Cold white light seeped faintly from the ceiling, pushing back the darkness of the panic room. Baekgyeong lay on the frigid tiles, his entire body bound, his face a ghastly shade of bruised blue. Under the effects of the tranquilizer dart, he was in a deep sleep, showing no signs of waking.
Siron’s gaze, fixed on Baekgyeong’s prone form in the CCTV feed, sank with pain. The memories he’d buried resurfaced in a tangle, stirring a storm of conflicting emotions within him.
“Crisp image, right? Just had that installed,”
said a voice behind him. Siron quickly wiped the turmoil from his face. Anna had approached and laid a hand on his shoulder, as if to comfort him. Siron tilted his head slightly, looking up at her—she stood taller than him.
“Yes. It’s clear,”
he replied.
“You’ve been staring at the feed all this time? Don’t tell me you didn’t sleep.”
“I did sleep. ...Woke up in the middle, though.”
“Hard to sleep in a new place, right?”
“Yeah, a bit... haha.”
Siron couldn’t be honest. How was he supposed to tell her—that her brother had spent the entire night jerking off against the wall and that it kept him up?
“You should’ve slept longer.”
“I’m fine. I should head home now.”
“You’re going home? That’s way too dangerous.”
Staying here, with your brother and Baekgyeong both breathing down my neck, feels a lot more dangerous, Siron thought bitterly.
“What’s so dangerous about home?”
“You never know when Isaac might show up again.”
“What? Didn’t the cops arrest him? Don’t tell me they let him out?”
“What? ...Arrested by the cops?”
Confusion spread across Anna’s face. That’s when Siron noticed what she was holding: a neatly pressed navy shirt with a police badge sewn onto it.
“You’re a cop?”
“Yeah.”
“I had no idea.”
“Well, we haven’t exactly known each other long enough to know everything, right?”
She studied him quietly, then asked,
“So why did Isaac kidnap you—”
“Wait, Isaac wasn’t arrested by the police...?”
They both began speaking at the same time and trailed off, blinking at each other before breaking into a short laugh.
“Feels like this is going to be a long conversation, huh?”
Anna took the lead, her voice laced with a hint of dry humor.
“Yeah.”
“Then we’d better go somewhere else for this.”
“Good idea.”
She led him to the study on the second floor—a space once used by her parents, now converted into her personal workspace to investigate the murky circumstances of their deaths. But that investigation had stalled, and the room had long since been left to gather dust in her wandering detachment.
Together, they searched for any public information on Isaac Bazelli. But no documents or records on his crimes surfaced. Siron stared at the empty search results, disbelief thick in his voice.
“So you’re saying the police didn’t arrest him?”
“Law enforcement doesn’t work like that. Not in the U.S. Even a terrorist has their basic human rights and legal protections.”
Anna replied from across the heavy wooden desk. Siron, chewing on his lower lip, whispered almost too quietly to hear,
“Even if he’s a heinous murderer?”
“Murderer? Isaac Bazelli killed someone?”
She stared, and Siron took a long breath. He stepped into the tunnel of memories he’d wanted to avoid. After a pause, he answered with effort.
“There was a man who was kidnapped with me. He died. I didn’t see it happen—my eyes were covered—but he was dying in the back of the car. I’m sure of it. There were so many red flags. Isaac even said the other lab rats in his trial all died except for me.”
Anna took notes, then looked up with a steady gaze. Her tone was direct.
“It was a clinical trial for erectile dysfunction, right?”
“...What?”
Siron’s face flushed a violent red, as if it had been slapped by fire.
“Th-that’s... yeah. I mean, yes. That’s right. But now—it’s fine! I’m fine now!”
“You were cured through the trial?”
“Well... yeah. I guess, technically.”
He stumbled over his words, hesitating again and again. Anna’s eyes were intense and unflinching, drawing him in like the depths of the sea. Staring into them, Siron couldn’t help but think of Isaac’s similarly abyssal blue eyes.
“The clinical trial Isaac did on me was less of a treatment and more like...”
He hesitated. He wasn’t sure whether to tell her about being an omega—something even he still struggled to accept. But eventually, she’d find out through Lewis anyway.
And so Siron began to explain what Isaac had told him. That alphas and modern humans had diverged genetically, and that cross-reproduction between the two was impossible. That alphas were genetically designed with shorter lifespans.
“Alphas start experiencing this crazy spike in some gene around age 34. Because of it, their brain cells start dying.”
“Wait, what? Their brain cells?”
“Yeah.”
Siron realized, to his own surprise, that he was hoping Anna would say something like, “So it’s like when you get whacked on the head and lose brain cells, huh?”
But Anna, unlike him, cut straight to the core, even with the limited information.
“Then... they go into brain death eventually?”
“Yeah. It’s supposedly a disease common to all alphas. They call it Apollyon Syndrome.”
“Apollyon Syndrome? That’s Greek, isn’t it?”
“Uh... yeah.”
“No—wait. I think it might be from Hebrew.”
“Uh... that too. Probably.”
Siron refused to admit he didn’t know. Anna barely restrained her instinct to tease him.
“So how long do alphas live?”
He shook his head and answered grimly.
“They say they usually die of brain death by 35. It’s sad.”
He said it was sad, but the feeling in Anna’s chest wasn’t sorrow—it was more like suspicion. She set her pen down and muttered, deep in thought.
“How has this stayed hidden until now?”
“What?”
“NewLife Clinic tells families their loved ones will return to full cognitive function once they become alphas.”
“Maybe it’s being covered up?”
They both turned toward the voice at the doorway. Lewis stood leaning against the wall, watching them.
“Covered up? What would be the point? Everyone finds out eventually. It’s not even logical. Families would’ve chosen the alpha conversion anyway, even knowing it meant a shorter life. Better that than watching someone waste away in a coma. There was no need to hide it.”
He’d come close without them noticing. Now he dragged over a stool and sat beside Siron.
“I thought about it too. I don’t think the cover-up was for the patients’ families.”
“Then what for?”
“To control alpha violence.”
“Violence?”
“Do you think an alpha, staring down the end of their life, would just let themselves be taken down by a tranquilizer? To an alpha, the most important thing is releasing sexual tension...”
The moment Siron shot him a sharp look, Lewis’s breath hitched. He lost his train of thought, eyes wandering for a moment before he continued more carefully.
“If they knew they only had a few years left... imagine how many would go completely out of control.”
Lewis couldn’t meet either of their eyes and instead focused on the growth rings in the wood of the table.
“But most alphas don’t know they’re terminal. We need a future that doesn’t end in a prison cell. A future where we live upright, not locked away. That’s why panic rooms exist. That’s why they let us be taken down with tranquilizers.”
“You didn’t exactly let yourself be tranquilized, now did you?”
“Aw, Anna...”
Lewis looked up from the table and whined at her, trying to sound playful. But Anna’s face was still steel. Realizing she wasn’t in the mood for jokes, Lewis quickly pivoted.
“Anyway, I downloaded an interesting app recently.”
He pulled out his phone from his back pocket.
“It came through a link sent by Dealer H. There’s something... secretive about it.”
All three of their gazes turned to the phone Lewis placed on the center of the desk. In the middle of the screen, a cheery font displayed a sentence:
---
**Welcome to Hybris.
An online community for alphas.**
---
“What is this?” Anna’s eyes widened.
“Just what it says. An online community for alphas.”
“Ugh. This gives me a bad feeling. When did you install it?”
“A little over ten days ago.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just... didn’t want to share everything.”
After a pause, Lewis added,
“It’s not like I’m trying to hide behind an anonymous community. I just didn’t want to share my identity as an alpha.”
Anna scowled, but still listened. She wasn’t sure whether to count this as a matter of privacy or not.
“So what’s actually in it?”
She tapped the menu at the top of the screen. Only roman numerals—I, II, III—were displayed. Aside from the first, the links didn’t open. She touched the I tab.
---
Medical Support
We provide one-on-one personalized medical support to help alpha carriers live a healthier, more active life and reintegrate safely into society.
Our medical team fully understands the daily challenges of trait-carriers and is your trusted companion on the road to recovery.
※ If you need more information about medical support, feel free to contact us via chat. A professional counselor will assist you in real time.
---
“One-on-one personalized medical support? ...Are they talking about rut management?”
Anna reread the message several times, her {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} face hardening. Finally, with a biting edge, she muttered like a cruel joke:
“Well isn’t that just a glorified escort service?”
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