Famine 92: The Forge Project

Shi He’s shoulders trembled lightly.

Nidhogg did not dare to meet his gaze, but Shi He was no longer crying.

The boy lowered his head, taking a long time to steady his breathing.

Step by step… the tips of his shoes pressed into pools of blood, crossing through heaps of severed limbs and entrails.

Ripples spread across the blood. A warm sensation came from his side.

Shi He knelt down beside him, in the blood that pooled around them.

The boy’s fingertips hovered in the air, trembling for quite a while, yet in the end, unable to rest upon Nidhogg’s body. There wasn’t a spot left on Nidhogg that was whole; any embrace, any touch would just add frost to snow.

Shi He’s lips were bloodless, parted slightly: “…”

Whoosh!

A sudden blast of wind cut off his words, stifling even that one syllable—“Brother.”

“—I know you’re watching, Captain.”

Amid the shrieking gale, Nidhogg’s head hung low. He drew a deep breath, forcing out a savage grin, dragging the tempo back onto familiar ground.

“Come on, come on, show yourself, there must be something you want to say to me, isn’t there?”

In the center of the storm, a silver-gray mist swirled and rose, condensing into the shape of Si Zhiyan.

“I promised you an answer.” Nidhogg said, “Ask your question. The offer expires soon.”

…Just like a bristling hedgehog.

What was he afraid of?

Si Zhiyan was silent for a time, then shifted his gaze to Shi He.
Shi He had managed to compose himself. The boy knelt naturally at his brother’s side and nodded to Si Zhiyan.

So, Si Zhiyan sighed softly.

“I need to know the source of your uniqueness. How are you different from an ordinary human?” Si Zhiyan stared at him, speaking slowly. “From beginning to end—everything.”

Nidhogg paused in the act of smoking.

After a moment, his expression grew complicated, and he managed a laugh.

“A clever and incisive question…”
“You’re still as unpleasant as ever, Captain.”

“It’s an honor,” Si Zhiyan replied, calm.

“Hmph.” Nidhogg flicked his wings restlessly and, after a brief silence, finally averted his gaze. “Have you heard of the ‘326 Meteorite Incident’?”

“That was ten years ago, right after the famine game broke out…”

On that day, people went about their lives as usual, until a massive meteor fell onto the east coast.

No scientist or agency reported tracking it; the meteor seemed to appear out of nowhere, cutting through the atmosphere and striking the crowded coastline with a tremendous impact, unleashing screams and casualties.

The internet dubbed it the ‘326 Meteorite Incident,’ and for a time, it caused a huge stir online.

The uproar eventually subsided. The giant meteorite was hauled away by the authorities. All survivors were forced into silence and the noise faded, leaving only scattered rumors—

The meteor wasn’t just a silent stone, but shone with an oily film over its surface. Deep inside that falling star, something else was hidden…

“What was it?” Si Zhiyan asked.

“I don’t know,” Nidhogg admitted. “I didn’t have clearance to see what was inside the meteorite. All I know is, in some way, they extracted from it…”

“A countdown.”

At the core of the meteorite, there was a countdown, the digits reducing with every passing second.

—A countdown from beyond the stars.
Si Zhiyan understood instantly.
Nidhogg’s words to Shi He, “our fates have only eight years left,” referred to the moment when the countdown would end.

“That meteorite was taken to a joint research agency, hidden deep in a restricted zone, out of any official supervision, directly overseen by the authorities.” Nidhogg idly rubbed his neck. “They worked around the clock and soon made a shocking discovery—”

“Deep inside the meteorite, there was something that could provide genetic fragments for the evolution of living beings.”

Thus, the ‘Forge Project’ was officially set in motion.

The world, as humankind knows it, became a vast forge—no one knew what ingredients or what outcome might come from it. Yet everyone could toss something of their own in.

The research advanced at an astonishing pace.

Within only a few years, they devised a method to implant fragments of the meteorite into the human body.

“But introducing such an unknown thing into a living human was simply too great a risk.” Nidhogg gave a brief, wry laugh. “So, for the first try, they decided on an excellent solution: clones.”

“And so I was born.”

The first time Nidhogg opened his eyes, it was in a cold, vacant laboratory pod. His mind was empty—a hazy, dazed consciousness stared out the glass window at the woman with hands in her pockets: the director of research. Instinctively, he uttered two syllables—

Mama.

“Record that,” the ‘mother’ told her assistant. “Maternal attachment in the cloning subject.”

“Begin physiological testing.”

Countless cold gazes were cast upon him, all ending with harsh red stamps—

[Unqualified.]
[No Obvious Distinction.]

[Failure.]

“Regrettably, his intelligence and abilities matched the original soldier exactly.”
“In training, his performance was no different from the soldier’s.”

“No matter how much I trained day and night, worked desperately to meet mama’s expectations, tried to get it right…”

Nidhogg touched the back of his neck, speaking offhandedly:

“…I was biological waste.”

He spat those words out so quickly and lightly, but Si Zhiyan’s sharp eyes still caught it—the cigarette in Nidhogg’s hand was almost broken between his fingers.

“Once they finally confirmed my failure, I lost any value for research. With so much ethical risk, so much funding spent, all for such a result, the institute faced tremendous pressure. As a last attempt to salvage something, they handed me over to the military.”

Nidhogg shrugged.

“Sometimes, like a mercenary, I was sent off to war zones to do their dirty work.”

…

“Mama was not discouraged by my failure, and set up the next project. This time, they chose a real, flesh-and-blood human.”

“She chose her target quickly.”

“That kid—he was the Good Samaritan type, a model student, all the way in China… grew up in an orphanage. The director who raised him died halfway through his schooling; he’d just finished his college entrance exams and left home for school. On the second day after registering, while saving a little girl, he was stabbed seven or eight times by a robber.”

“Under normal circumstances, he would have died. Modern medicine couldn’t have saved him. But for some reason, mama seemed to be acting on some directive and chose him without hesitation.”

“They tried everything, but managed to bring the young man to the lab.”

“They implanted a fragment, one from the same source as mine, into his body.”

“And then, a miracle happened. The student’s wounds healed rapidly; when he woke, he was a different person entirely. His recovery rate, his reflexes were incomparable to before. He’d become something beyond human, a true living weapon.”

“His name, if I recall…”

Si Zhiyan spoke quietly, in unison with Nidhogg: “Bian Xu.”

Shi He froze, propping himself up: “?!”

Nidhogg grinned around his cigarette, though the smile did not reach his eyes: “So you do know him.”

“I called him my little brother,” Nidhogg stretched. “When that kid first woke up, he called everyone brother or sister, jittery as a prairie dog. I’d harass him, he never got mad. A real simpleton.”

“What’s with that face?” Nidhogg sneered. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to pity him. He was the most successful test subject—young, good-looking, talkative—he was the darling of the whole lab, far beyond my reach.”

“I don’t know much more than that.”

“As the lowest-clearance biological waste, everything I know is pieced together from hearsay; I wasn’t even allowed to see the meteorite.”

“In the years that followed, I was sent on more and more missions. Most of the time it was obvious—they wanted me to die on assignment.”
“But unfortunately for them, I was not so easy to kill.”

“Until one mission, I’d completed the job, and as I was escorted back to the desert’s edge…”

“I discovered the entire research facility was engulfed in a raging inferno.”

“To erase my records, I went in and searched through the flames… but in the end found nothing, and came out empty-handed. Luckily, everyone escorting me died, and I was free. After that, I wandered the war zones, took in a child, and hid away…”

“…Until the day the Main God descended.”

“On that day, I fell into a high fever. When I woke, all my latent mutations erupted, dragon wings sprouted from my back, and every old wound healed itself in half a minute. The enormous ‘Eye’ hung low in the sky and greeted me.”

“The ‘Eye’ told me that I was one of two most unique candidates in this world.”

“That’s it.”

Nidhogg spread his hands—

“That’s all the answer your question will get.”

…

The brat wasn’t telling the whole truth.

So thought Si Zhiyan.

Until now, he’d had the patience to spar with Nidhogg, but with the ‘Eye’ threat looming, any information he could obtain had to come quickly.

He’d have to think of a way to get him to speak further.

Si Zhiyan said, “I have another question.”

Nidhogg sneered, “That’s a different price.”

Si Zhiyan ignored him, saying only, “On the day the research institute was destroyed in fire, if you simply wanted to escape, why did you go back in?”

Nidhogg paused.

“You said, at that time, you had no regenerative ability, no special traits… So, the best choice would have been to leave and never look back. If you went into the fire, there had to be a reason.”

“You went to save someone,” Si Zhiyan said slowly, with certainty. “You wanted to save Bian Xu.”

Even though Nidhogg’s story painted himself as a malicious biological reject, Si Zhiyan still noticed the truth.

Amid a world in ruins, there remained a single strand of kindness, owed to the one person who always met him with a smile, no matter how foul his mood.

Bian Xu.

“…” Nidhogg drew in a deep puff of smoke, silent in reply.

Similar images rose from Shi He’s memories.

The day they first met, Nidhogg had asked him, “Kid, where’s your family?”
A very young Shi He had strained to swallow a mouthful of steamed bun and whispered, “They’re dead.”
“Oh,” Nidhogg had clapped his hands, delighted. “What a coincidence. My little brother died, too.”

In the short, cold life of discarded biological waste, it was that bizarre student—calling everyone brother or sister, more perfect than Nidhogg himself—who represented the only warmth he ever felt.

So, when Nidhogg broke free and escaped into war’s chaos, finding a young child among the ruins…

That child called him brother.

And Nidhogg found he could not push him away.

“…”

Nidhogg took a deep final drag, snuffing out the last bit of his cigarette in his own blood.

At last, he said, “You’re as disgusting as he is.”

Nidhogg rummaged around himself for a while, fishing out a fresh cigarette.

The watching gaze beside him burned into him almost tangibly.
He dared not meet Shi He’s eyes, bowing his head to light the cigarette, and gave a cold laugh.

“I told you, if you didn’t want to die you should’ve left, but you still barged in here to hear all this damn nonsense…”

Nidhogg drew in a deep breath. Doing his best to seem indifferent, he idly waved a hand at Shi He:

“Have you finished taking in the rare exhibit? You can go now.”
“Considering you braved a pool of blood just to get here and still have to sneak out to wash your own clothes in the middle of the night, I’ll let you off for this story; no ticket required…”

…

His voice stopped abruptly.

Shi He, with infinite care, pressed a kiss to his forehead.

It was soft, warm, trembling—so light, so delicate—
as if he were the most precious treasure in all the world.

“You are not some piece of biological waste, and I don’t care why you saved me. You never treated me as a substitute for anyone; you love me, and no one knows that better than I do.” Shi He’s eyes were closed as he whispered, “You are my brother, my only brother.”

…

For a split second, Nidhogg’s hand shook so badly he almost dropped his cigarette.
That kiss was impossibly restrained, vanishing the moment he tried to push Shi He away. The child retreated on his own, sitting quietly beside him. Nidhogg tried to slide him even further away, but found he simply didn’t have the strength.

He didn’t even dare to look the boy in the eyes.

Nidhogg had always suffered from a sharp tongue, always cracking wise, mocking others and himself shamelessly.

The researchers never bothered with biological waste. Unless he made them angry, then they’d give him a glance, a curse or two, maybe a slap.

Bian Xu had not been anything special to Nidhogg; the twisted hate and jealousy that burned inside him had hurt both of them.
Bian Xu was just a good kid.
A good kid who had to be provoked to even look his way.

For a long time, it was the only way Nidhogg could prove he existed.

Until the day he crawled out of the rubble and found a little boy in the refuse heap.

He could command with energy, or mutter a few tired words, unleash violent, unspeakable feelings… but Shi He would always follow him, gun in his arms, trotting to keep up, head tipped back to listen intently. Those dark eyes fixed wholly on him.

Never saying a word, just looking at him with such conviction, as if every useless utterance mattered—as if he was the boy’s entire world.

No test subject, no biological waste, no cold, hard serial number…

He was himself. Only himself.
The person Shi He needed most.

Nidhogg blinked hard, trying to clear his blurred vision.

“I point it out only to prove one thing to you.”
Si Zhiyan stood serenely in midair, a hair’s breadth above the bloody ground, robe untouched, his brow tranquil and gentle behind the faint mist.

“—You left that research lab a long time ago, the place that saw you as waste.”

“I know you’re hiding things. I won’t force you, nor will I press you further. I only want you to know, if you’re worrying about Shi He, about me, or want to prevent some action we might take… perhaps, that is not the real problem.”

“Neither I nor Shi He will harm you. On this point, I give you my word.”

“In others’ eyes, you matter more than you realize.”