My blurred vision flickered.
“The bleeding’s bad. Start with a transfusion.”
“Check his blood type first.”
“Transfuse O for now.”
It doesn’t hurt much.
Strange.
I’m sure my left leg wasn’t moving.
“He won’t be able to use anything below the knee.”
“Maybe if we were in the Empire, but we can’t save it. Cut it off.”
So my memory was right.
Of all things, fuck.
Along with a chilling sensation, my eyes flew open.
“Guh!”
It hurts.
“What the hell is anesthesia doing!”
It hurts, it hurts.
“We just need to stop the bleeding and prevent necrosis. It’s fortunate he regained consciousness, but for now….”
Hurthurthurthurthurthurt.
I couldn’t listen to the end.
My eyes slowly closed.
My vision went dark.
***
“Father.”
“We merely used one exposed laboratory out of thirteen. You need not concern yourself with the damage.”
The weight of words was a thousand catties.
In the Luna Count family, the words of the family head were heavier than anything, and had to be obeyed without fail.
Karina Luna had no choice but to withdraw upon hearing them.
One laboratory damaged out of thirteen.
Twenty-five test subjects seized.
More than thirty allied unmanned Titans damaged.
And while cleaning up allied losses, the laboratory was exposed to an Academy cadet belonging to Karina’s squad.
“Is this not different from what you promised?”
All of that had been forgiven.
Though she should have withdrawn, Karina Luna stepped forward.
Because one Titan had been seized.
The family head had clearly promised.
No matter what peculiarities there were in Deep’s Titan, they would not seize it.
“This is clearly seizure.”
“We are merely acquiring and studying a Titan that damaged the family’s Titans. It would be hard to call that seizure.”
Mani Luna poured hot water over the tea leaves.
“It must have been an action taken to protect himself in the engagement that occurred when the defense system was tampered with.”
“No. The recovery sequence merely activated when it detected a test subject that had escaped from the laboratory.”
TN-TB12.
Ailey.
“In that sense, I will tell you why that promise cannot be fulfilled.”
And.
“There was never any human named Deep to begin with. No such name exists for TB13.”
TB13.
“If he belongs to the Academy, that alone guarantees his status.”
“Is the Academy’s fragile fence more important than the glory of the Luna Count family?”
“I….”
“I am grateful to you.”
Karina closed her mouth.
“The experimental unmanned unit used this time commercialized White Bunny’s core technology.”
She was ashamed.
She had not wanted this.
“You have seen the inside of the laboratory as well, so I suppose I can speak freely now. Within White Luna’s core are two artificial intelligences.”
There are two people inside.
Ugh.
A wave of nausea pitched her body forward.
She barely managed to cover her mouth and hold it back.
“The idea for the unmanned unit came from there. Lowering personality autonomy to its limits caused the sync between the two artificial intelligences to drop drastically, so its combat power was lacking, but that can be adjusted from now on.”
“That technology was not created to be used for such a purpose!”
“And it was also you who found what I wanted.”
And she was ashamed.
“I needed the two test subjects who escaped in order to solve the unmanned unit’s sync problem.”
The family head had said it.
Investigate the unidentified pilot, Deep.
“As expected, there were issues with solving sync through stimulants alone. The current unmanned unit cannot even properly reach an ordinary sync rate. We need to confirm more.”
He had said that Deep might be what he was looking for.
From the very beginning, the family head had never once referred only to Ailey.
“It is regrettable that we obtained only that Titan, but we can modify its personality autonomy and use it as a weapon, then after recovering TB13, use them together as an unmanned unit.”
Unmanned unit.
Even after plugging people into the core, Mani Luna still used the words unmanned unit.
“You mean to use people as weapons?!”
“Wrong, Karina Luna.”
The family head strained out the tea leaves.
“Every human in this world is already being used as a weapon. As the weapon called a pilot, the weapon called an engineer, the weapon called an operator, the weapon called a citizen.”
A fragrance rose from the cleanly brewed black tea.
“I merely wish to become the king of weapons.”
***
A hazy sensation and a body that would not move as I pleased.
I can hear blues.
It’s a dream.
I was used to nightmares, so it was easy to tell.
But with ordinary nightmares, being fully lucid for them is what makes them fucking awful.
If you can’t move your body the way you want, it’s even more fucking awful.
My dark vision grew bright.
My nose feels blocked.
There was a foreign sensation in my forearm, too.
All sorts of things were stuck into me.
“TB17 personality autonomy adjustment complete.”
“TB15 personality autonomy adjustment complete.”
“TB19 personality autonomy adjustment complete.”
With my stiff body, I looked around.
My vision is bright red.
I see. I’m inside a glass tube.
The glass tube from the Luna Count family’s laboratory.
I reached my hand forward and lightly touched the glass tube.
Contrary to what I expected, it wasn’t cold but lukewarm.
“Adjusting TB13’s personality autonomy.”
“Administering additional stimulant.”
Liquid seeped in through the IV line.
“Guh.”
It felt as though a metal brush had been shoved into my ear canal and was scraping my brain raw.
“Keu, kek, ugh, kek.”
Even when I tried to scream, the red liquid blocked it.
I clearly couldn’t breathe, but the tube inserted into my nose automatically controlled my breathing.
“TB13 personality autonomy adjustment complete.”
When I barely managed to turn only my head and look around, I saw the glass tube opposite me.
“TB12 personality autonomy adjustment complete.”
Ailey.
Ailey was looking this way and slowly waving her hand.
She looked exactly the same as the hologram and the body.
Inside the red liquid.
“Scanning. Brain damage caused by stimulant confirmed. No impediment to the experiment.”
The blues music did not stop.
I was taken out of the glass tube.
After that, my entire body was disinfected, I was dressed in white clothing, and then I was guided somewhere.
As soon as twenty people were locked in one space, the door closed.
Some people silently looked around without saying a word, and some tore at their hair while cursing the Luna Count family.
Then Ailey looked at me, smiled brightly, and came over.
“I’m Number 12! You’re Number 13, right? Did you see me say hi earlier? You were in so much pain back then. Are you okay? Does it not hurt now? You looked like you were hurting a lot.”
So she’d been this talkative even back then.
“I-I’m okay.”
“Really? Then why are you stuttering? Did you always stutter?”
“They say I h-have brain damage.”
“Will it get better with time? Or will they make it better?”
“I-I don’t know.”
Aaaaaaaah!
When the woman tearing at her hair screamed, Ailey flinched and looked back.
“I see. Then let’s talk again later!”
Ailey quickly went over to the screaming woman and began to comfort her.
“I, I’m just lowborn, so why? Why! Why do I have to suffer this!”
Revan had said it.
In the North, lowborn people often disappeared.
I hadn’t known that meant they were being abducted for the Luna Count family’s research.
Thud.
At the sudden noise, everyone raised their heads at the same time.
A man who had been looking around without saying anything suddenly collapsed.
The door opened, and someone like a security guard came in, grabbed the man’s body, and dragged him out.
“TB20 is a failure. The stimulant dosage appears to have been excessive.”
Clack.
After the corpse disappeared from view, the door closed again.
***
The experiments continued.
The test subjects moved at the same time and boarded the cores.
Each test subject was administered a regulated amount of stimulant.
Test subjects with lower numbers were given inhibitors that raised personality autonomy.
Test subjects with higher numbers were given stimulants that lowered personality autonomy and increased calculation speed.
The ambiguous numbers from the Number 6 range to Number 14 came out of the cores even after the experiments ended.
Aside from them, each time an experiment ended, one person failed to come out of the core.
One day.
I learned that Ailey had originally been a commoner, but had fallen to lowborn status after a distant relative in her family surrendered to the Alliance forces.
Because it was a punishment decided by the Dis Pater family, there was no way to avoid it.
Two days.
The blues did not stop.
I realized that no one remembered their own name.
Memories of the past were also growing increasingly hazy.
The inhibitors and stimulants were clearly destroying our brains.
There was nothing we could do.
Three days.
The people who had cried and lamented their circumstances were gone.
I became certain that the brain damage would not heal naturally.
It was damage caused by stimulants.
There was no way it would get better if they did not stop administering the stimulants.
Four days.
Every time they saw someone collapse, everyone lost more of their will to survive.
People gradually began having nightmares.
Every time they woke from sleep, more people tried to kill themselves.
Every day, their personality autonomy was altered, making them forget more and more about themselves, or conversely, making them accept the current situation more emotionally.
On the other hand, TB13 could not kill himself.
Numbers in the low teens had the most stable dosage.
There were no symptoms of forgetfulness caused by stimulants, nor any impulsive tendencies caused by inhibitors.
Even while forcing himself to endure the pain, he did not have a suicidal impulse strong enough to make him want to die.
Only the urge to harm himself in order to escape reality remained.
Among the test subjects, that was considered one of the most stable states.
The only one who had not changed from the beginning was Ailey.
“Number 13, you’re seriously amazing.”
“Wh-what is?”
“You know, during the experiment last time. It was just moving inside the core, sure, but I definitely heard a researcher gasp in admiration! I’m sure he was impressed watching Number 13 pilot it! If Number 13 looks like he’s about to die, that researcher will probably do everything he can to save you.”
“Th-thanks, even if it’s just words.”
“I mean it, you know?”
“O-okay.”
At some point, the place we boarded changed from a core to a pilot seat.
One pilot seat became two.
The person sitting beside me kept changing.
First TB6, then TB14, then TB7, then TB12.
Ailey.
“The sync rate….”
After the researcher reviewed the possibility of error, he looked surprised again.
After tests on each subject’s pilot ability and core compatibility were completed, half of the test subjects were scheduled for core conversion.
TB13 was judged to have high pilot ability.
And so TB12’s core conversion was decided.
Ailey’s core conversion was decided.
***
There were not even simple partitions in the test subjects’ sleeping quarters.
So TB12 and TB13 were able to push their beds together and sleep.
The temperature inside the laboratory was just enough to avoid freezing to death.
The only warmth one could find in that chilly air was another person’s warmth.
When TB13 lay with his back turned, TB12 carefully leaned her back against his.
Not once had TB13’s body temperature ever been warmer than TB12’s.
“Hey… are you asleep?”
But that day, TB12 did not turn her back.
She pressed close against TB13’s back and slipped an arm around his waist.
The tension slowly left TB13’s body, which had stiffened for a moment.
The arm wrapped around his waist was trembling.
From the moment core conversion was confirmed, a person ceased to be a person.
They became a weapon.
For TB12, it was the last night she could spend as a human.
“N-no.”
“Want to talk a little before we sleep?”
“S-sure.”
They did not talk about the past.
TB12 talked about what she wanted to do once she got outside.
I want to do anything for someone who falls in love with me at first sight.
I want to eat something delicious, and I want to eat something warm.
I want to go to a ball like a noble and dance with the person I like.
TB12’s fingers slipped between TB13’s.
Behind his back, he could hear the ceaseless pounding of her heart.
The conversation ended, but neither of them could fall asleep.
It was the last night they could sleep together.