Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 13===

''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.

Hamazura’s group had no choice but to rely on that cryptic phrase.

They could only hope the answer was hidden in the data on the card-sized hard drive found in the counterfeiter’s tent.

“Are we taking an underground route, Hamazura?” asked Takitsubo while teasing her bangs.

The way her sweat plastered the hair to her forehead seemed to bother her. The moxibustion had partially relieved the pain and suffering, but she was gradually reaching her limit. She would not last long even with that treatment.

He was afraid to mention it.

He felt like everything would fall apart if he did.

“Y-yeah. I’m sure everywhere is being monitored, but that will at least keep the satellites from seeing us.”

They were walking through an underground subway station, but in overcrowded Academy City, it was not unusual to end up in another station altogether if you continued walking down a subway station corridor. In Districts 11 and 23, there had to be a terminal station leading to the airport nearby, so they would be able to reach their destination while staying underground.

“The others are already in the juvenile hall, so not even Anti-Skill can get to them and pass it of as an accident during an investigation,” muttered a girl walking past them. She must have been organizing her thoughts while twirling the military-looking flashlight in her hand. She was a high school girl with her midriff exposed and wearing her long hair in two tails. “So as long as I survive, I still have a chance of saving them. Damn that pedo Chairman. Does he think this mess is any way to repay his old friends? Anyway, maybe I can borrow an empty room in the morgue used by Anti-Skill’s coroner.”

Those piles of garbage had to be taken out of the city by land or by air.

If they could borrow a special screwdriver from the people who extracted personal information and other data from the electronic trash there, they might be able to get a look inside that hard drive labeled “Lifeline”.

(Assuming they’re still alive.)

Hamazura knew Anti-Skill was in the middle of some major operation, so the usual rules no longer applied. Whether or not Anti-Skill could fight against the deepest depths of the dark side, he had to assume the extremities were in tatters. They may have been destroyed already and they may have run off in a panic, so they might not still be running their usual business.

And…

“Huh? Where did that hakama chick go?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked back, but only saw the crowd there.

He was curious since that hakama girl had treated Takitsubo’s symptoms. He could not do acupuncture of moxibustion himself. He was pretty sure you needed special qualifications for that. But on the other hand, that girl had no obligation to stick with them.

They were a sick girl and a useless Level 0, so they may have been too great a burden to shoulder on a whim.

“Let’s leave her be. She may have slipped away without saying anything as a kindness.”

“Right.”

They could not hope for further treatment now, so they had to get out of the city before Takitsubo’s fever came back.

“We’re almost in District 23, Hamazura.”

“We were right to go underground. They might have checkpoints set up between districts by now.”

They found some stairs leading up and climbed to the surface.

He never really thought about it, but the piles of trash were pretty awful. The gray hills were visible even from a distance. Most of it seemed to be metal, like electronics and car scraps, but it was piled up as high as the third floor of the surrounding buildings. From the look of things, the road might be covered too.

But once they approached…

“Where are the trash collectors?”

“They might be taking Christmas off.”

There were no flashlight beams to be seen. They could not guess where any of the trash piles would collapse. He was extremely reluctant to climb them, but he could only see so much from the ground. While looking out for any metal sticking out or glass shards, he moved on ahead to search out a safe route for Takitsubo.

The place was so quiet.

He looked out from atop the pile to see a silver desert.

He did not want to get in a gunfight with the trash collectors, but it also worried him to find no one at all here. The trash collectors probably counted as the dark side too, so he started wondering if Anti-Skill had already taken control of this place and had an ambush prepared.

“What do we do?” he asked.

“We can’t stop here, so let’s try to find whatever we can.”

Takitsubo’s calm composure was so reassuring at times like this. Yet she had to understand better than him how valuable each second was here. After all, the moxibustion had only provided temporary relief, so that shell could crack at any time, allowing the fever to return.

“If the trash collectors frequent this place, they must have a car or something they use. If one of them is parked around, we might be able to find out who owns it from the license plate. And if not, maybe there are tire tracks.”

Those precise instructions did not actually give them anything to do. The delinquent boy found nothing and resorted to opening the door of a refrigerator buried nearby.

“…”

Then he frowned.

He shut that fridge full of a brownish mess and took a deep breath.

(Is that how they scavenge for valuables?)

Their entire plan had been misguided. They had hit a dead end. Was there really nothing here? Surely there was at least one thing in all this garbage.

He gripped something solid in his pocket and pulled it out.

“Show me where the special screwdriver is, Coin of Nicholas.”

He heard a sound like someone had kicked a metal panel.

His girlfriend, Takitsubo Rikou, cried out in surprise.

They both hesitantly looked over to see something stabbed diagonally into the trash. It was a diamond-shaped yellow “!” road sign. It warned of some other danger here. But there were rumors that, if one of those did not have a secondary sign to explain the danger, it referred to some sort of unscientific threat.

(That wouldn’t scare me so much if I hadn’t already seen something like a ghost wandering the city.)

The denting sound had apparently come from the sign. Something was buried in the trash down at its base. It was a metal panel…no, a door. A pair of metal double doors.

“Hamazura, is this what I think it is?”

“A metal container?”

But not just a container.

It was embedded in the pile of trash to create an open space that functioned like a tunnel. And its floor had been cut away to reveal stairs leading down.