Togami froze as low red light glimmered at him from across the room. He would recognize that shade of red anywhere, no matter how weak and pale it might be — the harsh red of fresh blood, the same shade that glared out at the students from Monokuma's lightning bolt eye.

He barely let himself move enough to take a breath, scanning the electronics to pinpoint the source of the light. How could it be present anywhere in the library? Even if the mastermind had returned and wanted to speak through Monokuma again, they shouldn't have been able to do so — not with the robot in pieces all over the floor. Togami knew he had disconnected the bear's head from its power source, he could remember unhooking the connections before he'd tried to do anything further with the head. Without a link to some sort of battery, that eye should have been completely inert.

But the words should have were meaningless when fractured beams of red light scattered themselves in changing patterns across the library, appearing and disappearing over and over. Whatever vestiges of power that eye had managed to dredge up, it seemed to be running through them quickly. The light had to be close to burning out, from the way it kept flickering off and on, off and on in an almost hypnotic rhythm.

A regular rhythm.

Togami frowned sharply as that thought crossed his mind… but now that the possibility had occurred to him, he couldn't help but see the changing light differently. It wasn't flickering — it was marking something. And that put an entirely different slant on the situation.

His initial thought had been that Monokuma's eye blazing back to life might indicate some kind of threat meant to trigger if an unauthorized person accessed the bear — and that could still be the case. But now, looking at the blinking red light, he had to wonder if it might be something else instead. The robot received its signals wirelessly, he knew that. Could the blinking light indicate some kind of transmission?

Ice flooded his veins as he turned, gaze shooting across the room to the place where he'd left the bomb. It still sat in the corner where he'd left it, motionless and undisturbed. He would have said it was completely inactive — but just a few moments ago, he would have said the same thing about Monokuma's red eye.

But the bomb was motion-triggered, he'd been able to see that easily. Even if the motion sensor could be turned on wirelessly, it wouldn't trigger on its own, not unless he touched it. And really, if the mastermind wanted the ability to trigger their bomb remotely, there would be no reason to involve the flashing light on the eye at all. Bombs might be dangerous, but they weren't all that complicated, not compared to the rest of the mastermind's technology. Someone with the resources to build a machine like Monokuma would certainly be able to add a remote trigger to a bomb that didn't require an additional transmitter.

That realization wasn't exactly reassuring, but it did relieve enough of the immediate tension for him to think the matter through clearly. He'd spent hours handling Monokuma's parts, and nothing he'd done had caused that light to emit so much as a single blink. But now, at a moment when he was across the room, it had activated itself, in spite of being disconnected from any of the bear's main sources of power. That meant that the light was related to something that someone else was doing — or rather, something that Monokuma's operator was doing.

Could the mastermind be back? Was this an indication that they were trying to operate their robot and failing? But if so, why hadn't the processor come to life? Maybe… whatever was causing the eye to blink had been meant to do something else.

Slowly, poised to bolt in the opposite direction if any of the electronics so much as blipped, Togami took a single, cautious step in the direction of the blinking red light. He held his breath for a long moment, scrutinizing the entire display of machinery parts as he counted out the passing of a full minute… but nothing happened. Every nerve screaming with tension, he tried a second step, and then a third, until he'd made his way back across the room to the place where he'd been working.

And there it was. Togami stared down at the pieces of Monokuma's head — and the tiny device attached to the red lightning bolt eye. When he'd examined the head the first time, he'd thought the machinery attached to the eyes would do nothing more than operate the bear's complex facial expressions — but the flickering red light behind the eye said otherwise.

What was it meant to do, then? It had to be there for a reason. Togami couldn't imagine that the inventor who had designed the rest of this brilliantly efficient machine would include a purposeless blinking light. But… what could it do, when the only thing it was attached to was the back of Monokuma's eye? No matter what angle he looked from, the only connection Togami could see was the one holding it to the lightning bolt. A connection that looked fairly loose, in fact…

Togami knelt beside the bear's head, reaching for his screwdriver again. He knew he was operating on borrowed time, an alertness born of adrenaline and fear more than anything else — but regardless of its origins, it still gave him enough focus to unhook that single connection and pull the blinking device away from the rest of the machinery.

He held it cupped gingerly in one outstretched hand, prepared to fling it away if it did anything unexpected… but it didn't stop or alter its slow pattern of pale blinks. Togami lifted it a little to regard it more closely, trying to spot some kind of indication about its purpose. But in its own way, this device seemed to be as cleverly constructed as the robot's processor — it worked without giving away any clues about how exactly it did so.

For a moment, Togami felt a fierce, bitter stab of regret that Fujisaki had been killed. The brilliant Ultimate Programmer would almost certainly have been able to untangle the mysteries of this device. Even the shadow he'd left behind in the laptop might have had some idea, if the mastermind hadn't taken the opportunity to destroy it. But now there was no one left who could even hazard a guess.

Or… was that right? There wasn't anyone left who knew computers and electronics better than he did… but it was just barely possible that there was someone who might know the mastermind. Sakura Ogami had been the mastermind's mole. She'd spoken to them on a level that no one else had. Of course, it was unlikely that the mastermind would have let any details slip about the specific workings of their equipment — but it had a better chance than anything else he could think to try.

Doing his best not to jar the device resting in his outstretched hand, Togami walked slowly around the corner and out of the library. He kept a careful eye on it as he moved, watching for any change. Even the slightest alteration could be dangerous when it involved Monokuma.

And that close attention was why Togami noticed that as he approached the stairs, the slow blips of red light came very slightly faster.