In a School District 7 garage, several giant automobiles were parked.
Their white chassis were as large as tourist buses but had no windows. And
they weren't buses—but rather the world's biggest ambulances. The so-called
hospital cars, in addition to packing life-support-equipped beds for ten,
featured onboard equipment for performing simple surgery.
Around ten of these hospital cars were parked in the garage. Fully occupied,
they provided accommodations for one hundred patients.
Several short figures stood behind those hospital cars.
They were the Sisters.
Assault rifles and anti-tank rifles hung from their bodies, not even slightly
matching the Tokiwadai Middle School uniform blazers the girls wore. About
ten of them stood there, on guard for the enemy group called the Hound Dogs,
released by a man named Amata Kihara.
Amid them, a girl's voice rang out.
"Let me go! If you don't have a 'Misaka Network Connection Battery,' I don't
think there's any point in me staying here! The city is acting weird, too, so I
have to go check on it!!"
A group of nurses was restraining a girl dressed in a white nun's habit. Her
calico's hair was on end, too, but a doctor had him clutched in her arms, so
despite flailing his legs, the cat couldn't slip away.
Little Misaka was listening to the uproar as well, but she couldn't turn and
look.
Her body wasn't moving the way it was supposed to.
"( Confirmed signal from host individual #20001.)"
"( Estimated danger level 5. Misaka #10032 suggests reject—)"
"( Rejection refused. Accepting signals via routes R, V, and Y.)"
"( Misa…large, heavy burd on thoughting process—)"
"( Rejection refused.)"
Zzzz!! A certain signal spread like a giant wave through the Misaka network. It
covered the world within moments.
It was an emergency code from Last Order.
Whatever the code actually contained, the individual node Sisters couldn't
oppose it. With most of their working brain regions repurposed, the girls were
reduced to breathing organisms. Each of them froze in place.
What now? they all thought.
Last Order had clearly fallen into someone's hands. However malicious the
commands she sent were, they couldn't resist them. But twiddling their thumbs
and watching was out of the question.
I must take…action…that doesn't oppose…the command…
#10032, Little Misaka, sent information to the Misaka network.
…If that…is able to resolve…this critical situation…as a result…
All the Sisters responded.
They would stop their futile resistance against the virus (or so the Sisters had
redefined the emergency code from Last Order as). By doing so, they could
once again secure the calculation regions of their brains that were, in the past,
dedicated to resistance. From that they gained only a tiny bit of thinking ability,
though; Little Misaka still couldn't move a finger.
But with ten thousand of them doing it, everything coalesced into a single
power.
The Sisters didn't hoard the power for themselves.
They all knew someone who could use it more effectively