“Reki, where are you right now?! It’s so loud over there I couldn’t make out what you said!”
“The seventh floor of the Snipe building.”
“Snipe …” I said to myself and turned north.
The Snipe building was composed of an underground facility that was equipped with a long and narrow firing range, and the main building, which rose above the surface in the northern part of Academy Island.
“Sorry about the noise. It’s unrelated to your client so calm down.”
“What is it?! What going on?!”
“I left the range in the middle of the sniping competition, so I was disqualified. Everyone seems to be displeased about it.”
I heard the sound of a window opening over the phone. Next, I heard a gunshot followed by a large commotion in the background. I was about to ask what happened when the glass sphere of lamppost next to me shattered. I was in a state of panic, but the exploding glass took me by surprise and brought me to a complete standstill.
“Kinji, please calm down. Just losing one’s composure reduces a person’s abilities by half.”
D . . . Did Reki just fire at that? There’s nearly two kilometers from here to the Snipe building …
“That’s exactly what’s happening to you right now,” she continued.
“R . . . Right.”
I heard a magazine being reloaded into a gun. It was amazing that she could be so accurate while talking on the phone and using that outdated Dragunov rifle, no less.
“I don’t see the client anywhere … but I can sense something unnatural in ocean currents. It’s around drainpipe number nine.”
There were twenty-eight drainpipes on the fringes of this Mega-Float that was Academy Island. They were holes from which any water that irregularly entered the island via rainfall and the like was pumped into the ocean.
“W-Which way?”
“… I … am a single bullet …” was the response that came back to me. It was a sort of incantation she used—one she had a habit of chanting when she concentrated.
Zpp!
The bullet from a sniper rifle marked the asphalt a short distance away from my feet.
Zpp! Zpp! Zpp! Zpp! Zpp!
W ... What the?
Making use of the Dragonuv’s rapid-fire abilities, Reki was etching something in the asphalt. Soon enough I realized what it was.
“In that direction. Please investigate it. I’ll continue to search for the client from here.”
She had drawn an arrow thirty centimeters in length and width. I arrived at the drainpipe it pointed me towards, but I didn’t see anything particularly suspicious about the water coming out of it. There were, however, traces of drainpipe number nine’s grating being removed and forcefully put back in place. Reki noticed the changes in the ocean surface that came about from something as minimal as this? At that distance?
Not that it was the time for being impressed by Reki’s super-human eyesight. I checked my butei handbook to see where this drainpipe led.
“Junction …” I whispered to myself, sweating. It wasn’t sweat from running around. I had broken into a cold sweat. There was danger to be found in pretty much every inch of Butei High, but Junction was one of the three great danger zones along with Assault and Masters (the educational affairs department). The term “Junction” was nothing more than a euphemism used to avoid touching upon what the underground warehouse really was—an explosives storehouse.
This is bad. Very bad. I don’t mean to imitate Aria, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Not many were aware of it, but something significant was happening in Butei High. And Shirayuki was caught right in the center of it!
The subterranean floors of Butei High were structured like the decks of a ship, and all floors underneath the first basement were below sea level. I flew down the stairs to the first basement and jumped into the elevator that would take me to the lower levels, which were designated as a restricted area. Once inside, I tapped in emergency password … but the elevator wouldn’t move.
That’s weird. It’s not working the way it normally does. That much is fact.
I went into the transformer room and removed the thick pin that was securing the emergency ladder in the corner. The manhole-like door installed in the floor also served as partition in the event of flooding and was made of three layers of metal. Using the password, a cardkey, and the contactless IC card chip incorporated in my butei handbook, I opened the door, and putting the ladder in place, I descended to the floor underneath. That brought me to the boiler room where I repeated the same process to access the third, fourth, and fifth basement. The ladder was rusted, and my hands were cover with abrasions from climbing down it so quickly.
… It hurts. Man, does it hurt. But I don’t have the time to be concerned with that now! If there’s even a one percent chance of Shirayuki being here, I’ll climb down as fast I possibly can. If that’s what it takes to save her after she believed in me, then so be it!
And at length, I made it to the seventh basement.
Junction.
This was the deepest section of Butei High. Drainpipe number nine was connected to this floor. Of course, just making it through the drainpipes didn’t mean an easy access to the area afterwards … but I knew it wasn’t impossible to do so long as I kept going. The weakness and flaws in Butei High’s structures often came up in conversations between students. Since Butei High was designed to be so expansive, it was relatively susceptible to infiltration by outside forces. The reason it isn’t that big of a concern is simply because there aren’t many people stupid enough to trespass on an island crawling with hundreds of buteis. When I dropped down into a reference room, which was located in the corner of Junction and no longer in use, it dawned on me. It’s dark.
I carefully opened the door so as not to make any noise and looked down the corridor, but it was pitch-black. The power was out. Only the red emergency lamps remained on. Thinking to call Muto and Reki, I took out my cell phone, but the Inbuilding Mobile Communication System must have been taken out because the words “No Service” displayed on the screen.
Damn.
I was pissed off at myself for being too much of a dolt to anticipate this situation. This wasn’t going to be like some video game where a flashlight or transceiver would be conveniently lying around on the ground. Still, I would lose too much time if I were to go all the way back to surface. Right now, what mattered more communications or light was time. I wasn’t sure if my judgment was correct, but Shirayuki might be in danger at this very moment—all because I was an idiot. If that were the case, I had to hurry. There was nothing else to it.