07 Test Subject 2

Tokyo, washed clean by the rain, saw even its darkest corners temporarily brightened.

That narrow alley was wedged between two old apartment buildings, its width barely enough for one person to pass through.

In a corner untouched by sunlight, several discarded cardboard boxes were stacked together, soaked by the rain into a deep, dark brown.

In the center of the bottom-most box, a small lump protruded abruptly.

"Rustle... scrape..."

The faint, fragmented sound was exceptionally clear in the deathly silence following the rain. The sodden cardboard covering the lump trembled gently, then once more.

The next second, a hand, overly pale and delicate, poked out from a gap in the cardboard.

The fingers were slender and knuckled, with faint, pale blue veins visible beneath the skin on the back of the hand.

This hand paused in the air for a moment, as if confirming something, before slowly peeling back the layers of cardboard pressing down from above.

Beneath the cardboard, a boy's face was revealed.

He was about thirteen or fourteen years old, his skin pale, his hair pitch-black and plastered wetly against his forehead.

His eyelashes were long, casting shallow shadows beneath his eyelids. He blinked blankly at first, then pushed himself up with effort, sitting up from the pile of boxes.

The boy sat on the top layer of cardboard, looking down at the thin white hospital gown he wore. There should have been a serial number on the left side of his chest, but now, only a circle of torn threads remained.

Fragments of memory surfaced from the depths of his consciousness.

He had lived in the laboratory for as long as he could remember. Pure white walls, cold fluorescent lights that never turned off, and an air forever permeated with the mixed scent of disinfectant and some kind of chemical reagent.

At first, there were ten children just like him.

They had no names, only numbers, assigned in the order they arrived at the laboratory.

He was 07, the seventh child to be brought in. No one knew who had sent them, and no one told them why.

"You are all the chosen ones," the people in white coats would always say, their voices muffled behind masks. "For a greater goal."

The weekly biological experiments began with simple drug allergy tests.

Needles pierced their skin, injecting liquids of various colors, followed by the recording of reactions: rashes, vomiting, dizziness, high fevers.

The children huddled behind the glass of the observation room, watching the symptoms appear on each other, comforting one another by saying, "It will be better soon."

By the second year, the experiment content shifted to "drug resistance cultivation."

They began taking various pills and receiving more injections. Colds, fevers, diarrhea... these daily ailments became part of the testing.

A girl named 02 never returned to the ten-person dormitory after three consecutive days of high fever.

The third year, the fourth year... the children learned not to cry or scream during the experiments.

Because crying was useless; it only led the people in white coats to record data on how "emotional fluctuations affect physiological indicators."

Until the fifth year.

The experiment content changed to "toxin resistance testing."

The reagents began to include various viral prototypes. They heard the researchers whispering terms in private: "influenza variant," "neurotoxin sample," "blood pathogen."

That year, six beds in the ten-person dormitory became empty.

The remaining four children huddled in the corner of the room, sharing warmth.

07 remembered the boy named 03, who was always lively and would secretly tell stories about the outside world after lights out, even though those stories were likely all made up.

"07, I don't think I can make it," a white-haired girl named 09 sobbed one night, leaning against his chest. "03 hasn't come back for two days."

07 was only eight years old at the time. He patted the girl's back gently and said, "09, it's okay, we will hold on. 03 is just tired; he'll be back after a nap."

But he knew it was a lie.

The rule of this dormitory was simple: if someone was taken away and didn't return within twenty-four hours, they were never coming back.

In the corner, the other two children embraced each other, neither speaking. A suffocating pressure filled every corner of the room.

In the sixth year, 09 was also taken away.

The empty dormitory was left with only him. The nights became exceptionally long, and he couldn't help but wonder: why was he the only one who survived? Every time, he managed to pull through at the critical point where his body was on the verge of collapse.

Once, he finally couldn't take it anymore.

It was a night in the seventh year. Taking advantage of the researchers' distraction, he hid a shard of glass from a broken reagent bottle. After lights out, he lay on his bed and used the glass to slit his left wrist.

He watched expressionlessly as the red liquid dripped onto the bedding, feeling his body temperature slip away bit by bit, his consciousness gradually blurring.

When he finally closed his eyes, his heart felt only a sense of hollow relief.

But then, he opened his eyes again.

The pure white ceiling, the smell of disinfectant, an IV tube connected to the back of his hand.

His wrist was wrapped in thick bandages, and a researcher sat by the bed, recording something.

"Awake?" the person said without looking up. "Don't do that again. Your life is very precious."

From that day on, the laboratory assigned someone to watch over him. Every day, a different researcher took shifts, sitting by his bed, watching him eat, sleep, and complete his daily tests.

The only "special treatment" was that these attendants would occasionally teach him things: mathematical formulas, laws of physics, foreign language words...

There was also a female researcher who often snuck snacks to him, most frequently White Rabbit Creamy Candies produced in China.

In the eighth year, the experimental focus shifted to "physical function enhancement."

He began learning mixed martial arts, boxing, and jiu-jitsu. In the training room, he sparred with opponents of all shapes and sizes, learning how to subdue them with minimal effort, how to strike vital points, and how to escape when pinned down.

In the ninth year, combat training was upgraded to "practical application." This included assassination techniques, reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, environmental utilization, and intelligence gathering.

He was taken out of the laboratory to conduct drills in a training ground that simulated an urban environment.

In the tenth year, the genetic modification experiments began.

A purple serum was injected into his veins, and pain flooded his entire body. He had survived the first five times.

After each experiment, his physical functions improved significantly; during combat training, opponents he once had to face with his full strength could now be easily subdued, and complex knowledge could be logically parsed with just a single glance.

That was until the sixth experiment.

"Preparing for the sixth genetic fusion," the researcher's voice echoed in his ears.

The needle pierced the side of his neck, and the purple liquid was pushed into his body. The initial pain was similar to before, but then, a heart-wrenching agony erupted from the depths of every cell.

His vision began to blur, and all he could hear were his own heavy heartbeats and the alarms of the instruments.

Just when he thought he was finally going to die, the pain suddenly vanished.

No, it didn't vanish; it was replaced by an even more terrifying sensation, as if his entire body were dissolving, restructuring, and collapsing.

The last things he heard were the panicked shouts of the researchers, and the last things he saw were flashing red lights.

Then, he lost consciousness completely.

The boy pulled himself out of the memory and took a deep breath. The air after the rain smelled of damp earth.

He had escaped.

The last image he remembered was crawling out of the water, the freezing liquid filling his nasal cavity as he struggled to swim to the shore.

Surrounded by dense woods, he hid in the bushes and overheard the searchers talking:

"The biological experiment failed, and Director Kaneda has escaped."

"The higher-ups have issued an order to catch him; what a hassle."

"Stop complaining and hurry up to clean this place up. Get a move on, there are plenty of other tasks."

Kaneda Yamano was the man with the gold-rimmed glasses, the director of the laboratory.

Number 07 could see him behind the observation window every so often, always wearing a pristine white coat, always expressionless.

But one time, Number 07 saw him take off his glasses to wipe them, and those eyes... they were scarlet.

Number 07 shuddered and stood up from the cardboard box. His hospital gown clung to him, damp and uncomfortable. He checked his body: aside from the scars on his wrists, there were only needle marks.

It was as if those years of experiments had never happened.