Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item3 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

Mugino tackled the kitchen door with her shoulder and burst out from the cafe.

This was the 25th floor. It was an isolated aerial island with no escape in any horizontal direction. Capture now meant death, so where would Meg go if she really did want to survive?

(If they were working on their own because they weren’t great at teamwork, it’s unlikely she’ll escape from the roof by helicopter. She’ll probably just head for the ground. And she won’t have time to wait for the elevator to arrive, but running down 25 floors’ worth of stairs would take too long too.)

“So she’ll go for the elevator shaft. But instead of waiting for the elevator, she’ll grab the wire and slide down. That’s the fastest way to the surface!!”

An extended warning buzzer sounded. It wasn’t as pressing an alert as the fire alarm, so it probably indicated an emergency stop for an elevator. After a glance over at the map on the wall, Mugino ran toward the nearest elevator hall. That was her only option.

“Outta the away! Get down! Dammit!!”

Mugino ran through the crowd, shoved aside a young man and woman who were chatting in the center of the walkway, belatedly realized there was a baby carriage in front of her, and jumped over it in a superhuman feat of acrobatics. Afterwards, she was surprised to find she still cared enough to do so. Maybe she was getting something out of her school after all.

(I’m supposed to do the dirty work in the shadows. I’m sick of pain-in-the-ass hostage situations. I won’t let it go that way, so I need to kill them all now while I can!!)

As she ran, Mugino focused on her right hand so she could fire Meltdowner at any time. She charged right into the elevator hall. Maybe the arrangement of stores or the layout of the building played a role, but this one elevator hall was especially quiet and deserted.

“Get back here, Meg!! You’re the ones who picked this fight with-”

Mugino didn’t finish her sentence.

Red.

A rusty scent.

Something was lying on the floor. It was a human corpse. It was obviously dead without needing to check for a pulse or breathing.

The elevator’s emergency stop buzzer was still sounding. The metal door was stuck half open. That meant she had been attempting the most sensible escape route.

And yet this had happened.

Before she could even use her killer electric guitar’s 18 million volt current.

Guitarist Meg’s upper body was gouged by several deep wounds. She had likely been stabbed by a sharp blade. Whoever had done it had definitely been trying to kill her. This wasn’t the result of an ordinary person swinging a blade in a terrified panic. Each wound accurately pierced a vital point.

Someone had killed her.

But who?

Mugino felt a draft noticeably different from the air conditioning’s chilly breeze. She crouched down and found the thick tempered glass dividing the buildings exterior and interior had been cut away. In a precise 1m square.

(They used that.)

This was the 25th floor, so it was unlikely the killer had just jumped down to the ground. Had they been wearing a wingsuit, or had they escaped using a large cargo drone?

Either way, tracking them down using traditional methods wouldn’t be possible.

Mugino continued glaring at that hole in the glass until her phone rang.

It was the voice on the phone.

“I did some research into those Sadistic Dolls and it looks like Item doesn’t even need to bother hunting them down. You’d be wasting your time, so just forget about them. You can’t recover the costs.”

“Explain.”

“This city’s justice is on the move.”

That was succinct.

And that word still felt out of place here.

“I know what you’re thinking because it’s always like this with you, but you don’t need to deal with the Sadistic Dolls. Their twisted justice let them harm ordinary people and take hostages, but that hurt their reputation in ''a different world''. So a different set of this city’s gears will eliminate them for us.”

“I see.”

Mugino sighed before continuing.

“But I’m afraid this warning came a little too late.”

“?”

A picture was worth a thousand words, so Mugino snapped a photo of what she saw at her feet.

Something was written quite large in red blood.

''You crossed a line.

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