CHAPTER 2

Steel Battlefield Floating Above the Clouds
Skybus_365.

1

Itsuwa, girl of Amakusa, puffed out her cheeks with an irritated glare.

When she heard the boy, Touma Kamijou, would be using an Academy City–made supersonic passenger jet to arrive, she ran all over putting things together, then went to a London airport to be his Japanese-speaking guide—but now that she was there, he was nowhere to be found. Something strange must have gone wrong, because the only thing that ended up in her hands was a calico in a cage, registered as their pet.

This was supposed to be her chance! She’d buy anything, even the Great Fairy Flashy Maid Set!! She’d gotten so enthusiastic about it, she was considerably disappointed. Bearing the small calico-carrying cage, she’d gone back home to Little Tokyo, where she, a minor at her own dining table, was guzzling down a 1.8-liter bottle of alcohol. She even had dried squid on a small plate to go with it.

They told her that boy would be coming with the Index for business.

Watching Itsuwa, their faces pale, were her roommates, the tiny Kouyagi and the female Tsushima. The large Ushibuka’s shock, in particular, had been great—he’d hidden that bottle of potato shochu in a storage space under the kitchen floor.

“U-um, excuse me, Itsuwa…? I-it was just a slight mishap. Do you really need to be so depressed over it…?” asked the married Nomozaki gently, putting a stranglehold on Ushibuka, who threatened to go crazy over his precious “duke of potatoes” being swiped.

In response, Itsuwa poured more of the liquid into her very unadorned clear cup.

“Hic…I’m not…I’m not depressed…Damn it. That’s right; that’s right. Why would I…?”

M​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r​-​m​u​t​t​e​r. Itsuwa’s lips remained still as she mumbled incomprehensibly, mostly venting at this point.

“…God, just what…what’s this ‘duke of potatoes’ anyway…? You can’t…can’t even tell if it’s potatoes or sweet potatoes. What an annoying name for a drink…”

“Then don’t drink it!” cried Ushibuka, tears in his eyes. “Don’t take away my love!!”

That’s when it happened.

The past-middle-aged Isahaya’s face lit up as he entered the room, and this was the first shot he fired:

“H-hey!! The young man is still on schedule! He’s apparently in London now!!”

With a crash and a clatter, Itsuwa shot to her feet. The bottle tipped over as she did and dribbled its expensive liquid contents onto the table. “Hgyyaaaah my duke of potatoes!!” screamed Ushibuka, before the lady Tsushima shut him up with a chop to the neck.

But Itsuwa didn’t have time for that.

That boy was in London?

They’d told her at the airport that nobody fitting his description had been aboard, but perhaps it was merely a mistake, and he had been on the plane after all? Which meant—would he…? Would he visit her?!

Itsuwa’s face almost began to shine with a soft, dazzling glitter, but then her happy expression abruptly froze.

She noticed something.

The disastrous scene she’d perpetrated.

…She was drunk on potato liquor. With every breath inhaled and exhaled came the stark stench of sake. A dried squid leg was hanging out of the corner of her mouth. Would he see her in such a terrible, unsightly state…?

“I-it’s all over!! If that happens, it’s all over for me!!”

For now, she just had to do something about appearances. She ate all of the dried squid legs, poured breath mints into her mouth, washed her face, and tried to stand up crisp and straight. But she was still walking like she was clearly drunk, and her face was as red as an old man’s at a horse race.

W-wait. Just because he’s in London now doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed he’ll come to Little Tokyo right off the bat. Normally, he’d stop by a hotel, and if he went to Buckingham Palace after that, he wouldn’t be coming to Little Tokyo this soon! I just have to focus all my energy on making myself presentable…!!

Despite her rather optimistic thinking, the past-middle-age Isahaya gave her a grave look and shook his head. “It’s too late, Itsuwa. The young man is almost here.”

Itsuwa’s shoulders lurched. Still wobbly, she thought, But why?! He couldn’t possibly have come here by pure coincidence…!! She did have one clue as to what would bring him here right away, though. Come to think of it, I took their cat at the airport…No, it’s all my fault! Of course they’d come here to get their own cat!!

Her eyes and mind spinning in a panic, the approaching sound of sharp, heavy footsteps reached her ears. A few frantic moments later, she heard the door click open.

“He’s here!!”

The past-middle-age Isahaya’s shout rang in Itsuwa’s ears.

Her living space was designed in the western style, but there was a paper sliding door between the front door and the rest. She watched as a spiky-haired silhouette appeared, much to her dismay, behind the thin paper.

No matter how she thought about it, he would undoubtedly head straight her way.

W​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​-​w​h​a​t​-​w​h​a​-​w​h​a​-​w​h​a​t​-​w​h​a​t​-​w​h​a​t​ do I do?!

She’d been driven into a corner.

Itsuwa blanched as, before her eyes, the sliding paper door slid to the side. She was plastered beyond the point of vomiting; the smell of alcohol surely spurted from her very pores. Even the calico she was looking after ended up running away, as if to say, Young lady, I cannot bear your odor. Having confirmed the situation again, her mind reached the absolute pinnacle of chaos.

Awah!!

And then…

“Ta-daa!! The spiky-haired Saiji Tatemiya has arriv— Bghooohhhh?!”

A moment after her black-haired roommate toyed with her maidenly heart, she didn’t flip the table at him—in fact, she grabbed it with one hand and hurled it at Tatemiya with all her might. His tall body bounded back out of the room while Isahaya paled at the spectacle, which he was no doubt soon to be complicit in.

2

The Skybus 365.

Kamijou and Index had abandoned the calico and boarded an extremely unhurried jumbo jet. The seating area was spread across two levels, and the simple increase in size meant it could hold many passengers and provide more area per passenger. One might immediately think of economy seats being as cramped as a chair in a movie theater, but this Skybus 365 didn’t follow that rule. Even the cheapest seats had enough space to stretch your legs. They doubled as massage chairs, too.

If there was one issue with it, however…

“Wow…Didn’t think there wouldn’t be a single flight going to London,” muttered Kamijou to himself.

All flights to London had been fully reserved. Kamijou and Index were still bound for Britain, but they’d be heading to Edinburgh, Scotland, first, then transferring to a domestic flight to reach London—their plan was all thanks to the helpful advice from the lady at the airport’s service counter.

Incidentally, Scotland was in the north of the United Kingdom, while London was in the south.

In any case, they were now headed for Britain after finding a flight with seats on the waiting list, but it of course took money to purchase the tickets. Kamijou’s had been stolen after Tsuchimikado had emptied his wallet as a ploy to prevent him from fleeing the airport in a taxi, but the one good thing was that he had enough money to buy tickets without a problem by using the virtual wallet on his cell phone.

…But that virtual wallet is like a credit card. I hope the bill isn’t enough to make me scream when I see it…

In contrast to Kamijou and his civilian troubles, Index, who had changed from her safety-pin-covered habit into a simple dress (she couldn’t board the plane with all those dangerous objects), was in an extremely optimistic mood. She was entranced with this irregular space around her that she called an aerialplane.

“T-Touma, look at all the glowies on this chair!!”

“There are a lot of buttons, yes, but it’s not a video game. Anyway, it’s just a TV…Wait, what?! Index, get your hands away from there now! You’re watching a channel you have to pay for!!”

“Beef-or-fish!! Beef-or-fish!!”

“I know, you’re intent on the in-flight food!! Agh!! The latest movie channel here seems super expensive!!”

“What’s this button do? Wa-hyah!! A clear cup with a string on it came out!!”

“That’s your oxygen mask in case of emergencies!!”

Taking that as a super-serious signal, a hot blond flight attendant paled and ran over. As Index continued punching buttons all over the place as though nothing else mattered, Kamijou ended up being the one to apologize.

While he taught Index basic airplane manners, she cocked her head to the side. “There’s glowies that take money and glowies that don’t take money?”

“I told you—you can’t play games on the screen. All those buttons are a big trap to get you to watch channels you have to pay for. Look, there are plenty of free channels with cool stuff on…Urk?!”

“Touma, it’s just a lot of little letters saying things like stocks, whatever those are.”

“Damn it. They show boring things on purpose to get you to consider the paid service, don’t they?”

Now rather dejected, Touma watched as the man, incredibly unattractive despite being on television, told him all about his cherished opinions on world economics. It looked like the market was in chaos because of the Eurotunnel explosion.

Index slowly straightened up. “By the way, Touma, when does food arrive here on this aerialplane?”

“The in-flight meal? Hmm. It’s past dinnertime, so the next meal will probably be in around nine hours. The people around us look like they ate before getting on, and the reason this was cheap is because there’s no late-night meal.”

“…???!!!”

“No! I understand that’s a shock, but don’t try to bite poor Kamijou’s head, Index!! That’s just how it works! I can’t do anything about it!!”

But since they were late getting to the airport after Tsuchimikado gassed them before dinner, even Kamijou was hungry. Wondering whether there was a shop on board, he looked around, then spotted a signboard indicating a free drink station near the foremost cluster of seats.

He spoke quietly. “Index, I’m going on a journey.”

“T-to the land of rice balls?!”

“No, this will not be a wonderful land of grains. But for now, I’m going to get some coffee at least.”

Kamijou sprang out of his seat and headed toward the free drink station. The Skybus 365 was a super-large passenger plane with three rows of two seats each. The passenger space could hold over five hundred people in total, and the seating was split up by walls for economy class, business class, and first class. Because the space was then separated into two stories, it actually had twice the volume as well. It was insane.

When he looked around from his new vantage point, he saw that a lot of the passengers weren’t Japanese. Most of the people—sleeping with blankets made of three-millimeter-thick material apparently designed by NASA—looked like businessmen who had been working in Academy City and were now returning home.

Kamijou was in the economy-class section, the farthest one back. The free drink station was stationed on the wall separating economy and business class.

…That’s a way to combat terrorists, too, right?

If he recalled correctly, planes these days didn’t allow passengers to travel with plastic bottles or even tubes of toothpaste, to prevent anyone from bringing liquid bombs aboard. In exchange, airline companies installed free drink stations as a way to comfort their passengers, whose “freedom had been stolen.”

The drink station had a machine that could be found in most family restaurants. The sort where you put the paper cup underneath, pressed the button, and the drink would come streaming out. They didn’t have many kinds of drinks, though. Only four: coffee, black tea, orange juice, and the world’s most famous carbonated drink. The coffee was simply labeled COFFEE, leaving out any additional information like where it was produced or whether it was bitter or acidic. He didn’t even have a choice between hot and iced.

Well, it’s better than nothing, but we went without dinner, so this is kind of bad…Huh?

Then Kamijou’s eyes came to a stop on something.

Right next to the tower of paper cups stacked one on top of the other were, probably to go with your black tea, plenty of things that looked like square crackers. Their light saltiness was probably for bringing out the flavor of your tea, but…There was no doubt that eating a lot of them would fill his stomach.

Huh. I didn’t know airplanes nowadays gave these out for free. Oh, and they’ve got a lot of toppings, too. Butter, blueberry jam…I knew fuel costs for overseas travel weren’t changing anytime soon, so there was a customer service war going on, but I didn’t know they were improving this stuff, too…

In that case, I’ll have some. I wasn’t thinking about food before, but now that I see it in front of me, my stomach is suddenly growling up a storm!! he thought, reaching for the crackers…and then stopping abruptly.

“”

There was a small box next to the plate of crackers.

And on the box was a note, probably from a flight attendant. In cute lettering, it said:

Available for Purchase

3

Nine hours later.

In the end, he was unable to acquire the price-tagged crackers; the large Skybus 365 passenger plane landed for a time at an airport in France with the empty-stomached Kamijou and Index still aboard.

Refueling or a layover due to no direct flights being available—both were possible, but this time, it was neither.

After a soft ding, a woman’s voice came over the speaker. After explaining the same thing multiple times in English and Chinese, they heard a Japanese explanation even Kamijou’s ears could understand.

“Due to the effects of the Eurotunnel explosion, this aircraft will be contributing to the transportation of goods between France and the United Kingdom. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Please wait until the additional supplies have finished loading.”

As Kamijou listened to the announcement and turned on the small TV attached to the seat, he said to himself, “That reminds me—I think the news said that since that giant tunnel is unusable now, boats and airplanes are carrying goods.”

“Touma, we’re not taking off yet?”

“Well, we’re all having a hard time right now.”

Outside the window, darkness covered everything. We got on the plane after sunset, and nine hours later, it’s still sunset. It doesn’t add up!! complained Kamijou’s biological clock, but that was the magic of planet-size jet lag.

He couldn’t see it from his window, but part of the plane’s fuselage was probably open now, where a brigade of forklifts was loading containers on board.

“Touma, is beef-and-fish soon?”

“You have to choose one or the other for the in-flight meal. When did you start thinking you could eat both? You weren’t thinking you’d eat my portion, too, were you?”

“Mgh! That man in the work uniform is eating a sandwich!!”

“Working through his meal? The people at the airport must have it rough, too…Wait, why are you in beast mode, Index?! It doesn’t matter how much you rampage through the plane, that sandwich isn’t going to warp inside here— Ow!! …Huh?”

As Kamijou worked his own arms wildly, his elbow hit something.

He noticed an object that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Part of the wall near the window had a square chunk missing; it had opened by itself to reveal what looked like a car’s dashboard. And there were about twenty varieties of dangerous cables inside.

What’s this?

Something weird opened on its own…?

“…”

Kamijou thought about it for a moment, then used his entire body to slam the cover shut with a bang.

Then the hot blond flight attendant walked down the passageway, possibly having heard them talking, before speaking to them in fluent Japanese.

“I’m sorry. We have the utmost consideration for our passengers’ schedules, but…”

“I-i-it’s fine,” stammered Kamijou, waving his hands. “We weren’t going to make a formal complaint or anything.” He changed the subject to hide his alarm. “Still, is it worth hauling commodities by plane like this?”

“Well, that is…” The flight attendant seemed to have trouble discussing it. “It’s just that, of course, we are bringing them in from a different country, so it would appear that there are many things you can’t procure in Britain. Since the seafloor rail tunnel is closed, they’re assigning goods to ships and aircraft at the moment…”

“Stuff you can’t get in Britain…”

“For example, the United Kingdom is an island country, but nearly half its seafood depends on imports. Seafood would spoil if carried over in slower ships, so they require airplanes. In fact, on our flight specifically, I believe the containers on board may include oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal?”

“Yes. I don’t know the name of the disease, but…I believe it’s been specially made for people who can’t eat normal meals. Apparently, it’s something you can only get from food corporation facilities in France.”

I guess everyone’s got their problems, thought Kamijou, looking out the window again.

All sorts of containers were already aboard the plane, but naturally, there was nothing unnecessary. There were enough people having a rough time in Britain to warrant the time spent doing the extra work.

Then…

“…Food…,” said Index suddenly. “…Food…Things to eat…aerialplane meals…in-flight food…beef…beef-or-fish!!”

“Gwoohh!! Index, I get it—we skipped dinner and now your hunger is at max level, but please just calm down!! We’re almost to food time!!”

“How long is almost?!”

“…About an hour?”

“…???!!!”

“Y-you fool!! Poor old Kamijou’s head doesn’t taste like beef or fish— Uguh!!”

Index, overtaken by her carnivorous instincts, attacked Kamijou. It pained him to see the flight attendant shout “I-I’ll bring something immediately!!” and run off.

Under attack by the starving Index, Kamijou cried, “Stop, Index!! You’re going crazy and making trouble for everyone else!! Also, eating an in-flight meal on your own before you’re supposed to— Do you ever stop complaining?!”

“It doesn’t matter—my empty stomach has already gone past its limit three times!! I wish you’d understand how urgent the situation is! I can’t wait a minute or even another second!!”

Index took the toy flute the flight attendant had given her before leaving (shaped like a ball, it was probably a points reward from buying plane tickets), gripped it tightly, and began blowing into it shrilly, distracting him.

Meanwhile, as the two of them argued over this and that, contrary to their expectations, the blond flight attendant with the nice body didn’t come back.

“?” To Kamijou’s confused ears came the following announcement.

“We’re sorry for the wait. Additional cargo loading has completed. We will now begin preparations for takeoff. All passengers, please return to your seats and buckle your seat belts.”

“Huh? Oh. The airplane will be slanted when we take off, so it would be dangerous to stand in the aisle. The cart carrying the in-flight food looks like it’s fixed in place with metal fittings, too. We’ll have to wait to eat until we’re back in the air for real.”

“…”

“Well, the plane should stabilize after about twenty minutes. You can endure it that long, right? Wait, what? Miss Index, why are you looking down—?”

No answer.

Only a beast-like rumbling.

Please bring food as soon as possible!! willed Kamijou, sensing imminent danger. Unfortunately for him, a Level Zero couldn’t use telepathy.

Index’s teeth began to grind.

4

The Skybus 365 took off safely.

After the airplane’s angle stabilized, they lifted the seat belt restriction for passengers.

The inside of the big passenger plane once again began to provide its comfortable celestial service.

But as Kamijou and Index made use of said service, a man stood a short distance away, observing them.

Actually, it might be more appropriate to say he was overcome with surprise.

The man was standing in the passage.

He wasn’t actually an economy-class passenger like they were. He’d gotten a ticket for the adjacent business class so he wouldn’t rouse any needless suspicion. He’d gone through the “walled” area separating economy and business class—in other words, past the onboard bathrooms—and walked into the economy-class section, his movements natural. But now…

What’s going on? he thought, confused, taking out his notebook.

He’d been reminded before all this not to look at the notebook as much as possible. He was only to use it to reconfirm things when he came up against conditions that actually required serious consideration. Feeling that now was such a time, he hurriedly flipped through the pages filled with jumbled terms and numbers.

The seat number was written right there.

He checked again—there was no doubt.

The seat with that spiky-haired Asian was supposed to be empty.

One of his friends was supposed to have gotten that ticket under a false name.

“…”

The man thought to himself, his index finger tracing the seat number written in the notebook. And he arrived at one answer.

Damn it. The seat was filled by someone waiting for cancellations…?!

Even if a passenger reserved a seat in advance, if they didn’t show up after the boarding cutoff time, the seat would be treated as available and possibly given to another guest. That must have been how the spiky-haired Asian ended up in the seat that needed to be empty.

He understood the situation.

But he couldn’t come up with a way past it.

What now…?

People would get suspicious if he stood in the middle of the passage for much longer. He began to walk slowly down it, deciding for now to head for the staircase in the back. The large jumbo jet Skybus 365 had two stories. If he used the staircase, then moved to the opposite staircase on the other floor, there would be less risk of people noticing that they’d just seen him.

He put the notebook in his inside pocket. As he walked down the passage and past the spiky-haired Asian, his mind raced at full speed.

What now? If I can’t use that seat, I can’t put this plan into motion.

5

The in-flight meals were taking their sweet time.

Even after the plane left the runway, soared into the skies, and stabilized its angle, the flight attendant wasn’t coming around…And could she even move mealtime up to begin with? Wouldn’t her colleagues and superiors get mad at her?

“Hmm. I’m starting to worry. I’m going to go pay the flight attendant a little visit.”

“But I’m worried about the beef-or-fish, too!!”

“You’re just going to make things worse, so stay put.”

Besides, if her coworkers were actually chewing the hot blond flight attendant out, he planned to say, I-I changed my mind—it’s fine, really!! and get them to stop. If Index came along with her starved appetite on full display and a raging torrent of her Beef-or-fish! Beef-or-fish!! slogan, the entire situation would definitely fall apart.

So, from the window seat, he stepped over Index’s knees and eventually made it into the passageway. His destination was the walled area between economy and business class—the place where amenities like the onboard bathrooms, free drink station, in-flight meal area, and steep stairs to the other floor were all gathered in one place.

Hmm. What will I do if she’s actually getting yelled at…?

A little nervous, he went straight down the passage and entered the walled area. As always, it was more dimly lit than the passenger seating areas.

He took a quick look around but couldn’t find the flight attendant.

What? This isn’t where she is?

He’d guessed—arbitrarily—that she’d be setting up for the in-flight meals, so he’d thought for sure she’d be in here. Apparently, he’d been wrong.

He found a door to a small room that appeared to be where they got all the food together, but he didn’t quite know if passengers were allowed to open it without permission, so he gave up on that.

Instead, he brought his ear close to the door. He didn’t hear any sounds of working from inside.

I mean, I could look in a different area, but…It’s not like she’s inconveniencing us, so it’s probably not worth walking around all over the place to chase her.

Just when he decided to go back to Index for now and turned around, it happened.

“Ahhhh?!”

Suddenly he heard a shrill yelp, then heard a thud. He must have accidentally pushed someone trying to get around him to the floor.

He looked and saw it was the woman he’d been searching for.

She seemed to have been carrying papers in both hands, but when she’d bumped into Kamijou, they’d gone flying all over. The A4-sized sheets had the small letters of a word processor printed on them, but the words were in a different language, so Kamijou couldn’t read any of them.

Besides, this wasn’t the time to be reading sentences.

“Yikes! I’m sorry. Are you all—?”

A moment before he bowed in apology, the flight attendant moved swiftly. Still on the floor, she began collecting the scattered papers at an incredible speed.

And then the hot blond flight attendant said this:

“D-did you see…?”

Touma Kamijou answered honestly. “I did not see up your skirt!!”

“?”

The tight-skirted hottie looked at him blankly. That didn’t seem to be what she was worried about.

Then what does she think I saw…?

Belatedly, his eyes went to the sheaf of papers the flight attendant was holding.

But before he could examine any pages closely, she stood up in a hurry. “I-I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “The in-flight meals, well—we’ll bring them out momentarily!!”

“Right, um…”

Kamijou tried to say something, but the flight attendant said “I’m terribly sorry” a second time and went off somewhere.

…What was that about…? Kamijou wondered, tilting his head.

He didn’t have perfect recall like Index, so he couldn’t easily remember the contents of a piece of paper he’d only seen for a moment.

But he had seen a series of English letters, and what he could faintly remember was…

What was that? The plane’s flight number?

And that was all.

6

Starting from the nose, the Skybus 365 was split into three classes: first, business, and economy.

Of course, there was a fourth area even further up than first class:

The cockpit.

The small space was covered in tightly packed buttons and switches—in front, to the sides, and even on the ceiling. Four chairs were in it. The front two were for piloting, and the rear two were for standing by. Right now, a captain and two copilots were permanently stationed there, leaving one space empty.

“Report output from Control is finished.”

That was the blond flight attendant.

She was speaking in Japanese.

Normally, she would not have been allowed into the cockpit. It wasn’t a purely ethical issue; it was written in the company rules that she couldn’t go in. The reason she had set foot in the cockpit in spite of that was simple.

It was an emergency.

“The full text of the threat to the airline company has been received?”

This was spoken by a tall man in a mainly white, military-like uniform.

He was the pilot, the captain of the plane.

He had short-cropped black hair and a tinge of color to his skin.

As the words he spoke would imply, he was Japanese.

And he hadn’t been talking to the flight attendant.

He was talking to the flight control center at the international airport in Academy City, Japan, through a headset.

“Awful, isn’t it?”

The captain gave a low groan at someone who was presumably an air security officer. “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Nobody in their right mind would accept these demands.”

“And if we don’t, it may put your plane at risk of attack,” continued the security officer bitterly.

“We must be up against a French anti-British organization…”

“Historically speaking, Britain and France switch between enemies and allies a lot, but this will only concentrate the negative feelings from that.”

He wasn’t sure what route the officer had used to get the information, but anything from an Academy City air security officer tended to be right awfully frequently.

“They’re saying things about the Eurotunnel explosion, too: that the whole thing was a British conspiracy, and since France was clearly the victim, Britain should have to pay equal reparations.”

“Reparations as in aggressively shutting down British air routes? Idiotic,” growled the captain.

For France, the Eurotunnel was one of many important land routes, but for Britain, it was the only one connected to another country. There shouldn’t be any reason for Britain to manufacture the explosion, but…

“The individual who sent the threat has been arrested by French authorities, but the one who will actually do the job is apparently elsewhere. Unfortunately, said individual has been keeping quiet, and normal methods to get the information don’t seem promising.”

“If they’re buying time, we’ll have a problem,” the captain said quietly, gripping the flight yoke. “It’ll take us forty minutes to an hour to get from Paris to Edinburgh.”

“If this terrorist is for real, it’s highly probable they’ll make a move in that time.”

“But is it true?” asked the captain, unable to resist. “Their allies are on a plane they want to crash?”

“Their primary objective is probably what they stated in the threat. It’s safer to expect that the terrorists are prepared to lose their own lives if we don’t accept their demands.”

“…”

“Whether we accept their demands and stay safe or don’t and the Skybus 365 falls, the terrorists will have done the damage they wanted to. Which means no matter which way this goes, they’ll treat it as a success.”

“…This is awful. I’d almost rather turn around and go back to Paris right now.”

“If you suddenly start circling with the plane, the terrorist or terrorists might become suspicious. We’d run the risk of them making a move immediately. And you don’t have the fuel to turn around slowly enough for them not to notice—airline companies are subject to gas prices, after all. I’m sure you understand all that.”

“Then all we can do is root out the infiltrator before they make a move.”

The captain swore. The Skybus 365 was a rare world-class passenger plane, equipped with two stories of seating. They had over five hundred passengers. Going through and checking them one by one would take far longer than their one-hour limit. And even the police would have a very difficult time locating a criminal simply by observing individuals from a distance without interviewing them.

“…None of us are trained for this.”

“You’ll have to do it anyway. It would be one thing if you could use an Academy City teleport esper, but right now, you probably can’t get anyone from a police agency onto the plane.”

The air security officer wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. In fact, it was precisely because the Academy City man could suggest teleportation as a viable method that the words came out with such bitterness.

“Other than that…Right. I’m sure you know this, but do your best not to let the passengers know about this problem. Chaos and violence aboard a plane with no escape will turn it into hell on earth.”

“I know that. The fate of this plane and my passengers’ lives are in my hands. I’m not rotten enough to cling to them and use them as shields.”

Just when the captain said that, something happened.

A different channel than air control cut in over the headset.

It was from inside the plane.

“Emergency. We have movement. Likely the terrorist in question!!”

“?!” The captain’s body tensed at the crew member’s words.

The report continued. “One injured but conscious. He was apparently attacked from behind and didn’t get a good look at the person. What do we do, Captain?!”

7

Index’s starvation had reached its limit.

“In-flight food, in-flight food! Beef-or-fish…”

“…I feel such a strong presence next to me. Like a lion with a noble face is sitting one seat over. What is poor Kamijou to do?”

“Not only is the beef-or-fish not coming out no matter how long we wait; the bourgeoisie right nearby is munching on those crackers, and it’s making my stomach boil and growl.”

Kamijou scratched his head. He couldn’t exactly do anything, considering Tsuchimikado had stolen his wallet and the only currency in their luggage was in pounds…And then he stopped abruptly.

Index gave him a questioning look.

“…Wait,” he murmured. “If this airplane is going from Academy City to Britain, can’t we use British money here?”

“???!!!”

“No!! I completely understand your anger, Miss Index, but if you bite my skull open, you’ll never, ever get those crackers!!”

The beast’s maw gaped wide open, its very breath a roar, as Kamijou desperately tried to ward off the imminent crisis. Then, after barely managing to preserve his life, he rose from his seat and headed for the free drink station.

…You know, I’ve been up and about for a while now. Wonder if anyone thinks I’m suspicious.

He needn’t have worried; looking around as he walked down the passage, he saw a fair number of others, who were tired from the extended sitting, doing light stretches in the passage. The seats functioned as massage chairs, but this was still the cheapest class: economy. They didn’t seem efficient enough to work out all the knots in your whole body.

In the walled area dividing economy and business class was the free drink area. Next to the crackers was a clear box stuffed with bills from various countries. A small blackboard listed exchange rates. Apparently, he could use Britain’s money.

Let’s see…I can get ten crackers for three pounds. Wait, how much is that in yen?

It was foreign money, so he couldn’t really grasp the relative values. Unable to decide if it was expensive or cheap, he inserted the money.

After putting the money inside, he grabbed a pack of ten crackers wrapped in a clear film package.

Then…

“…Huh?”

When Kamijou turned around to go back to Index, he stopped abruptly.

The free drink station wasn’t the only facility in the walled section. Several others were here, like the onboard bathrooms, space for cleaning appliances, and small rooms that could preserve the in-flight meals and warm them up.

Among them was a half-opened door.

The one that had been closed a little earlier—the door to the small room for in-flight meal service prep.

…Are they supposed to leave the doors open on a plane like this?

Passenger planes were heavily slanted during takeoff and landing, and other things like turbulence could cause shaking. During a time like that, if a door was left half-open, it could cause trouble, like suddenly swinging closed and slamming fingers or breaking the door’s fittings. At least, that’s what he’d seen on a documentary once.

“Should I close it…?” muttered Kamijou casually, walking near it. Nobody would get mad at him if he merely closed it. Right before he grabbed the knob, though, his eyebrows twitched.

He saw something.

He saw what was on the other side of the half-opened door.

The room itself was narrow. The space was apparently for warming a lot of the in-flight meals at once, with a row of microwaves bolted onto a metal shelf rack.

That wasn’t the problem.

Something dark red and goopy was stuck to those microwaves stationed along the wall. It was about fifteen centimeters across and fifty tall. After thinking for a moment, Kamijou decided someone had put a dirty hand on the wall to try to stand up.

What could the dark red stuff have been?

The room was for heating up in-flight meals, so maybe some kind of sauce or stew had spilled…

“You saw, didn’t you?”

Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind him.

It belonged to a woman.

When Kamijou turned around, the hot blond flight attendant was standing there.

With an apologetic face, she repeated, “You saw the bloodstain, didn’t you?”

The flight attendant even told him something he didn’t know.

“This is—,” began Kamijou, but the next words didn’t come out.

He heard a bang!!

It took him several seconds to realize that not only had she twisted his arm, but she’d also taken him down to the floor.

Practically straddling him now as he lay facedown, the flight attendant brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered an apology.

“(…I’m sorry. Since we can’t bring weapons on board, all crew members have been trained in this sort of hand-to-hand combat in order to deal with a variety of trouble. Only through training exercises, though.)”

“Wh-what is this…?” stammered Kamijou, bewildered.

With the hand that wasn’t currently twisting his arm, the flight attendant clicked a switch that was probably for a radio.

“Captain, this is urgent,” she said in Japanese, her tone nothing if not extremely cold and businesslike. “One of the passengers saw the bloodstain before I could clean it. I believe he’s now caught on to the situation aboard the plane. How should I proceed?”

8

The babealicious flight attendant who had Kamijou pinned down seemed to be waiting for someone to come.

The idle time continued.

Eventually, the flight attendant spoke.

“A terrorist…”

“You’re a what?!”

“N-not me!!” denied the hot blonde hastily. “Airport control informed us that one has apparently infiltrated the plane. If we don’t accept certain demands, they’ll create a mechanical failure on the Skybus 365 and cause it to fail during landing—in other words, they’ll bring it down in flames.”

“…Seriously?”

“The bloodstain you saw was from a tour guide, a colleague of mine. He was attacked from behind suddenly, and we believe it was the terrorist’s doing.”

“You don’t think I’m the criminal, do you…?” said Kamijou, a bad feeling coming over him.

The flight attendant shook her head. Though of course, he was lying on his stomach and couldn’t see her face.

“No, not at all…,” she said. “But we don’t want this information disseminating to the other passengers. This is already a dangerous situation, and if word spread, there would be a huge panic inside the plane with nowhere for anyone to run. A lot of blood could be shed, and if worse comes to worst and the panic makes the criminal anxious…”

Her tone suggested she was at a complete loss. Maybe she told him all this because she felt indebted to him. Despite having him completely pinned with a self-defense technique, she seemed to be in the inferior position.

“What exactly do you plan to do?”

“Well…”

As she searched for words, reinforcements arrived.

Not for Kamijou, but for the flight attendant.

It was a fairly tall man. He had on a white, military-like uniform, so he was probably the pilot.

This man took one look at Kamijou’s face squeezed against the floor and spoke, using Japanese.

“…We’ll have to separate him from the other passengers.”

“C-can we go that far? We have a duty to protect our passengers’ safety, but that doesn’t give us the right to put one in isolation.”

It was actually the hot lady, the very person who had him pinned down, who seemed rather confused.

In contrast, the pilot wasn’t shaken.

Slight bitterness crossed his face occasionally, but his feelings didn’t seem to change his mind. “You think we can just tell him not to talk and send him back to his seat now? He’ll make a fuss. You can be sure of it. When that happens, the whole plane will panic…You know all that. That’s why you knocked him down and waited for instructions, isn’t it?”

“…”

“We need him to stay here until we wrap this up. We’ll give him a full refund for this flight for cooperating. If it seems like he’ll make a fuss anyway, we’ll have to leave it to the company’s attorneys.”

“H-hold on just a minute!!” interrupted Kamijou. He was pinned facedown, one arm immobilized behind him, but he cried out anyway. “I heard there might be a terrorist on board, but if that’s true, you don’t have time to be doing this, do you?! Can you guys find the person by yourselves? The more people you have, the better, so I’ll hel—!!”

Before Kamijou could finish, the captain cut him off with a click of his tongue. He gave the flight attendant one close glare, then looked back at Kamijou. “…That sort of thing is exactly why we’re preventing you from moving.”

“What?”

“Listen to me. There are over five hundred people on this plane, and that’s just counting the passengers. The terrorist hiding among them has all those lives in the palm of their hand. We can’t have some amateur blabbermouth like you going wherever he damn well pleases.”

To Kamijou, it sounded like the captain was picking a fight, and he found himself angry at how the man had put it. But the captain continued with some cold words before he could say anything.

“Can you shoulder the weight of five hundred lives?”

“…?!”

“As captain, I have a responsibility to do exactly that. I will think about what it takes to guarantee the survival of this entire plane and act accordingly, even if this incident gets out and I’m fired. Offering help is something only people who are prepared can do, and I’m sure you can’t. Nor do you need to.”

The captain gave a sharp gesture for the flight attendant to move.

He wasn’t telling her to release Kamijou.

It was so she would isolate him somewhere else.

“The heating space for in-flight meals right over there is empty, isn’t it? Throw him in there. If things escalate into a nightmare, he’s welcome to blame me.”

9

The door closed, and Kamijou heard the dull sound of the lock falling into place. In the room that contained only microwaves and a bloodstain, Kamijou picked a random shelf on the rack to lean against.

After the captain left, but right before the flight attendant personally threw him into this tiny room, she’d bowed her head in apology, saying, “I-I’m sorry. We really need to do this to avoid panic on the plane.” She’d probably figured he deserved an explanation for why this was happening to him.

He thought back to what she had said before. It seemed like her claim that a terrorist might be on board was right on the mark.

The threat letter delivered to the airline company went like this:

A structural defect existed on Skybus 365 passenger planes, tested and proven by the terrorists. Unless the master recorder for the four biggest airline companies in the United Kingdom was destroyed, they would exploit the flaw in the Skybus 365 headed from Academy City to Edinburgh and take the plane out of the sky.

“Master recorder?” he’d asked.

“It’s the computer that manages all passengers’ flight tickets, luggage tickets, and things like that,” the flight attendant had explained. “Without it, air service would come to a complete stop. It processes far too much information to do by hand.”

The exact method they were to use was apparently infecting the master recorder with a computer virus that was supplied with the threat letter.

“If we infect it with a virus while it’s connected to the network, not only will it probably destroy all the data in the master recorder; it will also apparently send all the log files after it’s destroyed to the comment sections on hugely popular blogs. If we could just analyze the log formats, we could probably send out dummy logs and make it look like the master recorder was destroyed, but apparently, the logs are encrypted to the point where decryption would take days.”

There were a lot of apparentlys and probablys in there; the flight attendant didn’t appear particularly knowledgeable in this field, either.

“…What’s the structural defect?”

“We don’t know. But when we looked at the flight names in the threat letter again, they were all Skybus 365 models like this one: flight 5991 from Paris to Moscow, flight 4135 from Nice to New York, flight 7558 from Marseille to Peking…And it seems all of them experienced engine failure for about fifteen seconds during their flights. They did an investigation on each plane where they disassembled individual parts, but they couldn’t find any particular issues. The parts are still being used.”

The three planes had been dry runs for the terrorists, and this was the real deal.

Supposedly, that was how investigative authorities had interpreted it.

“Then what about the bloodstain before?” he’d asked. “You said your colleague got attacked.”

“Yes, but we don’t know the terrorist’s true intentions…And we don’t even know what procedure they’ll use for exploiting the defect. But it could have been an important part of their plan…”

Before she’d closed the door on him, Kamijou thought he saw exhaustion in her face.

“…The terrorists are after the complete closure of British air lanes…,” he muttered to himself in the small, empty room.

If they accepted the demands, they’d completely destroy the master recorder. If they didn’t, the Skybus 365 would crash. Either way, it would be a heavy blow to the British airline industry.

Not to mention the only land route, the Eurotunnel, was out of operation now. If everything went according to the terrorists’ plans…

Does that mean they were involved with the closing of the land route, too?

Kamijou considered it for a moment, but eventually shook his head.

He had no information. An amateur wouldn’t figure out the truth just by thinking about it.

That was true for his current situation, too, where he was locked in a cramped room…They treat passengers absolutely awful, but still. It’s hard to say anything when they ask if I can shoulder five hundred lives…

The tension drained from Kamijou’s shoulders. He decided to think positively: When the door opened next time, it might mean they had good news.

10

From the nose back, the Skybus 365 was split into three classes: first, business, and economy. The passenger seating was structured into two stories, forming a total of six sections.

Stairs to go between the first and second floor were in the “walled areas” separating each class. The metaphorical “wall” was actually over seven meters thick, hosting a collection of small facilities like the onboard bathrooms and the free drink station.

A certain hatch was open in one of those areas.

A fireproof hatch leading to the cargo hold.

The cargo hold on a Skybus 365 extended below the first floor of passenger seating. There was no real reason the seating area would be connected to the hold, but if there happened to be a fire in the hold, you wouldn’t otherwise be able to extinguish it; you’d just be waiting to crash. That was why an emergency hatch was prepared, but…

“…”

The man stood in front of the hatch at a loss.

A soft mechanical beep prevented his action.

He had a key card in his hand.

A key card he’d only gotten after purposely attacking a flight attendant from behind.

…Damn it.

He put the key card in the reader again, then swiped it down.

But like before, he heard the beep rejecting him.

Damn it all. I can’t do anything if this won’t open…

The man let out something akin to a moan.

In his hand was a black cell phone. All the “required programs” were entered into it. He was supposed to prepare for the terrorist attack: If he hooked a cable to the phone’s bottom connector and sent the “required programs” into the Skybus 365, it would exploit the structural defect.

The place where he was originally supposed to do that was an empty seat in economy class. An ally had reserved a seat under a false name, but the spiky-haired Asian had taken it when they released the seat to people on the wait list.

He could have used force to make him vacate the seat, but if he was too violent, he’d turn a good one hundred passengers against him.

That method was useless now.

Instead, he was trying to move forward with plan B, since plan A hadn’t gone the way they’d hoped. But he absolutely needed to get this hatch open for it to work.

Shit, shit, shit!! I should have known a flight attendant wouldn’t have the security clearance to open this hatch. But all the operators with more clearance are in the cockpit. If I could fight my way in there, we wouldn’t have been so roundabout and threatened to exploit this structural defect in the first place…

The man cast a baleful glance toward the walled area’s exit—the economy class passageway. If only that spiky-haired Asian wasn’t there, he wouldn’t have had to get so conspicuous and attack that flight attendant…

Damn it. Just having to use that thing in the cargo hold means I’m in a lot of trouble! Things would have gone a lot more smoothly if only that seat was empty…!!

“…Huh?” the man muttered suddenly.

He was gone.

The spiky-haired Asian who had been sitting in the seat in question was gone. Maybe he was using the bathroom. Plus, the silver-haired, green-eyed girl who seemed to be his companion was out of her seat, wandering around the passageway.

This was his chance.

His last chance to gain control of the Skybus 365 without having to use that thing stored away in the cargo hold.

He took a glove out of his pocket. If he went down the passageway, he’d run into the silver-haired girl. A better idea seemed to be to use the stairs to change floors, find another set of stairs to access the opposite passageway, then get close to the seat he needed.

11

Touma Kamijou hadn’t come back.

Index, waiting for both the boy and the crackers he had to pay for, eventually lost to her hunger and stood up.

She had decided to go look for him.

He could be hogging all the food to himself, after all.

…That’s what she thought anyway, but her search ran into early complications. Kamijou had walked straight down the passage and gone past the walled area. It wasn’t very far, but for some reason, she couldn’t find him anywhere.

“?”

Tilting her head in confusion, Index returned the way she’d come.

Then something else stopped her again.

Someone was sitting in Touma Kamijou’s seat.

It was a fair-complexioned man in a plainly colored suit. Probably in his early twenties. Average height. He had a big French-language newspaper open in front of him, which hid the lower part of his face, so she couldn’t make out many features.

Index wondered if he’d sat down in the wrong seat by mistake.

But she had perfect memory; it couldn’t have been her misremembering it.

So, without hesitation, she sat down in her seat and said to the man next to her with the newspaper, “That’s Touma’s seat.”

The newspaper man’s shoulders twitched in surprise at her voice.

She looked at him again to see that he had the newspaper open in one hand. His other hand wasn’t holding it. She followed his arm down behind the newspaper; his hand was holding a blackish cellular phone. On his knee, which was also blocked by the newspaper, were little pieces. Maybe they were phone parts…A slender cable of some sort, and what looked like a nail clipper…

<“…Damn. Why can’t you wait a hundred twenty seconds?”> he muttered in French.

Index looked at him blankly, and before she could say anything, he moved.

He folded the spread newspaper and placed it on his knee, then turned to her and casually reached out with a hand.

There was something in it.

Something sharp pressed against her side, hidden in a way that prevented the other passengers from seeing.

<“Airport security mainly goes for metal detection,”> said the man in French. <“You’d be surprised at what they don’t see—the simple truth that even a knife whittled from animal bone can still pierce organs and slice veins.”>

For now, the man had stopped the witness from taking action.

…This is the worst. I mess up on the very first thing, and now absolutely nothing is going according to plan!!

From the man’s perspective, it was almost checkmate.

If the girl frozen next to him yelled, it was all over. He could kill her, but if he did that, he’d turn at least all one hundred of the economy-class passengers into enemies. When that happened, they wouldn’t act out of a sense of justice—they would panic, and the panic would engulf everyone. One little blade wasn’t going to do anything about that.

“…What are you doing?” asked the girl next to him.

He didn’t have a responsibility to answer, but he spoke anyway, in a voice that sounded like he was talking to himself. “Injecting a program. It uses a cell phone’s data transmission function to interfere with forced-landing safety mechanisms.”

“Forest landing?” said the girl with a frown.

Ignoring her, the man reached to the window side of his seat…right below the window. He drew out a piece of rolled-up wire, then fed it into a gap in the wall and moved it to the side. It was like he was using cutters on the wall; a straight line formed in it.

The man dug his fingernails into the line, then pulled. A lid came open like a car’s dashboard. On the other side were at least twenty kinds of cable.

“If they accept the demands, I won’t have to use this. That’s right. It’s not like I’m doing this because I want to—”

He stopped midsentence.

The cable coming out of his phone’s lower connector was supposed to hook into the maintenance cable inside the plane’s wall, but it wasn’t working. There was a slight crack in the connector he needed to use.

There was only the clatter-clatter-clatter-clatter of plastic against plastic grating on his nerves. His brow creased, and he began to swear under his breath periodically. But no matter how many times he tried, he got the same result.

The cable wouldn’t connect. He couldn’t inject the program.

“Oh, that’s the thing Touma—,” began the girl next to him, but he wasn’t listening.

<“Shit!!”> he shouted in French, prompting a glance from the passengers nearby. He slammed the lid on the wall closed. Then, his bone knife still against the girl next to him, he looked up at the ceiling without a word.

What now?

He couldn’t insert the program from the economy-class seat. Their “bargaining” that depended on the structural defect couldn’t continue now.

He knew it. This method wasn’t going to work.

…This is awful. Half the reason we’re doing this is out the window now. The only other thing I can do…I don’t want to, but I’ll have to rely on that thing…!!

After thinking that far, the man pulled himself together.

He couldn’t depend on the economy-class seat anymore. Which meant he’d just have to find a way to pry open the hatch to the cargo hold. Using what little time he had left, he had to get his hands on a key card with more security clearance than the flight attendant’s.

And he had another problem.

The girl sitting next to him, completely stiff.

If he let her go, she’d warn everyone about him. He needed to shut her up for good.

He had no choice.

He gulped loudly, then put the tools and cell phone on his knee into his pocket. Finally, he hid the blade in his French-language newspaper and said to the girl, “Stand up. If you disobey, I’ll stab you.”

The plan was starting to fall apart.

Even the mastermind himself wouldn’t be able to control the situation for much longer.

12

Next to a wall lined with microwaves in the in-flight-meal heating space, Kamijou suddenly lifted his head.

…Footsteps?

Suddenly, from the other side of the door, he heard what sounded like footsteps.

Not just one set.

It was at least two.

Wondering who it could be, his ears picked up on something else.

It was a high-pitched whistling sound.

…Is that Index?

If he remembered right, when Index was angry earlier (because no matter how long she waited, it wasn’t mealtime), the hot blond flight attendant had given her a cheap ball-shaped toy. Apparently some sort of prize, it made a flutelike sound when you gripped it.

It didn’t sound like she was spontaneously squeezing it. The sound was regular. It was probably in her pocket rubbing against her, making noise on its own.

If that toy was an airline-points reward, then it might not have been Index carrying it…but he couldn’t help imagining her, wearing her simple dress.

If it really was Index, who was she with? Maybe she’d caught the flight attendant.

But then a different thought occurred to him.

One that threw cold water over his optimistic opinion.

Wait, he thought.

Was the truth really something so kind?

There was plenty of danger.

Why had they thrown Touma Kamijou in here in the first place?

No, that couldn’t possibly…

He tried to deny it, but then the two sets of footsteps stopped.

The whistling flute noise stopped, too.

He heard a door open.

This area was walled off. The other passengers wouldn’t see them.

And then…

<“Inside. If you don’t want to be stabbed.”>

The voice spoke French, so Kamijou didn’t know what was said. But the deep male voice certainly didn’t sound anything like what most people would expect of a tour guide who worked in the service industry.

Screw that!!

Kamijou was about to shout and break out, but if he made too much noise without being able to break the door down, it would just antagonize the criminal.

The door didn’t seem to be made of metal, but it also didn’t seem the sort he could break just by tackling it. He didn’t think he could use a wire to undo the electronic lock, either.

While he was considering his options, there was movement on the other side of the door.

The one doing the threatening and the one being threatened seemed to have just entered another small room right nearby.

Shit!!

Kamijou cast a quick glance around. His eyes fell on the aluminum cart they used to carry the in-flight meals. It was like a squared-off stroller.

He violently grabbed the cart’s handle and pointed it at the door.

The thought of having to compensate for the damage didn’t even have time to cross his mind.

“O​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​!​!”

He shouted and charged with all his might.

Then came the collision.

With a brilliant crashing noise, the aluminum cart’s front crumpled inward. But the door didn’t make it out unscathed, either. The lock mechanism bounced off with a click, and the door flew ajar like someone had kicked it open. The remaining momentum sent both Kamijou and the broken cart rolling out into the passageway.

He released the cart and looked around.

There were several small rooms in this walled area, but only one door was closed.

He grabbed the knob and flung it open.

It was the closet where they kept cleaning supplies. There were several mops and plastic buckets inside.

As well as a familiar face.

Index.

She was lying there, faceup, as a man he didn’t recognize straddled her. The man’s hands held a rubber hose from the closet, and the hose was wrapped around Index’s slender neck.

What was he doing?

Before Kamijou could think, his hands moved.

“?”

The man strangling Index must have been engrossed in the act, because he didn’t notice the danger until the moment Kamijou grabbed the back of his collar.

With the man’s suit in his grip, Kamijou wheeled himself around.

The man’s body, under the influence of centrifugal force, flew out of the cleaning supply closet. Before he touched the floor, he crashed into the far wall.

There was a thundering slam!!

Oxygen left the man’s lungs. His body slumped and crumpled onto the floor.

Kamijou ignored him.

He didn’t notice the scream he unleashed as he swung one of his legs up, then drove it toward the man’s sternum, trying to break his bones.

This time, his attack was dodged. The man had moved, rolling to the side.

The inner walls were thin, probably to decrease the plane’s weight. The sole of Kamijou’s foot ended up buried in the wall.

The man took the chance to bring his arm up and around.

Kamijou felt something hot near the back of his thigh.

He turned to see a knife made out of carved bone in the man’s hand—probably to get through the metal detectors.

“…”

Kamijou didn’t clench his fist.

Instead, he pulled out the aluminum handle bar from the broken in-flight meal cart that was stopped on its side in the passage.

If he landed a hit with it, it would be no laughing matter for the victim, but Kamijou didn’t care.

With the blunt weapon now in Kamijou’s hand, the man was the one to edge carefully away.

And then Kamijou began to hear the pattering of footsteps.

The flight attendants had noticed the terrorist—or rather, they’d heard Kamijou smashing through the door.

That seemed to decide the man’s next course of action.

He put the blade in his inside pocket, then escaped via the nearby steep staircase to a separate floor. Kamijou considered chasing him, but in the end looked toward Index, lying limp in the cleaning supply closet.

“Index!!” he shouted right next to her ear. The girl shifted a little. There was still a dark blue bruise on her neck, but it didn’t seem like her life was in danger.

Her small mouth moved slightly.

“What? Forced-landing safety mechanism…?”

A stream of unfamiliar terms flowed from it.

Ones he wouldn’t think the mechanically challenged Index would say.

That was when reinforcements finally arrived.

The flight attendant and the tall man…probably the plane’s captain. He must have been prioritizing the terrorist on board, leaving the plane’s controls to his copilot.

They looked disapprovingly at the broken door to the in-flight-meal heating space, but when they saw the limp Index and the gash in Kamijou’s thigh, they realized he hadn’t done it for nothing.

After explaining what had just happened, he asked, “What did she mean by ‘forced-landing safety mechanism’? Index probably heard it from the criminal.”

The captain exhaled slowly, then answered. “Do you know what a belly landing is?” he began. “I’m sure you’ve seen it on the news sometimes. When you can’t get the wheels out during landing and the plane makes all those sparks on the runway. Do you know why that’s dangerous?”

“Well…because the sparks could ignite the fuel tanks or something?”

“The plane’s fuel tanks are inside the main wings. The fuselage hitting the asphalt won’t normally set them on fire.”

“Then what?”

“It’s the engines. You know, the ones hanging underneath the main wings. The Skybus 365 model is designed so that the engines won’t come into contact with the ground during a belly landing, but a whole lot of vibrations still make it to them. The jet fuel inside a spinning engine is already easy to burn, but when it reacts with the air, it basically becomes a bomb waiting to go off. If any unstable vibrations hit it, the entire thing could explode. If the fire in the engines goes through the fuel pipes and into the main wing tanks, that’s when the whole thing’ll blow.”

Kamijou couldn’t take this all in; the captain explained it to him piece by piece.

“That’s why the Skybus 365 has a forced-landing safety mechanism. Sensors will automatically detect the impact from a forced landing and shut down all the engines on its own. It seals up the fuel pipes, preventing fire in the engines from igniting the fuel in the tanks. After that, the plane scrapes along the runway with pure momentum, decelerating…That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“It automatically stops all the engines…?” The bad feeling Kamijou felt deep in his heart escaped through his mouth. “Then if that safety malfunctioned right now…”

Everyone was silent.

The captain groaned softly, then said, “I understand the gist of it. I know that your friend was hurt, too. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t be there to help, but…”

“(Yeah? What do you ‘understand,’ exactly?)” Kamijou remarked to himself.

The captain, not noticing, continued, “Most importantly, this didn’t escalate. But we can’t let anyone else know that both a tour guide and a passenger have been harmed. If they knew, all five hundred of them would create a huge panic as they sought ‘safety.’”

His calm tone aggravated Kamijou even more.

He didn’t appreciate how no matter what happened, the captain treated it like it had nothing to do with his decisions but was still trying to decide everything on his own.

“I apologize to the both of you, but we’ll still need to isolate you temporarily somewhere else. I have a duty to the lives of my passengers. For that, I’ll do anything—”

Before he knew what was happening, Kamijou’s right hand moved.

Once he started to swing his fist, he remembered his hand still had the aluminum bar in it.

But he couldn’t stop now.

Thud!! came the sound.

The captain’s body reeled over backward.

“…Don’t give me that shit,” growled Kamijou. “A duty to the lives of your passengers? I listened and did what you assholes told me to do, and look what happened! Do you even understand the situation we’re in?! You talk like you’re so freaking important, and you’re not even sorry that you messed up! What’s that about?!”

“Ugh…”

As the captain, holding his nose, tried to say something, Kamijou shoved the blunt weapon at him again.

“That guy just hurt my friend!! You say you have a responsibility to five hundred people, but you let one slip through the cracks awfully quick!! Treating people differently because of how they come up on some documentation, are you? What do I have to gain by protecting complete strangers like you with your stupid job rules?! I have every reason to beat the hell out of that shithead. You can do whatever you want! And I’m going to do things my way!!”

Kamijou looked once at Index, who was being cared for by the hottie flight attendant, then tossed his blunt weapon aside.

…Damn it. If I’d been prepared…

Then he started off in the direction of the steep staircase where the man in the suit had disappeared.

“…That piece of shit. I’ll beat him senseless.”

The violent tone wasn’t the sort Kamijou usually had.

And Kamijou wasn’t the only one acting differently from usual.

“…That hurts,” grumbled the captain, who’d been struck by the weapon. He rubbed his nose where he’d been whacked, checking to see if it was broken.

He glared after Kamijou, then slowly put a hand up to the wall and took a microphone from it. It was the one flight attendants used to tell all the passengers to buckle their seat belts or call the cockpit directly to ask for instructions.

The captain adjusted the channel so only the cockpit would hear him, then spoke in a low voice.

“Wash…” That was the name of one of his two copilot subordinates. “You can leave the plane’s controls to Richmond. Yes, yeah. It’s an emergency. You unlock the box and bring the Archery here.”

The hottie flight attendant blinked at him, dumbstruck.

The Archery was the only weapon on board the Skybus 365, stored in the cockpit so that nobody could steal the flight yoke. In consideration of Japan’s Swords and Firearms Control Law, it was categorized as a type of crossbow, but in reality, it had none of the structure or function of a bow and arrow. When you pulled the trigger, nitrogen gas would propel a metal dart over forty centimeters long at a high speed—a weapon almost on the level of a hunting gun.

When he saw the flight attendant’s dumbfounded look, the captain snorted. “He won’t listen to any orders. He raised his hands against the captain, too. I hereby designate him as a dangerous individual. We essentially have another terrorist on board. I’m not about to let someone unpredictable have his way on my plane.”

His voice was chilling to those who listened.

The Archery arrived quickly.

13

When Kamijou arrived on another floor via the stairs, he looked around. The post-sunset plane interior was illuminated by soft lights, but the walled section he was in seemed somewhat dimmer.

The man in the suit wasn’t here.

In front of him was the business-class seating and behind him, economy.

In both areas, the passengers were spending their time in their own ways, unfolding newspapers, putting on their seat-connected headphones, and fiddling with their small monitors.

…Which one? Which way did he go?

For now, he decided to move from the walled area to the economy-class seating behind him. He was pretty sure he remembered the features of Index’s attacker, but every single one of these people was sitting politely and quietly in their seats. They all started to look camouflaged.

Kamijou didn’t have perfect recall like Index.

He’d finally gotten a look at the man’s face—but at this rate, his mental image of it would probably get jumbled up.

If he’d only act panicked, I could tell him apart right away…, he thought bitterly. But then he stopped dead.

The criminal had been negotiating with the British over the destruction of the master recorder or whatever. That would constrain him from taking any major action until it was clear what the response would be.

For example—

Making the final decision of whether the plane would or wouldn’t fall.

I get it. Kamijou nodded to himself, then turned back to the walled area. I know how to shake him up.

Fweeee!! A shrill buzz rang in the man’s ears.

He was actually in the other direction from economy, where Kamijou had headed—in business class, sitting with an incredibly natural posture. There was nowhere to run on a plane. The most effective way to throw off pursuers was to blend in with the other passengers.

And now this buzzing. It felt like it was piercing his chest.

It must have been for emergencies, because all the seats began to operate on their own, letting out clear oxygen inhalation masks all at once. The passengers looked at them blankly for a moment and then, as though their hair had caught on fire, began to panic.

What the hell? What’s going on here?!

The man gripped his seat’s armrests and looked around.

If the oxygen masks are out, the plane isn’t doing well…But I still haven’t injected the required program. I don’t remember gaining control over the forced-landing safety mechanisms!!

Meanwhile, the shrill buzz continued.

The other passengers nearby were rioting, making him feel like the plane itself was rocking unnaturally.

What if…

What if, hypothetically, something irregular had happened and the plane had malfunctioned somehow…?

Not good.

His objective—no, the objective of the terrorist organization he was a part of—was to destroy the master recorder for the four major airline companies in the United Kingdom. They hadn’t gotten any response from the UK yet. If the Skybus 365 were to fall victim to a completely unrelated accident that caused it to plummet and crash, then…

The master recorder was still live.

Wait, if they treated the whole thing as a simple airplane accident, the entire terrorist incident would disappear.

Not good, not good, not good! Shit, I need to do something!!

The man stood from his seat.

He had to fix this state of affairs. But he didn’t have any real plan as to how.

Meanwhile, the captain was furious.

Having gotten his hands on the Archery, the only projectile weapon on his plane, he scowled at the shrill buzzing and grabbed a microphone hanging on the wall.

The line was a direct connection to the cockpit.

“What’s happening?! You didn’t suddenly decrease our altitude, I hope!!”

“N-no, sir. The craft is level. The instruments didn’t cause an automatic alarm; a manual switch inside the plane activated it.”

“Shit! Damn terrorists!!” shouted the captain, Archery in hand. The actual terrorist was one thing—he didn’t even perceive Touma Kamijou as a normal passenger anymore. “If they plan on having their way on my plane, then they’ve got another think coming…Hey, Richmond!! Cut the alarm, damn it! We know the instruments are fine, so play the automatic voice clip! The one saying it was a mistake and there are no problems!!”

After shouting into the microphone, he slammed it to the floor and hefted the Archery again. That Asian kid used the stairs to go to the other floor. But no matter how big the Skybus 365 was, it was still a passenger plane. If he combed the whole thing, the captain would find him quickly.

“Damn it. I’ll stop those little bastards even if I have to shoot their limbs off,” he spat, about to hurry to the staircase.

Then, from the microphone-slash-speaker he’d thrown to the floor came his copilot’s stressed voice.

“C-Captain!! Emergency!!”

The mic was meant to be close to the face to talk through it. He’d heard it from the floor—proof his copilot was shouting his head off, not caring.

“What is it? Did they do something else?!”

“I’m not sure, sir!” the copilot said, returning shout for shout. “A-anyway, please come back to the cockpit! I can’t do this alone…Damn it, what’s going on? What the hell is all this? Th-the fuel gauge…!! It’s not supposed to be going down like this! There must be a hole in the tank!!”

“Are you kidding me…?”

The captain felt a cold tension begin to whirl like a vortex in a spot near his gut.

Just hitting the onboard buzzer wouldn’t have caused such a change. Or had something happened related to the forced-landing safety mechanism…?

…What’s happening?

Both hands still clutching the Archery, which could kill an unarmed foe in a single shot, the captain vacillated over whether to chase the terrorists or return to the cockpit.

“Captain, your orders?! We won’t hold until the airport! Worst-case scenario, we have to prepare for a forced landing on a highway!!”

“Damn it all!!”

The captain made up his mind.

Instead of heading up the steep staircase, he went with his other copilot, who had brought him the Archery, and ran full speed toward the cockpit.

14

The London borough of Lambeth was home to a church named St. George’s Cathedral.

St. George was a household name; many different facilities took it, including schools, hospitals, parks, and churches. There were even multiple St. George’s Cathedrals in London. This was one such building.

When thinking of a church at night, most people would probably envision the moonlight colored by flickering candles and stained-glass windows creating a cold, solemn atmosphere. This was a day when that rule didn’t apply. A plethora of monitors provided by groups cooperating with Academy City, headquarters of the science side, sat atop the podiums and pews, with square, boxy communication devices and all kinds of coiling cables lying on the ground. The light from the liquid-crystal displays and pilot lights threw the soft darkness in the nighttime cathedral into chaos.

As a large group of sisters traveled to and fro, none of them quite sure how to operate the unfamiliar machines, two figures sat on chairs.

One of them was the head of the Puritan Faction—the archbishop Laura Stuart.

The other was the head of the Knight Faction—the Knight Leader.

In contrast to Laura’s gentle expression, the leader of the Knights’ was stern.

“’Twould seem the head of the Royal Family Faction won’t be coming. One would think it sets a bad example for the three factions not to come together for negotiations.”

“…The royals, starting with Her Majesty the Queen, control many related agencies such as the police and the Parliament. They’re doing their utmost to have them act appropriately. They’ve no time to come to a place like this.”

Laura exhaled at those words.

The three factions of the United Kingdom had a clear relationship of power.

The Royal Family Faction knew how to handle the Knight Faction.

The Knight Faction knew how to handle the Puritan Faction.

The Puritan Faction knew how to handle the Royal Family Faction.

Therefore, by having a representative from each present at a conference, they could all state their opinions as equals…but the Royal Family Faction’s absence made several things more difficult for the Puritans’ Laura. It was enough for her to curse the queen, thinking, I do hope that irritating woman didn’t run away from this on purpose.

Without noticing Laura’s concerns, the Knight Leader spoke, tone steadfast.

“…In any case, it seems that illusion the lot of you planted is starting to show its effects.”

“Heh-heh. I will admit that it is indeed too difficult to completely hijack a hunk of science such as a passenger plane from a distance. Falsifying a single instrument, however, is really quite simple.”

“In other words, you messed with the fuel gauge in the cockpit,” he replied, looking at the computer set up in the cathedral.

There were several LCD monitors and instruments surrounding the two chairs. It was a training simulator, the same as the Skybus 365 cockpit. She seemed to be using it to “aim” her illusion spell.

“There should be much consternation on board about now. After all, their gauge is plummeting so fast, they must think there’s a hole in the tank. They will believe they won’t make it to an airport.”

“Instead of landing at an airport, you’ll have them do a forced landing on a countryside road with few buildings.” The Knight Leader moved his eyebrows in displeasure. “The report did say the terrorist himself won’t crash the plane right away, but I’m sure he doesn’t understand the plane’s defect they’ve started the rumor about. Forced landings are very difficult. If anything were to get in the way, it would make a big mess.”

“Oh-ho. Would you rather have it explode in a big city, in a residential area, on the international airport runway, or near the control tower? If worse comes to worst, I should think the victim count would be many times the number of passengers aboard.”

“…”

The Knight Leader fell silent for a moment, growling.

Laura grabbed one of the sisters who was walking over with a report and asked, “What roads might they use for a forced landing?”

“Of the straight roads from London to Scotland, the best would likely be in the vicinity of Kendal and Carlisle.”

After hearing the report, Laura snapped her fingers.

The Knight Leader frowned. “…Some kind of signal?”

“Shut down all main roads that correspond to that area and block all the roads that lead there. Also, full equipment for suppressing the terrorist. I believe the Knight Faction has the Robin Hood for sniping, yes?”

“A schemer falsely preaching religion would dare to order a knight who protects an entire nation?”

“Please think of it as us letting thee have all the credit. By the reports, our terrorist is no sorcerer and doth show no sign of possessing a gun or explosives. If the craft lands safely, he would not be able to contain over five hundred passengers. I’m extending to thee a splendid gift—a chance to farm some experience points.”

“Ridiculous,” spat the Knight Leader. “I don’t mind hurrying things along, but what do you plan to do if the plane breaks up in midair?”

“If that happens, we must at least secure the Index of Prohibited Books, who is on board with them. Oh, come now. I have the spell I used to capture Lidvia Lorenzetti when she attempted to flee using a charter flight. Even should it explode in midair, if it’s just one person, I can catch them on the ground.”

“I say this from the bottom of my heart: You deserve an untimely death.”

15

The man felt the plane bank sharply.

The nose was tilted down—in other words, the plane would decrease altitude rapidly.

A forced landing? Not good!!

The man’s goal was the destruction of the master recorder. If they landed somewhere before the UK decided whether to accept that demand or not, their “negotiations” would be unable to continue.

And traditionally, a passenger plane landing somewhere other than an airport meant he’d be surrounded by a lot of law enforcement agencies and end up in a siege. He’d heard a rumor that aircraft windows and walls weren’t only light and thin to decrease its weight and solve the problem of high gas prices—it was also so that people could use large rifles to accurately snipe passengers on the inside.

British airports and main roads were right in the middle of enemy territory. He couldn’t afford to land somewhere like that and get trapped in a stalemate.

“Shit!!”

The man sprang into a run. From the business class forward…He thought of going through first class and battering his way into the cockpit, but he stopped halfway there. The cockpit door would be the most sturdily constructed of all, as a way to prevent terrorism. It wasn’t something he could break through without a plan.

Meanwhile, the plane continued its downward race.

He began to feel an odd weightlessness, the kind you get when riding an elevator.

“I have to do something…anything…,” he muttered to himself, jumping into the walled area between business and first class. Like in the other walled areas, a mic for the flight attendants was hanging on the wall.

He took it.

His trembling hand changed the channel on it, and when he got it to connect directly to the cockpit, the first thing he shouted was this, in French:

<“Call off the forced landing!! I’ll bring this plane down right now!!>”

“?!” He heard a gasp from the other end.

They probably couldn’t figure out how to respond to the sudden threat.

Without thinking, the man continued, “I have control of the Skybus 365’s structural defect. I can bring this plane down at any time! If you don’t want over five hundred passengers to be killed, bring us back to our original altitude right now!!”

That was a complete bluff. The seat in economy class had been unusable, and he couldn’t even open the hatch connecting to the cargo hold for the backup plan. But that didn’t stop him from lying.

“We can’t.”

Despite his bluff, he got an unexpected answer. The voice was tense, but still replied clearly.

“For whatever reason, the fuel gauge numbers are plummeting. We’re probably leaking fuel. At this rate, we won’t make it to the airport in Edinburgh. And we can’t turn around and go to one in London, either! In fact, if things go wrong, the fuel could catch fire and make the engines themselves explode!!”

None of that mattered.

Whether or not the plane blew up didn’t change anything for the man.

What was important to him was to grace this act of terrorism with a beautiful ending.

“Argh. I’ll kill you. Three minutes, got it? If you don’t return us to normal altitude in three minutes, I’ll start killing the passengers one by one!!”

“Do you understand the situation?!”

The answer was close to a shriek, but the man covered it up with an even more deranged voice. “Do you understand?! I hold the passengers’ lives in my hands!! I have over five hundred hostages. I could kill half of them and still have more than enough in stock! Don’t forget that!!”

After saying everything he wanted, the man slammed the mic back onto the wall.

Then he slid down the wall and sat on the floor.

He reached for the animal bone knife in his inside pocket.

Would they ascend, or would they descend?

His teeth chattering, the man gave his full focus to the plane’s angle.

16

In a corner of St. George’s Cathedral, the archbishop Laura Stuart frowned.

“…How odd this is.”

“What?”

The answer came from the Knight Leader.

Laura looked not at the monitors but at the whiteboard next to them. Several round magnets were stuck onto a map of the United Kingdom, but one of them was traveling along it.

“Our plane is ascending. I must assume they’re giving up on their forced landing.”

“You didn’t order the illusion disabled?”

“Oh, no,” mumbled Laura, as if talking to herself. “I would never disengage the illusion before they landed on a main road. Nevertheless, the remote illusion we placed on said craft has lost its effect. Which is—”

“Archbishop! It’s an emergency!!”

Just then, a young sister from the Puritan Faction ran over to her.

“We confirmed large-scale interference from Scotland. Our illusion is being nullified by a third party!! The fuel meter display should be back to normal now!!”

“Interference, you say…?”

For the first time, Laura’s brow furrowed in distaste.

Who? And for what purpose…?

This was, of course, magical interference. But they also knew the terrorist in question was a mere felon and unrelated to sorcery. It didn’t seem plausible that there were any sorcerers working with the criminals.

In fact…

“Scotland…Of all things, for the interference to come from within the United Kingdom…”

The Knight Leader’s expression changed, becoming easier to understand than Laura’s.

It was anger.

“Either French sorcerers have gotten involved without us realizing it, or a British sorcerer’s society has turned coats. We don’t know. But this is your fault, Archbishop. You were given absolute authority over the English Puritan Church to avoid any trouble like this before it happened.”

“…I understand that.”

And though it didn’t show on her face, her emotions were actually in a state of violent turbulence. Then, with one of those emotions in her voice, she said:

“There’s more to this incident than a delinquent or two who liketh things flashy.”

Laura snapped her fingers.

The next thing anyone knew, there was an orange point of light directly behind her. It was a flame, lit on the end of a cigarette. A sorcerer with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth. Laura spoke to him.

“Just in case, make the preparations we discussed for the Skybus 365. What will you need?”

“Let’s see,” said the red-haired priest quietly, blowing out a puff of smoke. “I’ll need a transport. The Knight Faction presides over military matters; can I get their leader to contact the RAF?”

17

The man looked up.

The plane’s angle had changed. In contrast to just before, the nose was going up.

It was gaining altitude again.

The forced landing…was avoided?

Breathing heavily, he looked around.

The shrill buzzer had cut off, as though the cockpit had done something about it. An automatic announcement began to play in the languages of several countries, informing them that it was a mistake and there was no need to worry.

Somehow…I made it.

In the walled area between business and first class, the man finally relaxed. The terrorist plan was basically at a dead end, but it wasn’t a decisive failure yet. If he could just figure out how to open the hatch connecting to the cargo hold, there was a solid chance to recover.

But then…

“So this is where you were.”

With a startled expression, he looked to where the voice had come from.

The spiky-haired Asian was standing in the entrance to business class.

Touma Kamijou didn’t actually understand much of the situation.

He’d been the one who pressed the emergency buzzer, but after that, he hadn’t felt the plane’s rapid descent. At most, he wondered if the crew was up to something.

In any case, he’d caused a panic in the plane and shaken up the criminal, then looked around here and there, watching to see if anyone had an irregular reaction.

And he’d found one.

The walled area between business and first class.

A man who had grabbed a mic and yelled through it at the cockpit.

“…”

For a few seconds, the man looked at Kamijou, dumbfounded.

Then he reached for his inside pocket.

His bone knife was likely inside.

The knife that the metal detectors couldn’t find, sharpened to a neat angle that could sever veins and pierce organs.

That was why Kamijou moved before the man pulled his hand back out.

With a bam, his feet hit the floor in a quick dash to close range. Then he rammed his palm into the man’s elbow, bent as it was to pull the knife out.

When he saw the way his arm jerked back, the man winced.

Without caring if the man understood Japanese, Kamijou said to him, “You want to get stabbed with your own knife?”

“?!”

The man, now in a cold sweat, tried to whirl his body around to shake off Kamijou’s arm. But before he could, Kamijou pulled his head back, then slammed it hard into the man’s forehead.

There was an ear-splitting wham!!

The man staggered.

Then Kamijou let loose a fierce knee to close the newfound distance.

It was a direct hit, and the man’s body floated, his gut at the center. As his target thumped back down onto the floor, Kamijou moved in for a counterattack, but…

“…”

His opponent’s hand reached for that suit pocket again.

And as it did, he smiled thinly.

<“No complaints, I’m sure.”>

Kamijou didn’t understand the French, but he could tell the enemy was boasting about imminent victory.

With Kamijou unable to move, the man whipped out the knife and pointed it at him.

No matter how you thought about it, between bare hands and a blade, the blade had the advantage. In the worst case, if Kamijou went in prepared for them to hit each other, the other guy would get away with a punch—Kamijou’s gut would be split open and he’d die.

…That’s how it should have been.

But the bone knife in question had made contact with Kamijou’s knee before, so it was broken from the base.

“…Are you kidding me?”

The man glared balefully at his knife, now only a grip.

Then his face came back up abruptly.

Touma Kamijou, fist clenched like a boulder, was slowly moving toward him.

He spoke.

He knew the man probably wouldn’t understand, but he spoke in Japanese anyway.

“No complaints, I’m sure.”

Bam, wham, crack!! A series of noises as his fist swung down again and again.

For once, Touma Kamijou wasn’t satisfied with a single hit.

18

The male terrorist was personally tied up and left in a small room in the walled area between business and first class.

The rapid decrease of the fuel gauge seemed to have been a mistake on the crew’s part, and there was no real problem. (Still, the captain was awfully unhappy and didn’t appear to want to talk to Kamijou. This was something he’d heard from the hot blond flight attendant.) They weren’t going to crash anymore; they’d gained altitude and were headed to Edinburgh Airport as originally planned.

Kamijou was worried about Index, who’d been throttled by the man, but in her words:

“Beef-or-fish, beef-or-fish! Once the problem is fixed, all that’s left is to eat the aerialplane meal!!”

“…Index, you were held at knifepoint and have a bruise on your throat where he squeezed it. But you’re acting like the world is totally at peace.”

All things considered, everything was supposedly going smoothly.

But…

“…”

“What’s wrong, Touma?”

Something didn’t sit right with him. It felt unnatural, like he’d been fitting all the pieces into a jigsaw puzzle but lost the ones he needed to finish the picture.

“Come to think of it, why would he pick now to commit a terrorist attack?”

“Well, he seems to be with an anti-UK group,” said the flight attendant, while giving him a skeptical glance. Maybe she didn’t want Kamijou, a passenger, moving around more than he already had. “I suppose they wanted to cause a problem with the skies over the country.”

But Kamijou was still confused. “It just seemed like he was scared of us doing a forced landing in Britain or the negotiations being called off before the time limit…If he’d just done things right away, he could have given himself more time for negotiating. Then the criminals probably could have done all kinds of bad stuff and maybe even shaken up Britain.”

“Either way, the terrorist is gone now. We don’t need to worry about it, right?” said Index. “More importantly, beef-or-fish!!” she shouted.

The flight attendant comforted her with a smile.

Am I overthinking it…? It’s possible the pilot could have made us land at an airport along the way if the terrorist hijacked the plane immediately. Still…Kamijou thought about it, walking slowly. But if he needed to act at the right time, then why? If all they wanted to do was send a threat letter to a British airline company and have them destroy the master recorder, they wouldn’t need to involve the skies over Britain. No matter where the plane crashed, the end result would still be that a flight to Britain got attacked.

And the terrorists themselves couldn’t have thought up some slipshod plan on the spot. They’d actually shut down the engines on other flights for fifteen seconds, testing to make sure they could use the forced-landing safety mechanism properly.

They would have done simulation upon simulation, planning so that they could handle any possible situation. Would the whole thing be over just because they couldn’t use the forced-landing safety mechanism?

Was there something else?

Wasn’t there a backup plan they could have used as insurance?

…A reason the terrorist moved in the final hour of a ten-hour flight…Had something out of the ordinary happened in the meantime?

That’s right. We stopped at an airport in Paris on the way to load in extra cargo!!

That’s when Kamijou stood perfectly still. When Index and the flight attendant gave him dubious looks, he said, “There’s more.”

“?”

“The cargo hold!! He waited until we were finished loading cargo at the airport in Paris to carry out the terrorist act. Why was that? Because he was waiting for his friends to get into the Skybus 365 via the cargo!!”

Index and the flight attendant looked shocked.

“Normal passengers can’t bring weapons onto an airplane. That’s why his friends hid inside the containers to board the Skybus 365. If a problem came up and they couldn’t do plan A, they’d have the man open the hatch from the outside, which is the only way it can open, and move to plan B.”

“Then the reason he was quiet for almost nine hours and didn’t attack at all was to join his allies in France…? Is that why he started moving after the containers were loaded?”

“If this is true, we’re still in trouble,” said Kamijou, tap-tapping a foot on the floor. “They got into the cargo hold without going through normal checks. They wouldn’t have been patted down. It’s more than likely the enemies in the cargo hold are armed with guns and explosives. And if they realize the plan has failed, they might use their firepower to bring the entire plane down, themselves included.”

The jumbo jet was flying ten thousand meters in the sky. The air was thin, for one thing. Too thin for a person to breathe. The air inside the plane was artificially pressure-adjusted to make it easy for people to spend time there. It was just like putting air into a balloon.

Bullets would easily punch airholes in that balloon—the plane’s fuselage. It would be all over if that happened. The air inside the plane would move all at once to escape outside it, resulting in that tiny hole folding inside, seriously damaging the plane itself.

“…Is that the only entrance to the cargo hold?” he asked.

“Y-yes, but you need a copilot or higher key card to unlock it,” answered the flight attendant with a rather uncertain expression, as though she wasn’t an expert on cargo.

“A key card…I don’t think I can exactly ask our captain for help at this point.”

The captain had a projectile weapon called the Archery, but he wasn’t likely to lend it to them. Kamijou had recovered his good name after taking the terrorist down, but it didn’t look like that had changed the captain’s personal feelings.

Then the flight attendant offered, “…Maybe not the captain, but if you ask the copilot, you might be able to get the key card.”

“…Really?”

“Not the Archery, of course, but still,” said the flight attendant apologetically. For Kamijou, though, he would be grateful just to open the cargo hold hatch. “Also, the Skybus 365’s cargo hold is separated into three blocks,” she continued. “Most of the cargo we loaded in France is in the center block, I believe.”

Which meant the terrorists were most likely there.

But if there was only one entrance…“…The most dangerous part would be the instant we open the hatch.”

“B-but there are no other exits…,” stammered the flight attendant.

“That’s right,” he said. “Can we use the ventilation ducts?”

“No, this isn’t a movie. The ducts in the Skybus 365 are only thirty square centimeters in diameter. It wouldn’t be possible for a person to go through them…”

“Actually, that’s fine.”

“?”

“What do you mean, Touma?”

The flight attendant and Index gave him surprised looks. “There are coffee and tea bottles in the free drink station, right?” he said. “Bring some here. If they’re cold, could you warm them up for me again? Use the microwaves or whatever you have to. I just want something ridiculously hot.”

19

Several box-shaped containers were lined up inside the cargo hold. They weren’t the long, slender type that you’d see loaded on tankers in a port, though. They were cubical, like dice, two meters to a side. Made not of metal but of lighter aluminum. They sported the airline company’s logo on their silvery surfaces.

The door of one of those containers was open. And standing against the wall of that open container was a single man.

Acre Lugoni.

Although he wore the work uniform of a Paris international airport, his hand gripped the latest model of pistol. The bag at his feet was also packed with explosives like hand grenades and plastic bombs. Of course, he’d only be using them in the absolute worst-case scenario.

If possible, he’d rather not use this armory of weapons.

When Acre and the others were moved to this project, they’d actually gotten all kinds of support from several organizations in the form of information and hideouts. The condition was that those organizations needed to assist Acre in hijacking a passenger plane—where it was naturally difficult to bring firearms—without using any real weapons. If they were successful, Acre promised to share his knowledge with those organizations.

Thus, if Acre and his comrades failed at this new kind of terrorist attack that took advantage of the plane’s forced-landing safety mechanism, they’d turn into laughingstocks.

But there was no sign that their first option was going to succeed.

The negotiations using the Skybus 365 had probably failed. The United Kingdom likely wouldn’t answer their demands—they wouldn’t do any damage at this rate.

Their second option—in other words, the worst-case scenario—was fast approaching.

…Guess it’s time.

In the dimly lit cargo hold, Acre glanced at the wristwatch on his thick arm. He calculated they’d arrive at Edinburgh Airport soon, but there was no sign of his comrade Musset making a move; he should still be in the passenger seating area. Had he lost his nerve? Messed something up? Either way, Acre didn’t get the feeling things were proceeding according to plan.

At the very least, he’d bring down this plane.

He might be able to blow open the hatch using his explosives, but he decided against such a roundabout method.

He made up his mind: five more minutes. If there was no movement, he’d deliver an attack to the cargo hold’s wall. If he blew a hole open in the outer wall, he just had to wait for the force of air to destroy the Skybus 365 on its own. They’d be laughingstocks later for the half-assed result, but it was better than getting nothing done at all.

That’s when it happened.

He heard a ba-klong. It sounded like something denting a metal sheet. Not only once, either—the sound came a second time, then a third.

Acre searched for the source of the noise, then eventually directed his gaze up.

That was where he heard the metal sound from. Strung all about the ceiling were ducts. Their metal surfaces were twisting out of shape. Not just in one place—but as though something was moving through them, little by little.

…Are they serious? Is this supposed to be a surprise attack…?

You saw it all the time in movies, but…The ducts in the Skybus 365 were far too small for a human to pass through them and too thin. He’d admit that going straight through the single entrance to the hold would be suicidal, but wouldn’t getting yourself stuck in the tiny ducts and becoming unable to move be just as idiotic?

Acre pointed his gun overhead.

The ba-klong came once again.

He took careful aim, then fired several shots into the one point where the metal sheet had bent.

Bang bang bang!! A series of gunshots.

The walls of the ducts were awfully thin—maybe high oil prices had steeply increased fuel costs, too. Then, from the easily made, fingertip-sized hole came hot fluid.

And it was hot.

But it was too hot to be human blood.

“What?!”

The pain stung him like a deluge of sulfuric acid. He identified the thin vermilion liquid from its smell. It was black tea. Even now, steam rose from the stream of liquid dripping down.

And Acre hadn’t noticed something.

Having timed his entrance to cover the sound of the hatch opening and closing with the gunshots, Kamijou had dived straight through the front door and into the cargo hold.

“Yo, terrorist. Ever heard of thermal expansion?”

The volume of an object changes when it heats up. A simple example is the crackling noise when you dump hot water down a stainless-steel sink. In order to draw Acre’s attention, Kamijou had sent black tea through the duct.

“!!” Without hesitation, Acre pointed his gun at the voice speaking to him.

But before he could fire, Kamijou had already hurled an entire bucket of liquid at him, almost like he was dousing a bonfire in water.

Instead, the bucket contained steaming hot coffee.

It doesn’t need to be explained what would happen if you had that dumped on your head.

“G​w​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​!​!”

He howled and writhed as Kamijou tossed the bucket aside and laughed. He gave the handgun Acre had dropped a light kick out of the way. It sank into a puddle of burning hot coffee.

But Acre didn’t stop there.

Screaming, he grabbed Kamijou by the collar with both hands and lifted him up. A moment after the sensation of his feet being in the air gave him a chill, Acre slammed him down to the floor. Da-pam!! The impact shot through Kamijou’s back, and air escaped his lips. “Grgh…brgh…?!”

He couldn’t breathe, but Acre didn’t do the polite thing and give him time to cough. Instead, his arm went behind his waist and came back out with a rather large knife.

“!!”

As the knife swung straight down at his face, Kamijou forced his head to move. There was a shrill gachee from right next to his ear. It looked like half the knife had broken when it stabbed the floor, but Acre, not caring, went to bring it down a second time.

Kamijou reached for the floor.

He grabbed the broken part of the blade and, as Acre leaned forward, stabbed it into his thigh.

The man let loose a scream.

As Acre buckled and staggered to one side, Kamijou rolled to the other, trying to somehow put distance between them.

But he quickly realized the attempt had failed.

The puddle of coffee was right next to the kneeling Acre. And in the middle of the still-steaming puddle was the handgun Kamijou had just kicked into it.

Acre wasted no time grabbing it.

Handguns were made with many different materials, but the one Acre had was stainless steel. It was, of course, a good conductor of heat. After being in the boiling coffee like that, it should have felt like a burning coal, but Acre gripped it tightly anyway. The only thing on his face was rage.

“…I am bringing down this plane,” said Acre, burned all over his body, purposely speaking in Japanese because Kamijou had spoken to him in it. “The Eurotunnel explosion did major damage to our great France. They’re going to pay an equal price. They’ll lose their air lanes in addition to their land route…!!”

“There’s not even any proof Britain did that!”

There were a lot of containers around. Some of their contents might have been usable as weapons. But Acre wasn’t about to give him the time to open them up and check.

“Besides, it’s an island nation! Why would they destroy their only land route?! They’d only be hurting themselves. And they’re having all sorts of trouble now, aren’t they?!”

“That’s not necessarily true,” said Acre, the scorching handgun practically fused to the surface of his palm. “The Eurotunnel has been canceled midconstruction before because of military or political issues. It’s an important land route between France and the UK, but there are still people who haven’t admitted how effective it is to block it off.”

“…”

“We decided to jointly oversee the Eurotunnel’s construction as proof that we’d joined hands in friendship. And yet they were selfish and ruined what we had going!!”

“…Do you have any proof of that?” Kamijou spoke carefully. “Is there really a reason to fight over whose fault it was?! I heard about what’s stored in the containers on this plane from a flight attendant. It’s all liquid food for people who can’t eat normal stuff. French food companies made it to send to the people in Britain!! I thought that was the relationship between your two countries. You think everyone else in the world will go along with your bullshit conspiracy theories?!”

“You’re right—maybe not all British citizens are in the wrong. But there are idiots wherever you go. I’m not going to let those idiots off the hook just because you say there are good people among them.”

As Acre spoke, his finger tensed on the trigger. For some reason, he was smiling hysterically.

“Either way, you’re dying here. It’s not something you have to worry about.”

“…Can you even shoot that thing? It was covered in hot coffee.”

“Recent handguns, even soaked thirty percent in mud, can fire. Don’t think the bullet won’t come out just because it’s wet. Japanese people don’t know anything about guns, do they?” he said, freely pulling the trigger.

Kamijou automatically wanted to shut his eyes, but he barely managed to suppress the urge.

Then…

He heard a grrkk sound.

Nothing else happened—no bullet flew from the muzzle.

The safety wasn’t on or anything. Nor was he out of bullets.

He pulled the trigger a second time, then a third. And then, as he stood there dumbfounded, Kamijou clenched his right hand into a fist.

Then he spoke.

“Ever heard of thermal expansion?”

“?!”

Not waiting for a reply, Kamijou’s fist flew. Wham!! A dull feeling traveled from Acre’s face down, dispersing throughout his whole body. But he still didn’t fall. Kamijou clenched his left fist, too.

“Same as the duct before. An object’s volume changes when it heats up!”

His left fist flew.

Acre, punched in the face, reeled backward.

“Gun parts work the same way! Soak them in boiling water, and one or two of them are sure to bend out of shape!!”

Kamijou loosed his right fist again, and this time, it took Acre down.

He exhaled.

Guns worked by causing the gunpowder inside to burst, and the small blast of air shot the bullet. Since firing one or two hundred shots in a row could cause guns to heat up, they were made to resist a certain amount of heat. That also meant the parts of the gun that wouldn’t normally heat up could be a weak point.

…Still, it was basically a gamble whether or not it would really malfunction like I’d hoped. Don’t know whether it was lucky or unlucky…Actually, I was unlucky the moment I ran into terrorists here.

Whatever the case, as long as a third person didn’t show up to rush him down, the Skybus 365 was free from danger for the moment.

At last, he relaxed.

And then he heard rustling.

Kamijou turned to face it.

Acre, who he’d already punched down, was quietly trying to get up. And there was a bag at his feet. His hand was rummaging around in it—and then it came out. With a hand grenade.

“…!!”

Kamijou hurried to grab Acre’s arm, but Acre’s movement was faster. He grinned an incredible grin as his other hand reached for the grenade’s pin.

It would detonate before much longer.

The cargo hold was small, with nowhere for Kamijou to run. And even though it was made for killing people, the grenade would surely do damage to the Skybus 365’s outer wall. If that came to pass, it would all be over. This passenger plane would crash.

And then—

“As much of an amateur as always, I see. Your hesitation to kill is putting everyone else in danger.”

Kamijou heard a voice.

A man’s voice—one he knew.

Acre frowned at the strange situation, but that didn’t stop him from moving his hand to pull the pin out of the grenade.

That was when…

20

The noise was the first thing the captain, gripping the flight yoke in the cockpit, noticed. He gave the radar a dubious look, spotted a small point where it shouldn’t have been, then looked out the window and gave a start.

A transport craft, giant and jet-black, had flown up right next to them, as though it was a stealth plane.

They weren’t even ten meters apart. It was positioned as though they were doing a midair refueling, but that was an art only small fighter jets were permitted to attempt. Two eighty-meter-class jumbo jets flying within this distance was far beyond simple acrobatics. It was basically suicidal.

As she walked down the passageway of business class, the hottie flight attendant looked out the window and was shocked. A transport craft had its rear hatch open, and something was scattering out of it. It was like a high-altitude blizzard of paper dancing through the air, and even though she didn’t know what it was, she innocently thought of it as pretty.

Index, who was waiting in front of the hatch to the cargo hold for Kamijou to return, noticed people near her start to make noise and glanced out the window. What she saw astounded her. The knowledge in the 103,000 grimoires she possessed had identified the dancing paper blizzard as runic cards.

And then…

In the cargo hold, on the wall right next to Acre, something strange happened.

Whumm!!

Something orange in color spurted from the wall. It was a sword. A single sword, made of flames, penetrating the plane’s outer wall to arrive inside it.

The flame sword burned Acre’s clothes but didn’t destroy his body.

Then the one who had created the flame sword, not caring whether the result was ethical, pulled it back out.

It happened a moment later.

Roar!! The air whipped up into a storm.

All the air in the cargo hold started to move toward the hole near Acre.

Acre, of course, was the first one to suffer harm.

His body shot toward the wall like a door slamming shut. His gut was being sucked through the hole in the aircraft. The jumbo jet, the Skybus 365, which would normally have been torn apart from the inside out, barely avoided destruction by a lid named Acre closing on the hole.

However…

“​G​g​g​g​g​g​g​g​g​g​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​?​!​”

Acre screamed as he felt his body expand under the constant force of suction.

The flesh around his gut was literally being torn off.

Kamijou watched the absurd situation, eyes wide, and then heard the flame sorcerer’s voice.

“It’s ten minutes to Edinburgh Airport. I think he’ll probably survive until then…And I must say, you’ve somehow been entrusted with ‘her’ management tasks, so I’d prefer it if you demonstrated at least this much resolve.”

After saying everything he wanted, his voice suddenly disappeared like a radio transmission ending.

Kamijou stood dumbfounded for a few moments, then realized the hand grenade was still in the screaming Acre’s hand. Practically foaming from the mouth now, he was desperately trying to pull the pin.

Kamijou knocked it away with a hand. The grenade bounced far away so easily it was almost funny.

With Acre’s last means of resistance lost, Kamijou, forcing him back, grinned and said, “Do your best.”

21

The mastermind saw the news on the television later.

Despite the Skybus 365, which had landed at Edinburgh Airport in Scotland, being in a dangerous situation for a time, the passengers had worked together to resolve the problem safely. While watching the cheerful news, the mastermind looked over various documents.

What was on their mind was the transport plane.

The Royal Air Force had lent out a transport craft to resolve the incident.

And it was a stealth transport with an extremely small effective-radar cross-section, too—tech borrowed from Academy City.

The mastermind couldn’t help but sigh.

They decided that the United Kingdom was at its limit.

They were disappointed at the state of affairs, where the UK had needed to borrow strength and technology from Academy City to solve a problem of this level. They couldn’t become a truly strong nation like this—at least, not by leaving the reins with people who would borrow the strength of others to fight.

The mastermind turned off the TV, then scrupulously put the documents together and neatened them, thinking, It looks like we will have to do something after all.

INTERLUDE TWO

Yo.

Looks like you saved me a second time.

That’s right. I thought I’d safely defected from the area under Russian Catholic control. The Roman Orthodox Church and the Russian Catholic Church joined forces, right? Thanks to that, those Russian hands have reached all the way to France, which should have been under Roman Orthodox control. Anyway, all things considered, I was in quite the pinch. This old body of mine would rather stay away from such tales of escape.

I went through all that work reforming the group and changing its name, and thanks to you, the Astrologers’ Brigade is now quite famous.

This time, I think you’ll let me thank you. Last time…Well, we were all desperate at the time, but you disappeared without saying anything, so I still quite regret not being able to thank you.

Oh, I know. Just say the word and we will come to your aid.

Anything you need? …A weapon, eh?

I must say, I can’t help but wonder how on earth you lost your own weapon…But I suppose it would be best not to ask. Oh, don’t glare at me. I can imagine how terrible that episode must have been.

Still, we have plenty of good weapons in store. I didn’t vanish from Russia’s confines and travel the world freely for nothing. We’ve laid hands on all sorts of tools, from all ages and countries, acquired them and made deals for them. We even have the rare, ridiculously large article you like so much in stock.

We’ll give you a few, so feel free to test them out.

The weapons will break? Listen here. I’m repaying a debt to you. I obviously wouldn’t give you fragile weapons. They’re the real things—I guarantee it. They don’t just leave their names in history—they make history.

…No, hold on a moment. If I made such an awful claim about them and they broke first thing, we’d lose face. Come over here a moment. I’ll lead you to where our true, top-of-the-line, number one weapon is.

Eh? No, I am not putting on airs. I can’t carry it to you by myself. I could use construction machinery to do it, but it would be faster just to bring you to it.

Over here, now.

Yes, it’s in this carrier. Let’s just undo the rope and pull the cloth off.

How do you like it?

I know I’m bragging, but it’s amazing, isn’t it?

The holy sword Ascalon.

Ha-ha. Don’t give me that dubious look. I get it, all right? There is no such holy sword named in real legends. This is a Soul Arm made by a true sorcerer based on the story penned by a certain sixteenth-century author who took some liberties. The sorcerer considered what the theoretical values of the sword would be if an evil dragon fifty feet long actually existed and the sword were to slay it. It’s a bona fide monster of a weapon.

It’s a 3.5-meter, 200-kilogram hunk of steel.

This author wrote that it was a one-handed fauchion, but when he calculated what the holy dragon-killing sword would need to look like, it ended up being stupidly large.

Go on, take it. There’s no one more fit to hold it than you.

I must say, you have it tough, too, don’t you?

The fact that you saved our old Astrologers’ Brigade was nothing but happenstance. These eyes of mine saw it the moment you requested that we procure weapons, when you never planned on contacting us again—you’re in quite a hurry to make battle preparations.

Well, you’re headed off to battle no matter what I say, I’m sure. I won’t stop you. But before you leave, there’s one thing I wanted to give you. A certain craftsman living in Britain left it with me. Seems he’s the same as me—he couldn’t easily forget you after you up and disappeared so suddenly. You apparently told him to burn the sketch, but that old man completed it in secret anyway.

Ha-ha, what’s wrong?

One look at the thing and you grimace at it?

A lot has happened, but originally you were the one who requested the craftsman make that escutcheon, weren’t you?