From the moment Rowan woke inside this body, his psychic senses had felt a constant pressure. Someone was watching him.
The sensation only vanished when he turned invisible. That was why he never dropped concealment until his temporary base was complete and sealed. The same pattern held when he followed Misaka Mikoto. Invisible, no pressure. Visible, the feeling snapped back instantly.
The problem was that he'd already destroyed every camera and sensor in the area.
That meant the surveillance wasn't conventional.
Rowan closed his eyes and pushed his psychic perception outward to its limit. Almost immediately, something felt wrong. The monitoring wasn't coming from fixed points, but from countless tiny moving presences scattered through the air. They were so small, so subtle, that without deliberate focus they were impossible to notice.
"Found you," Rowan muttered.
His magnetic field snapped inward.
Every metallic particle he could sense within range collapsed at once, crushed into nothing. The watching pressure vanished instantly.
Whatever those devices were, they were still metal. And metal answered to him.
Misaka Mikoto manipulated electromagnetism through electrical output, inducing motion and force indirectly. Rowan's control was far cruder and far more direct. Like Magneto, he didn't persuade metal. He commanded it.
Before, his range and output had been too limited for that difference to matter. Now, after the clone's amplification, it absolutely did. Twenty tons of metal was effortless. Invisible machines, no matter how advanced, didn't stand a chance.
Somewhere deep beneath Academy City, Aleister Crowley's eyes snapped open.
"…He noticed."
For the first time since the city's creation, the aerial surveillance network had been forcibly neutralized. And it wasn't Misaka Mikoto who did it.
It was the clone.
That alone marked Misaka 9981 as a variable that couldn't be ignored.
"Move faster," Aleister said quietly, issuing orders through secure channels. "Authorize capture. Deploy ITEM."
If he couldn't observe the board, he couldn't control it.
"He's here," Rowan said softly.
Misaka Mikoto tensed as a white-haired boy stepped into the alley.
Accelerator.
"It's eight fifty-eight," Misaka 9982 stated flatly. "Experiment nine thousand nine hundred eighty-two will begin in two minutes."
Accelerator shoved his hands into his pockets, staring at the clone with a twisted edge to his expression.
"What happened to the one yesterday?" he demanded. "Why did she run?"
His voice sharpened. "You're not supposed to feel fear. You're not supposed to care."
Until yesterday, he'd treated the clones as objects. Targets. Training dummies that screamed numbers when they died. That detachment was the only way he could keep going.
But one of them had fled.
That meant doubt. And doubt meant guilt.
"Misaka 9981 was an anomaly," 9982 replied evenly. "Ignore it. If you continue the experiment, you will reach the required threshold after killing ten thousand twenty clones."
She lowered her night-vision goggles and raised her rifle.
"Nine o'clock. Experiment begins."
Accelerator clicked his tongue. "Annoying."
The bullets never reached him. Their vectors flipped and snapped back toward the shooter. 9982 dodged automatically, relying on data inherited from thousands of prior deaths. She plunged the alley into darkness, attacking from concealment.
It didn't matter.
The gap between them was overwhelming.
Her equipment was shattered. Her weapon torn away. Right on schedule, she fled toward the secondary battlefield.
Accelerator followed at a leisurely pace, curiosity gnawing at him. He wanted to know one thing.
Would this one beg?
Rowan and Misaka Mikoto moved with them.
The final location was an abandoned riverside dock. According to the experiment script, this was where 9982 was meant to die.
Rowan vanished.
Misaka Mikoto stepped forward.
"Stop!"
Accelerator glanced at her, then grinned. "Another one? Guess the rules are flexible today."
With a casual gesture, he twisted the air. Containers tore loose, spinning toward the two girls like meteorites.
"Iron Sand Sword."
The ground answered Mikoto's call.
Metal-rich sand surged up from beneath the dock, forming a roaring, electrically driven blade dozens of meters long. She swung once.
The containers split cleanly in half.
Lightning danced around her as she advanced.
And for the first time that night, Accelerator's smile faded.
...
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