L*st and Death

Pheromones that stung the tip of his nose were seeping out through the crack in the door. Suppressing his discomfort, Lewis forced a cheerful tone as he asked:

“Standby mode optimized for pleasure? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means a banquet has been prepared for you.”

“Hearing it put that way gets me kind of excited.”

Lewis rubbed his palms together and laughed, pretending to be eager. Dylan stared at him with a sharp, impenetrable gaze and said:

“Usually, greenhorns like you are only allowed access to the floors between 15 and 17. You can’t go above the 18th or below the 14th.”

“Huh? But this is the 12th floor. Why’d you bring me here?”

“Because I liked your face. And besides, you didn’t strike me as the type to feel guilt over something as trivial as sex.”

“What?”

Lewis frowned, unable to believe what he just heard. Dylan narrowed his eyes like someone who’d lost their glasses.

“Even if it disgusts you, enjoy it.”

“...What the hell does that mean?”

As he watched the smile slowly vanish from Lewis’s face, Dylan pulled out a blue card key. It seemed to be the building’s master key—when he held it up to the reader, the door opened without fail once again.

Dylan flung the door wide open. Contrary to Lewis’s expectation of a dark, foul cave-like space, the room was clean. Inside was an older man of Hispanic descent.

“What the—who’s this guy?”

“Go in.”

Reflexively about to step into the room at Dylan’s command, Lewis quickly turned around. Dylan stood in the hallway, merely watching him.

“Who is he?”

“The one providing medical support to Lewis McCarthy.”

“Medical support? ...Don’t tell me, sex?”

“Just five minutes in there with him and you’ll want him.”

Dylan smiled strangely, like a vampire sending a fledgling out on its first hunt.

“Don’t kill him. Would be better if you used him sparingly.”

The door closed behind him, leaving Lewis alone in the room. He knocked, twisted the knob, but the massive metal door didn’t budge. Staying calm to assess the situation, Lewis looked around the interior. In the center of the room was a king-sized bed. Opposite it, a small flat-screen TV mounted to the wall played foreign news. There was a minibar, a long console table, an armchair, and a bathroom equipped with a shower. Aside from the lack of windows, it felt like a cheap business hotel.

Lying on the bed was a man who looked to be in his fifties, panting heavily.

The man referred to as V3011 was drenched in sweat and mumbling incoherently. Amid the stench radiating from him, there was something oddly stimulating—a distinct, sharp smell that could never mix with anything else. But it wasn’t pleasant. If roasted corn were to rot, it would probably smell like this.

And disturbingly enough, the stench from V3011 subtly stimulated the arousal centers in Lewis’s brain. Frozen in shock by the door for a long moment, Lewis hesitantly stepped forward.

“A-Are you okay?”

On the bed lay a paper box of donuts and a half-eaten hamburger combo, casually strewn about. Grease and ketchup stained the man’s mouth. He stirred under the blanket, muttering to himself nonstop.

“Uh... Hace mucho... calor. ...Mucho calor.”

“Hey.”

Covering his nose and mouth with his left hand, Lewis waved in front of the man’s face and snapped his fingers to get his attention, but there was no response. On closer inspection, the man’s eyes were unfocused, pupils dilated.

“Ay... sálva...me. ...Uh...”

“Sorry? I don’t understand. Can you speak English?”

The man groaned with dazed eyes, shifting restlessly. He looked like he was high on something.

“...Hace calor.... Ah...”

Spanish? Or maybe °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° Portuguese? Mexico? Brazil? Or perhaps someone smuggled in from nearby Beljoras. Did he come here on his own, or was he abducted?

Abducted.

The word popped into his head, and Lewis’s heart sank. V3011 wasn’t some park-side prostitute selling himself for drug money. This was a serious crime scene. The man had clearly been kidnapped and imprisoned.

Lewis reached toward the blanket that had been twitching, bothering him for some time now. The center of the blanket was moving up and down rapidly. V3011 seemed to be masturbating underneath it.

When Lewis pulled the blanket back, his suspicion was confirmed—he was jerking himself off. And with the blanket removed, the pheromones pooled inside rushed out, releasing a suffocating stench. It was then that Lewis realized—his body was absorbing V3011’s pheromones like a sponge. No matter how much he willed himself otherwise, he couldn’t block them out or escape them.

“You didn’t... actually sleep with that poor guy, did you?”

Anna asked cautiously, glancing at Siron. The abrupt question left Lewis speechless, and he forgot what he’d meant to say.

“You got swept up in the pheromones again and caused another mess? Flung your dick around again without—”

“Excuse me, Anna. Why are you asking a question like that while looking at me?”

Siron sharply cut her off with an annoyed expression. Flustered, Anna turned to Lewis, who looked back at her with a face twisted with a mix of contempt, fear, and pity—all tangled up together.

“So? Did you really do it?”

“Absolutely not.”

Lewis denied it calmly, though he felt wronged. Denying it too vehemently felt like it would be a betrayal to the man left behind in that room.

“I didn’t even want to, and more than that, I didn’t want to become an accomplice.”

He continued, scowling.

“If I were some dumb alpha with nothing but sex on my mind, maybe I’d have lost control. But I’m not that kind of trash.”

Siron and Anna looked at him with the same disapproving frown. Realizing they were silently condemning him in unison, Lewis shifted his body, protesting his innocence.

“Siron! Anna! I’m not that far gone.”

“Hmph, well. That’s what you say.”

“Bebe, I’m serious. I didn’t do it.”

Siron asked with a blank look:

“Then why didn’t you lose control? You’re sensitive to pheromones—shouldn’t you have been the first to get overwhelmed?”

“I’ve still got my sanity, and I took a suppressant, remember? But more than that, the pheromones from that guy and the blonde woman—they weren’t real.”

“What do you mean, ‘weren’t real’?”

After a moment of thought, Lewis answered as if he’d found the right way to describe it.

“It’s not a perfect comparison, but let me put it this way. Real alpha and omega pheromones are like a live concert—vivid, powerful, immersive. But theirs... theirs were like 8-bit game music. Flat. Simplistic. It just hit you with raw, one-dimensional lust.”

Maybe that’s why his rut cycle had triggered earlier than expected. But it was a very different kind of rut from before. If his previous rut felt like a dam breaking and violent waves flooding everything, this time the dam remained intact, and the water simply overflowed—quietly.

Maybe it was the suppressant. Maybe it was that V3011’s pheromones simply weren’t potent enough. Either way, Lewis had barely managed to hold on to his reason. He’d called for staff through the internal intercom and made it out—but Dylan had already vanished.

“So how did you find us again after we left the building?”

“Your pheromones. The moment I caught a whiff of Bebe’s scent in the breeze, I nearly lost it.”

At the mention of that night, Lewis’s eyes changed. Sensing her younger brother’s libido reigniting, Anna quickly changed the subject.

“Did you find out anything else?”

As Anna asked, something seemed to flash through Lewis’s mind. He hurriedly pulled something from his pocket and placed it on the table. A small white plastic pill bottle, about the size of an espresso cup.

Siron carefully twisted open the cap. Inside were several strands of hair neatly wrapped in tissue, and two small, tablet-shaped pills. Rewrapping the hair in tissue, Siron asked:

“Hair from that V3-something guy? To find missing persons?”

“Yeah. I yanked it out by the root. Figured we could ID him with DNA. Anna, can you look him up?”

“...I can check the database. But we’d need a private lab to run the actual profile.”

“Is there any way to get help from the government or media? This feels like... something too big for even a cop, a celebrity, and a black belt in taekwondo to solve.”

Anna briefly wondered what taekwondo had to do with anything but answered honestly.

“Yeah. I wish this was something that could be solved by just filing a report.”

“Wait—Bebe, you’re a black belt?”

“Eh, from way back. Just a hobby.”

“Can you do flying kicks? Like, full 180-degree splits? I quit taekwondo because I couldn’t even do the splits.”

“Of course I can.”

“No wonder you’re so flexible. Your legs spread so easy—zip, zip.”

“What the fuck is this drug?!”

Anna shut down the two men’s irritating conversation with a sharp bark and pointed to the pills on the tissue. One was a rhombus shape, the other half-dissolved, misshapen, like someone had chewed it.

Lewis winced as Siron jabbed him sharply with his elbow but dutifully explained.

“Both were in the trash. The intact one was stuck to the side of the bottle. Looks like V3011 took it. The color and shape screamed party drug.”

The pill had a unique color—deep red with a dark undertone, reminiscent of aged cherries.

“Cherry-colored?”

“Exactly. A dark cherry. Ring any bells?”

Anna felt a familiar memory clawing its way to the surface. She didn’t answer Siron. She couldn’t. Gripping her head, she tried not to lose focus.

“I had sex here. It was... insanely good.”

“What drug did you take that day?”

“Drug? ...Oh, Neopeak. The guy gave it to me.”

Suddenly, Anna realized what the déjà vu had been. Neopeak—the drug used by the homeless prostitute who had been the victim in the motel rape case.

“I think I know what this is.”

Anna’s face flushed red. According to the victim, the cherry-colored drug didn’t just intensify orgasms—it made them come over and over again. It erased pain with extreme sexual euphoria, pushing users into a spiral of endless pleasure. Anna groaned and rubbed her forehead. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember the victim’s name.

“I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

Anna grabbed her bag and shot to her feet. She knew exactly what she had to do: the Homeless Support Center. The social service agency where she’d transferred the motel case victim.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!