Chapter 46
May 6, Rhine Life IV Experimental Base, Northern Columbia.
Nearly half a month had passed since Yoren arrived at Rhine Life, yet he still hadn't seen Hemer.
In that time, he had tried everything—hunger strikes, suicide threats, refusing treatment. He even wrote a letter to Hemer and asked White-Faced Owl to deliver it.
None of it worked.
He began to suspect that Rhine Life no longer saw him as a "human" but rather as an object. They weren't trying to extract information from him; in fact, it felt as though they already knew more than he did.
Every evening, after receiving his injection, he would quickly fall into a semi-comatose state. He had, of course, tried refusing the injections—but by nightfall, the agony of his oripathy flare-ups became unbearable, and he inevitably found himself begging White-Faced Owl for the injection.
And yet, what puzzled him most was that despite the secretive experiments and his restricted knowledge, everyone around him treated him with kindness. There were no threats, no coercion—nothing like the cold, clinical detachment he expected. He didn't even know who to be angry at.
Meanwhile, Snowsant was living her best life—eating well, playing freely, her face rounder by the day. It made Yoren feel a strange sense of gratitude toward Rhine Life.
Strange. Very strange.
If they truly wanted to conduct human experiments against his will, Rhine Life wouldn't have to be so polite about it. Given his current condition, they could have easily restrained him in some dark lab, pumped him full of sedatives, and done whatever they wanted. That would have been much simpler.
Yoren could still feel the two inexplicable forces within him. They hadn't been taken away. But beyond that, he knew nothing about them—how they worked, what they were, or how to use them.