That idiot really was faking it

Ririko stood with her arms crossed over her chest, coldly watching two guards enter behind her and haul Herman off the floor.

"What are you doing?!" Herman struggled, her wrists bound behind her back and a strip of gray cloth pulled tight across her mouth.

The guards dragged her out. As they passed Ririko, Herman suddenly froze.

She saw a smile on Ririko's face that no human should have been capable of.

That smile was like a bottomless, icy pool, capable of dragging a soul into the abyss.

"Since you care so much about Arkham," Ririko said, "why don't you... offer yourself up as a test subject, too..."

In an act of great "kindness," she explained where Herman was headed next.

Herman was shoved out of the cell, a muffled, strangled sound escaping her throat.

No matter how hard she struggled, she could only be dragged mercilessly toward No. 5 Laboratory.

The corridor fell silent again.

As Ririko left the cells in E Block, a faint sound suddenly reached her ears.

She stopped.

"Who's there?"

Ririko looked back down the corridor. No one was around.

The rustling sounded like someone trying to speak in a dark room, only to have their mouth covered every time they were about to make a sound.

Yet she felt she knew whoever was speaking. She even felt that the sound had existed inside her body all along...

She followed the sound to a door at the end of the corridor.

Without hesitating, Ririko pressed her employee card against the reader.

A green light came on.

The door opened a crack, and the rustling abruptly doubled in volume, like a layer of gauze being peeled away to reveal something denser and more skin-crawling beneath.

For some reason, Ririko was certain those sounds had something to do with her.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside. A step led downward before her.

She took three steps down. Once her eyes adjusted to the dim room, she saw a large number of cylindrical tanks before her.

The tanks stood taller than a person, arranged in neat rows that stretched to the far end of the room.

Ririko's heartbeat quickened. She walked to the wall and felt around for a switch.

Overhead, fluorescent tubes lit up one after another with a sickly white glow.

As everything in the room sprang into view, Ririko's pupils contracted sharply-

Every one of those "tanks" contained a grotesquely abnormal human body!

"They" floated in pale yellow liquid, their limbs spread at unnatural angles.

Some had only an upper body, a rib cage and head floating all alone;

Some had several arms growing from their bodies, like elongated human centipedes;

Some had several heads joined together, facing different directions and tearing at one another...

Though every body was grotesque, they all shared one thing:

"They" all had long black hair, its strands floating in the pale yellow liquid like a cloud of dispersing ink.

Ririko knew that seemingly living hair all too well-

Every day, she stood before the mirror and brushed that same long, beautiful hair.

She walked forward in a daze, looking at the floating bodies as a powerful conviction welled up inside her.

These were all test subjects implanted with the "Tomie Organization"!

Hugo had implanted that same horrifying thing in her body, yet she had survived without mutating-or rather, she had not begun to mutate yet...

That was why he had called her "special."

She reached the last tank. The body inside had a long tear down its back, with another body emerging from the opening.

"They" were even twitching faintly!

Ririko stared, dumbfounded. What kind of monsters were these?!

Suddenly, both faces in the tank turned at once, staring at her with open eyes.

"They" could not only see her, but speak as well:

"You... will become... like this, too..."

The voice emerged from the tank with a distorted echo.

Then the "things" in every tank came alive.

Some twisted their heads, some opened their mouths and laughed wildly, and some slapped the inner glass walls with their extra arms, making dull thudding sounds...

Ririko's heart hammered. She stumbled backward, then turned and ran out of the room.

The metal door slammed shut behind her.

Without looking back, she ran to her dorm room. Only after shutting and locking the door did she stop.

Her chest heaved violently, her lungs burning...

She leaned against the door, gulping down the stale air. It took a long time before she calmed down.

The same question circled in her mind-would she turn into one of those grotesque bodies, too?

Instinctively, she walked over to the mirror set into the wall.

She reached up to touch the gauze over her left eye. Just then, the eyeball beneath it suddenly began to hurt.

But the eyeball in her left socket was already gone...

She had checked, and Harley had checked, too. A lost eyeball could not grow back. That was common knowledge even NPCs understood.

Yet now her eyeball hurt.

She pinched the edge of the gauze and slowly lifted it.

Beneath it was a pale eyelid with a perfect double crease, its lashes long and curled like butterfly wings.

She opened her left eye, and the world became whole in an instant.

Her reflection had two bright eyes. A new eyeball had "grown" back inside her left socket...

She touched the area beneath her left eye with a fingertip. A new mole had appeared there.

Its size and position were exactly the same as those on the faces in the tanks-assuming "they" still had faces.

She carefully studied her appearance in the mirror.

She was beautiful. There was no question about it.

She had been beautiful before, too, but never to this degree.

She could find no flaw in that face, but neither could she find anything connecting it to her.

Without her realizing it, this had ceased to be her face.

She took a deep breath and immediately covered her left eye with the gauze again.

Someone as meticulous as Hugo must have noticed the change in her appearance, yet he had never questioned it.

He had always regarded her as a "test subject."

If he learned that this "test subject" had grown an eyeball, that experiment-obsessed madman would surely strap her to a laboratory table and dissect her for study.

He might even remove her other organs one by one to see whether they would grow back.

She was certain Hugo Strange would do exactly that!

She could not stay in Arkham any longer.

Ririko lowered her hand from her face, and as she turned, her arm struck the edge of the table.

The Clown Doll on the table fell to the floor and rolled over.

She picked up the ridiculous doll.

An absurd thought suddenly struck her. If Jerome were here, perhaps they could team up and escape. But now she had only herself to rely on.

She flipped the doll over and turned it in her hands, discovering that the clown's head could be detached.

With a gentle twist, she unscrewed its head.

A hollow, cylindrical socket was exposed in the doll's body. A tiny line of text was engraved on its inner wall.

L-527-1340.

As it happened, Ririko had studied Arkham's floor plan that day, and she understood what the code meant.

L Block, fifth floor, door 27. Could the 1340 at the end be the door code?

She stared at the code, her pupils slowly widening.

This was the doll Jerome had "shared" with her, and hidden on it was a code relating to Arkham...

That idiot really was faking it!