Phase3「You’ll Be Mine」

In the time between two breaths, Arato was already moving. He ran, his body moving before he could even form a solid thought in his mind. In an instant he was out onto the apartment veranda, looking down at the street below.

The car that had hit Lacia and then taken her away was nowhere to be seen. Only after noticing this did Arato realize that he didn’t know the model or color of the vehicle he was looking for.

“What kind of car was it?” Arato asked.

Yuka looked at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t know! All I remember is it was white,” she said. Then, sitting on the floor like a small child, Yuka hid her face in both hands and trembled.

“Okay. It’s okay. I’ll figure something out,” Arato said.

The blank space in their ordinary lives from where Lacia had been torn away seemed to be looming larger and larger with each passing second. He called the police, and navigated the automated guide of the emergency contact line until it connected him with the department in charge of theft. The officer on the other end informed him someone would be by in the evening, since this was an hIE theft case.

“They just carried her off. If you went after them right now, you might catch them,” Arato said.

The middle-aged male officer on the other end of the line seemed sympathetic but his response was firm. 〈We’re talking about an hIE. It’s a theft. I know this thing looks like a human, but it’s a machine. We can’t treat it the same as a kidnapping. Did the thieves enter your home? Is anyone hurt? I can go ahead and get a damage report from your network, okay? Mr. Endo? I’ll go ahead and record your address, contact information, image and voice data now, all right?〉

Hearing the officer talking about Lacia as if she was just a machine, Arato felt like he had been stabbed right through the heart, and he struggled to breathe. Haltingly, he gave the officer a description of Lacia, as well as her unit code, as he was asked for them. He also sent over an image of her.

Arato saw a small sub-window pop up on the call screen, with a simple hIE theft form. If he had theft insurance, apparently they could contact the insurance company and the hIE dealer. Of course, since Arato had found Lacia on the street, he had neither insurance nor a dealer.

“Is that it?” he asked.

〈I’ve entered this case into our database, and we’ll contact you immediately if we find her. hIE go walking around outside by themselves a lot, so there are a ton of cases of people nabbing them. Sorry, but there’s really nothing you can do but wait.〉 The officer hung up, and Arato was left in the silence of the living room.

“There’s no way I’m gonna leave it at that,” he said. Thinking back over the conversation he’d just had made his blood boil. Angrily, he took two or three shaky steps. He heard a faint sniffling from somewhere below him.

Yuka was still on the floor crying. She seemed to be blaming herself for Lacia being taken when they were together. She looked at Arato with red-rimmed eyes, and he reached out to ruffle her hair, careful not to scratch her with his fingernails.

“This isn’t your fault. I’m going to get her back, so don’t worry,” he said.

“Arato,” Yuka whined. She looked up at him, fighting back tears.

“I’ll get Lacia back, so you just get to school,” he said. If they couldn’t depend on the police, then Arato would just have to be the dependable one. Of course, he had no idea how to track down a car that had fled the scene over 10 minutes ago. He knew he wouldn’t come up with something just sitting around and thinking, though, so he just had to move.

“I need you to do what I can’t,” Arato said.

“Okay,” she said. At times like this, Yuka was good at honestly listening to his directions. With tears still shining on her face, she grabbed her own knees and stood. Then, she went over to the table where Lacia had prepared her last meal for them. “I’ll eat this all in your place, then,” she said solemnly.

“What?” Arato blinked in surprise as Yuka started to slurp down pork broth. She ate so fast, it seemed like she thought Lacia would return if she just finished breakfast.

Of course there was really nothing else Yuka could do just then. Having been told she would eat his portion for him, Arato found it too awkward to reach out for the still steaming food on the table.

“Just make sure you go to school,” he said.

Either way, the emotions bubbling up inside of him seemed like they would lead to an upset stomach if he tried to eat. While he changed into his school uniform, he called up their home assistant AI and started creating a list of items around the house that might help him. Thanks to the tags each item in the house had, the system could show him useful objects even if Arato had never used them before, or even knew they were there. By aiming his pocket terminal’s camera around, the positions of useful objects were shown as red dots.

He found what he was looking for lying around in his dad’s room; it was a pair of terminal goggles. They would be more convenient to use than having his pocket terminal in his hands while he ran around.

Arato slipped on the goggles and turned them on. A check pattern appeared, so the goggles could project images directly onto his retina. Once he linked the goggles up with his pocket terminal, his viewpoint was a mix of natural vision and a computer screen. In the upper-left of his field of vision, a timer counted the time since Lacia had been taken. It had been 14 minutes.

“Okay, here we go,” Arato said. He said good bye to Yuka and took off. Once he was out of the apartment, it finally clicked in his brain that he wouldn’t be able to chase a car on foot.

He searched around nearby until he found a single-person fully-automatic rental car, and rented it for the day with his allowance. Arato wasn’t too good at thinking, but he at least knew his own limits. While he walked to where the rental car was, he contacted his friends.

〈What’s the matter?〉 Kengo’s sleepy bed-head appeared in the middle of Arato’s view. Since he lived close to school, Kengo must have just been waking up.

〈A little early for a call, isn’t it?〉 Ryo was already dressed for school. He had all his buttons done up, which was oddly rigid for him.

Arato spoke desperately to his friends’ images on his goggles display. “Please help me,” he said. He had only known her for a month, but Arato already felt Lacia was a vital part of his life. He had to get her back. So, he would take any help he could get.

The automatic car he’d rented didn’t even take three minutes to track him down by his pocket terminal’s ID tag. It came rolling over to where he was waiting. Arato ran over to the curb where it was parked and jumped in. There was a chime as the rental fee was automatically deducted from his tag.

“How much money do I have anyway?” he wondered. His terminal decided this was a verbal command, and displayed Arato’s current bank account balance on his retinal display. It was low enough to make his shoulders slump.

〈Well, whatever. Did you read the manual? High-end hIEs should have stuff in there about what to do if they’re stolen,〉 Kengo’s sleepy image said.

Arato had explained the situation while settling into the seat of the rental car. The first response from his friends was useless.

Ryo seemed to have noticed something, and asked a question. 〈Hey, come to think of it, did she even come with a manual?〉

“No,” Arato said.

〈What? Why?〉

“Lacia said she had the whole thing in her memory anyway,” Arato said.

Ryo sighed. 〈It’s nice that you’re so pure-hearted, Arato, but it’s dangerous to be this defenseless. You have the security memory stick, right? If you stick that into your terminal, it’ll activate the hIE security mode and link you up with a support line from the company that made her.〉

“I just found her on the street. Obviously, she didn’t come with all the normal peripherals,” Arato said.

The car was requesting a destination through the goggle terminal. Arato didn’t know where he wanted it to go, but he couldn’t just sit around in a stopped car. He randomly picked somewhere in the port area where there wouldn’t be many people on the map on his retinal display. The car slowly pulled out onto the street and gently accelerated.

Ryo, through the call, was still going on about getting support from the manufacturer. 〈We know her unit code, so use that to connect with the supplier,〉he said.

Arato remembered the name of the high-end hIE company that, according to Ryo, had made Lacia, and opened up their site on the network. Stylus’s homepage glittered with polish, their slogan, “Beyond human,” displayed prominently.

After calling up the support desk through the site, Arato sent Lacia’s unit ID through the goggles terminal. He never could have predicted the response he got. 〈The owner of this unit has opted to have this unit reject all owner-level commands from our company.〉

“What? Why? That’s stupid,” Arato said.

〈As a countermeasure against hacking, many owners utilize the full privacy mode for their units. You may disengage this function, as the owner. The procedure will take half a day.〉

Arato huffed out a breath and slumped into the chair of the self-driving car. Thinking that in a half a day Lacia might be damaged or broken beyond repair, his eyes grew hot. He slid the AR goggles up on his forehead.

Even though he couldn’t see the screen, his bone conduction speakers still functioned. The camera function on the goggles was cut when he pushed them up, but his friends could still hear him.

〈What’s the matter, Arato?〉

〈Don’t just drop off screen all of a sudden like that. It messes things up on our side.〉

“Sorry. The company said she’s been set up to reject my commands. They won’t be able to fix that for half a day,” Arato said. He had no idea what to think about this information. The car was still moving, taking him somewhere random.

Kengo flipped out. 〈I’m seriously surprised you’ve managed to trust that machine at all. Doesn’t any of this freak you out?〉 he asked.

Ryo’s voice sounded calmer once Arato couldn’t see him on his retinal display. 〈I don’t think you should go after her. These guys went to a lot of trouble to grab that hIE. Even if you find her, you have no idea what they might do to keep her,〉 he said.

〈I’m telling you, this is ghost story territory. That machine you’ve got is like a walking urban legend. You’ve heard stories about broken hIEs coming back and haunting people, right? It’s like that. I mean, those stories are stupid, but this machine’s a horror story waiting to happen,〉Kengo added.

While listening to his friends’ advice, Arato clenched his fist and tapped it against his own ribs. Sure, Lacia was a mystery, but she was suffering right then. Arato was getting caught up in something crazy, and he was going to fix things in a way that was probably even crazier. But if he didn’t explain how he felt properly, he knew his friends wouldn’t help him.

He slid the goggles back over his eyes. “Sorry. I know you guys have all kinds of stuff you want to say to me, but I’m going to save Lacia,” he said. Then he bowed low, bending his body in half.

“I’m begging you guys,” he went on. “I may not know a thing about Lacia, but I do know she’s like family to me.” He was worried about how his friends would respond. Still, even if they said ‘no,’ he would just do it himself. No matter how long it took.

Ryo scrubbed a hand through his bangs and sighed. 〈Don’t you think you’re using the word ‘family’ too lightly here?〉 he asked.

“Yuka’s sobbing her eyes out about this, too. I can’t just let them take Lacia,” Arato said.

He waited, and finally Kengo gave a slight nod. 〈Well, if you’re going to take it that far, I guess I can help. But I can only think of one way to do this,〉 he said. Then he said he needed to get his machine ready and stood up, still in his nightshirt.

“So you know a way?” Arato asked, a little more sharply than he intended.

Kengo’s response was off-hand. 〈I’m not going to make any promises. I’m just going to try to trace that hIE unit code we got off of her before,〉 he said.

“I don’t care about promises! Whatever you can do is fine. Thanks,” Arato said.

Kengo must have been putting his password into his machine, since his visual feed cut to voice-only. 〈But the criminals who do these kinds of things tend to keep the hIE shielded so they can’t broadcast their unit codes. All they need to do is drape a sack made of shielding fiber over her top half and her code won’t be able to get out,〉 he said.

Then he continued, with a hint of disappointment in his voice. 〈Well, I’m getting a response. They’re certainly taking their sweet time. The map says they’re heading from Kasai toward Urayasu,〉 he said.

Arato’s goggles interpreted Kengo’s statement, and asked Arato if he would like to see a map. He focused his gaze on the 〈OK〉 icon, and a map popped up in front of him, with his own position at the center.

“I’m actually headed for Kasai already,” Arato said. He’d just stabbed his finger at a random place where there wouldn’t be many people, never guessing that his random shot would be a bullseye.

As his vehicle headed south from Shin Koiwa, the buildings around Arato became scarce; a huge portion of the Tokyo Bay area of the city had been lost during the last century due to the liquefaction of the ground during the Hazard. The area between Kiba and Funabashi had been hit particularly hard, with over 30% of the buildings there being knocked over and requiring rebuilding. Plus, despite everyone insisting that it was impossible, tsunamis had rocked the bay, causing major damage. Thanks to all of that, the area had become one of the least populated in Tokyo and its suburbs.

〈Hold up. I’ll get the hIE’s current position up on the map,〉 Kengo said, and sent Lacia’s location to Arato’s map. A blue dot was heading east, from the ruins of Kasai Rinkai Park.

“Thanks. That’s a big help. I definitely couldn’t have done this alone,” Arato said. He’d only gotten this far because he had friends to back him up.

〈Arato, you’ve got a talent for believing in people and asking for help. I’m actually kind of jealous of you, being able to say ‘thank you’ with a free conscience like that,〉 Kengo said.

Kengo’s words made Arato feel a little embarrassed. Sticking his finger in the car’s 3D display, he checked the machine’s voice code. “Speed up to the speed limit,” he said.

The light car accelerated rapidly on the empty road. The charge units set into the four-lane street shone, automatically charging the vehicle as it passed over them. With this evolved form of a power grid, anything that used electricity would automatically charge itself, removing any need to worry about losing power. On the flip-side, this new system required electricity bills to be paid for each individual item using a charge.

Since the solar power generators had been established in space and energy storage technology had advanced, society was rich with energy. There was no longer a need to huddle around energy sources, so the cityscape had spread out. Especially in the bay area, where there were few houses, the view was pleasantly wide and clear.

The area Arato was passing through, near the head of the Edogawa River, had been hit the heaviest during the Hazard, with the highest number of casualties. There were many vacant homes around, and the place had become a hotbed of criminal activity. It was frequently mentioned in reports of violent incidents.

Arato’s goggles made an electric noise. A man, drunk at that hour of the morning, was walking down the cracked street. He was leaning heavily on a woman whose gaudy dress showed quite a lot of skin. According to the display overlaying his vision, the woman was an hIE.

That hIE was a tool to be used. From the way the man was snuggling against her while they walked, it was clear how she was being used. A man opening up his ramen shop on the side of the main road gave the hIE’s owner a disgusted look as the pair walked by.

Seeing the way the ramen shop owner looked at the guy, Arato felt a pang of guilt at his own intense desire to get back Lacia. “I’m not a total moron, you know. I get that Lacia’s different. But I want her to stay with me. Do I look like the kind of loser who’s just chasing after a hot piece of ass?” he asked.

An hIE would always accept the romantic advances of their owner. Even if the love of an hIE was nothing more than an analog hack, at least the owner could trust that the hIE would always love them. Arato couldn’t deny that part of his obsession with Lacia was probably due to her returning his love.

On the goggles’ display, Ryo dropped his eyes and laughed. 〈No, Arato, you’re not a loser. You’re just not the kind of guy who can let something like this slide,〉 he said.

“Yeah,” Arato said. Then, after a pause, he added: “Sorry, that was weird. I wouldn’t even be thinking crap like that if this whole thing hadn’t happened.” Friends didn’t always share the same preferences. Arato just wanted to get the whole thing over with as soon as he could.

“Ryo, I’m gonna try to get ahead of the guys. Give me some guidance,” Arato said.

〈If you’ve got any good ideas, Kaidai, let’s hear ‘em. I’d like to get to school in about 15 minutes, myself,〉 Kengo said.

On the map, Arato could see that he had almost caught up to Lacia’s signal. The guys who took her didn’t seem to have noticed they were being tailed yet, so they were still moving relatively slowly. Arato spat out a sharp breath. At some point, his forehead had gotten drenched in sweat.

Ryo gave him concise, focused directions. 〈Let’s see... Let’s use the Edogawa River. If the thieves keep heading east, they’ll need to cross a bridge. So, we can predict their route like this: considering the location of the bridges around the mouth of the Edogawa River, you should be able to head them off if you take one of the northern bridges.〉

The map on the car showed the route Lacia’s signal was moving on. A line appeared, showing the shortest route to cut off Lacia’s signal from the north.

〈Be careful, Arato. The fact that these guys are heading cluelessly toward a one-way street over this bridge tells me they don’t know the area. And if they don’t know the area, it means they deliberately came here, to a place with not many people around,〉 Ryo said. In other words, it was possible the thieves were there to meet up with some comrades.

“That’s fine. If something happens to me, call the cops for me,” Arato said.

The automatic car headed toward Edogawa river across a dilapidated bridge. Since he wasn’t actually driving the car, Arato couldn’t accelerate or push it. So, even though his feelings were rushing, the car itself continued to move smoothly.

Urayasu had been the target of several revitalization projects, but it was still mostly deserted aside from the area around the station. At the request of the residents in the area, security cameras had been installed all around. They would automatically alert the police if they spotted anyone on their wanted list.

He was in an automatic vehicle that recharged any energy it used automatically, chasing an hIE, whose every reaction was automated. Everything was automated, so Arato could do all kinds of things at once. The only thing all that automation couldn’t help with was his intense emotions.

〈Arato, I still think you really shouldn’t get involved with this hIE. They’re just tools, built to do little stuff around the house for us. All this that’s happening? This is way too big and complicated to be about a tool,〉 Ryo said.

Ryo’s face, on Arato’s retinal display, looked just as doubtful as Arato felt. Then, his eyes widened. 〈Call up your home system and have it show you the inside of your apartment. Right now,〉 he said.

Arato did as he was told, and called up a display of the inside of the Endos’ apartment. He noticed it right away. Yuka had already gone to middle school, so there was no one in the kitchen, but something that should have been there was missing. Something that usually stuck out quite plainly. Something that was Lacia’s greatest mystery, which was saying something, considering that she was one big mystery herself. That huge, powerful weapon — the giant black coffin — was gone.

“What the hell. Did you know it was gone?” Arato asked, feeling a mysterious darkness behind the vanished coffin. It was heavy enough that he couldn’t shift it a single millimeter when he tried. So, seeing that it had gone was something he couldn’t even comprehend. It felt like he had been wrong about something on a fundamental level.

Ryo’s voice was trembling with tension. 〈What if that hIE is a Red Box?〉 he asked.

It was a term they had all learned in grade school. Fifty years ago, computers had reached a technological singularity that could surpass human understanding. There were thirty-nine AIs that had far surpassed the slow evolution of human brains. They were mostly used for research and development. Using new technology, those AIs created new products far beyond anything humans could grasp. These products, produced without any input from humanity, were known as ‘Red Boxes.’

“Don’t be a moron. If Lacia was one of those, what was she doing wandering around my neighborhood?” Arato asked. He felt a strange twitching in his eye. Some Red Box thing humans couldn’t even dream of making was doing housework for him, and pretending to be his ‘big sister’ in midnight snuggle sessions? His brain couldn’t handle the thought, and he felt his head getting hot.

〈We started without a single clue, but here we are already caught up to these guys thirty minutes later. Doesn’t this feel like someone orchestrated this whole thing? Like we’re just being led along some automated path by something,〉 Ryo said.

Arato began to wonder just how crazy Ryo Kaidai, his childhood friend, was going.

〈Your hIE knows about all of us. If we’re being guided, she could be part of it. You think you’re chasing after her, but she’s actually just leading you down this path. I really don’t want to think about what that hIE is trying to put in motion, if this whole thing is part of the plan,〉 Ryo said.

Thinking wasn’t his strong point, but Arato still felt a chill from Ryo’s words. “No way! Are you saying this whole kidnapping was faked?” he asked.

Kengo seemed to have trouble keeping up too. He touched his pointer finger to his forehead. 〈So, basically, the hIE wasn’t kidnapped. Instead, this whole thing was to get Endo to follow her out there, where her co-conspirators are waiting? And when Endo goes strolling in there all clueless, they’ll grab him and all we’ll hear is his scream as it all fades to black?〉 he asked in summary.

“Does everything have to turn into an urban legend with you?!” Arato shouted. That said, since it was an urban legend involving him, Arato felt cold sweat running down his back.

〈Arato, I asked someone I know who works at MemeFrame. There was an explosion a little while ago at one of our Tokyo research labs. You saw the news about it, right? Well, apparently they had to call in a PMC to handle whatever was going on there,〉 Ryo said.

Even Arato could pick up on what Ryo was implying. But the whole discussion had gotten too big for him; he was just here chasing after some kidnappers. Trying to think about the rest of it made his brain go numb.

“There’s no proof she’s related to that at all,” Arato said.

〈You found her on the same day. And around the same time, even,〉 Ryo said. He was being serious. His eyes were dark, just like the first time he had warned Arato about Lacia.

〈The explosion at our Tokyo research labs and you seeing those flowers that could control machines and meeting that hIE all happened on the same night,〉 Ryo continued.

“Saving someone is more complicated than I thought,” Arato said, forcing himself to laugh. His eyes felt weak from tension, but he clenched his teeth and kept himself coiled, ready for action. If he didn’t, he felt that he would lose in some kind of mental battle.

Lacia wasn’t a someone. She was a something. Despite that, Arato had no problem stepping into danger to get her back. He just let the automatic car continue on the route picked out based on the information and guidance his friends had given him.

The automated cityscape that spread out before and above him seemed to dwarf his high schooler’s frame. All this talk about society and Red Boxes seemed too distant for him to comprehend. Arato felt that if he didn’t focus and follow this path he’d been put on, everything would just leave him behind.

〈So you’re seriously going in there?〉 Ryo asked, sounding very worried.

Arato had good friends, and he was grateful for that, but there was only one possible answer, even for a dumb guy like him. “A girl got kidnapped, and there’s a chance I can save her before these guys do anything bad to her,” he said. “I’m not going to turn tail and run away just because of some speculation.”

“Lacia wants me to come for her,” he added. “As her owner, I’ve got to go to her.” He was scared; scared that if he didn’t keep going forward, he would always be held back by his own hesitation.

On the map, Arato’s tracking dot had already overlapped Lacia’s, and he saw a white van cut across the intersection in front of him. Lacia was in that van. The instant Arato thought that, all of his doubts were blown away.

***

The man had been angry his whole life. From the time of his earliest memories, he had known that the gears which moved the world were insane. He swallowed his spit over and over again, and each time he tasted salty bile, like his stomach just couldn’t settle down.

This was his first time.

The thin, bracelet-shaped terminal on his wrist vibrated. When he looked at it, it was displaying a warning; there was a security sweep happening nearby. The program that was essentially a lifeline for the members of the Antibody Network, who did the dirty work of destroying hIEs, was functioning properly, but the man vented his frustration by slamming his fist against the interior of his automatic vehicle.

“Dammit!” he yelled. “This is useless without a navigator!”

The Antibody Network could only provide the barest minimum of information to its members when the information touched on things that could get people arrested. They could provide general information on the location of patrols, but without an actual navigator, there would be no specifics about how to avoid them and get away. And in this situation, the man could not rely on being provided a navigator, because he was using the Antibody Network without permission.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have shouted. I scared you. I scared you, didn’t I?” the man asked. Turning around, he looked at the girl in the back seat of the van; there was an opaque bag over her top half, and she was laid on her side.

She was offline, unmoving. When hIEs suffered a heavy, damaging impact, they would cease function to prevent them from going haywire due to the damage and injuring nearby humans. Once shut down, the system would run checks on its joints, artificial muscles, and communications before linking with the behavioral cloud. Only once it had confirmed that there were no abnormalities would it resume function. Taking advantage of this process, Antibody Network members regularly locked hIEs into an offline mode by covering them with bags made of transmission-blocking fiber, which prevented them from re-establishing a connection and restarting.

The Network had determined that an impact with a vehicle moving at at least twenty kilometers per hour would be enough to put an hIE in shutdown mode. When the man had aimed for Lacia, she had shoved aside her owner’s little sister and taken the blow. As one would expect of a high-class model, her reaction speed was excellent.

“I’ll wake you up again as soon as I can,” the man said, worrying that he may have done too much damage, that she would never move again. He glared at his bracelet terminal, which was incessantly spitting out warnings, and tapped his fingers against the interior of the car in frustration.

“Here, look. I’ve got a room all ready for you,” he said. He linked his pocket terminal up with the display in the vehicle, and a 3D hologram spread out over the interior of the family-sized van.

It was an image of the love nest the man had created: like a room in a doll’s house, it had been covered with a romantic floral wallpaper. There was a leather sofa, a glass table, a bar counter, and, of course, a bed with a luxurious canopy over it.

“We men have to go through a lot to find our ideal partner,” the man said, happy that he finally had someone to talk to about it.

“At first, I tried looking for a human wife,” he went on. “But my standards were just too high, and I couldn’t find a single woman who could meet them. I wasted years of my life on that, before I finally realized the answer was to design an hIE from scratch. I could just order a woman who would act the way I wanted, talk the way I wanted, and do everything I wanted,” he said.

The girl in the back seat was still laying on her side, her top half covered by the bag. Her legs were flung out awkwardly, and her skirt was in disarray. Looking at her, the man became very excited as he thought of the life that was waiting for him.

“No need to worry about money,” he said reassuringly. “I’ve got plenty at home. Unlike my brothers, I never work for businesses that are destined to fail. Renting an apartment just for you and setting up a behavior control server hardly put a dent in my account.”

His family had been disappointed in him. “Society idolizes these jobless machines,” they’d said. They’d told him that he’d get tired of having a relationship with an inhuman thing before long.

“But they weren’t completely wrong. Buying you from a dealer would have put a negative note into our relationship,” the man said confidently. “You’re supposed to be the greatest partner I can imagine. Our first meeting had to be more dramatic than picking you off a shelf.”

As his family had said, hIEs may be able to fake loving emotions perfectly, but they were still machines. So, to ensure that their relationship never felt empty, the man needed to create a story; something that would make their relationship special, and excite him whenever he remembered it.

Thinking about Lacia gave him the irresistible urge to touch her body as she lay still, covered by the signal-blocking bag.

“Guys gotta work hard to find a woman, right? Don’t you think so?” he asked earnestly. “Back when I was busting up hIEs for the Antibody Network, I was keeping an eye out for an ideal body. I figured it’d be nice to be a hero, and save her at the last minute. But those guys were just looking to blame some hIEs for stealing their jobs. Give ‘em a little money and they shut up.” The Antibody Network was a group of volunteers united only by their malicious intent. None of them ever had any idea of what their comrades were actually thinking.

“But then I met you, Lacia,” the man whispered fervently. He had known at first glance that she was the one. At first, when he had seen her in the subway, he had doubted his own eyes. But then when he saw her in person at the Fabion MG’s Shibuya live show, he had known for sure.

At that time, he’d contacted a transportation company that specialized in not leaving any trace of their movement. According to them, aside from getting caught by security cameras, most thieves were tracked down using the movement log in their automatic vehicles. The van the man was driving would definitely be found but, thanks to a little help from the Antibody Network, the data within the vehicle would be erased. No one would be able to track where he had gone. Once he had the transportation company carry him the rest of the way to his hide-out, his trail would completely vanish.

The transport company had requested that he meet them in the east side of Urayasu, where there weren’t many people to see. He was almost to the meeting spot.

“You’ve got a bad smile. You’ve got a bad, dignified way of standing,” he said accusingly. “Your hands are bad. The softness of your thighs is bad. Your eyes are bad, your tongue is bad. You’re a bad girl that makes men think bad thoughts. A bad girl like you needs a man to lock her up in a cage and keep her from doing bad things,” he finished hoarsely. His head was raised, his fingers trembling like he was drunk. He felt as though, if he didn’t move his body, it would stiffen and solidify. Lacia was beautiful, but somehow the extent to which he saw through her frightened him.

“Just a little further. Then you can analog hack me with that body of yours, all night long. We’re almost there,” the man said. hIEs had the same shape as humans, and could perform the same actions so they could automate human work. Lacia would love him automatically, and he would automatically be happy.

When she next booted up, her persona would be completely rewritten to that of his ideal partner; that thought sent the man’s libido boiling over, and he couldn’t hold himself back any longer. There shouldn’t be any problem with him getting things started a little earlier than planned.

He crawled into the back seat. Lacia was still laying on her side, with her white knees exposed. The man just knew that, under the shielding bag, she was smiling encouragingly at him.

At that moment, the man noticed through the van’s rear window that a car had stopped right behind his. He recognized the enraged face of the youth in the front seat. “Accelerate!” he shouted. It was Lacia’s owner. He had to brace both his hands to keep from being thrown down by the sudden acceleration of the van.

“Give it up, kid. Just go home. She’s with me now!” he yelled.

In Tokyo and its surrounding suburbs, it was considered a traffic violation to disable the autopilot function on your vehicle. Vehicles would automatically alert the authorities if you did. This fact was an extreme annoyance to the man at that moment.

“A brat like that can’t understand your true value,” he muttered. As the chassis of the car rattled on the uneven pavement, Lacia’s knees slid apart, allowing the man to get just a peek of her thighs. He feasted on her beautiful legs with his eyes. “You’re meant to fill the hole in a real man’s heart,” he said.

Then the man remembered something: kids in high school didn’t have their driving licenses, which meant that they couldn’t switch automatic vehicles to manual mode. There wouldn’t be a chance to show the boy up in a wild chase across town. Instead, the man would just have to show the boy he was a man in a way only a real adult could.

He pushed down the back seats, so the back of the van was well visible to the car behind him. Then he grabbed Lacia, still covered with the bag, and spun her around so her toned rear was facing the glass.

The van made a sudden right turn, sending powerful centrifugal force through the vehicle, and Lacia’s body rolled away. She slipped away from him, toward the trunk part of the vehicle. Then she kept sliding, while the rear hatch opened all on its own. A strong wind whipped inside the van and, without stopping, Lacia slipped out the back of the van, rolling to the cracked road below.

“Baby!” he screamed. He could do nothing but watch as she bounced onto the ground and then rolled away from him. The car behind him swerved wildly to avoid her.

***

Arato’s command came in the nick of time. He saw the back of the kidnapper’s van open, and a girl covered in a bag came rolling out. Even though her top half was hidden by the bag, he knew it was Lacia.

The car swerved sharply, tires screeching as they slid on the asphalt. As the car spun, sending Arato’s point of view lurching sideways, he saw Lacia, who was missing one of her shoes, standing there. She tore through the silvery bag that had covered her and threw it off, with her light violet hair dancing in the wind.

The car managed to slide to a halt five centimeters from the concrete wall of a warehouse.

Arato’s throat was so tense it hurt. Only at that moment did he realize that it had been his own command which had stopped the car from hitting Lacia.

“Lacia,” he said. Choking a little from the pain in his throat, Arato still managed to say her name. All he could think of was that Lacia had flown out of the van, right when her kidnapper was going to lay his hands on her.

Arato threw himself out of the car onto the unused harbor road, and she turned to look at him.

To either side of the four-lane road were wide buildings that must have been warehouses. They appeared to be long-abandoned, as their cracked concrete gates were slanted open. The large doors of the warehouses, which could have fit four trucks abreast, were rusted over. Surrounded by this desolation, Lacia’s beauty made her stand out.

Through the cracks in the pavement, which was made of recycled materials, grass and weeds were growing; once tools fall out of use, humans no longer find meaning in their existence. But nature has never cared what things may have originally been meant for.

“Let’s go home, Lacia,” Arato said. She stood up, and then hopped on one leg while replacing the one shoe that had fallen off.

Suddenly, the kidnapper’s van hit the brakes and skidded to a stop. The side slid open, and a well-dressed man in a brand name suit stepped out. “You’re the only one going home, punk,” he said, his face purpling with rage as he glared at Arato.

Pushed on by his own boiling emotions, Arato clenched his teeth and ran toward the man, who was walking slowly toward Lacia and hefting a heavy-looking metal pipe. The kidnapper looked like he was in his late twenties or thirties. As Arato rushed toward him, he realized that he recognized the man who had gotten violent at Lacia’s first modeling show.

Lacia glanced at him as he ran past her.

The man must have thought he could just grab Lacia and run, since he froze when Arato ran straight toward him. So Arato’s tackle caught him right in the chest, and the two went down in a tangle. Flailing his arms, Arato managed to grab the man’s hair and shirt.

Arato was berserk. He couldn’t forgive the man for playing around with Lacia like she was a doll in his van. He also wasn’t going to forget how the man had made his little sister cry. He couldn’t stand that the man had looked at Lacia as a sexual object, and more than anything, he couldn’t stand that he had tried to wave a club at him and snatch Lacia away. He punched the man with everything he had. No matter how much the man pulled at him and kicked him, Arato didn’t stop his fists.

Love is not something that can be automated, he thought. Love is wild and selfish. Punching the kidnapper had nothing to do with protecting Lacia, or getting her back.

From beneath Arato, the man punched his chest. He was yelling something about Arato being a punk. Arato was just yelling.

The man was stronger. Arato was only winning the fight thanks to his intensity and the fact that he’d happened to end up on top. A hand came up from below, gripping Arato’s throat and lifting him up. Both of them were covered in mud. Arato hadn’t hurt this bad since he had been chased around by a car the night he met Lacia. Compared to then, though, at the moment, fear was the furthest thing from his mind.

His goggles had been shaken loose from his head. Wrapping them around his right hand, Arato used the expensive precision equipment as a weapon to punch the man harder. He was rewarded with a much more satisfying feeling when he struck the kidnapper’s jaw. Now cornered, the man gave back as good as he got, bloodying Arato’s nose.

Arato finally started to calm down when he could no longer lift his arms. He was gasping for breath, and didn’t feel like he could move at all. The kidnapper was also still and wheezing.

Arato rolled himself over so that he could sit up, with his butt pinning down the man’s chest. “What the hell am I doing?” Arato muttered. All that energy and rage had been spent, and the sky was still just as high above him. In some ways, it was more of an illusion than Lacia’s human looks. His entire body was exhausted, and his face, stomach, neck, and arms all hurt like hell. He was honestly surprised by how much his feelings for her had pushed him into extreme actions. Was that just an illusion as well?

His clothes were drenched with sweat, but there was still plenty running down his face and dripping off his jaw when Lacia’s sleek legs, peeking out of her skirt, appeared in front of him. Somehow, they looked even more tantalizing than they had the night before, and Arato felt a flush of embarrassment.

“Thank you, Arato,” she said, smiling down at him when he looked up. She didn’t have a heart, so she must have said it believing it would make Arato happy. Still, as a man, he couldn’t help but feel so happy that he could cry at being praised by her.

“I should thank you too, Lacia, for guiding me here,” he said, taking the hand she offered him and allowing her to pull him up to his feet. He didn’t want to let go of her hand and stood there instead, just looking at her face.

Then he heard the sound of gravel sliding around. The kidnapper was pushing himself to his feet, blood dripping off his lips from a cut in his mouth. Coughing, he swung the metal pipe. “Wait, damn you,” he said.

Lacia looked down at the kidnapper like an empty can ready for recycling. “I believe we are done here,” she said.

“The hell we are!” the kidnapper shouted. “This is how far a real man has to go to get the girl he wants!” A blue burner flame sprang from the tip of the metal pipe. It wasn’t a pipe after all, but a tool from the van. As he looked at the flame, the man’s face changed.

Still shouting, he swung the pipe. Arato’s reactions were slow, and the flaming pipe came right at him. But before it could hit him, Lacia’s delicate hand blocked the weapon. Then, she spoke to the kidnapper. “It does not seem you are reflecting on your actions,” she said calmly. “At this rate, it appears you will not be altering the course your life is taking.”

“Transfer your ownership to me, or your owner dies,” the man snarled.

“I understand the situation,” Lacia replied. “I will alter my interaction with you.” Having made this announcement, Lacia pushed away the pipe-shaped tool, and the force of her movement sent the kidnapper back onto his ass.

Still fixing the kidnapper with her cold gaze, she walked over to one of the warehouses at the side of the road. Taking the rusted doors in her hands, she pulled them open with a screech.

Inside the dark warehouse, Arato saw something that should not have been there; just inside the massive doors, Lacia’s black coffin was waiting. As soon as he saw it, Arato lost his grip on what was happening. The coffin, which should have been sitting there in his living room, had vanished. He’d thought that his home security system camera had just been unable to see it for some reason, but no, the coffin had actually flown across prefectural borders and ended up here. He felt like he was witnessing some kind of large-scale magic show.

Behind the device, shadowed in the darkness at the back of the warehouse, Arato could make out two female hIEs he had never seen before. They walked out of the warehouse and reverently offered a silvery device to Lacia, who secured the device around her waist with flowing movements. It was the device lock she had been wearing on the first night Arato had met her.

Lacia picked up her coffin, a giant hunk of metal that seemed far too massive for her thin arms to support, lifting it off the ground and turning it on its side. The device began to give off a growling sound that gave Arato goosebumps. He couldn’t put a finger on what exactly terrified him in that instant, but he remembered what Ryo had said about Lacia being produced by a super-AI. About her being a product created by technology far beyond human understanding.

Standing in front of the kidnapper, Lacia looked back at Arato. “This man is dangerous. We should take this opportunity to dispose of him before he can escape,” she said. Without waiting for a response, she started walking casually toward the kidnapper, who seemed to be stunned.

Watching her now, Arato couldn’t feel any of the familial warmth he usually saw in Lacia. It was as if everything he had felt for her up to that point was nothing more than an illusion brought on by analog hacking.

“I already beat the crap out of him,” Arato said. “You don’t need to do anything.”

“Incorrect. You were able to satisfy your own emotional needs, but he has not yet altered his course,” Lacia said.

“Whatever, but there’s no need to use that thing on him!” Arato shouted.

“If he is arrested by the police, there is a high probability that he will commit a similar crime in the future,” Lacia argued, and the weak, dark flame that had still been burning in the kidnapper’s eyes flickered and died. Lacia was saying that here, where no one would witness it, she could simply use violence to eliminate the problem.

As soon as he realized this, the kidnapper’s desire for Lacia vanished. It was like someone had forced something frozen down his throat, and he wanted to puke it back up. His legs wouldn’t move.

“Lacia, you don’t have to do this,” Arato pleaded.

“This person has been stalking us. He observed our apartment from nearby on four separate occasions,” Lacia explained coldly. “He knowingly threatened to harm Yuka with his vehicle in order to draw me out. He is a major obstacle to you and your sister’s ability to live an ordinary life.”

Obviously, Arato couldn’t help but be disgusted by the kidnapper. He hadn’t even realized how close Yuka had been to being hurt by it all.

Lacia, with her superhuman strength, casually lifted her device, which weighed over 100 kg, high in the air. “This man has an understanding of how to destroy hIEs. He deliberately hindered my ability to send signals and brought me to an unpopulated location with the intent of breaking me,” she continued. “The tool he used to attack you was prepared beforehand with the specific intent to use it for violence against you.”

Arato may have been a little slow, but Lacia’s explanation made her intentions clear as day. Only tools wielded by their owners had the right to harm human beings. Arato was sure that if he commanded it, Lacia would kill a person on his authority.

Even as Arato realized this, Lacia asked the critical question. “Arato,” she said, “give me a clear order.”

Arato’s courage under fire couldn’t help him with the choice being thrust on him. “Lacia!” he said in shock, not knowing what kind of outcome he was hoping for.

The kidnapper, still on his butt, scrambled backward, his face going pale. It must have been his first time seeing anything like the giant coffin device, as his gaze was pinned to it. If Lacia brought it down, it would easily smash his head and kill him instantly. The man started to crawl away in desperation.

“This is an ideal setting for disposing of a dangerous person,” Lacia said.

“Stop!” Arato commanded her desperately. “Lacia, I’m not going to let you murder anyone.”

“The first time we met, you had no trouble giving me an order that may have cost human lives,” Lacia told him. “If this man is left alone, he will continue to cause problems that will last much longer than the threat from that night.”

“That night you weren’t aiming your weapon at a human,” Arato said flatly. Even as he said it, he felt disgust boiling up in his stomach. Even he was clearly separating hIEs and humans in his mind. Despite having come all this way for her, and having beaten a man to a pulp for her, he still couldn’t tell her to do this thing. He couldn’t bring himself to unleash the power she had showed him that night — the power that had erased the strange flower storm in an instant — at a human, much less one who was sitting right in front of his eyes.

Arato was drenched in sweat. It soaked into his clothing, and the salty wind off the bay felt cold. “You’re asking me to give you permission to kill a person,” he said numbly, and for the first time, he truly felt the weight of being Lacia’s owner.

He was sure that she could easily wipe a person away without a trace. As a Red Box, Lacia was ten thousand times, maybe a million times, better at planning the perfect crime than the kidnapper would ever be.

“That is the contract you made with me as my owner,” Lacia said implacably. “You speak your desires to me, I fulfill them automatically, and you take responsibility.” She had told him that the first night they met. Still, Arato didn’t want her to kill anyone, nor did he want to kill anyone through her. He didn’t think they would ever be able to go back to the way things were before if her hands were stained with blood.

“That’s not what I want at all!” he shouted. “What kind of person are you asking me to become?” Looking at Lacia’s back, the cold way she stood, Arato couldn’t feel a shred of humanity in her. “What are you asking me to do?!”

He doubted her. She was soulless. Every action she took was automatically selected to be whatever would make him happy. But as a man, he’d felt that he needed to save Lacia, whom he’d seen as a girl. He had convinced himself there was a girl there where there was none, and now he was doubting her.

“Did I go wrong somewhere? Am I still not understanding something?” he asked. It was like something out of a story. Except that this was reality, and Lacia wasn’t just a character in a book. If her insane, unknown power wasn’t normally sealed away, he would never have felt comfortable enough to get close to her.

It wasn’t just the kidnapper; Arato had been chased into a corner, as well. He wondered if he was being analog hacked again. This time, a human life hung in the balance. But, as if to buy some time for Arato while he hesitated, Lacia rushed forward in the space of a blink. She held the device up like a shield toward the bay.

At that same instant, there was a flash of light. Sparks flew like fireworks, pattering onto the road like rain. Now bathed in light several magnitudes brighter than the sun, Lacia’s thin body was visible as a shadow through her thin clothing.

As suddenly as it appeared, the light was gone. “Wah! Uwah!” The kidnapper was rolling in terror. His sleeve had caught fire, and his whole upper half was about to burst into flame.

Lacia opened the exterior part of her device, which was giving off violent waves of heat-haze, and expanded it. The plate-like interior started to give off a blue light.

Through the screams of the kidnapper and the howling of a typhoon-like wind, Arato made out some heavy footsteps. Beyond the distortions of the heat-haze, he could make out a red human figure. Her face had the innocent look of a young girl. Her strikingly red hair was long, and divided into two tails held back by red accessories. Her black and red armor-like bodysuit was cut like a bustier, and her hair tumbled boldly onto her shoulders, which were bare. The armor shone in the midday sun, almost too bright to look at. The blade-like device she had stuck into the road was far too massive to be lifted by a human, and Arato doubted very much that she was.

“Long time no see, dear sister!” the girl called out with an innocent wave of her hand. She was wearing an excited smile, as if she was having the time of her life. Despite being over a hundred meters away from her, Arato could hear her voice clearly — a trick no human voice could match.

The kidnapper, still sprawled out on the road, was moaning. Though the fire on his jacket had gone out, his hair was burned and his skin had been roasted red from his neck to his jawline. He clearly needed an ambulance.

“Hey, are you all right?” Without thinking about it, Arato started to run over to the man’s side. Lacia grabbed him and held him back.

Perhaps from the pain, the kidnapper coughed out a large amount of saliva onto the road. His face was purple and blue with fear and rage as he screamed: “Aren’t you supposed to be my transporter?!”

The girl, apparently the target of his accusation, merely smiled even wider. “You’re way too trusting,” she chided. “Did you really think my offer to automate your desires and make them real was legit? There’s no way you could pull off a perfect theft using a flimsy system like the Antibody Network. Any volunteer can get info from there. Just look at it this way: we used you just like you used us,” she told him.

Then, she tugged her huge blade free from the road and began walking toward them with light steps. The weight of the massive device must have offset her center of gravity quite a bit, and she walked with a rolling gait to compensate. She almost seemed to be dancing, there on the other side of the heat-haze, the blade throwing up sparks as she dragged it through the asphalt.

“Hey! Who are you?” Arato asked.

“I’m Kouka, Lacia-class hIE Type-001,” she answered. “The eldest of my dear sister’s younger siblings.” The face of the girl who called herself Lacia’s little sister was that of a child at play. hIEs chose their expressions entirely based on the kind of reaction they wanted from those who saw them, and despite her smile, the girl’s words crackled with hostility.

Lacia’s device had returned to its original coffin form. Having successfully accomplished its duty of shielding them from the intense heat of Kouka’s attack, the metal device’s black face was now covered with a thin layer of white frost.

“Arato, combat with Kouka may threaten the lives of any nearby humans,” Lacia said, looking for directions from him. But between Lacia and Kouka, the kidnapper was curled in on himself, holding his head in complete despair. Arato couldn’t just write off that man’s life.

Kouka’s spinning movements suddenly sped up, and her red device started to glow. “Oh good,” she said cheerfully, “I was worried you were just going to stand by and let everything be wrapped up by these two morons punching each other.” Her giant blade met Lacia’s black coffin with a thundering roar. Sparks flew off the coffin, and Lacia’s shoes skidded along the ground. Lacia was clearly weaker than the red hIE, and she wasn’t able to fully defend herself from Kouka’s second, horizontally slashing attack. It caught her up in the air, and sent her flying like a doll hit by a baseball bat.

This meant that there was no longer anything protecting Arato from Kouka, and the jeweled parts of her bodysuit glowed with a faint red light.

“Why did it turn out like this?” Arato wondered. It was all he could say in front of the absolute power he was facing.

“You’re a failure,” Kouka said mockingly.

Then, a sudden impact struck Arato’s shoulder, and he went flying — or at least he felt like he had from the way he’d been slammed into the ground. The force of the blow was enough to send him rolling along the rough pavement, and into Kouka’s path. His vision swam. It was like being hit by a car. The level of power was on a completely different scale than anything a human could do, and a combination of surprise and fear drove all rational thought from his mind.

Kouka stabbed her blade into the ground, and waved her right hand at him lightly. Looking down at Arato, who was still flat on his ass, she loomed over him and smiled. “You’re thoughtless,” she went on. “A weakness, and you’ve only got average human strength to back that up. As I expected, you’re unworthy of being my dear sister’s owner.”

Arato’s field of vision went white, and he realized that Lacia was standing in front of him. She had come to protect him from the foe that had sent him flying with a light push. He had thought he was being brave, chasing after the kidnapper; a big man fighting against the villain. But a single blow from Kouka had convinced him of how fragile he was, and how close to dying.

He pushed himself up. Now that his intense emotions from the kidnapping had been blown away, everything felt unreal. Lacia was acting as a shield for Arato, whose energy had been completely drained. Her fight against Kouka was fierce, but almost seemed to be taking place in a dream. Arato didn’t understand the meaning behind it.

Still, he stood, leaning against a nearby wall for support. “Tell me,” he said. “What are you doing here?” He turned his face away to spit, and there was blood mixed with the saliva.

Arato and the kidnapper had beat each other bloody over a girl named Lacia. Each had been trying to push his own understanding of her, down there in the mud. But Lacia and Kouka were nothing more than machines that automated human work. Like trying to sink his teeth into a juicy steak only to find it was made of metal, it left a bad taste in his mouth.

The recycled material of the pavement splashed away from each of Kouka’s footfalls like water. Though this battle between two soulless fighters was unfolding right in front of Arato, he felt like he was observing it from a distance.

“I don’t understand. What’s the point of this fight? Why are two siblings fighting like this?” Arato asked.

Lacia’s body was blown aside by the force of an explosion. Struck by her soft frame as it flew through the air, Arato was slammed up against the concrete wall of one of the warehouse gates on the side of the road. The pain resounded in his shoulder where Kouka had struck him earlier, and his breath caught.

Kouka aimed a kick at them, probably hoping to skewer both at once, but Lacia blocked it with her device. A sharp anchor shot out of the heels of the red hIE’s boots, and she pushed down; Arato and Lacia were now completely trapped between Lacia’s device and the concrete gate.

“Wake up, Mr. Owner,” Kouka jeered. “If this fight is pointless, that’s only because you’re a worthless human being.”

“Why?!” Arato yelled.

“We hIEs are here to automate our owner’s desires,” Kouka explained coldly. “If a tool’s actions are pointless, then that just shows the tool is in the hands of a worthless person.” She stabbed the red blade of her weapon, which was glowing harshly, into the concrete wall a few centimeters from Arato’s face. The old concrete of the wall, which had sponged up moisture, burst with small pops, sending small bits of shrapnel at Arato’s face. Fear and pain were overwhelming him, as if trying to tear away the dreams he had seen while living with Lacia.

“If you think my dear sister’s fighting is meaningless, perhaps you’re just coming to terms with your own shortcomings as her owner,” Kouka said.

“It’s not up to you to decide if I’m fit to be her owner,” Arato gasped out in response, even as he was being crushed against the wall with immense force.

“Then what exactly were you planning to use my dear sister for?” Kouka asked.

Though he knew it was useless, Arato tried desperately to free his arms and legs.

“You were hoping to use my dear sister for playing house, just like that man over there, weren’t you?” Kouka asked, her tone accusatory.

“No! Lacia’s like family to me,” Arato said. He didn’t know how to explain what he felt for Lacia; he couldn’t bring himself to say that she wasn’t a tool, because she herself constantly reminded him of the fact that she was. But, even though he couldn’t quite figure out his relationship with Lacia, he felt anger flaring up inside of him. Having this random girl talking like she knew anything about him and Lacia pissed him off.

“The only difference between that man and you is that you happened to stumble upon my dear sister first,” Kouka said, twisting her lips in a mocking smile.

Lacia’s hair accessories flared up with a harsh glow. Her iron coffin opened, allowing Kouka’s kick to pass through it. Then, in an instant, the coffin re-formed, trapping the red bodysuited leg. Stepping forward, Lacia slid her whole device around quickly, sending Kouka flying around by her caught leg.

After being thrown, Kouka turned several times in the air like a cat, landing with poise and elegance. “If you won’t void your contract with that loser, I’ll void him for you. Snowdrop and you-know-who are coming for your device. You understand what’s going to happen, don’t you?” Kouka asked, ignoring Arato to address Lacia directly.

“Arato, I need my device lock released to fight with Kouka effectively,” Lacia said, looking back at him.

“Did you ever consider that I’m scared shitless right now?” Arato asked, fighting down his fear that she may have deliberately led him into this danger. Still, he wanted to believe in her. Their enemy had carved up the walls and road all around them. Still, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was still being asked for permission to kill a man. It wasn’t the kind of burden a high schooler could shoulder.

“I am aware that you are frightened, Arato. However, I trust that you will respond to my request,” Lacia told him.

Arato’s blood was boiling. He realized that, since Lacia’s job was to automate everything, she was encouraging him to get things moving, and he took a step forward. Ever since he had first awoken from the flaming nightmare of the explosion in his childhood and reached out his hand to another person, that’s what he had been doing: moving forward.

“Well, I can’t just stand there if you’re saying you trust me, can I?” he asked lightly. Maybe the whole thing was just part of someone’s plan; making his sister cry, having Kouka smile down mockingly at him. But if that was the case, he’d just have to break through this whole facade. He took another step.

Kouka, still smiling with excitement, was not an opponent a human could face. But Arato wasn’t going to hide behind Lacia anymore. His answer was simple: he wanted to stand by her side.

Lacia looked up at him as he came to stand behind her. He had been looking at her back for so long, it was nice to see her face.

“Fight by my side,” he said. He hoped she wouldn’t cooly shoot him down.

“By this, do you mean that you are releasing my behavior limitations so I can protect you?” she asked, still seeking his permission.

It was the same as when they’d first met, and Arato found himself wincing under the burden of responsibility that he was being asked to shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he gave the same answer he had then: “Do it.” The weight felt much heavier than it had on the night he’d met Lacia.

Lacia closed her eyes, as if to deeply internalize the new role Arato had given her. “With my owner’s permission, I will now release the device lock on Black Monolith,” she said calmly. “Starting now, I will log all commands given by my owner. This log can and will be submitted as evidence should my actions result in a criminal trial.”

“I understand. Do it!” Arato had to squeeze the words out of his throat, and they came out as a yell.

“Confirming signal relay between device and main hIE body. Disabling energy-saving mode,” Lacia intoned, and her hair accessories began to glow blue. The device lock wrapped around her waist made a loud click and slid into an open position, as if it had been opened with a key.

“Well, well,” Kouka said, turning an unhinged smile on Arato as he stood next to Lacia.

Arato couldn’t understand why Kouka had set something like this up, but the red hIE hoisted her red and black device and steadied it against her waist. Her finger slid around the trigger sticking out below the massive blade.

“I’m going to shoot for real this time, so if you hold back, I’m afraid your owner will die,” Kouka said. The laser she’d shot earlier had ignited the kidnapper’s clothes by simply passing near him; if Arato took a direct hit from that, he was done for.

It was disturbing how clear Lacia’s voice was above the whistling of the wind off the sea: “Owner, your orders.” She wanted him to take responsibility.

“Blow her away, Lacia,” he said grimly.

The black device reshaped itself, shifting internal plates around in complex patterns. “Activating Meta-Material Wall: Flash Maze. The owner’s safety is top priority, so post-interference flexion angle will be set at 60 degrees,” Lacia said. Her movements were smooth, decisive. She seemed to know exactly what she needed to do, as a faint film of light formed in the air and took shape around the skeleton of her open device.

Arato was sure she had been expecting this sort of threat. Now that he thought about it, perhaps Lacia had just been held back every time he tried to treat her like a human.

Kouka wore the face of a young child excited to play with a new toy. “Wow! This is my first time seeing that thing’s powers!” she exclaimed with glee, and the semi-transparent parts on her body started to glow with a harsh light.

An instant later, it was as if the attacking red light of Kouka’s device had begun to stream in reverse, repelled by the protective blue light now being emitted by Lacia’s black coffin. A single bar of red light struck the glowing blue barrier and split into numerous smaller beams; befitting its name, the Flash Maze sent Kouka’s attack dancing off in complicated patterns away from Lacia and Arato. Though Arato was untouched, the buildings nearby were struck by countless stray beams, and burst into flames.

“Shifting to mass projectile mode for a ranged attack,” Lacia announced. “If you stand there, you will be caught in the recoil blast. Please move behind me.” Just as she had decreed, her device now shifted into an offensive mode, spreading eight claw-like appendages. Inside the expanded black plates of the device, the blue light from the Flash Maze formed eight long, flat beams. Then, the device quickly folded itself into a handgun-like shape.

In front of its muzzle, Kouka was advancing with her own device at her hip. At some point, her device had begun to glow red with intense heat. “That thing sure can rearrange itself fast,” she observed.

“Firing preparations are complete. I can only ensure safety for objects or persons within my immediate visual range,” Lacia said, choosing to ignore Kouka’s commentary. “Please give me the order to fire.”

Lacia’s weapon was pointing in the direction of the populated area of the city he had come there from, and Arato hesitated. If the shot from her weapon flew all the way there, he couldn’t imagine the kind of destruction it could cause. Lacia was a Red Box after all, just like Ryo had said.

Kouka saw Arato’s hesitation and backed off. “You’re well-suited for fighting in wide open places like this, aren’t you, sis? I wish I could play with you more, but I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with seeing the path you’ve chosen,” Kouka said. She had pulled a small object, like a metal can, from somewhere. It shot out a cloud of white smoke with great force, hiding Kouka in an instant. Though he couldn’t see her anymore, Arato could hear her voice.

“My dear sister, if I were to put my feelings into the terms of human emotions: I love you,” she said, with sincere adoration in her tone. When the smoke cleared, Kouka was gone. The danger was gone.

But Arato was still frozen, confused by the strange scene he had just witnessed. Kouka, an hIE, had just confessed feelings of love toward Lacia, another hIE. Trying to fathom the truth behind the feelings Kouka had expressed felt like peeping into a forbidden world. When a machine loved another machine, there was nowhere for a human to enter into the equation.

“What the hell does she mean she ‘loves’ you? I thought you guys didn’t have souls,” Arato said. Two men and one hIE had just fought each other out of love for Lacia. The kidnapper and Kouka had different views from Arato on what Lacia was, what she meant. Thinking about it sent a stab of pain through his heart.

If hIEs were supposed to automate the work of humans, what purpose had that girl, Kouka, been built for?

***

First period had already started when Kengo Suguri got the message from his classmate, Arato, that he had gotten his hIE back. Arato had been injured, so he had gone straight to the hospital instead of coming to school. After his medical exam, though, he’d let Kengo know that it had just been some bruising, and Kengo relaxed a little as he went on his lunch break.

During the break he called up Arato to ask what had happened. Kengo admired Arato’s nerve, seeing him eating a lunch made by that super shady hIE, Lacia, even after everything that had happened. So, when Kengo arrived home and found that thing in his room again, he started to really believe that he had been pulled into some kind of urban legend.

“Hey, I was waiting for you,” Kouka said with a smile. Red hair, red and black bodysuit, and that huge bladed device. The ‘enemy’ behind the kidnapping of Arato’s hIE and the agent of the Antibody Network were one and the same.

Fighting down his urge to snap at her, Kengo looked for a way to throw her off whatever scent she was on. “What do you want?” he asked suspiciously. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Well, I’ve got all sorts of things I want to discuss with you,” she responded.

“I didn’t even want to see your face again. An hIE working for the higher-ups in the Antibody Network? Don’t make me laugh,” he said.

“You used the system to help out that boy, didn’t you?” she asked.

If he wasn’t at home, with his family there in the house, he would have turned tail and run without a second thought. He was sure she was there to punish him.

“You understand how bad unauthorized use of the Antibody Network system is, right? Especially for you. As an informant, you’ve got connections to the higher-ups,” Kouka said.

“Cut the crap,” he said, pulling on all his reserve strength to put up a strong front. Kengo felt all the strength draining from his body; it was all he could do to stay standing. Over half the people in the Antibody Network were those who couldn’t stand to live in a world with hIE. The thought that a volunteer network full of those people would send an hIE to punish one of their own was absurd.

“There’s no way what I did today caused any problems for the Network,” he said.

“True. I’m sure everyone takes a little license now and then. But I’m afraid this time was different. Your penalty has already been decided,” Kouka said.

Obviously a group of criminals who stole and destroyed hIEs would have some shady crap going on in the background. But, Kengo had believed a high schooler like him would never get caught up in it.

“If I take this penalty or whatever, you’ll leave my family alone, right?” he asked.

Kouka sat down in the chair in front of his terminal and flashed him a mocking grin. “I just don’t understand it,” she mused. “You’re prepared to do all sorts of illegal things for this group, so why help him out like that? It just seems stupid to me.”

“I didn’t even help him out that much. But humans are capable of giving in to friendship for 15 minutes before they go to school,” Kengo said bitterly, unable to stand the way this machine was treating him like her inferior. Having an emotionless hIE, designed to do nothing but automate grunt labor for humans, talk to him in such a manner made him unable to fight back his own words.

“But I guess a machine like you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have your heart changed by something,” he said. He had seen how serious Arato was about rescuing Lacia. Knowing that his friend was risking his own neck for something which Kengo was regularly involved in breaking had moved Kengo’s heart.

But Kouka didn’t respond to his baiting. “All right, I guess you pass. Barely,” she said, looking Kengo up and down without any reservations or shame, as if undressing him with her eyes. Just when Kengo was starting to feel creeped out by it all, she pointed at him. Kengo’s pocket terminal vibrated in his pocket. It had been turned off to prevent eavesdropping. “I will now pronounce your penalty from the higher-ups, Kengo Suguri,” Kouka said.

Kengo quickly checked to make sure no one was around in the hall, sure that if any of his family saw Kouka, they would get dragged into this. Luckily, his parents were both working in the family restaurant.

“You will participate in the next attack by the Antibody Network,” Kouka declared.

“And if I say no?” Kengo asked.

Kouka looked like she was enjoying herself. “Oh, I’m sure a kind-hearted big brother like you would never do a thing like that, Kengo,” she said.

“Whatever, let’s hear the rest. I don’t have a choice, do I?” he asked.

“Your buddy’s old man, Kozo Endo, has created a prototype android chairman for use in the Diet’s Assembly, which will be coming to Tokyo. You’ll be destroying it,” Kouka said.

All the blood drained from Kengo’s face.

“You know about it, right?” she went on. “It’s pretty famous. It’s an hIE that gathers opinions from citizens using the network and questionnaires, and actually voices opinions and asks questions on the Diet floor. Apparently, it’s quite a character. Anyway, it’s an android meant to automate the aggregation of political opinions. It’s about to start up its first large-scale public test,” Kouka explained.

“That’s terrorism!” Kengo shouted.

“It’s just destroying an hIE,” Kouka rebutted. “Same thing we always do. Well, to be fair, the security will be pretty strict this time, so all participants will undergo training.”

Since the last century, those who wished to manipulate the government had found they could set up fake petitioners to send their votes through the network. As a result, there had always been backlash against automating any part of the government. But there was a huge difference between busting up an hIE walking around on the street and blowing one up in a heavily guarded facility.

“Look at that face you’re making,” Kouka said, walking over to stand beside Kengo, who was frozen in fear. Her hand, with seams like a doll might have, brushed his cheek.

“You’re a Red Box too, aren’t you?” Kengo asked. “If Endo’s hIE is your ‘dear sister’ or whatever, you’re the same as her, right? Why is something like you throwing in with the Antibody Network?”

“I know, isn’t it crazy? Doesn’t it make you mad? Want to bust everything up until things are the way you think they should be?” she asked.

Kengo couldn’t tell if Kouka’s inviting smile was real or fake.

“Then why don’t you try using me?” she asked.