A massive spherical room whose dimensions could give an observer feelings of vertigo. Hundreds of liquid-filled vats containing... brains? There was no other word. Robotic arms hoisted by steel girders hovered over those vats like doting mothers, sometimes darting with startling quickness to pick up and discard one of the disembodied brains, sometimes disappearing into trap doors to retrieve a replacement brain, identical in likeness (identical in function?), and place it with unerring accuracy into the same vat—as simple as unplugging a defective circuit board and swapping in a new one. The similarities were striking, and frightening, too.

Shusei Kagari couldn't make sense of what he saw. A feeling of dread had accompanied him down the seldom-used service corridors of Nona Tower, down its ladders, hatchways, and emergency lifts, but it had gone hand-in-hand with the expectation that what he encountered at the end would be terrifying and likely mortally dangerous, but still understandable. He'd prepared himself for the sight of Makishima's henchman, the guy called Choe Gu-sung, wiring up a bomb, or triggering canisters of poisonous gas, or through an ingenious feat of hacking somehow bringing down the Sibyl System entirely and plunging the nation into chaos. He'd rehearsed scenarios in his head, planned out what he would do in each situation. (Mostly his plans involved diving to the ground and firing his Dominator in Gu-sung's direction until its powerpack ran out, but that was his usual MO as an Enforcer anyway. He was a simple guy.) When he'd finally reached the last fateful hatchway and stepped through, his body bursting with adrenaline and every nerve fiber signaling readiness, he'd been prepared to kick into an action hero style asskicking.

What he hadn't expected to see was the unfathomable nature of the Sibyl System itself, laid out before him in the surpassing detail of a finely-crafted miniature. The sight brought him up short, loosened his grip on his Dominator, made his mouth fall open in surprise. He wasn't prepared for that kind of shock.

"What in the hell am I looking at here?" he said slowly.

"It's the truth," Gu-sung replied. "The real form of the Sibyl System."

He said something more, but Kagari wasn't listening—his attention was rooted on one of those articulating robotic arms, which before their very eyes began to pluck a brain out of the Sibyl System. It sped out of view, its gelatinous cargo dangling from a set of clever tentacles, presumably to dispose of the current model and retrieve a suitable substitute. No way. This is too much. The Sibyl System is just a brain farm? You have got to be kidding me! He shook his head and tried to wrap his mind around the idea that the ironclad rule of the Sibyl System, the Cymatic Grid, the mandatory Hue checks, even the Dominators and the Enforcers who wielded them, like Kagari himself—all of that great machine of society, the whole goddamn structure, was apparently based around the whims of a bunch of jar-brains. The idea was revolting. Made his skin crawl, even.

All of this went through Kagari's head in a matter of seconds. The thoughts came and went in a stream of disgust that made him curl his lip and shake his head. Beside him, he was dimly aware of Choe Gu-sung holding up a cellphone and recording the whole sorry vista beneath Nona Tower. Good, he thought. Let Makishima tell everyone about this. The people deserve to know. The people—

"Elevated Crime Coefficient detected. Enforcement mode switched to Lethal Eliminator. You may fire upon the target."

Kagari blinked. He quickly shook his Dominator, toggled the safety on and off. Nothing happened. He gave it an experimental tap with the heel of his palm. Is it the anechoic chamber that Gu-sung mentioned? he wondered. Is it playing havoc with the Dominator's circuitry? But his gun wasn't even active! He stared down at its textured grip, confused.

It was only when Gu-sung spun with an extraordinary amount of grace and fired his nailgun at someone standing in the hallway behind them that Kagari's brain finally caught up with events. But what he saw made no sense.

Chief Kasei?

The Dominator fired with a deafening ka-chunk! and the air crackled with ionization. The damage output of a Lethal Eliminator round was high; survival was not in the cards for poor Gu-sung. Kagari watched as his head expanded like a balloon and ruptured seconds later, drenching both him and Chief Kasei in blood and bone matter.

Gross.

"Chief Kasei, what's going on?" Kagari tore his eyes away from Gu-sung's dripping carcass and met Kasei's gaze.

Or it would have been her gaze, if only she'd had one. What stared back at him was a ruined human face hideously grafted to a metal skull, with a blue lens staring at him like cold fire… It was instantly clear that he was looking at a cyberized lifeform like Toyohisa Senguji, the billionaire madman with a penchant for human-hunting. But Chief Kasei was human—or she was supposed to be. None of it made any sense!

"You're not human." Kagari loosened his grip on the Dominator. He doubted that it would even fire for him in light of this revelation. "What's going on here, Chief?"

"Oh, Enforcer Kagari," said Kasei sadly, and the cyberized voicebox must have been damaged by Gu-sung's nailgun, for it was an inhuman voice, more like a distorted loudspeaker than a human woman. "If only you had gone with Enforcer Kogami and Inspector Tsunemori in search of the criminal Makishima. It would have been better for you."

"Better for me?" Kagari echoed. "In what way, Chief?"

The Dominator that had been aimed at Gu-sung's corpse was suddenly aiming at Kagari now. He lifted his eyebrows and raised his arms above his head. "Hey, relax, Chief. I'm no threat. I'm on your side, remember? Just one of the MWPSB's trained hunting dogs…"

"Enforcement mode: Destroy-Decomposer."

The Dominator metamorphosed into its most frightening form. Its body shifted, rearranged pieces of itself, sprouted new ones. An eerie blue glow began to emanate from the barrel. It was still aimed at his chest.

"I've seen too much, haven't I?" Kagari said ruefully.

Chief Kasei smiled, which was a horrific sight in itself. Pieces of flesh sloughed off her cheek, leaving bare metal behind. "You could say that."

With what was probably his last moment alive, Kagari glanced over his shoulder, at the great collective intelligence of the Sibyl System. He saw a brain being dropped into a vat. He saw Choe Gu-sung on the ground, his blood a perfect crimson pool. And he saw his only chance of survival—which he seized at with both hands, of course.

Kagari beamed at the Chief with his brightest and most winning smile. "Say, you fellows wouldn't happen to need a volunteer, would you? My brain is in tip-top shape."

Part of him knew it was a fruitless gambit. He'd probably hate living life as a jar-brain anyway. But his only alternative was the business end of a Dominator, and well, he hadn't seen his life ending that way.

Then he saw Chief Kasei gazing at him thoughtfully.

Oh, just great!

"Enforcement mode: Non-lethal Paralyzer."

The last thing he saw was a flash of blue light.

When Akane Tsunemori stumbled out of the MWPSB's headquarters at three o'clock in the morning, her eyes red from holo-screen strain, her breath masked with peppermint gum, her hair a crazed mass of tangled strands, the sight that greeted her on the pavement was an unwelcome one. Shusei Kagari stood with a smile in his eyes and a bottle of what she presumed was illicit liquor clutched in his grimy fist.

"Miss Tsunemori," he said with a bow. "Might I interest you in a pre-Sibyl curiosity?"

"That's Inspector Tsunemori to you, Enforcer Kagari," she said icily. But she couldn't keep the curiosity from her voice as she looked at the proffered bottle. It was a deep golden color, unlike most of the recently popular carbonated drinks, and its label depicted grand scenes of pre-war Europe, with brown and black bears standing on their hind legs, saluting a nameless flag, along with charging knights and what looked like a castle in the far distance. She squinted. 40 Proof. Was that good? Bad? She hadn't a clue. The only alcohol she was familiar with came in little packets of hand sanitizer, for medical purposes only. Kagari's 'pre-Sibyl curiosity' didn't look the least bit medicinal.

"It's good stuff," Kagari insisted, and gave the bottle an inviting shake. "Inspector," he added.

How is his hair always so… rumpled? Akane shook her head. In truth, she was somewhat surprised to be propositioned by this particular Enforcer. She had assumed that Kagari swung the other way, what with his impeccable taste for shoes and fashionable clothes, and always being up on the latest trends, but clearly her ability to tell was failing her. Too much time spent cooped up in the CommuField, probably, interacting only with avatars and holograms. In any case, while Kagari was good-looking and had a great sense of humor, he wasn't her type at all. She tried to figure out how to let him down gently. They would have to work together on the Makishima case, after all, and she didn't want to needlessly burn any bridges with her colleagues.

"Will that cause brain damage?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Kagari scratched his head and peered at the label. "You know, I think that might be why they outlawed this stuff."

"Did you drink any?"

He smiled. "Well, there were two bottles before."

"Good morning, sleepyhead! You have two events on the agenda for today!" Candy materialized above the bed in a shimmer of projected holographic light and looked down at Akane with a grin. The jellyfish was her usual irrepressibly hyperactive self. "First, you have a conference call with the Tax Bureau to verify your new employment status as a Senior Inspector. Second, you received a call from Enforcer Nobuchika Ginoza of the MWPSB asking you to meet him at Division One headquarters at nine o'clock."

Akane sighed. She fixed one drooping eye on the ceiling projection, where a soft red glow displayed the current time and outside temperature. Six o'clock. Can I get another hour of sleep? She pulled the covers up to her chin. The last fragments of her dreams were fading away, but she could still see Kagari's mischievous smile in her mind's eye. Oh, Kagari, she thought sadly. Why did you have to get yourself killed?

Sleep proved impossible to recapture. She got out of bed and let Candy start her morning sequence. Breakfast was 300 kcals: a single slice of jam toast, imitation orange juice, an oat bar, and a fast-acting combination antidepressant/sedative sprayed onto the back of her tongue. Candy showed her the latest styles from the Fashion Walk of the CommuField and she selected drab, gray, businesslike attire. With Kogami gone off the grid somewhere, a fugitive from justice, she didn't see any point in going out of her way to impress anyone. Karanomori was the only person who still showed an outsize interest in Akane's appearance, and the data analyst's motive was quite obvious to her.

That wasn't strictly true, she thought as she put on her shoes and paused in the foyer of her apartment—Kagari had complimented her style on a few occasions. But Kagari was dead, of course.

Her morning commute to the MWPSB's Tokyo headquarters was always an efficient one, even by Japanese standards: a fuss-free boarding of the sleek bullet train, where the seats were foam bubbles that cushioned your body from unwanted vibrations and where broad floor-to-ceiling windows sometimes showed holo-advertisements and more often acted as simple windows. She took her usual spot in the second car, by the ticket-reading machine at the front of the cabin. They departed at 8:25am, precisely on schedule, with a barely perceptible sensation of acceleration; Akane felt herself being gently pressed against the back of her seat. Then, cruising speed attained, she opened her electronic reader's last bookmark and began to read.

When her train arrived at the station she disembarked and took the short walk down Government Avenue to the MWPSB headquarters, a starkly tall building that always reminded her of a butcher's knife pointing toward the sky, and made her way through its glass corridors to the chilly air-conditioned office of Division One. It was a place she thought of as a second home, though its appeal had lessened now that its friendliest presences, Kogami and Kagari, had departed. Instead of a cheerful quip from Kagari, she was greeted by the haughty stare of Ginoza, who eyed her as she hung her coat over the back of her chair and went to the break room to fix a cup of coffee.

When she returned with a huge mug of oily sludge, she went to her desk and sat down. Blowing on her coffee to cool it, she flipped on her monitor and navigated to Division One's personnel roster. After typing in her personal code, she saw faces appear on the screen in front of her—Kagari, in his first booking photo, smiling insouciantly at the camera, and Kogami, staring grim-faced somewhere above the camera, as if his mind had been on other things. She dragged the two portraits and put them side-by-side, then leaned back in her chair, sipping coffee.

Her eyes drank in every detail of those two faces. They lingered on Kagari more, because he was truly lost, with no hope of a sudden joyful reappearance, whereas Kogami… well, he could be standing right outside at that very moment, couldn't he? She didn't know exactly why she committed Kagari's face to memory anew each morning. It might have been because she saw signs that he was being forgotten by the others. For the first few months after his death, they had all shared reminiscences about his exploits, his practical jokes and his ranking on several popular CommuField games, all with the warmth of nostalgic camaraderie. But as time passed, as Kagari's desk was cleaned out and his possessions sent to his next of kin, he was mentioned less and less often. She was afraid he was being killed a second time.

She enlarged the photo with a few clicks of her mouse and leaned closer.

After some time of intent study, Akane did what she always did—took hold of the sadness that had settled around her shoulders like a heavy, wet wool overcoat, and threw it away. She closed both files. Deleting him from the active duty roster had been on her agenda for weeks, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Let the next Inspector of Division One delete him, she thought. Let someone who didn't know him do it.

She put down her coffee mug and threw an eye over the office. Time to start acting like the boss.

Kunizuka was deep in analysis, her head bent over her monitor, a glow outlining her features. Ginoza was immersed in the composition of some interdepartmental memo that would doubtless be crafted with the care of an office Michelangelo. Karanomori was nowhere in sight, but Akane knew she would certainly be in the Data Hive, which was what Kagari had called her lair, which was what Akane called her server room. Kagari had also nicknamed her the Data Queen, which Karanomori had enjoyed very much. New Guy—she still couldn't remember his name, even though they had worked together for nearly two weeks now—was sitting cheerfully in Kagari's old chair, playing a game on his cellphone, earbuds in his ears, fingers tapping away at the keys. He was fresh out of the academy, having earned top marks and been assigned to the PSB by order of Sibyl itself. A rising young talent, then. Akane saw herself in his eager bright eyes, before the events of the past year had torn the film from her gaze and left her bitter and suspicious, with a Crime Coefficient that obstinately refused to budge. In a way, she wished it would rise—it might make her grief more real, somehow.

Is this how it begins? she wondered. Did Ginoza feel the same way, after Kogami fell? Is it an eternal cycle?

Akane stared at New Guy in silence. The coffee mug was poised at her lips, but she didn't drink.

As if he had picked up on a subtle vibration in the air, New Guy looked up, met her gaze, and blanched. He quickly shut off his phone and turned back to his computer, shooting her a worried glance from the corner of his eye. Even in that he somehow managed to remind her of Kagari.

Akane took a deep gulp of coffee. She turned away.

It's going to be a long day.

Shogo Makishima stood in a penthouse loft and watched the sun rise over Tokyo, a slow brightening that seemed akin to all the painted surfaces of the city suddenly shaking off years of grime and dirt and age and becoming new again. Tokyo in sunlight was a gleaming city and seemed an unrelentingly optimistic place. The colors were brighter and the air was clearer. He felt hope rising in his chest even as he looked at its skyline, which surprised him. Remarkable, he thought. We humans can change our whole mood and outlook on life simply by witnessing an ordinary sunrise. What an adaptable animal we are. This is worth cherishing. He sipped green tea contentedly.

About five feet behind him and to his left, and occupying the whole of the generous kitchen island with a mound of blinking and humming computer gadgetry, Choe Gu-sung was in a deep state of communion with his devices. They beeped for him, displayed flashing patterns at his whim, and even called out his name. It's almost like love, isn't it? Makishima tilted his head. Now I wonder… Could the Sibyl System ever fall in love?

The idea struck him with such force that he drew Choe's attention. The hacker looked up from his screens and did a double-take. "What's wrong?"

"Ah," Makishima said.

The hacker sat up in his chair and craned his neck to peer over Makishima's shoulder. When he failed to see anything of note in the Tokyo skyline, he looked at his friend and asked again, "What's wrong?"

Makishima splayed his palms wide. "Nothing," he said. "I was just thinking about the nature of the Sibyl System. Its fundamental impulses, I suppose you might say. And I wondered about its capacity for love."

Choe Gu-sung blinked. "Love?"

"Yes. Can the very sophisticated brain of mankind's greatest supercomputer feel that most human of emotions?"

"It isn't."

"Pardon?"

"It isn't a supercomputer," Choe clarified. "That is, it isn't only a supercomputer. Sibyl's architecture is a parallel distributed processing system, or a PDP. That means that each node is, in and of itself, not exactly hot shit. It only mega evolves when the nodes are connected together. That's when the magic happens."

"Interesting. Would that be at all analogous to a human brain and how its neurons connect to each other, thereby generating consciousness?"

"Where do you think the Sibyl guys got the idea?"

Makishima paused. "Ah," he said again. He took a sip of green tea and glanced at Choe's screen. As usual, he could make neither head nor tails of the strings of characters that filled every column of the glowing rectangles. "Is the Sibyl System conscious?"

"How the Sibyl System works, the Cymatic Grid theory of operation, all of that is one big mystery. About the only thing the public knows is how the Hue checks work."

"You are a helpful man," Makishima observed.

"I am an overworked man," the hacker countered, and resumed his intent stare into his screens. They threw an eerie light over his features, making him appear almost demonic. A slight smile creased Makishima's sharp features at the thought that his pure-hearted friend could be mistaken for the evil half of their partnership. What would that make Makishima himself—an angel?

"You are a well-paid man," he said. "You are also the only true believer I have in my rather motley ranks, I'm sorry to say."

"Well, it's good to be appreciated."

"Never fear, Choe. You are." Makishima peered into his cup and swirled the last dregs of tea around. He tried to read his fortune in them—he'd read somewhere that you could do that—but then gave up the idea for being too silly. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure what he would do if they managed to pull off their plan. Say the riots worked as a distraction, and the rank-and-file of the MWPSB rushed into Tokyo to suppress the unrest, leaving Nona Tower undefended. Further assume that Choe's mysterious programs could penetrate Sibyl's stronghold and gain them entry to the inner sanctum of government. If they saw the beast in its lair and it was beautiful, would Makishima be overcome with compassion and spare its life? It happened, from time to time—a burst of kindness blossoming in his heart, displacing his plans like the inexorable ocean tide. Would his own heart betray him?

"You're having one of your introspective freak-outs," Choe said, not looking up from his work. "You know, for a genius with a silver tongue and the entire Japanese underworld begging to do your bidding, you sure are plagued by self-doubt."

Makishima chuckled. "I am, aren't I? It's a character flaw, I suppose. Yours might be tact."

"I spend all of my time with code, not human beings. That's my excuse." Choe sat upright and tapped a flurry of commands into his keyboard. The glowing cube that was the most outstanding of his computers darkened suddenly. Then it gave a long beep, as though acknowledging something, and went silent. Its lights faded, leaving it an inert hunk of aluminum. "Well, that's the last of it. SibylSlayer 2.0 is compiled and ready to run. It just needs to be connected to a dataport in Nona Tower, preferably inside the firewall. Otherwise we'll have to waste time breaking through it."

"Then what will happen?"

Choe leaned back and popped open a can of orange soda. He sipped it and shrugged. "Then we'll know if I'm as good as I think I am."

Makishima's eyebrows shot up. "Are you telling me there's a chance this thing won't work?"

"A very small chance. Don't worry."

"You fill me with the warmth of confidence, Choe."

The hacker frowned. "Was that a double-entendre?"

"No."

"Oh."

Makishima grinned. "Well, if we're quite done here, shall we depart for Nona Tower? We have an unscheduled appointment with dear Sibyl, and we wouldn't want to be late."

"Fine by me. Let me just pack everything up." The hacker began to disconnect cables and coil them up, put his computers in various zippered compartments of an ordinary backpack, place optical discs in cloth sleeves. He handled his equipment with such tenderness and care, Makishima noticed with fascination, that they might almost have been living things. Choe fastened one last buckle around his waist and looked at Makishima expectantly. "Ready."

Well, it's time for our date with destiny. Makishima gulped down the last of his green tea and shut off all the lights in the kitchen. Then, with a last wistful look at his penthouse, he followed Choe into the hallway and locked the door behind them.

"One question, if I may," Choe said as they headed to the elevators.

"Certainly."

"What will you do if that Enforcer is there? Shinya Kogami." Choe glanced at him. "I know you have an interest in him."

Now that's amusing. "Will I spare his life, do you mean?" Makishima considered the question. He was surprised to discover that he didn't know the answer yet, and said as much. "I might. I might not. We'll see what my mood is like when the moment strikes. It would be a shame to kill him. He is the best of the MWPSB. They say he's an Enforcer, but to call a man such as Shinya Kogami a mere hunting dog is to demean his true nature. He is a detective."

"What if he figures out our plan? Aren't you worried?"

Makishima laughed. Worried? He doesn't understand. I've been looking forward to this day since I first laid eyes on Shinya Kogami. To match wits with him is almost more important than defeating the Sibyl System.

"No," he said, and the neon light fell across them like slashing marks as they exited the building. "I'm not worried, Choe."

Shogo Makishima opened his eyes and saw, laid out before his eyes like a row of bright packages, the bittersweet taste of chocolate. He blinked, and when he turned his head the flavor of chocolate had been replaced by the sight of the scent of basil, which became the sound of the sensation of ants crawling single-file up his forearm. He tried to sit up and realized that he had no body. He was floating in a void, incorporeal, adrift.

Synesthesia.

"Well," he said to no one in particular. "This is unusual."

Experimentally, he flexed his calves. He knew that he had calves, just as he knew that he was human and his name was Shogo Makishima. But the actual calves, the muscle fibers and the bone of his leg and all the rest of it, that seemed to be missing. To his own surprise, this didn't seem to disturb him greatly. He felt calm and surpassingly relaxed, which made him suspect that he had been drugged.

Had the MWPSB caught him? He tried to recall the last thing he remembered, tried to picture the scene in his mind's eye… He saw fields of grain the color of lager waving under the red sky, and the sweet smell of damp soil, and the unmistakable odor of fertilizer. He saw a factory. And he saw a face—whose? He squinted. Dark hair. Tall. It was a man holding a gun.

The gun was pointed at him.

"Makishima."

I'm not alone, at least. "Yes?"

The voice filled his head without having been spoken. It was less like a voice, really, than a thought which happened to trespass into his mind by an unlocked window. It was the voice—or thought—of a man. Was it the man with the gun?

"Our apologies, Makishima. We seem to be having a bit of trouble on our end. You see, your mind is quite strikingly unusual, even by our standards."

Makishima mulled over this statement for quite some time. It contained a wealth of information about his captors, if only he could piece it together. He had the sensation of dullness and felt certain that he was normally quite quick-witted. Now his thoughts were plodding slow things, content to inch along, dragging their heels. Again he considered the possibility that he had been drugged, with greater certainty this time.

"Makishima, are you there?"

"Yes. I accept your apology. May I ask where I am?"

This could be the headquarters of the MWPSB. A holding cell, perhaps. I may be strapped to a bed in a hospital room, with a hallucinogen distorting my sense of reality. But to what end? Once they had captured him, why bother playing tricks with his mind? They could simply torture him—he would tell them everything. He was under no illusion that he could resist interrogation for long.

Again he tried to jog his memory. That man in the field of grain—he was important, Makishima was certain of that. He was the focal point of everything that mattered—probably. Maybe. Had he meant to do something there? That factory… did he work there?

"I'm afraid we would have to bring in a philosophy professor to answer that question, Shogo, and at present we don't have one to hand. I apologize for the inconvenience."

The scent of basil became stronger. It filled his field of vision, until the world consisted of nothing more than basil upon basil—and more basil. He felt a pinprick on the back of his neck, then a tingling sensation running down his spine, as if his nerves had fallen asleep and were slowly awakening.

"That is quite all right," he said. "Have you drugged me?"

The voice-thought in his head seemed to laugh. Makishima wasn't sure how he knew it was laughing, just that it was. "No. The odd sensations you may be feeling are entirely the fault of our resident hotelier, Mr Chambers. He is responsible for the first integration of the donor's central nervous system—the wiring up of the breadboard, so to speak—and unfortunately yours is giving him a spot of trouble."

For some reason that Makishima couldn't understand, his fists began to clench. He knew something had gone wrong, badly wrong, and that he ought to try to escape. But he had no inkling of how to begin, so he waited, helpless.

"Okay, Makishima. The scalpel has been put away, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear. The transplant was a complete success, though Mr Chambers is still having difficulty on the software side of things. He is going to do a complete system reboot momentarily. Don't worry—it's just like falling asleep."

"What do you mean?" Makishima said. "I don't understa—"

Blackness.

"May I take your order, sir?"

Makishima blinked. A moment ago there had been nothing—no awareness, no consciousness. Now there was sight and sound and sensation. He looked down at his body.

He cut a dashing figure in a pure white linen suit, white shoes, white belt. He was a vision in white. He opened his mouth—because his teeth had been clenched around a pipe. He took the pipe out of his mouth and gazed at it. He sniffed at the bowl. Tobacco. In his left hand was a glass of whiskey. He sniffed that, too.

It smelled like whiskey.

The waiter was looking at him, eyebrows raised. Makishima smiled back, his expression seeming to say, Give me a moment, would you please? There was a table before him—in fact, he seemed to be inside a high-end restaurant, though the sole patron at present. There was a menu on the table. Grilled ahi. Seared scallops. Fried calamari. It was an ordinary restaurant menu.

Makishima lifted his eyes to the waiter's. He didn't say anything.

The waiter shrugged.

"Well." Makishima looked again at the menu. He put down the glass of whiskey and emptied the pipe into an ashtray shaped like a seashell. He cleared his throat. "I suppose I'll have a steak. Medium rare. And a glass of wine—something you think is good."

"Very good, sir."

The waiter took the menu, bowed to Makishima, and walked smartly away. Makishima watched him go, eyes narrowed.

So that's the kitchen, he thought. That means the door behind me must be the exit.

The knowledge that he knew of a way out made him a degree more comfortable in his surroundings, even if he still had no idea how he'd arrived at this restaurant. Amnesia was a curious phenomenon until it struck you personally—then it became horrifying. It occurred to him that this might be a plot by his enemies. Come to think of it, did he have enemies?

Yes. For some reason he couldn't pin down, he was quite certain he had enemies. Plenty of them.

"Shogo Makishima!"

He looked up. A man was striding across the restaurant toward his table. Stout to excess, he was nevertheless jolly and open-faced, and wearing a suit of bright canary yellow. A decorative chain hung around his neck with a golden key attached to its end. The key rested against his tie, which matched his suit.

Makishima stood and offered his hand as the man neared his table. The stranger clasped it between two meaty palms.

"Hello, Mr…?"

"Kurou Yamato." The fat man beamed at him. "May I sit?"

"By all means."

They sat.

"You'll forgive the confusion surrounding your arrival," said Kurou Yamato with a smile. "We've had a thousand and one tasks to complete, and to do them in the right order has been a Herculean effort of data-processing, even for us. We aren't infallible, you know."

"Well, who is?" said Makishima pleasantly. "However, I'm afraid you have me at a loss."

"Oh!" Yamato looked at the empty tablecloth and blinked. "Oh. You haven't eaten yet! I am sorry, Mr Makishima! You must be completely baffled. This is a blunder. I'm quite embarrassed."

"I'm not very hungry."

"Well, you may not feel hungry, but it is still necessary that you eat." Yamato looked at Makishima earnestly from across the table. His eyes were large and blue and seemed very trustworthy. "You see, Mr Chambers was having a devil of a time getting your schema integrated into our system. In fact he couldn't finish the job entirely without the risk of botching it and possibly doing you irreparable harm. So he elected to bypass the three problem regions of your mind and associate them with food triggers."

"Food triggers," Makishima repeated.

Yamato nodded. "It was standard practice in the early days of cyberization, when wiring up the nervous system was more art than science. These days it usually goes off without a hitch, but again, you are a special case. Your mind simply wouldn't accept integration."

Makishima didn't say anything.

"One of the problem regions was your long-term memory. That's why you're having trouble recalling how you got here. Once our food arrives—" Yamato glanced around irritably, as if seeking out the waiter "—you should regain all of your memories. Then our conversation will make a good deal more sense."

"Cyberization," said Makishima. The word seemed to have a distinct meaning, an important one, that he ought to know, but he was damned if he could recall what it was. "What is that?"

"It is the gate through which you joined our happy company," said Yamato. "As a disciple of Sibyl, you are now in essence a god, immortal and without limits or constraints."

At the word Sibyl, Makishima looked sharply at Yamato. His hands were trembling in his lap. Yamato watched him with fascination.

"Quite remarkable," he said, nodding to Makishima's trembling limbs. "Even with your long-term memory being actively suppressed, some part of you knows that word and responds viscerally to it. Amazing, quite amazing. I've never seen anything like it."

"You say that if I eat something, I'll remember who I am?" Makishima spoke with a good deal of hoarseness. Some fit had come over him; he was still shaking. The word Sibyl had set his heart to racing.

Yamato inclined his head.

"Then let's get it over with." Makishima took a deep steadying breath. "Waiter!"

Within seconds the waiter was, once more, at their side. It was almost as if he hadn't traversed the intervening distance from kitchen to table at all, but had simply materialized out of thin air—but of course that was impossible. He was holding two covered trays. One tray he placed before Makishima, the other before Yamato. The latter rubbed his palms together eagerly and removed the lid with a flourish. On the platter, garnished with red and green peppers, sat a resting whole roasted chicken. At the sight of its glistening golden skin, seasoned lightly with spices and herbs, Makishima's mouth started watering. Yamato cackled and began to carve large chunks onto his plate.

"Your meal, sir."

Makishima looked up. The waiter nodded toward his tray, so Makishima removed the lid. On his tray sat three objects, none of which were food. The first was a tarnished coin with his own face on both sides. The second he recognized as an ordinary apartment key. The third, though, seemed to taunt him with a sense of recognition that hovered just out of reach. It was an electronic key fob for automated laundromats, for customers to pick up their orders after hours.

The waiter bowed to him. "Bon appetit, sir."

Makishima looked at his tray. "Yes. Thank you. That will be all."

The waiter vanished.

"I know it doesn't look like food," said Yamato around a mouthful of chicken, "but really it is the symbolism that matters. Of course it isn't food at all, is it? I don't know what each one of those is supposed to correspond to—Mr Chambers would, but I expect he's busy—but they will each restore a different part of your mind."

"I have to eat these."

"Yes. You see, if Mr Chambers tried to force your mind to integrate, it might rebel. That would be a disaster—you wouldn't survive. But if you voluntarily partake of the meaning behind the meal, it becomes a willing act, and thus your mind will accept Sibyl."

"That word again," said Makishima sharply. "I don't like it."

Yamato spread his hands, as if to say, Do any of us?

I've had enough of this. Makishima stared at his plate, then picked up the coin and swallowed it with a mouthful of water. It went down like a pill. He did the same for the key and the fob, then sat back expectantly.

"Okay, I've eaten them," he said. "Now when is it supposed to…"

He trailed off, because he suddenly realized that he was sitting in an upscale restaurant with Kurou Yamato, the famous politician, in fact the political mastermind behind the establishment of the Sibyl System. Makishima stared.

Yamato gave him a knowing smile. "Is it coming back yet?"

Makishima turned his head and let his eyes dissect his surroundings. His gaze sharpened and his body stiffened. Each glance seemed to bring a new, almost unconscious insight to his present catalogue. He seemed to move differently than before. Something about the way he held his body spoke of danger, promised danger.

"You are Kurou Yamato," said Makishima thoughtfully. "You vanished in 2083, the year before the passage of the Justice Act, establishing what we now know as the Ministries of Welfare, Governance, and Research, along with the Public Safety Bureau and the Cymatic Grid. It was believed that you were murdered by a fanatic opposed to the System you introduced, but that was a fiction, of course."

Yamato studied him.

Makishima continued. "You faked your death, probably because of a terminal illness—there were rumors of cancer, and that was during the last years when such a diagnosis could very well be fatal—and used your clout to have yourself integrated into the nascent Karma Network, a name later changed for public-relations purposes to the more benign Sibyl System. This allowed you to cheat death and become a god of sorts."

"Of sorts?" Yamato shook his head. "I am a god, Shogo, and now you are too. We disciples of Sibyl are the first true deities in human history. Mankind imagined the divine, created gods in his image, but it took until the twenty-first century for that act of creation to bear fruit. We are immortal, we provide judgment for our followers' sins, and we are worshipped. That's a god any way you slice it."

Makishima closed his eyes and inhaled softly. He remembered now. The field of grain, the dark-haired man. Shinya Kogami. The hyper oat farm. The MWPSB had tracked him there, Kogami and the girl had hunted him down relentlessly, until at last Kogami had fired the bullet into his back that would end their association forever.

What were the last words they shared?

"Tell me, what do you think, Kogami? Once this is done, will you find a replacement for me?"

"I don't know. I sure as hell hope not."

Makishima put down his fork. He had been clutching it so tightly that it had formed a painful red indentation against the flesh of his palm. His head rolled backward. His mouth slackened. He let his eyes study the intricate designs high above on the ceiling of the restaurant; or, he thought, this fake digital representation of a possibly real restaurant somewhere in the world. It could have been a restaurant in his own hometown or in New York City, for all he knew. His eyes traced over the patterns, searching for meaning. A sound began to form deep in his chest, slowly increasing in volume and strength, becoming more real with each utterance. It began as a wheeze and deepened as it came up his gullet by way of his larynx.

Makishima closed his eyes. The laugh started as a chuckle and grew in volume until he was convulsing with merriment, limbs shaking, nearly knocking over Yamato's roasted chicken and sending china skittering away. He laughed helplessly, in the grip of some nervous attack, until his abdomen ached and his throat hurt.

His laughter was accompanied by a single thought, repeated in various phrasings, a thought that reverberated through his head like clashing cymbals: He beat me. He beat me! I can't believe it. He beat me. Shinya Kogami beat me! Makishima felt an incredulous sensation of disbelief. During all his planning and envisioning of the post-Sibyl future, during those long nights with Choe spent plotting and scheming, it had never occurred to him that Kogami and the MWPSB might defeat them. Makishima shook his head. Pride had done him in. He'd underestimated Kogami.

When he finally opened his eyes, he saw Yamato staring at him in shock and horror. The man was half-standing, chicken running down the napkin tucked into his shirt, his eyes wide. Makishima realized what he must be thinking, and the thought caused him to laugh even harder.

"Relax, Minister Yamato," he said, and wiped tears from his eyes. "The cyberization process worked perfectly well. I am Shogo Makishima, whole in body and mind. Your plan succeeded."

Yamato hesitated, then sank down into his chair. He clutched the table as if for support and stared wide-eyed at Makishima. "I thought your mind had rejected communion with Sibyl," he said breathlessly. "A rejection like that is a horrifying sight, as the mind commits suicide by refusing to engage with its new digital environment, and you had such a look on your face…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "Oh, thank God."

Makishima lifted his eyebrows in puzzlement. "I thought you and I were the gods here, Minister."

Yamato sighed. "Old habits die hard, Shogo. We are gods now." He shook his head. "I can give the people a fate. That's true godhood."

"It is power, I suppose," said Makishima thoughtfully. "It must be intoxicating for you."

"It is—and it will be for you, too." Yamato looked as earnest as a successful politician could. "We are the last of the old and the first of the new, Shogo. We are eternal. You'll see."

"Oh, I'm sure I will," Makishima replied with a genial shrug. He sat up and surveyed his empty dinner tray, then eyed Yamato's half-finished chicken. "Well, Minister, I'm willing to talk it over, certainly, so long as you agree to split that chicken with me. Is it a deal?"

Yamato laughed.

Well, Kogami, you won. Makishima accepted a chicken leg and conversed absentmindedly with Yamato as they ate, with most of his thoughts simmering idly in the background. I had hoped to avoid becoming a member of this silicon freak show, but now that I'm a part of dear Sibyl I may as well accept my fate. Opportunities can be found in the most unexpected of places.

He ordered wine, the best that Sibyl could offer, and took a sip, expecting disaster. But it was wine. Relief flooded through him—if he was to live a counterfeit reality, it was one that had its pleasures, at least.

Now that he had agreed to come aboard the pantheon and be a team player, Yamato was treating him as if they were long-lost cousins. Makishima, in turn, was his most charming self. He would take part in this charade for as long as it was necessary to finish what he'd started. He was nothing if not single-minded in the pursuit of his goals.

As everyone knows, it's easiest to tear down a house from the inside.