Chapter 1:

Prologue.

BlackBrain


February, Year 2308

Conflict Summary:

S-Flu (Spanish Flu D): 589,456,144

Humanity: 0


Sterilized Delivery Room 2, Jiguroka Hospital, District 4.

Isayama Tore, 18 years and 1 month old.


It wasn’t easy to perform in that place: lights drilling into your corneas as a group of masked strangers yelled and held you down, ensuring you didn’t crush the skulls of those precious, screaming creatures in the throes of pain.

I guess having artificial legs is an advantage in moments like that...

I opened and closed my right hand twice.

“Push! Push!” one of the doctors urged the woman, shouting over her screams. “Just a little more. Tatsumi, clean towels!”

“Y-yes, sir!” replied the young man behind him, hurrying toward me.

There, all gleamed white, especially the uniforms of the professionals gathered around the woman, who worked relentlessly as the first of two tiny heads emerged.

The five doctors were accompanied by three useless trainees hovering in the way. Me included…

“Tore! Vaccines ready? No more than forty seconds between delivery and immunization!” barked one of them—my mentor.

As if my dark circles weren’t enough, I had to help poor Tatsumi pick up the tweezers and vials he had knocked off the cart I was guarding, all while searching for his dammed towels.

“Vaccines ready, sir!” I called out, still crouched on the floor.

“Sorry, Isa, I’m not used to this tension.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry…” I replied as we got to our feet.

“Towels!”

“Coming!”

“Poor Ayaka,” I muttered, observing the third trainee adjust her glasses as she stepped back to avoid interfering.

I turned toward the glass, just as the air purifier kicked in. Beyond the ‘Sterilized Zone’ stickers, I noticed a man in scrubs and a hairnet, praying—likely the father.

God doesn’t exist, sir. And even if He did, He wouldn’t spare you from two screaming twins.

“Back in the academy, I never imagined it like this…” It was our first real fieldwork as maternity nurses.

To be fair, the only thing keeping my anxiety in check was luck. Preparing the vaccines felt easier than facing the chaos around me.

“Push! Come on!”

“You just have to wait for your turn…” I lied. Seeing how agitated our superiors were and how they ripped the towels from their young hanger called Tatsumi, I knew I couldn’t mess it up.

“Administer the injections yourself too!”

“R-right.” Tatsumi rushed to my side, picking up one of the needles I had prepared with trembling hands. “Did you disinfect these with alcohol?”

“Yes, everything’s ready.” I sweated.

“Ayaka, get the portable cribs. After the vaccinations, we’ll transfer them to the Intensive Care Unit. Ma’am, we’re almost done…”

“Right away!”

“First, Smallpox A. Vascular decompressor. Then Smallpox B and C, H1N1, and finally Spanish Flu D.” He pointed at the six closest syringes.

“Perfect.”

Within ten seconds, both creatures were crying in the doctors' arms.

“Vaccines, now!” shouted my old sensei.

“Let’s go!” We dashed forward with the vaccine cart.

“Easy, youngsters… Quick, but steady…” Tatsumi’s instructor advised, while Ayaka nervously watched from a distance.

We started with Smallpox A.

“Isayama, vascular decompressor.”

Everybody there understood how critical those vaccines were against the S-Flu.

“Next is Smallpox B.”

“On it.”

“Smallpox C.”

“Don’t cry, little ones. The suffering is almost over,” One of the doctors tried to comfort the babies.

“Just H1N1 and Spanish D left.”

“We’re doing good, Tatsumi.”

“H1N1 administered!”

“Tore, Kageyama…”

We were so focused that we didn’t see the lifeless expressions of the two veteran doctors.

“Let’s do Spanish D, Tatsumi.”

“Guys…”

“One, two, three—administered!”

“Well done…”

With gasps of relief, we didn’t notice the sudden silence. Nor that the newborns had stopped crying.

The silence was so clean it allowed us to hear the father’s sobs through the glass.

“Dr. Yamaguchi?” Said the mother, also panting.

Beside her, holding her hand, Yamaguchi-sensei, my mentor, slowly removed his glasses, pocketing them in his coat.

Soon we both began to sense the eerie atmosphere.

“I’m sorry, guys…”

“Huh?”

“W-what?”

“Neither of the newborns survived the vaccines…” he said, voice trembling, as the babies were wrapped in towels.

“How… how could they not…?”

“I’m sorry. Their immune systems couldn’t withstand the reinforcements we administered,” my mentor explained to the mother. His voice was somber and heavy. “They wouldn’t have survived in today’s world, either.”

She collapsed onto the pillow, her tears a silent testament to her heartbreak.

All I could do was shake in panic; I couldn’t accept it. And judging by Tatsumi’s expression, neither could he.

“Maybe if we had waited a couple more weeks, their systems might have been stronger… But that would have risked the delivery, Mrs. Sato,” my sensei added grimly, while the other doctors placed their tools and soiled cloths on the metal cart.

“Give me back my children, devil’s flu…” she murmured in despair.

What the hell went wrong?!

“Damn it…” Tatsumi muttered through tears.

How many babies have died like this before? How many has Yamaguchi-sensei…?

Overwhelmed by a sudden wave of nausea, I felt the acid rising in my throat. And so, I ran toward the door, covering my mouth with one hand and slamming the door’s button with the other.

“Isayama…” I heard Tatsumi as I ran.

It was fleeting, like a shadow that crossed the corner of my eye. As I stumbled toward the restroom doors, a figure emerged from there—a young woman with dark hair and white details. She passed me with her head tilted and her face partially obscured.

I couldn’t see much in that moment, just the way her hands clutched at her sides, as if she was holding herself together. A tear traced her cheek as she vanished, leaving me alone with my crisis.

Locked in the bathroom, I cried and vomited my soul out, my fury directed at the toilet as though it bore the blame for what had happened.

“Damn it! How did they die?! What did I do?!” I’d never forget that acid smell.

Panic gripped me as I clawed at my lab coat, tearing off buttons just to breathe.

KNOCK, KNOCK.

“Isayama?”

“Tatsumi?!”

“Is that you?” His voice sounded hollow, eaten away by pain.

“Tatsumi! What did we do wrong?!”

“At least your hand’s an implant, mine was flesh and bone…” he replied, his voice breaking. I heard him hesitate, perhaps looking at his reflection in the mirror. “They’re waiting for you…”

“Tatsumi!” I struggled to my feet, leaning on the toilet for support.

“They want you in the office to report what happened. Your tutor’s waiting.”

“W-what? Wait!” I heard the door open.

“Don’t cause Yamaguchi-sensei any trouble… I don’t think he deserves it,” he closed the door softly.

I left the restroom to join my tutor in the office to give my statement. They spent an unbearable amount of time trying to convince me that none of it was my fault—that nearly twenty percent of newborns couldn’t survive the required immunizations.

That those doses were essential to fight S-Flu and had been used for decades. That every one of us was a survivor of them.

They said that the war against S-Flu showed no signs of ending or even any progress. Thus, the best and only hope was to immunize as many newborns as possible so future generations could finally overcome that cursed virus.

The meeting dragged longer than necessary, likely due to my lack of cooperation. In the end, I signed the papers: waivers of responsibility, confidentiality agreements, and acknowledgments that this method—used for decades—was the best way to ensure a newborn could breathe the fresh air of today’s world.

"Isayama Tore is innocent."

And yet, my hands still trembled.

Perhaps I owe you all an explanation too.

This was a story where the only conclusion to be drawn was that humanity was doomed sooner or later. And so we lived, connected to our artificial selves. Detached from the past of cells, hoping that our cables and advanced tissues would be enough to shield our souls from the enemy that cornered us.

At the end of the workday, I ran into Yamaguchi-sensei in the hospital locker room. It was late, and there was hardly anyone or any light in the area.

I sat there, hunched over, my chest tight and my breaths shallow, opening and closing my artificial hand like it might still feel something. In design and utility, it was no less capable than a normal hand, save for its lack of humanity.

I sought justification in it, proof that centuries of human progress weren’t in vain.

Meanwhile, Yamaguchi-sensei organized the contents of his locker.

"Don’t feel bad; these things happen sometimes."

"Sensei..."

“Young Tore, I need you to understand that you are not to blame for what happened.”

"It seems to happen more often than the world deserves to know...”

"This has been the case since that virus appeared. Since that First World War, humanity has done nothing but suffer deaths many of us would call avoidable and senseless.”

"They teach you in school that if they had stopped fighting, maybe all of this could have been avoided."

"Maybe so," he said while putting away his lab coat.

"Do you think we’ll defeat it?" I looked again at my fake hand.

"If you mean the rot, I believe so. If what torments you is your artificial side, don’t worry—it could be much worse."

“It doesn’t matter...”

" Implants are the only way humanity fights back.”

Come to think of it, I don’t believe there’s a single person in the entire city without at least one robotic implant…

" Look at me—I’ve fought off that devilish flu more times than I can count."

He took off his sweater and shirt, showing me some of the irregularities between his old skin and his “new self.”

"I’ve lost my entire body fighting the S-Flu, day after day. It’s the oath I took when I became a doctor. Sometimes people die in your arms, you think it’s your fault, that you could have prevented it... This is war, Tore. There are battles you win and battles you just don’t..."

"I want to quit..." I interrupted abruptly.

"You need to lead the—wait, what?" He turned back to his downcast pupil.

"I said I quit, Sensei. I can’t face another mother crying, another family broken­­­—I can’t do it anymore…”

“Isayama Tore!”

“I… just…”

“You can’t just leave! The future need people like you!”

We argued for a few agonizing minutes. I didn’t blame my sensei for it; I understood his position and knew that the one acting illogically was me.

Despite all my mentor’s efforts, my mental block resulted in my resignation from the internship at the hospital and the betrayal of my dreams.

Freshly graduated from the Metropolitan Medical Academy, I left the side of Ayaka and Tatsumi who, not like me, did have the courage to keep facing the virus ravaging humanity.

How did we get to this point?

This is my story: that of an ordinary guy unwilling to lose his humanity. A dream that would soon take a massive turn, one I neither expected nor wanted.

Do you want to know how humanity ended up replacing parts of its own body just to survive? Let us start at the beginning: the year 1918.

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