To Live Again, For the First Time!

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The professor cooled down after a bit, but the fire in his eyes never died.

His passion for his work would have been admirable if his job were not so... tricky to label, a job of various aspects, both bad and horrific.

"Lock the other six in the dungeon and bring this one to my laboratory." 

The professor spoke to F8, casually pointing at who he meant, but even if he didn't do so, F8 would also be able to guess the professor's intentions.

They were pretty obvious.

F8 nodded and went to work.

If the professor didn't specify a time, he meant that it had to be done instantly.

In the end, each one of the failed subjects was locked into a separate cell with their arms and legs tied up and mouth gagged to prevent suicide.

The cell was completely devoid of anything that they could hurt themselves with or use to break out, just 4 bare walls, no bathroom, toilet, holes, nothing.

There was but a slit under the door from which the tray with their small rations would be passing through.

If that slit didn't exist, the people from the inside wouldn't be able to tell which bare wall was the door from which they entered anymore.

F8 did all this as if he had done it hundreds of times, a little monotonously, a little melancholically and a little tiredly.

But he showed nothing on his face, he pitied them, but he didn't say anything.

The others didn't resist either, they knew that they were in no position to do so, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to escape, only attracting the eerie and wariness from those who would go on to control their fate.

Even if they had a chance to escape, something with the probability 20 times lower than winning a billion-dollar lottery, it was higher than 0.

Their survival instincts told them to lie low, even though both ends of the road were dead ends.

As for S3, F8 couldn't help but give her a pitiful glance, taking her by hand to the right room.

S3 thought of hitting his hand away, but it was good to keep a close watch on her enemy, if there was some sort of trap, she would have a meat shield to protect herself with.

If F8 knew what this little girl was thinking.... well, he would probably agree with her, thinking to himself that he would have done the same in her position.

Though she was looking down on him a little too much.

The professor's laboratory was much smaller in size when compared to the one they had been in previously, however, the instruments here were much more in variation, quantity, and quality.

"What are they going to do to me?" S3 spoke for the first time since separating from F76, but she spoke as if this had nothing to do with her.

"You'll be okay..." F8 wasn't even hesitant, lying so blatantly.

It was both embarrassing and shameful, but he didn't show it on his face and he still said his words seamlessly, though he trailed off at the end a little when he noticed S3's glare.

It wasn't completely wrong though, they would go to the ends of the world to keep S3 alive, that was for sure, at least for as long as there wasn't a better, more perfect specimen other than herself.

However, just because she was going to be kept alive to the best of their abilities, it didn't mean that she was going to be okay.

She was going to be far from okay.

"Heh, what do you take me for? A child? You should know better than that." S3 scoffed, which looked adorably out of character for this cute young girl.

Under her murderous glare, something that even S3 didn't know she was emitting, F8 could only give in.

"You'll be tortured out of your mind," F8 confessed honestly with a straight face.

"Mm," S3 nodded lightly.

"That seems about right."

Once again, it didn't feel like she was agreeing that she was most likely going to be tortured in this room any moment now, it sounded much more like 2 people agreeing on what was better, pancakes or waffles.

In fact, the pancake waffle argument may very well have been more bloody and violent than this one.

S3 had recognized multiple devices in this room, things that she had never seen nor heard of before in her life, yet she still somehow knew about. 

Knowing both their composition, usage, and dangers.

And none of the things here were particularly to her liking.

"Then what are you going to do?" F8 probed, hiding his dark eyes, similar to a pool of deep water, behind his unkempt curly hair.

"Well, I won't be like you," S3 could only speak with her adorable baby voice, but her seriousness was anything but childlike.

"I won't let myself be tortured here while watching others have the same done to them, even if I have to die."

Though the young kid, S3, sounded particularly heroic at that moment, F8 felt that those words were a stab at himself.

She was clearly distaining him, though she had good reason for it.

"You won't be able to escape their grasps. You'll die without what they have to offer you, your data will eat you alive," F8 sounded as if he was explaining things to a junior, but to both S3 and himself, all it sounded like was excuses.

As if he were trying to explain his own actions.

"Not to mention, even if you die, they'll just find a replacement, sooner or later. In this case, sooner if it is to be me, and later if it is to be you."

F8 continued, with a bitter smile on his face.

"Now that's where you are wrong." S3 rebutted.

"Hm?"

"They'll never be able to find another like me again, not in this lifetime, and not in the next either."

F8 didn't understand, simply waiting for S3 to give him an explanation, but she didn't open her mouth so he could only ask for himself.

It was better than to be rejected without even having tried.

"What do you mean?" F8 asked curiously.

He wasn't necessarily probing anymore, he was asking purely out of his own curiosity.

S3 didn't know why she was talking so much either, like a villain in his or her last moments when they thought they had the hero in the bag, explaining their plans.

But she felt like she could understand that feeling just a little.

The one that would make all those villains confess everything they had done as well as their following plans.

Loneliness, that was the answer.

When they finally came across someone they could talk their hearts out to, how could they not?

You really couldn't blame it all on the villain's stupidity...

Nothing in this world was that simple.

"Exactly what I said, they can't replace me, no matter how much they try, how long they try for, they will never be able to find another one like me," S3 said with confidence and conviction, something that F8 couldn't find the reason for.

"With time they should be----" Just as F8 was about to say that they would probably be able to do it, find another one like her in his lifetime, which wasn't all that long, to begin with.

He was definitely going to die soon, he had a few more years at most and perhaps a couple of months on the lower side.

"Are you deaf? I already told you, they won't ever be able to get another one like me."

"Why?" F8 immediately followed up, he still didn't understand where this statement was coming from.

"Because, I know more about this data than they do, a lot more. Or they wouldn't have been going around in circles all this time, they wouldn't have brought in all these useless subjects," S3 thought back as if having remembered something, a dizzy spell hitting her hard.

"Either way, it's none of your business," S3 stoped there. 

She had already spoken too much.

There were some things that she had only found out after the trial, things that she had pieced together after she been forced to digest all that information.

And she was better of not saying what, after all, it would be of no use to her.

Suddenly, alarm bells rang in her head.

At this moment, the professor slid the door open to allow himself inside his own lab.

'How long was he here?'

'How much did he hear?'

S3's body trembled a little, but she quickly calmed down and shut up, another part of her survival instincts.

"Then let's have you all strapped up and let's get started shall we?" The professor asked rhetorically, with a smile a little more genuine than usual.

S3 gave him a 'do I have a choice' kind of face before going on and strapping herself without a hint of reluctance or hesitation. 

There was no avoiding this, but even so, there was no way that she could completely get rid of her innate fear of pain.

"Why don't we get started by seeing if I can extract some good information from you? You sure sounded confident that you had some insights that we don't..." the professor's voice trailed off a little in suspicion and fear.

If what she said was true, then things could be truly quite bad for them, as for the accuracy of her information...

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