FIND YOU FIND YOU FIND YOU I WILL. WILL I FIND YOU NOW FIND YOU LATER FIND YOU NO, FIND YOU NOW. NOW NOW NOW. HOST NOW. EAT YOU NOW. BRING YOU TO PARENT NOW. TAKE BACK WHAT STOLEN FROM PARENT NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

CAN SMELL YOU. SHALL BECOME YOU. SHALL TEAR YOU APART. TAKE WHAT BELONGS TO PARENT BACK NOW.

MUST HAVE YOU NOW.

CAN SMELL THAT BLASPHEMY IN SISTER. SHALL REMOVE SISTER FROM YOU. TEAR YOU, THE BLIGHT APART.

SHALL HAVE YOU NOW.

----

Oh yes.

This is fantastic.

I caaaaan’t wait to see you again, Allyson.

My smile was so wide it threatened to dislocate my jaw like some demonic clown. Dark murky feelings like sludge from the sewers poisoned my heart, but I quickly shook the haze from my head and looked down at the notebook.

I need to read it, I thought to myself as I stared at the burgundy cover. My hands shook and a drop of cold sweat dropped down from my neck to my chest. That damning smile was still plastered on my face.

Slowly opening it, I gazed at the first few letters of the first page of the notebook. No, that wasn’t accurate. I noticed that it had several pages torn out of the notebook because of paper waste in the spine, so the actual first page was long gone.

Starting from what was left of the notebook, I decided to read the author’s work.

-CORE Project was deemed too dangerous by the government. I found that a waste. I knew the CORE children were not being used to their full potential, bound by certain limiters in their bodies that kept them in their human forms.

I do not know how this ‘Father’ person managed to place these limiters, but I had tried to figure it out.

One of my first and possibly worst theories was the belief that a CORE child could break through their DNA limiters via intense physical and emotional distress.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any change in [REDACTED]’s appearance or behavior, apart from now having a target on my back. If I had known it wouldn’t work, I definitely wouldn’t have done it.

Alas, science is all about making mistakes. Now I know emotion has nothing to do with the limitations the ‘Father’ placed on the CORE children.

I just need more time to figure this out. I can’t get to ‘Father’ himself, but since I have a CORE child chasing me, it shouldn’t be too hard to capture it. Maybe a different specimen could provide different results.

If I can capture the CORE child chasing me-

I heard several footsteps coming from the hallways. They were fast and panicked, telling me that the people out in the hallway knew someone, that being me, had trespassed here. Quite frankly, I didn’t want to stick around and find out what they’d do if they found me here.

So I did what any average person would’ve done. I started searching for a place to run to. The only exit was the entrance door. There were eight test tubes and several tables.

For a moment I considered hiding underneath the tables, but I mentally slapped myself for thinking that.

Wait, a drop of nervous sweat trickled from my chin to my neck as I counted the test tubes. There were eight in total, but one was empty.

At that moment, I really took in the submerged victims in the tubes. There were three male humans, two female humans, a cat lady covered in some kind of whitish-gray mist that swam within the water, and a strange-looking woman covered in blackish-red scales that appeared not unlike armor. She oozed power.

My eyes stayed glued to the figure. I deduced she was a draconian, as the scales were different from the lizard maid I met back when I first arrived here. Rather than being completely covered in scales, she appeared to have spots of unblemished pale human skin on her face, arms, midriff, cleavage, and hips down to her thighs. The rest of her body was covered in the black scales that expanded and contracted from her slow breathing. It looked almost like living armor. Her muscles that popped out from her human skin looked chiseled.

She had two large pointy dark crimson horns protruding directly from both sides of her temple. They didn’t have a demon-like quality to them, though. It was more dragon in nature. They were arched in a C-shape a few inches away from her face.

The draconian woman was beautiful, but something about her made me shiver. Something instinctual told me I’d never want to fight her.

Even so, I was drawn to her menacing beauty.

Focus! I need to hide! I tore my eyes from her, and put my mind on overdrive. The people running down the hallways were looking for an intruder. Looking for me. I needed a place to hide.

Should I hide within the tubes? I could pull my hair in there. That’d lower the chances of me being recognized. But then how would I activate the system to turn on the tube’s waters so that I’d camouflage with the rest of the experimental subjects? How would I even wake up if it works? And...would I be able to handle being in it?

I considered using Athens to hack into the system mainframe and hide in plain sight within one of the test tubes, but that’d be way too risky. For one, they might recognize me within the tube. A second reason would be that they might figure out someone hacked their computer system. I didn’t know how advanced their mainframes were, and personally, I didn’t really have time to figure it out.

Thirdly, a part of my heart rejected the notion of entering the tube. Even though I could smother most emotions, entering that abomination of a glass cylinder was something I felt nauseous just thinking about.

I looked up and noticed a vent. Eureka! I screamed mentally.

Shuffling the dropped papers back, I held the notebook in between my teeth.

Propelling myself into the air, I grappled the vent shaft and pulled it out with sheer strength, dropping back down onto the steel floor. Holding the torn out shaft with my left hand, I jumped again and latched into the hole with my right hand, pulling myself into it.

This broken shaft was something I had to take with me into the vent, so to make more space within these tiny confines, I bent the metal inward, and flung it deeper into the ventilation shafts.

A part of me hoped they didn’t realize the notebook went missing, but I also figured that tiny little detail wouldn’t matter since they were rushing in here.

Suddenly, the doors opened, revealing several black-robed figures as the guards. They scourged the area, with two very familiar-looking figures within that cesspool of black.

“Neyla and Bodhi…” I whispered. I shouldn’t stay here, I thought to myself, Neyla knew I was last time. Can’t afford to be caught here.

I crawled through the vents quickly and quietly as possible, cutting corners through the rooms. Each time there was an incline within the vents, I thought to myself, Am I climbing floors?

This notebook...where did Neyla get it? She shouldn’t have it. Could it be that the one I’ve been searching for was here this entire time?

The quarry that’s been eluding me for so long....is she here, in this world?

I needed time to read this notebook, all of it.

I won’t compromise. She is mine. Nothing, not even gods will keep me from her. I will tear her piece by piece, skin her centimeter by centimeter, just to prove a point.

No one takes what belongs to me.

No one.

My clothes and hair got ruffled through my little escapade in the vents. Strands of my growing hair started to sting my eyes, so I blew them away. I started picking up my speed through the tiny airways because of my impatient desire to read the entirety of this notebook.

Sweat started to drip from my neck and face. My mouth started to feel parched as thirst constricted my throat. I plucked the collar of my stuffy knight uniform, hoping to cool off even just a little.

My skin became unbearably sensitive from dehydration and I felt every bit of sweat drop from my forehead. Mentally, I started to feel a daze come over me. I started to slip in the vents due to my own sweat, making it too slippery to crawl and climb.

I hadn’t banked on the fact that ventilation shafts could get so muggy.

I grew desperate and quickly found a vent exit. With pure fervor, I kicked it open and plopped down into a room. Gazing at the notebook, I noticed it was drenched in my own sweat.

Then, I heard a gasp. Immediately, I turned to my right, and noticed someone I was well-acquainted with, in a room I’ve been in before.

A half-dressed redhead widened her eyes in disbelief, as the maid who was dressing her fell on her back from the fright I gave her.

Because the maid fell with her hands still on the redhead’s loosely-placed dress, the girl’s clothing was pulled down with ease, nearly revealing her two generous assets, before she instinctively covered them with her left arm. Her stomach was soft, without any muscle, but she wasn’t at all fat either. I noticed she had a bit of an outie belly button. Not that that’s important or anything...

“W-what are you doing here, Lady Allyson?!”

I did the only thing I could do at that moment. I gazed up at the half-naked startled princess and said with a deadpan expression, “I was exterminating rats in the vents. I used to be an exterminator in my previous world before I became a soldier.”

As if a volcano erupted in her face, coloring her expression a fierce scarlet, she shouted, “Who would believe that?!”

My last thoughts before a pillow hit me straight in the face, were, Ah, she’s not as gullible as I thought.