“—Stand by. That’s an order.”
Behind the station, in the shadow of the equipment warehouse, Kujo threw the words at Iris. His voice carried a coldness that left no room for argument. The light of dusk stained the warehouse’s corrugated metal roof red, stretching the two of their shadows long across the ground.
“Understood. I will stand by here.”
Iris nodded without changing her expression. Her eyes, devoid of reflected emotion, seemed almost like mirrors reflecting Kujo’s irritation. Kujo said nothing more and turned away. He didn’t look back. He had a feeling that if he did, he might end up exchanging more words with her.
From the very first day of her assignment, Kujo had kept Iris at a ruthless distance. At crime scenes, he ordered her to “stand by”; inside the station, he told her to “shut down.” He had repeated that rejection, disguised as orders, over and over. At first, his colleagues had approached him with concern, but by now they had all settled for shrugging as if to say, “Not again.”
But Kujo’s irritation grew day by day. Even after he ordered her to shut down, Iris would show up for work the next morning with a perfectly unfazed face—or, more precisely, the same expressionless face. Even after he ordered her to stand by, she would appear at the scene as usual whenever Kiryu issued a directive. It was as though Kujo’s rejection had never existed in the first place.
“Why won’t you obey?”
One day, Kujo finally cornered Iris. In a corner of the hallway where a single fluorescent light flickered, his voice unusually failed to conceal his irritation.
“I am obeying your orders. However, the authority to determine the priority of orders belongs to the team chief, not you, Agent Kujo. When there is a directive from the team chief, that directive takes priority.”
Kujo was left speechless by her matter-of-fact explanation. It was, of course, what the organizational operating regulations required, but at the same time, it meant that no matter how completely Kujo rejected Iris, it could never resolve the underlying problem. Before the wall of the system, individual emotions were no more than a few lines of regulations. Kujo had been forced to learn that lesson the hard way.
That night, Kujo reached his limit.
In the station’s equipment storage room, Kujo waited until the building was deserted and called Iris there. Dust and machine oil hung stagnant in the windowless room. A single bare bulb swayed feebly from the ceiling.
“Iris. Come here.”
“Yes.”
Without the slightest suspicion, Iris followed Kujo. At the back of the storage room, in front of a metal workbench, Kujo took a heavy wrench from the tool rack. The cold metal against his palm only stoked his heat further.
“Agent Kujo, what are you—”
“Shut up.”
The emotion in Kujo’s eyes resembled unmistakable murderous intent. That arm—the one that had pierced Nagumo in front of him three years ago. The scene from that day overlapped with Iris’s figure. He understood it rationally. Iris had nothing to do with it. Her model and individual identification number were different from those of the unit involved in that incident. She was an entirely separate entity. Even so, he couldn’t suppress it. Three years had done nothing to dull the memory inside Kujo.
He raised the wrench high.
But he never brought it down.
“That action has no meaning.”
Iris’s voice echoed quietly through the storage room. Kujo’s arm stopped, just slightly.
“Destroying me will not produce the result you seek. Androids have no life. We are nothing more than tools meant to be used correctly by humans. Destroying me would only mean losing one tool.”
“…Then you deserve to be destroyed.”
Kujo’s voice trembled. It came out hoarse, as if dragged from the back of his throat.
“I understand that what you hate is not me, but the incident from three years ago.”
Iris stared straight at Kujo. In the light of the bare bulb, her eyes shimmered faintly.
“The androids that caused numerous casualties in the city that day were originally benevolent tools meant to operate under human supervision. However, someone illegally hijacked them and drove them berserk. That was the result of tools not being used correctly.”
“That’s sophistry.”
“It is not sophistry. As an android, I take that incident very seriously. Many lives were lost because we androids were used by human hands for an improper purpose. That is a problem that requires the very principles behind our design to be called into question.”
There was no emotional fluctuation in Iris’s voice, but it carried a definite weight. Each word seemed to have been carefully selected through the calculating apparatus inside her—quiet, yet unwavering.
“I cannot restore what you lost in that incident. However, I am here so that the same mistake will not be repeated. That is the role assigned to me.”
“…Is that supposed to be an apology?”
“Yes. I understand that it is inadequate.”
Kujo slowly lowered the hand holding the wrench. His anger had not disappeared. But even if he smashed the being in front of him to pieces, Nagumo would not come back. Somewhere in his mind, he understood that much. A long silence filled the storage room. The sound of the swaying bare bulb seemed unnaturally loud.
“Don’t talk without permission.”
Kujo tossed the wrench onto the tool rack and left the storage room. The sound of the door closing echoed with an oddly dry finality.
The next morning, Kujo went to confront Kiryu directly. The remnants of the previous night’s turmoil still lingered in his stride as he walked down the hall.
“Chief, I still can’t partner with her. If you’re going to force me to work with an android, I’ll resign.”
Kiryu remained seated deep in his chair, studying Kujo for a while. Cigarette smoke rose slowly from the ashtray.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m serious.”
“All right. But I have one favor to ask.”
Kiryu slid a file across his desk toward Kujo. A red URGENT stamp marked the cover.
“It’s a bizarre murder case that’s been unfolding for three consecutive days. The scene is abnormal… There’s evidence that doesn’t look human. Work with Iris to solve this one case. If you still intend to walk away after that, I’ll hold on to your resignation for you.”
Kujo was silent for a while, then picked up the file with a click of his tongue. The sound of his fingers turning the pages echoed through the quiet room.
“…Just this one case.”
That afternoon, Kujo and Iris rushed to the scene. Kujo stared silently at the city passing outside the police cruiser’s window.
A section of an abandoned factory. The moment Kujo stepped inside the crime-scene tape, he lost his words.
Blood spattered across the floor. The victim’s limbs had been twisted at unnatural angles, and there were marks as though the body had been slammed against the wall. A scene of carnage beyond anything human strength could possibly reproduce spread before them. Even the forensics division personnel grimaced every time they entered the scene.
“…What the hell is this?”
“I will analyze the pattern of skeletal damage.”
The instant she finished speaking, a faint light entered Iris’s eyes. It was clear that an enormous volume of calculations was being processed inside her in an instant. Even the air around them seemed to fall silent, as though sensing her concentration.
“Based on the angles of the injuries and the direction in which force was transmitted, I estimate that the perpetrator possesses at least three times the muscular strength of an ordinary human. In addition, based on the blood-spatter pattern at the scene, I estimate that the crime occurred approximately six hours ago.”
“You can tell that from here?”
“Yes. I am cross-referencing the surrounding temperature and humidity data with the blood’s state of coagulation.”
Kujo wore a bitter expression, but he couldn’t deny the accuracy of her analysis. Information a human investigator would have to wait for the forensics division to provide had been produced in a matter of seconds. For Kujo, who had relied solely on instincts honed through years of field experience, it was difficult to accept, yet impossible to ignore.
But Kujo didn’t thank her.
“…Let’s check the next thing.”
That was all he said before walking ahead.
After that, the two of them painstakingly examined the minute fiber fragments left at the scene, the blind spots in the security-camera coverage, and the victims’ personal connections. Iris’s computational ability and Kujo’s field instincts—their contrasting approaches to the investigation closed in on the truth faster than either could have imagined. They questioned people through the night, analyzed security-camera footage around the abandoned factory, and found traces of illicit dealings shared by the victims. Fragmentary information gradually connected into a single line.
“This fiber fragment matches the protective casing of a modified android part distributed on the black market.”
“…So the perpetrator is either a modified android itself or a human involved with one?”
“I estimate that possibility to be high.”
Three days later, the two of them succeeded in identifying a suspect. His name was Kogami, a man who had once been involved in the black-market trade of illegally modified androids. His previous arrest record, connections to the black market, and eyewitness accounts placing him near the crime scenes—all the evidence pointed to one man.
“Kogami, don’t move!”
In a room inside an abandoned building, Kujo aimed his handgun at Kogami, who had nowhere left to run. Dusk light slanted through the room’s shattered windows.
“Damn it… damn it!! Because of you people, my life is…!”
Kogami shouted with the eyes of a cornered animal. In his hand, he gripped a modified gun he had kept hidden.
It was only for an instant that Kujo let his guard down. Perhaps it was the relief of having confronted Kogami with the evidence, or perhaps he had been distracted by years of hatred. A tiny opening appeared in Kujo’s awareness.
The muzzle turned toward them.
“—Agent Kujo!”
The next instant, a silver-white figure blocked Kujo’s view.
Two dry gunshots rang out in succession.
The first struck her heart. The second, her brow. Iris’s body took the bullets as she shielded Kujo.
“Iris…!?”
Before Kujo’s eyes, the light faded from Iris’s eyes. Those eyes, which had been continuing their immense calculations, sank quietly into darkness as if her power had been switched off.
“I predicted… the trajectory… of the shot that would hit you… in advance…”
Her words came in fragments. They were Iris’s final words.
Her silver-white body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. Kujo caught her instinctively, but the serene light that had filled her moments before was gone. The weight in his arms alone was proof that she had truly existed.
“Iris… Hey, Iris!”
Kujo stood frozen, dumbfounded. For a moment, he even forgot to secure Kogami right in front of him. The backup team that had been standing by outside the abandoned building stormed in, and the distant sounds of them pinning Kogami down reached him—but none of it registered in Kujo’s ears.
As he looked down at Iris’s completely silent body in his arms, a strange emotion he had never felt before swept through Kujo’s chest.
(She was supposed to be a tool. She wasn’t supposed to have a life—)
But the figure that had shielded him and gone still before his eyes overlapped far too perfectly with that day three years ago. That day, too, he had held someone in his arms like this. That day, too, he had been unable to do anything.
Kujo’s hands trembled faintly. The light of dusk quietly illuminated Iris’s fallen silver-white body. A long, long silence in which no one spoke was all that remained.