Chapter 2: The Second Herrscher I
Some months later, February 1, 2000 CE, 0800h
Shirou hummed along with Bella as she chopped up vegetables while he minced some meat, the tune apparently from her time with her mother before she and the rest of Sirin and Bella's village perished in an incident the two girls still hadn't told Shirou about. He didn't mind, having his own secrets to keep: the fact that he was a clone of someone, for example, or his dream memories that still triggered on occasions. Sirin sat in a nearby corner of the kitchen on a small chair, slurping a cup of instant noodles, having become addicted to them the first day the kitchen opened and having had to use the instant noodles packets for dinner due to a lack of other ingredients, a problem which had been solved by the next day with automated robot deliveries of supplies, starting a routine of Shirou waking up earlier in the morning to start on breakfast and Bella joining him as assistant chef later. Shirou had tried to stop Sirin eating so much instant noodles they had to keep restocking them weekly, but was only able to prevent her from having them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sirin still consumed instant noodles like a black hole in spacetime regularly and Shirou was just too nice to ban her completely when he saw how happy she was while slurping them. As if on cue, Sirin looked him in the eye at that moment and slurped up the last of the cup noodles loudly. Sighing, the 12-year-old redhead began reflecting on the last few months since he had met his two friends.
Creating a menu for the entire population of Babylon Labs was challenging to say the least. Shirou's dream memories taught him the do's and do not's of working in the kitchen, like not leaving the fire on or not letting water boil over, etc. What the memories didn't provide were recipes, so Shirou had to request for cookbooks from the scientists, who were annoyed at the requests but were satisfied with the results when the quality of their meals jumped up a level from 'army rations' to 'homecooked food'. The other kids' moods also generally improved, and Shirou made sure to give special attention during mealtimes to the kids that had just undergone the 'tests' in the morning as well as anyone who got sick, giving them soup and generally trying to boost their immunity. It seemed to work, however, as no child in Babylon Labs had died under Shirou's watch, even the two crying girls from before. When they had reached 12 weeks of no death recently Shirou rewarded both the children and scientists with a special treat he had been working on: homemade pizza. The researchers were apparently positively affected by this decision, as the other kids had reported the scientists becoming more gentle with them during their tests, meaning Shirou's plan had succeeded in a small way. He would of course like to have the tests stop completely, but Shirou knew the head scientist would never allow it. For now, Shirou would just make sure the others lived to the best of his abilities. If he happened to enjoy the cooking and helping others? That was merely a bonus, nothing more.
Bella and Shirou finished prepreparing the ingredients for the day's lunch and moved on to make the actual breakfast: pancakes with maple syrup, a classic. Sirin watched on from the side; she had once made an attempt to help with cooking but Shirou had firmly banned her from the stove after an incident involving her cup noodles. With the pancakes done in batches, the three children all put the pancakes on a cart and started pushing them to the mess hall to start feeding the other kids.
However… they were met with an unpleasant surprise when they got there, by the same head scientist that announced the tested children every day. "Finally, there you are, brat. We need the girl with you, she's scheduled for a test today. Keep serving your food to the other brats, we'll just take her and go."
The entire room tensed, even the other scientists, as the head scientist began to walk towards Shirou. "Boss, do we need to do this right now? Couldn't we wait until the brats get their food and the rest of us not conducting experiments just grab and go?" Some other scientist questioned. "Look at the brats, I don't think the kid chef is going to want to serve us his pancakes after what you just said, and I'm hungry," another scientist muttered as the head scientist walked into grabbing range and started to reach for someone…
But it wasn't Sirin being tested, as Shirou had assumed. Out of the two girls, Bella had gone through another test more recently compared to Sirin, the one where she had barely recovered and nearly died. Shirou had expected fear to constrict around his heart when the head scientist got close to the purple haired girl… only for the fear to drop into horror when the man moved past her and grabbed Bella's arm instead. The room instantly exploded into noise.
"Hey, hey, why the assistant chef?"
"Of all the people to select, you pick her, boss…"
"This is not going to go over well, making the kids angry like this…"
"No, no, no… NO! DON'T TAKE HER! TAKE ME INSTEAD! PLEASE! NOT HER, NOT HER!"
The last scream came from Sirin, who had grabbed the man's fingers and was trying to desperately pry his fingers open from the grip on Bella's arm. Unmoved, the man simply slapped her away, not caring where she landed. Sirin landed painfully at Shirou's feet. The boy quickly moved to help her up, angrily glaring at the heartless man in front of them, when Sirin grabbed his shoulder in a vice-like grip. "Shirou… please, help her, you're the only one who can."
The two children stared intensely in each other's eyes for a brief moment, before Shirou nodded and spoke, "I already intended to." Supporting Sirin upright, the boy turned to the head scientist again. "Please don't take her for testing, it's too soon and Bella had an extremely bad reaction after her last test. If you take her, she may not survive, please, sir, take Sirin or me in her place. You haven't selected me for testing in the past months since I've been put here and started serving you, and I'm much more healthy than Bella and more likely to survive, so I am a much more suitable candidate. Please, we beg you, just don't take Bella, take me instead."
The man scoffed at the boy, "As if I could, brat, if I could have tested on you I would never had allowed you to cook in the first place. Under direct orders from the Schicksal Overseer, you Subject HM-03-1204 are to be placed on strict 'observation only' status, so I'm forbidden from grabbing you anyway. And speaking on that, the Overseer himself is coming over tomorrow to check on us and his 'pet project', so this lab needs to be seen doing something to impress him. This girl here displayed the highest level of conversion and efficiency rate out of all the other brats here, so we're taking her for testing. All of you, stop them if they try to stop me."
"My name is Shirou, not HM-03-1204! You won't take Bella to your lab, I won't let you! Please, didn't all of you see Bella helping me serve your meals every day? Weren't some of you passed your meals personally by her with a smile and her telling you to enjoy yourselves?! Look at her, she's innocent! Help me change his mind, everyone, please!" Shirou looked around, hoping to see support from among the people he had personally served food over the past months, only to find every single scientist looking away in guilt.
"Sorry, I like my pay, I don't want to be fired."
"The Overseer is coming here, right? Maybe I can get promoted…"
"Can we get this over with? I want to go back to my experiment now, this is a waste of my time…"
A variety of responses drifted over to his ears, but none of them were to his favor. As Shirou continued to look around, no adult in the room looking him in the eye, he realized something: These people were uncaring, heartless, unwilling to repay others for the kindness of a little girl who helped them with a smile on her face and asked for nothing at all, they had already started to write off Bella off as dead. As this feeling of realization grew, so did his disgust… for these men were not human. They were monsters.
'Fine, if there's no other way…' Shirou shifted his gaze to the leader of the monsters here, who was still holding onto his friend. 'If this trash is going to perform the test on Bella himself…' He tensed himself more, ready to move at a moment's notice, 'then I just have to injure him until he can't do so—' about to rocket forward into the head scientist's face, someone tapped him on the shoulder… and released sleeping gas right into his unsuspecting face.
Tunnel vision towards his enemy had caused him to lose awareness of his surroundings, and already while on the verge of passing out, Shirou turned… and saw the face of the scientist who had served the three children bread on Shirou's very first day. "Nothing personal, kid… but the boss is somewhat aware of your skills from your files from the Overseer. We're really rather not be beaten up right now, you understand."
With the last of his fading strength, and with a cry in the background from a purple haired girl, Shirou launched himself at his target, much to the surprise of everyone around him. Bella had been frozen with fear for the whole time this confrontation was occurring, yet at that very moment she snapped out of her fear and held the head scientist still long enough to Shirou to come close… and use everything he had to punch the arrogant jerk in the face. The boy then stumbled back, strength spent, body collapsing to the floor and finally passed out.
"SHIROU!" his two friends screamed. "YOU F*! I'LL KILL YOU!" Sirin snarled, rushing towards the head scientist as well — "Someone knock her out already, damnit!" — but a quick blow to her head had her stumbling, consciousness fading. She only could realize it was also the bread scientist with the sleeping gas that had struck her, before her body came to a stop on the floor also a few meters away from her friend's, and Sirin's consciousness left her temporarily. Her last thought was the feeling of failure, of not being strong enough to save Bella from the hell she was about to endure.
"Sirin! Shirou! Please wake up! Help me! I don't want to go! Someone, help, please, I don't want – I don't want to die! I don't want to—" she was cut off, by the head scientist also knocking her out and putting her body over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "What do we do with the sleeping brats, boss?"
"Forget them, just leave them where they are. By the time they wake up again it'll be too late."
The scientists all left the mess hall, leaving behind the unconscious bodies of Sirin and Shirou… and scared children hiding under the mess hall tables, avoiding the gaze of the monsters passing off as humans. The pancakes on the cart were abandoned there where Bella had stopped pushing it, the efforts of the two children… left uneaten and cold.