Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter3
Status: Incomplete
2/10 parts completed
Chapter 3: In the Void of Zero — Contact_6.
Part 1
“Emergency arrival at Entrance 3!!”
“Another one? Our treatment rooms are full!”
The emergency entrance primarily used by ambulances was so tense it was easy to forget today was Christmas. These were not operating rooms. They were treatment rooms used for simple tests and first aid.
Everyone there had to wonder if the rusty stench was escaping the rooms.
They knew everyone who moved in and out of the room and the hallway were disinfected in a variety of ways, but the scent still seemed to linger in their minds. That was how bad the situation was.
An (intentionally) anxiety-inducing siren could be heard approaching. EMTs and doctors rushed this way and that. The people moving in and out were shuffled around like a deck of cards thrown all over the floor. The nurses and a private guard had to throw out a self-styled reporter who was trying to use the confusion to sneak some photos with a pen camera.
If a patient’s breathing or blood pressure fell too far in the treatment rooms, they were finally moved to an operating room. The long row of treatment rooms was meant to provide more minor care to avoid overburdening the limited number of operating rooms, but there was barely any difference between them anymore. If no operating room was available, a doctor would come to the treatment room and provide as much treatment as possible without violating regulations.
The term “field hospital” was on all their minds even though none of them had ever seen a real one.
“Really, what is going on today?” said the frog-faced doctor with a large mask covering half his face.
He could seem detached from the things going on around him, but no one knew how he really felt on the inside. His ability to maintain a stable condition at all times seemed to prove his talent.
They had no obvious external wounds.
At the very least, they had not been stabbed with a knife or hit by a car.
Yet they had undeniable internal damage.
Their blood vessels and nerves had ruptured.
The cause was unknown, but the number of victims continued to grow and it was nothing short of a miracle that none of them had died yet. The frog-faced doctor had initially suspected a toxin, bacteria, or radiation, but since he was here among them without any special protective equipment, they had obviously found no evidence of that sort of risk.
(But only specialists with the proper knowledge will be able to accept that conclusion. People will have seen all these patients taken to the hospital after they collapsed on the streets. I hope this doesn’t start any harmful rumors.)
A new nurse nervously held out a silver tray.
“Um, these are the patient’s possessions.”
Everyone here was merely medical staff and not Anti-Skill or Judgment, but when an injury suggested a crime or they found evidence of illegal drug usage, they were required to swiftly record and report it. That required them to know what their patients had on them. Especially when that patient was unconscious and they needed to identify them.
“Hm.”
He noticed something curious along with the ordinary wallet and phone.
It was a coaster-like disk made of smooth plastic. It was divided into different colors with a few different symbols carved into it, so it probably had some kind of meaning.
“Was this made with a 3D printer?”
“We keep finding stuff like this,” said the nurse with an almost fearful tremor in her voice. “They all have these weird items like a small skull or cards with strange symbols on them! What is happening!?”
“…”
Mythology, the occult, the spiritual world.
If this had to do with those things, the frog-faced doctor wondered if something external to the students was causing their powers to go berserk, but that did not seem quite right to him. In that case, they should have been harmed differently depending on their powers: burns from a fire power, telekinetic wounds from a telekinesis power, and so on. It was hard to imagine that would lead to such uniform symptoms.
(When the cause is unknown, it is important to look back from the onset of symptoms and reassess each and every thing they did. Did they start something new recently, or did they finally do something they had been avoiding before? If they stop whatever that is and the symptoms go away, then you can be fairly certain that was the cause.)
But that method would only convince a special sort of person who could view other people as something to be observed.
A cheerful female voice was speaking from the flat-screen TV in the guard office located next to the ambulance entrance.
“Are you worried people are keeping secrets from you? Do you feel left out?”
Everyone was afraid.
And fear led people to try things they normally would not.
They might call those very things ridiculous in public, but once no one was looking, things changed.
“Well, worry no more! Normal methods might be powerless to help you, but real magic can fix it all in a jiffy. If there is anything you want to know, investigate, or divulge, then log onto R&C Occultics. Our large collection of fortunetelling methods will free you from those needless worries!!”
And none of them had any idea that eliminating their worries in that way would only make them the next victim.
The negative cycle would never end until the cause of the damage was known, but R&C Occultics were the ones in control of the knowledge and data needed to learn that.
Without that knowledge, it would never end.
Just like how IT companies and car manufacturers would show off their graphs explaining how self-driving cars dramatically reduced traditional traffic accidents, but they would fail to mention the increase in accidents caused by cyber attacks.
Or like how online stores would advertise how much more convenient they made everyone’s lives, but they would fail to mention how inconvenient it was once the local stores all went out of business and your city or town grew fully dependent on the online store.
Or like how global food companies would highlight how they did not use additives or agrochemicals, but they preferred not to explain how they ended up with fruits and vegetables that stayed fresh despite being almost disturbingly pure and free of additives.
Information sources would hold back any information detrimental to them.
All publicly available information was biased in some way.
That was one of the most basic facts of giant corporations.
Part 2
“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou Touma.
It took him a second to remember where he was.
(Oh, right. I was thirsty, so I stepped out into the hall to get some water.)
He could not tell if he was in pain or not. He had lost all ability to judge his own pain.
He only had a general feeling of his entire body being swollen. He did not know what exactly that meant, but he knew there was something wrong with him.
He looked down at himself again. He was doubled over and leaning against the cold wall of the deserted hallway. He slowly tried to move away from the wall, but he could not manage it. He could not move, like the wall was sucking him in.
“You must be about at your limit.”
“Othi…nus?”
“I told you this before, but you might not remember due to the constant pain.”
A small form poked her head out of his pocket. It was the 15cm god named Othinus. The girl with long, wavy blonde hair and an eyepatch climbed up to his shoulder.
“If this acute St. Germain really has been modified by the Rosicrucians as the legends say, then the technology here will have a very hard time fully healing you. After all, it is growing faster than Imagine Breaker can negate it. Human, if this continues, the microbes will infest your right hand as well. If you hope to escape death, you will need to speak with Anna Sprengel since she did this to you.”
“…”
Was that true?
Maybe it was.
But he had to ask about something else before continuing based on that assumption.
“You knew?”
“Knew what?”
“That I need Anna Sprengel to fix this. Did you tell anyone other than me that?”
Othinus let out a short sigh, but she did not hesitate to answer.
“Based on the commotion I’ve seen outside, Anna appears to be approaching this hospital. Now, I never told them myself, but Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki learned of Anna’s necessity on their own. I saw no reason to stop them, though.”
A dull sound followed.
Kamijou Touma’s hand squeezed at Othinus, but she did not bat an eye.
“Will you be satisfied once you have crushed me?”
“Othinus.”
“Only one thing matters here. Anna Sprengel is powerful and you have zero chance of victory if you thoughtlessly confront her head on.” The coldhearted voice of the god of magic, war, and deception continued. “So it is necessary to send someone else against her first so she will reveal her trump cards before you face her. Would you want ordinary Anti-Skill or Judgment playing that role? They would be slaughtered gruesomely. To be honest, I don’t really expect those two to win. I don’t, but those two Level 5s are the only candidates I could think of who had any possibility of staying in the fight long enough before losing and still making it back alive. Of course, it’s all over if they screw it up, but they at least have a chance. Anyone else would have been killed for sure no matter how hard they tried. Again, for sure.”
“Othinus!!!!!!” he roared in anger.
Her logical series of words came to a halt there.
And after a bit…
“There was never any way to avoid damage altogether. This was the only option that left any possibility at all of everyone surviving.”
“This is my problem.”
“If you had simply gone to face her on your own, you would have been killed first and foremost. And then it would all have fallen apart. Even for those girls who are fighting now.”
“Please, Othinus.”
The god glared up at Kamijou like a sulking child even as her entire torso was squeezed within his hand. It was the boy who had the wavering eyes of a lost child.
“I want you to save me, but not like this. I know I’ve fallen several steps behind. You said Imagine Breaker alone isn’t enough to keep up here, right? Well, it’s always been like that. I’ve always had to use every trick in the book to get by. So please. If someone has to die, then please build the plan around that person being me. Then I’d be on board 100%.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I don’t want to hate you.”
This time, the god fell silent.
She hung her head a little, hiding her face behind the brim of her witch’s hat.
And she spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice.
“(It was necessary, but even after all this, you still ‘don’t want to’, huh? It’s that soft side of yours that forces someone else to make the hard decisions, you know?)”
Before Kamijou could ask what she had said, she sank her teeth into his thumb and his grip on her relaxed.
“Ow!?”
“Hmph, insolent human. You can’t just touch a god’s body like that. Without asking permission first, I mean.”
She used that opening to slip from his hand and sat on his wrist with her thin legs crossed.
“I get your policy now, but that is no reason to abandon the information we have now. I will tell you what I have learned about Anna Sprengel. Let’s start with what you can do. However this plays out, it can’t end until you defeat her.”
He had already decided he was going to the battlefield himself.
This was his fight, so he was always the one who should have been in harm’s way.
But…
“Wait? If Misaka and…who was the other one? Anyway, if those two are on the front line, then how have you been watching them fight? Did you exchange addresses so you can watch a live video sent from their phones or something???”
“A certain idiot I could mention is so poor I do not have a phone of my own. And they wouldn’t be very mobile for me anyway.”
He felt bad about that, but it did not answer his question. Othinus was a legitimate god, but she could not use magic on her own in her current state.
For some reason, she could not look him in the eye.
Just like a child afraid of being scolded. Or like a child being asked who had broken the window when they were hiding the fact that they had broken the bonsai too.
She whispered rapidly while dripping with sweat.
“(R&C Occultics already has everyone using all sorts of meaningless magic, so a professional god can easily alter their half-assed spells to secretly place a Huginn and Muninn effect on top. But I really probably shouldn’t tell him that. I definitely can’t let him know I spread around those surveillance spiritual items made from the raven’s feathers. I mean, the side effect for using magic is hitting them whether I alter their spell or not, so this isn’t doing any more damage, but I just know he’d still be mad.)”
This time, he moved his hand higher.
Kamijou Touma the God Catcher squeezed Othinus head between his thumb and forefinger.
It was punishment time.
The 15cm understander flailed wildly for a while from the pressure to her temples.
