Chapter 75: Cage

Embryo traffickers were known to cut shady deals with corrupt lab personnel at the gestation vats, buying formed embryos at dirt-cheap prices only to flip them to desperate buyers for double the cost.

Had he not brought the infant home, the police department would have classified the undocumented child as an illegal wanderer and had him systematically "cleared."

"Your salary is barely enough to keep yourself afloat. How do you expect to raise a baby?"

The moment the words left her mouth, the woman regretted them. She knew that clones were entirely sterile—perhaps he simply longed for a family of his own.

"I’m sorry."

She was, after all, merely a virtual program. She could neither bear his children nor accompany him into the real world.

After lulling the baby to sleep and tucking him beneath a thick blanket, the Sentinel knelt down before the woman, gently holding her ethereal hands.

"I’ll work hard and save up for a Generation-3 Expansion Chip," he promised softly. "When I get it, I’ll be able to keep you right by my side wherever I go."

The woman in the emerald cheongsam offered him a soft, lingering smile. "Alright."

Even though she knew he wouldn’t be able to afford such an upgrade even if he worked a hundred lifetimes.

Turning her back, she quietly wiped away a single, virtual teardrop from the corner of her eye.

The Sentinel pinched every penny and worked tirelessly, eventually becoming a model officer at the precinct as he raised the infant day by day. He gave the boy a name: Xander.

Time glided past in quiet routine.

When Xander turned thirteen, his adoptive father faced a sudden reassignment: he was being banished to 616. Unwilling to be separated from his son and the virtual woman, he resisted—only to be forcibly bound and dragged away under the cover of night by military personnel.

Before leaving, those men mercilessly destroyed the chip containing the virtual woman.

Bunny watched as the young, blue-haired Xander stood all alone in the vacant apartment, thoroughly lost. He collapsed onto his father’s bed and slept for three days and nights straight.

Yet the father he waited for would never return.

Left with no other choice, Xander began scavenging outside for scraps, making a life for himself at Scavenger Station No. 3 in the Lower City alongside discarded utility robots. Even when the food was sour or completely spoiled, the starving boy scarfed it down like a feast.

Watching the young Xander in his tattered clothes—severely malnourished, his hair matted like a bird’s nest, his face smeared dark as charcoal—Bunny felt her heart twist into painful knots. She reached out to comfort the young boy, but her fingers passed uselessly through the fleeting memory phantom.

Three years later, sixteen-year-old Xander awakened as a Sentinel. The utility robots urged him to enlist in the military, where he would at least be guaranteed daily meals.

Taking his robotic friend’s advice, Xander spent half a year at the military boot camp. He developed rapidly, undergoing a complete transformation from his former self.

Yet tragedy struck once again.

Bearing a rare and exceptional spiritual form, Xander quickly caught the attention of a high-ranking female Guide whose father was a top military official. Reassigned to serve as her personal guard, Xander’s true nightmare began.

The cruel woman locked him inside a massive water tank, forcing him to transform into his aquatic form simply to serve as a decorative spectacle for her and her high-society friends.

Xander refused to be her lapdog.

Torture, beatings, and solitary confinement followed in relentless waves. She went so far as to procure illegal drugs designed to force Sentinels into heat, watching with sick fascination as Xander curled up inside his cage, brutally mutilating his own flesh just to keep from surrendering to her control.

"Don’t you get it? You were born to be a plaything, a dirty low-class creature meant solely for display!"

A butterfly trapped in a cage will tear off its own wings to reach for freedom.

Xander severed his own breathtaking tail, ripping away every last iridescent scale. Mid-transit while being rushed for emergency medical treatment, he dragged his blood-soaked, mangled body into the shadows and escaped.

He had only one path to break free from this demon forever.

Filing an urgent request with the Special Operations Bureau to be stationed in 616, Xander boarded a warship bound for the unknown district within twenty-four hours.

The bureau director—a high-ranking Guide with fine lines framing her eyes—asked him why he specifically requested assignment to the 616.

"My father is there," Xander replied softly.

The senior Guide blinked, choosing not to tell Xander that the father he sought had long passed away. Instead, she offered a quiet, distant sentiment:

"An old friend of mine was stationed there once, too... though she gave her life in action long ago."

She had submitted multiple requests to access her dear friend’s classified casualty records, only to be met with cold rejections from the Military Intelligence Bureau every single time.

That middle-aged Guide intercepted the claws and surveillance eyes of the demon, arranging for people to safely transport Xander to the Tower in 616.

Here, Xander endured ten long, solitary years.

Across a decade, he bore witness to countless teammates perishing, taking their own lives, or even deserting and betraying the cause. He stood like an isolated node on a desolate planet—countless lives crossed paths with his, only to drift further away. The longer he survived, the further redemption slipped from his reach.

She watched as Xander sat alone on the Tower’s rooftop, legs dangling over the terrifying drop, gazing out at the crescent moon as he numbly drowned his senses in alcohol.

Bunny desperately wanted to wrap her arms around him, but it was nothing more than a ghost of a memory within the phantom vision.

The scene snapped shut.

Bunny found herself standing barefoot in a deep, sapphire-blue ocean. Rolling waves crested and fell, and the surface stretched out as tranquil and still as a field of cornflowers.

This was Xander’s mental landscape.

Deep along the seabed lay countless gorgeous seashells and coral reefs, though pitch-black patches of contamination clung to them. Bunny picked them off one by one, the cool seawater lapping against her ankles and calves with a refreshing, tingling chill.

Certain sectors of the sea were terribly murky—so thick with grime that even cranking her mental threads to maximum brightness failed to illuminate the depths. This was years upon years of accumulated mental sludge.

Because Xander’s rank was absurdly high, Bunny scrubbed the "streets" for hours without making a dent. Just as she surrendered and flopped onto the sandy beach to rest, a crisp, youthful boy’s voice piped up behind her:

"Hey, who are you?"