INTERLUDE ONE

Academy City had gotten very busy in its own right.

In a girl’s dormitory room, Mikoto Misaka was sitting on her bed. Her roommate, Kuroko Shirai, wasn’t here. She’d apparently been summoned for some sort of job, fulfilling her duty as a member of Judgment.

School, too, was closed today. And not exactly because a typhoon had made landfall.

The possibility was apparently slim so far, but there was still a nonzero chance that Russian warheads or bombers could appear in the skies above Academy City.

Incidentally.

Academy City and Russia seemed more than willing to have at it, but the Japanese government was taking a rather passive approach to the war. It made sense—Japan didn’t have its own military, so even if someone suggested they go to war, nobody could really snap to it and say Yes, right away, sir. With Russia acting as though this was a global-scale war, the US’s so-called deterrence wasn’t working, either.

With no chance of victory in a real clash, the Japanese government was even trying to pressure Academy City to quickly accept Russia’s demands in order to avoid a full-scale war.

In response, Academy City had offered a very simple video.

It showed a ballistic missile blowing up outside the earth’s atmosphere.

It wasn’t just one—or even two.

Over thirty shadows flew past at once, and Academy City’s interception weapons shot every one of them down.

“We will not make any demands of you.”

During a mobile 1seg broadcast, the Academy City press secretary had this to say:

“However, we also have no responsibility to protect anyone beyond our own allies. Russia has already launched ballistic missiles without warning. Thankfully, we confirmed that none were loaded with nuclear warheads at this time, but we do not know when that taboo will be broken as well. We’d like you to use your own judgment to make the decisions you feel are right. Still, the nation of Japan also possesses Aegis warships and PAC-3s secured through massive tax investment, so we don’t believe this will be a major issue.”

…It’s practically a threat.

Academy City had essentially said that if Japan interfered, they would remove Japan’s cities from its air defense network. The American-made interception systems the Japanese Self-Defense Force had, in desperation, procured were certainly excellent, but they were incomparable to ones made in Academy City, which was said to have science and technology twenty to thirty years more advanced than the rest of the world. Even a child could understand these devices couldn’t guarantee 100 percent precision. And how huge a tragedy it would be for even one shot to make it through.

It was almost like Academy City was using Russian-made missiles to make a threat, but most people thought of the issue this way: I don’t care; just please don’t drop it on my head.

Thanks to that, large throngs of citizens were apparently all over their politicians right now, telling them not to provoke the City to ensure that their own cities and towns remained safe zones. The immense flood of public opinion prevented the politicians from doing anything, and meanwhile, Academy City continued to do whatever it wanted.

The contents of the declaration of war had been revealed to the entire world, and Mikoto had viewed it online herself.

However.

It was a fact that she was strangely dissatisfied. Academy City was using indirect threats to stir up the masses, while continuing to claim to be allies of justice who would protect the people—staying clean, never getting their own hands dirty. This image of absolute integrity was eerie, as if everything had been whitewashed with bleach. Eerie enough that it made her think things would be stranger if there wasn’t something at the bottom of it all.

Something…

Mikoto glanced away from her mobile device and looked at her cell phone.

The phone had her Croaker charm attached to it.

She’d dialed the number of a certain spiky-haired boy several times already but hadn’t gotten any sort of response at all. And just the other day, he’d said that he was in London during the coup d’état.

She’d thought it was some kind of joke at the time.

But what if…?

What if he hadn’t come back to Academy City yet?

Mikoto decided it was worth investigating.

After the outbreak of war, the City had restricted usage of the District 23 airport by civilians. Plus, considering the timing of the coup and the war, maybe it was difficult to return.

Academy City: seemingly detached from all the disturbance outside it, but actually the centerpiece of a world war.

If that boy was on the outside, the danger he would face shot through the roof. In that case, she couldn’t very well sit back and do nothing.