-"The fruit fly, insignificant in size, yet infinite in revelation. In their wings, entire generations rise and collapse within days, showing us evolution's cruel efficiency."
---
The air of the laboratory was thick with disinfectant and the faint tang of decay that clung stubbornly even after sterilization. Kael stood before the rat cages, eyes narrowed as he noted the positions of the small bodies, the way some had curled upon themselves and others lay stiff, twisted at odd angles.
He scribbled into his notebook with quick, precise strokes: Day three. Sixteen of twenty-four dead. Eleven died within the first six hours. Remaining subjects exhibit inconsistent symptoms. One shows tremors. Two listless, reduced activity. One unaccounted for until recovery of body under bedding material.
Lucian, across the room, swirled a flask of pale solution with an almost theatrical grace. He didn't glance at the rats. He rarely did after the first impression. To him, the outcome was already obvious: death. The manner was secondary.
"You see, Kael," Lucian said, his tone soft, indulgent, "nature always finds the path of least resistance. They perish swiftly because they are weak. It is a kindness, really. Efficient."
Kael shook his head once. His pencil tapped against the page. "It's wasteful. The trajectory is unreadable. If they die within hours, we lose the opportunity to study progression. No markers. No curve of decline to trace."
"They die," Lucian repeated with a shrug, as though that should be enough. "Is that not the curve? The perfect slope, the instant extinguishing of a meaningless light?"
Kael's jaw tightened, though he kept his expression neutral. "We're not studying symbolism, Lucian. We're testing delivery systems. If the subjects collapse before we observe the intermediate stages, we cannot refine the dosage. Humans won't react in uniformity. Too many variables."
Lucian finally set the flask down with a delicate clink, his smile curling. "Ah, yes. The scientist frets over his data points while the executioner admires the fall of the blade. But remember, Kael: no matter how elegant the design, the final note must always be silence."
Kael wrote another line in his notes, not answering. Silence, yes. But silence without understanding was chaos. And chaos was not control.
The rats shifted faintly in their bedding, the survivors twitching in disturbed rhythms. Their eyes—tiny, beadlike—glimmered red in the lab's fluorescent wash. Kael lingered on them, as if hoping to catch the precise second decay became inevitable.
Lucian, already bored with the details, leaned against the counter, his gaze turned inward. "Perhaps we're approaching this backward. The fruit fly reveals more than the rat. Generations in a handful of days. Imagine testing not just death, but heredity. Corruption passed along the spiral of life itself."
Kael's pencil paused over the page. He didn't disagree. But he noted, without saying aloud, that Lucian always reached for grandeur before mastering the smallest step.
---
The door creaked softly, breaking the rhythm of the fluorescent hum. Kael looked up sharply; Lucian didn't.
Taisia entered as though the lab had been waiting for her. She wore her white coat already, sleeves folded back with exactness. Her hair was pulled away from her face in a simple knot, no strands loose. In her hands she carried a folder, slim but neat, the paper corners aligned without deviation.
"I thought this lab was reserved," Lucian said at last, his voice lilting with amusement more than irritation. He didn't look at her, still gazing at the half-empty flask on the bench.
Taisia's eyes swept the room once—the rats, the notebook in Kael's hand, the residue of powder on the scales. "It was," she replied, her voice calm, carrying an edge of certainty. "But I find availability depends on who asks."
Lucian's lips twitched. "Ah. A parasite who knows how to charm the host."
Kael said nothing, but he noted the shift immediately. Where most students would flinch at Lucian's words, Taisia did not. She moved instead to the nearest empty bench, setting down her folder with care.
She glanced once toward the cages. Her brow furrowed—not with sympathy, not with disgust, but with calculation. "Too fast," she observed simply.
Lucian's head tilted, finally granting her his attention. "You've already concluded this from a glance?"
"I see bodies," she said, "and I see no pattern. Too many succumbed too quickly. You can't trace the mechanism that way."
Kael's pencil paused mid-word. He met her eyes across the cages. For a moment, there was recognition—not of agreement, but of parallel reasoning.
Lucian laughed softly, though the sound was knife-edged. "Two scientists murmuring over corpses. Very well, little beetle, what would you propose?"
"Control your variables," she said, unbothered. "If the delivery medium is unstable, adjust the carrier before you escalate. Unless, of course, you enjoy blindness."
Her tone was measured, factual. She didn't posture, didn't try to sound superior. That was what made her words sting sharper than if she had raised her voice.
Lucian's smile thinned. He leaned against the bench, folding his arms. "Blindness is part of divinity. To strike without needing sight. To burn without needing to measure the precise degree."
"Divinity may not care," she returned, her voice soft but unwavering, "but science does. Unless you are content with poetry alone."
The silence that followed pressed like static.
Kael's pulse quickened, though his face remained still. He found himself almost admiring the exactness of her phrasing, the way she held her ground without theatrics.
Lucian broke the silence first, his grin widening. "Then perhaps you will illuminate us. Show us how the parasite guides the predator."
Taisia didn't flinch. She opened her folder and withdrew a sheet of carefully charted notes, each line immaculate, each symbol sharp. "I intend to. Not for your sake. For mine."
She laid the page flat upon the bench, aligning it to the edge with meticulous precision.
Kael moved closer without realizing it, his eyes scanning her data. Dosages, intervals, control groups. She had already replicated some of their methods on her own, quietly, without fanfare. Her results confirmed what he had suspected: the vector itself was inconsistent, degrading too quickly outside optimal conditions.
Lucian leaned over the sheet, his expression unreadable, his fingers drumming lightly on the counter. "Ambitious," he murmured. "You would correct the gods themselves."
"Not correct," she said, her gaze steady on his. "Refine."
For the first time, Lucian's smile faltered—not entirely, but enough for Kael to see the flicker of something else: curiosity.
Kael, observing them both, realized this was no longer his puzzle alone. The experiment had widened, not only in scope, but in players.
And the rats, twitching faintly in their cages, became silent witnesses to a new dynamic forming: predator, observer, parasite. Each circling the other, none yet sure which would consume or be consumed.
---
Oh their way to the train station, Lucian's stride was measured, deliberate, his silhouette cutting clean lines against the fractured glow of the city. When he spoke, it was as if the world fell quiet to listen.
"Stay over," Lucian said suddenly, not turning his head. The words dropped as casually as a pebble into water.
Kael blinked. "Tonight?"
"Unless your empty rooms call louder than mine." Lucian's lips curved faintly at his own phrasing.
Kael looked down. His aunt was away—she often was, the flat left in silence, cupboards filled with food that didn't taste like anything when eaten alone. No one waiting. No warmth. He had known that silence so long it felt like a skin he couldn't shed. Yet here, invited into Lucian's orbit, that silence wavered.
"You don't mind?" Kael asked, though his voice carried more hesitation than refusal.
Lucian laughed softly, the sound edged like glass. "I wouldn't offer if I did."
They boarded the late train, the compartment near empty. The car rocked with the low hum of steel and distance. Fluorescent bulbs flickered above them, buzzing faintly, a hymn of dying insects. Kael sank into a seat across from Lucian, then, after a moment of awkward stillness, shifted beside him.
The tension in his body, the fatigue in his eyes—it betrayed him. He hadn't slept properly in days. His mind, wired to constant vigilance, had replayed possibilities, methods, failures in endless loop. Thrill laced with exhaustion. His pale eyes shimmered faintly in the light, but the weight beneath them was unmistakable.
Lucian's gaze slid sideways, grey and unreadable. "You're tired," he said, voice low but certain.
Kael stiffened. "I'm fine."
"Liar." The word was almost affectionate. "Sleep. I'll keep watch."
The bluntness caught Kael off-guard. For someone like Lucian, whose world revolved around domination and control, the offer felt alien—yet it was delivered with matter-of-fact calm, as though this, too, was part of strategy.
Kael hesitated. But the hum of the train, the warmth of the compartment, and the sheer gravity of his fatigue dragged him under. He leaned back, lids heavy. Slowly, almost unwillingly, his head tilted sideways until it came to rest against Lucian's shoulder.
Lucian didn't move at first. He studied the boy beside him—the faint smudge of sleeplessness under his eyes, the fragile twitch of muscles finally conceding rest. A lesser creature would call it tender. For Lucian, it was utilitarian.
He is vital. His logic steadies my fire. His precision keeps my vision from dissolving into chaos. If he breaks, the hive burns before it ripens.
The train jolted. Without thinking, Lucian shifted, his arm sliding behind Kael's back, steadying him against the sudden motion. The boy didn't stir. His breath deepened, warm against Lucian's shoulder, a rhythm so human it felt almost obscene.
Lucian tilted his head back, watching the reflections of the city streak by in the dark window. He felt no warmth, no softness—only a sharpened certainty. This alliance was everything. To protect Kael's strength was to protect his own future.
Yet still, a thought lingered, uninvited: Not all are insects.
---
The train shuddered to a halt. Lucian's hand pressed briefly against Kael's shoulder, fingers tightening just enough to rouse him.
"Wake," he murmured.
Kael stirred, blinking, confusion clouding his pale eyes until memory snapped back into place. He straightened abruptly, embarrassed, brushing his hair from his face. "I—didn't mean to—"
Lucian's lips twitched. "You needed it."
There was no mockery in his tone. That alone unsettled Kael more than any taunt would have. He nodded, subdued, and followed Lucian off the train.
The streets to Lucian's house were hushed, damp with the residue of late evening. His neighborhood was quieter than Kael's, the houses taller, facades lined with hedges trimmed too precisely, as though no life dared grow wild.
Inside, Lucian's home was elegant but empty. His father was absent, working abroad. His mother—he knew without needing to look—was already out, lost to clubs and liquor, her return destined to be a stumble of shame in the small hours.
They dropped their bags in the hallway. Lucian moved smoothly through the rooms, the house responding to him like a tamed animal. He set out books on the polished table, notebooks stacked neatly. The ritual of study.
Kael sat across from him, shoulders loosening in the quiet. For all its emptiness, Lucian's home carried a strange comfort. Here, there was no clatter of neighbors, no hollow silence of his aunt's flat. Only stillness, deliberate and almost reverent.
They bent over their work, graphite scratching, pages turning. Occasionally Lucian's voice would cut the air with a question, precise and direct, pulling Kael back into the rhythm. Hours slipped, their minds moving in tandem, aligned.
At one point, Lucian rose, retrieving two glasses of water. He set one beside Kael without a word. Kael blinked, then lowered his gaze quickly, murmuring, "Thanks."
Lucian only inclined his head, as though it had been nothing at all.
For Kael, the moment lingered. This was what safety felt like—not absence of threat, but presence of certainty. That someone, even in silence, would keep watch. That he was not disposable. That he was, perhaps, indispensable.
For Lucian, the sensation was subtler, a recognition blooming like a bruise: the boy across from him was not vermin. He was the exception. The irreplacable keystone.
And so the house held them that night, two at a table littered with papers, their companionship edged with calculation, yet human enough to unsettle even themselves.