8

Countdown: 161 Days Remaining.

Only one wall remained as a reminder of where the Shimo-Kitazawa station once stood. Makoto stared blankly at the crumbling edges, unable to recall ever having been to the station in the Before. He couldn’t remember a single detail about how it once looked.

Rui, on the other hand, sighed. “I used to get off at this station to go to school. Every day I walked through here, popping out of the teleporter rooms and grabbing a drink at the cafe before going to class. And now there’s nothing left.”

That’s how everything looks now, Makoto thought, but he refrained from saying so. He’d grown cynical, far too accustomed with every area of his life having fallen to ruin, but from the morose tone of Rui’s voice, it seemed he’d still held out hope for some areas looking normal.

A moment of silence passed before Rui took the first step into the rubble of the bombed out building. Makoto carefully watched his feet and matched his steps, determined not to trip this time.

“So the old man said it should be around here, right? The underground tunnels,” Rui said. “Where do you think the entrance would be?”

Makoto looked around mindlessly. “If they haven’t been needed for over a century, would there still be an entrance? They probably just built this station over the top of it and called it a day.”

“I didn’t mean a formal entrance -- we’re trying to find where the Rebels went, after all. A hole in the ground certainly sufficed.”

The bitter edge to Rui’s voice made Makoto turn to him, perplexed. This was the first time he’d heard Rui sound resentful over something other than the Pure, and he searched Rui’s face for the reason.

Even though half of his face was hidden by a respirator, Makoto could see from the throbbing vein at Rui’s temple and the harsh lines near his eyes that he was tense and clenching his jaw. Fire burned in his eyes, and his shoulders were squared off, fists balled at his sides, ready to fight anything that moved.

When he noticed Makoto’s eyes on him, Rui turned away and forced himself to relax, though the tension remained even as he rolled his shoulders back and tried to open his hands.

He cleared his throat and said, “Shall we get going?” Rui’s voice was strained, trying to hide the bitterness. His face had lost some of its stiffness, but his eyes struggled to hide the fire smoldering within.

I guess he’s not as much of a chameleon as I thought. Maybe I just needed to get to know him and his personality to be able to read him better. The thought soothed any of Makoto’s remaining apprehension, and as he followed Rui deeper into the station’s remains, he made a mental note to ask him about his feelings on the Rebel’s later.

Unlike the other transporter stations, this one had been heavily bombed in the revolt. The stench of blood hung in every breath of stale air, and the metallic twang told Makoto most of it had come from Defectives.

I shouldn’t be surprised, he thought sadly. Shimo-Kitazawa was a hub for alterations, and most of the students in my medical courses planned on working here. Of course this would be a major target for the Pure when they revolted against us.

He tried not to look at what he was stepping on, but he couldn’t block out the crunch of decaying bones beneath his shoes and the sharp clicks of metal scraps being kicked away. The temptation to look around for any salvageable organs was strong, but Makoto knew that if this was near the entrance to the Rebel’s hideout, he had little chance of finding anything usable, and he didn’t have time to waste on scavenging scraps.

The pair had almost crossed the expansive station when Makoto stopped, grabbing Rui’s arm. “Do you hear that?” Rui paused, looking around, then shook his head. “There’s water dripping from somewhere, but it hasn’t rained in ages,” Makoto said, tuning into the higher pitched sound of drops falling in an empty space.

“You think it’s from a pipe underground, maybe in the tunnels?” Rui asked, excitement replacing any anger still manifesting on his face.

Makoto nodded, and let go of Rui’s arm, standing stock still and maxing out his hearing so he could focus on locating the sound. He hardly dared to breathe.

A few steps to the right took him directly above the source of the water. Beside him, Rui crouched down to feel the ground, sweeping away ashes and crumbs of concrete to feel for any crevices. Makoto joined him, and used the thermal scan on his monocle to search for any temperature difference.

Several feet away, below a thin layer of dust, he noticed a slight warmth on one area of the floor. It was large enough to hold a trapdoor, and as he went to examine it, he found a tarp of insulated fabric covering a gaping hole in the ground. A cloth ladder was attached to the underside of the tarp, tied up by a long thread that dangled into the hole.

“Do you think anyone’s down there?” Rui said. His mechanical eye glowed faintly, certainly running the same scans as Makoto. “I don’t see anyone, but I don’t know what to look for.”

“As far as I can see, the heat level is fairly consistent. It’s a little warmer than outside, but not enough to sustain a large group of Defectives,” Makoto replied. With only a few degrees of difference between the outside temperature and the underground, he guessed there was little to no insulation. If there had been a large group surviving down there, surely someone would have gathered enough insulation to maintain as close to homeostasis temperatures as was possible, like he had done with his camp.

He pulled the thread and dropped the ladder, listening for any movement below. When he heard no signs of life, he took a deep breath and climbed down.

The underground tunnels had been fitted with neon bulbs along the sides, casting a soft glow and accounting for the heat. In the dim light, he could just make out the railroad tracks along the ground and the crumbling of the brick walls. Pipes crossed the ceiling, most of them rusted and decaying. Only one seemed to carry water, as evidenced by its icy temperature compared to the others around it.

Rui made little noise as he landed behind Makoto, scanning the area. “I’m still not seeing any signs of life here, but the old man was right about the tunnels.”

Most of the Rebels died in May, so it’s not surprising that there are no signs of life near their old hideout, Makoto thought. Yet he noticed the acrid stench of decay permeating the stale air and shuddered to think what he may find deeper within the tunnels.

Rui adjusted his respirator, tightening it around his chin and over his nose. Makoto did the same, but it didn’t do much to block out the odors as they ventured further, searching for any doors or paths leading off from the main railway.

The neon lights led them down the main tunnel for a while before turning into a small, nondescript side tunnel that could easily have been missed if it weren’t for the lights guiding the way. A slight temperature difference suggested a human presence, but Makoto noticed nothing in the heat scan.

The weight of foreboding pulled at his limbs, slowing his steps almost to a stop. Rui didn’t protest the break, instead squatting down and hanging his head between his knees. What was visible of the back of his neck looked pale and sweaty, even in the dim light.

Makoto ran a quick scan on Rui, looking for any anomalies that could indicate organ failure or some other illness, but nothing alarmed him. No fever, no signs of infections.

Being down here is making me nauseous too, Makoto thought, clamping his mouth shut to keep anything from slipping out.

An invisible hand tried to pull Makoto away from continuing down the tunnel. The weight in the pit of his stomach told him he wouldn’t find anything useful, that he would be better off returning home and cutting his losses, but he knew he couldn’t listen. The nagging possibility of something salvageable would keep him up at night.

He tapped Rui’s shoulder, a gentle inquiry over whether he could continue, and gave the boy a moment to collect himself and stand.

Rui nodded, discomfort displayed in his hunched shoulders and the hand hovering close to his stomach, and let Makoto lead the way forward.

A room opened up on the side of the small tunnel, hidden by a door that received little illumination from the neon bulbs. Although the rest of the tunnel was well illuminated, the Rebels had refrained from illuminating the entrance to their hideout, certainly to give them the upper hand should any unwelcome strangers approach.

Makoto hesitated before pushing open the door, but he saw no signs of life within. The heat scan only revealed the faint warmth of more bulbs behind the door, lining what looked to be a shorter ceiling than that of the tunnels.

He exchanged a look with Rui and saw the same amount of dread in Rui’s eyes as he felt. Makoto’s hands had gone numb, not from the cold, but from the sheer reluctance to see what lay behind the door.

With such a strong stench of decay and no signs of life anywhere nearby, I think we already know what happened to the survivors of the rebellion.

He steeled himself for the worst, and opened the door.

What had once been the Rebel’s hideout was now nothing more than a mass grave. A mound of dirt took up the center of the room, and a shovel sat against one of the walls.

Only one body was visible, seated against the furthermost wall, slumped forward, hands caked in dirt. The face was obscured by the dim light, and Makoto didn’t dare to look any further, not wanting to see a corpse up close. He’d seen enough pictures during his studies to know that decay was not something he wanted to zoom in on.

It looks like he was the only one left, the last Rebel, who buried the others one by one as they all passed away in this dark room, giving up hope after the failed attack on the sanctuary.

In his peripheral, Makoto saw Rui moving closer to the corpse, squinting. He didn’t seem bothered by the smell anymore, even though he’d looked ready to pass out moments before.

“So this is what happened to you,” Rui said softly, so faint that Makoto almost didn’t hear him. Rui stopped a few feet away, half-heartedly reaching out, but not daring to touch him.

“Who was he?” Makoto asked, sidestepping the mass grave to look at the metal desk in the corner of the room. As he’d expected, there were no papers or schematics of any sort. Nothing indicated this was even the Rebel’s hideout besides their insignia carved into the steel surface, barely visible under the thick layer of grime.

Beneath the desk was a metal box, opened on top, containing scraps of organs, stripped wires, and metal plating. He rifled through it quickly, noting that most of the contents were salvageable, with a little cleaning and deoxidizing.

“He was one of my school mates, in the Before,” Rui said, dropping his hand. “We weren’t friends -- we barely even knew each other -- but, after the revolt, he tried to convince me to join the Rebels.”

If he had looked up, Rui would have noticed Makoto inching a little closer after having emptied the box into his backpack. He watched Rui’s face, noting the anger in his scrunched brows that didn’t match the sadness in his eyes. The conflicted expression was one he’d seen multiple times on Rui’s face before, but he didn’t quite understand it.

“Why didn’t you?” Makoto asked, resting a hand on Rui’s arm in an attempt to comfort him as best he could.

Rui didn’t move away, didn’t even seem to notice Makoto beside him. “I was naive,” he said. “I didn’t think this would last. I didn’t think they could make any sort of difference. I guess I didn’t think there was any point, that it was all just a waste of time.”

He turned away abruptly, no longer able to look at the remains of his former classmate. “I thought we would rally together, us Defectives, and find a way to thrive, to create our own government now that the previous one had dissolved. I didn’t think everything would fall apart like this, that almost all of us would be dead in only a few months.” His voice had thickened, bordering on tears, and he shook his head. “I’ll be fine in a minute; you can keep looking.”

Even though he’d found all there was to see, Makoto busied himself with the desk again, scraping away the grime with a gloved finger to make himself look occupied.

I’ve never seen him like this, Makoto thought, and mentally chided himself. He’d only known the boy for a week after all, of course he hadn’t seen every side of him.

“What’s that thing you always say?” Rui asked, clearing his throat. His voice sounded more nasal than usual, but Makoto tried not to notice. “That we’ll all be dead by winter?”

“Yeah…” Makoto said softly, almost regretting his cynical views.

“I guess most of us already are, aren’t we?” Although he phrased it like a question, Makoto knew Rui expected no answer from him, so he didn’t offer one.

A moment of awkward silence passed between them, then Rui took a deep breath, and turned around. Although most of his face was hidden, Makoto could still make out tension in the creases around his reddened eyes, but little else. The sadness had dissipated, as had the anger, and he’d returned to a fairly neutral expression.

“Did you find anything helpful?” he asked, looking from Makoto to the desk then back again.

“Nothing about the sanctuary, but I found some materials,” he said, carefully meeting Rui’s gaze with one that tried to assess his state of being. He didn’t dare ask how Rui was feeling, all too aware of the toll it took to find someone you knew like that.

Rui nodded slowly. His hand rose, like he was about to say something more, but then it fell back to his side, and the words stayed behind his respirator.

He walked back over to Makoto, but didn’t look at him. In a soft, hesitant voice, he asked, “Do you mind if I give him a proper burial? I know it’s meaningless, but the idea of leaving him out like this, when he’s probably the one who buried the others… I just feel like he should be with them, in the end.”

“Of course,” Makoto said, helping Rui move the desk over to make room for another grave.

“Thanks,” Rui said.

They took turns with the shovel, though Rui only allowed himself a short break when Makoto scolded him for wasting too much energy. His reluctance to burden Makoto was understandable, but Makoto couldn’t let him handle the task alone, not when they were already tired. “We’re partners, after all,” was the reason he gave Rui when the red-haired boy questioned his willingness to help.

Rui gave him a grateful smile and nod. A few more unshed tears shimmered in his blue eyes, but he blinked them away and sat down to rest.

Once a large enough hole had been dug, Makoto helped Rui move the corpse into the grave, noting that the boy had indeed been around their age, though his features were now largely obscured.

“I’ll leave you alone, so you can say goodbye. Come out when you’re ready,” Makoto said, giving Rui’s shoulder a gentle squeeze.

The boy nodded wordlessly, and Makoto left the room.

From behind the door, he could make out the faint sound of Rui’s voice, but he turned his hearing sensitivity down. He didn’t want to intrude on this private moment.

Instead he busied himself with the scraps he’d taken from the metal bin, categorizing the contents into potential organ groups and picking out whatever was too small or eroded to be useful.

An idea started to form in the back of his mind, but he didn’t have time to flesh it out before Rui came out, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket, and nudged the door closed behind him with his foot.

“Thank you, for that,” he said, nodding towards the now closed door. “I’m glad I found out what happened to the survivors, even though it wasn’t the outcome I’d been hoping for.” His voice held little of the previous emotion now, no more than a hint of the sadness he’d displayed in the room, as though he’d locked it away behind the steel door.

“Of course,” Makoto said, standing. “Ready to go home?” he asked, surprised at himself for referring to their camp as home for the first time.

Rui nodded, and the pair headed back down the tunnel towards Shimo-Kitazawa station.