A spinner cutting silent through neon fog looks the same whether it's carrying a suspect or a sentence. From the street, you can't tell the difference. Neither can he.



We already ran his sister through the machine. The readout came back wrong — not human-wrong, not replicant-wrong. Just wrong, like the question itself broke something on the way in. Command wants to know if it breaks the same way twice.



So I've got Jin in seat, quiet as a held breath, and the Kurotsura's district bleeding light beneath us — pink signs, temple incense, the whole neon liturgy of people who'll never know how close the ground under them just got to opening up.



VK doesn't lie. That's what they tell you. What they don't tell you is what happens when it doesn't know the truth either.



Test starts when we land.