"Sixteen students?" Naegi asked. "Do you mean that there's another person locked in the school with us?"
For a moment, he remembered that hidden room – and the figure that had attacked him. He hadn't gotten a good look, but it was certainly possible that it could have been a student who had done it.
"And if I ask you who that is, will you have anything useful to say?" Togami asked, crossing his arms.
Ogami shook her head. "I don't know. I asked, but the mastermind refused to tell me. He called the sixteenth student the ace up his sleeve."
Naegi frowned. A sixteenth student hidden somewhere in the school – could it really be possible? Well, there were certainly enough closed off areas and locked doors to hide another person without much of a problem. He'd seen the stairs leading up to yet another floor of the school when they'd been exploring the fourth floor.
"His ace, is it?" Togami asked. His mind had clearly been going in a different direction than Naegi's. "What would the mastermind need an ace for? What can this supposed other student do that a spy among us couldn't?" He shook his head. "Assuming we can even believe what you're saying, that is."
"Of course we can believe her," Naegi said, giving Togami a puzzled glance. "She turned on the mastermind, and she told us what she knows."
"Yes, which very conveniently raises the specter of a different threat to distract from her," Togami said. He shook his head. "No. I'm not convinced. She could just be pretending to have betrayed the mastermind as part of acting against us."
Naegi looked over at Ogami. Her eyes had gone very wide, but she didn't say a word of protest. Somehow, that seemed to make it worse than if she'd objected. "I don't think that's true."
"You didn't think there was a traitor when I first suggested it, either," Togami countered. "And I was right about that. You may want to live in a fantasy world where you can blindly trust anyone you meet – but this is reality. Here, people betray one another. And if someone betrays you once, they can just as easily do it again."
"You don't need to argue about it," Ogami said, before Naegi could respond. "I told you already that I have no intention of trying to avoid responsibility for what I've done. If that means you choose not to believe me, then so be it." She folder her arms. "But what I would like to know is what you intend to do now."
"Well – I guess we need to tell the others," Naegi said slowly, looking up at Togami again. "I mean, we can't keep a secret like this from them, right?"
"Certainly not," Togami agreed. "If the others don't know the truth, she could do or say anything she pleases. The ideal choice would be to confine her somehow, but of course that isn't an option."
"We can't just lock her up!" Naegi protested, horrified.
"Obviously we can't, she's much stronger than we are," Togami said impatiently. "It would only be possible if she let us restrain her – and frankly, I wouldn't trust it if she did."
"I wouldn't agree to it, anyway," Ogami said quietly. "I have no intention of being locked away."
"I thought as much," Togami said with grim satisfaction.
"There's still something I have to do," Ogami went on. "I want to make up for what I've done – and so I intend to destroy the mastermind."
"What?" Naegi stared at her.
"I will wait until after you've informed the others, so that they can hear my confirmation," Ogami said. "But after that, I will confront the mastermind and take them down by any means necessary."
Togami shrugged. "If you want to be melodramatic about it, go ahead and get yourself killed. It will solve the problem of containing you very nicely."
"Hey! You can't just say that to someone's face!" Naegi objected.
"Would you rather I waited till she left and said it behind her back?" Togami said, raising an eyebrow. "She knows herself that it's true – she worked for the mastermind, and as long as she's alive, we can't trust that she's really stopped. The only way that we can stop worrying about it is if she's dead."
"Or if we take the mastermind down," Naegi said.
"If the mastermind could be taken down by punching him, we wouldn't still be here," Togami said. "No, there's nothing of consequence that a spy can contribute."
"I'll think of a way," Ogami vowed.
"Don't overtax what little brain you have," Togami told her. "You can go in there while you think about it." He gestured towards the door that led from the changing room into the actual baths.
"In the bath?" she asked, frowning.
"Yes. There's something else I want to do here, and I don't want you hanging over my shoulder taking notes for the mastermind," Togami said. "And I don't trust you to wander around the school, either. So go wait in the bath where I can keep track of you."
Something he wanted to do? Naegi frowned – and then his gaze fell on the lockers lining the wall of the changing room. Alter Ego was the only other thing of note in the changing room – did Togami want to talk to him?
Either way, Ogami nodded. "Very well. Then I'll wait until I hear from one of you."
She headed into the bath, grimacing as the steam touched her clothes, and shut the door behind her.
Togami frowned at the door for a moment, then pushed one of the benches up against it. "There. It won't keep her inside, but that should at least make enough noise to let us know if she's trying to get out."
"So you want to talk to Alter Ego, right?" Naegi said.
Togami nodded, crossing to the locker where the laptop was kept and pulling it out, placing it on the bench beside Naegi. "Yes, that's right."
The laptop screen flickered to life, and Fujisaki's face smiled out at them. "Hi, Togami and Naegi! It's nice to see you both again."
Togami didn't bother to respond to the pleasantries. Instead he reached for the keyboard and typed, "Have you finished analyzing the data?"
"Oh, that! Yes, uh, actually, I have," Alter Ego said, with an equal mix of pride and embarrassment. "I have all the information ready. Do you want to hear it?"
