A sharp hum—artificial, high-pitched—echoed faintly through the air as Yuuki stirred. Her consciousness rose like a drowning swimmer clawing toward the surface. She gasped.
White light flooded her vision.
The ceiling above was too bright, too perfect—no water stains, no imperfections. A cold antiseptic smell lingered in her nostrils, burning its way to the back of her throat. The edges of her body felt distant, as if her limbs were submerged in warm sand.
She tried to move.
Nothing.
She was restrained—thick, padded cuffs around her wrists and ankles, body secured to a narrow steel table. Her head lolled slightly to the left, weak.
"What... is this...?"
Her voice was barely audible. Slurred.
There was no answer.
Yuuki blinked, focusing her eyes. To her right, across a short gap, another table stood. A familiar figure lay strapped down, equally bound. Disheveled hair, sharp cheekbones, narrow jawline.
Watanabe Takuya.
Of course it would be him.
Even now, unconscious or barely awake, he looked composed. His brow furrowed just slightly, like he was in the middle of solving a puzzle in his dreams. The No. 1.
Always first. She was second.
It was infuriating. Comforting. Unexpectedly reassuring.
Her lips moved slowly, dry and cracked. "Takuya..."
He didn't respond.
She swallowed and tried again, forcing air into her lungs. "Watanabe... wake... up..."
A soft metallic click preceded the hiss of a sliding door. Three figures in black entered. Not the same men from the street. These wore surgical masks, clinical coats. One held a tablet. Another wheeled in a metal tray lined with syringes and tubes.
They didn't look at her like a person.
Just a subject.
"Subject A is regaining full cognition," one of them muttered, tapping on the tablet. "Neurological response is within threshold. Schedule administration of Stabilizer-B in two minutes."
A second figure glanced over. "We'll need to begin the calibration phase soon. The Genesis loop requires full cerebral synchronization."
Yuuki's eyes narrowed. "Genesis...?"
The man looked up briefly, almost surprised she could speak.
"You weren't supposed to hear that," he said.
"Where... am I?" she croaked.
"Where you need to be," the third man replied, voice calm but distant. "And where the world needs you."
She coughed, her chest burning. "You... drugged me."
"To help you transition. You are both too intelligent to consent willingly."
Yuuki shifted her gaze back to Watanabe. His fingers twitched. Was he waking?
"You... won't get... what you want," she whispered.
The man laughed quietly. "You think this is coercion. This is evolution. You and Takuya—your minds are the perfect vessels. The Genesis experiment is designed to use your neurological structures to model the quantum lattice of consciousness."
"Pseudoscience," she spat, barely.
He tilted his head. "You of all people should understand. The brain is an equation. The mind is a waveform. You and he—together—will compute the foundation of the next reality."
The word "together" pulsed in her mind.
Watanabe groaned.
The three men turned.
His eyes opened slowly, glassy but defiant. "...you drugged me?" he muttered.
They didn't answer. Instead, one of them turned to the tray and prepared a new syringe.
Watanabe's eyes flicked toward Yuuki.
"Of course," he said dryly. "If I were kidnapped for a secret experiment, I should've guessed you'd be here too."
Yuuki let out a breath that might've been a laugh. "You're awake."
"Barely," he said, testing his restraints. "You look worse than usual."
"You still look smug."
The technician with the syringe approached Watanabe.
"Do not touch me," Watanabe said coldly.
"Injecting Stabilizer-B," the man said, unfazed.
"Wait—" Yuuki rasped. "He's... allergic to stabilizers."
It was a lie, but she needed a distraction.
The technician hesitated, glancing at his colleagues. "That's not in the file."
"Check it again," she urged, her voice growing firmer. "He nearly died in 2007. Paradoxical reaction to beta compounds."
"She's lying," Watanabe said blandly. "But you should probably double-check. I'd hate to die before I solve your little toy problem."
That made them pause.
The man with the tablet frowned. "Pause injection. Confirm subject allergies."
The momentary distraction gave Watanabe enough time to twitch his left wrist. His thumb found a tiny bump in the restraint. He closed his eyes and smiled.
They hadn't noticed the pressure-sensitive release hidden under the pad. He must've triggered it during a seizure test or while playing unconscious.
His left hand came free with a subtle twist.
Yuuki caught it and widened her eyes, playing weak.
Watanabe moved fast. He grabbed the wrist of the man with the syringe and twisted. The man yelped, the syringe clattered to the floor.
Alarms began to blare.
The other two lunged, but Watanabe was already on the floor, rolling sideways, gripping the fallen syringe like a blade.
"Yuuki," he said, eyes sharp. "How fast can you compute five-digit primes under sedation?"
She blinked, processing. "Fast enough."
"Then think quickly," he said, slashing the straps around her wrist.
The Genesis experiment had just lost control of its two brightest minds. And now, they were working together. For the first time.
The moment the emergency lights flashed crimson and the alarms screeched through the sterile corridors, Yuuki and Takuya bolted from the experimental chamber. Their limbs, sluggish with lingering sedation, moved on adrenaline and desperation. Yuuki stumbled but caught herself, her lab coat flaring behind her. Takuya led the way, dragging her through steel passageways that twisted like a maze.
"They had to put us underground," he muttered, scanning for an exit, "but not beneath Tokyo. The air smells... too clean."
They turned a corner—and the ground shook.
A low, resonant thud echoed behind them.
Takuya stopped mid-run. "...You hear that?"
Before Yuuki could answer, the corridor wall folded open like a blooming metal flower.
And it stepped out.
Quant 4.0.
Seven feet of carbon-alloy limbs and ceramic musculature, matte-black plating etched with fractal circuits, and eyes that flickered an unnatural blue. It turned its head with eerie precision, gaze scanning them like data packets.
"Subjects Takashima Yuuki and Watanabe Takuya: unauthorized egress detected," it said in a voice that sounded male, almost gentle—disturbingly human.
"Terminate evasive sequence. Return to holding protocol."
Yuuki stepped back. "Takuya... that's not a robot."
"That's an apex design," he whispered. "It's a thinking machine."
Quant stepped forward, unfurling one segmented arm into something like a blade. The tip glowed faintly.
"Go left!" Takuya shouted, grabbing Yuuki's hand.
They ran.
Quant moved with terrifying grace—its heavy frame somehow silent on steel flooring. Doors slammed shut behind them, walls shifted, the entire facility turning against their escape like a living organism.
They burst into a hangar-sized atrium. Glass windows revealed a stunning, horrifying truth.
Ocean. Nothing but endless water and rocky shorelines.
Yuuki stared, breathless. "We're not in Tokyo."
"No." Takuya's face was pale. "We're on an island."
The facility stood alone on a windswept coast, its outer buildings connected by steel bridges and silent watchtowers. No boats. No helipads. No guards. They didn't need any.
Because no one could escape.
Suddenly, Quant burst through the wall like a cannonball, skidding across the floor and blocking the only exit.
"Final warning," it said. "Surrender for re-integration. Genesis experiment resumes in forty-eight hours."
"We can't fight that," Yuuki whispered. "It adapts. It's smarter than anything we've built."
Takuya clenched his jaw. "But it's not more determined."
He hurled a shattered metal tray at Quant's head. It deflected harmlessly.
Quant lunged.
They split apart, dashing in opposite directions, but the machine was already anticipating. It swept Takuya off his feet with a leg hook, pinning him in a moment. Then it turned its head toward Yuuki and paused.
"You are the prime neural candidate," it said. "No damage authorized."
A tranquilizer dart shot from its shoulder unit, embedding in her thigh. She collapsed instantly.
"Takuya..." she breathed, eyelids fluttering.
He reached for her, but another dart struck his chest.
Darkness again.
⧫⧫⧫
When she woke this time, the restraints were tighter. More invasive. Her limbs no longer just cuffed but locked into a standing rig. IV lines threaded into her veins. Her head supported in a biomechanical halo.
Takuya was beside her again, in the same rig. Awake. Breathing slowly.
"Yuuki," he said softly, "I think this isn't a lab."
She met his eyes.
"It's a prison," she said. "A prison for minds like ours."
They stared at each other, the truth settling between them like concrete:
This place wasn't meant to hold people. It was designed to hold genius. Indefinitely. Exploit it. Control it. Forever.
There was no escape.
Not from a genius's prison.
~■♤■~