The air felt heavy in the white room. Too white. Too pristine. Mayu felt like a stain in this clinical environment, a fragment of shadow planted in the heart of a flawless world. She stood rigid, eyes locked on the man before her, his face half-hidden behind opaque glasses. His smile was anything but friendly—too wide, too practiced.
> "Aren't you angry?" he asked at last, his voice calm, as though he were a doctor posing a benign question to his patient.
Mayu blinked. She could feel her heart beating in her chest—not racing, but with a weighted, deliberate thud, as if each pulse dragged an invisible chain. She thought of Seth. Of Lia. Of Subject 45. Of everything they had endured to arrive here.
> "I should be," she said after an endless silence. "I should hate you. I should kill you on the spot."
His smile widened. "Then why don't you?"
She lowered her gaze to her trembling hands—not trembling with rage, nor fear, but with an ancient, accumulated weariness, ingrained in her flesh like a slow poison.
> "Because I want to understand."
He took a step toward her, then another. His shoes clanged against the white floor like hammer blows, each echo driving home the reality she faced.
> "Very well," he murmured. "Then I will show you."
He reached out to a panel on the wall, and without a sound, a screen folded down. A video began to play. Mayu instantly recognized the room: an earlier, less sophisticated version. Children filled the frame—dozens of them. She saw a little girl who looked just like her, bound to a table. The girl screamed in agonizing pain, but the camera never flinched from its lens. A machine injected some substance into her veins.
Mayu's throat tightened. Her stomach churned, but she remained upright, refusing to look away.
> "You want to know who you are, Mayu?" he asked softly. "You are the sum of all those failures. The final product. The most advanced prototype after hundreds of flawed attempts."
The footage shifted to another child. Then another—each one mutilated, broken.
> "You were not born, Mayu. You were designed."
She tore her gaze from the screen, jaw clenched. She could have exploded. She should have. Yet a frigid calm held her in place: her emotions lay frozen, glittering like shards in crystal. She observed them without surrendering to them.
> "Why now?" she demanded. "Why show me this?"
> "Because you are ready," he replied. "You stand on the brink of truth. And you must choose."
He made a gesture. A door slid open to the side, revealing another chamber. There, bound and weak, knelt Subject 32—an old companion, one of the survivors.
> "Kill her," he said. "And you will take her place."
Mayu staggered back. "You're insane."
> "No," he responded. "I am a scientist. You want to stop this project? You want to bring down the organization? Then become the weapon I created. Prove you can be it."
A shiver ran up Mayu's spine. The walls seemed to tighten around her, as though forcing her to make a choice.
Then she remembered something else.
A fragment of a distant memory. A blurry silhouette—a taller boy offering his hand to her in a dark corridor. A voice, distant and fading:
> "You are not what they intend you to be. You have a choice."
It was Akira.
His name rose unbidden in her mind. She did not know where it came from, nor why that memory surfaced now. But it carried with it a forgotten warmth, a faint light in the darkness.
She lifted her eyes, pupils alight with intense blue fire. The man recoiled.
> "I am not your weapon," she said. "I am what you failed to control."
She turned to the open doorway and walked toward Subject 32. Kneeling, she broke the bonds that held the survivor.
> "You have nothing to fear anymore," she whispered.
The man laughed—cold, mirthless.
> "And now what? You think the organization will let you go? You believe this world can still save you?"
Mayu faced him, hair drifting softly, her gaze piercing like a blade.
> "No. But I will save what can be saved. Even if I have to burn it all down."
Silence fell—heavy, oppressive—broken only by Subject 32's ragged breaths. Mayu supported her, then rose. She turned her back on the scientist, unafraid.
An alarm blared. The lights turned blood-red.
> "You won't get far," the man growled.
Mayu closed her eyes.
> "You said the same thing… when I was a child."
And she fled. With Subject 32 in her arms, she sprinted down the corridor, slicing through the darkness. Doors slammed. Sirens wailed. But she did not stop.
The fight was only beginning.