Raito's eyes blinked open, squinting against a harsh, clinical glare that felt like a physical weight on his forehead. He bolted upright, his heart thudding as he realized he was staring directly into a massive surgical lamp. He wasn't on the mountain anymore, he was in a hospital gown, sitting on a cold, metallic exam table.
Panic flared. He frantically checked his arms and legs, expecting to see jagged scars or missing limbs from the Yeti's pursuit. But there was nothing. His skin was perfectly smooth, as if the nightmare on the slopes had never happened.
The heavy hiss of a sliding door cut through his confusion. A doctor in surgical scrubs stepped in, his expression unreadable. Raito, trapped between a "thank you" and a "get away from me," offered a painfully awkward, tense smile. When the doctor reached into his pocket for something, Raito's survival instincts screamed. He slid off the table, edging toward the open door. The doctor froze, his eyes narrowing as he tracked Raito's every twitch.
They stood in a silent, high-stakes standoff for a heartbeat. Neither spoke. Raito took one slow step toward the exit and the doctor took one slow step into the room, pulling a handy talk from his pocket. Their eyes locked in a final moment of suspicion before Raito simply bolted. He lunged past the threshold, leaving the doctor to talk into the handy talk behind him.
He was in a long, cold corridor that seemed to stretch forever. On both sides, heavy reinforced doors marked with medical symbols lined the walls. It was a subterranean maze of glass and steel, bathed in an unsettling, pale blue light. Raito didn't have time to look through the observation windows and run.
As he reached a bend in the hallway, he skidded to a halt, peering around the corner just in time. Three guards were charging toward him, their boots thundering against the floor. Thinking fast, he ducked into the nearest room and pressed his back against the door, holding his breath.
The heavy thud of combat boots finally began to fade into the distance, leaving behind an oppressive silence that rang in Raito's ears. He leaned his back against the door, closing his eyes for a fleeting second as he let out a jagged, shaky breath that rattled in his chest. His lungs burned from the frantic sprint, and his mind raced to calculate his next move through the maze.
However, just as he began to push himself away from the door to scout the room, a sudden and agonizingly sharp sting pierced the muscle of his left arm. Raito gasped, his eyes snapping wide in shock as he looked down to see a high-tech syringe embedded deep in his shoulder. The device hissed with a mechanical precision, and before he could even raise a hand to swat it away, a thick, glowing, neon-green fluid was already surging through the needle. He watched in silent horror as the luminescent chemical forced its way into his veins, spreading a cold, numbing sensation that traveled rapidly toward his heart.
The room began to tilt. The sharp edges of the facility softened into a blur. Raito spun around, his knees buckling, catching a final glimpse of a figure in the same dark military uniform he'd seen on the mountain. He tried to force his fading mind to remember the face.
"Short hair... Glass... Es..." he wheezed.
"Just... Forget me," a soft, calm voice replied.
And then, the darkness took him again.
***
Raito's eyes drifted open, greeted by the same oppressive, clinical glare that had haunted his previous awakenings. His first instinct was to roll off the bed and find an exit, but a firm hand pressed against his chest, pinning him to the hospital bed.
This time, he wasn't alone. A woman stood over him, clad in the same dark, sharp military uniform he had glimpsed through his fading vision. She watched him with a calculated intensity.
"Your name is Raito, right?" she asked, her voice steady. "To withstand two full doses of that serum and still remember... That's a rare kind of resilience."
Raito's mind was filled with a fog of confusion and questions. "Serum? What are you talking about! Where am I!?"
"An amnesiac," she replied, her tone flat but her eyes gleaming with a sudden, sharp interest. "It's designed to scrub the mind clean through whispered suggestion. Yet, here you are, remembering everything."
She stepped back, allowing him to sit up as she laid out the grim reality of his situation. She introduced herself as Tiana, the one who had stood between him and the Yeti's fury. He was currently within the walls of a shadow organization known as A.I.T.S., the Agency for International Threat Security.
With a chilling lack of hesitation, Tiana dismantled his world. The monsters from half-forgotten folklore, the nightmares of mythology, they weren't just stories, they were living, breathing threats that the world was never meant to see. The green fluid they had pumped into his veins was their primary tool for keeping that secret, a chemical sedative meant to make witnesses forget the horrors they had seen.
"Wait," Raito interrupted, his voice hushed with realization. "If this is all some top-secret operation… Why are you just handing me all this information?"
Tiana leaned in, a sharp, almost predatory smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "It's not for public consumption. Only those on the payroll are cleared to know the truth."
Raito's heart sank as the pieces clicked into place. "Then... That means..."
"Exactly, Raito," she said, her smile widening. "Whether you like it or not, you're under my jurisdiction now. Welcome to the Agency."