Part 75: Chill and rigor

[Music: Chill and Rigor]



Wait, what?!



But an assistant's only an assistant. I didn't come up with all this.



Then... If you're not Zero, who is?
Calm down there, Junpei. Didn't I say "2 things"? You made 1 more mistake. Junpei, you just said...

"All of this was revenge for what happened 9 years ago."

"That's why this Nonary Game happened."



There's another reason you guys were playing the Nonary Game.
...?



Save...someone?
Right.



Wh-What the hell are you talkin' about?!



Suddenly, Seven froze.

His eyes went as wide as dinner plates, and he spun around toward June.

Junpei followed his gaze--



Where June had been, there was nothing.



His face was twisted with effort, as though he were struggling with something they couldn't see.

He gritted his teeth and pressed his hands against the sides of his head.



He groaned and fell to his knees.

Seven! What the hell is going on!?
I don't know... I don't know, I just... I swear to God, my head feels like it's about to explode.



Santa seemed to have entered an almost trance-like state. His words were calm and measured.



I'm sure you know already, but I'll tell you one more time. It was a project designed to test a particular phenomenon. And what was that phenomena? For 2 organisms to communicate with one another in the absence of physical contact...



Could human beings use these invisible fields to exchange information? That was what this experiment was conducted to determine.
...
There were 2 separate locations. One was the Gigantic, and the other was a building in Nevada called "Building Q".



The 9 children trapped in Building Q were faced with numerous puzzles, copies of identical ones on the Gigantic. They were told to send their answers into



...
The transmitters were put in Building Q and the receivers were put on the Gigantic. Each sibling pair was supposed to be split up, but...





However...



Perhaps she was mistaken for someone who was supposed to be in Group A. Whatever the case, Akane ended up on the Gigantic.
...
I think I've told you enough. You get it, don't you?



Wh-Where what is going...
Don't play dumb.



How did you know Ace had prosopagnosia...? How did you know why Ace wanted to kill Kubota and how Nijisaki was killed? Were you surprised when you found out Ace was Hongou?



How the hell did you open it?
Well...
That's...

[Music: Silence]

The answer to that is easy.









































Santa concept art #3.