To Live Again, For the First Time!

As previously mentioned, those who failed were naturally disposed of.

The ones who had failed in phase one, otherwise known as the first trial didn't have to be disposed of in any particular manner seeing as the sole requirement for the first trial was survival.

All the subject had to do was survive the process of having a serum with the information from their respective chips injected into their bodies, which would slowly, but surely alter the subject's reaction speed and 5 senses.

They didn't go through the trouble of teaching the children martial arts or combat techniques much less the usage of various weapons at that point, but when they started inserting brain chips on anything that required the body, the children were able to absorb it all like sponges that had been dried in the desert.

After a few more trials, an additional side effect was exposed.

The emergence of the subject's 6th sense, allowing these children to feel something, something close to precognition. It was unimaginable, to say the least, and the skeptics weren't numbered in the single digits.

Though accurate data on the matter was hard to collect, after a while, the evidence was undeniable.

It was first noticed when a young child came out with a 41 degree Celcius fever out of nowhere. Still, he wasn't willing to stay in bed in the doctor's office, a side building of the institution.

Then, shocking the doctor in charge at the time, the boy forced himself out of the patience's bed with a head full of sweat and clothes soaked through just to barely reach the door before the whole office collapsed in on itself.

He survived the collapsing walls, not a scratch on his body, but not before he died of a fever so high it fried his brain, or maybe it was his overused brain that caused that fever.

That much could be simply counted as a coincidence, but when similar, inexplicable events occurred, coincidence was no longer at play.

And not long after, just a week later, another child suddenly stood up and flipped over her tray during mealtime.

They had later found out that those rations that the child was eating at the time had been expired after some testing.

And of course, the accounts piled up.

It happened in unnatural sequences with occurrences of varying danger levels.

It was then that the professors had to start taking the supernatural into account.

Either that or a kind of wave fluctuation, that sent signals to the children's enhanced bodies, that had yet to be discovered by mankind.

Either way, this sixth sense, which could predict things from collapsing buildings to overcooked rations was a whole new playing field.

Something that these professors still had to take and study at their own discretion, exploring their new findings step by step.

Moving on from that subject, a more pressing matter at hand.

The trials for passing the second phase started not long after, right around when they already had 40 subjects that had passed the first trial.

They had to make do with only that many children due to their own miscalculations.

Even then, these kids didn't even have a name or a form of identification. The first ones only obtaining their tag after attempting the second trial.

They send the children in batches of 8, wanting to get enough information to proceed and make changes for the following attempts while taking into account their abysmally low number of human resources.

F8 had been part of that first batch, where everyone with the exception of himself, died, but that didn't mean that he had passed.

Passing the first trial meant that your body was able to adapt to the serum, but it wasn't that simple for the second trial.

Though it was previously mentioned that the success ratio was higher in this second trial, with them already having obtained 3 successful subjects, you really had to take into account that those 3 had also passed the first trial, and so, in retrospect, what was really abysmally low was the success ratio for those who passed both the first and the second trial.

And since you had to pass the first trial to even attempt the second, the true success rate of those who passed the second phase wasn't as high as what one had originally imagined.

And this was to be expected.

While the first trial modified the body, the second modified the mind.

The experiment required large amounts of information to be absorbed in incredibly tense situations. 

There were impairments on the 5 senses while the trial was ongoing and the mental fortitude had to be constantly attacked before outside information could be instilled.

It sounded a lot more simple than it actually was.

Attacking these children's mental barriers to open up unused parts of the brain so that more information could be unloaded at high speeds actually took days of torture using unthinkable and unspeakable methods while they were strapped up so that they wouldn't kill themselves instinctively.

A pain that was able to overpower the human's natural survival instinct.

Either way, the information would be loaded into the children's brain, however, how much they absorbed depended on them.

As for the ones who failed, they were the ones who failed to absorb more than 10 percent of the data injected between their mental barriers.

They wouldn't die immediately, but the rest of the data that was not properly absorbed would sooner or later start attacking their own bodies, leading to inevitable death.

F8 had absorbed 9.99% of the data injected into him making himself, a failure.

But don't look down on that 0.01%.

Many children had been stuck on that 0.01% and even more in the 9.00 range.

In the first trial, the other, F1-F7, hadn't been able to absorb more than 9%, a rough estimate that was made after their brains were opened and picked, quite literally.

The ones that had absorbed less than 5% had died instantly while those who had absorbed from 5-6% died within a week after the trial ended.

The ones who absorbed from 6-8 died within half a year and those from 8-9 within a year.

And then there was F8, who was still alive but dying from the inside with every passing day.

Still, at least he was the first one. 

The first one to have absorbed 9.99% of the data, making himself more useful than the others.

The others who had absorbed 9.99% in the following batches were taken and dissected, but he wasn't, because he was the first one, the standard to which the others would be compared.

As for those under that 9.99%, they were naturally locked up and left to die in various ways to test how they would react in varying scenarios.

This was also why F8 was so shocked when the professor asked him to bring them all to his office.

Though he must be in a good mood because everyone has survived, absorbing more than 5% unlike in the first batch, there was only 1 of them that passed.

There was no need to bring everyone else in as well.

F8 didn't understand the professor's plans, but seeing as things were like this, he was in no position to ask questions.

He continued to observe S3, who was now looking around in the enclosed space. 

Her eyes were fierce whenever she looked at the unfamiliar faces, that is until her gaze landed on a specific individual.

Another child who looked around 6 to 7 of age, S3's eyes were plastered on her.

And F8 hadn't failed to notice all of this, including the following interactions.

The second child, another young girl, F76, was one of the hazel-colored eyes. F76's eyes were bright when they saw that S3 was all right, but they dimmed in the very next second when she realized her current situation.

F76 didn't know much, but she knew that she would be punished with no food if they didn't pass, whatever that even meant. (As in the children didn't really know what the requirements for passing were, but once their names were mentioned to them, they would know whether they had passed or not.)

Her hazel eyes moved on to S3's yellow-green eyes, which didn't budge once they found their target.

S3 hesitated for a second, which could be seen from her stiff movements, which even then, didn't allow for any openings.

It was then, it seemed like she wasn't able to hold it in anymore, running in the direction of F76 at speeds inconceivable to children of her age or size, but not all too rare among these kids.

What really stunned them in the end, was her actions, not her speed.

'What is she doing?'

'Was she attacking her?' F8 entertained the idea, but not for long.

It was then S3 jumped on F76, but F76 didn't dodge in any way as one would have imagined she would have in this situation and atmosphere.

Instead, she welcomed her with open arms, with a helpless expression on her face.

In front of F76, S3, the only person who passed in this batch, acted completely defenseless, like an adorable little kitten. One may have even thought that she was just a regular child to be doted on at this rate.

"Sister…" S3 called, in a voice only audible to F76 and no one else.

F76 released a small sigh with unknown significance before patting S3's head, which was nudging at F76, truly like a baby kitten.