L*st and Death

As Isaac stepped out of the elevator that had stopped on the ground floor, he was met by a group of armed alphas. They unlocked his cuffs with practiced hands, and Isaac now stood before the lab doors. One of the armed men pulled a card key from his chest pocket and tagged it. The doors slid open, revealing the research facility beyond.

If the underground level was meant for prisoners, the ground floor was for research. The facility contained a cell culture lab, a bioinformatics suite, and other rooms outfitted with specialized equipment for genetic engineering.

Something about the place felt nostalgic. It reminded Isaac of the Federal Biological Research Institute (BRI), where he had spent his adolescence before setting the place on fire and escaping at age eighteen. The setup here was smaller and more high-tech, but the cold, mechanical atmosphere of a research institute had been replicated in uncanny detail.

Most of all, it was the presence of a certain man that stirred that nostalgia in him. The researcher who had tested Isaac’s physical limits every single day was now sitting right before him, reading the news as though the past fifteen years had never happened.

“It's been a week. Milk tea? Or would you prefer herbal?”

Manu Singh—British-Indian—didn’t take his eyes off the digital newspaper on his monitor as he offered the choice, as casually as if greeting a coworker. Isaac stared at him expressionlessly, then replied in a voice that was, by comparison, surprisingly light.

“I’d prefer an espresso, actually.”

Singh lowered his glasses to the bridge of his nose and turned his head. With dull yellowed sclera and cloudy, murky gray irises, he peered at Isaac, then clicked his tongue. Displeased to be bothered into brewing coffee when he already had perfectly steeped tea, he rose from his chair and walked off to the kitchenette.

Isaac’s gaze drifted to the monitor Singh had been reading. The taskbar showed the date: 2014-09-04. Singh was reading a news article from September 4. It was a follow-up piece on the collapse of the Langford Bridge connecting Baggers City to Gamptiva Island. The report noted that more missing persons had been discovered along various coastlines in the wake of the disaster.

As soon as Singh mentioned the Langford Bridge collapse, Isaac had immediately thought of Yoon Siron. The image of the boy, who had somehow survived in Isaac’s hidden refuge, being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time flashed chillingly through his mind.

Isaac stared at the computer—baited like a piece of cheese on a trap. If the tracking chip inside Siron was still functioning, he could identify his exact location to within twenty meters by inputting the chip’s serial number. But any move he made on the computer would be monitored in real-time through the surveillance cameras.

By then, Singh had returned with a freshly brewed espresso and set it down in front of Isaac.

“How was the rut cycle?”

Isaac ignored the amused glint in Singh’s eyes and took a slow sip of the espresso.

“Like a season in hell.”

“Ha!”

Singh laughed and nodded, folding his arms.

“A season in hell, huh... Good poetry collection. I used to have it memorized when I was young. Forgotten most of it by now.”

Isaac offered a smile that was neither agreement nor denial and gazed out the window at the endless horizon.

“All your cravings, your selfishness, your great crimes will bring you death.”

A line from the prologue of A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud. Singh had once made Isaac memorize every single one of Rimbaud’s poems. He liked the sound of Isaac’s low voice, and depending on his mood, would order the boy to recite them like a tape player. The scientist’s romantic facade had masked his complete disregard for the pain of the boy writhing through nerve stimulation and limb-severance tests. It all came rushing back to Isaac as vividly as if it were yesterday.

Nearly twenty years had passed since then, and yet Isaac remembered every poem without a single mistake. Meanwhile, human memory, so frail and fickle—Singh had clearly forgotten everything he’d done to Isaac.

“I might be stuck making humans who spread their legs for alphas now, but once upon a time, I wanted to be a poet.”

Singh followed Isaac’s gaze. They were somewhere on an island in the Caribbean. The open sea spread out endlessly before them. Singh’s eyes drifted into that void, his expression hardening into an unreadable blank.

After a long silence, Singh took a sip of his now-lukewarm milk tea and spoke again.

“Got a strange one while you were in rut.”

Annoyed by a tea leaf in his mouth, he spat it out into a napkin before continuing.

“Said he could cook the hell out of curry. Asked me how to get hired as a chef.”

Singh chuckled and stroked his greasy beard slowly.

“Guess he assumed I’d like curry just from looking at my brown face. Not entirely wrong, but I’ll admit—it stung my pride a bit. Said he’d worked nearly ten years at some Indian restaurant in Helsota, trained under a master curry chef. Couldn’t believe it. I mean, how the hell does a guy like that end up homeless?”

Isaac, sipping his coffee and feigning disinterest, slowed his movements slightly. His tone stayed flat and indifferent, but he felt his heart begin to pound for no reason.

“We’ll see once he starts working, I guess. Might be better than the garbage they’re feeding us now.”

“Eh, I’m half British, so I don’t really care what I eat. But the guy just wouldn’t let it go—kept pestering me about it. What did he say again? Kim... Kimchi-something? Said he was especially good at making that.”

Singh squinted, puzzling it out like he was trying to solve a riddle just on the tip of his tongue.

“Kimchi-something. What the hell even is that?”

Q: What’s the moment you regret most in your life?

A: Regret? Eating kimchi stew instead of salad last night. (laughs) I’ve been cutting back on water all day for a photoshoot, so I’m a bit parched. Regret’s always something minor like that for me. Honestly, no decision really affects my mood that much. Even if I make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. No decision is perfect—you just live in the moment and enjoy it.

At this point in time, Siron wanted to give a different answer.

A: Regret? Shit, I’ve got a whole list. But if I had to pick, I regret accepting Anna’s idiotic suggestion to “investigate homeless disappearances” for a measly $3,000. I regret trusting Lewis when he said he’d be watching from outside the building. Take this to heart: impulsive decisions will ruin your life. But of course, you never really understand that until you live through it.

Meeting Baekgyeong turned into the worst scandal of his entertainment career. Volunteering for Isaac’s clinical trial had made him into an omega who goes into rut at the scent of pheromones. And now, after playing homeless under the oh-so-clever McCarthy siblings’ plan, he’d ended up kidnapped to some mystery island swarming with alphas.

“Please let me go! I swear I won’t tell anyone. Okay? Please. I have kids waiting for me!”

“Let me go! Do you hear me? Please, just listen!”

“Call my son—tell him his father’s been kidnapped and he’ll pay whatever you want! Don’t you want money?”

If the man who experimented on Siron yesterday was right, then today was September 3. That meant this was his third day since waking up on the unnamed island. Even after days of beatings, some of the other captives were still clinging to the hope of bargaining with their kidnappers, their voices hoarse as they wept and clung to the bars.

They’re just gonna get beaten again.

Siron sighed, watching them with heavy eyes. If he could’ve, he’d have pressed a mute button and turned them all off.

The air in the prison was thick and still—no breeze, no A/C. Siron lay on the lukewarm concrete floor, staring up at the ceiling. Thinking hurt too much. It just made him more anxious. He didn’t want to dwell on anything. But a voice interrupted even this small escape, coming from directly above his face.

“What do you think they’re doing with these experiments? Super [N O V E L I G H T] soldiers? Or maybe... mind-controlling suicide bombers who follow orders via telepathy?”

A sweat-soaked face hovered suddenly into view, skin sickly and yellowed. Siron flinched, barely managing not to headbutt the man as he reflexively tensed.

“Secret weapons! That’s what this is about, right? It’s a huge threat to humanity—we have to stop it!”

The man’s eyes were bloodshot, pupils abnormally dilated. His neck and arms were scratched raw—likely from repeated drug use.

Holy shit. That scared the fuck out of me.

Siron gently pushed the man away and retreated to a corner.

There were thirteen people kidnapped alongside Siron. All of them were homeless men from the southern region. They had signed up for the “homeless relocation program,” hoping to take a long-distance bus ticket back to their families—only to be intercepted and dragged to the island.

Waiting for them were around ten alphas. The moment they stepped off the bus in confusion, they were herded into a large auditorium and forced into degrading military-style hazing. Anyone who resisted or lagged behind was beaten within an inch of consciousness.

The captives ranged in age and race, most in their twenties to forties—but all of them, curiously, were male. Likely because male homelessness was far more prevalent, sparing female homeless people from becoming the kidnappers’ targets.

Guess that’s something to be grateful for. Men can take a beating better, at least.

If he’d had to witness a woman subjected to this kind of violence, Siron’s heart would’ve shattered far faster than it had watching men take the blows.

But pain was inescapable either way.

My whole body still fucking aches.

Siron looked down at his bruised and battered limbs. The relentless hazing had left his muscles stiff and sore. His already injured face—hurt during his earlier confrontation with Joseph Miller—had been smashed again. His swollen eyelid now looked like a dumpling. But now wasn’t the time to worry about appearances. If anything, he was lucky—his ruined face had helped him avoid standing out.

Otherwise, they’d have destroyed my ass by now.

If he’d been brought here with no prior information like the others, he might’ve cracked already. But Siron had an idea of what came next. Just like V3011, the homeless men here would be “delivered” to alphas to help them relieve their rut cycles.

Focus, Yoon Siron. Stay sharp.

Even if his world had crumbled and the end of his life was looming, he couldn’t afford to give up. He had to keep a low profile and wait for a moment of carelessness—then escape.

His eyes flared with sharp resolve.

At that moment, the gate opposite the cell opened, and two armed men appeared.

“3543, 3547. You’re moving to the research block.”

3543. Siron’s new name.

A chill ran down his spine as sweat beaded and slid down his forehead. Legs wobbling, he barely managed to rise and shout:

“Y-Yes, coming!”

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