Ethan stepped out into the pitch-black darkness.
Three steps. Turn left. Seven steps. Turn right. Twelve steps straight.
He walked ahead confidently.
The smell reached him first—a whiff of sterile hospital kind of smell—trying to mask what couldn't be hidden. With each step, it grew stronger until it coated the inside of his nostrils and throat.
Then, the light began to seep in. A harsh, fluorescent glow that revealed the corridor in stark detail. White walls, white floor, white ceiling. Everything was designed to show the slightest contamination, to expose any imperfection.
At the end of the hall, double doors waited. They looked like they belonged in an operating theater, with small windows that revealed nothing of what lay beyond.
Ethan pushed through without a pause.
The laboratory spread out before him, gleaming with high-end equipment—research terminals, precision instruments, optimized tools of the trade. Standard, at first glance. But the rows of cylindrical tubes along one wall told a different story.
Each one was labeled with codes that meant nothing to anyone but him. Each held something: preserved parts, flesh suspended in solutions, unfinished clones—some failed, some promising.
Ethan moved to his workstation and set down his newly acquired prizes. The vial of crimson liquid and the carefully wrapped pheromone patch were placed on the desk. He separated them with deliberate care, sliding each into its own preservation tube. Soon, they would be cloned, tested, and replicated.
His gaze caught on the IV needle resting in its chamber, studying it with profound interest. The analysis monitor beside it scrolled a litany of test results.
All negative. Hundreds of them were.
"Still nothing," he murmured, his voice cutting through the sterile hum of machinery. Low, disappointed—though not surprised. "How… disappointing."
But his attention was already moving to the other items on the desk. He picked up a small spray bottle. Anyone else would think it was just water—anyone who didn't know better.
Ethan walked through the door at the far end of the lab. Behind it lay the real reason this facility existed deep underground. The moment the door opened, the nauseating stench of an unbearable mix of smells permeated, and weird noises could be heard.
Beasts, humans, monsters—each cell held a creature of its own kind. No matter how loud or deranged the sounds were, Ethan remained unfazed.
His presence brought forth fear and pain and desperation. Their sounds overlapped—whimpers, growls, the wet sounds of flesh against flesh, and underneath it all, a chittering that belonged to an unknown species. Until they reacted differently—lower, sharper, trembling.
Ethan moved forward, unbothered.
The cells lined both walls.
In the first cell was a man who had once been an alpha twisted against the restraints. His body was producing pheromones at levels that should have killed him.
In the second cell, there was an omega who had developed additional glands. She produced both alpha and omega pheromones that were completely compatible with each other. As a result, she writhed in an endless state of heat and rut, trapped in her own body, prompting for an isolated containment method.
The third one had someone who used to be a human, before the modifications took place.
But it was the seventh cell that caught his attention.
Inside were two figures that had once been two distinct individuals, who began to merge. Their bodies tried to become something new in response to the concoction that he had been feeding them. They looked up at his approach, four eyes tracking his movement with an intelligence that shouldn't have remained after the transformation.
Ethan raised the spray bottle, releasing its contents into the cell. A fine mist drifted across the cell.
The effect was instant and horrifying. The creatures lunged at each other with desperate hunger. Not violence, but something worse. They began to mate, if you could call it that. Their partially fused bodies struggled to perform a function they were no longer capable of.
"No wonder the other one failed," Ethan murmured, calm and detached as he watched creatures with interest. "His name was Marcus, wasn't it?"
He made a note on his light brain. "I gave him a neural disruptor, but a useless person will still be useless no matter what tools they're given."
The coupling in the cell grew more frantic, more destructive. He would have to sedate them soon, before they damaged themselves beyond repair. But for now, the data was too valuable to interrupt.
"Never mind," Ethan said softly, to himself—or perhaps to his creations. His gaze slid to the next cell. A faint smile curved his lips.
"He can be useful for another purpose."
His voice dropped, almost intimate.
"Right, Marcus?"
…
Ethan turned and walked back to the laboratory, the door hissing shut behind him. He placed the spray bottle onto a shelf beside seventeen identical copies, each labeled with dates and concentration levels. His fingers lingered on the rows, tracing their order—each one a memory of an experiment, a failure, a small step toward perfection.
"It wasn't that he didn't spray it," he mused, pulling up the data from today's incident scrolling across his screens. "But rather, the effect was just… delayed."
The timeline expanded across the display. Marcus had sprayed Neville's workstation. By midday, Neville had returned to the company, but the effects were already showing signs.
He sprayed another dose on Neville's desk. He was almost discovered. He was almost discovered, but Neville's pheromone patch had held on and didn't immediately dissolve. It was a fascinating item.
Seeing that Neville was recovering in the bathroom, he sprayed another dose before making his presence known.
"Still, he managed to endure," Ethan murmured as he studied the items on his desk. "Fascinating."
He ran the comparisons. "Not to mention that nothing immediately happened with that much dose of pheromone enhancer permeating the air. Even Grayson wasn't as affected as he should have been."
"So three doses in the bathroom alone weren't enough to take down either Neville or Grayson, huh?" Ethan pulled up the chemical analysis, frowning at the results. "That should have been enough to affect everyone on the floor."
The implications were staggering. Either both men had some form of natural immunity—which was statistically impossible—or there was something about their interaction that created a neutralizing effect.
Ethan started a new analysis sequence, this time looking for another perspective. What if it wasn't about them as individuals, but about their proximity to one another?
Grayson and Neville had stayed together the moment the drug kicked in. They had been together for so long that he thought that something was going on with both of them. He had considered a possible scandal—the CEO attacking a newbie omega—especially since Grayson had called him over twice.
However, the moment Bryan had walked in and lingered and even ordered some food, he dismissed this idea altogether. Still—
"That much wasn't enough, huh?" he said, his face twisting into a smile. "You two are really… interesting."
Setting aside the confusion, he reached for the crimson vial. The crimson liquid inside was still warm.
"Getting your blood sample was really incredibly risky," Ethan said to the vial, holding it up against the light. The red deepened to a shade of near-black, then lightened again. "But I know you're not going to disappoint me. You never do."
A drop here, a reactive agent there.
While the machines worked, he turned his attention to the earlier results from the IV needle. His previous attempts to map Neville's genetics had all failed. The Federation database, even his illegal access to military and intelligence records—all turned up nothing.
The boy was a ghost. Genetically invisible.
"I've already hacked the database of the Federation," he said, laughter scraping against the sterile walls, "and you're still nowhere to be found. Incredible."
It would take time—hours, maybe days—to get complete results. But he could already see preliminary data scrolling across the screens, and it made his heart race with excitement.
The laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep in his chest, uncontrolled and slightly unhinged.
"Ah~, my beloved," he whispered between gasps of mirth. "Just how much more fascinating can you get?"
The sharp ping of his light brain cut through his reverie. The caller ID made him frown—not someone he had expected to hear from today.
For a second, Ethan considered ignoring it. But then a thought flashed through his mind, a possibility too tempting to ignore. His frown transformed into a smile that would have sent his test subjects cowering.
He accepted the call, activating voice-only mode.
"It was a good thing that I didn't do it personally this time." He pitched his voice to sound sorrowful, regretful, even as his smile widened, knowing fully well that the caller wouldn't see his face.
The voice on the other end erupted—rage, accusations, words spat so quickly they blurred together.
Ethan listened and let them rant, making appropriate sounds of apology and understanding.
Yes, it was unfortunate. No, he hadn't anticipated this outcome. Of course, he understood their frustration. All the while, his fingers danced across his light brain's interface, pulling up files, cross-referencing data, preparing for another test run.
When the anger finally subsided, Ethan said. "Hey, how about using that person?"
Silence on the other end.
Ethan could practically hear the gears turning, the calculations being made in the caller's head. The caller agreed, albeit reluctantly. He ended the call and uttered a low hum of satisfaction.
Neville wouldn't hate me for this, right? Ethan thought, his eyes narrowing in morbid delight.