Chapitre 4: "124"

'Where...am..I?'

Mark's mind was in a mess, his sight was blurry and he couldn't really hear anything because of the constant ringing noise inside his brain.

He could make out a blurry silhouette that was moving back and forth. Though there was still the ringing noise inside his brain, he heard the sound of what seemed to be glasses making contact with metals.

As Mark wondered what was going on, he suddenly felt a wave of drowsiness assault him.

Due to the fact that he got injured, Mark couldn't resist the desire to go to sleep and involuntarily closed his eyes in a slow, but discernible matter.

Splash!

Mark was jolted wide awake after being hit by a splash of cold water. He instinctively moved his limbs, but soon realized that he was unable to.

He tried to move his head down but to no avail, he was left with no choice but to shift his gaze downward slowly.

He was currently sitting in something similar to an electric chair. The chair was made out of some kind of metal that gave off a dark blue light, this metal was similar to the one used on the outer perimeter of the city as protective walls.

Mark also noticed that his arms, legs, torso, and neck were tied by a dark grey kind of metal that made him unable to even move his body for just a millimeter.

As he tried to call for help, he realized his mouth was covered by some kind of muzzles that made his lips sealed tight.

'What the hell is going on!?'

He had fully aware of the situation he was in and couldn't help but got a little panic.

Mark tried to retrace his steps to remember how he ended up here but got interrupted by an old, hoarse voice:

"Oh good, you're fully awake now."

He moved his eyes up and saw an old, dark skin color man, he wore a white coat over him and small round glasses rested on his nose bridge. In his hands was a red bucket that had a little bit of water in it.

Other than that he looked nothing different than an old guy who lives next door to your house.

But there was something unusual about this old man that made Mark feel wary and restless. The way the old man looked at him was like a scientist looking at a lab rat.

"Hello, my name is John, you must be wondering why you're here." The old man who called himself John spoke with a friendly smile.

'Of course I am! I got captured by a bunch of human traffickers!'

Mark made an audible growl in his throat to express his anger.

John didn't seem to notice, or he simply didn't care about Mark's attitude as he continued speaking:

"This is a government facility where we use to create a new type of biological weapons..., super humans, you might say."

"...And you are the test subject number #124." He looked at Mark with a strange glitter in his eyes.

'...What the hell.'

Mark processed what he just heard with his eyes wide open.

It seemed like he had got himself involved in some government's experiment to create biological weapons. Furthermore, the man that Blondie mentioned also appeared to be involved in this thing.

Most of the details had already been cleared and a complete picture had started forming inside his mind.

But 2 questions still remained:

'Why did the mysterious man choose me specifically? And what kind of experiment is this? Isn't The Divine considered to be super humans already?"

...Well, 3 questions actually.

John seemed to notice the confusion in Mark's eyes and chuckled a bit, then asked him an odd question:

"...You do know what a Divine and a Corrupted are already, don't you?"

'Isn't this supposed to be common knowledge?' Mark was perplexed by the old man's question.

When the Remnants of Divinity fell down on Earth, The Divine wasn't the only existences that were born.

Unlike most of humanity, the majority of the creatures that possessed low to no level of intelligence and those with weak minds were infected by the remnants and could not handle the enormous pressures of it.

Most of them ceased to exist. Those that managed to survive; however, changed.

To adapt to the infections, their entire existences were twisted, and reshaped into something different.

They were known as The Corrupted.

"...The Remnants of Divinity carried inherently "evil" characteristics, as we humans might put them." John spoke hoarsely.

"The Divine and Corrupted got their name also because of these "evil" characteristics." He paused a little bit, then continued:

"The former are because they managed to tame the remnants, subdue them to their controls. The latter are unable to resist the corruption and can only mindlessly follow their instincts."

After he finished speaking, John quietly looked at Mark, as if waiting for his reaction.

'...Nicely done old man, you have successfully explained to me everything I've known before.'

Mark was annoyed by this old man, he couldn't help but think if this weirdo in front of him had a habit of not getting to the main point.

John chuckled a bit, then said in an excited voice:

"The Divine and Corrupted are 2 contradictory existences,2 sides of the same coin, the yin, and yang."

"...It is my utmost curiosity to see what would happen if a being capable to walk both paths at the same time, don't you think so too 124?"

'...Don't tell me!?'

At this point, Mark could practically guess what John was hinting at. A chill inadvertently ran through his entire being.

He didn't know what John would do to make him into this...being that was able to walk down both paths as he said.

...By the way, he referred to him as experiment number #124, he could vaguely understand what happened to the other 123.

Mark doubted that he would end up any nicer if he let John do whatever he want to him.

As Mark tried to rack his brain to find a way to escape, John suddenly moved behind him. This made him snap out of his thoughts and listened to what the old man was doing.

John returned moments later with what seemed to be an infusion bottle with a colorless fluid in there. He grabbed Mark's left hand and rolled up his sleeves to insert a siphon into his arm.

Mark's face winced up a little bit due to the pain.

After he was done, John took out a bandage and placed it onto the spot of the siphon in order to secure the thing.

"The subject needs to be in a completely stable state of mind for this experiment. I'll come back tomorrow and we'll begin our experiment." He said with a slightly twisted smile.

John slowly walked through the door and opened it to go outside. Before the door was fully closed, he gave Mark a wicked glance that made his back hair stand up.

...Mark watched as the door closed completely and let out a sigh of relief in his mind.

'...That old bastard is definitely a sociopath!'

He felt fear whenever he thought about what the old man would do to him, but he didn't linger on this matter for long but instead shifted his focus to the room he was in.

It was time to find a way to escape!