Chapter 133 U-731

I couldn’t let him escape. That much, I knew. Light, the so-called Messiah and time traveler, shimmered dangerously. The air around him wavered with static as he prepared to bolt, his eyes narrowing. If he leaned fully into his speed, there was nothing I could do, just as there was nothing he could do to hurt me while my intangibility held.

It was a stalemate, except Light had the initiative.

I knew with a bone-deep certainty that if he escaped now, it might as well be my loss. I remembered what he had done. The vision Mother shared still haunted me: the way Light razed an entire city, carving streaks of lightning through towers and people alike. The screams, the scent of molten steel. I felt that memory’s echo tightening in my throat, reminding me of what he truly was capable of. He could kill me if he regained the energy.

Right now, though, he was weakened. Every pulse of electricity running through him faltered, stuttering like a failing engine. I could feel his exhaustion, the trembling in his core, through the tendrils of my Empathy. No matter how carefully he masked it, his emotions thrummed against my mind with cold panic and a growing urge to flee.

He planned to retreat.

“You are not going anywhere,” I said, gripping his wrist before he could dissolve into lightning. “You are going to stay with me.”

He twisted, sparks flaring between our hands. I phased forward, trying to synchronize the molecular slip of my body with his energy pattern. My intent was simple: end him. Yet in that surge of focus, something shifted. My intangibility tangled with my empathy, the two powers colliding in a way I had never experienced.

Light stumbled… no, we stumbled. His body tripped, his face scraping the asphalt with a dull, wet crack. A sharp pain that wasn’t mine shot through my jaw, followed by a cascade of confusion. My vision split, blurred, and then fused again. The world realigned itself around a body that wasn’t entirely mine.

It was as if I had become him.

“What are you doing!?” Light’s voice shook through our shared throat. “Get out of my body!”

His panic flooded me, raw and electric. I could feel his heart slamming, his nerves sparking erratically. The sensation was intoxicating, powerful, and terrifying. I laughed without thinking, my voice echoing inside both our minds.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Is something funny?” Light snapped, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him.

It was funny. The irony of it all. This god of lightning, this butcher, was now trembling because he could feel. He could feel me, the cold weight of my empathy, wrapping around every secret he’d tried to bury. I could feel the fear building like static, a pressure behind his eyes. That was the thing about sharing a body: emotions were not just felt, they were contagious in a way that was intimate and immediate. His fear vibrated through me. It was a new texture of raw, animal, and very human.

I let myself sink deeper, because now that I had a toe inside his mind, the rest of him was only a door waiting to be pushed. The mad violence behind his smiles had given him power; the human tabs underneath gave me leverage. He’d always toyed with people. I would toy with him back, differently and so much crueler.

“Light,” I whispered inside our shared consciousness, my words rolling like thunder through his thoughts. “Tell me… what kind of life did you live?”

His fear spiked, a brilliant, blinding flare of emotion. And then I dove deeper, letting the world blur around us as I descended into the depths of his mind. There, among fractured memories and screams of static, I began to claw at the truth, intent on exposing, hurting, and humiliating him for everything he had ever done.

“Stop—stop—get out!” Light’s voice cracked, no longer the booming arrogance I’d come to despise but a trembling echo, small and desperate. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Please, just—leave me alone!”

He clawed at his own head, fingers digging into skinless flesh as if he could tear me out by force. “You don’t want to see it… what I’ve seen… what I’ve done… what they made me do!” His words broke into static and gasps. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this! I didn’t choose this!”

The light around us flickered, his voice dissolving into pleading whimpers. “Please, Eclipse… Nick… whatever—just stop. I can’t… I can’t go through it again…”

When I blinked, the world around me shifted into white. I found myself in a sterile, cold, and colorless space, the kind of white that hurt your eyes the longer you looked. I couldn’t move at first, but that made sense; this was a memory, not reality. Still, it was disorienting how real it felt. I could feel the faint buzz of air filters in the ceiling, the cold tile beneath my bare feet.

I stared at my hands. They were small and soft. It was the hands of a child. When I heard the trembling voice that came out of my mouth, I realized this wasn’t me. This was Light.

“Who am I?” I heard myself ask.

The question wasn’t mine. It was his, pure, confused, and terrified. I felt his breath hitch in his chest, the panic bubbling in his lungs. I was inside his fear. His innocence.

A mechanical, dispassionate, and vast voice reverberated from everywhere at once.

“You are Subject U-731. Your job is to survive and become the strongest soldier there is. We expect great things from you.”

My knees trembled. The word “survive” echoed in my head, over and over, until it became all that I could hear. Then one of the walls hissed and parted like an opening wound. From the other side stepped a little girl.

She couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Her eyes were crimson, wide, wild, and she was drenched in blood. An adult’s corpse lay behind her, throat torn open, the body twisted at a grotesque angle. The little girl’s lips quivered, her face streaked with tears and gore.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” she whimpered, and then screamed. “KYAAAAAAGH!”

She dropped to all fours, her limbs convulsing as bones cracked under her skin. Her teeth sharpened into fangs, nails blackened and curved. Her body tried to shift, to become something else, a bear, maybe, but the transformation was crude and incomplete.

I felt Light’s body, my borrowed body, move on instinct. I stumbled backward, terror flooding my chest like fire. Her claws dug into my ribs, her face inches from mine. The hot, rancid smell of blood filled my nose.

“Grrrrrrr… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

She didn’t want to kill him, but something deeper and programmed was making her. I tried to phase through her, but nothing happened. This was just a memory; my powers didn’t exist here.

“I—I don’t want to die!” I screamed in Light’s childish voice. “I want to live!”

The words came out broken, desperate… but familiar. It was as if someone had taught this child what to say when facing death. Like the instinct to survive had been carved directly into his brain. The bear-girl’s claws raked across my chest. Sharp, bright, and hot pain exploded through me. The vision flickered. My lungs burned. My heart screamed.

Everything went black.

For a moment, I thought I had died. But when I opened my eyes again, I was standing over the same girl. She was dead. Her small body lay twisted on the white floor, a massive laceration tearing through her abdomen. Her insides spilled out like spilled paint, vivid red against the blank white room.

Light… no, the child that became Light… was holding a shard of metal in his trembling hand.

And I felt his voice echo in my skull, hollow and numb.

“I… survived.”

That was his first victory, and the beginning of everything monstrous he would become.

Time lost meaning.

Days, maybe months passed, but it was impossible to tell in that white room. There was no sun, no shadow, no clock… only the cold hum of the walls and the echo of my own heartbeat. Sleep came when I collapsed. Food came through a slit in the wall. Water followed. Then another slit opened. And another child walked out.

Every time it happened, I told myself this would be the last. Every time, I was wrong.

The walls would speak again, that same mechanical tone slowly starting to grate in my ears.

“Subject U-731. Commencing evaluation sequence.”

The first few times, I screamed. I cried. I asked them to stop. The voice didn’t respond, only observed. The tests continued. “Good. You have exceeded expectations, Subject U-731. You have survived.”

Then came another child. A boy with pale skin and black eyes who could make his bones grow like knives. He came screaming, shaking, terrified, but he still attacked. When I broke his neck, the voice said again.

“Excellent. Efficiency: 94%. Adaptation: Optimal. You have survived.”

And again.

“Excellent. Efficiency: 95%. Adaptation: Optimal. You have survived.”

And again.

Every time I won, I was praised. Every time I killed, I was fed. Every time I hesitated, I was punished with hunger, with cold, with silence. It became a rhythm. Open wall. Opponent. Blood. Silence. Praise.

At some point, I forgot who Eclipse was. Who Light was. I was Subject U-731.

My hands grew red, my nails crusted dark. They never fully cleaned. They didn’t even bother giving me new clothes anymore; what was the point? I’d just ruin them again. My power, super speed, was the only thing that kept me alive. When I moved, the world slowed, and I was untouchable. When I stopped, I was just another corpse waiting to happen.

Sometimes I fought children my size. Other times, adults with powers I didn’t understand. People with claws, with fire, with voices that could tear your mind apart.

Why was I killing them?

Why couldn’t we stop and talk?

Why did we want to kill each other?

Eventually, I understood it wasn’t our choice. Something pushed us. Something deep and invisible pressed into our heads, filling us with hate, hunger, and fear. It wasn’t survival anymore. It was programming at the biological level with the intent to make weapons.

That realization didn’t free me. It only made me angrier.

Then came the next opponent.

He looked like me, same size, same frame, but his eyes glowed orange. Heat shimmered around him. His movements were blurs of red flame and light. A speedster, like me, but with fire licking off his arms and hair.

When he ran, the air burned. When I chased, the world turned molten.

He appeared to my left, a flicker of orange. I barely ducked in time as his hand swept past, leaving a streak of heat that singed my cheek. He grinned, wild and manic.

“I’ll win this time!”

We collided mid-run, a thunderclap of friction and impact. My arms burned where his fire touched me, but I didn’t stop. I tackled him, we rolled, the air filling with smoke and heat.

He was fast, faster than me, maybe, but he lacked control. His flames wavered, flaring wild. I feigned weakness, let him pin me, then twisted, slipping under his arm and driving my hand into his chest.

He screamed a shrill, human, childish scream, and I felt his ribs crack under my fingers. I pushed harder, faster, until I felt his heart give way.

The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

I fell backward, gasping. My lungs were on fire, my eyes blurred. I could still feel his heartbeat fading through my palm.

“Please…” I whispered. “I just want this to end…”

The voice answered at once, as if it had been waiting for me to finish.

“Excellent performance, Subject U-731.”

“Adaptation confirmed.”

“Power output increased.”

“Prepare for the next evaluation.”

Another wall opened.

The sound was faint, like steel teeth grinding against each other. The white room expanded again, reshaping itself into something wider, colder. I braced myself for what was coming, but when I saw her, something inside me twisted painfully.

She was young. Too young. Maybe six or seven years old, a few years younger than Light… no, U-731. Her white dress was spotless, too clean for this place, her dark hair neatly braided, her wide brown eyes flickering with confusion and fear.

She clutched her hands together, trembling. “C-Can you help me look for my b-brother?” she asked. Her voice cracked halfway through, fragile, small.

No… please, no.

I felt a migraine spike through my head. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if I was still in Light’s memory or back in my own body. My vision blurred, my thoughts split into two… Eclipse and Light, fighting for control.

My real self screamed inside this illusion: “Don’t do it.”

“This is a necessary sacrifice,” said Light. His voice was calm and detached, like someone repeating a line drilled into him a thousand times.

Before the girl could even react, he moved. There was no sound. No flash. Just motion.

In less than a blink, Light appeared behind her. His small hand pressed against the side of her neck in a single sharp twist…

*Crack.

The girl’s eyes widened, her body stiffened as her spine poked beneath her skin. Finally, she collapsed slowly to her knees, the innocence draining from her face before she even hit the floor.

Silence filled the white room.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the body began to cool, the blood pooling in a perfect still circle under her cheek.

I could feel the echo of Light’s heartbeat slowing down, the sharp pain in his skull as the adrenaline faded. I felt him realizing what he’d done. Not the child’s panic, not guilt… just a hollow ache where something human used to be.

I fell to my knees, clutching my head. My vision flickered.

“I can’t—” I gasped. “I can’t watch this anymore…”

But when I lifted my eyes again, I was no longer Light.

The world of the memory shifted slightly, its edges distorting like glass under heat. The child in front of me, the boy, was still there. Subject U-731. Covered in blood. Chest rising and falling shallowly.

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even alive, not in any meaningful way. He just stood there, staring blankly at the little girl’s corpse. His hands twitched once, and then stilled.

When his gaze lifted, his dull eyes met mine.

There was no hate in them. No regret. Only emptiness. The emptiness of someone who had learned too early that survival was the only truth that mattered.

Light hadn’t lost his humanity here.

It had been ‘taken’ from him.