2 AM. The Shinagawa sky is black. Only building lights weave a net of illumination across the ground. Behind Trifollia Tower. Loading dock entrance. One shadow against the concrete wall. Silver hair. White shirt. Sleeves rolled up. Leaning against the wall, fiddling with a terminal. Ginrei Akira. Yuuma stopped. Kasumi stopped beside them. Silence fell between them. One moment. Akira looked up. No surprise. The face of someone who'd been waiting. "[cold]Knew you'd come" Yuuma said nothing. Akira began speaking. Low voice. Flat. Emotion stripped away. But something seeped through underneath. Hired by Verde. Surveillance. Intercept fragments. That was the mission. But the moment they directly recovered the emotion fragment, everything changed. Touched Miku's emotional data. Joy. Sadness. Fear. A desperate will trying to reach someone. Not just code. Akira understood that. Bone-deep. After that, reports to Verde were deliberately distorted. Kept Yuuma's movements hidden. Bought time. And——of the 3 seized fragments, the memory. Akira had swapped it with dummy data. The real one. Still in Akira's terminal. "[serious]It's here" Extended the terminal. Yuuma looked at it. One second. Two seconds. Punched. Fist connected with Akira's face. Sound. Akira staggered. Didn't fall. Akira looked up. Red at the corner of their mouth. Eyes narrowed. Looking at Yuuma. Yuuma's hand was shaking. Anger. But not just that. "[serious]……Thank you" Voice low. Blunt. But sincere. Akira paused one second. Small nod. Kasumi watched the exchange in silence. Said nothing. Just toward Akira—— "[cold]Let's go" That's all. Headed for the loading dock. ── Service elevator to floor 7. Then emergency stairs. Landing. Landing. Landing. Footsteps echoed. Three sets of breathing mixed. Kasumi ran with notebook PC open. Memoria Trace——her independently developed deep-net tracking program——activated. Remote access to Verde's network. Instant. Black haze bloomed on the Deep Resonance screen. Dense. Incomparably denser than before. "[scared]Latest model" Voice dropped. Pale. Black haze——Cleaner——approaching. Kasumi hammered in encrypted code. Haze wavered. But circled back instantly. Learned. No longer effective. "[serious]Can't do this alone" Akira opened their notebook PC immediately. Running. "Reverse-engineer the Cleaner's learning pattern. Hit it simultaneously from the opposite angle" Kasumi glanced at Akira for just a moment. Then started typing code silently. Both hammered high-load code from different angles. Cleaner's processing jammed. Wavered. Wavered. 4 minutes. Cleaner stopped. "[serious]Now!!" All three ran at once. Connection route to floor 42 opened. Akira's program and Kasumi's Memoria Trace meshed——for the first time. No words between them. But the air shifted. From opposition to cooperation. Unmistakably. ── Floor 42. Server room door. Biometric lock and IC card. Double security. Kasumi remotely intercepted the authentication process. Click. Door opened. Dimly lit room. Server racks lined up. Cooling system hummed low. Cold air. In one corner——there. Analysis device. Fragments connected. Voice. Emotion. Two. Progress bar showed 60%. Verde extracting Miku's technical core. Mid-operation. Yuuma ran. No hesitation. Plugged Resonance Key——old USB memory device from Miku's concert lottery——into the port. Authentication code ran. That instant. Something activated inside the key. Backup code Miku had planted beforehand. Analysis device locked. Progress bar stopped. Device shrieked error. Miku knew this. Prepared before the accident. Yuuma's hand trembled. Recovered voice and emotion fragments to terminal. Two. Immediately after, Kasumi shouted. "[surprised]Wait——there's a fourth!!" Different server section. Song data fragment. Verde had collected it for analysis. "[serious]Taking it!" Immediate additional recovery. Resonance Key authentication. Third. Fourth. Complete. Light particles began gathering on Yuuma's notebook PC screen. Slowly. Certainly. Traced an outline. Thin shoulders. Water-blue hair. Translucent girl's form. No voice yet. But there. Definitely there. Yuuma's hand stopped. Couldn't move. No words. Something pounded violently in their chest. Kasumi stared at the monitor. Hand covering mouth. Blinks increased. Akira stood back. Watching the screen quietly. Expressionless face. But something moved deep in their eyes. ── Alert sounded. Red light flashed. Once. Twice. Three times. Flashed continuously. Verde's security detected fragment extraction——Tower-wide lockdown activated. Emergency shutters descended. Elevators stopped completely. "[angry]Run!!" Three kicked through floor 42's emergency door. Jumped into stairwell. Descended. One step at a time. Two steps at a time. Kasumi kept operating notebook PC while running. Yuuma called out. "[serious]What are you doing!!" "[serious]Backup. Distributing Miku's data across multiple network nodes" Breathing ragged. Hands didn't stop. "Don't want it stolen again. Won't let anyone erase it" Flat voice. But for just a moment, emotion rippled underneath. Akira checked behind. "[serious]Security coming. If they use this floor, we're trapped" Increased speed. Three sets of footsteps echoed down stairs. Floor 32. Floor 28. Floor 21. Kasumi shouted. "[serious]Backup complete!!" Kasumi drew level with Yuuma. Dark emergency stairwell. Their shoulders touched. One moment. Yuuma noticed. Said nothing. Kasumi said nothing. Just ran. But in that moment, something confirmed their existence to each other. Wordless. Unspoken. Just there. Floor 14. Floor 9. Floor 4. Underground parking entrance door came into view. Metal door. White fluorescent light leaking through. Three ran toward it. Beyond that door, something might be waiting——that premonition came. But couldn't stop. No reason to stop. Hand gripping Resonance Key tightened. Miku. Inside this terminal. Right now. Hand reached for the door handle.