August 6th, 1945. 8:15 AM.
Sekitanki woke with dread he couldn't explain.
The sensation was physical—ice settling into his stomach, his scientist's mind screaming warnings without identifying the threat. Something terrible was coming. Today. Soon.
He lay in his bunk while Unit 23 stirred around him, soldiers beginning morning routines with mechanical efficiency. Hayashi already drinking despite the early hour. Saito cleaning his rifle for the third time this week. Yamamoto organizing medical supplies with the careful attention of someone who knew they'd all be needed.
And Kaito sitting across the barracks, watching him with the same inexplicable dread.
Their eyes met. Recognition passed between them—two people from the future, both carrying knowledge that made this morning feel wrong. "You feel it too," Kaito said quietly in modern Japanese, barely moving his lips.
"Yes. Like reality is holding its breath." "Something's coming. Something that changes everything."
Sekitanki's mind raced through historical knowledge. August 1945. Early August. The war was ending soon—he knew that much from high school history classes he'd barely paid attention to. But the exact dates, the specific events...
What happens in early August? What am I forgetting? Then it clicked. Horror crystallized into certainty. Hiroshima. Today is Hiroshima. His face must have shown the realization because Kaito went pale. "What? What is it?"
"We need to talk. Now. Outside."
They slipped away from the barracks under the pretense of morning duties. Found a bombed-out building that offered privacy and cover. The ruins smelled of ash and old death—familiar scents in 1945 Tokyo.
"Tell me," Kaito demanded. "What happens today?" "Hiroshima. The Americans drop an atomic bomb. The first one. It destroys the entire city. Seventy thousand people die instantly."
Kaito stared. "Atomic bomb? Nuclear fission?"
"Yes. It happens soon. The explosion—" Sekitanki's voice broke. "It's like a piece of the sun falling to earth. Temperatures exceed surface-level solar heat. Everything within a kilometer is vaporized. Buildings, people, everything just... gone. Shadows burned into walls where bodies used to stand."
"When? What time?" "I don't remember exactly. Morning. Maybe 8 AM. Maybe later. I was a physics student, not a history major. I know it happened in early August, but—"
The sound reached them then.
Not the bomb itself—Hiroshima was four hundred kilometers away. But something else. A wrongness in the air. Like atmospheric pressure changing before a storm, except this was temporal displacement on a scale that made Sekitanki's machine look like a child's toy.
The fabric of reality flinched. Kaito felt it too. "What was that?"
"History. Happening in real-time." Sekitanki's hands shook. "Somewhere, four hundred kilometers away, seventy thousand people just ceased to exist. The world split into before and after. And we're standing in the after."
They sat in silence as the magnitude settled over them.
"In my era," Kaito said eventually, his voice hollow, "we study this moment. August 6th, 1945, 8:16 AM. The day humanity acquired the power to destroy itself. We call it the end of innocence. The moment we became gods who could choose extinction."
"What happens next? In your history?"
"Nagasaki. Three days from now. August 9th. Another bomb. Forty thousand dead. Then Japan surrenders on August 15th. American occupation begins. The war ends. But the shadow—the atomic shadow—it never really fades."
Sekitanki processed this. "We have three days. Three days before another city burns." "Should we warn them? Evacuate Nagasaki? We could save forty thousand lives."
"How? Who would believe us? And even if they did, how do we explain knowing the future without revealing we're time travelers?" Sekitanki's voice was bitter. "This is the curse of displacement. Knowing what's coming and being powerless to stop it."
"So we just let it happen? Let forty thousand people die when we could warn them?"
"What if warning them makes it worse? What if evacuation triggers different American responses? What if they drop more bombs, on different cities, killing even more people?" Sekitanki grabbed Kaito's shoulders. "Time travel isn't power. It's paralysis. Every action creates ripples we can't predict. The safest thing—the only thing—is to change as little as possible."
"That's coward logic." "That's survivor logic. And we're survivors first."
Kaito pulled away, anger and frustration warring across his face. "I became a soldier because I was lost, Now I'm watching them die because 'changing history is dangerous.' This is hell. Actual hell."
They sat in the ruins, two people from different futures, both crushed by knowledge they couldn't use. The news arrived at noon. A military telegraph, garbled and confused. Officers reading it three times as if repetition would make it comprehensible.
"Hiroshima... destroyed. Entire city. Single weapon. Flash of light. Then nothing." The barracks went silent.
Sergeant Hayashi read the report again. His hands trembled. "One bomb? One bomb destroyed an entire city? That's—that's not possible. No explosive has that yield. The energy required would be—"
He stopped because none of them could comprehend the mathematics. But Sekitanki could. And the knowledge sat in his stomach like poison. He knew all of it. Every horrible detail.
Saito spoke first, voice shaking: "What kind of weapon does that? What technology—" "Doesn't matter," Hayashi interrupted, reaching for his sake. "What matters is the Americans have it. And we don't. Which means we've already lost."
Corporal Tanaka—young, still believing in victory—protested: "No! Japanese spirit—"
"Spirit doesn't matter against weapons that erase cities!" Hayashi's control broke. "Don't you understand? They can sit in the sky and delete us. One plane, one bomb, entire cities gone. Tokyo could be next. We could all be dead tomorrow and never even see it coming!"
The barracks erupted in argument. Some soldiers refusing to believe the reports. Others descending into panic. A few began quietly weeping. Kaito found Sekitanki outside, both seeking escape from the chaos.
"They don't know," Sekitanki said quietly. "They don't know there's a second bomb coming. That in three days, Nagasaki burns. That in nine days, their Emperor announces surrender. That all of this—all the fighting, all the dying—is already decided."
"What makes it worse is knowing we can't change history."
"I know. And even if we could, it wouldn't make it any easier. World War II is on a scale none of us can truly alter. I've dealt with chaos before—but this… this is more mayhem than anything I've ever faced. Even the giant bugs don't compare to this shit."
They sat together as Tokyo burned in the distance—not from atomic fire, but from conventional incendiary bombing that seemed almost quaint now. Almost merciful by comparison.
"In my era," Sekitanki said, "nuclear weapons are historical curiosities. Dangerous relics from humanity's adolescence. We study them like we study medieval torture devices—fascinating in their horror, incomprehensible in their use."
"In mine, they're completely banned. Globally. Since 2089. We disarmed every warhead, destroyed every design, made their manufacture a crime against humanity." Kaito's voice was hollow. "We learned. Eventually. After coming too close to extinction multiple times."
"Does the world survive? Long-term?"
"Yes. Barely. There are close calls—1962, 1983, various incidents through the Cold War. But we make it. Japan rebuilds. Becomes pacifist. By 2228, Tokyo is..." He smiled sadly. "It's beautiful. You'll see. When we get there."
When we get there. The promise they'd made. The machine that could only carry one person's mass.
Sekitanki still hadn't told Kaito the truth. Still hoped desperately to find a solution, to redesign the temporal field, to make both of them going home possible.
But time was running out. The war was ending. American occupation would bring chaos. They needed to jump soon, before everything collapsed. "We need to accelerate our work," Sekitanki said. "The machine. We're running out of time."
"I know. I've been stealing components during salvage missions. Have most of what we need. Just missing high-capacity capacitors for the final power stage."
"Where do we get those in 1945 Japan?" "We don't. But the Americans have them. In their communications equipment." Understanding crystallized. "You want to rob American supplies."
"I want to go home. The Americans are the only ones with technology advanced enough for what we need." Kaito met his eyes. "Are you with me?"
"Always."
They planned the heist over the next two days while the nation reeled from Hiroshima's destruction. Military discipline fractured. Some officers refused orders. Civilians rioted. The social order holding Japan together began cracking under the weight of incomprehensible defeat.
August 9th, 1945. 11:02 AM.
Sekitanki was preparing for the mission when the second atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. He felt it again—that temporal displacement, reality flinching, forty thousand lives ending in nuclear fire.
Kaito found him vomiting behind the barracks. "Second bomb," Sekitanki gasped. "Just like you said. Three days later. Forty thousand more dead." "I know. I felt it too."
They kept each other calm—two time travelers carrying knowledge that crushed them, finding comfort in shared horror. As the friends they had become.
"This is why I wanted to save my grandmother," Kaito whispered. "Because in a universe this cruel, this random, saving one person matters. Even if you can't save everyone. Even if you fail. Trying matters."
"You won't fail. We're going home. Both of us. We'll get the machine working. You'll save her." "Promise?" "I promise." Lies taste like ash. But sometimes lies are kinder than truth.
That night, they infiltrated the American supply depot.
The occupation was still chaotic—Japanese forces nominally surrendering, American troops establishing control, everything in flux. Security was imperfect. Guards were overwhelmed.
Perfect conditions for desperate time travelers who'd survived prehistoric monsters and medieval warfare.
They wore stolen American uniforms—purchased from black market dealers who asked no questions. Sekitanki's English was decent from required language classes in 2024 schools. Kaito's was flawless—universal language by 2228.
Walking past checkpoints felt surreal. American soldiers everywhere, speaking English, the casual occupation of a nation that had been trying to kill them weeks ago.
The cognitive dissonance was crushing.
They located the communications tent. While Kaito created a distraction—setting off a fire alarm with improvised incendiary—Sekitanki grabbed the capacitors they needed.
Almost escaped clean until a sergeant questioned their presence. "You two. What unit?" Sekitanki's mind raced. "Requisition from Lieutenant Morrison, sir. Radio repair duty."
The sergeant was skeptical. His eyes narrowed. "Morrison? Don't know any—" Kaito interrupted with perfect American accent: "Sir, the Lieutenant needs these urgently. Communications breakdown at headquarters. Top priority."
Something in Kaito's confidence, his flawless English, his casual authority—it worked. The sergeant waved them through with suspicious expression but no action.
They escaped with the capacitors, hearts hammering, adrenaline making everything sharp and bright.
In the truck driving away, they started laughing—manic, relieved, triumphant laughter of people who'd just stolen from the most powerful military in history and survived.
"We did it," Kaito gasped. "We actually did it." "One step closer to home."
But as they drove through occupied Tokyo, past American patrols and defeated Japanese civilians, Sekitanki heard something that made his blood freeze.
Two American soldiers talking at a checkpoint: "Did you hear about the bomb? The one they dropped on Nagasaki?"
"Yeah. Scary stuff. Heard they have more ready. If Japan hadn't surrendered, they were gonna drop five or six more. Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka—all of them. Kill millions."
Sekitanki and Kaito exchanged horrified looks. They'd known about the two bombs. Hadn't known how many more were ready. How close Japan came to complete annihilation.
"This is why we have to go home," Kaito said quietly. "To remember. To make sure people in our eras understand what happens when we build weapons we can't control. To be witnesses."
"Witnesses who can never testify. No one would believe us." "Then we write it down. We document everything. We make sure the horror isn't forgotten." They drove back to base in silence, carrying stolen components and the weight of knowledge that would haunt them forever.
The machine could be completed now. Within days, they'd have everything needed for temporal displacement. One jump. One chance. One person going home.
And Sekitanki still hadn't told Kaito the truth about the mass limitation. Soon. I'll tell him soon. After we finish assembly. After I've exhausted every possible solution.
But deep down, he knew: there was no solution. The physics were absolute. One of them would go home. One would stay forever. And the choice—that impossible, heartbreaking choice—was rapidly approaching.
TO BE CONTINUED... [NEXT EPISODE: "Fragments of Tomorrow"]