Despite Misaka's best efforts, all her attacks are immediately stopped and redirected at her by Accelerator's power, the ability to change the vectors of everything (such as momentum, heat, and electrical charge) by touch. When Toma returns from the bookstore, he finds Misaka's dead body in a dark alley and calls the police. When they arrive to find the body, it is gone. Confused, Toma continues to search the alley and is relieved to find Misaka alive. However, he is horrified to see that she is carrying a body bag containing the body he had seen in the alley; dozens of identical girls resembling Misaka then appear, revealing that they are all part of a confidential experiment and are mass-produced military-use somatic cell clones of Mikoto Misaka called "The Sisters". The Misaka that he's been encountering all this time is Number 10032, currently the one carrying the body bag. Remembering how Mikoto had treated Misaka earlier, Toma realizes that Mikoto had known about all this and goes to her dormitory to learn the truth. Instead of finding Mikoto, Toma ends up waiting for her alongside Mikoto's roommate, the very protective Kuroko, and is forced to hide under Mikoto's bed when the dorm master comes by for inspection. Toma finds and reads a report about Tree Diagram's calculated methods for how Accelerator, the most powerful Level 5 esper in Academy City, can evolve to Level 6 by fighting "The Sisters" at special battlefields where he will gain experience from combat and finds a map with several red X's marked on it. Now aware of the truth, Toma goes to confront Mikoto.