126 The Escape 1

The girl who was back to the operating table at the middle of the laboratory room groaned out a weak pained voice. It was as if waking up had been hard for her. The glaring light that pierced her half-opened eyes immediately forced her to turn her head to the side. Afterward, as memories played back in her mind regarding how Sofony Mendez forced her to become a pitiful and bound lab rat, great waves of sharp pain started assaulting her whole senses. Large beads of sweat began to accumulate on her face, especially on the forehead. Not long after, a muffled scream came out of her mouth.

After some time, when she asked the system regarding her current situation, its voice mockingly resounded in her mind.

Clarissa cursed out, trembling due to the pain in her stomach. She hatefully asked, '... Did they conduct surgery on me? They removed my kidneys? Without giving me anesthesia or any painkiller?'

True to what it said, her stomach region was really exposed. The bunch of lunatics led by Dr. Lauren left her lying there with a bloody mess for a midsection. The girl didn't dare do what the system said for fear of her anxiousness getting haywire again. She was a strong-willed woman but even she, in her current state, wouldn't be able to fight the fear of seeing intestines and livers throbbing exposed in the air. She didn't dare look down to see what atrocities had been done to her.

It only paused for a moment then continued.

Annoyed while still feeling fried and tortured by the pain, she shouted to it, 'Don't you have anything else to say!? You're supposed to give me suggestions on how to escape from this damnable place!'

In the end, the system didn't really tell her anything useful. Clarissa could only ask the system to heal her while casting an illusion to the whole room, making it appear like she was still suffering and once again losing consciousness.

She finally breathed a sigh of relief when she felt her body no longer screaming in pain. Now, clarity went back to her mind. Not anymore bogged down by the negatives emotions and dark thoughts, she managed to stay calm while recalling how she got into this undesirable situation.

She lost. Utterly.

It was not due to a lack of skills or wits whatsoever that led her to this. It was being too focused on Leo Jones. She underestimated Sofony Mendez' will and means. She assumed so much that the other was weak, naive, and only half-b*tchy.

Now she knew. Even if that girl was incompetent, she should not have at least slighted the fact that she was still a proper host, an Official one, someone still higher than any Secondary Host in the eyes of the system. There was also Gio Albarez who despite being a mere non-host was someone way more competent than many below Level 5 hosts.

Her face became gloomier as she roamed her eyes around the room full of suspicious and spine-chilling equipment.

Now, revenge could only be put aside. Escaping here was the most important task. The place was proven more dangerous than imagined since the inhabitants here were individuals given some means to detain and incapacitate her.

Thinking of this, she momentarily closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Where is this?"

"Exact address."

She nodded, eyes opening. A second or two later though, she shut them down again, concentrating her mind in connecting with her 'seeds'. As reason and rational returned to her, naturally, she could now remember and think of maximizing what she has and what she could use. Her mind control ability was one of these. She was sure that all of Aljur's men at Aurora City had already either died or left somewhere to die, this was why she focused her ability on those staying strong and hidden in this city.

The command she gave them was to raid any Walker family related properties. Her intention was for them to either rescue her as they did this or at least create diversions which would force Lauren and maybe some other white lab coat wearing madmen out of the place for some time. A little bit of time was all she needed to escape there by herself.

Moments later, with a dangerous glint in her eyes, she realized, maybe she could actually do it now, and thus them attacking the Walkers would just be her little revenge on the way.

'My body is very lethargic and with little to no energy... But I can still summon enough strength to escape here... Especially since there is no Sofony Mendez here now to hinder me!' she thought while laboriously crawling towards the door. The system had already informed her of the incoming visitor.

Four minutes later, a table trolley was pushed in by one of Lauren's assistant. While this assistant was exchanging some of the empty bottles, used syringes and smalls knives from the metal rectangular table there with the suspicious bottles and paraphernalia from the movable table she had brought in, the whole team dressed in white lab coat also came back.

Lauren was not one them, instead there were only two middle-aged women, one wrinkled-faced old man with a head full of white and gray hair, and a young man wearing thick eyeglasses.

Five people were in the room when the male assistant dressed in a nurse outfit was included.

"I'm so glad to be back!" exclaimed a slightly fat and short-statured woman

"Dr. Ferrer, you're funny. You're looking at this pretty girl so devotedly, like anytime soon, you'll be cutting her brain," laughed the oldest person.

"Haha. I just can't help it! I can't wait to do an operation again! The feeling is awesome. I get to cut an annoyingly beautiful girl's perfect body, revealing the ugly insides under her beautiful and fair skin. I want to do it more! In fact, my hands are already itching so much to do it again!" explained Dr. Ferrer.

Envy and gloating were very evident from her voice and expression even though she was smiling. It was easy to guess that this scientist had a thing or two against beautiful people... Something called extreme jealousy. Indeed, this was the case because this woman was already an old spinster rejected by many men due to not having a beautiful body and features. This explains why she was like this in front of an impossibly beautiful specimen. Her envy and hate for the beautiful was only a level away from madness.

"Doctors, I'm leaving," politely said the assistant who was now holding the horizontal bar of the wheeled table.

The younger male doctor waved a hand at him, "Go ahead. Just don't forget to inform Dr. Walker that we're going to start some tests to check if something really changed within this live specimen's body."

As the nurse nodded, his feet were already marching outside, pushing the table trolley outside and leaving their group of doctors marching and surrounding the pale-faced sleeping 'Clarissa'. The door behind him already closed so he didn't know that when the four scientists approached the sleeping victim, when they got into one meter from her, one by one they began losing consciousness, their lips turning violet as veins all over their body became exposed, throbbing.

'Hmm? Poison gas?!'

Shortly, Lauren, who had been watching the scene from another room sprinted out to check the theater where the doctors were. This cousin of Gio became alarmed, remembering Sofony Silver mentioning the possibility of this living experiment subject doing some normally unimaginable tricks in order to escape, discreetly scattering poisonous substance in the place not out of the long list. With thrill and anger enveloping this lady scientist's heart, she ran back to the operating room. She also alerted the whole mansion not to let anyone, no matter how dear or distant to her, out of the residence.

On the other hand, right outside the lab room, when the confused assistant stopped to inspect the wheeled table which suddenly became heavier to push forward than usual, his eyes suddenly lost luster, dimming like stars that could no longer produce as much light as before. Moments after, he had seemingly heard a voice speaking in his mind and thus he began pushing the table trolley again.

His destination, not the exit leading to the first floor of the mansion...

...