*
In GenTek's containment chamber, a great many things had happened today. To soothe my mental exhaustion, I lay down on the bed, casting one last look at Mother's worried eyes, and sought sleep.
*
...
...
...
It always takes time for darkness to lift.
Light came swiftly, but my consciousness crawled back into this world slowly, ever so slowly.
First, there was warmth.
Something soft, deep, and comforting was cradling my cheek and forehead.
Then I opened my eyes.
The first thing that filled my vision was neither a white ceiling nor a metal frame.
—It was Mother's ample breasts.
The light flowing over their curves trembled gently, like primordial amniotic fluid. Beneath the back of my head were her thighs.
'...A lap pillow?'
I faintly furrowed my brow. Considering what I had seen recently, this place felt utterly alien.
That was when it happened.
A soft hand stroked down my cheek. The feeling of those fingertips was not quite human... but something deeper, something older.
"Are you all right...? My baby."
Elizabeth Greene. In this world, she was known as the Queen of the Infected. But at this moment, to me, she was only one person.
—My mother.
Complex emotions were tangled across her face. Worry, relief, fear, sorrow, and maternal love.
None of them were false.
I slowly sat up. But Mother caught me and drew me right into her embrace.
Rather than a hug, it felt closer to protection. Her Blacklight biomass rippled faintly, brimming as though it might seep beneath my skin.
"You looked like you were suffering."
Her voice was low and deep, like muddy water.
"Did it hurt badly... in your dream?"
I could not answer.
The moment I spoke, I felt as though the remnants of that dream—the beastliness on the verge of rampaging, the nature of DX-1118 M within me—would spill out into reality.
"...It's all right. It's all right now."
She whispered as she cradled my head. With every touch, the waves raging inside me were pressed down and extinguished one by one.
It was not the power of a virus. Nor was it an infected's ability to control others.
It was simply the power of a mother.
Whenever she held me and whispered, the instincts inside me let out breaths that were a little closer to human, rather than a beast's howl.
I slipped free of Mother's embrace and slowly looked around.
The familiar containment chamber.
The familiar equipment.
The familiar smell.
But within it, I was no longer familiar.
That something seething inside me was no longer the person I had been before entering this room.
The instincts of DX-1118 M. Their nature did not stop at mere infection or proliferation.
—Spread.
—Infect.
—Destroy everything.
Those raging urges were madly sweet, intoxicatingly alluring.
At the very edge of rampage, I had been entranced by that power.
And now—
I was afraid of that fascination myself.
That was why this moment in Mother's embrace felt so human, so warm.
Click.
The cold, familiar sound of the automatic lock disengaging echoed through the containment chamber.
I knew who it was from that sound alone. The door opened, and white hair and red eyes stepped into the light.
Minazuki Kir. My father.
As always, he approached with a faint smile—but today, something was different.
His steps were slow, his face stiff, and his innate cheerfulness seemed precariously hidden behind a pale shadow.
"Kiria..."
He stopped in front of me. Then, just one word.
"...I'm sorry."
I narrowed my eyes as I looked at him. It was the word I had least expected to hear from Father's lips.
"..."
He lowered his head very slowly.
It was not shame, but a gesture tangled with guilt, regret, and self-reproach.
"I... want you to grow stronger."
His voice trembled.
"But today, I think I pushed you too hard."
His eyes wavered. Within them were two utterly different emotions.
One was—
His profound love for Mother and me.
The other was—
A scientist's endless desire to study the virus, and a sense of mission bordering on conviction.
The two could not coexist. That was why he was always in pain.
I knew that. I had known for a long time.
I could feel that he suffered because of those contradictory thoughts: the desire and sense of mission born of conviction in his eyes, and at the same time, the love and affection he held for Mother and me.
...
Between Mother and Father, I often wondered.
Was I human? Or was I an infected?
My body was viral biomass. I bore a human appearance, but in essence, I was an evolved being infected by a virus.
After being reincarnated into this world, having lived only in a containment chamber since childhood, the fact that I could not possibly be human was only natural.
Yet ironically—because of that,
I could not hate Father.
His madness,
his obsession,
his warped love,
his undeniable thirst for research.
I could understand every one of those contradictions.
Because the same duality was beating fiercely within me.
So I accepted him.
Rather than forgiving him, it was closer to embracing all of him exactly as he was.
Blacklight and Redlight viruses always absorb, assimilate, and reconstruct the things around them.
Perhaps I had inherited that nature in my emotions as well.
...But.
No matter how well I understood him—
Today's reckless test was, honestly, infuriating.
So I decided to answer him in a slightly more twisted way.
Father laboriously raised his head.
"Kiria... I'm truly, truly sorry."
I slowly raised the corners of my mouth.
"...All right, Father."
He let out a small breath of relief.
At that moment—
I spoke in a dry, sharp tone.
"But."
"..."
"Father, did you happen to prepare my will before today's test?"
Father's face stiffened. I added,
"Or... if I died, were you planning to scrape up my biomass and leave it behind as research material?"
His eyes went wide.
Beside us, Mother softly said, "Kiria..." but I did not stop.
"Or did you think that if the experiment went wrong, you could just make another me?"
"Ah... no, that—"
"You'd be more than capable of it, Father."
I shrugged.
"After all, you're more of a 'genius scientist' than anyone else here."
Kir opened his mouth, then shut it again. His red eyes shook, and his breath came deep and long.
"...Kiria. I'm truly sorry."
His voice was far lower, far more earnest than before.
"Watching you today... I realized how foolish I've been."
"..."
"The researcher in me and the father in me... those two sides are fighting each other. But..."
He reached out and gently stroked my head.
"At least in front of you... I want to be your father."
I fell silent for a moment.
His touch was warm, careful, apologetic,
and filled with twisted love.
All of that was part of why I liked Father.
I let out a quiet sigh. Then, at last, I spoke.
"...I know."
Kir blinked.
"Still..."
I looked at him slowly and said,
"Just for today, I'll accept your apology."
The moment I finished speaking, the tension slowly left Father's eyes. His shoulders relaxed, and his breathing trembled a little less.
He smiled quietly.
"Thank you... truly."
I thought to myself.
—You're going to be this happy about it.
—That just makes me want to tease you more.
Even having thoughts like that felt like proof of something called family.
Mother silently watched us from beside me. In her eyes spread warmth, unease, and, for only an instant, the shadow of sorrow.
*
Deep within GenTek's research wing, beneath the coldest and brightest lights, a man was studying something.
Alex Mercer.
Crimson holograms reflected in his eyes, flickering in the darkness like flames.
At his fingertips, tissue samples collected during Kiria's battle, along with the biomass structural analysis data just processed, floated silently and rotated.
At this moment, that data was intoxicating him more than anything else in the world. He drew in a long breath, like a priest inhaling something sacred.
"...This can't be possible."
But the data did not lie.
The independent activation patterns observed in Kiria's cells at the brink of her rampage were clearly neither DX-1118 A nor DX-1118 C.
They were an entirely different structure.
And that structure possessed a single property no virus in this world had ever possessed.
'Energy-based mutation.'
The phrase pierced his mind.
Fire.
Electricity.
Emission.
Not elements on a level humanity could understand. It was a force far more fundamental—and far more difficult to control.
"So... that's what those flames were."
Alex murmured.
With a gesture, he opened the test room CCTV footage.
On the massive screen appeared the image of Kiria, flames enveloping her entire body as she illuminated Gina Cross like a furnace.
She was not burning her body. She was forcibly outputting energy pouring from within into a 'form,' enough to warp the density of the surrounding air.
Alex's lips slowly parted.
"Fire... is that all?"
He already knew. With this structure, heat was only a simple expression.
The manifestation of electricity.
The release of poison.
The condensation of cold.
The control of pressure and vibration.
The creation of every wave that possessed an organic form.
This virus did not absorb energy from outside; it produced energy within and released it in mutated forms.
"My God..."
His voice trembled. Whether from excitement or fear, it was impossible to tell.
"Does that child... have mutation as fuel?"
Images too concrete to call mere imagination began exploding through Alex's mind.
One was—
An infection spreading like wildfire with a single breath that enveloped an entire city.
One was—
An army of biological energy-based weapons that needed no power lines.
One was—
An age in which a single life-form embodied every shape of evolution humanity had ever imagined.
And the last was—
The virus as ecosystem,
the virus as species,
the virus as civilization.
Alex slowly raised both hands and looked up at the data structure. The cellular simulation, as though tracing millions of circuits, resembled a supernova explosion compressing the evolutionary map of the stars.
"DX-1118... the countless mutations, including A and C..."
He let out a distant breath.
"...But none of them can even reach the feet of this 'M.'"
He smiled softly. It was neither cold nor hot. It simply... flickered.
"Minazuki Kiria."
When he spoke that name, his voice was almost a hymn.
"You are not something we created."
The hologram burned in his eyes like flame.
"You are... the point of evolution the virus chose for itself."
Alex flicked his fingertips. The cells on the screen erupted into countless colors and explosively fragmented, only to reconstruct themselves into a new form.
He was certain.
This child was the pinnacle of all infected beings currently in existence.
And at the same time, he realized that all virus research until now had been no more than an opening step.
The world had tried to stop them, but Alex was certain now.
If everything until now had been a 'prologue,' then starting with Kiria, the true 'development' would begin.
He slowly drew in a breath.
"How... should I make use of this virus?"
The shadow cast across his face was eroded by light, only to revive once more, flickering like flames.
A shiver traveled up his spine and spread through his entire body. It was not displeasure—it was pleasure.
"Fire..."
He murmured lowly.
"...Electricity..."
A smile spread across his face.
"...Poison, ice, vibration, gravity... anything should be possible."
And at last—Alex Mercer smiled very slowly.
That smile belonged not to a surgeon dissecting someone's fate,
but to a pioneer witnessing God's creation before his very eyes.
"GenTek doesn't know this child."
He whispered as if speaking to himself.
"Kir understands only half of it."
He shut off the hologram and looked through the black glass window toward the containment chamber.
Below lay the starting point of a new species not yet awakened—the place where Minazuki Kiria slept.
"You are... a new god."
Was that worship,
or was it a declaration?
Everything had already begun.
*
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