Pharmaceutical Rewrite! Episode 9: Vials of Redemption
The Echo of Silence
Snow drifted down in great sheets, blanketing the broken streets outside the ruined pharmacy. Each flake seemed to fall slower than the last, as if even time itself mourned here. Through the cracked windows, the light of winter spilled pale and thin, casting shadows that moved like memories across the walls.
Inside, silence reigned. The shelves stood like gravestones, splintered wood sagging under years of rot. Shattered vials crunched beneath Akio Hukitaske's boots as he sat in the center of it all, hunched in his long, torn coat. The only sound came from a lamp flickering faintly on the counter and the eerie, faint pulse of the vial in his hand.
The liquid inside shimmered with an impossible glow—neither blue nor silver, but something in between, as though the cosmos itself had bled into glass. It wasn't just a serum. It was possibility in liquid form, the seed of entire realities, and in the wrong hands it was apocalypse in a bottle.
Akio's fingers tightened around it. His knuckles whitened. He felt so frail now—scar tissue under his coat, bruises mapped across his body, his bones aching with a thousand regrets. He had fought for too long, carried too much weight for one person to bear. And yet, he knew this battle wasn't over. There was one last chance, one last story to write.
He lifted his eyes.
Across from him, tied and beaten, sat the Uki brothers. Yatsumiya's once-proud smirk had faded into a bitter calm, while Bradzi's fire had dimmed to little more than a sullen ember. They didn't snarl. They didn't lunge. They simply sat there, watching Akio with tired eyes.
In that silence, for the first time in years, it almost felt like they were just the children he once promised to protect.
An Impossible Proposal
Akio's body ached as he pushed himself to his feet. Every muscle screamed at him, but his voice—steady, deliberate—did not waver.
"I need your help."
Yatsumiya barked a laugh, though it came out ragged, splintered. "Help? You think after everything we've done to each other, you can just ask?"
Bradzi shook his head slowly. "You want us to... what? Forgive? Forget? Pretend we didn't burn the world to the ground at your side?"
Akio knelt down in front of them. The vial glowed between his fingers, painting his face in ghostly light.
"No. I don't want forgiveness. I don't deserve it." His voice broke, and for once he didn't try to hide it. "I want purpose. For all of us. Because if this vial falls into the wrong hands again, everything—all of it—dies. Not just here. Everywhere."
He leaned closer, his breath trembling in the cold.
"You know what this is."
The brothers' gazes locked on the vial. Even beaten, their eyes gleamed with recognition, obsession, and fear.
"It's not just a dimensional-breach serum," Akio whispered, voice low enough that the machines might not hear. "It's a seed — a chance. I left a drop from this vial on purpose during the chaos. I needed them to believe I'd failed so they'd stop hunting the full design, and so the Lab couldn't shelter you with machine gun attacks with all their so callled fancy weapons after I lured you here. If they'd known you were safe, their agents wouldn't have followed me and left us alone as I planned. And it worked out great and also...
He set the vial down like a guilty thing and met their eyes. "I staged even more — shards, scorched labels, a trail that looked like I'd run for my life — so the investigators would take the obvious story with the serum droplet. The truth is I'm still fighting. One real drop wouldn't have convinced them, so they wouldn't go after us and the serum. I mixed other chemicals from the room with a compound I usually carry as a weapon and made a liquid that looked and felt right — convincing enough to fool them without tearing reality. Because also in truth why would I actually have left any of the real serum from this damned vial... If I had, it would've broken reality itself.
"You could say I fooled you just now with words the same way I fooled them — led them to recreate what they thought they'd found, while the real thing stayed hidden. I did it to keep them busy. Because knowing them they won't quit now that they know we're fighting back, the very same people who killed my friends when I stood against them. But enough of the theatrics. I'm not giving up, not even when I'm hollow with grief. You hear me, Uki brothers?"
He let the last words hang between them, an admission that was both confession and promise.
Bradzi's lips curled into a wary scowl. "Why? Why risk everything just to... play games with gods?"
"Because if they had the full formula," Akio said, voice low, "they would build a one-way gate. They would choke every timeline until only their vision remained. Suffering would become the only law. And I couldn't... I couldn't let that happen."
For the first time in years, Yatsumiya leaned forward—not as a villain, but as someone who remembered curiosity. "So what's the grand plan, Doctor Savior?"
Akio locked eyes with him, weary but resolute.
"To save myself."
Confusion flickered across their faces.
"The version of me who didn't rise. The one who didn't take my friends hands. The one who broke and never stood back up. If he can still be saved... maybe all of us can even if It's not the me you see now. At least I can save the main version of me and that's all I really want in the end. A version that hopefully showl have a future to call a happy timeline. And also because were just side characters to the originals in the end anyways but still we continue living on even if were not the originals in are little lifes in are little timelines. But that also dosen't mean we can't help others out even if It's are selfs. Because were humans to... Like the originals."
Mirror of the Past
From his coat, Akio pulled a worn box and opened it with shaking hands. Inside lay scattered photographs, faded notes, and fragments of digital memory—collected pieces of other timelines, echoes of himself that he'd pieced together from stolen Lab technology and more of the main timeline. And he had stollen them for his grand plan, planning this all from the beggining since he found the vial and learned of the labs research.
The brothers stared.
One photo stopped Bradzi cold. It showed an Akio sitting alone on a snow-covered bench, head bowed, eyes hollow as if life itself had abandoned him.
Bradzi's voice faltered. "We were there. That day. In the alley near your old pharmacy... you gave us medicine, and warmth. Just for one night."
Akio's eyes softened. "And then I closed the doors. I locked everything up. I abandoned this place... and I abandoned you. But this other Akio still has a chance. From these research pieces stollen from the labs years of research which I'm not suprised they have allot on me in the main timeline because they seemed to never stop being obsessed with killing me even now. But thats beside the point, are plan is all that matters now. Which is why were not giving up and still have a chance to save the main me."
Yatsumiya's jaw clenched, but his words were quiet. "We didn't blame you. Not then. We blamed ourselves. But the Lab... they showed us how to channel that blame into something else. Power. Control."
"And it cost you your hearts," Akio whispered.
The silence that followed felt like the pause before a confession neither side knew how to voice over this whole situation.
Building the Bridge
"Help me build the bridge," Akio said, rising again, his voice carrying more strength than before.
Marina stepped forward from the back room, arms crossed, while Raka loomed like a shadow at her side.
Akio held up the vial, its light reflecting in their tired eyes.
"This isn't for us. It's for them—the versions of us in timelines where we failed. If we can use the Lab's leftover frequency emitters which I've also stollen, if we can build a transmitter strong enough, we can send a signal across. We can remind them of the truth and one person can only do it. Considering the size of how much liquid we have and all."
"And what happens after that?" Yatsumiya asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Then they choose. With knowledge. With hope. Maybe they rise where we fell."
Raka snorted, arms folding. "Sounds risky. Sounds insane. Sounds perfect."
Marina smirked faintly. "If anyone can pull it off, it's the doctor too stubborn to let despair kill him."
Akio turned to the brothers. His voice softened. "Are you in?"
For the first time, Yatsumiya hesitated not with scorn, but with thought. He glanced at Bradzi. Bradzi stared at the floor for what felt like an eternity... then lifted his head and gave a single, slow nod.
Rekindled Sparks
The pharmacy, once a grave, came alive again. Broken counters became workbenches. Shattered glass was swept aside for wires, lenses, and stolen circuits. Akio mapped blueprints across the old walls. The Uki brothers, bruised but determined, worked beside him. Marina calibrated equipment. Raka hammered salvaged steel into frames.
For the first time in years, the place didn't feel like a tomb. It felt like what it once was—an engine of healing, a sanctuary, a heartbeat in the snow.
And with each spark, with each connection, Akio felt something stir in him. Not hope—he wasn't ready to call it that. But maybe... something close.
The Mission of Marina
When the transmitter neared completion, Akio pulled Marina aside. In his palm lay a small transponder and a folded note, edges frayed from trembling hands.
"There's one worldline worse than ours," he said quietly. "A version of me never escaped. Never rose. That's the one we must reach first."
He pressed the items into her hands.
"You'll find him in an alley behind a bar, the night his pharmacy was destroyed. He'll be broken. Alone. I want you to guide his friends to him. Make them take his hand. Tell them he'll need them that night."
Marina's lips trembled. "And his wife?"
Akio hesitated, then whispered, "If you can protect her... do it. My version of me lost her completely. It destroyed me. Don't let that happen again my friend."
Tears filled Marina's eyes. "You're sending me away."
"I have to. If this works, he'll live. And so will all of us, in some way. But once you cross, you can never come back."
Marina closed her hand around the note. "I promise I'll never stop fighting for you. For every version of you."
Akio nodded as a faint smile tugged at his lips in awe. "Thank you... Marina, I'm sorry we may never see each other again. But stay safe my friend..."
Crossing Timelines
And so, she went. Through the breach, into snow and shadow.
She found him, just as Akio had said—sitting alone in the alley, eyes glassy, hands shaking. She didn't reveal herself. Instead, she ran to Akio's friends, told them to give this note to Akio, of the person outside she cared about dearly. She told them the doctor had once saved her life, and now he was the one who needed saving.
Word spread. Raka, Hikata, the others—friends who hadn't yet been broken—went to him. They took his hand, lifted him from the snow, and gave him warmth. But never the note, because they didn't trust it, thinking it might be the lab.
Marina watched from the doorway, tears streaming silently as she saw hope flicker back into his eyes.
Rumane threatened to burn the note due to her strict personality but gave it back to Marina to give it to him herself if she cared so much, distrust gnawing at her heart. Yet somehow, they all sensed a greater design moving beneath them, even if they couldn't name it.
But fate was cruel. In that worldline, Akio's wife still died. And Marina never returned. She remained instead as a quiet customer, a fabricated stranger who visited his rebuilt pharmacy often, always watching, always guarding. He would never know her true name. Not yet.
But his death, in that timeline, would one day ignite her own future—binding her fate to his, across worlds.
"As the episode ends with snow falling around Akio's pharmacy a figure watches Akio with pure anger and walks into a dark alley saving his tale with Akio for another story..."
TO BE CONTINUED...