Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Chapter3

==Chapter 3: Uiharu Kazari Can Do Real Work Too==
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===Part 1===

Academy City was an artificially created city.

Some people might find that phrasing unusual. Isn’t every city in the world an artificial creation?

But anyone who set foot in that city would know exactly what it meant.

Academy City had a different vibe from every other city in the world.

It was not a place that had naturally developed over time. Tall walls had been erected around a vast area of land and everything necessary for the city’s functioning had been stuffed inside, creating exactly the metropolis the adults wanted. On a deeper level, Academy City was a giant collection of institutions given shape according to a certain ideal. If a problem cropped up within it and that ideal began to unravel, there was always someone to take the blame.

Thus, in that city of 2.3 million, with 80% of its population being students, there were statistics that were officially gathered but never made public. Because everyone knew their release would make unwanted waves.

For example, the yearly number of suicides in that city of mostly children was never officially released.

===Part 2===

“It is a lab, but I don’t think it’s the one we wanted.”

Misaka Mikoto, a middle school girl with short chestnut hair, sounded bored as she leaned against a metal door.

The space through that door wasn’t much larger than a studio apartment. The oblong room’s walls had as many steel racks bolted to them as would fit and they held computers of all sizes. Something had been partially dismantled using various tools after its cushions had been removed. Was it a massage chair?

“Even cyber attacks are done for profit these days. I guess someone decided to copy that virus everyone is talking about and rewrote it enough to earn them some money. But whether this ransomware targeting public infrastructure is the original or a modification, taking people’s lives is a real crappy thing to do.”

“Onee-sama!!”

A new annoyance had arrived.

The girl with a Judgment armband on her right arm was her underclassman Shirai Kuroko.

“You shouldn’t be doing so much on your own. You aren’t in Judgment, so you need to stay behind me.”

“This isn’t a Judgment job either, is it?”

“Ugh,” groaned the defeated twintailed hero.

Student-run Judgment was only supposed to solve problems occurring within their own school. Criminal investigations out in the city itself were a job for teacher-run Anti-Skill. So as much as Shirai nagged, her pursuit of criminals in the streets was something she had learned from Mikoto.

Still leaning against the door, Mikoto looked back inside the rusty-smelling room.

The lab was actually a smoking room surrounded by frosted glass. Place a “closed for maintenance” sign on the locked door and you had your own private space to use. The cyber attack lab taking people’s lives for profit had been sitting in a corner of District 15, Academy City’s largest shopping district.

A group of small children in yellow hats raised their hands and followed their teacher across a nearby crosswalk. They were probably on a field trip rather than heading home after school. They looked like a bunch of baby ducks following their mama, but it wasn’t a heartwarming sight in this instance. It was awful knowing such a dangerous lab had been so close to them.

“Anyway, now we wait for Uiharu,” said Shirai. “We still haven’t found the original lab, but this place should still be full of valuable information. My guess is we’ll find the original one next time or the time after that.”

“I say this was worthwhile in and of itself.”

Mikoto used her chin to gesture toward the people collapsed next to the lab.

The lab’s technician and a few bodyguards (who were probably mostly meant to keep an eye on the technician and make sure he did his job) were twitching on the ground with a scorched smell coming from their clothing.

“These people were making money using a modified version of that dangerous virus, after all.”

It was said Academy City’s scientific technology was 20 or 30 years ahead of the outside world and illegal programs and tools were a serious problem there. Unfortunately, they were not all key picking software that neutralized an electronic lock’s security, invisibility tools that altered the records of security cameras, or anything else an SF action movie’s protagonist might use. In fact, someone using those tools would still leave microscopic skin fragments and clothing threads behind, so they would only be putting themselves at greater risk. Having your hair or saliva on the floor when the cameras never showed you there would raise some serious red flags.

The students familiar with Academy City science knew real life wasn’t like the movies.

The cyber rumors in this city were of a different variety:

There were rumors of a neutron cyber attack tool that could rewrite the electrical signals in someone’s nerves.

There were rumors of self-teaching VR that could increase your Level but had serious side effects.

There were rumors of a fashion server that could perfectly predict the next big thing.

And there were rumors of the ultimate underground security software that let you download as many sketchy tools and programs as you liked without ever falling victim to any cruel traps.

“The majority are phony. They take their advance payment and then run off with the money. But sometimes a truly dangerous app appears out there.”

This may have been the worst case of that yet.

The initial product description was incomprehensible, but it wasn’t just an online scam. The actual distributed product was having a real effect.

Mikoto looked up into the blue sky.

“ExitApp. ''The perfect suicide tool'' that lets you die without feeling any fear.”

===Part 3===

14 cases were currently known.

The actual number was unknown since anyone who tried it inside their locked room or in a car parked deep in the mountains might not have been discovered yet.

The number of attempted suicides was impossible to know. Especially because ExitApp did things differently from traditional suicide methods.

“ExitApp calls itself ‘the perfect suicide tool’. We still don’t know where it came from, but it seems to have been created based on an existing health management app.”

Mikoto and Shirai had returned to Judgment Branch Office 177 and Uiharu Kazari, a Judgment IT expert, reviewed the information they had.

But part of that was new to Mikoto.

“A health management app?”

“Specifically, the management program included in an IoT massage chair.”

These days, even microwaves and washing machines had USB ports and short-range wireless connectivity to access a computer or the network. And the host that managed all of the devices in a home didn’t have to be a traditional computer. The main health management program could be in a massage chair that connected to the scale, phone, smartwatch, etc.

“There is nothing at all wrong with the massage chair with its normal settings, but if a bit of hacking is done to remove the limits on its movements, it can be transformed into an execution machine that folds people up, snapping all their bones in the process.”

“Ew,” groaned Saten.

She was probably viewing this as a gruesome urban legend instead of a criminal investigation.

It might sound surprising, but there are very few examples of people truly setting out to create something dangerous and succeeding.

Think of kitchen knives.

Think of cars.

Think of cellphones.

In most cases, the dangers were discovered after the thing was created.

Situations would arise that the creator had never even considered.

People would use them in bizarre, unintended ways.

That had happened countless times.

Danger could be found anywhere, like in playground equipment or the lid to a can.

Even with tools meant to keep people alive, like fire extinguishers and life jackets, people had to learn the proper way to use them.

Because they could be dangerous otherwise.

Academy City’s esper powers may have been the same.

Anyway.

For better or for worse, Saten was knowledgeable about rumors, so she crossed her arms and tilted her head in thought.

“Hmm. I have heard a lot of urban legends saying a massage chair could kill you if it malfunctioned, but I thought everyone had concluded it wasn’t actually possible. I heard they could maybe break a bone, but it couldn’t kill you because you would just get out of the chair before it got that far.”

“Yes, the ExitApp and a massage chair on their own wouldn’t be a real problem,” said Uiharu. “The app gives the chair a ‘kill’ setting, but like Saten-san said, people would normally escape the chair once it started hurting them.”

“On their own? I take it there is another piece to the puzzle,” said Shirai with a frustrated sigh.

Uiharu responded with a serious nod.

“The success rate rises dramatically when combined with the consumption of strong alcohol. Obviously people’s tolerance there differs, but there appear to be some videos going around explaining how to efficiently get to sleep by manipulating your circulation through the combination of alcohol and a massage chair.”

“Oh, you mean like how they say drinking after a bath is a bad idea?”

Mikoto sounded skeptical because she was of course not a drinker.

Uiharu sighed softly.

“This is that but with the efficiency boosted by science. Basically, if people would leave the chair because of the pain, you instead get them to pass out drunk inside the execution machine first.”

“So you’re saying an ordinary massage chair really can kill someone?”

“And there is no resisting it. So the app lives up to its claims of being the perfect suicide tool that lets you die in your own home without chickening out at the last second.”

In other words, these weren’t accidental deaths from the machine developing a short and electrocuting its occupant.

This was a hit product ''designed to kill and only kill'' and it was still out there being distributed.

“To start with, it has you enjoy a massage every day as just part of your routine. Once you’re used to using it, you activate the ExitApp, drink some alcohol, and continue with your usual routine one final time.”

The massage chair let people do practice runs of their death any number of times.

And once they decided to go through with it, they had a special tool that would automatically finish the job after they got themselves drunk enough.

Mikoto sighed while considering that setup.

“Could you get the massage chairs removed from store shelves until all this dies down? It’s not fair to the people who worked so hard making them, but what are you gonna do?”

“The entire point is to push the chair past its limits, so it doesn’t actually matter if the software doesn’t match the hardware’s standards. That would work if it was taking advantage of a vulnerability specific to one product, but we don’t have a good enough justification to remove every brand of massage chair from sale, so an industry group would fight back and claim they were being unfairly targeted.”

“An industry group?” asked Saten, blinking in confusion.

Shirai shrugged.

“Massage devices might seem like a niche market, but a lot of major electronics companies are shifting their focus to health devices like scales and air purifiers to make up for the losses caused by the shift away from domestic manufacturing of TVs and LCD monitors. Doing anything that earned their ire would mean picking a fight with a power greater than you can possibly imagine.”

Besides, the very idea of fighting them was taking this in the wrong direction. The companies hadn’t done anything wrong in this case. This perfect suicide tool betrayed the vision of the people who had created the massage chairs. The same was true of alcoholic beverages, even if that was a world middle schoolers like them had no part in.

This tool would appeal to people who really wanted to die, as well as people who simply wanted a thrill. And even if someone only downloaded it as a test of courage, the fear of death would fade as they repeated the initial harmless process, so they might activate the kill mode on a whim at some point.

It was impossible to know just how many people in Academy City truly felt their life had hit rock bottom and wanted to die right away.

But with all the worries over stagnant power development and the stresses of studying for exams, it wasn’t uncommon for people to start saying they wanted to die or they wanted to be reborn and get a fresh start in a new life. Those might be idle complaints at first, but this ruinous tool provided a realistic way of accomplishing it and invited them to do something they could never undo.

In that sense, the number of “attempted suicides” using the app may have been in the thousands or even tens of thousands. Because anyone who wanted to die would use the massage chair on a daily basis, gradually wearing down the fear of death while they continued to live their ordinary lives.

And once they had become numb to the fear, they would activate the kill mode and die without any hesitation.

The deadly trigger in this case was drinking alcohol.

That was readily available on any convenience store’s shelves.

“Oh, here we go. I found the story. But it says that trigger has actually kept the harm from spreading too far,” said Saten.

She was getting this information from the internet on her phone, so its accuracy couldn’t be entirely trusted.

“Alcohol is a hard thing for middle schoolers like us to get our hands on, right? If I brought one of those colorful cans or bottles up to the register, the cashier would definitely stop me. So even if someone has started using a massage chair before bed each day, acquiring the alcohol would be enough of a challenge that they might suddenly realize what they were really doing and stop themselves.”

If the hurdle was a lot lower, the number of deaths may have been a lot higher. Like if the trigger was eating chocolate to relax and that led people to submerge their hairdryer in the water to electrocute themselves.

Drinking alcohol before the age of 20 was considered wrong.

In a city where 80% of the population was students, people were carded much more strictly than in an ordinary city.

So people who were considered ordinary by the city’s standards would be hesitant to cross that line.

It might seem strange that someone planning to kill themselves would care, but different suicidal people viewed things differently. If they wanted to end their life before they fell even further, it wasn’t unusual for them to avoid any criminal activity and seek out a “clean” death. According to Uiharu’s analysis, the people who didn’t care about anything else as long as they died might opt for a murder suicide of a loved one or random strangers instead of killing themselves all alone. If that was true, then positive thinking wasn’t necessarily enough to help people recover and return to being a healthy member of society. People were complicated.

However…

“But some students really are completing the process.”

“Alcohol is not sold in vending machines, but there are more ways of buying it without directly meeting an adult clerk nowadays. Like online shopping or self-checkout. They may be choosing places like that to reduce the mental barrier.”

“Ugh,” groaned Shirai Kuroko.

She didn’t need to feel any responsibility just because her family ran a nationwide convenience store chain, but the responsible types tended to be hard on themselves.

“Anyway, removing every form of alcohol, including mirin and ethanol disinfectant, from store shelves isn’t realistic. The only way to prevent any further suicides is to track down the developer of ExitApp,” concluded Uiharu.

The perfect suicide tool that used precise equations to fold up its drunk victims had already been distributed to a large number of people, so it was only the purchasers’ relative purity(?) that kept the number of suicides from exploding. They continued to incorporate the app into their everyday routine, but they weren’t willing to go so far outside their idea of ordinary.

If the mysterious developer was captured and made to explain just how dangerous the app was, those users would start to question their use of ExitApp. Because even if they were suicidal, these were still ordinary people who were hesitant to use a fake ID to buy alcohol at their local convenience store.

And once they started questioning it, the thousands or even tens of thousands of suicidal students across Academy City would stop using ExitApp. And they wouldn’t try to use a new perfect suicide tool either.

Uiharu sighed before continuing.

“The key to this case is following the distribution route back to the developer. Since you two took care of all the people selling modified versions, there should just be the one route left. We will reach our target next time. So let’s eradicate ExitApp before it creates any more victims.”

===Part 4===

The tracing investigation had begun.

Out on the main street, Mikoto and Shirai surreptitiously glanced over at the narrow, dimly-lit zone around the corner of a building.

“Why are we waiting here as backup?” complained Academy City’s #3 Level 5.

“I-it’s your own fault,” said Uiharu over the radio. “The underground message boards I follow are on the lookout for you and Shirai-san after you made such a scene destroying those other sellers. I mean, Shirai-san has such a hero complex she walked into the back alleys with her armband still on!”

“A sting operation!?” said Saten, also over the radio. “W-wow, why didn’t you tell me you were doing something so cool, Uiharu! You don’t have the disposition for undercover work, so let this rumor-loving, sexy, and risqué adult take over! Then we’re sure to save the world and the human ra-”

“You stay where you are, you hopeless troublemaker!” shouted the other three in perfect unison.

They must have all imagined the unpleasant future that was liable to lead to. They had needed someone there in order to cover all the exits, but they were worried sick having that girl acting alone after the grief she caused them during the Level Upper and Liberal Arts City incidents.

The adults of Anti-Skill were not just ignoring this problem. They were pursuing the criminal in their own way. It was more accurate to say Mikoto’s group was working on the case without permission.

The hope was they wouldn’t need to send in a Level 4 or a Level 5. That would be as overkill as firing a warship’s guns on the criminal hideout while the criminals were simply worried about a police raid.

Shirai sighed in frustration.

“So what’s this about message boards?”

“The criminal underworld prefers well-established services with simple functionality. Those are a lot safer than a social media group that uses a constantly evolving AI to detect dangerous posts.”

These things could get extremely complicated, but it sounded like the definitions of “safe” and “dangerous” were entirely reversed for ordinary people and criminals.

But whatever the reason, Mikoto and Shirai were currently watching Uiharu Kazari wandering in a dimly-lit part of District 15, Academy City’s largest shopping district. The timid girl looked out of her element in the back alley, but delinquents weren’t the only suckers who fell for criminal scams. Entertainers and athletes were arrested on drug charges all the time, so it obviously wasn’t just the outcasts who broke the law.

“Uiharu, why do they do this face to face instead of online?” asked Saten.

“Because online interactions will leave some kind of record. On the other hand, the buyer will be afraid to meet the mysterious seller in person. Phone cameras are so ubiquitous these days that you never know when someone might snap a photo of you.”

Something flew by over Uiharu’s head.

It was a multicopter drone, which were common enough now that they could easily be bought online.

“So the safest method is to put ExitApp on a thumb drive and piggyback that on the ordinary delivery network. The information I’ve gathered on the dark web says drone deliveries for online shops are constantly flying through District 15. That creates an invisible traffic network. From what I can tell, the seller wears large goggles to hide their face, intercepts the signal providing real-time tracking information for a package, covers the small thumb drive with rubber adhesive, and slingshots it up so it attaches to the bottom of the package.”

“These criminals are clever,” said Mikoto, looking exasperated.

“If only they could put this resourcefulness to better use,” said Shirai, looking the same.

With so many delivery drones flying around, Mikoto could borrow their cameras to keep an eye on things and Shirai could teleport in the instant Uiharu was in danger. The Level 5 and Level 4 were two of the highest ranked students at Tokiwadai Middle School. They never would have placed Uiharu at the vanguard without that kind of backup.

“Anyway, I know the seller with the ExitApp and a slingshot is going to appear here,” said Uiharu. “We can pursue them from here. And by tracing the path back from there, we should eventually – ksh – reach the person who actually created ExitApp – ksh.”

“Hm? Hold on, Uiharu-san. There’s some noise in the signal.”

“I-I’ve found – ksh – them! It has to be – ksh – that person. Wait – kssshhh – Misaka-san, can you – ksh – me? Um – ksshh – see – ksssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“Damn. Kuroko!!”

Mikoto quickly slapped her partner’s shoulder, but the girl wobbled weakly. Mikoto looked over in shock to find Shirai wasn’t even looking her way. Her eyes were opened as wide as they would go while she stared into the dark alley. She was frozen in place.

“Sh-she…disappeared.”

“…”

“Uiharu suddenly vanished!! Wait just a second! I can’t teleport after her if I don’t know where she went!”

===Part 5===

The secret behind magic tricks was always quite simple.

And unlike a mystery novel, there was no rule in reality saying all the necessary information to reach the answer had to be provided in advance.

“This way.”

“…”

Uiharu Kazari gulped when an alto girl’s voice called out to her.

The mystery girl gesturing for her to follow turned back to look at her.

“This is something of a main road for the delivery drones because the signal is best here. They check the massive amount of map data in the rooftop relay antenna and learn how to fly to the next base antenna on their own.”

Antennas needed more than just an elevated location. They were only one part of the wired network linked to the thick communication cables, so they required some way of attaching an industrial cable.

In other words, the two girls were underground.

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They were in a conduit used by all the thick cables.

Several cables thicker than Uiharu’s arm ran through a concrete space so cramped even someone as short as her had to duck to avoid scraping her flowery head. The conduit may have also been used for the power lines connected to the wind turbines. It felt exceedingly long, but that may have been due to the lack of any light other than the other girl’s phone. She could not see very far down the conduit.

“Are you the seller?”

“What if I am?”

The alto-voiced girl was probably a high schooler.

She had the bleached blonde hair and brown-tanned skin often seen in District 15.

The adults might not see much difference between middle and high schoolers, but that framework created an absolute barrier for Uiharu. If she wasn’t careful, she would forget about the situation she found herself in and let the older girl take command just because she was older.

“You shouldn’t have to meet me directly since the deal is made by piggybacking on the network of drones flying overhead. So why did you come to me?”

“To warn you,” replied Uiharu.

“…”

“If I could reach you, then anyone else could using the same methods. It’s a clever system, but there is no such thing as absolute safety. I recommend you do something about this security hole as soon as possible.”

“Hoping I’ll be grateful enough to reward you in some way?”

“No, hoping you will be impressed enough to pay for my services.”

It all came down to this.

She didn’t need to act tough. She could be her usual earnest self.

“With my help, you can develop a much safer method. I don’t know why you’re selling this perfect suicide tool, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t a nonprofit act of charity. So how about you pay for the extra safety I can provide you?”

“Hm,” groaned the girl as if appraising her.

No.

The high school girl really was eyeing Uiharu from head to toe.

She had taken aim at Uiharu and dragged her down below the surface.

She must have noticed Mikoto and Shirai keeping an eye on things. If not, she could have just spoken to Uiharu in the alley without going to all this trouble.

That meant ''it was working.

The mystery high school girl was elated over outsmarting Mikoto and Shirai, which loosened her lips. It was more of a physical reflex than a psychological thing, similar to the reaction after leaving a dark and spooky tunnel or a haunted house. If Uiharu claimed to have intentionally escaped their surveillance, it would sound a lot more realistic to the seller than if she tried to act like a villain.

Ultimately, the girl started talking on her own.

“So you don’t want to use it?”

“…”

“You aren’t asking for some kind of special deal either. You want to join our group and make a profit off of our perfect suicide tool?”

“I’m not interested in the suicide itself. I wouldn’t have a use for the tool even if I had a copy.”

“How rational of you.” Her alto voice lowered further in tone. “Keep in mind that this isn’t a fraction of users dying after an accident or after overusing the app. We created a tool people buy for no other reason than to die and we sell it, converting lives into money.”

“I am also not interested in ExitApp itself. I will earn my share while handling the security countermeasures one step removed from all of that. You don’t strike me as the kind of person who optimistically believes in heaven. Well, neither am I. I can rationally work the numbers and they tell me I’m better off helping sell this app than using it. You arrived at the same conclusion, didn’t you?”

“Hm,” she said for the second time.

But the nuance was different this time. The scales within her were tilting. Uiharu was not so oblivious that she failed to notice that. And even if Uiharu’s people-reading skills had only been trained in an ordinary classroom, she could tell where this was headed.

In other words…

(I’m in troub-)

“''Hm.''”

A loud thud rang out.

The tanned high school girl had repeated that same sound again.

Uiharu’s vision flashed in and out. It took her a few seconds to realize she had been grabbed by the collar and slammed back first into the wall. Her feet were only still on the ground because the ceiling was so low.

The difference in strength between them was too great.

“Kah, ah!!”

(Oh, no! I failed to earn her trust!)

Uiharu had discovered this security hole before anyone else, so had the girl decided to it would be safer to silence her than hire her?

(Wh-what do I do?)

She had her phone in her skirt pocket. And she had used her handiness to modify the strobe flash into a handmade stun gun. But releasing that high voltage current while this close to the target could end up shocking her as well. It was especially dangerous with the other girl’s arm against her neck and chest. Incapacitating her opponent was meaningless if she stopped her own heart in the process.

But she couldn’t let this girl get away either.

If she allowed her to escape, she would go into hiding and start another job somewhere else.

Then ExitApp would take even more people’s lives. The repeated practice runs would lower the hurdle of suicide and even give that final push to people who hadn’t really intended to die.

(What can I do!?)

But then the girl said something unexpected.

She whispered in her alto voice from directly in front of Uiharu.

“It’s true I developed the health management software known as ExitApp.”

“?”

(She isn’t just a seller? I found the developer already!?)

That was enough of a surprise.

Uiharu had trouble imagining someone who looked like that wearing a lab coat, but there were science-loving gyarus with bleached hair, tanned skin, gawdy nails, and beads. If first impressions were enough to know who someone truly was, no one would bother developing the AI-linked security camera networks meant for use in airports.

This unnecessary revelation only made Uiharu more of a threat. And with a real criminal, this could be enough of a reason to kill her.

But the girl didn’t stop.

“''I came here because I hate that people are making money off of this. I wanted to take out the people selling it.''”

“?”

Uiharu gasped for a reason separate from the hand on her collar or her back against the wall.

She wasn’t sure what to make of this.

But the high school gyaru looked to the side while keeping Uiharu pressed against the wall. She stared into the deep darkness of the long conduit and spoke in her alto voice.

“They’re here.”

“Wh-who is?”

Uiharu realized what was happening as soon as she asked. She heard footsteps from the darkness. And not just one set. There were several people approaching.

“The customers.” The blonde, tanned high school girl spat the words with her eyes still on the shadows. “I’ve already taken down a few of their sales routes, but they saw me in the area a couple of times. They already know I’m the developer. If they can’t nab me at the storefront, they’ll aim for my workshop.”

“…”

“Come with me.” She let go of Uiharu’s collar. “I’ll show you some mercy. If I left you hear, they might rip you to shreds.”

Uiharu choked while she finally searched through her skirt pocket for her modified phone. Whether she was aware of the stun gun feature or not, the high school girl scoffed at Uiharu’s action.

She whispered with the face of a fearless teenager.

“Most of the people who try out ExitApp are suicidal kids who don’t want to break the law. They keep using it as a part of their daily routine, but they abandon it before crossing that line. But that doesn’t apply to this group.”

“(Is she really aware I can do this? Let’s see, I need to start up the default camera mode, wait for the strobe flash’s high-capacity capacitors to fully charge, and then I can switch it on and off with the extra physical switch I added to the side.)”

“They’re willing to attack someone to get their hands on the perfect suicide tool, so these people won’t stop when they have to break the law. …Hm? What are you muttering abou-”

“Yah!”

“Gyahhhh!!!!!!”

When Uiharu squeezed her eyes shut and thrust out the object she held in both hands, the mysterious high school girl was easily brought to the ground. She had set the stun gun to a maximum voltage of nearly 200 thousand volts. Contrary to what dramas and movies would have you believe, stun guns did not usually fully knock people out. The high school girl was lying on her back with her limbs twitching, but she appeared to still be conscious. As a District 15 gyaru in a short skirt, the (surprisingly plain and white) underwear situation made her look especially pitiful. She was unfortunately unable to consciously shut her legs or fix her skirt at the moment.

Mysterious or not, she was still human.

Uiharu wiped the sweat from her brow while looking down at the mystery girl trembling in silence, but she had another issue to focus on.

Several sets of footsteps were still approaching.

She got the impression they would find her and easily capture her if she stayed here.

These people wanted ExitApp even if it meant assaulting someone, so she couldn’t expect much in the way of morality from them. Leaving the developer collapsed on the ground here would end badly and Uiharu was the one who had put her in that position, so she had no choice but to carry the older girl with her.

That meant it was time for a benevolent kidnapping.

The older girl’s curviness against her back irritated Uiharu. Simply put, the high school girl had bigger boobs than a middle schooler like Uiharu.

“Okay, she was putting on this invincible aura that practically dared you to try something and it’s only human nature to want to accept that challenge, right? Still, what was I thinking?”

“Yeah, that’s a really good question!! Pant, gasp. I was holding a peaceful, civilized conversation and then you tased me out of nowhere, you maniac!!”

“Ugh, ugh. Shut up. Why are you so heavy? I should just leave you here.”

“Please, don’t! I’ll tell you everything, so at least take responsibility by carrying me until I can move on my own!!”

===Part 6===

“Judgment? You’re kidding. Then I had this entirely wrong!”

“Who are you?”

“Amahebi Saeka. With my name and appearance, you can look up the rest in the Bank, right?”

“I don’t have a signal underground here.”

The conduit was part of a spiderweb-like network of underground pathways centered on a single main line, but it turned out they couldn’t return to the surface just anywhere.

With so many unexpected turns of event, Uiharu knew she needed to meet up with the more powerful Mikoto and Shirai as soon as she could, but she couldn’t seem to find an exit hatch.

The high school girl slumped limply over her back was heavy.

After the one path branched off into several and the branch they took branched off two or three times further, Uiharu came to a stop and lowered the heavy sack of flesh to the floor.

She looked back but saw no lights violently shining around. The footsteps didn’t seem to be directly pursuing them either.

“It wasn’t a suicide tool,” confessed Amahebi, her butt directly on the floor and her back against the wall. “The software known as ExitApp wasn’t developed as an efficient form of suicide.”

“Then what was it?”

“Using that health management tool causes the massage chair to move beyond its design limits and smash up the victim on the skeletal level.”

Uiharu wanted to say “and?”, but couldn’t get the word out.

The tanned high school girl continued on her own.

“''That result itself was a failure.''”

“Eh?”

“It was supposed to be a type of Testament using the chair’s electrode sleep assistance. But if you think of the Testaments as affecting the ‘software’ that are our memories, ExitApp was supposed to affect the ‘hardware’.”

“You mean the brain itself?”

“The idea was to choose which parts of the brain’s synapse wiring to cut off. Moving more than just the chair’s head was a bug and it was never designed to be used along with strong alcohol.”

“Choosing which parts of the brain’s synapse wiring to cut off? Now I’m even more confused. Why would you want a tool that did that?”

Making an ordinary health management app sounded more profitable than that.

Or an illegal suicide tool for that matter.

But Amahebi Saeka gave a self-deprecating laugh.

“It was supposed to solve a problem any Academy City kid should understand.”

“…”

The blonde, tanned girl could finally move her arm, so she tapped at her temple with a trembling finger.

“Academy City’s esper powers are created in here.”

“You don’t mean…”

“The wiring in your head is highly dependent on inborn talent and the esper development really only expands the traits that are already there. You might be able to remake a fire esper into a smoke esper, but you can’t fundamentally change a fire esper into a water esper. Just like a sunflower seed can’t bloom into a rose. It doesn’t matter how green your thumb is and it doesn’t matter if a selective breeding expert works at it, it isn’t going to happen.”

That was why some Academy City esper powers were rarer than others.

Everyone knew the #3 Level 5 controlled electricity, but that didn’t let you apply that to your own power. There were only 7 Level 5s in the entire city and no amount of hard work was going to make those powers easily mass produced.

It required innate genius.

There was an insurmountable wall in the way.

That “survival of the fittest” hierarchy plainly revealed something as poorly defined as the specs of people’s brains. No one had to explain it because everyone who experienced it instinctually understood how that food chain of predator and prey worked.

“''However.''” Amahebi went on to throw out all those assumptions. “What if you had the ability to freely close off your brain’s synapses wherever you wanted? What if you could alter the color of the synapse lines, including the nerve fibers, to change the conductivity of the electrical signals and redesign the basic structure of your brain’s wiring? Think of it like how a tree frog or chameleon uses its cell coloration to camouflage itself.”

“You could…''change your power after the fact''?”

“My short term research goal was to change the basic type of power, like from fire to water. Once I had done that, my long term research goal was to allow adaptable changes so you could switch between powers on the fly like you were using a multitool. A version of Dual Skill, basically. It really would be like a chameleon’s skin. Unfortunately, it all went wrong on the very first step.”

The experiment in cutting off synapse signals had failed.

An uncontrollable bug had transformed the chair into an execution machine that folded the user up. And when combined with strong alcohol, some people were unable to resist and ended up losing their lives.

“Then why is that failure being distributed? Didn’t you know you had failed!?”

“''Because so many people wanted the failure I had created.''”

Uiharu thought she must have misheard.

If that was true, then the developer herself may have found it even harder to believe than Uiharu.

“I shut down the project as a failure, but the program still leaked out. The people who wanted to die didn’t care if it was a failure. In fact, they were glad it hadn’t succeeded. There is no fully erasing something from the internet, so I uploaded tens of thousands of tools and codes with a similar structure but no actual effect. I also spread lots of false information about needing to consume caffeine or catechin instead of alcohol. But they still searched out the deadly combination from the ocean of misinformation.”

“…”

“Why are they so intent on finding it? That’s obvious. They only want one thing, so the numerical pros and cons are meaningless to them. They want to die. They just want to die. There is no reasoning them out of it when they are so focused on that one thing.”

That was frightening.

Real crimes didn’t always have an answer.

And even if you did track down the right answer, it didn’t guarantee a happy ending. There was nothing to be done if it turned out there was no way to stop the mass suicides.

Uiharu’s lips trembled, but she gathered all of her strength and managed to get her voice out.

“Was the completed tool leaked, or just a portion of the code?”

“?”

“If anyone could create it, no one person could monopolize the production and distribution route the way we’re seeing. The suicidal people are not creating the tool themselves, so does it require some special equipment or development software?”

“I’m not sure why that matters.”

“Amahebi-san! It might seem like ''second nature'' to you since you’re the developer, but not everyone can copy your talent. At the very least, I couldn’t create something like ExitApp. Don’t give up yet!! There’s something you know and I don’t. If we can eliminate that intermediary step, then no one can make ExitApp ever again!!”

The tanned high school girl thought for a moment and then groaned.

“The alcohol.”

“You mean how people need to knock themselves out with strong alcohol or they would leave the massage chair before ExitApp’s kill mode could do its job?” Uiharu frowned. “But I thought that used a video on how to efficiently knock yourself out.”

“It isn’t just a video,” spat the science gyaru. “It uses one, but it’s actually a program installed in the chair itself. It ensures the suicidal people don’t make any mistakes.”

“You mean…?”

“That is part of the current ExitApp. A special program is installed on the chair to manipulate the victim’s circulation and create a rapid intoxication like drinking in the bath. That way the size of your body and your alcohol tolerance don’t matter.”

There might be no eliminating the kill mode from ExitApp.

But what if they removed the part that knocked the victim out with alcohol?

Then everyone would leave the chair due to the pain and it wouldn’t function as a suicide tool.

“But that part will have already been copied countless times online. How could we erase that without a trace?” asked Amahebi.

“That part is distributed online using a video site, isn’t it? It isn’t handed over physically to make it harder to track?”

“Yes, but what does that-”

“''That puts it in my territory.''”

Uiharu didn’t let her finish.

The perfect suicide tool would lose its power if it lost its kill mode or the intoxication function. If the latter only existed online, then Uiharu could hunt it down. Once she was back on the surface and had a signal, she could end it all with her PDA.

And this was the perfect chance since the distributor would have their guard down.

If they switched to an offline exchange where both sides were cautiously hiding their identity, this wouldn’t work anymore.

So she had to delete every single copy before they could attempt a counterattack.

“C-can you really do that?”

“''I can.'' I could explain how, but it would be faster to get to the surface and show you.”

Uiharu Kazari took a breath and switched mental modes.

“And just to be safe, let’s make doubly sure. There is one way of ensuring no massage chair can ever kill anyone again, even if they start using offline distribution of the video.”

“How?”

“I take control of the data region used to install ExitApp. If I infect every massage chair in the world with a harmless virus, then there isn’t room for ExitApp anymore. I can do that with your help.”

It was like a bandage. If you covered the wound, the germs couldn’t get into your body. Since it was perfectly harmless, it might be more accurate to call it a security patch, but since she was taking over that memory without permission, it still technically counted as a virus.

“To make sure this works, I would like sample data for the kill mode and the intoxication function. You can get me that, can’t you? Give me that and get me aboveground and I can take care of the rest.”

“B-but the security differs between the manufacturer and model of the massage chairs. How can you possibly infect all of them!?”

“''I will find a way.'' Lives are on the line. If I say I will do it, I swear to you I will do it. So we need to get aboveground!!”

Someone suddenly emerged from the shadows.

And they spoke with a somehow absentminded tone.

“I won’t let you do that.”

The footstep seemed to only come later.

It was like spacetime was being distorted.

This conduit for network cables wasn’t known to the general public, so no one would show up there for no reason.

This only seemed to come out of nowhere to Uiharu because she couldn’t see every part of the incident.

This was probably someone who had been involved with ExitApp longer than her.

The newcomer looked to be college aged.

Her appearance wouldn’t normally have been alarming. Her hair was braided and she wore plain glasses. She wore an ankle-length skirt and a blouse with a cardigan worn over the shoulders, making her look quite guarded. She wore very little makeup for her age and had the looks of the knitter that every class seemed to have. She shouldn’t have made anyone fear for their life. Running into them out on the streets late at night, this braid woman would have seemed more comforting than the blonde, tanned gyaru.

Yet she terrified Uiharu.

It was impossible to predict what she would do next.

There were no hints to be found.

She had the air of unpredictable unexploded ordnance, like she would say hello with a smile and then say good day while stabbing you repeatedly. So Uiharu did not dare take a single step. She couldn’t do anything without thinking it through. The all-purpose spice of a polite smile wasn’t going to work here. One careless move would tread on one of the many landmines and instantly reveal who that woman really was. So Uiharu was trapped. There was nothing she could do.

Why was someone so clearly dangerous free to walk around unmonitored?

How far gone was Academy City if they couldn’t separate out someone like this who radiated thick, invisible walls in all 360 degrees around her!?

The woman smiled while standing off kilter.

“I ordered a guaranteed death with no pain or fear. Everything else is in place, so why has my ExitApp still not arrived!? …Because someone is screwing me over, like usual. All I want is happiness. And this is the only way. The perfect suicide tool is the only way to get Ta-kun to love me again. I don’t care what they say, it isn’t a lost cause.”

A guaranteed death, everything else, ExitApp, screwing me over, love me again.

The tanned high school girl had said there was no reasoning them out of it, but Uiharu made some guesses base on the bits and pieces of information and tried her best to put a stop to it.

She took a step through the minefield.

(Does she want to die to make her ex regret breaking up with her?)

“W-wait! You aren’t going to find happiness that way!”

“Oh, yes I will. I will claim happiness with Ta-kun for myself. As long as I get that woman to use the suicide tool, everyone will conclude she killed herself no matter how unnatural it might look, right?”

“Sh-she’s completely insane…”

The gentle smile split wide across her face.

Her eyes shined bright.

“Insane? You’re offering a tool that makes it look like someone killed themselves. ''How is that not the perfect murder weapon''?”

The woman’s voice seemed to melt from her tongue.

Uiharu had trouble breathing.

She had completely misread the worst possible use of a perfect suicide tool.

With this woman, it was beginning to evolve into ''something more than just a way to kill yourself!

“Ah, ahh, ah.”

Amahebi Saeka’s eyes widened past the limit and her mouth flapped wordlessly.

She must have thought the suicides were as bad as it could get.

She would have convinced herself it couldn’t get any worse.

But there was no bottom to the depths of human desire.

Humans would learn, adapt, and evolve.

The college woman’s voice wavered as she smiled faintly and listed as if drunk. She gave off the bewitching aura of a crazed woman. She possessed an intimidating air that existed beyond science – the same one that ancient artists had carved into their hannya masks.

It existed in a dimension separate from esper powers or talent.

Something unseen bound Uiharu and the high school girl’s souls.

The college woman did not move particularly quickly.

In fact, she moved slowly while lovingly rubbing her hand against her lower stomach.

That seemed to explain everything.

But Uiharu didn’t want accept it.

She didn’t want the venomous jellyfish’s bloody stingers to ensnare her soul any more than they already had.

This explained why she wore such a loose long skirt, it explained why she wore the cardigan for extra protection against the cold, it explained what had happened between her and Ta-kun, and it explained how someone who looked so gentle and harmless had become so thoroughly broken. Instead of a single point to avoid stepping on, this was a network of countless points, too many to keep hidden, and it ran through Uiharu’s mind against her will. It was like the work of malevolent stars – pulsars and quasars that used their unfathomably powerful flashes of electromagnetic waves to send out cosmic signals that destroyed people’s minds.

This destruction had to be something a middle or high school mind was not yet equipped to understand.

“Hee hee hee. So there’s nothing to worry about. Ah ha ha. Eh heh heh. Make sure to wish me happiness.”

Uiharu heard a series of quiet sounds like metal gears turning.

It made her think of a large utility knife used to cut thick cardboard.

But that wasn’t it.

The woman actually pulled out a metal measuring tape. She extended it from her hip like she was slowly drawing a sword from its scabbard.

It was such an unexpected choice, nothing she said seemed to fit together even as this developed into a real crisis, and the metal measuring tape’s edge provided the same fear as an actual blade. Everything about this situation was much too dangerous.

There was a complete lack of mutual understanding, like the crazy woman had forced Uiharu to play a deadly game of rock-paper-scissors where the loser was killed, but revealed three seconds before the game began that there was no such thing as rock, paper, or scissors in the game.

Was this really how it was going to start?

Was there any way to win or lose this!?

“Everything will be fine. Yes, just fine. Ta-kun and I are going to be so happy together. It doesn’t matter what I say here or who hears it because nothing can change how it all ends. Once I have the ExitApp – once I have that tool, I can rid both our lives of that filthy whore and give us a happy ending with smiles all around. So hand over the perfect suicide tool. Hand over my ''key to happinesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss''!!”

Uiharu was overwhelmed.

Her physical abilities didn’t even come into it. She ended up standing perfectly still while she heard something slicing through the air.

===Part 7===

Uiharu couldn’t move in that moment, so it was someone else who pushed her aside and stepped forward.

“Gahh!!”

It was the blonde, tanned high school girl.

She must have recovered from the stun gun, but she couldn’t deflect a blade even in top form.

“!!”

The measuring tape bent like a whip and sliced through the air. 

It left a gash on Amahebi Saeka’s cheek, and not a shallow one either.

But Uiharu Kazari’s gasp wasn’t in response to the injury itself.

The liquid dripping from it was colored bright green.

“My power is called Scorpion Tail.”

Maybe this had been the original cause.

She hadn’t been trying to create a perfect suicide tool. She had wanted a device that let her change her power to whatever she wanted.

ExitApp had been her way of physically removing the source of her complex and flying free.

“Yeah, I loathe this power!! ''A power that makes my blood weird colors is just creepy''!! But there’s nothing I can do about it because this is the power I’m stuck with!!”

The drops of blood changed color more vividly than liquid crystals.

From green to blue, from blue to red, and through several other colors before settling on black.

Amahebi herself had already hinted at the true nature of this power with its name: Scorpion Tail.

“Gahh!?”

It only took one drop.

When a single drop of blood took flight and was absorbed by the chest of the woman’s blouse, not even her bare skin, she jumped straight up. She tried to fall back, but her legs got tangled up, and she ended up leaning against the wall to her side.

The drop had landed on her chest, but her lips and eyelids were already swollen.

“Agh, what, huff, iz thad phower!?”

“My power seals my deadly will inside my own blood and transports it to a target. It’s technically classified as reverse psychometry because it forcibly sends the image in my head to the minds of whoever touches the object, but in my case, it only really works with creating poisons out of deadly images. But thanks to that, I can create any existing chemical poison like aconitine, ricin, and maitotoxin, as well as legendary poisons that probably aren’t actually true like the idea that mole, newt, and snake blood can put people to sleep.”

“!!!???”

“But don’t worry. I can recreate the effects of any poison in my rainbow blood. And I can control the toxins I create as easily as my own arms and legs.”

Eliminating the source of a complex was not the only way to overcome it.

She could also change how she used her power to change its definition in her mind.

When a poison was used to protect, it was known as medicine.

“I won’t let this affect anything in your belly. No matter what. The suffering will be entirely contained within your head.”

“Gbhgdhfalkubhbwerbnmnafahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

She wiped the blood from her cheek with her thumb.

The crimson drop shimmered like the surface of a CD and it finally stabilized as a golden liquid.

Launching that through the air with a flicking motion ended the battle.

The drop splashed onto the center of the woman’s forehead.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out. Amahebi gently caught her as she collapsed forward.

Only after flipping the woman onto her back did she notice someone else had collapsed too.

The woman wasn’t the only one with a non-red drop on her skin. Uiharu Kazari was also sprawled out on the hard floor.

Amahebi had poured all of her efforts into saving someone but she had only brought harm to the world.

“Ah, ahh…”

In the end, poison was no more than poison.

Try as she might, Amahebi Saeka could not become a medicine.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

She clawed at her hair and wept.

But she wasn’t even able to approach the person she had harmed.

A single drop of her flowing blood would kill the person she had wanted to protect.

Yet again, her hideous power stood in her way.

“I’ll be…fine.”

Nevertheless, she heard a voice.

“I’ll…be fine.”

“How!? What was I thinking!? I can control the toxins I create as easily as my own arms and legs!? Yeah, right! I haven’t changed at all!! It keeps happening over and over and over! Everything I create only makes the world worse!!”

“That isn’t…true.”

Uiharu was too weak to even get up, but she still smiled.

“Because…you can heal me.”

She took Amahebi’s hand.

She touched the body that could only produce poison.

“Ah.”

“If you can create the effects of any poison, then you can also create any medicine. So I know you can do it. ''You can overcome this.'' You’ve suffered enough already, haven’t you? Then you deserve something good for once.”

Amahebi could not shake off that hand.

It was so very weak, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She could fill the space a poison needed with a harmless poison. That would prevent the harmful poison from getting in, which meant it acted as a medicine. It was the same method Uiharu had hoped to use on the massage chairs.

Amahebi pressed her knees against the floor.

She directly faced the other girl once more.

She told herself now was the time to overcome this by saving the girl.

She held Uiharu’s other hand in her own and pressed her forehead against her as if praying.

A single drop fell from her.

It was colored ruby red.

She chose to believe that any poison could become a medicine if used right.

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