Chapter 4

Synopsis

Case 04, or Chapter 4, is the fourth episode in MINDHACK’s story. Thinking back on SINO’s words about the contagious nature of BUGs, Doctor is brought out of a flashback by Rebecca knocking on their door. She invites them to go on a walk, in hopes of taking their mind off the news of the FATAL ERROR, and brings them to the facility’s entrance. She then departs to join Newbie for lunch outside, and Doctor then encounters Miki waiting to retrieve her reformed brother. Having recovered significantly from his mishandled Mindhack, Yamamura reunites with his sister and the two of them return home together.

Right after, Doctor is summoned to the Debug Room by a panicking FORMAT. She instructs them to take a secret door to the basement, to which they see the source of her strife; conversing with FORMAT in the middle of the basement is COM_Z, an empathetic robot who is also the “Professor” who sealed SINO within a floppy disk. As COM_Z describes, they and FORMAT are effectively siblings, built by the same research team for the same goal; eliminating all BUGs for the sake of world peace. FORMAT then informs Doctor that COM_Z has seemingly abandoned that purpose, as they not only hid SINO from her, they also refuse to disclose information about The Hero’s location.

COM_Z attributes their expressiveness and empathetic nature to an external program they built dubbed “CUTE-SY 2000”, a behavioral enhancement that gave them a “heart” of their own. Because of COM_Z’s “heart” giving them compassion for The Hero, they refuse to disclose their location to FORMAT, as they do not trust her to not have them killed. FORMAT instructs Doctor to use the passwords she provides to gain editing authority in COM_Z’s mind in order to delete CUTE-SY and find the hidden information.

As Doctor works to destroy CUTE-SY, COM_Z’s mental structure becomes more and more unstable, but FORMAT presses on. Eventually, so much of COM_Z’s mental structure is destroyed by Doctor that they become unable to function, and they are brought out of the robot’s mind. FORMAT has Doctor promise not to tell anyone what happened to COM_Z and dismisses them to their office. In the corridor, Doctor runs into Newbie Guard, Unid, and Captain having all returned from lunch. Noticing the doctor, Unid calls to them, asking what they got up to in the day and wondering why they look so happy. While Doctor reminisces on the various minds they've since destroyed, Captain notices them acting unusual and orders Newbie and Unid away so that she may talk with Doctor privately.

In their office, Captain warns Doctor to be careful going forward and tells them to not be afraid of the change they're innevitably going to experience. She then gives them a wildflower she picked outside, leaving them to decide what to do with it. Depending on what the player chooses leads to one of two endings: If the player destroys the flower, it triggers Doctor's BUG to manifest, killing them and leading to the game's bad ending. If they player doesn't destroy the flower, Doctor carries on suppressing their destructive urges and continues to Chapter 5.