This time, at the Director's suggestion, I had to go meet Victory — the one I'd rescued before.
The problem was that Liberty had to part ways with me sooner than expected, and she was thoroughly sulking about it.
She made her displeasure known immediately.
Crunch!
"Ugh?!"
"Whimper…"
I felt the sharp pain of fangs piercing skin.
Though, to be fair, it only hurt a little.
Given that she could tear my entire upper body apart if she wanted to, this was well within the realm of playfulness.
And so, having left yet another set of bite marks on my shoulder, Liberty finally climbed down from me.
"Alright then, Liberty. See you next time."
"Huff huff… Woof woof!!"
After barely managing to say goodbye to Liberty, I stood in front of the room where Victory was being held.
She'd almost certainly be bound up tight, just like Gloria had been when I first saw her.
But she'd recently turned a person into ground meat, so I needed to be careful.
I steeled myself and stepped inside.
Creeeeak…
The unsettling groan of the door echoed through the entire room.
Deep within, I spotted Victory — suspended in midair like a butterfly caught in a spider's web.
She lifted her head and looked my way.
The moment she saw my face, her eyes went enormous, and her cheeks flushed a deep red.
'She remembers what happened last time.'
Victory had wanted to meet me in the first place, so this was a genuine relief.
I smiled warmly and spoke to her.
"Victory, is your leg feeling better now?"
"Y-Yes!! Of course!!"
More enthusiastic than I expected.
That would make rebuilding the relationship considerably easier.
I pulled up a chair and sat down in front of her, just as I had before.
How was the new cell treating her.
The restraints were tighter than before — was she uncomfortable.
I was truly sorry I couldn't free her, and so on.
We kept up a perfectly ordinary conversation.
Her reactions were incredibly warm, but still.
I hadn't realized how wonderful it was just to have a conversation that actually worked…
Compared to Gloria and Liberty, she was practically an angel.
As we continued talking, the bound Victory wriggled and made a request.
"M-Maxwell, could you… like last time…"
"Like last time?"
She'd trailed off, and her gaze was fixed on my hand.
I had stroked her head to calm her down while treating her injuries — that must be what she meant.
There was no reason to refuse, so I placed my hand on her head.
The texture was smooth and soft, completely different from Liberty's coarse, shaggy fur.
"Hehehe… Maxwell's hand…"
"I'm glad it feels nice."
Victory's face melted into pure happiness as she kept pressing her head into my palm.
Seeing this situation mirror what had happened with Liberty before…
It seemed like mutants who faced discrimination and persecution from others generally suffered from severe emotional deprivation.
But then Victory, who had been enjoying my hand, suddenly went blank-faced.
I was wondering why, when a very familiar kind of reaction surfaced.
"…What's that smell?"
To reiterate — Victory was a rabbit mutant.
Which meant her sense of smell was far superior to a human's.
I'd just come from seeing Liberty, so she could probably pick up Liberty's distinctive scent, just like Gloria had.
To prevent a repeat of the incident where Gloria and Liberty had fought on sight, I told Victory the truth.
"Do you remember the two girls who were fighting before? I've been spending time with them."
"Ah…"
Hearing this, Victory's expression shifted into something like understanding.
But then, just as suddenly, her face changed again — she clicked her tongue, scrunched up her features, and looked genuinely irritated.
Of course, the moment she noticed my slight puzzlement, she was back to staring at me with that flushed, eager look.
After that, Victory's expressions kept shifting like a performer swapping masks — one face after another, in rapid succession.
She'd been like this in the future too, apparently.
The comic had briefly described it as mood swings, but seeing it in person, I had a clearer sense of what was actually going on.
'Dissociative Identity Disorder?'
In other words — multiple personalities.
Most of her personalities seemed to like me, from what I could tell.
But this… I'd need to handle her even more carefully than Gloria and Liberty.
I spent the rest of the visit observing Victory's various personalities.
But some things never change.
"Why does the stench of those animal brats keep getting stronger every day?"
"Ahem… Gloria, there are circumstances."
Today, too, I got an earful from Gloria and her bloodhound nose.
**********************
Now I was officially in charge of three young test subjects: Gloria, Liberty, and Victory.
At this rate I was genuinely going to develop an allergy, but our Gloria showed no mercy.
"Um… Gloria?"
"……"
When something didn't meet her standards, she'd simply refuse to eat — exactly like right now.
Seen this way, she was behaving in a manner perfectly appropriate for her age.
Still, even with the gentle approach I was using, her ability output and control were growing steadily — enough that the Director was surprised when she reviewed Gloria's analysis data.
"Sometimes the straightforward path really is the answer."
"Truth tends to be closest at hand. But Black Cell isn't satisfied with just this, is it."
"No. For the era to advance, we need to move faster than this."
"You're absolutely right. However…"
The organization had already run nearly every conceivable experiment on Gloria.
The results were predictable — either the researchers ended up dead, or nothing changed at all, making it a complete failure.
In short, what I was doing now was the only thing that had ever worked.
"Still, Maxwell — isn't this genuinely fascinating? I love finding problems that have no answer."
"It is, ultimately, an answer that only time can provide. Though the impatience is unavoidable, I suppose."
"Heh heh… Are you sympathizing with me?"
"Think of it as professional courtesy."
The Director listened to my response, gave a small smile, and told me to get going.
Another productive session of earning points with my superior — but not long after, a strange announcement came over the entire facility.
[ All staff, please proceed to the Convention Hall. ]
[ Repeat. All staff are to stop whatever they are currently doing and… ]
I had just finished with Gloria and was on my way to Liberty when the organization suddenly summoned every single employee.
The Convention Hall was a large multipurpose space designed to accommodate corporate events and the like, so I assumed some major announcement was coming.
But when I arrived, the hall was completely empty — and the Director stood there with a face twisted into something monstrous.
The other researchers and managers were all exchanging bewildered looks when it happened.
"Seal this location."
Clack clack clack clack!!
The moment everyone had arrived, Black Cell's special agents blocked every entrance.
Then the Director, apparently deciding the time had come, explained why.
"Everyone, check your phones right now."
Actions over words, then.
Following her instruction, we all pulled out our phones and opened the web.
What we saw made us doubt our own eyes.
[ Is Black Cell secretly conducting inhumane experiments? ]
[ The dark secret of a pharmaceutical giant. ]
[ The drugs made by grinding people up. ]
"There's a rat somewhere in this room."
So there was another whistleblower besides me.
********************
Seeing the Director's eyes go wild like this — it was exactly how she'd looked in the comic.
And apparently, there was an internal whistleblower somewhere in the organization.
Of course, right now, it absolutely wasn't me.
Without a genuinely good method, the probability of getting caught was far too high.
So I hadn't left behind a single record.
That must be why the Director had called every employee together.
'So right now, they're going through everyone's computers and desks?'
There was a very high chance they were tearing through the company-assigned dormitories as well.
Not that I had anything to worry about, which was a considerable relief.
I was in the middle of congratulating my past self for being so careful, when the Director — her plans now facing a serious obstacle — accepted a handgun from the special agent beside her and—
Click!!
Bang!!!
"I wonder who the rats are. Is it you?"
She fired at the ceiling without warning, then pressed the barrel against a Lower-level Manager's head.
With the special agents standing right beside the Director as her guard, the targeted manager had no option but to plead his innocence.
"E-Eileen, Director!! It wasn't me!! It absolutely was not me!!"
"Oh? Really?"
After that, the Director moved from employee to employee, leveling the gun at each one, telling them she'd show some leniency if they came clean.
But some people fainted the moment the barrel was pointed at them, while others burst into tears from sheer indignation.
The Convention Hall grew colder and colder with every passing moment.
For everyone present, each minute felt like an hour.
And then, finally, it was my turn.
"Heh heh heh… It's our Maxwell. I wonder what excuse the genius of the century has for me~?"
The cold muzzle of the gun pressed against my chest, over my heart.
But I had spent this entire time analyzing the Director's personality — both from the original work and from reality — and I had been carefully managing her moods.
For the sake of a more comfortable life in this organization going forward, I gave her exactly what she truly wanted to hear.
"Why are you letting this situation get to you so much, Director?"
"What did you just say…?"
The unexpected words made the Director blink, and the employees around me went pale with shock — but I had no intention of stopping.
"The public doesn't want the truth. They're just looking for something to chew on over drinks and online arguments. They'll make enough noise, work up enough outrage, and the moment they get bored, they'll move on to the next piece of meat."
"…Maxwell?"
"Director, there is no reason to be shaken by the gaze of those animals."
I had maintained a gentle, measured attitude ever since joining Black Cell.
Perhaps she hadn't expected me to say something like this.
The Director held her silence for a moment, staring at me for a long while.
Then, slowly, the corner of her mouth began to curl upward—
"Ahahahahahaha!"
She burst out laughing.
The laughter that filled the entire hall made everyone flinch, but the look in the Director's eyes as she watched me had changed.
"Heh heh… I was briefly out of my mind. So then, Maxwell — what do you think I should do?"
"There's a saying in Go: when your opponent stirs up a counter-current, maintaining a steady flow becomes the counter-current from their perspective."
"So you're saying respond by the book?"
"It's a simple matter that ends with a single lawsuit. And whoever did this — they were genuinely foolish."
"…Tell me more about what you just said."
"If it were me, I wouldn't have gone to the press. They don't want justice. They want money."
Black Cell is, on the surface, a globally recognized pharmaceutical company — a mega-corporation. When you crush someone with money, authority, and the law, individuals and media outlets can do nothing.
"And that goes for 'heroes,' too."
"Pfft… You really do say exactly the things I like to hear."
The Director found the brutal, unvarnished reality genuinely entertaining.
In any case, the special agent beside her received a radio transmission.
"Eileen, they're reporting nothing out of the ordinary."
"My, my… I've gone and rattled innocent people for nothing. Still, Maxwell — you understand how I feel, don't you?"
So they had searched my dormitory after all.
A thorough Director, as always.
After that, the atmosphere in the hall loosened somewhat thanks to me, but in the end, the whistleblower was never caught.
Instead, the Director seemed considerably more at ease, and after she took several measures, the press shifted into neutral gear within a single week.
The individuals suspected of being the whistleblower, of course, were reassigned to a rather special facility.
The company's stock price dipped slightly — a minor casualty.
And then an unwelcome guest arrived.
"You want me to be the one to receive the heroes coming this time?"
"That's right. You're the only talent I have, Maxwell."
One mountain after another.