Episode 03 - Project Radio Noise
Over the past several months, Mikoto has encountered odd remarks here and there — rumours of a top secret project to create super-soldiers by cloning a Level 5 esper. She always brushed them off as fantastical nonsense... even when one whisper said she was the subject. And then, there were times when people claimed to have seen her somewhere that she wasn't...
Back in the present, the dark-haired girl with intense eyes addresses Mikoto as "the original". When Mikoto reacts with confusion, the girl says she must have heard "the rumours". Mikoto realizes she must be referring to the cloning stories, and demands the girl tell her what she knows. After chiding Mikoto for speaking rudely, the girl tells her she'd be better off not knowing, adding that she couldn't do anything about it anyway. Mikoto, offended, asks the girl what she's doing. The girl replies that she's been spreading money cards around in order to draw attention to the hidden alleyways and corners of Academy City — places where normal traffic and surveillance cameras don't reach. Her goal is to eliminate these blind spots, where "the experiments" must be taking place. Mikoto, having no idea what the girl is talking about, just looks more confused.
Her hideout compromised, the girl gathers up her belongings and prepares to leave. Remarking that certain things shouldn't be left lying around, she takes out a sheaf of documents labelled "Esper Mass Production Project" and lights them on fire. Mikoto, demanding to know what the girl is talking about, accidentally knocks the burning papers into the floor, where they start a fire. The girl hastily departs, leaving Mikoto to drag the still-unconscious delinquents outside.
Rather than head home, Mikoto stops to think about what the girl was implying, and wonders if there really could be some cloning project involving her. Remembering her Flash Back again, she reflects that she did donate her DNA map many years ago, although the hospital in question supposedly closed down soon after. Deciding to do some quick investigating, she heads over to a streetside phone booth.
Pulling out her PDA, Mikoto plugs it into the phone booth's data terminal, then uses her electrical powers to bypass the security systems and hack into Nagatenjouki Academy's student database. After a brief search, she finds the girl's file: Shinobu Nunotaba, a 17-year-old prodigy in the field of biological psychiatry. As a young child, it seems she was already brilliant enough to work as a researcher at Yamashita University Hospital... the same place where Mikoto donated her DNA map. She subsequently also worked at Higuchi Pharmaceuticals 7th Research Center. It occurs to Mikoto that, if Nunotaba was involved, it's possible her DNA map might also have ended up at Higuchi Pharmaceuticals. She decides to go and check the place out.
Mikoto glances down at her Tokiwadai school uniform and realizes it's a bit conspicuous for snooping around in. She goes into a department store and buys a change of clothes. Then she goes to a downtown hotel, and rents a room to change in.
Meanwhile, Saten is keeping Haruue company at her and Uiharu's dorm. Saten shows off all the money cards she's found; in response, Haruue produces an even larger stack of her own. Uiharu comes in just as Saten is silently bemoaning her defeat. As they sit down for dinner, Uiharu inquires why Saten was asking about Mikoto earlier. Saten says she must have mistaken somebody else for her — although the other person looked just like her, even down to the Tokiwadai uniform. That leads Haruue to wonder why Mikoto and Kuroko always wear their school uniforms; Uiharu says it's a Tokiwadai school rule, adding that she can hardly imagine Mikoto wearing anything else.
Now in street clothes, Mikoto successfully sneaks inside the Higuchi Pharmaceutical building using a combination of stealth and electronic tampering. Once inside, she hacks into the security system and notices there's a whole section which is completely cut off from the main computer and surveillance cameras. As she's about to investigate, a security guard nearly finds her, but she manages to distract him by manipulating a security robot with her powers. Moments later, a security alarm goes off and she thinks the game is up — but it shuts off after a moment, and she overhears the security office telling the guard it was a false alarm. It seems that a previously scheduled visitor has just arrived, but somebody forgot to make the necessary arrangements in advance.
Once the guard leaves, Mikoto makes her way to the mysterious sealed section and breaks in. She finds a room full of computers overlooking a large area with a lot of suspicious-looking medical equipment. With considerable trepidation, she hacks into a computer and soon finds several files alternately titled "Project Radio Noise" and "Sisters". With mounting dismay, she reads...
Project Radio Noise was established for the purpose of mass-producing Level 5 espers on demand, by cloning an original template. The chosen template was the #3 Level 5, Mikoto Misaka, a.k.a. Railgun. Using sophisticated incubation equipment and various bio-chemical compounds, they were able to grow a clone from embryo to maturity in only 14 days. Next, its personality and mental patterns were imprinted using a Testament program developed by a contract researcher named Shinobu Nunotaba.
However: based on the initial results, and subsequent projections calculated by the supercomputer Tree Diagram, it was found that it was not possible to duplicate Level 5 powers by cloning. In the best case, a clone's ability would be only Level 2 or 3, meaning the project's objective was unachievable. Therefore, before it could move to its final phase, Project Radio Noise was ruled a failure — and permanently frozen.
Mikoto sinks to her knees in relief: it seems there aren't any clones of her after all. Word of this project must have leaked out at some point, then gotten distorted by the rumour mill. The whispers going around, she concludes, really were just an urban legend. Buoyed, she leaves the facility in high spirits.
As she departs, the security guard escorts another person into the secret facility: the previously-mentioned visitor, who has come to purge the remaining data on Project Radio Noise... a brown-haired girl in a Tokiwadai school uniform, who refers to herself as "Misaka".
Tropes
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Judging by the glimpses of her in Flash Back, Nunotaba tends to dress like this when not in her school uniform. Much later on, this will become a subtle hint about her connection to Febri, who is dressed similarly.
- Hollywood Hacking: Mikoto. Granted, she's a master of electricity... but you'd think bypassing passcard locks, hijacking security robots, erasing herself from security footage, and breaking into a secure facility's network from a phone booth wouldn't be that easy, even if you can control electricity.
- Hope Spot: Mikoto finds out about a project to clone her... only to discover moments later that it was cancelled. Then, right after she leaves, someone who looks an awful lot like her shows up... and it will soon be revealed that the cloning project is not only up and running, but has been repurposed into something far worse than Project Radio Noise.
- Idiot Hair: One of Mikoto's normally-flat strands stands up and starts waving around like an antenna while she's controlling the security robot.
- Money to Throw Away: Mikoto doesn't bat an eye at spending 37,000 yen note on a change of clothes; she then rents a room in a fancy-looking hotel simply to get dressed in.
