Chapter 108: Musings of Death - 2
Of course, it was not silent all the time.
The boy had a tendency to talk to himself. Many times, it felt as though he were looking directly at something, but in reality, he was simply in a daze, lost in his own memories.
She often watched him and wondered exactly where he came from. Was he taken from some remote village, just like her? Or was his origin something else entirely?
After some time, the boy finally figured out a interesting way to communicate with her: through nods.
He would ask a barrage of questions, and she would simply answer with a shake or a nod.
"So, what is your exact age?" the boy asked one day.
She just shook her head.
The boy tilted his head confused. "Don’t want to tell me, or you just don’t know?"
She shook her head twice, indicating it was the latter.
"I see," the boy said thoughtfully. "I am five years and six months old now." He paused, calculating his exact age on his small fingers. "Hmmm... no. Five years, six months, fourteen days, and twelve hours... something, something."
She rolled her eyes. She had realized some time ago that her dismissive, silent gestures entirely failed to deter his bubbly energy.
"Do you know why we are here?" he asked.
Shake.
"Why exactly do they keep calling you ’Project Death’? Is that your real name?"
The girl paused. So, I had a similar name as well?
Shake, shake.
"Don’t know, or that’s not your name?"
Shake. Meaning, she entirely didn’t know.
The boy paused for a long moment, then asked softly, "Do you have any friends?"
Shake.
What friends? She had never had a single friend in her life...
She slowly looked over at the looming Death Stone... Does this cold stone count? she wondered.
Then, the boy leaned in with bright, hopeful eyes. "Do you want to be my friend?"
She was about to shake her head purely on reflex, but she froze. Her eyes widened as she looked directly at him. She didn’t say a single word; she just kept staring at him in silence, which quickly caused the boy to become nervous.
"Y-you can say no if you don’t want to," the boy stammered flustered by her intense gaze.
She stared at him for a long time, and then, very slowly, she nodded.
The boy blinked, confused once again. "Don’t want to, or is that a yes?"
Nod. Nod.
The boy’s face instantly lit up with a blindingly bright smile. "From this exact day on, we are friends! In life, and if fate wills it..." He lowered his voice, trying to sound mysterious, "...even in death!"
Looking at his dramatic display, she almost chuckled aloud, barely managing to stop herself.
But she couldn’t stop a small, genuine smile from appearing on her pale face.
The boy happily took this as confirmation. And like that... she finally gained her very first and probably only friend.
From that day onward, not a single day went by where she didn’t smile.
No matter the agonizing day, no matter her bleak mood, no matter the terrifying situation outside their cell... the boy never failed to make her smile.
Looking closely at him, she slowly realized that though he might not be as profound as the Divine Death Stone, he was still worth watching.
If the cold Death Stone showed her what Death was... then the precious, warm time spent with the boy showed her what Life was.
Life... as time passed, it had life had only taken things from her. But she had to admit, it had also given her these beautiful moments she cherished the most.
Like her warm mother... and like the bright boy.
Alas, good times rarely ever last. And good times had this annoying way of over too quickly.
A time came when reality hit her again. Something changed in the lab’s routine... because one day, the boy simply stopped coming to the chamber.
When she managed to ask the man named Dr. Isaac, he stated the boy was now assigned to different experiments.
It was only one day, whether luckily or unluckily, when she heard his screams echoing through the metal halls as she was being taken to her cell by the men in coats, that she finally understood what Dr. Isaac had meant.
She had seen in the filthy streets before. Innocent people suffered horribly, but the others around them just blankly watched.
It was common, and she herself had shamefully done it too. It was not because people didn’t want to help, but because they were powerless to actually do a single thing about it.
And that day, she was reminded of her own powerlessness once again.
That day, sitting completely alone in front of the Death Stone, she cried.
His horrifying screams kept echoing in her head, and she recalled all the warm time they had happily spent together.
But aside from the crushing sadness, she also vividly felt another raw emotion...
It was pure, unadulterated rage.
She felt anger at all the cruel men in coats. In fact, she felt anger at the entire world. But to her despair, she realized she was still just a weak little girl. She quickly accepted that reality, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
Since that day, she was never able to truly focus on the Death Stone again.
She didn’t have the calm mood to stare at it; everything in this sterile chamber painfully reminded her of the boy. And every single time she thought of him, the only thing her mind returned to her was the haunting echo of his screams.
What she didn’t realize was that her daily progress as a lab experiment had stalled ever since the boy had first arrived.
Dr. Isaac had keenly noticed that her integration with the Divine Death Stone had not just reduced, but it was barely even increasing anymore.
This led the cold scientist to reach the conclusion that perhaps the boy was distracting her. Besides, when he examined the boy, the boy showed no reaction to the Death Stone whatsoever.
So, he ruthlessly removed the boy from the equation, aiming to kill two birds with one stone: one was to resume her integration progress by isolating her, and the other was to assign the boy to something else that might actively produce better scientific results.
At first, the cruel isolation actually worked. But ever since the day she ’accidentally’ stumbled upon Project Nightmare during a particular experiment, Project Death’s overall integration progress not just stalled, it had completely halted.
It even showed signs of deteriorating.
This increasingly disappointed Dr. Isaac. And a disappointed Dr. Isaac was not a good thing for anyone involved...
...
As she stood quietly before him, Dr. Isaac gave her a fake smile and asked smoothly, "How is everything going?"
She looked down and muttered, "It’s... it’s okay..."
Seeing her lackluster response, he finally decided to go through with his plan. As much as it ’hurt’ his scientific pride to lose a subject, in his eyes, a useless specimen was worse than a worthless one.
Still, he was unwilling to just let her vast potential go to waste. The fragile subject was entirely not ready for full integration yet, but he had finally run out of patience. To improve the success rate of the fatal experiment, he had cooked up a manipulative plan.
Dr. Isaac suddenly put on a difficult, pained expression and sighed, "That boy... Project Nightmare..."
That name immediately got her complete undivided attention.
Got you, he thought gleefully.
Maintaining his falsely difficult expression, Dr. Isaac continued solemnly, "The Death Stone... we will actively have to fuse it directly with him instead."
As soon as he callously said it, suffocating despair completely overwhelmed her. Him in that agonizing pain again? But... but that meant certain death! This was a separation. Tears threatened to appear in her eyes.
Dr. Isaac continued heartlessly, "We cannot find anyone else good enough to fuse the stone with. It was an tough decision on my part, but it can only be him. No one else is more suitable."
She finally couldn’t let this continue. "I’ll go."
Dr. Isaac continued as if he didn’t hear her, but inwardly, he smiled viciously. "With how weak he is... I honestly don’t think the poor boy will survive the procedure..."
She stepped forward and said much more firmly, "I’ll do it!"
Internally pleased with where things were heading, Dr. Isaac outwardly showed a surprised expression. "You?" he asked, acting exactly as if he had never even considered her.
She said without a single moment of hesitation, "Yes. I have been with the stone since the day I came here. If there is anyone that can succeed... it can only be me."
"But this is risky," Dr. Isaac warned falsely.
She said with fierce confidence, "It’s not... if it’s me."
Dr. Isaac finally nodded. "Fine. Do exactly as you wish," he said, acting as if he had just been forced to make a unwilling decision.
She gave a grateful smile. "Thank you."
Dr. Isaac adjusted his glasses. "Don’t bother. You all are like my own children to me," he lied with a straight face.
As she stood before the stone as it began to merge with her body, everything inside her screamed in rejection.
The pain was entirely unbearable... It felt exactly like she was dying in the most bizarre manner possible.
But even through all the excruciating pain, she stubbornly kept remembering her warm mother. And when the agony made it harder to remember her face clearly... she focused on the recent, bright memories with the boy.
As the pain became so intense that she didn’t know if it would ever actively end... it felt like this burning agony had fundamentally been with her since forever.
She desperately kept remembering the boy’s bright smile, his laughter, and his silly jokes just to keep herself sane. She kept constantly reviewing the happy memories: the first day, the day they officially became friends, and finally... the day she heard his screams.
Until yesterday, when she had decided to replace him in the chamber... She was glad he absolutely didn’t have to fuse with the Death Stone himself.
It truly was painful...
And like that, she finally died... with a small, peaceful smile on her pale face.
She died protecting a friend.
That was how her tragic story was supposed to end. But the exact moment she died, the Divine Death Stone finally reacted, as if acknowledging her ultimate sacrifice.
Right before it completely merged with her fading soul, the ancient artifact told her exactly how Dr. Isaac had tricked her, and precisely why.
This was beyond Dr. Isaac’s expectations. Though it was only a stone, it was fundamentally divine not something a scientist could ever hope to truly understand or control.
But despit all of it at the bitter end, she didn’t regret her decision for a single second.
After the agonizing fusion process was finally over, all that physically remained of the little girl was a six-foot-tall skeleton.
Dr. Isaac entered the lab sometime later. Thinking the integration experiment had entirely failed, he stored her remains inside the lab’s corpse refrigerator, where she chose to play completely dead.
Yes, unlike what Dr. Isaac believed, the experiment had not failed. It had succeeded, and she had indeed successfully merged completely with the Divine Death Stone.
She then chose to play dead and gather her strength in the freezing dark.
But who would have thought that not a month later, the same boy would barge his wsy jn and, and not just save her, but bind her to his very soul as his summon?