Free A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 8 by Kazuma Kamachi

lifted her head up. She gritted her teeth, rallied all her strength, and looked up as if beseeching the heavens from the ground below. “Why…would you mention…Big Sister’s name?”
    The girl decided to humor her and answer—as though to scorn her as no longer requiring caution, as her wounded state presented no threat. She seemed to enjoy watching how frustrated Shirai was, seeking pointless amusement at the expense of discarding the most logical course of action. “Oh?” Still cross-legged, the girl put a hand to her mouth as though this were a joke. “You didn’t know? Well, it doesn’t
seem
like you’re being used without knowing it…Tokiwadai’s Railgun doesn’t have that kind of character.”
    She hadn’t answered her.
    Shirai had asked that question with the last of her strength, and all she got was a self-satisfied soliloquy.
    “Didn’t you think things were a little
too
convenient? Like how the useless person who stole this practically aimed to get wrapped up in a traffic jam? You couldn’t guess the reason behind the electricity failure on the traffic lights? There’s no possible way you wouldn’t know what kind of powers Tokiwadai’s ace has.”
    Kuroko Shirai glared, though she couldn’t look above her.
    She glared at the unidentified piece of luggage and the enemy reigning supreme atop it.
    “What…have you…” Her dry lips clung together; she moved them anyway, coughing the words out as though blood would come out with them. The lip balm she’d borrowed from Mikoto sent a strangely sticky feeling back to her. “…been talking…about…?”
    “The remnant—well, you wouldn’t know just from my saying that. And ‘silicon-corundum’ would be difficult, too, I suppose,” answered the girl, pleased, clanking the metal darts in her hand together. “Let’s see. Perhaps if I mentioned the remnant of the Tree Diagram, you’d understand. It was broken, it was forgotten—and yet enormous possibility still remained within the supercomputer’s silicon-corundum central calculation unit.”
    Kuroko Shirai was shocked. “That’s…impossible. Isn’t it…up in satellite orbit…as we speak…?”
    It was so absurd she didn’t have a sense if it was real. The Tree Diagram, the world’s finest simulation machine and the pride of Academy City, was being kept safely in space on board a satellite. Even if you wanted to do something to it, you would never be able to touch it so long as you were connected to the ground. Besides, if there had been an accident (or it had been destroyed), it would have had a pretty extensive round on the news.
    However.
    The luggage the girl sat on was made to be used in extra-vehicular work in space.
    And its tag had the day Academy City’s shuttle returned on it.
    Agencies all over the world were currently competing for space advancement.
    Shirai’s thoughts wavered. The girl took a photograph out of her skirt pocket and flicked it toward her, spinning like a Frisbee. It fell in front of her. “An appendix to Academy City’s report on its destruction. Rare, huh?”
    The photograph showed the giant Earth against the deep-black background of space. In the foreground of the blue planet’s gentle curves floated the scattered wreckage of a satellite. A satellite whose silhouette she had seen before on the news and in pamphlets.
    “That…that’s…”
    As she stared in mute amazement, the photograph vanished, warping to between the girl’s index and middle fingers. She’d used Move Point or whatever it was to get it. “The Tree Diagram was destroyed quite a while back. That’s why everyone wants to get their hands on the remnants of the broken satellite floating around up there.” She seemed to see something in Shirai’s expression. “Mikoto Misaka sure has it rough. Someone blew up the Tree Diagram for her, so her nightmare ended—but now they’re saying they’re going to repair it. If that happens, they’ll redo the experiment. So, well, I