~ Chapter 31: Killing my naivety

[Kardian’s point of view]

When we stepped into the Atrium, it felt empty, devoid of all life, but Xerya’s scans that appeared on my retina showed that there were human lifeforms all around us. For the sake of keeping up appearances, we pretended not to see and not to know.

“This place looks empty.” Nataly played along as she gave a kick to a cardboard box near the fountain in the middle.

“This is unexpected... We were told that this was a camp of survivors, right?” I asked her, pretending to be a fool.

Several marks moved on the second floor, but they were hiding in the shadows.

“Those two must have lied to us.” Nataly then said, giving a hint that we encountered the ‘traitors’.

Acting like unaware survivors looking for a place to stay was the little show that she cooked up. This play would also remove any doubt from anyone that saw us that we were anything but normal human beings. Now the reason why we were waiting down here and were not actively searching for them was because we were trying to lure them in to send someone to talk to us. If a fight were to break out, although I thought it was highly unlikely, the Atrium would offer us a better advantage over an enclosed classroom.

When we arrived at Resonance High, we made it look as though we struggled to get here. Our weapons and appearance spoke of desperate battles outside among the Nano-Z. Well, Xerya didn’t have to pretend that much, Nataly was crying tears of blood just looking at how badly she was controlling her body in combat. None of us expected that an AI like her would have trouble with something like this, even she was surprised and wanted to get to the bottom of it.

“You said you were teacher here, right? Why didn’t you know that this place turned into this abandoned dump?” Nataly scoffed as she looked back at me.

“I barely survived on my own in my own neighborhood. I came here because I was worried about the kids.” I gave her my honest reply in the hope that those who heard it would remember me and show me that they haven’t changed too much.

They were once my students, so I couldn’t help but worry about them.

Clap! Clap! Clap!

The round of slow applause in a mocking rhythm came from the floor above us. I looked up and saw someone walking towards the glass railings. He had long black hair all the way to his shoulders, a dirty face, and wore a blood-stained armor made from various scraps of metal and leather tied together with rope and wire. On his back was a spear made from a long metal pole with a sharp piece of metal welded on the top.

“Now isn’t this quite an admirable appearance, mister Pandora? Pandora was it, right? I honestly can’t remember you since you didn’t show your face to school that day!” he then laughed.

“Yes, it’s Pandora, and I was stuck in my apartment building for a long time, I...” before I continued my words, he raised his hands, and then the red marks moved all around us.

20 or so teens and adults surrounded us on the ground floor. They were all wearing makeshift weapons and armors, which to a normal survivor might have looked intimidating, but not to us. Xerya already confirmed that none of them was like us or a cyborg.

“What’s going on? What is the meaning of this?” I asked as I looked up at him and then at the people surrounding me, pretending to be scared “You, you’re Davius, right? And you, you are Mirtocan! Flavius too, what is going on here?” I asked them as I looked at the faces that I recognized.

I remembered them as good kids, who cared about their passions and tried to do their best when it came to their tests. Not even once did they come out to me as someone who would one day point a makeshift sword and spear at me. They weren’t the only ones, however, there were others whom I recognized by face alone, but not by name. I couldn’t call out to them.

With the exception of a few, I recognized all of them, they were my students, the children I was once supposed to guide towards a better future.

“Teach, it looks like you held up pretty well! Just look how clean you are! I’m sure your flesh tastes well!” Davius said as he licked his lips.

“What?” I was shocked.

Their words struck me like thunder, and what I wanted to ignore came back to bite me in the end. What Zuiza and Yumino said about them turning cannibal was starting to sound more than just a fiction created by two teenagers overstressed by the weight of our current world.

“There’s two of them, we won’t have to go out to hunt for a week now!” one of the adults declared.

He was just a skinny man in his thirties, wearing glasses and under the armor had the remains of a suit. He was probably an accountant before all of this happened.

“They can be split into three, we can use a scale!” another declared.

“What?” I asked surprised.

“Oh, mister Pandora, I have to thank you for surviving all this time, but in case you don’t get it... you are going to be our lunch. So, give up you weapons and surrender before we have to tenderize your meat. You can’t get out anymore. It’s over.” he declared and then took out something from his pocket.

It was a bony hand.

“My lovely Christina was too weak to survive, but... she served her purpose well and fed us all for four days straight! Ah, such a wonderful little sister she was!” he declared before laughing.

“You... You ate your own sister?” I asked as I felt my words barely leaving my throat.

“Yes, and I think you knew her, mister Pandora. Does the name Christina Maribun ring a bell?” he asked.

In that moment, I had a flashback to the time when this hellish world had yet to come. I was teaching History to a second-year class. There, a young girl with curly dark brown hair raised her hand and asked me all sort of questions about the current subject. She wasn’t as active in the philosophy class, and I heard she was a bit of a goof when it came to mathematics, but she was in love with history.

“She wanted to become a historian... or an archeologist, to go out there and bookmark mankind’s passing through time. She was a kind and gentle soul... so why, why did you do that to her?” I asked as my cheeks were getting wet from my tears.

“Because she was weak.” came a cold answer from her so-called brother.

“Yes, the weak can only be our food! Because we are strong! We deserve to live, but they can only deserve to be our food!” Davius declared with a chuckle.

“Such a twisted mentality...” Nataly remarked with clear disgust towards them showing on her face.

“Twisted? I would rather say that it’s just natural.” Mirtocan said.

As I looked down, salty tears flowed down my cheeks. I cried for the innocent lives that were lost because the world had turned to chaos, the students who once again I could not protect. I felt hopeless and sad, I felt as if I had lost my will to live. The strength in my hands weakened, and I let go of the mountain climbing axe in my hand. 

With a rang that echoed in the school, everyone looked at me and then started to laugh.

“Hahaha! You are also weak! How can you cry after hearing about how some losers died? You are pathetic!” they all laughed as if sanity and morality was nothing but a joke to them.

Two of them came from behind and grabbed my hands. Two others apprehended Nataly.

“This was so easy! Breaking the minds of weaklings like you is the best! Absolutely the best!” the guy on the top floor declared with a loud laughter.

“TONIGHT, WE FEAST!” Mirtocan shouted and everyone cheered.

“Hey, Kardian, are you alright?” Nataly asked as she looked at me with a worried expression.

“I failed... again... I couldn’t protect them.” I said as the memories of my time on Earth came back to haunt me.

The smiles of the children who once dreamed big only to be faced with a reality that crushed them to bits. Their eyes of hate once they learned the truth and the fact that I was only selling them sweet lies, ideals that were only seen in fiction. I was a dreamer like them, but they woke up, and when they did so, they hated me for not being able to help them get strong from the start.

These memories, no matter how much I tried to suppress them, to forget about them, they were still so vivid in my mind, so damning, like a curse or a sin that could never be wiped clean. Of them all, the ones that hurt the most were those when I saw their parents crying over their caskets and cursing me for not guiding them better… and I knew… I knew that all of it was my fault.

I failed to protect them… I failed as a teacher… as an adult. I failed…

“Did you fail to protect the villainous or the just?” Nataly asked, pulling me out of my trance-like state.

“What?” I lifted my chin up and looked at her in the eyes.

Did I fail to protect the villainous or the just? What kind of question is this… this…? I thought, but my mind was already spinning as if something was finally unlocked and the energy that had been stagnant until now was starting to flow.

“You two stop talking!” Davius glared at us, but we ignored him.

Nataly’s words struck something inside me, they struck hard.

Who did I want to save? I wondered and then remembered how I struggled to help those who were less fortunate to get to class and have the right materials to study, then how I helped those who were about to fail class to pass it. There were also those whom I advised after class about how to improve their lives and get better, I did all that and yet... I failed.

“Both...” I replied in a quiet voice.

That was my answer to Nataly’s question when I looked back at my past. I wanted to desperately save both the just and the villainous. I didn’t think that I had to make a choice between them. For me, they were both equally worthy to be saved, so why was I supposed to choose between them?

Wait... I thought as I looked at Mirtocan as he licked his lips while looking at me and then at Davius who behaved as though he just caught a big juicy rabbit. Despite the apparent danger, I wasn’t afraid of them. If anything, they had to be afraid of us because Xerya was currently just waiting patiently for a reason to act.

“Mirtocan...” I asked as I looked at him.

“Hm? What? You still have something else to say?” he asked with a scoff.

“Those you call weak... why did you kill them?” I asked him.

“So that we can survive, isn’t that obvious?” he tilted his head to the left as if I was speaking nonsense.

“But humans survive better when they are together, isn’t that right?” I tried to reason with him.

“Keh, that’s the mentality of the weak! Look at us!” he declared and spread his arms wide open “If we didn’t make a choice, the choice to survive, we would have ended up like those teachers who tried to convince us that what we were doing wasn’t right! That we should have followed the army or that the strong should defend the weak! They were morons and weaklings who didn’t understand! The weak are meant to be ruled by the strong!” he declared and then pointed his spear at me. “We made a choice! And because we made the choice, we are strong!”

“A choice... yes, you can call this a choice.” I said as I looked down.

“Indeed, those who kill in the end make a conscious choice of taking another being’s life. The reason they tell themselves they had to do it can either help them sleep at night or give them nightmares instead.” Nataly scoffed.

“Then...” before I could ask my question, the one on the top floor, who appeared to be the boss, shouted at us.

“Enough with the chitchat! Our people are hungry! Finish them off and then send their stuff to my neutral zone! They should have some good stuff on them since they managed to survive the journey all the way here!”

“Yes, boss!” Mirtocan replied with a nod.

“Hey, Kardian, we can talk about that later, right now, it seems like they are intent on killing us. What do you suggest we do?” Nataly asked.

“I agree, we need a solution. I will not stand by and let my two host bodies die.” Xerya declared with a cold tone.

As I looked back at Nataly and then over at the teenagers who I once knew as innocent, I came to realize the hard truth which I wanted to avoid all this time. Mirtocan was right... I was weak. I wanted to save them, I wanted to think that the brutality of this new world didn’t reach to them, that somehow or another, we were all still bound by the morals of the interstellar civilization that appeared back on Earth. I wanted to believe that we were better than our basic instincts, but... in the end, we all make a choice... and they chose to succumb and abandon their humanity.

“If surviving this ordeal means to kill my innocent self, my naive self, then... maybe that’s the right choice to make.” I said and then looking at Nataly, I called out to the SAI living in me “Xerya, remove all shackles on Nataly, give full control back to her!”

“What? There’s another one?” Davius reacted when he heard me and then they all started to look around with caution.

“Understood.” Xerya replied to me, and Nataly appeared to go weak for a moment, fainting on the ground.

“What’s wrong with this one?” the guy holding her asked.

The second thing he knew, however, was that a sharp blade pierced his heart. He spat out blood as he looked into Nataly’s cold eyes.

“Ah, it feels so good and refreshing to be in control again!” she declared as she then pulled the other man towards her with her super strength and twisted his arm.

“AAARGH!” he screamed in pain.

Using this moment of confusion, I freed myself from the grasp of the two holding me down and then used my retractable blade to kill them just as I did with the Nano-Z. It only took me one fast move to the skull.

“Now, Xerya, be a good girl and watch how a true master uses this body of mine!” Nataly said as a wicked smile appeared on her face.

“Get them! Kill them!” the guy at the top shouted.

“Shut up!” Nataly glared at him as she picked up her axe and then with a precise movement tossed it and pierced his skull.

The man died on the spot and then rolled over the rail and fell on the floor with a thud. The bone hand fell out of his pocket and slid on the floor. The innocent smile of Christina flashed before my eyes once again, but this time it was a bit sad as if she was thanking me for avenging her.

“Vidin!” someone shouted.

“Kill them!” another called out.

Nataly felt pleased with her attack and then looked towards Davius who stepped forward to challenge her. Using her agile body, she moved close to him, her speed and dexterity far surpassed Xerya’s as she not only disarmed him, but also used his own makeshift sword to cut off his head. The man’s sinister smile had turned into a horrified one as he came to realize that he had met his match.

Another one tried to stab Nataly from behind, but she dodged by a hair’s length and then grabbed his spear. She pulled him towards her, and the man stumbled forward, right into her Retractable Blade.

On my side, Mirtocan was starting to realize that we weren’t normal opponents.

“Cyborgs, but how?!” he said in surprise, but I grabbed his spear just like Nataly and then used my strength to push him back.

He stumbled on the ground and fell next to Vidin’s body. He was scared and horrified when he saw his precious weapon in my hands.

“We’re not cyborgs.” I replied as I then dodged a sword attack from a skinny adult and then used my Retractable Blade to slice his throat before I struck him with my elbow in his temple.

With each attack and every kill, I felt myself growing cold to the deaths of those around me. I feared that just like them, I would end up losing my humanity and continue to walk on the path I struggled so much to avoid. It was similar to how I got used to killing Nano-Z despite knowing that they were, technically, still alive thanks to the nanobots inside them.

“We’re...” I used his spear and then stabbed it in his chest. “Nano-Z.” I told Mirtocan as I looked right into his eyes as his lifeforce slowly faded away.

“Shit! They are too strong! Retreat!” someone shouted, and they all started to scatter.

I continued to look at Mirtocan as he gasped for air, his lungs failing him. Life was quickly fleeing from his grasp and the ones he once called his allies were now ignoring him completely.

“If you were strong, then we are stronger... and because we killed you, that means you are weaker, but...” I knelt down as I looked into Mirtocan’s eyes “I never wanted to either kill you or suppress you... I just wanted all of us to survive.”

Mirtocan’s eyes grew big when I said this. It was as if he finally came to understand something, a secret or maybe the answer to a question he had held on for a long time. With this last gasp of his, however, his life faded away.

I closed his eyes and then let out a heavy sigh.

“My hands... are bloody.” I said as I looked down, but there wasn’t even a single drop of blood on them. After fighting against so many Nano-Z I got used to avoiding their bodily fluids.

“Kardian... Let’s head out now. We’ll talk about this when we make camp, and don’t worry... you did good.” Nataly told me with a gentle smile on her face as she tapped me on the shoulder.

“I hope so... It just feels that I lost something... something precious to me.” I said as I clenched my hands.

“Let’s go.” she urged me again and then I finally moved from there.