At dusk, the river surface burned a slow, molten orange. From the factory chimney across the water, a thin white plume rose and dissolved into the breeze. Misaki watched it idly. The iron railing held the last warmth of the sun, passing it gently into her palms. The river had a smell — salt and mud and something faintly sweet, a scent that belonged to this city alone. Three years since she'd come here. She exhaled slowly. The breath vanished into the amber air. Since that night when the terminal screen went dark, Rey=Kamisato had barely slept. Staring up at the ceiling, he could not stop thinking about his own eyes in that footage. Sharp. Stripped of emotion. Those eyes. Despite wearing the same face, they gave the impression of an entirely different creature. The meaning of the words "I pray you will find it" remained unsolved. Those were not words one spoke to oneself—that much was certain. If he couldn't sleep, he could move. With that judgment made, Rey rose before dawn. --- MSB Headquarters, Fourth Floor, General Affairs Analysis Division. It had been a long time since he'd arrived more than an hour before his shift began. The hallway held no figures, only the low hum of air conditioning filling the silence. Sector 1's morning came late. This district, where administrative agencies clustered, began its operations only after the citizens had stirred—a breath behind the city's waking. Rey powered on the work terminal and lowered himself into the chair. The screen illuminated white. First, he followed proper procedure. He connected to MSB's internal database and typed "Sector 7 Collapse Incident" into the search field. Three years ago—precisely in 2014—a massive structural collapse had occurred in Helios's Sector 7. Twenty-three dead, one hundred eighty-seven injured. Cascading destruction of aging ground-support structures. The cause was attributed to a judgment error by the Structural Management AI, and the case had been closed as resolved—officially, that was the incident. He pressed Enter. A second passed. The screen returned nothing. Not an access denial. Not "file not found." The search results field simply remained blank. Empty. Void. As though the search had never been conducted at all. Rey stared at the display, then tried again with different keywords. "Sector 7 Collapse." "2014 Structural Accident." "Structural Management AI Judgment Error"—no matter what he entered, the same white void returned. *(Not being rejected.)* That was what made it strange. If classified, an access denial code would appear. If deleted, a "file removed" record would remain. But now, the screen held nothing. Not even the information that something "did not exist" was inscribed here. The file wasn't hidden. Its very existence had been rewritten—that was Rey's intuition. He stared at the terminal once more. The search field still displayed "Sector 7 Collapse Incident." But the database side remained completely silent in response to that string of characters. He had no way of knowing whether this search had been logged. All operations on MSB work terminals were saved. He knew that. But whether someone was watching those logs, whether they were reaching somewhere at this very moment—that was impossible to judge. He powered off the terminal. Outside the window, Helios's dome ceiling was beginning to pale. An artificial dawn. --- Regular work began. Data reconciliation. Document organization. Report draft assistance. Rey's tasks were all simple, leaving room for thought. In that space, the white screen from earlier surfaced and faded. Several colleagues came and went before noon, and he heard the sound of coffee being poured in the break room. Rey remained at his desk, sitting before the terminal. The internal line from the first-floor reception rang as midday approached. "For Kamisato=Rey of the General Affairs Analysis Division. This is the first-floor reception. We have a visitor from CMOA—the Symbiotic Intelligence Operations and Oversight Bureau. May we direct them to Conference Room B?" CMOA. The Symbiotic Intelligence Operations and Oversight Bureau—the specialized agency responsible for surveillance, management, and ethical review of all AI intelligences operating across Mars. Becoming a management official required professional credentials in both artificial intelligence engineering and ethical philosophy, taking a minimum of five years to obtain. Across all of Mars, there were only seventy-two officials. Why him? The question flickered for an instant. But Rey immediately suspended it. It was better to move than to think. "Understood," he answered curtly and stood. --- Conference Room B was a small space at the far end of the fourth-floor hallway, beyond where the corridor bent. No windows. The lighting was uniformly white. One table. Four chairs. Too sparse to truly be called a conference room. When he opened the door, a man was already seated. He showed no sign of standing, his gaze fixed on a terminal screen. Only his eyes registered Rey's entrance. Silver short hair. Under the white lighting, it held a metallic sheen. Sharp silver-gray eyes. A thin vertical scar on his right cheek—fine and straight, as though made by a blade, yet the treatment marks were too clean. Height, perhaps one hundred eighty centimeters. Even seated, his spine was perfectly straight, and though he seemed at ease in the chair, he possessed a strange presence that dominated the space. His age—late twenties, perhaps. Yet he didn't feel young. Youth and maturity seemed to coexist in him, or perhaps both had vanished entirely. That was the impression. The man glanced at Rey and turned from the terminal. "Kamisato=Rey," His voice was low and composed. Almost no emotional inflection. Yet it didn't carry oppression either. Rather, it seemed as though his voice had taken on the same temperature as the air in the room. "I'm Jin=Haloot. Special Operations Official of CMOA—the Symbiotic Intelligence Operations and Oversight Bureau." Special Operations Official. Rey took a beat to process the title. Among CMOA officials, it was a position of upper-tier authority—only seven existed across all of Mars. He held the authority to detect deviant behavior in AI intelligences and issue forced shutdown commands. And likely—something more than that. "I'm Rey=Kamisato," He pulled out a chair and sat. They faced each other across the table. Rey observed the man's contours. His clothing was a dark gray jacket, made of flexible material but precisely tailored. No watch. A terminal-shaped bulge in his pocket. "This isn't punishment or warning," Jin spoke first. When Rey remained silent, he continued. "This morning, 7:17 AM. Multiple searches using keywords related to the Sector 7 Collapse Incident were conducted from an MSB work terminal. The operator ID was Kamisato=Rey. All search results were processed as blank." The precision was down to the minute. Rey's expression didn't change. He consciously kept it unchanged. 7:17 AM. He mentally reconstructed the time from when he'd powered on the terminal to when he'd entered the first keyword. Nearly exact. Real-time—or nearly so—log access. "You're saying I'm under constant surveillance?" He asked directly, but politely. Jin paused briefly. The length of that pause seemed to serve as the answer. "The reason I'm here is precisely that. I came to inform you that your actions this morning have been noted." The phrase "precisely that" Rey examined from multiple angles. Taken at face value, it meant information only. But would a CMOA Special Operations Official make a personal visit merely to report? Rey met Jin's eyes. In that moment, a faint dissonance ran through him. Something from a circuit separate from logical analysis. The silver-gray eyes were calm, revealing no emotion. Yet—they weren't entirely expressionless either. Something lay beneath. What it was, Rey couldn't articulate. As an observer trying to read the other, for just an instant, he felt himself shift to the observed side. *(What is this person?)* That sensation, Rey pushed inward. Not something to show. "How should I interpret the blank results?" He asked. "That's for you to judge," The answer was brief and unhelpful. Yet it wasn't dismissive either. Jin retrieved his terminal from his jacket pocket and rose quietly from the chair. The movement was economical. He didn't touch the edge of the table—simply shifted his center of gravity and stood. He was leaving. Rey's eyes followed the motion while he searched for something to say. But words didn't come fast enough. He felt himself being carried along by the other's pace, and that displeased him slightly. At the moment Jin's hand touched the door—he stopped. He didn't turn around. Facing the door, in a voice barely above a whisper, he spoke: "If you investigate in official places, logs remain. Public information sometimes speaks more than you might expect." With that, the door opened and closed. Left alone in the conference room, Rey stared at the door for a while. --- Lunch break came. Rey drank a single cup of coffee in the break room, then left the MSB building. He analyzed Jin's words repeatedly as he walked the hallway. "Don't investigate in official places; public information sometimes speaks more"—this wasn't a prohibition. A prohibition would end with "don't investigate." But this phrasing suggested the existence of another path. Not official places, but publicly available information. In other words, data anyone could access. He hadn't come to stop him. He'd come to open another door. Whether that judgment was correct, Rey still didn't know. What Jin=Haloot's purpose was, either. Why a CMOA Special Operations Official would personally visit a former detective turned desk worker and leave words that awakened awareness of surveillance while simultaneously opening an alternative route—he had no answer. But his course of action was decided. --- Sector 3 was the commercial and entertainment district. Positioned at Helios's center, it mixed market clamor with quiet alleyways. From MSB to here took ten minutes at a brisk pace. The information terminal café "Pulse" sat roughly midway through Sector 3, one block off the main thoroughfare. Forty seats. Coffee for five MC per cup. It had public information terminals where citizens accessed public databases. Three anonymous terminals lined the back of the counter, but Rey headed for the standard public terminal instead. He ordered coffee and sat before the screen. He searched for "Sector 7 Collapse Incident." This time, it returned results. Vast quantities of them. Official accident reports. Records of council questioning. Medical facility injury intake reports. Structural analysis reports by architectural engineering experts. Victim testimony summaries—all arranged chronologically. Three years of data, neatly stacked. Rey began reading. For the first thirty minutes, he read straightforwardly. The accident report was detailed, explaining the mechanism of ground-support structure aging and the cascading process of collapse with care. The Structural Management AI's judgment error was also illustrated, showing which parameters had been incorrectly processed. But as he continued, a strange sensation grew. *(The consistency is too high.)* Accidents, by nature, scatter information. Initial reports contradict later ones. Testimonies conflict. As investigation progresses, initial explanations are revised—that's how real accident investigations work. But here, such wavering was nearly absent. From the initial report to the final summary, explanations lined up in a single thread. No contradictions. No fraying. That a record of an accident killing twenty-three people maintained such perfect consistency meant— Rey stopped his hands. He reached for the coffee cup. It had gone cold. He took a sip and turned back to the screen. He o