Black, The Dark of Ages Past

His first thought was of Sakura Taira, the sweet embrace she had offered him in the bed, her home cooking, her advice. Even when she was telling him off she’d been trying to help him! He was going to go back. He had planned to come home and see her again so why? Why was he falling? He needed to get back up, but his arms only flailed.

He felt his back hit something hard, but he didn’t break. He floated, buffeted by a loud hum that filled his ears. He reached up and entered the realm of memory.

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Hiroki grabbed his hand and yanked him from the raging current.

“I told you to be careful around this spot! I don’t care how good a swimmer you are, you can’t beat that!” The young man chided, pointing at the white water lapping at Joben’s heels.

He stood up-

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The warden smashed him in the face with his stun baton, shattering his glasses.

“You understand, perp!? You don’t get rights! You forfeited that when you involved innocent lives in your sick games!”

Joben spit up a tooth and peered up at the aging policeman.

“Let me guess, your family got caught up in the riots?”

“My father died in the riots you scum!” He hit Joben again, knocking him from his knees to the floor. “He was sixy-five! How about I hit you sixty three more times! One for each year you stole from me!”

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He jerked and sat up in in the terminal. Hiroki fussed with several pounds of metalflesh on his forehead, doing his best to get the mass to stick before he moved.

“Hold still!” He insisted. “The wet state drive could still move around after it’s been inserted.”

“But it’s in, isn’t it? We’ve done it! I can feel it too. It has all the information I need to make the perfect hack. It’s great!” He pulled himself out of the terminal and embraced his friend. “Don’t give up, I’ve got you!!!-“

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He yelled, holding the bleeding body of his cellmate. The man slumped over, dead as a doornail. Around him in the yard, prisoners dropped like flies as the guards opened fire. Columns of men rushed the stairs to the upper levels carrying corpses and slamming into the guards with all they had. Once a few of the inmates had guns, the war truly began and the red god sprayed the concrete with ichor.

Joben slid behind benches into the crowd and tried to make his way towards the front towards anything at all. The crowd of inmates passed a guardpost locked with a single terrified woman inside. He looked down at one of the dead security guards. He grabbed the man’s hand and swiped the keypad on the door. It swung open.

The woman inside retreated into the corner, throwing up and shivering. Joben locked the door behind him, pulling the guard’s corpse behind him as he did. He went to the terminal in the corner of the guard post and plugged in. He searched for his friend, searched for Hiroki Nakazawa. Finally, after minutes that felt like years he found a report.

Hiroki Nakazawa- Status: Deceased, Date: 2208_09_15, Cause of Death: Unknown.

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His head sank. He stood over the river. Cars rushed behind him in a blur, taking no notice of yet another poor soul ready to end it all. His foot slipped and he caught himself before falling. Was that it?

He escaped prison and that was all he had to show for himself? Just a simple self-preservation instinct? Why did he care? He wasn’t physically gifted, he wasn’t special, he was just like anyone else. Why care? Why not end it all?

He fell back and nearly shattered his knees falling from the suicide fence to the bridge. He just wanted to forget, he wished he could for-

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He stood up from the chair, in a dark place he couldn’t name surrounded by wires. He paid a man, a skeleton, a ghost of a person and he was gone. He couldn’t remember the man’s name. He couldn’t remember much, not clearly.

Joben Gima sprang to mind. That’s right… the man I used to be. He’s gone now. He realized. He looked in his pocket at his wallet, at a freshly minted ID card that read his new name, Ichijo Hajime. Yes, that was the name.

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Ichijo liked the work. He liked the job. He didn’t mind the overtime, or the lack of pay because he had no real bills and no real reason to try for more. He walked under the data tower on the way to work every day. He felt the radiation from the thing sear his skin.

He’d get skin cancer that way. But he thought that Joben Gima might like that so he kept doing it. He started walking through the radiated town that had been cordoned off as well. That should speed things up. One of those had to give him some mutation that killed him.

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A kiss.

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A punch.

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A warm embrace.

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A tearful reunion.

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And then… Nothing.

The person was gone, lost in the fog of what was and what should have been. The person faded from mind, from space, from existence and into the realm of fantasy. The person sat there, comfortably for a time until they observed the nothingness surrounding them and fell again.

Who is that person? Someone thought. And deep in the recesses of consciousness, truth reflected back and provided the answer.