"Th-This is..." Rion said.
"Eh!? You know the name Raika, Rion!?" Akira asked.
"You know something, Akagami?" Mariya asked.
"Just what does it mean?" Oomori asked. They were all on edge.
"..." Rion looked at them. "Ah... N-No... It's not anything special..." She blushed a little as she said it.
"..." Torako looked at the word again. From Rion's reaction, she could guess what it might be.
"Any trivial stuff matters! We can use any kind of hint!!" Mariya said.
"N-No, well... It's just something irrelevant..." Rion said.
"You don't know that yet!" Akira said.
"That's right, Rion! Do it for us...!" Oomori said.
"..." Rion blushed, still hesitating.
"... It's an anagram, right?" Torako said.
"You see it, too!?" Rion said, looking relieved.
"!?" the others said.
"See what!?" Akira asked. Rion looked at Torako for help, completely red in the face.
"..." Torako took pity on her. "Look at it... R.A.I.K.A. When you reorder the letters, it becomes A.K.I.R.A.—Akira." There was complete silence.
"R-Ridiculous...!" Mariya said, appalled.
"I... It told you it's irrelevant! But you forced me to say it..." Rion said, embarrassed.
"That's what you two think of in this situation!?" Mariya asked incredulously.
"Well, when I saw Akagami-san's reaction... it clicked," Torako said.
"Impressive you can think such embarrassing stuff..." Miyauchi told Rion.
"..." Akira was also a bit red in the face now.
"And here I thought the little one was smart," Igarashi said.
"I heard that..." Torako said, crossing her arms.
"B-But thinking up an anagram, that's surprising..." Yuki said.
"W-Well, I played it often with Akira-kun's mother..." Rion said.
"Played? With anagrams?" Yuki said.
"Akira-kun's mother likes mystery. She especially likes anagrams and secret codes," Rion said. "We played by giving each other challenges, so when I see names, a habit kicks in... Did you play it with someone, Fukui-chan?"
"... My father..." Torako said.
"Geez, and here I thought we had a clue..." Yashiro said.
"What a disappointment, right, Yarai?" Yashiro said.
"..." Yarai held his chin. He wasn't so sure about that.
"I don't know..." Torako said. "Isurugi Miina's name was on the 'antenna', right? So would it be any stranger for a form of Sengoku-kun's name to pop up, too...?"
"..." They all stared at her.
"It would be totally strange!" Igarashi said. "Isurugi Miina is one thing—her grandfather has connections—but a boy like him..."
"But, didn't we all agree that this place and the 'antenna' were older than the Isurugi group? If that's the case, there'd be no reason for her name to be there, because she wouldn't even have been born yet..." Torako pointed out.
"Ah... I guess that's true..." Igarashi said reluctantly.
"This is getting really confusing..." Yuki said.
"Whatever! The name might have some meaning or not, but just knowing the name is good in itself," Mariya said briskly. "This room might hide something else. Let's look around some more!!"
"Yeah!" Everyone agreed.
Outside, there was a bit of a panic beginning .
"Wh-What did you say!? That monster who attacked the plane might be nearby!?" someone said anxiously.
"Yeah... We found the debris of a helicopter close by. It was all flat, like it had been trampled over by something..." Kokonoe said calmly. "The only monster who can do that is the megatherium!"
"Wh-What now? We only just started searching, stopping now would be..." Murayama said.
"... I have an idea, fire!!" Yamato said.
"Fire...?" Kirino asked.
"Yeah, I heard from Sengoku that monster retreated when the plane burned," Yamato said.
"I... I see. A campfire! If we light up a big one... Okay! Let's gather firewood!" Suzuki said.
"... A monster, huh..." Miina said skeptically. "But it's just a sloth, right? Is it really that dangerous...?"
"Ah! You haven't see that hairy beast before?" Heero asked.
"I fled when the captain was stabbed, so... The attack on the plane happened after that, right?" Miina said.
"Yeah, right," Quatre said.
"I thought I was a goner..." Heero said.
"It looked through the windows with its big eyes and shook the plane like a toy..." Duo said.
"Mhm, I can imagine it..." Miina said.
"..." Isurugi Miina opened her sketchbook to the page that drawing was on and showed him. "... Look here. Megatherium. Five to eight meters high, three tons heavy... It has powerful claws and a long tongue. Not even the fangs of the smilodon can pierce the long hair that's covering its body."
"... Hee, sure sound like a monster. So such a big animal existed," Miina said.
"... There's an even bigger one," Isurugi Miina said.
"Eh?" Miina said. "Are you kidding? I mean, this one is already three tons heavy. Then even bigger would men five tons? Ten tons?"
"Twenty tons," Isurugi Miina said.
"Huh!?" Miina said, startled.
"8.8m long... 7m high... Recorded in history as the largest land mammal: paraceratherium," Isurugi Miina said, showing them a sketch she had made of an animal that appeared to have the body of an elephant, the next of a giraffe and a sort of weird, deformed horse head. But it was larger than all of those animals combined. It's foot alone was larger than the image of herself that Isurugi Miina had drawn in to show its scale.
"P-Paracera? What a big animal—" Miina said, amazed and a little disturbed. "It's as big as my house... It's like a walking two-floor single house..."
"You're kidding. Doesn't that already count as a dinosaur?" Heero said.
"W-Was there really such an animal?" Duo asked.
"..." Nishikiori was listening to their conversation from where he sat guarded by Seigou. Kubo was next to Nishikiori, preparing a fruit for him to eat. "Kubo-kun, go take a look at that sketchbook."
"Eh?" Kubo said.
"Take a good look at the page she has open right now," Nishikiori said.
"What do you mean?" Kubo asked.
"If I'm not wrong... something completely identical to what she drew will appear," Nishikiori said.
"... Eh?" Kubo said.
Inside, they were still looking around the church.
"... "Akira was staring at a particular spot in the graffiti.
"What's the matter, Sengoku-kun?" Oomori asked when she noticed he was just standing there.
"Oomori-san," Akira said. He pointed to what he was looking at. "This has been on my mind..."
"!?" Oomori said. She saw it clearly despite the other graffiti, a number: 2307. "Numbers...?" Oomori said.
"Yeah," Akira said. "Take a look around. Everything else is letters, but just this one is numbers..."
"..." Oomori stared at it.
"Mh? What's up, Oomori-san?" Akira asked.
"Well, I fell like I have seen it before... Mhm, but I don't know where... I'm sorry. It's probably just my imagination..." Oomori said.
"I see," Akira said.
"Ah! What's this!?" Miyauchi said.
"What's up?" Akira asked, going over to her with Oomori.
"Sengoku! Look here," Miyauchi said, showing him the box she was holding. "I found something weird at the broken piano.
"Something weird?" Akira asked. He looked at what Miyauchi was holding. It was a metal box that had been corroded a little bit. He took it into his own hands. "...What's this... A silver box...? Looks pretty sturdy... Maybe something important is in there?"
"You think so, too? It was buried deep under the piano pieces..." Miyauchi said, pointing to the spot.
"The lock looks broken. Can you open?" Mariya asked.
"Y-Yeah," Akira said. He tried to pry it open. "Grr... So heavy... has it rusted?" The lid budged. "I-It moved! I'm opening it!!" He lifted the lid, and saw that there was a glass cylindrical container with a metal lid inside. "A bottle...?" He handed the box to Oomori and held the container up in the light of one of the tiny windows. "It's all blue. You can't see what's inside. What the... seems like the inside is covered by something like blue paint...? Damn, what's inside?"
"Could you let me have a look, Sengoku-kun?" the vice president asked.
"Sure, Vice-pres," Akira said, handing it over. She held it up close to her face. "Hey, look here... It's not just blue. There's also pink and yellow mixed in. What a weird color combination... But for what reason would the inside be painted? Does it preserve what's inside or..."
"..." Miyauchi tried to look over her shoulder, but couldn't get a good view. "Hey, let me see, too!" Miyauchi said, reaching for the container.
"If it's about colors, me, a press worker, should..." Igarashi said, also moving closer for a better look.
"Eh?" the vice president said. "H-Hey, wait... Don't pull on me..." She instinctively moved the container away from Miyauchi's grasping hand, which made Miyauchi try harder to take it. "Kyaa!"
"Oww..." the three of them groaned, having fallen to the ground together when they lost their balance.
"Ah!? Th-The bottle!?" the vice president said urgently, hoping it wasn't broken.
"Here!" Rion said. She was squatting down, pointing at container, which was broken on the floor.
"S-Sorry. Are you hurt?" the vice president asked her.
"N-No, I'm fine," Rion said. "It only dropped by my feet."
"Oh, damn. It broke..." Akira said.
"What about the contents...!?" Miyauchi asked.
"What was inside...!?" the president asked.
"W-Well... It seems it was empty..." Rion said.
"Eh?" Akira said. He and Mariya squatted down to have a look, too. "You're right..." Torako moved to look, too, but Yarai put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.
"...?" She looked up at him questioningly, but his eyes were on the broken container.
"The paint on the inside is really dried out..." Mariya said. "Seems like the contents vaporized in an instant after being locked up for so long."
"Just what was inside...?" Akira asked.
"I don't know..." Mariya said. "But it was conserved so carefully. It might have been something dangerous."
"Dangerous...?" Akira asked.
"It might be that it was one of the reasons for the biohazard that happened here..." Mariya said grimly.
"..." They stared at him.
"Well, it's broken now. And it looks like nothing happened..." Mariya said as he, Akira, and Rion stood back up.
"Okay, what now?" Yarai asked. "We searched the whole room already. The debris blocked the floor, but wanna try getting to the third and fourth floor?"
"Yeah... If we take a rope, we can climb up..." Akira said.
"No... Rather than risking that, we should go to the other building," Yashiro said.
"Eh? Yashiro-san?" Akira said. "Other building...?"
"I noticed it by looking at the windows," Yashiro said, squatting down to scratch an image of it with a piece of debris. He drew three rectangles in the shape of an 'H' and drew a dot for their present location in the first side of the 'H'. Then he drew a sun under the 'H'. "Judging by the shadows, the sun is here... That means this is south. Having a southern alignment with good sun exposure is a great advantage for a building." He circled the middle line of the 'H'. "What's more, this building is the center of the 'building'... If anyone important lived here, then it should be in that one...!!"
"!!" everyone said. "..." They all looked at each other.
"N-Now that you mention it... Okay. Let's check it out!" Akira said.
"For now we're going down?" Rion asked.
"Yeah! There was a passage on the first floor," Akira said. They all took their eyes off the broken container as they left the church. They didn't see that it was rapidly becoming moist again, turning into a gooey substance that moved on its own.
"I wonder what we'll find..." Akira said.
"I don't know..." Yashiro said. "If you think about it... Maybe traces of people... or... something even more horrible..."
"Eh? Please don't say something so scary," Akira said.
"Ah... Sorry. Don't worry about it..." Yashiro said. They all walked forward together. Rion was so focused on where she was going that she didn't notice some of the blue goo was on her shoes.
Outside, another discovery was about to be made.
"Kyaaa!" a girl screamed.
"Wh-What's up!?" Yamato asked, rushing over with an armful of firewood.
"Th-This...!" the girl said, pointing at the ground where a skeleton lay.
"Another corpse..." Yamato said. "Mh? It's holding onto something..." He squatted down to have a closer look. It was another container just like the one the others had found. It was broken open and empty. "What's this... bottle...?"
Inside, they had returned to the first floor of the first building.
"Are you sure, Sengoku? That the center of the building seemed to have a connection to this passage?" Mariya asked.
"Yeah, I'm sure it's supposed to be around here," Akira said. Even though it was Akira who saw the passage, Yarai and Torako were walking at the head of the group.
"!" Yarai and Torako said when they saw a long, windowless corridor that led to a door.
Hey... could that be..." Yarai asked Akira, pointing to it. "Isn't that it?"
"!!" Akira and the others said. They hurried down the corridor.
'The other side of that door is the center of the building...' Akira thought. 'Is it the most important place because of this tower? Just what is in there?' They reached the door and Akira tried it. "!" It didn't seem to be locked. "I'm opening it!" He looked back at the others, who nodded. Akira pulled the door open, and they stepped into an enormous room that appeared to be filled with nothing but tables with chairs placed around them. But the room was disorderly because some of the chairs and tables had fallen over. The furniture all had metal legs that looked rusted or even bent in some cases. "..." Akira stared it with the rest of the group. "What... is this place...? It's even bigger than that church from before... There's so many tables and chairs... Was it an assembly hall or something...?"
"This... This reminds me of the cafeteria at the hospital, but larger..." Torako said, holding her chin.
"Eh?" Akira said.
"What hospital?" Rion asked.
"The hospital my dad is in... It looked similar, only... there was kitchen and buffet line where you could help yourself..." Torako said.
"It's pretty damp in here..." the vice president said as they moved deeper into the room.
"It gives me the willies," Yuki said.
"Geez, what are you saying? You guys are too sensitive," Miyauchi said, leaning with one hand resting on a table.
"Don't move!" Tokiwa said, coming up behind her.
"Huh?" Miyauchi said as Tokiwa violently stabbed the table near her hand with her sharp stick.
"I killed it," Tokiwa said, showing Miyauchi the giant insect that she had just stabbed. It was long and had many legs... and it was still twitching. Miyauchi hadn't even noticed it was there. She turned white as a sheet and had tears in her eyes. She was prettified with fear of the disgusting creature. "That was close. It was trying to squirm in from your shirtsleeve." That only made Miyauchi feel worse.
"...! Look at that, Sengoku," Mariya said, pointing to one of the walls.
"Huh?" Akira said.
"There's something hanging on the wall," Mariya said. They all went over to the wall to have a closer look.
"What is this...?" Akira asked. "A painting...? No, it's a photo." It was a photo of a large group of people wearing white lab coats. "It's a lot of people lined up. What is this picture...?"
"huh? What's this?" Rion asked, startled.
"What's wrong, Rion?" Akira asked.
"Look... they photographed something weird," Rion said.
"What?" Akira asked.
"Look, in the center of the photo... what the person in the middle is holding..." Rion said.
"...!" Akira gasped when he saw it. "That's a... diatryma?" It was much, much smaller, fitting in the man's hands, but it was definitely the same creature... maybe as a baby. "What... is this picture...?"
"There's something written down there," Rion said. She read the english plaque and translated. "Completed project... the first one...?"
"The first one? Could it be that's the first extinct animal that was made on this island?" Mariya said.
"If that's true, then that explains that mark as well," Rion said.
"Huh?" Akira said.
"That mark was drawn on the wall in the pyramid's basement," Rion said. "Why a diatryma? It was weird. They were the first animals they created, so maybe that's why they gave them the symbol."
"Hey, there's an animal picture over here, too!" the president said, calling them over to the one he was looking at. They looked at all the pictures. In every single one, there was a baby version of an animal they had seen on the island.
"A saber tooth tiger..."
"Andrewsarchus..."
"Even a short face bear is there!"
"..." Mariya stared at a picture of the people in white coats observing large containers that had baby animals floating in them. "I see... This is likely a record of this island's history... Maybe this is a place where a lot of people gather, so that's why they have pictures like these on display."
"If you look at it this way, you can get why so many different languages are on the door in the basement of the pyramid," the vice president said. There were people of all sorts of races in the pictures. "I wonder why people from so many countries were working here?"
"Ah! L-Look at this!" Yuki said, pointing to another picture.
"!!" Rei gasped.
"Th-That's... the 'pyramid'?" Miyauchi said. It was the pyramid, only it wasn't buried, and they could see a neat network of roads around it.
"It's officially called 'The Factory'..." Yuki said.
"So it looked like this when it wasn't covered with dirt and sand?" Yashiro said. He noticed there were planes parked in one area. "Look, the planes were grounded! That asphalt had to have been a runway!"
"It looks like there were even other buildings," Yuki said.
"Yeah, we've gotten a whole lot of this wrong," Yashiro said.
"H-Hey! Over here is the 'antenna' we were at!" Akira said, calling them over to another picture. The tap doors were clearly visible and the angel statue was still standing. "It was called the 'Monumental M'?"
"This is what it originally looked like..." Mariya said. "Look! There's the statue we dug out! This is where it was placed."
"Hmm, when you look at it like this, what is it?" Akira asked.
"It seems like some kind of religious facility..." the vice president said.
"..." Oomori stood behind everyone, looking trouble.
"This what Yarai called 'the lighthouse'... It has 'Spiral' written here," Akira said as they looked at a picture of the 'lighthouse' in the middle of construction. There was another picture of a different building being constructed. "This is the tower we're in right now. Are these both pictures of them during construction? It's a lot different than right now."
"That much time has passed..." Mariya said.
"..." Akira held his chin.
"Hey! Take a look at this!" Miyauchi said, standing in front of a picture that showed people carving large heads with rough faces.
"Th-Those are the human-faced stones we saw in the cavern?" Akira said. "Is that what Miina said she saw...?"
"They really were manmade," Mariya said.
"B-But why is something like this... Was it some kind of landmark?" Akira asked. "Maybe it's for if you got lost or something..." Rion noticed there was another picture that had fallen onto the floor.
"..." She picked it up and dusted it off a little bit with her hand before putting it back where it it must have fallen from, the blank spot over a plaque that said 'Raika Island.' "Raika Island... When you take another look at this island, it's pretty awful."
"... Yeah..." Akira agreed.
"I know what this room is!" Yashiro said, rejoining them. It seems that at some point, he had left them while they were viewing the pictures.
"Huh? Yashiro-san?" Akira said.
"What Fukui said was really close to the mark after all. It looks like a dining hall or something. There's a kitchen in the interior," Yashiro said.
"A dining hall..." Mariya said.
"I get it, that's a place a lot of people would gather in," Akira said.
"Is this place really something like that...?" Miyauchi asked. "Besides, it doesn't seem like it's all that important..."
"There's a door over there," Yarai said, drawing their attention to an open door that led deeper into the building. "Can we go on ahead from there?"
"All right, let's go!" Akira said.
"... Huh? Rion-chan, there's something stuck to your shoe," Yuki noticed.
"What?" Rion said, looking down. "Oh, there really is." She leaned down to brush off her shoe. "Oh, man. What is this blue-looking stuff... Are you kidding me!"
"Does it look like it came off?" Yuki asked.
"Yeah, it's fine. It looks like it came off already," Rion said, not realizing that it had gotten onto the cuff of her sleeve. She and Yuki hurried to catch up with the others. They entered another room with a black and white checkered floor that had some seats and a table in it.
"... Is this the lobby of the middle tower?" Akira asked.
"It isn't drafty in here," Mariya noted.
"It looks like there's something on the other side of the dining hall," Akira said. "Should we try going over there?"
"No... That won't be necessary," Yarai said.
"Huh?" Akira said.
"Look at the wall near the staircase," Yarai said.
"Near the staircase...?" Akira asked. He looked and saw a map of the floors. "...!! A direction board...? For the tower?"
"Yeah, that's what it looks like," Yarai said. "Maybe we just didn't notice it and there was one in the previous tower as well. On the opposite side of the floor we just came to is a storehouse and a fuel room. And it looks like there's living quarters on the second floor."
"Then, let's hurry up and get to the second floor," Miyauchi said.
"Wait! It looks like there are living quarters on the third floor, too, but on this side, the living quarters are overwhelmingly large," Yarai said.
"What?" Miyauchi said.
"Let's count them..." Yuki said. "One... two... three... four... five... Five!?"
"Yeah, there's four in all on this island's tower. That's for each office that was here... and if you add up all the island's leaders together... It's five people! The numbers add up."
"Ah! Then, the room where the important people we were searching for is..." Akira said excitedly.
"Right, it's likely the third floor," Yarai said.
"... Wait. Then, what's this?" Yuki asked, pointing to something else. "This room on the fourth floor... Doesn't it look like just one room?"
"..." Akira stared at it.
"Something's written there," Mariya said. "Memorial... Hall...? A memorial hall?"
"Well, it does have that meaning as well, but... in the English-speaking world, it has another meaning," Yashiro said.
"Huh?" Akira said. "Yashiro-san, thats'..."
"A mausoleum. A place where souls sleep," Yashiro said.
"Huh? Souls...?" Akira said, furrowing his brow.
"Th-That's an animal's...?" Yuki said. "B-But why would the top brass on this island go through the trouble of making something like that where they live?"
"..." Oomori was anxious, wondering if she should say something. Had the time come? "That tower is probably a gravesite."
"Oomori-san?" Akira said.
"This is pretty crazy, and I haven't had a whole lot of self-confidence, but... the letters written under Miina-chan's name at the 'anntena'... I think they're 'Rest In Peace'. Rest in peace... maybe the fourth floor has something to do with that... Something we don't expect..."
"..." Torako held her chin. 'Rest in peace... If that's the case... then the shape of that tower... As I thought, it's strange for a cross... Could it be...?'
"All right, let's hurry up and go!" Rei said, taking charge.
"Rei-san!" Akira said.
"The goal is already in front of us. Nothing for it but to go!" Rei said. Everyone looked determined as they followed her up the stairs. Akira walked behind Rei, and Tokiwa went up after him. When they had almost reached the level they wanted, Tokiwa paused.
"..." Tokiwa looked down into the darkness of the stairwell.
"What's wrong, Tokiwa?" Akira asked. She stepped in front of him.
"There's something about this I don't like..." Tokiwa said.
"Huh?" Akira said.
"Sengoku-kun, go on up ahead... Act like you didn't notice," Tokiwa said.
"O-Okay..." Akira said, a little confused. He stepped up past her.
"..." Tokiwa pretended to take another step forward. 'You've been following after us this whole damn time...' She suddenly turned, jumped up onto the railing, and threw herself down. "It's about time you show us who you really are! You... fucking bastard!"