Atlas's initial reaction was pure panic. It was perfectly normal, nothing to be ashamed of: any human being would have reacted the same way to such a phenomenon.
Speaking of other humans... where were they? Why was the country's largest university completely deserted? If everyone had suffered the same fate as him, Atlas should have seen people "sleeping" everywhere. He might not be a genius, but he had retained his sharp mind. This was all strange. Far too strange.
Atlas had to get to the bottom of this.
As he tried to stand, a wave of weakness washed over him, like a violent spell of vertigo caused by an iron deficiency. His frail body nearly collapsed again.
But Atlas forced himself to be resolute. His mind would find no rest until he had grasped the beginning of Ariadne's thread in this whole ordeal. Because yes, Atlas refused to believe he was alone in this situation.
Making his way through the long university corridors, rendered grim and moldy by the absence of artificial light, Atlas lost himself in thought. He used to do this before... Before what, exactly? How could he even name what had just happened? And who were these Tohotsi? What interest did they have in "awakening" the entire population of a planet? And what did they mean by "greatness"?
Before Atlas could sink deeper into these unanswerable questions, a faint noise echoed down the hall. It sounded like a woman crying. The sound was so quiet he surprised himself by even hearing it. It had to be a side effect of his Qualia's "awakening." Though no scholar, Atlas loved reading and appreciated philosophy; he knew exactly what the concept of Qualia represented.
Atlas tried to run toward the source of the weeping, which grew louder as he approached. His first steps were heavy and labored, but after about thirty meters, his body began to move effortlessly, with disconcerting fluidity. He finally arrived at a classroom bathed in natural light pouring through the large windows.
And there, he saw her.
She had curly brown hair. He couldn't see much more, as she was sitting on a bench in the amphitheater with her back to him. She seemed to be holding her head in her hands, muttering between sobs: , Why... why us... why me!?
Before he could even approach her, a second sight struck him, accompanied by a macabre sound: the wet thud of bodies being piled on top of one another.
At the back of the amphitheater, men in military uniforms, whom he hadn't noticed at first, distracted by the young woman, were stacking corpses. The soldiers wore grim expressions. None of them spoke. They all seemed disoriented, their minds lost in their own distant thoughts, yet their movements remained perfectly, chillingly mechanical.
One detail made Atlas's blood run cold. All these bodies shared one common trait: their eyes were missing. Dried blood stained their now-empty sockets, as if the sight of this new world had been forbidden to them by divine decree.
The girl, meanwhile, alternated between crying into her hands and staring blankly at the gruesome spectacle.
Atlas, strangely, felt calm. A calm that surprised even him. It was as if something had shifted inside him; he could feel it, but couldn't quite put his finger on it.
He decided to approach the girl. Every step he took on the dusty floor seemed to echo far too loudly in the silence, yet it was drowned out by the sobs and the macabre background noise. The scene was surreal: the soldiers, like gray-skinned automatons, didn't seem to notice them at all, entirely absorbed in their repetitive, dismal task.
When he was only a few meters away, the girl finally sensed a presence beyond her own despair. She whipped around with a gasp of pure terror. Her entire body tensed, her heels scraping the floor as she tried to put as much distance as possible between herself and this wild-looking stranger.
Everything, absolutely everything, since she woke up on the cold, filthy tiles of the university restroom had terrified her. The smell of stagnant water and mildew still clung to her skin. She understood nothing. All that remained was the memory of a strange dream, a voice still echoing in her skull... Was it even a dream? The pain of that "awakening" had been far too real.
Refusing to be overwhelmed, she had drawn on unsuspected reserves of courage to search for other survivors. But the long corridors, where the wallpaper was peeling off like dead skin, were utterly deserted. The silence had driven her mad. Panicked, she had run blindly until she burst into this amphitheater.
And there, the horror had hit her full force. The metallic stench of dried blood assaulted her nostrils before her brain even processed the scene. All those dead... They were students. Their uniforms were familiar, albeit torn and caked in dust. She thought she recognized the shape of a face, the color of someone's hair... people she had shared coffee with just yesterday.
But it was those eyes... those gaping, dark, wet holes where life should have shone.
It was too much. Her legs had given out. Collapsed on the bench, her throat burning from crying, she was condemned to watch the soldiers' mechanical ballet. The dull thud of bodies being tossed onto the pile set the rhythm of her growing madness.
Until this exact moment when... a shadow stretched across the floor in front of her. A young man stood there.
Judging by his tattered clothes, he seemed to be a student from this campus too. She didn't recognize him, but then again, thousands of them used to swarm this place... before.
He looked nothing like a hero. He wasn't huge; he was rather scrawny, covered in grime, and wearing a face utterly devoid of emotion, like a wax mask. But something about the blue of his eyes seemed... strange.
She couldn't put it into words, but those azure irises radiated a soothing aura, an anchor of calm in the midst of the storm. A thought crossed her mind: had he, too, undergone a "change" like her?
Yet, despite this reassuring glow, the weight of the horrors she had just witnessed was heavier. Her survival instinct, screaming with distrust, took over. Seized by panic at this stranger who was entirely too calm to be normal, she struggled to back away, her feet scraping against the floor to distance herself.
Between two panicked gasps, she managed to whisper: Who... are all of you?
She didn't know why she had used the plural. It had slipped out in the most natural way, a hesitation on her tongue that had nothing to do with mere confusion. Rationally, she saw only one man. But instinctively, the plural had forced itself past her lips, as if her subconscious perceived a crowd where her eyes only saw a scrawny silhouette. It was a strange dissonance that made her shiver even more.
Atlas froze, unsure of how to react. Standing before him was a girl whose beauty clashed violently with the apocalyptic scenery. She had intense green eyes, reminiscent of the ocean just before a storm, a perfectly proportioned, delicate nose, and lips that... She was... stunning.
The realization was bitter: she had absolutely nothing in common with him, the ultimate average guy. He knew perfectly well that in his past life, he would never have had the chance to even associate with a girl this pretty, let alone hope to date her.
And yet, she seemed even more terrified than before. Was it him scaring her so much? His feral appearance? Or that inhuman calm he radiated?
In a steady tone, trying to soften his voice to appease the young woman, he replied, ignoring the plural which he mistook for distance: , My name is Atlas. I am... well, I was a student here, I guess. Do you happen to know what's going on? I don't remember anything. I woke up barely ten minutes ago and everything was... old. Dusty.
Emma seemed to calm down a fraction at his words, Atlas's voice acting as an anchor in this nightmarish reality. , I... I'm Emma, she murmured. I don't know any more than you do. I woke up a few hours ago, but... I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. It was... it was terrifying.
Atlas studied her, intrigued. He hadn't experienced the same thing. Paralyzed? How so? If they had all awakened at the exact same moment, the logic of the situation fell apart. If the entire human race had just opened its eyes, how could these soldiers already be operational, organized, and busy with this sinister task? No, there was definitely a flaw in the timeline. Not everyone had woken up at the same time.
-You say you were paralyzed? What do you mean? he asked in the gentlest voice he could muster.
He began to move toward her, one step at a time, with the cautious slowness of a man trying not to startle a wounded animal. He feared the slightest sudden movement would shatter the girl's fragile equilibrium.
Her eyes lost their spark, and she spoke in a distant tone, as if recalling these moments required her to dissociate just to bear the pain: I couldn't move, but... it's like everything inside me changed. It started with this massive migraine, and then I collapsed. It felt like something plunged its hands into my head, touching and altering everything inside. Then I fell asleep... and I must have woken up too early. I was completely unable to move. And then, suddenly, no sensation at all... I really thought it was the end...
Atlas sensed she was becoming emotionally unstable. He didn't know how to react. He was burning to hear the rest, but ultimately, he asked her to stop for her own good.
-Hmm, I see. Like you said, it's some sort of "awakening," but I'm struggling to understand why. If I remember correctly, I heard a voice... well, if you can call it a voice, in my head right when everything collapsed. It said…
Emma cut him off abruptly: - A voice? What do you mean, a voice? I didn't hear anything like that!
She seemed even more lost than before.