'Luciel. What an unsuitable name for this child.', thought Ghost as he observed the boy suspended before him.
The boy's long, matte black hair flowed down as he lowered his face to the floor, his arms and legs stretched out in the air by long metal chains.
Ghost knew the child was blind; the boy's every action showed it, yet Ghost couldn't understand the boy's current strange behaviour.
The boy remained eerily motionless as he spoke to Ghost, his nonchalant demeanour both perplexing and infuriating to Ghost.
If it were up to him, Ghost would have already tortured the child and gotten the answers he wanted long ago, yet he knew he couldn't.
'Don't lay a single finger on him.' Ghost recalled the stern warning he had received as he patiently observed the boy, waiting for him to answer his question.
After a moment of silence, only cut through by the soft hum of the air conditioner and the quiet, rhythmic beeps of the robotic arm, the boy finally parted his lips to speak.
But the words that came out of the boy's mouth only infuriated Ghost even further.
"I don't know.", said the boy, his tone flat and dismissive.
"Very well.", said Ghost as he tightly clenched his jaw under his black helmet, trying to maintain his calculated demeanour.
'Haah. This is pointless.', thought Ghost as he walked over to the table filled with various gadgets.
After a few seconds of thought, Ghost steadily approached the boy, a circular collar-like object in his hand.
And with a swift motion, he placed it around the boy's neck, before promptly signalling to the camera positioned in the corner of the room.
In an instant, the chains binding the boy broke free, dropping him suddenly to the floor.
The boy desperately struggled to stand despite his body's clear exhaustion, his legs trembling with every step, before falling back to the floor.
"Hm? It seems regenerating your cells took a greater toll on your body than I expected.", said Ghost as a slight smile crept onto his face.
{Shadow Hand}
Ghost's shadow darkened and shifted as a large dark hand sprang from within it, encasing and lifting the boy in the air.
The boy twisted and turned as he tried to escape the shadow hand's grip.
"What's going on?", asked the boy as he soon realised he couldn't escape from the shadow hand.
"…"
Ghost remained silent as he led the boy out of the room and into a dimly lit tunnel, its lights flickering rhythmically as they moved through it.
After a few minutes of walking through the narrow tunnel, Ghost promptly came to a stop in front of a wide metallic door, the words Detachment Capsule painted on its frame.
SWOOSH
The metallic door slid open before he dropped the boy into the room.
"I hope you continue to survive.", said Ghost as he glanced over the room, noting all the other intriguing children in the room as the metallic door slid shut.
***
Luciel bitterly whispered curses at Ghost as he spread his ethyr throughout the moderately sized room, mapping out its structure as he searched for the familiar ethyr tagging at his senses.
But as Luciel's senses heightened along with his ethyr, he heard the quiet whimpers of the other children in the room.
"Somebody…save me."-SOB, SOB.
"I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die."
"This can't be happening. I'm too young to die. I'm too young to die. Wait, that's it. This isn't real. HAHA. Yes, this is all a dream!", proclaimed one brightly coloured-haired girl.
But Luciel could only lie on the floor, helpless, his chest tightening from the rush of emotion as he heard the children's wails and delusions.
He understood their predicament well, as he had been in a similar situation before, and just like the last time he was in this situation, he was powerless, lacking any way to help himself or others.
But before Luciel could continue his lamenting, the soft hands of a small child landed on his back as an unknown figure helped him sit against a wall.
'What's going on!?', wondered Luciel as he refocused his ethyr, trying to locate the unknown figure.
And as he focused his senses, he heard it-
BADUM
BADUM
The sound of a pounding heartbeat rang in his ears as he finally identified the familiar ethyr and the unknown figure.
"Are you alright?", asked the figure, her familiar tender voice carrying a certain emotion, an emotion Luciel was not familiar with.
'It's the girl from the strange dome.', thought Luciel.
'But how did she keep getting this close without me knowing.', wondered Luciel as he recalled how she had seemingly appeared out of thin air, even in the dome.
The fact that he could not sense her until she was this close to him, bothered Luciel, but he chose to focus on his current situation and think about it at a later time.
"Yes, I'm fine.", answered Luciel.
"That's grea-", said the girl before the sudden shaking of the room interrupted her.
VWHOOSH
And in the next instant, the entire room descended at a frightening speed, putting the children in a state of zero gravity as their bodies floated against their will.
"AAAHHH!!"
"MUMMMYY!!"
The children yelled and screamed as they continued their rapid descent.
'What the heck!', Luciel shouted internally as his body began to feel weightless, completely throwing off his senses.
Yet despite the dire situation they were in, the black-haired girl next to Luciel seemed unbothered. Instead, her dazzling tanzanite-like eyes focused on Luciel as his long hair lifted, revealing his ruby-like eyes.
She didn't yell or panic as her body floated in the air, but focused her attention on Luciel's calm expression, completely puzzled by his nonchalant demeanour.
'How is he so calm?', she thought to herself.
Ever since she set her eyes on Luciel, his expression has always been stoic, completely indifferent to all that happened around him.
'Even back in the dome, he was so indifferent. Why?', she thought calmly as she tried to explain his behaviour to herself. But even after a few minutes of thought, she couldn't wrap her head around it.
'He's strange.', she thought.
And she was right. Luciel neither screamed nor panicked. He never showed any ounce of emotion or reaction to anything around him. He was a mystery to the girl, one that both intrigued and unsettled her.
BADUM
BADUM