Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter1 (section)

===Part 11===

“This…can’t be happening.”

The man slowly exhaled.

He did not know what had just happened.

But if he did not understand the threat, why had he withdrawn so far from the front line? And why was he holding his breath as if in fear of being discovered?

His back bumped into a metal wall.

The string of his bow twanged like a broken musical instrument. It had a stabilizer and dot sight attached, so it looked more like a piece of sports equipment than a hunting tool.

“Our Wyvern…lost?”

No matter how hard he found it to believe, the Wyvern they had prepared had indeed failed to destroy its target. That should not have been possible, but he could not fall behind. If they had failed, he had to withdraw. His own safety was priority #1.

He came back to his senses.

Now was not the time to blindly follow his homing instinct.

Emergencies were exactly when you had to choose your actions most carefully.

He removed his back from the metal wall – the side of a large truck container – and made his way to the payphone he already knew was safe. He needed to use a special method to contact the others.

“Prepare the retrieval team!! Send them out immediately. We cannot let the public know of the Wyvern’s existence. We can only erase the footage from security cameras and robots that comply to public standards! Personal cameras and phones are beyond our reach! We must erase all trace of this before Anti-Skill or the firefighters arrive!!”

He knew that was asking too much of them, but listening to the operator’s rebuttal at a time like this was a very bad idea. Thus, the man “rationally” placed the receiver back on the hook, took an intentionally deep breath, and rubbed his fingers down the center of his chest. He was stimulating his autonomic nerves to calm his thoughts.

His identity as a researcher rose to the surface.

“(Where did we go wrong? If the Wyvern functioned according to our expectations, its ground and aerial mobility and its flamethrower radiator attack should have given it the mobility and firepower needed to destroy a formation of four main battle tanks. On the defensive side, it should entirely neutralize ultrasonic and infrared targeting and it should be able to adjust the angle of its scales to divert radar waves so they won’t return to the radar. Did the focus on high firepower create a gap in its anti-personnel attack power? If it did not begin with a detailed scan using its ultrasonic sonar, then was it an issue of insufficient education rather than an anatomical flaw!?)”

The man muttered under his breath while opening the glass door and stepping outside. He kept doing so as he walked toward the driver’s seat of the large truck.

But that was when his shoulders shook and he came to a stop.

“Oh? You noticed me faster than I expected. I was hoping you would reveal more valuable information first.”

He was facing the truck container.

A high school girl with black hair, a prominent forehead, and a sailor uniform a size too small was leaning back against the container’s side. Just like he had been a little earlier. How long had she been there? Had she been smiling there while listening to the critical information he had so carelessly let slip!?

“It looked like that dragon could partially change colors to match its surroundings like a tree frog or chameleon, but in that case, ''why was it green to begin with''?”

Her oversized chest must have tugged on her summer uniform’s top because her navel was showing while she waved around a skinny stick-shaped voice recorder.

“You managed to get that giant thing here without causing a scene, so it must have been in a large box of some sort. A special box with the largescale cooling equipment to artificially induce hibernation so your own pet dragon won’t devour you. That means the green dragon must have been frozen in that state and then shipped here. That made its weakness simple enough to deduce and also helped me search our surroundings for the culprit.”

“Kh!?”

The tool was not meant to be used like this, but now was not the time to be picky. The man frantically nocked an arrow to his bow and he pulled the string tight.

But he did not loose the arrow.

He unnaturally froze in place with the string still taut.

“Khah!!”

“Oh, I didn’t think you would help out.”

Kumokawa Seria sighed with the look of someone whose thunder had been stolen.

Someone stood behind the man.

It was a girl with fluffy chestnut hair, a small bag over her shoulder, and the summer uniform of a well-known middle school. Mitsuari Ayu was targeting the man’s back with her phone’s camera.

That allowed her to open a hole in the barrier around someone’s mind and manipulate the soft stuff within.

“Mental Stinger, hm? That’s a pretty cheap power.”

(Much like ''someone else I could mention''.)

“Are you really one to talk? How did you manage to escape his notice? ''I provided no support whatsoever until just now''.”

Kumokawa shrugged.

She still had her secrets.

The capable high school girl stepped away from the container wall and slowly approached the man who had his bowstring taut but could not move a finger.

She took one step to the side.

That was all it took for the unarmed high school girl to escape the line of fire.

Her slender fingers moved to his sweat-soaked chin.

“I should probably get a photo of your face, your fingerprints, and a hair sample. The hair root will give me your blood type and your genetic type. You seem to specialize in biology, so I imagine you know just how much of a threat that is.”

“…!?”

“You have no way of hiding your identity any longer. Biometric locks are generally unchangeable, so all the secrets you left in your accounts could leak out. …And once your boss starts fearing that possibility, you might just be the next target. You’ll have one of your own creations sent after you. Hm, I wonder what it will be next. A Kraken? Or maybe a Cerberus?”

Mitsuari Ayu looked to the side instead of at the man.

She looked to the truck container that Kumokawa had been leaning against. Three large letters were printed there: L.S.S.

“Were you using a random company’s name for camouflage, or were you being honest?”

Kumokawa sounded exasperated.

She could investigate that later, but settling the immediate incident took precedence. Since this man had tried to kill them, letting him go free would never end well. No matter how much of an advantage she had now, she could not leave any possibility of him taking revenge at a later date.

She would not claim to have no fear, but that was exactly why she could not go easy on him. She had to fully eliminate that fear.

When she could crush an enemy, she would do so.

And she would use as surefire a method as she could.

“What do we do now?” asked Mitsuari.

“Since he’s under your control, you do the honors. First, have him slowly release the bowstring and then drop the weapon. Although I doubt that is meant for self-defense or assassinations. He probably uses the arrow to launch some kind of substance that will guide in the dragon with its scent or moisture. That way, he can use the arrows to control it.”

Unlike higher thinking lifeforms like humans, lower thinking lifeforms like insects and reptiles generally only thought in terms of yes or no. They thoroughly scanned the terrain and circumstances using high-quality sensors that could detect temperature, humidity, sunlight, scent, and other factors and they used that to search out the route with the least risk, the most food, and the best possibility of leaving behind offspring. For example, a snail looked for shade, high humidity, and edible rocks and a rhinoceros beetle looked for early morning, tree sap, and places where birds would not find it. The group that arrived at the optimal location through that series of yes-or-no questions would be able to reproduce and the group that failed to do so would die out. It was obvious enough what would happen to a snail that wound up in an arid desert. They lived in a world of those sorts of choices.

That said, the terms “higher” and “lower” are only for convenience’s sake and there is no real superiority or inferiority between the two methods. The aforementioned thought process was adopted by the field of mechanical engineering for things like a Mars exploration robot.

But if you knew what conditions and materials those yes-or-no questions were based on, it was not that difficult to externally control a lower thinking lifeform like an insect or reptile. That was used in the field of non-agrochemical insect extermination such as the sticky sheets that caught flies and roaches.

So if you wanted to control an enormous dragon, you only had to prepare a few different arrows carrying cotton soaked with different perfumes and launch them in a long arc.

At the very least, that would be easier than controlling a human being like Kumokawa Seria and Mitsuari Ayu could do.

The Tokiwadai Middle School monster released an exasperated sigh.

“Now what?”

“Now give him a simple command. I imagine the person who risked his life more than either of us would be frustrated if he did not play a role in the conclusion, so we can give him a reward. Just this once, we can let a boy take the credit.”

The other girl tilted her head in confusion, so Kumokawa gave her a cruel smile.

She winked as she explained.

“Have that twig of a researcher run full speed toward Kamijou Touma. His fist will do the rest.”