[ This is apparently some kind of suspense-type romance novel, titled “No Laws of Robotics in Love”; it features Jack and Izanagi on the cover, crouched as if hiding from someone while Izanagi looks around a corner.]

“Hmm? Was the old man hiding something, you think?”

Jack leaned back, internal balance sensors sending him a stream of warning messages—suddenly Izanagi’s face had just been too, too close in a way that his processes didn’t know how to deal with. What was that supposed to mean?

But—right, the question. “I couldn’t say,” he hazarded, after a moment. “I mean, I was his assistant, but I don’t have the authorization to deal with sensitive data or to release it to anyone else, even with your credentials…”

“Seems shady…” Izanagi rubbed his chin. “You don’t plug into a wired charging port or anything like that, where a hacker could have inserted an extra cable, do you?”

“No—I’m solar-powered,” said Jack, shaking his head. “But—why do you ask?”

But he only shook his head. “Just eliminating the possibilities. Here’s the thing—I don’t care about the old man, really, and just because the department asks me to, doesn’t mean I’m that beholden to the blackmail Captain Yvette has on me. But—“

He grinned. “You’re the most interesting set of challenges I’ve had in years. Let’s have fun together, okay?”

***

Izanagi isn’t really a detective, but he’s the best consultant the department’s got to call on when it comes to really complicated crimes—owing in part to his own checkered past. When a murder turns up its main suspect as the man’s android assistant, he’s determined to get to the bottom of it and find the real culprit, because he just can’t believe that it would be an android—but is reluctant to divulge the reason for his gut instinct. He just needs to find the evidence, and that means getting closer to the assistant…

Jack is just trying to do his job, but unfortunately his owner is dead, and he can’t remember anything that happened the night of the crime. And the persistent case consultant Izanagi wants to get to know him better. Maybe there’s secrets he should be protecting, but he can’t help but want to tell Izanagi everything, even when Izanagi suggests that he falls outside of the humanity that Jack was intended to protect. Is there such a thing as friendship for androids? Or maybe… something more?

But the criminal is still on the loose—and apprehending them will test the tentative bonds between Jack and Izanagi. But it may yet forge them into something even stronger and never-before-seen in the world…