A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 21 Page 9

  Then the door flew open with a bang!!

  Accelerator appeared.

  “You— Did you see outside?! The hell’s going on, damn it?!”

  “It must be Fiamma. To think he would shake the four planes…”

  Elizalina frowned, then disappeared out the doorway Accelerator was standing in. Though the building they were in was a field hospital, it was originally an old fortress. It didn’t have any windows, so they couldn’t tell what it was like outside.

  Hamazura was curious, too, but right now, Takitsubo mattered more.

  She’d fallen on the floor, so he went to pick her up to return her to the stretcher. But then he noticed something strange. When he lifted her, she didn’t feel like a bag packed with mud like she had before. She was lighter. She was actually paying attention, attempting to shift her body weight.

  Her consciousness had returned, properly reaching all her extremities.

  More than anything else, that was a massive sign of improvement for Hamazura.

  “Hamazura…?”

  “You’ll be okay,” he reassured her, before losing all his energy in relief.

  He had somehow ended up being held in Takitsubo’s small hands instead of the other way around, so Hamazura decided he would at least keep his mouth working. “I’ll explain everything to you later. Just let me say this now—you’re going to be okay. You’re not fully cured, and we’ll probably need Academy City to completely deal with the aftereffect stuff. But for now, the Crystals won’t make your condition any worse than this. Our lives aren’t even in danger anymore. So you’ll be okay…And now it’s our turn to go on the attack.”

  He felt Takitsubo’s body’s warmth for the first time—the physical warmth any normal girl would have.

  She didn’t feel unnaturally warm, like she would if she was running a fever.

  After briefly checking her over, he eventually left Takitsubo’s embrace, little by little.

  She could stand on her own two feet now.

  As she sat down on the stretcher, Hamazura spoke to her again in slow tones. “I’ll go call a nurse. Do you need water? If you’re hungry, I can have them get some fruit, too.”

  “Hamazura. What do we do now?”

  “If we’re serious about going toe to toe with Academy City, we can’t stay here forever. We threw off their pursuit by going to groud in the Alliance, just like we planned. Next is going back into Russia and searching for a way to negotiate with them.”

  After saying all that, he paused.

  Looking into Takitsubo’s eyes, he said, “But I’m not saying we have to do it together. You’re still recovering. You can wait here—”

  “Hamazura,” interrupted Takitsubo, “which would wake you up: a kiss or a slap?”

  “When you put it like that, it only makes me want to leave you here more.” Hamazura roughly ran a hand through her hair and looked toward the door. “I’ll find us some transportation. I’d feel bad stealing a car from the folks who saved us, but—”

  Then.

  It happened.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw scattered documents. This was a temporary field hospital, but originally it was an Alliance military facility that had been furnished with medical equipment. Because the Alliance had hastily converted it into a medical facility, military-related devices and documents would probably still be around.

  The documents that had caught his attention turned out to be a bundle of faxes.

  Hamazura couldn’t read Russian, but he recognized the attached photograph.

  It was the settlement where Digurv and the others were from.

  “…Regarding the Alliance of Independent Nations’ admission applicants and their problems.”

  Takitsubo, peering at it from behind Hamazura, read the Russian written on the report to him. Hamazura frowned and said, “You mean…Digurv’s settlement wanted to be part of the Alliance?”

  To begin with, the settlement was near the border with the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations—and an area that was being requisitioned by the Russian military. They’d scattered land mines almost as harassment, and there was also the privateer raid to think about. The desire to join the Alliance as a member to escape Russian oppression wasn’t that strange.

  But as anyone could tell from its current state, the people of this country hadn’t accepted Digurv’s settlement into the fold, and they were suffering right outside the border.

  What did the report mean when it said problems?

  “It doesn’t look like it’s a problem with the settlement or the people living there.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It says there’s a Cold War nuclear missile silo near the settlement. Because of its load out, it was separated from normal military bases and hidden in the forest.”

  Hamazura was dumbstruck at Takitsubo’s words.

  She flipped through the report. “The silo itself has been left there for decades. The actual missiles have been removed, too. It’s nothing but ruins now. But if the Alliance tried to annex the settlement and the surrounding land, they’re worried others would assume they were trying to acquire Russian nuclear launch facility know-how. It says they can’t aid the settlement, no matter how much they ask.”

  “That’s bullshit…,” spat Hamazura softly.

  That nuclear launch silo didn’t belong to Digurv and the others. Russia made the facility without asking them—that was why the settlers had lost their freedom, and why they were currently under the threat of land mines and privateers. It was good that an Academy City presence had arrived, but if they’d come any later, all the settlers might have been killed.

  “The Kremlin Report…?”

  But the injustice didn’t stop there.

  Takitsubo picked up another report and said, “…Hamazura, this is bad.”

  “What is it? A report? That diagram looks like the area’s climate data.”

  “These numbers are measurements for wind direction, temperature, and humidity. I think the data’s for predicting how bacteria will proliferate, but…”

  “…Bacteria?”

  Hamazura’s shoulders stiffened at the ominous word.

  Still looking at the stack of faxes—the Kremlin Report—Takitsubo said, “This was sent by the Russian military. They faxed the original Kremlin Report and additional documents here all at once. It seems like they want to make a show of giving Alliance officials a warning in order to justify the regular military actions happening inside their borders. This was actually only sent a few hours ago, and even if they showed the Alliance this, they’d never be able to start a large-scale evacuation. I think this is a threat against the Alliance. They’re saying You’re next.”

  “What do you mean bacteria? How is that connected to Digurv and the others?!”

  “It looks like a procedure for protecting nuclear launch facilities called the Kremlin Report was officially announced by the Russian military. The plan involves deploying bacteriological weapons to retake captured launch facilities or to protect sites on the verge of being captured. They’re…”

  “They’re going to use the nuclear launch silo near their settlement?! It’s their own country! Do the people in the Russian army plan on deploying the bacteria indiscriminately?!”

  Hamazura felt dizzy.

  But considering the relative locations of the nuclear launch silo and the Academy City force stationed at Digurv’s settlement to protect it, he couldn’t deny the possibility that they’d be a target for this so-called Kremlin Report procedure.

  “Doesn’t it say nobody’s used the silo for decades? And they removed all the missiles, too, right?”

  “The site’s launch function itself still works. And they can bring in missiles from outside. Russia has only recently managed to deploy prototype missile-defense networks. They have them concentrated on the borders—they didn’t consider setting up defenses for anything firing at them from a silo within the country’s interior.”

 
“…You mean that if you fired a missile from that silo, you could get it to land anywhere you wanted?”

  “The Russian generals were the ones who developed this—they would know the fear of ballistic missiles flying overhead better than anyone. I think they’d do anything to stop that from happening.”

  “Damn it…”

  At this rate, the Russians would chalk it up as something necessary to defend Russian soil and deploy deadly pathogens in the vicinity of the nuclear launch silo. If that happened, Digurv’s settlement would get caught up in it, too. The germ was clearly bad enough to be labeled a weapon. He didn’t even want to think of the death rate it was capable of achieving.

  “When do they plan on deploying it?”

  “I can’t tell. It seems like there’s not much chance the bacteriological weapon will reach the Alliance because of the overriding wind direction, but if it really gets dangerous, I think that Elizalina person will issue an evacuation advisory to the people.”

  Hamazura and Takitsubo didn’t know when the weapon would be used.

  For all they knew, the Russian military might have been carrying out the operation even as they spoke. Hamazura couldn’t deny the possibility that if he and Takitsubo attempted to stop it, they might arrive just in time to get caught in the attack, too.

  However.

  “Takitsubo. Will you wait here for me?”

  “Are we going to use the bacteria-wall military technology in the Kremlin report as a bargaining chip to negotiate with Academy City? Military-grade bioweapons by itself won’t be special for Academy City—”

  “Not that,” denied Hamazura shortly. “I can’t leave Digurv and the others there. I know all we’d be doing is taking a huge risk, but I don’t want to abandon them. This is all wrong, isn’t it?! It’s not like I’ve lived a decent life before this; I’ve hurt a lot of people, but this is so much worse than that. Wanting to stop this from happening isn’t crazy. The fact that it could happen in the first place is what’s really crazy!! How is everyone doing all this shit with a straight face?!”

  “…”

  Rikou Takitsubo stared into Hamazura’s eyes for a moment.

  Eventually, she nodded, too.

  “Okay. I’m going with you.”

  “Takitsubo?”

  “I couldn’t talk much while we were in the settlement, but I remember everything those people did for me. I want to fight for their sake, too.”

  “I hope you don’t regret this.”

  “You too.”

  They exchanged nods, then headed for the hospital exit together.

  He knew it wasn’t the time to be doing something like this. They hadn’t found any leverage they could use to negotiate with Academy City yet, and simply getting involved in the now full-fledged war playing out in Russia, a battle that had nothing to do with them, might cost them their lives. Taking an unnecessary detour amid all that would only shorten their life spans.

  Shiage Hamazura went over all those factors in his mind.

  Then, a single thought came out on top:

  But we owe them.

  2

  He heard a cry.

  It wasn’t human.

  This roar was more alien, slipping effortlessly into human minds, shaking their emotions without choice. He wanted to reject it even more than the sound of nails on a blackboard, and yet, the very thought of rejecting it summoned an incredible sense of guilt—an incomprehensible, unacceptable, unignorable cry. Breaking the limits of human hearing, the voice reverberated across the night battlefield that looked like it had a coat of India ink.

  An angel.

  Gabriel—the POWER OF GOD.

  Misha Kreutzev.

  “St…stop…”

  Kamijou’s mouth moved on its own.

  Something stood out on the expansive battlefield like a lone light in a field of shadow. It was a pale-blue glow. Its silhouette, too, unnaturally still at an altitude of over three thousand meters, was almost humanlike.

  Wings had sprouted from the silhouette’s back.

  Wings of ice, like crystals.

  Their lengths were uneven. Some were only a few dozen centimeters, while others were over a hundred meters. The irregular wings each moved independently of the others, cracking into one another, flinging eerie sparks into the night. Kamijou knew that all of those wings packed enough destructive force to cleave mountains in half with a simple touch.

  They undulated in a tight pack, just a tiny bit of power gathered inside them.

  That, by itself, was enough.

  “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!”

  Kamijou’s human voice meant nothing when pitched against the flapping of such a massive set of wings.

  A storm of destruction and slashing broke out. Academy City’s fighters and supersonic bombers, designed with the most cutting-edge technology available, were cut into round slices. Several of the icy wings deliberately broke apart, transforming into hundreds, thousands of fragmented blades, raining down over the armored units deployed on the surface. An immense shock wave burst forth, and faint shudders even made it up to the Star of Bethlehem, still flying through the skies.

  Kamijou peered down through a shattered window, but the dense cloud cover prevented him from seeing anything. There were gaps here and there, but that wasn’t enough for him to confirm the fate of those below. Enormous clouds of snow had whipped up from the ground as well, forming a dense curtain.

  “Damn it…”

  Only one spot directly under the archangel visible in the distance, dozens of meters in radius, had opened up in the thick clouds. When it had shot all those shards down toward the ground, it had probably blown the clouds all over, creating localized weather disturbances.

  Pilots he didn’t know ejected from their sliced-up fighter jets, parachutes deploying moments later.

  The archangel ignored them. It didn’t aim its wings of ice at them, either.

  But that was not out of benevolence or compassion. Gabriel flapped its ice wings at a different bomber, and the mere gusts its steely towerlike wings produced rattled the parachutes enough to cause them to fail.

  The crews that bailed out might have been okay if they had spare parachutes, but otherwise, they were on a one-way road to death.

  The word war wasn’t enough to encompass this.

  Divine punishment.

  Kamijou gulped as the words seared themselves into his mind.

  …It’s not just the Star of Bethlehem. Fiamma, that bastard—did he kidnap Sasha so he could use that crazy archangel as a weapon?!

  “Shit!!”

  This wasn’t the time to be dumbfounded. Kamijou burst out of the stone room for now, deciding to run across the Star of Bethlehem. The angel seemed to be under Fiamma’s command. But if he could have used it at any time, he would’ve brought it out earlier.

  Maybe it had to do with the Star of Bethlehem’s rising.

  If there was some sort of key to operating the archangel, then Kamijou might be able to stop Gabriel either by destroying the key or by taking down Fiamma himself, likely its user.

  Of course, Kamijou didn’t know much about the sorcery side.

  However.

  That doesn’t matter.

  As he ran, he clenched his teeth against the sounds of explosions going off in the distance.

  In that case, I’ll break anything I can find that seems like it might stop that angel!!

  After passing through several rooms, the skies opened up.

  He had reached a stone bridge with a wide path, but no railings on the sides. The gusts and explosive shock waves threatened to rock him from the side. The dark sky was murky like a midnight sea, imparting a bottomless sense of anxiety.

  He didn’t have time to stop for every little thing.

  Even Academy City’s elite units couldn’t stand up to a monster like that. At this rate, they’d be
conveniently used as targets for demonstration purposes. The only one with a chance of stopping that angel, even if it was indirectly, was Kamijou.

  He dashed across the lengthy bridge, covering about a hundred meters in one sprint.

  At what could be called the opposite shore, he opened the door to another room.

  An intricate mechanism that resembled a pipe organ occupied the space here. It could have been magical in nature—or a mere decoration assembled like a puzzle. Even if it did have supernatural properties, it might not have anything to do with the angel.

  Either way, checking was simple.

  Kamijou only had to touch it with his right hand and see if it broke.

  Decision made, he stepped deeper in the room—

  “…?!”

  And then caught his breath.

  Right next to him. A person, hidden in some pews lined up in the room like a chapel, had suddenly tackled him from the side.

  They both slammed into the floor.

  The blow took Kamijou’s breath away, and at first, he reflexively tried to gasp for air, but he forced the impulse down and tried to roll across the floor without breathing. If they were both down, whoever could get on top would be the winner. His assailant appeared to think the same thing; they tried to roll away as well to regain a superior position.

  But the assailant banged into a pew.

  Now that they had stopped, Kamijou climbed atop of the assailant.

  Anyone he found here must have been an elite Roman or Russian sorcerer.

  Without thinking, he got ready to bring his fist down—

  “Huh…?”

  —but then stopped dead.

  He recognized that face.

  Long, wavy blond hair hiding her eyes. Black belts that looked like physical restraints and red clothing made of a semitransparent material that looked like undergarments. She was younger than Kamijou. Hammers, saws, and a variety of other carpentry tools that had been converted into human torture implements lined the belt at her waist.