Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

“Emergency arrival at Entrance 3!!”

“Another one? Our treatment rooms are full!”

The emergency entrance primarily used by ambulances was so tense it was easy to forget today was Christmas. These were not operating rooms. They were treatment rooms used for simple tests and first aid.

Everyone there had to wonder if the rusty stench was escaping the rooms.

They knew everyone who moved in and out of the room and the hallway were disinfected in a variety of ways, but the scent still seemed to linger in their minds. That was how bad the situation was.

An (intentionally) anxiety-inducing siren could be heard approaching. EMTs and doctors rushed this way and that. The people moving in and out were shuffled around like a deck of cards thrown all over the floor. The nurses and a private guard had to throw out a self-styled reporter who was trying to use the confusion to sneak some photos with a pen camera.

If a patient’s breathing or blood pressure fell too far in the treatment rooms, they were finally moved to an operating room. The long row of treatment rooms was meant to provide more minor care to avoid overburdening the limited number of operating rooms, but there was barely any difference between them anymore. If no operating room was available, a doctor would come to the treatment room and provide as much treatment as possible without violating regulations.

The term “field hospital” was on all their minds even though none of them had ever seen a real one.

“Really, what is going on today?” said the frog-faced doctor with a large mask covering half his face.

He could seem detached from the things going on around him, but no one knew how he really felt on the inside. His ability to maintain a stable condition at all times seemed to prove his talent.

They had no obvious external wounds.

At the very least, they had not been stabbed with a knife or hit by a car.

Yet they had undeniable internal damage.

Their blood vessels and nerves had ruptured.

The cause was unknown, but the number of victims continued to grow and it was nothing short of a miracle that none of them had died yet. The frog-faced doctor had initially suspected a toxin, bacteria, or radiation, but since he was here among them without any special protective equipment, they had obviously found no evidence of that sort of risk.

(But only specialists with the proper knowledge will be able to accept that conclusion. People will have seen all these patients taken to the hospital after they collapsed on the streets. I hope this doesn’t start any harmful rumors.)

A new nurse nervously held out a silver tray.

“Um, these are the patient’s possessions.”

Everyone here was merely medical staff and not Anti-Skill or Judgment, but when an injury suggested a crime or they found evidence of illegal drug usage, they were required to swiftly record and report it. That required them to know what their patients had on them. Especially when that patient was unconscious and they needed to identify them.

“Hm.”

He noticed something curious along with the ordinary wallet and phone.

It was a coaster-like disk made of smooth plastic. It was divided into different colors with a few different symbols carved into it, so it probably had some kind of meaning.

“Was this made with a 3D printer?”

“''We keep finding stuff like this,''” said the nurse with an almost fearful tremor in her voice. “They all have these weird items like a small skull or cards with strange symbols on them! What is happening!?”

“…”

Mythology, the occult, the spiritual world.

If this had to do with those things, the frog-faced doctor wondered if something external to the students was causing their powers to go berserk, but that did not seem quite right to him. In that case, they should have been harmed differently depending on their powers: burns from a fire power, telekinetic wounds from a telekinesis power, and so on. It was hard to imagine that would lead to such uniform symptoms.

(When the cause is unknown, it is important to look back from the onset of symptoms and reassess each and every thing they did. Did they start something new recently, or did they finally do something they had been avoiding before? If they stop whatever that is and the symptoms go away, then you can be fairly certain that was the cause.)

But that method would only convince a special sort of person who could view other people as something to be observed.

A cheerful female voice was speaking from the flat-screen TV in the guard office located next to the ambulance entrance.

“Are you worried people are keeping secrets from you? Do you feel left out?”

Everyone was afraid.

And fear led people to try things they normally would not.

They might call those very things ridiculous in public, but once no one was looking, things changed.

“Well, worry no more! Normal methods might be powerless to help you, but real magic can fix it all in a jiffy. If there is anything you want to know, investigate, or divulge, then log onto R&C Occultics. Our large collection of fortunetelling methods will free you from those needless worries!!”

And none of them had any idea that eliminating their worries in that way would only make them the next victim.

The negative cycle would never end until the cause of the damage was known, but R&C Occultics were the ones in control of the knowledge and data needed to learn that.

Without that knowledge, it would never end.

Just like how IT companies and car manufacturers would show off their graphs explaining how self-driving cars dramatically reduced traditional traffic accidents, but they would fail to mention the increase in accidents caused by cyber attacks.

Or like how online stores would advertise how much more convenient they made everyone’s lives, but they would fail to mention how inconvenient it was once the local stores all went out of business and your city or town grew fully dependent on the online store.

Or like how global food companies would highlight how they did not use additives or agrochemicals, but they preferred not to explain how they ended up with fruits and vegetables that stayed fresh despite being almost disturbingly pure and free of additives.

Information sources would hold back any information detrimental to them.

All publicly available information was biased in some way.

That was one of the most basic facts of giant corporations.