Wounds (4)

And so, she was dragged back to the laboratory.

Or more accurately, it would be truer to say she had walked back of her own accord, at least halfway.

The facility she arrived at was entirely unlike the one she had been imprisoned in before. An entire colossal space colony served as a single installation—a complex vast beyond comparison. And because the facility was so immense, there was an almost unfathomable number of "test subjects" just like her.

Ten thousand.

Her senses, honed to an extreme pitch after enduring countless agonizing procedures, allowed her to gauge the approximate headcount simply by reading the presence of people around her. The number she arrived at was ten thousand. Ten thousand human subjects, all just like her.

With that realization came a chilling, despairing truth: having so many test subjects simply meant the researchers had that much more ammunition to spend. To a scientist, having an endless supply of "ammunition"—of expendable chances to fail—meant only one thing.

The intensity of the experiments was about to skyrocket.

Her prediction was proven correct in less than a week. She did not even need to read the room or overhear the staff; the procedures inflicted upon her were so excruciating that the past eight years of torment paled in comparison.

Merely being pricked by needles, sliced open, dissected, and drained of blood was something she had long grown accustomed to. But the agony of something gnawing away at her from the inside was a torment she had yet to build an immunity against.

Something was rewriting her from within. From her internal organs down to the finest capillary in the tips of her toes, everything was being torn apart and remade. Once an experiment began, losing consciousness for a day or two was routine, and every time she came to, she writhed in unadulterated agony.

Every time she blacked out and reawakened, she could feel her body becoming less and less her own.

Eventually, she was strapped into full-body restraints and transferred to another facility. As they wheeled her through the corridors, she noticed something peculiar: the presence of people around her had dwindled drastically.

After pondering the anomaly for a moment, she quickly arrived at the obvious conclusion.

They're all dead.

Even with her innate cellular regeneration, there were countless moments when she genuinely believed she would never wake up again. What chance did those without healing abilities—or with only feeble ones—ever stand? They had died, of course.

The experiments were ruthless. As if driven by some desperate deadline, the researchers burned through test subjects without a moment's pause.

Three months passed.

She realized that the ten thousand "friends" she once sensed had been whittled down to barely a dozen. And she herself was no longer called by her old designations.

She was not called by her forgotten human name, nor Subject 108, nor EH_3021.

She was called the "Successful Creation."

The new name bestowed upon her—the very first successful creation—was Astrea.

Life as a "successful creation" was an improvement compared to before. Whether conditions had truly gotten better or she had simply grown numb to the torture, she couldn't say, but at least there were no more procedures that left her writhing in convulsions. To her, an experiment that did not hurt was practically a vacation.

That respite lasted about a week.

It was not an escalation in experiments that brought it to an end, however.

Bang, bang, bang—!

After sharp bursts of gunfire and muffled explosions rattled through the corridors, the door to her cell swung open. Standing on the other side was the very same woman she had seen three years ago: Researcher Sara.

The only difference was the menacing assault rifle gripped firmly in Sara's hand.

"There's no time. Follow me, quickly."

Sara rescued her once again.

It took barely an hour to fight their way through the laboratory and reach a starship docked at the port. Yet in that single hour, Astrea's clothes had become thoroughly drenched in blood.

Nor were her wounds merely superficial. Though hidden from sight, her internal organs were twisted and torn. In her desperate attempt to protect Sara—the woman who had now saved her twice—she had pushed her unfamiliar abilities far beyond their limits.

"...I'm okay."

Astrea showed no sign of her agony. Pain was second nature to her.

Watching her, Sara grimaced with heartache. She spent several frantic moments punching coordinates into the ship's navigation console, then pressed a handwritten note and an information terminal into Astrea's hands.

"No matter where you land... show them this. Please."

Sara turned and headed back outside the ship, declaring she would buy time. Soon after, the vessel was hurled into the vast expanse of deep space.

Having shaken off their pursuers, she and the ship sailed through the sea of stars for days on end.

Yet something had evidently gone wrong with the craft.

At a certain point, alarming sirens began to wail throughout the hull. As violent tremors shook the ship, her honed instincts guided her straight to the escape pod bay. Pushing her unfamiliar esper powers to their absolute brink once more, she fled the exploding vessel and threw herself into an escape pod.

And in the very instant the pod ejected into the void, a singular sight caught her eye.

A lonely planet resting amidst the deep, pitch-black dark of the cosmos like a radiant blue glass marble.

Earth. The paradise she had dreamed of ever since she was a child.

Etching that breathtaking vista into her memory as her final sight, her consciousness snapped, and she drifted into darkness.

Heavy-hearted.

There was no better word to describe what I was feeling right now. Thinking that throwing myself into some intense task might clear my head, I had gone all-out clearing Gates for the first time in ages, but the knot in my chest refused to loosen. I even buried myself in reading for hours, yet the gloom didn't lift in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠slightest.

"Dammit."

Curses kept slipping past my lips. That was just how tangled my thoughts were.

The reason my mind was such a chaotic mess was entirely due to the story I had heard yesterday evening. The tale recounted by the pure-white girl—no, the Hero, "Astrea."

Her story had been nothing short of shocking.

It wasn't merely the trauma she had endured that shocked me. Of course, the crimes against humanity committed against her were horrifying and deserving of every ounce of condemnation, but to me, another piece of information hit far harder.

Espers and regular humans waged a full-scale war?

Having spent the last twenty years stranded on Earth, I had been completely in the dark. It had never once crossed my mind that the humanity exiled into outer space would tear itself apart in a civil war.

"If another war breaks out at this rate..."

Human extinction would be guaranteed.

Whether the Esper Republic won or the Human Alliance triumphed, neither side would ever willingly concede defeat. It would end in mutual destruction, or at best, inflict catastrophic devastation that would take centuries to heal. And if that happened, forget about reclaiming Earth or reviving human civilization—even maintaining the human species would be an uphill battle.

"We are seriously so fucked."

I had resorted to the radical extreme of slaughtering half of humanity just to prevent our extinction, and now the surviving half was marching straight toward self-destruction.

What did that make my actions?

The massacre of a madman? The greatest traitor in human history?

Whatever the label, one thing was undeniable: it would have all been entirely meaningless.

Should I try subjugating the Main Gate right now?

If I could just manage to seal the Main Gate, humanity could return to Earth and resume living here anytime. After all, the Main Gate was the primary reason I had killed half of humanity and driven the rest into space in the first place.

However, sealing that Gate was practically an impossibility right now. Fifty years was the absolute bare minimum estimate, so trying to close it after a mere twenty years was pure suicide.

And even if I somehow closed the Gate, that didn't solve the problem either. Could anyone guarantee that the returned Espers and the Human Alliance would suddenly hold hands, laugh merrily, drop their weapons, and live in harmony?

I sure as hell couldn't.

"The situation's critical, that's for sure. But how the hell am I supposed to handle this...?"

Astrea's backstory made it blatantly obvious that things were on the brink of an explosion. Why else would the Human Alliance trample all over human rights, cage espers for human experimentation, and attempt something as insane as creating an esper chimera?

They obviously intended to use them as biological weapons of war. Theoretically, an esper chimera was the ultimate predator—a direct hard-counter engineered specifically to hunt espers.

Not like I have a way off Earth anyway.

Even if I did find a way to leave, how could a mere human like me ever mediate an interplanetary war raging across outer space?

I racked my brains for hours searching for a solution, but naturally, not a single viable answer emerged. Lacking both sufficient power and galactic knowledge, the actions I could take right now were severely limited.

After letting out a heavy sigh and stewing in my thoughts for what felt like an eternity...

"...Let's eat first and think later."

Before I knew it, it was time to prepare Astrea's meal.

Until now, she had been sustaining herself on intravenous IV fluids, but for an esper chimera like her, saline and glucose were hopelessly inadequate energy sources. So, I grabbed some of the stockpiled esper emergency rations and canned goods, prepared a decent meal, and brought it to her. Breakfast turned out to be a quiet success.

A meal that had worked once wasn't going to fail the second time.

While warming up more canned food and rations, I suddenly remembered that I had posted an inquiry on the gallery yesterday and sent out some direct messages. Astrea's revelations had been so shocking that it had slipped my mind entirely.

I quickly brought up the Demon Lord Gallery interface and my inbox, immediately checking the thread I had posted along with my received DMs.

Unfortunately, there were no new replies in my inbox, but quite a few comments had accumulated under my question post.

Compared to the triple-digit volume of comments, useful information was nowhere to be found. Perhaps that suspiciously helpful anonymous user from before was just an anomaly; the vast majority of the commenters were merely tossing out wild guesses.

As a result, the replies offered virtually no nutritional value. If anything, the comment section ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had been overrun by posts of a distinctly hazardous variety—comments that had nothing to do with the question and everything to do with painting a target on my back.

As expected of Demon Lords who lived for prying into others' secrets and digging up weaknesses, the real issue was the handful of comments from users who had already begun running background checks on me.

Throwaway speculative remarks aiming for a cyber witch-hunt had spawned long chains of replies, completely clogging up the thread. Among them were guesses so razor-sharp they practically drew blood, but the problem didn't end there.

Wait, isn't my gallery activity log supposed to be set to private?

Right from my very first week on the forum, I had followed the advice of Marquis of Wolves and Odin, setting my profile history to private. I hadn't touched those privacy settings once since then. Unless someone with supreme administrative power like the Chief Manager had tampered with my account, it should have been completely hidden.

Panicking slightly, I double-checked my user settings. Sure enough, it was still set to private.

After a moment's contemplation, the conclusion I arrived at was terrifyingly simple.

"These crazy no-life forum addicts..."

They either lived on the gallery twenty-four-seven and had memorized every single thread I'd ever posted, or they had manually dug through hundreds—if not thousands—of archived forum pages just to cross-reference my posting history.

"...Should I just delete my posts the second I get an answer from now on?"

I found myself seriously contemplating running an auto-cleaner on my account.