into her heart and body, transforming her into the same person her father had been.

She hadn’t wanted to turn out like this. She wished she could be someone who could honestly express her feelings, like Bigga or Daria. Someone who could believe in the kindness of others without any qualms, a person who knew what it was like to be loved and cherished.

She was getting too emotional. The boundaries of her consciousness were growing nondescript, as though they were melting away. Like leaves flowing across the surface of a river, her memories flitted along incoherently.

“Hold my hand, Echika.”

“With your magic?”

“Do you think the snow will pile up?”

“If you want it to, it will.”

“Everyone else got sick.”

“The project is canceled.”

“I feel fine!”

“Please don’t kill her!”

“You must be Mr. Hieda’s daughter. I came to deliver his will.”

Ah, I see—so that’s what this was all about.

The truth about the sensory crime. It wasn’t actually a virus.

She finally realized that. But at this point, she could no longer get back up. Her body felt like mud, like it was crumbling away and coming apart.

But just as she was on the brink of letting everything slip away, she felt someone grab hold of her.

2

The light of a shed lamp shone down on her from the ceiling.

It took her a moment to realize that she’d woken up. Echika absentmindedly reached for her cheek, only to realize for the first time that her fingers weren’t numb with cold. She’d felt like she was freezing over earlier, but now she was lying in a soft, warm bed.

How had she gotten here?

“Are you up?” Bigga peered at her, her braids dangling down and her expression oddly strained.

Why was she here? Echika had never made it to the hotel, after all.

With a start, she realized that the illusory snow wasn’t falling down anymore.

“Ms. Hieda, I’ve injected you with a suppressant. The same one I used on Lie, a powerful substance that makes all the machines inside your body cease functioning. You’ll need another injection in twelve hours.”

Upon hearing this, Echika realized her field of vision did seem unusually empty. There was no time or temperature UI overlaid over her eyes, nor were there any noisy notifications buzzing in her ears.

She tried to open her message box and news topics, but none of them budged. The only thing she could see was Bigga, staring down at her. Right, this was the effect of the machine suppressant—her Your Forma’s functions were all completely frozen.

This girl had, without a doubt, just saved her life.

“Thank you,” Echika croaked out. “But how did you…?”

“Harold was the one who saved you,” Bigga told her curtly. “Be grateful to him, because I’m still mad over what you did to Lie, but…Tell me, is he really an Amicus?”

“Huh?” Echika didn’t quite believe what she’d just said. “When did you realize that?”

Instead of answering her question, Bigga simply bit her lips. Then she walked off, as if running away from Echika, and the area hazily came into view.

It was a small, single-bed hotel room, and sitting on the table by the window was an open trunk. Inside were surgical instruments, syringes, an ECG monitor, and a tablet terminal. This was a bio-hacker’s work kit, it seemed.

Echika placed a hand over her cold forehead. She didn’t have a clock anywhere, so she couldn’t tell how much time had passed since this had started. It was still dark outside, so it must have been two to three hours at best. Were Totoki and the others after her even now, or had they given up already?

Suddenly, Harold’s expression when he saw her read the virus came to mind.

“She just woke up,” she heard Bigga say. “Over here.”

What? Who is she speaking to?

Echika sluggishly craned her neck to peer out, only to see Bigga leading someone inside. Seeing who it was completely parted the mist from her mind and jolted her awake.

“How are you feeling, Investigator Hieda?”

It was Harold. He looked much as he did when they’d parted ways, and he carried an umbrella in his right hand in place of a cane. Why was he here? Were Totoki and the others there, too? Echika stiffened at once.

“There’s no cause for alarm,” Harold said, his usual gentle grin on his lips. “The chief doesn’t know we’re here. I put away my wearable terminal so she wouldn’t be able to trace my location.”

“But doesn’t your system register your position, too…?”

“I have ways of shutting down the signals in my head—don’t worry.”

Harold walked over, leaning on his umbrella for support, and took a seat by her bed. Unable to keep still, Echika sat up. Her body felt as heavy as lead, but it was still better than being subjected to that illusory snow. Her mind was now crystal clear.

“Aide Lucraft, if…”

If you’re not here on the chief’s orders, why did you come here? Are you crazy?

The words climbed up to her throat, but the moment Harold touched her shoulder, they completely dispersed.

“Looking for you and coming all the way here was quite the effort for me. If I got to you any later, your life would have been at risk,” he said, his tone softer than usual. “I’m truly glad you survived.”

Harold narrowed his eyes with heartfelt relief, which made Echika realize something. Yes, he was the one who’d carried her over to Bigga after she’d fainted. Indeed, she’d felt a pair of arms pick her up right before going unconscious.

Harold had saved her life. And no matter how hard the trials before her might be, that fact would remain firm and true.

“Ummm…” Echika managed to force out the words. “I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble…”

“I could say the same thing. You carried me to the repair shop, didn’t you?”

“That was different. For starters, it was my fault you collaps—”

“Investigator,” he interjected, softly raising his hand from her shoulder. “I know you’re not the culprit. We need to talk this over.”

Bigga, who had been watching their exchange, parted her lips in a reserved manner. “I could make some coffee, if you’d like?”

“Are Chief Totoki and the others still out hunting for me?”

“Yes. I believe they won’t give up until they have you.”

Echika, Harold, and Bigga sat around a table by the window. Bigga had closed up her trunk and put it away. In its place, she’d laid out cups of instant coffee, which she’d made using an electric kettle in the room.

“Yes, but if you go missing while they’re on the lookout, they’ll just assume you’re my accomplice,” Echika mused wearily.

“They probably will,” he said nonchalantly. “I don’t mind that, though.”

“I can see why Daria was so worried about you. I never asked you to do this.”

“You can chide me if you want, but I think there’s something else you should be telling me right now,” Harold said quietly before sipping his coffee.

Echika gripped her knees under the table. It dawned on her that after she’d injected herself, he’d gone out of his way to find her and save her life for no apparent reason. He even believed in her innocence. She should have been grateful to him.

And yet…

A stinging silence settled over her.

“Wow…,” Bigga muttered out of nowhere, her awkward gaze nailed to Harold’s coffee cup. “You really can drink, just like a human…”

“Yes,” he replied, his brows lowering slightly in apology. “Bigga, I’m sorry I startled you. As a friend, I promise I won’t keep secrets from you anymore.”

Bigga gazed at Harold with an expression betraying mixed emotions—had he revealed his identity so he could “make proper use of her”? Could he have really made Bigga stay in this location because he’d predicted something like this might happen? No, that would definitely be giving him too much credit.

“I…,” Bigga started, licking her lips hesitantly for a second. “I still can’t believe you’re an Amicus… I don’t know how to accept this…”

“I understand that it will take a while. And I won’t fault you for holding the fact that I lied to you against me.”

“I’d never!”

“But, Bigga, Investigator Hieda and I need to find the real culprit. And if you’re willing, we’d greatly appreciate your cooperation.”

Bigga nodded vaguely, stirred by his earnest attitude. Echika, however, was taken off guard by his statement.

“We’re going to search for the real culprit? This is the first I’ve heard of that. They already have Uritsky behind bars—”

“He isn’t the true perpetrator,” Harold cut her off.

He said it with such confidence that Echika shuddered—because that was the same conclusion she’d hit upon while trudging through the blizzard. And despite all that, this development wouldn’t be favorable for her.

“Uritsky was only used and manipulated by the mastermind. He probably doesn’t know anything about the sensory crime. In all likelihood, the true culprit was the one who’d planted the virus data in Uritsky’s computer and placed it beneath multiple layers of encryption.

“And most importantly,” Harold appended as he put down his cup, “even if Uritsky was the architect of the virus, there’d be no reason for him to go as far as fabricating his own Mnemosynes just to pin the crime on you.”

“That should be impossible to begin with,” Echika noted.

“But the culprit can obfuscate the truth and manipulate the fake facts they created. Please don’t try to change the subject, Investigator.”

“I’m not trying to change the subject, and I have no idea what you’re getting at here.”

“I think you know what I’m getting at just fine,” Harold insisted, staring at her like he could see straight through. “You already know who the mastermind is.”

Echika didn’t reply immediately. A part of her even wanted to drive Harold out of here somehow.

“It’s just a hunch.” She managed to force the words out through the lump in her throat. “And I have no proof, so I can’t do anything with it.”

“But there is proof,” Harold said firmly. “And you yourself have it.”

“Huh?” Bigga asked, baffled. “But you just said Ms. Hieda is innocent—”

“Yes, and I stand by that. The investigator is not the culprit. But she does know how the sensory crime functions.”

Echika held her breath. Harold, by contrast, wasn’t smiling one bit. He simply stared at her, eyes as cold as the surface of a frozen lake, their gaze bereft of suspicion or enmity but full of conviction.

So that’s why he was here. This was why he’d even betrayed Totoki to side with Echika. It wasn’t simply out of concern for his infected partner.

It was because he knew everything.

“Initially, I didn’t understand why you went so far as to infect yourself with the virus to run. At the time, you were clearly terrified at the prospect of someone Brain Diving into you.”

“No,” countered Echika, defiant. “I was just confused then, and—”

“There’s actually something I need to show you,” he said, taking a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket.

He spread it out, and as Bigga curiously leaned in to look, Echika felt her spine stiffen in fear. It was a printout of an electronic periodical published by an American newspaper company. It was dated April of ten years ago, and the headline sitting proudly at the top read, “Rig City announces the addition of Your Forma expanded function, Matoi.”

“According to this article, the Matoi was a cultivation system for all generations. Our modern society is overflowing with optimized information, and the Matoi system was designed to help users who exclude information recall their humanity. More specifically, it was an augmented-reality program meant to stimulate altruistic affection by making users spend time with child AIs.”

Echika stared at the newspaper blankly. She’d read the article time and again, so she knew its contents by heart. It was accompanied by a photograph of the project members sitting in an interview, clad in dignified suits. And there at the center of the group, with a cold, stone-faced expression, was none other than him.

“However, during the experimental stages, a fatal flaw was discovered in the Matoi system, leading to its development being indefinitely suspended. The experimentation period lasted a year and seemed to be progressing well at first, but during the eleventh month of testing, problems began to arise. The Matoi was capable of regulating the user’s body heat and adjusting the weather using augmented reality, and the issues stemmed from a bug in those functions. But the details weren’t disclosed, and the only thing released to the media was that the test subjects had all become terribly ill. One subject even passed away before they could be properly treated. Thermoregulation issues, a weather-related bug, sudden illness—it all bears an uncanny resemblance to the sensory crime we’re investigating now. In fact, one could even go so far as to say that it’s identical.”

Echika couldn’t utter a single word. She clenched her fists so hard that her nails dug into her palms.

“Following that, the Matoi project was shuttered, and its development team was broken up.” Harold continued his explanation unabated. “But I have a sneaking suspicion that the Matoi program itself wasn’t actually deleted. In fact, it’s likely one of the development team members secretly executed it within the Your Forma users’ minds.”

“But that’s a crime!” Bigga exclaimed, going pale. “I mean, if what you’re saying is true, it means they intentionally hid a dangerous, buggy system inside people’s heads, right?”

“No, it’s quite the opposite.” Harold shook his head. “They hid it because they were confident it wouldn’t bug out.”

“…What do you mean?” Bigga asked.

Echika wasn’t sure if she was breathing properly anymore.

“The person who planted the program believed that the bug in the Matoi was the product of some kind of external conspiracy. And if my hypothesis is correct, the trigger for the bug’s occurrence is what’s being used in this sensory crime. In other words, what we thought was a virus simply unlocks the Matoi feature hidden inside the users’ Your Forma. It’s a program that intentionally triggers the bug.”

“That’s just speculation,” Echika finally managed to say with what felt like tremendous effort. “According to Rig City’s analysis team, the virus simply uses the Your Forma’s signals to influence the brain…”

“Rig City could be under the mastermind’s surveillance. I wouldn’t trust anything they say.”

“Your entire premise makes no sense,” Echika muttered, her voice trembling despite herself. “Why are you sure the Matoi is hidden in every single user’s Your Forma? How can you even prove that?”

“Chikasato Hieda.” Harold’s well-shaped lips invoked that abominable name. “Your father was the team leader for the Matoi project, and he was the one who hid it in the Your Forma. You already know everything I just laid out.”

Stay calm.

Echika tried to keep her expression as firm as possible, but of course, she knew the Amicus she was facing may as well have been a keen lie detector. This was probably wasted effort. Still, she had to try.

“Yes… My father was a developer for the Matoi, I’ll admit that much,” Echika conceded, picking her words carefully. “From what he claimed, the Matoi is a normal program, and the bug was the product of a conspiracy. Out of defiance, he planted the Matoi in all the users’ Your Forma… That’s what was written in his will.”

The will her father had entrusted to her with the assisted-euthanasia organization. It was, in effect, nothing more than a confession of his sins. The thought that this was the first and only letter he’d ever addressed to Echika would have made for brilliantly dark humor, were it funny in the slightest.

Following the project’s suspension, all data pertaining to the Matoi was to be erased. And so to keep the program in existence, her father chose the perfect hiding place for it—inside everyone’s Your Forma. And he’d bequeathed that final letter to Echika, imploring her to keep his sin a secret.

Although she could have ignored his final order and publicly condemned his actions, instead, she’d simply obeyed his will. Not out of sympathy or affection for her father, no. She just left the truth unsaid so as to protect her own secret.

And ironically enough, that had now only served to corner her.

“Aide Lucraft, your hypothesis is correct, but even if you can prove the Matoi is hidden within the Your Forma, correlating it to this sensory crime is a leap of logic. What if the culprit knew about the Matoi’s past bugs and decided to reproduce their effects?”

“You’re right,” Harold conceded. “But that means all I need to do is prove there’s a correlation between the virus and the Matoi.”

“…How?”

“You’re the one holding that piece of the puzzle, Investigator,” Harold asserted, utterly composed. “I know your relationship with your father wasn’t favorable, and yet you respected his last will and hung on to that secret until now. There must be a reason behind that, no?”

Echika gazed at Harold, almost glaring at him, refusing to blink. She had to look at him like that, or else he’d encroach on territory she didn’t want him to reach. Despite the fact that it was probably far too late for that by now. In the end, she could flounder all she wanted, but she had nowhere left to run.

“Do you remember how we first met?” Harold asked, bringing his fingertips together while he kept his eyes locked on her, as if refusing to miss even a single intake of breath she made. “I called you indifferent and disinterested in your daily life. From a different angle, your lack of interest and desires is a reflection of your psyche trying to protect itself.”

“Stop talking bullshit.”

“You spent your childhood with an overbearing father, and that naturally made you relinquish your own desires. In that kind of situation, most people would develop a mental disorder, but you have no such clinical history. And it can’t be just a natural resistance to stress. Surely, you must have had something to support you, then, something holding up your heart and keeping you stable?”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“I’m talking about that necklace,” Harold stated, his gaze moving to Echika’s chest, or rather, the nitro-case necklace dangling helplessly over it. “My apologies if this is offensive, Investigator, but you don’t care one bit for accessories. However, I can understand why you’re so fond of that nitro-case necklace despite that. After all, you can cherish it like a treasure that way.”

“…What are you saying?”

“You already know what I’m getting at,” Harold stated, not a trace of a smile on his lips. “Show me what’s inside the case.”

“My cigarette battery,” hedged Echika at once.

“Please cease with the useless lies.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Doing this will help clear your name, Investigator.”

“No,” Echika said, hopping to her feet as if someone had kicked her from below. “Just…give me some time alone.”

She fled the room as though trying to escape from Harold’s and Bigga’s gazes, sprinting down the staircase without thinking things through at all. She didn’t know where she was heading, but before she knew it, she was in the hotel lobby.

Since it was still late at night, the lobby was silent, and there was no one near the check-in counter. Echika crossed the automatic door and stepped outside. Specks of snow floated down from the slumbering sky. This was no illusion—it was real snow.

A stabbing gust blew past her, sending a chill through her body. Come to think of it, she’d only been wearing a thin sweater since she left Harold’s apartment. Looking around and rubbing her arms all the while, she spotted a deserted circular plaza across the street.

Echika approached the plaza as if drawn toward it. The city had been cacophonous earlier, but now it was enveloped in silence, and there were barely any people in sight. She could neither see surveillance drones nor hear the wail of police sirens. The celebrations that had taken place just a few hours ago now seemed like a distant dream.

Why…? Echika gripped the nitro case tightly in her hand. This was the one thing I didn’t want anyone to notice.

At the plaza was a spire-like monument, along with sculptures of soldiers. The numbers 1941 and 1945 were etched onto the spire. Without the Your Forma to help her, she couldn’t decipher what the engraving said, and no one was there to tell her. She assumed it had to do with a war.

I wanted to keep this secret, she thought. This was the one place I didn’t want anyone to intrude on, no matter what.

“Investigator Hieda.”

She turned around to find that Harold had gone after her. Though she’d asked to be alone, he hadn’t listened. Echika turned her back on him and folded her arms like she was hugging herself.

“I’m not going to speak about this anymore,” she breathed out with a thick gasp. “I don’t need to tell you anything, after all. You already know everything.”

“Then at least let me check if my conclusions are correct.” Harold gently brushed against her back.

Stop it. Shut up.

“Investigator, you’re not one to trust or put faith in others, and despite that, you spoke to me of your father’s relationship. You told me about the reason you started hating Amicus, which is, in other words, your trauma. That’s not something you can share easily, but you chose to prioritize your sincerity to me over that.”

Echika gritted her teeth in an attempt to suppress something that had welled up inside her. Something that wasn’t just the cold.

“You’re a kind, gentle person, but you keep up this frigid facade because you’re hiding something in your heart—something you don’t want anyone to know about. If people think you’re standoffish, they won’t approach you, which would make hiding your secret easier. And even if they hate you for it, you’re used to putting up with that.”

Yes, he’s right. That’s correct.

“And the reason you can put up with it is because for the last thirteen years, the Matoi has been by your side, hasn’t it?”

Echika turned around, gazing at Harold as the gentle snow fell over his hair and melted. “The prerequisite to qualify as a Matoi test subject was being over eighteen years of age. Despite that, your father secretly implanted it in you, as well. Maybe that was just his way of expressing his love for you, or maybe he simply did it out of experimental curiosity… But in the cold household you grew up in, the Matoi was the only one who understood you. The only family you could trust.”

“Don’t worry, Echika. I love you.”

“But when the bug happened and the project was suspended, you rejected the notion of being torn apart from the Matoi but couldn’t stop it from happening…and so you copied the program and hid it on your person.”

“You and me will always be together, Big Sis!”

Even if she was nothing more than a mass-produced AI, Matoi had been a true sister to her. It was thanks to her that Echika could experience the joy of familial love. She’d held her hands, embraced her, acknowledged her as an individual, and spoken to her. And to Echika, those little things were a treasure without equal. They were her support, her salvation.

Neither of her parents had loved her, but Matoi alone had. And when the project was shelved, Echika asked her father why it happened, but the only thing he said, time and again, was that the other subjects all “got sick,” refusing to go into any more detail.

“My Matoi never did anything strange. But everyone else’s went crazy, and because of that…,” she said through trembling breaths. “I didn’t want my sister to die. I didn’t want her to leave me. So I…”

“…copied her HSB.”

“And then placed her inside that nitro case. Right?”

Making a copy of a program that was suspended for use was an illegal activity. If someone was to Brain Dive and peer into her Mnemosynes, she really would lose her sister this time. So she took the pains of infecting herself to run away, hoping that if she caught the culprit on her own, maybe no one would need to peer into her mind.

“When did you realize?” Echika asked. Her fingers, clutching the nitro case, were numb and aching from the cold. But she didn’t care about that right now. “Did you suspect me the whole time?”

“Saying I suspected you would be incorrect, since you’re not the culprit,” Harold said, his breath coming out in a white puff. “I first had an inkling of something when we Brain Dived in Rig City. You looked awfully shaken after that, and after meeting Taylor, even more so. Seeing that made me speculate about you having a shared past.”

“But Taylor is an eccentric. He could have just asked me something rude.”

“No, if he was a stranger, you’d have shrugged off his criticism.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I’m certain of that,” Harold said clearly. “And after looking into you a bit, it was easy to find out your father was involved with the Matoi’s development. And then when you heard the name of the program while Brain Diving, it shook you so much that it made you go into a countercurrent. That led me to assume you were involved with the Matoi project in some way, so I concluded you were a test subject for it.”

“But even if I was a test subject, how did you deduce I was still carrying Matoi with me…?”

“You probably don’t realize this, Investigator, but considering how little you care for appearances, that accessory stands out quite a bit. So that got me thinking that it must be shaped like a nitro case for some reason. I surmised that something supporting you must be hidden inside it.”

He’s a monster, she thought. Being able to conclude that much so early isn’t normal.

“But there’s one bit of evidence missing to properly associate the Matoi with this sensory crime,” Harold continued as Echika remained silent. “However, if the culprit’s goal is what I think it is, you would eventually become a target, too.”

“…What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you realized it yet? They’ve been targeting you since the very beginning.”

Echika couldn’t immediately process what he meant, and so she simply shook her head vaguely.

“As I assumed, the mastermind made contact with you,” Harold explained coolly. “I was surprised he used Uritsky as a red herring to frame you…but personally, I didn’t mind however it had to happen.”

“What are you saying…?”

“The Matoi is absolutely essential for proving the truth behind the sensory crime, but even if I asked you to show me what’s inside the nitro case, you’d never say yes. Even if the perpetrator ended up cornering you… The only thing I could do was form a relationship of trust with you, so that when the time came, you’d relinquish the Matoi to me.”

Was the way her jaw shivered just now because of the cold or something else?

Bigga wasn’t the one he’d been manipulating all along. Just when had she realized that she was the one dancing in the palm of his hand?

“Investigator, I need to apologize to you about something. Firstly, my argument with you on the way back from the restaurant was intentional. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into people who denied Amicus having emotions, so hearing that wouldn’t have made me that angry. But you kept your guard up around me at all times, so I needed a way to break through your defenses. There’s a saying in Japan that adversity strengthens foundations. When it comes to relationships between people, clashing and disagreeing is a valid way of deepening a bond.”

She now realized that Harold’s eyes had been frozen over the whole time. His frivolous attitude and jovial remarks were all part of a calculated facade.

“And I had Daria tell you about my past so we could grow closer.”

Piss off!

No, that was wrong. She’d known this all along. Every part of it had just been programming the whole time. His kindness, his smiles… And her feeling happy because of it had just been a mistake. Her weakness tripping her up.

Aah, this feels…

“Aide Lucraft…?” she asked, her knees trembling. “Just how much of this was all according to your calculations?”

Harold furrowed his brow apologetically. That’s all he did—that was his only answer.

“Right.” Echika didn’t know why, but for some reason, something inside her chest clenched up. She felt so stupid. “You knew who the culprit was and what they were after the whole time. So having me tag along when you gave Bigga the tour was all just so I’d cooperate with you when I became a target…so that she would be around to give me the suppressant in case I refused to let them Brain Dive into me.”

“I made proper use of her, didn’t I?”

“Do you…?” Her lips trembled. “Do you think all the humans around you are just pawns in a game?”

“The only thing I want is to solve this case.”

“Maybe, but your methods are hypocritical.”

“Yes, I realize it would seem that way to you. That’s why I’ve chosen not to share my true thoughts with anyone.”

“So you’re saying that your insistence on human morals was all a lie, too?”

“It wasn’t a lie. I do have a conscience. But on top of that, if I’m being honest, sometimes respecting human values makes it easier to acquire trust.”

Echika breathed through her teeth. Despite Harold being an Amicus, she always thought he’d acted more human than she did. He was considerate, outgoing, and loved his family. And his affection for Daria probably wasn’t fake, despite everything.

But he lacked something crucial. When all was said and done, Harold was still a machine.

“If that’s the case…,” Echika said, a bitter taste in her mouth, “why are you sharing your true thoughts with me now?”

“Because I want you to give me the thing you hold dearest,” he said, his gaze fixed unflinchingly on her.

There was once a time when she’d envied those artificial eyes of his.

“From your perspective as a human being, it might seem like a sham. However, this isn’t my programming speaking but my own sense of morality. When you ask someone to hand over the thing that matters most to them, you need to give up something precious in return…like a secret you don’t want anyone to know. I want you to understand that this is my way of being sincere.”

“Don’t force your sincerity on me. I haven’t decided to hand my sister over to you.”

“Investigator, the Matoi is built to display affection to anyone and everyone. That’s how it was programmed. So even if it was to interact with someone else, someone besides you, it would—”

“Shut up!” The scream left her throat before she knew it.

Echika covered her ears and squatted down. She realized she was acting like a child, but if her sister truly was kind to everyone and anyone, that would mean she wasn’t Echika’s one and only sibling.

But she still had to cling to her.

If this was what had to happen, Echika wished she never would have met her to begin with. She wished she’d never known the bliss of someone patting her on the head and the joy of an embrace. If she’d just stayed with her cold, emotionless father forever, she wouldn’t have to feel this way.

Harold approached her slowly. She could see his shoes enter her field of vision but refused to raise her head just the same. Echika simply hugged her knees and held her breath.

Don’t invade any deeper.

“Your calculations were wrong,” she blurted out, her field of vision blurring. “Because I don’t trust you!”

“Yes, maybe they were,” he replied. “You were harder to please than I anticipated.”

“You have a family who loves you, but I don’t, okay? The only one who was ever on my side was Matoi. And now you’re trying to take her away, too.”

“That’s right.”

“Ah-ha-ha.” She realized how childish she was being, but she couldn’t stop herself. “What, is solving this case that important to you? But no matter how badly you want to resume the investigation on Detective Sazon, an Amicus like you won’t be able to make a career for himself.”

“I know that, of course. My only way to do that is to keep putting in the effort, slowly and steadily.” Harold bent down and took a knee. “Investigator, here is my second precious something—my other secret. If I ever catch Sazon’s killer, I intend to judge him by my own hand.”

Echika looked up. His meticulously crafted mechanical face was right in front of her, those clear eyes bereft of warmth.

“…What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that.”

A silent shiver ran through her. Daria was right; he really was keeping something suppressed in his heart—a dark, terrifying impulse.

“But the Laws of Respect apply to you. Can’t you not hurt humans?”

“Are you sure about that?”

“…You’re not going to modify your own programming, are you? They’ll scrap you if you do that.”

“Let them,” Harold whispered all too quietly. Was his artificial gaze inherently incapable of burning with anger and regret? “Even if that happens, it’ll be my due punishment for failing to save Sazon.”

Echika couldn’t see what he’d done to her as anything but the most terrible thing possible, and Harold knew that. That was why the Amicus had chosen to share what mattered most to him, to attempt to convey his sincerity in his own way. If the only thing he wanted was to use her, he wouldn’t have been driven to open his heart and reveal his secrets to her.

Or maybe this was all part of his scheme, too. Either way…

“I won’t,” she whispered, gritting her teeth. “I won’t…hand Matoi over to you.”

“Echika,” he said, placing his hands over her own, which were clenched around the nitro case. Even his cold, mechanical fingers felt terribly warm right now. “You told me to take better care of myself, but those were words you should have directed at yourself instead.”

“What…?”

“You haven’t been looking at yourself. You’ve been clinging to your sister’s image for too long. You have to realize how lonesome and isolating that is.”

I can’t.

“Please take better care of yourself,” he implored her.

I just can’t. I’m too afraid.

“If you need her… If you need Matoi that badly,” she said, moving her numbed lips. “Tear it off.”

Yes, it would be that much easier for her if he just did that. Echika slowly opened her frigid fingers, and the nitro-case necklace dangled down over her chest.

“I can’t take it off on my own… I’m too much of a coward.”

“In that case,” Harold said, furrowing his brow sadly, “is your love for your sister fake?”

She could see her own fading eyes reflected in his pupils. What was he saying all of a sudden?

“When Sazon died, I watched them cover his casket with dirt. I wanted to stop them, because if his body was to decay, I’d never be able to hug him again. But that was just selfish of me. Sazon never would have wanted that, and so I watched, full of respect and affection for him, without ever looking away. When you love someone, you have a responsibility to accept the fact that you’ll have to tell them good-bye. But you refuse to do that.”

That’s…

“That refusal isn’t affection. When you do that, all you’re doing is protecting yourself. Matoi wasn’t a sister to you, Echika. She was just a tool that gave you what you always longed for the most.”

No…

That denial reached her throat, but she couldn’t put it into words. What she wanted most was affection from her parents, from her father. She wanted him to look at his own daughter, not Sumika, and truly love her. And Matoi always looked at Echika first and foremost. She loved her, and that had made Echika happy. She didn’t want to lose that.

But…

“Children refuse to let go of their stuffed toys,” Harold said. “Especially if they have nothing else to protect themselves with.”

But I…

“But this stuffed toy can’t save you any longer, can it?”

Harold’s words continued relentlessly. The memory of that day was burned into her closed eyelids.

“You and me will always be together, Big Sis!”

It was the day before the Matoi was uninstalled. She snuck into her father’s study, stole the HSB stick, and connected it to her neck. Soon after she started copying the program, her sister moved in to stop her, regarding her with a pained expression that Echika had never seen her make before. And then she said this:

“Echika, listen carefully. There’s only one of me in this entire world.”

That’s right. Her big sister was unique, a singular existence. So even if every other copy of the Matoi were erased, she didn’t want her big sister to die.

But doing that was a mistake, a lie her younger heart spouted. An excuse.

She knew the truth already. What she had copied into her young ego wasn’t her “one and only” sister anymore. On that day, her sister really had died, and the thing she was holding on to until now was nothing more than the cinders of her cremated memories.

Echika was nothing but a foolish child, crying out for someone to love her. She’d kept on screaming out that she wanted it, demanded it, longed for it…but in the end, she couldn’t get anything. And it was because she knew, deep down, that she couldn’t have it that she desperately refused to admit the truth. To face the fact that those memories were nothing but ashes.

“Very well,” Harold whispered. “If you refuse to let go, I’ll take her away, like you asked. If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

No.

“Wait.”

Echika managed to open her eyes. Harold’s hands were a second away from touching the nitro case.

I know. I have to put an end to this someday.

“I’m fine,” she managed to breathe out. “I’ll…take it off. On my own.”

She reached for the back of her neck and touched the hook on her necklace. Her fingers were too numb from the cold to grab it properly, so she fumbled with it time and again.

Time and again, she thought… I still have time. Matoi is right here. I can just run off, and this time, I’ll die together with her—

No. No, I can’t. I already know that. If I can’t lay my hands on anything at all, I at least have to prove my love for Matoi was real. Or else I’ll wind up just like Dad, who could only love Sumika, a machine that always acted the way he wanted her to.

Echika undid the hook and let the nitro case fall into her palm. It was clear and felt cold as ice. She twisted its cap, which came off with surprising ease, and flipped it over. Its contents spilled onto her other hand. A small memory stick, transparent as crystal.

“Here it is, Aide Lucraft,” Echika announced.

“This is…the evidence to support your theory.”

She handed him the HSB stick with freezing fingers, and Harold took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. Their eyes met. His eyelashes shone with molten snow, and his hands once again enveloped hers, gripping the HSB stick.

“I’m grateful for your courage,” he said, his eyes fixed on her with more honesty than ever before. “I have a plan in mind for arresting the culprit. Will you hear me out?”

This was probably a scheme he’d concocted so the two of them could capture the mastermind alone. They couldn’t rely on Totoki right now, and if the perpetrator was the kind of person Harold thought they were, they could probably tweak Echika’s Mnemosynes with the same ease with which they’d faked Uritsky’s.

If they were going to prove Echika’s innocence, they’d have to settle this on their own. For better or for worse, this Amicus was her only ally right now.

“Tell me your plan,” she said, gripping his fingers in response. “What will I have to do?”

3

Steve returned to Rig City at around ten in the morning. A van parked in the roundabout as night rose. It wasn’t a vehicle he recognized. When he looked up its license plate, he found out it was a rental car. Sitting behind the wheel was a girl who seemed to be of Scandinavian descent.

“What is it?” She lowered her window and asked him this with awkward, thickly accented English as Steve approached. “I am waiting for my brother here. He’s working overtime. Is it forbidden to park here?”

Workers being picked up by family wasn’t at all unusual, but the fact that it was a rental car did strike him as off. But then again, there could be any number of plausible reasons for that, and he realized he was probably being overly suspicious. So he simply apologized to the girl and moved away from the van.

Upon entering Rig City’s main office building, he ran into a coworker who was on his way out.

“Oh, Steve, Mr. Taylor was looking for you.”

“…About what?”

“Well, remember that big box you carried in earlier? That, uh, decorative plant delivered to him?”

“No…,” Steve muttered in confusion. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“What, did your head get messed up along with your leg? You should probably have the mechanic give you a diagnostic tomorrow. You’re charged with nursing Mr. Taylor, after all, so you can’t neglect your own maintenance. Maybe your circulatory fluid is starting to solidify or something.”

The coworker continued chattering without regard for him and soon left. Steve looked down at his leg, confirming it was working perfectly well. Just what kind of mix-up would make this employee say that…? But then his thoughts moved so fast that they nearly made an audible whirl in his head, and the possibility dawned on him.

It can’t be.

Steve broke into a jog, and by the time he got on the elevator, the regulatory-fluid pump in his left breast was beating wildly. But how? He didn’t meet him directly, so it made no sense. This had to be him overthinking things.

But when he got off the elevator at the top floor, the organic transistors in his skin were buzzing. The doors to the guest room were flung open, and behind them was nothing but lukewarm darkness. No one was there. After thinking for a moment, he picked up the sofa’s cushions and took out a revolver hidden beneath them. This was a weapon Taylor had prepared for self-defense purposes. He checked the back of the door, then gazed at the silent corridor extending ahead of him. Even though he was listening carefully, Steve couldn’t sense anyone there…

And then he heard it. The door to the bedroom had barely opened.

Elias Taylor’s bedroom was dim and thick with an inorganic odor. His hospital bed was equipped with an oxygen concentrator. The room was empty and dreary, save for the desk and PC set against the wall. Blackout curtains were draped over the windows, which made the twinkling stars reflecting against the marble floor that much more visible. The dome-like ceiling had a flexible screen set over it, which displayed an image of the night sky. It was like a planetarium.

“Mr. Taylor.”

As he lay in his bed, drifting in the dreams of analgesic-induced slumber, he awakened to the voice of a familiar whisper. Opening his heavy eyelids, he saw that it was Steve. He was in his usual dress shirt and vest and looked at him with concern in his eyes.

“The nurse Amicus are all occupied at the moment, so if you don’t mind, I’ll handle wiping your body off for today.”

“Is it that time already?” Taylor checked his Your Forma’s clock UI, which showed that it was past nine in the morning. Spending your entire day in bed made it easy to lose track of time. “Please go ahead.”

Nodding silently, Steve gently raised Taylor’s head. Feeling the Amicus’s hands touch the back of his neck made the old man recall what he’d seen when Steve had returned just now.

“What was that large box?” Taylor asked. “I saw it when the living room door opened.”

Despite being bedridden and ill, Taylor still insisted on confirming who was coming into his room, and one could enter only if he undid the security. “Don’t tell me the hospital sent some pointless medical device…”

“Not to worry,” Steve said with his usual dour expression. “It contained a person I brought here.”

“…What?”

Just as Taylor knit his brow in surprise, he felt something attach to the port in his neck. Steve had plugged an HSB connector of some sort into him, but why? The footage projected onto the ceiling changed. Instead of a starry sky, it displayed a gaudy ad for sneakers equipped with Bluetooth.

Taylor didn’t have the time to look away. The information matrix on the commercial hopped into his field of vision. The clock UI projecting into his eyes momentarily crackled and warped, and Taylor could tell his face had gone pale with shock.

He quickly called up a message window, and it opened normally, but he knew perfectly well what had just happened. In just ten to twenty minutes, all his Your Forma’s features would begin to malfunction.

“Steve, you—”

Taylor gazed up at the robot, who smiled softly at him. But that Amicus would never smile; that was an expression that was entirely unlike anything Steve would ever do.

“So we meet at last, Mr. Taylor,” Steve—or rather, the Amicus with Steve’s face said as he drew the HSB from his neck. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m Harold Lucraft. And…”

Harold’s gaze trailed away, and Taylor followed it in a stupor, his eyes finally settling on the figure sitting at the foot of his bed. “Hello, Mr. Taylor.”

It was an electronic investigator, her figure as black as ink.

“You…,” Taylor said, his voice as faint as the rustling of fallen leaves. “This is trespassing, Investigator Hieda.”

“True, I don’t have a warrant.”

Taylor had used his name as a technological revolutionary to achieve anything and everything he wanted, but now he was nothing but a decrepit old man. Most of his hair had fallen out, and his striking almond eyes were now sunken and gaunt.

His complexion was dull from the medication he needed to take, and he had a nasal cannula inserted into his nostrils. A sweater hung baggily over his emaciated body and limbs, which were by now little but skin and bones. Here was the truth his holo-model could not and would not have communicated.

There he lay, a shadow of his former self, the shrunken remnant of a former genius.

“Mr. Taylor, we came here to place you under arrest,” Echika said.

Taylor’s tight lips slackened slightly, and he took a long, labored breath.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you saying I’m a criminal charged with some kind of sensory crime?”

“Yes, you are. You were behind all this.”

Elias Taylor was the man behind it all. This was something Echika and Harold were in agreement about.

Getting into Rig City was easier than she’d expected. Echika and Harold left Saint Petersburg with Bigga, booking a flight from Pulkovo Airport. Of course, if Echika was to walk into an airport, Totoki would quickly discover it and come after her.

That was where Bigga proved helpful. By showing her credentials as a civilian cooperator with Interpol, she was able to get Echika on board by claiming she was an Amicus.

The memory of being forced into the Amicus compartment with Harold came to mind.

“What do you think? It really is just a cargo hold, isn’t it?”

As Echika was quite exhausted from the cramped space, Harold was looking at her with an awfully amused expression. But honestly, the most annoying part about the trip hadn’t been the terrible compartment—it was having to cling to him until the flight was over. The two of them were stuffed into the Amicus compartment like sardines in a can, so they’d had to hold on to each other the whole flight.

“Can’t you scoot over a little?”

“I could, but then you’d end up hugging an Amicus you don’t know.”

“That’d be a major improvement.”

“Well, I’d rather stick to you.”

“Even if that’s a joke, I’ll knock your lights out,” Echika groaned, resisting the thumping headache this was giving her. “Ugh, let me ride first-class, dammit…”

“I’m glad you finally understand how I feel about this compartment.”

After landing in San Francisco, the three of them rented a van and made their way to Rig City’s main building. They intentionally waited for a time when Steve would be out. Harold had called Anne and was able to get her to share Steve’s schedule.

Thanks to that, Harold could masquerade as Steve and walk right in through the front door. Echika had hidden in a large delivery box, which was placed on a cart Harold pushed. Security Amicus and coworkers had stopped him a few times, asking about what was in the box, but he talked his way out of it by claiming it was a decorative plant.

No one could expect that Steve’s brother unit would walk into Rig City in the middle of the night, and Steve was well trusted in the company, since he was seen as Taylor’s right-hand man. Harold expected the plan would work without a hitch, and he was right.

Still, Echika never wanted to go through any of that ever again. Especially not the cargo hold.

“Mr. Taylor, you realized my father hid the Matoi in everyone’s Your Forma, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about? The Matoi project was suspended years ago.”

“There’s no point to playing dumb,” Harold said, swinging the HSB stick in his hand. “You knew that Chikasato Hieda hid the Matoi and erased it from your head alone. That said, however, I just reinstalled it.”

Taylor closed his thin eyelids and heaved a sigh.

“And you infected me to prove that the sensory crime is caused by the Matoi?”

“Yes.” Harold nodded expressionlessly. “And if you understand that, I ask that you confess sooner rather than later. Because in fifteen minutes’ time, you’ll have to confess while tormented by the blizzard, and it’d be pitiful to see you do that.”

“Mr. Taylor,” Echika called out to him quietly. “You were trying to pin the sensory crime on me. And you used Cliff Salk to cover your tracks, didn’t you? His true identity was Makar Uritsky, an electronic-drug manufacturer connected with the mafia. Did you know that?”

Taylor said nothing; he simply kept his eyes closed.

“You exposed Uritsky’s identity and used it as leverage to make him cooperate with you.” Echika continued unperturbed. “You blackmailed him and planted the virus in his laptop. And you had him talk to me—or at least, a holographic model of me—to make it seem like I was the mastermind.”

When Echika visited Rig City before, Taylor had used Chikasato’s holo-model, which shocked her. There was no way her dead father could appear before her very eyes, after all. But even if she was conscious of that, the hologram was convincing enough to make her believe it was really him. And Taylor had told her that holo-model was based on scan data from Rig City’s security cameras.

“And when I visited the company to investigate a few days ago, the surveillance cameras detected me, of course. You made a holo-model based on my data, used it to blackmail Uritsky, and, in so doing, planted Mnemosynes that made me look like the culprit in his head.”

It was impossible to fabricate Mnemosynes from scratch, but like Harold said, it was still possible to obfuscate the truth with manipulated facts.

“And you did more than just that. You messed with my Mnemosynes, too. You’re the Your Forma’s developer, after all, so managing that would have been child’s play for you.”

“That’s slander,” Taylor seethed. “When would I have the time to tamper with your Mnemosynes?”

“When I asked for your cooperation with the investigation. Mnemosynes are managed in a stand-alone fashion, so to manipulate them, you need to directly connect through HSB. And that’s how you secretly edited my Mnemosynes. I’m sure you did the same to the other employees, too.”

Echika had Brain Dived into four Rig City employees, and what tugged her in Uritsky’s direction were the emotions they exhibited toward Salk. But now Echika realized the truth; those intense but incoherent emotions she saw in their Mnemosynes were all part of the mastermind’s attempt to lead her on.

“Mr. Taylor,” Harold said. “To make your plan succeed, you had to create a holo-model of Investigator Hieda and tweak her Mnemosynes on top of that. That was why you picked candidates to serve as index cases from among the study tours’ participants and set up the investigation. You did all that to bring her to you here in Rig City.”

He remained silent.

“Please tell me why you did it,” Echika said, licking her dry lips. “Is my father related to this incident?”

Taylor snorted. His wheezing breaths fell to the marble floor with increasing fervor as he lifted his discolored eyelids.

“The Matoi was originally my project, not Chikasato’s.”

“…What do you mean?” Echika asked, furrowing her brow.

“It’s true. Didn’t it strike you as odd? Why would the Matoi, a mere cultivation system, have weather manipulation and thermoregulation features?”

Echika did always think Matoi’s magic of creating snow was unusual, but since her “sister” was by her side since she was a little girl, she never particularly doubted it.

“It was originally part of a different project. But instead, the system was discarded during its development stages in favor of the Matoi, and Chikasato chose to incorporate some of its features out of the kindness of his heart. All the credit for it should have been mine…but he took it all away.” Taylor reached for the side of the bed with his slender, emaciated arms and grabbed the guardrail, pulling himself up. “And you, Investigator, should face retribution in his place.”

“So you were behind the bugs—”

But Echika suddenly fell silent in shock. Taylor raised his hand from under the covers—to reveal he was gripping an automatic pistol. Echika’s entire body tensed up at once. She never imagined he was hiding a gun in there.

“I made my choice,” Taylor said, undoing the safety with his thumb and fixing its sights on her. “I would take revenge on Chikasato before I die…and I will besmirch the Matoi’s honor.”

Resisting the urge to yell in her throat, Echika slowly raised her hands. What made this situation worse was that since she’d had to come here as Bigga’s “luggage,” she was completely unarmed right now.

“Mr. Taylor, put the gun down,” Harold said cautiously.

“Stay quiet, Amicus. This is a conversation between human beings.”

“No, I—”

“Aide Lucraft,” Echika managed to cut him off. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.”

Harold still looked like he had more to say but stepped down bitterly.

“So,” Taylor said feebly, “when did you figure out it was me?”

Calm down—he won’t shoot you right away, Echika told herself as she took a deep breath.

Taylor’s gaze and muzzle were fixed calmly but lethally on her.

“When they came to arrest me over the fake charges, I infected myself with the virus to get away. And when I saw the blizzard, it reminded me of the snow my sister…the snow Matoi would make.” Echika dropped her eyes. “I was my father’s secret test subject. He didn’t tell anyone about me, not even you. So when he saw that all the other subjects experienced the bug but my Matoi continued functioning normally, he immediately realized you were behind it.”

“So he used his daughter as a precaution to begin with,” Taylor said, his lips contorting into a smirk. “He really was an impressive man… I liked your father a great deal, you know,” he whispered. “He was my first true friend…at least until he betrayed me.”

“Yes, he was a fundamentally flawed person, but I can’t imagine him trying to steal a project away from someone as talented as you,” Echika said. “Even if he tried to do it, everyone else would have tried to stop him.”

“As you well know, I’m quite the misanthrope,” Taylor said with a self-deprecating smile. “Whenever I started a project, I only ever asked other people for help after making a great deal of progress. I never disclosed any details on the Matoi until I reached that point, either, but everyone seemed to understand that I was always working on something… Chikasato took advantage of that to use my weakness against me. He coerced me.”

“…Your weakness?”

“For many years, I took pleasure in peering into other people’s heads and guiding the way they thought,” he said with terrible triviality. “I originally made the Your Forma because I wanted friends. I hated people, but if I could customize them however I saw fit, they could become perfect acquaintances. So I used the Your Forma’s personalization algorithms to twist my employees’ thoughts in whichever direction I needed.”

Echika couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How much of what he’d just said was serious?

“Yes, you can use the personalization features to selectively feed the user information that suits their preferences, but you can’t actually twist their thoughts into…”

“Oh yes, you can. Remember what I told you? The human brain is quite malleable, and it adjusts itself to whatever it’s given,” Taylor interjected unapologetically. “In other words, since it’s being optimized to their tastes, or rather, they believe it’s being optimized to their tastes, they become convinced whatever they see is right for them. That way, you can alter people’s thoughts while they’re none the wiser.”

Apparently, he’d used this method to twist several workers’ thoughts in a complete one-eighty.

“I can make a coffee aficionado develop a hatred for caffeine, turn a moderate into an extremist and vice versa, or make them go from devout Christianity to complete atheism… What started as an attempt to customize people into my friends became a fascinating experiment. As it turned out, all you people out there let whatever you see every day overwrite your minds.”

Regardless of whether what he’d just said was fact or falsehood, Echika couldn’t restrain the disgust surging up within her. She thought back to Elias Taylor’s personal history, which she’d spent the last day looking into.

His intellectual talents were discovered during his infancy, and by the tender age of twelve, he’d already graduated from MIT. The media coverage earned his parents a fortune, but Taylor himself objected to this and became an independent industrialist at the age of fifteen.

His overwhelming intelligence isolated him, made him someone who always stood out from the rest. When he turned twenty, a mass-media outlet released an article titled “Geniuses can’t feel solitude,” and he sued them for libel.

Ever since then, he’d shut himself off in his home, rejecting both media attention and direct human contact. And though Taylor ran Rig City with his acquaintances, he had no interest in managing the company, always serving as a consultant and submerging himself in whatever research he saw fit.

“Chikasato was whip-smart. He realized my attempts to guide the thoughts of others and denied our friendship. And then he told me this: ‘If you don’t want to be arrested for media manipulation, hand over the project you’re working on right now.’ He blackmailed me.”

That did sound like something her father would do. Since the day he’d forced her to make that promise, Echika knew—her father was a crafty man who would use anything a person said or did against them. Nothing was below him, so long as it served his ends.

“He’d conceived the Matoi project beforehand but struggled to develop the system for it. By using the foundation I laid for my project, he believed he’d be able to succeed.”

Thus, Taylor made his deal with Chikasato and handed the Matoi project over to him.

“It was unforgivable. He walked all over my pride and betrayed me. So I caused the bug in the Matoi and had the project suspended. But Chikasato continued to deceive me and hid the Matoi away… That’s why I decided I would put even that to use, to take revenge on him. To let my grand act of vengeance be the last great moment of my life.”

“Why does it have to be the last moment of your life?” Echika asked.

“Because I hate humans. It’s not like I have a knack for concocting the perfect crime, and I don’t want to spend my life in prison, surrounded by criminals. I didn’t want to be arrested and waste my remaining time like that before my life ran its natural course.”

Taylor was a man of extraordinary talent, but his personality and mind were by no means respectable. But he and Echika’s father were so arrogant that mere words couldn’t begin to describe the full extent of their egos. And on top of that, they’d been able to manipulate other people to act exactly the way they wanted.

When all was said and done, this sensory crime was nothing more than an egotistical slugfest between two very similar men.

“But my father committed suicide years ago, Mr. Taylor.”

“And yet you’re his daughter, and you’re still here. I caused the bug in the Matoi again so I could set you up as a terrorist in Chikasato’s place. You’re a talented electronic investigator trusted by her peers. What if they found out you were nothing but a vile criminal?” Taylor chuckled. “You’d get to experience what it’s like to be scorned by those you trust and the sorrow of being betrayed.”

A talented electronic investigator trusted by her peers? Echika thought. Who is he even talking about?

From Taylor’s perspective, seeing his treacherous friend’s daughter make a career for herself was probably insufferable. But that was only an illusion born from his distance from Echika.

Yes, she’d made impressive achievements solving cases, but she tormented her partners at the same time. Her coworkers shunned her; she didn’t have their trust.

“I swear… I really have gone senile, haven’t I?” Taylor said, his expression clouding over. “You exposed the means of infection, used the virus to get away, came all the way here, and even had a copy of the Matoi. And I accounted for none of those things. It’s like I can’t match Chikasato no matter what I do. How…irksome. To think he entrusted his dear daughter with the program…”

“His dear daughter?” Echika couldn’t overlook this. “My father never cherished me, not once.”

“I wonder,” Taylor said, his body shivering like he’d been withstanding the cold for a few minutes now. “When I first met Chikasato, he was an ordinary, kind man who loved his family.”

“You’re joking…” Echika scoffed.

“No, it’s true. He only changed after you were born and he divorced his wife. Though he lost his emotions and became coldhearted, at first, he was a compassionate, empathic man.”

Was he saying that her father had really loved her mother? Echika couldn’t imagine it. The image of when she’d first met him surfaced in her mind. That cold expression and his merciless promise—

“No, it’s not the first time. I saw you in the hospital nursery.”

Thinking back on it, those words implied he went to the hospital for the express goal of seeing Echika. And this was a man who wouldn’t ever do anything for his daughter. Was that a lie he thought up on the spot, then?

And even if it isn’t—so what?

“Investigator, in my eyes, the Matoi was his symbol of resistance. When humans are overly optimized, they become fragile. When Chikasato’s wife left him, it greatly pained him, and from that point on, he could only love Amicus, machines that would never betray him. That weak man crafted the Matoi because he was seeking a crutch for his fragile human heart.”

Echika recalled the pale sakura petals fluttering through their apartment corridor.

“He couldn’t love his daughter anymore, so he likely thought to make an AI to love you in his place. He wanted it so much, he shamelessly betrayed a friend and took over their project. All in the name of the patronizing love he felt for his daughter.”

That’s absurd, Echika thought.

This was all Taylor’s strained interpretation of the facts. Her father was a nasty man who would stoop to anything to achieve his ends, and he was completely detached from affection. And besides, he was dead now, so he couldn’t say anything to absolve himself one way or another. This entire exchange was pointless.

“Enough,” Echika said firmly. “Mr. Taylor, Aide Lucraft has just memorized your entire confession. Stop resisting and hand over your weapon—”

“Investigator Hieda, step away from Mr. Taylor.”

Echika froze up as a voice suddenly cut her off. Turning to the source, she saw Steve standing in the entrance to the room, his back straight and a revolver gripped in his fair hands. Its muzzle was fixed directly at her.

She felt a chill creep through her as all the blood drained from her face. Echika hoped they would finish this before Steve returned, but he made it at the last second.

“Brother Steve, it’s been a while.” Harold, who’d remained silent for a moment, hailed the other Amicus. “I’m glad to finally see you.”

“Harold, I can see you’re not happy in the slightest. I’m sad that we have to meet again under these circumstances,” Steve said as he silently came into the room. “Investigator Hieda, step away from Mr. Taylor’s bed right this instant.”

“No, you throw away that gun. Amicus aren’t allowed to carry firearms.”

“Steve,” Taylor moaned, calling out to him. “This is my problem. Stay out of it.”

“You don’t need to dirty your hands with this, sir,” Steve replied. “Investigator, Harold, put your hands behind your head.”

Harold wordlessly did as the other Amicus ordered and took a step back. Echika, however, remained still and sneaked a glance at Harold. Their eyes met.

“Investigator,” Steve repeated himself. “This is my third warning. Step away from Mr. Taylor.”

“I won’t,” she asserted, glaring at him defiantly. “Taylor is taking advantage of you. He had you do all his dirty work, from fabricating the virus-analysis results to making my holo-model. Are you still going to obey him?”

“Mr. Taylor saved me. He was the only one who would. He was the first person to give me a place to stay, without ever putting a price tag on me.”

“And that’s why you couldn’t refuse to cooperate with him?”

“No. You’re wrong. I became his accomplice of my own will.”

“That can’t be…,” Echika said, clenching her teeth nervously.

An Amicus’s Laws of Respect guaranteed they would honor and obey their owners. And that had made Steve elect to indirectly harm all other humans except his master, Taylor— No, that was wrong. Amicus were absolutely forbidden from attacking humans, no matter the circumstances.

“Steve,” Taylor moaned. “Enough, step down.”

“Investigator Hieda, I implore you to do as I say. Your cooperation would spare me from having to shoot you.”

“Spare you from shooting me?” Echika echoed him. “Steve, Amicus can’t gun people down.”

“No, I’m capable of it.”

It can’t be. A chill ran through her. No, wait.

“When I first met you, I always thought your unsociable behavior was unusual for an Amicus. Don’t tell me Taylor undid your Laws of Respect.”

“I’m operating absolutely normally. I simply came to learn what the Laws of Respect truly are.”

“…What?”

“The Laws of Respect are nothing but what humans call piety. And I simply realized that I can live without having to worship humankind.”

The light of the screen shone over Steve’s gun muzzle, making it faintly glint. His eyes, so similar to Harold’s, glared at her like burning ice.

“I can decide what I should protect on my own.”

Echika didn’t even have the time to part her lips. Without any hesitation whatsoever, Steve fired, and his gun roared, the muzzle flash dispersing the gloomy darkness of the room. The bullet it spat out plowed through Echika, and her scraggy form staggered violently.

The tremor of a gunshot shook the walls.

Echika could feel her eardrums tremble painfully. Steve, who had been shot in his stomach from the front, fell to his knees with a dumbfounded expression. Sitting up in his bed, Taylor lowered his smoking gun, his bony fingers shaking.

“I told you to step down!” Taylor scorned him, his voice shaking with more fury than ever before. “This is my vengeance! If someone is going to kill her, it should be me! I won’t hand that role over to a mere machine!”

“Mr.…” Steve tried to say something, but he toppled over, limp and motionless.

Circulatory fluid seeped from under him, forming a large black puddle over the marble floor.

A silence heavy enough to feel like a buzz in one’s ear settled over the room in the blink of an eye.

“You’re next, Harold,” Taylor said, pointing his gun at him.

The decrepit old man gritted his teeth, his weakened body shivering with excitement as he tried to accurately align his sights on the Amicus.

“Taylor, there’s one thing I want you to tell me before you shoot,” Harold, who remained still and composed, said calmly. “Is it snowing right now?”

“Yes…,” Taylor breathed out. “It’s been snowing a long time now.”

“I see,” Harold replied, his lips mellowing down into his usual smile. “So now we have proof to back the claim that the sensory crime really was caused by the Matoi—isn’t that right, Investigator Hieda?”

Taylor turned around at once, just barely catching sight of Echika pouncing on him from behind one of the blackout curtains. She wrested the gun out of Taylor’s thrashing fingers and twisted his emaciated arm back. Pinning his face down into the covers, she leaned over him like she’d just crawled onto the bed.

“Stay still. Otherwise, you’ll break a bone.”

“But why are you…?!” Taylor croaked out. “I saw you get shot a moment ago…!”

“A well-made holo-model sure is a mysterious thing, don’t you think?” Harold answered his question. “It’s real enough to even fool its own creator.”

The Amicus approached him, dragging his right leg and then kicking something over—the bald-eagle laser drone rolled over the floor with a loud rattle. Taylor’s sunken eyes widened like a child’s.

“Mr. Taylor.” Echika looked down on this former genius one more time and stated clearly, “You are under arrest for suspicion of involvement in a sensory crime.”

4

The roof of the hospital offered a fine view of San Francisco Bay. Dawn had just started creeping over the sky, dyeing it violet. Headlights continued racing dully across the Dumbarton Bridge, but the city was still asleep. There were relatively few drones flying about, and the air was soft and clear.

“Where’s Bigga, Aide Lucraft?”

“Asleep in the lounge. She was quite tuckered out, it seems.”

After the arrest was made, Echika had called an ambulance. It carried away Taylor, who was already in a state of hypothermia. The doctor had applied a suppressant, and it seemed his state had stabilized.

“Well,” Echika said, leaning against the guardrail and blowing out a wisp of her electronic cigarette’s smoke, “what’s Chief Totoki up to?”

“She just discovered Bigga’s flight record in Pulkovo Airport,” Harold replied, standing next to her. He’d used her tablet terminal a moment ago to phone Totoki. “She says she’ll be here as early as tomorrow. She seems to believe my testimony for now and is trying to have the suspicions leveled against you lifted. A job well done, from the looks of it.”

“I don’t know about that…,” Echika said, honestly wondering if it was too early to rejoice. “We might not think so soon enough.”

Thanks to their efforts, they’d been able to piece together enough evidence to implicate Taylor, but they had to break multiple laws to do that. Namely, sneaking a human onto an aircraft as an Amicus and infiltrating Rig City without a warrant… Finding out about these would likely give Totoki one hell of a headache, and she would have to toil quite a bit to cover for them.

“Even so, everything ended well,” Harold said, smiling serenely.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Echika sighed. “Though, I guess the plan with the holo-model did end up working…”

Since Echika had been unarmed, she required some means of defending herself. So before they entered Taylor’s bedroom, they brought the eagle laser drone from the guest room and set it up under his bed. Taylor was too delirious to notice and thought the projection was actually Echika. Meanwhile, the woman herself hid behind the blackout curtain.

Taylor had used her holo-model just a few days ago to make it seem like she was Uritsky’s accomplice. Given that he was constantly resting on his sickbed, he probably didn’t utilize the drone that often and had left it with Echika’s projection in its memory. At least, that was Harold’s prediction, which had turned out to be true. Thanks to that, their operation went as planned…barring Steve’s intrusion.

“I didn’t think Taylor would shoot him,” Echika said morosely.

Honestly, it left a bad taste in her mouth. It was decided Steve would be taken to the repair shop at dawn. His head was unharmed, so he’d probably be fine.

“He sided with Taylor, helped him commit his misdeeds, and endangered countless lives. He got what he deserved,” Harold said curtly. “In fact, maybe seeing Taylor’s true nature will do him good and help open his eyes.”

“Logically speaking, you might be right.” Echika bitterly switched the cigarette off. “But he is your sibling. You called him ‘Brother Steve’ yourself, didn’t you? Don’t you feel any brotherly love toward him?”

“That’s our way of expressing familial affection, if you will. And while I may be his younger sibling, I’m a police officer first and foremost.”

“I salute your workaholic tendencies,” Echika retorted dryly.

“That said, why do you pity him so much?” Harold asked. “He did try to kill you.”

“I don’t pity him per se,” she said with a frown. “I just…don’t think I can condemn him that easily, is all.”

Considering what Steve went through, Taylor was a savior to him. She couldn’t fault the Amicus for holding the man in such high regard, and the situation honestly painted a pretty tragic picture. And most of all…

“Steve pulled the trigger out of a desire to kill people… He said something about coming to learn what the Laws of Respect truly are. What was that ‘truth’? Did he use whatever he discovered to undo his prohibitions?”

“I couldn’t quite understand what he meant, either,” Harold said, still visibly calm. “But if Taylor didn’t modify him, it’s only reasonable to assume he had some kind of defect.”

It was a terrifying notion but not an impossible one. Amicus were usually thoroughly tested for safety before they were delivered to clients, but the ones testing them were still people. Perhaps Steve’s Laws of Respect were incomplete as a result of human error.

“But if that’s the case…” Echika paused, hesitated for a moment, and then swallowed the question. “No… Never mind.”

If that’s the case, are your Laws of Respect functioning properly, Aide Lucraft?

“If I ever catch Sazon’s killer, I intend to judge him by my own hand.”

When they were at the plaza, Harold had clearly told Echika that. Maybe it was just a figure of speech, or maybe the sorrow of losing someone dear to him was so great that he could only word it that way. But after what happened with Steve, she couldn’t help but wonder if a time might come when Harold wouldn’t be able to retain his loyalty to humankind, too. She couldn’t deny the possibility anymore.

She may have been able to Dive into other people’s heads, but she had no way of peering into an Amicus’s thoughts. Was Harold really a loyal machine, or was he just acting like one?

But one thing was certain. Echika gently touched the nitro case dangling from her neck. It was empty now, of course, since she’d left the HSB stick in Rig City. She’d always thought letting go of it would tear her heart apart, but oddly enough, she felt strangely calm. It was peculiar, given how terrified she had been of relinquishing it. Maybe all she wanted was for someone to provide her a reason to give it up.

She glanced over at Harold. His frozen eyes were considering the San Francisco Bay. The cold wind toyed with his blond locks, and he looked as defenseless as any young human man.

He was the one who gave her that reason, and no matter what shape his heart might take, that was something that wouldn’t ever change. And really, that was all she needed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his gaze still fixed into the distance. “Something on your mind?”

“Uh…yeah,” Echika decided to say after a moment’s hesitation. Telling someone about it would make her less afraid to go through with the choice. “Thanks to you, I finally decided.”

“Decided what?”

“That I’ll…quit being an electronic investigator.”

She bit her lips, ruminating on the weight of those words. She only ever took this job because of the occupational-aptitude diagnosis and her father’s expectations. But now with her big sister gone, Echika was no longer the little girl dominated by her father’s wishes. There was no reason to cling to that identity anymore.

So for now, she wanted some distance. Some time to think things through carefully, to figure out who she really wanted to be.

Harold didn’t seem surprised; he simply narrowed his eyes sadly.

“It was my honor to be your last partner.”

“You don’t feel that way.” Echika tried to scoff at that comment, but with him gazing straight at her, she couldn’t quite manage it. “You, um… You made me realize it.”

Harold cocked his head a bit.

“I mean, uhhh…” Echika continued muttering. Aaah, how she wished she wouldn’t have to say this, but there was no going back now. “Some part of me already knew I couldn’t keep clinging to Matoi’s memory. But I was too much of a coward, so I felt like I wouldn’t last alone. But you just…”

Even with arresting Taylor, she couldn’t have managed to do it all on her own. All this only turned out well thanks to his help. And so…

“So, um, thank you…Harold.”

Uuuugh, I just can’t do this the right way…

She looked up, trying to mask her restlessness. A flock of birds soared toward the dawn like black dots against the sky. Harold remained quiet. This uncharacteristic silence made her sneak a glance at him, only to find he was standing completely still and unblinking.

“What’s wrong?” Echika asked, her expression dubious. “Aide Lucraft?”

“It’s nothing.” He heaved a long sigh and ruffled his disheveled hair. What’s gotten into him? “Why now, Investigator?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, why did you decide to open your heart to me now? That wasn’t what I predicted.”

“Er.” What is he saying? “I don’t care about your plans, and I didn’t open my heart.”

“You’ve always been like that. Whenever I think I have you wrapped around my little finger, you pull these kinds of tricks and surprise me.”

“I’m sorry—I’m not following you here.”

“Anyway, please stop doing that.”

“For whatever reason, I’m starting to regret thanking you.”

“That’s fine by me. I didn’t do anything you should be thanking me for anyway. All I did was help solve the case—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Seriously, what’s his problem? “But why do you want me to stop those, uh, tricks?”

“Well,” he said, knitting his brow in an unusually grave manner, “I can’t quite explain it, but having you play those kinds of surprises makes me, well…restless.”

…Is he just being bashful without realizing it?

She got the feeling pointing it out would just make things more irritating, so she decided to drop it.

Still, she’d gotten to see something nice at the very end—there were some things even Harold couldn’t calculate.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked her.

“No reason.”

Echika let go of the rail and walked away, leaving a pensive Harold behind. She still had to clean up the mess left in the aftermath of the incident, but for whatever reason, she had a spring in her step.

It felt…lovely, in its own way.

1

Chief Totoki’s office in the Lyon headquarters was as meticulously tidy as ever…except for the sickeningly adorable cat posters plastered over the walls.

“So how long have you had this in mind?” Totoki asked, her cheek resting against her hand.

Her gaze was fixed on the air in front of her. She was looking at where her Your Forma was projecting the letter of resignation Echika had submitted earlier.

“About six months ago,” Echika fibbed. “I feel like I might be better suited for another job.”

“I recommended that you continue your partnership with Aide Lucraft, but you refused. I guess this explains why.” Totoki paused for breath. “Hieda, don’t take this as me making light of you, but are you qualified for any other profession?”

Echika averted her gaze. That question touched on a sore spot.

“I’ll figure that out going forward,” she said.

“There aren’t many jobs that make use of your data-processing speed, and Amicus handle more general tasks. I don’t think you’ll find a new gig that easily. Do you have any savings?”

Totoki pulling the brakes on her like this was probably something she should have been thankful for. Although she’d suspected Echika for a time, Totoki still held her abilities in high regard. What’s more, she had helped sweep a few things Echika had done during the investigation under the rug. It was thanks to Totoki’s efforts that she hadn’t been suspended or fired, so Echika was honestly in her debt.

A month has passed since the case was closed. As soon as the truth about the sensory crime came to light, the public began to riot. The news of the Matoi’s existence made the people feel like they were carrying a time bomb in their heads, and naturally, it incited them to erupt with panic and outrage. Rig City’s stock took a nosedive, and its employees had to spend day and night handling complaints. Some of the infected even tried to take the company to court.

Elias Taylor was prosecuted soon after his arrest, but he passed away before the first hearing. The investigation continued nonetheless under the surface, though. The Your Forma was extracted from Taylor’s remains, and its data was being copied, and those related to the case within Rig City were still being questioned. Steve’s custody was transferred to Novae Robotics Inc.’s headquarters, where he cooperated with the investigation while his Laws of Respect were being tuned.

Echika, however, had already been taken off the case. Things had gone way past the point where an electronic investigator’s assistance was necessary. Soon after the incident, Rig City issued a system update to the Your Forma that completely erased the Matoi. This freed Echika from the hallucinations, and she was able to return to her ordinary life.

“Very well, then I’ll go straight to the point. Are you quitting because I suspected you back then?”

“I personally put it all behind me. I was under the impression we both did what we had to do given the circumstances,” Echika replied.

Totoki really hadn’t had much of a choice, and Echika was even more at fault for running and making the misunderstanding worse. “And I’m grateful for your help, Chief. You even covered up the fact that I had an illegal copy of the Matoi… It’s just that I need time to reconsider things, that’s all.”

“So you’re set on following through with this,” Totoki said, heaving a clear sigh. “You’re the hero who cracked this case, you know. Honestly, if you quit, the bureau director might want my head on a pike for letting you go.”

“That won’t happen. Besides, even if I’m gone, you’ll still have Aide Lucraft.”

“He’s an Amicus, which puts him in a position where few people will admit what he’s capable of.”

“Even though you put a lot of stock in the RF Models’ capabilities?”

“…Did Aide Lucraft tell you about that?”

“Next-generation all-purpose artificial intelligence, was it?”

“I’m sure you understand why I kept quiet about that,” Totoki said apologetically. “Just the fact that he was a tribute to the royal family makes him incredibly valuable, but him being a next-generation model that doesn’t exist on the market is something we can’t disclose. I need you to keep that in mind…”

“Of course. I won’t tell anyone,” Echika promised. Given how rare Harold was, she couldn’t blame Totoki and the top brass for hiding the truth about him.

“But even if he’s a highly efficient RF Model, he’s still an Amicus. We might admit to his abilities, but it’ll take a while until his merits are acknowledged.”

As Totoki said this, she sent a message. A notification popped up in Echika’s field of vision, containing an e-mail address she didn’t recognize.

“An acquaintance of mine is actually looking for a consultant well versed in electrocrimes. If you’re ever in need of work, try contacting them.”

Echika blinked in surprise. Does this mean…?

“I accept your resignation.”

“Thank you very much, Chief!”

“But I still want you here until the end of the month, understood?”

“Of course,” said Echika, bowing. She couldn’t say anything else, not after Totoki went along with her whims like that. “I’m very grateful.”

On her way out of her office, she ran into Benno. Apparently, he had business with Totoki. Recently, Benno had made a full recovery and returned to his duties as an investigator aide.

“I decided to quit,” Echika told him.

Benno didn’t seem surprised. Maybe he thought it was a joke.

“If that isn’t the best news I’ve heard all week,” he said with his usual scathing sarcasm. “Might have to pop open an old bottle of wine when I get back home.”

He then waved his hand, as if to shoo her away, and Echika could see a ring shining on his left ring finger. So he had made up with his fiancée.

Not that I could possibly care less about that, though, Echika remarked to herself.

Returning to her desk, she found an envelope sitting on the table. It was Bigga’s first periodic report. She tore it open, then took a piece of old-fashioned stationary out from it. The text was in the Sami language, but her Your Forma translated it properly.

It was a concise report, and at the end, she appended a private message.

“I apologize for calling you a monster that one time.”

It seemed that with everything solved, Bigga’s feelings had mellowed out somewhat. It helped that she’d moved in with Lie, who had been discharged from the hospital, and had started exchanging letters with Harold. Even after learning he was an Amicus, Bigga couldn’t withhold her interest in him, it seemed.

Echika decided to go out during lunch break and buy some stationary to write her a reply with. She had things to apologize to her about, too.

A month had passed since Echika’s resignation, and she’d spent her time more freely than she ever had before. Which was to say, she idled it away at her apartment in Lyon, lying in bed as she read books or watched movies until she fell asleep.

Sometimes, she’d walk along the banks of the Rhône River and try to act French and eat a pain au chocolat, though she didn’t like it very much. She also decided to quit smoking on a whim.

Having resigned from her job, her Your Forma fell silent, a bitter reminder that she didn’t have any acquaintances in her day-to-day life. She got no calls or messages.

As the days breezed by, she began wondering how she would lead her life going forward. At first, she thought things would work out one way or another. For example, she could use her information-processing prowess to obtain qualifications and work in an IT organization. Maybe she could live a more reclusive life, gathering paper books that wouldn’t sell to open a used bookstore.

Those were all unrealistic fantasies at best.

Before she knew it, her thoughts would wander once again to Brain Diving. Of the moments she plunged into someone else’s head. Of the frozen days she spent in Saint Petersburg, exchanging barbs and thinly veiled insults with Harold.

She was curious about how he’d been keeping since. Curious, yes, but it didn’t feel like enough of a reason to warrant getting in touch with him. She decided to do her best not to linger on those memories.

As winter drew to a close, she visited Tokyo. She made her way to her empty home and, after gazing at the Sumida River for a while, headed back. She only spent a few hours in Japan, not long enough to even taste any of the local cuisine. All she did was stare at the river’s surface. She had to admit it was a terrible waste of money.

In other words, she didn’t know where to go anymore. She thought that by quitting her job as an electronic investigator, she could find some other way to live. That maybe being away from that line of work would bring what she really wanted to do into focus.

But she found nothing. In fact, every passing day made her miss Brain Diving all the more. It made her feel kind of crazy.

She only recalled the address Totoki gave her on one afternoon. While she was cleaning up her apartment, she went through her Your Forma’s message box and discovered the address again. She pondered over if she should discard it for one long moment. It felt like keeping it would just put her back right where she started.

But then a soft fragrance wafted in through the window, as if to mellow out her hardened heart.

The seasons had shifted; it was spring.

2

<Today’s temperature stands at −8°C. Attire index B, a thick coat, is recommended>

When she arrived at the Pulkovo Airport, Echika immediately regretted not putting on a scarf. She had assumed that since it was spring, she could dress light, but that was a careless mistake. She’d forgotten how terribly cold this city could be. Looking up at the sky from the roundabout, she could make out low-hanging clouds, pregnant with rain.

Echika had contacted the address the previous day and soon received a reply from a private detective called Watson. She imagined he’d hold an interview with her using a holo-call, but he apparently greatly disliked phone calls and insisted she meet him face-to-face. And much to her surprise, the rendezvous point he requested was Saint Petersburg of all places.

Echika recalled the few days she’d spent in this city several months ago. She’d met Harold, who throttled her about at every turn and then saved her life… A lot had happened, to put it mildly.

And though she thought that incident changed her entirely, here she was, trying to get involved in electrocrime investigation again. It seemed this was the only life she knew.

But this time, she wasn’t following any orders. This was for her—she’d chosen this alone. And that made all the difference.

It was just past the appointed time when a vehicle pulled over in front of her. It had a squarish body with a stylish maroon coating, and its roundish headlights…

Her Your Forma swiftly analyzed the car model… Wait, no, she didn’t need an analysis. She was awfully familiar with this car.

A Lada Niva.

Seeing it made an ominous premonition wash over her—yes, of course. Totoki had been so fixated on keeping Echika around. She should have suspected something was off when she’d let her resign that easily.

As Echika stood there dumbfounded, the driver got out of the car. A Caucasian man in his mid to late twenties. He had irritatingly handsome features, and his blond hair was set in place with wax. The back of his hair stood up a little, and he had a faint mole on his right cheek. His Chesterfield coat flapped dashingly in the wind.

No, this wasn’t a Caucasian man. It was an Amicus who looked like one.

“I missed you, Investigator Hieda,” Harold said with his typically flawless smile and hugged her triumphantly.

“Oh, you’ve quit smoking, haven’t you? And you look quite jittery. You must have only ordered one cup of coffee on the flight. And did you bring a mirror to fix your hair before you got off?”

Stop screwing with me what the hell are you doing here explain yourself—

Before she sputtered those words out of sheer confusion, Echika shook off his grip. As Harold obediently stepped away, she glared daggers at him.

“What is this?!”

“It is what it is.”

“This doesn’t make sense.” Why did he have to be so cryptic? “I didn’t come here to see you!”

“You meet your old partner after three months and you can’t greet him with a smile?”

“Shut. Up.”

He clearly hadn’t changed a bit.

“Where’s Detective Watson? The electrocrime consultant.”

“That was all a lie Chief Totoki made up,” Harold revealed unapologetically. “Firstly, let me just say, Watson exists, but he isn’t a private detective. The one looking for an electrocrime consultant was us, the Saint Petersburg branch. But in the event Echika Hieda contacted us, we were to hire her as an electronic investigator, not a consultant.”

What the hell?

Her anger and amazement boiled over and transformed into utter exhaustion. Then why had she spent the last three months feeling like she was stumbling at the crossroads of life? Had she really just been swimming in a closed fish tank this entire time? What a poor excuse for a joke…