A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 21

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “What do you mean? I can use the Steel Glove like this, too. It does dig into me, though, in various places. I mean, Bayloupe was riding this thing all around the Tube— Hey, stop that; stop, please!! It can’t hold two people, and it’ll fall to pieces if your right hand touches it; please endure it and walk by yourself!!”

  Kamijou and Lesser struggled with each other, but it didn’t last long.

  Not that his Imagine Breaker had broken the Steel Glove or anything.

  What broke was the passage in front of them.

  With an explosive boom, the ceiling, made of snow, abruptly collapsed.

  It happened about a hundred meters ahead of them. The thick white ceiling—which was probably supported by something magical—had suddenly fallen, like a giant shutter dropping.

  In the blink of an eye, the passage was blocked.

  And it didn’t stop there.

  Right after came a bursting sound loud enough to burst eardrums.

  The passage’s ceiling continued to break and fall, one section at a time, as if from the foot of an approaching giant.

  If it caught them, it would bury them alive.

  “Crap!! Let’s head to the entrance for now!!”

  “You didn’t need to tell me!!”

  Kamijou and Lesser wheeled around and sprinted at full speed. Even as they did, the passage and rails vibrated with a low sound, the snowy ceiling about to turn into an avalanche that would swallow them whole. It was pretty much like a monster’s mouth was chasing them.

  “What?! Did my right hand break some spell supporting the snow?!”

  “Or else it’s a wonderful theme-park attraction that Fiamma thought up!! Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to use the same trick…!!”

  Whump-whump…The low noises continued.

  Both Kamijou and Lesser ran as fast as they could.

  As the collapse closed in on them, tiny ice particles whipped up.

  The cloud quickly overtook them. The collapse was right at their heels.

  But at that very moment, Kamijou’s body launched out of the entrance. Next to him, Lesser, without moderating her momentum, stumbled spectacularly onto the snow. But was it really a coincidence that he could see her underwear?

  Are…we good…?

  Hands on his knees and breathing raggedly, Kamijou went to offer her a hand. She lay faceup on the ground, catching her breath.

  But his motion stopped halfway through.

  He’d figured it out.

  The collapse hadn’t started because his right hand had nullified sorcery holding up the snow. At the same time, it also wasn’t Fiamma’s side blowing up the passage to prevent their entry.

  “Damn it…,” he murmured, hearing a high-pitched, flutelike noise.

  The true cause was…

  “Academy City’s bombarding the base?!”

  Kamijou snatched Lesser up from the ground by the collar, swung her around, and pushed her toward the hill’s slope that used to be the tunnel entrance.

  A moment later, something came.

  In the sky, veiled in white snow clouds, something glittered. No—it wasn’t just one thing; they numbered fifty, at least. The shrill, flutelike whistling was the sound of metal tearing through the air at supersonic speed. And those hunks of metal were drop cannons—weapons that first used gunpowder to fire artillery shells fifteen centimeters across and about seventy centimeters long up into the air approximately five hundred meters, before precisely guiding them to a target by moving their tail assemblies.

  There was no time to think about where they’d fall.

  Besides, they weren’t picking their targets carefully. They were bombarding everything, from the base itself to the sensors and other equipment deployed in the surrounding area.

  Sound and light exceeding his senses’ tolerance burst out, rattling Kamijou’s and Lesser’s bodies. The light was intense pain, and the sound was an impact. The white flash was so powerful that Kamijou couldn’t tell the difference between when his eyes were closed and when they were open. Despite having Lesser pressed against the hill’s slope, he could feel her slipping away from his hands. Except…that wasn’t quite correct. He’d been on top of her, and now his body was being blown into the air by the shock waves.

  Over thirty seconds of pure stupefaction.

  Or perhaps it was actually only an instant, and the afterimage burned into his eyes was still overloading his senses.

  “Les…ser…”

  When he squeezed out a word, his voice sounded abnormally hoarse. Pain shot past his temples, like he’d been staring at a fluorescent light for too long.

  He didn’t have time to leisurely tend to his wounded body.

  Grrr-grrr-grrr-grrr!! Heavy-sounding caterpillar treads had reached his ears.

  The smell of exhaust, the kind that would irritate your chest, mixed into the white, snowy scenery.

  An Academy City mobile unit…!!

  Ignoring the body heat draining from him, Kamijou buried himself deep into the snow.

  He had entered Russia illegally. If they found him like this, they’d arrest him for sure. He couldn’t let himself be caught now—he had to save Index.

  The caterpillar-tread noise and exhaust gas came in a few different varieties.

  Small, airborne tanks were at the formation’s front, probably made for dropping out of transport planes and bombers, with special vehicles loaded with long-range missiles and rockets following in their wake. Many personnel carrier trucks, too, each with over twenty powered suits on board. The unarmed, armored eight-wheelers accompanying the unit could have been power supply vehicles for recharging powered suits or UAVs. The ones with all the antennas on them might have been command vehicles for controlling unmanned units deployed in the surroundings.

  Sporadic artillery fire began coming from the base. The Russian military was counterattacking.

  But the return fire was erratic. Academy City’s first wave had probably reduced their combat strength by quite a bit. That didn’t matter much if even one of those arcing projectile explosives landed nearby though, since it would turn Kamijou and Lesser into messy chunks of meat regardless of how the battle was going.

  “(…Now’s our chance!!)”

  Then, Lesser, who had gotten close to him without him realizing, quietly spoke to him, letting herself sink into the sloped snow like he was.

  Kamijou stared at her. He couldn’t wrap his head around what she was saying.

  “(…Our chance?! The Russians started shooting, too. It’s gonna turn into a full-on tank battle any minute now!!)”

  “(…That’s why we’ll use the confusion to sneak into Fiamma’s base.)”

  Lesser watched the powered suits closely as they got off the trucks and entered combat readiness.

  “(…Why do you think the Russian military is defending? Fiamma doesn’t want to move. Either he doesn’t want them to know he’s hiding there, or he’s putting some sort of sorcery to work. Anyway, if we go now, we can get to the base from the ground. Now that the underground route is blocked off, it’s our only choice.)”

  Academy City and the Russian forces had begun their artillery combat.

  The base, despite being dozens of kilometers away, was now within weapon range—which meant victory, essentially, was already determined. One normally positioned defensive lines farther in front than this. Either Academy City had already wiped out their defensive line, or they’d used supersonic bombers to rapidly drop forces behind it.

  She was right—if they took advantage of the chaos as they charged in, they might be able to get into the facility.

  “(…What do we do, then? They might be immersed in the battle, but if we just stand up and start walking, they’ll see us and shoot us.)”

  “(…We’ll steal a powered suit.)” Lesser regripped her Steel Glove in both hands. “(…You probably don’t need complicated control techniques for them. If they follow the movement of your arms and legs, even we should be able to work them witho
ut any special training.)”

  “(…You make it sound so easy. Those things can withstand thirty-millimeter gatling guns. My right hand won’t do anything to them. How do we take one down?)”

  “(…Obviously, it’s going to be me.)” Lesser lowered herself like a predator on the hunt, weapon in hand. “(…We don’t know if they understand that base’s importance, but they can’t beat Fiamma with the gear they have. Fiamma doesn’t seem to want to move at the moment, for some reason, but he’ll show up if the base ends up at a serious disadvantage. If we can’t get in before that, everyone will die.)”

  “(…Lesser!!)”

  “(…If you want to praise me, you can do it in bed while you pet my head.)”

  Ignoring Kamijou trying to stop her, Lesser silently began to move. She seemed to be after a powered suit that had just passed nearby and now had its back to them, but the machine’s hand gripped a giant shotgun. One of the anti-shelter weapons he’d spotted in Avignon, France.

  Nobody could get hit by one of them and still be in any kind of shape to appear at their own funeral.

  Right now, Lesser was basically trying to kill a large beast with a primitive spear or club. Maybe she had traditional techniques, too, but from what he could see from the outside, it would virtually be an acrobatic stunt.

  “(…Shit!)” he murmured to himself, still deep in the snow.

  He had other concerns besides Lesser.

  Yes—

  “(…There should be sorcerers in addition to the Russian military inside Fiamma’s base. When we snuck in before, there were almost two hundred Russian Catholic sorcerers in the big room with him. If they make an appearance, they could even topple Academy City’s advantage. But there’s no sign of them. Does that just mean they’ve already joined the battle? Or have they not shown up yet? If not, then why? Even Fiamma can’t possibly want that base to fall. Then why does he need to conserve them and helplessly draw Academy City’s forces toward him?)”

  None of these words were spoken in hope of an answer.

  He was only saying them to himself so he could get a handle on what his questions were again.

  And yet…

  “Hmm? That’s obvious. It’s all to lure you in—you and your precious right hand.”

  …an answer came.

  Dumbfounded, Kamijou searched for the source of the sound. It wasn’t in front of or behind him or to the left or right. The voice had come from inside his clothes.

  “I may have caused this war, but I wouldn’t want your right arm to get caught up in some petty cannon fire. And if people show up saying ‘We don’t know what he’ll use it for, but it seems essential to Fiamma of the Right’s plan, so we’ll just kill the kid and be done with it’—that would be an issue, too. I left a hole, I suppose you could say, on purpose, to get my hands on it quickly.”

  “…”

  Kamijou had encountered Fiamma in the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations. The encounter had technically ended as a draw, but he’d stolen Sasha Kreutzev and destroyed their whole party. They’d pretty much lost that fight.

  At the time, Kamijou had wondered why the man had so readily retreated. Fiamma wanted his right arm, and he’d been in full control of the battle. And yet, he’d let Kamijou escape for the sole reason that carrying both Sasha and Kamijou’s right arm with him at the same time would be inefficient.

  Why didn’t he ever think Fiamma of the Right would come up with a plan after that? He couldn’t have only wanted to leave them a message in bad taste.

  He’d search for where Kamijou was.

  And once he found him, he could attack at any time.

  With accuracy and precision.

  Shit…!!

  Kamijou heard several shrill, flutelike noises overhead at once.

  Immediately, he tried to look up.

  But he was too late.

  Boom!! A rumbling broke out, enough to shake the white land itself.

  A rumbling from under his feet.

  2

  Selick G. Kirnov let out a groan.

  Where am I? he wondered.

  It was a dark room. His body had been tied to a chair placed in the center. In front of him, a few steps away, was an outlined square of light—probably a door, he reasoned. The light was filtering in through the gaps.

  That was the only light source, however. No windows or light bulbs, so he could only see vague silhouettes of the objects near him.

  Something like metal—like blood.

  The smell pressed against his chest, and it gave him a bad feeling about all this.

  After all.

  He had an idea what was happening.

  “…Let’s make this quick.”

  He heard a voice.

  And then a clack.

  The sound came from in front of him. Someone had set a wooden chair down on the floor and must have sat in it. With almost no light in the room, only a pair of red eyes gazed directly at Selick.

  “You can be honest. You can lie. You can even stay quiet. After all, I’ll measure what’s in your mind by the response you give to my questions. Think of it as an advanced lie detector. It’ll all be over soon anyway.”

  Snap!! A pale-blue flash of light covered Selick’s vision for just a moment.

  He thought it was a camera.

  But no. It was a spark of high-tension electrical current. It had come off of a different person, a girl standing immediately behind the red-eyed man.

  “She can control electricity. That’s the kind of esper she is. An esper—you know what that is, right? I know you at least get Daihasei Festival broadcasts here…and in your line of work, it’s natural you’d be familiar with ’em.”

  “…”

  Sweat broke out on Selick’s face.

  The red-eyed person ignored him and spoke.

  “I want to know why jerks like you are hiding out around here…Oh, and again, you can answer however you want. The kid behind me is gonna measure all your brain’s electrical signals anyway. Right—I know. I have an idea. Let’s do it this way. I’ll ask a question. What were you looking for when you came to the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations? And you answer like this: ‘I was searching for something important on my superior’s orders.’ That’ll be good. And then we look at your mind, see how firmly you agree or reject what you’re saying, use that as a key to search the region of your brain where you store memories, and we’re done. My investigative methods might lack delicacy, but eh, don’t let it bother you.”

  Selick had received so much training not to talk.

  And just as much to make them think he was confessing, when he was really passing them fake information.

  However.

  They’d just told him they could look into his mind whether he agreed or refused. How was he supposed to stop them from doing that?

  In any case, Selick G. Kirnov had one thought.

  Don’t let them follow their plan.

  If the enemy could read his mind unconditionally, they would have scooped out the necessary information while he’d been unconscious. They were only bothering to question him like this because they needed to. So if he didn’t let them stick to their plan to get information, he might be able to defend it to the last.

  He felt the will to resist.

  He would find a thread to counterattack.

  And then.

  As though reacting to Selick’s inner thoughts, despite him not having said a word, the red-eyed person smoothly pointed his index finger at Selick’s face.

  No.

  Strictly speaking, behind him.

  What’s…?

  Since he was tied to the chair, he couldn’t see very far behind him by twisting his neck. He could only get little glimpses out of the corner of his eye.

  That was when he heard the creaking.

  It sounded almost like a thin rope squeezing something, but the noise was heavier and eerier.

  Barbed wire.

  The stench, like metal and blood, p
lunged through Selick’s nose down into his lungs.

  In the same moment, he realized what he’d gotten a glance at.

  Barbed wire, hanging from fixtures in the ceiling. Its sharp barbs held about an armful’s worth of flesh onto them. He didn’t know what kind of flesh. It was dark red, and the skin seemed to have all been removed. But here and there, on that flesh, small bits of what looked like cloth clung to it.

  Yes.

  As though…

  A person’s head and arm had been severed, and all their skin flayed, then the remainder was tied up with barbed wire and strung up—would it turn into something like this?

  “…???!!!”

  Selick G. Kirnov almost lost control over his breathing. When he looked again, several other pieces of barbed wire were hanging, too. No flesh on them. Instead, seven chunks had been torn apart and were now lying on the floor. The weight had probably been too much.

  Including the hanging one, there were a total of eight. Things that looked like dark-red scraps of cloth clung to them. They’d changed colors quite a bit, but he recognized them. It was the outfits they’d been wearing before.

  In the dim room, the monster only noticeable by his red eyes told him quietly, “Uncooperative—every one of them. I know it’s fastest to have the brat behind me read your mind, but it doesn’t take much to make me violent.”

  Selick heard a strange rattle-rat-rat-rat-rat-rat-rat-rat-rattle.

  It was coming from his feet. The chair’s legs were tapping against the floor—in time with the strange trembling that had overtaken him.

  The red-eyed person ignored it and parted his lips into a smile. Bringing his face close to Selick, he said, “We don’t have any more hostages. Don’t make this hard for me.”

  Accelerator and Misaka Worst opened the door and left the room.

  The place they’d just been in wasn’t a gruesome torture chamber, but a storehouse for preserving food. In fact, the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations apparently didn’t have torture chambers to begin with.

  “Well, that was pretty easy. What a bore,” said Misaka Worst. “He was a Russian spy, right? With all that anti-torture training? I thought they all had tolerance for physical violence.”

  “Deception never changes. It’s about not giving them a chance to make rational decisions.”