Several minutes had gone by without any new arrival to the main hall. M2 had settled himself on the floor, avidly biting on his thumb as a substitute for the promised energy bars. M5 was cheerfully swaying his body at the rhythm of the song that he had been continuously humming.

The main hall itself remained in complete silence, the workers still huddled together against the walls while continuously looking to their former human lab rats. They would flinch and some shriek every time M5 moved his body in a more accentuated way.

“Come, my sweet child~,” suddenly started singing M5 in English, excitedly spinning his body around with hands handcuffed behind his back. M2 released his thumb from in between his teeth and looked over in his direction. “The garden of shadows is no more~ You’ll be free~”

“Not now, M5,” simply warned M2, putting his thumb against his lips once again, every now and then nibbling it. “Hearing one of us singing that song is more than enough for now. It’s not the time for you to sing it. Not yet.”

“Sorry~ But I’m so excited that I can’t help myself anymore~” apologized M5, looking over to M2 with a huge grin on his lips. “Don’t humans usually say that practice makes it perfect? I want to be in top shape for the first time I get to sing with M0~”

“But not now,” said M2 once again while looking sideways to the door that led to the service stairs. “M1 will be angry at you if you sing it now and he’s already being brought here.”

“He’ll forgive me for having some fun while I wait, right?” inquired M5, tilting his head slightly. “It’s not like he would break my neck on our first meeting~”

“Not on your first meeting, at least,” acknowledged M2 with a shrug. “But M0 might get angry at you. And that means he won’t talk to you at all. Like it happened that time.”

“Oh no! I can’t let that happen!” yelped M5, his face growing ghostly pale as an expression of total panic popped up in it. “I’ll be as silent as a corpse from now on! I promise I won’t sing at all until the time comes!”

Eki exchanged a quick glance with Kuwabayashi, both of them arching an eyebrow at the strange conversation suddenly being hosted by the two targets. Eki tilted his head slightly and Kuwabayashi simply shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, passing on the message that he also didn’t understand what exactly the two targets were babbling about. Probably just another moment of more accentuated craziness.

All of a sudden, the door to the second service stairs was open ajar with a loud bang, its surface getting slightly bent outwards. Not two, but four newcomers appeared from there.

“M3! No kicking doors open!” admonished Kinjou Akira, giving a quick bump with the end of his rifle’s barrel to the head of the tall male walking in front of him. “You could have hit someone passing by. I have the authorization to shoot you in the ass if you hurt someone, you know?”

“Shut up! I got too excited and you were taking ages opening the door!” roared M3, turning his body around, restricted by a straight jacket, to glare at Kinjou. “If you want to shoot me, then shoot me on my back or something. It might break the fucking locks of this fucking thing if I’m lucky!”

“Stop complaining already and get moving,” sighed Kinjou, giving a quick jerk with his chin to point at the centre of the main hall. “Look, your buddies are over there.”

“Can you hurry up and get out of my way?” requested another male wearing similar clothes to M3, though his weren’t restraining his body. “I’m not enjoying my first travel through this ascending tunnel-like area and I really want to get away from it the quickest I can.”

“M3! M4!” cheerfully called M5, giving small, excited jumps in the same place. “You’re finally here!”

“I take that back. Let me return to the tunnel,” said M4, a sour look on his face as he observed M5 nearly sparkling with happiness. He took a half step backwards but a rifle was immediately pressed against his back.

“You made me swear in the name of all gods, mythological or whatnot, that we would take all of you out of here, which took me nearly 25 minutes to voice out and a quick research with my smartphone to fulfil your strict demands,” angrily grumbled Hisaka Kato, a vein popping out on his forehead as he glared at M4. He started pushing his target to the centre of the main hall with the help of his rifle, right behind his squad leader, Kinjou, and their other target. “If I hear you saying anything about wanting to go anywhere other than the humvee, this time I swear in the name of the exact same gods that I will shoot you.”

“Uh-ho…” gasped M5, M3 and M2 at the same time, all of them looking over to M4.

“God…” softly mumbled M4. He suddenly looked over his shoulder in the soldier’s direction, his eyes releasing a threatening red glow that made quite a few soldiers and lab workers shudder. “Don’t you dare talk about the gods and the superior beings as if you are familiar with them, you measly creature. You don’t even understand how fundamental and complex such a concept it is. If you want to keep all of your body parts intact, then remain quiet about it. Don’t ever utter a word about them in front of me. You’re clearly not someone deserving to talk about such complexities.”

“Chill out a bit, M4,” said M3, stopping in the centre of the hall as Kinjou indicated. “I heard that taking a bullet in the ass hurts. Ah, wait. You’re the same as me. You wouldn’t even flinch if they cut your leg off, let alone if you got a bullet stuck in your ass.”

“You’re as crude as always,” sighed M4, stopping on the opposite location of M3.

“M4, M3, nice to meet you,” sluggishly greeted M2, once again taking his thumb from in between his teeth.

“Yeah, nice to meet you, M4, M3!!” also greeted M5, renewing his hyped grinning expression.

“Nice to meet ya too, M2, M5,” greeted back M3, releasing a big yawn afterwards.

“Hmph! Nice to meet you, I guess,” greeted back M4 too, albeit in a very unfriendly and sour manner.

“Heh! I see that you also act in the same weird way as always,” snorted M3, giving a quick jump and landing on the floor in a sitting position with his legs crossed. “Can’t you show us a happier expression? I know that you’re just as excited about all of this as we are.”

“Hmph. I simply want this to end the quickest possible,” grumbled M4 while looking the other way. “Only M1 and M0 missing? M1 is already on his way here but the team of soldiers that went to get M2 is still on its way to the bottom door.”

“Yeah, I noticed they are sort of slowpokes,” pointed out M5 while looking at Kuwabayashi, a sly smirk on his face. “They walk so slowly that I thought I was having a competition with a snail and actually losing it.”

“Oh, nice one, M5!” cheered M3, softly snickering at Kinjou, who was still pointing his rifle at him. “But well, they’re just normal soldiers. They don’t stand a chance against us, in every single sense of the word. Actually, I don’t think even any of you could stand a chance against me.”

“It’s a pity that the scientists no longer have the time to restart their experiments on cloning, then,” sarcastically remarked M2, shaking his head slightly to move his long bangs away from his eyes.

“Yes, truly such a pity for our poor, little torturers, isn’t it?” taunted M5 while looking sideways to the lab workers, his eyes flickering red for a fraction of a second. “It looks like they are going to get… ah… what’s the word you use to call people who don’t have a job?”

“Unemployed,” answered M4. He was about to start to admonish M5 over having forgotten such a simple word when all four of them looked over to the access door all at the same time, an excited glint in their eyes as they expectedly awaited the entrance of one more of them.

The door opened with an acute creak and from there appeared M1, closely being guided from behind by Murayama. A handgun remained tightly pressed against the back of M1’s head. Screams and shrieks readily started coming from the area where the lab workers were being kept.

“H-Have you gone insane!? You’re releasing all of them at the same time and putting them all together?” furiously yelled a male voice.

“They’re going to kill us all! All of us are going to die!! Ahhhhh!” screamed another male voice.

“Oh my Lord in Heaven, please hear my prayers tonight. I have a child at home that I need to sustain. You can’t let me die here,” started praying a woman, tears flowing down her face and smearing her makeup.

“Y-You’re not thinking of releasing M0 too, right?” asked an older man clad in a lab coat. “H-He’s not ready to be released! He can’t get out of his cell! Not yet! Those over there… sure, take all of them away! Do whatever you want with them, actually! But if you value yourselves, then spare our and your lives and don’t let M0 out of his cell!”

“Hehehe…” chuckled M1 at hearing those words. He continued to allow himself to be led to the centre of the main hall at the same time as he sideways glanced at the lab workers. “Aren’t you quite noisy for cattle?”

The room was abruptly filled with a deadly silence. Murayama looked over to the group of scientists and other workers of the clandestine lab and saw their faces completely drained of colour, every single one of them doing their best to keep their sobs and screams well locked up inside of their throats. Even in this type of situation, where he was immobilised by handcuffed hands and under the threat of having his brain splattered all over the floor if he made any unexpected movement, M1 was still the one with total control of everything.

It made Murayama start to wonder if everything that was occurring that night was nothing more than a sick and manipulative game that M1 had orchestrated, even while confined inside of that cell. Such thought made shudders go down his spine.

“M2, M3, M4, and M5,” started M1, looking over to the four males. “It’s nice to meet you all.”

“Nice to meetcha, M1!” cheerfully greeted back M5, smiling brightly at the other male. “That riddle was such an amusing one! It looks like your absolute favouritism over ‘The Divine Comedy’ is still going on a roll~”

“Yeah, nice to meet ya, M1,” also greeted back M3 while uncrossing his legs and flexing them over the ground, getting up from the floor in a single swift motion.

“Nice to meet you,” greeted back M4, bowing down his head just the slightest.

“Nice to meet you, M1,” greeted M2, sluggishly lifting his big body up from the floor. “I hope you’re not angry at me for having told them the codes to our cells.”

“Of course I’m not mad. If you hadn’t, I would have done it myself,” answered M1, smiling softly to the other males (which came as an enormous blow to Murayama, from the reaction that his whole body displayed). “The only one missing right now is M0. But I think that will be solved very soon. Isn’t that right, Murayama Yamase?”

“Y-Yes,” acknowledged Murayama, gulping down the large lump that had suddenly formed on his throat. He was a soldier and the one with a gun… then why did he feel as defenceless as a newborn baby in a forest filled with wild beasts? “M0 will soon be released from the floor -6 and then be brought here. When that happens, you will cooperate and willingly come with us, right? Without any victims.”

“Of course. None of yours will die tonight,” acknowledged M1, his soft smile immediately morphing to a knowing smirk.

“M1! M1” started calling M5 in an extremely enthusiastic manner. “Have you been listening? Have you been listening to M0 singing?”

“But of course, M5,” said M1, smiling in an even gentler way. “I’ve heard M0 singing every single day of my life, as far as I can remember.”

All of a sudden, M5’s eyes started to glow a red hue. M4’s eyes soon followed. Then M3’s and M2’s. When M1’s grey eyes started glowing an intense red shade, the entirety of the main hall was illuminated in a chilling bloody crimson display, creating dark shadows all over the walls, the floor and the ceiling.

The group of Ms shifted their gaze to the lab workers at the same time and intently stared at them, every single person in that room shocked and speechless at the almost unbelievable event revolving around them.

“It’s time to leave Virgilio behind and meet with my Beatrice, all of us abandoning the Inferno and the Purgatory to head together to Paradise.”

-.-

His eyes closed, he took unhurried steps while rustling his fingertips through the numerous titanium chains suspended in the ceiling, most of them almost touching the floor. With a quick jump, he too got suspended in the air by grabbing with his hand onto one of the chains.

“Come, my sweet child. The garden of shadows in no more – you’ll be free,” he started to sing, gently rocking his body while suspended on the chain. When his body gained a certain motion of back and forward, he released the chain and his body motioned up in the air, grabbing at another chain when he started losing height. “Go, my sweet child. What awaits is just war – no time to flee.”

The chains shook against one another while he continuously climbed higher and higher in the chains, never stopping his singing.

“Run, my sweet child. Knowledge for a murder, the beauty is gone.” He kept singing, lightly entwining one of his wrists on one of the chains and then releasing his grip on it, his body immediately starting to fall in the ground’s direction. Though the big division was flooded in total darkness, he grabbed the chain once again when his feet were barely one inch away from the floor. “Weep, my sweet child. No one could hear her – passion won’t get a new dawn.”

He once again started climbing the chain, rocking his body back and forth and continuously exchanging from ‘rope’ to ‘rope’ as if an experienced circus artist.

“Fight, my sweet child. For the fallen to slay and the shadows appease,” he sang while wrapping one of his wrists in a chain once again. But he didn’t tie it lightly this time; he strongly wrapped the cold chain around his arm and then motioned his legs up, also wrapping two more chains around the lower side of his limbs. Then he released his hand. His body remained suspended in the air, shackled in his own private world. “Live, my sweet child. Turn the red into grey – bring an end to the disease.”

He dropped his head backwards and opened his eyes. Two red orbs of light shone in the midst of the darkness, creating an eerie ambience all around the big room – all that was on display were chains suspended from the ceiling. That and a big metal door.

He intently stared at the door, his body swinging around in the air aimlessly as if he was a forgotten marionette after a puppet show. But that would change soon, for he knew there were unknown people right behind the gate to his world.

In a few minutes, the intruders would step inside his garden of shadows. When that happened… he would be free.