In the first few seconds, he tried hard to keep his eyes open, seemingly wanting to stay conscious, but that was futile.
Dizziness, nausea, the sharp pain of internal organ shock, thick and sticky blood… including the entire noisy world, gradually moved away from him, like a river from another life.
It seemed he had fallen like this before, but he couldn’t remember anything.
Black mist rose from the ground, converging from all directions, slowly enveloping his vision, turning the five senses into a silent plain.
“…quickly spread out the search…” “Damn, can he survive falling from that height…” “Grab him, damn it!…”
The city lights were bright in the distance, but the wind at the cliff was bone-chillingly cold. Barking dogs and soldiers’ curses echoed in the black night, countless flashlights sweeping back and forth.
Suddenly someone shouted: “There!” Si Nan, covered in blood, crawled out from the cliff’s bushes, stumbling forward a few steps before being pounced on by several military dogs.
“Got him, quick—” “Bite him, teach him a lesson!”
Who am I? Where am I? What is this place?
All pain and struggle blurred in the chaos, and he suddenly found himself very small, with small hands and feet, unable to push away the ferocious dogs.
Piercing laughter, glaring flashlights, the hot breath of beasts, the cold and damp grass; countless bizarre scenes turned into blades in the void, viciously cutting through the brain’s central nervous system until blood flowed. The last thread of human consciousness snapped. Hatred burned blood into his pupils, and in the moment before falling into darkness, he only heard a roar from his throat that didn’t sound human at all.
“Four military dogs and two soldiers killed in the line of duty, six injured, two critically…” Si Nan opened his eyes in a pale white laboratory.
The hexagonal space was filled with mirrored walls. He raised his head, and countless familiar yet young faces looked back at him from all directions. Bloody bandages were messily wrapped around his black hair, and he was tied to a chair resembling a dentist’s chair with handcuffs and several electrical wires.
“Electrocution,” someone said coldly.
Unexpectedly, electricity suddenly crawled over his body, and Si Nan let out a miserable scream, his small body violently shaking, then struggling desperately! The electric shock ended after a few seconds.
Little Si Nan continued to twitch, painfully opening his eyes to see the laboratory mirror in front of him change, revealing several experimenters wearing white masks: “What is your name?”
“…” Si Nan panted heavily, gritting his teeth.
The electric shock stopped, and Si Nan’s entire body convulsed, his vision blurry, the pain’s aftermath leaving him disoriented for a long time before slowly seeing the surrounding scene.
The experimenters appeared on the screen, coldly watching him: “What is your name?”
Si Nan turned away, his chest heaving like he was dying.
“Electrocution.”
Time became exceptionally long in the endless torture.
After countless rounds of pain, Si Nan looked like he had just been pulled from cold water, his black hair wet and sticking to his pale forehead, lips blue, constantly shivering, with fine electric shock marks covering the exposed skin of his hands and feet.
“What is your name?”
……” Sinan gasped for a long time before finally speaking, his six-year-old voice raspy like it had been ground by sandpaper:
“Noah.”
The experimenter began recording.
A few seconds later, the screen changed, showing a row of test tubes from left to right with different colored liquids – light blue, light red, emerald green, and scarlet, extending to a horrifying deep black on the far right.
The experimenter’s mechanically altered, unchanging voice spoke again:
“The two drug injections given daily to the test subject and to you.”
“Which two specific drug agents?”
Little Sinan’s pupils dilated, staring directly at the test tubes, gradually seeping a fierce look in his eyes –
A cornered small beast driven to desperation, burning with anger and madness.
The electrical wires crackled, and the handcuffs made an intensely taut creaking sound. The experimenter closed the screen, and the next moment a voice said: “Electric shock.”
A heart-rending scream echoed through the laboratory until it became voiceless.
Some time later, Sinan awoke from unconsciousness, his brain in a haze, with fragmented memories.
He blankly stared at the snow-white metal ceiling, meeting the gazes of countless versions of himself.
The door silently slid open.
He moved slightly, barely looking up.
A middle-aged man in a suit, blonde and blue-eyed, steadily approached – a face familiar from numerous television and newspaper appearances. However, this face now looked nothing like his usual public speaking demeanor – not vibrant and friendly, nor solemn as during TV broadcasts. He appeared cold.
He stood before Sinan, scanning the six-year-old’s body continuously twitching from electric shock, slightly narrowing his eyes. Suddenly, he pulled out a small knife from his key chain, cut the wires, and with two clicks, opened the handcuffs.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked flatly.
“……”
“Do you know who I am?”
“……”
The silence continued for a long time, but unlike the experimenter, the man didn’t coldly say “electric shock”. Instead, he showed an abnormal patience, staring at Sinan’s wary eyes, and slowly said: “I’m your new father.”
Slap! A swift punch was abruptly stopped. The man gripped Sinan’s wrist, forcing his hand down inch by inch.
“You’re not my dad…” Sinan rasped, staring at him.
“My dad is sick, sleeping in a wooden box… he’s just sick…”
“Like this?” the man sneered, easily dragging Sinan to a corner of the laboratory and swiping a card to open a metal door.
Several ragged, skeleton-like people wandered in the open space, dragging their feet, desperately reaching forward, emitting unconscious, miserable howls. Seemingly startled by human presence, these living dead slowly turned, staring directly over, beginning to move towards the entrance.
Sinan fearfully stepped back half a step, then was grabbed and pushed inside by the man.
“Break their necks, or you’ll die.”
The demon-like voice from behind would penetrate his memory, taking root in his subconscious:
“Kill them. Destroy their brains.”
But his eyes were half-closed, his eyelashes obscuring all expression, with no discernible focus.
Yan Hao’s face rapidly turned red, then blue, and his uninjured hand trembled as it grabbed Sinan’s wrist. However, in the rapidly deteriorating oxygen-deprived situation, all his struggles were futile.
…Why…he thought painfully.
Wake up… please, Sinan, wake up…
His inner plea was destined to be in vain.
Yan Hao heard his throat emit an unbearable creaking sound, his vision blurring and darkening; in the moment before falling into the abyss, he saw Sinan raise his hand, fingers sharp as knife tips, reaching toward his eyeball.
·
Who am I?
How was I born?
Countless living beings, born and dying, experiencing joy and sorrow, with time accumulating into history washing over every rock on Earth, how did a “me” suddenly appear?
“What have you turned me into? What have you turned him into?!”
The sixteen-year-old boy stood in the overgrown grassland, pointing at the moss-covered iron-gray tombstone behind him, his scream echoing through the cemetery: “Did you ask our opinion? Do you know this is not what he wanted? Why forcibly retain someone who has already left? Let him go!”
The boy staggered backward, looking at a woman in an expensive black dress as she wept uncontrollably.
“You’ve turned us all into monsters, without time or life and death, you’ve turned the one you loved into a monster…”
