Chapter 601: The More You Know the Truth, the More Desperate You Become
Ian nodded. Indeed, research on Demon Fruits and technologies like the application of Seastone had only emerged in the Marines in recent years. If Vegapunk had started researching these things from the beginning, they might have appeared even earlier.
This indirectly proved that Vegapunk's initial research was indeed in a different direction. Drake hadn't lied about this, and he couldn't have fabricated such a lie.
"Since you served as security at the research base, you must have had contact with Vegapunk. Do you think he was researching these things voluntarily?" Ian asked Drake.
"No!" Drake replied firmly. "I did have a few occasions to meet Vegapunk alone. He seemed to enjoy researching Demon Fruits and Seastone, but when I tentatively brought up the accident back then, I found that Vegapunk was completely unwilling to discuss it. I could sense that it wasn't regret over the failed experiment that bothered him, but an instinctive disgust toward that kind of human experimentation!"
Drake explained to Ian, "You might not know this, but at the Punk Hazard research base, there's a massive freezer room. In it are frozen a considerable number of corpses—thousands of them—from all sorts of races. Judging by their appearance, some were prisoners in prison uniforms, others were slaves wearing collars..."
As he spoke, Drake seemed to recall the sight he had witnessed, shuddering involuntarily. "Every single one of those corpses had a terrified expression. Don't laugh at me, but the first time I saw them, I was so frightened I fell over."
Ian asked him, "Could those frozen corpses be related to Kaido's experiment back then?"
"Most likely!" Drake nodded. "Dr. Vegapunk never wanted to go near that freezer room. He designated it a restricted area, forbidding anyone from approaching. However, that scientist named Caesar completely ignored this. I saw him walking out of that freezer room several times..."
Ian understood. From the various clues Drake described, it was clear that Dr. Vegapunk opposed this kind of human experimentation. Ian even speculated that he might have been forced to stay in the Marine Science Unit against his will.
No matter how well the Marines and the World Government treated him, bestowing titles like "The Marines' Top Scientist" or "A Genius 500 Years Ahead of His Time," it couldn't erase the fact that Vegapunk had been forcibly taken away by the Marines!
Waldo and Gaji had both been colleagues of Vegapunk at the same research institute. But when the Marines declared their research illegal and raided the institute, both of them escaped. Only Vegapunk was captured, showing that the Marines and the World Government's focus was entirely on him.
Connecting these clues, Ian felt that Vegapunk was likely in a very delicate state. Although this genius scientist was hailed by the World Government as a treasure of humanity, he had never appeared before the public. Could this be interpreted as him being under house arrest by the Marines and the World Government?
In Ian's view, even if the Marines and the World Government had enough financial resources to provide materials and research funding for Vegapunk, people all yearn for freedom. Someone as intelligent as Vegapunk would never willingly accept being confined.
Ian suspected that Kaido's failed human experiment and subsequent escape might have been deliberately orchestrated by Vegapunk. Perhaps this was his way of venting his dissatisfaction with being imprisoned. After all, as the discoverer of the Lineage Factor, for Vegapunk to personally oversee an experiment that failed... the odds of that were hard to believe.
But if he opposed such unethical human experimentation, why did he later restart the Pacifista project? Even if Kuma had voluntarily offered his body as experimental material, if Vegapunk truly detested it, he could have refused outright...
There were too many questions here. Kuma, a former Warlord of the Sea and a high-ranking Revolutionary Army officer, had voluntarily given up his consciousness to cooperate with Vegapunk's research. That defied logic. So Ian preferred to believe that Vegapunk was acting deliberately, that he might have reached some agreement with Kuma and was secretly planning something...
Composing himself, Ian asked Drake, "What happened next?"
"You can imagine how shocked I was when I learned that Kaido, one of the Four Emperors, was actually created by the Marine Science Unit!" Drake said. "I even suspected that there might be some secret agreement between Kaido and the World Government. In my impression, Kaido, that madman with a tendency toward self-destruction, had never been attacked by the Marines..."
Although Ian had only learned about Kaido being an experimental subject from Drake's fragmented account, he understood that the process of such biochemical experiments was never gentle. He could imagine the torment Kaido had suffered at Punk Hazard.
A person's personality is often shaped by their experiences. Someone like Doflamingo, who fell from being a Celestial Dragon to a commoner, nearly burned to death, and even killed his own father and brother, had his personality twisted by such experiences. Similarly, if Kaido hadn't endured inhumane treatment during the experiments, he wouldn't have developed his later mad desire for self-destruction. He not only loved attempting suicide but also claimed he wanted to drag the entire world into a great war to destroy this boring world...
And this madman who wanted to destroy the world was actually created by the World Government and the Marines themselves...
Ian could somewhat understand the shock Drake felt upon uncovering the truth. Even Ian felt a lingering fear. If Vegapunk had succeeded back then, what kind of existence would Kaido have become?
"I think my father might have been like me. After discovering these shocking truths during his time in the Marine Science Unit, he suddenly changed drastically, defected from the Marines, and became a pirate!" Drake sighed. "When I realized this, I found that I no longer hated my father. He was once such an upright Marine. I could understand the collapse of his faith."
"And ironically, I ended up following the same path as my father!" Drake's eyes flickered. "I always felt that the World Government's experiment plan regarding Kaido might conceal an even bigger secret. So during my time on the island, I kept trying to find a way to learn more about this plan. However, when I discovered the code name of this plan in a fragmentary document, I was discovered!"
"Code name? Kaido's experiment had a code name too?" Ian pressed.
"Yes! The code name for this plan was the RT Project!" Drake said. "I don't know what this code name means, but by then, my snooping had already caught the attention of CP0. I realized things were going bad, so I had to cause an accident on the island and escape from Punk Hazard amid the chaos."
"From the moment I escaped, I knew I could never return to the Marines!" Drake said calmly. "I thought that prying into such a big secret would bring me a death sentence, but surprisingly, after I escaped, not many Marines came after me..."
"What's going on?" Ian asked, puzzled. "If I were a World Government high-ranking official and knew about your actions, I would have made sure you disappeared from the world forever!"
"Exactly!" Drake nodded. "I couldn't figure it out at the time either. But as time passed, I gradually understood. Investigating secrets can be serious or minor. Probing into the RT Project would definitely bring me huge trouble, but if I had been investigating other trivial secrets, I might have gotten off lightly."
"You mean someone inside the Marine Science Unit helped cover up what secret you were investigating?"
"That's the only explanation!" Drake nodded. "The Marines who came after me initially only had a Vice Admiral as the highest rank. And after I escaped, they didn't pursue me relentlessly but quickly turned back... However, when I encountered Kizaru on Sabaody Archipelago, he said something to me: 'The more you know the truth, the more desperate you become'... So I suspect that the Marines might have eventually discovered something after all."