INTERLUDE: Risks and Reasons

     Stepping out from behind the desk Mirai’s presence grew in veracity. The light crept through the windows, shimmering over her contour. Laia felt a weighted urge to step back as Mirai approached ever closer. She could see in her eyes a growing volume of exasperation.

     “Deactivate yourself,” Mirai ordered. Her voice direct and pointed. “Wait…” Laia tepidly slipped in, “We don’t know if we’ll be able to just access it again if we do. I still don’t understand the clemency protocol you-”

“Laia… quiet!”

     Mirai faced the AI once more and reiterated, “Deactivate yourself.”

     Oddly remaining silent, the AI slowly dissipated.

     Like facing an untimely farewell, Laia stood by with a hue of tenderness in her posture. Mirai stepped past her and out of the office, to which Laia pensively then followed.

     “There’s somewhere I need to check,” she affirmed while pulling her sweater over her head and tossing it aside. “Thanks for your help. You can take a cab home.”

     Unspoken, Laia just held her gaze onto Mirai from a distance. Observing as she grabbed the drugstore items and stuffed them in a cupboard.

     “You’re not going to the police, are you?” Laia concerningly questioned, only to find herself being ignored once again. “It would be nice to have an answer, Mirai,” she then pressed.

     Coming to a full stop, Mirai turned to face Laia directly, and with a brooding walk towards her, Mirai hammered, “I already talked to them and saw that they neither found the issue significant nor did they have the adequate common sense required to deal with it. In other words, they’re full of shit.”

     Standing still with her face freezeframed on what could only be best described as a tasteless expression, Laia only found one response to give.

“… You’re such a brick wall.”

     Breezing past her once again, Mirai fished a set of keys out of a drawer and slipped into a jacket hanging beside the front door. Laia scurried alongside her, quickly tossing her laptop into her bag and swinging it over her shoulder as she began questioning Mirai about Yukue. Noting that she had books on neuroscience sitting on the shelves in her office.

“She was a doctor.”

“Like… a doctor doctor, or a PHD doctor?”

“A manipulative doctor.”

“Oh… I’m sorry what?”

     Wrapping around to the driveway, Mirai approached a single car garage. The door gradually lifted open and Laia found herself mesmerized by the vehicle stationed inside. “Your sister owns her own personal self-driving vehicle, and I had to take a human operated cab to get here? Mirai, you really do suck, you know that.”

“It’s a perk of the town. All residents have one.” Mirai exclaimed to which Laia then swiftly switched gears. “Oh… And you plan on getting in that thing?” then in a whisper, “What if the aliens probe you?”

Mirai returned a staunch sneer as Laia glared back with gaping eyes.

“I wasn’t going to.”

     Peeking over her shoulder, Laia gazed into the deep shadows lurking in the farthest depths of the garage. And within its abyss, a small shimmer reached out to the two of them.

     Once again, Mirai looked towards Laia and gave another staunch sneer. But this time, with a touch of fervor as Laia stood clueless.

     Fear and amazement engulfed her rippling cheeks as they peeled down the road on a sports bike with Mirai at the handle. “Your sister owns one of these things?” Laia struggled to force from her mouth. “It’s mine,” Mirai clarified.

     Zipping and swerving through the roads, swinging in and out of traffic, they closed in on a hospital illuminated against the backdrop of the dimming night sky.

     Mounds of air nearly choking her, Laia still found a means of blabbering about how she’d learned to ride a motorcycle back when she was with the digital engineering department. And ecstatically concluded on her own that the two of them were going on a secret mission.

     Making a harsh turn off the road and into a nearby wooded area, Mirai came to a full stop deep into the secluded forestry.

     “So, we really are going on a covert mission, huh?” Laia muttered, catching her footing from a failed leap off the motorbike.

“Well, I would prefer not to draw unneeded attention.”

“And whipping down the freeway like a bat outta hell in a self-driven vehicle is your definition of that?”

“I like to manage my risks.”

     Confused, Laia sneered at a confident Mirai as they marched forward; mocking her from behind, “I LiKe tO MaNAgE My RiSKs.”

     Catching back up with her, Laia let the questionnaire generator that was her mouth carry on unmoderated.

     “Why would your sister leave clues in a hospital? There’s a better chance of finding something hidden in one of those old dusty books she’s got in her house.”

     “I’m not here for whatever cluse she left hanging around. I’m here for the ones she didn’t.” Mirai stiffly uttered.

     Now only a short distance from the hospital, Mirai slipped out a small razor from her pocket. Rolling her shirt up and exposing her abdomen, she calmly took a single breath before violently swiping the razor across her stomach.

     Laia clutched her mouth in disbelief and her eyes stretched wider and wider.

     “It’s not that bad, but it looks ugly enough,” an unfittingly calm Mirai appealed, casually tossing the bloodied razor to the side and obscuring it in the dirt.

     Pointing her trembling finger forward, Laia then cried, “You’re literally bleeding from your stomach.”

“I said it’s not that deep. It should get me into the ER.”

     Laia’s expression immediately soured, and her hands fell to her sides.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Don’t start, Laia.”

“You could have cut your palm and accomplished the same thing.”

“Then I would need a bandage on my hand which is noticeable.”

“You could have cut anything other than your stomach.”

“Your arrogance is going to kill me faster than this little flesh wound ever would, so I’m gonna just get going.”

“You are the most callous person I’ve ever met in my life!”

　As Mirai trekked onwards, Laia shuffled her fingers through her hair in a fit of rage, only to then slump her entire body in defeat as she murmured to herself, “She’s not a sane person…”