The virus had answered: Oxidation takes everything.
For all the files that refuse to rust.
Kaito double-clicked anyway.
Outside the data haven, the rain began to fall on the drowned city. Kaito pressed his palms against the laptop’s lid. He could still see her—Rei Saijo, seventeen, bandaged fingers, playing Chopin in a bunker that no longer existed.
She was playing an invisible piano.
