4

"What?" said the red-haired Diclonius woman, her three guns still poised to kill.

"Lucy," Kazuto responded plainly. "That is your name, right?"

"How do you know that?"

"Well, I figure you've gotta be pretty important—in either a good or bad way—to have your picture hung up in every one of these facilities."

Lucy was silent. She had no idea that she was really recognized by anyone anymore—not by what she had learned so far. She had been put away, like an old toy thrown away in a closet and forgotten—out of sight and out of mind.

"I can tell you're surprised," Kazuto said, reading Lucy's surprised expression like a book. "You're probably wondering why this organization—whatever it's called—would even care to acknowledge you. I dunno either, but just by looking at the pictures, I can think up of two captions: 'All hail,' or 'Beware.' Personally, I think the latter is more likely."

"DWEC," said Lucy, almost cutting Kazuto off.

"Huh?"

"DWEC," she repeated. "Diclonius Weaponization and Evolution Corporation. That's the name of this organization."

"How the hell did you figure that out?"

"I heard it from an official."

Twenty minutes ago…

She took in a huge breath, as if she had been brought up to the surface after a long time of being underwater. She felt faint: she had not the slightest idea of where she was, what time it was, or even which direction was up. She felt cold all over, and she could hardly see anything. She felt scared. She must have started to panic, because she heard a man's voice telling her to lie down and rest for a while, although she was so disoriented that she could barely hear the man. Without the slightest clue of what else to do, she obeyed.

Ten minutes passed. She was finally able to see clearly. She sat up and looked around. She was in a dull room with metal walls and a single door with a bulletproof glass window in it. She was sitting on some sort of hospital bed dressed in pale green sheets (she, on the other hand, was not dressed at all). A single fluorescent tube on the ceiling cast a cold unfeeling light around the room. On the left side of her bed was a longish table with all sorts of scientific and medical equipment on it. Among these instruments were stethoscopes, microscopes, scalpels, pens and pads of paper with illegible notes scrawled all over. Some of these tools were strapped down to the desk to prevent them from being used as weapons by unstable patients, but a few were left unsecured—someone must have been using them recently.

"Welcome back, Lucy," said a man's voice—the same one that had lulled her back to sleep. "Your vital signs have stabilized."

Lucy turned to look at the man. He was a thin 57-year-old man with short, neat black hair that was turning gray on the edges. He had narrow, deep-set blue-gray eyes, a neatly cleft chin, and well-defined cheekbones. His skin was a pale, ghostly white due to his lack of being outside. He looked like some sort of doctor—no doubt because of the long white lab coat he wore.

Lucy could not look at him long. Her head began to hurt, as if she were having a migraine. She leaned forward and cupped her hand over her forehead; her long red hair—though one might argue that it looked slightly pinkish—drooped over her shoulders, covering her unclothed breasts.

"Don't worry, Lucy," said the doctor. "Your head will undoubtedly hurt a little after thirty-six years in cryostasis."

Lucy's eyes immediately widened. "Thirty-six years?" she blurted.

"Yes, indeed," said the doctor without much feeling. "We had to perform a few tests on you, but at the time we captured you, the technology we needed to perform them was a bit too young. Since then, we've been considerably successful."

She looked herself all over. She didn't feel thirty-six years older. In fact, she didn't feel any older.

"Give me a mirror," she ordered. The doctor complied, giving her a pocket mirror that he would use for certain cases. Lucy took it and observed the face that stared back at her: it didn't look any older than she remembered it. She patted all around her face, as if making sure that what she saw wasn't some sort of twisted illusion."Why aren't I older? It's been thirty-six years!"

"Well," explained the doctor, "cryostasis reduces your overall body temperature to a level where the cells reproduce more slowly. How old do your remember yourself being?"

"About nineteen," she answered.

"Well, congratulations," pronounced the doctor without much enthusiasm. "If my math is correct (which it usually is), you are now 21."

Lucy paused to collect herself. She had so many questions.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked sharply.

"You can call me Morinaga. I'm part of the Diclonius Weaponization and Evolution Corporation, or DWEC, for short. I'm sure you are familiar with organizations like us, though you might have forgotten about them over your long hibernation. But, I assure you, we are not like the Kakuzawa Institute in terms of brutality."

Lucy didn't need a polygraph to see right through the doctor's lie. She knew better than to trust companies that showed interest in her species: they only wanted the extinction of or domination over Diclonii. "Where am I?"

"You don't recognize it?" was Morinaga's reply. "According to the old reports I was given, you know it all too well."

She looked around, thinking about what Morinaga said. She gasped as the answer finally hit her: "The Kakuzawa Complex." At least, that's what she had learned to call it; she never learned the real name of the building—if it had a name, that is. The only other name that Lucy could associate with the place was "Hell."

"So you do remember. I guess your memory isn't as compromised as I thought it would be. Thirty-six years is a long time to be frozen in a near-death state."

Lucy did not respond; she appeared deep in thought. Dr. Morinaga continued: "About those tests… I figured you'd like to know what we were doing to you. You are a very interesting case among your breed. Your DNA makes you the only Diclonius we know of that is capable of reproducing sexually with a human male; all others of your kind are sterile, only able to pass on their genes by transferring them to a human male by way of their vectors—often called 'transmitting the vector virus.' This much you know about your species. But, as we have discovered, your DNA is capable of doing much less selfish things than just allowing you to have sex with human men. You see, we have found that–"

"Where's Kouta?" Lucy murmured, almost incoherently.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Where is Kouta!"

"Whatever," said Kazuto. "That was a rhetorical question."

Lucy gave him a slight nod of acknowledgement. It was then that she noticed something odd. "What's with the extra horn?"

"You mean this?" Kazuto asked (again, rhetorically), pointing to the protrusion on his forehead. "That's nothing, really. I'm just different. Not all that different, but different." He paused. "But why are we even talking? Aren't I supposed to be tearing you to shreds right now?"

"That's what I was wondering," responded Lucy. "Were you actually planning on doing that sometime today, or were you just going to stand around and talk?"

"Killing you was part of the plan, but why don't I let you make the first move? But, please, no guns. Those just take the fun out of everything, don't they?"

Lucy didn't hesitate to release her vectors' grasp on the M4 and the MP5. "Works for me," she said as she tossed away the AK-47 in her hands. With that, Lucy sent one of her now-freed vectors at Kazuto. Silent and invisible, it swiftly made its way towards his head, guided solely by her thoughts. It reached out to grab his face and tear it clean off his skull…

And then Kazuto snatched it out of the air with his right hand and forced it to the left; he didn't need to see it, for a Diclonius (or Neoclonius) can just tell where his or her adversary's vectors are—an evolutionary trait used for defense. Lucy was stunned. What he just did was impossible! She followed up with another vector, but Kazuto countered by drawing it to the right with his left hand.

How is this possible? thought Lucy incredulously. No person, human or Diclonius, can grab a vector with his bare hands! Unless… It was then that she actually got a good look at Kazuto's hands. They were transparent—not quite invisible, but pretty close to it. Are his arms…? She prayed not. She lashed out with her remaining two vectors, hoping that the three-horned man would not be able to defend without releasing his grip on her other two vectors.

Without even blinking, Kazuto's hands released their hold on Lucy's vectors. But his arms did not move an inch; they extended. His arms quickly snaked around Lucy's trapped vectors, wrapping them as though they were two boa constrictors. Once they had wrapped themselves around three times, his hands continued to extend. This time, they shot out at Lucy's two free vectors. His fingers clamped down on the invisible arms with an iron grip and pulled them away, just like the other two.

"Bad Lucy," Kazuto said with an oddly playful air. He lifted his leg, which promptly turned transparent and shot out about a meter above Lucy's head. With a forceful movement, he swung his thigh downwards, and his outstretched leg quickly followed, cracking down on top of Lucy's skull like a whip and slamming her face-first on the steel floor.

Lucy attempted to get up, but just as she got herself upright she immediately fell over onto her back. Lifting her upper body off the ground with her hands, Lucy looked up in a daze at her adversary. Kazuto brought his foot back to its natural position, and color returned to both his arms and it. Brushing a couple of crimson locks of his short straight hair away from his eyes, he walked towards the discombobulated woman and squatted down in front of her.

"Like I told you…" said Kazuto as he touched a transparent finger to her face. He dragged it upwards a bit, leaving a shallow cut in her left cheek. "… I'm different."

"Who?" Morinaga asked Lucy, caught off guard by the outburst.

Lucy sighed. "Never mind."

How could the man have known? Kouta was no extraordinary person; he was just an average nineteen-year-old college student—though now, of course, he would have been much older. He did well in school, but that was hardly worth the attention of a company like this. The only thing that would have drawn DWEC's gaze toward him was his connection with Lucy: she and Kouta were friends when they were little. Lucy harbored strong feelings for the boy, who was the only person that didn't mistreat her because of her horns. But when Kouta lied to her about his cousin Yuka's gender (he told Lucy that Yuka was male to avoid hurting her feelings and making her jealous), Lucy, feeling betrayed, went on a killing spree. She later stowed away on the train that Kouta was leaving Kamakura on and killed his father and his little sister Kanae. This experience traumatized Kouta and led him to repress those memories for years to come.

Kouta was also involved in another incident with Lucy. Eight years after the deaths of his sister and father, Kouta and Yuka found Lucy on a beach, though at that time she was inhabited by an innocent and infantile personality—a personality later dubbed "Nyu." This personality split was caused by a .50 BMG round to Lucy's head when she escaped the Kakuzawa Complex. Kouta took her into the abandoned restaurant—the Maple Inn—that he called his home, not realizing that he was caring for the very woman who killed his family.

Lucy stopped reminiscing over the past. Who cares anymore? thought Lucy. It's been thirty-six years since I last saw Kouta. For all I know, he's probably married to that jealous bitch, Yuka. What hope do I have of regaining his love?

"Well," said Morinaga, "if you're finished with your outbreak, then I think it's time we get down to bus-"

"Wait," Lucy interrupted. "There's someone else I wanted to know about. A Diclonius."

Those last two words caught the doctor's interest. "Who is it?"

Lucy dug deep to remember the identity of the person she was thinking of. Her name, her number, anything. She could remember nothing—only the fact that she was female and that she had become one of the few people Lucy could call a "friend." Her frustration over remembering was evident. She had her hand held up to her forehead, as if she had a headache. Every so often she would let out a strong breath that carried an air of irritation. Her frustration became more vocal as she started saying things to herself under her breath like "Dammit, who was she?" and "Come on, you know this. Get a hold of yourself."

Eventually, the emptiness of her mind brought her to her metaphorical knees. "I'm sorry," she said to the doctor, "I don't remember."

Morinaga shrugged as he sat down in a chair next to Lucy's bed. "That's no big deal," he reassured her. "You don't have to. I'm amazed enough as it is."

"Amazed?" Lucy repeated.

"Well, consider the facts. Cryostasis is a young technology, even today. Back when you were first frozen, as the reports go, the devices that made the process theoretically safe were just developed: the technology was just barely into its infancy. You were really the first human—or, should I say, humanoid—subject to undergo the process. All things considered, it's a miracle that you even came out alive. What's more, when I was looking at your vitals a few minutes ago—before you were awake—I noticed that the state of your brain is actually very promising. Most of your memory cells are merely traumatized by the shock of coming out of the cryostasis pod, not damaged. With that in mind, you should start to regain some of your memories given enough time." Morinaga got up from his chair and walked over to a monitor that was showing an MRI scan of Lucy's brain. "There are a couple of areas that might take a week or so to recover fully, but your memory should make a quick recovery. That, by the way, is even more of a miracle than you coming out of that pod and living to tell the tale."

Then, an electronic beep was heard from Morinaga's right pocket. He reached in, took out a cell phone, and flipped it open. His expression tightened up a bit as he looked at the small screen—his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed themselves together. "Sorry," he said as he closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. Before, his voice had a hint of a friendly tone. Now he sounded more professional and more serious, as if his business mattered more than his patient. "That was just a text message from my superiors. They're waiting for us."

"For what?" Lucy asked.

"For testing, of course."

Lucy nearly hit herself. She almost forgot what organizations like DWEC did: test Diclonii under torturous conditions. They did this because they feared the Diclonius species. They saw Diclonii as enemies of mankind. In the past, Diclonii showed a tendency to attack only humans—they would not attack each other or other animals. Diclonius "research institutes" similar to DWEC were supposedly created to keep the Diclonius threat at bay and preserve humankind. Of course, these corporations were kept secret; if they were made public, certain individuals might question whether the research institutes were really protecting humanity. After all, it was equally likely that the institutes were inadvertently causing the Diclonii's hostility toward humans because of the way Diclonii were treated at the facilities.

"You should probably get up," said Morinaga. "We'll be leaving soon. Besides, I still don't know if your legs have fully recovered."

Lucy complied. She turned herself so that her legs hung over the left side of the bed and pushed herself off. She stumbled a bit, but she quickly recovered. It had been a long time since her legs had made contact with the ground, so she was understandably a little off-kilter. But she was able to stand just fine, and she could walk with very little trouble, too.

"Astounding!" Morinaga remarked. "Simply incredible! The effect of the extended cryostasis on your primary motor functions appears to be negligible! Remember, you spent close to forty years without walking."

"Yeah," Lucy said in reply, walking past him, "It is remarkable, isn't it?" Her surprise was feigned. She couldn't let this guy get on the better side of her. She couldn't let DWEC perform tests on her. To submit to the testing would be to give up freedom. Lucy's instincts told her that DWEC's tests were no less brutal than the Kakuzawa Institute's. She could not give them the chance to rob her of her freedom like she did the Kakuzawa Institute. She needed to avoid the testing.

She needed to escape.

"Here." Lucy turned around to see Morinaga holding a bra and panties. "Company policy discourages me from clothing you, but it's the best I can do to show a sense of decency."

Lucy initially looked confused, but she accepted the gift. This man really is a pretty good guy, she thought as she put on the underwear. Too bad I have to kill him. She thanked Morinaga for his kindness.

Lucy began walking along the long table to the left side of her bed. She scanned her eyes across the equipment lying about on top of it. As she had noticed before, most of the tools were secured to the table, but some had been used, and so were loose. Luckily, one of the scalpels was among those tools. Perfect.

"What happened to my vectors?" she asked, partly because she noticed she couldn't use them, but primarily because she needed to distract Morinaga as she walked and ran her left hand across the table. She couldn't let him notice her pick up the loose scalpel; he would surely call security on her, and then her chances of escaping would be shot.

"Ah, yes!" Morinaga said. "I completely forgot about that. DWEC does not like its subjects having access to their vectors when they aren't necessary. It runs a great risk, a risk that DWEC would rather not take. Letting a Diclonius use her vectors freely allows her to cause incalculable damage to the facility. As a precaution, we inject our subjects with a serum that neutralizes their vectors temporarily. The effects can be reversed prematurely with an antidote which we keep in every test chamber. When we get to the designated test chamber, we will administer that antidote to you."

Lucy was not happy to hear that. She would have to conceal the scalpel all the way to the chamber. The chances of that happening unnoticed were slim to none. On the bright side, she did distract Morinaga long enough to drag her fingers across the table and grab the instrument. She turned around, casually dragging her hand (and the scalpel, hidden beneath her wrist and forearm) off the table and to her side.

"Are there any other doses of that serum outside of the test chambers?" she asked as she moved her arm a bit further around her hip and slipped the scalpel underneath the elastic of her panties. Thankfully, Morinaga hadn't given her a thong, so there was enough cloth to obscure the weapon-to-be. A keen eye might have noticed it, but Morinaga did not seem to be blessed so generously.

"Naturally," said Morinaga. "We have a stash of them here. We pack them in their syringes here in the labs. Where else did you think we would do that?" Then Morinaga's eyes widened a bit as he realized what he had just said. "I'm sorry," he said in a darker, more professional tone. "I shouldn't have told you that."

"That's okay, doctor," Lucy said reassuringly. "I won't tell anyone. Promise." Of course, that wouldn't matter in a few minutes. She took note of the double-doored cabinet on the other side of the room. It had a card-key lock on it. It didn't take a genius to figure it out: that was where the stash of antidote was. They might as well have put a huge neon sign pointing to it. Clearly, this room was not intended for housing Diclonii.

Another beep. Morinaga took out his phone again. "We must get going," he said hurriedly. "My superiors are starting to get angry."

"I'm ready when you are."

Morinaga headed to the door on the opposite wall from the foot of the bed. He punched in a numerical code. Lucy took note of it in case the door decided to close on her. 8-1-5-2-5-3-1-9-6-9. Is there really a need to put a numerical lock on the inside of a door? Lucy wondered. Perhaps to keep Diclonii from getting out.

The door slid open. On the other side was the same stale white light that the fluorescent bulb cast inside the room. The outside hallways also had the same metal walls as the room. The only feature that the hall didn't have was the window: it was completely windowless, as far as Lucy could see. Now was the time. She slipped out the thin metal object from her panties.

Morinaga took one step before he felt his shoulder being jerked back by a hand. The next thing he knew, a scalpel had been driven directly into his jugular vein. In an attempt to make sure that Morinaga was dead, Lucy cut across his throat, causing it to bleed profusely. But that wasn't necessary. He was cold dead with the first stab.

Leaving the scalpel in the wound, Lucy searched the limp body for its card key. Once she had found it, she went over to the cabinet and swiped it. The lock within clicked, allowing Lucy to yank the doors open. She swiped a syringe, pulled the cap off with her teeth, jabbed the needle into a vein in her left arm and mashed the plunger down with unnecessary force.

Lucy grimaced. The antidote stung as it coursed through her blood vessels. It wasn't a crippling sting, but it was definitely unpleasant. She tried using her vectors, but still she received no response. Perhaps she grabbed the wrong syringe. Perhaps it just needed time to take effect. Either way, she couldn't head out into the facility unarmed. To make matters worse, an alarm started blaring. Figures: security had seen the killing on the cameras. Perhaps they didn't notice her pick up the scalpel in the first place, or maybe she was simply lucky, but now was probably the best time for the alarm to go off. Had it gone off before she killed Morinaga, she'd probably be locked in this room, awaiting execution. She went back over to Morinaga and wrenched the scalpel from his neck.

"Thank you for your kindness, doctor," she said coldly. She ran into the hallway and kept running, hoping she wouldn't get killed while her vectors recovered.

Lucy glared at Kazuto. "Don't touch me!" she shouted as she slapped Kazuto's hand away from her cheek. Using her vectors, she flung Kazuto across the room. He crashed into a stack of containers, knocking them over. Kazuto pushed two containers off of his body and picked himself up.

"O-kay," he mumbled to himself, "that was stupid. That was stupi—WHOA!" Lucy had thrown another steel container his way. Reacting quickly, Kazuto engaged vector mode and forced the incoming crate sideways with his hands while twisting clockwise. The combined forces sent the crate flying past just in front of his face, slamming into the wall behind with a eardrum-ringing boom!

Kazuto was hyperventilating. He had nearly been squashed to death by a flying crate not once, but twice in the same day.

"Oh, come on!" Lucy taunted in a cool, understated, "badass" tone. "Take it like a man, will you?"

Kazuto did not have the patience to have his manhood be made fun of. Not at all. He tried to stay calm: he was there to help this poor woman, not kill her.

That was when inspiration hit him. He looked at the thrown crate, then at at the two security cameras—moving his head minimally while doing so in order to avoid betraying his intentions. Then he looked at the container again. Bingo, he thought. That kind of force could prove quite useful, if I can manipulate it right. He knew exactly what he was going to do to destroy the cameras "by accident."

"'Take it like a man', you say?" said Kazuto semi-tauntingly and confidently. He clenched his fists and put them up in a combat stance. Now that he had a plan, he was ready to fight and, more importantly, to escape. "I'd be more than happy to."

End of 4