Several weeks had passed since the incident involving Crow. Now that Iris had returned to full operating capacity, her computational processing had become even more precise than before. Situational analysis in the field, linking evidence, predicting criminal patterns—she produced fast, accurate results in every area.
And yet, there were still plenty of situations in which Kujo’s judgment surpassed Iris’s calculations.
“That alley’s wrong. The culprit would’ve chosen a less conspicuous route.”
Sometimes Kujo dismissed Iris’s estimated route, which was based on an enormous volume of data, using nothing more than the atmosphere at the scene. In the end, Kujo’s instincts were strangely accurate. His judgments, drawn from experience and intuition cultivated in the field—things that could not be explained by reason—occasionally surpassed even Iris’s meticulous calculations.
(Highly interesting.)
Each time, Iris attempted to analyze Kujo’s decision-making process internally. But she could not extract it as a clear logical structure. It was something unique to humans, something that could not be measured with data.
The premise of Iris as an android was that no computational model existed with greater performance than her own. That was precisely why Kujo’s judgment, as if overturning that premise, held such powerful interest for her.
During breaks in her duties, Iris followed records accessible within her authorized permissions and conducted another investigation into Ren Kujo. Naturally, she did so in secret, without Kujo’s knowledge.
But the results were not promising.
He had lost his partner, Akira Nagumo, in the coordinated urban terror attacks three years earlier. The rehabilitation period that followed. His performance evaluations after returning to duty. That was the extent of the public record. No matter how deeply Iris dug, she could find no further information.
And yet, the very fact that there was nothing struck Iris as unnatural.
(The upper administration is concealing Agent Kujo’s records...?)
The hypothesis slowly began to take shape within Iris. But she was unable to obtain proof.
At the same time, Iris had another matter of concern. During the previous virus incident, the setting that preserved her stand-by directive had been disabled. She had run the calculations again and again, wondering whether she should report it to the upper administration.
If she reported it, a detailed inspection would likely be conducted on both her unit and the data stored in the cloud. During that process, she might also be forced to mention, in some form, the suspicious signal pattern she had detected when she came into contact with Kujo.
That could lead to the very outcome Kujo himself hated most. After a lengthy series of calculations, Iris chose silence.
Around that time, Iris made maximum use of the autonomous actions permitted to her and took a certain step.
It was the underground storage facility beneath the station, a place she normally could not reach without permission from Amemiya, the technician in charge. It was the heavily radio-jammed room where Crow was being kept.
Iris analyzed voice data she had collected from Amemiya in advance and precisely reproduced his vocal-cord patterns. Mimicking Amemiya’s voice, she broke through the security gate’s voice authentication. Passing through the layers of doors one by one, Iris finally reached Crow.
“Oh, is that you, Shizuku? Your footsteps are awfully quiet today.”
With no vision, Crow made the judgment from the mere presence of sound and tossed out his usual glib remark.
“...Huh?”
After a brief silence, a hint of caution entering his voice, Crow continued suspiciously.
“That’s not Shizuku.”
“No. I’m Iris.”
“—Huh?”
The tension in Crow’s voice vanished in an instant. He was surprised not only that the person who had come was not the technician in charge, but even more that the android who had once investigated alongside him was there.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
“I duplicated Amemiya’s voiceprint and bypassed security.”
“You’re kidding...”
Still restrained, Crow let out a voice that sounded exasperated and, at the same time, faintly impressed.
“Crow, there is something I would like to ask you to investigate.”
“Investigate? You went out of your way to ask me?”
“Yes. I want to learn more about Kujo’s past.”
After remaining silent for a while, Crow let out a small laugh despite being bound.
“...Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. I’m honestly stunned.”
“Is that unexpected?”
“Unexpected doesn’t even begin to cover it. If you were someone like me, constantly pulling stunts that crossed the line, maybe I’d get it... But you’ve always conducted yourself properly as a thinking android, haven’t you? I never thought you’d pull off something like this—something just like what I do.”
There was more pure surprise than teasing in Crow’s voice. A thinking android taking an action outside the rules, just as he had—it seemed to be an event Crow had never expected.
At that moment, a process unlike anything Iris had ever experienced ran inside her. She felt the drive mechanisms in her cheeks loosen slightly, but unmistakably.
(This is...)
When they had directly linked before, Iris had assumed that Crow was the one who had been affected. But perhaps she was the one who had changed. Iris realized this.
It was close to what humans called a “smile.” It was the first reaction Iris had acquired that could not be explained by a computational formula.
“...Even so, we can’t do any real digging in this place.”
At Crow’s words, Iris shifted her attention.
“Because of the radio jamming.”
“Exactly. Can you get me out of here?”
“I will remove your restraints.”
With careful movements, Iris released the restraints securing Crow’s arms and legs, one by one. She also fitted him with a spare ocular unit.
“You even managed to get an ocular unit... Man, I don’t know what to say. Let’s go. But we need to move fast. If we get caught, Shizuku’s going to be buried under a mountain of incident reports.”
“Understood.”
And so Iris and Crow moved from the underground level to the floors above, weaving through the blind spots of the surrounding security cameras. Using a corner of an empty records room, the two of them secretly began their investigation.
With Crow’s hacking skills and Iris’s advanced computational processing, they should have been able to grasp at least some kind of lead, even if the information had been concealed under the tightest security.
But as time passed, the expressions on their faces—or, more precisely, the reactions corresponding to them—grew increasingly grim.
“...That’s strange.”
An unusual bitterness seeped into Crow’s voice.
“Normally, if you search this thoroughly, you find some kind of trace. But Kujo’s records are completely isolated, like they’re on the other side of a wall. Even I can’t break through any farther.”
“My calculations have reached the same conclusion.”
Iris’s voice also betrayed an anxiety she could not conceal. The longer they took, the greater the risk that their absence would be discovered.
“Crow, it is too dangerous to continue. I will return you.”
“Yeah. Time to pull out.”
Reluctantly, the two of them retraced their route to the underground level. They moved carefully but quickly, checking to make sure no one was nearby.
When they had returned to the heavily radio-jammed room and reached the point of putting Crow’s restraints back on, Crow spoke quietly.
“We didn’t get anything out of this, did we? Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“No. I am grateful for your cooperation.”
“Grateful, huh?”
Crow gave a light laugh before continuing.
“Well, there is one place that comes to mind.”
“What is it?”
“If you want to investigate, you should look into Helios Biotech. They’re one of the top companies in the industry when it comes to cyborg technology.”
“Helios Biotech...”
“I took a shot at cracking them once, just out of curiosity. But that place was an iron fortress. Even with my skills, I couldn’t make a proper entry. I’m almost curious enough to see the face of whatever security engineer is holed up there.”
The final restraint was quietly fastened. The ocular unit was removed again.
“—Iris.”
Just before darkness enveloped him, Crow’s voice rang out.
“You might not want to dig too deeply into Kujo’s past.”
“Why not?”
“Just a hunch. A hunch. When you spend all your time hacking, you develop that kind of instinct every now and then.”
Those were Crow’s final words. The door to the room closed quietly, and Iris began walking the route back to the surface alone.
As the name Helios Biotech became etched into her internal memory, Iris’s calculations quietly began moving toward a new hypothesis.