Shinkawa plunged his head into a basin of ice-cold water.
At the tail end of winter, the shock made his entire body tremble. Some of the building's pipes ran outside, exposed to wind and rain, and a thin crust of ice covered the metal. The water flowing through them was bitterly cold.
It was not that the facility lacked hot water. He had filled the basin with cold water on purpose. Only the cold could ease the heat inside his skull. It felt as though molten rock were running through his brain, drawing every scrap of warmth in his body up into his head. His eyes hurt so badly he could barely think.
He kept them open beneath the water.
Broken veins spread across the whites in jagged red lines. At first glance, it resembled conjunctivitis, but the cracked-glass pattern looked less like inflammation than scars.
Behind all that red, pale gold flickered for an instant.
Shinkawa stayed underwater until his lungs began to seize and even the icy water felt warm. Then he braced both hands against the sink and tore his head free. Water sloshed over the rim and ran from the hair plastered to his forehead and ears. He dragged in breath after breath as if he had just finished a ten-kilometer run.
The cold finally smothered some of the heat in his brain. The dizziness and pressure eased. Shinkawa leaned toward the mirror and studied the disheveled face staring back at him.
He had not shaved in months. Exhaustion had aged him by years, but he had long since stopped caring how he looked.
His attention remained on the gold flowing faintly through his eyes.
"Heh... heh heh..."
A low laugh escaped him.
"So these are the eyes you two have."
Shinkawa did not truly understand what a Fluctlight was. From the fragments he had overheard around the facility, he knew only that its awakening was a gift available to very few. It was what made Satoru and Makoto Kaizuka nearly invincible in a virtual world, and what that man had called The Seed.
Shouichi Shinkawa was no genius.
No matter how hard he struggled, the best he could do was follow in the wake of those two, and every attempt had ended in defeat. If someone like him wanted to stand on the same ground, he had to pay a greater price.
They kept him in FullDive for as long as twenty hours at a time. His mind was monitored around the clock. Electrodes covered his body, stimulating one nerve after another, while researchers in white coats built virtual worlds designed to drive him into desperate extremes.
Day and night lost all meaning.
His five senses were pushed to their limits, and the pain feedback was raised far beyond anything a game would ever allow.
He had once believed that a year in the lightless depths of the Black Iron Palace was the worst thing a person could endure.
He had been wrong.
In one world, there was nothing but ocean. He fought the virtual waves for three days until exhaustion dragged him beneath the surface, then experienced every agonizing second of drowning.
Another world was a volcano made of blades. Every step opened fresh wounds. Steel pierced him with almost perfect realism as he climbed through the forest of knives. One careless movement sent him tumbling into the crater, where the flames consumed his avatar in seconds.
That was what VR was truly capable of.
It was not merely a platform for games. It was a dream box that could create any place, any environment, and any form of suffering.
Every world followed the same directive.
Kill him.
Again and again, his mind was battered and torn apart.
Even Shinkawa had wondered whether the next experiment would finally leave him insane. A first-rate clinical team kept that from happening. They maintained his body and mind, piecing him together after every session like a shattered ceramic vessel.
Some stubborn fragment of obsession still remained inside him, and somehow, he had made it this far without breaking.
"This is fucking inhumane," he spat whenever he could.
The words changed nothing.
He was a prisoner under a death sentence. No one cared whether he consented to the experiments.
Physically, he had never been healthier. His meals were expensive and scientifically balanced, and the mandatory exercise had made him stronger than before.
But the pain left by repeated torment had settled in his eyes.
He was alive, yet he had experienced death more than a dozen times.
What a contradiction.
The military would love this kind of torture. With a large enough support team, the captive would not even die. At worst, they would only lose their mind. Few people could endure it without eventually submitting.
Still, the experiments had worked.
Kayaba's method of stimulating his own mind during the final battle had remained in the database. Using that record and everything gathered since, the researchers had finally produced the result they wanted inside Shinkawa.
An artificial Fluctlight awakening had become reality.
"So now I'm carrying a time bomb too," he murmured with a dark laugh.
Awakening a Fluctlight was like taking the locks off the mind. The soul expanded, but the process devoured the life that sustained it. Anyone who crossed that limit was doomed unless they learned to control it. At first, the unleashed beast might still obey the reins. Once it ran wild, there would be no stopping it.
Satoru must have suffered terribly in the beginning.
Everything around him would have seemed painfully slow while his thoughts raced ahead. Worse, that same accelerated mind would have been constantly calculating how much time remained before he reached the end. It would have been like watching his own life count down.
Somehow, Satoru had tamed the beast completely.
Now it was Shinkawa's turn to experience it.
He took a dry towel and wiped the water from his face and hair. It did not matter. Every person was born moving toward death.
Golden eyes changed nothing.
The destination was absolute.
Shinkawa left the bathroom and followed the corridor toward the smoking area. Everything around him resembled a hospital. Doctors and nurses wore masks and white coats. Disinfectant hung in the air, and the walls and lights were an impartial white.
But no hospital was this merciless.
Guards in black stood throughout the facility, gun holsters hidden beneath their jackets and high-powered stun batons strapped openly to their belts. Whether by nature or regulation, no one spoke more than necessary.
The building and everyone inside it were orderly, clean, and cold.
A modern prison, Shinkawa thought.
At least there aren't many other inmates.
Only one person stood in the smoking corridor. He wore a pale lab coat and thick plastic-framed glasses. His hair was cut short, and gray stubble covered his chin. The years had worn deeply into his face. He was at least forty, perhaps older.
"Professor Nagashima. Fancy seeing you here."
Shinkawa walked to his side and slipped a hand into the pocket of his hospital clothes. Together, they looked through the floor-to-ceiling window at the small courtyard and its lone crooked tree.
"Shinkawa-kun. Are today's experiments over?" Nagashima asked around his cigarette. "And while I do hold a doctorate, please call me doctor, not professor."
"Same difference. You're not in charge of me anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the professors and doctors in this place are all the same. Educated elites with questionable consciences."
Nagashima ignored the insult.
"Are the experiments over?"
"Since I awakened that thing, they haven't needed to put me through anything as intense."
"That is good. You need the rest."
Nagashima studied Shinkawa's face. He looked as though he had not slept in two weeks. Then the doctor noticed the cigarette in his hand.
"I didn't know you smoked."
"I didn't. Then I died twice in their experiments."
Shinkawa pulled the cotton from the filter, turned the cigarette around, and lit the empty paper shell where the filter had been. He inhaled hard as the paper flared.
"Put a man through enough shit and he'll learn on his own."
"That may be the least healthy way I have ever seen anyone smoke."
"But it feels damn good."
Shinkawa released a dense cloud.
"No one has confirmed it, but nicotine seems to suppress the side effects of Fluctlight awakening. That's only my personal impression."
"An interesting observation," Nagashima said with a nod.
They fell silent. A careful meter separated them as they stared through the glass. There was little outside worth calling scenery. The crooked tree had lost every leaf. Beyond it stood a high wall, and beyond the wall there was only sky.
Shinkawa did not even know where the facility was located.
He had also stopped keeping track of the date. The snow beneath the tree was beginning to melt, so spring could not be far away. Time felt vague to him. So did the present.
He was no longer certain he would live long enough to let that old man drag him all the way to Santorini to admire the beaches and women in bikinis.
"You can come and go whenever you want, can't you, Dr. Nagashima?" Shinkawa asked suddenly.
"I have clearance, yes. I also signed an agreement. It may technically be an employment contract, but when the other party is the military, it stops being an ordinary job."
"That only means they value your talent. This place is working on something extraordinary, isn't it?"
"It is."
"Then can I ask about my cellmate?"
Nagashima frowned.
"She is not a prisoner. She is a patient."
"Fine. Your patient. I'm the lowest-ranking person here either way."
Shinkawa shrugged.
"How is she?"
"Not well."
Nagashima was silent for a moment before answering, and his voice carried the weight of a sigh.
"So I heard. She's still playing games, though. Apparently, she doesn't have to sign any confidentiality agreements."
"Of course not. As far as she knows, this is an ordinary hospital. She cannot reveal what she does not know."
"She thinks she's free. I lost my freedom because I know the truth. The rest of you pretend you still have yours."
Shinkawa gave a bitter laugh.
"This place really is something."
Nagashima said nothing.
"How much longer does the girl have?"
"Not long..."
The exhaustion in the doctor's voice deepened.
"That's going to be lonely."
If she died, Shinkawa would lose the only other person in the facility whose circumstances felt anything like his own.
"If there's nothing more you can do, then stop. Keeping her locked in this miserable place serves no purpose. Let her go wherever she wants."
"She would not survive a single day outside," Nagashima said. "Too many people have betrayed her. They made promises and failed to keep them. I made her a promise as well. I will not abandon it. As long as there is even the slightest chance, I want to cure her."
"That sounds less like hope and more like letting her die by inches."
Shinkawa looked at the doctor's scholarly face and smiled without kindness.
"You're wasting the little time she has left."
Nagashima turned toward him, displeasure tightening his expression.
"I have the ability to help her. I studied for more than a decade, and my training allows me to see the hope that still remains. My confidence may be so faint that no one else can see it, but it is built on something real. That is better than making promises with nothing behind them."
"Promises with nothing behind them?"
"You know Makoto Kaizuka," Nagashima said quietly. "A man who cannot even hold on to his own life should not make reckless promises about someone else's. All he accomplished was making another person feel how helpless this world can be."
"Makoto threw his life away precisely because he was trying to hold on to it. Contradictory, sure, but he truly burned himself down to the last spark."
Shinkawa's voice remained calm.
"How far would you go, Dr. Nagashima, for a patient who has no connection to you?"
"You seem offended that I criticized him."
"Don't take it personally. My present circumstances leave me offended by almost everything."
"I have rested long enough, Shinkawa-kun. Take care of yourself."
Nagashima dropped the last of his cigarette into the bin, slipped both hands into his pockets, and turned away.
"I meant what I said," Shinkawa told him without looking back.
Nagashima slowed.
"Which part?"
"Let her leave this place. Call her whatever you want, but she and I are both prisoners here. Test subjects. Being treated like a favorite does not change that. They will extract every last bit of value from her before they let her go."
Shinkawa kept his back to the doctor, unable to see his reaction.
"She doesn't have much time left, does she? You probably know that better than I do."
He gave a quiet laugh.
"Have you really sacrificed more for her than Makoto Kaizuka did?"
Nagashima tilted his head.
"That is none of your concern."
His footsteps resumed, each one crisp and precise as clockwork.
Left alone, Shinkawa stared at the crooked tree and drew deeply on his cigarette.
"Still... living the way Kaizuka did is a pretty miserable fate," he sighed to himself.