Enontekiö was a small Finnish village close to the Norway-Sweden borders. It was in a technologically restricted zone that composed the majority of northern Finland.
“I thought London was cold, but this place is just messed up. My cheeks hurt, and I can feel the blood vessels in my head contracting.”
“That’s why I told you to get earmuffs, Investigator Gardener.”
<Today’s temperature is −10ºC. Attire index A, cold-resistant clothes, are required>
Harold closed his wearable terminal’s clothing app. The parking lot of the village’s sole coffee shop was an unpaved lot. Powder snow ruthlessly flitted down on his and Bigga’s shoulders. The sky was a vast half circle, and the only things in sight were some small huts visible between the European pines.
Harold heard someone beside him let out a loud, booming sneeze.
“Bigga, won’t you lend me your hat? You’re used to the cold already.”
The man trembling next to them was one Investigator Jacob Gardener, a twenty-eight-year-old British man who was the head of the Special Investigations Unit for the London branch. He bleached his hair, as young people often did, and wore an expensive brand of down coat. It was clearly a personal garment, as opposed to being issued by the bureau.
“I don’t think it’s your size,” Bigga said, looking a bit irked as she took off the wool hat she was wearing. “Why didn’t you look at the forecast before coming here? Take this seriously!”
“Cut me some slack. I hardly get to go on business trips, so I don’t know. I’m originally from the Online Monitoring Department.”
“This isn’t a business trip; it’s an expeditionary investigation.”
“You can call it whatever you want, just get in touch with that Hansa kid and tell him to get here fast. I’ll wait inside the car.”
Investigator Gardener walked over to their share car, trying to expand the hat Bigga had lent him. Harold heard Bigga let out a conspicuous sigh. She brushed the snow off her hair in annoyance and pulled the hood of her coat over her head.
“I don’t like having to say this, but how did someone so irresponsible get to be our group leader?”
“I don’t know the details, but Investigator Gardener’s father runs a drone development company that provides the bureau with its products. I assume he pulled some strings to get his son a gig.”
Harold shared the story he’d heard about Gardener with Bigga, whose expression grew even more sour. Since she was studying so diligently in the academy, it didn’t sit right with her that Gardener had moved up based on his father’s influence.
A day had passed since Harold had finished up his maintenance at Novae Robotics Inc. and returned to his duties at the Electrocrime Investigations Bureau. Upon sharing his maintenance results with Chief Totoki, she told him that he would continue working on the Special Investigations Unit as an investigation support Amicus. In other words, he would no longer be an investigator aide and Belayer.
He’d accomplished all this before Echika’s suspension period ended. He needed to keep going at this pace.
“This just means we have to do our job right!”
Bigga seemed to have switched gears and was now looking up enthusiastically at the case file she’d opened on her Your Forma. Harold did the same, calling up the document on his wearable terminal’s holo-browser. It showed the personal data of the investors they were pursuing.
<Jonas Banfield>
A forty-year-old neurology physician who resided in London. He also served as the president of a welfare medical organization that focused on hospice care. But what he was really doing was getting donations from members of the organization and its recipients to invest significantly in Farasha Island.
“Based on what Banfield’s family is saying, he left London last week.” Bigga’s expression was serious. She looked less like an academy student or a consultant and more like a first-class investigator. “He’s a major photography hobbyist, and he usually goes on trips this time of year to take photos, but…”
“His family hasn’t noticed that his GPS position was lost.”
After narrowing their sights on the group of six investors with potential ties to the Alliance, the Electrocrime Investigations Bureau had tracked down each of their GPS coordinates. Banfield and a few others had already disappeared so as to shake off the investigation. Using past GPS records and surveillance drone footage, they found that Banfield had taken a direct flight from London to Helsinki, then moved north to the technologically restricted zone. But once he got to Enontekiö, his signal suddenly went dark.
“Investigator Gardener says that London’s Special Investigations Unit was tracking Banfield, and they believe he might have gotten caught up in an incident… But you think otherwise, right, Bigga?”
“There’s only one reason a Your Forma user would visit a technologically restricted— No, the kind of areas we Sami live in.”
Enontekiö wasn’t far from Bigga’s hometown of Kautokeino. Their briefing on the area had mentioned that 20 percent of Enontekiö’s population was Sami, and much like Kautokeino, their economy was based mostly on reindeer husbandry and aurora tourism. With the growing spread of the Your Forma, the region had achieved notoriety for being a technologically restricted zone, leading to an influx of new industries.
In other words.
“Your theory that Banfield is undergoing bio-hacking was correct.”
“I would have preferred to be wrong…,” Bigga said. Just then, she blinked. She appeared to have gotten a message. “He should be here soon.”
About three minutes later, a jeep pulled into the coffee shop parking lot. Its wheels ground against the unpaved gravel as it came to a stop. Then the driver—a jumpy-looking boy—left the car. His hair was cut short, like a mowed lawn, and his pale skin was covered in freckles. He wasn’t very tall. Military fatigue pants peeked out from under his down jacket.
“Hansa.” Bigga greeted the boy with a nervous smile.