Beno’s POV

Everyone is gone… not one left… I am alone…

When will my turn come…

I wonder, if I didn’t exist, will everything change? Will they still die if I didn’t exist… a lot of what if scenarios come to my mind, thinking of the outcome, but no matter what I still believe that I am the cause of it.  After all, I am the only one left alive, despite being in… a state that can’t be said is similar to alive…

But what can I even do now… I am stuck here on the hospital bed, my limbs doesn’t function properly anymore except my left hand... immobile, and being useless… just like how I was…

Days passed like this, where I am just here staring at the ceiling or occasionally the sky. Explosions sometimes randomly occur at the background as the attacks just keep coming, though it doesn’t matter to me, I am going to die sooner or later, and I can do nothing about it.

Well I did tried something. But every time it just feels like the world is working against me. I tried cutting off my life support, but somehow the nurse or doctor will always ‘pass by’, saw it then stop me. Or the other time when I try to stab myself using the fork, it would somehow still break. Despite it perfectly being able to stab through bone, it can’t stab through my skin… Safe to say I never ate without supervision after that.

Not to mention, my scumbag of a father is still alive… and is not happy that I am still alive…

Almost two weeks after the fire incident, he is back here, in my hospital room, holding a knife trying to finally seal the deal. He said that he wanted to tie up loose ends, but in my opinion, he is the loose end in this family. But I did not voice it out, I just stay there and let him do the deed.

Sadly again, his attempt is also blocked by whatever upper being that is keeping me alive. As even though I got stabbed, I didn’t successfully bleed out. Somehow once again the doctors are just passing by and saw that my clothes are all bloody and decided to check on me.

One time its coincidence, two times it’s lucky… but this many times? The gods above must love to watch me suffer.

Such is my life for the past 3 months… a cycle between getting hurt, didn’t manage to die, get saved, recover and getting hurt again. The cycle never ends. At this rate, the blood that I lost could probably make at least 100 blood packets or something.

Oh how I wish that one day, the cycle would end, either by my ‘father’ killing me, or through some miracle, I manage to reverse that role. I never once thought that I am a bloodthirsty person, or someone who would commit murder, but the past three months changed me, the torture I went through changed me. I wanted to die, I wanted to kill, I just want to end all of this once and for all.

Yet nothing changed, I am weak, I have nothing to use for myself, I have no strength, I have no power, I do not even have my own limbs to use.

Every time he enters, hatred fills my entirety, it makes my blood boil to even see his face, yet I can do nothing about it. For I am powerless…

That is when the door to my room opened once again, since it is not the time for the routine, I expected it to be my father, but contrary to my expectations, a man and a woman that I never saw before enters my room. The man looks like the researcher type with his coat while the woman is more business looking with the suit.

“What do you want with a useless like me.” I said to them first, shocking the man and woman but the woman recover quickly and clears her throat.

“We know what happened to you Mr Beno,” before she even continue, I told her to drop the Mr as I don’t deserve it.

“Well then… we would like to give you an offer. We would like you to help us test our new military prosthetics, you saw what happened to the city, you yourself are one of the victims of it, so we would like to help you get back on your foot and help protect this city.” The woman said while the man just nodded. So basically be a hero.

“What do I even get from this… I am going to die one day anyways. With or without this city.” I said to them flatly.

“Well, we went ahead and did some research, it seems your group of friends are killed in a series of incidents, which after our research, isn’t as simple as pure accidents.” The woman said. This statement sort of made me a bit mad, they are here not to help me. They are here to use me.

“I will assume your silence means you understand us. Well, our goal here is to stop these terrorist attacks and sadly in this day of time, we don’t know who is and who isn’t a part of them. We can check every possible candidate for that but it will take too much time, so we target the direct victims of those attacks, giving them a means to payback to the damage of what the terrorist dealt with them.” The woman said. The logic makes sense, but… humans are illogical beings. There is no way that this is their goal.

But if it means I can move again, then its worth it.

“Alright. What do I have to do.” I said.

“I understand if you deny… wait what?” now even the stoic businesswoman is starting to get tartled huh.

“I said I will join this plan of yours. But I have a request.” I said to them, in which they accept it without even listening.

“Find if my father is involved in them, and if my mother is just an innocent or also a part of them.” I said. While I trust that mom is not involved, but father’s action so far just proves the opposite, if he really is one of them, then I will be the one who end him.

The two people looks at each other then agreed to my condition, which the researcher man just leaves while the businesswoman stays. She then used the rest of the hour to explain what would my so called “contract” would be, but the more I listen to her saying, the more I feel like it’s just slavery.

Basically, I would be their lab rat in their new prosthetics, these will be next gen prosthetics that can react as fast as a normal hand would be, sometimes even faster as the prosthetics would directly receive information from the brain rather than the stump.

In normal circumstances I wouldn’t agree, but now? I don’t care… I just want to get this done with. Once I dealt with what they wanted and then finally what I wanted, I am going off myself.

“Alright, well that sums up the contract, glad to see you on board Beno.” The business woman said before also leaving the room.

Heh, never in my mind would I ever guess that I would become a soldier… no, a mercenary might be a better term, considering that I work for their private company and not the government. Oh just how society has gone… I just wonder, if this is the state of most seasteads across the world, just how long humanity has until they finally erased themselves.

Oh well, hopefully I won’t be here for that long. I will be gone after I take care of that fake parent of mine and erased that group that killed my friends.

The boring days continues until a week later after the meeting with the two people, that I am suddenly discharged from the hospital. When the nurses push my wheelchair to the entrance, I saw the two people there again, the researcher and the business woman.

“Greetings Beno, we meet again.” This time it is the researcher who talked, he sounded… too young for his looks. Well, it doesn’t matter…

“Follow me, we will have quite the nice time together~” he said as they both led me to the car. On the car, the researcher keeps talking about his research to me while the business woman just stays there, I can feel that she is tuning out of our conversation.

“Now, would you tell me why you accept this deal, after all, you know how bionic prosthetics went the past few years.” The researcher asked suddenly out of his lecture of prosthetics.

“Revenge. I want revenge against my father… and those bastards who killed my friends.” I said.

“Ah revenge~ such good emotions, sometimes I wonder which one is stronger, revenge or love~ but alas, I am not interested in stuff that cannot be quantified~ otherwise I would be a psychologist and not a researcher ahahaha. Anyways, good to know, I will tune the prosthetics accordingly~” the researcher said. Accordingly? What… if I answer something else will it then be powered by love?

“Anyways, when I first use the prosthetics, you will feel a bit of pain. It is the prosthetics trying to tune to your brainwaves, it should pass by fast.” He said as he bring out the prosthetics.

Wait… he is not installing it now right? In the damn car? Wait!

I fainted because of the pain. This isn’t a little bit of pain… I can see how the rest of my time with this lunatic will be now…

Benokelvin

Finally, the novel is back! Took some time lol.. if it isnt because of my google and phone issue... but anyways the novel is back! 

Though... the release will be slower, I will try to maintain the schedule of 2 chapters per week~ so stay tuned!

Also join my discord if you are interested in me tagging you every new chapter or if you have anything you want to chat or even suggest~