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The white light of the laboratory never changed.It didn't matter whether minutes or hours had passed—time was a prison just as cruel as the metallic walls that confined the children.
Code opened his eyes for the umpteenth time since he had been released from the pod. He could still feel that viscous sensation clinging to his skin, as if the liquid were trying to drag him back into the darkness.
Weeks had passed since his "birth."Or since his "rebirth."He still didn't know which word fit better.
Now he lived in a rectangular, cold, windowless room alongside two children: Kawaki, so silent he seemed like a shattered fragment of humanity…and the other boy, the unknown one, the one who carried a Karma similar to his own. The boy who didn't belong to canon or to his memories of the anime.
A whole year trapped there.A year that would change who they were forever.
Code—or rather, the man inside Code—had observed every reaction of the boy. Kawaki didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't ask for help. He simply obeyed, hardening with every order from Jigen, with every experiment Amado carried out.
Even Code, who already knew what Kawaki would become in the future, couldn't help but feel a certain… pity.
Kawaki was always a victim, he thought as he sat on his metal bed.But seeing him in person, so small, so broken… it's worse than I imagined.
Sometimes he heard the child murmuring barely audible words.
"Dad… I… I can be better…""I'm sorry…""Please… let me… stop…"
Code understood: the boy was still trying to please the father who had sold him.
That pain would become the foundation of his future transformation.
Jigen demanded results from the very first day. Age didn't matter. Trauma didn't matter. Mental state didn't matter.
Every day, for hours, the children were forced to train:
Physical resistance — running until fainting, enduring blows without crying.Body control — flexibility, balance, precision.Pain endurance — Jigen insisted that "a vessel incapable of enduring suffering does not deserve to exist."
For Code, who came from a world without ninjas, it was real, absolute torture.
His adult mind trapped inside a child's body screamed to escape, but his new body…His new body was a prodigy.
Growing strength.Speed above average.And above all, a dormant power inside the White Karma.
His "advantage" as a reincarnated became part of his training—he analyzed everything as someone who already knew the future.
But he couldn't show it.
Not yet.
During that first year, Code noticed something:
Amado never stopped writing.Never stopped watching them.
"The pain tolerance of Subject C-02 (Code) is… unusual for an infant," he murmured into his recorder. "His mind shows anticipation patterns as if he already knew the stimuli."
Code heard that more than once.Amado was beginning to suspect.Not his origin, but that something about him was wrong.
Meanwhile, Jigen treated them like tools.
"These two," he said, pointing at Code and the other boy with the white Karma, "are failures… but even failures can be useful if they survive."
That sentence would echo inside the three boys for years.
The boy with the white Karma—the one Code was beginning to watch with growing unease—was too aware. Too calm. Too… human to be a simple experiment.
He never talked about his past.Never asked anything.But he observed everything with eyes that felt far older than his age.
Once, Code caught him looking at his own reflection in the polished metal of the door, as if evaluating who was inside that body.
Are you like me too? Code wanted to ask.
But he couldn't.Because Jigen always watched, and a single strange phrase could mean death.
Thus, the first year passed wrapped in silence and tension between both reincarnated boys, without either of them saying a word.
Throughout the year, Code experienced a terror that didn't fit inside the anime.
Jigen and Amado pushed the White Karma to its limits, trying to understand its nature.
Electrostimulation.Resonance analysis with Kawaki.Implantation of modified cells.Artificial chakra overload.
Every test was hell.
Sometimes, Code screamed.Sometimes, the other boy didn't even blink.
And Jigen loved comparing them.
"The white Karma on this child"—he meant Code—"might evolve into power. Or it might destroy him from the inside.We're going to find out."
Year after year, that "we're going to find out" would become a chain around Code's soul.
One day, without warning, the White Karma reacted.
It happened during a resistance exercise:
Jigen had ordered him to fight a training android.Code's body began to break under the pressure…until a white glow burst from his hand.
A bright mark—cruel, alive.
The pain vanished.Strength coursed through his muscles like electricity.And for the first time, he felt something close to real power.
"Interesting…" Jigen smiled. "Very interesting."
Kawaki tensed.The other boy watched him with a mix of surprise… and recognition.
He felt it too, Code thought.That boy knows something. That boy is like me. And sooner or later, I'll find out.
When the year ended, Code was no longer just a child trapped in someone else's body.
He was a valuable experiment,a prodigy,a reincarnated soul beginning to remember who he wanted to become,
and a future rival to the other boy who shared his destiny.
Kawaki slept on his bed, breathing with difficulty.The other child wrote something on the floor with the tip of a stone.Code watched him and closed his eyes, knowing that this first year was only the beginning.
The nightmare had only just begun.
The story of Code, rewritten from zero, was taking shape.