“A masterpiece creation—! Pièce de résistance! The strongest, finest specimen ever, something to make everyone go wow! Your mommy was talking about it again. If her research goes well, she’s gonna do all sorts of things for me, right?”
Saiko’s mother had a way of phrasing herself.
“In that case, once I become a mad scientist, why don’t I do it? I can turn you into a real masterpiece!”
“Okay!”
The two girls put their heads together and giggled.
The next day, No. 13’s room was empty.
“Hey, where’s No. 13?”
“…She’s over here.”
While Saiko searched for No. 13, Saiko’s father took her hand and led her toward one of the lab rooms. He sat her down in front of one of the computers.
The screen was full of all sorts of numbers she didn’t understand and words she didn’t recognize.
“This is No. 13.”
Saiko understood what her father meant and accepted it immediately.
“This data is for No. 13?”
Farewell had come sooner than expected.
“It is,” her father said shortly. “Did you ever figure out what kind of specimen No. 13 was?”
“I wasn’t really sure. She talked and laughed like normal. But sometimes she seemed to know things. Like she could always tell when you were coming into the room.”
Saiko remembered how No. 13 would sometimes turn her eyes toward the door for no apparent reason. Whenever she did so, one of the workers was always sure to show up.
“Yes, very good. Specimen No. 13 was precognizant. She could predict the future, something that should be impossible. Essentially, No. 13 ignored the laws of physics.”
“Precognizant…?”
Saiko hadn’t expected such an occult word to come out of her father’s mouth.
“Occasionally we encounter what are known as paranormal entities here. There is no apparent corresponding organ within their bodies to explain their abilities. Even when we clone these creatures, they never display the same effects. It is a phenomenon that we cannot scientifically explain.”
“But she’s just data now. No. 13 said she wanted to become a masterpiece.”
In the end, Specimen No. 13’s dream never came true.
“Yes, No. 13 is data now. But as long as her data remains, there is still a link between No. 13 and the future.”
“The future?”
“Yes. No. 13 herself may be gone, but as long as her data is still in use, the fact that she once existed continues to have meaning. That’s why you have to study hard, Saiko, so that you can become a good scientist and make use of No. 13’s digital data—the numerical values here on this screen—as well as her analog data—the memories of her stored in your heart.”
“Okay!”
Whether digital or analog, as long as No. 13’s data remained recorded and remembered, she was still connected to the future. Saiko made up her mind there and then. She was never going to forget No. 13.
That day, Saiko received a hand-me-down lab coat from her mother and began working at the lab as a scientist. She didn’t receive a lab coat from her father because she was at the age when things like that bothered her. The lab coat she received from her mother, however, was not entirely white. It had a pattern, as her mother preferred.
Once Saiko grew older, she tattooed herself with permanent stitch marks. Just like the stitch marks No. 13 had had. She had to make sure that No. 13 became a masterpiece. No. 13’s data was still there in her heart. Saiko was going to become the best mad scientist ever and make the strongest, finest creations that had ever been seen.
That was Saiko’s dream.
No matter how much time passed, Saiko’s dream remained the same.
“Saiko, baby, how about you let me out of here?”
A man was on the other side of the plate glass, his arms and legs bound in restraints. He was no ordinary man, however. His frame looked powerful and bulky in a way that was not human, and his body was covered in some sort of special plating. But he wasn’t wearing the plating; it was fused directly to his flesh, a substitute for his skin.
“Watch yourself. If war breaks out you’re gonna be out here whether you like it or not.”
Saiko Hikita was currently eighteen. She had been assigned to a separate research facility from her parents, where, for various complicated reasons, she was now carrying out experiments on prisoners who had been condemned to death—off-the-books executions, so to speak. The kind of experiments that could never be allowed to come to light.
Although Saiko did not use the numerical data that No. 13 had left behind, as she made a name for herself as a scientist, she still kept the other data, the analog memories, safely within her heart.
“Tsk, you’re so mean…”
The man in the armor plating had only been joking to begin with. His pouting was meant as a joke as well.
“You’re not messing with Saiko again, are you?”
There was a woman in the adjacent cell, wearing what looked like a near-future bodysuit. Her two arms and two legs were free from restraints. Her other set of arms, however, was bound with heavy manacles. The hands on these two arms ended in sharp pincers, much like knives.
“Come on, you know I’m just joking,” said the man.
“Joking or not, people like us would have usually been disposed of long ago. Saiko took us in and gave us these bodies. Isn’t that enough?”
Saiko was willing to get every last drop of use she could from whatever she could. To wring out every bit of data there was.
“I know that. You know I’m grateful, Saiko.”
“Don’t get all sappy on me! I’m just using you both. I’m doing this for the sake of my own dream!”
“Your masterpiece, right? I wish could be your masterpiece…”
The man smiled, enamored by the thought. Just then, an alarm began to blare throughout the lab, and one of Saiko’s colleagues rushed into the room.