Recipe for Fog, Lies, and the Last Tape

Yuzuki Rei opened a dead woman’s storage chest and found a VHS tape wrapped in a handkerchief, stamped and hidden like medicine. The tape held a broadcast that had aired once, then vanished, and Rei knew at once that someone had guarded it for a reason. She worked as a detective in a world where memories could be bent, false proof could be made in minutes, and even a clean room could be built around a lie. Fog stayed low over the town each morning, and that mattered, because people did their worst work when no one could see far ahead. Rei had one gift that kept her moving. She could tell when a detail did not belong, even if every eye in the room insisted it did. The dead woman’s last years,...