Kihara Amata sat within a dark room.
It was an unused office. Most of the equipment used for work had disappeared, leaving behind only a large number of desks and chairs. Kihara sat in one of those chairs with his feet up on the dusty desk.
Men covered in armored uniforms stood around him.
They had gone down in number quite a bit. Only 5 or 6 remained.
Even so, Kihara's expression was still perfectly calm.
He could always bring in more Hound Dogs. Human trash could be found anywhere. Those that saw Kihara would probably describe him as the representative example of a bad person, but anyone who had no problem criticizing someone like that was the sort of trash who did not think about the feelings of others.
No matter how many were killed, there would always be more to replace them.
And so he was not worried.
"Communications have cut off from multiple teams. Most likely, they have…"
Kihara heard the nervous voice of a subordinate.
He replied with some casual words.
"They either ran off or died. Either way, we'll need to collect their hearts later."
Death was not enough to punish failure. Kihara preferred to take parts from the corpse to provide a clear lesson for the others.
"But which one were they taken out by?"
"It doesn't really matter. I can handle Accelerator. He's so pathetic it hurts my heart to punch him. …The real problem is that woman."
Kihara knew that Academy City had been paralyzed as a city.
And his own subordinates had fallen victim to an identical attack.
He knew that woman was likely the one who had attacked the city. However…
(That was an interesting phenomenon.)
To him, it had not looked like some "invisible physical phenomenon" such as nanotechnology or electromagnetic waves. Normally, someone using that sort of thing would wear a special mask or suit, but that woman had taken no such protective measures.
Kihara spoke to a different subordinate who had been right next to him at the time.
"When I tried to shoot that van Accelerator was in, that woman got in the way. Have you retrieved the group I used as a decoy then?"
"Yes." That was all it took for the man in black to understand what Kihara was asking. "We are currently checking on the victims with the equipment we have on hand."
"Are they all in the same state?"
"No. We have found three different varieties. It ranges from some who have simply lost consciousness as if they fell asleep to others who have stiffened up like a rock."
"What basis determines which variety they fall under? Where they collapsed?"
"Even those who collapsed at the exact same place are divided between the different groups. We do not have enough information to say anything for sure," continued the man in black. "We have not taken them to a research lab, so we have no accurate readings, but it seems those in the largest group of the collapsed decoys have an extremely low level of oxygen in their bodies. There is no visible necrosis to their body tissue, so they must have the bare minimum needed for their brains and organs to function."
"…So this artificially induces a state of apparent death."
Humans and all other animals had defensive instincts that lowered the functions of their body when they lacked what was needed to continue living. The simplest example would be hibernation.
The subordinate continued, "However, supplying a constant amount from an oxygen tank did not help. We need to assume some sort of power is constantly at work here. …Who is that woman? Dammit, she's starting to keep our mission success rate down. Both Olaf and Lulu were-…"
Just as he trailed off, the man in black collapsed to the floor. A thud rang loud in Kihara's ears.
"…"
Kihara Amata glanced around while still sitting in the chair with his feet on the table.
Nothing else happened.
He held his breath for a short while, but there was no sign of a second attack.
He had thought they were being targeted by some kind of ability, but Kihara would have been shot to pieces too if that was the case. He was bothered both by the fact that he had not been the first target and by the timing with which his subordinate collapsed.
(Damn her… How is she targeting us?)
Windows covered one wall of the abandoned office, but Kihara would have been the priority target if they were being targeted through it. Did she have some special means of aiming that did not rely on sight? Was there something that had turned her aim onto that subordinate instead of him?
Kihara thought on the special phenomenon that was even now attacking Hound Dog. Could those attacks be explained with an esper power?
(Not easily.)
Targeting one or two of them would be possible. However, the previous report indicated many more than that had collapsed. Constantly holding the oxygen inside a single human body at a certain level would be hard enough. Perfectly controlling several people spread out across several different locations was simply too much to handle.
And his subordinates had said some of them were showing different symptoms.
(It would be possible if they gathered as many espers to attack as there are victims…but that's just too high a cost. It doesn't make sense to tie up one of your soldiers for the sake of a single lackey.)
He was the expert in psychic powers development who had directly developed Accelerator's powers, so his judgment here was almost guaranteed to be accurate. But then what laws did this bizarre phenomenon fall under?
Even after ruling out esper powers, it could still be done with a variety of technologies such as nanotechnology and electromagnetic waves, but that did not explain why Kihara was unharmed. And even if those technologies could knock a human unconscious, he was not sure they could regulate the amount of oxygen in the blood.
This was not an Academy City esper power or Academy City cutting edge technology.
But ruling those out meant setting foot into the world of the occult.
Could that woman really use some sort of power that was not psychic in nature?
(The unscientific, hm?)
Kihara's eyes narrowed. He did not deny that possibility.
It was because he stood on the cutting edge of science that he was able to clearly see the outline of that word. While performing thousands and even tens of thousands of experiments, he had glimpsed odd readings that could not be explained by any theory. When he had developed Accelerator, Kihara Amata had vaguely captured the feeling that there were invisible holes in the theories he believed perfectly explained the world.
He clicked his tongue and lowered his legs from the desk.
"It doesn't matter. We'll just do what we need to do. Aleister's getting to be a pain in the ass, so let's hurry up and finish this."
Kihara had not been told why Aleister ultimately wanted Last Order to be captured. However, he had been told what he needed to do. He just had to do that.
"Is the Testament ready?"
"I have it here."
Another subordinate placed a silver attaché case on the desk. The electric brainwashing devices known as Testaments were supposed to be quite large, but they could be made this small if all but the bare minimum was removed.
For the most part, those "unnecessary" parts were what ensured the subject remained safe.
(Accelerator…)
Kihara watched his subordinate unlock the attaché case and put together the device.
He suddenly muttered, "He can manipulate any vector. So what happens with that sort of irregularity?"
"What?"
"Nothing," replied Kihara.