Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter4 (section)

=== Part 1 === 
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Enirya G. Algonskaya stood unhappily in front of a small tenant-owned store inside the large commerce facility.

The metal shutter had been destroyed.

The space must have only been rented. It did not look as if it was being used for any proper business. The metal shelves had a few large fish tanks on them and the tanks that were filled with dirt had a large number of dead ants scattered about in them.

The room smelled of insecticide, but an even more powerful stench was also there.

It was not iron.

It was blood.

“There is no official record, so someone most likely broke into an empty store and used it,” said one of her colleagues who was wrapped in bandages and searching on the Semipublic AR. “I sent images of them to a specialist and it seems the dead ants are definitely crimson long-legged army ants. Do you think this was something like a weapon manufacturing plant?”

“…”

“With the oranges here too, this matches up with the suspect’s testimony. Even the number of oranges matches up.”

“But we still cannot deny the possibility that she set all this up herself.”

“We found remains of what seems to be remote control equipment inside and some of us were rescued from the snowplow equipment by the suspect and the girl who seems to be an acquaintance of hers.”

“Even so.” Enirya’s expression did not change as she arbitrarily listed off the various possibilities that came to her mind. “Let’s just assume the machinery here had the specs needed to control the snowplow equipment. However, we cannot deny the possibility that the machinery here was being controlled remotely by different machinery in a different location. Misaka Mikoto could have used the snowplow equipment to hold us up while she attacked this place and ran off with the people and objects she did not want us to see.” 

Enirya used her chin to point toward the stains inside the store. 

“Is that from a human?”

“Most likely. We’re currently comparing it to the Russian authorities’ database…but given the amount, it looks like this was a murder with no corpse.”

“Blood for a blood transfusion could have been repeatedly taken from a single person over a period of time and then scattered about all at once here. It’s premature to assume there’s a corpse just because of the amount of blood.”

Despite saying that, Enirya felt it was more likely to have been an actual murder than some kind of act.

But…

“If this was a real murder, where is it hidden?”

“Yes, a body is rather large.”

“This shopping mall is a collection of manmade things. No matter where you go, the surveillance equipment is active and there are few places where something could be buried. After all, almost everything, including the ground, has been turned into a monitor for the Semipublic AR. The only places with dirt are the spaces for the trees along the pathways, but those are pretty much just large flowerpots.”

“Let’s assume it was incinerated or disposed of with chemicals.”

“Even with those methods, it would take quite a bit of time to make sure not even pieces of the bones remained. If someone took that much time, I would think their preparations and work would show up on the surveillance equipment.”

But even so there were only blood stains there and no sign of a body.

“…Don’t you think this workload exceeds what could be done by an individual?”

“But it looked like the suspect was fighting alongside someone else against the heavy equipment…”

(That’s not what I meant.)

While muttering that internally, Enirya looked up at the passageway’s ceiling.

To carry away and dispose of a body while slipping past the eyes of others and the cameras in that city would take quite a few people. But if there had been a large number of people in the vicinity of the scene, the surveillance equipment would likely have caught it.

(Dealing with a suspect who can manipulate electricity is tricky. I hadn’t thought of it before, but she might be able to interfere with the surveillance equipment.)

But she also made sure to think about possibilities that did not involve such mysterious things.

(So someone interfered with the surveillance equipment to hide a group, hm?)

Her job was to investigate and find every single one of those suspects.

She had to continue her investigation of Misaka Mikoto while making sure to look at all the possibilities before her eyes.

(But who could do that? If it has nothing to do with those mysterious psychic powers, then who could do that?)

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