Volume 1 (Light Novel)/Chapter 1

Amicus Ex Machina

## Synopsis

At a Russian airport, Echika waits for Benno to arrive for their next Brain Dive into the infectees of the virus in Saint Petersburg, but learns that their partnership had ended that day. She is told that her new partner would be arriving soon to pick her up. An Amicus arrives in a car to pick her up.

Once they arrive at Union Care Center, the location of the patients, the Amicus reveals that he is Echika's new aide, Harold Lucraft. Harold shows himself to be more perceptive and intelligent than any regular Amicus, which unnerves Echika, who has a distaste for Amicus. Echika calls her boss, Vi Totoki, to demand an explanation. Totoki explains that since Echika has been sending too many investigators to the hospital, it was decided that Harold would be her new partner since he is a special model who can keep up with her processing speed, and there was no risk to human aides this way. Echika reluctantly relents.

Echika and Harold are led to the patients' room. More than half of them are students at a ballet academy, and all of them are seeing an intense blizzard and experiencing hypothermia symptoms. Echika will be Diving into all of the patients in order to find out how they were infected. As soon as she Dives, however, she runs into a countercurrent where she dives into her own Mnemosynes instead. Echika manages to control her own feelings and find the origin of the infection in the patients' Mnemosynes: Clara Lee, a student from the ballet academy who isn't in the room. When Echika is pulled out of her Dive, she is shocked to find Harold perfectly unharmed.

Echika and Harold find out that Clara Lee had been absent from the ballet academy since the day she had been infected. After some investigation, they find out that she had rented a car and drove to the city of Kautokeino. Kautokeino has many Sami residents and is a technologically restricted zone populated by luddites. Many of the Sami work as bio-hackers. Because Lee's Your Forma has shut down due to her infection, the two are forced to drive there to track her down manually. Harold looks through Lee's social media accounts and finds videos of her ballet performances. He expresses an interest in getting to know Echika better, but she turns him down. Echika is relieved to find out that Harold hadn't seen her Mnemosynes in the countercurrent. After the two arrive in the city, they decide to stay at the supermarket under the reasoning that Lee would eventually go there for food. Eventually, Harold spots a Sami girl who he claims is sheltering Lee. They tail her to her house. Harold explains that he based his guess on how suspiciously the girl was acting in the supermarket parking lot and how she bought a large quantity of instant food. He theorizes that Lee had went to this girl to bio-hack her body so she could dance perfectly, and this girl was now sheltering Lee, who has mistaken the virus for malfunctions in her bio-hacking rather than her Your Forma. Echika and Harold decide to question the girl.

The girl introduces herself as Bigga. In the middle of their questioning, Bigga suddenly steps out, claiming that she was going to pour them more coffee. Harold guesses that she was smuggling Lee out so they wouldn't catch her, and he is proven right when Echika goes outside to wait at the back door and sees a girl run out of the house and hop away on a snowmobile. Echika confirms that she is Clara Lee. Echika and Harold use Bigga's jeep to chase after Lee. On the way there, Harold tells Echika what he got out of Bigga, including the fact that Lee and Bigga are cousins, that Bigga let her stay since she thought that the delusions were side effects of the bio-hacking, and that she injected a suppressant inside Lee to pause every machine in her body. Because of that, Lee is able to stay ahead of the investigators, but the suppressant soon wears off and the virus symptoms manifest in her, causing her to fall unconscious from the snowmobile.

Echika and Harold call an ambulance for Lee, but before it arrives, Echika wants to Brain Dive into her, which horrifies Harold. The two have a standoff until Harold finally relents. Echika searches through Lee's Mnemosynes and finds out that she had also visited Rig City, just like Thomas Ogier.

The ambulance eventually comes and takes Lee away. There is now a big possibility that Rig City is the common denominator between the index cases. Echika learns from Harold that he learned his observation skills from a skilled detective. She tries to distance herself from him again, but he asks her why she pretends to be cold and unfeeling when she clearly cares a lot. Echika refuses to answer him and the two drive back to Bigga's house.

## Terminology

* The Spore
* Interpol
* Novae Robotics Inc.
* Holographic Teleprescence
* Bio-hacking

## Locations

* Pulkovo Airport, Saint Petersburg, Russia
* Union Care Center, Saint Petersburg, Russia
* Kautokeino, Norway