Slady was violently thrown against a wall, inside a room. The red-haired woman was there too, but handcuffed and restrained.
He tried to get up, but the scientist glared at him viciously, preparing to strike.
"How does it feel to lose your friend and now return to your breeding ground, Slady!?"
He began to kick him brutally, but the redhead didn't move, paralyzed by the chains. Soon after, the man finished the beating, adjusting his gloves and leaving the containment room.
"This is just the beginning, Slady."
"Cough-cough!"
Slady spat blood, wrapping his arms around his stomach. The woman just stared at him with a weary expression.
"They forced me to bring you back, I didn't know why. They're... terrible, aren't they?"
Without answering her, Slady simply turns around, chest up, sweating from the blows. He tries to approach the redhead, but she asserts her position, ready to attack him.
"Don't come any closer, don't touch me, I'll hurt you."
Despite the words, the tone sounded more like a warning than a threat. Slady simply gave in to exhaustion, falling to the ground.
"What's going to happen?"
"I don't know, I just want... to get away from here. This place is cruel, cold, and... terrible. They've trapped me here after relentless hunts, and I've witnessed the same hell for countless years. And no matter how hard I try to be strong, they always trap me, always... I don't know how many years I've been here, but every second is unbearable."
"Prison... that word sounds almost familiar. I feel like I'm trapped inside myself, unable to scream, cry, or call for help. I feel like an empty shell unable to free itself from its own pain. I know what that pain feels like too... it's excruciating."
The woman felt strangely similar to the man, her fists clenching, gripping the chains that encircle her. Her gaze falls on the fallen figure before her, seeing it as a chance, a risky one, but a chance to free herself.
"Maybe I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I ask you to help me get out of this place, please..."
She tries to reach him, but is stopped by the chains. Slady just remains silent, letting out one last breath before losing consciousness.
***
Suddenly, he feels a painful shock in his chest. Opening his eyes, he sees another scientist dragging him by the hair; it was one of the ones who had killed Raizer.
'Damn you...'
Despite the pain, Slady's only thought was pure hatred.
He was abruptly placed on a bed, and the scientist took out a syringe filled with Renkai Energy.
"Let's move on to the first test."
He injected it into Slady's normal arm. He began to feel the corrosive energy flowing through his body, causing excruciating pain and fatigue.
"Hmph!!"
He fell off the bed, coughing and writhing, trying to somehow wring out the liquid with his mechanical arm.
"No... I can't die like this."
He salivated in pain, his mind going haywire. But before long, his body began to eliminate the Renkai Energy. The scientist laughed.
"Look... apparently someone has developed a way to increase their resistance to Renkai Energy."
He stepped on Slady's face, spitting on him.
"It's ridiculous that a failure like you managed to be as smart as some of our best scientists."
Slady didn't have time to resist the Renkai Energy, so the scientist injected another syringe into his neck. But this was the kind that weakened his body, the cause of his constant fatigue.
The scientist began to pull him by the hair back to the containment room where the red-haired woman was, opening the door and roughly throwing Slady toward her.
"Stay with that useless weapon!"
The scientist slammed the door shut, leaving them alone in the room. The woman felt immensely uncomfortable feeling him so close, but she didn't push him away, instead trying to comfort him in her own way.
"You're strong, you don't give up."
She hugged him to her chest.
***
A few days later, one morning, Slady and the red-haired woman were on the floor, scantily clad due to the countless cruel experiments performed on them.
"This seems almost routine for you..."
Slady says quietly, and the woman lets out a shaky sigh.
"But even so, I can't get used to it,"
the woman says. Slady just stares at her blankly.
"I didn't ask you about your name..."
"It's Ferinish, Ferinish Lawhell."
"Strange name, but beautiful."
"They gave me that name... Your name sounds a bit feminine, Slady."
"They asked me my name once... I didn't even know what it was. 'Slady' was the only thing I could think of at the time."
"And how did that name come to your mind, Slady?"
Slady places her hand over her temple, thinking.
"They once called me lady... they mistook me for a woman."
Ferinish gave a soft laugh. She seemed calmer, but she still hadn't lost her cold nature.
"I see."
She turned on the cold floor, staring into Slady's bionic eye through the darkness.
"You're the first person I've really talked to in a long time. You're not a bad man, Slady."
In that cold room, even with her power to manipulate fire, Ferinish still felt cold. Gathering her courage, she approached him and wrapped her arms around him, a little hesitant about the touch.
Slady was surprised; he had never been hugged in a non-intimate way, but he also felt the need to warm up, so he snuggled into her and accepted the embrace.
In that moment, Slady realized that this woman, Ferinish, even in terms of strength, was his exact opposite: strong, powerful, a true killing machine. But he also noticed his similarities to her and his vulnerabilities beneath a mask of coldness.
He felt good with her; even though he'd only known her for a few days, he felt... truly connected.
In the middle of the night, Slady woke up and felt his body... on fire? But it wasn't burning him or his clothes, it was just warming his body.
"Did she make those flames?"
He looked at Ferinish, noticing that she was indeed enveloping him in flames, but harmless flames.
He pulled away from the embrace slightly, feeling the flame begin to die down and the cold begin to return.
Instinctively, his body moved toward her, the source of the warmth. She had also moved a little in her sleep, wrapping her arms around him even tighter.
Normally, he felt uncomfortable with hugs too, even if they came from Elisa or Shaphira. But with that woman, he felt something strange... something he'd never felt before... a desire to reciprocate, not for temporary comfort, but because he truly wanted to.
This time, Ferinish's body didn't tense at her touch, but rather... as if he were at peace in that moment.
Two suffering and lonely souls, finally finding true comfort and peace in their hearts, so cold and yet... so wounded.
***
Early in the morning, a female scientist enters the room, holding two tranquilizer syringes. Upon entering, she only sees Ferinish lying on the floor.
"Where is he—"
Bang!
Slady appears behind her, shooting herself in the head with the pistol she'd managed to retrieve and fitted with a silencer.
"It's time for revenge."
Slady bends down, picking up the woman's scientist's clothes and badge. He begins walking through the corridors, entering a room where he finds his clothes, Ferinish's clothes, and her sword.
"They're more meticulous with her."
Slady grabs her clothes and puts them on quickly, silently grabbing Ferinish's kimono and weapon, and returns to the containment room.
"Woman, wake up."
He says softly, gently patting Ferinish's face. But he feels her legs wrap around his neck, instantly neutralizing him.
"I forgot she hates touch."
Ferinish wakes, pulling her legs away from Slady's neck.
"Sorry!"
She sits on the floor and sees that Slady has retrieved her things.
"Oh my... how did you do that?"
"It doesn't matter."
He tosses her the sword and kimono, and she quickly dresses and holds the sword in her hands... her expression growing much darker and colder.
"It's our time to get out of here."
Wasting no time, the two began to invade several rooms and kill all the scientists who were asleep or awake at that time.
But upon entering a specific room, Slady looked at a scene with... disgust.
It was an incubation room, where small incubators held small, deformed, limp creatures, some with multiple eyes, others with none, basically forced to avoid death in some bizarre way.
Slady, someone who had witnessed the worst things a man could ever witness, was disgusted by the stench and the grotesque sight of those laboratory-made humans.
"..."
He walked around the room, finding a computer in its center and began searching for information about those humans and even about Ferinish.
But one of them surprised him:
***
"The First Success"
The image was of a naked, 'unconscious,' weak body. But the fact that his hair was naturally long and other details on his body made Slady recognize that this was no ordinary creation...
It was himself.
"According to the experiment, the body was not awakened even with the most powerful electric shocks. It must be discarded to be consumed by the Renkai Creatures in a forest far from Libretanhya, or rather, from all society."
"A success or a failure? Both, his body and potential cannot be used due to a lack of consciousness. But the formula and method used to create the body, whether female or male, will be the same or close to the same."
***
So that was what Slady was... a weapon to be used and abused until a replacement arrived or he lost his usefulness and was discarded.
He couldn't even search for more information about Ferinish, as he ended up mashing the computer keys with his bionic hand.
"No... it doesn't matter... it never mattered to me."
"Of course you do, Slady."
Truth appears beside him, letting out a sigh.
"This shows how you, along with me, ended up being born. Or rather, you being born and me inside your mind."
"Please, shut up."
"Wait a minute...!"
Truth didn't even have time to explain; Slady had already banished her from his mind.
Returning to the corridors, he finds Ferinish standing in front of him, holding his sword, only his cold eyes staring at him in the darkness.
"Have you... done it?"
"Yes."
She walks toward Slady, standing in front of him.
"Let's go, together."
She extends her hand to him, and he holds hers firmly. Ferinish feels the urge to break his wrist, but he forces himself to keep their hands together.
As he begins to walk down the corridors, Ferinish kicks open a room door.
"This was the exit route that..."
Ferinish looks at the empty space in the room, where an Inferius should have been to escape.
"They probably knew something might happen, so they decided to confront and lock the Inferius so we couldn't escape,"
Slady says.
"Damn."
Still holding hands, she continues to lead him to several rooms.
"Where is this exit?"
Ferinish mutters to herself, looking at a door.
"This must be it."
When she tries to pull it, she can't; the digital part of the door asks for a password. Slady sighs and turns away, going to separate her hands...
"I'll look for the password—"
Boom!!
Ferinish pulled Slady back as she destroyed the door with a single kick.
"That's one brutal woman."
Without time to think, a voice echoed through the hallways.
"Exit door destroyed, preparing to eliminate intruder!"
Suddenly, several firearms emerged from within the walls, beginning to fire at the two. Slady quickly threw herself to the ground alongside Ferinish, her mechanical claws emerging from her back and beginning to cut through all the ammunition at high speed.
"..."
"..."
The two just stared at each other for a few seconds, with Ferinish below Slady and Slady on top.
After the firearms' ammunition ran out, the voice echoed again.
"Intruder not eliminated, self-destruct system for exit area activated."
Slady and Ferinish quickly got off each other and began running toward the exit... in a maze.
10...
First corridor: A Renkai Creature attacked them, and Ferinish eliminated it.
9...
Second corridor: Snakes climbed to the ceiling to poison them, and Slady eliminated them.
8...
7...
6...
5...
Third corridor: The two were trapped, with fire launchers activating. But Slady escaped with his claws, and Ferinish destroyed each one and followed him into a small corridor.
4...
3...
2...
Fourth corridor: The exit
1...
At the last second, the two managed to reach the exit just as the explosion occurred. Their bodies were thrown into the air. Ferinish quickly wrapped his body around Slady's body in a protective instinct, and the two fell onto an icy, snowy surface.