Totoki walked over to the counter and placed the briefcase she was carrying on it. She opened it up and took out a laptop they’d bought at a retailer on the way there. They couldn’t know for sure whether the Alliance had control of Novae Robotics Inc.’s computers, so this was their safest bet. As he watched Totoki swiftly prepare things, Steve whispered to Echika, “By the way, Investigator. Is Harold feigning his malfunction as an excuse to keep his distance from you?”
Echika stiffened. Since Steve spent his days here in Novae Robotics Inc., he naturally knew about his brother’s “condition.”
“Everyone believes he really is malfunctioning,” she whispered, emphasizing the situation. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” He blinked earnestly. “But his foolishness shocks me at times.”
“He has his reasons.”
“And you agreed to this?”
“Yes.” Saying that made her choke up a little. “We decided this was the best way to keep us both safe.”
Steve’s eyes, looking like dried-out lakes, narrowed. “I thought humans were greedier than that.”
…What does that mean?
Before Echika could ask, Totoki called Steve over. The Amicus walked over to the counter and checked the activated laptop. Its specs were on the lower end, just barely good enough for the job, and Steve quickly installed the programs he needed and got to work. His last statement still weighed on Echika’s mind, but the situation didn’t allow for her to bring it up.
All she could do after that was wait. She sank her body, which was still sluggish and tired, into the sofa and watched the seconds tick by in her Your Forma’s time display. Steve sat in front of the PC in silence as Totoki watched over him and spoke to Fokine over the audio call. The quiet hanging over the lounge grew heavier, to the point where it felt like a viscous sludge. Somewhere down the line, the snowfall outside the window had intensified, and it was now coming down nonstop.
The seemingly eternal silence was finally broken roughly ten minutes ahead of the Alliance’s meeting.
“The model’s still a bit shoddy, but it should be accurate enough for a holo-call.”
Steve’s fingers rose from the PC. Echika jolted off the sofa and approached the counter. She and Totoki, who looked somewhat tired, looked into the monitor.
Greg’s newly made holo-model gazed back at them expressionlessly, his body in a T-pose.
He really did it.
“Brilliantly done,” Totoki said without a smile. “I want you to apply it to Hieda’s Your Forma and set it as her holo-model. We need to change her voice to Greg’s, too. Can you do that?”
“I worked in Rig City, where the Your Forma was developed, so I can do it in no time,” Steve replied calmly. “Do you want me to modify the user data for her Your Forma?”
“Yes, go ahead. She shouldn’t be able to enter the meeting unless we’re very thorough and ensure she’s indistinguishable from Greg.”
Since Totoki was both their point of contact and their leader, the actual act of infiltrating the meeting fell to Echika. They’d decided their respective roles on their drive here in the share car. Normally, using a holo-model to impersonate someone was a violation of international communication security laws. It was, however, allowed as an exception during covert investigations. Echika wanted to believe they were still on the very edge of what was legal.
“This way, Investigator.”
At Steve’s prompting, Echika sat on one of the counter’s stools. He plugged an HSB convertor cable into the PC, then connected its other side to the back of Echika’s neck. Her Your Forma detected an external device, and the overwriting of her holo-model started right away. At the same time, the PC started to monitor her communications.
With this, Totoki would be able to look into the meeting and gather physical records that would serve as evidence.
“I analyzed the meeting’s program and server,” Steve said, operating the laptop. “Neither one is a Rig City service. They’re unique Farasha Island tech.”
“They probably did that to maintain secrecy. I bet the security is very tight.”
“Nothing is uncrackable,” the Amicus said with a serious expression. “I’m up for the task. No need for concern.”
As Echika listened to their exchange, she breathed in, so as to calm her nerves. She repositioned herself on the stool so she was sitting directly across from Steve. The Amicus’s eyes fixed on Echika unflinchingly. Their color reminded her of Harold, despite his absence.
“Investigator Hieda, while I try to figure out where they’re connecting from, I need you to stall for them by masquerading as Greg.”
“All right.”
Until Steve was finished, she had to be exceptionally careful. Depending on how she conducted herself, this whole operation could fall apart. Failure wasn’t an option.
“Hieda.” Totoki placed her hand on Echika’s back. “We’re counting on you.”
It was almost ten PM.
<Password and user data confirmed. Connection to meeting server eed586865893 approved…>
The moment after the connection went through, the exterior of the lounge was replaced by the image of a vast sky. In the blink of an eye, Echika found herself standing atop a lake that seemed to stretch into infinity. The water’s surface was still and clear, like a mirror, reflecting the blue sky. The clouds above cast a clear shadow, granting the illusion that she was trapped between two skies.
She knew this otherworldly scenery.
Salar de Uyuni.
It was a famous tourist attraction in Bolivia, a salt flat in the Andes Mountains. It must have been the inspiration for this scenery. Rather than calling the participants’ holo-models over, the immersive online meeting used the Your Forma’s augmented reality feature to change the space around them instead. This kind of technology did suit Farasha Island’s methods.
Before Echika had time to marvel at the scenery, a glass roundtable appeared, with donut tables forming layers of rings around it. It stopped at the fourth ring. Echika had to turn her head to be able to see the entirety of the outer ring. She’d been automatically seated in the second ring from the inside. When she looked down at her hands, resting on the table, she saw they were the bony, angular hands of a middle-aged man—the hands of Greg’s holo-model.
Holo-models started appearing in the seats around her. They were all unfamiliar men and women of assorted ages. Echika opened the meeting participant list so that Totoki could inspect their personal data. She casually glanced back, seeing that the outer table had filled without her noticing. The sight of it filled her with an inexplicable sense of despair.
This was already much bigger in scale than she imagined. So many people were there, and they were all part of the Alliance.
“Good evening, everyone. Let’s begin today’s scheduled report.”
Despite the size of the place, the voice sounded like it was speaking right beside her. One of the avatars at the central roundtable was speaking. Yes, avatar—it wasn’t a holo-model, and it didn’t even look human. Sitting at the roundtable were white, smooth clumps that resembled cocoons or chrysalids. There were six seats at the roundtable—four were occupied by these strange avatars, and the remaining two were empty.
Echika somehow managed to keep herself from frowning. Context seemed to imply that these cocoons were managing the meeting. They’d hidden their faces, likely because they were deeply involved with the Alliance. She checked the participant list, but the four didn’t have names. Instead, they were marked by letters of the alphabet—A, B, C, and F.
Why are D and E missing?
“Comrades #47, #50, and #78.” The same gender-neutral voice from earlier spoke—this was A. “Please report on how you followed up after purging the investors the bureau was after. What about their families?”
“No change in Quine’s wife and daughter,” said someone called #47, whose holo-model was of a young white man. “His daughter did express some doubts about his cause of death, but her misgivings were only temporary.”
So the investors and their families were being watched after all. Though shocked and appalled, Echika also felt panicked. All the participants had been allotted a number, but the seats on the tables didn’t indicate which digit was assigned to whom. If the seats had been in numerical order, Echika could hazard a guess, but based on the person who’d just answered, it seemed the seats were in a random order.
What was Greg’s number?
Her only option was to infer from what the others were saying. In other words, this didn’t just make the members easier to tell apart, it also served as a measure to expose any rats.