L*st and Death

Maybe it was the overdose of sleeping pills, or the prolonged dehydration. Singh’s veins had collapsed like deflated balloons. Only after countless punctures to both arms did something sharp and burning finally enter his bloodstream.

After a minute or so, his thin eyelids began to twitch, and sweat beaded on the tip of his nose—a sign that consciousness was returning. Frowning at the light pressing against his closed eyes, Singh slowly lifted his lids.

“Are you awake now?”

A low voice, smooth and calm, slipped into his ears. Singh immediately recognized it—unshakably indifferent, always collected. The voice of the man who'd just brought him back from the dead. Singh’s limp body, splayed like a dead fish across the deck, gave a sudden jolt.

“After a long nap like that, you must be feeling refreshed.”

Refreshed, his ass. Singh’s entire body screamed with pain, as if he’d tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs and crashed headfirst into the ground. And yet... he couldn’t remember what had happened to him. The intense white light blinding his vision made him feel like he’d woken up in heaven.

“Where... am I?”

“The ocean.”

“The ocean?”

Startled, Singh struggled to sit up, fumbling around on the floor to find his bearings. Still groggy, he stumbled several times before finally managing to grab hold of the railing. But what greeted him beyond the rail filled him with horror.

A pitch-black sea stretched endlessly before him. A low-hanging moon cast a shimmering curtain of silver across the waves, a beautiful façade masking the terrifying depths that lurked beneath. Singh recoiled from the sight, tripped over his own feet, and fell back.

“What the hell is this pla—ugh!”

The stench that had been tailing him from the moment he woke up suddenly became unbearable. Singh vomited sour stomach acid onto the deck. He could tell—the rot was coming from his own body. Turning toward the fresh breeze, he steadied his breath and finally rasped:

“What did you do to me?”

“Would you like the good news or the bad news first?”

Isaac ignored the question and offered another in its place. Realizing he had no choice but to play along with Isaac’s game, Singh swallowed hard and forced his nausea back down.

“Bad news first.”

Isaac leaned casually against the ship’s railing, arms folded.

“You’re going to die.”

Singh’s face stiffened for a moment. Then, with a dry laugh, he shrugged.

“How cliché. But sure, everyone dies eventually. So what’s my life expectancy?”

“The good news,” Isaac went on, again ignoring the question, “is that depending on how cooperative you are, you might survive this winter. Maybe even longer. There’s something I need you to do for me.”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

Isaac tilted his chin toward the black sea.

If Singh didn’t play along, he’d be sleeping beneath the waves by dawn.

Unable to look directly at the sea, Singh lowered his gaze. He didn’t resist as Isaac tied his arms together with rope. There was no point. He was the prisoner of a monster, trapped on a fishing vessel in the middle of nowhere, with death hovering close by. Unless Isaac collapsed from another one of his seizures, Singh had no way of overturning the situation.

His thoughts still foggy, Singh groped through his memories, trying to recall what had happened before he lost consciousness. He’d been disposing of data at the satellite tower when Isaac caught him. And the data in question wasn’t just any file—it was directly connected to subject 3543. It included the DNA sequencing of the first omega born after Yuri Berec’s death. It wasn’t just biological metadata—it was definitive proof that 3543 was an omega.

Singh had already uploaded the same data to a secure cloud server. Anyone with access credentials could retrieve it. If someone found that record, it was only a matter of time before 3543’s true identity was revealed.

“...How pathetic.”

Staring blankly down at the rope binding his wrists, Singh muttered. He’d played a key role in the creation of an omega. He’d been promised a payout of over five million dollars’ worth of crypto. But now, not only was his retirement dream dead—his life was hanging by a thread.

With an ease that made it look like he was hoisting a child, Isaac lifted Singh and perched him precariously on the railing. Singh looked up at him in fear.

“What... what are you trying to do?”

“You don’t seem like the type to jump on your own.”

A light push would be enough to send him plunging into the sea.

“There’s no need to go this far.”

“When you’re dealing with a cunning old man, you do.”

Isaac looped the end of the rope around a metal ring on the railing, securing Singh in place. Then he gripped Singh’s shoulder and locked eyes with him.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. And you’re going to answer truthfully. Don’t bother lying—some of the things I’m going to ask, I already know the answers to. If you lie, or if you fail to give me anything useful—”

Isaac gestured calmly toward the black water below.

“You’ll get to taste the sea. So don’t mess this up.”

Singh stared at him, terrified, then let out a hollow, nervous laugh.

“And if you ask something I can’t answer? I’m just a research assistant—”

“What’s the meaning behind the numbers assigned to the abductees? For example—3543. Does that mean they were the 3,543rd abductee?”

Why 3543? Why that specific number—the one tied to the omega?

Singh, his mouth dry, looked at Isaac in stunned silence before eventually giving in.

“3543. It means the 543rd subject from Island 3.”

“So there are other islands conducting experiments.”

Singh licked his parched lips. He remembered how Isaac had faked 3543’s experiment results—deceiving him from the start.

“Yeah. But not all of them work on converting betas to omegas. Most just manufacture Etas for distribution. That’s all I know. But... did you escape with 3543?”

Isaac didn’t answer. Instead, he asked his next question.

“Where do you take the Etas?”

Singh glanced back and forth between Isaac and the sea, recalling the old saying: a cat has nine lives. If every lie cost him one life, that meant he had eight lies left.

Unfortunately, Singh wasn’t a cat. He had only one life—and he needed to find out just how much Isaac really knew. How deep his understanding of Hybris ran.

“They’re taken to Mexico. Sold at auction in Quintana Roo, priced according to demand. Bought by wealthy alphas from around the world.”

“You mean they’re privately owned? ...Sounds a lot like what happened in Belzoras.”

“Yeah, that’s right. It was the same thing in Belzoras.”

Isaac showed no surprise. No flicker of recognition. His expression remained completely flat, unreadable. Then, with a soft exhale, he murmured:

“Thirty seconds.”

“...What?”

“I’ll give you thirty seconds to come up with a better answer.”

Then Isaac kicked him—square in the gut.

Singh’s body, barely balanced on the railing, toppled and plunged into the sea. Darkness swallowed him. Freezing water poured into his throat, his nose, his lungs. Thrashing in blind panic, he was dragged back up exactly thirty seconds later.

He collapsed onto the deck, coughing violently, gasping for air. Any thought of bluffing Isaac was gone—completely obliterated.

“Khuhhk! Cough! H-Hellso—Kehkk! Hellsota!”

“You mean the U.S. state of Hellsota?”

“Yeah! Huhh— That’s—That’s the one.”

“Where in Hellsota do they take them?”

“I don’t know! I really don’t! Just... I heard it was some kind of island!”

“I’ll give you another chance to think. Is one minute enough?”

“I really don’t know! I swear I don’t!”

Isaac leaned against the fish processing table, watching Singh with cold detachment as he hacked and gagged like a drowning man. Sprawled like a wet rag, Singh was utterly spent. Without an ounce of sympathy, Isaac hauled him back to the railing.

“You lied to me. Back when your people operated in Belzoras, none of the abductees were sold as private property. Loaned to alphas, maybe. But never sold.”

After escaping the BRI by setting it on fire, Isaac Bazelli had lived for years as a mercenary under a fabricated identity. In 2009, while investigating a missing persons case, he stumbled upon evidence of a trafficking ring supplying eleven adults—men and women—to an unknown buyer. This wasn’t the usual child trafficking seen on the black market. These were adults over eighteen.

The abductees were civilians labeled as “social disruptors” by the authoritarian regime of Belzoras—politicians, CEOs, soldiers, ordinary citizens. The government, in secret collusion with traffickers, had them abducted instead of sent to forced labor camps, as a means of population control.

Through various informants, Isaac learned those abductees had their identities erased and were forced into sex work. But back then, he had no interest in exposing the trafficking operation—especially not one backed by a military dictatorship. He moved on.

It wasn’t until 2010 that Isaac began suspecting a link between the trafficking ring and alpha traits.

While searching for Rafael Javier Harris—the missing son of a Belzorasian rum magnate—Isaac discovered a shadow network of brothels catering specifically to large-bodied men.

The abducted victims were used to satisfy the ruts of wealthy alphas.

The brothels were disguised as tropical island resorts, accessible only by private ferries far from the Belzoras coast. These VIP cruises masked their true nature with luxury packaging, and continued operating under the regime’s protection.

Most of the abductees didn’t survive even six months. Those who did return found no help—ignored by authorities, abandoned by society.

In 2011, during the collapse of the dictatorship—a moment known as The Dawn of Belzoras—attention briefly turned to the missing labor camp prisoners. But a coup and a wave of massacres quickly buried the story. Under military censorship, evidence was erased, and even survivors began to vanish. The truth was swallowed whole.

Had death not come knocking on his own life, Isaac, too, would’ve walked away. But one day, the countdown began—and everything changed when his colleague Marta Monto’s son disappeared.

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