"I don't know what we're going to do," Sevda said, looking at the fugitive named Aldoux Weisshafen, who lay in bed with his face covered in bandages. According to the healing computer, he hadn't regained consciousness yet, but it could happen at any moment. He had a body that responded remarkably fast to surgery. There was permanent damage in his brain, but it wasn't enough to cause more than a few neurological disorders. This boy's expensive, enhanced body had been enough to keep him alive.
The bed had remained drenched in blood throughout the operations, and the Uruzen children—known only by numbers—had been forced to constantly wipe the floor with rags in their hands. The cheap cleaning robots she had bought couldn't keep up with the speed of the flowing blood. The amount of tissue and blood used to keep the young "Enhanced" alive was so great that they wouldn't be able to perform a major surgery for a long time.
Now, he was still. The flickering lines indicating a stable heart rhythm relieved Sevda. The man's open abdomen had been stitched shut, and the sutures were hidden beneath the skin using thermal processing. A normal human would certainly not have survived such an operation; even if they did, they probably wouldn't have been able to move for centuries. But when Sevda saw this young man named Aldoux move his finger, she was struck with awe, thinking about how far biomechanical science had advanced.
According to the analyses from his brain receptors, the young man was having a nightmare. That was why he had reflexively tried to move his finger despite being asleep. Despite all the hardship, the brain's persistence in showing nightmares was admirable. She had participated in many surgeries and seen that brains in this state were programmed to preserve as much energy as possible while trying to repair the body in a panic. However, even while returning from the brink of death, this man's brain was wandering through the dark corridors of his subconscious, whispering old wounds or perhaps future dangers to him. This was proof of how stubborn and complex an organ the human (or humanoid) mind was. Perhaps the mind of a criminal was like this, filled with certain dangers he constantly wrestled with.
Sevda looked up from the monitor and stared at Aldoux's face. The young man's face had not yet undergone plastic surgery. Although pupils had been transplanted into his eye sockets, his face still consisted of raw flesh and bone. Therefore, looking at him, nothing could be seen but his eyes and bandages. But despite that, could the nightmares swirling in the man's mind be felt through the tremors in his eyes as they stared into nothingness and the shimmer within that gaze? "What scares you?" Sevda whispered to herself. "The memory of this burden you carry, or what awaits you in the future?"
The fact that the brain continued to produce dreams even hours after such a heavy operation was the greatest indicator of his extraordinary resilience and recovery capacity. His body had physically almost returned from the dead, trying to survive the shock and damage, but his mind continued to work as if refusing to accept that it had suffered irreparable damage. This was what made Aldoux more than an ordinary "patient" or "cybernetic"—it turned him into a phenomenon programmed to survive.
Sevda reached out and checked the man's pulse again. 52 beats per minute… Regular and strong… Aldoux was not a machine. He was a masterpiece wandering the boundaries of the organic and the artificial, rewriting the limits of biological durability. And right now, he was alone in a labyrinth where he faced his deepest fears.
He was clearly going to wake up… His brain, internal organs, and many other tissues continued as if nothing had happened. These indifferent organs, eager to work, did not care for the others. Therefore, the healing computers were trying to repair the remaining organs quickly until the moment they could all work together in harmony.
"You're going to need a face," Sevda said. "I've spent too many resources to let you die now." She exhaled deeply. As her cybernetic heart—her motor—pumped electricity in succession, she tilted her head back and began to think. Was she really going to bring a convict back to life?
Was she doing this for the sake of that oath she took at school centuries ago? Was she doing it for the sake of her motorized heart that provided her with a sense of guilt? Was she doing it so the resources she spent wouldn't go to waste, or was she doing it just because the Uruzenians wanted her to?
As the young Uruzenians looked through the glass as if they had nothing better to do, Sevda raised her hands and lowered them. With this movement, the glass turned completely opaque. Now, the gaze of the Uruzenians could no longer influence her while she made her decision. She had to make a single choice here.
At that moment, a name escaped the unconscious man's lips. "Isolde…" he whispered. Sevda didn't actually notice this whisper. It was the healing computer that caught this deep fadhom. When the massive screen dropped in front of Sevda, the name was written there: "A word was heard. Word: Isolde."
"Isolde?" Sevda said. "Sounds like a beautiful woman's name. So this man has a lover."
Ah… she was aware she was about to make a mistake. Perhaps during her time in Uruzen, she had grown less respectful of the laws and the decisions of the SWR. Once she killed the love for the law within her, she had become capable of helping even a convict. Besides… even if she wasn't lonely, she had been alone for a long time. She wouldn't mind having a noble friend, even if he was a prisoner. The face she had seen on the television was handsome, albeit a bit spoiled.
If this young convict was going to live the life of a fugitive, he had to give up that face. That was exactly what Sevda had in mind: giving him a new face, and with a new face, a new life. She wanted to give him a face that was a bit serious, a bit dangerous. A slightly long but stately face. A wide jaw, showing his strength… Sharp and bushy eyebrows that would make him look noble, and finally, sharp cheekbones that would steal every young girl's heart… Of course, when she added all these on the simulation screen of the healing computer, she found an artificial-looking face like a toy doll. Fortunately, there was an "auto-edit" button. When she pressed it, the face before her became that of a lord. Even the woman named Isolde, whose name he muttered, would fall for this face.
"Liet…" Aldoux whispered this time. This time, Sevda pushed the screen away with her hand before it could pop up, because she had heard this word herself.
"Another woman's name, huh?" Sevda said. "One is his lover, the other is his sister. Don't worry, they'll both love your new face."
"Velsil…" Aldoux said this time.
"Velsil?" Sevda said, pushing the screen with the back of her hand. "…how many sisters do you have?"
"Alora…"
She set the screen to "off" this time because she couldn't keep pushing it away. "Another woman's name, eh?" Sevda frowned. "This many women is a bit much…"
"Ilya…"
"Another woman! How many women are you seeing in your nightmare? What kind of nightmare is this…"
As he muttered, "Goma, Hula, Burse, Nala, Irrea…", Sevda couldn't contain her anger and shouted:
"Great!" She suddenly stood up. "We have a womanizing convict! If he wasn't in for corruption, he would have been in for being a creep." If the young man kept muttering women's names, she couldn't perform the facial surgery. So, she began to wait for the man to calm down. Whenever he stopped muttering names, she would perform the surgery, and apparently, the man's repertoire was not short.