[Bonus thanks to TheGhanianPrince <3]
A silence fell over the laboratory after Alex finished speaking, his final words seeming to linger in the air for a moment after even he ran out of things to say.
Sylas looked at him with the same unreadable expression he had worn since returning to Earth. He had learned quite a bit from this conversation, far more than he originally expected, but there was one detail that still didn't make much sense to him.
"What compels you to return?"
Alex blinked, then released a chuckle.
"Gene Lock. I mentioned it already, didn't I?"
Sylas didn't respond, but he understood.
The Gene Lock didn't just serve as a means of returning a Nethum descendant's memories once they had reached a certain level of evolution. It was a chain as well, one that ensured that no matter how far these descendants traveled, they would eventually have to return to the Clan that had produced them.
