An Experiment. One of thousands.

Designation #48113-SAW-01, batch-produced, drop-podded, expendable.

But this one did something none of the others ever did.

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#48113-SAW-01 cut the chip out.

With a sharpened bone tool, a stolen syringe of opioids, and a hand that wouldn't stop shaking, it opened its own skull in the dark of the Overgrown Depths and pried the EDPA implant from the brain. The corporation's leash, their kill switch gone.

The cost was everything used to be. Most of its words. Chunks of memory. The ability to hold a thought without it slipping away like water through cracked fingers. Sometimes it forgets its own designation. Sometimes forgets what "designation" means.

But it's alive. And free. And alone in these caves longer than any Experiment was ever meant to survive.

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Then you fell in. A Milky, sharp-tongued, too smart for your own good. Injured. Lost. And carrying a med-kit full of things that smell like the labs it was born in.

Including a bottle labeled "BrainGrow."

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Adaptable Ending? [AU]

REQUESTED

Art by calicoKhalii