5:14am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.
For more than an hour Aiden sat in a wheeled desk chair, spinning idly in slow circles as Zhang Xinyue worked. The doctor knew him, that much was evident, and yet Aiden had no memory of the man at all. He had followed him to his apartment with the promise that everything would be explained, that the doctor would reveal all he knew, but so far he had revealed nothing. Aiden had been given a caveat first - he was forced to offer a vial of his blood for the doctor’s analysis - and Zhang was still running that blood through his machine.
Zhang was a strange man. His hair was short and unwashed, his face covered in unshaved whiskers, and he worked in slippers and a bath robe that were pink and bright blue. And yet his 10th floor apartment, insofar as it could be called one, was immaculate. It was spacious, perfectly ordered, and there wasn’t so much as a coffee cup left to linger. Even the laboratory where he clearly spent most of his time - which took up one of the main room’s four walls and was filled with computers, medical machines, neural network ports and various blood samples - was spotless. It was as though the man had a crippling obsession; a compulsion for cleanliness that spread to everything except himself.
“Are you almost finished?” Aiden asked, getting rather bored. Zhang was leaning over a digital microscope, and peering at the cellular structure of various samples he was running side-by-side.
“Shh,” the doctor replied. “I’m working.”
“You’ve been working for over an hour,” Aiden grumbled. “The longer I’m here, the more dangerous this bec-“
“Dangerous? No. Not here. They won’t touch you here, Aiden King. There is an understanding between us.”
Aiden stopped his slow spin, and instead turned to look at Zhang directly. “Who’s ‘us’?”
Slowly, Zhang looked up at him. “You really don’t remember anything?”
Aiden shook his head.
After a few more minutes, Zhang stood back from his workstation and turned. “What’s the first thing you remember? From when you returned, I mean.”
Aiden looked back to the abandoned district, and once again saw himself crawling out of the endless piles of scrap and garbage to find freedom beneath a rain-shattered sky. Only… It hadn’t been freedom he had found, had it? It had been fear, confusion, and violence. A steel jungle in which he had ceaselessly been hunted.
“I was… Thrown away,” he finally answered. “Like an old television. I crawled my way out of a… Pit… Filled with old machines and scrap and whatever else people no longer wanted.”
“A pit? And where was this pit?”
Aiden shrugged. “I don’t know. Everything was abandoned. There were scavengers there, and apartment buildings filled with locked doors, and a wall that blocked it off from the rest of the city. I had to climb over it to escape. Oh, and these men came… Soldiers, I think, or some kind of mercenaries. They shot me.”
Zhang didn’t react at the mention of Aiden being shot, but instead looked rather disappointed. “There are probably a hundred derelict places like that in Kanto. That doesn’t really give me anything to go on. Did you recognize anything near there? Did you find the name of anyone who lived close by, or get an address?”
For a moment, Aiden saw Nami’s face again and sighed. “Why does it matter? Why do you even want to know? You promised to answer my questions but so far all you’ve done is ask your own.”
Zhang lowered himself into a second chair, leaning forward with his hands together between his knees. “Fine. You’re confused, you want to know what’s happening. I understand that. Ask away.”
Aiden looked down at his hand. He closed his fingers into a fist as tightly as he could, and within seconds, pale blood began to stream down the inside of his palm. He held his hand out towards Zhang as though to show him, but when he opened his fist again the bleeding had stopped, and the wound was gone.
"What’s happening to me?!”
Zhang looked at Aiden’s palm, then gestured to his workstation screen with a nod. The microscopic images of three samples, each side by side, were on that screen. The second two were clearly blood - their images filled with hundreds of purple-hued shapes - but the first was different. The cells there were white.
“Do you remember why you came to Japan, Aiden?” Zhang asked him. “Do you remember R.E.N/D?”
Aiden knew that name. It rose from distant memories like an unwelcome smell. “I… Yes. I think so.”
“The Research, Engage, and Neutralize Division. I was never a particularly big fan of that name myself, but it was accurate. You won’t hear about it nowadays, of course. You’ll find no mention of it on the net, except on those fringe conspiracy boards, or mentioned in passing in the most underground of dark streams, or in the highest offices of the corporations. Yet that’s where you were, Aiden King, for two years of your life. It’s where I was.”
As Zhang went silent, Aiden remembered the woman who recruited him. He remembered how he had told his mother and sister that he was going to Japan, how he had lied to them that he had accepted a full scholarship to Tokyo’s most prestigious and elite university. In reality, he had signed his life away to the promise of playing spy. To the promise of doing something good with his life.
“An anti-terrorism organization…” He mumbled. “I went there. But I don’t remember what happened.”
“Oh, anti-terrorism was certainly the face of it. The flesh behind the skin, however? The bones? It was about money and it was about power, just like everything else. The U.N saw it as a collaborative effort to foster cooperation between the most powerful organizations on the planet. Those organizations, however, saw it as a challenge. An opportunity to compete on the most sensitive field of battle there is; the one in the heart of the castle they all suddenly decided to build.”
“And me? How does what happened to me fit into this?”
“Well, you were there, weren’t you? One of the earliest to join, recruited right into the spearhead of special operations. You were young, eager, and with aptitude test scores of the like very rarely seen. You had no prior training, no prior experience. You were the perfect foundation on which to build what you have now become.”
“And what have I become, Doctor? Every time you speak I feel as though you’re skirting around a subject. What did they do to me? Why do I have this… This hunger… This creature inside of me?”
Zhang looked down, unsure how he was supposed to explain. “I don’t know how to say it, Aiden… I don’t know if we have enough time for me to tell you just what I know - which is less than half of what probably happened.”
Growing frustrated, Aiden slammed his his hand against the arm of his chair. “Doctor Xinyue! Just tell me. Please.”
With a sigh, the doctor turned his workstation screen so Aiden could better see. “You see the difference between these samples, yes? The second two are of normal human blood. The first is of yours.”
Aiden’s eyes traced the grey-lined cells. “I know that.”
“It’s quite clearly not blood, is it? At least, not blood as it is supposed to be. And why do you think that is?” Zhang asked him. “How could you have blood that is not blood?”
Aiden leaned closer to the screen, trying to examine the cells more closely. Were they nanomachines? Billions of microscopic robots built to replace the functions that blood usually provided? No - that was impossible. There would be more detail to them, there would be components visible on the cellular level, and there would likely be signs of an auto-immune response. He saw none of them.
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That left only one option, as ridiculous as it sounded.
"Genetic engineering?” He asked. “I thought that wasn’t…”
“Possible? Legal? Do you really think that mattered to them, Aiden? Your pale blood is just a byproduct of what they did to you - an unintended consequence of their experiments. Let me ask you… Your hunger. Is it for human blood? A vampiric craving?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to say that word because of how ridiculous it sounds but… Yes.”
“Another unintended consequence. Genetic engineering is not a perfect science, Aiden, and your body knows that something is wrong. It knows that - although what you have within you is functioning to an even greater standard than what is natural - it isn’t natural. Just as the vitamin deficient grow cravings for vitamin-rich sources, your body craves real, human blood.”
Aiden tried to remain calm, but there were simply too many questions flooding into his mind. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The man who’s been following me, who’s been trying to kill me, his blood is red. His blood is human. Yet he can heal from his wounds just like I can. Perhaps even better.”
“You speak of Sarratt?” Zhang asked him. “You might consider him a prototype. A version 1 to your version 2. All twelve of you were subject to such engineering.”
Aiden began to shake his head. “Twelve? What do you mean? There are ten more out there who are after me? Ten more who are exactly like I am?”
“Exactly like? No, not quite. Similar, perhaps. All experiments in their own right. The twelve of you were the heart of R.E.N/D, Aiden. The spearhead of operatives behind which all other soldiers would follow. The elite of the elite, made unnatural by the greatest scientists this world has ever known. While others had to rely on cybernetic implants, on replacing their flesh with metal, you twelve could rely on the flesh itself. You were all given different abilities. You can heal from grievous wounds, while others can change their appearance, or have terrifying strength. It’s… Amazing, quite honestly.”
“Amazing?!” Aiden snapped. “I’ve killed people. Others have been killed simply for getting in the way of those who’ve tried to kill me!”
“And?” Zhang retorted. “Even before these enhancements you were part of it, Aiden. You were a trained killer. A soldier and spy in a world of soldiers and spies. Do you really think your hands would be clean of blood if this never happened to you?”
For a moment, Aiden had to hold himself back from launching at Zhang and smacking him across his face. He calmed, however, when Zhang lowered his eyes.
“There’s no point regretting anything, Aiden,” he said. “Regret helps no-one.”
“Those sound like the words of someone who wishes they didn’t feel it,” Aiden replied. “Were you the one who did this?”
Zhang shook his head. “Me? No. I was just a medical researcher - I wasn’t part of what happened to you. Project Rednight, it was called, and that was Dr. Mori’s brainchild. But she died.”
“She died? When? What happened.”
Zhang never got the opportunity to answer. All of a sudden, several loud knocks, like the hammering of fists, came from the apartment door, and Zhang immediately turned, wiped his workstation screen, then checked a small door camera to see who was on the other side. Then, as he slid the vials of blood into a drawer, he gestured towards a door at the back of the room.
“Hide in there, quick!” He hissed, as silently as he possibly could.
Aiden wasted no time in following his orders. He tiptoed hurriedly towards the door and opened it to slide through, and found himself in a bathroom whose window overlooked the south side of the apartment tower. In the streets below he could see various cars, black in colour, parked on the sides of the surrounding road with a dozen masked and suited men waiting around them. He hid back from the window, then pressed his ear gently to the bathroom door. Beyond, Zhang was speaking to someone.
“What are you doing here?” Zhang asked. The man who stood in his doorway was terrifying; over six feet of solid muscle, and hidden behind a long, brown coat and a thick, black beard.
Calmly, the man took an uninvited step inside. He was alone, but that didn’t make Zhang feel any better, and his predatory eyes carefully scanned the room. Several seconds passed before he finally spoke.
“I didn’t take you for one for early morning visitors, Doctor. Not male, at least.”
Zhang didn’t dare close the door. Instead, he turned with his back to it, ready to flee at the first sign of aggression. “I have no visitors. I’ve been working all night, that’s all.”
With a slow and heavy intake of air, the man turned towards Zhang’s array of medical equipment. “It stinks of blood in here.”
“Of course it does. I’m a hematologist.”
“Don’t know what that means. Don’t really care.”
Zhang took in just enough of a breath to pluck up some courage, and abandoned his plan to flee. He marched across the room to his desk and opened the drawer, then pulled out a vial filled with dark red. “A blood doctor. I run tests here.”
“Perhaps. The cameras in the lobby, however, say otherwise.”
“They say I’m not a doctor?”
The man gave him the quickest, cleanest glare; so utterly filled with warning that Zhang almost peed in his robe. “No,” the man clarified. “They say you have a male visitor.”
"Really? Well that’s strange because, as you can clearly see, I am quite alone.”
The man walked across to the workstation, stopping right besides the second chair on which Aiden had earlier sat. “Clearly.”
“What exactly are you doing here?” Zhang asked. “You know where we are. You know who I work for. Do you really think you can just come in here and push me around? I might remind you that everyone - no matter who they might be - currently a guest in this building are under the absolute protection of Aoi-Tori. You Naka-Sura types can’t just push your way in here and-“
Zhang was silenced. The man turned with an uncanny swiftness, wrapped his hand around the doctor’s throat, and hoisted him into the air with a single arm. “Is that so?” He asked. “And what power does Aoi-Tori have now? At this moment?”
All of a sudden, the four corners of the room’s ceiling opened out to reveal tracking auto-turrets, all aiming inwards at Zhang’s oppressor. “That power,” Zhang gasped in the tightening grip.
The man released a low, inhuman growl, then dropped Zhang to the floor. Zhang immediately recoiled, nursing his neck with his hand, and took to leaning against his workstation for support.
“Naka-Sura isn’t invincible,” he groaned. “They do not have unlimited power. If you want to start a war with Aoi-Tori and its allies, fine, but don’t expect Naka-Sura to back you into a conflict that would cost them infinitely more than they would ever gain. The moment you become a hindrance to them, they will drop you and your organization like a stack of bricks. And without their backing, none of you will last a month.”
The large man said nothing at first. Instead, watching as the turrets tracked his every move, he walked towards the still open door. And there, as he stood beneath its frame and looked out into the corridor beyond, he flexed his hands. His bones popped sickeningly; cracking and deforming and then reforming back into what they had just been.
“One day, Doctor Xinyue,” the man said. “When you are no longer protected by your betters… I will rip away your flesh piece by piece, and devour you alive. And I will do the exact same to him.”
Several minutes after the man left and the door had closed again, Zhang walked to the bathroom door and opened it with shaking hands. When Aiden came out he was alert; his eyes narrowed, his body ready for a conflict that he still couldn’t believe had just narrowly been avoided. The turrets immediately began to follow him, but Zhang apologized and did something Aiden couldn’t see, and soon they turned back into their hidden compartments.
“Who was that?” Aiden asked.
“That, Aiden, was a man they call The Beast. And he was one part of R.E.N/D - part of Project Rednight just as you were. He was here for you.”
“But why? What did I do to them? Why won’t they stop hunting me?”
“I don’t know. I left R.E.N/D before its fall. I’ve heard rumours, of course - many have. But I imagine you are the only person in this room who knows the truth of it.”
“Well that’s great,” Aiden said, “because I can’t remember.”
Lowering himself back into his chair, Zhang shrugged. When he didn’t say anything, Aiden instead went to the next most important question on his mind.
“So what’s Aoi-Tori?” He asked.
“A not-quite megacorp,” Zhang explained. “This apartment tower is home to many of its employees, hence the name. Still, Aoi-Tori leads a coalition of sorts - an alliance of other corporations who wish to stop Naka-Sura from gaining true monopoly over this country. As you no-doubt heard, they now support what remains of R.E.N/D; and that, by default, makes Aoi-Tori perhaps the only ally you have.”
“There were men surrounding this building,” Aiden said. He walked to the main window, looking down at the streets below to see that those vehicles and their occupants were now gone. “They were Naka-Sura, I take it?”
“Possibly. I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that the moment you leave this building they will hunt you again.”
“Considering who just walked into your apartment, I don’t feel quite so safe inside, either.”
Zhang smirked. “Don’t worry. I’ll have Aoi-Tori security updated. They won’t be able to just walk in here again. Luckily, as much of a beast as that man is, he still had sense enough to not start a fight he had no hope in winning.”
Aiden sighed, falling back into his own chair. “That’s all well and good, but I can’t just stay here forever.”
“No,” Zhang said, “but you’re lucky. You can stay here for now - at least until we figure out what to do. Aoi-Tori can help, Aiden. I’m sure of it. And you have no allies, no family in Japan. That’s good. It means they can’t go after those who are close to you - they can’t force you back out onto the street.”
All of a sudden, Aiden threw himself up from his chair and marched towards the apartment door. Zhang, utterly shocked, watched as he opened it. “Aiden?” He asked. “What are you doing? Where are you going? Didn’t you just hear me?”
Aiden took a step into the corridor, then turned to look back over his shoulder. “You’re wrong, Zhang. I do have allies here. And they already know who they are.”
Before Zhang could stop him, Aiden was sprinting back towards the elevator.