The room smelled of iron and ozone. Monitors blinked in the darkness, their light slicing across rows of glass cylinders. Inside each one floated a fragment of what had once been human: neural tissue suspended in amber fluid.
I stood among them, pen still in hand, watching the final readouts scroll across the screen.
Subject 37 — Emotional Response Loop: Broken.
Result: Predictive Behavior > 98% Accuracy.
It was complete. Years of observation, manipulation, and cold calculation had reduced the chaos of human emotion to numbers, formulas, and patterns. With one model, I could predict loyalty; with another, fear. And though the corporation would weaponize it, that no longer mattered. I hadn't done this for money or ideology. I had done it for the understanding of control.
The door hissed open.
"Doctor Ren," the voice said, smooth and rehearsed. "Congratulations. The Board thanks you for your service."
I didn't turn.
"They never thank anyone until they plan to remove them."
A gloved hand moved, loosening a sidearm.
"You tried to use your model on the Board itself. Did you really think they wouldn't notice?"
I smiled without warmth. "Notice? Of course, I wanted them to. It was the final test — whether they were predictable enough to kill me."
The shot was clean. Heat lanced through my chest. The monitors flickered. Data spilled into static.
Even in death, the system responded exactly as expected. Perfect symmetry. Darkness folded over me.
Then came sound — muffled, like water pressed against ears. Warmth. The soft cry of a woman.
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe properly. Light stabbed through my closed eyelids.
Voices, rhythmic and foreign:
"Push! Just a little more—!"
A cry — not mine, but hers.
I was being lifted and wrapped.
"He's beautiful… our son… Ren."
Ren. A faint echo of another life whispered in my mind—a life of systems, betrayal, and calculation. And now, in a fragile infant body, that mind was reborn.
I drew my first breath in this world. Reflex, not emotion. Data. Observation. Analysis.
Outside, the wind stirred unseen trees. Energy thrummed faintly through every direction, a network alive and perceptible. Not electricity. Not magnetism. Something else. Something… mutable.
Chakra. Control precedes power. Observation refines truth. Evolution consumes the weak.
The final experiment had not ended. It had only changed form. A reincarnated mind awakens in a forgotten era. Emotionless, brilliant, and cold, Ren Soryu seeks not glory—only evolution. In silence, he begins to shape the world itself.