Designated Survivor
Even at the very brink, there were always people who still clung to hope.
I was one of them now.
I could hear the creature crawling along the corridor floor.
Now and then, a dull impact shook the office, and the overhead lights flickered in response.
The stink of blood seeped in through the narrow gaps in the door, which had been barricaded with every piece of furniture I could drag into place.
This was the deepest office in the underground research complex.
It wasn’t even an emergency bunker, so we had to ration not only the emergency supplies, but water as well.
And even then, it looked like the door I’d blocked off wouldn’t hold for much longer.
The security unit had gone silent long ago, after saying only that they were requesting reinforcements.
“…Ha.”
In the end, all I had left to lean on was a desk and a chair.
The chair creaked as it tipped back, supporting my weight.
A hologram shimmered before my eyes.
Beneath it, the desk was bare.
The reports that had proven my goals and the results I’d achieved were gone, leaving behind only emptiness.
Only the hologram casting its pale light in front of me told me who I was, and where I stood.
「Johannes Schumacher Research and Development Institute First Director, you have been designated as a Designated Survivor.」
Designated Survivor.
I stared at those words for a long time, my eyes hardening with effort.
From the very first time I’d heard it in my life, the term had clung to me like tar.
The meaning of this troublesome label was simple enough.
An individual designated to preserve the continuity of government in the event that all higher officials were wiped out by an emergency.
It was little more than a formality, a law that might as well have ceased to exist.
I hadn’t even known such a thing existed until I’d been personally appointed to it.
Until now, that was.
“So there really was no way after all.”
It had been the day before yesterday.
News had come in that humanity’s last city had fallen.
I took a sip from the cup of cold water and swallowed.
The Designated Survivor was no longer an illusion or a dead letter.
It was reality, standing right in front of me.
Even if this research facility was underground and the outside world was hidden from view, even if I didn’t know exactly how things were unfolding beyond these walls, it wasn’t hard to imagine.
Things had already passed beyond anyone’s control.
“There’s nothing I can do.”
Even though it was just water, the taste in my mouth was bitter.
I let myself sink into the back of the chair and looked up at the ceiling, and the screen announcing my designation as a Designated Survivor slid out of sight beneath my field of vision.
If I was right, even this brief moment of quiet would vanish soon enough.
Before that happened, I wanted to clear my head, if only a little.
In this place where my stubbornness and my goals, my duties and my sense of fulfillment, my anger and my bitterness, and every other emotion too complicated to put into words had all raged together.
I drew a slow breath. If I had to describe it, it was probably closest to a final goodbye.
At the tail end of that breath, a tingling sensation ran up through my fingertips.
「Confidential mail received.」
A mail notification. The sender was the Administration Bureau’s emergency system. The contents were brief.
「It has been confirmed that all higher-ranking officials are now incapacitated. The Designated Survivor Protocol will now be initiated.」
「All assets and authority of the Administration Bureau will be transferred to the Designated Survivor, “Johannes Schumacher Research and Development Institute First Director.” Chapter 1 of the Schumacher Lineage is hereby granted the status of Administrator’s Proxy.」
Countless lines followed beneath it, but instead of checking them, I closed my eyes.
They would have been about the responsibilities of acting authority, and the rights that came with it, and legal immunity, and all the rest.
I already knew them by heart; there was no need to confirm them again.
Besides, by now it was all just hollow formality. No matter how many weapons there were, no matter how many soldiers, in the end they still hadn’t been able to stop the world from ending.
“It might be better to go back to the past and start over.”
So all that was left was bitter sarcasm.
I waved a hand and erased the hologram.
With each flick of my wrist, another window crammed with regulations vanished one by one.
My dazed gaze drifted after the disappearing holograms, scattering and then focusing again, over and over.
That was when I’d closed about five windows. My blurred vision caught on one particular phrase.
「Final Regression Protocol」
The timing could not have been more malicious.
It was so absurd it might as well have been someone’s prank.
Even if it was a protocol that had long since become obsolete, who would have had the nerve to post such a blatant lie and put their own name on it?
With a dry laugh, I checked the fool’s name.
“…?”
Where a name should have been, a familiar-looking authentication mark floated instead.
Not long after, I realized what that mark meant.
“…Administrator?”
That was impossible.
The instant I understood the weight of that name, I lurched to my feet.
How could the Administrator’s authentication, which had vanished decades ago, be here?
I rubbed my eyes several times, half wondering whether I was hallucinating, but the shape before me was unmistakably the Administrator’s authentication.
No, but still.
Despite my rising suspicion, my eyes had already started tracking the full text of the mail.
「The Designated Survivor Protocol is activated when the Administrator is absent for any reason, and all higher-ranking officials under the Administrator have been killed. All authority over the Administration Bureau’s assets is transferred to the Designated Survivor.」
That was the same as the earlier mail. My gaze moved down to the next lines.
「When the Designated Survivor judges that humanity’s survival can no longer be guaranteed by existing methods, the Final Regression Protocol may be activated.」
The more I read, the more my doubts and questions swelled inside me.
And yet, at the same time, something firmer began to take shape as well.
「If the Final Regression Protocol is activated, the Designated Survivor will regress to a random point in time. In that case, control authority over the remaining assets will also be retained.」
If this was real—if regression was truly possible.
「If the Final Regression Protocol is activated, the Designated Survivor concerned will be deemed to have agreed to bear infinite responsibility for humanity’s continued survival.」
Then could this future be changed, too?
“…”
I searched through my memories for a moment. The things I’d regretted, the choices that might have been better, the chances I’d let slip away.
And above all, this very moment, right now.
Inside my head, the voice asking whether regression could really happen was still the loudest.
But my yearning was just as fierce.
And I needed hope.
The decision was brief.
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