Capítulo 38: A Wandering Soul - Spirit 3.10
In retrospect this wasn't the best idea on how to escape.
Personally, I blame the drugs, electrical tourture, and what I am beginning to think were physiological issues that seem to pop up when being trapped or cornered. But when I finally pulled myself together after coming face to face with the mad scientist responsible for this place, clever escape plans were not on my things to do list.
The first thi- okay the second thing I did, the first being me shouting a moderately impressive amount of curses at Akihiro Kanou and Yuuto Kiba, was to project four copies of one of my favorite scimitars. The reason for that was the incredibly helpful enchantment on the blade to cut through metal like clay.
Then I messed with the velocity parameter on the projections to send them shooting a few hundred miles an hour towards me to cut through the restraints on my hands and feet with little issue.
The reason this was a problem?
Just because I cut the restraints free didn't mean my hands and feet weren't wrapped in metal. And apparently the electroshocks had left my muscles with the structural integrity of jello, so the second I was free from the scaffold I collapsed rather painfully onto the floor.
"Hello floor, my old friend." I murmured quietly. Not because I was worried about making noise, the klaxon alarm going off made plenty of that, but more because there was this weird pressure all around me that showed up when I cut myself free.
It wasn't much. If anything it felt like going from walking in a dry room to walking through mist, but it was just... there now. And sudden changes like that after being trapped in an evil science lab tended to make people concerned.
But I couldn't focus on that now. I had to get out of these restraints, shoot/stab the bad guy in charge until he stopped being an issue, and then meet up with Natsumi. Not necessarily in that order.
First thing first though. I had to get out of the metal gloves on my hands and feet, which was simple to do with Alteration and the cuffs being disconnected from the machine that monitored them for changes. A quick application of mana, and the four cuffs popped open leaving me free and ready to get revenge.
I got to my feet, wobbled badly, and fell onto the table where Bakuya laid.
Okay, mostly ready for revenge.
So instead of rush out and probably get captured again, let's take another few seconds to recover and think of what I need to do here.
Priority one should be stopping Akihiro Kanou. Even if we shut down his operation here, it's only delaying things if he can set up shop somewhere else and do this all over again a few years later.
Priority two should be recovering any information Kanou had about my condition. He clearly had a better idea about what sort of state my soul was in, and I definitely didn't want any of that information getting back to Squad Twelve. I have no interest in being hunted by their insane Captain looking to experiment on me.
And finally, priority three will be to make sure that anything dangerous is contained or destroyed until Natsumi can get someone over here to secure the lab. The last time the Court Guard Squads went up against the good Doctor Kanou, he flooded the streets with mindless, monstrous experiments that killed everyone around them. I would need to make sure the same thing didn't happen here.
With my goals kinda-sorta laid out and now that I could stand up without my legs folding like a house of cards, I grabbed Bakuya and peeked out into the hallway. Surprisingly, there was no sign of anyone coming to deal with an escaped prisoner despite the alarms going off in the background.
I wasn't complaining.
Ducking back inside the room, I took another second to pull my hair into some semblance of order and tie it back with a black chord that manifested when I shifted my clothes to the default combat uniform. The flowy red pants and white shirt tightened into a close fitting black outfit, almost instantly afterwards my red mantle/skirt combo shimmered into existence.
I had to admit, even if it still felt like I was cosplaying EMIYA at times, the outfit had grown on me and I was starting to think of it as my own uniform.
Fashion break done, I stepped out into the hallway. Left seemed like a good direction to go. So I headed left at a brisk walk checking doors as I passed.
Most of them were similar setups to the room I was trapped in, except empty. The others were filled with filing cabinets filled with tools I had no name for or idea what they did, either that or paper copies of test data. Well, I assume test data. From the brief glance I got in one of the cabinets the papers had very scientific terms, graphs, and charts that made no sense to me but looked like something Urahara would understand.
After I realised poking through all the files there was both pointless and a waste of time I started moving down the hallway much quicker, now only poking a head in to see if anyone was in there.
They were all empty.
That was not as reassuring as it should be. The only reason to have multiple rooms like the one I was in was if you had multiple people needing to be restrained at the same time. Where did they go? And why build such a large facility if there was no one in it? The alarms hadn't stopped, so someone should have at least gone out into the hallway to check what was going on.
I had to stop my musing when I ended up in front of a staircase. Luckily I could only go up from here, so Kunou was unlikely to be on this level if no one had responded by now and I could continue without missing him somewhere in an unexplored area of this floor. So up the stairs I went.
What I found was horrifying.
Rows upon rows of mutilated creatures peered out from inside cages that lined the room. Most of them seemed like patchwork hunks of flesh that just stared blankly into the distance. The ones further away seemed more human, but I couldn't tell if that was on purpose or if it was just a temporary state. Angry red lines crossed their bodies where they had been stitched together, some weeping blood from how recent the attachment was.
"Hello my troublesome little experiment, it took you longer to reach this area than I thought it would." Kunou's voice crackled from a loudspeaker somewhere in the ceiling. "I am curious how you managed to escape when your Reiatsu was drained so much. You should have been barely able to move, let alone break those bindings."
"Guess I'm just that special." I muttered sarcastically.
I wasn't expecting an answer so I was a bit startled when he replied back. "I suppose you are. Clearly my past self managed a significant breakthrough if you are this much more advanced than my current efforts."
Great, so he could hear me even without anything obvious nearby. That was creepy.
"In an effort to avoid damaging such a valuable specimen, I will give you a chance to surrender. Resist and I will ensure that you feel every moment as I tear the secrets of its creation from your soul."
"So give up and be experimented on, resist and be vivisected? Lovely options, Doc." I mocked, heading further into the floor. "Counter offer, you surrender and I won't immediately kill you for what you've done to these poor people."
There was a rush of static that I guessed was Kunou scoffing, "What I've done to them? They are just the leftovers from my experiments. It doesn't matter what they think. In fact they should be grateful I keep them around despite being failures. The only use they have left is following my orders." The doors on the cages creaked open. "Why don't I show you. Subjects, capture the intruder at all costs!"
The 'failed experiments' shambled forward out of their cages. When they caught sight of me, that shambling changed to a disorganized rush as they scrambled over each other in an effort to get to me first.
One of them, a middle aged looking man with grotesque looking muscled limbs, jumped clear of the group and tired slamming his hands into me. He missed as I dodged backwards and the floor cracked under the force of his attack.
"So much for not damaging the valuable specimen." I snarked. Bakuya flashed out and severed the tendons at his knees and elbows. I didn't know if the damage Kunou did was reversible, so I would avoid killing would be a last resort.
"It matters little as long as you live." Kunou's voice responded. "All that changes is the time before I can resume my experiments. Of course that doesn't extend to the trash."
The disabled creature in front of me let out one of the most horrifying screams of pain I ever heard while its skin started bubbling and oozing off its body. Within seconds the poor creature was nothing more than a skeleton covered in a viscous purple slime.
I had seen a fair bit of violent deaths dealing with hollows since I started working with Urahara. People melting alive was not one of them. Only the rest of the experiments catching up to us stopped me from freezing up as the body vanished under the feet of the slavering horde trying to take a piece out of me. I gave ground as I ducked under flailing limbs and various other body parts.
A distant part of my mind noted that Kunou hadn't stopped at just humanoid experiments as I dodged a giant scorpion tail that had replaced the arm of a younger looking boy. The rest of me was far more concerned about how to deal with the mob in front of me if disabling them meant they were liquidized. The only way I could think of was to trace Kanshou into my off hand and press forward.
I danced through the crowd of experiments, the heavy shortswords in my hands smashing into the deformed heads of several of them. I was careful to control my strikes to ensure they would only be knocked unconscious and as uninjured as possible. If they weren't hurt then whatever mechanism Kunou installed to keep his creations out of Soul Reaper hands shouldn't activate, right?
The problem with using minimal force on a practically mindless mob? They do not care if they hit their friends as long as they can attack you. If I pulled this maneuver with a bunch of Soul Reapers, they would stop attacks when they saw it would hit the person next to them. The experiments would sometimes attack through one another if I was close enough.
So I was able to knock out the majority of the group, but I took several glancing hits in return. Nothing major, some scrapes and bruises definitely, but none of them melted so my strategy seemed to be working if nothing else.
"And that's the last of them." I panted as the final experiment fell over, unconscious. "What now Kunou? You're all out of experiments to hide behind, wanna give up?"
"Haha, out of subjects? This was just one batch. You may wish to observe your surroundings before making such bold statements."
What is he talking about? There is nothing else around- no wait. I could see more shapes moving in the shadows. Quite a few shapes actually.
Oh.
Those are all experiments aren't they?
It turns out the room I was in was actually connected to several others by dividers instead of walls. While I was dealing with the first group of Kunou's creations, those dividers were quietly being pulled back and the other groups had gathered in the dark. With surprise no longer necessary more lights flickered on revealing the full size of the horde.
It looked like someone had taken a zombie film, replaced the rotting corpses with monsters, and had every single one of them stare blankly at one single person. Me.
I felt a shiver run down my spine at the sight of hundreds of mutilated people waiting for the order to attack. Dealing with a few dozen was hard enough. This many? I would eventually be overrun or be forced to start cutting them down. There was only one thing to do.
I turned tail and fled towards the hallway as fast as I could.
It was time to admit I needed help. Concentrating, I started following the tiny pull Kansho and Bakuya felt from the single sword I had left for Natsumi to follow after me if we were split up. It didn't help that the ability to return was mostly centered on the owner, me, so the pull was tiny. Still, it was better than nothing.
The hallway was exactly the same as the floor below, but it was quickly changing into a scene out of the House of the Dead as more of Kunou's subjects filtered into the hall through other doors. Thankfully they were not that coordinated about it so several doorways were clogged as too many bodies tried pushing through them all at once. For the ones that made it through, they were either knocked out or dodged around as I ran by. Despite the ridiculous numbers, the individuals weren't that strong. Well, for someone at my level. Individually they were about the same as an unranked Soul Reaper. If they got out, then the surrounding districts were history.
Bakuya twitched in my hand and I turned right at an intersection.
So new plan. Find Natsumi, get a bunch of reinforcements to keep the monster minions contained, then find and stop Kunou.
More experiments are coming at me from down the hall, but some of them split off at another intersection? Before I can think of a reason they would run down another hallway when I am right in front of him, there is a flash of red and the hallway explodes. Smoke poured back out into the main hallway as I quickly knocked out the remaining experiments that had kept coming towards me. I heard footsteps echoing out from the smoke. My swords came up just in time to meet… Natsumi?... um okay.
I ended up catching Natsumi's katana as she leaped out of the smoke and brought it down on my head. Both of us were surprised at the other's sudden appearance but we smoothly disengaged.
"Well I guess you missed me then?" I snarked, happy to see a friendly face.
"I should have the Twelfth Division put a tracker on you. First Aizen, now Kunou? You seem to have a knack for finding yourself being taken to evil masterminds."
"Me being at Central 46 was your fault, and it's not my fault the doctor wants to vivisect me to find out how I was put together." I reminded her. "I think you just might be a bad luck charm."
Another person walks out of the smoke, who I unfortunately recognize as Kimura. Couldn't Natsumi have found someone else to follow her around?
"That the last of them, ma'am?" he asked before spotting me. "Oh hey, it's the newbl-" he suddenly cut off and paled dramatically. "Uh you aren't secretly an officer too, are you?"
I snorted. "Nope. I'm not even a Soul Reaper."
"Oh that's good." he breathed before walking past me.
I just rolled my eyes and turned back to Natsumi.
"How were things back in town? Cause we are going to need a lot of reinforcements to take care of all the experiments Kunou has here. I've been knocking them out as I go, but there are a couple hundred back that way we will need…" I turned to point back the way I came just in time to see Kimura plunge his sword into the unconscious form of one of the experiments I had knocked out. Then with barely any hesitation, he repeated the action on the one next to it.
I saw red.
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