A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 21 Read online

  “Hamazura. You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry! But I just, I just…!!”

  Seeing that Hamazura was on the verge of tears, Takitsubo, even as she complained, softened her expression a little and gently rubbed his back.

  “…”

  Meanwhile, Academy City’s strongest Level Five leaned against the wall quietly, arms folded.

  This place held no clues to save Last Order, either.

  Just a few hours earlier, hearing that news might have caused intense impatience and fear to burn within him. Or maybe he would have raged, demanding that Elizalina relieve Last Order’s pain, even for a second or less, claiming even a futile struggle was enough for him.

  Something inside him seemed to be changing, little by little.

  Like how steel’s properties changed after burning ardently, then suddenly cooling down.

  …Yelling and throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to make the situation any better, he thought, digesting everything he had learned. Either way, I know we don’t have much time. Which means I definitely don’t have time to waste on pointless shit anyway. If I struggle for stopgap measures and use up all the time I’ve gained, it’ll catch up to us in the very end.

  Making the decision immediately, Accelerator took out the sheaf of parchment. “Feel free to give your treatment in your way. But first, answer my question. Can you read this thing?”

  “Given time, I believe there’s a possibility I could.” Elizalina nodded slightly. “The text on the surface is only a foothold for decoding the contents. From what I can see, it looks like Russian Catholic, so I might be able to, but it will probably take a while. Do you want to leave it with me anyway?”

  “No.” Accelerator waved the parchment a little as if to confiscate it. “I just needed to know if it was possible. You focus on treatment.”

  “I…”

  And then Hamazura, who had been listening to them, opened his mouth to speak.

  But he couldn’t form any actual words.

  Accelerator sniffed at him. Maybe the guy assumed being openly joyous about his own companion being saved was rubbing salt in Accelerator’s wound, since there was no end in sight for him yet.

  “I don’t have time, either. I’m gonna get going, if you don’t mind.”

  As Accelerator moved toward the door on his crutch, it wasn’t the speechless Hamazura but Elizalina who asked him this, not particularly hopefully: “Any leads?”

  “Maybe not, but I’ll find one.”

  After leaving the hospital room, Accelerator called out to a soldier walking down the passage. This wasn’t a peacetime medical facility. Originally, it was a fortress designed for war—they’d simply lugged some medical equipment inside. It was more military than anything else.

  “How are those spies I weeded out?”

  “We’re, uh, interrogating them, but things don’t look hopeful,” said the soldier, withering. “We’re not experts at coaxing people to talk, and Russian spies get assigned to several small cells for a single operation. It’s possible they don’t even know any intel beyond what they needed.”

  “That so.”

  “Where are you headed? I can bring you there if you want.”

  “Don’t bother,” Accelerator said, waving a hand haphazardly at him. “I’ll try going after an information source who’s a bit more reliable.”

  The soldier frowned, but Accelerator wasn’t duty-bound to explain anything more to him.

  After leaving, Accelerator walked through the long passage to a different hospital room from Elizalina’s. Without knocking, he opened the door.

  The occupant was someone that, strangely, wasn’t tied up.

  Maybe that was another of the Level Zero’s ideas.

  “…Misaka Worst,” he muttered.

  The girl sitting on the bed, who looked about high school age, looked at him with a scornful glare.

  A unique human clone created in a project called the Third Season, based on the third-ranked Level Five’s somatic cells.

  She wore mostly white combat gear for her clothing, but her right arm hung from a cast and a belt. Accelerator had snapped it when he became enraged during their battle. She had large pieces of gauze in other places, too, like from behind her ear to the back of her neck.

  Two enemies.

  Two people who would stab each other in the heart without so much as a word passing between them.

  “What might’cha be lookin’ for today?”

  Just by shfiting a few millimeters, Misaka Worst created an expression that would have made anyone uncomfortable.

  It seemed almost as though she’d prepared it beforehand.

  “If you saved Misaka in that situation, her only value would be information. Unfortunately for you, Misaka doesn’t have the programming to tell you whatever you want. Which means it’s as clear as fire what happens next. Still, even though it was necessary, healing Misaka only to break her all over again shows what good taste you have.”

  “Help me.”

  “With what? Why? How?”

  “The Russians planted some bugs and I found a bunch. They’ll spit out fragments of information, some real and some lies. Figure out which is which for me. With your knowledge, I might find a clue.”

  “Your reasoning?”

  “The timing of your attack.” Accelerator shook the rolled-up stack of parchment. “It was right after I tried to ask some lady named Vodyanoy about this parchment. Your interruption felt contrived. Maybe they were just manipulating you to make sure I didn’t find a lead. It’s possible that if I combine the intel in your head and the Russian spy information, I’ll come up with something.”

  “Not that. What’s your reasoning that Misaka needs to help you?”

  Misaka Worst grinned.

  Her words seemed to purposely place herself in a dilemma. Perhaps a person who had gazed upon a world through eyes laden with malice wouldn’t feel any hesitation at being hurt.

  However.

  His face remaining steady, Accelerator answered, “The Third Season isn’t on the winning side or anything, here. Unless you’re more of an idiot than I thought, you know that.”

  “…”

  “Those guys in Academy City plan to use the Misaka network for something. Meanwhile, you came after the kid and me to reconnect the malfunctioning network…But why? I don’t know how many thousands of somatic cell clones have been created since the Third Season got going for real, but if you’re all the new network, you share the same fate. Either someone will use and discard you for their own ends, or they’ll reconstruct the network without even being able to do that. Whichever happens, you’re stuck. We’re talking about people who consider the slaughter of twenty thousand puppets to be a success. I’m sure you realize they’re not gonna use you in any kind of decent way.”

  “Is that why I have to help you?” Misaka smirked. “To join hands with not only an enemy, but one who stands at the dead center of hate and malice?”

  “You said you had a mechanism that prioritizes picking up negative emotions from the network, like malice or loathing or whatever, right?”

  “So what?”

  “Is that shitty, evil brain of yours really considering something as admirable as staying loyal to your master who’s using you as a disposable pawn? You know, I heard from that kid that not even one more of you can die right now.”

  “Even if that was true, that doesn’t mean listening to you will solve anything. It would just shorten Misaka’s life span, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah? Then it’s time to make a deal.”

  “What?”

  “Project Dark May.”

  “…You can’t be serious.”

  “A project that tried to apply my ability-control method to boost espers’ personal realities. They apparently got a little out of it, but never anything that led to a Level Five. The only way for you to be someone they can’t replace is to gain abilities the other Sisters don’t have. So? If you analyze my fight
ing style, you might be able to find a way out.”

  “…”

  For a few seconds, there was silence.

  It wasn’t time used to think.

  Her life wasn’t important to her.

  Anyone could have seen that from her words and actions thus far.

  The scales of this deal tipped based on whether it would be fun. Whether it was worth getting a taste of, even if it meant turning her back on the giant organization of Academy City.

  She was giving it close consideration.

  Rolling the malice around in her mouth, tasting it to see if it was worthy.

  And then she replied with a smile.

  In accordance with her production objective, Misaka Worst took up her malice once more.

  “Misaka understands…Yeah, that would be more like this Misaka. Probably more effective than bringing that painfully adorable command tower’s face of suffering in, in an appeal to goodwill or charity.”

  “I’ll find a clue to wiping out the kid’s ailment. You look for a different route so they don’t use you and lose you. We’ll fight Academy City. We’ll outsmart them. Our interests are aligned now. If you get it, quit whining and do something.”

  “Still, I have to say…”

  Misaka Worst rose from the bed she’d been sitting on, giving a slight wave of her elbow on her right arm, fixed in place by the cast.

  “They tuned Misaka specifically to kill Academy City’s number one. Can’t believe the day has come where even after all this, she’d give one of those insincere business smiles in agreement.”

  Her allusive words were probably something like a personal quirk; she expressed negative emotions from the network easily. She’d rub him the wrong way, even if she didn’t mean to. Especially when it came to interactions with Accelerator, she’d always do that.

  In response, Accelerator glanced at her cast, then moved his lips, his next words barely coming out.

  “…Sorry. That was my bad for letting them manipulate me like that.”

  For a moment.

  Misaka Worst’s face, painted over with malice, took on an expression that really didn’t seem to be thinking anything, like her thoughts had ground to a halt. Frankly speaking, it was a blank look.

  “Pff-hya!”

  And then.

  Misaka Worst, who had just stood up on the floor on her own feet, rolled back onto the bed again.

  “Ah-hya-hya-hya-hya!! What the hell?! What the hell was that about?! They went through all that to give me a body, tuned me specifically for the battlefield, and now this!! They could have at least put me at the top of the evil ladder so everyone hated me! Seeing you make such a meek little expression is really calling my own existence into question here!! Hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya!!”

  “…To hell with villains,” spat Accelerator in response as Misaka Worst held her stomach and flailed her arms and legs. “I got to the top—and that didn’t make the kid’s life the least bit safer. I don’t have a reason to bother with that anymore.”

  Yes.

  Neither that Level Zero nor that monster named Aiwass belonged strictly to good or evil to begin with. If he wanted to fight people like that, he couldn’t stick to an easily defined side.

  Tears forming in her eyes, her voice strangely refreshed in contrast to her sneering, Misaka Worst asked, “A monster like you that’s so deep in the mud—even if you got out of the darkness, where would you go?”

  “Hell if I know. I’ll find a place,” answered Accelerator, sounding for all the world like he found simply replying to her annoying. “Both of us are monsters those Academy City bastards purposely programmed hate into…I doubt I can abandon all that responsibility, and I don’t want to think about it, but at the very least, they cast their lines, and we took the bait like dumb-ass fish. Which means what? Reaching the pinnacle of evil wasn’t fighting against them—it was literally just running along the track we were supposed to be on.”

  “…”

  “This time, they’ll pay for this. We’ll rebel against them for real. I’m sick and tired of dancing in the palm of their hand. And I don’t care if it means doing things that don’t suit me.”

  As he spoke, Accelerator slowly reached out with his free hand.

  Almost as if asking for a handshake from a compatriot he’d trust his back to.

  “Please.”

  In that instant, Misaka Worst fell silent, as though time had stopped.

  But that didn’t last more than a few seconds.

  As if her pent-up feelings burst out all at once, Misaka Worst cradled her stomach and swung her legs around on the bed, back and forth, tears even coming to her eyes. “Hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya!! Are you stupid? Are you stuuuuuuupid or something?! Wow! That idiotically serious look is just wow!! Ah-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya!!”

  Rolling on the bed, she continued her bizarre cackle, this time hysterical enough to make one wonder if her diaphragm had actually torn.

  But eventually, she curled up, and from that position, she sprang to her feet.

  She firmly grasped the hand extended to her with a smack!!

  A sharp sound echoed in the hospital room, similar to the kind made when catching a baseball with a baseball glove.

  For her as well, someone drowned in malice, the act of taking someone’s hand must have demanded determination in its own right. And Misaka Worst had overcome it. Their linked hands, the handshake between two who had once been after each other’s lives, proved that.

  Misaka Worst stood up, hand still in the grip, like she was a wife being escorted. Giving a mean-spirited smirk, she spoke to the one who was her fated enemy. “Same goes for Misaka. But isn’t this the first time you’ve ever held someone’s hand like this?”

  “…No,” murmured Accelerator, looking away slightly. “I’ve done that a lot before—with an annoying kid who has the exact same face as you.”

  Recalling the one girl due to the sensation of their connected hands, he renewed his resolve.

  This wasn’t the end.

  Once more.

  Without fail.

  CHAPTER 6

  True Darkness Unfolding

  Up_the_Castle.

  1

  Nothing was around.

  The area was only a snowfield to begin with, but every last thing that could provide cover had been removed from around Fiamma’s base. Even the ubiquitous conifer trees were absent, nevermind man-made structures. The snowfield sprawling before them was smooth, prepared in such a way to quickly locate anyone approaching and accurately fire missiles into their midst.

  From a spot just outside that wall of firepower’s effective range, Touma Kamijou peered down at the white snow.

  And into a giant hole.

  Originally, this had probably been a low hill or some similar landform. The hill’s slanted surface gave way to a well-hidden tunnel about six feet across. Rather than going straight ahead, the hole appeared to lead farther downward.

  “…Another secret base,” he muttered, sounding half astonished. “Secret bases all over the place.”

  “Why are you so surprised? Japan’s Academy City would be far more advanced than this. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lake there split open and a giant robot came out,” answered Lesser in a playful tone, going past him and slipping into the tunnel.

  It wasn’t pitch-black inside the tunnel, which was fully covered on all sides with snow. Naked light bulbs hung from the walls at regular intervals. As they proceeded in deeper, the space widened little by little. After walking about fifty meters, they reached a freight train stop.

  But—

  “…Nobody’s here.”

  “No train, either, it seems.”

  At first, they’d been hiding behind objects to try to sneak a peek, but when they’d confirmed the total absence of people, they exchanged glances and stepped into the stop.

  It was a different stop than the one they’d snuck into before, but the layout was similar. The differences amounted to the
lack of any freight train or wooden loading containers. The space, illuminated by several light bulbs, felt unnatural, wrong—like a house the residents had left without remembering to turn off the lights.

  Kamijou, drawn to the metal tracks, squatted beside them and put his ear to the cold rail. “No shaking at all. Can’t smell any diesel exhaust smoke, either…It doesn’t even seem like the train’s running nearby.”

  “…Then maybe Fiamma already finished bringing the last of the supplies into his base.”

  “But that would mean…”

  Kamijou and Lesser exchanged soured looks.

  It was about twenty-five miles from here to Fiamma’s base. If they couldn’t sneak aboard a freight train, they’d have no choice but to go through the snowy cave on foot. It was far enough that even if they had asphalt underfoot, one big earthquake could have them designated as stranded.

  Lesser put the Steel Glove on her shoulder again. “Okay—all right. I have a plan.”

  “R-right. I should have expected a professional sorceress to have some kind of backup plan. We can’t use up all our stamina just walking, then face Fiamma while our calves are about to explode. It would be awful.”

  “Uppies, please.”

  “I’m going to knock your lights out.”

  Frustrated with himself for having embraced even a momentary hope, Kamijou looked down the long twin rails.

  It looked like walking really was the only thing they could do.

  Deciding it was better than going aboveground and getting pelted by the grenade launchers guarding the base, he forced himself to get pumped up.

  “Let’s go, Lesser. Or do you want to mind the place while I’m gone?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Make sure you remember this, please. Your dear Lesser has been admirable in her unswerving loyalty.”

  As Lesser spoke, she moved next to Kamijou, but then for some reason positioned the Steel Glove upside down, skillfully balanced it, then straddled its grip like a witch’s broomstick. The four blades wriggled and squirmed like fingers, sending her body forward.

  Kamijou looked at her as though he’d discovered a traitor. “…Lesser, what’s that?”