Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
EXPERIMENT E666
Football has always presented itself as a universal language — a delimited field, an obedient ball, twenty-two bodies chasing a meaning that pretends to be collective. Simple. Elegant. Comprehensible enough to be accepted without question.
But to Ray Dark, that idea was nothing more than a convenient simplification, a narrative far too clean to conceal what truly drives the game. Beauty was never a factor. It never had been. Football, at its core, was a system — closed, predictable when properly analyzed, moldable in the right hands. Raw talent was nothing but unstable raw material. What truly mattered was refinement. Precise interference. The ability to transform potential into something functional, directed, inevitable. Something that surpasses the comfortable limits of the human.
A king, he knew, is not born in isolation. He does not sustain himself alone. Every dominant structure demands a foundation that does not show itself, an axis that supports without claiming, a point of balance capable of absorbing impact without collapsing. Or, if necessary, collapsing in the correct way — at the exact moment, in the exact direction, serving a purpose greater than its own integrity. That was how efficient systems operated. That was how empires were maintained.
And, inevitably, his thoughts returned to the same name, like a recurring pattern in an experiment that refuses to stabilize: Michael Kaiser.
A prodigy. A miscalculation.
Kaiser did not play football in the traditional sense. He distorted it, bent its rules with a kind of ease that bordered on disrespect, as if following the system were an inferior option to rewriting it. There was something about him that worked too well — an aggressive efficiency, irritably precise — and yet incomplete. Unstable. Like a chemical reaction that never reaches equilibrium due to the absence of a proper catalyst. Too much energy, too little direction. Potential wasted in its own unpredictability.
Ray had analyzed countless talents over the years. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. Youths with skill, ambition, hunger enough to become useful within a greater system. They all exhibited variations of the same pattern. They all failed at the same point.
None were suitable.
None would withstand Kaiser.
Because it was not merely about playing alongside him. That was the minimum. The superficial requirement. The real challenge — the critical variable — was surviving his presence without disintegrating. Enduring the peaks of his ego, the abrupt fluctuations, the almost childish outbursts that were not weakness, but excess strength poorly distributed. Kaiser demanded constant dominance. Not only over the game, but over everything around him. Over everyone around him.
Finding someone on his level was already rare. Finding someone willing to accept being less — to deliberately occupy an inferior, functional, subordinate position — was a statistical improbability.
Nearly impossible.
And yet, the equation had been interrupted by an external variable.
Someone appeared.
Ray could not clearly reconstruct the man’s face. Only the residual sensation of a presence that should not be ignored. Too discreet to be accidental. Too precise to be coincidence. The man did not introduce himself, did not elaborate, did not attempt to persuade.
“I know a place.”
Nothing more.
No justification. No context.
Only an address.
Ray asked no questions. Not out of trust — but out of recognition. There were moments when seeking explanations merely meant confirming something one already knew, at a more primitive, more uncomfortable level. And he suspected he would not like what he found if he insisted.
Now, standing before the gate, that suspicion condensed into something more tangible. The silence around him was not an absence of sound, but an absence of variation. Too uniform. Too stable. Like a controlled environment where any deviation had been eliminated.
The building rose on the outskirts of Berlin, far enough to avoid direct attention, yet too imposing to completely disappear into the landscape. There was intention in that choice of location — a balance between visibility and denial. On the facade, the name stretched out in a long, technical, carefully impersonal sequence: Institut für Anomale Biomechanik und Kognitive Adaptation. A title that seemed designed more to obscure than to inform, as if terminological complexity functioned as an additional layer of isolation.
The building was white.
Not the worn white of functional structures, nor the clinical white that suggests sterility. It was an absolute white, almost aggressive, that rejected the idea of time. There were no stains. No wear. No mark indicating use, history, failure. As if the very concept of imperfection had been removed from the surface.
The windows, darkened, prevented any attempt at external observation. There was no visible movement, no silhouette, no sign of internal activity. No sound crossed the walls. No echo. No flaw.
Not even something that could be interpreted as life.
Ray frowned slightly, the gesture minimal, yet enough to indicate that something in his instinct had been triggered — not fear, exactly, but an uncomfortable recognition, like when an apparently perfect system reveals not its flaws, but the absence of them. And that absence… was, in itself, an error.
Laboratories were supposed to convey progress. Discovery. The future.
That place carried something that wasn’t easily named. It wasn’t just silence, nor merely order — it was control in its purest form, distilled until it lost any trace of humanity. Containment. As if every element inside had been calculated, positioned, kept under constant and invisible pressure, prevented from escaping its own limits. Or perhaps prevented from even conceiving the idea of leaving.
For a moment, something in Ray Dark’s instincts hesitated. It wasn’t fear — fear presupposes surprise, and this did not surprise him. It was something else. An uncomfortable recognition, almost physiological, like when the body detects a pattern before the mind can translate it. The diffuse awareness that he was about to cross a boundary that does not announce itself. The kind that leaves no visible marks, yet reconfigures everything once crossed.
He inhaled slowly, filling his lungs with air that felt too sterile to be real.
And then he stepped inside.
The entrance resembled an asylum — not because of disorder, but because of its absolute absence. Excessive cleanliness, controlled silence, surfaces reflecting light in a way that felt almost artificial. It was the kind of place where madness does not disappear; it is reorganized, classified, compressed until it fits into comprehensible categories. Domesticated. Here, the incomprehensible was not rejected. It was studied. Dissected. Kept under constant observation, like a rare organism pinned beneath glass.
Monsters were not expelled.
They were preserved.
At the reception, she was already waiting, as if his arrival had been predicted not in minutes, but in variables. An impeccable white coat, not a single crease out of place. Auburn hair cut at shoulder length, aligned with surgical precision. Brown eyes… opaque. Not empty — empty things still reflect. Those did not. They were like saturated soil, absorbing everything and returning nothing.
Ray raised an eyebrow slightly, analyzing.
She was smiling.
But the smile was merely a facial configuration.
— I am Elizabeth Hartmann, head of this department — she said, extending her hand.
Her voice was soft, carefully modulated, like an instrument calibrated to produce no noise.
Ray accepted the handshake, noting the exact pressure — neither more nor less.
— Ray Dark. Though I believe you already know that.
— We know many things here.
The smile remained. Unmoving.
And somehow, that made everything more uncomfortable.
— I was told I would find… something useful — he continued, direct, without embellishment.
Elizabeth tilted her head slightly, as if adjusting her angle of observation.
— You were told correctly.
No surprise. No curiosity. Only confirmation — like a result already predicted in an experiment repeated countless times.
— Follow me.
The first floors were immaculate. Clinical to the point of unreality. White was not just a color — it was an aesthetic imposition, almost ideological. A constant reminder that there was no space for disorder there. Scientists crossed the corridors with precise movements, carrying data, clipboards, devices. Conversations were low, technical, stripped of any trace of spontaneity.
It worked.
Everything there worked.
And that, paradoxically, was what disturbed him most.
Ray realized, with subtle discomfort, that he himself was the only misaligned element in that system. A foreign body inserted into an environment that rejected imperfection.
— What exactly are you looking for, Mr. Dark? — Elizabeth asked, without taking her eyes off the path ahead.
He took a moment to answer. Not out of hesitation, but precision.
— A player — he said at last. — Someone capable of keeping up with Michael Kaiser.
A brief, calculated pause.
— Not just keeping up.
His tone shifted, almost imperceptibly.
— Enduring him.
Elizabeth turned her head then, finally interested.
— Go on.
Ray inhaled, as if organizing internal variables before presenting them.
— He is unstable. Brilliant, but… unbearable. I need someone who accepts that. Who understands their own function within the system.
The silence between them was not empty — it was weighted.
— Someone who doesn’t react — he finished. — Who listens. Who remains.
Elizabeth smiled again. This time, there was something different — not emotion, but recognition.
— I see.
They resumed walking.
— Adolescents are highly malleable structures — she remarked, almost casually. — Under the right conditions, they can be shaped with remarkable precision.
Ray frowned, subtly.
— They are not objects.
She did not respond immediately. She simply took a few more steps, the sound of her shoes echoing in a controlled rhythm across the pristine floor.
— It all depends on perspective — she said at last. — Some simply… have not yet understood what they are.
Ray did not like the answer.
But he did not challenge it either.
Because, deep down, it was irrelevant to what he sought.
What mattered… was Kaiser.
And what Kaiser demanded from the world around him.
That was when the environment began to change. Not abruptly, but gradually — like a slow drop in temperature the body senses before the mind does. The corridors narrowed. The lighting became colder, more direct, eliminating shadows while deepening the sense of emptiness. The absolute white gave way to metallic surfaces, rigid, reflecting distorted images, as if reality itself suffered slight deformations within those walls.
And then came the doors.
Thicker.
Heavier.
More… final.
The first sound came minutes later.
A scream.
Short. Cut off midway, like a signal abruptly terminated.
Ray did not ask.
Not out of politeness.
But by choice.
Elizabeth continued walking as if the sound had never occurred, or as if it were irrelevant.
— Adjustments are necessary — she commented, her tone almost analytical. — Not all processes are… painless.
Another sound, this time lower.
Contained.
Like something learning, very quickly, not to be heard.
Ray kept his gaze fixed forward. If there was something wrong there — and there was — he had already crossed the point where it mattered.
The rooms followed one after another.
Cells.
Gurneys.
Bodies.
Some unnaturally still, like systems shut down with no expectation of restart. Others restless, unstable, reacting to invisible stimuli. Scientists moved among them with mechanical efficiency, recording data, adjusting parameters, testing limits.
No one hesitated.
No one questioned.
The absence of doubt was, in itself, an alarming datum.
The normalcy of that environment was the anomaly.
Elizabeth stopped in front of a door unlike the others. More reinforced. Thicker. Quieter — as if whatever lay beyond did not merely need to be contained, but forgotten.
She placed her hand on the cold surface with familiarity, almost recognition.
As if something in there belonged to her.
Or something she believed she owned.
Then she turned to Ray.
The smile returned, perfectly adjusted.
— I believe I’ve found exactly what you’re looking for.
The door did not suggest what lay behind it — it denied it. Thick, continuous metal, without concession, save for a narrow horizontal slit too small to be comfortable, wide enough to keep something alive. There were no marks of use, no scratches, no trace of resistance. As if anything that touched that surface learned, far too early, that resistance was futile. The interior, before the light was activated, was nothing but a compact absence — a space the eye could not penetrate, as if the darkness there was not the lack of light, but the presence of something that did not wish to be seen.
Before Ray Dark could form any question, a staff member appeared at their side, precise, economical. He opened the small slot in the door and pushed a plate inside without looking, like someone feeding a mechanism that required no interaction, only maintenance. The sound of metal sealing shut was dry, final.
— Just watch — Elizabeth hummed, already stepping away, her footsteps too light for the environment she occupied.
She stopped before a panel embedded in the wall, her fingers hovering for a moment over the buttons, as if choosing not a function, but a behavior. When she pressed one, a dim light flickered on inside the cell, revealing just enough to suggest form without offering intention.
Ray stepped closer, positioning himself beside her, arms crossed, his frown not born of curiosity, but evaluation. The revealed space seemed too ordinary. Small. Clean. Controlled. The plate rested on the floor, untouched, displaced like an error in a system that should automatically respond to basic stimuli.
— Am I supposed to see something? — he asked, without taking his eyes off the interior.
Elizabeth sighed, brushing a hand through her hair in a brief, almost impatient gesture.
— Normally, he isn’t this stubborn.
The small motion of her hand that followed was minimal, yet sufficient.
The staff entered without hesitation, carrying metal rods. The first strike against the structure of the cell was abrupt, a sound that did not merely fill the space, but distorted it. The metal reverberated insistently, repeatedly, a chaotic pattern that, paradoxically, felt calculated. The noise accumulated, pressing against the senses, testing invisible limits.
Ray clenched his jaw. That was not stimulus. That was intrusion.
— He’s sensitive to noise! — Elizabeth raised her voice, not bothering to hide the almost didactic tone.
— And who wouldn’t be? — Ray replied, his irony low, controlled, but present.
What happened next was not announced.
There was no transition.
Only rupture.
Something moved inside the cell — too fast to follow at first, a presence that did not obey the logic of space. The color came before the form: magenta, dense, displaced from any comfortable organic reference. The movement was serpentine, but not animal; fluid, but not natural. In a second, it lunged against the reinforced glass that separated observer and subject.
The impact made the staff step back.
Another movement followed, and then another tentacle emerged, not as a predictable extension, but as an independent response. It wrapped around the plate and hurled it against the glass with force, as if rejecting not the object, but the concept of submission it carried.
Ray blinked, once.
What passed through him was not naivety, but recalibration.
He expected deviations.
Not that.
— E666, don’t be so rude — Elizabeth said, leaning slightly toward the microphone embedded in the panel, her voice returning to its previous softness, as if nothing there demanded urgency.
Ray glanced aside for a brief second, registering the detail. Of course there was a microphone. Control was never partial.
Without warning, Elizabeth pressed another button. The lighting inside the cell intensified, not enough to fully dissipate the opacity, but enough to expose the center.
And then he saw him.
A boy.
The same age as Michael Kaiser.
Brown hair fell unevenly, the ends tinted magenta as if the color were not an aesthetic choice, but a consequence. His eyes, a deep violet — almost wine-colored — were not lost. They were focused. Aware. Looking back.
He wore hospital clothing, loose, inadequate for the presence he carried.
From his back, the tentacles emerged — there was no perfect symmetry, no easily identifiable pattern. They did not resemble known creatures, did not obey any natural design. Spines lined them, thin, almost delicate, in contrast with the latent violence in their movements.
And yet, his face.
Too calm.
Almost untouched.
As if the expression had been preserved while everything else had been altered.
Upon noticing the camera, the boy reacted without hesitation. His fingers lifted, and something formed — dense, liquid, structured in an instant. A spike. It was launched with precision. The camera shattered.
Ray took a step back, instinctive.
— That… — he began, pointing toward the compromised monitor, his voice more rigid — him? That boy?
The assessment came quickly.
— He’s unstable. Violent. He wouldn’t work with Kaiser.
Elizabeth pulled a swivel chair closer and sat with calculated calm. There was pride in her gaze, but not the emotional kind — it was technical, almost academic.
— Mr. Dark, E666 is malleable. He adapts to stimuli, to circumstances. He learns quickly.
She crossed her legs, resting her elbow on the armrest.
— And he will behave.
Ray stared at her in silence.
— Why?
Her smile widened, just slightly.
— Because we will offer him something he wants.
— What?
— Freedom.
The word fell without weight, but not without effect.
She laughed afterward, a sound that found no echo in the room.
— Curious, isn’t it? Something like that… wanting freedom.
Thing.
Ray did not respond. His eyes returned to the cell, to the boy who remained there, breathing, watching, existing within a space that did not recognize his humanity, yet could not fully erase it.
— Even so… — he began, lower now — I can’t teach football to someone from scratch.
— Ah.
Elizabeth raised a hand, interrupting him with almost irritating delicacy.
— He already knows how to play. Very well, actually.
Ray’s attention snapped back to her, sharper.
— What?
She turned the chair, activating the monitor. Images appeared.
Field.
Movement.
Control.
— Alexis Ness — she said, casually. — Son of two scientists who worked here. They were the ones who brought him in.
Alexis Ness.
The boy in the footage did not seem out of place. He moved with precision, anticipating plays, connecting spaces, filling gaps before they even formed. A midfielder. Not merely technical — functional. Essential.
Ray stopped processing the rest.
Parents. Scientists. Process.
All of it became secondary.
What mattered was on the screen.
— He still plays here… during intervals — Elizabeth commented, switching the recordings.
Other scenes. Other contexts. The same pattern.
Ray ignored what did not contribute to his assessment. Bodies in the background. Injuries. Interference.
Noise.
What remained was clear.
Potential.
Application.
Result.
— How much? — he asked, straightening his posture, the decision already formed before the question itself.
Elizabeth smiled, satisfied, handing him a sheet of paper.
— Consider it a lease. This is the amount. And when we want him back… we will retrieve him.
There was no room for negotiation.
Ray nodded.
It was sufficient.
The agreement was made without the need for further formalization. Some decisions do not require signatures — only acceptance.
On the way out, a lateral movement caught his attention. Another buyer. Another experiment being returned. The sequence was quick, almost clinical — until it wasn’t.
The creature lunged.
Without warning.
Impact.
The man’s body did not withstand it. The time between attack and end was too short for any meaningful reaction. Blood. Movement. Delayed containment.
— Don’t look — Elizabeth said, her voice low, almost gentle.
Ray was already looking.
For a moment.
Enough.
The experiment lifted its head, blood marking its skin, its eyes locking onto Ray’s with an attention that was not empty. It was analysis.
Recognition, perhaps.
Ray looked away.
Kept walking.
No comment.
No visible adjustment in his expression.
Because the contract had already been made.
And from that point on, any discomfort… was irrelevant.
Alexis Ness had always known — not as a logical conclusion, but as a constant noise in the back of his mind — that he was not like the others. He did not have to discover it on his own; that part had been taught to him with clinical precision. His parents made it clear the moment they handed him over to that place where the word “science” was used as justification for procedures that felt far closer to dissection than to understanding. Science, they said. But there was something deeply distorted in the way it was applied there, as if the method had been preserved and the ethics carefully removed.
He spent years in that environment. Long enough for memory to cease being linear and become fragmented, like corrupted data in a system that insists on functioning despite its faults. Years reduced to stimuli: artificial lights, cold surfaces, voices that never rose beyond what was necessary. And the question — persistent, unsolvable — always returned, like an equation without a solution: why?
Because he played.
Because he believed.
Because, in the end, he was just a child who did not know where reality ended and what he called magic began.
Was that a reason?
The question never received an answer. Only continuation.
And then, too abruptly to feel natural, came the disruption of the pattern. An external variable inserted into the system: Ray Dark. Not as a savior — Ness did not think in those terms — but as a deviation in trajectory. A minimal displacement that, even so, altered everything.
They called it a “lease.”
The word stayed.
Freedom, however, did not come as a complete concept. It came in small, almost experimental doses. The open field, the sound of the ball being struck, breathing without a countdown. Human interactions not mediated by constant observation. Friendships — fragile, perhaps, but real enough to be felt. It was little. It was everything.
And there was Michael Kaiser.
Kaiser was not just a player. He was an unstable gravitational center, pulling everything around him into his orbit without ever offering stability in return. Brilliant, precise, intolerably aware of his own superiority. Difficult. Exhausting. Fascinating.
Ness recognized patterns — it was inevitable. Trauma leaves traces, like residual radiation in a contaminated environment. And in observing Kaiser, he saw signs others could not. Small deviations. Microexpressions. The way tension accumulated in the body before manifesting into something greater.
That was how he saw it.
The moment Kaiser brought his own hands to his neck.
The gesture was not dramatic. There was no audience, no intent to be seen. It was contained, almost technical — pressure applied with precision, as if testing the limits of his own body. Self-inflicted pain as a method of control. As punishment.
It was not impulsive.
It was calculated.
And that was what unsettled Ness.
Because it required a specific kind of hatred — not explosive, but persistent. A hatred directed inward, refined over time until it became functional. How does someone reach that point? At what moment does pain stop being avoided and start being used?
He did not ask.
Some answers do not need to be verbalized to be understood.
Despite that — or perhaps because of it — the relationship between them formed. Strange, asymmetrical, but… sufficient. Ness liked it. He liked being necessary. Being seen, even if only partially. He liked the feeling of existing outside the walls that had defined him for so long.
They were friends.
The word was too simple to describe the complexity of what existed there, but it sufficed.
And, at some point difficult to pinpoint, something else began to form. Not as a clear declaration, but as an accumulation of small emotional variations. Ness did not allow himself to analyze it too deeply. Not because he couldn’t — but because he knew exactly what he would find if he did.
So he did what he knew how to do best.
He turned the feeling into function.
If Kaiser was the axis, he would be the support. The element of stability. The variable that adjusts without question to keep the system operating. Subordination not as weakness, but as a strategic choice.
It was working.
For a while, it worked well enough that Ness could forget — if only momentarily — the origin of everything. The laboratory. The cell. The controlled silence. As if the memory had been stored in a deeper layer, inaccessible during daily use.
Until something — someone — broke that equilibrium.
Isagi Yoichi.
The impact was not immediate. It came gradually, like a reaction that intensifies as variables accumulate. Ness tried to rationalize it. Told himself there was no reason for it. Isagi was just… another player. Competitive, determined, predictable within the context they were in.
But there was a problem.
Isagi did something Ness could not replicate.
No matter how much he tried.
No matter how much he adjusted.
Because what was at stake was not skill.
It was recognition.
Isagi had achieved something Ness had been pursuing in silence for years — something he had never dared to name, not even internally.
Kaiser’s gaze.
Not the gaze cast upon what is owned.
Not the gaze that reduces the other to a function.
But the gaze that recognizes.
That equalizes.
That validates.
And that… could not be replicated through effort.
That was when the fracture began.
Hearing Kaiser’s words only consolidated what was already in motion. There were no shouts. No exaggeration. Only direct, precise statements, like diagnoses.
He was not enough.
Not on the same level.
Replaceable.
Simple.
Objective.
Irreversible.
The pain did not come as an explosion, but as infiltration. Slow. Persistent. Like needles piercing through successive layers until reaching something deeper, more structural. It was not just about wounded pride. It was about identity.
Because if his function could be replaced…
What remained?
And then reality returned, not as a memory, but as imposition.
A dry, inevitable impact.
If he ceased to be useful — if he failed to fulfill the role that justified his existence within that new system — the deviation would be corrected.
And correction, he knew, meant return.
The laboratory.
The cell.
The invisible restraints that had never truly disappeared, only loosened enough to create the illusion of freedom.
All of it… because of someone who had just arrived.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it was only proof that, in the end, he had never truly left that place at all.
— Ness.
Theo Sachs’ voice wasn’t loud, but it hit its target with precision. It always did. Maybe because, in that moment, Alexis Ness wasn’t exactly present — merely occupying space.
He was leaning against the corridor wall of Blue Lock, his body held upright more by habit than by strength. Michael Kaiser’s words still reverberated, not as sound, but as internal pressure — constant, repetitive. There had been no rise in tone, no need for explicit cruelty. That was what made it more efficient. Cleaner.
More final.
Ness inhaled slowly, as if he needed to remind his own body of its basic functions. When he lifted his gaze, he forced a smile — small, controlled, carefully constructed so it wouldn’t collapse.
— Something wrong, Theo?
Sachs crossed his arms, looking him up and down with an attention that bordered on uncomfortable.
— I should be asking you that — he said, without softening. — You just got humiliated by that idiot and you’re… like this?
The word hung there, undefined, as if even he didn’t quite know how to name what he was seeing.
Ness held the smile. Adjusted his posture. Small corrective gestures, like someone trying to realign a mechanism that had slipped out of place.
— I’m fine, Theo — he replied, too lightly. — You know how Kaiser is…
— An idiot.
— Difficult — Ness corrected too quickly, almost automatically.
Theo rolled his eyes, letting out a sigh that carried more frustration than fatigue.
— That’s not an excuse. And you shouldn’t accept that kind of treatment.
The sentence lingered between them. Simple. Direct. Ineffective.
Because it wasn’t a matter of acceptance.
It was a matter of function.
Ness maintained the smile for a few more seconds, as if testing its durability, then tilted his head slightly.
— I’m fine… really. I’m just hungry.
The laugh that followed was brief, too light to be natural. A sound that didn’t sustain itself.
Theo frowned.
— Hungry?
Ness nodded.
— Yeah. Hungry. I’ll go get something to eat, okay?
Before there was room for a response, he gave his friend a light pat on the shoulder — a casual, practiced gesture — and walked off. Continuous movement, no pause. As if stopping meant allowing something to catch up to him.
Theo didn’t follow.
He only watched.
And let him go.
The path to the cafeteria was automatic. Measured steps, controlled breathing. A body functioning within expected parameters, even while the internal system showed evident faults. Eating would help. That’s what people did. That’s what was expected.
Even if his stomach disagreed.
Even if the idea of food felt displaced, almost absurd, in the face of what still echoed inside him.
His parents had always been clear. Not in tone, but in content. Attachment was a mistake. Relationships were unstable variables. His place had never been there — never among equals, never on the field.
It was in the laboratory.
In the cell.
On the cold surface where his existence could be measured, tested, adjusted.
Used.
And yet, something contradictory persisted — an emotional residue he had never fully managed to eliminate. A kind of affection that survived even when there was no logical reason for it to exist. Like a reaction that continues even after the initial stimulus has been removed.
As he entered the cafeteria, he picked up a tray. The gesture was mechanical. Familiar. He approached the counter, his eyes scanning options that sparked no real interest.
And then he heard it.
Voices.
Not loud enough to draw everyone’s attention, but carrying enough tension to distort the air around them.
When he turned his head, he saw them.
Yoichi Isagi and Kaiser.
Facing each other.
The argument seemed mundane on the surface — strategies, positioning, ways to face P X G. But there was something beyond tactical logic there. Something denser. More personal. Like two forces testing limits, pushing against each other to see how far they could go before rupture.
If no one intervened, it would escalate.
Not in words.
Into something more physical.
More honest.
Ness watched for a few seconds. Long enough.
Long enough to understand.
Long enough to feel.
Because there, in the space between them, was something he had never been able to occupy. No matter how much he tried to adjust, to mold himself, to reduce himself into the necessary shape.
They saw each other.
And that was everything.
His violet eyes slowly dropped to his own empty tray. The white surface reflected a distorted, fragmented image, as if he were looking at something that refused to fully assemble.
The hunger vanished.
Not gradually.
It simply ceased to exist.
Like a process interrupted before completion.
Without thinking — or perhaps thinking too much — he let the tray fall. The sharp sound of impact echoed more than it should have, or perhaps it was only his altered perception.
It didn’t matter.
He turned.
Left.
Eating was unnecessary. It always had been. His body had been trained to endure absences — of food, of rest, of care. A week, maybe more. Limits tested, recorded, surpassed.
That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was something else.
And it had a name.
Or rather — it had two.
And for the first time since leaving the laboratory, the idea of returning did not feel distant.
It felt… inevitable.
The truth imposed itself without dramatization: Alexis Ness went more than a week without eating. It wasn’t an act of rebellion, nor a conscious decision in the usual sense — it was a gradual deviation, almost imperceptible at first, that solidified with the same inevitability as a biological process finding the ideal conditions to occur. He avoided the cafeteria. Avoided Yoichi Isagi. Avoided, above all, Michael Kaiser. Coexistence had become unbearable not because of direct conflict, but because of its absence — the silence that replaced any form of recognition. And, deep down, Alexis was already operating under a different logic: that his presence there was temporary. Transitional. Like an organism kept outside its natural habitat only until someone decided to return it to its original container.
He did not fight it.
He simply waited.
Like someone who understands, at some quiet level, that the outcome has already been determined, and the remaining time serves only to fill the interval.
Noel Noa noticed Ness’s absence in the cafeteria, but did not intervene. The boy’s body continued to respond during training — stable performance, no significant drops, no evident signs of collapse. Within a system that values measurable results, that was enough. The simplest hypothesis sufficed: he must be eating at alternate hours.
It was a logical conclusion.
And completely incorrect.
There was a structural irony in it — Alexis did not eat, barely drank water, and yet his body remained functional. Not merely functional, but efficient. Adapted. As if it had been conditioned to operate under prolonged states of scarcity. And that efficiency, far from reassuring him, produced the opposite effect. Because it did not feel… human.
Normality, he realized, was a concept that did not apply to him.
But the absence of food was not neutral. It was merely… delayed in its effects. As the days passed, something began to shift internally. Not sharp pain, nor immediate weakness — but a gradual reconfiguration of biological priorities. As if the body, deprived of the basics, recalibrated its parameters of acceptability.
Everything became… potentially edible.
Flesh.
Texture.
Heat.
Origin ceased to matter.
And, inevitably, the line between the acceptable and the unthinkable began to lose definition.
Alexis recognized the process. Not as surprise, but as memory. An old protocol being reactivated. A response not learned there, but much earlier — in a place where limits were constantly tested until they ceased to exist.
He watched the people around him.
But he did not see only people.
He saw possibilities.
Silent, automatic analyses that he did not verbalize, but also could not fully interrupt. Even so, there was restraint. There was control. The problem was not giving in — not yet.
The problem was time.
Because the longer he resisted, the more natural that distortion became.
And along with it came something else: acceptance.
Not of hunger.
But of fate.
When Noel Noa proposed the pair dynamic, the change seemed irrelevant at first glance. Originally, the formation was simple: Ness and Kaiser. A system already tested, functional in its own dysfunction. But Noa decided to adjust the variable. Test another combination.
Kaiser and Isagi.
The choice was not random.
And neither was the effect.
Now, Alexis stood beside Rensuke Kunigami.
The change improved nothing.
Nor did it immediately worsen anything.
It only reinforced what was already in motion: displacement.
Training with Kunigami was… neutral. Functional. He spoke little, which, under other circumstances, would have been a relief. And in fact, it was. Silence was easier to maintain than any attempt at interaction that required emotional energy — a resource Alexis no longer possessed in sufficient quantity.
But the body began to demand payment.
Movements slightly slower. Responses delayed by a second. Small deviations that, in isolation, would not draw attention, but together indicated wear.
And still, he continued.
Until something broke the pattern.
— Shit!
Benedict Grim’s exclamation cut through the flow of training, drawing attention. The sound was not just irritation — there was surprise in it.
— Problem? — Noa asked, in a tone too calm, almost indifferent.
Benedict raised his hand. His palm was open, marked by an irregular cut where blood began to emerge, pulsing with the rhythm of his body.
— I think I got cut by some kind of thorn…
Thorn.
The word should have meant nothing.
But it didn’t.
Alexis blinked, slow, then looked down at his own hands, still pressed against the grass. The sensation came before understanding — a muscular memory, an internal recognition. When he lifted his hands, the movement was too abrupt.
Shit.
He didn’t need to see to know.
He had summoned it.
Without intention.
Without control.
A reflex.
But then the air changed.
Or maybe it was only his perception of it.
The scent came first.
Blood.
Metallic. Warm. Alive.
Something inside him responded immediately. Not as thought, but as impulse. His pupils dilated, his breathing shifted, and his body — that body that remained functional under absurd conditions — reacted with brutal clarity.
Hunger.
Not symbolic.
Not emotional.
Physical.
Urgent.
He could feel it.
Every cell seemed to recognize that stimulus as top priority. As if everything else were secondary. Irrelevant.
But not there.
Not like that.
Without thinking — or perhaps thinking too fast — Alexis did the only thing he could still control: he interrupted his own system.
Forced the collapse.
Consciousness withdrew like a function manually shut down, and the last thing he registered was Kunigami’s voice, distant, carrying an urgency that no longer belonged to him.
The infirmary corridor was silent in a different way. Not the clinical silence of laboratories, but an intermediate one, where sound still existed, merely contained. Cold lights stretched across the ceiling in regular intervals, creating an almost hypnotic repetition. The environment felt suspended — as if waiting for something that had not yet happened.
The nurse walked as she spoke on the phone, her voice low, but tense enough to slip out of its usual pattern.
— Yes, Anri… I know, but there’s something wrong with his file — she said, flipping quickly through the data on her tablet. — It’s not just inconsistency. It feels… incomplete. Like parts were removed.
A pause.
— No, it’s not a simple error. I found records that shouldn’t be there.
She stopped in front of the door, her hand hovering for a moment before touching the handle.
— I’ll check it myself. He’s unconscious, so—
The door opened.
Silence.
The room was dark.
Empty.
For a moment, her mind took too long to process what she saw — or, more precisely, what she didn’t see. Alexis should have been there. He was left there. The record confirmed it. Everything confirmed it.
But there was no one.
The nurse frowned, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her. The click sounded louder than it should have.
— Strange…
She reached out and flipped the switch.
The light came on.
And something moved.
Too fast to be immediately understood. A shape that did not match what the brain expected to find. Elongated. Fluid. Organic in the wrong way.
The tentacles emerged from the shadows like a delayed response to a stimulus that should never have existed. There was no time to react. One wrapped around her mouth, muffling the sound before it could fully form. Another restrained her arms, immobilizing any attempt at resistance.
The body reacted.
The mind did not keep up.
The phone remained connected.
— Hello? — Anri Teieri’s voice echoed from the other side, distant, disconnected from what was happening there.
For a second, there was only breathing.
And then—
— Ah… I checked the wrong file. That was my mistake.
The voice came out steady.
Natural.
But it wasn’t hers.
— But, Anri… I’ll need to hang up. I have something else to deal with here.
On the other end, there was no immediate questioning. Only acceptance. Routine.
The call ended.
In the silence that followed, the tentacle holding the nurse remained still for a few seconds, as if evaluating its own performance. Then, slowly, the pressure eased.
In the corner of the room, where the light did not fully reach, Alexis Ness watched.
His expression neutral.
His eyes… attentive.
The imitation had been perfect.
Days later, the nurse resigned. There was no commotion. No formal explanation. Only absence.
And, like so many other things in that place, she ceased to exist within the system.
As if she had never been there at all.
And Alexis Ness no longer felt hunger.