Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter5

Chapter 5

Part 1

There is a certain story.

There were two girls who were good friends. Girl 1 got a boyfriend. As a present, the boyfriend gave Girl 1 a necklace that had a very lovely stone in it.

Girl 1 was overjoyed by the present and wore it at all times.

But odd things started happening to her from that time on. Her face turned sickly, her health deteriorated, she was unable to fall asleep, and finally her hair started coming out. Girl 1 should have been happy with that necklace she loved so much, but instead she was cursed with bad luck. It was not much longer before she died.

Girl 2 inherited the necklace when Girl 1 died. According to an acquaintance of hers, the stone in the necklace was a uranium crystal. The details were unknown, but Girl 1’s boyfriend had given her a uranium crystal as a present. Girl 1 had been killed by the radiation.

“…Wow. That story’s in horrible taste as usual,” said Saten Ruiko, a girl who loved rumors.

She had been looking through a website dealing with urban legends. She had been chasing after the rumor of the Level Upper that sounded like a lie, but she still wished it was true. She had come to a dead end in her search and after a few twists and turns had finally ended up reading that completely unrelated urban legend.

Urban legend websites generally had two objectives.

The first was to gather together and introduce urban legends that were either circulating or had been circulating in the past. However, most people seemed to think that was not enough to warrant the site’s existence. Generally, those sites were only seen as proper sites if they also gave their own commentary or explained whether it could actually happen.

Most of the time, the opinions on the urban legends said they could not actually happen.

(They start by making you think it could actually happen, but then they search out all sorts of things denying its possibility and say it all with such a sense of superiority. It feels like they have their priorities backwards to me.)

However, she did at times understand the feeling of wanting to crush an urban legend because it was impossible if you thought about it scientifically. Urban legends could be incredibly creepy to the point of not being able to relax until you were able to utterly prove them wrong.

The story of the necklace of death had the following piece of additional commentary with it:

A crystal small enough to fit on a necklace would not have enough radiation to kill someone in such a short period of time. As such, the dramatic change shown in this story would not actually occur.

This urban legend has spread quite a bit in the past as well, but it seems to have been coming back recently. We are currently investigating what has caused this revival, but we can say that this is a very common pattern.

“…This may be an urban legend, but I prefer the more enjoyable kinds that have more dreams in them,” Saten muttered as she closed the browser window.

She had not been able to find the Level Upper that day either.

When she eventually found it, Saten intended to brag about it to Uiharu.

Part 2

“Yes, yes!! I checked, and it’s become a rather popular story especially on the internet! But that story really is in bad taste!!” Shirai Kuroko yelled into her cell phone as she rushed out of her dorm.

It was past curfew, but she could enter and exit fairly easily by teleporting. Also, it was hardly the time to worry about the curfew.

“Do you think Anti-Skill will do anything?” said Misaka Mikoto’s voice from the cell phone.

“With only this much information, I doubt it. And if I tell them, they would likely prevent me from taking action.” Shirai went over the information again in her head. “Essentially, Uiharu and I are the only ones that can take action.”

“Uiharu?”

“Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know her, onee-sama. She’s a colleague of mine. She’s the kind of Judgment member that mainly spends her time in front of a computer.”

“…That’s not much help.”

“Onee-sama, that kind of assessment is more than a little bit hurtful.”

“Anyway, it seems what I explained to you really is going to happen. I think the enemy is planning to use the urban legend of the necklace of death to carry out some kind of terrorist attack on Academy City.”

“I see. To be honest, this just does not feel real to me, but I will trust you, onee-sama.” Shirai frowned a bit. “But it feels like we need to tell that cooperative shopping mall to not get carried away. I can’t believe they would suspect you.”

“I’ve had about enough of it myself. But I’m being sheltered by some strange occult convenience store, so I’m managing for now.”

“Occult?”

“Well, here I’m having trouble for a different reason with the weird people like Lessar and Lancis.”

“…O-onee-sama! My bad feeling antenna is up to three bars! There isn’t someone other than me at your side, is there!?”

“Umm, there is. She’s really annoying, so she’s more or less the same as you. Anyway, you know what you have to do, right?”

“I have to go out and make sure there aren’t any suspicious necklaces showing up anywhere.”

“It doesn’t have to be a necklace,” said Mikoto cutting in. “Basically, it just has to be an incident that appears to be the same. It doesn’t even have to use any radioactive materials. Now that the urban legend has been spread in preparation, they could take action at any time.”

Whether electromagnetic waves were visible light, microwaves, or whatever else was determined by the wavelength. If they could produce electromagnetic waves with extremely high frequencies, they could produce the same results as the necklace of death.

“But would they even be able to get a team into Academy City with how heavily guarded it is?”

“I doubt it’s impossible,” Mikoto responded after thinking for a bit. “After all, I’m currently running around in a cooperative institution. …They have some kind of plan occurring right now.”

“…I first need a list of all the people from the shopping mall who are in the city after going through the proper procedures.”

Shirai hung up and called a different number.

She called Uiharu Kazari, the other Judgment member she had mentioned before.

“Have you finished the search!?”

“I’m still working on it. I know that 52 people from the shopping mall are here in Academy City. I have found a list of where they are staying, but 5 of them are listed as private, so I can’t locate them.”

“Private?”

“It isn’t too surprising. They are participants in a forum in the international conference hall in District 3. They’re being treated as VIPs, so their locations are probably being kept a secret as a means of preventing any terrorist attacks on them.”

“…Hm.” Shirai thought for a bit. “Uiharu. If someone was going to carry out a large scale terrorist attack that would utterly destroy all functions of the city, how many people do you think they would need?”

“I-I don’t know anything dangerous like that. Wait…what is going on? You told me to look that up, so I helped you, but is this some kind of dangerous situation?”

(…Well, I doubt they could do it with only 5 people.)

After that arbitrary conclusion, Shirai asked another question.

“How many groups of visitors are there?”

“Um…3 or 4. They’re things like staff for a cargo jet and dispatched groups of researchers…”

“Give me a list,” Shirai ordered. “If that’s all, it would likely be faster to just work without thinking too much about it.”

Part 3

Shirai Kuroko was a Level 4 Teleporter.

That meant that she could freely enter and exit most places as long as she paid attention to where any electromagnetic and ultrasonic sensors were.

Uiharu had sent a list to her cell phone that she was using to head to the hotel where one of the groups was staying at. She then entered one of the members’ rooms.

She of course did not knock.

Nor did she use a card key.

Places like hotels would have cameras set up in the public areas such as the lobby, the lounge, the elevators, and the emergency stairways, but all the other places tended to have laxer security. For instance, the hallways and customer rooms had no cameras for the sake of privacy.

As such, no one could stop Shirai from teleporting in undetected.

She checked to see if she could hear anything on the other side of the door and then unhesitatingly entered the room.

“Now then…”

Shirai pulled thin gloves from her skirt’s pocket and put them on as she looked around. As expected, no one was there. The lights were not on. Holding a penlight in her mouth, she checked the closet and the bedside table.

She heard Uiharu’s voice coming from her small cell phone that was hooked to her ear like a headset.

“Shirai-san, please be careful. We don’t know what it is, but there could be something there with similar effects to the necklace of death.”

“If it was that easy, this would certainly go a lot faster.”

“How about you use the simple detection tool provided by Judgment? It’s the thing you can connect to the lower connector on your phone that acts as a sensor and puts together data on the composition of the air and whether there are harmful electromagnetic waves there.”

“Hm?”

“We all underwent training on how to use it the other day, remember!? Or does someone with top grades in a high class school have the ability to sleep through lessons, too!?”

As Uiharu squealed an explanation at her, Shirai followed the instructions and attached an unfamiliar device to her phone.

Shirai had a habit of walking around with items that she had been provided even if she did not know how to use them. The reason she did not put any effort into teaching herself how to use them was simple.

(If I teleport it, anything can be used as a weapon. There’s no point in trying to go for two birds with one stone.)

With that arbitrary thought, Shirai put the small cell phone back to her ear and looked around.

The only piece of luggage seemed to be a large suitcase.

It was locked, but that was no problem for Shirai.

By teleporting just the outer suitcase, she managed to get out the items inside.

Even if the person was a complete subordinate working odd jobs on the outer edges of the plan, someone in a group planning to carry out a terrorist attack would need to be prepared.

There were two major categories those preparations fell under.

The first was things like firearms and blades that reinforced one’s strength.

The second was things like fake passports and disguising wigs that hid oneself strengthening one’s safety.

Shirai fished through the luggage for a bit, but…

(…It looks like this was a miss.)

Shirai came to that conclusion as she was sending each object back into the suitcase with her teleportation. Not only did she not find the mysterious object in question, but she did not even find a single gun.

She hadn’t thought she would find the actual object so easily.

Shirai teleported out of the room and headed for the hotel where the next group was staying.

The misses continued.

But then, there were only 4 groups on the list.

She made it to the last one before long.

Shirai’s expectations had not been wrong.

“…”

The instant she teleported inside the room, something seemed off.

No one was inside.

There were no sensors or traps.

But there was something clearly different from the other hotels that had been misses. It was too clean. Of course, hotel rooms tended to be that way, but after staying there for an hour, the guest’s smell tended to cling to the place. Normally, slight traces would remain in the bed or the bathroom, but there was nothing there. It was like a model room.

There were no suitcases, coats, or any other objects belonging to the person staying there.

Shirai pulled out a few devices from her skirt’s pocket and checked the doorknob for fingerprints.

Nothing remained.

(I know you don’t leave any fingerprints behind if you wear gloves…)

Shirai came to her conclusion while touching the cell phone on her ear with a finger.

(…but cleaners enter the room every day. Since even their fingerprints are gone, the person staying her was not someone who just so happened to be wearing gloves. They had to have at least wiped off the doorknob.)

“Uiharu, I’ve got a hit here.”

“What should I do?”

“This was the group sent here from the Russian shopping mall for business training. Get me pictures of the 18 members, their identities, their schedule in Academy City, their current locations…and, well, just send me as much information on them as you can find.”

Part 4

Inside the 177th Judgment Branch, Uiharu Kazari continued working.

At first glance, she was a girl with no characteristics that stood out, but the large number of flower decorations on her head completely overturned that initial impression.

While using a computer, she spoke into the cell phone she had switched to speakerphone.

“I’ve done a cursory gathering of data, but it seems like tidy official information. It looks like it may be difficult to determine where they currently are.”

“You have images of all their faces though, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then go looking through the recorded footage from the security cameras and robots from around the hotel. If you go back, you should be able to find them. From there, just check through the footage from the different cameras along the way to follow their route to where they are now.”

“Should I really be doing that?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

Shirai’s permission sounded rather arbitrary, but Uiharu still typed into the keyboard as instructed. Of course, what she was doing could not be done just with the authority of a normal member of Judgment.

(Now I don’t know who the real criminals are.)

“Found them. They used a classic technique.”

“?”

“In order to avoid being followed on the camera footage, they changed clothes or put on wigs at a few blind spots along the way. They were trying to prevent anyone from tracing them by altering their looks bit by bit.”

Normally, that method was used in a crowd to escape flesh-and-blood pursuers. With recorded footage that could be examined carefully again and again, someone who was constantly changing their clothes actually stood out from everyone else. It was basically announcing that they were up to no good.

“This isn’t even enough to fool facial recognition software,” Uiharu commented.

“You won’t be led astray by that, right?”

“They travelled using busses, the subway, taxis, and as many forms of transportation as they could manage. They split up to take multiple routes and occasionally double back or make large circles around the same place. Most likely, they are trying to throw off pursuers or are checking to see if they have any.”

Uiharu connected together the recorded camera footage, calculated out the path they had taken, and drew lines on a digital map.

“I’ve found it. I’ve found it. All the members that split up met back together at a single point.”

“Where?”

“An apartment complex for teachers in District 8. But almost no one is actually staying there. They are being rented by the wealthy as essentially ‘large closets’.”

Part 9

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