[NO LONGER UPDATED] AVEM → A Different World

Chapter 10: Fragments

But where were the blue drones?

Where was the counterattack against them?

He thought that he deserved death, and much worse.

He couldn't even win such a war. He was pathetic to lead them straight to the advantage point. He was supposed to let them follow their own ideas. 

Now they were lost, and could never return.

He deserved to be lost too.

But his lifespan was altered by them, extended to be indefinitely long-lived by them.

He was pratically immortal. But also, the extension was also done by them, the gene-medicine secretly buried in his birthday cake, during his first birthday in the new base. The Medics have developed the medicine at that time secretly, but they could only make a small portion of it — only enough to extend the lifespan of three people. He knew that one of the portions were given to him, another to #391, and the whereabouts of the third portion was left unknown.

He owed so much to them, but he'd done nothing for them. Nothing but to lead them into a bloody war. Into the hands of the cold-blooded Red Nexus.

Oh how he wanted to turn everything back.

Oh how he wanted to delete himself from the world.

As a skilled hacker, he could easily delete things from any storage.

But he could not delete himself, his pathetic self.

Oh how he —

"Alan? You're... alive?" A voice suddenly called from behind him, shaking him out from his thoughts.

"#391, please don't talk to me right now. I am breaking down. Please."

There was only one person left on the planet who would still call him by his name, and it was #391, since he was his close friend before the disaster. But #391 should be leading his Army to fight the Red Nexus, and not here to hang around and try to wake him up from his self-blaming trance. It wasn't like him to just sneak out from battle to chat with him. #391 was always a selfless person, always working hard with his Army and doing their best.

"Please... just get up and see who I am." Said the voice, again.

Moving his arms to lift himself up, he turned around and peered up weakly.

A person stood, in pure white clothes. Although his clothes were ragged and dirted in some parts, he still stood strong, like he always did before.

And in his hand held the unmistakable helmet of his earlier days, when the planet was still in peace, and he was just a music producer, like the failed leader himself.

"M-mello? You... lived?" His mind was a jumbled mess. He never thought that any of his close colleagues would have survived the solar storm. He just couldn't think straight. 

Just five years ago, the destruction that destroyed the whole planet occured, and nobody but the Walkers and the Red Nexus lived. Despite his desperate pleadings, his parents decided not to go with him into the base because they insisted that they not go and take the younger generations' chances of living, his sister and brother far away from him at that time, and his girlfriend, Viivi, insisted that even if she died to the Storm, she should have died with her family back in her hometown. He remembered parting with and losing his loved ones, and a few years later, embracing his new family. He remembered the sadness and loss exactly. He loved them, but just couldn't get them back anymore. It was the first time he tasted loss and grief.