SSSSSS—!!! The sharp screech of erupting high-pressure gas still ricocheted frantically off the metal walls of the corridor.
Through the rolling, viscous white vapor...
"Ugh—HAH!" A horrific, frantic gasp tore through the air, like a drowning victim forcibly dragged from beneath the ice, their alveoli tearing open in an instant.
Immediately after, the blurry silhouette deep within the white mist struggled violently. The wheelchair emitted a teeth-grinding metallic groan. The body instinctively tried to curl up, arching its back to ward off the sensory tsunami, but the purplish-black restraints, embedded deeply into its flesh, pinned it relentlessly in place.
The mist began to thin amidst the violent gasps. Hair as piercing as karmic flames flew wildly in the turbulent air.
Erika saw her face clearly.
Physiological tears were pouring like a breached dam from her tightly shut eyes. The tears mixed with cold sweat—squeezed from her forehead by sheer, unadulterated agony—washing frantically down a face paler than any corpse.
But she didn't scream. She didn't break.
In that first instinctual spasm lasting less than a second, she made her first move upon awakening.
She forcibly stopped trembling.
Erika watched as she bit down on her cracked lower lip until it bled, a bead of bright crimson seeping out. Then, millimeter by millimeter, she raised her bowed head.
Her long, slender neck—which should have been held high with a secretive, innate superiority—was now straightened rigidly, even as the rough, filthy straps bit mercilessly into her skin. It was a hair-raising, morbid poise.
Her bloodshot eyes finally opened.
The harsh light caused the physiological tears to flow even more fiercely. Her pupils violently contracted, trembling violently against the glare.
Yet her gaze, as if tethered by an invisible iron chain, bypassed the crowd with terrifying precision and absolute subjection, landing squarely on Cassius.
Her cracked lips parted slightly. Her first words, accompanied by the rust-tinged air escaping her throat, were weak and trembling, yet every syllable smashed clearly into the dead silence of the corridor:
"Golden birds... break their proud bone," she gasped, swallowing mouthfuls of metallic air, her chest heaving violently. Her voice shook with excruciating agony, but her enunciation remained hair-raisingly pristine. "In the mud of putrid blood... blooms a red flower."
It was a poem. A cliché, overwrought piece of garbage, stiff in rhyme, overflowing with sycophantic elegance trying desperately to mimic high art.
A drop of sweat, mixed with blood, dripped from her chin. She closed her eyes briefly, then continued reciting in the most exquisite aristocratic cadence:
"The abyss's bitter wind... cannot extinguish the master's grace," she paused, forcing those cracked lips into a haunting, obedient smile, delivering the final, accidentally brilliant line: "For in my ashes... remains only his dawn."
Dead silence suffocated the corridor. Only her rapid, ragged breathing echoed in the air.
Pfft—! An extremely sharp, undisguised mocking laugh shattered the quiet.
Lynus stood a few paces away, holding his forehead, laughing so hard his shoulders physically shook.
"Cassius," Lynus turned, those pale blue eyes dripping with mocking malice, "Your taste is as appalling as your rhymes."
Cassius ignored him, stepping slowly behind the wheelchair.
His movements were deliberate, slow as if performing a sacred ritual. The hands that had just tapped out a death knell on the metal backrest now lifted, falling softly upon the wildly tangled red hair.
He began to comb her hair with his fingers.
The movement was hair-tinglingly gentle. Not a rough yank, not a disgusted prod, but genuine, patient grooming. His gloved fingers threaded through the tangled strands, meticulously undoing the knots formed by cold sweat and tears, smoothing the chaotic red fire until it lay docile once more.
He murmured to himself as he combed. His voice was incredibly soft, like coaxing a frightened animal. But there was zero tenderness in that tone—only the sickening satisfaction of a collector admiring a prized specimen.
"Birds." His fingers twirled a strand of red hair, rubbing it lightly, as if testing the weave of fine silk.
"Proud." The girl didn't move. Only the faint rise and fall of her chest proved she was still breathing. Her neck remained rigidly straight, tears still flowing silently, but her gaze—those bloodshot eyes—followed Cassius's fingers with unwavering devotion.
"Mud." His fingertip traced across her cheek, gently stroking the barely-there tear track.
"Grace." He paused, the corner of his mouth curving into a deeply satisfied arc.
"Ashes..." He gestured with his chin toward the row of half-dead subjects in wheelchairs on the other side of the corridor.
Lynus stood nearby, arms crossed, wearing an expression caught somewhere between a smile and a sneer. He didn't interrupt, watching it unfold like an entertaining, albeit pathetic, theatrical performance.
"Cassius," he drawled lazily, "Must you do this every single time?"
Cassius didn't look back. He continued combing the red hair, replying with absolute flat indifference:
"Dawn."
Lynus's smile froze for a fraction of a second.
Then, he moved.
Erika's head was violently jerked up by a pair of arms.
The movement was blindingly fast. Too fast for Erika to react, let alone struggle. Lynus had lunged from behind, one hand clamping like a vice over Erika's jaw, the other pressing hard against the back of his skull, forcibly propping his face directly in front of the red-haired girl's.
Their faces were less than ten centimeters apart.
Erika could see the heavy tears clinging to her lashes, the fresh blood welling on her bitten lip, the frantically pulsing blood vessels in her eyes.
Then—
Snap.
Lynus's right hand pulled away from the back of Erika's head and snapped his fingers sharply right next to his ear.
The sound was crisp. Loud enough to make Erika's eardrums ring.
But far more terrifying was the physiological reaction—his breath caught violently. It was as if an invisible hand had clamped around his throat, squeezing every ounce of oxygen from his lungs.
Snap. Another.
His breath hitched again. His vision blackened at the edges.
Snap. A third.
He felt his heartbeat literally skip a rhythm.
And in the exact microsecond each snap echoed— The girl before him, who had been as motionless as a marble sculpture, her gaze tracking only Cassius, experienced the exact same violent reaction.
With every snap, her breath caught in unison. Her frail body trembled microscopically. Those bloodshot eyes blinked, her pupils contracting to pinpricks before snapping wide open again.
She had fallen into the exact same rhythm. Like two machines wired to the same master switch. Like two puppets jerked by the exact same string.
Lynus leaned his handsome, twisted face between them. He looked at the pale, gasping Erika, then at the sweat-drenched red-haired girl, the corner of his mouth curling into a purely malicious arc.
"See, Cassius," his voice drifted over, carrying a light, infuriatingly casual tone. "My 'furniture' and your 'work of art' seem to have quite the synergy."
Snap. Fourth. Both their throats emitted a suppressed, choked gasp simultaneously.
Snap. Fifth. Another tear spilled from the girl's eye. Erika felt his heart hammering so hard it threatened to crack his ribs.
"Enough." Cassius's voice cut through the air, laced with an icy, suppressed fury. He finally stopped his grooming, turned, and stared dead at Lynus. "She is different from your consumables."
Lynus shrugged nonchalantly, completely releasing his vice grip on Erika's head.
Erika staggered backward, gasping violently for a lungful of rust-tinged air. The invisible noose around his neck finally receded. He wheezed heavily, feeling his deflated lungs tearing themselves open to accept oxygen, the black spots dancing in his vision slowly fading.
But his eyes, bloodshot from the hypoxia, remained riveted to that pale face just inches away.
The red-haired girl was also gasping violently. At his exact frequency. In his exact rhythm. Her tears still flowed, her lips still bled, her long neck remained rigidly straight.
But her eyes—those desperate pupils completely drowned in tears—had finally broken away from her master.
She was staring dead at him.
SPLAT—!!!
A sickening, wet thud—not entirely deafening, but utterly impossible to ignore—erupted without warning from behind.
Erika didn't know if he should look back. He instinctively observed the reactions of those around him.
But the Blue Cloaks— Showed absolutely no reaction.
Lynus still stood with his arms crossed, wearing that ambiguous sneer, not even bothering to blink. Cassius remained behind the wheelchair, his gloved fingers still lightly stroking the ends of the red hair. The other Blue Cloaks at the far end of the corridor were either whispering amongst themselves or listlessly inspecting their cuticles.
Not a single person looked back. Not a single person asked, 'What was that sound?'
It was as if the noise was nothing more than a raindrop hitting a tin roof. Only Erika trembled in terror amidst this absolute, terrifying apathy.
WHOOSH—
The heavy blast door at the corridor's end slowly slid open again. Several nuns pushed wheelchairs out, moving as silently as ghosts.
The chairs formed a neat line. Some were empty, the pale overhead lights illuminating large, grotesque, dark stains left on the cushions. Some still contained people—just like the previous subjects, they were strapped down mercilessly by thick belts, their heads hanging low, hovering in the liminal space between life and death.
The rubber wheels rolled over the industrial metal grating, producing a monotonous, teeth-grinding friction.
The Black Robe administrator, who had seemed welded to the floor from the very beginning, finally turned his stagnant, dead eyes. His gaze swept the corridor, passed over the Blue Cloaks, and finally settled on Lynus.
"The pipeline is clear. Ready?" The voice remained flat, as if merely reading instrument calibration data.
Lynus didn't answer immediately. He slowly raised his long, pale hand, his index finger pointing with absolute, crushing arrogance at the red-haired girl in the wheelchair.
"Except for her." Lynus's voice drifted over. It wasn't loud, but in this dead-silent corridor, it carried the weight of absolute madness. "Take the rest of that garbage and throw it all down."
Dead silence. In that instant, every sound in the corridor was forcibly choked off. The squeak of the wheels stopped, the nuns froze, and even the "living things" in the wheelchairs seemed to hold their final breaths.
Then, the corridor exploded.
"Lynus!! You mad dog!" The Blue Cloak who had complained earlier suddenly spiked his volume, waving his arms in sheer outrage. " It took me three whole months to cleanly strip his pain receptors! I haven't even collected a single set of baseline data yet!"
"What a tremendous waste." The brooding Blue Cloak, the one always claiming to be hungry, slowly licked his lips. His predatory gaze fixed on Lynus's back. "That piece of meat was fermenting just right… I was planning to dissect it myself tomorrow to study the organ mutations. With one 'throw it down' from you, you've robbed me of a meal."
"Cassius agreeing to let his 'bomb' act as the companion is a private transaction between you two." The third Blue Cloak's voice was frigid, dripping with an actuary's harsh calculation. "But now you are clearing an entire batch from the experimental queue. Lynus, I don't care how high your Deep Dive clearance is, you cannot use all of our research assets as bait for the abyss!"
The protests rose and fell, boiling over in the ash-black metal corridor. These death engineers, survivors who had crawled up from the abyss, were now red-faced, viciously attacking Lynus over their deprived "data" and "quality consumables."
But Erika could no longer hear what they were arguing about.
His hollow eyes had, at some point, completely broken away from the red-haired girl. His gaze passed right through the group of Blue Cloak nobles vehemently contesting their "property," and locked rigidly onto the left side—the massive French window occupying the entire wall.
Right at the exact spot where that sickening thud had just erupted.
On that impossibly clean, transparent blast glass, something was now pressed flat against the surface.
A mangled, bloody mass of flesh.
Amidst the background noise of Blue Cloaks screaming over experimental budgets, the thing was sliding down the glass. Slowly. Viscously.
It was completely unrecognizable as anything human. It was just a dark red lump of mashed gore, instantly crushed by some unimaginable pressure or abyssal force. It clung tightly to the slick glass, sliding down inch by agonizing inch under the pull of gravity, leaving behind an incredibly wide, shocking trail of thick blood.
Erika stood paralyzed, his pupils contracted to pinpricks from sheer, unadulterated terror. He stared fixedly at the lump of meat, watching as a small, pale section rolled out from the gore as it slid—the unmistakable, jagged remnant of a human finger bone.
"What is all the noise about."
Lynus's voice wasn't a shout, but it carried the absolute, crushing weight of an apex predator. It instantly penetrated the corridor.
The protests died down by half.
"I asked you. What is all the noise about." He repeated the question, the corner of his mouth curling into that spine-chilling, malicious arc.
The arguing ceased entirely. Lynus clasped his hands loosely within his dark blue sleeves, tilting his head slightly, looking down at his peers with an expression reserved for watching insects tear each other apart.
"Don't say I monopolize the resources." His voice was a slow, lazy drawl. His gaze swept over the ashen faces of the Blue Cloaks one by one, finally stopping on the colleague who had been throwing a tantrum over the "pain-stripped subject." He casually tossed out a single sentence:
"Next batch of defective products… I'll let you pick first."
A suffocating silence descended once more.
The Blue Cloaks were mute. The righteous anger on their faces was instantly overwritten by something extremely cold—the weighing of interests, the calculation of power, a bitter compromise they were unwilling, yet entirely forced, to swallow.
Lynus let out an extremely faint sneer—the victor's ultimate mockery of the mediocre.
And amidst this suffocating, callous transaction of human life...
Erika was still staring at the massive glass window.
He didn't know how long he watched it. He only knew that the living had already struck their sordid deal, but this lump of meat belonging to the dead...
Had not yet slid to the bottom.