Four

Spending four years of my childhood in a research facility was the worst memory I could think of.

The staff woke me up at 3 in the morning for my daily training. First, they started with some brain scans and medical check up. They checked me every day to see if there was any progress on my body. After that, I had my breakfast which was stale bread without anything else. They said I had to have the same diet every day so that it didn’t affect the variables the test. After having breakfast, I began various training sessions–– or better called, experiments–– to test my “gift.” I finished at 9 at night and was sedated to make me sleep on time to prepare me for training the next morning.

Even though I wasn’t the only kid in there, I was the only one locked up alone in my own cubicle. Looking back, they were all subject experiments like I was, but none of them had the gift that I possessed. I wasn’t allowed to play with them as the staff claimed that it would interfere with the test, so I spent all my time just training and occasionally talked with the staff who asked me questions.

They ran countless tests on me and injected me with numerous medications. They never told me what they were for, so I never knew. All I felt was, I felt drowsy all the time, feeling like I had been drugged to keep my nerves calm at all times.

I kept waiting every single day for my parents to come visit me, a day which never came. Whenever I asked the staff about it, they never answered. After 2 years, I accidentally found a file of a certain transaction with my parents involved in it. I read from the file that the research facility gave my parents a huge sum of money in exchange for sending me here. I finally came to terms and accepted that my parents abandoned me here, like what happened to other kids.

After spending four years in the facility, on my 10th birthday, someone broke into the facility. He destroyed everything. The tests, the building, the machines, everything. He killed all of the staff and set all of the children free.

I still remembered the time he came to my room.

“Hello, little one. Wanna go outside?”

I was still able to hear the voices of people screaming and running in the background. The facility was in complete chaos.

He reached out his hand. I was so scared of everything that I ran away and hid behind the cabinet.

“Don’t be scared. They’re all gone now.”

After realising that there were no more staff around us, I reached out to his hand and came with him.

He gathered all of the children in one room and offered us a deal. He said that the children could go home to their parents if they wanted to, or, we can come with him, and be part of his family.

Thinking that it was no use to go back to our parents who abandoned us for money, all of us decided to come with him.

We called him our “hero.”

He took us all on a ship and sailed to an island far away from the nation. Once we arrived, he prepared some food for us to eat and let us have a day to ourselves. We started living with him ever since.

We also started working for him. He provided us with food, clothes, and shelter; and we provided him with everything he needed. As for me, he said that I was the one he was looking for in the facility and had a special task just for me.

Unlike the staff who did tests on me about my ability, he truly taught me properly how to develop my ability. As a Transflage, I finally got control of my innate skill under his teachings. Later on, I was told that, the people from the research facility did tests on me to find a specific genetic trait that can help them to create more Transflage in the future. The children from the research facility were human subjects they were experimenting with, to see if they could make a genetically modified Transflage. What a horrible place.

He and I eventually got really close. I looked up to him and considered him like an older brother. He then promoted me to be one of his high-ranking officers of the organisation he founded, the Stainless Syndicate. He anointed me as number Four, after assessing my strength and comparing it with other officers.

After doing countless of missions of working together towards a common goal and carefully organised preparations for a greater good, he finally decided that it was time to launch the final project. This project involved all members of the organisation–– officers, agents, associates–– to work worldwide. It was the final step to achieve this organisation’s main goal: to incite a revolution that would change the fate of the world for the better.

Our goal was to demolish the Human Empire and the caste system. It was an outdated system created by violence, colonisation, and wars which enslaved the six nations. By liberating the Dominions, we would all finally have true independence and create an egalitarian society.

In order to do that, we needed to show the world how powerful we were as an organisation. We planned to destabilise all governments that had connections to the Human Empire to show the world our influence and how we could reconstruct the society from the beginning.

High-ranking officers of the organisation were divided into teams who would infiltrate the government of each Dominion. Hamlet, Blackjack, and I were assigned to infiltrate Virtue Vault Federation. Our main goal was to kidnap the Premier and bring him to our hideout to extract his “power.” We understood that this might not be the most righteous thing to do, but to achieve a bigger goal, sometimes sacrifice was necessary. Hamlet and Blackjack would do the preparations necessary for the action behind the scene, while I infiltrated the military to act as a spy who would work closely with the Premier and gain as much information as possible.

I joined the Sacred Guard Regiment particularly in Garuda Squad in order to work as closely as possible with the Premier. When I first joined, the team was led by Chief Bataar. Not long after me, Arudo and Zum joined the team. Those two were the only ones working with me during Chief Bataar’s tenure. After he passed away, I replaced him as the Chief of Garuda Squad.

Our plan to kidnap the Premier started since my tenure as the chief. Even though I met the Premier regularly, we needed to kidnap him in front of a large audience so that the media would spread the news to international audience about how serious and powerful we were.

Originally, our plan was to kidnap the Premier during the Lantern Festival. Even though the preparations were adequate, somehow the information about our attack got leaked to the enemy and they managed to stop us before we succeeded. Since we couldn’t bring the Premier with us, we decided to take the Advisor instead as a compensation.

Hamlet’s fyx skill was “Shadow Coat Transformation.” By cutting someone’s shadow and stealing it, he combined it with chroma* sorcery to transform the shadow into a coat that could grant him transformation into the appearance of the shadow's original owner. While the Advisor was in coma, Hamlet disguised himself as the Advisor to infiltrate the Temple Members Assembly and gain some information about the inner circle of the government.

While Hamlet pretends to be the Advisor, Blackjack and I stole the Advisor’s body and killed him so nobody will suspect Hamlet. We threw his corpse in the river near the Temple, which was a mistake since the Military Police found out a few days later. After they found out Hamlet’s true identity, we decided that we are going to plan B.

After what Hamlet heard during the meeting about the whole defensive cooperation from multiple military regiments to anticipate our attack during the Day in Memoriam, we decided to postpone our attack that day since we would be severely outnumbered. We then waited for another chance on another day.

A few days before the Crown Prince’s coronation, I got some information about the placement of the carriages. Since we were going at night, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to kidnap the Premier then. Although there were other Sacred Guards and the Lord Commander, they were not as many as the ones during the Lantern Festival.

Little did I know, they knew there was a spy within the Garuda Squad and they have had investigating us ever since. They tricked me by giving false information about the location of the Premier and I was forced to reveal my identity to them. I did not expect that my identity would be revealed so soon, but we did anticipate this kind of situation so it was still on track with our plan.

Now that plan B had failed, we would now proceed to the final plan. We would be looking forward to see them again at the Royal Palace.

*chroma = colour.