AN: So, you might notice that Madam Stargazer is missing from this story. That's because I never understood the point of her, really at all, except to be randomly cryptic. The only explanation that halfway makes sense is that she somehow enables the connection between dolls, but EPR was able to set up their own network without her. So that doesn't work. I have no idea what to do with her, except just leave her out. If you are a Hoshimi fan, I apologize.

"There are no natural electric-medium dolls," Kanami was saying. "Ours are able to use the city's power grid for their specters only because of the way we network them."

"I didn't know that," Hei said.

So, he hadn't needed to be so paranoid about that specter that had appeared in Kanami's light fixture during their poker game; it couldn't have been anything but one of Astronomics'. That did bring up another issue he'd been looking for a way to solve, however.

"Chief Ishizaki could write a book about all the things we rubes don't know about dolls," Kouno said airily.

Kanami just laughed. "I already have - problem is, it's classified," she said with a wink.

"They can't use their natural mediums when they're networked like that though, can they?" Hei asked.

Kanami shook her head. "No; they can't access anything except the network in their stasis tubes. You'll see."

The three of them had just passed through Astronomics' security checkpoint and were headed into the observatory itself. This was Hei's first visit; he looked around him with cautious interest.

He'd been slightly worried that it would remind him of Pandora here, and the unpleasant memories associated with that mission. Pandora had been a maze of stark white hallways, hushed voices, and an ever present feeling of paranoia and the sense that the world was just slightly…off.

Instead, Astronomics felt a lot like Section Four's headquarters, with people stopping to chat in the halls, and silly cartoons and drawings taped up on office doors. The only major difference was that instead of wanted posters and police bulletins, the corridors were lined with scientific posters. Hei couldn't make heads or tales of the data on exhibit, but it looked impressive.

The people that he saw were far more relaxed than anyone he'd seen at Pandora, too. Maybe that was because they were so far from the Gate and all its attendant otherworldliness; maybe it was because their boss dressed the same for work as she did for a poker night at home, just with the addition of heels and a lab coat. Once again, Hei found himself perplexed by Misaki's friendship with such a polar opposite.

"We have two main divisions," Kanami said as she pushed open a set of double doors into a huge, domed space. "Optics and Surveillance."

Despite the fact that it was still early afternoon, there were no lights on in the room. Instead, the space was lit by the eerie blue glow from dozens of computer monitors as well as a series of tube-like tanks on his right. A map of the stars was projected onto the underside of the dome, replicating the current positions of the stars over the city. As Hei watched, one streaked out of sight.

"HS-853," someone reported, but Hei wasn't listening. He was staring straight ahead.

"That's Optics," Kanami said, following Hei's captive gaze.

He'd never seen a telescope so large in person. Situated on a raised deck, it took up most of the rear quarter of the room. There was no eyepiece that he could see; instead, a complicated array of instruments was clustered around the massive, cube-like base.

Kanami led them over, past banks of computers, monitors, and other electronics that Hei couldn't put a name to. Almost every workstation was occupied by a white-coated technician. Some looked up as they walked by and waved to Kanami. Hei received several curious looks; he tried to ignore the itch at the back of his neck.

"It's a Ritchey-Chretien design," Kanami said when they'd reached the telescope. Hei stared up in awe. "Light reflects off a four-point-three-meter primary mirror - concave hyperbolic - then off a one-point-four-meter-secondary convex mirror before arriving at the focal plane. Synchrotron radiation is a broad spectrum form of electromagnetic radiation, as I'm sure you know."

"It is?" Hei said blankly.

"Of course it is - you don't even know the basics?" Kanami asked, aghast. "I would've thought that someone like you-" she broke off abruptly, with a glance at Kouno.

The detective rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Ishizaki, you really expect everyone to be as into this stuff as you Astronomics' geeks?"

"Geeks, is it? Did you not major in mathematics in college, then?"

Kouno coughed and looked away.

"Anyway," Kanami continued, "because it's broad spectrum, we can use a variety of instruments to detect it. The Ritchey-Chretien cube" she reached up and patted a gigantic metal block that was taller than she was "allows us to switch between up to five different instruments practically simultaneously. The amount of spectroscopy data we can collect is amazing."

"You need all that just to detect contractors?" Hei asked.

"Well, no. When the optical scope picks up a high intensity photon beam, that's enough to tell us that a star is active, and then pinpoint its coordinates and identify its Messier code. The longer the contractor stays active, the more data we can collect: wavelength, fluctuation patterns, pulse time structure, that sort of thing. That falls more on the research side of what we do. It helps us characterize that particular star as well as learn more about the new stars in general."

"I used to watch the stars through my own telescope," Hei said, a bit wistfully. He'd been missing it again, now that he was more or less settled in the city. "I could see the pulses when a star was active, but they all looked the same."

"You had your own telescope?" Kanami sounded both surprised and impressed. "What kind? Amateur scopes are getting harder and harder to find these days."

"A Satake; one of their cheaper models. It, uh, broke last year - I cracked a lens."

"Li, not you too, man?" Kouno grumbled. "We're just supposed to be getting you your orientation tour, not geeking out on astronomy."

Hei rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, sorry. I don't know any of this technical stuff anyway."

Bai would have been interested in the technical stuff, he thought. In those last few years before she disappeared, she'd made a point of learning as much about the new stars as she could. In retrospect, part of that had probably been in order to understand what the Syndicate was planning; but regardless, she'd disliked not knowing everything about world around her. Maybe that was what had led her to uncover the Syndicate in the first place. He wished he'd had the chance to ask her.

"Well, we can always chat about it during the next poker game," Kanami said, cheerfully ignoring Kouno's groan. "But basically, with our instruments we can get resolution down to the picosecond; at that level it's possible to detect individual patterns of radiation pulses that would look like a solid or slow-blinking light through your Satake."

She gazed up at the dome and the slowly shifting pattern of stars. "You know, I never did any stargazing back when the real stars were still there. I've seen the photographs, of course, but I've always wondered what I missed."

"I can't tell any difference," Kouno said. "Can we move on to the cool stuff now?"

Kanami arched an eyebrow. "It's all cool stuff. But sure; particle physics can wait until another time."

She led them back across the floor to the main bank of monitors and stopped next to a young woman in glasses. "Welcome to Surveillance. Li, this Negishi, one of our lead specter analysts. Negishi, this is Officer Li, Section Four's newest recruit."

Negishi's eyes widened behind her glasses. "Section Four? Ootsuka told me that someone had been hired for the new position. Um, are you really…?"

"Uh, no," Hei said, straightening awkwardly from his polite bow. "I'm, um, not a contractor."

"Oh." If anything, Negishi looked disappointed. "I've never met a contractor before."

"Trust me, you don't want to," Kouno said, leaning an elbow on the back of her chair. "Those guys can be all charming charisma when they need to be, but bottom line, they don't care about anyone but themselves. So, got anything interesting for us today?"

Kanami cast Hei a pitying glance, but he pretended not to see. Instead, he leaned in towards the large monitor along with Kouno.

"Wow," he said, blinking at the detailed map and the flashing icons that were traveling across the city like some kind of complicated video game. "Are all those trackers specters?"

"Yes," Negishi told him. "We have twenty-four mediums total; twenty are online at any given time. Each medium can send out one specter, traveling at a rate of twelve and a half meters per second."

"What kind of coverage does that give you? What?" he asked at Negishi's furrowed brow.

"Sorry," the analyst said. "It's just that usually the first question I get from someone who's never seen the network before is What are specters or How can they move?"

"Um, Chief Ishizaki already explained that," Hei lied quickly. Beside him, Kanami folded her arms and raised one eyebrow, but she didn't contradict him.

Instead she said, "We can canvas the whole city in less than eight minutes. That's if you want it quick and dirty; a specific search pattern will take longer. Even longer if we need to include building interiors."

Hei gave a low whistle under his breath. He knew the basic specs of Astronomics' network already, of course - that had been part of his first debrief upon assignment to Tokyo. But actually seeing it in person, seeing the sophistication of the instruments - he was amazed now that he'd never triggered an alert. Less than eight minutes to cover the entire city?

Although, if he thought about it, eight minutes was a pretty big window in the world of covert ops. He'd never held his power for much longer than thirty seconds, and never more than a few times in succession. Less than two minutes, max. In an ideal scenario, that still left six minutes with no specter passing by.

"How do the specters ID a contractor?" Hei asked.

"They can sense the emission of synchrotron radiation within a radius of four hundred meters," Negishi said. "That triggers an alert in the system. We see it here on the map, and the four closest specters respond as well. They all converge on the site where the contractor is using his or her power. If any of them catch a glimpse, they lock on; that way if he runs, they can follow."

Hei did some quick mental math. Traveling at rate of twelve point five meters per second… "That's just over thirty seconds for response time," he said in surprise. From the furthest point of detection.

Kanami nodded. "But if none of the specters spots the contractor before he stops using his power, or he manages to get to a location they can't follow, then we've lost him. And honestly, the chances of a specter being within four hundred meters of a contractor using his power isn't that high. What we really need are more mediums," she finished wistfully.

"Ishizaki," Kouno whispered loudly, "you're supposed to encourage new recruits, not freak him out that every contractor is going to get away undetected."

"I'm just telling him the facts; anyway, I don't think he has any false ideas about what we can and can't do." She cast Hei a shrewd look.

"What about visual recognition?" he asked, his eye on one particular tracker on Negishi's monitor.

"It's rare that the specters get a good look at a person of interest," the analyst told him. "And it's too easy for someone to change their gross appearance - all they'd have to do is put on a hat or take off a jacket, and they'd look too different. Facial recognition is more reliable, but our algorithms still aren't as robust as synchrotron radiation detection. And again, the specter would have to get a clear look at the face. Clear enough to match the required point threshold."

"Yeah, and it's not like we have mugshots of every contractor that shows up in town," Kouno said. "CCTV photos, sometimes. Usually we know their Messier code, or their face, or their codename - but not all three together. It's like last year, when BK-201 first arrived in the city. We've told you about him, right?"

Hei kept his face studiously blank. "Um, a little, yeah."

"Well, the first night he was in town, the specters picked up another contractor was active. We could guess which Messier code was his because of the timing; luckily, we had a codename and affiliation on file for that star. A French agent. We had his photo too, but the specters didn't catch him before he stopped using his power. So we lost track of him just long enough for him to be killed."

"Um…killed?"

"Yeah; we never did figure out why. It was just obvious that the killer was a contractor whose power we hadn't seen before. Negishi here did the analysis, and the best fit based on time of activity was BK-201. Who we knew absolutely zilch about. No codename, no affiliation, not even a rough description. We weren't even sure it was him. I mean, I was sure. But the Chief wouldn't let us make the official designation until almost a whole month later, when we got confirmation from another operative."

Hei could feel Kanami's gaze on him. He knew that she trusted Misaki's opinion of him, but he had no idea how she felt, personally. He hoped that helping that doll escape the mafia would be enough to balance out the whole…murdering…thing.

"Anyway," Kouno continued with a wave of his hand, "BK-201 operated here in the city for about a whole year; but because we never got a photo or a specter sighting, we never came close to catching him."

"He is back now," Negishi pointed out. "Has been for almost two months. No activity though, which doesn't fit his star's usual pattern at all."

"Yeah," Kouno said thoughtfully. "No idea what he's up to. It's got to be something major, for him to go dark like this."

"Or, maybe he's just found an honest job," Kanami said with a raised eyebrow.

Kouno burst out laughing. "Right! Can you imagine any contractor punching a time clock, let alone the Black Reaper?"

"Maybe he just got tired of being a contractor," Hei said quietly.

Kouno laughed again. "Sure. Don't worry, Li - the Chief isn't worried about it, so we shouldn't be either. At least, not until the bodies start to drop."

"On that happy note, it's about time to wrap up the tour," Kanami said. "I'll introduce you to the mediums, then you and Kouno can get back to work."

Hei nodded, relieved, but the other man blanched.

"Yeah, uh, you guys go; I've already seen them. I've just got a question or two for Negishi here."

"Oh, Chief, before you go - one of the specters is behaving oddly."

Hei tensed; he'd been hoping no one would notice, at least not until after he'd left the building.

Negishi clicked a couple of times and zoomed in on one sector of the map. One lone specter tracker was off on its own, not moving.

"Is that - Astronomics?" Kanami asked in surprise. "This building isn't on any regular routes; why would one of the mediums send a specter here?"

Kouno's eyes narrowed. "Unless a contractor is here, after something."

"Which medium is it - did it send out an alert?"

"Number eighteen. And no."

"And no recent contractor activity in this sector," Kanami mused.

Hei took a step forward on the pretense of leaning in to see the screen with the rest of them. With the toe of his shoe, he carefully tapped the side of Kanami's lime green pump three times. When she turned to him quizzically, he raised his eyes to an electrical conduit overhead, then back down.

Fortunately, the Astronomics' chief was quick on the uptake. Casting Hei a brief, suspicious glance, she turned to her subordinate. "Well, without an alert or any registered activity, I'd say it's probably just a glitch. Let her be for now; I'll take a closer look once these guys have gone. C'mon Li, I'll show you the mediums. Kouno, you sure you're not coming?"

"I, uh, should really stay here. In case of any contractor activity, you know? Li, don't worry about it if the mediums weird you out; they throw everyone for a loop, the first time."

Kanami snorted. "And you've definitely gotten over that, three years later."

Ignoring Kouno's sheepish shrug, she led Hei across the central floor to the row of coffin-sized tubes against the far wall. She stopped by one of them and placed her hand on her hip. "Alright, why is one of my dolls tracking you, and why am I lying about it to my people?"

Hei cast a surreptitious glance back towards the bank of monitors, but Kouno was already chatting with the analyst, and out of earshot besides. The specter, however, had followed them along the conduit.

"I don't know," he admitted. "It started tailing me when Kouno and I left to come here. You're sure they've never registered my face?" He couldn't remember ever being spotted without his mask, but that didn't mean he hadn't missed a hidden specter while focused on a fight.

To his surprise, guilt flashed across Kanami's face. "We never got a facial hit while you were active last year," she assured him hurriedly. "But, well, it's procedure to upload the Directory photos of all Section Four personnel."

"What? Why?" They had his face? He knew he should never have agreed to having his photo taken.

"It's for safety purposes - you guys are at much higher risk for being targeted by hostiles than the general population. Government officials too. If we have your photos in the system, it'll be much easier for the specters to locate you if there's a problem."

Hei forced himself to exhale slowly. "I guess that makes sense. Why didn't Misaki tell me?"

Kanami shrugged. "She probably didn't think anything about it. It is standard procedure."

"Okay. So, all the mediums can recognize me as someone from Section Four…"

"Yeah. But why was Dolores following you? It's not like we actually track you guys."

Hei blinked. "Dolores?"

"Number eighteen," Kanami said with a smile. She patted the tank next to her. "This is her."

Hei realized that he hadn't even so much as glanced at the row of tanks. Each one was lit from within to enable the analysts to monitor their condition; each one showed the head and upper torso of a medium. They looked practically identical, features nearly obscured by the organized chaos of life support tubing and network system cables.

"Have you seen a stasis chamber before?" Kanami asked.

Hei nodded. "A few times."

"You don't like it."

It wasn't a question. Kanami sighed and continued, "As much as I hate to admit it, Kouno is right; the mediums do tend to weird people out, even if you've seen them before."

"It's not that. I just…picture someone like Yin being trapped in a science experiment like this, for her whole life…it makes me a little sad. That's all."

"Would it be strange to say it makes me sad, too?" Kanami folded her arms and sighed again. "I just remind myself that they would die without some kind of programming, and any programming that we give them is by its nature artificial. What you've told me about Yin, and seeing Agnes and Dolores start to act in ways that we haven't programmed, it gives me hope that things can change for them. It just won't be overnight, you know?"

Hei stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded.

"Still," Kanami said, "that doesn't answer the question of why Dolores is following you. You weren't using your power; Optics would have given an alert even if Dolores didn't."

Hei thought back to the specter that had been watching the poker game, and the odd ways that Yin had begun behaving early on in their partnership. "I wonder…I'm new to the team. Maybe she's just curious?"

Kanami pursed her lips thoughtfully. "That could be. My only explanation for why Agnes keeps popping up during poker night is that she enjoys watching. I mean, what else makes sense?"

"It's a problem though."

"Why? They're harmless."

He shook his head. "Not for someone like me. What if a contractor sees a specter following me, and asks himself why? What if I have to use my power while apprehending someone, and the mediums send out an alert? Can you program them not to respond?"

"Hm, I see your point. That would be super tricky to program, actually - a specter won't know your Messier code if they detect you using your ability; they'll respond like they would in any other situation. I might be able to code in an exception if they recognize your face, but they'd have to actually see it, and then we'd end up with a false alarm. Which isn't something that usually happens, so that would set off a whole other series of problems. And then what if you do end up in trouble, and we have to launch a search - we'd have to override the exception somehow." She frowned. "I don't see a solution."

"Um, I might, actually. If you think it'll work, and don't mind."

"What is it?"

She sounded more curious than cautious. Hei took a breath, and explained. "When Yin and I were on the run from the Syndicate, we couldn't always rely on radios to communicate. She could hear through her specter, but I wasn't always in a position where I could speak. So we worked out a system of nonverbal tactical signals. Simple things like hold, all clear, retreat."

"You think our mediums can learn them?" Kanami asked.

"I don't know; maybe. They might not be able to replicate what Yin could do with her specters, but it shouldn't be too hard for them to learn to recognize hand signals."

"Wait, wait - what do you mean, what Yin could do with her specters?"

Hei shrugged. "Two-way communication was vital; she worked out ways to change her specter to pass on information to me."

The Astronomics chief's eyes widened. "I've never even heard of that being possible! What did it look like? I mean, how exactly was she changing her specter?"

He almost took a step back at the onslaught of questions. "I can't really describe it; just…small changes. You'd have to see it yourself to understand. It wasn't easy for her; she had to work hard to do it at first. And I'm not surprised you've never heard of something like that; the only ones who would even know would be contractors, and what contractor would think about teaching a doll anything?"

"Hm, you have a point. We should definitely give it a try, though. Is Dolores still watching?"

Hei blinked. "You want to try now?"

"Why waste an opportunity?"

"Um, okay, I guess." He glanced back towards Surveillance, but Kouno was flirting obviously with Negishi, and she in turn was staring fixedly at her monitoring, but giggling. No one else in the room was paying any attention to Hei and Kanami. It should be safe.

Kanami was gazing intently at the medium's blank face in the stasis tube, but Hei turned slightly to his left and looked directly at the specter that was watching from a power bank mounted on the wall. He'd never acknowledged the presence of one of Astronomic's specters before; it was an odd feeling, almost like taking off his mask in the middle of a crowded room.

"Um, Dolores, right?" he said quietly. It felt less odd if he pretended it was Yin he was speaking to. "I don't mind if you stop and say hi now and then, but you can't follow me like this. It isn't safe. If you see me make this hand signal -" he twisted the fingers of his left hand in the same gesture that he had used with Yin "- that means everything is fine, but you have to go."

"Does she understand?" Kanami whispered, watching him now.

"I don't know."

Hei raised his hand up a little higher, and made the Clear; stay dark signal again. There was a long, long pause - then the specter disappeared from the power bank. Hei glanced around the room; there was no sign of it.

"She's gone," he said.

"Oh my god, this is amazing!" Kanami was clearly struggling not to shout, her eyes shining. "Just think of all the things we can teach them - what else can they learn? What can we learn? You have to visit regularly, help me set up some experiments, okay? Please, Li?"

"Um, okay," Hei said. Then surprising himself, he added, "I'd like that."

At that moment, an alarm bell sounded on the PA system. "LY-482 is active," a technician from Optics shouted, while Negishi exclaimed, "Synchrotron radiation detected in Shinjuku, Sector Three."

"Yo, rookie!" Kouno called across the room. "We're on; let's go!"

"Well, what'd you think?" Kouno asked as they sped away from Astronomics, towards Shinjuku. "Creepy, right?"

Hei gazed out the window, watching a specter flash along the power lines.

"Actually…it's not that bad."