I Love You, Monster: The Blindfolded Wife x The Masked Husband
Chapter 163: Caged bird

Country X…

The town of Zemei that was home of ten thousand was perfectly isolated. It was a beautiful place and seemingly peaceful.

However, it was actually the secret headquarter of the world famous underground organization called Blackleaf, and was actually backed by the government of Country X. The organization was known to be among the humanity's biggest threat. They were known to be secretly creating dangerous chemical and nuclear weapons. And the town was a safe haven for exiled and rogue scientist for creating all sort of illegal experiments. The government forbids anyone unauthorized to visit the place. So the town was among the few mysterious places that continue to exist as hidden in plain sight.

Sei and his mother were told to live in the town. And Sei was then told to join the elite group of hackers that were trained as notorious cyber-criminals and spies.

As he spent his days as the only child in the group of adult hackers, Sei continued breaking expectations. His hacking skill was surpassing every single one of the so called elite of all elites' hackers.

Until at age nine, Sei was ordered to steal documents of Country H's military defense system, using of course his dear mother to make him abide. And within a mere few hours, he managed to stole some sensitive documents without leaving a single speck of clue about his presence. Causing an extreme uproar to the entire town of Zemei.

People who knew what he did started treating him like a king. Even the country's president sent his military chief to personally confirm the news about him.

Since then, everyone started treating him royally and no one dared touching him nor talking to him badly. The government realized what kind of power the boy has and they decided to keep him at all cost, thus, they started trying to please him by giving him whatever he asked except of course leaving the town.

So after years of being caged tightly, they finally loosen up their grip on Sei. They finally allowed him to roam around the town without guards and spent some time with his mother. He was a caged bird who was just transferred into a little bigger cage where he at least could fly a little bit.

However, nobody knew that Sei already started scheming countless scape plans in his head ever since he realized what was truly happening in the place he and his mother was currently living in.

Roaming around the town freely, Sei started discovering what was going on. The place was actually a home of all sort of extreme illegal activities.

At a certain building he visited, Sei found a group of children at his age. They were children looking pale and vampire-like. He found out later on that they were the survivors of test tube experimental babies. They were trying to create geniuses, a living obedient weapons. He found out that dozens of those children died along the process until eventually leaving just eleven of them.

The children have numbers from 1 to 10 tattooed at their back. An old seemingly heartless scientist told him that the children were numbered according to their obedience rate. However, what caught young Sei's attention was the boy numbered zero.

He asked why his number was zero and the old man told him that it was because he was a complete failure. He told him that number Zero's physical well-being was almost a superhuman, however, he said that it's impossible to control him.

The old man also told him that they were planning to just send him to the war zone as front liner to at least be useful or they might use him as guinea pig for some further experiments. Words that made Sei just quietly clenched his fist as his gaze fell into the boy in white gown.

That moment, Sei and number Zero's eyes then met and for some reason, as he gazed at his dangerous eyes, Sei felt like he will need him.

At the same time, Sei realized that he wasn't a failure. He was the only one among those children who could still be called human. They failed to control him because unlike the other ten, he was still a human and not a complete robot.

That moment, Sei felt that in order for him to have a chance escaping this hell, he needed to have him.