A nurse's scream echoed through the dark halls of the hospital, the woman having collapsed onto her knees in front of an open door. She forced herself to crawl forward into the room, to check the bed and the closet, the bathroom.
It was empty.
The bed was unmade, the sheets cold. The heart monitor droned a flat line, the liquid from the nearly empty IV creating a damp patch on the blanket. The patient had left hours ago. The comatose patient that had been declared brain dead had stood up and left.
Trembling hands reached for a radio transmitter that linked to Heaven Canceller at all hours, and the nurse fumbled with it, nearly dropping it, before she managed to get a firm grip on it. It took her several tries to press and hold the button.
"Heaven Canceller, sir? Doctor?" The nurse said, voice quavering.
Static buzzed for a moment before a sleepy voice said, "Yes?"
"She's gone."
"Please be more specific?" Heaven Canceller's voice implored.
"The patient… umm… Celeste Crowley. She's gone," the nurse wailed.
Silence hung for a moment. "She's dead?"
"No, she's gone! Missing! Walked straight out!" The nurse sniffled, unable to hold back the tears.
Then and there, she resolved to quit her job in Academy City and move somewhere where people who were supposed to be nearly dead did not just get up and walk out. She's had one too many scares in this hospital already, shaved one too many years off her life. Another one would probably give her a heart attack.
"Nurse, she is brain dead. She cannot leave on her own," Heaven Canceller said patiently.
"But… But…"
"Someone may have taken her."
"No! She walked out herself!" The nurse insisted.
Heaven Canceller sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Calm down. We'll check the security cameras, alright? Then we'll know for sure. I'll be there in ten minutes."
The nurse sniffled again. "Alright."
But when they checked the videos, over and over and over, they could only see a single girl walking out of the room, down the halls, and out the hospital door. There was nobody with her, and nobody had entered her room between the time when Heaven Canceller left her and the time when the nurse went to check on the IV.
That only left the obvious conclusion that the nurse was right, and the girl had upped and walked out.
Heaven Canceller frowned, the wrinkles on his forehead creasing even more deeply. She shouldn't have regained consciousness. All the tests he ran proved that, and the three level four telepaths he had brought in all said there was no brain activity from the girl whatsoever, no matter what level of her mind they looked at.
Nothing made sense.
In the dark room, a cellphone rang, buzzing loudly against the wooden surface of a bedside table, clinking occasionally as the vibrations shifted it to tap against the lamp. The generic sound of 'briing briing' caught his attention only for a brief moment before he drifted back towards slumber.
With a groan, Accelerator buried his head under the pillows. Who the hell would call at this time of night? Apparently the caller insisted on him picking up, because the phone had been ringing softly for about ten minutes, the sound stopping only when the call time ran out, before it started ringing again after a few seconds. The ringing stopped for a long moment, and he sighed with relief, starting to doze off again.
"Bokura no kono ichidou kiri no yume Douse itsuka owari ga kuru nara Ikiru koto wo yametai toki dake Tachi domatte kangaeru kurai de, ii yo ne…"
It started again, but it was no longer the tone for unrecorded numbers. Accelerator frowned, mind slowly shifting back to consciousness. He knew this melody. His eyes burst open as he shot up, almost falling of the bed when he scrambled for the phone on the bedside table.
He didn't get his hopes up, though. He knew her condition. That could only mean someone was calling him using her phone, translating to new information about her.
"What?" Accelerator asked groggily.
"Accelerator-kun," Heaven Canceller's voice said. "Celeste Crowley is gon—missing."
Remembering his own reaction when the nurse called him, Heaven Canceller changed his wording at the last moment. He didn't need Accelerator panicking, especially since the news he would deliver was bad enough already.
That whipped all the sleep out of the boy. "What?!"
"She wasn't here when the nurse went in to check. And the surveillance videos showed her walking out," Heaven Canceller said wearily. "Before you think that is good news, I'm going to tell you it is impossible. Somebody must have been controlling her body. And if that somebody is a magician…"
Dread filled the pit of Accelerator's stomach. Heaven Canceller didn't need to finish the sentence. If that somebody was a magician, he wanted the girl for what was inside her. They would use her and toss her like trash, and if someone summoned Lucifer while she was in this state, Celeste would die for sure.
"I will contact Aleister. Please see if the Misaka Network could find her, and contact Tsuchimikado-kun," Heaven Canceller instructed before hanging up.
Accelerator stared at his phone for a moment before he snapped back to reality, and turned to shake Last Order awake. The girl reacted very much like he did, trying to sink into the bed to avoid having to wake up at one in the morning.
"Oi, wake up, brat," Accelerator growled.
"Hmmnn," Last Order whined before sitting up, rubbing the sleep out of her barely open eyes. "Misaka Misaka wants to sleep…"
"Ask the Sisters if they've seen Ce—Titania," Accelerator told her, suddenly finding himself incapable of saying the girl's name.
"Eh? Cici is gone? Misaka Misaka asks with surprise as she wakes up completely."
"Yeah."
The small girl frowned. Accelerator stared at her, eyes completely focused on the clone as she communicated with the others. And when her face lit up with a bright smile, Accelerator felt himself relax slightly.
"Misaka Misaka found her! Let's go!" The little girl said too energetically for that time of day, but for once, Accelerator found that he didn't mind her energy.
The two ran out of the apartment, Last Order pumping her legs hard to keep up with Accelerator's longer strides. She held his hand, dragging him towards where one of the clones had been stalking Celeste on Last Order's request. It was a good thing the clones had eating and sleeping habits that were as bad as any normal teenager, because it meant they were out at all hours.
It was probably unnecessary.
Long before they arrived he could already guess where the girl was going, and he didn't know whether to feel relieved that it wasn't a random magician or pissed that Aleister could have been the one to move her.
"Titania!" Accelerator shouted as she came into sight.
Her light blonde hair was messy, most likely from rolling straight out of bed, and her dyed tips had reverted to her natural hair color. She was still wearing the hospital gown. He could see her bare feet bleeding from walking on concrete and all the sharp pebble fragments, yet she didn't seem to notice. She kept walking towards the Windowless Building.
From behind, she looked exactly like Aleister Crowley.
"Cici, Misaka Misaka yells!"
The girl didn't react to either of their voices, and Accelerator frowned. He let go of Last Order's hand. The clone's steps slowed to a stop, the child waiting at a safe distance as Accelerator approached the girl.
Accelerator's walk turned into a run as the girl walked closer and closer to the glowing building that had no points of entry or exit.
She finally halted, her figure tiny in comparison to the building she stood in front of. He could see her tilt her head upwards, eyes most likely scanning the infrastructure.
"Oi, Titania," he called out again, his footsteps faltering, before completely stopping several feet away from her. She didn't answer. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and tried again, "Ce… Celeste?"
Too slowly, she turned to look at him. Accelerator's eyes widened, his breath catching. Unconsciously he took a step back.
It wasn't his Celeste.
Cold purple eyes stared straight through him, deeming him insignificant. He reached out, mouth working, lips shaping her name, but no sound came out.
He could only stare in shock as she turned away from him once again, and his world spun out of control.
A/N: I just thought I should (finally) give you the meaning of Celeste and Accelerator's ringtones. Forgive me for any mistakes in translation. If you count two different dialects of Chinese, Japanese is my fourth language.
Accelerator's 99.9% Noisy on Celeste's phone: "Tsuu ka yo, uttoushiin da. Tengoku nante doko ni mo nee darou. Tsuu ka yo, amattaruizee. Tamatta doro ga omokute. Yabai ne, massugu arukenee…"
Translates to: By the way, it's depressing. Something like heaven doesn't exist anywhere, right? By the way, it's sentimental/naïve. The mud I've collected is so heavy. Shit, (I) can't walk straight.
Celeste's ring tone (No Logic by Megurine Luka): "Bokura no kono ichidou kiri no yume Douse itsuka owari ga kuru nara
Ikiru koto o yametai toki dake tachi domatte kangaeru kurai de, ii yo ne"
Translates to: Since the end will eventually come for this dream we have once, only when we want to stop living, it's fine if we think about stopping/giving up, right?