As Adam slowly gathered his senses, and began to gain an awareness of his surroundings, he looked up at Sinja in confusion.

“Help me against the Isekai Initiative? But I figured that there was no way to avoid it?”

Sinja smiled, “before I tell you anything, I just want to ask you a few questions. It’ll be much more conducive to the investigation if you answer completely truthfully.”

“I wasn’t planning on hiding anything,” Adam replied confusedly, “so ask away.”

Sinja smiled mischievously.

“Well then, do you lack friends, family, or anyone close to you? Are you obsessed with a novel series, or web novel, or some sort of passion, to the point where it is pretty much the only reason you are living? Or have you recently been down on your luck, and been wishing your life was different?”

Adam stared, somewhat thrown off by the somewhat embarrassing and deeply intrusive nature of the questions, and hesitated. Sinja looked at him expectantly.

“Well… Yes.”

Sinja, delighted at first, suddenly stopped, took a few seconds to puzzle the nature of Adam’s answer, and frowned.

“Yes to which of the options?”

Adam reddened at his confession, as it seemed that most people would only have one of the options in their life.

“Well yes to… to all three.”

At his reply, both Sinja and Caleb stilled. Sinja’s face clearly and outwardly expressed shock at his words, while Caleb, while still having shock on his face, seemed to be mixed with some measure of elation as well.

Eventually, the two shook themselves out of their stupor, and gathered their senses. Caleb still gaped at Adam, while Sinja began to speak.

“There are certain, for lack of better wording, criteria for being marked by the Isekai Initiative. Normally, like protagonists of the Isekai genre, people that are marked experience one of the situations I listed earlier, in their day-to-day life. Most die, a victim of the initiative. However,” Sinja paused, as if to build suspense, “if they manage to survive the attempts of the initiative on their life for a while, eventually the danger abates.” she paused again, looking at him as if trying to scrutinize the state of his body.

“Dealing with danger every day, of such a super-natural nature, heightens their human abilities to the point of inhumanity. Increasing fitness, mental acuity and swiftness, agility, even unlocking some features of humans lost through evolution.”

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She paused, then, completely out of the blue, cavities opened on the sides of her neck, slowly fluttering, before closing again. Adam fell off of his bed in shock, while Caleb just rolled his eyes at her display. Sinja let out a chortle.

“Ha! Gets them every time.”

She took a drink of water.

“I was targeted when I was younger, in middle school, when I used to be part of a swim team. More like, it was the only thing that kept me going. I had no friends and not the greatest relationship with my family, so other than the swim team, I was mostly alone. And so, my obsession with the swim team led me to being targeted. Because I was targeted mostly when I was near water, I ended up growing-” the cavities on her neck opened again, expelling some water in the process, “gills.”

Adam stared in shock.

“B-but I don’t have any gills! So how-”

Sinja let out a giggle.

“I can really see how he got on your nerves,” she directed to Caleb, who rolled his eyes at the comment, and in exasperation, exclaimed.

“Can we please get on with this? None of us are getting any younger here.”

“Except you,” Sinja giggled, but then became serious.

“Not all adaptations are purely physical like mine was. Like I said before, some adaptations are mental in nature, or are simply just an increase in strength or stamina. However,” Sinja’s eyes gained a more manic light, talking with passion as if the subject they were speaking on were a favorite franchise or food, “if more than one reason was why a person was targeted, the attempts on their life were more frenzied, less spaced apart. With the heightened danger, came a more accelerated rate of adaptation to that danger, so people with more than one factor end up gaining more advanced adaptation.”

“So when you were surprised at me having more than three factors-,” Adam began.

“I was surprised, since most people with one die before adulthood, and compared to people with two factors, they’re many in number. I’ve known people with all three factors, but only three before you, and they were all raised in environments that gave them the edge on adaptation.”

Adam frowned, “but-”

Sinja held up her hand, her eyes sparkling again, “before we lose ourselves to the fascinating subject, I need to know about your adaptation. What happened to you?”

Adam thought back, “when the jug of water hit the oil, just as the flames exploded out, the world around me just suddenly slowed,” he recalled, “and it was like I could see everything happening around me. Almost as if I was reading a story from the third person omniscient perspective.”

Both Caleb and Sinja looked at him in confusion.

“Or like a quick time event in a third person shooter game,” he stammered out, feeling his face heat up at the fact how no one had understood his metaphor.

“Well with an ability as useful as that, you’ll likely be on the field a lot. Heal up, and we’ll see you when you get out of here!” Sinja clapped Adam on the back, as she and Caleb rose to head out.

Adam felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him as he drifted off to sleep. However, once again as he closed his eyes, he felt the sensation of a vision that was somehow read to him, though it was more of a sound this time: that of millions of fluttering wings.