On the day of Rapture, she is ready.
The entrance is battered down, and the angels swoop in. Men and women enter, dressed in black suits and black ties, carrying weapons that are jagged, sharp, and imbued with a mysterious energy that lends them an almost divine façade. Their menacing demeanors and hostile behavior as they search the house would strike fear in the hearts of most children – and adults, too, as they know all too well the identity of these people. But as the angels go about their business, darting up the stairs at speed, pushing every door open, she alone remains unperturbed. She sits on the sofa, book in hand, watching silently, waiting for them to notice her.
At last, one of them does.
"What's your name?" asks the woman, whose expression is much kindlier than her uniform first makes her seem.
"Akemi," the girl replies.
"Nice to meet you, Akemi. We're going to get you somewhere safe, okay? You don't have to worry about anything. Are your parents home?"
The girl nods. "Dad is home. Mom is with her… friends."
A commotion upstairs draws their attention. There are sounds of a fight breaking out, before a heavy clattering silences the noise. As the footsteps trudge back down the staircase, the girl sees her father, his hands behind his back, a group of suited people hemming him in as they walk towards the front door.
Their eyes meet. His eyes widen. Her eyes remain still.
"No," he croaks. "No, wait. What will happen to Akemi?! What will you do with her?!"
The suited people do not answer.
"No!" he yells, dragging his feet and scrabbling to reach his daughter. "No! Akemi! Wait!"
She looks away. A part of her feels sadness, anguish, the sorrow that one experiences when an irreplaceable element of their life is ripped away from them. But, for the most part, she is emotionless, her breathing steady, her body relaxed, her head clear. The weather outside is bright and sunny, as if the events unfolding before her – the screams of her father, the cold gazes of the suited people, the black car with tinted windows waiting outside – are nothing but an illusion.
Perhaps after so many years of grief, she has been numbed to the despair of daily life. But maybe, just maybe, she is also afraid of feeling relief.
The woman reaches for her hand and takes it. It is a soft and tender grasp, full of a love that is not her own. But it is also firm enough to preclude all notions of escape – not that the girl has entertained any.
"Come with me," says the woman. The girl obediently follows, book still in her other hand.
Kokonoe's eyes jolted open, and she sat up on her bed, before immediately regretting doing so as her head pounded in protest at her sudden movement. She was soaked in sweat, her pajamas clinging uncomfortably to her body, every nook and cranny rendered moist by her unconscious exertions. The pain in her bones was sharper and more pronounced than it had been yesterday afternoon; the stiffness in her joints, the likely result of inflammation, meant that she took on the appearance of a puppet being tugged about on strings as she made her way to the kitchen sink, her legs jerking agonizingly forwards with each step.
She glanced at the clock. It was far too early – or late – to be awake. But now that she had awoken, she knew that the ailments that had haunted her all her life would not let her return to slumber that easily. A part of her knew that the right course of action would be to call in sick for the day, and get the respite that she needed before she returned to work.
Yet the overriding feeling was that she could not afford even a single day off. Not when the show was reaching its climax. Call it selfishness, call it stubbornness – she would make sure she missed nothing, because at this stage of the investigations, any small detail she found could be important.
In the end, all roads led to the faceless man she had met on that rainy day.
She had secretly recorded his voice on her wrist-link, but the noisy static of the heavy rain, and the probable use of a voice changer, had ultimately rendered any analysis impossible. She strained to remember any distinguishing features, but in her current state, none were forthcoming. No cameras or sensors were near the area, which she now slowly realized was a common theme between the three murder cases. But beyond that, she had no leads – save for the triplet of paper cards, the message behind which remained unclear.
Circumstance was not on her side; it rarely ever was. The three cases danced around in her mind's eye, jeering at her, telling her mockingly that there was more to them than anyone would have first thought, daring her to peel away the veil of untruth. But she felt far too sick, and her head was far too foggy, to make sense of their taunts. She cursed the illness that plagued her, hating how it made her weak, lashing out internally against the injustice of being condemned without trial to be incarcerated within a prison of poisoned flesh from which there was no escape.
It had not always been this way.
She had once been healthy, if not happy. As a child, she could walk, run, play like any other person of her age, though she was not often granted the opportunity to do so. It could be that a lack of such chances to let herself loose contributed to an eventually unhealthy development, but she sensed that there was a deeper meaning to her malaise. The great whirlwind of her childhood had been a perfect storm of negativity, a constant tumble of rocks and boulders crushing her under their weight, endlessly piling on the pressure, never once allowing her relief.
Then, the Sibyl System came for her, and she was abruptly, inexplicably, free.
The new era had dawned upon a Japan that found itself very much in the midst of crisis. Declining birth rates, increasingly stringent social stigmas and taboos, an economy in freefall, and the chaos that invariably followed – all these factors lent themselves to the inevitable foretelling of the once proud nation's doom. Beyond Japan's maritime borders, the world was in a state of flux, its countries rent by the claws of war and strife, its resources stripped to exhaustion, its surface damaged beyond repair. The aging, overworked, fearful populace of Japan had nowhere to turn, and so when a group of enigmatic technocrats promised an answer to their problems, they were swiftly elevated by their grateful peers to the nation's highest political echelons.
The solution they proposed would never have been accepted under normal conditions, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and they quickly unveiled the latest innovation in AI technology: an ostensible black box that could use special sensors to determine one's best path forward based on a combination of machine learning, mass personal data collection, and individual physiognomy. The operation of such a far-reaching neural network required the installation of cameras and microphones at every street corner, as well as the gradual relocation of people away from rural areas and into the cities, where they could be more easily monitored. Slowly but surely, the black box, now known as the Sibyl System, infiltrated every aspect of the people's daily lives, coddling and guiding them to the extent that they no longer remembered what it was like to worry about their futures – the need for any level of stress had now been all but eliminated.
Then, Phase 2 of the great plan began, and the implementation of the Psycho-Pass apparatus was completed. Now, stressful thoughts were not only unnecessary, but altogether forbidden. The thinking was that stress led to cynicism, which led to resentment, which led to criminality. Removing all sources of angst would end any prospect of crime – cut the head of the snake, and the rest would fall limp. "Stress care", a procedure combining several different therapeutic and psychiatric methods in order to rapidly relieve one's anxieties, became commonplace. The technocrats' grand vision of an isolated utopia full of content, satisfied citizens had come to fruition… or at least, that was how it seemed at first glance.
Amidst all this upheaval, Kokonoe Akemi grew out of innocence and into adulthood. She could only be grateful for her emancipation by the agents who served as the harbingers of the Sibyl System's will – in a strange twist of fate, the increasing stringency of the Sibyl System's command over society had rather removed the shackles that had once bound her. Her time with her dysfunctional family had come to an end, and in time she learned to stand on her own two feet without worrying if she might be sent sprawling back onto the floor.
But such sudden relief came at a price.
In the same way that a broken watch would never again tell the time, the mechanisms that made Kokonoe's body tick no longer knew how to function without subservience. Where once she had been punished for disobedience, beaten into submission, and ordered to do but never allowed to question, she was now given free rein to decide the way forward for herself within the Sibyl System's boundaries. The gates of Heaven were opened to her, but she did not know how to step through. She retreated from the light and huddled in the corner, letting the darkness wrap her in its embrace.
The Sibyl System had wanted someone capable, someone smart, someone observant. But above all, the Sibyl System had wanted a slave. And it had received one who willingly submitted herself to bondage.
She snapped the chains back onto her ankles. She walked into the flight of the whip. She returned to the fields and toiled the earth in service of her simultaneously human and inhuman master.
It was all she knew how to do.
"Who's there?"
The heavy steel door creaked open, and the person pushing it, who had to shift all her weight towards moving the inflexible hinges, panted and puffed as she stood in the doorway, choking in the dust and musty air, folding her arms as she surveyed the area with a mix of pity and distaste.
"Oh, Shimotsuki," said the room's only tenant. "I didn't expect to see you today."
"When did you expect to see me?" Chief Inspector Shimotsuki Mika sat opposite her erstwhile superior, eyeing her warily. She might be confined to a chamber barely bigger than Shimotsuki's office, but Tsunemori Akane was never one to be taken lightly. "Not like you have anything to do anyways, Senpai."
Tsunemori laughed. "You're right. Talking to you makes things a lot less boring. How's work?"
"Just the usual." Shimotsuki shrugged. "Some Area Stress elevations here and there. A few latent criminals caught. Mundane stuff, but it beats being stuck in here."
"I bet. What about our mutual Inspector friend? Is she well?"
"Kokonoe?" A frown crept onto Shimotsuki's face. "She's investigating a chain of murders. They're all really strange cases – the victims' heads were completely beaten in, but the rest of their bodies were left intact. She doesn't have any leads so far, so I'm considering assigning Division 3 to help her."
Tsunemori put a hand to her chin, deep in thought. "Their heads were beaten in? As in completely destroyed?"
"Pretty much. Their skulls were crushed; their brains, eyes, and other features were basically flattened. Horrible thing to do, desecrating someone's corpse like that. But like I said, the weirdest part is that the rest of the body from the neck down was untouched. Just left to lay there."
"Almost as if the rest of the body didn't matter." Tsunemori's eyes lit up. "What mattered was the head, and only the head."
Shimotsuki observed her former colleague's change in expression. "Did you figure something out?"
The corners of Tsunemori's lips curled up. "Who knows? Maybe I happened on a faint possibility. Maybe not."
"So, what is it?"
"What is what?"
"The faint possibility."
Tsunemori leaned back onto her sofa, but said nothing further.
"Come on, Senpai. If you've got something, then I can tell Kokonoe so she can solve the case quicker."
"Don't worry, Shimotsuki." Tsunemori stretched her arms out and sighed. "Knowing her, she's probably already figured it out."
"You sure have a lot of faith in her. I wish you showed the same faith in me back then," Shimotsuki grumbled under her breath.
"What was that?"
"Nothing." Shimotsuki clicked her tongue. "Anyway, that's not the only reason I came to visit you today."
"Oh?"
"I need to bounce something off you, as much as I hesitate to talk to you about certain topics. Remember when… actually, no. You weren't there." Shimotsuki cleared her throat. "Around a year ago, Chief Kasei told me to take Kokonoe to the NONA Tower to see the Sibyl System's real form."
"Oh… yeah. I think I remember Kokonoe talking about that."
"Here's the thing – she had almost no reaction at all. She just acted like it wasn't anything totally beyond her imagination, almost like it was to be expected. Completely different from you and me. I remember freaking out when I first saw it, though I really prefer not to think about that moment."
"She's… special, I'll give her that," Tsunemori admitted.
"Is she, though? She's half a dozen years younger than we are. Maybe the newer generation's become so dulled out and accepting of everything that this is simply how anyone would act when confronted with the truth. Remember the helmet riots? How nobody cared when someone was being killed right in front of them? Maybe we're the weird ones." Shimotsuki paused. "Either way, that seems to be what Chief Kasei thinks as well."
"You mean, in other words…"
Shimotsuki nodded. "The Sibyl System is considering going public with its true existence. The plans had been shelved for a while, but apparently Kokonoe has somehow convinced it that it might be able to take the next step. I've heard that test subjects are being gathered in order to see how they react to seeing the… brains."
"To be honest, that sounds extremely premature." Tsunemori's brow furrowed. "There can't be that much of a difference between us and people of Kokonoe's age. Plus, nothing fazes Kokonoe – she feels like an exception to the rule. There has to be some other reason that the Sibyl System's doing this."
"I don't disagree. Chief Kasei – the Sibyl System – must have some ulterior motive. If the Sibyl System's up to something, I want to know what it is."
Tsunemori swiveled around to look at the farthest corner of the room, where a tiny glass lens stared back at her. "I doubt the Sibyl System will be open to telling you. Though, I'm surprised. I thought you were too devoted of a servant to query its motivations."
"Just because I think the Sibyl System is our best option doesn't mean I don't want to know what its next move is."
"I see." Tsunemori smirked. "I guess even a priest has to question their own beliefs occasionally."
Shimotsuki pulled a face. "If you've got that much snark left in you, then it looks like my worries were misplaced. I think we're done for now. Thanks for today, Senpai." She grunted and rose to leave.
"Don't think too hard about it," said Tsunemori as Shimotsuki opened the door. "The Sibyl System doesn't take criticism well."
Shimotsuki stopped, leaving the door ajar, and turned to glare at her.
"Maybe you should've taken your own advice in that respect," she replied pointedly.
And with that, the Chief Inspector was gone.
Chief Kasei's office, located at the top of the Public Safety Bureau's headquarters, was an unwelcome, somewhat claustrophobic space that reflected the steely and piercing demeanor of its sole permanent occupant. The Chief's old abode had screamed authority and command, with its long red carpet and chrome interior; this new chamber was a colder, more sinister specimen. The floor and walls were painted in a green-and-gray checkerboard pattern that absorbed much of the light emanating from the network of stark white fluorescent tubes woven into the ceiling. Rows of jagged ornamental protrusions flanked the Chief as she sat at her station, observing matters from her computer screens.
Behind the Chief was the only one of the four walls that wasn't plastered in an unpleasant green hue: a massive mirror in which Kokonoe could view her own reflection. Her face was pale, and not just from the lighting.
"I read your report on the three cases," said Kasei, pushing her horn-rimmed glasses up as she focused on her latest visitor. "The similar manners of death have convinced you that they are linked, and that a serial killer may be behind them."
"That's correct," replied Kokonoe.
"I agree with you on that point. However," Kasei continued, "as you know, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that the Psycho-Pass' scanners would not detect the presence of someone with prolonged, high-level criminal intent if they are to survive within the boundaries of this city. In other words-"
"The killer is criminally asymptomatic," Kokonoe finished, before realizing the rudeness of cutting off her superior and squeezing her lips together to prevent any further words from escaping.
"Precisely." For a moment, Kasei looked on the verge of reprimanding her, but decided against it in the end. "The perpetrator must be criminally asymptomatic. As such, it is of the utmost importance that you find them as quickly as possible, and with as much discretion as you can manage. The efficacy of the Sibyl System, and the prosperity of our society, depends on it."
Kokonoe nodded. She fully understood what the Chief meant – the Sibyl System's veneer of invincibility and infallibility would lose its sheen if the existence of the criminally asymptomatic were revealed to the public. Even if the chances of someone being born with the condition were slim to none, such was the nature of doubt that the tiniest seed of it could take root and blossom into something more substantial, spreading like a virus amongst the people. It was imperative that these people – and news of their appearances – be nipped in the bud, so they might be assimilated into service within the Sibyl System's cognitive framework.
"Your report also suggests, however indirectly, that you may have found a motive behind the perpetrator's actions," Kasei continued.
Kokonoe blinked. "Does it? I thought I said that no motive had been found yet."
"Yet your report does not explore any possibilities regarding motives – something you have done in all of your previous reports, and a feature that I greatly appreciated even if your hypotheses turned out to be incorrect. Knowing your intellect and capacity for shrewd observation, the conspicuous absence of such a section would, if I were more cynical about you, suggest that you were hiding something from me."
A stone dropped in Kokonoe's chest.
"I… I apologize. I was feeling particularly ill yesterday, so I did not do as good a job on the report as I would have."
For a brief, heart-stopping moment, Kasei said nothing. Her hawk-like gaze drilled holes into Kokonoe's eyes, and Kokonoe could not help but gulp, even though she knew that the Chief ought to have no reason to suspect her of withholding information. A cold sweat broke, and her face burned under the heat of Kasei's scrutiny. She shuffled her feet, forcing herself to not avert eye-contact and hence arouse further suspicion.
Finally, Chief Kasei smiled and let her shoulders loosen slightly, a sight that relieved Kokonoe to no end. "Of course. As it is I – or we – that made you an Inspector, I share some of the responsibility for asking you to come to the office every day, even if you are unwell. Do not think too badly of me for this."
"No, I would never. If you would like, I will rewrite the report tonight."
"Leave it be." Kasei waved her hand dismissively. "Conjecture is conjecture, nothing more. We only concern ourselves with the facts. Continue to apply yourself to the investigation, and I will be satisfied. That is all; you may go."
Kokonoe bowed, and made her way to the entrance.
"We placed much trust in you by letting you see the Sibyl System's true form," called Kasei as Kokonoe stepped out into the corridor. "Do not make us regret that choice."
"Rest assured I'll do what I can." Kokonoe gave the Chief a crisp salute, shut the door with a snap, and headed towards the lifts. Only when she was out of earshot and eyeshot of the office, in the quiet confines of the elevator, did she allow herself to take a deep breath to calm herself.
She was not committing a crime – the scanners would never have let her leave the room otherwise. But deceiving the Chief, and consequently the Sibyl System as a whole, was a plenty stressful thing to do in itself. Of course she had ideas about what the killer really wanted; she had confirmed her speculations essentially from the moment the second murder had been discovered. Yet the fact that the killer required her to find him on her own, and ostensibly had some means of knowing if she had spilled the beans or not, meant that she could not disclose what she had realized to anyone.
Not even the one, if her hypothesis was right, that the killer was actually targeting.
As with most cases, the solution was easy enough to understand once one arrived at it, yet reaching the solution in itself proved difficult. It required one to know of the criminally asymptomatic, and the number of people who did, outside of the criminally asymptomatic themselves, could likely be counted on one hand.
The elevator doors dinged open, and Kokonoe hastily returned to her office. Kitahara and Inaba were at their seats, eyes glued to their screens, only turning once they heard her footsteps.
"Everything go well with the Chief?" Kitahara asked.
"As well as could be expected." Kokonoe fell into her chair and poured the now-cold contents of her coffee mug down her throat. "She asked me about my report. Any progress on the cases?"
"I've drawn up a diagram of locations that the three people visited six months prior to their deaths," said Inaba. "I thought about using a longer time period, like a whole year, but there were way too many irrelevant overlaps."
Kokonoe moved over to Inaba's workstation, staring at the dense web of red lines superimposed on the map of Tokyo displayed on her computer. "Even half a year seems like too much. Did you find any intersections?"
"Yeah." Inaba tapped her keyboard, erasing the lines and leaving a cluster of dots. "I isolated the places that they were spotted visiting. They didn't live too far away from each other, so most of those places were restaurants, convenience stores, and the like. Taking those away leaves… this."
Another tap, and most of the dots were cleared. Only four from the original cluster remained.
"What sorts of places are these?"
"They're all locations you'd go on a day off, or maybe once in a while after work. This one on the right is a shopping mall in Chiba. The one just to the left is a karaoke bar in Edogawa. Third is the Tokyo Dome – I think there was a baseball game there recently – and fourth is a nightclub in Ota."
"Did any of them go to the same place on the same day?"
"Just the Tokyo Dome, for the baseball. But that's no surprise, I guess. We could probably review the camera footage, but people are a lot harder to spot inside the stadium, especially in the middle of a crowd. They could move around – maybe into one of the bathrooms, or something like that – and we'd never know."
"You're right." Kokonoe sighed. "And I'm guessing there was no good footage of them in the other three places. We'd probably have to visit each of those locations ourselves and see if we can find any witnesses. They're relatively close by if we take the car, so we could head to Tokyo Dome first, followed by Chiba and Edogawa, then finally-"
A thought abruptly struck her, stunning her into silence. An earth-shattering moment of inspiration; a bolt from the blue. Her jaw dropped, leaving her mouth agape.
"Inspector?" said Inaba with a hint of concern.
"Ota," Kokonoe whispered. She shook herself from her reverie and patted Inaba's shoulder. "We'll check the Tokyo Dome after lunch today. I'll let you two go early for lunch break. Good work, Inaba."
Inaba giggled. "Thanks, Inspector. Always happy to help."
"As you should be. It's your job." Kokonoe ignored Inaba's crestfallen whines and returned to her seat, deep in thought as she chewed on her fingernails. She snuck a glance at her pill container, under which was hidden the three mystery square cards – and the three equally mysterious letters printed on them, whose puzzle might finally be on the cusp of being solved.
Ota. O-T-A. It had to be.
More likely than not, her desperate mind was scrabbling for a foothold in the investigation, however superficial, yet she could not help but feel hopeful. The link was tenuous, but her gut told her that there was meaning to be found in coincidence.
And even if it actually weren't, she would check it out anyway. Red herring or not, she would follow any lead in her pursuit of the truth. If the killer knew something about her past, and wasn't afraid of showing it, then she would have to take his provocation as seriously as she conceivably could. Solving these cases was hard enough as is, even without all the enigma surrounding them, and if her anonymous adversary dangled a line in front of her, she would bite as hard as her enervated body could muster.
Even if she ended up getting hooked out of the water because of it.