Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 1402 Is this really the case?

From that day on, Pereike became an accomplice.

She never agreed, yet she never refused. When the person brought new test subjects to her, she simply stood silently to the side, like a pale stone statue, gazing at the bodies and souls writhing and struggling in pain, recording the pleas and murmurs woven from the depths of their throats. She did not personally release the plague, nor did she move an inch to stop each cruel experiment in the name of truth. The girl's conscience was tormented, her fragile morality was burning. She tried to deceive herself that she was not standing aside, but powerless. Every night before falling asleep, she would face the moonlight and see her hands as clean as ever, but her soul already stained with silent bloodstains.

This is a subtle yet enduring betrayal. Whenever she realizes that she both craves recognition from others and is unwilling to meet her teacher's expectations; both wants to save others and finds it difficult to lend a helping hand; both hopes to break free of the curse and refuses to admit that it is the curse that gives her value... the premise of betrayal already exists, and the rest are just minor details.

Although betraying anyone was not the girl's intention, her only wish was to live well in this world, without hurting anyone or being hurt by anyone.

But refusing is not about upholding one's bottom line; silent observation is also a form of participation. Her teacher didn't need her to perform the surgery herself; all she needed was for her to be there, to witness death with her emerald eyes, and to tacitly approve of everything that was happening with her still-beating heart. This gave the cruel experiment a twisted legitimacy.

Did you persevere? That's evolution; do you leave? That's elimination. Whatever choice she made seemed to align with her teacher's expectations; at least his theory was indeed validated: every soul in the world is impure and must undergo trials to transcend the mundane. If Perec was unwilling to become the god who brought elimination and evolution, then he would do it himself. Truth wouldn't change because of Perec's refusal; it would only be slower.

Perec also convinced herself of this. She told herself countless times that even if she resisted, the experiment would continue, death would still occur, and her screams and struggles would be nothing but meaningless noise, soon to be drowned out by the cold hum of the laboratory equipment. But the girl never understood, or rather, deliberately avoided thinking about: if she couldn't change the outcome, what was the point of her standing there?
Why not bury your head in the sand like an ostrich, as if unseen tragedies don't exist? Why not stand up like a hedgehog, as if resisting others will protect you? Why not burrow into a shell like a hermit crab, as if a fragile barrier can completely block harm from the outside world? If you could have done these things but didn't, what was the reason? Was it because of a pitiful sense of guilt? A laughable sense of atonement? Or a shameful sense of innocence?

However, the final answer will probably be nothing at all.

Sometimes, she would gaze at the unfamiliar faces on the lab table, watching life slowly wither away under the ravages of illness. She would think of that wood sprite boy, of the listless, silvery-gray moss between his brows. Back then, she still had the strength to say sorry, but now even those three words seemed hypocritical and heavy. Apologies couldn't change any facts; they were merely an emotional luxury. And in the world of the man named Metanzor, there was no room for luxury; what he needed was value.

Each time a test subject finally succumbed to the torment of illness and breathed their last, the person would calmly tidy the equipment, clean up the blood and corpse, and occasionally comment with "insufficient adaptability" or "data bias," as if what had just vanished was merely a string of invalid numbers. Perec, however, would feel a strange emptiness in this deathly silence. It wasn't sadness, sadness was too extravagant; nor was it anger, anger required strength. It was something deeper, as if a part of herself had been ripped away and decomposed along with the test subject's death, merging into the laboratory's perpetually pervasive stench of disinfectant and decay.

In the daily cycle, Pereira is being shaped. She is no longer the person she imagined, nor is she the person the man wanted to see. Instead, she gradually transforms into a state, a thought, or a pitiful person tormented by self-contradictory psychology.

She had assumed this situation would continue indefinitely, until one day her teacher lost patience with her, or she lost faith in him. But when that day finally arrived, and her teacher stood before her, scrutinizing the girl he had rescued from a mountain of corpses with a knowing look, she felt a mixture of trepidation and anticipation. She hoped to hear him say something like, "Go," or "I don't need you anymore," something that would finally put the weight off her heart. Instead, she heard him say, "Perece is right."

Eh?
what?
She almost thought she had misheard. The teacher had admitted his mistake. Did that mean he had finally changed his mind?

No longer insisting on the cruel theories of elimination and evolution, no longer insisting on the cruel research on life and death, no longer insisting on the abusive practices of trauma and treatment... If only it were like this, if only it were really like this... how wonderful that would be.

"The essence of elimination and evolution lies in survival of the fittest. But are those who survive necessarily superior, and those who perish necessarily inferior? Is it possible that those first eliminated are actually the first to embark on the path of evolution? Just as for an individual, dying from an inability to resist disease is undoubtedly being eliminated by nature; but for a population, even the elimination of hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of individuals is not surprising, as long as we can learn from the experience and use it to help the population embark on a new evolutionary path." He murmured, "So that's how it is. The evolutionary path of life is so wondrous. Perhaps you, Pereike—"

"Your ambiguous attitude towards the experiment isn't because it's too cruel, or because you're too kind. It's because you must maintain this attitude to ensure you aren't eliminated and to preserve the possibility of evolution." He gave the girl a meaningful look, as if he was certain of his guess: "Yes, that's exactly it. Because the power you possess is so strong and dangerous. If you accept it completely, there's a risk of losing control; but if you resist it outright, you'll find it difficult to protect yourself. Therefore, you must be somewhere in between, like walking on a rickety log bridge. Only by maintaining balance can you proceed cautiously."

wrong!

That's not it...!

Why, why do you deny my emotions, my nature, everything I possess, attributing all these visible factors to a cold-hearted theory? Are you suggesting that my compassion for the innocent is not because I have a kind heart, but because I'm choosing what's best for myself? Are you suggesting that my continued presence despite disagreeing with you is not based on trust in you, but because I'm avoiding actions that are harmful to me?
If that's the case, if that's the case...

It makes me sad.

The girl could barely contain her overflowing emotions, wanting to blurt out those impulsive words, but at the last moment she stopped herself, realizing the truth of the matter. Indeed, she had stood by and watched those innocent people in need die, while those with true compassion would have done everything in their power to save them; she had indeed watched her teacher stray further and further down the wrong path, while those who truly trusted and relied on him would have bravely stood up to stop him, even at the cost of being ostracized.

If the facts are right in front of you, then nothing can be denied.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out, as if there was a bottomless hole in her heart that swallowed everything up.

The teacher looked at her with a hint of pity, but not for her hypocrisy and weakness, nor for her slowness and contradictions, but for her foolishness—that she still believed it was wrong even now? But elimination and evolution are not only the rules of nature, but also the instincts of living beings. They have always been correct. It is Pereira's behavior of deceiving herself and enduring torment to resist them that is wrong.

“Don’t worry about it. You’re just on the right path,” he said in a low voice, as if speaking to Pereira, yet also as if talking to himself. “Even if emotions are resisting and reason is confused, living beings still have instincts.”

Instinct, it seems, is about eliminating the weak and evolving into the strong. Then, ignoring the stunned girl, he turned and left.

The teacher's figure disappeared behind the door, her footsteps fading into the distance until they were completely swallowed by the wall. Pereike remained standing, like a plaster statue forgotten in a corner, her breath almost imperceptible. Her heart was entangled in a chaotic vortex: Was I right? No, I was wrong, there couldn't be a more absurd mistake; but if I was wrong, I had to correct it. How? By participating in those cruel experiments, or simply leaving this place? If so, it would have to be right, wouldn't it? But wasn't what the teacher called right precisely what she had always resisted?
Right, wrong, change, departure, hypocrisy, pity, fiction, reality, hypothesis, sadness, loneliness, grief… In the end, she almost lost the ability to think; only these ambiguous words flashed through her mind, disappearing again and again. She slowly squatted down, hugging her knees. This posture made her feel smaller, lighter, as if she had become that nameless girl trembling in a pool of blood again. But she knew she couldn't go back. That girl at least trembled with fear, and became numb with despair. Now, she had even lost that pure emotion.

What remained was only a vast, empty sorrow, one that seemed to have no place to belong. It had no shape, no outlet, but pressed heavily on her chest, making it hard to breathe, yet preventing her from crying.

The silence in the room became deafening. In this deathly stillness, she heard her own faint heartbeat, one after another, as if coming from a very far place. She wondered what kept this heartbeat going—was it for the elimination and evolution her teacher spoke of, or simply because… she was still alive?
There is no answer.

But from that day on, the teacher stopped trying to get her involved in his experiments.

The girl never stepped into that laboratory again.

until……

……

Breaking free from the mire of memories, like a drowning person finally breaking the surface, Pereike gasped for breath, the cold air in the cockpit stinging her lungs. Those years she wanted to escape were gone, and the memories, filled with the smell of disinfectant, had been forcibly suppressed, crammed into a corner of her consciousness she would never easily touch again. She realized that fighting with herself would only lead to an endless cycle; she had to let go of the past to face the present.

The Plague Witch's gaze slowly focused, landing outside the cockpit window.

Below, the devastation of the Mikkelsen corridor remained unchanged despite her distraction. The dim light and the purplish-red, festering afterglow still painted the scorched earth. The smoke was the relentless, heavy breathing of the behemoth, the sporadic explosions were the unwilling throbbing of its exhausted heartbeat, and the flashing gunfire was still the meaningless twitching of nerve endings.

Everything remains the same.

Death continued, a stalemate, a long, agonizing stalemate. It was as if the entire world was slowly bleeding out in this corridor.

The massive shadow of the Thai Sky descended, like a raven feather carelessly dropped by Death. The engines hummed low, a lament that had once been a funeral dirge, but now sounded more like a mockery of fate.

She came to end it all.

To put an end to this battle, to bring something to a close.

Then, the next battle begins.

Her fingers stopped twitching unconsciously and rested steadily on the control panel. The cold touch jolted Perec fully awake. Memories were a luxury, especially in this land where even the air smelled of rust and ash. She breathed as if drowning, her voice barely audible, almost swallowed by the roar of the engine. If her teacher's theory was correct, then was her choice at this moment evolution, or another form of elimination?
She didn't know. And she stopped thinking about it.

Instead, it pushed the joystick.

The massive fuselage of the Taikong tilted slightly, and the low hum of its engines suddenly turned sharp, like a long-suppressed beast finally letting out a pre-hunt roar. It drew a cruel and resolute arc under the gloomy sky, like a fish that accidentally leaped out of the sea, briefly touched the suffocating air of freedom, and then, unable to bear the vast emptiness, or burdened by some inescapable destiny, resolutely plunged back into the ocean that bound it, yet was also the only place that could define it.

Perhaps after a long period of evolution, fish in the sea will one day be able to fly in the sky.

But at least, it won't be today.

It couldn't be her.

Give me some cats