Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Cold Game (section)

===Part 16===

'''(the_tower)

They had to organize what information they had.

Mikoto leaned against a column in the courthouse lobby.

“With his lawyer gone, they’re sure to call someone in to take her place.”

“This is as good as over once the court-appointed attorney arrives here. This series of unexpected events has left both the professional judges and the lay judges hesitant to act. They must not want to create a negative precedent. At this rate, it’s entirely possible that they’ll wash their hands of the entire issue by dismissing the case.”

That would end the trial without a clear guilty or not guilty verdict. And it could not be appealed to a higher court. That did sound a lot like simply washing their hands of the issue, but the principle of res judicata applied to a dismissed case. That meant another trial would qualify as double jeopardy, so a dismissal meant Innai Chigiri could never again be tried for the crime of the cold sleep murder.

“B-but then Loophole…Innai Chigiri will be free to do whatever he pleases.” Uiharu had grown pale. “And his record of perfect crimes has been marred.”

Mikoto breathed a heavy sigh.

If they were to overcome the worst of this, they could not avoid looking at the problem.

“I don’t know if he’ll be angry or curious, but the odds are good Saten-san will be in danger after unwittingly doing that to him.”

Mikoto’s group wanted to prevent that.

That was their top priority.

“If you want to unfreeze someone from cold sleep, you need finely-controlled speed,” said Uiharu Kazari while messing with her mobile device. “Whether from liquid to solid or vice-versa, an object’s mass changes when it changes state, so the larger the difference between the inside and outside of the cells, the greater the risk of the cells rupturing. That means rapid changes are off limits.”

“But would there be a problem to do it slowly but surely?”

“There is still a problem there. If the unfreezing process is too slow, the recovering flesh and blood will be unable to bear the cold and get frostbite. You’d essentially be throwing a naked person into temperatures a few dozen degrees below freezing.”

It had to be slow enough for the cells to survive but fast enough that the person did not freeze to death.

It would be simple enough to say you just needed the perfect level of heat in the perfect quantity, but that was not very helpful when you were the one who had to supply that heat.

Too much or too little would put the girl’s life at risk. It was like getting the right angle of entry for the atmosphere.

“Another difficult problem is melting an entire human body equally and uniformly. If you place a normal ice cube on a table, it slowly melts and the corners round off, right? That isn’t enough for this.”

“Hm…”

“It’s like how fighter pilots constrict their thighs to cut off blood flow to their legs so the blood can reach their head even during intense Gs. If the unfreezing is uneven across their body, it will have a similar effect. Just like when you squeeze a bag of water from the outside, the internal pressure – blood pressure in this case – rises. And that too will put her life at risk.”

It was already a very difficult problem.

Simply unfreezing a body from cold sleep was not easy.

“To avoid that, a CT or MRI will need to take detailed cross-section photos to get an accurate map of her organs, fat, muscles, and bones. With a diagram, the heating and unfreezing can be accurately applied to each part evenly. If a diagram like that can be made, that is. I’m not sure those detailed scans will work while she’s frozen.”

And on top of all that…

“There is still the wound on her back.”

There was even more.

Uiharu viewed the information on what looked like a handheld game system.

“There is a deep vertical cut from between her shoulder blades and down to her tailbone. Even if she is properly unfrozen from cold sleep, this wound will reopen. Mass blood loss will be unavoidable. And it is impossible to sew it up or give her a transfusion before the unfreezing is complete.”

“…”

“Blood pressure comes up again here. This time, the loss of so much blood will make her blood pressure rapidly drop. She will enter a state of shock.”

This was where the troublesome double standard branched off.

If they did not unfreeze her from cold sleep, the girl would die.

But if they did unfreeze her from cold sleep, the girl would die.

“Loophole has an answer to this puzzle. But what is it? Why did he go out of his way to use a saline-based preservative for the cold sleep? Was it just to create a time limit for her frozen state? And why wasn’t he satisfied with just freezing her? Why did he go the extra step and cut open her back? What was he afraid of…?”

“About that.”

Just then, Shirai Kuroko broke her silence.

Her throat shook as she hesitantly spoke up.

“…Onee-sama. Aren’t you trusting Innai Chigiri a little too much? You are assuming he is capable of saving frozen Asajimo Saemi, but we have no proof of that outside of his word. It is possible he does not actually have any way of saving her.”

“Eh? But…that’s his lifeline. If he can’t save the frozen girl, then there’s no reason to end the trial in a hurry.”

“That depends on when the dismissal of the case occurs. He is saying he cannot go save Asajimo Saemi until he is freed, so he only intends on attempting that difficult problem after the dismissal. To put it another way, the trial will already be over whether he saves the frozen girl or not.”

“But! If he breaks his promise, he can just be thrown right back into court!!”

“Don’t you remember? That would qualify as double jeopardy. Once a case has reached a conclusion, it cannot be retried. That of course applies to a guilty or not guilty verdict, but it also applies to a dismissal when the trial is called off without reaching an actual verdict. That is the theory anyway.”

“You mean…it could all be a bluff?”

“As long as the judges and lay judges succumb to the pressure.” Shirai sighed. “You’ve seen how manipulative he is. Even if he does fail to unfreeze Asajimo Saemi and she dies, he will point at everyone around him and accuse them. He will say his theory was perfect, so it was everyone else who screwed up. He will deny all responsibility.”

That was insane.

With the self-satisfied whispering of an emptyhanded and ignorant amateur, he would manipulate the experts. He would break down the systems of society. He would continue committing strange crimes that pointed out loopholes in the law and fan the flames of public anger against those systems. This was the ultimate form of his malice.

“If Innai Chigiri’s original statement was a bluff, then he has been manipulating us from the very beginning,” said Shirai. “We are searching in the wrong direction, so we will never find an answer here. Not even if we search every last branching path leading from there. There was no saving frozen Asajimo Saemi from the very beginning. It was hard to tell because she appears to have been frozen in time, but it might be best to assume she is already dead.”

“…”

This would be a lot simpler if that was true.

If Innai Chigiri had no bargaining chip, the trial would swiftly get back on track. There were still claims of false accusations on the internet and there had been a fire in the temporary storage room for evidence, but those were not enough to stop a trial on their own. Human life was obviously what mattered most. Once that restriction was gone, everything would begin moving once more.

However…

“But wait. That’s only if you assume he’s bluffing. What if he really does know a way to save that frozen girl?”

“Onee-sama…”

“Then we would be leaving her to die when we could have saved her. It wouldn’t be someone else doing it; it would be us doing it! We need to give this more thought before we jump to conclusions. Let’s not worry about whether or not Loophole would be able to do it! Let’s think about this puzzle in our own way!!”

“There might be a way. We might be able to do it. Even if no one else can come up with something, maybe we can. That hope is proof that you’ve already fallen for Loophole’s trap. I mean, clinging to hope is a lot easier, isn’t it? Because it lets you avoid looking at the horrific truth before your eyes!”

Shirai intentionally raised her voice to overwhelm Mikoto’s words.

Like she was desperately trying to stop a friend who was racing toward a cliff’s edge.

“It’s true the current judicial system can’t confirm Asajimo Saemi’s death. Death is defined in terms of brain death instead of cardiac arrest, so it refers to when the brain’s primary functions cease and can never recover. The victim has been ‘stopped’ and preserved by cold sleep, so we can put off answering that question.”

“Then-…”

“But do not forget: Loophole is a freak who enjoys creating cases that take advantage of legal loopholes so they can’t be judged under current law! ''Simply creating a dead body that can’t be defined as such using the brain death definition'' may have been his goal here!”

“You can’t, Kuroko. We still don’t know which one of us is refusing to look at reality. I mean, wouldn’t it be easier to decide there’s no way to save her so you can give up!? That way you aren’t trapped by the pressure of holding the victim’s life in your hands. By ''deciding'' that she was dead from the beginning, you can escape the fear of making a choice. You remove the weight of Asajimo Saemi from your shoulders! By deciding nothing you could have chosen would save her, you’re just shoving all the irresponsible hatred onto Loophole alone! You benefit from giving up and deciding she’s already dead!!”

“Onee-sama! You mustn’t let him cloud your judgment!!”

“Kuroko! You can’t look away from the fear of making a choice!!”

They glared at each other from point-blank range.

Neither one of them had said anything wrong. This was not a conflict between a good side and a bad side.

The one at fault was Loophole, aka Innai Chigiri.

But some unnecessary negative emotions had started to clash over the issue of whether or not to trust the words of the last person they should be trusting here.

The two girls turned their backs on each other.

“I will go speak with the prosecutor and judges,” said Shirai. “I will ask them to stand strong against this criminal’s twisted game and to make a fair and impartial judgment. If they accepted your compromise, they might start focusing on that nonexistent hope and try to make a deal with the criminal.”

“I’ll visit the university hospital. If they go with your hardline choice, they might pull the plug on that girl.”

That was it.

Mikoto and Shirai walked down their chosen paths, leaving behind a flustered Uiharu.

It was not that they did not trust each other.

It was because they trusted each other that they could clash like this.

With a human life on the line, they could not hold back out of concern for each other. They let their opinions clash so that, no matter what happened, they would reach the best possible conclusion in the end.