Chapter 218: For All the Alices (3)

Project Alice-01.

Her world was the white of an isolation room, or the gray of a laboratory.

'I...'

Born into a colorless world, the girl spent much of her life imagining things.

After all, she had never once left the laboratory.

Even so, the doll always spoke of the outside world.

She remembered every word she had said to her little sister.

-When we get out of here someday, let's build a quiet house and live there together.

-I want to visit so many places. The sea, filled with endless salt water. Mountains, where all sorts of plants grow together. Snowfields covered in white ice crystals... Ah, and I want to go to an academy too, a place where people our age gather!

But those words had little to do with dreams or longing.

They did not make her excited or fill her with hope.

-So let's make sure we survive.

She simply needed something, anything, to cling to if she was going to survive.

The girl's life was so brutal that she could not live without even a blade of grass to hold onto.

A life confined to a narrow room, tortured without end.

'Why... am I alive?'

Not even faint starlight entered the isolation room.

It was a world with nowhere to turn.

<Ahem.>

And the creator who had shaped the girl was a devil.

<Well then, it's time for another enjoyable experiment.>

<As it happens, we have a new drug prepared.>

<It will be at least five times more painful than the standard one. Truly dreadful stuff.>

<Then, Project Alice-01. You'll endure well this time too, won't you? We can't lose such a precious test subject. Of course, we'll adjust the dosage so you don't die, but...>

The man always held a syringe out to her.

He spent every day torturing his creations.

Under the guise of experimentation, the girl suffered countless forms of abuse.

'I don't want this.'

A life of struggling, clawing at herself, crying and begging, then losing consciousness again.

There was no way to escape.

She could only walk through an endless, unrelenting hell.

That was why the girl dwelled on her own helplessness several times a day.

'Wouldn't it be better... if I just died?'

She wanted it to end.

Yet the reason she could not let go of life was...

-Sis... I'm sorry. You got hurt protecting me...

There was someone she had to protect.

The girl could not die.

Perhaps Father knew that too.

Even when she wanted to let go of everything, whenever night fell, she found herself desperately trying to protect her little sister.

-I'm scared...

Her younger sister cried easily.

They were twins, yet the girl saw her as so much younger.

She was small, precious, and lovable. Someone who seemed as though she would break at any moment unless her sister protected her.

-It's okay. We'll definitely be happy someday.

-Your big sister will figure something out.

So the girl had to live while playing a role.

She imitated the image of a perfect older sister.

She hid her fear, concealed her pain, and became a place of rest for her little sister.

The girl wore herself away. She drove herself onward. Beneath that rough, worn-down shadow, she kept what was most precious to her.

-But I want to be with you too, Sis.

-S-Sis? Siiis... I can't breathe when you hug me that tightly...

Thankfully, her little sister grew up well beneath that shadow.

Her smile alone kept the girl alive.

Yet part of her was still despairing.

How long could such sacrifice, such a foolish way of living, continue?

'How long... just how much longer do I have to live?'

An endless night.

The girl's heart festered with each passing day.

'I wish neither Liss nor I... had ever been born.'

And so, the older sister's world was a silence of white and gray.

* * *

Unknown's deep world.

In place of her broken self, I underwent all sorts of experiments at Oz's hands.

<Now then... I wonder how long you can endure.>

<Shall we start by frying your brain until it's just about to burn?>

They called them experiments, but they were torture in all but name.

Techniques devised solely to inflict pain.

Oz spoke proudly.

<To maximize the Black Queen's power, we must plant the greatest possible pain and trauma in the test subjects.>

<The clearer the hell you hold within yourself, the more rapidly the Queen's influence will grow.>

<That's also why we taught all of you about the outside world and the meaning of ordinary happiness.>

<You must know happiness to understand unhappiness more clearly.>

The Oz Unknown had described.

That madman was several levels worse than I had known.

<Isn't it delightful? To think you can become the centerpiece of such a grand project.>

<If I could, I'd gladly become a test subject myself, but... regrettably, I was deemed unfit.>

He injected me with drugs and carved high-level dark magic into me.

Sometimes he cut open parts of my body to inspect my condition.

This was different from when Javert snapped my neck on the ninetieth floor of Purgatory.

These methods had been devised to their limits to inflict pain and despair upon test subjects.

<Oh dear, perhaps that drug was a little too potent this time.>

<Come now, you must stay conscious. Otherwise, we'll change the test subject to Alice-01.>

<Excellent. Very good. Shall we cut open your stomach next? I'd like to see how your internal organs have twisted.>

The sensation of my abdomen being split open while I was alive, my insides stirred and rummaged through.

I had to experience every moment of it in full.

<Oh my, you're drenched in cold sweat.>

<Is it a little warm in the laboratory?>

<Then how about we freeze you solid instead?>

I could not pass out from the pain or flee into unconsciousness.

Whenever I did, Oz's drugs forced my mind awake.

I remembered something Alice had once told me.

-Father always inflicted pain through drugs alone.

-He said he did not know how test subjects would break if they suffered physical damage...

-In other words, he made drugs so horrific that they could inflict enough pain without even touching us.

They said Oz never left a mark on his test subjects.

But right now, I was being subjected to every kind of torture.

'This is probably the result of Unknown's trauma manifesting in an extreme form...'

With the nightmare layered over it, the ordeal had become even more vicious than it originally was.

In that deep world, one second passed like an eternity.

I had to endure every moment.

<Then, let us begin again.>

Being in a deep world did not mean I could not die.

Just like on the ninetieth floor of Purgatory, this was an environment where a certain sequence repeated.

After dying on the operating table, I woke up again in the white isolation room.

The strength of my original body and my stats were utterly useless.

Inside this laboratory, I was fixed in the body of a young test subject who could not resist.

<How astonishing. It must be excruciating, so how have you not screamed even once?>

<It doesn't seem as though you lack the ability to feel pain, either.>

Yet despite the agony, I never screamed.

The corners of my mouth remained raised, never holding even a single groan.

I simply walked through the hell laid out before me.

'I see.'

What I felt was pity.

Of course, even that was not for myself, but for others.

'Alice and Unknown... those girls must have hurt too. For all that time. Without end.'

My first death came on the operating table.

I did not know what drug he injected into me, but my skin cracked apart and then shattered to pieces.

My tenth death was an accident.

Oz had turned the power of the electric torture up too high.

After that, dark magic tore open my throat, or I was crushed to death entirely.

<Oh? Project Alice-03's weakness is the neck? It reacts especially well compared to other parts of the body.>

<We'll direct every remaining experiment there.>

I did not remember my hundredth death very well.

Perhaps it was because the scenes repeated too continuously.

Something stabbed into my throat, forced its way inside, sawed through me while I was alive, broke something... all sorts of things passed through me.

My entire body was soaked in cold sweat.

I was drenched as I lay bound to the operating table.

I could not tell whether what was running down my body was sweat or blood.

'It hurts.'

That was all I could think.

It was beyond comparison with Purgatory.

But that was precisely why I could not back down.

'You two suffered this much.'

The world was so cold, and there had been no one by those girls' sides.

No one to teach them about the warmth of a hand or love.

'I had my teacher, but you were not even allowed an adult like that...'

Poor girls.

That was why I wanted to be by their sides.

I wanted them to be able to answer proudly when asked why they should keep living.

'I'll teach you.'

The reason not to let go of life, even when you are unhappy.

The hope that even a ruined life can still change.

I faintly raised the corner of my mouth.

If a price this small could bring smiles to both of them...

'That's a bargain.'

And so I lived in that same place for days, then more days.

Perhaps after I had died around a hundred more times.

"You..."

The girl who had stayed silent the entire time, curled up in the corner of the isolation room.

Unknown spoke for the first time.

"Stop... Please, just give up now..."