Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter5 (section)

===Part 12===

When Mitsuari Ayu first woke up, she could not bring her eyes into focus.

Everything looked blurry as if due to tears, but rubbing at her eyes a few times did nothing to help. However, this may have acted as a protective cradle for her. Was it a coincidence, or were her senses subconsciously rejecting something?

As soon as her vision did recover, she saw an upper body without the bottom half attached.

“Ugh!?” she groaned.

She looked away as best she could while a corner of her mind noticed how dryly she was reacting. Someone was dying, yet she was not crying, screaming, and rushing over to try to stop the bleeding even if it bloodied her own hands. She had realized at a glance that there was no saving him.

She only heard some wheezing breaths.

How much longer would Matsuo Ryuusuke remain conscious? It was a gruesome enough sight that it overturned the usual concepts of good and evil by making her think it would be best if he died quickly.

And…

“…?”

The fluffy-haired girl saw something, perhaps because she had looked away from the gruesomeness. Was that a phone? The entire surface functioned as a monitor and a small keyboard slid out like with a calculator.

It displayed something.

The image was terribly out of focus, but she could make out some grainy black-and-white footage. It looked like it was from a security camera, but it was not looking down from near the ceiling. The height of the footage looked about eye level with the average person, but its height was changing despite no one operating the device. It almost looked like it was moving along rails standing up from the ground.

It used a tree.

A camera was crawling along a tree trunk like an insect or chameleon and it surveilled the area from there. She recalled that L.S.S. used biological creatures in everything they did.

The edges of the full-screen monitor displayed some arrows and buttons. That seemed like too much for simply controlling the camera’s angle. You must have been able to control the creature itself like with a video game.

Was it controlling the creature’s brain?

Or were things set up so a chemical substance or ultrasonic wave could be sent out to direct the creature around?

“…”

She hesitantly reached for the mobile device.

She felt no desire to touch the control panel along the screen’s edges. Touching it would not melt her finger away with poison, but she was confident that doing so would be like stepping off a precipice.

Even though she too had the power to control people’s minds.

The grainy black-and-white footage was tracking a girl in a hakama-like school uniform. Since Matsuo Ryuusuke was no longer in control, it must have been tracking her automatically.

“He’s alive.”

But Mitsuari Ayu’s eyes were glued to the person she caught occasional glimpses of on the edge of the footage.

“He’s still alive!!”

Yes, she saw the pointy-haired boy.