Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

The deafening sound of construction machinery echoed through the dimly-lit tunnel.

“Uhh, ahhh.”

Mitsuari Ayu covered her ears with her hands, but the hard mask and the raincoat hood seemed to be getting in the way.

Kumokawa Seria was using something a little different from a drill. The machine seemed to move a thick metal spike in and out at high speed, but it was not something anyone would use at home. It was breaking through concrete, so this was on the level of construction work.

“This is a chipping hammer,” readily answered the high school girl. “Academy City’s underground areas tend to be overcrowded. The city has crammed water pipes, gas, electricity, communication cables, subway tunnels, and even flood-prevention waterways down here. L.S.S. has enough land to mistake it for a park, so they’re bound to overlap some of the underground public infrastructure.”

The surprisingly powerful high school girl was talking through her dust mask and skillfully operating the heavy machinery she had swiped from a construction site for expanding the subway tunnels.

“And server rooms are heavy. Just like you can break the floor in a wooden house by filling a second-story room with bookcases, they are generally built on the lowest floor, whether that is the ground floor or a basement. So if we can determine that ‘depth’, we only need to break through a single wall. See!?”

While making sure they were not crushed by the removed piece of reinforced concrete wall, they stepped inside a server room larger than a school gym.

The room had probably been designed to keep dust out, but it was now so dusty that fluffy-haired Kumokawa began coughing once she removed her dust mask. She must not have liked how the raincoat and thick mask felt on her skin because she stripped those off and looked around with loose shoes clapping on the floor.

“Pwah.” Kumokawa removed her dust mask and raincoat too. “Let’s cover up the door to the rest of the building from our side. That door has to be sturdy to begin with, so the guards won’t be able to get through.”

“Um, what about the hole we used!?”

“The guards and company workers only have the official plans for the building. The walls themselves don’t have sensors to detect breaks, so it should take them a while to think of the subway’s backup power room.”

Computers larger than industrial refrigerators lined the room like bookcases in a library. The machines here were only meant to store and retrieve data, so there were far fewer screens.

Kamijou heard a dull banging sound.

Instead of placing a bar or other obstacle in front of the door, Kumokawa had taken that piece of construction equipment – a chipping hammer? – and bent the thick metal door itself.

After discarding the heavy equipment, she returned to them and pulled out a small folded electronic device.

“Oh, it’s those things businessmen use.”

“It’s called a PDA. Really, I wish they would just use their phones for all this.”

She did something and the wall of giant computers opened up like some kind of puzzle box. She looked inside and inserted a cable directly into a port that looked like it would shock her if she touched it.

She was apparently accessing the data on that small screen.

Kamijou huddled up next to her and her body heat placed a burden on his heart.

Fluffy-haired Mitsuari looked puzzled.

“Are you downloading all the data onto there?”

“This thing’s flash memory is nowhere near big enough. I’m checking through the entire server first and then I’ll pick and choose what data to steal.”

“What are you going to search for, Senpai?”

Her answer to that was simple.

It was a single name.

“''Mitsuari Ayu.''”

“…”

“I’m not going to accuse you of anything at this point.” She kept her eyes on the PDA’s screen. “But think back to the original dragon attack. The boy and I couldn’t think of any reason we would be targeted. If we hadn’t chosen to see Mitsuari back to the School Garden out of the goodness of our hearts, we never would have encountered it. That means Mitsuari Ayu holds some kind of value to L.S.S. I’m checking to see if it’s an ordinary issue of money or family, or if it’s an Academy City issue of esper powers or genetics.”

“I-I don’t know why they would-…”

“I’m not asking you if you know anything. Besides, we’ll know soon enough if I follow the data.”

But Kamijou tilted his head.

“Senpai, can’t her Mental Stinger control people’s minds?”

“What about it?”

“Umm, would that work on something like that dragon?”

He asked the question while guessing it would not.

If it would, she would have at least tried holding out her phone and using her power while the dragon chased after her. Not doing so when she could would be like not protecting your face from a ball flying your way when you could use your hands just fine.

“And if her power doesn’t work on animals, I don’t see why L.S.S. would be interested.”

“A-and L.S.S. was already controlling the dragon. That man in the lab coat had those arrows covered in some kind of chemical, so they wouldn’t even need my Mental Stinger, right???”

It was possible they did not want two different control methods to exist since it could cause a conflict, but that was not an issue if her power only worked on humans.

“Wait. I’ve found a few files.”

The time for theories had ended.

Kumokawa Seria continued with confidence in her voice.

“These files were linked to the keywords of Mitsuari Ayu and Mental Stinger. Since they’re using her esper name, I doubt it has to do with her money or family.”

“Wh-what does it say? Why are they trying to kill me!?”

Mitsuari was eager to know, but only Kumokawa knew how to access the data. Her device did not look like much more than a handheld game system, but she was spying on the giant industrial server’s data in debug mode. That worked differently than a normal computer OS.

Kumokawa Seria was like a shrine maiden.

She received the giant system’s oracle and relayed it to the other mortals.

“Middle school 1st year. Oh, I thought that was a strange family name, but you’re from the north.”

“Eh? Wait.”

“Hm, your weight is a little high for your height. I’m betting you have more subcutaneous fat than you let on. Ha ha. Watch your waist and you might do well in the chest department. But based on your pelvic shape, it might all go to your butt instead. You might want to be careful with your clothing’s color coordination.”

“Wh-wh-wh-what are you looking at!? Why do they have this data in there!?”

Mitsuari Ayu blushed and waved her hands around in a panic.

Kamijou could only stare in confusion, but was her flustered attempt to stop Kumokawa proof that this data was accurate?

Kumokawa Seria lightly shook the small device hooked up to the cable.

“This includes your entire life history. Every address you’ve lived at, your academic history – including awards and punishments – your power development data, your health checkup results, and even the places you generally visit.”

“It has…all of it? It doesn’t talk about Ideal, does it???”

“?”

Kamijou tilted his head at that unfamiliar term. He had trouble making any sense of it, but Kumokawa must not have considered it important because she moved on.

“Hm, you use the herb mist deodorant instead of the white powder? And you’ve started buying boxes of it online instead of at the drugstore. You also have a light ragweed allergy. Had you noticed you have a red spot below your right shoulder blade? It looks like that isn’t a bug bite.”

“…”

The fluffy-haired girl’s flustered behavior came to a complete stop as she grew white in the face.

This was more than embarrassment. That data included personal information she herself was unaware of.

And it continued to be gathered in real time.

Could someone follow this information to learn she had spent the night at a manga café with Kamijou and Kumokawa and that she had used a raincoat and dust mask to get inside this building? It was unclear how many steps behind her pursuers were, but they were sure to catch up if she came to a stop. She had no chance of escaping if she let all this data overwhelm her.

(We have to act first.)

Kamijou gulped.

He felt like he had glimpsed what scale this enemy existed on.

(The grim reaper is creeping ever closer, so we have to finish this before it can tap her on the shoulder. But is that even possible?)

As opposed to a simple stalker, this data had the cold intimidation of medical records or a report card. It was calm, thorough, and unerring. A corporation was a giant entity with no personality of its own, so being in its sights was a unique feeling.

Kamijou felt a chill down his spine despite being a boy, an outsider, and not the direct target.

How much greater was the shock to the girl being targeted?

“Um, Senpai? L.S.S. is a company, so they wouldn’t be chasing Mitsuari around just because they’re perverts. What are they trying to do by collecting all this data?”

It may have been difficult for Mitsuari Ayu herself to continue on, so Kamijou chose to do it in her stead.

The high school girl answered while doing something on that small screen.

“The Beginning Child.”

“?”

He initially thought that term pointed to Mitsuari, but apparently not.

“That is the oldest modern esper,” continued Kumokawa. “A normal person was trained based on Mifune Chizuko’s data and she became Academy City’s first esper. Modern Academy City was supposedly constructed based on the system used for the Beginning Child.”

“H-hold on.”

“She was an esper from more than half a century ago, but the general public never believed her powers were real. Although I don’t know if that was because the cruel reporters forced her to perform experiments that were set up for her to fail, or if it was misinformation spread by Aleister to hide her existence.”

Kumokawa sighed.

The few newspaper clippings were in black-and-white and had far less information than modern internet articles.

Still, that provided evidence that it was a true story.

A photo showed her wearing what was not quite a kimono.

It was a student uniform with a very different design from the ones Kamijou and the others wore nowadays. It was more like a hakama than anything. Her waist-length black hair had an evident luster even in the black-and-white photo, and her hands were folded in front of her in a graceful way not seen anymore. If that form of elegance still existed anywhere, it would have to be inside Tokiwadai Middle School.

But at the same time, there was an exhausted or sorrowful light in her eyes.

“In the end, she apparently went missing. She supposedly could not bear living a life of constant attacks from skeptics. The letter she left behind only said ‘but I do have it’.”

“What does she have to do with anything? The data about me is scary enough, but I’ve never heard of that Mifune or Beginning Child. You aren’t going to claim she’s my grandmother or something, are you!?”

“She was preserved.”

That was all Kumokawa said.

Kamijou did not understand at first, but then a crawling feeling gradually moved up from his fingertips.

“''The Beginning Child’s physical body was frozen and somehow ended up with this company.'' She remains unconscious, however.”

“What?”

“It isn’t clear how her disappearance led to this, but information on her is locked down more strictly than Mitsuari’s personal information. Take a look.”

The colors seemed to stab into Kamijou’s retinas.

He had gotten too used to the black-and-white photo, so the bright digital colors seemed almost toxic.

The photo on the small device showed a thick plastic bag similar to an IV pack, but it was the size of a sleeping bag or body bag. It was sealed shut with something like a zipper and the inside was filled with something like frost, making it white and hard to see through. A few cables and tubes were connected to the top of the long bag, but it was unclear what those were for.

There was no movement since this was a still photograph, but the protrusions pushing the plastic out from within showed it was filled with something solid.

So Kamijou could only see a silhouette.

But he could tell that it was an alluring female silhouette contained beyond that obscuring white frost. It reminded him of a mammoth frozen and preserved in the Arctic.

This was a human.

A human was sealed inside there while still alive.

It almost looked like a display in a museum.

“That date…that date is recent. You’re kidding, right? That’s from this week!!”

“That’s probably the last time the data was updated.”

This was the first esper created in Academy City.

That was no more than a schoolgirl who lived in the time of black-and-white photography, but the flow of time had been greatly twisted. It almost felt like seeing a time traveler.

“But an esper who can control minds might be able to shake her mind from within and resurface her consciousness. L.S.S.’s goal is to resurrect and monopolize the ultimate specimen that is the Beginning Child, Academy City’s first esper. The dragons, griffons, and other creatures were no more than candidates for waking the Beginning Child. Although it appears that fear and threats to her life were ineffective.”

Kamijou recalled seeing a documentary about external stimuli like music or smells being tested as ways to stimulate an unconscious patient. But that must not have been enough in this case. When those bizarre creations were not enough to give them what they wanted, L.S.S. must have finally settled on directly stimulating her mind from within.

In other words…

“Mitsuari Ayu’s Mental Stinger was the perfect candidate.”

“But…why go this far? The first esper certainly sounds impressive, but is this really worth attacking people over!?”

“Aleister couldn’t control her.” Kumokawa inserted her words as if to cut off that line of thinking. “He created the Beginning Child, but not even he could control her. After all, the official records say she ultimately went missing and the technology of the time was not enough to keep her in a cage. The attacks from the newspapers only happened because she could not use her power when and how powerfully they wanted. …So if LS.S. could wake up the Beginning Child and then fully control her, they might be able to reach a level of technology that eluded even the Board Chairman.”

“…”

“The average lifetime income of the Japanese is between 200 and 300 million yen, right? If we think of that as a human’s value, then this would bring in more than enough to outweigh the cost of killing someone.”

“So…that’s why they want me?”

That was when they heard a quiet sound from overhead.

They were on their guard since they had snuck in, but this surpassed anything they imagined. Kamijou initially thought it was the sound of rusty screw turning, but that was not it.

The ducts and even the ceiling itself bent like a plastic greenhouse under too much snow and then a black mass avalanched down into the server room as if to crush everything there.

“What!?”

“Move, boy!!”

Kumokawa managed to shove Kamijou out of the way, which was a decent result for how suddenly this attack had come.

But even that was not enough.

Kamijou had tried to reach out toward Mitsuari Ayu.

“Kyaaahh!?”

“Mitsuari!!”

He shouted her name, but it was too late.

It looked like a sea of filthy fur had broken through the thick ceiling and poured down, but it had to actually be a swarm of rats. There had to be thousands or tens of thousands of them.

And a man stood at the center of them all.

He was older than Kamijou and Kumokawa. They were children and he was an adult. They could sense that dividing line very clearly.

The tall young man whore a fancy suit.

“Good day, my friends. From the look of things, I will assume you have already searched out our secret.”

“Matsuo Ryuusuke. A visit from the president of L.S.S. himself? You must be confident to show your face at the scene of a crime like this.”

“Did you not consider that I can simply alter my face? My company shows little restraint when it comes to working in every single field connected to life.”

It sounded more like a groan than a scream.

Mitsuari’s feet had left the floor. The spiraling swarm of rats had captured her torso and she was having trouble breathing. It was hard to believe that was actually a swarm of smaller animals because it looked more like an octopus or squid tentacle.

Kumokawa discarded the handheld device that was useless now that its screen was broken.

“Wouldn’t anyone have worked as long as they could stimulate the Beginning Child? You didn’t have to be so fixated on Mitsuari Ayu that you sent a dragon out into the city streets.”

“That was something of a communication error. The request was to capture her by any means necessary because she was our top priority, but that somehow got twisted into ‘kill her in the cruelest way you can’.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“You already know the answer, don’t you? She is the only key within my reach. She is the only one in the world who fits my needs and is realistically obtainable. To be honest, ''the other one'' is far too unapproachable.”

“…?”

Kamijou looked puzzled, but Kumokawa only clicked her tongue. The man apparently had no intention of giving a more detailed answer.

“She is the key. With Mental Stinger, I can awaken the Beginning Child.”

The entire atmosphere crawled.

The swarm of artificially-modified rats intimidated Kamijou’s group like a strange monster.

“And then Academy City will be ours for the taking. We will rise higher even than the Board Chairman. No more scientific agencies will be necessary. My company will create and use espers for our own profit. That is how valuable the Beginning Child is.”

“We won’t let you!!”

“Did you know, boy, that rats have killed more humans than any other animal save one? After all, they are famous for being carriers of the black death.”

“Gah!?”

Was it too late once she symptoms presented themselves?

He did not think he had been injured any, so had he absorbed it through hairs too small to see?

All strength left his knees.

Matsuo Ryuusuke had won once he dragged out the conversation long enough for “this” to happen. That was why he had engaged them in conversation even if it meant revealing some of his own information.

“I believe I mentioned that my company shows little restraint when it comes to working in every single field connected to life.”

“A virus… a biological weapon!?”

“Have fun imagining how you will die. It won’t be pleasant, I will tell you that much.”

That was the end of it.

The L.S.S. president had never considered actually fighting them.

The filthy mass of fur that was the swarm of rats leaped straight up. They carried Matsuo Ryuusuke and Mitsuari Ayu up with them. Kamijou tried to reach out, but he could not even stand up right now.

“Mitsu…ari.”

Those two were gone.

Movies and dramas often featured vaccines and cures, but what could they actually do after being infected by something microscopic? Figuring out what had infected them would be hard enough, so how realistic was it to actually create a drug or serum matching the symptoms? And would any solution like that even work on someone who was ''already'' infected? Wouldn’t they have needed to take it beforehand like with the flu vaccine???

“Hey.”

He heard a distant voice.

Or did it only sound distant because of how out of it he was?

“Hey, boy. Listen carefully. Cough. Look me in the eye!!”

He was lying on the floor and could not stand up, but he looked over to see Kumokawa Seria squirming while collapsed just like him. No, she had not given up yet. The arm extending from her sailor uniform’s short sleeve had something attached to it.

“Senpai, what is that?”

“A patch test. This is reacting to quinine and there’s an abnormality in my red blood cells. I also have a fever and feel chilled.” She sighed. “This is Di003S or something derived from it. That means it’s probably a stun weapon made by modifying malaria. It was designed to be silently disseminated across the battlefield where it would nonlethally knock out all the soldiers. Gh, it’s known for causing a blood infection, a fever of close to 40 degrees, chills, and a feeling of weakness. But if this was derived from that, its lethality may have been revived.”

“And? That means he’s spread some dangerous pathogen and run off, right? That seems reckless even if he has a vaccine for himself.”

“I called it a stun weapon, didn’t I?” Kumokawa was sweating profusely. “Malaria is actually a brutal protozoan that produces fevers of close to 40 degrees and they have killed more people than man-eating sharks. Gasp. But Di003S was modified to provide a weaker fever since they only wanted a stun weapon. In other words, you take yourself out with the heat you create. If a criminal was holed up in a building, this could knock them out but their fever would go down before they died.”

“…”

“Specifically, 39.5 degrees is the borderline. If this fever lasts for half an hour, the modified malaria carried by our red blood cells will die on its own.”

“But you don’t know what L.S.S.’s version will do, right?”

“Right. If the fever reaches 42 degrees, that’s it right there. That would modify all the protein in our bodies and we’re the ones that will die. Pant. Which is why we can’t rely on the fever. We need to keep our body temperature up some other way before they can affect us.”

“How?”

“Like this.”

An unexpectedly strong force reached him.

While still lying on the floor, she had grabbed his collar and dragged him toward her.

Almost like she was going to hug him.

“Whoa?”

“You don’t have to think about anything. Just let it happen. 39.5 degrees. Cough. Think of it like a somewhat hotter-than-usual bath and it isn’t that difficult. Don’t worry. Leave it all to me.”

Kamijou could not move much anyway.

High School Girl Kumokawa Seria held him in her arms and he was surrounded by the beating of her heart.

He might die here.

They had no vaccine or cure and they had not been examined by a doctor. This was a biological weapon created by a professional(?) Biohacker. The situation could hardly be worse. It was like playing a game of Russian roulette with all six chambers loaded and betting your life on it jamming.

However…

“This isn’t…”

Even so…

“This isn’t over yet,” he said. “Not with Mitsuari captured.”

“Yes.”

She spoke softly and her tone suggested she was smiling while holding him in her arms.

“You focus on that.”