Chapter 2 - Scarlet Labyrinth
The city had chosen, but peace hadn't followed.
Truth had a sound — a low, metallic hum that never quite faded once heard. That was what lingered now through Tokyo's rebuilt veins. The name Yakasuke had become a contagion of its own — whispered in encrypted chat rooms, burned into dark web threads, murmured in half-lit council chambers, and scrawled on the back walls of Hukitaske Pharmacy.
Yet, amid all that noise, one thing was eerily silent.
The figure himself — Hakurage Yakasuke — the ghost who had engineered Akio's torment, vanished after the fall of the previous attack. No live feeds. No chatter. No heat signatures. He had simply evaporated.
But those who truly understand how power works know that silence is never empty. It is the inhale before the scream.
A Map of Scars
The rain that morning was delicate — the deceptive kind that turns to storms without warning. Hukitaske Pharmacy glowed dimly from within, its lights softened by the haze. Raka was cleaning the shelves, Rumane adjusted a row of tincture bottles, and Akio sat at the counter reading a customer's thank-you letter written in crayon.
A delivery truck pulled up. The driver didn't speak. He only nodded, handed Akio a package, and drove off without a word. The box was plain wood, heavy for its size, sealed with wax embossed by a strange emblem: two serpents consuming one another in an endless spiral.
"Looks ceremonial," Hikata said, leaning over Akio's shoulder.
"Or sacrificial," Rumane muttered.
Akio cut through the wax. Inside lay three data drives resting on a bed of white ash. No letter. No signature. Not even a trace of fingerprints.
Within hours, Yamataro had the drives rigged to his improvised terminal — a nest of tangled wires and flickering monitors in the back office. The hum of fans filled the space as he decrypted the first drive. The screen came alive with scrolling numbers and pulsing coordinates.
"Hidden relay points," he murmured. "Blacksite network spread across old Kyoto tunnels. Looks like they were… converted into research chambers. Code name: Scarlet Helix."
The room fell silent. Even the rain outside seemed to still.
Akio's fingers tightened on the counter. "That's where he's been hiding."
"Or where he wants you to think he's hiding," Misaki said softly, arms crossed.
Rumane's tone cut through the quiet: "So what? We wait here for the next bullet? Another raid? Another attempt to erase you while we smile and hand out prescriptions?"
Akazuchi, ever the silent wall of steel, slammed his hand on the table. "No. We take it to them. On our terms."
No one argued after that.
Gathering the Unseen
Preparation began not with weapons but with phone calls — long, quiet ones that reached into the past. Akio and Hikata walked Tokyo's hidden veins: train tunnels turned shelters, abandoned med units, forgotten rooftops where rebels once met.
They gathered the "unseen": a web of ex-soldiers, rogue medics, scientists who had fled when conscience outweighed salary. People who'd lost too much to stay silent any longer.
No rallying cries. No banners. Just eyes that said, we're tired of running too.
Among them was Kyo, a former lab technician with a tremor in his right hand and a haunted stare. He handed Akio a flashdrive. "I worked on Project Ribbon before they erased it. Before they burned it. I couldn't stop them. But I saved… something."
When Akio opened the footage later that night, it played like a memory that should never have existed. Subjects screaming in reverse — time unstitching their lives. Clones collapsing mid-birth. Faces identical to his own, some deformed, some sobbing for a mercy that never came.
He didn't cry. He didn't even breathe for a while.
He just watched until dawn, when the sun broke through the curtains like a wound.
Descent into Scarlet
They departed in silence — five vehicles splitting off into different routes. By dusk, they converged beneath the ruins of Kyoto Station, a monument to forgotten progress. The air smelled of iron, mold, and old secrets.
Rumane adjusted her gloves. "No turning back after this."
Akio looked up at the dark concrete arches. "There's never really been a 'back,' has there?"
They found the gate behind a wall of graffiti, a rusted pressure door marked by faint digital etchings. When Akazuchi pressed a gloved hand to it, a mechanical voice whispered, 'Password required.'
Hikata stepped forward. "He was always obsessed with reflections. Try: Echo Protocol 0.1."
The locks disengaged with a hiss.
Beyond the door, crimson light pulsed down the corridor like blood flowing through veins.
The Red Spiral
The deeper they went, the more the tunnels curved inward. The walls were lined with transparent panels containing half-formed human figures floating in bio-fluid — failed subjects, discarded memories of Project Ribbon. Some had numbers burned into their skin; others simply bore the symbol of two spiraling serpents.
"This isn't a lab," Rumane whispered. "It's a mausoleum."
The lights flickered, revealing fragmented words painted along the walls: CONVERGENCE. ASCENSION. PERFECTION.
Every few meters, automated turrets or drones blocked their way, but Hikata disarmed them like he'd done it a thousand times before. Akio noticed something strange — his hands didn't shake. His expression was calm. Not numbness. Acceptance.
When they finally reached the lowest chamber, they entered a space that defied sense.
The ceiling was glass. Above it, a swirling pool of red energy — part plasma, part liquid data — circled endlessly. Dozens of holographic screens floated around a single platform, each showing Akio's face from different ages and angles. Some were moments from his life; others were predictions — versions of him that never existed yet.
And standing at the center of that madness was Hakurage Yakasuke.
The Mirror Brother
He turned slowly, lab coat pristine, silver hair combed back like the crown of a being who believed himself immortal. His voice slid through the air like a scalpel.
"So, little brother," he said, smiling. "You finally found the courage to stop hiding behind failures."
Hikata's voice was steel. "I didn't come for your approval."
"Of course not. You never could stand not being the lesser one. Always too gentle. Too emotional. Too human."
Akio stepped forward, each word deliberate. "Funny. Humanity's exactly what you've forgotten."
Hakurage's eyes glimmered. "And what did humanity ever give us? Pain? Grief? You of all people should understand that science is the only salvation left. Everything else—" he gestured toward them "—is weakness pretending to be virtue."
"Science without conscience is rot," Akio said. "And I've seen what your salvation costs."
Hakurage's smirk returned. "You think this is about ethics? No, Akio. This is about design. You are my design. Every regression, every success, every failure—measured by your pulse. I made you what you are."
"Then you made your own destruction," Akio whispered.
He raised a transmitter. And the world began to watch.
Truth Floods the Wires
The Scarlet Helix's internal servers screamed under the strain as Akio's broadcast flooded global channels. Every screen, every encrypted network, every government line—infected with truth.
"My name is Akio Hukitaske," his voice echoed, calm and clear. "I was part of a project that sought to rewind time through the human mind. It was a dream twisted into an instrument of control. A lie dressed in progress. And here—" he pointed toward Hakurage "—is the figure who turned that dream into a weapon."
Data began to pour across the feed: images of experiments, documents of victims, voice logs of Hakurage ordering deletions. The walls of the chamber glowed white-hot as servers cracked under the upload.
Hakurage lunged forward, trying to sever the cables. "You can't—"
"I can," Akio said. "And I did."
Outside, millions watched as two brothers stared across a field of red light — one born of obsession, one reborn from it.
And for the first time, the world began to believe.
The Price of Ending
But justice is never clean. The Scarlet Helix had its own defense mechanism — a self-destruct circuit buried within its power grid. Plasma conduits began to glow like veins ready to burst.
Yamataro's voice shouted through the comms: "Fifteen minutes before total overload! You've gotta get out—now!"
"Not yet," Akio answered. "We need to wipe the core so it can't replicate."
Hikata refused to leave his side. "We started this together."
"Then we finish it together," Akio replied.
They sprinted through the corridors, manually overloading coolant lines, shattering stabilizers. As the countdown neared its end, Hikata found the final switch — a failsafe buried beneath the floor.
"Once I hit this, there's no turning back."
"Then hit it."
The world turned white.
The Scarlet Helix imploded in a bloom of scarlet fire that carved the night sky open. The explosion's echo reached the city minutes later, a low, mournful roar that lingered like thunder.
Ashes to Soil
When the smoke cleared, dawn had already crept across the horizon. The team stumbled from the wreckage, coughing, covered in soot and ash, but alive.
Hakurage was gone. His body never found — only fragments of glass and the faint imprint of his boots leading deeper underground.
Back in Tokyo, the world had changed. Media stations reversed their slander; journalists spoke of "Project Ribbon" and "The Scarlet Helix" with trembling reverence. Protesters filled the streets outside pharmaceutical giants. Whistleblowers surfaced from every continent.
For the first time, Akio Hukitaske wasn't being hunted. He was being heard.
But he didn't celebrate.
He went home — to the pharmacy. To the familiar smell of herbs and dust, to the soft rattle of teacups and the hum of people alive because of small, ordinary acts of care.
Rumane met him at the door with a faint smile. In her hands was a photo frame — a fresh painting made by the town's children: the phoenix mural reborn, its wings made of red ribbons and silver leaves.
"You were never the spiral," she said gently. "You were the flame that burned it away."
Akio looked at her, then at the photo, and for the first time in years, his body remembered how to tremble.
He wept.
And he let the tears stay. Because sometimes survival isn't about strength — it's about finally allowing yourself to feel everything you fought so hard to protect.
Outside, the wind carried faint ash from Kyoto's ruins across the skyline. The people who passed by didn't know what it was.
But Akio did.
It was the past, finally turning to soil.
[Next: Volume 4, Chapter 3 — The Child With No Birthday]