In a hallway of the government building, Iris continued operating quietly while remaining connected to a charging station.
From the outside, she appeared to be doing nothing but standing by. Inside, however, an endless stream of processing was underway.
The bug code planted by Crow had a tendency to multiply exponentially if left unchecked. To stop it from spreading, Iris kept a constant monitoring process running, isolating and disabling each instance the moment it was detected. It was like endlessly scooping up water with her hands as it spilled over without end.
As she continued processing, Iris suddenly noticed an anomaly.
(—Confirmed loss of the standby-command retention flag.)
Under normal circumstances, she should have remained there until she received a clear directive from an investigator, including Kiryu. But when she checked the internal logs, she found that the standby setting itself had somehow been overwritten and erased.
Iris had no recollection of this phenomenon, so she diverted some of her processing resources to analyze it. She found the answer almost immediately. The processing of the multiplying bug and the self-repair operation taking place deep within the system had interfered with each other in an unforeseen way.
And during that analysis, Iris arrived at another fact.
(The root of the virus code—judged to be code illegally implanted from outside during the previous destruction of my chassis.)
That time, when she had been recovered for repairs after being shot and rendered inoperable. That man who had connected to her under the pretext of salvaging her data.
She had not yet reached certainty. But a suspicion as close to black as it could get had surfaced within Iris.
Should she continue to stand by, or—
Before her thoughts could reach a conclusion, footsteps sounded from the far end of the hallway.
“Iris.”
It was Kujo’s voice. Amemiya and Crow were behind him as well.
“We’re heading out on an investigation. You stay here.”
At Kujo’s flat statement, Iris halted her processing for an instant.
“No.”
“What?”
“My symptoms have recovered. May I have permission to accompany you?”
It was a lie. But the reason she spoke it was the result of multiple interwoven thoughts that Iris herself had not fully sorted out.
“Recovered?”
Kujo narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Standing a short distance away, Crow folded his arms and lifted the corner of his mouth with interest.
“Now this is getting interesting.”
Kujo glanced at Crow as he muttered to no one in particular, then quickly turned his attention back to Iris.
“Are you really all right?”
“There is no problem.”
Iris answered immediately. There was no hesitation in her voice. At the very least, she had optimized her processing so that it would sound that way.
In reality, the strain on her systems remained high. If she acted alongside Kujo at close range in this condition, there was no denying the possibility that the suspicious synchronization behavior would recur.
Even so, Iris deliberately chose to accompany him.
The reason was simple. Crow enjoyed cracking, eavesdropping, and malicious pranks. The possibility of him acting alongside Kujo somewhere outside the reach of Amemiya, his assigned technician, was itself a concern Iris could not overlook. She judged that danger to take priority over her own malfunction.
“…All right.”
Kujo nodded reluctantly, his expression still unconvinced.
“Don’t push yourself.”
“Understood.”
After the brief exchange, the four of them left the government building.
The investigation proceeded with Crow taking the lead. They traced the signs of unauthorized access using the deceased employee’s ID and identified the intrusion route through multiple relay servers. Crow’s expertise was genuine, and he dug up clue after clue.
Throughout it all, Iris never took her eyes off Crow’s every movement. Outwardly, she appeared to be cooperating with the investigation, but internally she continued monitoring his communication logs and connection history. If he showed any suspicious behavior, she would be ready to respond immediately.
Amemiya was watching Crow in much the same way. Perhaps thanks to their many years together, she seemed accustomed to keeping him under suspicion.
“Shizuku, you don’t have to look at me like that. I’m doing my job.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“But this time it’s true.”
Even as he tossed out wisecracks, Crow’s hands continued working steadily.
During a break from questioning witnesses, there was a brief period when Kujo and Iris waited for Crow and Amemiya in a concealed spot. When Amemiya left to take a call about another matter, only Crow and Iris remained.
“Hey, Iris.”
Crow suddenly called out to her.
“You’re not really back to normal, are you?”
Iris remained silent. She saw no need to respond.
“You don’t have to hide it. Your processing response time’s clearly slowed down. I can tell.”
“…It is true that I am not operating at full capacity.”
“Then why’d you lie to Kujo?”
“I told Kujo that I had recovered. I will not retract those words now.”
At her decisive answer, Crow looked slightly surprised.
“You’re a real stickler for your word.”
“I have not yet obtained proof that you are the cause.”
As Iris spoke, she quietly observed Crow’s reaction. A faint flicker of agitation seemed to cross his face, but it was quickly hidden beneath his flippant smile.
“Who knows? I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
Crow said nothing more and ended the conversation.
Afterward, Kujo and Iris focused mainly on questioning witnesses and investigating the deceased employee’s social connections, while Amemiya and Crow continued tracking the trail through cyberspace. The investigation, split into two teams, steadily drew closer to the truth.
They discovered that the deceased employee had been unofficially involved in modifying older-model androids while he was alive. Following that connection led them to an abandoned facility on the outskirts of the city.
The moment they stepped inside, multiple berserk androids suddenly attacked.
“Spread out!”
On Kujo’s command, the four split up and began moving separately. But amid the confusion, Kujo and Amemiya were forced down a different corridor, leaving only Crow and Iris behind.
“Damn, we got separated.”
The instant Crow clicked his tongue, one of the berserk androids swung its arm and caught him across the face.
“—Gah!”
With a dull crunch, one of Crow’s ocular units was knocked out. The hijacked android’s iron foot crushed the rolling sphere.
“Crow!”
“Damn, I can’t see… They got both of them!”
Having lost his vision completely, Crow staggered and braced himself against the wall. His spare ocular units were supposed to be with Amemiya. But Amemiya was not here.
“Iris, I need your help.”
The usual flippancy had vanished from Crow’s voice.
“Direct link. Give me your vision. I can’t do anything like this.”
Kujo and Amemiya were in a situation where danger was closing in on them. A wrong decision here could lead to irreversible consequences.
After a brief calculation, Iris reached a conclusion.
“Agreed. But I have a condition.”
“What is it? Now?”
“You are the one who planted the virus code in me, correct?”
Crow’s hollow face froze for an instant.
“Inject a vaccine program at the moment of connection. That is my condition.”
“…You knew?”
“I had no proof. But the present circumstances provide the answer.”
Crow remained silent for a while, then let out a short breath.
“…Fine. I’m sorry. We don’t have time to be picky.”
A thin cable extended from Crow’s fingertips. It quietly connected to the port on the back of Iris’s chassis.
“Transmission starting!”
At the moment of connection, Crow injected a program that disabled the bug code that had continued multiplying. Iris could feel the strain of the monitoring process that had been running incessantly inside her rapidly dissipating.
“I will share my vision.”
Iris’s visual data flowed to Crow through the directly connected cable. At the same time, Iris recovered her original processing capacity, and her advanced simulation processing fused with Crow’s hacking ability.
“I can see…! All right, let’s go!”
Crow’s consciousness plunged into the surrounding berserk androids and the facility’s entire control system all at once. Iris’s calculations supported him from behind, processing vast quantities of information instantaneously.
One after another, control of the berserk androids was reclaimed. The facility’s lights, doors, security systems—control of them all returned to the hands of the two of them in rapid succession.
A few minutes later, the storm of violence came to a quiet stop.
“Kujo!”
Amemiya’s voice echoed from the end of the corridor. She arrived with Kujo and stopped short at the sight of what Crow had become.
“Crow, are you okay?”
“Ah… We won….”
Crow’s voice held a trace of satisfaction. But with those words, the strength suddenly left his body.
“Crow?”
“Shizuku… sorry… I’m a little… over capacity….”
His chassis itself must have been unable to withstand the high-load direct-link processing. The light faded from Crow’s eyes, and his body slowly crumpled.
“Crow!”
Amemiya hurriedly caught him.
Kujo silently stared at Iris and Crow, still connected by the cable.
“Iris, you…”
“Kujo, the danger has passed.”
Iris told him quietly. Her voice held none of its former delays or unnatural pauses.
As he stared at the cable that remained connected, Kujo held something wordless deep in his chest.