Homo Sapiens

Siliguri City.

Deep underground, within the Siliguri Base City.

Ed, a captured radar operator from the Tianzhu Army's 28th Division, was being held in a special-purpose cell.

Inside the same cell were nine of his comrades.

"Do you think they'll kill us?" one of the younger prisoners asked, staring despondently at the low ceiling.

"Who knows…"

"Waaaah…"

Listening to the noisy chatter of his comrades, Ed's eyes were completely vacant as he stared silently at the bottom of the bunk above him.

As one of the Tamil People, Ed didn't feel much of a sense of belonging to Tianzhu. He had only joined the army to make a living.

Scenes from his memory surfaced in his mind.

His parents…

His brothers and sisters…

And his tyrannical superior officer…

Ed wasn't too worried about his family. Or rather, his place in the family wasn't particularly important. After all, there were six children, and he was the fourth. He wouldn't have joined the army otherwise.

Just as he was lying on his bunk, his mind blank and pondering the meaninglessness of his life, a few guards appeared at the cell door.

After opening the cell door, one of the guards repeated a phrase several times in a few different languages:

"Come with me. If you don't want to eat a bullet, don't try anything funny."

A few days ago, some prisoners who thought they were quick on their feet tried to take a guard hostage. They were shot to ribbons on the spot.

The gruesome state of those unlucky bastards was even paraded in front of the other prisoners to make them understand their situation.

Ed, naturally, didn't want to die, so he obediently walked out of the cell.

In the cold, dim corridor, the only sounds were footsteps and heavy breathing.

The ten prisoners were clearly nervous.

After twenty minutes of twisting and turning, the group arrived in a relatively spacious room.

The temporary warden, Bai Qinran, put down the file in his hands and swept his gaze over the uneasy prisoners before him. He propped his chin on his interlaced fingers.

"I have some unfortunate news for you. Tianzhu has given up on ransoming you back. You now have two choices. One, continue as prisoners and go work in the POW factories. Two, become temporary Converts and work for the Assam Branch."

The ten prisoners looked at each other, momentarily unsure how to choose.

Bai Qinran added a reminder, "Don't think you can bluff your way through this. If you choose to become a Convert, you will have to swear an oath under the company's flag, and we will be recording it. So you'd better think it through."

GULP! The prisoners' expressions changed slightly.

Clearly, some of them had been entertaining clever ideas.

But Bai Qinran's words shattered their little schemes.

Now there were only two choices before them.

Either maintain their loyalty to Tianzhu and go work in the POW factories.

Or switch sides and pledge allegiance to Assam.

Furthermore, Bai Qinran had deliberately questioned them in front of each other. His goal was to crush any lingering fantasies they might have. If they chose to defect to Assam, they had to do it completely. They couldn't pull any tricks like pretending to serve a new master while remaining loyal to the old one.

One of the prisoners, who was originally a native of Assam, was the first to speak. "I am willing to work for Assam."

"Lute Wa, correct?" Bai Qinran asked, making a checkmark on his tablet with a stylus.

Lute nodded. "Yes."

With the first person having taken the plunge, others quickly followed suit and made their choices.

Including Ed and Lute, a total of seven prisoners chose to become temporary Converts. The remaining three were more stubborn and refused to defect to Assam.

Bai Qinran wasn't too concerned about their choice. The opportunity was there for the taking.

Those who resisted Assam in their hearts would have a higher "reformation cost." The Assam Branch wasn't short on manpower right now, so there was no need to force anyone who was unwilling.

Soon, Lute, Ed, and the other prisoners who had chosen to defect were led away by specialized staff to the prisoner reformation camp.

The reformation camp was located adjacent to the temporary prison.

After being assigned to new dorms, an instructor had them shower, take care of their personal hygiene, and then change clothes before assembling.

The instructor in charge led the cleaned-up newcomers to the base's hospital for a full physical examination.

Although temporary Converts were not "New Human" employees, they still had to be implanted with a biological chip. However, the chips for temporary Converts did not grant any permissions to the host; they existed purely as a secret monitoring system.

Only after a temporary Convert passed a series of assessments and became a true Convert would they become a "New Human" employee.

Ed only remembered lying down on the hospital bed before quickly drifting off into a drowsy sleep. He had no idea what happened afterward.

When he woke up again, four hours had passed.

A doctor wearing special glasses walked over, holding a test report. "Your physical condition is acceptable, but you have severe tooth decay. You'll need comprehensive dental surgery."

"Uh… how much will that cost?" Ed asked instinctively. His cavities really were bad; just a few days ago, the pain had been so intense he couldn't eat.

The doctor placed a tablet in front of Ed. "The cost will be deducted from your future wages. Four cavities, plus cleaning, whitening, and straightening, for a total of 860 Jin yuan. Just provide your fingerprint."

Ed didn't hesitate. He had already decided to join Assam, so he wasn't worried they would rip him off. After all, his life was worthless at this point.

After he pressed his fingerprint, a record of the medical contract immediately popped up on his personal profile on the tablet.

Meanwhile, in the next bed, Lute, who had lost an eye in battle, also signed a medical contract to have his eye treated on the doctor's recommendation.

The next day, after completing their training and cultural classes, Lute, Ed, and the others went to Siliguri First Hospital.

The two of them, holding the biological phones they had received that day, didn't need to go through any of the usual tedious procedures. They didn't even have to register or wait in line, and went straight to their respective departments.

Ed waited for half an hour before his phone's digital assistant automatically notified him that it was his turn for surgery.

"Ed? From the training camp?" the head nurse inquired.

Ed took out his phone.

After both parties confirmed his identity and the surgical procedure, the head nurse had Ed lie down on the bed and performed a dental cleaning.

A moment later, the chief surgeon came to the bedside and glanced at his own tablet. "Ed. Four cavities, plus cleaning, whitening, and straightening?"

The head nurse nodded. "Identity and procedure have been confirmed."

"Then let's begin," the surgeon said, sliding the tablet into a pocket on his work exoskeleton.

The head nurse secured Ed's body, placed special patches in his ear canals, and operated the medical assistance computer on the surgical platform.

Soon, Ed's dental nerves and some of his oral nerves were blocked by the biological chip hidden inside his body, which released special hormones.

"Anesthesia complete."

The surgeon was fast, precise, and ruthless. He directly extracted Ed's four decayed teeth, then selected four artificial teeth of a similar size from a supply of artificial crowns and inserted them directly into the fresh sockets.

He then injected a rapid-growth agent for pulp and dental discs between the artificial teeth and the alveolar bone.

In less than twenty minutes, the four artificial teeth had grown together with the alveolar bone, becoming virtually indistinguishable from natural teeth.

Next, the surgeon gave Ed's teeth a quick and rough straightening, then used a rapid dental-disc repair agent to fix the teeth in their new positions.

The final steps were cleaning, whitening, and fine-tuning the bite alignment of his upper and lower teeth.

The entire set of procedures took a little over two hours.

After the nerve block was lifted, Ed felt only a slight ache in his teeth, nothing like the pain he'd experienced when he had his wisdom teeth pulled.

The surgeon shooed him away. "You're done. Don't eat anything too hard for the next few days."

"That's it?" Ed was completely bewildered.