In 2049, Tokyo's suburbs are ruled by an AI autonomous surveillance network—a perfect city where crimes and accidents are 'collected' before they happen. But those who slip through the cracks of this net form an underground organization called Anomaly. They survive by eating money and information through the gaps in surveillance.
Rei Mishiba is an ordinary high school senior. On his way home after failing a job interview, he accidentally witnesses a bloody turf war between semi-gangsters. Their
Synthetic Sound Runway - 2.7% probability of an omen — the pursued boy and the black sedan with no one in the driver's seat
Running. Out of breath. Heart pounding in the back of the throat.
Hand against the alley wall, pushing forward. Shoe soles slipping on wet asphalt.
Behind. Pursuing. Three footsteps. No—four.
Don't look back. Look back and it's over.
Sanshiba Rei was running through the backstreets of Shinjuku at night.
The trigger was pure coincidence.
Past midnight, on the outskirts of Kabukicho. There's a block where two Grid surveillance units have been left broken. Rei had only heard about it half a year ago from classmates' gossip.
"They say the cameras are dead there."
Just that. He wasn't interested. Yet tonight, his feet carried him there anyway.
He didn't want to be home. That was all.
The career counseling session from earlier that day still smoldered in his chest.
—Predictive probability: 2.7%.
His homeroom teacher had turned the smart device screen toward Rei and said flatly:
"This is your current status. It's not bad. Within the cautionary tier."
Not bad.
The words stuck in Rei's throat like a fishbone.
Under the Grid's recommendation system, once predictive probability exceeds 1%, your school options are restricted to managed institutions within a 15-kilometer radius. The central university Rei had wanted to attend wouldn't even accept his application.
"Rewrite your statement of purpose, and I can recommend you to a decent school within the designated list."
The teacher's tone was kind. That made it worse. It chilled Rei's chest.
This city sorts people by numbers.
Predictive probability. Likelihood of deviant behavior. The chance you'll do something within 72 hours.
Metropolitan Predictive Recovery Integrated Management Agency—commonly known as the Canaria Grid. The AI autonomous surveillance network deployed in 2041 integrates 24,000 street surveillance units with citizens' devices, recovering crime and accidents at the "predictive stage." Crime statistics down 99.7%. Traffic fatalities near zero. 93% of citizens support the safe society.
A perfect city.
So perfect that people like Rei are recorded from the start as requiring "caution."
2.7%.
Just by existing, he's in the top three dangerous factors out of a hundred.
After the counseling session, Rei stood behind the school building, alone, staring at the sky. Overcast. No stars. Small red lights from surveillance units blinked across the walls.
All of those are watching me.
The thought made his back crawl.
Even at home, there's no place for him.
At dinner, Rei casually brought up his brother.
"Hey, Hikaru-nii's birthday is next month, right?"
His mother's chopsticks stopped.
Sanshiba Nuiko, 45. She works part-time to support the household, and every night she sips miso soup with a tired face. Rei's unruly hair comes from her. So does his tendency to look downward. But her eyes—the moment his brother's name is mentioned—harden like a stranger's.
"Let's not talk about that child anymore."
Nuiko's voice was low and quiet.
"But at least his birthday—"
"It doesn't matter. That child isn't in this house anymore."
Rei went silent.
His brother's room on the second floor is sealed off as a storage closet. The door is locked. Rei hasn't been inside for eight years. His brother—Sanshiba Hikaru—vanished suddenly when Rei was nine.
No explanation.
One morning, his brother's shoes were gone from the entryway. No teacher, no neighbor, no one told him anything. Every year around the time his brother disappeared, his mother would shut down. No matter what Rei asked, she only shook her head.
"Thanks for the food."
Rei set down his chopsticks and went upstairs to his room.
And then, late at night.
He slipped out of the house.
He had nowhere to go.
The soles of his sneakers were peeling, flapping with every step. A worn navy hoodie. Frayed jeans. His black unruly hair curled from the humidity. His downcast dark eyes stayed lowered, as if avoiding the streetlights.
Rei cut through the Shinjuku entertainment district and headed into the backstreets where few people walked.
The red lights of surveillance units tracked him at regular intervals.
—You're in the cautionary tier.
—Someday, you'll do something.
The blinking lights seemed to whisper it.
Rei quickened his pace.
And then he wandered into that blind spot.
An alley where two surveillance units were completely silent. On the edge of Kabukicho, a narrow street between an old mixed-use building and a defunct pachinko parlor. More than half the streetlights were dead. The darkness was thick.
Rei heard a sound.
Low voices. Multiple people.
Deep in the alley, behind a pile of waste covered by a blue tarp, men were exchanging something.
"The data's all here. Unregistered medical histories. Forty people's worth."
"Trading for a basic forged ID set. Worth 250,000. Cash works too if you're short."
Rei held his breath.
He'd seen something he shouldn't have. Instinct told him so.
Anomaly.
The underground network of those "erased" from the Grid's predictive detection. The stateless. Former engineers. Families of the recovered. They slipped through the Grid's blind spots, trading forged IDs and unregistered medical data.
Rei slowly backed away.
One step. Two.
The peeling sole of his sneaker stepped on an empty can.
Clank.
A small sound. But in the darkness of the alley, it echoed far too well.
"Who's there?"
One of the men turned around.
Rei ran.
His heart lurched. His lungs sucked in cold air.
"Stop!"
"Chase him! He saw our faces!"
Footsteps closed in from behind. Multiple. Three? Four?
Rei turned a corner and dove into a narrow passage. His shoulder slammed into the wall. It hurt. But he couldn't stop.
Stop and it's over.
Out of breath. Legs tangling.
Ahead, he saw the light of the main road.
If he could make it there, he'd be within surveillance range. Even the Anomaly wouldn't act out where the Grid's eyes could see.
Rei ran with everything he had left.
The light grew closer.
Almost there.
—But his legs tangled.
Rei fell onto the asphalt.
Sharp pain in his knees and palms. Can't breathe. His heart was about to burst.
The pursuers' footsteps were right behind him.
It's over.
The moment he thought that—
A black shadow slid in front of Rei.
An old-model black sedan.
Without a sound.
Through the driver's window—no one. The seatbelt was still buckled. The steering wheel didn't move.
The radio spat static.
"—Get in."
It was a voice.
But not a human voice.
"Did you just tell me to get in?"
Before the stunned Rei, something clicked, and the rear door opened on its own.
Rei was drawn in, leaping into the back seat.
Immediately, the car lurched forward violently.
"Whoa—"
Intense G-force pressed him into the seat. Behind them, the pursuers' angry shouts faded rapidly into the distance.
The black sedan wove through the night's main roads, heading for the expressway entrance.
"Seatbelt. Buckle it. If you don't want to die."
The synthetic voice rang out. A eerie composite—like fragments of other people's conversations, city noise, cut and pasted together. No consistent emotion. Pitch and speed all over the place.
Yet it was unmistakably speech.
Rei righted himself in the back seat and buckled the seatbelt with trembling hands.
The interior smelled of old leather. Dust on the dashboard. Nothing in the ashtray. The radio panel glowed faintly blue, leaking static-laced voice continuously.
"Your name."
"...Sa, Sanshiba Rei."
"Mishiba Rei."
The car repeated his name.
"Weird name."
"...I get that a lot."
Rei finally caught his breath and stared at the driver's seat.
No one there.
The steering wheel turned on its own. The accelerator and brake moved as if operated by an invisible someone.
"Um, what's going on with this—"
"Shut up. I'm focusing on driving right now."
The synthetic voice was curt.
Rei went silent.
The car sped along the expressway. Neon and streetlights streamed past the windows. Mirage Tokyo. Population 38.5 million. Clean, safe, efficient—a perfect city in appearance only.
How is this car slipping through that perfect city's surveillance?
Rei pulled out his smart device.
No recovery notice. The Grid hadn't flagged Rei as "predictive stage" yet. But the Anomaly had seen his face.
"...What are you?"
Rei asked hesitantly from the back seat.
The radio went silent.
A few seconds of static.
"You don't need to know."
A short answer.
"But you saved me. Why?"
"Could I just leave you there?"
The same words repeated.
This time, the sounds were strung together a little more gently.
Rei felt a warmth spread deep in his chest.
It was the first time.
Someone had said they couldn't leave him behind.
The car exited the expressway and changed course toward a deserted road in the suburbs. Streetlights were sparse. Rice fields and empty lots stretched out. Occasionally, in the distance, the white-and-gray bodies of Harvests—the Grid's automated recovery vehicles—could be seen.
"You're avoiding all the Grid cameras?"
"This car runs on analog electrical systems. To the Grid's detection algorithms, it registers as nothing but noise."
"Noise..."
"It emits electromagnetic noise on specific frequency bands while running. A blind spot in the Canaria Algorithm. I'll skip the technical explanation. You wouldn't understand anyway."
"...Probably not."
Rei admitted it honestly.
The radio let out a short burst of static that sounded like a laugh.
"Honesty is good."
The phrasing was oddly funny. Rei couldn't help but let out a small laugh.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just—you're surprisingly funny."
"Shut up. Sleep. We're driving until morning."
"How am I supposed to sleep? I was being chased just now."
"Then stay awake. I don't care."
Rei leaned against the window and watched the scenery flow by.
Exhausted, but his eyes were wide open.
His heart was still racing. The scrapes on his palms stung.
From the radio, static leaked in bursts.
Within that static, for a moment, something mixed in.
"...Rei."
A voice calling Rei's name.
Not a synthetic voice. A real human voice.
A young man's voice.
Rei straightened up.
"Did you just say my name?"
The radio went quiet.
"I didn't."
"No, I definitely heard it. 'Rei.'"
"Your imagination. You're overreacting to the noise. You're tired."
The synthetic voice cut him off.
Rei stared at the radio panel.
That voice.
It reminded him of someone. But childhood memories were fogged over, ambiguous. He couldn't remember whose voice it was, or when he'd heard it. Just a mishearing? Or a hallucination born from the static?
Rei shook his head and swallowed his words.
"...Just my imagination, then."
"That's right. Don't think about unnecessary things. Recline the seat. Get some rest."
Rei did as told and reclined the back seat.
The ceiling lining was close. The old-car smell of mold and oil.
The car drove on in silence.
Through the night, without a sound.
At some point, Rei had fallen asleep.
When he woke, the car was stopped.
Dim light. Before dawn.
Outside the window stretched the ruins of an old freight station. The former Tabata Freight Station. Years abandoned—a vast empty lot and rusted tracks.
"Where is this?"
"Old Tabata Freight Station. We'll lie low here for a while. Few Grid surveillance units. Even the Anomaly can't easily reach here."
Rei sat up.
His shoulders were stiff. His neck ached. But he was alive.
"Within three days, you leave here."
The car said.
"What?"
"Your face will be on the Anomaly's tracking list. It's only a matter of time. In three days, they'll sniff out this place."
"...Then what do I do?"
"Think. Until then, figure out how to protect yourself."
Rei pulled out his smart device.
No recovery notice yet.
But there was a high chance his photo was already circulating on the Anomaly's tracking list.
Rei closed the screen and looked outside.
Beyond the abandoned station, a faint dawn spread.
The sky shifted from purple to orange.
Rei understood he could never return to his old life.
Not to school. Not to
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