"We don't want any fatalities," Akane said, and glared at the members of her strike team. "Is that absolutely crystal clear?"

The assembled Enforcers gave a massed, "Yes, sir!" Itaru Arishima, she noticed, said it rather half-heartedly. I'll need to keep an eye on him.

Isao Egusa, one of Division Two's borrowed hounds, raised his hand to speak. The man looked like a walking, talking forest fire—easily topping six and a half feet, said to be the son of a Japanese and a foreigner, he sported delicately coiffed hair of the brightest red. Yet, despite his giant stature, he carried himself with a graceful ease, like a leopard somehow walking easily on stilts. He had a reputation for always choosing to wait until his Dominator reached Lethal Eliminator status during apprehension, though, even going so far as to verbally provoke suspects into raising their Crime Coefficients. He enjoyed the killing, they said.

Akane nodded.

"Who's the target, ma'am?" he asked, politely enough. "Because forgive me for saying so, but I haven't seen a strike force this large since..." His eyebrows drifted slowly upward, as if carted off by helium balloons. "Well, ever."

"I was wondering that too," said a young, mousy-looking girl of perhaps nineteen. Nami Chisaka, of Division Six. She was as diminutive as Isao was freakishly large. "This feels like some secret agent shit, you know?" Her large pale eyes blinked excitedly. "I mean, this is cool, right?"

Ginoza, forgive me if I was ever half this idiotic as a rookie. "Are you an actual MWPSB officer?" Akane asked, tone glacial. "This isn't bring your kids to work day, is it?"

Chisaka nodded. Then, as Akane kept staring at her in silence, she slowly shook her head.

"This is serious, people." Akane kept her words clipped and efficient—and intimidating, she hoped. She was consciously emulating Kogami, which was rather ironic considering the purpose of their mission, but he did know how to get rookie Bureau employees into shape—she was evidence of that. She began to pace back and forth, letting her body take up as much space as possible. "Our mission is to rescue an Enforcer by the name of Shinya Kogami from a criminal enclave in the port city of Akita. Intel has already mapped our route in and out. C-22 Ospreys will take us from Nona Tower directly to the strike zone. We'll be wearing full tactical gear and equipped with shock grenades, flashbangs, and restraint nets. And our Dominators, of course. Civilian casualties should be kept to a minimum, but the safety of the target is the highest priority. If you see someone threatening Kogami's life, you take them out. Any questions?"

An Enforcer that Akane didn't recognize raised his hand and said, "Isn't Shinya Kogami that asshole who used to pick fights in the canteen?"

Isao Egusa frowned. "I know who you're talking about—he used to be close with that Sasayama guy, right?"

"That's him." The Enforcer turned to Akane. "Inspector, I know you have your orders, but the guy we're going after is a real pain in the ass. Take my word for it. Can we at least let him break a few bones on the way back?"

Akane looked at Yayoi, whose eyes sparkled with amusement, and began to massage her temples. Kogami, you really aren't going to make this easy for me, are you? The assembled Enforcers began to reminisce about the exploits of Kogami and Sasayama, an apparently fearsome duo who had played practical jokes, picked fights, and thrown food in the cafeteria. Just perfect. All I need is for someone else to say that Kogami slept with his girlfriend and I'll have a mutiny on my hands before the mission even starts.

"Sibyl itself has given orders that Kogami is not to be harmed during extraction," Akane said levelly. "I'm not exaggerating when I say that his safety is a matter of national importance."

That shut them up, even if Egusa seemed unhappy about it. Akane checked her wristband, where she knew Kagari was listening in and probably crying with laughter just about now. It was still three hours until dawn.

"Listen up, we move out at 0400 hours. Your equipment for this mission has been stowed in your lockers—get it, get suited up, and familiarize yourself with the 3D map of the target, a nightclub near the harbor run by a suspect known as Lor Sam Pau. According to the local Akita authorities we've consulted, he's a notorious black market smuggler, hit man, and dealer in illicit computer code. His nightclub is located in a Cymatic gray zone, so our intel will be spotty at best once we're on the ground, and our Dominators won't function without a direct antenna link to Sibyl, so don't rely on them. Any more questions that don't involve wishing harm on Shinya Kogami?"

Egusa lowered his hand sheepishly. Akane sighed.

"All right, get to it. We'll depart at 0345. Dismissed."

The office began to clear out. Akane waited until there were only a few stragglers remaining—most seemed to be heading for the lockers, as she'd instructed—and then spoke.

"Inspector Arishima, may I have a word in private?"

The rookie hesitated on his way out the door. Seeming somewhat surprised by her request, he waited for a trio of Enforcers to pass by before walking over to her. His Dominator was missing, she noticed, and she couldn't help but take the empty holster under his shoulder as a symbol of life after the Sibyl System. What would they carry as police officers, if not Dominators? She supposed they would have to go back to using bullets, like the revolver that Kogami used to practice shooting at the range.

"Ma'am?"

Up close, Arishima smelled faintly of perfume. Akane took a quick sniff. Shion's perfume. No surprise there. His features were classically handsome and cheerful, and for a moment Akane felt as if they could have been two university students asking each other out on a date. He was rather attractive, she had to admit. But there was something about his manner that bothered her. She couldn't put her finger on it, but Itaru Arishima seemed too cavalier about his job for her taste—especially so now that Kogami's life was on the line.

"Itaru, are you fully on board with this mission?" she asked quietly. "I couldn't help noticing that you seemed distracted during the briefing."

He smiled at her, showing chalky, evenly-spaced teeth. "Inspector, I have my orders, as I'm sure we both do. You can rest assured I'll carry them out to the utmost of my abilities."

Akane studied him for a moment. There was just something about him… "Fine. You'd better get ready with the others."

"Yes, Senior Inspector."

When Arishima had gone, leaving Akane alone in the office, she went over to Kogami's desk and sat down. Feeling a tremble course through her body, she put her feet up and tilted the chair back as she'd seen him do dozens of times. Once she felt like a carbon copy of Kogami, she closed her eyes, raised her head up to the ceiling, and breathed.

If you die, Kogami, I'm going to murder you.


Shinya Kogami raised one arm over his head, flexed his muscles, and heard a sharp crack resound from his shoulder joint. The sound was accompanied by a sensation not unlike small marbles rolling around inside a hollow cardboard tube. Wincing, he shifted against the hardness of the wooden bench, trying to find some part of his body that wasn't covered in bruises—the Neosalanx didn't offer much in the way of comfortable dining. His tendons seemed to quiver like thin strips of leather that had been stretched out and allowed to dry in the hot sun. His list of discomforts didn't end there—a channel of dull pain ran from his shoulder blade and around his side, to his appendix; under his shirt lay a nasty half-healed scar following roughly the same track. The perp responsible for that souvenir had accomplished his work by taking a meat cleaver to Kogami's jacket, like a mad tailor. It had taken three shots to the belly for the man to go down, and even then he'd taken a swipe at Kogami's leg.

The result of the killing—or murder, if you wanted to look at it that way (Kogami didn't)—was an invitation to join Pau's club as a sort of tame animal, a freak of both nature and the martial arts, who would be willing to inflict glorious pain upon those who happened to displease the crime lord.

Kogami had taken the job. Some of the time he found himself enjoying it. Most of the time, though, he merely existed.

Lor Sam Pau's underlings seemed to look upon Kogami with not as much fear as he'd expected, though there was some of that. But their predominant reaction when he methodically took apart potential challengers to Pau was disgust. Apparently Kogami seemed as bad to them as he thought they were. One night, after a boxing match against a rival crime lord's champion, Kogami had looked into the mirror in the dive's restroom and seen a blood-soaked stranger gaping back at him, face adorned with black bruises, left eye draining yellow fluid, teeth gritted. But what struck him most powerfully was the guy's expression—it was as coldly murderous as any perp he'd shot down with his Dominator. In fact, something about that expression made him think of Shogo Makishima. Not something to improve his mood a great deal.

If Kogami was honest with himself, he would admit that his investigation had hit a dead end months ago. The trail of Makishima's lackeys had led all over Japan before going cold, but the effort had drained his bank account, which he'd liquidated into the form of easily-traded goods, and left him physically frail, sleep deprived, and paranoid. He gave Hue check scanners a wide berth these days.

His last target had been a computer hacker known as the Red Crane, one of Choe Gu-sung's collaborators. The two men had never met in person, but their online association stretched back decades, to Gu-sung's youth in South Korea. There had been hard evidence in the MWPSB computer system of the Red Crane's part in the downing of the Cymatic Grid during the attack on Nona Tower, thus giving Kogami's conscience the go-ahead to take him out. Whenever he killed one of Makishima's henchmen, he ran a moral calculus before doing the deed, and in each case, he felt comfortable with his actions. His barometer for whether a killing was justified or not was if he could look Tsunemori in the eye afterward, and until recently he'd felt confident that he could win a staring contest with her. But the Red Crane had broken something inside him, something that he didn't know could break.

There was no doubt about the man's guilt. The Red Crane had received an encrypted file from Gu-sung over the Sibyl-run CommuField—a brazen act, but not one out of character for a hacker of his confidence—and succeeded in running it on the mainframes of his employer, which just happened to be the prefectural administration of Tottori. The code spread like wildfire through neighboring prefectures due to the privileged nature of the goverment's interconnects, and the net result of his actions had been the complete cessation of all emergency services across many square kilometers of populated Japanese cities and towns. That meant no ambulances, no fire trucks, no autonomous guidance for vehicles. Huge parts of Japan had simply frozen into gridlock, and Kogami had no doubt that dozens, possibly hundreds of people could have died as a result. For that, any pre-Sibyl court would certainly have convicted the man. And that was enough for Kogami.

So Kogami used the last of his funds to track the Crane all over Japan. Somehow, the hacker knew he was being followed. But for all his technical expertise, he didn't have Kogami's nose for the hunt. It took all of his skill as an ex-cop, but he cornered the guy in Akita. The hacker had run into Lor Sam Pau's Neosalanx nightclub and asked the boss there for protection. Apparently the two had an association going back years.

Kogami shifted on the bench, gritting his teeth as his shoulder flared with pain again. Hope it's not getting infected, he thought. That would be dangerous—as a fugitive, he couldn't just walk into a hospital and say that he needed treatment. They would scan his ID and the Cymatic Grid would scream out to Sibyl that Shinya Kogami had been found. The alarm and all that it entailed would rocket across Japan at the speed of light. He had no doubt that some of his Enforcer colleagues would be at his doorstep within thirty minutes.

So he had to hope that he didn't have an infection. Hope, and maybe pray.

Tsunemori might help me, if I asked her nicely enough. Now there was a conundrum. His former Inspector occupied Kogami's thoughts more than usual lately, though he tried to suppress them with over-the-counter sedatives. He dreamed of her, sometimes. Good dreams. But when he woke up and saw that she wasn't in bed next to him, saw that he was still in his 4,000-yen-a-night coffin rental by the sewage treatment plant, he died a little inside.

He'd thought there might have been something in their future. Something big. He didn't dare dream of marriage, of course. But companionship of a sort? Perhaps. He'd slowly lost his mind after Sasayama's death, fallen into a gutter spiral before Akane Tsunemori showed up in the rain looking ridiculous in her high heels and off-the-rack duds, and proceeded to lecture him on how to do policework—then shot him with a Dominator and somehow made him feel as if he'd done something wrong. There was something special about that woman. Even her scent… It might have been perfume or body wash or even just her sweat, but it made him need, and he'd never experienced that before. Not with a dozen girls before her, and not with any since.

She might have felt something—

No. Kogami shook his head and, for reassurance, let his hand run over the barrel of the shotgun lying beside him. She would never sink so low. Tsunemori's good. Pure. Hell, her Psycho-Pass never even wavers. She wouldn't want anything to do with me.

He closed his eyes. Tsunemori deserved better than him, someone who could look her in the eye. Because he couldn't—not any more.

The Red Crane had run into the Neosalanx seeking protection and found it—for all the good it did him. Kogami followed, the thrill of the hunt on him, and proceeded to dismantle a dozen of Pau's heavies. After that display, they'd surrendered the hacker to him with little protest.

He deserved it. People could have died. No, I'm sure they did die. He was a murderer.

Kogami had dragged the hacker—a gangly college student, practically a kid, with terror in his eyes and useless computer disks falling out of his pockets—outside of the Neosalanx, onto the quay. There had been a Hong Kong freighter outside, Kogami remembered, its bow rising like a rusty paint-flecked wall above the harbor. Under the shadow of that huge ship, as Pau's regulars watched with interest, some making lewd jokes, Kogami had shot the hacker in the back of the head. The body fell like they all did, as if the strings had been cut. Kogami went back inside and ordered a drink, and they'd given it to him free of charge.

After that, the trail went cold. So Kogami returned to the bar and got another drink, telling himself that he would book passage on the freighter to Hong Kong. But when it left, he was still there. I'll take the next one, he'd thought. And when a few of the regulars decided to dispose of him, Kogami was almost happy—it was a way to cleanse himself of bitterness and frustration. That was when he'd gotten his scar, along with an invitation from Lor Sam Pau himself to become a member of his crew.

He accepted.

Why? He still couldn't say for sure. All of his buddies were dead, pretty much. Sasayama. Kagari. And now old man Masaoka, the toughest cop Kogami had ever known. It was enough to make him want to weep. Except he didn't think he knew how to cry any more, even if Tsunemori wanted him to.

"Drink," Kogami said roughly, and the serving girl shot him one terrified glance before darting away. That was one good thing about his reputation—good service.

What the girl brought back, atop a tray that trembled above her shaking limbs, was a recreation of a drink Masaoka had introduced him to. According to the old man, it was called the Three Wise Men, and gave whoever drank it long life.

Bullshit. Kogami took the glass and nodded. The girl fled. More like gives you ulcers. Probably makes life seem long.

As he drank, slowly, so as not to fall with undue haste into the clutches of the Mean Drunk, he threw his eye over the bar. The Neosalanx was an establishment of the red light district. This meant that it hosted a certain kind of clientele. Kogami made no judgments. He was here to feel something. In that, Pau was keeping up his end of the bargain nicely.

It was late in the day—or was it early? Kogami considered the possibility that it was nighttime, then the converse. He decided that it made no difference to him either way.

It was late/early in the Neosalanx and the courtesans sat like pretty flowers in advantageous places—along the edges of the bar, near the grand entrance (which featured two potted ferns and four concrete steps leading into the club's main lounge area), and by the gaming tables. The ones by the bar, in Kogami's estimation, were the least attractive. That stood to reason, since the bar was primarily occupied by young men wearing VR helmets. Those who frequented the gaming tables were the most voluptuous, though none, in his opinion, stood a candle to Tsunemori at her worst.

Stop thinking about her, Kogami thought roughly. He drank and felt some of his anger dissipate, drawn out of his blood by the displacement of chemical intoxication. He studied Lor Sam Pau's crew, saw the way they averted their eyes when he looked in their direction, and smiled. He traded flirtatious glances with the working girls, who seemed to find his dangerous reputation alluring.

Time passed. Kogami sat in his booth all alone and drank several of Masaoka's foul concoctions—by now he thought they were rather delicious, actually—and periodically got up to piss. The air smelled of warm electronics, liquor, and human sweat. He found it better than any cologne. It must have been past midnight, because the only people still in the Neosalanx wore VR helmets and interacted with sights and sounds that didn't exist in reality, only their bulbous heads visible in the neon glow from the signage behind the bar. In an earlier age, Kogami thought, there would have been tobacco smoke wreathing the heads of the bar-goers, not flavored water vapor. Such was the downside of living in the twenty-second century.

He got up to piss again. His bladder was filling itself every few seconds, it seemed. Kogami moved around the booth, intending to stand, and managed to fall against the next table over, sending dirty glassware flying onto the grimy carpet. Shit. He clawed himself upright and tried to stay in one place, which sounded simple but was quite difficult. Japan was moving beneath his feet.

Earthquake, he thought.

The bathroom was less than fifteen feet away, just around the corner, but Kogami could as easily have walked to Hong Kong. He clutched the wall and used it as a guide and a friend on his journey. When he reached the hallway, though, he found his path blocked. He pawed at his eyes and squinted, trying to see through the hazy darkness.

Three grinning faces stared back at him. Kogami remembered them. Two had been friends of Kogami's tailor, and present during that aborted robbery. The other was a man Kogami had shared a drink with. He rummaged through his memory in the manner of a man searching a drawer full of junk for a particular key.

That was right—the other man was the Neosalanx's bouncer. One of Pau's men.

Pain erupted from his left eye, sending Kogami reeling. He collapsed into more tables, sending cutlery and packets of soy sauce and ketchup flying. Fuck. He blinked up and saw the three men grinning wider. One of them, Pau's bouncer, was massaging his fist.

The smallest man, a rat-like fellow with a goatee and a purple shirt, displayed gold teeth in a wide grin. "Hey, friend, guess what?"

Kogami grunted. "What?"

"We're going to fuck you up. Then we're going to throw your body in the harbor. Then Akita will go back to being the nice place it was before you showed up."

Kogami's lips twitched. He half-knelt, half-crouched on the filthy floor of the nightclub, his eye swollen and bloody, alcohol making his ears ring and the world sway around him. But deep inside his chest, something was happening.

"He's too drunk. Look at him. Doesn't understand what's happening."

I was a cop. Kogami slowly climbed to his feet, using his legs to brace himself against the overturned table. The sensation in his chest grew more powerful, more resonant, and seemed to spill over into his arms and legs, and rise into his head. It cleared most of the cotton from his head and seemed to calm the heaving of the walls and floor. I was an Inspector with the Public Safety Bureau. I protected people.

"Are you ready to die, asshole?"

The smile that broke over Kogami's face was the mirror image of Makishima's, but he had no way of knowing that.

"Yes," Kogami said simply.

The bouncer shifted his weight, preparing to throw a punch, but Kogami saw it coming and dived headfirst into all three men. There was a frenzied shout of anger and fear as they all went down, and then Kogami rolled, anger making his movements ruthless and precise, and brought his elbow down on the bouncer's throat. Something broke; there was a snapping sound and then a choking gasp, and the bouncer's eyes widened in sudden fear. Kogami grinned at him and turned his attention to the other two men, who were just now gaining their feet.

Kogami rose and brought his left leg up in a kick that shattered the small man's ribcage. He followed it up with a kick to the knee, which bent the joint the wrong way, eliciting a sharp cry of pain and a string of curses. The goatee went down, arms flailing, pulling tablecloths after him.

Somewhere in the haze of the nightclub, Kogami was aware of an alarm blaring in the background. The place seemed deserted.

The third man slashed at his belly with a switchknife. Kogami flowed with the strike, letting it miss his flesh by centimeters, and followed it back to the man. He seized the man's wrist and forced the knife inward, so that its point faced its owner, and pushed. The man fought back, panic filling his eyes, but Kogami's muscles had been honed through a daily regimen of martial arts. The knife slid into the man's chest with the slightest resistance, and blood began to pour from his mouth.

"You fucker," the man gurgled, and as Kogami stared into his eyes he saw that they were flecked with tiny particles of silver. Cyborg implants. They reminded him of Choe Gu-sung, and he felt a surge of anger that he'd lost the trail.

When his last attacker fell, to bleed all over the floor, Kogami looked around. They'd made quite a mess. Pieces of broken glass glittered like gemstones on the thick carpet. Blood from multiple wounds—some of which were Kogami's—made dark stains on clothing, carpet, and tables. The karaoke machine was no longer singing a backing vocal to the Beatles' Eight Days a Week.

Kogami began to limp toward the exit. He didn't know where he was going; he had no money, and Pau had fed him his only meals. But he was fairly sure that this was only a prelude to a larger movement, so to speak. If Pau wanted him dead, he stood very little chance of surviving in the crime lord's own establishment.

As he passed the bar, Kogami snagged an opened bottle of whiskey and cradled it under his good arm. His head had cleared far too much for his own good—reality was beginning to impinge upon things. He hit me first. I didn't start it.

As he descended the concrete steps and was about to step out into the filth of the quay, Kogami came to a stop. Three more shadows appeared in the open doorway—two men holding sawed-off shotguns, and one wearing a silk vest.

Lor Sam Pau, he thought.

"Kogami," said Pau in a genial way, as if the two of them had bumped into each other on the street. "Not leaving already, are you?"

Kogami studied the hired muscle and calculated his chances. Just then, his bad leg began to buckle underneath him. He remained standing, but only just.

"I'd planned to, yeah."

"You don't enjoy my club?"

"I've enjoyed it all night," Kogami said. "I think it's time for me to leave."

Pau spread his hands and smiled. "Well, there's something we can all agree on."

Kogami made a move as if to approach the crime lord. Instantly two shotguns were pointed in his direction. He shrugged.

Don't think there's a way out of this one. Too bad. His one regret was that he wouldn't have a chance to apologize to Tsunemori. He'd broken his promise.

"Why don't we go to my office?" Pau suggested, nodding to the rear of the nightclub. "We can discuss things easier there."

Kogami shrugged again and took a swig from his bottle of whiskey.

Let's get this over with.


"Hiroki informed me that you wished to speak with me," said Kurou Yamato. The Vice Chairman of Sibyl was still at his desk, the Stadium around them rapidly emptying of legislators—almost, Shogo thought, like soap residue swirling down a drain. Like most of their sessions, it had been uneventful. The centerpiece resolution involved an increase in the Judgment rate for the Nara Prefecture. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Yes." Makishima had voted in favor of the measure. It's not like it truly matters—this place will be destroyed before too long. He would miss some aspects of the Sibyl System, the purely aesthetic ones. It was invigorating to live in a world that was, in essence, the creation of hundreds of minds. You could almost hear thoughts humming along in the background, like hot water whooshing through a radiator.

Yamato smiled. It was a trifle stiff, perhaps, but genuine enough. "Well, what is it, Shogo?"

"I'd like to meet Mr Chambers."

The grin that engulfed Yamato's broad face was dazzling, like drawing open the curtains at approximately noon. You could see why the man succeeded—no, thrived—in public office. "Well, it's about time! No, really, Shogo, I'm thrilled to hear it. He's been anxious to meet you for so long… And to be frank, I'd almost begun to think you were putting it off for some reason."

Makishima's knuckles rapped the hard oak top of the Vice Chairman's desk. He cocked his head, listening. The sound it gave off echoed through the deserted chambers, a plucked string in an empty concert hall. "To be equally frank, Kurou, I was. You know what I was like on the outside. Trusting people isn't in my nature. But I've been listening and learning about Mr Chambers, and everybody seems to agree that he is an extraordinary person."

Yamato had been smiling and nodding along with his words of praise, but Makishima's emphasis on person caused the smile to freeze up. The Vice Chairman turned away and began to sort and stack papers on his desk. "And who have you spoken with, I wonder, about Chambers?"

"People."

"Ah, yes." The smile that appeared on Yamato's face now would not win him many votes on the campaign trail. "We have a few of those here in the System, don't we."

"Just a few."

Makishima studied Yamato's face, trying to read what was behind the mask, but he could discern little. The Vice Chairman was a practiced liar, he knew, and by force of habit held his cards close to his chest.

Yamato finished stacking his papers, and now began to load them into his briefcase, guiding each neat-edged pile into its own accordion pocket. When the briefcase bulged with documents, he snapped the two bright brass catches into place and wrapped both arms around the case, his left hand grasping the other wrist.

"How are the Okaba Street trials coming along?" Makishima spoke as if the question were an afterthought.

Yamato, in the middle of descending the central dais, paused in mid-step. He looked up at Makishima expressionlessly. "You are well-informed, aren't you, Mr Makishima?"

"When are you leaving?" Makishima pursued. "It must be soon, because from what I've been able to learn the office building at Okaba Street has been closed for weeks. The project has run its course. I'm assuming the technical problem was solved?"

"It will be solved in due course," said Yamato. "Of that I can assure you."

"When?"

The Vice Chairman ignored the question. "When do you plan to meet Chambers?"

He doesn't know how much I know, which serves my interests just fine. Yamato also didn't know how much Makishma didn't know—which was probably more beneficial to him. He didn't want to be hauled before Chambers just yet.

"Soon."

Yamato smiled, then continued to descend the steps. The Stadium was by now completely deserted; Makishima and the Vice Chairman were the only two Sibyl members still in it, and the latter began the long walk up one of the cardinal ramps to the elevator. Makishima kept a safe distance behind, a few steps aft of the man's shoulder, in case he should lash out with a physical attack. Not likely to happen, but it was possible.

"When are you leaving?" Makishima asked again.

Yamato grunted. "When Chambers decides it is time."

"So all of that guff about beings gods, being free from the prison of the flesh—that was all meaningless?"

Yamato shot him a glance from the corner of his eye. "Not meaningless—my opinion. But Chambers calls the shots around here, not me."

"You built this place," Makishima pointed out. "You built everything. Nona Tower, the Ministry, the works."

"Why?"

Makishima blinked. "What?"

"Why do you think I built it all, Shogo?" The Vice Chairman turned and gesticulated with his briefcase, a motion that encompassed the entire Stadium, and, by extension, the Sibyl System itself. "For pride? For money?"

"For power," Makishima said, but he suspected that it wasn't as cut-and-dried as that. He, of all people, knew the attractions (and limits!) of mere power. There were other, more subtle pleasures at work.

Yamato shook his head. "No. I had power, Shogo. Japanese lawmakers were practically falling over themselves for a chance to have a private meeting when I was chairman of my company. I had money, power, women—beautiful women, Shogo, supermodels. I had houses and even a private island. So I ask you again, why did I create this place?"

It was a good question, and not one that Makishima felt he could answer just yet. The question of motive was foremost in any crime, but this crime was of a different order than any that had been perpetrated before. A mugger steals a purse and thereby takes perhaps tens of thousands of yen from an innocent citizen; a murderer takes a life, and all of its unlived experiences; corporate malfeasance leads to the poisoning of waterways, food supplies, even the air that people breathe. All crimes, great and small, come with victims. But Yamato's crime was on a scale scarcely to be imagined. If, as some Japanese commentators speculated, the other nations of the Earth destroyed themselves utterly in war, then Japan would remain as the only human civilization on the face of the planet. And if that happened, Yamato would have been responsible for a crime against every human being in existence. Even by Makishima's standards, it was heady stuff. What could possibly motivate such an act?

"I don't know."

"You view me as a monster," Yamato said. "Very well—that's your right. But think back to your history, Shogo; I know you're well read. What element has caused some of the greatest strife in the ages?"

That was an easy one. "Religion," he said.

Yamato nodded toward the elevator, and they began to walk toward it. "Correct. But just saying the word doesn't answer the question. What about religion causes men and women to forsake everything else?"

"A desire for eternal life," Makishima guessed.

"Wrong. Belief in something greater than themselves."

"I thought you and I were supposed to be the higher powers now. Isn't that what you said? That in the Sibyl System, mankind has risen to the level of gods?"

"We have, Shogo, but there are powers even greater than us. A being that even the gods worship. A being that existed for all the ages of time, that roamed the stars in endless search of communion with sentient entities. And when such a being found them, it raised them up into gods, to live for an eternity in splendor and joy. In worship of its own act of existence."

The skin on the back of Makishima's neck began to prickle. The last time that happened, he'd been face to face with Shinya Kogami in the midst of the hyper-oat fields, his life draining away drop by precious drop. "Chambers," he said with dawning understanding. "You're talking about Chambers."

The elevator chimed, the doors swept open silently. Yamato climbed aboard with Makishima at his heels. The doors enclosed them in darkened silence, and the Vice Chairman stabbed the button for the Astrocyte's main concourse. The elevator car began to rise, accompanied by the downward pull of one's guts. Makishima closed his eyes and thought.

"Chambers," Yamato agreed.

"That was what she meant," Makishima said softly, "when she said he wasn't human."

The Vice Chairman raised an eyebrow. "Evelyn said that?" He clucked his tongue. "Disloyalty. Wouldn't have believed it of her. She must have grown more attached to you than I'd supposed. But what happened to her in Caneworth was quite traumatizing. Allowances can be made."

"When did you meet it?" Makishima didn't specify what he meant. It was clear to both of them.

"Him, Shogo. Chambers identifies as male."

"Him, then."

"Nearly fifty years ago. I was a lawmaker in the Japanese Diet and I'd just been assigned to the Subcommittee on Defense Affairs. Back then it was very dry stuff—facts and figures about our military coordination with the Americans, drills against opposing navies, budgetary matters. Very dry. To be perfectly honest, I slept through most of the hearings. Listening to shriveled old admirals and generals tell us about missiles and bombs and deployments was my idea of torture. Of course, I was a young man then."

"Why did you bother showing up?"

Yamato shrugged. "It was an honor for such a young politician. My rise had been, as they say in the news media, meteoric. I did what I was supposed to do in order to gather influence. But you wanted to hear about Chambers. Well, one day our subcommittee meeting turned out to be top-secret. I was intrigued. I decided to pay attention to everything that was said. And it was astonishing."

Makishima didn't say anything. This was a gold mine, he thought—let Yamato tell him everything, reveal every secret. Finally the design of things was being laid bare.

"In the months after the great earthquake of '46, there had been seismological surveys conducted by the Interior Ministry in order to determine the risk of more tectonic shifts. The potential for a future disaster was great, so a lot of money was put into the program. Robotic submersibles were sent to examine the coastal floor of Japan, to analyze fault lines, conduct core sample drilling, and so on.

"Well, they found more than just minerals down there. The earthquake had dislodged a piece of the Earth's crust and revealed an object within." The Vice Chairman looked closely at Makishima. "Have you ever heard of a lithopedion?"

Makishima shook his head.

"It's a medical term referring to a fetus that dies during pregnancy and is stored by the mother's body within layers of calcified tissue. The mass can exist for years, even decades, without detection. That's what they found beneath Japan—a piece of the Earth's crust that contained a foreign object. At first they didn't know what it was, only that it was metallic and of great purity. But it was interesting enough that they convened a hearing for us lawmakers. And that was when I first learned of Chambers."

"He was inside?"

"Correct." Yamato closed his eyes as the elevator ascended; with his head slightly upturned he looked quite beatific, peaceful, almost saintlike. "I was the only lawmaker on the subcommittee to have any experience with science, so they deferred to me. My sister, you see, was a rather distinguished researcher in those days. I managed to get her assigned to the team that would study the object. She was quite grateful to me."

His sister. Choe had told him about the Yamato family records and their inexplicable purging from the Ministry database—now they knew why.

"It was soon realized that the object in question was not native to the Earth. It fell onto our planet at a far earlier stage of human evolution—perhaps before we as a species even existed. It was covered by rock and, inert, it lasted for centuries in a kind of slumber."

"An alien ship," Makishima said slowly.

"Hardly," Yamato scoffed. "That would be the tabloid headline, of course, but such language demeans the very nature of Chambers. He is not an alien. He is of the earliest moments of Time, when galaxies were still coalescing, the shape of things yet to come. He came to us quite on purpose, he said, because he saw that we would grow to become worthy of his attention." Yamato smiled in a self-satisfied way. "And look around you, Shogo—haven't we just?"

Trying to steer the conversation back to facts, for he saw the glint of madness in Yamato's eyes, Makishima said, "You mentioned that you got your sister placed on the research team. How did you manage that?"

"Oh, Mayumi? She'd always been brilliant. Our parents recognized her intelligence from an early age. She was the type to get scholarships while half-asleep, you know, while I…" Yamato trailed off, shrugging. "I was more mercenary-minded. I started my first company at twelve. Made a mint, too.

"When I suggested that my sister head the government team researching the Trench Artifact—that was its official designation—my fellow lawmakers were only too glad to acquiesce. Having the brother of the chief researcher as a colleague would keep them all in the loop, you see, and everyone realized that there were fortunes to be made from the discovery. So it worked out for everybody."

"What did they find?"

"The object itself was hollow. It had been fashioned as a form of ark, which could transport life across vast interstellar distances. As I said before, Chambers travels in search of beings worthy of transcendence. He had found a few before he came to Earth. They were inside of him. Asleep."

"Aliens?" Makishima asked incredulously.

"Yes. They live inside Chambers—not solely in a physical sense, you understand, but spiritually as well. The technology that powers the Sibyl System was given to us by Chambers. It was how he communed with his worshippers. The mind enters him and experiences his glory—takes part in his act of creation, much as the citizens of Japan take part in our little performance. Mayumi found the subject a fascinating area of research. She said the technology was centuries more advanced than ours."

It sounded insane, but Makishima couldn't begin to argue against what Yamato was saying. There was no other explanation that fit all the facts. Nevertheless, it was astonishing. He didn't consider himself prone to flights of fancy, but this filled him with a sense of wonder that he'd never before experienced. It was no surprise that a man like Kurou Yamato could be so taken in by it. When set against the immensity of the Chambers discovery, his former ambition must have paled in comparison.

"Unfortunately, those he had found worthy before lost Chambers' favor."

Makishima narrowed his eyes. "What does that mean?"

"The beings that were found inside of Chambers could not be roused. As they had slept for centuries in his belly, they became frail and sickly. Only through his grace did they continue to live."

Something doesn't add up. "And where are they now?"

"Still inside him," Yamato said. "It hardly matters. Chambers has found his new flock—us. Once the technology is finished, we will displace them and Chambers will depart, with us, to the farthest reaches of the universe. There we will experience eternity."

The elevator came to a stop at the three-hundredth floor. Yamato's penthouse. As the doors slid open and Yamato got off, Makishima asked a final question.

"When will that happen?"

The Vice Chairman didn't turn around, but Makishima could see a smile beginning to form on the edge of his face. It was a smile he hadn't yet seen before, unlike the boastful, proud, satisfied, and happy smiles Yamato usually wore. This one was secretive.

"Soon," Yamato replied, and began the short walk to the door of his penthouse. "Very soon, Shogo. But before that happens, why don't you go see Chambers in person? You could get all the answers to your questions from him." Deep, resonant laughter. "I'm sure you would both learn something from that experience."

Yes, Makishima thought, and stabbed the button for his own floor. Why don't I?