John looked down, watching his own hands begin to tremble.
"I watched children gasp in agony in clouds of poison gas. I saw freshly unwrapped candy in their shattered skulls. I watched them, because of their youth, become prime food, sold for three US dollars a pound at roadside meat stalls!"
"I don't even know if the food I ate there was him or his parents!!"
John's eyes turned crimson as he spoke.
"I said I wanted a bowl of pork, and they brought me a child, asking if he looked plump enough. I even praised them for raising the child so well…
I thought it was their own child… Who in that environment would raise someone else's child to be so fat?"
John covered his old face with his hands, his voice trembling and desolate.
"I ate a person… I ate a person…" he repeated, over and over. "That child… if I hadn't ordered food… if…"
Cannibalism…
Henry froze. He was beginning to understand the reason for John's despair… They had been so proud, standing at the forefront of the world.
But now he had participated in something as vile as cannibalism…
"This… it wasn't your fault…" Henry took two steps forward, patting John's shoulder. "You're filled with remorse… you didn't want this to happen…"
"Is it merely remorse…?" John lowered his hands, looking even more haggard. But when he looked at Sequence Zero in the distance again, his eyes, behind the round-rimmed glasses, gleamed with light.
"I can't just be remorseful… I have to do something…"
He turned back to Henry. "Henry, I have to go back… I've already caused one child's death. I can't just stand by and watch other children die like that!"
He pulled a triple-sealed container from his pocket. Henry's pupils contracted violently, and he gasped.
"Crimson Agate?! How did you…"
He grabbed John's hand. "This is contraband! You'll be exiled from Future City for this!"
"Just exiled?" John shook his head with a bitter smile. "Not executed?… If I opened it here, threw it into the crowd below, and infected hundreds, thousands of people… would I die?"
"Of course you would…" Henry said agitatedly, but he stopped mid-sentence, stunned. "You're saying… someone in Siberia used this stuff?"
"Poison gas, biological agents, small-scale nuclear weapons, infrasound resonance… you can find every weapon you can imagine there…" John placed the small vial of Crimson Agate on the table.
"But no one does anything about it… Haha… how ironic… The small nations can't, and the major powers are too busy scheming against each other… those who don't want to get involved stop those who do…"
"So you're going there to judge them, to become the one who delivers punishment?" Henry asked tentatively, watching the light reflect off John's glasses.
John shook his head.
"I don't have that kind of power. I can't stop this war… I just want to protect the children accidentally caught in this catastrophe…"
John turned to look at Henry, and beyond him, at the Future City emblem hanging on the wall.
"In Siberia, I escaped death several times thanks to a flag. They didn't recognize me, but they recognized where the flag came from…"
"If one flag could save me… this time…
"I will use ten thousand flags to save ten thousand people!"
---||---
The conversation between the two old men unfolded before Shu's eyes. He was like a third party, the "bystander who only participated with his eyes" that John had mentioned.
His perspective seemed to be from a shelf, like a doll placed there, witnessing everything.
He watched the two old men embrace and weep after their heated discussion. He watched them pack their belongings. He watched them meet with several other elders.
Their attempt to steal from the database failed. It was something no one had ever accomplished, and of course, the two old men couldn't either. He watched as a group of cybernetic guards burst in, arrested the two men, and declared their sentence: exile from Future City.
They only took some daily necessities, a few storybooks, some clothes, a few medical kits, the object Shu's consciousness was attached to… and two full boxes of flags.
John really had brought ten thousand flags.
The elders, supported by some of the younger and middle-aged people who accompanied them, left the world they had lived in for decades. He watched them depart from the "future" they had helped create, and step into the hell known as "Siberia."
Shu watched as more and more people gathered around them. He watched them build a towering structure in a world of death and snow. He watched the "Hanging Gardens" descend upon the earth.
They found displaced and traumatized children from the war, wrapped them in the flags of Future City, and brought them back to the Tower of Babylon. A single, thin flag provided more warmth than a cotton coat.
They allied with some local mercenary groups who still had a conscience, sending the healed children out of Siberia to places like Shenzhou, Western Europe, and the Mediterranean coast, warning them never to return, no matter what.
And the flags that had saved them were used again.
But in the end, very few children could leave… The ten thousand flags were used up in just a few years. And the last person saved by the last flag…
…was named Sirin.
After that, no child ever left the Tower of Babylon again.
---||---
"Grandpa John…" Little Sirin tugged on the sleeve of the weary, bald old man. The old man paused, put away his round-rimmed glasses, and knelt down gently.
The object Shu was attached to was right beside them. He watched as Sirin glanced his way from time to time.
"What is it, Sirin? Shouldn't you be sleeping? What do you need from Grandpa John?" Shu watched the old man kindly pat Sirin's head and smile.
Little Sirin made a big circle with her hands. "It's just, Grandpa John and everyone else can wake people up, but I can't… Does Grandpa John know magic that I don't? Can you teach me?"
The little girl's innocent eyes made John stare blankly for a moment. Then, he gave a bitter smile. "Silly child, there's no such thing as magic. And even if there was, you wouldn't be able to learn it…"
"Really…?" Sirin tilted her head in confusion, then closed her eyes and thought for a second before coming up with an answer.
"Hmph, Grandpa John is being stingy. I can definitely learn it!" Sirin decided John was lying.
John felt a bit helpless. Sirin was obedient, but she was also truly stubborn…
"Well then… how about Grandpa John teaches you a little magic?" John looked around, his gaze suddenly falling on Shu's location.
He reached out, picked up "Shu," and held him up for Sirin to see.
"If you're ever scared, or if something happens, just hold on to this tightly, and say in your heart…"