They stood there, doing nothing. Nicole was scared, James was scared, and Mat... He wasn't saying anything.

- ...

- ...

- ...I'm going to release him.

- Wait, wait, wait, wait! - Nicole exclaimed. - But what do you intend to do?

- I'm...

- Mat, that thing is a monster. - said James. - There's a reason it's... Like this.

- Yeah, but...

- Mat, a monster attacked us earlier, what makes you think this one won't? - James said.

- It's just... It doesn't have an evil aura, and that's why...

- Mat, you said the same thing about the other one! - Nicole complained.

At that.

"Help... Me..."

The group heard a strange, horrible voice whispering in their ears. Everyone was startled and Nicole almost had a heart attack... I'm exaggerating.

- It was you, wasn't it? - Mat said and... He released it with his powers.

- Mat, what have you done?! - James was scared by... That.

The humanoid creature got up and...

- Maaaaat!

[https://i.imgur.com/xopNVGb.png]

Nicole screamed, but the creature did nothing. It simply walked away from Mat, sat down on the floor. The chair it was tied to sparked. It was like to electrocute it.

"Oh, so that's what it was for? Disturbing..." Mat thought.

The creature, already sitting up, said, I think... It would be better to say it whispered, but it's too redundant already:

"Thank you."

It said again as a whisper.

- Y-you're welcome. - Mat said. - B-but... What are you?

- " W-what do you mean with t-that? That... That's... That's very rude of you."

It whispered again, and from the words it used, they stopped being afraid.

- Ah, I understand, sorry... - Mat said.

Nicole moved closer to James and said, whispering to him:

- Hey, James... What's going on?

- I have no idea.

Mat was... Talking to the creature at the time, then went to where the other two were and said to them:

- Guys, it's harmless. - He said it with a smile.

- A-are you serious? - asked Nicole, who didn't trust Mat's words because of... Because of the creature's appearance.

- Yes. - he replied while nodding his head.

"Agh..."

It whispered again, but... This time it sounded as if it was in pain. When the three of them turned to look at it, it had several wounds. It looked like... It looked as if its own body was hurting him, as its limbs separated, injuring it and it was bleeding from where there were no wounds.

- Are you all right? - the first to approach was Nicole, who looked worried. Also... She seemed to have overcome her fear, at least at that moment.

"I am..."

The creature was starting to... Whisper better, so to speak. It was articulating its words better. After whispering it, its wounds regenerated, much to everyone's surprise.

"Such it seems... Our transformation was a failure... But..." Whispered the creature.

"Our transformation? What is it talking about?" thought Mathias.

- Mat, hey. - Nicole approached him. - ...What's going on? I'm scared...

- Are you as scared as you were when you almost proposed to Andrew? - Mat said, and got slapped almost instantly. - ...I'm sorry. But... I don't understand what's going on either.

"Do you want us to tell you what's going on?"

Whispered the creature.

- Do they know? - James asked. - But how? You... I mean... YOU guys never left here, did you? How do you know that then?

"That's true, but... We can hear everything that goes on in this place. We heard you guys when you were coming, but... We couldn't do anything. Amazing how you survived an artificial monster and defeated it, though."

They whispered.

- Artificial monsters? - Mat asked.

"Now we tell you about it, although we may not get everything we say right, because there are some things we barely heard and we could have distorted them."

They whispered again.

What that creature said was that they were in a kind of laboratory, on one of the lower floors. That place had been designed that way so that the test subjects, the people they were taking and locking in groups, could not escape. In addition to that, they placed failed and weak, but functional specimens to roam around the place, which, for some reason, only killed humans.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

All this was for the purpose of making the subjects feel despair, depression and anxiety about their situation. If this was achieved, they made the survivors experience extreme pain, without killing them (that's why the blood... Which was from several people), to increase their spiritual power, and then inject them with a strange liquid, with which began their mutation... Or evolution, as they said.

How is it that those who performed these experiments were not killed by the monsters/mutants? Each group of them carried a card, on which there was an unusual spiritual power and, apparently, the monsters recognized the superiority of that person's spiritual energy and were afraid of them. Another thing is that in that place there were also natural monsters, that is? Monsters that had been around forever, that were not artificially created, mostly, and that were under investigation.

They also told them that they were not clear about the purpose of those experiments, but that they heard that there were more places like that. Oh, and that... The mutation of them, the creature, caused four people to merge into one.

- I see... - Mat said. He seemed to be calm.

- So that was it... - said James, who was starting to get a sick feeling. - And to think that we murdered one person...

- That's... Horrible. - said Nicole, who was in a cold sweat and shivering. She turned to look at Mat and said. - How can you be so calm right now? Did you hear everything they said? They were going to do that to us, and on top of that, we killed a person! So... Why are you so...?!?

- I'm not... - Mathias answered. - I'm worried about all this, but getting distressed isn't going to solve anything.

“And... It was a person that we couldn’t save...”

- Y-you're right, but... Still... - said Nicole.

- Yeah, it really won’t. - said James. - Now let's cut that out there, we need to get out.

"Exactly. But... I noticed something."

- What thing? - Mat asked.

"Since you guys killed a monster, the investigators, or something, should have come, but no... It's strange, though... This only happened once, and this is it."

- Mathias. - James said, and pointed at Mat. - He knocked out a bunch of them, and we locked them in our room.

"Is that right? Then all the more reason they should have come, but no? It's strange, but... Let's go out then."

- You too!? - Nicole exclaimed.

"Why shouldn't we? Oh, that's right... We are monsters... But..."

- That doesn't matter. - Mat said. - To me you're people, so... Let's get out!

- M-Mat! - Nicole.

- ...It's okay. The more the merrier, right? - James said. - Besides it's a monster, if another one attacks us, we'll be able to defend ourselves better.

- True, but... Ugh... It's okay. - Nicole finally agreed and approached the creature. - So... My name is Nicole, nice to meet you...

- And mine is James, it's a pleasure...

- And mine is... Oh, right, you already know.

"We heard you all the way, so we knew who you were. But... Calling us monsters... It's kind of weird, but since we don't remember our names anymore, you should give us one."

- Huh? And why us? - Nicole asked.

"We thought that would be better."

- I see. - Mat said. - So...

- How about the name Victor? - suggested Nicole.

- H-hey! - said Mathias. James...

- We like it. - said James. - It's a normal person's name, so it works.

"Victor... Victor... Sounds good. Thank you very much. We'll be Victor from now on."

- Yay! - Nicole didn't seem to be afraid of them anymore.

- It's settled then. - James said.

- Oh, shoot... - said Mat, disappointed. - I wanted to name him The Faceless One, it sounds menacing, scary and...

"Like the name of a monster and it's simple at the same time, but I'm not going to say it." Mat thought.

"That's horrible..."

- S-sorry.

"Let's go..."

They whispered.

- Yes! - said the rest.

They left that room.