Chapter Text
White rooms. Bright lights. Sterile smells.
“Playing sample nine, 24,000 hertz.”
The noises from nowhere that always made him clamp his hands over his ears, only for the person holding him to pull them back away. It would go on like this for hours.
“Confirmed.” The sound stopped. They let go of his arms.
“Playing sample ten, 25,000 hertz.”
Each ring hurt more than the last. Each pierced his skull like a bullet. He covered his ears. They pulled his hands away.
“Stop, please,” he whimpered. He knew they wouldn’t. Even back then, he knew the routine. They did this every month.
“Playing sample eleven, 26,000 hertz.”
“Stop,” he said.
They pulled his hands away.
“Playing sample twelve, 27,000 hertz.”
“Playing sample thirteen, 28,000 hertz.”
“Sample fifteen, 30,000 hertz.”
“35,000 hertz.”
“50,000 hertz.”
“60,000.”
When they finally reached sample sixty, all he could hear was the AC and the breathing and the heartbeats of himself and the person holding him.
Tears had fallen and dried on his face. All he wanted was to go back to his room, where it was quiet and he could sleep. Where the kind older girl would sing in soft, soothing tones for him and the rest in his group. Where the pain would finally stop.
“Okay, that’s subject U-2-2; age, three years and ten months; upper limit, 74,000 hertz. Let’s move on to the lower limit test.”
Ukyo whined.
— — — — — — — —
Being petrified was the first time Ukyo experienced true silence.
Not quiet. Not static.
Just.
Nothing.
It was almost blissful.
It was completely terrifying.
And then, just like that…
It was gone.
The world came blinding in with bright light and cracking rock. Shards clattered to the stone ground like thunder rolling over sky. Around him, at least five people breathing, hearts beating as the wind raced through unseen trees. Birdsong, gnat-buzz, something burrowing underneath. It was loud. But not nearly as loud as the busy city street where he’d just been kneeling down to retie his shoe.
Behind him, a familiar-looking young man—seventeen, maybe eighteen—with long, matting hair and a muscular frame. They’d never met, and Ukyo had never taken interest in fighting-type sports, but—
“Aren’t you… Shishio Tsukasa?”
He’d had a crewmate who did.
“It’s nice to meet you. Yeah.”
And behind him, a blonde woman about Ukyo’s age who he wasn’t sure he had met but who may have taken his photo about a year back. Maybe an eternity back, based on the landscape, but maybe in his time it would still be right to say a year. After all, he remembered it like he had just left. He was still—
“The former submarine sonar operator, Saionji Ukyo! You’ve made quite a name for yourself.” She tilted her head and smiled “Known for ‘exceptional hearing and rational decision making!’”
He did not say anything in response to her praise. He did not cringe at being known for his hearing. He’d read it all before. He only accepted the clothes handed to him and made himself decent, grateful for the hat and high collar to hide himself between.
Tsukasa led him through a camp only ten people strong, and explained he had been awake for a little over a month. In charge for just about half of that. He told Ukyo he wanted his help to build a better world out of this stone-age sanctuary, and that they would need to be careful about how they did it. They could not revive too many all at once, when the miracle fluid only dripped so fast. Necessity would force them to pick and choose.
“I want to give that privilege to the young.” Tsukasa’s lion skin cape billowed out behind him as they both looked out at a sunset over forests that hadn’t been there thousands of years ago. “It was the old and corrupt who cast the old world in strife. Even those who did not actively perpetuate it became jaded and apathetic, and allowed the horrors of the world to go on unchallenged.” He turned his head towards Ukyo and caught his eye. “Tell me. Would you allow future generations to grow up in the same world we did, burdened with struggles those before us left you and I to bear?”
Though Ukyo felt certain the struggles Tsukasa spoke of were far removed from what Ukyo himself had been through, there was only one right answer in his heart, and only one answer he knew Tsukasa would want to hear. “Of course not.”
Tsukasa, approving of this, turned his head back out towards the burning sky. “Suppose we revived individuals from the privileged class,” he said, “And they acquired access to weapons of science. What do you think would happen?”
Images of tasers and tranquilizers found Ukyo from far in his past, and nearer, the unvindicated paranoia of hostile vessels sneaking into their waters. “If someone with harmful intentions got ahold of something like that while everyone else only had stone and wooden weapons,” Ukyo answered, understanding his fear, “It would be extremely difficult for anyone to stand against them.”
Those words hung in the air for several seconds as the last streaks of sunlight faded over the horizon, leaving behind only purpling gradients and orange-dusted clouds.
“The world of the past must stay in the past,” Tsukasa concluded when the whispers of wind and distant insects nearly became unbearable. “Together, we will create a new world in harmony with nature.”
It was a pair of phrases Ukyo would overhear no small number of times in the coming months. Tsukasa’s script shifted with each new induction, but always, he would repeat that. A nice image. A common wish. For most, it seemed an easy thing to hear that and trust Tsukasa was doing what was best for them all.
For Ukyo, it had become chilling ever since he first watched him shatter a statue.
It took little to guide Tsukasa into admitting his exact intentions. For him to glance across the camp at a pair of teenagers with dark brown hair—a girl with a modest headband and a boy with the loudest voice in camp—and quietly tell the story of a young scientist whose life had been cut short by his own hands. He believed wholeheartedly that it was the only right choice.
It was then Ukyo knew for certain that dissent would not be an option.
Ukyo was made a knight under a self-supposed emperor who he stood no chance against in a fight, with either weapons or words. So he stayed silent. He did not voice his disdain for Tsukasa playing god in a world where every law had been erased. He did not defend the still-petrified statues outright. He did, occasionally, pose a gentle question to their head advisor.
“Minami, I’ve been wondering,” he brought up to her during dinner by a fire that crackled in his ears, even as they stood some meters away from it and the surrounding crowd. “It seems like Tsukasa has been predominantly reviving strong, able-bodied people. Explain to me again what exactly the plan is?”
“Of course!” Minami said with open cheer and lowered her meal of skewered meat away from her face. “We’re doing everything we can to maximize our odds of survival, so we’re prioritizing people we believe will move us closer to that goal.”
As he picked at his own roasted something, Ukyo kept his frown hidden in the shadow of his collar. “And in a world without farms, that means hunters?”
“Who better?”
He bit the inside of his lip. Finally, he asked, “For how long?”
“Hm?”
“What I mean is, not everyone from the old world was physically gifted in the way most of us here are.” Ukyo knew that much was obvious. He was talking to one of the only people in their little empire that wasn’t practically an Olympian. But with the look she was giving him, he wanted to start from something he knew she would find as obvious as him. “When do we start reviving more people who aren’t famous for being strong or gifted survivalists? Or people who aren’t physically fit in that way at all?”
Minami turned to look at the group of young men and women and teenagers chatting around the fire. One of them was telling some story from the old world about a teacher who he swore was trying to get him held back. They all laughed over how it didn’t matter now, and would never matter again. Minami, who could only hear them laughing, smiled gently.
“We do already have a few people like that,” she said about herself and the girl who’d been friends with the young scientist Tsukasa had killed. “And we plan to revive more along the way as it becomes safe and beneficial to do so. I’ve been telling Tsukasa that we need more foragers for a while anyway. It seems like some of these people just hate to do anything but hunt.”
Ukyo hummed. She hadn’t exactly answered what he wanted answered. He wanted to ask about the people who might struggle to contribute in ways like that, people who would need more help themselves in a world without inhalers or mobility aids or medicine. Even people who only needed glasses, but needed them badly. What would happen to them?
(More than that, he wanted to question the whole premise of “the young,” “the pure.” There were good older people in the old world. Adults who were just living their lives, raising families, and trying to make the most of their time on earth without hurting anyone. He knew what a tragedy it could be to lose someone so suddenly in a way outside of anyone’s control. He’d seen it while working disaster relief in the SDF. It was something nobody deserved to go through. And besides, didn’t everyone deserve a chance to live on? to learn and change and maybe even become better?)
“Do you think we’ll ever revive them all?” he asked instead. “At least, everyone who isn’t a, ah, ‘greedy, corrupt’ adult?”
Minami patted him on the shoulder, something sombre and regretful in her eyes. “You have a big heart. I’m sure we’ll do everything we can.”
The fire crackled, and Minami joined the crowd as someone began to tell a new story. Ukyo listened for a while, as he finished his meal, to someone’s tale about their sister and a cat and a broken arm. Then he turned and left for the trees.
It was a lucky thing the moon was full that night. He could do his evening patrol without a torch, and no one would wonder at the pinch in his brow.