The alarm triggered at six o'clock in the morning and sounded like a Bach cello suite playing for a miniature concert hall. Shion twisted her naked body and stretched, reaching out with one hand to trigger the switch above the headboard that would silence the impromptu performance. The sheets clinging to her legs were rumpled, as though two tigers had fought for territory in the waning hours—an apt description of the night's entertainments, she thought with a slow smile. He looks naive, but he's stronger than he seems. I may keep him around. Her skin was lightly beaded with sweat, and red marks (teeth marks?) ornamented her cream-colored skin in concentric patterns around her arms, thighs, and breasts.

"What was that?" a sleepy voice asked from beside her.

Shion ran gentle fingers over the sharp curve of the man's hip bone. It was accentuated by his thin physique. In reflex at her touch, he gave a slight jerk, but then smiled up at her through lidded eyes.

"Nothing," she said, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

"Let me guess," he said dryly. "You've received an urgent message and now must go sit in front of your computer for six hours, tracking down latent criminals."

Shion shrugged. "It's my job," she murmured, and with a graceful slide out of bed, she began to hunt for her clothes. They seemed to have been tossed into each corner of the room. She found her skirt wrapped up in a pair of slacks and a holstered Dominator.

Arishima sat up and watched her dress with an unreadable expression marring his pretty face. Was it jealousy? It can't be—not after one night! "Will I see you again?"

Oh, you can count on it. Aloud, she said, "I enjoyed last night. Did you?"

The rookie blew out a sharp breath, his cheeks reddening.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Shion with a laugh.

When she had gotten herself into a mostly presentable state, Shion paused by the mirror beside the door and studied her reflection. She began to fix her hair.

"You're beautiful."

"Do you like Yayoi?" she asked absently.

Itaru Arishima frowned, as if he didn't quite understand the meaning of the question. "Yes, she's very pretty," he said, and hesitated. "Though not the friendliest person, at first."

"It takes time for her to warm up to new faces." Satisfied with her appearance, Shion snagged an unopened bottle of champagne from the bucket by the door. The ice had long since melted into a pool of room-temperature tap water.

"That's true for some people. Why do you ask?"

"If you'd like, you can have both of us tonight."

The rookie Inspector's mouth dropped open, and he stared at Shion in disbelief.

Perfect, Shion thought, and with a last look to admire his disheveled appearance, she left the bedroom.


Akane Tsunemori didn't like going to the zoo; she thought it was terribly cruel for the animals to be locked away like so many priceless treasures, even if they seemed happy. To inflict such pain on defenseless creatures, she felt, was a barbarous throwback to the era preceding the advent of Psycho-Passes and the Sibyl System.

But as she sat helplessly in the darkness, it seemed as if she had no choice but to learn intimately what life in a cage would be like. There must be a way out. I have one of the best hackers in the world locked in here with me, and Kagari and I are both members of the Public Safety Bureau. There must be something we can do. However, despite how many times she told herself that, her words didn't change the solidity of the bars that barricaded them inside Shion's office.

"Can you trigger the fire alarm?" Kagari asked from his spot on her wrist, and Akane's lips drew back. She was getting awfully tired of his suggestions, which were invariably things that Choe had thought of already. She had half a mind to deactivate the wristband, but she couldn't find the power switch in the darkness.

"Yes, but what would that accomplish?" Gu-sung countered. "Unless making Tsunemori miserable is your primary concern."

"Maybe it would short-circuit the security system," the Enforcer theorized hopefully.

"Perhaps—water does tend to react poorly with electronics." The hacker let a pregnant pause fill the room. "Oh, by the way, Shusei, where do you suppose I am right now?"

It took a few seconds for Kagari to get it, but then he sighed and grumbled, "In a laptop. Yeah, yeah. Nevermind."

Akane lowered herself onto the couch facing the door and folded her hands in her lap. Appearing almost as if she were deep in prayer for divine intervention, she closed her eyes and adopted the meditative breathing techniques that Professor Saiga had taught her and Kogami. There's no point in clouding my Psycho-Pass over nothing, even if that's technically impossible for me. I'll just wait for the security team to get here, and then… Well, she wasn't sure what she would do then, but she'd think of something. She tried to swallow, but couldn't summon enough saliva, so she settled for wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her uniform.

The hacker's voice rang out in the darkness, strained and commanding. "I hear someone. Be quiet."

Akane closed her eyes—a meaningless act, what with the thick veil of darkness that surrounded them, but it seemed to help her hear better, regardless—and tilted her head to listen. The sounds that permeated Nona Tower were hushed and distant, mainly comprised of the hum of the A/C ducts and the almost imperceptible swaying of the giant skyscraper, causing microshifts in the metal skeleton of the enormous structure… But then she heard something else—a staccato echo against the floor outside, almost like… heels?

She was about to voice her theory to her companions when the unmistakable sound of a key entering a lock came from the door, seeming all the louder for being the only sound they'd heard in nearly an hour. Akane began to stand, her hand grasping out into the darkness, when the door abruptly swung open, flooding the server room with blinding light.

Akane shut her eyes and shielded her face with her crook of her elbow. "Who's there?" she demanded.

"Scanning for targets. Target acquired; processing."

Akane seized her own Dominator by instinct, but kept herself from drawing it—doing so would initiate an immediate incident report with the Sibyl System, something she definitely didn't want to do. The other Dominator said something else that she couldn't make out, but evidently it wasn't an authorization for firing, because she was still standing there with her vital organs in a solid rather than gaseous or liquid form. She could just make out the hazy bluish glow of a Dominator in its default configuration, and the outline of a tall figure standing behind it.

"Akane?" The sound of heels walking briskly on tile. Akane, still blinking away tears in the bright glare, braced herself. "What are you doing here?"

A strong hand took her by the chin, and Akane opened her eyes to see Shion Karanomori staring quizzically down at her.

"Shion! I'm sorry about this. We—" Akane hesitated, with a glance at the table where the laptop still sat half-opened. "I mean, I must have accidentally triggered one of your security programs. I was just in here doing some analysis of…" She floundered around helplessly for a likely subject "… of the electrical disturbances that Yayoi noticed in the Warehouse District. It turns out we were wrong—it really was just a sensor anomaly. Isn't that interesting?"

The data analyst studied Akane with a skeptical frown and holstered the Dominator in a rather clumsy motion—it took her a few tries to get the barrel lined up with the holster, the same mistake Akane had made dozens of times as a rookie Inspector. Then she went to sit at her desk, and with a few deft keystrokes she logged into her computer and called up the standard PSB security program. Akane hovered over her shoulder, feeling her face grow pale as Shion began a full sweep of her network.

She knows.

When the scan finshed, Shion made a thoughtful noise and tapped her chin with a long fingernail. Then, with a glance at Akane's white face, she slid her chair back and peered under the desk at the broken padlock. She leaned back in her chair and idly ran her fingertips over the trackpad on Choe's laptop. She studied the device for a few long moments, then looked a silent question at Akane.

The moment seemed to stretch on into a microscopic eternity. Akane tensed, her mind racing. Why is she looking at me like that? Shouldn't she be calling security? A flood of hope broke its levees and went pouring down her spine, to be followed just as quickly by what felt like ice. Shion was working with Sibyl. Why won't she say something?

"What are you—" Akane began angrily.

Shion raised a finger to her lips, then nodded meaningfully toward the Dominator that hung at her waist. Akane paused. Come to think of it, where did Shion get that Dominator? She's not supposed to have access to—

"Why don't we take a walk together, you and I," and Shion nodded toward the open door, "to the cafeteria, Akane-chan, where we can discuss your analysis?"

Now she was really confused. Shion rose and gracefully beckoned for Akane to join her, stopping only long enough to place the Dominator and its holster onto her desk, then went striding through the door—just as if she hadn't discovered irrefutable proof that one of the PSB's Senior Inspectors was illegally accessing the Bureau's protected database.

Akane scooped up the laptop and followed the data analyst into the bright, and, it seemed to her, accusatory sunlight. Hours had passed since they'd been locked in the Hive; it was nearing afternoon, the sunlight coming down at a nearly vertical angle. She blinked several times to clear her vision and quickly followed Shion, who was already halfway down the hall.

"Now," Shion said when Akane drew even with her, and with a glance down the hallway to ensure that they wouldn't be overheard, "what exactly were you doing in my office, Akane-chan?"

Can I afford to trust her? Akane tried to empty her expression of any tells and looked at the floor tiles as she walked, her eyes tracing over each seam as if she were deep in thought. But can I afford not to? She might take offense and turn me in. Like it or not, she holds all the cards.

"I was accessing the citizen files for Mayumi Yamato," Akane said carefully, and thought, Let's see what she makes of that.

For the briefest of moments, genuine surprise crossed Karanomori's beautiful face, then her usual calm mask reasserted itself. She frowned, and it was her turn to appear lost in contemplation.

"Do you know who that is?"

Shion gave her a sidelong look. "I do, but I wonder how you do, Akane—and what you plan to do with that information."

Akane took a deep breath. If I'm wrong, then I'm signing my own death warrant, but it hardly matters now. "I'm thinking of a change in careers. The Public Safety Bureau might not be the right fit for me." She left unmentioned the fact that a career, once chosen by the Sibyl System, could never be changed—to do so would imply that the System had made an error. She waited a moment, then added, "Or for anyone in Japan."

They had reached the junction leading to the escalators. Shion paused there, evidently digesting her words, and then without saying anything headed into a nearby restroom. Akane followed her into it, trepidation making her almost lose her grip on Choe's laptop. She caught it before the plastic wedge went tumbling to the floor.

When she poked her head into the restroom, a bright white oasis of tile and scented soaps, she saw the data analyst walking its length, ensuring that every stall was unoccupied. When she had done so to her satisfaction, Shion beckoned Akane over to the last one with a long lacquered fingernail.

Akane approached, hesitation broadcasting from her every movement. "What are you doing, Shion?"

"Be quiet." Shion glared at her, brown eyes practically throwing sparks, and put her red-lipped mouth very close to Akane's ear. "Are you aware of what you're doing? How close you are to drawing attention to yourself? Why didn't you come to me first?"

"I didn't know," Akane whispered back. "I thought you were loyal to Sibyl. I didn't know who I could trust. I'm sorry."

The blonde analyst shook her head. "Now that we've said the unsayable, I can tell you that I have also thought of a change in career, but I never thought it would be possible—at least not in my lifetime." Her gaze seemed to probe Akane's thoughts with as much implacable authority as a Hue check scanner. "Now, what have you learned so far? Who are you working with?"

Akane tried to speak in a roundabout way. "Kogami's best friend. He's still alive. He was..." She searched for the right words. "Invited into our boss's house."

Shion's eyebrows lifted a fractional amount. "But Kogami shot him. The incident report said that he died in the hyper-oat fields."

Akane nodded. "He was shot, but he was airlifted here. His body didn't survive, but they managed to save his brain, which was all they really wanted anyway. He's one of them now." Akane made a face to demonstrate what she thought of that kind of life. Judging from Shion's repulsed expression, the other woman seemed to share her sentiment. "His friend, the hacker, is with me. It was his idea to access the database."

"Tell your friend that he's a good hacker, but coming back here again was a foolish idea," said Shion with a scowl. "When you saw the encrypted files the first time, wasn't it clear that their family was protected?"

"Coming back was my idea—we had to know who she was," Akane said with a sheepish glance down at the laptop. She could practically feel Choe's irritation radiating from the plastic. "Kogami's friend thinks she had something to do with Sibyl."

Shion's lips twisted as if she'd bitten into a lemon—and somehow, Akane thought with a small amount of pique, she managed to appear gorgeous even doing that. "She did, but you won't find that in any Ministry database." The data analyst hesitated. "If you really want to learn more about her, go to the old Tokyo Public Library—not the CommuField one, the physical one with paper books. Ask the librarian for a day pass to the historical archive. Access there is usually restricted to registered historians and journalists, but an Inspector with the MWPSB should be able to get in. You'll find some articles about her in the newspapers. Look in the obituaries."

"She was famous, then?"

Shion glanced toward the restroom door, looking as nervous as Akane had ever seen her. "Famous? Hardly. There are very few people who remember her name. And now you're one of the unlucky few." Shion shook her head slowly. "Just hope that Sibyl doesn't decide to take a peep inside your head for the next few days. You'd better hurry."

Akane shook her head. "How do you know all this, Shion?"

Shion smiled. "Your hacker friend isn't the only one good enough to go poking through the Ministry database without leaving tracks behind. I learned about Mayumi before her records were wiped."

"When did that happen?"

"Ten years ago. I was in university at the time. It was probably a bad idea—what I found there certainly didn't help my Psycho-Pass." The data analyst sighed. "Go now, Akane-chan. And don't invite your friend back. It's not safe for him here."

"Okay, we'll leave." Akane gave the data analyst a quick hug. "Thanks, Shion."

When she paused by the restroom door to wave, she noticed Shion unashamedly sizing her up with a small smile and a raised eyebrow. Akane flushed.

"Let's have lunch sometime soon, Inspector," Shion called. "Just the two of us."

Akane waved. "Yeah, whatever, thanks!"

She just can't help it, can she?


The restaurant on the ground floor of the Astrocyte had been Makishima's first experience of the Sibyl System, and in a way, it still functioned as a soothing locale when he wished to unwind with a glass of wine and convivial company. He knew that it served such a purpose for another Sibyl member, too, and as he stepped through the lobby, he saw his quarry dining alone under starlight.

The waiter was at his side in moments, having appeared out of thin air. Makishima no longer jerked with surprise when that happened. He gave the man—who was, of course, not really a man, nor really a waiter—a pleasant nod of greeting and ordered a pot of fresh green tea, just shy of boiling, and two mugs. When the waiter vanished, he wandered over to the patio, approaching Masuda from an oblique angle, keeping out of sight for as long as possible. The man seemed intent on avoiding him whenever practicable, and the day before had actually got up and walked out of the sauna when Makishima entered.

He's still upset by my remarks concerning Ms Sawaki. Makishima schooled his features to remove their wolfish cast and strode calmly into the moonlight. Today he would be a dear friend ready to supply a needed shoulder. This confirms my theory. He loves the girl deeply.

"Are these stars accurate?" Makishima asked into the silence, and the Sibyl programmer jumped and looked over his shoulder. When he saw who it was, his lips drew back. "I ask because, while I recognize a few constellations—in fact, I see a dog that Choe showed me once—I don't believe I've ever seen a sky quite like this one."

"It is highly accurate," said Masuda with a sneer, and began to dab at his lips with a napkin. His plate was still mostly uneaten.

"You know, this reminds me of something Evelyn told me," Makishima said, and instantly the programmer was arrested in his attempt to rise. He looked at Makishima for a few moments, bitterness making his features ugly, before replying with a put-upon tone.

"What did she tell you, Shogo?"

"That one can only fall in love under the light of a full moon." Makishima laughed and spread his hands. "I don't believe I've ever heard such nonsense before, but the absurdity of it stuck in my head. A foolish notion, don't you agree?"

Masuda seemed to war with himself for a few moments, then gave up. And the puppet ceases struggling. Makishima watched him silently, eyes intent, studying, observing. The programmer took a half-full glass of red liquid in hand and sipped at it. He eyed Makishima over the rim and said, "Would you like some? It's a Bordeaux, from 18—"

"Yes?"

"Eighteen-something. I don't remember. Ask the waiter." Masuda shrugged, and his sad eyes fixed on Makishima almost unwillingly. "She really said that? Evelyn, I mean?"

"Yes." Makishima invited himself to a seat across from the programmer. "She's quite a romantic."

"Oh?" Masuda glared at him. "You would know that, would you?"

"We dined together," Makishima began, and held up a forestalling hand when Masuda began to sputter. "Half a moment, please." He eyed the programmer sternly, and in a few moments the force of his personality quelled the other man into submission. "As I said, we dined together in her quarters and talked for hours. We didn't sleep together, if that's what you're wondering."

This statement seemed to half-reassure, half-outrage Hiroki Masuda. He squinted at Makishima before taking another sip of wine. He seemed to be fashioning his reply in the manner of a medieval blacksmith—with forge fires brightly lit, and hammer and tongs banging away, pounding the glowing metal until each imperfection was minutely diminished, a small degree improved. "You don't—you don't love her, then?" He blinked several times, rapidly, like a frog. "Makishima?"

"I don't."

The relief that overcame Masuda would probably be visible with a telescope from the moon, Makishima thought. The man sagged against the table and stared into his half-eaten chicken dish, his brown eyes relieved and despairing at the same time.

"I can tell that you have feelings for her," Makishima continued, when the silence called for an interlude, "and as I consider you a friend, Hiroki, I would never dream of leading her on. I told her as much."

Masuda blinked sudden tears from his eyes. "You did?"

Makishima nodded.

The programmer inhaled a ragged breath and seemed to inflate slightly, as if someone had connected him to a balloon and was pumping in air. He sat upright and blinked at the stars, and then at Makishima, whom he looked at with a great deal more warmth than a few minutes before.

Almost time, Makishima thought. He's very close.

"Sir?"

The two men turned as one to face the waiter, who had appeared like a sudden gust of wind at their table. With the graceful movements of an experienced server, the man cleared a space of dishes and placed Makishima's pot of green tea on the tablecloth. He placed a mug in front of each man, bowed, and left as he had come.

"It's green tea," Makishima murmured as he poured himself some. It left the spout with a little cloud of steam, its color honey-yellow combined with the green of a tarnished copper coin. "Would you like some?"

In response, Masuda held out his mug. And there it is. Makishima sighed with satisfaction as he poured tea for the other man. He's ready.

"I've told Evelyn that you have feelings for her," he said, and closed his eyes to inhale of the tea. "And that you're a good friend of mine."

Masuda watched him breathe in the tea, and did the same. He took a slow sip. "Thank you, Shogo. I was afraid that you were..."

"Interested in her?" Makishima smiled and shook his head. "As you remarked before, she's not my type."

The programmer nodded and took another sip of tea. He seemed to find the taste agreeable.

"I have been wondering something, though," Makishima said slowly, as if he'd just remembered a half-forgotten subject. "Could you clear it up for me?"

"Of course, ask anything you'd like."

"What are the Okaba Street Trials? Evelyn spoke of them during our conversation, and it seems like, well..." Makishima spread his hands. "Everyone but me in the Sibyl System knows what they are."

Masuda blew on his tea to cool it further and took another slow sip. He stared down at the tablecloth, his eyebrows slightly scrunched together. "It's a cyberization project," he explained finally. "Okaba Street for the headquarters of the research company that develops most of our neural interfaces. You could say it's a partnership between a few Sibyl members and a company on the outside—"

"What company?" Makishima interrupted.

"Senguji Industries."

Makishima blinked. "The Senguji? The company that Toyohisa Senguji founded?"

"That's right," Masuda replied. "As I was saying, Senguji Industries was responsible for the contracting work on the Sibyl System—they built all of the physical interfaces, the Nutrient Arms, the cerebrospinal fluid baths, the filters and exchangers… Hell, even Nona Tower. They had all of the necessary technical expertise to help the Japanese government realize the vision of Sibyl."

"What did they get in return?"

Masuda shrugged. "Where do you think Mr Senguji got his fortune? Senguji Industries was small fry before the Sibyl contract, I think the third largest cyberization company in Japan."

If I had known that Toyohisa was working with Sibyl… Makishima sighed and tamped down his irritation. He sipped green tea. His death would have been at my hands—and far more gruesome. He felt some degree of satisfaction that Shinya Kogami had been the one to take Senguji's life, however, as though he had been acting out Makishima's will. As it should be.

"The Okaba Street Trials you keep hearing about are just a project we've had going with Senguji Industries for several years," Masuda continued. "It's under Mr Chambers' express direction."

"It sounds important," Makishima said.

Masuda shrugged. "Mr Chambers thinks it is, so you're right, it is. He's only given me hints about it, but from what I gather, it will enable the next step in human evolution."

"Meaning…?"

Masuda leaned across the table and said in a whisper, "Meaning we could escape the confines of this… this prison and go out into the world again."

"How?" Makishima demanded.

"I'm not supposed to say," Masuda said evasively.

He feels the strings again. Makishima nodded and poured them both more tea. "If you'd like, Hiroki, I can arrange a date for you and Evelyn."

The programmer's mouth fell open. He stared at Makishima with yearning in his eyes. Makishima saw the calculation going on between his eyes, saw the immense respect the man had for Mr Chambers warring with the fundamental impulse for procreation and lust. He had to hold back a smile.

This will be the decisive moment.

Masuda gazed into Makishima's eyes for a long moment, then sighed and looked down at the table. "What would you like to know? There are some things I'm not supposed to speak of, you understand..."

For a moment it was just as if Makishima were back in the real world among the criminal element of Japan, finding the diamonds in the rough, polishing them to a brilliant sheen and sending them out into the world, where their glittering magnificence could shape life and death into an art form to last the ages.

This is what I was meant to do.


The Tokyo Public Library seemed like a relic of pre-war tranquility, a glimpse of the old life as viewed through a smeared windowpane: the style of construction American, with the curious confluence of architectural impulses that characterized the mid-century Japanese building—columned, regal, and yet seemingly delicate too, like the shiny jewel-like exterior of an insect that nevertheless concealed great strength. The steps ascended to a pair of huge wooden doors, which were open to let in the sunlight. Ascending them, Akane felt like a worshipper climbing the steps of a ziggurat, come to offer sacrifices to a capricious god.

"Let's hope they didn't wipe the newspapers, too," Kagari said from her wrist.

Akane nodded and made her way past those giant doors. "It's unlikely, I think. The world that Sibyl exists in is the world of computers. They seem to feel that the physical world is beneath them. It should be one of their blind spots."

The library was vast, in an airy, gossamer-skinned sort of way, as if it were really just a giant cloth tent wrapped around a steel skeleton. The ceiling rose and fell in organic and hypnotic fashion, exposing wooden beams that crisscrossed from each side of the building; huge rectangular skylights let in plenty of natural light. It was split into two levels, with spiral staircases of wrought iron at each corner of the central courtyard, where there were couches and armchairs for comfortable reading amid small trees and flowers that seemed to flow in and around every chair, almost like rivers of vegetation. It was the sort of building that didn't exist any more in Sibyl's Japan, and arguably for good reason—with the possibility of custom holographic surroundings for any occasion, why would a builder create a fixed environment that precluded changes in style and taste? Most public and private spaces these days were bare concrete, with simple, functional furnishings and a minimum of ornamentation, like her own apartment.

Akane made her way over to the receptionist's desk, where an elderly Japanese woman was perched precariously on a stool and squinting down at a tablet displaying a CommuField gossip column. Her hair poured in white ringlets around her heart-shaped face, and she looked exceptionally healthy for someone who was probably an octogenarian. She peered up through large reading glasses as Akane approached, seemed to size her up by the cut of her uniform and find her wanting.

"May I help you, young lady?" the librarian asked.

Akane smiled and bowed. "Yes, ma'am. I'd like to access some of the research materials held in the historical archive, please."

The old woman raised a quizzical eyebrow. "What for? You aren't a journalist, are you?" Her gaze took in Akane's rumpled jacket and windblown hair, and seemed to say, Yes, definitely not a journalist.

Akane drew herself up to her full height, which still left her gazing up at the librarian and feeling rather foolish. She scowled and drew out her MWPSB badge. "I'm an Inspector with the Public Safety Bureau, ma'am, and my request is connected to an official investigation. I'm afraid I can't say any more than that."

The librarian studied her badge for a few long moments, as if she would contest its authenticity, but then shrugged and ducked down to grasp something stored under the desk. What she withdrew and placed in front of Akane was a ring holding a single key of the old-fashioned type—with no logic built into it, the key was simply a bit of shaped metal, with grooves on one side and a flat edge on the other. Akane held it up to the light and studied it closely, fascinated.

"Those were before your time, I'm sure," the librarian sniffed.

"But not before yours, I'm sure," Akane retorted sweetly.

The woman scowled at her and gestured to the far side of the library. "The historical archive is in the back. Look for a door that says Employees Only. That key will let you in. Go straight back and you'll see cabinets. That's what you want."

"Thank you."

Akane pocketed the key and made her way across the library, stopping halfway through the courtyard to close her eyes and inhale the fragrance of a flower whose petals curved in a gentle arc over the path. A feeling of warmth seemed to fill her, and she smiled. It was funny—she often spent hours in the bathtub after work, trying fruitlessly to relax the knots in her muscles while Candy ran a meditation program for her. The scent of red clover and apple blossom would fill the apartment—synthesized by the computer, of course, but chemically identical to the real thing. But smelling the conjured incense didn't give her the sense of deep well-being that these real flowers did.

Maybe we've lost more than we realize, replaced too much of what was real with artificial substitutes. She continued across the library, through large stacks filled with crumbling paperbacks from the 2040s and cocoa-colored leatherbound books from an even more distant past—some, she saw, dated to the 1970s. Ancient times indeed.

She found the Employees Only sign stuck on a metal door that squeaked rustily when she unlocked it and stepped through. The corridor that stretched before her was clearly part of the building's circulatory system, meant for maintenance purposes—the walls here were simple brick that had been painted over dozens of times, and the layers of paint now clung thickly white over the mortar. There were no holographic generators here. The corridor opened onto a large room with a stained cement floor. The sole light source was a tube-style fluorescent bulb that gave off a cold greenish hue. Gray cabinets, the height of a man, grew like polyps from the floor; there were at least three dozen of them, stretching off into the pea-green darkness, each featuring a small handwritten label and a pull-out drawer. Akane approached one of them and read: The Hokkaido Evening Post. She went down the row of cabinets and examined the other labels—each bank contained a different city broadsheet, and in total they amounted to some three or four dozen, from all over Japan.

Shion said it would be written in the obituaries, she thought, and opened a drawer at random to peer inside. Autumn leaves stared back at her—dessicated strips of yellowish paper that time and humidity had condensed into so much pulp and mold. She picked up one of the leaves between ginger fingertips and examined it closely, making a face at its flooded-basement odor. The headline seemed incomprehensible to her at first, but then memory stirred of a long-forgotten school lesson.

President Turner Addresses Congress; U. S. Declares War Against Sino-Russian Alliance

Akane let her fingertips draw gentle circles on the faded newsprint. This was old news, sixty years gone at least. She sought the date among the tiny English letters that crowded the page and saw November 29th, 2039 written in the upper right corner. It was old, dating from before the Sibyl System's conception. Arinobu Yamato would still have been a junior representative in the local prefecture. She slid the scrap of newspaper back into the drawer and looked at its neighboring cabinets, her eyes searching the labels.

"It's sad, isn't it?"

Akane frowned and glanced at her wrist. Her friend sounded unusually introspective, even depressed.

"What is?" she asked.

"Everything that happened after that headline," the Enforcer said, and Akane glanced down at the faded newsprint. "The politicians who wouldn't back down, even though they knew neither side could win the war. And when it started, nobody wanted to be the first to stop."

Shusei had never spoken of his feelings about the war. That was understandable, though—few wanted to think of the past. It was a very Japanese trait, Akane thought, to keep one's eyes fixed firmly on the island. Never look up at the sky or off to the oceans, because in that direction lay four billion reasons for insanity. Maybe that's one of the reasons why we looked to Sibyl's embrace to comfort us. We felt guilty for watching as the world tore itself apart. She remembered going to visit the seaside at Shirahama with her mother as a child, watching the tide roll in and out and laughing with childish delight at the ghost crabs that were left behind, their legs sticking out of the sand like the spokes of a buried wheel. That had been during the last years of the third world war, after the nuclear fire burnt itself out, leaving only the remnants of once-proud nations who refused to know when the end was near. Whole civilizations reduced to savagery.

She remembered the boat that landed, too—a lifeboat, painted a crisp white, with red life preservers attached to its hull by rope, and men on it crying out with joyful laughter as they touched soil for the first time in what must have been weeks or months at sea, adrift among the ocean currents.

The local prefecture contacted the Japanese Coast Guard. The cutter that appeared from around the edge of the bay was gray and shark-like, its prow a perfect triangular blade slicing through the water. It had arrived at the beach where Akane and her mother stood, watching the shipwrecked foreigners with uncomprehending curiosity, and disgorged a dozen blank-faced sailors. These men carried weapons, and Akane remembered thinking that the weapons glinted with dark violence in the bright summer sunshine. She'd found it hard to look away.

The confrontation did not last long. The sailors made it clear to the shipwrecked men that they had not found salvation after all. Akane remembered the agony on their faces as the men were forced at gunpoint to return to their lifeboat, given a few meager provisions of food and fresh water, and towed back to sea.

"That's one of the reasons we built the Sibyl System, Kagari," she said, and for a brief moment heard her own voice echoing down the years. Young Akane had been full of enthusiastic zeal, thankful for the opportunity to serve the nation's greatest creation, the invention that had saved Japan from the madness that swept the world like a hurricane. Only through Sibyl's guidance had they survived, she remembered thinking—but at what cost?

"What do you mean?"

"It was because of war that Yamato was able to get Sibyl off the ground. War, and murder, and rape, and violence. It was everything wrong with humanity. That was why we allowed our Psycho-Passes to be monitored by an impartial machine." Or what should have been an impartial machine, she thought bitterly. In reality it had turned out to be the two hundred most psychopathic and twisted minds in all of Japan—a sick joke, really.

Kagari seemed to mull this over for a while. Then he said, "Yeah, but there must be an alternative, Akane. Not war, and not Sibyl. There must be."

"If Makishima's plan works, then I guess we'll find out if there is," Akane replied grimly.

After a great deal of searching, they found the obituaries in the top drawer of the file cabinets along the far side of the room. Cobwebs clung in spidery tendrils to the bricks here, and several times as Akane went from cabinet to cabinet she broke a spiderweb with her face and grimaced. There must have been a flood in the building at some point in the past, probably during the last tsunami, for the water had etched a stratum of orange rust on the bottom drawers, and when opened they offered mounds of rotted paper, dried silt, and a fetid odor that made Akane wrinkle her nose and turn away. She went through each drawer, selecting the likely editions and piling them on a hulking steel desk that a maintenance person had turned into a makeshift workbench—dirty rags, cleaning agents, tools, and replacement lenses for holographic projectors lay scattered on top of its surface. Soon she had six or seven piles of newsprint, each several feet high.

"This is going to take a while," she sighed, and began to scan the first newspaper. The feel of it was unusual in her hands; the texture was coarse and scratchy, almost like tree bark. It was a pleasure, though, to see words bled onto paper using real ink… She felt like an archaeologist, peering into the past, or perhaps even a time-traveler. It's so weird—the words don't respond when you touch them. She realized that it had been years since she'd read anything that wasn't a tablet, phone or holo-screen.

"This is going to take more than a while," Kagari announced, and her wrist-computer dimmed as it deepened into sleep mode. "I'm taking a nap, Akane-chan. Wake me when you've found something."

"Thanks a lot for your help," she replied sarcastically.

"Any time, babe."

Akane rolled her eyes and grabbed the next newspaper. This one dated from the 2020s, and the headlines told of international controversy and the sailing of a Chinese carrier group along the coast of the United States, after an incident involving a collision between a fishing vessel and a guided-missile cruiser a few days before. She flipped to the next newspaper, and the story picked up from there—bickering in the U.N. Security Council and the recalling of ambassadors led to sanctions, and then the arraying of various countries into trading blocs and military alliances. As she read, she saw the seeds of future chaos being sown on the crumbling pages of the Hokkaido Post. She wished that she could reach into the newspaper and grab the leaders whose faces stared up at her with high-wattage PR smiles, grab them and shake some sense into them. Listen to me! She wanted to shout. You're going to kill everybody! But their smiles didn't change, and they couldn't hear her.

Hours dragged on. Akane fell into a trance-like state as she read newspaper after newspaper—absorbing all of the past's mistakes, celebrating along with their achievements, and watching with the dread of a witness to a slow-motion car wreck as the global political situation deteriorated in the 2050s. When the first mushroom clouds appeared in full color on the front page of the Post, she stared at them for a few long moments before looking away. She was not surprised. With the benefit of hindsight, and a front row seat for the irrational decisions stretching back decades, she thought it was a wonder that it had taken so long for war to break out.

NATO Calls For Coordinated Strikes Over Atlantic Ocean; China Alleges U.S. Lasers Shot Down 'Weather Satellite'

And soon after:

Japan Announces Abrogation of U.S. Defense Treaty, Announces Development Of Computerized Law Enforcement System

Akane sat up. She looked closely at the last article, which featured a photograph of a smiling Kurou Yamato. But that wasn't what caught her attention—it was the woman standing slightly behind him, her hands folded over her lap, an expression of composed satisfaction on her face. The family resemblance was undeniable. She quickly scanned the article.

April 6th, 2070

TOKYO UNIVERSITY—The eyes of the nation are upon Japan's political and business elite as an unprecedented partnership between the Ministry of Defense, led by Gen. Goro Fujibayashi, and the tech sector's Blue Astrocyte Corporation, headed by noted businessman and philanthropist Kurou Yamato, was announced today at a gala in Tokyo University's Jaeger Hall. The project is the result of recent breakthroughs in cyberization, the so-called ability for computers to supplement the essential functions of the human nervous system. Japanese leaders claim that the technology holds out the promise of ensuring social and political harmony in the nation even as countries around the world are overcome by sectarian violence. Prime Minister Edamura says that Project Karma, to be headed by Dr Mayumi Yamato of Tokyo University, eminent scientist and sister of Blue Astrocyte Corporation's Chairman Kurou Yamato, represents the best of Japan's technological know-how, and may hold the key to lasting peace around the world. The two parties will hold a press conference next week at the joint session of the Diet. It is expected that the bill providing funds for the project will pass.

Akane sat back, the newspaper folding over in her hands. Her eyes traced Mayumi Yamato's face, from the rather high forehead to the intelligent gray eyes, to the upward curve of her small nose... She was an attractive woman, Akane thought, but there was definitely a sense that Mayumi Yamato didn't spend an inordinate amount of her life on romance. Her white laboratory coat was wrinkled even in the photograph, and Kurou seemed to be clenching his teeth as he stood beside her, even if he was smiling for the camera.

They don't like each other, Akane thought with certainty. She couldn't say what made her sure—there was just something about brother and sister that seemed to proclaim no love lost. She wondered whose fault it had been. Was Kurou the stereotypical domineering elder sibling, or was Mayumi the overachiever in the family?

Feeling that she was on the right track, Akane rapidly scanned the headlines, searching for further news about Project Karma. There were several articles in the political section of the Hokkaido Post and the Tokyo Inquirer detailing Blue Astrocyte's winning of government contracts and military partnerships. But the news overall seemed to be firmly concerned with overseas matters, and probably with good reason, she thought.

And then she saw it. Nestled under the pile of newspapers, near the very bottom of the stack, lay a dog-eared edition of the Post. The headline, as was to be expected by now, concerned diplomats meeting in Paris over arms control treaties. But as Shion had told her it would, the important bit appeared in the obituary section of the paper.

November 1st, 2079

Professor Mayumi Yamato, the originator of cyberization theory, has died today at the age of 39. Afflicted in recent years by mental illness, Dr Yamato was a controversial figure in the field of neurology as well as in the wider business world. As the research and development head of Blue Astrocyte Corporation, Dr Yamato was one of Japan's most powerful women, but conflicts with her brother and former business partner, Kurou Yamato, led to her firing by the Board of Directors of the company she inherited. The last years of her life were consumed by legal battles against the Yamato estate. She recently filed civil suit against her brother, alleging that he presided over illegal activities in his role as Blue Astrocyte's chairman, but before the case could go to trial Dr Yamato tragically took her own life. She is survived by her brother. Services will be held in Tokyo University's Jaeger Hall.

"Kagari," she said slowly. "Wake up."

The wrist computer flashed bright color into her eyes, and then the sound of Kagari's yawn echoed through the room. "What is it, Akane? Find something?"

She pointed the camera lens at the obituary.

There was a moment of silence as Kagari read the article. Then he gave a low whistle.

"It's different," Akane said.

"I know. The obituary in the MWPSB's records didn't say anything about a lawsuit or any mental illness. Choe would have mentioned it if there was."

"I don't think there was any mental illness, Kagari—at least, not on her part. I think Kurou framed her." She bit her lip. "I'm almost certain now that Kurou used her discovery to create the Sibyl System against her will."

The Enforcer's voice sounded somewhat doubtful. "Isn't that a lot to draw from one article? It could be that they were equal partners and old Kurou got a little greedy. What makes you so sure?"

Akane shrugged. "Call it a detective's instinct."

"Don't let Ginoza hear you say that," Kagari muttered. "He'd give you a two-hour lecture about the importance of evidence-based policework."

The obituary was small enough that she could have simply taken a photograph of it with her cellphone, but as a government employee, all of her communications were piped through Sibyl. That wouldn't be the best idea. Instead, she carefully tore the article out of the newspaper and slipped it into her purse.

"That's theft, you know," Kagari pointed out as she returned the newspapers to their drawers and prepared to leave. "I'd watch my Psycho-Pass if I were you. You don't want to end up in the kennel with us."

"I'd rather go after Kogami and become a fugitive," she said, and smiled when Kagari laughed.

And speaking of which, it's just about time for us to go capture Kogami for Sibyl, she thought, and the prospect of seeing her colleague again sent a little thrill of electricity up her spine. I hope he won't be too mad if I have to shoot him with my Dominator again. It's becoming a habit between us.