Live long enough and things happen that cannot be helped. For instance, a situation where your limbs are bound and your right to make your own decisions has been taken away.
......I did not want to know these things either.
***
When I came to, agonizing pain came with it.
How should I explain this? Roughly the level of pain you would feel if someone tore off thin strips of living flesh, chewed them over and over, sewed them neatly back on, sprinkled a little salt over them as seasoning, and then burned them with electricity.
Naturally, then, I concluded I had gotten caught up in a crime that involved kidnapping.
It was not as if there were only one or two bastards who would put me to use, dead if I died and alive if I lived.
Since a failed mission led straight to death, I had been confident that I always cleaned up after myself properly, so how had things come to this?
'Which is it? If silencing me was the goal, they'd have killed me outright. Remnants of the bastards I took care of last week? Their skill is far too high-class for that. Ugh......, come on, go easy on me.'
The water was cloudy, as if some chemical had been mixed into it, and my field of vision was narrow. Perhaps because oxygen was at least being fed in through the device clamped in my mouth, this body of mine, accustomed to pain, would not even lose consciousness.
Only my awareness was awake. With pain added on top. My uncontrollable arms and legs were nothing but a nuisance.
I did not know who had thrown me in here, but if the purpose was to ruin my mood, they had achieved it in full.
'I wish I could at least see.'
And so it went for a while.
Only after the pain subsided, my sight returned, and I took in the unfamiliar space around me did I realize that something had gone very wrong.
Pure white, smooth finishing materials close to those of a sterile room, broad lighting of a high, nearly white intensity, a transparent cage filled with an unidentifiable liquid, and the floating body trapped inside it.
Unable to put up any resistance at all, I was sunk in the water with nothing but breath left in me.
'Ha......, what the......?'
Grasping the situation I was in and drawing up the optimal route was something I had repeated countless times. Even with my vision clouded, I had called up the action guidelines for a kidnapping and lined up several plans.
I had been right about to execute them.
What is this?
What am I supposed to call it?
Why on earth is my body so frail now?
"Record of the tenth experiment on Type 99-X. Biological responses have returned to normal, but application failed. Detailed analysis appears necessary for the next application attempt. Certain anomalies have appeared as a side effect of 99-X......."
As my hearing normalized, I caught the presence of someone outside the tank.
The voice had been distorted into a mechanical tone, as if the system only allowed one-way communication, but unless it was a monster, it had to be a person.
The one in charge of my pain was probably that researcher.
'An experiment? On me? Where'd human rights go? How disconcerting.'
So the pain, close to full-body torture, was a side effect of the experiment.
Is my changed build a side effect too?
'There's no way. Anyone can see this isn't my body.'
It was absurd enough that I had not regained consciousness through ten rounds of experiments, and on top of that, the researcher would not even turn his head my way.
He only followed the records on the monitor, packed dense with figures.
Soon an additional dose took effect and I let go of consciousness entirely, and I ended up having an unpleasant dream.
When was it, again?
There had been a time when, because stress management was essential, my one pleasure was reading comic books and snickering at them.
Just being able to turn a blood-smeared page and smirk at nothing in particular was enough for me.
The voice of the colleague who teased me, asking if I still read that sort of thing like a child, is still so vivid.
Why? Why a dream of those days?
***
Damn it.
The tenth experiment on 99-X.
This did not mean there had been ten experiments.
The 99 referred to me.
The ninety-ninth test subject.
The X was the detailed classification of the experiment.
From A to Z.
The reason I recalled this even now was—
"Disposal of Type 99-X. Approval of the request to retry 99-A, which showed a response. Day one record."
—because this was a place I knew well.
It is a little pathetic that I only remembered it in the moment I barely caught the last thread of my consciousness while the blood was being sucked out of my whole body.
Ah, that is not what matters.
Isn't this what they call possession?
No matter how I looked at it, this was inside a boys' comic I had read, and it seemed I had become one of the characters in it.
Like most boys' comics, it was an ordinary sort of comic in which a righteous protagonist overcomes hardship, grows, saves the world from evil, and fulfills his dream along the way.
There were beasts and ability users fighting until the blood burst out of them, disillusioning political maneuvering, and interference from the masterminds behind the scenes, but in the end, well.
It was the kind of comic where all of it gets pushed through and there is even a perfect ending at the finish, built on the pretext of sacrifice.
The problem is that I'm not the protagonist.
I'm the worst villain instead, the one who drives the latter half of the story and even throws trials at the protagonist's party.
'Good grief.'
Perhaps the author was fond of the character, because that villain not only had a heavy presence in the work, his backstory was unpacked in exhaustive detail.
Thanks to that, I was at least able to catch on even in the confined space of the water, which was fortunate.
'Is this really fortunate?'
A piece of human garbage who lost his emotions to experiments carried out on him before his sense of self had even formed and who rampaged, chasing nothing but dopamine and causing all that trouble. That villain, really?
'That pitiful bastard I cursed at while reading is me. I've become him.'
Either way, I'm seriously screwed.
I was the villain who would be brutally killed to serve as the detonator for the awakening of the protagonist's party, but the side effects of the long experiments meant I was fated to die young regardless.
This pitiful villain's future was terminal.
'How bleak.'
What can I do? If I don't want to die, I'll have to thrash my way through it.
First, I need to put a stop to these meaningless experiments that only repeat the pain.
Floating in the liquid in a half-dead state, then an experiment, then pain again, then blacking out again, repeat, repeat.
'This is a corpse with its eyes open. Is this even living?'
No, this won't do.
I rolled my eyes to follow the researcher's figure beyond the transparent cage.
Still analyzing and recording the experiment results and working through his report, the researcher moved with nothing but the indifferent, mechanical motions befitting a man who had been through every previous experiment.
"Huh? Why is the signal suddenly like this? This......, this should not be happening? Last time it clearly stabilized at this stage......."
The researcher, peering into the complicated monitor, was flustered.
I had not done anything much. Just something simple, like slightly changing the composition of the liquid in the tank that held me.
The reason he was commonly called X, or Number 99, in the original work was that the 99-X experiment had succeeded.
That is right.
The experiment just before I opened my eyes here had succeeded, and I had gained an unknown ability.
All I had seen of the techniques were a few drawings, so precise control and adjustment would be necessary, but getting out of this oppressive tank should be light work, shouldn't it?
"Do not tell me our eyes just met......— Wh-what is this?!"
Such a fuss over a bit of eye contact.
Staring at the researcher's mug beyond the rippling space, I raised a hand and laid it against the transparent cage.
'Congratulations. Your experiment didn't fail. It made a monster.'
Looking down at the researcher as he toppled over in shock, I tore off the mechanical sensors attached all over my body.
"Insane!"
The researcher flailed his arms and tried to make contact.
Summed up roughly, it was an order to seal off the research wing at once because I looked ready to rampage.
I liked that he put the ripple effects of my escape ahead of the human survival instinct that would have him begging for personnel to come save him.
"S-success! At last!"
Correction.
Seeing that mug of his, saturated with the euphoria and joy of his own research succeeding, he was simply a madman.
I knocked on the transparent wall like a gentleman, carrying the meaning of, 'How about you just let me out?'
"Type 99's manifestation traits were so cantankerous that it was a headache, and now this....... And to think it is trying to coax me. Hahaha, is that not a masterpiece?"
There was no getting through to him.
I had attempted persuasion, thinking it might be of some use in escaping the laboratory, but that was a bust.
99-X's ability is related to water.
Rather than anything scientific, it is closer to a supernatural ability, which is to say magic or alchemy. From another angle, given its affinity with water, you could even call it spirit arts.
It was only a matter of time before the transparent cage, unable to withstand the pressure of the swelling water, shattered.
The enormous mass of water held in the cage poured into the laboratory all at once, and the broken shards, swept along with it, clawed at everything around them.
My feet finally touched the ground, but the joy lasted only a moment before I grabbed the tube jammed deep into my throat and pulled it out. Nausea and a scorching pain came at once, and my eyes screwed shut on their own.
"Ah, aah."
A rough voice like scraping metal came out. Along with a grating pain. My half-paralyzed throat would not function properly.
'At this rate I can't communicate for a while.'
There was a lot to dig out of the researcher.
To resolve the side effects of the experiments, the research data was absolutely essential. A detailed record of what method and what dosage had been injected, and where the sequence began and ended.
In the original work, he never found this data and ultimately failed to be cured.
'That's why he went even madder, threw himself at the protagonist, and died.'
No, that will not do.
I turned to look at the researcher, drenched like a drowned man. The way he raked his madness-soaked eyes over my whole body was exactly that of a mad scientist.
"This is the greatest in history. This is a jackpot! I was certain there would be nothing beyond the sample subject, but was all of that rubbish?"
His gaze, glistening all the more, perhaps from the water, was almost too much to bear. The researcher laughed grotesquely and snapped his head up.
"You cannot speak? You understand my words, though? Haha, in truth it does not matter if you do not. A language problem is something you can learn in time!"
The severity of his delusion was somewhat concerning.
Rubbing my stinging throat, I scanned my surroundings. A monitor was still lit despite the surge of water.
'Would it be better to pull it out myself?'
When I furrowed my brow, the researcher flinched at the shoulders and laughed unpleasantly.
"Heh heh, your emotions are alive? Do you want to run away, perhaps? Did the experiments hurt? Do you mean to take revenge on me? Kuk, the data will need revision. You have not been deceiving me all this time, have you?"
A curse nearly burst out of me, but my throat hurt, so I held it in. That one was beyond saving.
At least he kept talking to himself, which looked like a habit formed from the repeated experiments.
"It is fortunate that something came up. I nearly missed seeing the success, did I not? Putting up with Section Chief Kim's whining was worth it after all. I thought he was an incompetent bastard who could not even select a delivery contractor on time, and here I am reaping the benefit."
Delivery?
At the enticing word, I stopped my steps toward the machinery.
'So it really is around this time?'
There had been talk about how far the author would milk the story with spin-offs, but at times like this, it comes in handy.
Around the time the 99-X experiment succeeded, the laboratory was tangled up in a great many interests. The experiment was so coveted that 99, the subject himself, as well as the Laboratory Director and several corporations were dragged in, and a scramble of chasing and being chased unfolded.
Of course, 99 was the shrimp whose back bursts between fighting whales, so whoever won, his life would have been rough. But it is different now.
It seems there is room for my possessed life to become a little easier.
"Thanks to the delayed schedule, I get to run an additional experiment, see the finished product, and even say a proper farewell. Hold on, was the successful experiment 99-X? The measurements clearly said......."
ZAP.
The researcher grabbed at the monitor, half submerged and finally dead, was at a loss for what to do, and then turned to look at me.
"What does past data like this matter? The result is right in front of me anyway! You are the first to endure all of those experiments. So the ability was water, as predicted? How about killing me with it, hmm? I am saying I will give you a chance at revenge."
A bastard mad for research.
Had he left his own life behind at the dump?
The researcher waded through the thigh-high water and came closer to grab me. But after his hands twitched several times, he could not bring himself to touch me and clutched his own face instead.
I watched his mug twist under his palms for a moment, then quietly stepped back.
It probably did not show, but at that moment I was in quite a bind.
'Why isn't the water going down? It feels like it just keeps rising.'
I had manifested the ability based on my memories, but it came so much more easily than expected that I had gotten complacent.
'How do I stop this?'
There were none of the flashy, eerie skill effects I had seen in the comic.
There was only a pitiful villain on the verge of drowning himself by his own ability.