I hung suspended in the sea of information, drifting slightly in the current that rushed dizzily around me. The Chinese government's internal Net spread out across my field of view; an enormous, impenetrable maze of light and static, crawling with randomly alternating attack barriers.
If I hadn't been sitting there attempting to infiltrate the thing, I probably would have spent quite a bit of time admiring it.
Not that it had been waiting out in the open for just anybody to come and gawk at how complex it was; it had taken me a good deal of time just to find a path, tracing through hidden connections and backdoors left ajar by other ambitious hackers. Hopefully all of this effort would be worth something.
An alert sounded inside my cyberbrain; the program I'd deployed to work out the encryption pattern on the outermost layer of attack barriers had finished running, and I had a window for the next five minutes, until the encryption changed again. Time to get going.
Okay, here's the plan; we scoop up as much information as we can, and then we leave. Three of you are going to stay at the main gate and watch the local Net for activity. The other two are going to come along and back me up. Got it?
Yes, ma'am!
I'd borrowed five tachikomas for AI support; though I'd decided to make the dive with my own setup for added security, even I wasn't about to try this solo.
Good. Sensory masks activated; here we go.
I pushed forward, melting through the wall of the maze. The pressure was so intense that I actually had to wait a few microseconds for my cyberbrain to stabilize.
Everyone all right?
Ready and waiting, Major!
Gosh, look at these barriers…I don't think we've ever been anywhere like this before!
I know, right? Just think of all the experience we're gaining!
Perhaps taking the increased risk and performing the dive at Section 9 with Ishikawa to watch my back would have been the better option after all.
Chatter all you like, but if anything sneaks up on us because you two weren't paying attention, I'm going to personally dismantle the both of you.
Eek!
Y-yes ma'am!
After taking another brief moment to get my bearings, aware every second of my rapidly diminishing window of time, I set off for the Chinese government's census records, feeling my way through the narrow walls that surrounded me.
The database structure was infuriating to maneuver; sections would jump and shudder before my eyes, or turn cloudy and vanish altogether before reappearing again. This was probably for added security – I'd encountered Nets before that, while certainly accessible to a particular class of hacker, would only come into proper focus if the user had the correct authorization matrix in their cyberbrain. This wasn't something that I could create or work out through code; to access it I'd have to go to mainland China, infiltrate the server complex, and then enter the database through the cyberbrain of one of the staff members there, and unfortunately time was short.
I arrived at what I'd thought was the correct set of coordinates after an entire minute and a half of navigating the maze, only to find nothing but more translucent wall, shivering in and out of my sight in complicated patterns.
What the…?
Was this just another part of their security system? It seemed unlikely that the information could hidden entirely, even from someone without the proper clearance; garbled and heavily encrypted, perhaps, but not completely inaccessible.
Maybe I just needed to do a little digging.
Tachikomas; stand by for data recovery. If someone or something spots us, pull me out immediately – our secrecy takes top priority.
Roger!
I checked that my sensory mask was still functioning and then cautiously released the search program I'd written.
For several moments nothing happened at all. I stood foolishly in the middle of the maze, one hand outstretched.
Then, slowly, scraps of data, appearing to my eyes as brilliant chains of light, began to peel away from the walls and floor around me, spooling themselves into the palm of my hand.
The information was encoded within the barriers themselves.
I watched, transfixed, as it raced toward me, strand by strand. In this form, it would need to be reconstructed before it would be of any use, but that wasn't a problem; as long as I had the pieces, I could put them together.
In the back of my mind, the countdown until the encryption pattern changed continued to tick mercilessly toward zero. It was impossible to tell how much of the total amount of relevant data I'd extracted so far, and I was attracting so many threads of it that I felt as though I was standing in the middle of a brilliant storm.
Twenty seconds left.
The chains continued to spin themselves out of the maze walls. I didn't dare pull away for fear of losing something vital.
I was frozen there in the middle of their dizzy whirl of light.
Ten seconds.
Too much light now. A vast wall of it, blank white and icy cold, bearing down on me.
Five seconds.
I tried to pull my hand away, but it was stuck, caught in the tangle of data still pouring out of the walls; walls that were rapidly closing in around me.
No time to retreat.
Major!
I opened my eyes.
Major, are you all right?
I was in my apartment, sitting in front of the massive dive device that took up a good three quarters of my office area. My body was still frozen; I needed a moment to come back to it.
Yeah; I'm fine.
If I had a pulse, it would have been racing.
So, how did we do?
We managed to get you out before the encryption shift, Major!
Nobody's noticed any intrusion, either! It looks like we're all clear!
Good. And the data?
It's hard to say at this point! It's still heavily fragmented from the storage process!
Right! Even though the search entries were accessible as cohesive entities, the files themselves were being stored in separate segments!
What a weird security measure; the Chinese government sure isn't making this easy!
Uh-huh!
I sighed, trying to move my body again; the feeling was gradually coming back into my limbs, and I could move my hand enough to manipulate the controls and disconnect myself from the dive equipment.
The entire run had taken me only two hours and forty-nine minutes. Not bad. Now to get to work on making what I'd found presentable.
Tachikomas, you're dismissed; thanks for your help. Get back to monitoring our dragnet, and don't give Ishikawa too much trouble, okay?
Yes, ma'am!
Hey, Major! Are you gonna come back to Section 9 now and help us again?
In a bit; I've got some jigsaw puzzles to assemble first.
The team was assembled in the briefing room again, just as we had been a little more than eight hours ago.
The only difference was that I now stood at the head of the room instead of at the rear, and every eye in it was on me.
"Due to the difficulty in obtaining census information from the Chinese government, the records I managed to recover are somewhat incomplete, but here's what I've pieced together based on the DNA data recovered from the crime scene."
The profiles of twelve men appeared on the screen behind me.
"More than half of our suspects resided in China's Yunnan province until sometime in the year 2024; all are marked as having immigrated to Japan as refugees, and their current whereabouts are unknown. None of them are listed as cyberized, although this obviously could have changed in the last decade. I was able to find facial data on two of them, but so far there's been no match on either man in any domestic databases."
The silence when I finished speaking was deafening.
"And?" said Batou at last, leaning forward onto the table. "It was a group of refugees who came from the same place and who could be based anywhere in the country now. No offense, Major, but this isn't really much more to go on."
"I know," I said.
"So what are we supposed to do, then?" said Azuma. "Go hunting through each of the refugee districts until we find these people?"
I turned my eyes toward him. "That's exactly what we're supposed to do."
The matrix of profiles on the screen disappeared, a large map taking its place.
"We'll start by focusing on the largest residential areas. Each team is to push local sources for information; if any solid leads turn up, report them back to headquarters and we'll make any further decisions from there.
"Batou, Saito, and Azuma; you three will head out to Nagasaki. It's the closest zone to the scene of the crime, and it's very likely that some of the perpetrators may be sheltering there. Paz and Borma, I want you to stay here and investigate the Niihama zone. I'll be taking on the Kanto zone."
"What, by yourself?" said Batou.
I nodded. "I'm just going to visit a few contacts I have in that area; they might know more about this group. At this point it's best to focus our resources on the zones closer to Fukuoka. If nothing turns up there, we can expand the search and pull more people out to Tokyo."
My eyes made a quick circuit of the room.
"I don't think anyone here needs to be reminded of just how important this case is. Take all necessary precautions, and stay in constant contact. Now, let's go!"
Yoko lay on her side on the hard wooden bench; she'd curled up inside her coat in an attempt to conserve body heat, but the cold had still managed to wrap itself around her, digging its icy fingers deep into her flesh.
Her only indication of the time was the light that came in through the two tiny windows, crawling slowly across the floor. From the distance it had moved since she had first arrived, she guessed that she'd been here for nearly ten hours.
She was exhausted. Her brain hadn't interpreted her unconsciousness during the trip to Tokyo as sleep, due to the cyberbrain lock; if her estimation of the time was correct, she'd been awake for nearly a full day.
Every time she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, she saw them.
First had been Mr. Komatsu, the man who'd been in the car with her.
It wasn't his specific job to escort her; he'd just happened to be assigned to her on that particular day, in keeping with the shifts that were drawn up at the beginning of each month. Pure luck had placed him with her that night.
She'd sat and watched as the contents of his head splattered against the window.
"Get down, please, ma'am," Mari had said, her tone as gentle and as comforting as always. She was reaching for something on the other side of the vehicle, although it was too dark for Yoko to see what it was.
Then one of the attackers had opened the door, forced her head down, and put a bullet through the back of her skull.
Mari, her sweet, quiet shadow, her constant companion for the last two years. Mari, who had kept her functioning, kept her files organized and her schedule straight, and who could always be counted on for a kind word of encouragement besides.
Yoko wondered if she'd even had any life outside of her occupation. If anything else other than praises and words of thanks from her mistress had ever made her happy.
Two years and she'd never bothered to find out. Never even really told the bioroid just how much she meant to her, other than the common courtesies that she dispensed so frequently that they'd almost become meaningless.
She wondered what Mari had felt as she'd died. Regret, disappointment, futility?
Whatever it was had quickly drained out onto the dashboard with the rest.
That was when Yoko had closed her eyes.
She'd felt the movement of the rear door of the car being hauled open roughly, and then the weight of the man who'd entered. Felt him pull her forward and shove the lock into the plug in the back of her neck.
Then she'd found herself here. Trapped. Waiting for someone to come and save her.
Major…
Yoko had already reached for the familiar feel of the connection twice, as if she'd somehow be able to get through if she just tried it again. The static from the jamming signal had stabbed into her brain both times, leaving her dizzy and sapping just a little more of her hope that all of this would eventually sort itself out.
She'd heard it said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was a sign of madness.
Perhaps that was why they'd left her here, alone in the cold, with only the last several horrific hours of her life for company. They expected to open the door again and find a frozen, broken shell of a woman, too tired and traumatized to do anything other than acquiesce to their demands.
What did they want from her, anyway? Was she supposed to announce the truth of her heritage to the world? Somehow manipulate space and time and fully integrate the Asian refugees into Japanese society, while still keeping them aloof and separate in their own little communities?
And what would happen when she didn't come through on either front?
The image of Mari, bent forward with the muzzle of a gun shoved against the back of her head, flashed into her mind again, and fear jolted her body like an electric current.
Major…please…
Including the journey to Tokyo from Fukuoka, Yoko guessed that she'd been missing for nearly a full day. Her heart sank further and further into hopelessness with each second that ticked by.
But she couldn't give up entirely.
The lock rattled, and she looked up; the door swung open to reveal two men, different from the ones who had escorted her to this place earlier that morning, their faces dark against a clouded twilight sky. One of them held his hand out.
"The boss wants to speak with you again. Come with us."
It took Yoko a few tries to unfold her stiff, frozen body and stand, but eventually she managed it, and the men led her back across the school grounds to the shell of the administrative building.
Even through her fear and discomfort, she was curious about exactly what kind of power Mr. Zhang held in this place. It wasn't uncommon for refugee camps to appoint neighborhood leaders, in an attempt to keep some amount of order, but it was unusual for these people to command such an intense level of respect.
She thought of the mania she'd glimpsed in the man's eyes earlier. He'd had at least two people killed just to get to her; he had probably proved to these men already that he was not someone to be crossed, and they obeyed him accordingly.
How on earth had her father ever fallen in with such a person? She'd been small when he had died, and her memories of him were indistinct, but all of them seemed to be of a soft, quiet man whose love for his plants was surpassed only by his love for his wife and daughter. He had not been a man who would associate with a murderer, of that she was sure.
Perhaps this was why he'd left China to begin with.
Things were much livelier in the camp; most of the refugees had returned from whatever work they'd been able to scrounge, and large groups congregated by the fires set in trash cans and oil drums, talking and passing around bottles of alcohol. Heads turned here and there as the two men walked past with their captive between them; aware of the attention, Yoko did her best to walk with her back straight and her head high.
She could at least pretend that she was in control of the situation.
A few more minutes of walking led them once again to Mr. Zhang's sitting room. One of the men remained outside the door while the other ushered Yoko through it, then stood in the corner with his arms folded while she sat down on the sofa.
"So, madam," said Mr. Zhang, peering at his guest over the rims of his glasses, "now that you've had some time to reflect on our little chat, what do you think? Will you admit the truth to the nation, for the sake of both your people and your dear father's memory?"
That voice.
That cloying, arrogant, patronizing voice.
What had been dread only a few minutes ago swiftly turned to anger.
"I've done a great deal of reflection," said Yoko, willing herself to remain steady; she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear showing through. "It took some time, but I've come to a resolution regarding your proposal."
She'd adopted the sort of tone in which she'd speak to a particularly repulsive minister or representative, still aware every second of the fact that this man could have her killed if the mood struck him.
"Oh?" said Mr. Zhang. He leaned forward, his hands in his lap. "Let's hear it, then."
"You speak of my duty to my father and to my people," said Yoko, her eyes narrowing. "However, the fact remains that my father left China and relocated to Japan. He began a new life for himself here. He found work, married, and started a family, all under the Japanese name he'd taken for himself. This was the name he passed on to me, the name I've used my entire life.
"My people are the ones who make up the country in which I was born and raised, the ones who voted into office the body of representatives that elected me their prime minister, and who have kept me in that position for the last five years. The fact that my father was Chinese is irrelevant; he may have been born there and worked there for many years, but he lived as a citizen of Japan.
"You and your followers are not my people, or my father's people. I owe you nothing."
Her words rang in the empty silence that followed. Mr. Zhang simply stared at her, his lips pressed together tightly in a thin line. Yoko met his eyes with her own icy gaze, although her hands were trembling.
Suddenly, Mr. Zhang's face split into a smile.
"Oh, your father would have been so very proud of you. Shun?"
The man standing behind the sofa stepped forward.
"Yes, sir?"
Mr. Zhang's smile faded slightly.
"Send it."