Harold stood over the broken form on the floor, watching the teenager's lips move in a silent, erratic rhythm. Ethan's eyes had rolled back, showing only stark white, his body twitching as he muttered incoherent fragments into the dirt.
So... Eliza did something to him, Harold realized, narrowing his eyes at the limp boy. That dark IV drip. She altered him before he even woke up.
He stared down at Ethan a moment longer, shaking his head.
Pity. The brat actually had decent form. Sad he had to collapse like a defective unit.
Harold took a slow breath and turned toward Eliza, who was lying flat on her back, her breathing shallow and ragged.
What happened to her? She was standing triumphant just a second ago...
Eliza stared up at the concrete ceiling, her vision darkening at the edges.
Is this where I end...? No... I refuse...
Spurred by pure survival instinct, Eliza dragged her paralyzed frame across the metal floor grates, her trembling fingers clawing toward a low steel cabinet. Dragging herself inch by inch, she pulled a clear vial from the emergency kit and jammed the auto-injector deep into her forearm.
The color returned to her face in a sudden, violent surge. She gasped for air, though her legs remained completely numb beneath her.
Clutching the cabinet for support, she turned her head and offered Hayato a pale, bitter smile. "I'm... cured..." she wheezed.
Hayato, propped against the opposite wall with blood pooling beneath him, returned the smile.
"Glad to hear it, Doc..." Hayato rasped. He planted a knee onto the grate, trying with every ounce of his remaining strength to force himself upward. But his body buckled instantly, coughing up a thick spray of crimson.
"If it weren't... for these injuries... I'd be on my feet..."
Eliza's smile faded, replaced by a look of sheer, unsettling gravity.
Beside her, the bio-engineered monster moved without a command. Swinging its massive, calcified arm, it drove a brutal bone-blade straight through both of Hayato's knees, pinning him flush to the floor.
Hayato collapsed flat onto his stomach, the wet sound of tearing muscle echoing through the hallway.
Eliza watched him, her chest heaving as she breathed through the pain. "I always knew you were different, Hayato."
Hayato's head rested in his own blood, but his lips curved into that same, insufferable smirk. "Is that... supposed to be a compliment?"
Eliza didn't answer. She only stared at his face, haunted by the smile.
"What are you waiting for, Doc?" Hayato called out, his voice cracking through the crimson stain over his teeth. "Kill me... now."
Eliza's eyes widened.
In an instant, the sterile, blood-soaked corridor dissolved from her mind, replaced by the warm, golden glow of a quiet afternoon years ago.
She was wearing a traditional white kendo gi, standing at the edge of an open-air dojo courtyard. A few yards away sat a young boy on a wooden bench, wrapped in identical training clothes. He was quiet, gazing up at the sky, deep in thought.
When he noticed her watching, the boy turned and offered her a bright, effortless smile.
In the reflection of his vibrant, lively eyes, Eliza saw her younger self—unburdened, whole, and full of promise. Then, she saw here present self, in his bright eyes.
The memory shattered.
Eliza snapped back to the cold reality of the Second Branch. She stared down at Hayato lying in a pool of his own blood.
It was the exact same smile—but the eyes staring back at her were completely dead.
Eliza stepped back, her voice barely a whisper. "You've changed, Hayato..."
Hayato's smile vanished instantly. His brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Where the hell did that come from...? You were about to kill me a second ago."
Eliza looked down at him, her gaze hollow. "You're already dead."
The words struck Hayato like a physical blow. His casual demeanor evaporated into thin air, replaced by a raw, terrifying desperation.
"THEN KILL ME!" Hayato roared, his vocal cords straining to the brink. "KILL ME NOW!"
Eliza flinched, taking a involuntary step backward.
A single tear escaped Hayato's left eye, cutting a clean path through the drying blood on his cheek.
Eliza's eyes were wide and her mind drifted once more into the past—to the quiet bench beneath the spring trees.
"I wish our fathers would just open their eyes and see the light," young Eliza sighed, staring at her hands.
"Well, we can't change what they do," young Hayato replied, swinging his legs casually off the bench. "But we can control who we become."
He looked over at her with a soft, playful grin. "I just hope we don't end up like them. I hope we never lose our light."
"I'd hate that," Eliza admitted quietly. Hayato nodded.
Eliza looked up at the sky, her voice dropping into rare sincerity. "How do people even bring themselves to experiment on fellow human beings?"
Hayato spoke, "They don't see that... just like us... those subjects are someone's loved ones..."
"KILL ME!"
The bloodcurdling scream shattered the memory into dust, dragging Eliza back to the nightmare in the lab.
Hayato was sobbing uncontrollably—crimson tears mixing with blood as he screamed at her, his expression twisted into pure, unadulterated hatred.
"Hayato..." Eliza whispered, her heart seizing in her chest.
"We both lost our light..." she wept softly, tears streaming freely down her face as she looked at the mutant she had built, and the broken ghost of the boy she used to know.
A few yards away, Shisui struggled to force himself up from the floor.
Before he could regain his footing, Harold stepped in from his blind spot, driving a heavy right hook into the back of Shisui's skull and slamming him face-first into the concrete floor.
"Don't worry about your friend," Harold rumbled coldly. "He's dying anyway."
Shisui slowly pushed himself up, wiping blood from his forehead as he rose into a low, completely unfamiliar stance. "A brute like you... isn't worthy of taking my life."
Harold grinned, cracking his massive knuckles. "I live for arrogance. Let's see if that stance is for fighting, or just for show."
Harold lunged forward like a battering ram, launching a massive right straight. Shisui didn't dodge; he absorbed the crushing blow directly to his sternum, using the momentum to step inside Harold's guard and wrap his right hand tightly around Harold's throat!
Before Harold could react to the iron grip, Shisui drove a succession of brutal, short-range knees straight into Harold's face.
Harold thrashed, unable to pull back with his windpipe clamped shut. Reaching out in a blind rage, Harold threw a wild left hook, but Shisui dodged, driving a heavy counter-strike towards Harold's cheek. Harold retaliated with a knee to Shisui's stomach, forcing a gasp of air from his lungs.
Capitalizing on the opening, Harold grabbed Shisui's arm—the one still clamped around his throat—and twisted it with terrifying, superhuman force.
CRACK-SNAP!
Shisui's arm twisted at an impossible angle as the bone shattered beneath the pressure.
Harold sneered, pulling his opposite arm back as dark energy surged through his muscles. "BONE-SHATTERING PUNCH!" he bellowed.
The strike whistled through the air toward Shisui's face. At the absolute last microsecond, Shisui jerked his head aside, but the blow slammed squarely into his left shoulder blade!
CRUNCH!
The force tore through muscle and cartilage, breaking Shisui's shoulder, fracturing several ribs, and blasting him into the concrete floor.
Harold stood over Shisui's motionless body, breathing heavily as he adjusted his vest.
"With this level of strength... did you fools genuinely believe you could take down the Second Branch?" Harold mocked, looking around the ruined laboratory. "You couldn't even break past us... let alone Number 0, our standard bio-mutants, or the Special Mutants above them."
Harold turned his back on Shisui, taking heavy, triumphant strides toward the kneeling, bleeding Hayato.
Suddenly, a faint sound echoed from behind him.
Harold paused, shaking his head in annoyance. "Still trying to stand...? Why won't you just accept—"
Harold cut himself off mid-sentence.
The air inside the subterranean lab instantly plummeted into a freezing, suffocating stillness. A wave of raw, unchecked murder intent radiated from behind him, so heavy it physically weighed down on the atmosphere.
Eliza gasped. Even the mindless bio-mutant froze, slowly turning its massive, calcified head toward the back of the chamber.
Propped against the shattered doorway stood a figure.
"E... Ethan...?" Hayato whispered through bloodied lips.
Ethan stood upright. His head was bowed slightly, his breath coming out in long, rhythmic bursts of white steam. When he slowly raised his face, his pupils had vanished—replaced by a pair of glowing, crimson-red eyes.
Outside the subterranean complex, the storm had reached a blizzard pitch. Thick sheets of white snow blanketed the ruined wooden shacks and crumbling stone foundations, burying every track in sight.
Number 0 walked calmly through the center of the abandoned village, his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his dark overcoat.
He paused near the snow-dusted fountain, scanning the silent perimeter with sharp, analytical eyes.
Nothing here... Number 0 thought, his breath swirling into the freezing air. So it was just a waste of time.
He let out a quiet sigh, adjusting his collar against the wind. "I should head back down..."
Number 0 turned on his heel to walk back toward the hidden surface entrance.
STEP.
Directly behind him, a sleek white boot pressed firmly into the fresh snow.