Chapter 8: Suspicious Past (part 2)

Seven years had passed before I noticed that a certain "trash" had gone missing. It struck me suddenly, like a cold gust of wind that left a chill in my bones. I was going about my routine when the thought crossed my mind, and once it did, it wouldn't let go.

"Instructor," I called out, my voice steady but insistent as I approached the man who had overseen so much of our lives in the Dome. "Where is zero-zero-one-three?"

The instructor glanced at me, his expression one of mild confusion. "Who?" he asked, clearly struggling to place the number.

"You know," I pressed on, trying to jog his memory, "the trash... the weakest initiate in the Dome."

He stared at me for a moment, his brow furrowing in thought. "Weird... we had someone like that, but I don’t remember," he finally admitted, his tone laced with uncertainty. "Your power allows you perfect memory, doesn’t it?"

"Yes," I confirmed, the unease in my chest growing. My memory was flawless; I could recall every detail of every day since my arrival at the Dome. The fact that the instructor couldn’t remember someone who had been a constant presence, however insignificant, was disturbing.

The instructor nodded slowly as if considering my words. "I will have to talk to my superior," he said, turning away, his voice distant.

As he left, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Zero-zero-one-three had been the weakest, the one who never fought back. He had been a constant reminder of what could happen if you didn’t push yourself to survive in this place. And now he was gone, erased not only from the Dome but seemingly from the very memories of those around him.

I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of him. Had he finally broken under the pressure? Had the Dome discarded him as easily as one would discard trash? The thought lingered in my mind. In this world, even the faintest flicker of existence could be snuffed out without a trace.

Four hours later, the instructor returned, his face devoid of the usual sternness and instead shadowed by something that made my heart pound a little faster. He didn’t waste any time on pleasantries.

"When did you start noticing this?" he asked, his tone sharp and focused.

"Just recently," I replied, trying to mask the unease that had been gnawing at me since our last conversation.

The instructor looked at me for a long moment before speaking again, his voice low and deliberate. "He escaped."

My breath caught in my throat. "What!?" The word slipped out before I could stop it, my shock evident.

"We have no idea when," he continued, his eyes narrowing. "Don’t get any funny ideas, and don’t share this with anyone, or it’ll be your neck on the chopping block. Upper management doesn’t want your fellow initiates getting any ideas either, so keep this to yourself. Escaping the Order would be the highest folly."

The weight of his words settled heavily on my shoulders. The idea of escape had never truly crossed my mind before. We were trained to survive, to be strong, and to follow orders without question. The thought of someone actually escaping the Order seemed impossible—suicidal even.

"I... I understand," I stammered, trying to process the magnitude of what I had just learned.

The instructor gave a curt nod and left, leaving me standing there, my thoughts racing. Zero-zero-one-three, the boy I had once considered weaker than myself, had somehow managed to break free from the clutches of the Dome. It was almost unthinkable, yet it had happened.

As I watched the instructor walk away, I couldn’t help but wonder what had driven zero-zero-one-three to take such a dangerous step. And more importantly, I wondered if he had succeeded in finding the freedom we all secretly yearned for but never dared to pursue.

For the next few days, I couldn't shake the thoughts of zero-zero-one-three from my mind. His disappearance gnawed at me, unsettling my already fragile peace. The unanswered questions buzzed in my head, and the secrecy surrounding the whole situation only made it worse. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and confronted the instructor once again.

"Instructor," I began, my voice edged with frustration, "what if the others notice too and start asking questions? Why even tell me he escaped? You could have just said he was killed for not producing results! Tell me the truth!"

I felt a sharp pang of betrayal as I spoke. The idea that the "trash" had managed to escape, something I hadn't even dared to consider for myself, left me feeling vulnerable and exposed. My anger boiled over, and I came on strong, my emotions getting the better of me. I might have been trained to suppress them, but even I wasn’t immune to mood swings when the stress accumulated enough.

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The instructor met my outburst with a calm that only served to irritate me further. "Because threatening you will yield better results," he said, his tone matter-of-fact. "They won’t know unless you talk. Only you know he’s missing. I and upper management didn’t even realize it… Only three people know this—you, me, and my direct superior."

I stared at him, my mind racing. "How?" I asked, trying to make sense of it all. “How did he do it?”

"Zero-zero-one-three’s power is a hypnosis variant that allows him to make people forget," the instructor explained. "He showed promise when he was first introduced to the revised project... thanks to his psychosis being suppressed."

"Psychosis?" I echoed, a cold shiver running down my spine.

"Yes," he confirmed, his eyes narrowing slightly. "From his failure to survive his shedding."

The term "shedding" was something we all knew too well. It was a process that occurred when a person reached a specific "state of mind," triggered by the "Insanity Gene," a hidden special gene that physically represented the soul. For unpowered individuals, the first shedding was always a matter of life and death.

This "state of mind" was a special state of insanity that, if survived, granted superpowers. But if not, it turned the person into a monster—a superpowered pure psychopath bent on causing harm to others.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Zero-zero-one-three had been living on borrowed time, a ticking time bomb that no one had seen coming. His escape wasn’t just a fluke—it was a testament to the chaos lurking beneath the surface of the Dome, a place designed to strip away our humanity and leave us as weapons in the hands of the Order.

I felt sick, my mind reeling from the implications. If he had survived his shedding, or at least suppressed its worst effects, what did that mean for the rest of us? And if he could escape, could others? Could I?

But the instructor’s words brought me back to the grim reality. "Don’t get any funny ideas," he had warned, and I knew he meant it. The consequences of even considering such a thing were too dire to imagine.

Yet, the seed had been planted, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a way out of this nightmare, or if I was doomed to remain a pawn in the Order's twisted game forever.

I asked the question that had been gnawing at me since our last conversation. "What happened?" My voice was quieter than I intended, the curiosity about the mysterious boy’s past outweighing my usual caution. “How did he do it?” I sounded like a broken record, but I needed this.

The instructor’s expression remained stoic as he explained the Dome’s past. "In the beginning, the Dome project was designed to artificially awaken powers in unpowered individuals. Several infants were adopted under fake names and subjected to experimentation… It was a spectacular failure, with zero-zero-one-three as the last survivor."

I listened intently, feeling a cold dread settle in my gut. The instructor continued, his voice even and detached, as if he were recounting some distant memory rather than the horrific events he described. "He was six years old on the day of his shedding, and in the aftermath, he killed over sixteen superpowered personnel, injured four more, and put nearly a dozen into a coma."

My breath caught in my throat. The boy I had once called "trash" had been responsible for that level of destruction? It was almost unimaginable. The instructor paused, perhaps sensing my shock, before continuing.

"At the last second, the boy somehow regained clarity and used his power on himself. He made himself forget his psychosis, but his power had become so strong that he erased his abilities too. The Dome project was then revised, and he was placed in here along with you kids."

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All this time, I had thought zero-zero-one-three was simply weak, too cowardly to fight back. But the truth was far more complex. He hadn’t fought back because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t. The very power that had once made him a monster had been stripped away by his own hand.

"There were still lingering side effects of his psychosis," the instructor added, "like his belief that we live inside a game. And because of that, some held hope that he’d awaken his powers again."

I gulped, the weight of the revelation pressing down on me. So, the reason he had been so passive, so seemingly broken, was not just fear—it was a kind of self-imposed powerlessness, a desperate attempt to escape the nightmare that had consumed him.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, my voice shaky. The knowledge felt like a burden, something that could crush me if I wasn’t careful. “I knew I asked for this, but you could have just shrugged me off…”

The instructor’s gaze hardened, and he looked at me with a seriousness that sent chills down my spine. "Because you show promise," he said, the words heavy with implication.

Three years after my time in the Dome, I finally escaped.

Freedom was supposed to be a relief, but instead, I found myself plunged into a life even more miserable than the one I’d left behind. On the run, I was hunted by a powerful government that was hell-bent on dragging me back. All I wanted was a normal life. I craved it desperately.

Was it too much to ask?

At first, every day was a nightmare, a constant battle for survival. But as time went on, I began to find small joys in my life on the run. I met new people who became friends, jumped from one planet to another, fought against the Order that had once controlled my every move, and experienced things I never could have imagined back in that sterile, brutal facility. I saw new worlds, tasted strange and wonderful foods, experienced different cultures, and slowly, without even realizing it, I became too good at running. So good that the government eventually decided to reduce the resources they were wasting on chasing me.

I was still a fugitive, but life had become a strange dance of evasion and exploration. In some ways, it was almost peaceful.

As I sat in my latest hideout, a small, dingy room in a far-off colony, the radio beside me crackled to life. "It is thirteen minutes before four o’clock in the afternoon—" the announcer’s voice droned on. I reached over and switched the channel, searching for something to fill the silence.

The static cleared, and a familiar tune filled the air:

"Take me to the magic of the moment, on a glory night…"

I smiled faintly as the lyrics washed over me. I couldn’t resist joining in, my voice was soft at first, then growing louder as the chorus approached.

"Where the fighters of tomorrow dream away…"

"Dream away…" the radio echoed back.

"In the winds of change," I finished, my voice blending with the music.

The song "Wind of Change" by Scorpia wasn’t always a favorite of mine, but I enjoyed it. There was something about its melody and lyrics that resonated with me deeply, especially now. I hummed along, letting the music carry me away, if only for a moment.