Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter1 (section)

===Part 7===

Their combined weight broke through the metal emergency door and they tumbled inside.

They heard bending metal directly behind them. The emergency stairs were falling to the burning ground after either the wall’s surface or their bolts were melted.

There was no turning back now.

There were no obvious lights, so they had to rely on their phone backlights. This appeared to be a multi-tenant building with a few different restaurants crammed together. Instead of an office, they were in a space meant for customers. There was a somewhat sweet smell in the air and a glance at the building map next to the one small elevator said the first floor of the building was a cake shop.

“Is this a combination yakiniku shop and boutique?” The busty high school girl sighed. “I feel like everything from the latter would smell like the former.”

The dragon must have still been walking on the roof because low tremors sent small pieces of the ceiling falling down. It was a lot like being in an air raid shelter during a bombing.

“W-w-we need to call Anti-Skill! And the firefighters!!”

“…”

“Young lady, I know you want to avoid getting in trouble for breaking and entering, and there is nothing we can do about the fire ourselves.” Kumokawa put her hands on her hips in exasperation and then turned to Kamijou. “But you know why we need to do something about that dragon before we call in the firefighters, don’t you? I would have trouble sleeping at night if our report led them to their deaths here.”

Even when focused just on extinguishing the fire, she seemed to think they could not just let the adults handle it.

This was like another world altogether. Reinforced concrete felt like the symbol of the structures built by the grownups, yet they found no relief at all after hiding inside one of those sturdy buildings. Manmade things were no match for that extraordinary threat. Its claws and fangs were not directly targeting them right now, but the pressure alone was so great it seemed to be damaging his stomach and heart. The pain was like having a thin wire wrapped tightly around his soft internal organs.

This was on the level of a natural disaster.

He felt the same hopeless despair as if he were watching a tornado approach with enough power to rip a house’s roof off. He had to consciously keep his breathing stable or else he would scream and run around.

“What do we do?”

He knew he could not sit down.

Once he did that, he was never getting up again.

“I’m so stupid. Why did I come back? I should’ve just accepted being a chicken. I should’ve made an anonymous report from a safe distance and then gotten the hell out of here! Oh, god!! Why does it always end up like this no matter what I do!? I always second guess myself until I don’t know what’s what anymore!!”

“Cool your jets, boy. What’s done is done and thinking about it now isn’t going to improve our situation.”

“Why does it matter that they’re girls? It’s not like they’re going to kiss me if I save them. I’m so dumb. Why would I risk everything just to save someone when it won’t benefit me in the slight-…”

“Calm down. Try to stay calm. Here, I’ll help.”

A loud sound echoed out.

Fluffy chestnut-haired Mitsuari held her hands to her mouth in surprise.

The busty high school girl winked after throwing a solid slap.

“Staying here isn’t going to save us. Staying by the wall will only get us roasted if it breathes fire through a window and cooks the entire floor. It also might break right through the roof or wall with a tackle or knock the entire building over at the bottom. Not to mention all the fires around here. The smoke and flames will get us if we stick around too long.”

Kamijou did not say anything.

The situation made him picture a bundle of tangled cables. She might be calmly listing off what they had to do, but the fear of being trapped at every turn only grew inside him.

However.

While Kumokawa Seria leaned against the wall and crossed her arms below her large chest, she seemed to be focused on something else.

She was looking elsewhere.

She opened her mouth in a colder way than before.

“Mitsuari Ayu.”

“…”

“Do you know what that thing is? Spiky Head and me can’t think of any reason why we would be attacked by a monster like that.”

The fluffy-haired girl squeezed her small bag in her arms like a pillow and shook her head.

“I-I don’t know. This came out of nowhere for me too.”

“I see.” Kumokawa exhaled through her nose in displeasure. “Then let’s leave it up to luck. We have no way of defeating it, so running away is our only option. The boy, you, and me will split up and run in three different directions. No matter how big it is, there’s only one of it. Since it’s entirely up to chance, no complaining if it goes after you, okay? The other two can run to safety while it attacks one of us. That gives us more of a chance to escape into a crowd or seek help from the adults. That’s fair, don’t you think?”

“Wait, um, but then, uh.”

“The odds are 1/3 for each of us, so it’s a lot like playing Russian roulette with two bullets loaded in a six shooter. If there really is no reason for it to attack you, then it should be entirely fair. And you can’t think of anything, right? Then you don’t have to pessimistically assume it will 100% go after you.”

The girl gulped.

Her tiny body shrank down even further.

Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

Silence surrounded them.

However, the first to give in and speak was not the fluffy-haired girl.

“Wai- cough.” Kamijou Touma’s voice caught in his throat due to the heat and fear, but he managed to interrupt. “Wait, Senpai! Hold on a second, please!!”

“God, really!?” Kumokawa blatantly scratched at her head. “Don’t get all softhearted, boy! I had just set things up so Mitsuari would talk if she’s hiding anything!!”

“I can’t just watch this. It’s too much. I came back because I was afraid of abandoning you, so I can’t waste that effort by letting even one of you die now. I can tell I’d crack first if we tried to do that. And regardless, there are a few things I want to check on.”

“Kh.”

Mitsuari held her hands to her undeveloped chest and shrank down, but Kamijou waved a dismissive hand.

“No, it isn’t about your situation. I’m sick of this squabbling between friends.”

“Friends? You don’t know who either of us are. You’re more softhearted than I thought.”

“That doesn’t matter and you can make fun of me for it all you want. I’d rather be mocked then see a girl looking blue. So our top priority has got to be that mysterious dragon going nuts out there. I want to brainstorm some ideas about that thing. Please! If that thing stays a mystery, I think I’ll go crazy!!”

“Well, if that’s what you want.”

Kumokawa sounded irritated, but she must have felt somewhat similar since she actually agreed. An unidentified but undeniably deadly creature was crawling around out there. This was like one of the strange curses seen on a summer ghost story show. Simply being told not to feel afraid was not going to cut it.

Kamijou took a deep breath and made sure not to let his imagination overpower him here.

“First of all, what is that thing? I mean, it’s a dragon, but can it actually be scientifically explained?”

“Well, it’s not like they found it deep in a European forest and wrapped a rope around its neck to drag it here.” Kumokawa kept her arms crossed and pouted her lips like a child. “But the dragon breath doesn’t have to be some occult phenomenon from a picture book. We don’t know its anatomical structure, so it might have multiple stomachs like a cow. It could always create some kind of flammable substance inside its body and ignite that.”

“A flammable substance?”

Mitsuari tilted her head and Kumokawa sighed.

“A familiar example would be methane gas. Although the gas that left your mouth at that burger place would have been carbonation, I suppose.”

“Bwah!? Erase that from your memories right this instant!!” shouted the fluffy girl, but Kamijou had a troubled look on his face.

He wanted to give this the proper thought even if he had to force it.

He wanted the peace of mind that came with categorizing that thing – that monster – as an understandable creature.

Just like people insisted ghost sightings were actually caused by plasma illusions or special mental states brought on by low frequency waves.

However…

“Would it really be that simple? I mean, that flamethrower melted the metal stairway like it was stripping it from the building.”

“It might be difficult for a single creature, but, boy, did you know that the termites which do so much damage to trees and wood do not actually have any internal organs capable of digesting the wood they eat and converting it into nutrients?”

“Eh?”

“They exist in symbiosis with protozoa that break down wood and convert it into nutrients. So if that other creature broke down stone instead, termites would eat stone. And if they broke down plastic, termites would eat plastic.”

Kumokawa Seria seemed to be saying that the same monster would be considered a vampire if it liked blood or a zombie if it liked flesh.

Academy City science was known for ''taking things to extremes''. The esper development was the primary example.

“How much of your food you digest is dependent on the balance of your gut bacteria. And depending how sugar, a necessary nutrient, is broken down, it can become flammable. Like with methane gas or alcohol. I can’t write out the actual equations for you, but I still think it’s possible to reproduce a dragon’s fiery breath with a purely biological approach.”

“…”

“The melting point of iron is around 1500 degrees. If methane gas is mixed with the air before ignition, it can surpass that number depending on the level of oxygen intake. It’s the same basic idea as the bellows used for metalworking.”

If that creature had burst out of a magic circle after someone recited a strange magical incantation, there would have been no way of understanding what was going on. Their only option would have been to use their final trump card: have the boy clench ''that right fist'' which only he was aware of and charge blindly in at the dragon.

But this was different.

That ''animal'' wandering around out there was doing just fine after a blow from his right fist.

So was it a product of the organized and understandable science that was managed by Academy City’s technology?

That would open up a different path even if his right hand would be of no use.

“Are you saying it’s a chimera creature made with cloning or biotech?”

“Yes. If someone abused biological science to rearrange the DNA for their own purposes, I suppose you would call them a Biohacker or something. People like that will use anything that catches their interest, from bacteria to mammals. Safety will be a secondary concern.”

A Biohacker.

That word sent a disturbed chill down Kamijou’s spine.

It was an entirely different sort of crime to mugging or murder. They would create even more prolific black bass or an even more virulent influenza virus just because they wanted to or because it was there. They did not need some grand conspiracy or plan. They might doom the world “just for fun”. They would assume they at least would be safe, but they would be little different from the people who released a turtle into a city waterway once they could not look after it anymore.

“I have to know. If that thing was created by piecing together existing animals like a puzzle, then what do you think it was made from?”

“What it was made from?”

“Hmm…”

He traded opinions with Kumokawa Seria and Mitsuari Ayu.

Setting aside how exactly the genetics had been manipulated, the girls’ opinions were not all that different from what he had been thinking. There was a tendency to overthink things when your life was on the line, but when they kept it simple, that should be the answer.

They could understand this.

It made sense.

And that meant they could fight.

The final key was the small bag carried by Mitsuari Ayu. It seemed like an item from another world altogether to Kamijou, but grownup Kumokawa Seria had said it was not as expensive as it looked. In that case, why did Mitsuari choose it over other, nicer ones? That question led to the answer they needed.

“That’s a sweets shop below us, right? With cakes and cream puffs and stuff?”

“What about it?”

“I think we’ve already found its weak point.”