Pharmaceutical Rewrite! Episode 6: Through Ash and Snow
Still a Storm Inside
The storm outside had ended, but inside Akio Hukitaske the blizzard still raged.
Snow pressed against the cracked hospital windows, whistling through the smallest seams like the wails of unseen spirits. Each gust rattled the panes, and with every rattle Akio was reminded of fractures that went deeper than glass.
It had been three days since the alley. Three days since he uncovered the truth of the Uki twins—that they were not nameless monsters, but children he himself had once taken in, warmed, and then lost.
Three days since the memory carved itself into him like frostbite that refused to thaw.
He stood by the window now, coat draped over weary shoulders, staring into the swirling gray sky. His silence had grown thick in those days. Marina had kept the hospital running, rationing supplies, tending to patients, issuing orders. But her eyes always found him, studying him from the corners of rooms, watching with a quiet fear that he might crumble again.
And yet—something about him was different this time. His silence wasn't the hollow abyss of despair. It was weight. Pressure. Like a mountain gathering its strength before the inevitable avalanche.
The Call
That morning, the mountain spoke.
"Marina," he said, his voice rough from disuse, "call Raka."
She turned from the records she was sorting. Her brows arched. "Raka?"
Akio nodded slowly. His gaze never left the storm outside.
"We're going back."
Marina's heart clenched. She knew what he meant without him needing to explain. Back into the storm. Back into the Lab's maw. But this time, not to flee. Not to survive. To end it.
The call was placed. Within three rings, Raka answered. Her voice was fire through the static.
"Doc! Took you long enough. You sound like hell."
Akio almost smiled. Almost. "Feels like it. Meet us at the clearing west of Sector 4. Tomorrow night. Bring your mask."
A laugh roared through the receiver, hearty and reckless. "Thought you'd never ask, boss."
Hikata's Absence
His finger hovered over another contact. Hikata. His old friend, the baker who once filled the pharmacy with the smell of warm bread. Hikata, who now took care of twin children at home—children who ran laughing through snowbanks instead of shivering in alleys.
Akio typed out a message. A warning. A plea. A confession.
Then he stared at the blinking cursor for a long time, before pressing delete.
Some fights weren't meant for parents. Some risks weren't worth taking. He would bear this one alone.
Cloak of the Past
Night came, and with it, Akio opened a long-sealed chest at the foot of his quarters. Dust plumed upward as the lid creaked, and inside lay the relic of his old life: a white coat, clean, crisp, worn in those days when he had believed he could heal everything with medicine alone.
His hand hovered over it, trembling with memory. Then he pushed it aside.
Instead, he reached for the other garment. The blackened coat, torn and filthy, smelling faintly of smoke. The one that clung to him like regret.
He slipped it on. The weight was heavier, yes, but truer.
"The one who smiles in the light is gone," he whispered to the empty room. "But the one who fights in the dark... still breathes."
Marina leaned in the doorway, watching him silently. Her eyes glistened in the dim light.
"You don't have to go alone."
Akio met her gaze, and this time his voice was steady. "I know."
Infiltration Begins
The next night, the storm returned. Snow whipped across the clearing like a wild beast thrashing in its chains. The moon was a pale scar in the sky.
Marina stood beside Akio, her gloved hand tightening around a stolen keycard. Raka loomed in front, her figure defiant against the wind. She was a legend sculpted from grit—her old wrestling armor gleamed beneath a winter cloak, her cigarette glowing stubbornly against the gale, and her gold Gucci chain flashed absurdly bright amid the ruin.
Her mask swung from her side, scratched and battered but untouchable. She didn't need to wear it anymore. Her name alone was its own mask.
She glanced back at Akio, a grin splitting her face. "Ready to crack skulls, Doc?"
"No skulls," Akio muttered, the words muffled by the storm. "Just doors. We're here for answers—and to free the twins. This isn't about revenge. This is about ending it."
His jaw tightened. "I might break again. But I won't break my word. Not this time."
Marina passed out stolen keycards and small vials of adrenaline boosters. Raka countered by handing them steaming cans of protein soup, as if to remind them that some rituals were still sacred.
Then, without another word, they descended the snow-choked path into the hidden valley. The cliffs loomed overhead, jagged teeth in the night. And there, nestled beneath the frozen stone, was the Lab.
The Lab's Expansion
What had once been a bunker was no longer recognizable.
Metal silos rose like obscene monuments, hissing steam into the frigid air. Research domes dotted the valley floor, glowing faintly with green light. Giant pipes snaked across the snow, carrying luminous fluids into reactors that pulsed like artificial hearts.
Marina's voice was a whisper drowned by awe. "This isn't just regression tech anymore..."
Akio's eyes darted to a monitor flickering in a security booth they passed. A phrase scrolled across its cracked glass screen.
TIME-LINE CROSS-ANALYSIS: PROJECT PRAXIS
His breath froze in his stomach. "They're not just altering age. They're... tapping timelines."
The Revelation
They forced entry into the mainframe chamber. Cold blue light bathed their faces as rows of servers hummed with alien precision. Akio's fingers flew across the console, bypassing encrypted locks.
Files bled open. Pages of archived experiments, records of test subjects, strings of numbers that bent the very idea of logic.
Age regression—the vials that had haunted him—were only the beginning. Phase 1. A prelude.
Phase 2 was worse.
Temporal Displacement.
Not just de-aging bodies. Not just rewriting memory. But sending people across fractured timefields. Plucking them from alternate branches of reality.
Akio's throat went dry as his eyes landed on the line that shattered everything.
Earth-AK: Prime Line Confirmed. Current Line Status: Divergent Clone 03.
He whispered it aloud, and the words seemed to crack the chamber itself.
His world wasn't the original. It was another version of an original. An echo. And the Lab had known all along.
Raka Hears the Truth
Raka's cigarette fell from her lips. Her buff frame stiffened. "You're saying... we're not real?"
Akio turned, his face pale but his voice iron.
"We are. We breathe. We suffer. We fight. That makes us real. But we might not be the first version. Or the only one."
He swallowed hard. "The Lab wasn't just experimenting on people. They were trying to break through timelines. To contact the first Lab—the original one. If they succeed... it won't just ruin this reality. It'll unravel all of them. Every version of us. Every memory we ever had. Erased."
Marina's voice broke, tears streaking down her face. "They want to overwrite who we are."
Akio's hands tightened into fists. "And I won't let them. Even if those other versions of us live lives we'll never know—they matter. Because they're us. If the Lab keeps tampering, reality won't bend. It will shatter. And when it does, none of us will survive."
His eyes burned with a terrible certainty. "They're about to make contact with the first Lab. And if they do, every thread, every world, every us—gone."
Silence fell, heavier than any snowstorm.
The Watcher
They didn't see the figure standing behind the reinforced glass wall of the observation chamber.
Yatsumiya Uki leaned against the frame, his red eyes glowing faintly in the dark. His smile was thin, razor-sharp.
"So you've finally seen it, Doctor..." he murmured. His voice was a dagger carried on the hum of the machines.
"Welcome to the real experiment."
TO BE CONTINUED...