Chapter 133 U-731
I couldn’t let him escape. That much, I knew. Light, the so-called ssiah and ti traveler, shimred dangerously. The air around him wavered with static as he prepared to bolt, his eyes narrowing. If he leaned fully into his speed, there was nothing I could do, just as there was nothing he could do to hurt while my intangibility held.
It was a stalemate, except Light had the initiative.
I knew with a bone-deep certainty that if he escaped now, it might as well be my loss. I rembered what he had done. The vision Mother shared still haunted : the way Light razed an entire city, carving streaks of lightning through towers and people alike. The screams, the scent of molten steel. I felt that mory’s echo tightening in my throat, reminding of what he truly was capable of. He could kill if he regained the energy.
Right now, though, he was weakened. Every pulse of electricity running through him faltered, stuttering like a failing engine. I could feel his exhaustion, the trembling in his core, through the tendrils of my Empathy. No matter how carefully he masked it, his emotions thrumd against my mind with cold panic and a growing urge to flee.
He planned to retreat.
“You are not going anywhere,” I said, gripping his wrist before he could dissolve into lightning. “You are going to stay with .”
He twisted, sparks flaring between our hands. I phased forward, trying to synchronize the molecular slip of my body with his energy pattern. My intent was simple: end him. Yet in that surge of focus, sothing shifted. My intangibility tangled with my empathy, the two powers colliding in a way I had never experienced.
Light stumbled… no, we stumbled. His body tripped, his face scraping the asphalt with a dull, wet crack. A sharp pain that wasn’t mine shot through my jaw, followed by a cascade of confusion. My vision split, blurred, and then fused again. The world realigned itself around a body that wasn’t entirely mine.
It was as if I had beco him.
“What are you doing!?” Light’s voice shook through our shared throat. “Get out of my body!”
His panic flooded , raw and electric. I could feel his heart slamming, his nerves sparking erratically. The sensation was intoxicating, powerful, and terrifying. I laughed without thinking, my voice echoing inside both our minds.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Is sothing funny?” Light snapped, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him.
It was funny. The irony of it all. This god of lightning, this butcher, was now trembling because he could feel. He could feel , the cold weight of my empathy, wrapping around every secret he’d tried to bury. I could feel the fear building like static, a pressure behind his eyes. That was the thing about sharing a body: emotions were not just felt, they were contagious in a way that was intimate and imdiate. His fear vibrated through . It was a new texture of raw, animal, and very human.
I let myself sink deeper, because now that I had a toe inside his mind, the rest of him was only a door waiting to be pushed. The mad violence behind his smiles had given him power; the human tabs underneath gave leverage. He’d always toyed with people. I would toy with him back, differently and so much crueler.
“Light,” I whispered inside our shared consciousness, my words rolling like thunder through his thoughts. “Tell … what kind of life did you live?”
His fear spiked, a brilliant, blinding flare of emotion. And then I dove deeper, letting the world blur around us as I descended into the depths of his mind. There, among fractured mories and screams of static, I began to claw at the truth, intent on exposing, hurting, and humiliating him for everything he had ever done.
“Stop—stop—get out!” Light’s voice cracked, no longer the booming arrogance I’d co to despise but a trembling echo, small and desperate. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Please, just—leave alone!”
He clawed at his own head, fingers digging into skinless flesh as if he could tear out by force. “You don’t want to see it… what I’ve seen… what I’ve done… what they made do!” His words broke into static and gasps. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this! I didn’t choose this!”
The light around us flickered, his voice dissolving into pleading whimpers. “Please, Eclipse… Nick… whatever—just stop. I can’t… I can’t go through it again…”
When I blinked, the world around shifted into white. I found myself in a sterile, cold, and colorless space, the kind of white that hurt your eyes the longer you looked. I couldn’t move at first, but that made sense; this was a mory, not reality. Still, it was disorienting how real it felt. I could feel the faint buzz of air filters in the ceiling, the cold tile beneath my bare feet.
I stared at my hands. They were small and soft. It was the hands of a child. When I heard the trembling voice that ca out of my mouth, I realized this wasn’t . This was Light.
“Who am I?” I heard myself ask.
The question wasn’t mine. It was his, pure, confused, and terrified. I felt his breath hitch in his chest, the panic bubbling in his lungs. I was inside his fear. His innocence.
A chanical, dispassionate, and vast voice reverberated from everywhere at once.
“You are Subject U-731. Your job is to survive and beco the strongest soldier there is. We expect great things from you.”
My knees trembled. The word “survive” echoed in my head, over and over, until it beca all that I could hear. Then one of the walls hissed and parted like an opening wound. From the other side stepped a little girl.
She couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Her eyes were crimson, wide, wild, and she was drenched in blood. An adult’s corpse lay behind her, throat torn open, the body twisted at a grotesque angle. The little girl’s lips quivered, her face streaked with tears and gore.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” she whimpered, and then scread. “KYAAAAAAGH!”
She dropped to all fours, her limbs convulsing as bones cracked under her skin. Her teeth sharpened into fangs, nails blackened and curved. Her body tried to shift, to beco sothing else, a bear, maybe, but the transformation was crude and incomplete.
I felt Light’s body, my borrowed body, move on instinct. I stumbled backward, terror flooding my chest like fire. Her claws dug into my ribs, her face inches from mine. The hot, rancid sll of blood filled my nose.
“Grrrrrrr… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
She didn’t want to kill him, but sothing deeper and programd was making her. I tried to phase through her, but nothing happened. This was just a mory; my powers didn’t exist here.
“I—I don’t want to die!” I scread in Light’s childish voice. “I want to live!”
The words ca out broken, desperate… but familiar. It was as if soone had taught this child what to say when facing death. Like the instinct to survive had been carved directly into his brain. The bear-girl’s claws raked across my chest. Sharp, bright, and hot pain exploded through . The vision flickered. My lungs burned. My heart scread.
Everything went black.
For a mont, I thought I had died. But when I opened my eyes again, I was standing over the sa girl. She was dead. Her small body lay twisted on the white floor, a massive laceration tearing through her abdon. Her insides spilled out like spilled paint, vivid red against the blank white room.
Light… no, the child that beca Light… was holding a shard of tal in his trembling hand.
And I felt his voice echo in my skull, hollow and numb.
“I… survived.”
That was his first victory, and the beginning of everything monstrous he would beco.
Ti lost aning.
Days, maybe months passed, but it was impossible to tell in that white room. There was no sun, no shadow, no clock… only the cold hum of the walls and the echo of my own heartbeat. Sleep ca when I collapsed. Food ca through a slit in the wall. Water followed. Then another slit opened. And another child walked out.
Every ti it happened, I told myself this would be the last. Every ti, I was wrong.
The walls would speak again, that sa chanical tone slowly starting to grate in my ears.
“Subject U-731. Comncing evaluation sequence.”
The first few tis, I scread. I cried. I asked them to stop. The voice didn’t respond, only observed. The tests continued. “Good. You have exceeded expectations, Subject U-731. You have survived.”
Then ca another child. A boy with pale skin and black eyes who could make his bones grow like knives. He ca screaming, shaking, terrified, but he still attacked. When I broke his neck, the voice said again.
“Excellent. Efficiency: 94%. Adaptation: Optimal. You have survived.”
And again.
“Excellent. Efficiency: 95%. Adaptation: Optimal. You have survived.”
And again.
Every ti I won, I was praised. Every ti I killed, I was fed. Every ti I hesitated, I was punished with hunger, with cold, with silence. It beca a rhythm. Open wall. Opponent. Blood. Silence. Praise.
At so point, I forgot who Eclipse was. Who Light was. I was Subject U-731.
My hands grew red, my nails crusted dark. They never fully cleaned. They didn’t even bother giving new clothes anymore; what was the point? I’d just ruin them again. My power, super speed, was the only thing that kept alive. When I moved, the world slowed, and I was untouchable. When I stopped, I was just another corpse waiting to happen.
Sotis I fought children my size. Other tis, adults with powers I didn’t understand. People with claws, with fire, with voices that could tear your mind apart.
Why was I killing them?
Why couldn’t we stop and talk?
Why did we want to kill each other?
Eventually, I understood it wasn’t our choice. Sothing pushed us. Sothing deep and invisible pressed into our heads, filling us with hate, hunger, and fear. It wasn’t survival anymore. It was programming at the biological level with the intent to make weapons.
That realization didn’t free . It only made angrier.
Then ca the next opponent.
He looked like , sa size, sa fra, but his eyes glowed orange. Heat shimred around him. His movents were blurs of red fla and light. A speedster, like , but with fire licking off his arms and hair.
When he ran, the air burned. When I chased, the world turned molten.
He appeared to my left, a flicker of orange. I barely ducked in ti as his hand swept past, leaving a streak of heat that singed my cheek. He grinned, wild and manic.
“I’ll win this ti!”
We collided mid-run, a thunderclap of friction and impact. My arms burned where his fire touched , but I didn’t stop. I tackled him, we rolled, the air filling with smoke and heat.
He was fast, faster than , maybe, but he lacked control. His flas wavered, flaring wild. I feigned weakness, let him pin , then twisted, slipping under his arm and driving my hand into his chest.
He scread a shrill, human, childish scream, and I felt his ribs crack under my fingers. I pushed harder, faster, until I felt his heart give way.
The sll of burning flesh filled the air.
I fell backward, gasping. My lungs were on fire, my eyes blurred. I could still feel his heartbeat fading through my palm.
“Please…” I whispered. “I just want this to end…”
The voice answered at once, as if it had been waiting for to finish.
“Excellent performance, Subject U-731.”
“Adaptation confird.”
“Power output increased.”
“Prepare for the next evaluation.”
Another wall opened.
The sound was faint, like steel teeth grinding against each other. The white room expanded again, reshaping itself into sothing wider, colder. I braced myself for what was coming, but when I saw her, sothing inside twisted painfully.
She was young. Too young. Maybe six or seven years old, a few years younger than Light… no, U-731. Her white dress was spotless, too clean for this place, her dark hair neatly braided, her wide brown eyes flickering with confusion and fear.
She clutched her hands together, trembling. “C-Can you help look for my b-brother?” she asked. Her voice cracked halfway through, fragile, small.
No… please, no.
I felt a migraine spike through my head. For a mont, I couldn’t tell if I was still in Light’s mory or back in my own body. My vision blurred, my thoughts split into two… Eclipse and Light, fighting for control.
My real self scread inside this illusion: “Don’t do it.”
“This is a necessary sacrifice,” said Light. His voice was calm and detached, like soone repeating a line drilled into him a thousand tis.
Before the girl could even react, he moved. There was no sound. No flash. Just motion.
In less than a blink, Light appeared behind her. His small hand pressed against the side of her neck in a single sharp twist…
*Crack.
The girl’s eyes widened, her body stiffened as her spine poked beneath her skin. Finally, she collapsed slowly to her knees, the innocence draining from her face before she even hit the floor.
Silence filled the white room.
For a mont, nothing happened. Then the body began to cool, the blood pooling in a perfect still circle under her cheek.
I could feel the echo of Light’s heartbeat slowing down, the sharp pain in his skull as the adrenaline faded. I felt him realizing what he’d done. Not the child’s panic, not guilt… just a hollow ache where sothing human used to be.
I fell to my knees, clutching my head. My vision flickered.
“I can’t—” I gasped. “I can’t watch this anymore…”
But when I lifted my eyes again, I was no longer Light.
The world of the mory shifted slightly, its edges distorting like glass under heat. The child in front of , the boy, was still there. Subject U-731. Covered in blood. Chest rising and falling shallowly.
He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even alive, not in any aningful way. He just stood there, staring blankly at the little girl’s corpse. His hands twitched once, and then stilled.
When his gaze lifted, his dull eyes t mine.
There was no hate in them. No regret. Only emptiness. The emptiness of soone who had learned too early that survival was the only truth that mattered.
Light hadn’t lost his humanity here.
It had been ‘taken’ from him.
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