Half a year had passed since I first survived inside Black Cell, that villainous organization.
It was around the time I was struggling desperately to carve out some way to stay alive.
"Don't come to my room anymore unless you actually need something."
I had no idea why, but Gloria had suddenly drawn a line.
It caught me off guard, but I decided to treat it as an opportunity instead.
Before Gloria could change her mind, I moved to try building a relationship of trust with the other young test subjects.
"Grrrrrrrr…."
"Still on guard today, I see."
A mutant with wolf ears and a tail.
The moment I stepped into the room in my protective suit, Liberty sent me a warning.
Even so, the fact that she wasn't attacking on sight the way she had at our first meeting — that was a massive improvement.
I'd planned to take my time, just as I had before.
But every time I came back from Liberty's cell, Gloria would be in a spectacularly foul mood.
She'd insist there was some smell on me and pressure me to go wash up, which pushed me past showering three times a day, and then —
"Ugh… go wash again."
— there were times like now, when she'd flat-out turn me away.
I asked her what kind of smell she was detecting, but she gave me nothing.
Eventually I went to the other researchers for help, and a hypothesis emerged.
"That little lunatic is practically a walking collection of Superhuman-type abilities, isn't she."
"She almost certainly has some ability tied to her sense of smell."
"If that's actually true, what a completely useless superpower."
"Well, there are abilities out there that make you feel full after eating half a meal, so I suppose it's in the same category."
Gloria simply had a bloodhound's nose.
After that, I took one careful step at a time down the road toward atopic dermatitis — because apparently being too clean was what set her off.
Still, the sacrifice to my skin was worth it. As time passed, I grew a little closer to Liberty.
"Heh… heh… heh…."
By now Liberty seemed to have grown fully accustomed to me — she'd just stare without attacking.
Recognizing this as the right moment, I thought back to Liberty's final monologue in the original work.
Even in the future, when her intelligence had nearly vanished, she'd apparently returned to herself just long enough to die — and it was written like this:
'All I ever wanted… was to be petted….'
Liberty was a mutant.
From the day she was born, she'd faced discrimination and violence from countless people, and after being brought here, she'd been subjected to experiments that bordered on torture.
In some ways she was a little similar to Gloria, but unlike that extreme my-way-or-the-highway type, Liberty seemed to suffer terribly from loneliness.
I kept turning that over in my mind, building on it from every angle.
The conclusion I reached: she might genuinely love physical contact.
Of course, getting close still meant getting attacked — that much was obvious — but I put my faith in the protective suit and slowly approached Liberty.
And yet, some things never change.
Clang!!
"Bark! Bark!!!"
The moment I got close, she reacted violently and lunged at me.
Liberty's claws tore straight through the protective suit, and pain flared across my skin.
But if I retreated here, I'd lose Liberty for good.
I pushed forward, enduring the sensation of being sliced by a blade over and over.
The attacks grew fiercer as I advanced — but the moment she was backed into a corner, everything changed.
Like a beast cornered with nowhere to run, Liberty's eyes filled with fear and terror, and her whole body began to tremble.
She watched my hand slowly reaching toward her. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Pat… pat….
"Whine?"
I simply stroked Liberty's head.
A moment later, her pupils dilated enormously.
And her tail began to wag without stopping.
"Whimper… whimper, whimper…."
Confirming that Liberty had calmed down, I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
***************
Having succeeded in petting Liberty, I would have liked to stay in the cell longer.
But blood was seeping from wounds all over my body — I was in no condition to linger.
I put off getting closer to Liberty for another time and headed to the changing room to strip off the ruined protective suit.
Drip… drip….
"Ugh… I suppose there's a reason she's locked up in the high-risk ward."
She'd only lightly scratched me with her claws, and it looked like this?
This protective suit might as well be decorative.
My whole body was covered in blood, but inside Black Cell, this barely qualified as a scratch.
I was able to get treatment at the research complex's medical bay.
It turned out Liberty's claws had gone deeper than I'd expected.
"Maxwell, this… it's going to scar."
"Then I suppose I'll have to think of it as a badge of honor."
"Given that it was that beast who did it to you, I can see the argument. Either way, if you want to minimize the scarring, you'll need to do self-dressing as much as possible. Let me show you how."
The professionalism of the staff working in the medical section gave the place a slightly unusual company-like atmosphere.
But this was an evil organization where people were ground up and spat out every single day.
While learning how to disinfect my wounds, I also received word that new recruits would be arriving soon.
"So the hiring season is coming around again?"
"Seems like they're bringing in a lot of people — apparently quite a few have died recently."
Coming from someone who worked in the medical section, that meant a truly staggering number of people had been killed.
And yet the situation was apparently familiar enough that the staff member cracked a joke about it.
"Looks like you'll finally be getting a junior, Maxwell."
"Sounds like a bit of a hassle, honestly…."
"What does it matter? It's all experience."
Just like any ordinary company, when new recruits came in, the senior staff had to take them under their wing and show them the ropes.
I could only hope that whoever ended up under me had at least a functioning brain.
Not long after spending those rather hectic days —
Just as I'd heard, the new personnel actually arrived.
Quite a large number of new recruits had come in at once.
One wrong move and something catastrophic could happen, so the majority of research was suspended.
But since I was the one responsible for feeding Gloria, I was naturally excluded from the suspension.
As a result, I ended up taking on only one junior.
"Nice to meet you!! My name is Amano Yume!!"
"Likewise, Amano. I'm Maxwell Gray."
From the name alone, she was clearly a Japanese woman.
I began talking with this new recruit whose name meant "dream" —
And to my surprise, Amano already knew who I was.
"To think my senior would be Maxwell Gray!! It's like a dream come true!"
"Do you know me, Amano?"
"Of course!! Before you disappeared from the outside world, you were called the genius of the century!"
That was exactly why Black Cell had gone to such lengths to recruit me.
But then I'd gone and taken over this body, hadn't I?
My memory had genuinely improved — to the point where every detail of the original comic's story came back to me with vivid clarity — but the towering intellect that had originally belonged to this body seemed to be entirely gone.
Truly a shame, but there was nothing to be done about it.
After that, whenever I had free time, I taught Amano this and that.
She was quite young — clearly fresh to the workforce — and brimming with energy, and the people around her seemed to take an immediate liking to her.
But Amano showed a keen interest in the work I was doing.
"The truth is, I really love children!"
"Then why come to a place like this…."
"Hehe… the salary is absolutely incredible, isn't it."
"I can't argue with that."
Amano had made her peace with reality, and she was refreshingly honest about her desires.
But she clearly had no interest in dying, so she kept her distance from Liberty and Gloria and simply listened to whatever I told her.
*************
Some time passed after I'd taken Amano Yume under my wing and managed to pet Liberty.
As I looked into various things about our wolf mutant, I stumbled onto a rather surprising discovery.
I'd come to the conclusion that there was no real difference between wearing the protective suit and not wearing it, so I walked into Liberty's cell bare.
But did she have some bad memory associated with the protective suit?
The moment I stopped wearing it entirely, Liberty's aggression dropped in a way that was visible to the naked eye.
"Grrrr… whine…."
"You definitely prefer bare skin, don't you."
I kept stroking her head, and Liberty — her wariness completely gone — stopped attacking altogether. She started pressing her own head into my hand.
Now she'd climbed entirely into my lap.
That said, I had absolutely no intention of removing her muzzle.
Snap! Snap!!
"Hey, I know it's frustrating, but no."
"Whimper…."
Liberty kept making biting motions at me.
It was probably the same kind of mouthing a puppy or kitten does.
Even if she had the shape of a young girl, a predator was still a predator.
She was still scratching me little by little, so I had to keep my guard up.
Still, seeing my relationship with Liberty improve gave me some peace of mind.
There was more on my plate now, but this was all for the future — I could endure this much.
The problem was that lately, whenever I visited Gloria, she seemed to be in a strangely bad mood.
And she kept sending odd looks at the bandages wrapped around my arms.
But true to her nature — Gloria, who preferred silence — she asked nothing.
After that, as my relationship with Gloria continued to improve, the exploration of her abilities proceeded smoothly.
"Oh? It didn't break this time?"
"Hm."
Before, she'd had no control over her strength whatsoever.
But now she could hold a thick glass without shattering it — she was handling her ability with far more freedom.
The fact that even she seemed surprised told me this was genuinely good news.
Watching Gloria like this — not being consumed by her own power, but slowly expanding her control over it — I found myself thinking that someday, she might become a hero rather than a villain.
"If you keep moving forward one step at a time like this, I'm certain you'll eventually discover what your true ability really is. By the way — why are you looking over there?"
"Someone's watching."
The special laboratory was structured so that the outside could see in, but those inside couldn't see out.
But she had X-ray vision, so she'd apparently noticed someone outside.
Judging by Gloria's reaction, it was probably other researchers who'd come to watch.
The experiment was over now, so I needed to return her to her cell.
Afterward, not wanting to deal with unnecessary corpses, I moved to disperse the researchers gathered outside.
But what was this?
Someone was staring at me with a distinctly unpleasant expression.