Division Zero stood before them like a wound in the earth.
The old Ministry building had collapsed years ago—or so the official records claimed. Earthquake damage. Structural failure. Condemned and sealed. But standing in the rain-slicked ruins, Nagisa Shiota and Yoku Hakumura could see the truth: the collapse had been controlled, deliberate, designed to hide what lay beneath.
The entrance was exactly where Hakumura's stolen files said it would be—a maintenance hatch concealed beneath rubble that looked random but had been carefully arranged. Someone had been maintaining access. Someone who wanted to be found.
Or who knew they would come eventually.
Hakumura knelt beside the hatch, his hands hovering over the locking mechanism. In the two days since his campfire confession, he'd been quieter, more withdrawn, carrying the weight of spoken memories like physical scars freshly exposed to air.
"Last chance to turn back," he said without looking at Nagisa.
"We're not turning back," Nagisa replied, checking his equipment one final time. Knives. Flashlights. Medical supplies. The same dull blade he'd carried since Koro-sensei's death, still unsharpened, still a reminder rather than a weapon. Improved to be steal blade of battle.
"When we go down there," Hakumura continued, his voice tight, "we're going to find Kurasaki. Or what's left of him. And whatever he's become... it won't be the friend I remember. You need to be ready for that."
"I'm ready." Hakumura finally met his gaze, eyes searching, unflinching.
"Are you?" he asked quietly. "Because I've told you what they did to him. Fifteen years of biological immortality. Fifteen years of indoctrination. Fifteen years spent as the guardian of Division Zero's archives—surrounded by proof of every crime, every experiment, every death. That kind of existence doesn't leave a person intact. It breaks them. Then it rebuilds them into something else."
He took a breath, steady but heavy.
"He led their goals all this time. And we've been fighting the enemy just to stop those goals. Now we know who's behind it all—Kurasaki. The name in the files. The architect of the Erabus Project. The mind behind its industries, its science, its horrors."
Hakumura's voice hardened.
"So I'm asking you now, Nagisa Shiota. Are you ready to end this? To kill the enemy responsible for all of it? Or are you going to let everything we've done mean nothing?"
A pause. "I won't," he said. "For me, this is already decided." His expression flickered—something raw beneath the resolve.
"I never expected him to be the enemy leader. We only know that now because we decided to check back on the files about Kurasaki. Only cause you were curious about his role now in Erabus. I knew they were tormenting him, using him. But this… this is shocking to me too. An old friend became our greatest enemy. Someone I once trusted is now my mortal adversary—devoted to a system I have to destroy. All because we suspected his role, and now we know he turned out to be the enemy leader. Of every piece of... Erabus!"
He looked down. "The industry. The experiments. The suffering spread across countless fields. It ends here." His eyes locked onto Nagisa's. "So tell me. Are you in—or not?"
Nagisa met his gaze steadily. "I killed my teacher. Watched him die knowing it was the right thing and hating myself for it anyway. I understand what trauma does to people. What it makes them become. And I understand that sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for someone in pain is help them end it all."
The words hung between them like a promise and a threat.
Hakumura nodded slowly, then turned back to the hatch. His fingers worked the lock mechanism with practiced ease—muscle memory from a childhood spent learning to break through barriers. The hatch opened with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a ladder descending into darkness.
The smell that rose from below was wrong. Not decay or rot, but sterility carried to an extreme—the scent of a space so thoroughly sanitized it had become hostile to life itself.
They descended.
THE LAYERS
The facility sprawled beneath Tokyo in archaeological strata, each level representing a different era of institutional secrecy.
The first level was Meiji-era construction—brick and mortar, tunnels originally built for infrastructure that had been repurposed for surveillance. Gas lamps had been replaced with electric lighting, but the bones remained, speaking of an age when monitoring citizens had been done with human eyes rather than digital ones.
The second level was World War II vintage—concrete bunkers designed to withstand bombardment, interrogation rooms with drainage grates still stained dark despite decades of supposed disuse. This was where secrets had been extracted through pain.
The third level was Cold War era—server rooms filled with obsolete computers, filing systems designed for maximum redundancy, the architecture of paranoia made physical. This was where information had been hoarded. Knowledge had been weaponized here.
And beneath it all, the fourth level—modern, pristine, humming with power. This was Division Zero proper. The archive. The heart of UMA 8907's institutional memory itself.
Their footsteps echoed wrong in these corridors, sound behaving strangely as if the space itself had been designed to disorient. Nagisa noticed details that made his skin crawl: cameras that tracked their movement with too-smooth precision, ventilation systems that seemed to adjust airflow in response to their presence, lighting that brightened and dimmed in patterns that felt almost communicative.
"He knows we're here," Hakumura whispered. "How long has he known?"
"Probably since we entered the building. Division Zero isn't just an archive—it's a consciousness trap. Erabus designed it to scan everyone who enters, map their footstep patterns, record their presence. Kurasaki's been watching us since the moment we opened the hatch."
As if in response, speakers crackled to life throughout the facility. A voice emerged—young, perhaps twelve years old, but carrying weight beyond its years:
"Hello, Yoku. It's been a long time." Hakumura stopped walking, his entire body going rigid.
"And you brought someone. Nagisa Shiota. The kid who killed Koro-sensei. How... fancy. Both of you defined by the act of destroying what you loved."
Nagisa's hand moved toward his knife, though he knew it would be useless against a voice. "Keep descending. We have much to discuss. And I've been waiting so very long for this conversation."
The speakers fell silent, but the air had changed—charged now, expectant, like the moment before a storm breaks. They continued downward.
THE ARCHIVE CHAMBER
The final door was reinforced steel, unmarked except for a single designation etched into the metal: K-19. Hakumura's breathing had become shallow, rapid. "This is the room from the files. The subject origin archive. Where they kept—"
"Your brother's remains," Nagisa finished quietly. "I remember." Hakumura's hand trembled as he pushed the door open.
The chamber beyond was vast, circular, rising several stories high. The walls were lined with filing cabinets and server banks, physical and digital records coexisting in meticulously organized rows. Climate-controlled cases held documents preserved behind glass. Monitors displayed scrolling data—names, dates, procedures, outcomes.
But at the center of the room stood something that made both of them freeze.
Three cylindrical containment units, each approximately seven feet tall, filled with luminescent preservation fluid. Inside each cylinder floated biological samples—tissue, organs—suspended in eternal stasis.
The labels glowed faintly in the dim light:
SUBJECT 02 - DAIKI H. (DECEASED) - CONSCIOUSNESS EXTRACTION: 47% INTEGRITYSUBJECT 04 - YOKU H. (RECONDITIONED) - NEURAL ARCHITECTURE: STABLESUBJECT 09 - KURASAKI (RESTRUCTURED) - TEMPORAL STATUS: SUSPENDED
Hakumura approached the cylinder containing his brother's remains like a devil approaching a shrine. His hand reached toward the glass, fingers trembling, not quite touching.
"They kept him," he whispered. "All this time. They kept pieces of him like... like specimens in a museum."
Nagisa studied the cylinders, his analytical mind noting details: the sophistication of the preservation technology, the precision of the labeling, the almost reverent arrangement. This wasn't just storage—it was memorialization. Someone had cared enough to preserve these remains perfectly, to maintain them across fifteen years.
"Kurasaki did this," Nagisa realized. "He's been maintaining these. Protecting them." "Protecting or worshiping?" Hakumura's voice was bitter. "What kind of person keeps their friend's brother's corpse in a jar for fifteen years?"
"The kind who never forgot what friendship meant," a voice said from above. They looked up simultaneously.
Perched on a ledge three stories above them, silhouetted against banks of glowing monitors, sat a figure. Small. Child-sized. But the way it moved—descending via the ladder with practiced ease—carried none of a persons certainty.
When it reached the ground level and stepped into the light, Nagisa felt his breath catch.
The child appeared twelve years old, perhaps younger. Gray eyes that held the weight of decades. Dark hair cut precisely. He wore a white coat that dragged slightly on the floor, adult-sized.
Kurasaki.
But Hakumura had been right—this wasn't the child from his memories. This was something wearing a child's form, moving with the careful precision of someone who'd forgotten what spontaneous movement felt like.
"Hello, Yoku," Kurasaki said, his voice carrying that same wrong timbre they'd heard through the speakers—too controlled, too measured, each word precisely chosen. "You remembered. I knew you would eventually. The Memory Architecture was flawed—I told Erabus it wouldn't hold forever. Consciousness is resilient. Truth finds its way out."
Hakumura stood frozen, staring at his childhood friend trapped in temporal stasis. "Kurasaki," he managed. "What did they do to you?"
Kurasaki smiled, and it was the most disturbing thing Nagisa had ever seen—technically correct, hitting all the markers of a smile, but empty of any emotion that would make it genuine.
"They saved me. Gave me eternity. Gave me purpose." He gestured to the cylinders. "I've been the guardian of our story. Keeping these remains preserved. Making sure what happened to us was documented, recorded, remembered. Someone had to bear witness."
"That's not witnessing," Hakumura said, voice shaking. "That's... that's stupid. You've been down here for fifteen years, alone, surrounded by evidence of torture, and you've convinced yourself it meant something."
Kurasaki's smile didn't waver. "It did mean something. We were the first successes. The proof of concept. Daiki's consciousness encoded into you. My biological immortality. We changed the world, Yoku. We proved that death isn't the end. That consciousness can transcend flesh. That humanity can evolve."
"We proved nothing!" Hakumura shouted, his voice echoing through the chamber. "We were tortured! Experimented on! Our childhood was stolen! Daiki died screaming! And you've spent fifteen years down here telling yourself it was for a reason because the alternative—accepting that we suffered for nothing—is too painful to bear!"
For the first time, something flickered in Kurasaki's eyes. Not agreement, but... recognition. A crack in the facade.
"You don't understand," Kurasaki said, his voice losing some of its measured control. "I've had fifteen years to think about this. Fifteen years to study the data, to understand what they were trying to accomplish. And I've realized—Erabus was right. Not about the methods, maybe. Not about the cruelty. But about the goal. Consciousness liberation. Freedom from death. That's what Koro-sensei represented. That's what his existence proved was possible."
Nagisa stepped forward. "You're wrong. Koro-sensei didn't prove consciousness could transcend death. He proved that even monsters could choose to be human. That's the opposite of what you're describing."
Kurasaki turned those gray eyes toward Nagisa, studying him with clinical interest. "The student who killed his teacher. Tell me, Nagisa Shiota—when you pulled that trigger of stabbing, when you watched him die, did you feel like you were being human? Or did you feel like the weapon they'd trained you to be?"
The words hit like physical blows.
"Both," Nagisa said quietly. "I felt like both. And I've spent years trying to reconcile that. Trying to understand how love and murder could coexist in the same action."
"Then you understand what I'm saying," Kurasaki replied. "We're all weapons pretending to be human. The only difference is whether we accept it or lie to ourselves about it."
"No," Nagisa said firmly. "The difference is whether we let our trauma define us or whether we fight to remain human despite it."
Kurasaki's expression hardened. "Easy to say when you're not trapped in a body that will never age, in a facility that's been your prison for fifteen years, surrounded by the ghosts of everyone who died screaming."
He raised his hand, and the chamber responded.
THE ACTIVATION
Monitors throughout Division Zero flared to life, displaying files, photographs, video recordings—a cascade of documented suffering spanning decades. The cylindrical units began to glow brighter, their containment fluid pulsing with increased energy.
"You came here to destroy this," Kurasaki said, his voice rising above the hum of activating systems. "To burn Division Zero. To erase the evidence. But you don't understand—this isn't just evidence. This is memory. This is the only thing that proves we existed. That what happened to us mattered."
The walls of the chamber began to shift, panels sliding aside to reveal a hidden space beyond—a massive laboratory, pristine and active, filled with equipment that shouldn't exist.
Rows of containment pods. Empty vessels suspended in stasis, waiting.
And at the center, a throne-like chair surrounded by conduits of Erabus Energy, crystallized consciousness data flowing through tubes like luminescent blood.
"I've spent fifteen years maintaining this facility," Kurasaki continued, moving toward the throne. "Learning its systems. Understanding its purpose. And I've made improvements. Perfected what Erabus and your mother couldn't achieve."
He sat in the throne, and it responded to him—energy flowing into the small body, making him glow with silver light.
"Full consciousness digitization and transfer. I've solved it. Using the mind scans I've collected from everyone who's entered Division Zero over the years. Using the consciousness fragments stored in Erabus Energy. Using the quantum echoes of Koro-sensei's final moments preserved in the moon fragments that power this facility."
Hakumura's face had gone pale. "You're going to try to transfer consciousness. Into those empty vessels."
"Not try. Succeed." Kurasaki's eyes were blazing now, reflecting the energy coursing through him. "And I'm going to start with you, Yoku. You're already carrying Daiki's consciousness fragments. Imagine if we could extract them. Give your brother a body again. Let him live properly instead of haunting you."
"He's not haunting me," Hakumura said, voice breaking. "He's part of me. And I wouldn't trade that for anything, even if it means carrying the pain forever."
"Then you're a fool." Kurasaki stood, energy crackling around him. "You came here to destroy the past. I'm offering to resurrect it. To give back what was taken from us. To make the suffering mean something."
"The suffering already means something," Nagisa said, stepping forward to stand beside Hakumura. "It means we survived. It means we learned. It means we became people who fight to make sure it never happens again. That's the meaning. Not resurrection. Not transcendence. Just the simple, human act of saying 'never again' and meaning it."
Kurasaki's expression twisted—rage and grief and something like longing all warring for control.
"You don't get to decide that," he said, his child's voice breaking with emotion held back for fifteen years. "You don't get to tell me my suffering was worth it because I learned from it. You don't get to make peace with the past when I'm still trapped in it!"
The energy around him surged, and the empty vessels in their pods began to activate.
"If you won't accept salvation," Kurasaki said, tears streaming down his face even as his voice remained cold, "then you'll become data. Neural patterns to be studied. Consciousness to be archived. Just like everyone else who's ever entered this place."
He raised both hands, and Division Zero responded—not as a facility, but as an extension of his will, fifteen years of integration with its systems making him and the archive nearly indistinguishable.
"I've become what Erabus wanted to create," Kurasaki said. "A being liberated from flesh. Consciousness merged with technology. And now I'll show you what that power can do."
The containment pods opened, releasing the empty vessels—bodies with perfect physiological function but no consciousness, no soul, moving with mechanical precision toward Nagisa and Hakumura.
"This is your final lesson," Kurasaki said, sitting back on his throne like a child-king presiding over a kingdom of nightmares. "The one Koro-sensei never taught you. That sometimes, love isn't enough. That sometimes, the only way to honor the dead is to join them. That sometimes, humanity itself is the weakness that needs to be transcended."
Behind him, the cylinder containing Daiki's remains pulsed brighter, consciousness fragments activating, responding to Kurasaki's will. And Nagisa realized with horror what Kurasaki intended to do.
He was going to try to resurrect Daiki using the consciousness fragments encoded in Hakumura's brain, the preserved biological samples, and an empty vessel.
He was going to rip Hakumura apart to bring back a ghost. And that he genuinely believed he was doing it out of love.
THE BATTLE BEGINS
Nagisa drew his knife—the dull blade that had never taken a life—and moved into a defensive stance. Beside him, Hakumura pulled his own weapons, face set in grim determination.
"Kurasaki," Hakumura said one last time. "Please. Don't make me fight you. You're my friend. You were my first friend. The person who kept me sane when everything else was hell."
Kurasaki's expression softened for just a moment—a flicker of the child he'd been, trapped beneath fifteen years of trauma and indoctrination.
"I know," he whispered. "That's why I have to do this. Because if I can bring Daiki back, if I can prove consciousness transfer works, then all the suffering—yours, mine, his—will have meant something. We'll have changed the world."
"The world doesn't need changing," Hakumura replied, tears streaming down his face. "It needs healing. And this isn't healing. This is just more trauma dressed up as salvation."
"Then I'll show you salvation," Kurasaki said, and the empty vessels attacked.
The fight that followed was brutal, desperate, heartbreaking—two people trying to survive while facing someone who'd once been a friend, now transformed into something neither of them recognized.
The vessels moved with inhuman coordination, their attacks precise but emotionless. Nagisa fought them off with the skills Koro-sensei had taught him—not to kill, but to disable, to survive, to protect.
And above it all, Kurasaki sat on his throne, tears streaming down his unchanging child's face, directing the battle while sobbing for the friendship he was destroying in the name of saving it.
The Archive trembled. The cylinders pulsed. And somewhere in the machinery, Daiki's consciousness fragments began to stir, fifteen years of death interrupted by technology that had finally learned to play god.
The final lesson had begun. And no one—not Nagisa, not Hakumura, not even Kurasaki himself—knew how it would end.
To Be Continued...