Chapter 12:

12

We'll All Be Dead by Winter


Countdown: 155 Days Remaining.

Makoto cursed under his breath, drawing Rui’s attention. “What’s wrong?” he asked, leaving the wires he’d been sorting on the ground as he meandered over.

Makoto unscrewed his scope from the port in Sumire’s abdomen. “It’s still not enough,” he said, trying to tamp down the panic creeping into his veins. He was running out of options.

“The prototype didn’t work?” Rui's eyebrows furrowed in concern, his mouth pulling into a taut line.

“It’s working, but it can’t keep up with all her organs, so it’s doing almost nothing.” Makoto sat back, looking for something to take his frustrations out on as his fingers curled into fists at his side. What’s the point of trying so hard if it never works?

Rui sat down beside him, patting Makoto’s leg. “That sucks,” he said simply. Something about his presence made Makoto calm down. Rui took the scope from him and returned it to Makoto’s backpack.

“Thanks,” he said, allowing himself to stretch. He’d spent several hours working on deoxidizing several of Sumire’s organs while removing any decaying tissue around them. The renewed threat of necrosis hung over his head, suffocating his every move.

“What about the new one you were making?” Rui asked. “I thought you were almost done with it last night.”

Makoto shook his head. “It needs a stronger chip. It’ll never work with the materials I have now, not as it is.”

Rui thought for a moment, then asked, in a low voice, “Can she survive without the prototype?” He glanced at Sumire, worry tightening the features of his face.

Makoto shuddered at the amount of dead tissue he’d had to remove. If he kept needing to do so, her frail body wouldn’t be able to regenerate fast enough. He shook his head. “Not for more than a day or two, at the most.” Nausea bubbled up his throat, the bile burning his esophagus and leaving a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. Leaning against Rui for the support he desperately needed, he said, “I don’t know what to do, Rui. I’m out of options.”

“It’s not over yet,” Rui said. Though he tried to sound confident, his voice wavered and broke the effect. Undeterred, he continued, “We’ll find something, today, however we have to. What kind of chip does it need?”

Makoto sighed and said, “Probably the same type as the one in my heart, but mechanical hearts are rare. I was given a prototype, and I became the first person born heartless who managed to live with a mechanical one.” And I only knew one other person who had one… He pushed the thought aside, trying to keep his face from giving him away.

The weight of Rui’s gaze on him made it hard for Makoto to breathe. Any movement seemed too risky, too suspicious, like his secret could be given away with one flick of his wrist or shift of his body.

The red-haired boy nodded slowly. Silence clung to him for a moment, and he had stopped his usual fidgeting. Still leaning against him, Makoto felt just how still Rui had become. He wondered if the boy was trying to read him, to match his stillness and wait for Makoto to break the silence.

Then, with a sharp inhale, Rui said, “What about your medical school? Surely you had organs and parts there to study, right? Maybe they still have the chips there, since most people don’t know how to program it themselves.”

A wave of relief washed over Makoto. “That’s brilliant,” he said, a slight smile forming on his lips. He still couldn’t shake his fears, but he felt a lot lighter. “Let’s go.”

He stood first, then held a hand out to Rui. He accepted and pulled himself up easily, then the pair rushed out of the camp.


“The school used to be right around here,” Makoto said, turning away from the abandoned station at Kugayama. “I was almost always running late, so it had to be no more than a five minute run from the station.”

“You? Running late?” Rui shook his head, incredulous.

“I’m not infallible.”

“Clearly not, if you can’t even be punctual.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

“Hey, I made it. Out of breath and tired, but always on time.” Makoto led the way down a side street, taking the shortcut he always ran. His feet still remembered frantically pounding down one street after another, cursing him for never waking up on time, even with the jolt of his alarm across the back of his neck. “I was a scholarship kid after all -- I had certain conditions to uphold.”

Rui shook his head. “I knew you were some sort of child prodigy. There’s no way someone my age could be such a skilled Surgeon otherwise.”

The compliment went unnoticed as Makoto stopped before the ruins of his school. The front half of the building had been bombed into rubble, so only the back rooms remained standing, with thick cables and wires holding together the slabs of concrete that dangled over the lower floors.

“The main storage rooms were in the back half of the building, fortunately,” Makoto said, picking his way over the outer wall.

A temperature scan revealed nobody in the building, but one of the rooms on the left side, one floor above their heads, held enough warmth to light up a faint yellow among the gray.

Rui noticed it too. “What’s up there?”

“I think that was one of our labs,” Makoto said. The memories of his time in school had faded during the last few months, but he remembered the second floor being mainly labs.

Once he reached what remained of the building, a sense of nostalgia swept over him. He saw the faces of his classmates, most of them older than him, passing by as he ventured into the hallway. The din of their voices whispered through the empty space, a haunting hum of indistinct conversations.

He’d kept his head down in those days, trying his best to shrink into the background and convey ample respect to his elders. Most of his time had been spent examining the floors, so his recollections of their faces were vague at best.

Giving in to the nostalgia, Makoto unclasped his respirator to take a deep breath of familiar smells. The de-oxidizing agents mixed with the twang of synthetic oils -- he’d spent months breathing that in, so smelling it again brought a comforting warmth to his chest. For just a brief moment, he almost forgot about the state of his home town.

Then the perpetual cold nipped at his exposed skin and he pulled the respirator back over his face, warming the metal grate with a long, slow exhale.

Rui disappeared from Makoto’s side to check out a room to his right and broke Makoto from his reverie. “So what used to be down here?” he asked, peering through the broken window. He tried the knob, but it barely turned in his hand.

“Most of the classrooms were here, on the first floor, with labs on the second and third floors, and then operating rooms on the fourth and fifth floors. The sixth floor had apartments for the professors and staff, but they were rarely used.”

“Oh?” Rui asked, trying another door. This one was locked, too, with what used to be a retina scan, but was now just an empty hole. Someone had stripped the scanner from the wall, certainly to take apart for usable parts. “They prefer to live off campus or something?”

“No, they just didn’t spend much time sleeping. The school was always open, so a lot of the staff and professors had their brains altered to need little or no sleep. They wanted to keep an eye on students at all times.”

Rui stopped exploring long enough to look at Makoto with wide eyes. “You could get an operation to be able to function with little sleep? That sounds amazing! How come everyone doesn’t do that?”

Makoto chuckled at Rui’s surprise. “It was highly experimental at the time, so there was only one surgeon who was skilled enough to do it, and even then there were a lot of complications.” He shuddered at the memories creeping out from where he’d buried them. “We lost a few professors that way. One day they’d be fine -- the next they’d be a lobotomized vegetable.”

The excited twinkle in Rui’s eyes faded as his face dropped. “Have you ever considered a career in anti-marketing? You can make anything cool sound like a nightmare.”

Makoto shrugged. “It’s a gift,” he said, turning towards the last room at the end of the hall. It was the only one that looked untouched, and he knew why.

Although the wall beside the door looked nondescript, Makoto had been trained to see the slight variation in the metal plating. With Rui looking over his shoulder, he pulled out his monocle and ran a scan designed specifically for the indented section of the wall. Every semester, the updated program was given to the students and used exclusively for the storage rooms. If he hadn’t managed to salvage half of his glasses, Makoto would have had no chance of opening the door.

Small symbols appeared on the screen, matching the patterns of indentations on the wall. Even without any energy, the wall still recognized his eye movements as he drew the password with a gaze, careful not to make a single mistake.

Rui, standing close beside him, had enough sense to stay still so as not to distract Makoto. He didn’t even take a breath until the door unlatched.

“How did you do that?” Rui asked, watching the door silently slide open. The only noise came from some of the rubble tumbling into the otherwise untouched room.

“We were all given the code for the security system when we got accepted, and it gets changed every year so only the current students can open the storage rooms.” He paused for a moment, almost intimidated by how clean the room was. “Looks like nobody else has been here since everything started to fall apart.”

It felt wrong to disturb the peace. The room was like a museum display of what life looked like in the Before.

But I need to find something to help Sumire, Makoto thought, taking the first step into the room. He took a deep breath of sterile air, something he hadn’t smelled in months. The sudden loss of the bitter ashes and dust made his nose itch.

“It’s strange how we get so accustomed to something unpleasant, so that when it’s gone, we almost miss it,” Rui said, reading Makoto’s mind.

Makoto nodded and continued farther. The shelves looked equally undisturbed, with their contents still organized in locked metal compartments. He walked confidently to the opposite end of the room, aiming for the back right corner. Those shelves were rarely touched, as most of the surgeons in his course were more comfortable using pre-made organs instead of crafting their own. He’d taken an instant liking to his engineering courses and had spent his compulsory work hours sorting through the chips and stand-alone components.

The actual storage bins only required a basic retina scan and fingerprint to ensure the student had authorization, as some of the more complicated organs required permission from the head surgeon.

Makoto unlocked the center unit of the back shelf and rifled through the smaller containers.

“Do they have what you need?” Rui asked, peering over his shoulder. Confusion danced across his face. “All of this looks exactly the same to me,” he said with an embarrassed shrug.

Makoto pulled out one of the small, thin computer chips. Black and white lines crossed the otherwise gray surface, and a small indentation on one side marked it as the top. He employed the zoom function on his monocle to inspect every micrometer of it for any imperfections and was pleased to find none.

“Yep,” he said, tucking the chip safely into his glove, where he could be certain it wouldn’t get lost. As much as his backpack sufficed for carrying larger components, he’d learned long ago that the pockets couldn’t secure something as small as a chip.

Before leaving the storage room, Makoto stocked up on as many pieces as he could carry. He wound fresh wires around a spare spool as well, but he didn’t discard his old stores, since he ran through them so fast he preferred to have as much backup material as he could carry. Once both his and Rui’s backpacks were full, he led the way out of the room, locking it behind him.

Rui looked up towards where the thermal scans had picked up heat in one of the labs. “Should we go check out what’s up there?” he asked, glancing back at Makoto.

Makoto pulled up a mental map of the school, trying to recall which type of lab was in that hallway. When he failed, he shrugged and said, “It can’t hurt, but we have to hurry. I don’t want to be gone too much longer.” A weight in his gut tugged at him, telling him to leave sooner than later, but he ignored it, brushing it off as his usual sense of worry towards Sumire.

Rui nodded and headed for the staircase at the end of the hallway. The elevator beside it stood with its doors perpetually half opened, lacking sufficient energy to close them.

“I’m not sure we’ll make it up this way,” Rui said, planting one foot tentatively on the first stair.

Makoto peered over Rui’s shoulder, but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. For once, the staircase looked whole and untouched, unlike the rest of the building. “Why do you say that?” he asked, noting the slight glow of Rui’s mechanical eye.

“The support underneath the steps has been compromised,” he said, looking up and down the staircase. “It’s thin in some areas, so it might crumble.” He grimaced, turning back to look at Makoto. “What do you want to do?”

Makoto looked up and down the dozen steps. He would fall almost twice his height if he went through the landing, but the heated room proved too enticing. He couldn’t walk away without knowing why an entire room had stayed heated for months.

“I’m lighter than you, so I have a better chance of getting up there than you do,” Makoto said, noting the height and build difference between himself and Rui. Rui had a few inches of extra height, and he had broader shoulders and a slightly more muscular build than Makoto.

Rui hesitated, then acquiesced. “Be careful,” he said, though the concern weaving lines across his forehead revealed his desire to protest the idea. “Stay close to the wall -- that’s where it’s strongest.”

Makoto nodded and moved in front of Rui. With a deep breath to calm his nerves, he took the first step up, testing his weight on the stair. He hesitated each time he raised a foot, clinging to the railing like it was his only lifeline and gluing his feet against the wall.

He’d made it up the first five steps when his heightened hearing picked up a soft crack. Before he could react, the entire step detached and fell away. He tried to lunge forward, but his weight had been centered along his back foot, and he couldn’t keep his grip on the railing. His other hand reached uselessly out in front of him.

Instead of falling through the floor, a pair of strong arms wrapped around Makoto’s waist. Rui pulled him close as the pair crashed to the floor, the breath knocked out of both of them.

Makoto blinked, trying to process what had happened in the span of a few seconds. Once again he felt that his heart should be beating faster, if only it was organic instead of mechanical.

Rui chuckled into his ear, still holding Makoto around his waist. “I’m flattered that you’re falling for me, but this isn’t how I’d imagined it.”

Makoto pulled away and aimed a glare at Rui, saying, “Your imagination runs wild way too easily.” Then he softened and added, “But thanks.”

“At your service,” Rui said, standing up to give a dramatic bow that had Makoto rolling his eyes. His face sobered long enough to ask, “What are you going to do now?” while looking at the missing step.

Makoto gave it a rueful glance, and said, “We can’t get up this way after all, and the elevator no longer works, so I don’t know.”

“There’s no emergency staircase?”

“That was the emergency staircase. I guess it was just never used so they didn’t maintain it.”

Rui tried to give Makoto a hopeful smile and said, “Maybe we can find something else to climb?” He backed out of the stairwell and looked down the hall, then up at the ceiling. “Maybe I could lift you up and you could reach the second floor from outside.”

Makoto followed him out, intrigued. “Do you think you could lift me that high?” he asked, looking at the ceiling. It was pretty low for a regular building, since the architect had been trying to make as many floors as possible within the city’s height limitation.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Rui said, already standing outside. He crouched and cupped his hands, waiting for Makoto to step up. “Just try not to land on my face if you fall? I kinda prefer it unscathed.”

“Yeah, you can’t be a shameless flirt with a bashed face.” He placed both hands on Rui’s shoulders to steady himself and wedged his dominant foot between Rui’s waiting hands. The ledge sat several feet above his head, but he could almost reach the ceiling of the first floor when he stretched his arms up.

“It doesn’t quite have the same effect, no.” Rui repositioned himself, adjusting his balance, and asked, “Ready?”

Makoto barely managed to nod before being launched into the air. Flailing, he scrambled for the ledge, managed to grip an open doorway, and pulled himself up onto the second floor. Below, he heard Rui’s gleeful laugh. “You made it!” he exclaimed.

Makoto crawled back over to the edge and grinned down at the red-haired boy. “You’re surprisingly strong,” he said.

“Oh? Who’s the shameless flirt now?” Rui called up.

Makoto rolled his eyes and stood up. “Still you,” he said, mostly to himself. Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he made his way over to the lab on the left, doing another quick scan to confirm it was the heat source he’d seen.

On the second floor, most of the labs had little security, since there was nothing to steal when they were unoccupied. Any materials and equipment were to be brought in by the students and taken back with them, so there was no need to lock an empty room.

Makoto noticed the temperature change the moment he walked into the room, but nothing stood out as the cause. The metal tables and counters were exactly like he remembered, as were the screens that took up an entire wall, though they had gone permanently dark.

Assuming the heat came from residual energy in the screens, he gave them a quick scan, but they were as cold as the rest of the school.

Only the walls, as nondescript as any other wall, lit up on the heat scan. Upon closer examination, he noticed the panels were sealed together tighter than anything he’d seen in other surviving buildings. This meant the insulation behind the panels had not degraded, therefore keeping the room warmer without generating any heat.

Perfect, he thought with a small smile. I’ve been needing to replace the insulation around our camp, so I’ll collect what I can. He pulled out his multi-tool and changed the end to a drill bit -- the least used, but still a good function to have -- and made a hole in the bottom right corner of the first wall. Attaching a hose to the other end of his multitool that led into the large pocket of his backpack, he spent a few minutes sucking as much of the insulation as he could.

The room instantly cooled, and Makoto felt a little guilty for it, but he pushed the emotion away. What use was an insulated room if it was inaccessible?

Once he’d drawn as much as his backpack could hold, he resealed the hole and left the room.

Rui waited for him outside, watching the ledge for Makoto to reappear. “So what was it?” he asked. “I noticed the temperature changed after you walked in.”

“The insulation hadn’t degraded in there,” Makoto explained as he lowered himself over the edge of the floor. Rui moved to catch him, helping him return to the ground. “Thanks.”

With only a sliver of sunlight remaining to mark the end of the day, the boys turned away from the school and headed back towards their camp, satisfied at the success of their day’s journey. 

Makech
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