[ 🫧 ] sᴇᴠᴇɴ 𝘢𝘯𝘥 ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛɪɴɢ

ii. heiyaoshi - 2 years later

Chin up, eyes ahead, 100 steps per minute. Shoulders back, not hunched, neck and back straight and not tilted to either side, even by a millimeter, because no one outside had scoliosis, neck problems, or struggles with posture.

14 breaths per minute. 80 heartbeats per minute. Don’t rush. Don’t run.

That’s how any real human being had to walk through the streets if they didn’t want to be noticed. And that was how Heiyaoshi Liu-Duong was told to act whenever he stepped outside if he didn’t want to get caught. He had to act robotic, one-dimensional, just like everyone else because the developers were too lazy to code unique traits for every single member of the population.

But his heart pounded, his breath quickened, his eyes darted around warily as he walked through the crowd. If he messed up anything it’d be caught on camera; through the eyes of bodies that looked like a human’s but were not.

As far as he knew, Heiyaoshi was the only human outside of a lab who could fully control his own body, thoughts, words, and decisions. He was the only one who was born and raised in a human home, like a human child, hidden from the outside world. If there was anyone else like him, he surely would've noticed.

Heiyaoshi glanced around before darting into a dark alleyway and ducking behind a dumpster full of scrap metal. He dropped his bag on the ground and pulled out a plastic ID card.

“Thái Bình Dương” was the name on the card. 27-year-old Thái smiled at the camera on his ID photo, the year he started his biomedical science career with The Seven, the day Heiyaoshi was born in this same alleyway, the day his mother was found and killed because the government didn’t like the idea of Thái having a human son.

They thought Heiyaoshi was killed, too, but Thái managed to save him and raise him in an old nursery no one used because no one was raised like a human anymore. Heiyaoshi grew up alone, hidden away, with no other human like him other than his father—that was, until The Seven came and took Heiyaoshi’s father five years ago.

Heiyaoshi inhaled shakily, tensed his shoulders, and then stood up and slapped the ID card on the black door handle. A tiny green light flashed and the door clicked as Heiyaoshi pushed it open slowly, hands trembling as he poked his head inside and peered around.

The door creaked and the sound reverberated eerily throughout the entire warehouse. The walls were a dusky, dirty brown, pipes rusted, the only light coming from windows on the ceiling. Long cables were suspended from the ceiling, which stretched high above Heiyaoshi’s head—10.9728 meters, according to the blue lines and calculations that popped up on the lens of his glasses. His stomach flipped over on itself.

He stepped cautiously into the warehouse, still looking around, shoulders tense. There was no sound other than his own breathing, no circuit sparks, just his breath, heart pounding, pounding as if it were a tremoloing timpani.

He took another careful step, then another, before gathering up the courage and taking a few more. He walked over to a pipe on the wall. A light blue square in his own handwriting lit up on his lenses again; Fe, atomic number 26, and O, atomic number 8. Iron oxide.

He glanced down, expecting nothing other than iron oxide—but the blue lines glitched and a different set of numbers and letters took place in the square; Ag₂S. Silver sulfide. Heiyaoshi knelt down and squinted at the shadowed ground near the wall. Dirt and grime had caked up where the floor and wall met and he sneezed—quietly, of course.

A little metal scalpel lay on the floor. His glasses outlined half of the handle and drew a line pointing to it, then wrote Fe₂O₃ again. Simultaneously, the square reading Ag₂S outlined the entire scalpel.

Silver sulfide was an anti-bacterial agent that kept the pots and pans and silverware in Heiyaoshi’s home clean. So if this scalpel had it as well, that meant it was used on something that outside bacteria shouldn’t touch.

Human surgery—no, experimentation.
The Seven owns countless research facilities. This might be one of them. Or. . . used to.

He stepped back and jumped when his foot landed on something that didn’t feel like the ground. He glanced down and dropped back onto his knees.

A cigarette lighter lay on the ground, layered in dust. Heiyaoshi glanced around as his glasses picked up more elements; carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, and nitrogen—all of which were normal and found everywhere, but also in fire.

Now, fires weren’t very uncommon; electric cables and outlets burst into flames often when overwhelmed with energy. The fires on stoves were electric, warmth was generated electronically, and if anyone wanted to start a fire, all they needed to do was plug ten different chargers into their phone.

But whenever Heiyaoshi’s father was stressed, instead of taking medicine like Heiyaoshi, he’d go outside with his lighter and smoke for five minutes or so.

No one else needed a lighter—and if there was one here—

What if. . .

He turned around. A narrow table stood alone in the middle of the room, right under a broken lightbulb suspended from the ceiling. Heiyaoshi stepped toward it warily.

The table was a little bit tall and you'd have to stand or use a tall chair if you wanted to eat there—but Heiyaoshi knew it wasn't for eating. There was one very thin leather cushion on it, burnt black at the edges and turned completely into ashes at the corners, revealing the rusted metal underneath that looked a lot like the black bean paste his father used to make jjajangmyeon. A leather strap hung from either side of the table—most likely used to bind someone to the table. More broken metal tools covered in iron oxide and silver sulfide were scattered on the ground along with shattered glass.

Heiyaoshi stepped back and clutched his chest. A knot began to form in his stomach.

They didn't do anything to his father, right? They couldn't have. They needed him; that was why they took him away, that was why they killed Heiyaoshi's mother and tried to kill him, too.

He knelt down again, grabbed a tissue from his bag, and picked up one of the metal tools. It was another scalpel, rusted—but this one was a darker, more saturated red—that wasn't rust.
Blood.

Heiyaoshi's heart dropped. Please let it be someone else's. . .

His glasses couldn't read human DNA yet—something he was still working on—so he had to take it home if he wanted to be sure. He grabbed a handkerchief from his bag, placed the scalpel in the middle, and folded it carefully, tucking it safely in the side pocket.

Heiyaoshi stood up, head racing. He felt sick again—incredibly sick. His stomach churned, his chest ached, his head raced, his thoughts swirling around his head as if they were in a blender. He turned around and took a step toward the door.

A thud sounded from behind him, echoing throughout the entire room. And then—

“FUCK!” an unfamiliar voice shouted.
Heiyaoshi jumped and turned around—he didn’t even know why, because he didn’t hesitate to turn back around and dart over to the door. His hands shook as he yanked it open and stumbled out, hoisting his bag over his shoulder, and back into the street and down the sidewalk, heart pounding, pounding, pounding. . .