Burning Bright

2307

Inside, Yarai's group was making its way back to the dining hall.

"..." Torako was thinking as they walked. "We should try to figure it out, just in case this doesn't work..."

"Huh?" Miyauchi said.

"The people here were annihilated by the same condition as Akagami-san and the others? No... Something is strange!" Torako said, holding her chin.

"We'll have no choice but to go through time," Yarai said.

"What do you mean by 'go through time'?" Miyauchi asked.

"I'm just presuming... something happened in this tower once before. If we can recreate what happened that time, possibly we can get an answer to Fukui's sense of discomfort."

"Huh? S-Something like that is impossible..." Miyauchi said.

"No... We can do it," Torako said. "If we compare the information we've seen so far in this tower... in order to save those two, we'll all work together... What happened in this tower?"

"W-Wait, they never brought that bottle out of the pyramid? That place is the DNA factory... and there were dead bodies..." the vice president said.

"Let's exclude that possibility from the situation right now. I'm not looking at the 'pyramid's' basement facility. We've been caught up in what we saw in the tower. If you look at what happened here, people died in the middle of running. It happened fast. If it killed that fast, once it was unleashed, would anyone infected have been able to make it this far from the 'pyramid'? I think we can restrict it to this tower," Torako said.

"Are you sure you want to say that?" Yashiro asked. "What about this? One day, a scientist from a normal section carried out that bottle... and committed an act akin to indiscriminate terrorism! The infected people wanted help and went to the church... or maybe they tried running outside... in the end, everyone died. Is there anything else besides that?"

"But, that doesn't explain the uncomfortable feeling I have," Torako said. "We have to be overlooking something... I'll think hard about what happened that time... Akagami-san and Sakuma-san are suffering..."

"..." Miyauchi looked grim.

"All right, let's keep going," Yarai said. "I get what happened from the picture that was in the dining hall. Researchers who gathered from countries all over the world lived here. It seems that white, black, and Asian people were here. There was a car outside. They used that car to go back and forth from here to places like the 'Factory' and the 'Spiral'. Judging from the building's facility we first entered into... After coming home, they'd relax at the counter bar in the lobby and have a few laughs in the lounge. And the church was on the second floor. It's possible they held mass there on Sundays."

"Seems like it was pretty perfect... kind of feels like a town..." Miyauchi said.

"On that day, a biohazard broke out! The bacteria had been in a secure case. It's possible it wasn't an accident, but something that was caused by man! The infected prayed to God to be delivered from suffering... and when they weren't, they cursed God," Yarai continued. "They tried to leave by car, but one car that was in a rush caused an accident and a collision happened! Their exit was blocked. They abandoned their cars and they headed toward the gate... However... they'd used up all their strength at the place where they'd exited the gate and most of them died!"

"That sounds pretty convincing," Miyauchi said.

"Yeah, there aren't any contradictions..." Yashiro said.

'That certainly seems to explain everything, but...' Torako thought. "Something's still missing..."

"What?" Yashiro asked.