somebody ; minsung

VI ; data

I wake up at the stroke of midnight. Sight, speech, movement come back to me. I yank the wires out of my nape, pushing out of the glass pod. My knees wobble and I collapse to the floor.

Activating camouflage protocol.

The plates on my back flux and split, a thin veil of armour folds over my head and shoulders, covers my face like a skin-tight mask. I watch as my hands and arms dissolve into a haze. My whole body is gone.

I get to my feet and stagger to the door, forcing it open. I look back into the room before I leave. The pods are empty, all five. Where did the other people go? Did Han Jisung break them out as well?

I flee down the hallway. A laboratory flies past — messy desks and old coffee cups, clawed machines and 3D displays, all dormant in the darkness. I slow to a stop, push carefully through a curtain of plastic strips. As long as there's no one here to shoot at me, I'm going to collect all the data I can.

I circle the desks, trying to make heads or tails of the things I'm seeing. Everything looks like a doomsday device, refrigerator-sized machines, keypads without numbers or symbols, unmarked vials of blue fluid, the same colour as my armour.

I see a piece of paper on the wall. It's a warning — personal devices are prohibited inside the lab, sensitive information is prohibited outside of it. There's a thank you to the scientists for their cooperation on the 'BWI.' What does that stand for?

I leave the room once I've combed through everything, freeze as I hear a sound from ahead. An android is stepping out into the hallway. It takes the ring of keys on its belt, locks the door and pushes its cleaning cart around the corner.

I approach once the droid is gone. There's a sign on the door — 'do not enter, authorized personnel only.'

Activating picklock protocol.

I press the tip of my finger to the lock. It seeps into the keyhole, molds to the inside and solidifies. Oh. Cool.

I turn my hand and the door unlocks.

Activating scotopic adaptation.

The pitch black room flares with green. Walls of filing cabinets reach all the way to the ceiling, aisles snaking between like a labyrinth. It's organized alphabetically, judging by the cards on the outside of each drawer. What was the acronym I saw in the lab? BWI?

I comb through the aisles, stop at the 'B's and open a drawer. I ruffle through the thick files until I find it — 'Bionic Warfare Initiative,' trial one. It's a report on an experiment from two years ago, the first attempt by Oracle Labs at creating half-human, half-machine warriors. Cyborgs.

The trial failed. The human brain couldn't function within the robotic shell. All test subjects died, one through five. I find each of their names, faces and birthdays in the files that follow. Every one of them was saved from the brink of death, on the frontlines of the war between the east and west.

Trial two was a failure as well. The artificial heart was unable to pump oxygen to the brain. Three test subjects died, the remaining two are in medically induced comas, still somewhere inside this building.

Trial three saw more success — the biological and mechanic components meshed well. But the subjects revolted. They were isolated, treated like cattle, sent off to do inhumane things in faraway places, never offered any kind of psychotherapy. They tried to escape. All were eliminated.

For the fourth trial, Oracle Labs took precautionary measures. They erased the memories of their subjects to safeguard against another revolt. The full capabilities of their robot armour would be withheld until the host was deemed reliable and compliant.

The information stops there. I've made it to the present. I flip through the files, looking for my own.

Subject 17. Age 28. Park Ujin. The picture staring back at me — it's me.

No. This can't be right. My name is Minho... isn't it?

There's no way to know. The answers I need aren't here. But maybe I'll find them with Han Jisung.