There’s something I still have to do.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ga-bam!! The fortress gave a massive jolt. Its descent accelerated even more, and became even more unstable, than before. It was as though a large ball rolling down a hilly road had picked up so much speed nobody could turn it back. She had to retrieve the idiot now.
However.
The VTOL suddenly rocked. The aircraft swayed, almost as if it was flying away from the fortress.
“Hey!! What do you think you’re doing?!”
“The fortress’s shaking has exceeded a threshold, reports Misaka. If we continue our approach, this aircraft may crash into it.”
“…!!”
Still plastered to the shaking main wing, Mikoto held out her palm and grabbed hold of nearby magnetic forces.
She’d get him by force if she had to—she didn’t care.
Anything would work: a button on his school uniform, a belt buckle. She’d use magnetism to drag the boy up and evacuate him from the fortress.
That was her plan. But in actuality, the thread of magnetism that connected her to him abruptly broke off.
“Huh…?”
Mikoto stared blankly, completely in the dark about what had just happened.
A moment later, though, she understood. The boy had a strange power that canceled out all Mikoto’s abilities.
And it had cut off his last lifeline.
Even if she had the power to take on a bunch of tanks at once—even if she had the power to stop a nuclear missile launch.
It wasn’t enough to rescue that one boy.
As the fortress continued its unstable descent, the VTOL drew away from it. The Sister pulled Mikoto, who was idle atop the turbulent main wing, into the cockpit and shut the canopy. The blessing of the mysterious field around the fortress was immediately lost.
The reason was simple.
That was how far away they’d gotten.
Leaving the boy, who said he still had something he needed to do, behind in the fortress.
A moment later, the only sound was Mikoto Misaka’s scream.
✦ ✦ ✦
…There’s still something I have to do.
The VTOL pulled away. The fighter craft that might have been his last way to escape.
But Kamijou had turned his back on it.
His fight couldn’t end just yet. The Star of Bethlehem had a radius of over forty kilometers. If a structure this big was in free fall, the damage it would do to this celestial body called Earth would be incredibly severe. The war wasn’t over until someone did something about this problem.
And besides…
Kamijou looked around and searched for his objective: the remote-control Soul Arm meant for controlling Index from the outside. It had fallen through a crack in the floor after the last attack. He needed to find it and destroy it.
His footing swayed.
The way it shook made him anxious, like an elevator moving at a fixed speed that suddenly stopped.
This fortress wouldn’t hold for long.
And when he realized that again, he heard a girl’s voice ringing in his ears.
A voice that couldn’t possibly have been there.
“Touma…”
It was the voice he thought he’d wanted to hear for so long.
The remote-control Soul Arm had left Fiamma’s hands, but it was probably still working. Her consciousness, no longer suppressed by anyone, was drifting about the space around the Soul Arm.
“Touma…”
Then, faintly…
…her body appeared, translucent, as if rising out of the air. Upside-down and ignoring gravity, she looked at Kamijou’s face.
She spoke.
“Why didn’t you escape?”
“Because nothing’s finished yet,” he answered, going farther into the Star. He wasn’t searching blindly; her very presence was leading him to the Soul Arm. “Your Soul Arm is still around, of course, but I have to take care of the fortress itself, too.”
After saying that, Kamijou’s expression suddenly clouded.
There was just one thing he hadn’t resolved during his battle with Fiamma of the Right.
“…I’m sorry.”
The fact that he had amnesia.
The question of whether hiding it all this time was truly the right thing to do, he simply hadn’t wanted to hurt Index. He wanted to be the Touma Kamijou she believed in. But wasn’t that only because he personally didn’t want to see Index’s face in shock? Wasn’t he just scared she’d leave him?
Now that he’d finished his fight with Fiamma, he understood:
If he truly thought it was best for her, then he had to overcome.
Overcome the painful, overcome the bitter, overcome everything.
Don’t fear the position in which you stand.
“I’ve done something terrible to you. I’ve been lying to you all this time. I’m going to tell you everything now. I don’t have a guarantee I’ll be able to come back from the Star of Bethlehem, so I’ll tell you while I still can.”
Very slightly, Kamijou looked down.
And then, once more, he lifted his eyes of his own accord.
“I…”
He spoke.
And this…was the first time.
The first time he’d ever felt like this.
Felt like opening his mouth took so much courage.
“I…”
What he’d been hiding from her all this time.
His amnesia.
The truth.
“
.”
As he moved his mouth, forming words, he thought, That was long.
“It’s fine.”
He heard Index’s voice cutting him off.
“That’s all fine now. It doesn’t matter. If the same old Touma comes back home, none of it matters.”
“…”
For just a moment, he was silent.
He truly wanted to take her up on her kindness.
“I’ll come back. I promise.”
But being hard on himself and being pessimistic were different things.
He’d live and return for certain.
For that, Touma Kamijou needed to promise this.
“And it won’t just be for this Soul Arm. Once I get back, I’ll apologize to you for real.”
He glanced at a panel on a nearby pillar. It was a communication device fitted with a microphone for broadcasting audio through the speakers all over the Star. He couldn’t read the Russian writing, but he did understand the numbers written with them.
“Tell this to the English Puritan Church: The frequency is 50.9 megahertz. That should let them connect to these speakers. If this much matter falls uncontrollably, there’s no telling how bad the damage will be. I’ll have to lower its speed in stages and set it down somewhere safe. And the only one who can take the wheel right now is me. But I need advice to do it.”
“I can’t do that.” The girl’s voice became troubled. “I can’t go back to my body by myself.”
“Didn’t think so,” Kamijou agreed casually. His eyes settled on that accursed Soul Arm on the floor. “You’ll have to go back before me.”
He reached out his right hand and grabbed the small, cylindrical Soul Arm.
That was all.
The Soul Arm crumbled into pieces, and at the same time, the power sustaining her was lost. Her translucent body disappeared, too, like an eraser had rubbed it out.
Now he was well and truly alone.
The Star of Bethlehem was still continuing its descent in the meantime. Its speed, too, was steadily increasing. Once it went past the point of no return, it really would crash into the ground at a speed close to free fall.
A direct impact from of a mass over forty kilometers in radius.
If that came to pass, it would demonstrate in twenty-first-century Earth that a meteor collision had caused the Ice Age. Some historians might be pleased, but for most people, it would only spell tragedy.
The final battle was about to begin.
As a reward for his gamble, he had been presented with the very fate of this shooting star.