Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter2 (section)

===Part 9===

She caught on.

Mitsuari Ayu finally caught on.

She had ended up here while being chased by the drones and an electric minibike. All while wearing her indoor slippers.

She lightly beat on her fluffy-haired head because she was now inside a concrete parking garage.

She had figured out what the enemy was trying to do, but it was too late to matter.

She had screwed up really bad.

“I’m so stupid, stupid, stupid!! What is wrong with me!?”

She heard a loud boom followed by the disconcerting roar of flames sucking up oxygen.

She could no longer return to the first floor. A sweep of the Gatling gun had shredded the cars there like wet tissue paper, triggering a large explosion and engulfing everything in a great conflagration. It terrified her how the heat seemed to stab into the upper arms and thighs left exposed by her gym clothes. Worse, there was a risk of the gym clothes’ synthetic material melting like cheese on toast.

She climbed the winding slope.

That was all she could do.

“Pant, pant.”

Once on the second floor or higher, there was no escape for the skinny girl. Her sleeveless top and her shorts were both uncomfortably soaked with sweat. She gradually consumed the drink she had pulled from her refrigerated bag, but she felt like she was sweating the fluid right back out of her. It was like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

The emergency stairs on the outside wall had long since been torn away by the Gatling gun, but if she jumped down and hurt her legs, she would be obliterated by the Gatling gun or sliced up by the wire drones. On the other hand, the rising heat and smoke of the fire meant she would be burned to death if she stayed where she was. The second and third floors both felt equally oppressive. It was already a midsummer day, but now she was assaulted by an intense heat similar to a sauna or pizza oven. There was no doubt in her mind that her stamina was slowly but surely being sapped from her.

She really was trapped.

“Ugh.”

What had she been thinking?

She could not help but wonder that while dripping with sweat.

She had her phone with her, but Mental Stinger only worked on people’s minds. She needed someone to use it on. Her power had one weakness: being alone. That seemed to perfectly reflect the shape of her own heart.

She did not know who this enemy was.

There were at least three and possibly more. That was all she knew.

The thing was, she had actually run across some people on the way here. She had spotted some Tokiwadai students, some School Garden security officers, and even some people in this very parking garage. If she had aimed her phone’s camera at them, she could have controlled them and sent them toward the enemy as a diversion.

But she had not.

Now that she was trapped, she had to ask herself why she had not.

Of course, the answer could not have been more obvious.