Mother was sitting on the couch in the living room, engrossed in the flat-screen television mounted on the wall. She noticed me coming in, and pointed at the screen. A female newscaster with long, straight hair was broadcasting a warning to all residents of Chronos.
A convict had escaped from the Correctional Facility in the West Block, and was last seen fleeing into the Chronos area. With regards to the hurricane as well, the area was to be put in a lockdown that night. Everyone in the area, excluding special cases, was forbidden to go outside of their homes.
Nezumi's face appeared on the screen. Underneath, the words "VC103221" floated up in red letters.
"VC..."
I lifted a spoonful of cherry cake into my mouth. Every year without fail, Mother baked a cherry cake for my birthday. It was because Father had brought home a cherry cake on the day I was born.
From what Mother said, my father was a hopeless case who indulged lavishly in money-spending and women, but above all, the bottle ― he was just a step away from being an alcoholic. He had come home one day, in his drunkenness having bought cherry cakes ― three of them ― that were so good she couldn't help but remember their taste every time September 7th rolled around. My parents divorced two months after the cherry cake. So unfortunately, I have no memory of my hopeless case of a father who was one step away from an alcoholic. But it was no inconvenience. After being snagged as a top ranker, Mother and I received the right to live in Chronos, along with complete insurance of our living conditions, including this modest but well-outfitted house. There was no inconvenience at all.
"I just remembered, the yard's security system is still turned off. No harm in leaving it off, right?"
Mother raised herself slowly. She had gained a lot of weight recently, and it seemed like an effort for her to move.
"It's such a pain in the neck, that thing. Even a cat jumping over the fence sets the alarm off, and people from the Security Bureau come every single time to check. What a hassle."
Almost as if in correlation with her gaining weight, she had started to call things "a pain in the neck" more and more often.
"But look at him, he's still so young. A VC... I wonder what he's done."
VC. The V Chip. It was short for Violence-Chip, and was originally a term used in America for a semiconductor that was used to censor television content. With this chip, you could set the television not to display violent or disturbing scenes. If I remembered correctly, this term was first used in the 1996 revision of the Telecommunications Act.
But in No. 6, the term VC carried a heavier meaning. Perpetrators of murder, attempted murder, robbery, assault and other violent crime were subject to having this chip planted inside their body. This enabled computers to track every location, condition and even emotional fluctuations of the convict. VC was a term we used for violent criminals.
――But how did he take the chip out?
If the VC was still inside his body, his location could be instantly pinpointed with the city's tracking system. It should have been easily possible to arrest him without any citizens noticing. To make news of his escape public, and to enforce a lock-down would only mean that they hadn't been able to find his location.
――Could that bullet wound have...? No, that can't be.
I'd never seen a bullet wound on a human before, but I could tell it definitely came from being shot at a distance. If he had blown the chip off himself along with the flesh of his shoulder, he would have had a more serious wound, with burns and all. Much more serious.
