L*st and Death

Siron blushed at Anna’s unsettling hypothesis—that he might become instinctively aroused by alpha pheromones.

“It probably only happens during rut. I got a little excited when Baekgyeong was in rut too.”

“So your theory is that you only respond to rut-cycle pheromones?”

“Yes.”

“Just to be sure, we should test whether you react to an alpha’s regular pheromones.”

“No way. Come on, that’s not gonna happen.”

Despite his denial, Siron glanced at Lewis with an anxious expression.

“Are you giving off pheromones right now?”

“Huh? No. I’m suppressing them.”

Lewis slid an arm around Siron’s shoulder and pulled him in close, bringing his lips near Siron’s ear. In a quiet, soft voice, low enough that Anna wouldn’t hear, he whispered:

“We’ll test it when we get home. I’ll soak you in pheromones.”

The tickle of Lewis’s breath made Siron burst into laughter, but just as quickly, he wiped the smile off his face and jabbed Lewis in the side with his elbow. Lewis flinched from the sharp pain but still clung to Siron, playing around and refusing to stop teasing.

“I feel sick, so knock it off. For fuck’s sake, stop radiating ‘we just fucked’ energy.”

At Anna’s crude remark, Siron flushed red and quickly gulped down some water. Shuffling away from Lewis toward the edge of the booth, he scratched his cheek awkwardly, suddenly overcome with gloom. Even after four straight days of nonstop sex with Lewis, his skin was still smooth, hairless, almost feminine.

He still couldn’t fully grasp what it meant to be a complete omega. Isaac had said that if the heat cycle progressed normally, the inner cervix would begin to open—but all of it still felt unreal, like some nebulous, distant thing.

Isaac’s whereabouts were still unknown, and Siron’s body was changing, slowly but surely. He had no idea how to return to his original form, nor could he even fully comprehend what being an omega truly meant. Eventually, after much deliberation, Siron arrived at a single conclusion. If he couldn’t understand what an omega was, then he would try to understand what it meant to be an alpha. As it happened, he, Lewis, and Anna were all aligned in that goal—so Lewis was tasked with approaching the secretive organization known as Hybris.

As they divided the dishes on the table and sampled bits of each, a question Siron had pushed aside returned to his mind.

“What actually happened that day, after you got in the car at Twin Mall?”

Lewis was chewing a mouthful of classic burger. He paused, chewed slowly, and answered:

“The car? Oh, the one I got into... yeah. So, there was a counselor inside. She introduced herself as Counselor H, but I don’t think she was the same person I talked to online.”

“Then who was she?”

“A bait product.”

At Lewis’s incomprehensible response, both Siron and Anna set their food down and waited for him to elaborate.

Lewis began recounting his experience—how he met a woman who emitted pheromones similar to an omega but wasn’t one, how a fellow alpha named Dylan led him through the Baggers City chapter of Hybris and showed him around the facility.

“She released pheromones but wasn’t an omega? ...Maybe they call her an Eta just because they don’t know the word omega?”

“I don’t think so.”

Lewis shook his head at Siron’s question. He pushed his empty burger plate to the corner and pulled the plate of pancakes toward him.

“She was different from you. Her pheromones weren’t the same.”

“You said they were sensual.”

“Yeah. Sensual, sure. But... a different kind of sensation.”

Lewis tried to explain, but the right words escaped him. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

Then Anna cut into their conversation.

“I looked up what Hybris means.”

She slid her phone to the center of the table. On the screen was an encyclopedia entry listing a set of ancient Greek terms. ὕβρις—read as hubris or hybris. The page explained in detail that the term referred to excessive arrogance or pride, and that in ancient Greek culture, such traits were seen as acts of defiance against divine order.

“Everything about it screams psycho cult. What kind of group are they, really? I doubt they exist just to offer legal services to alphas who commit crimes.”

Anna’s voice turned serious as she stared at the screen. Lewis looked down at the syrup-drenched pancakes in front of him. They had cooled to an edible temperature, practically inviting him to eat—but what he was about to say next made him lose all appetite.

Just remembering it made his stomach turn. With a grim expression, he set his fork and knife down and crossed his arms defensively.

“There was a suspicious emergency exit connected to the fifteenth floor. Looked like it led to medical support. So I went in.”

Lewis McCarthy, a tall white man in his twenties. Sexually uninhibited, lacking empathy. Speaks bluntly enough to provoke hostility. His rough style of sex had already driven most women away long ago. What he needed now was a prostitute who could satisfy his endless lust—without consequence.

Lewis mentally reviewed the character profile of the man he was pretending to be: Lewis McCarthy. A guy bold enough to visit an organization he knew nothing about in search of paid sex. The kind of man who, above all else, prioritized the release of his destructive sexual urges.

As he followed behind Dylan, trying to appear cocky, he couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling.

He was afraid that the “personalized one-on-one medical support” the Hybris counselor had mentioned really meant prostitution. Because anyone servicing alphas couldn’t possibly be sane. It was a filthy world—one he didn’t want to examine too closely, like mold hidden under a thick rug.

Dylan held a blue keycard to the reader beside the emergency door. The heavy lock disengaged. That an emergency door even required unlocking was already suspicious.

And the strange details didn’t stop there.

“The stairwell’s blocked?”

The stairs going up to the sixteenth floor were sealed. Lewis rapped on the metal wall—it had no doorknob and didn’t budge, probably welded shut from the outside. He pressed his palm hard against it to test the thickness, but all it gave back was a heavy, hollow sound.

“Why the hell would you block an emergency stairwell? If there’s a fire, people will burn alive.”

“That’s what it’s for.”

Dylan’s cryptic reply made Lewis’s heart beat faster. But Dylan just smirked at his unease and walked downstairs.

“Kidding. The real exit’s on the other side.”

The stairwell ended on the twelfth floor. The door was sealed like a bank vault.

“Wait—does that mean there’s no emergency exit from the twelfth to the fourteenth floors?”

“Correct.”

“And the elevator doesn’t stop on those floors either?”

“Right. Not bad. You’re smarter than I thought.”

If the elevator was programmed to bypass them, then the only way in or out of floors 12 to 14 was through the fake emergency exit on 15.

They were clearly hiding something. Otherwise, there would’ve been no need for such elaborate restrictions.

At the twelfth floor, Dylan once again used his card on the reader. As Lewis stepped inside, his first impression was that it looked like a luxury prison.

Beyond the security and control rooms was a barricade, and past that, a long carpeted hallway. The entire corridor was thick with alpha pheromones, clinging like grease. And mixed faintly within that were sensual notes—traces of a different pheromone.

Dylan walked up to a service window along the hallway. Behind it sat a burly middle-aged man and a young, slender man, both wearing bored expressions. Dylan tapped on the glass, startling the older one out of his magazine.

“What brings you here...?”

Dylan asked,

“Do you have any Etas available right now?”

The older man scanned Lewis, then tapped away at his keyboard.

“One moment... Mm, we still have V3011.”

“V3011? Seriously?”

Dylan’s brow furrowed ever so slightly.

“They’re mostly booked. No open slots. Usually it’s all by reservation...”

The man trailed off, offering a vague apology.

“Hmph. That’s inconvenient.”

Dylan turned to Lewis with a mischievous expression. The easy confidence had drained from Lewis’s face—he now looked nervous. Locking eyes with him, Dylan spoke.

“Alright then. Prep V3011.”

“Yes, understood.”

The younger staffer grabbed a small suitcase and stepped out. He scanned his card at the reader, unlocked the heavy barricade, then briskly walked down the hall and turned right out of sight.

Meanwhile, Lewis was subjected to a full-body security check like he was at an airport. He had to surrender his phone at the service window too.

Ten minutes later, the young staffer returned. His face was flushed with excitement.

“We’re ready. This way, please.”

Lewis followed Dylan down the hallway, eyes quickly scanning the area. Rooms lined both sides. Each door had a digital display reading things like: Service Suspended, Optimization Standby Mode, External Assistance—vague terms that hinted at something more beneath the surface.

“There’s a lot of ‘service suspended’ signs... What’s that about?”

The sticky pheromones clinging to the air made Lewis feel nauseous. Even though the ventilation fans were running constantly, the musk of excited alphas had settled like layers of cigarette tar.

“Who knows. Maybe they’re defective.”

Defective?

Before Lewis could even process that, Dylan stopped walking.

On the panel next to the door in front of them, the display read:

No. V3011

Optimization Standby Mode

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