It's funny, because for a moment, she thought she won.

That final shot leaving the chamber, the shudder as it buried itself in the thick rubber of the tyre. The squeal as the truck left the road and toppled over into the field of hyper oats. The metallic tang in her mouth, the gasping heaves of her chest and the lingering elation of victory.

And then the events had tumbled out of control, and Makishima had slipped through her grasp as sand does through fingers, and she was left behind by the two predators once more, a hunter without a gun.

It was then that she truly understood. As Makishima walked off into the lightening horizon, as Kogami followed with sure, determined footsteps, and as she desperately stumbled after the two unreachable hunters in front of her, she realized that the abyss that she had tasted wasn't her terrain. It belonged to the two of them, a clash of white and black, a conflict that would never cease until one brought the other to his knees.

Hollowed Vision

When he opened his eyes, black stretched out beyond him in an impenetrable blanket.

He shook his head a few times, as if he were hoping that his eyes would adjust to the dark. He waited patiently, waited for blurred lines to appear, for the sure outlines of the world to etch themselves into his mind once more. He waited.

Shuddering, he reached up and stroked his fingertips lightly over his eyes. His eyelids weren't covering his amber orbs. No, they were up, as surely as curtains were drawn before the dawn of a new day. So? What was the darkness that enveloped his being? What was the black canvas of the world that had been drawn over the windows to his soul?

"It's three in the afternoon, Shogo-san."

His ringing laugh was tinged with a hint of desperation and resignation.

"I've become blind." He whispered. Her quiet sighs accompanied him as he slowly sank into the darkness that now ruled his life.

It seems that the abyss that he had been wading through had finally swallowed him.

Akane sat with her back pressed against the wall. She could feel the cool of the metal panels seeping through her thin blouse. Her black jacket lay to the side, folded neatly. It'd started to feel stifling lately, and she wasn't sure if this was because the weather was turning warmer, or if she was being driven into a corner herself.

She held her dominator limply in one hand, the muzzle of the gun pointed towards one of the various brains in Sibyl's collection. Psycho Pass Reading Not Available. The shimmering hologram screen before her eyes was telling her. Not a Latent Criminal. The Trigger is Locked.

"I gained nothing from my visit today." She was in the middle of telling the Sibyl System about her visit to Makishima. She had watched as a weird desolation had crossed his features upon realizing that he was blind. With today's technology, they could easily fix it. A few implants here, some weaving of the nerves together there and he could probably see again.

But nobody wanted to help a criminal.

That response had been calculated. He has yet to give up any information. He is stubborn. Sibyl replied.

"Not only that, I think he's still recovering from his injuries. We can't expect too much of a man who had just been shot three days ago. His mind may still be in some kind of shock. And he feel unconscious shortly after I spoke to him, so I didn't manage to question him thoroughly as I would've liked."

That is to be expected. There is no change in his Psycho Pass. It remains under 100. Shortly, doctors will deem him operable, and he will join us.

Akane couldn't help but grimace at that, and as if the collection of bubbling brains could see her, Sibyl let out a mechanical chortle that rang in her mind. What Sibyl must've meant by the phrase 'join us' must be the process of removing Makishima Shogo's brain from his body and then attaching it to the super computer that stood before her. A collection of individuals who have been placed together to run a series of tests, individuals who were all once unaffected by this very system.

Human bodies have limitations. A calculating computer does not. Sibyl informed her. She nodded dumbly and stood to leave. Just as she turned, she remembered why she had gone after Makishima in the first place. It wasn't in vengeance for her friend's death, although Yuki's violent passing had pushed her along in her determination. It was so that she could earn freedom for her fellow detective, Kogami Shinya.

Just the thought of his name sent a twist of worry through her stomach. As soon as she had brought the two of them back into the MWPSB facilities, a group of dominator toting individuals had marched into the garage and had taken them into their custody. No matter how much she begged, she hadn't been allowed to see Kogami yet.

"You have to keep your half of the bargain, Sibyl. We agreed that if I captured Makishima, you would re-judge him and grant him a life other than that of being executed." Akane held her breath in anticipation. If Sibyl agreed, then perhaps Kogami wouldn't have reason to view her as antagonistic, even though she had shot him with the dominator.

As of this moment, the deal does not stand. We asked you to refrain from harming the subject, but you have allowed him to become shot. Until he becomes part of Sibyl, Kogami Shinya's crime coefficient will not be lowered and his status will stay the same.

Akane squeezed the trigger of the dominator in frustration. "You can't just twist your word-"

Our judgement is final.

She wanted to scream, to lunge at the brains that held the lives of countless human beings with their decisions. She wanted to smash the jars that held these abominations to human nature. She wanted to destroy everything. Tears of frustration gathered in the corners of her eyes, but she swiped them away angrily with the back of her hand.

"You better keep your promise, otherwise I'll make sure to shoot Makishima myself next time." She warned.

Sibyl only laughed robotically.

You wouldn't dare pull the trigger, came the amused reply.

Upon reaching her apartment, Akane collapsed onto her bed and spent five minutes emptying her thoughts and feelings.

After the...incident, she had turned into what Shion had jokingly called a 'Kogami-copy'. She moved out of her old apartment and had moved into a high-rise skyscraper condo right next to the MWPSB building. She was so close to her workplace that she only had to go to her bedroom window to be able to see the floor where she worked everyday. It had become routine to stare at the office in the minutes before she fell asleep.

She wondered if she was really becoming a Kogami copy. Was this how the man lived his life, right up to the point where he shot Makishima?

When her mind was well and truly blank, she found the strength to stumble to her feet and go about her nightly routine.

Make yourself dinner. She shuffled aimlessly towards the refrigerator and gave it a cursory glance. There wasn't anything inside that she particularly wanted to eat.

Take a shower. The pounding of the water upon her bare back calmed her somewhat, although the heat from the water failed to touch the cold that lined her heart. She was frozen in indecision, a deadly self-hate that allowed her to doubt her every action.

Drink a cup of water, and then head to the study to look over some more reports. When she was soaking the tea bag, a splash of hot water hit her pale skin. She glanced at it numbly. The pain had hardly registered in her mind. The water disappeared quickly, leaving nothing but a small pink circle upon her skin. She shook her head and shuffled to the study, where she locked herself with her reports for the next few hours.

It was around three o'clock when she finally yawned and stretched. She'd been briefing a case about domestic abuse, where two apparently compatible partners had suddenly turned on each other. The husband had managed to kill his wife before the authorities found out via a huge spike in his Psycho Pass, and tomorrow Unit 1 was going to search his apartment to determine how exactly he had killed his wife. The report assured that the crime scene had been left untouched.

Well, it's more convenient this way, although I'll have to get my hands dirty once more.

It had come to the point where she no longer felt anything, even if she was snapping on gloves to reach into the entrails of a dismembered corpse, or feeling about a shattered bone to get an idea of how the victim had been hurt. Her senses were numbed to the sight and smell of blood; they seemed to her no more than holo-decorations for the floors and walls.

As she stood up and filed the report neatly back into her bag, a knock at her door startled her.

Immediately, she had her back against the wall, one hand shuffling over her desk to grasp for anything that could be used as a weapon. The room fell silent, so silent that she could only hear the ticking of her clock.

Her fingers reached something thin and sharp. She wrapped her hand around it securely, and took her eyes off the door to glance down briefly. It was a pair of scissors. Better than nothing, she thought.

The knock came again, sharper and more urgent this time. Akane's nerves were going haywire. She twitched and pressed her lips in a thin line. There was nobody who could possibly be knocking at her door at this hour.

She quietly made her way towards the door. Scissors gripped firmly in hand, she took a few deep breaths and waited with bated breath, one hand on the doorknob. After counting to three, she yanked the door open. Her brown eyes searched the empty doorway for a shadow of movement.

Nobody was there.

Paranoia? She immediately questioned herself. Perhaps it was just another late worker heading home. Even as her mind considered the possibility, she was shaking it off. Her ears hadn't deceived her. It was obviously coming from her apartment.

As she closed the door, she heard something knocking against her neighbor's door and she smiled. Either way, the problem had moved on now. She shut the door and locked it securely, moving one of the dining table chairs in front of the door. If anyone came in , he or she would first be delayed by the chair, and the scraping of furniture against the floor would alert her anyway. Better safe than sorry, she reasoned, even though she couldn't rid herself of the suspicion that the knocking was actually more than it seemed.

Finally, she stretched. Akane headed to bed and thought no more of it, until she woke up three hours later gasping for breath and realizing that her apartment was on fire.

A/N: Sorry for the late update! It was quite hard to get back into writing this fic, which is why it's progressing a bit slowly (My pacing is a little of OTL I haven't written in a while...) but hopefully things will pick up from here.

Thanks to all those who reviewed and favorited/followed this story!

Reviewers: Akuma Shoujo23, Magpies and Pie, Lilly, Guest, AruuYuda-ShoriKyuyu and astraea.12.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you continue to enjoy!