CHAPTER 22: Keep Dreaming, Boy

Liu Xian's days in the laboratory were… hell.

There was no poetic way to describe it. No metaphor soft enough to wrap around the horror. The sounds of his screams pierced even the walls designed to mute everything.

Each time he blinked awake, he prayed it was a nightmare.

It never was.

He'd lost count of how long he'd been here. Hours? Days? Weeks?

Time bled together in a haze of pain and needles and the hum of machines that never stopped.

Every day they drained him dry, leaving just enough mana to keep his heart beating. Just enough to keep him alive for tomorrow's agony. There were times his body shook so violently it felt like his bones would shatter. Times when the straps cut into his wrists because he couldn't stop convulsing. Times when his voice gave out mid-scream, and he was left mouthing pleas to deaf ears.

And always, always, there was Dr. Omicron-7.

That smiling bastard with bloodstained gloves and wild eyes that lit up at the sight of suffering. A man who treated pain like a masterpiece. Dr. Omicron-7 didn't talk to Liu Xian—he talked at him. He monologued like the world was his stage and Liu Xian was nothing more than a backdrop.

Sometimes, when Dr. Omicron-7 tilted his head and smiled just right, Liu Xian imagined what it would feel like to crush his skull with his bare hands.

But that was just imagination.

In truth, Liu Xian didn't have the strength to move. Most days he didn't even want to.

Most days... He just wanted to die.

He thought he'd known suffering before. Being feared. Being hated. Surviving his father maltreatment, the judgements, the cold.

But nothing... Absolutely nothing compared to this.

The silence between tortures was the worst. When he was left alone in his restraints, too weak to cry, staring blankly at the ceiling as the fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Those were the moments he begged for the end. When he stopped being Liu Xian and just became it—a thing in a lab, waiting to be broken.

"Marvelous,"the familiar voice chimed, jarringly cheerful. "That's a nice result. The contract will soon be completed though. What a shame."

Liu Xian's eyes, half-lidded, shifted toward the source of the voice. There he was—Dr. Omicron-7, standing beside a glowing console, grinning ear to ear. His red hair was slicked back messily, wild strands sticking out, and the eye patch over his left eye made him look like a pirate from some twisted nightmare.

Liu Xian's throat was raw. Every breath rasped, shallow and shaky. But he managed to whisper, barely audible:

"Kill… me."

Omicron-7 paused, raising an eyebrow.

"What was that?"

"Kill me," Liu Xian whispered again, the words trembling on cracked lips. "Just… finish it."

There was a beat of silence.

Then Omicron-7 burst into laughter. He laughed loud and long, like he'd just heard the best joke of his life. "Oh, my dear boy," he said through wheezing chuckles. "You still think you get to choose when you die?"

Liu Xian shut his eyes.

The pain was still there—like it always was. Buzzing under his skin, rattling his bones, churning in his veins like a sickness that wouldn't go away.

Then, slowly, he opened his eyes again. The lights above were as bright and cold as ever. The humming of the mana-draining machine vibrated through the metal slab he lay on, rattling in his ears like a ticking clock counting down to nothing.

He turned his head weakly, just enough to catch the outline of Dr. Omicron-7, standing with his back half-turned, fingers dancing over the control panel. The screens flickered with data, elemental charts, vitals, a hundred lines of code Liu Xian couldn't read—but none of it mattered.

A bitter smirk tugged at the corner of his cracked lips.

"Be sure to pick a date quickly," Liu Xian rasped, his voice hoarse but sharp like splintered glass, "because if you don't kill me soon…"

Omicron-7, paused, his gloved hands freezing mid-motion.

The lights flickered.

Liu Xian's smile deepened, slow and hollow, a crack in the porcelain mask of the boy who had spent days begging for death.

"I'll be the one who kills you," he whispered.

There was a long, heavy silence.

"Keep dreaming, boy," Omicron-7 beamed.