A boy who looked to be about six years old was clinging to my waist.
An oversized lab coat hung off his frame, and beneath it, he wore skin-tight hot pants like some back-alley idol. His inner shirt was just as loose, the sleeves fluttering with every movement.
Since his shoes didn’t fit at all, they let out a hollow clack-clack with every step he took.
His reddish-brown, wavy hair swayed softly, and at a glance, his large eyes were the picture of an innocent brat.
However, if you looked closely, you could see electronic signals racing behind his irises, flickering with an artificial glow. That light was a manufactured brilliance.
And deep within those eyes wasn't innocence, but the unmistakable hue of madness.
"Hey now, what’s with the look? Staring at me like that... have you finally fallen for my charms?"
Releasing my waist, he spoke in a high-pitched voice, but the words were clearly those of a worn-out old man.
My brain felt like it was about to short-circuit.
"Look at these legs!"
With that, he hopped onto a chair in front of me and dangled his thin legs, showing them off.
"The exterior is just a cute little body, but the guts? That’s a different story. Triple springs, compressed and reshaped, circulated with directional explosive fluid metal—! Thanks to that, I can beat a car in terms of instantaneous output! ...Well, I’d blow to smithereens immediately after, but still!"
He rolled around, giggling like a child.
But the subject matter was a human experiment involving explosive self-destruction. It was a joke in incredibly poor taste.
"...As noisy as ever. You said you were busy—is this really okay? It helps me out, but still."
The moment I spoke, he skillfully moved his toes, crawling them up my chest.
When I slapped his foot away with a sharp thwack, he let out an affected "Aahn ♡" and started faking a cry.
...He really was beyond saving.
He was even worse out in the world. His gestures and lines were exactly those of a boy in "that kind of business," and he took great pleasure in Toying with his clients.
He’d always claim, "It’s a hobby, a hobby. It’s fun," and then have the gall to send over recordings of his "play sessions" with customers.
—I never knew exactly how I was supposed to react to those.
"Ah, right, right. I was busy. Well, to be precise, I’m still busy. But—if it’s you, that’s a different story. I’ve actually got a bit of a consultation for you."
The Doctor carelessly slipped his toes back into the shoes he’d left on the floor.
Making that clack-clack sound again, he began walking toward the back of the lab as if he were setting off on an adventure.
Good grief. I wondered what he was about to propose.
Despite my misgivings, I followed him.
The room we had been in was the treatment room—the place where the Doctor’s "patients" were usually seen.
We passed through a corridor leading further into the facility.
The area we stepped into was his personal space.
It should have been spacious, but it was so cluttered with junk that it felt claustrophobic. Desks and chairs vied for floor space, and an unnervingly large bed sat at the far end. A mirror was mounted on the ceiling, a testament to his atrocious taste.
Scattered throughout the room were ampoules of unknown purpose, non-standard plugs, and electronic paper flickering with paused, obscene videos.
It was a nightmarish space where the organic and the inorganic merged.
I had been this far before. But today, we went deeper.
We approached the room the Doctor called his "treasure chest"—a place he allegedly never let anyone enter.
Standing before the door, the pervert in a child’s body moved his hands with practiced ease to disengage the locks.
Double... no, triple security. I watched as he bypassed the complex layers one by one.
A high-pitched electronic beep signaled the release of the final lock.
He pressed a button beside the frame, and the thick door slid open silently, allowing a draft of cold air to spill out.
The Doctor glanced back at me, the corners of his mouth curling upward.
"Go on, get in here."
That smile looked like nothing more than a devil’s mask grafted onto a child’s face.
I took a breath and stepped inside.
The first chamber was narrow. Decontamination units were packed tightly from floor to ceiling, and the moment I entered, a sharp pssh! of air-cleaning wind blasted me from all sides.
"This place is a bit delicate, you see," the Doctor said, his lab coat fluttering in the gale. "My treasure chest doesn't tolerate a single speck of dust."
I grimaced as the wind tossed my hair.
The chemical scent unique to cleaning nanomachines stung my nose and throat. I could never bring myself to like that smell.
Once the decontamination cycle finished, the Doctor led the way through a second door.
"Welcome—to my treasure chest."
He slapped a switch on the wall, and the ceiling lights flickered on in sequence, racing toward the back of the room.
The sight they revealed stole my breath.
From floor to ceiling, the walls were lined with transparent culture tanks.
Contained within were eyeballs, limbs, ears, genitals—every imaginable part of the human anatomy.
Eyes bobbed in the fluid, reflecting the light with an eerie, shimmering glow.
At the very back, a full body swayed gently in its natural state. Countless bubbles crawled up its skin, and multi-colored hair spread across the water’s surface like a sleeping mermaid.
A cold shiver raced down my spine.
I’d assumed they were prosthetic parts, but a closer look proved me wrong. There were no cables, no interfaces.
The cross-sections revealed raw muscle and exposed bone. They weren't prosthetics; they were Natural "components."
"These aren't prosthetic parts, are they?"
The words left my mouth before I could stop them. The Doctor stood beside me, staring at the culture fluid with an intensity that bordered on hunger.
"I... I want to become the ultimate 'Natural' of my own design. Not a prosthetic body, but something stronger and more beautiful than any machine. I will surpass the body made by God and create a version of myself superior to the divine. That is my dream."
A Speech Bubble appeared.
《This body isn’t bad, but it’s lacking. I will use these hands to forge a status that exceeds God’s own design.》
The way he gazed up at the tanks with such ecstasy... he wasn't a scientist or a researcher anymore. He was a fanatic.
I let out a heavy sigh. Basically—he wanted to be a "Natural" who was stronger than a prosthetic and more aesthetic than an android.
...Well, as long as it didn't interfere with me, he was free to dream whatever he wanted.
"Fine. I get your pipe dream. But you didn't bring me in here to talk about that, did you? What’s the real 'seed' of this conversation?"
The Doctor snapped back to reality and shook his head quickly.
"Oops, my bad, my bad. I got a little lost in the moment there."
He grinned and gestured toward a side passage.
"This way. The main event starts here."
We stepped into a side section that felt starkly different from the orderly rows of culture tanks.
There sat a rugged, unadorned medical capsule—the kind with a transparent lid used for keeping the critically injured in stasis or holding brain-dead bodies before a full-body prosthetic transfer.
Inside the capsule lay a woman, completely nude.
She was young, probably in her early twenties. Her features were well-defined; she was beautiful by any objective standard.
However, compared to the "Doctor-made" idealized bodies I’d just seen, she looked fragile and pathetic.
"Is she in stasis?" I asked.
Given the nature of the capsule, it was a logical question.
"Nah, she’s dead as a doornail. I didn't have a spare container, so I just tossed her in here for the time being."
The Doctor shrugged, his lips twisting into a smirk.
"The important thing is—why she’s here."
I gave him a skeptical look. Was she anything more than just another corpse?
The Doctor nodded, his reddish-brown hair swaying.
"I wouldn't go through the trouble for just any body. This girl was a regular at our shop. I don't give a damn about her personal data, but she was one of those 'young ladies from a good family.'"
I peered back into the capsule.
Now that he mentioned it, I might have seen her face in the corner of the club once or twice.
"And? What happened to her?"
"The other day, she suddenly went berserk while drinking at the club. Usually, restraining one girl is a walk in the park, right? Except she sent two augmented guards to the clinic. One of them died on the spot. That’s the kind of mess we’re talking about."
The Doctor’s voice sounded almost cheerful.
"By the time we finally pinned her down, her heart and lungs had already stopped. When I went looking for the cause... I found this."
He pulled a terminal from his lab coat and thrust it toward me.
The screen displayed an image of a chip that had been embedded in the girl’s neck.
It was a familiar shape. One I had no intention of forgetting.
"It self-combusted and vanished the moment I extracted it. Quite the headache. This image is the only thing I managed to save from the surveillance data."
The Doctor ran a fingertip along the lid of the capsule, tracing the line of the dead girl’s skin as he laughed lowly.
"...A chip like this turned up at Cordeaux’s place, didn't it?"
"You’re well-informed," I remarked.
"Rumors of the chaos in the Upper District reached my ears. I heard a strange chip was making the rounds. And since you’re the only one I know who’s connected to Cordeaux..."
I waited for him to finish.
"I want to build the 'ultimate me.' To do that, I need the data on what kind of output a biological body can hit when pushed by that hardware."
...I see.
But as it happened, I’d come here with the exact same subject in mind.
"Is that so? Well, that makes things easy. I actually came here to talk to you about this very same chip."
I grinned and reached into the inner pocket of my jacket.
I pulled it out and showed it to him. Resting in the center of my palm was the exact same chip from the image.