Silent Gods

In the incubator chamber, the girl's dark honey-colored eyes narrowed.

It was not a gesture of pain. It was something closer to conscious awakening—the expression of someone who, after an interminable sleep, opens their eyes and recognizes,

for the first time, where they are.

The monitors went haywire all at once. Kessler recoiled from the control panel, his voice catching in his throat.

— Doctor, the values are—

The glass of the incubator cracked, fissures propagating in a perfect geometric pattern, as if something from within had decided exactly where to break its own shell. Then, all

together, the cylinder exploded outward, the nutrient fluid spilling across the floor in a blue wave, the glass fragments dissolving into fine dust before they could even touch the

ground.

The girl emerged from the remains of the capsule, her body drenched in fluid, her legs trembling for an instant—not calm, not regal, but uncertain, like a newborn animal that

does not yet trust its own weight.

She stood motionless, her gaze drifting slowly across the chamber, across the too-white lights, across the faces in white coats observing her from behind the glass. There was

no understanding in those eyes. Only a flash of something that could have been confusion, or perhaps—deeper, older—a pain she did not yet know she carried within herself.

— Subject B. — Aldric approached cautiously, a thermal towel extended between her hands. — How do you feel?

The girl did not answer. Her gaze was already elsewhere—fixed beyond Aldric's shoulder, through the reinforced glass wall separating that chamber from the next, where

Freyja's capsule continued to pulse with its own blue light.

She took a step toward the glass. Then another.

— Subject B, stop. — Halloway's voice grew tense. — The protocol requires the test of—

She did not listen. She crossed the chamber at a slow but unstoppable pace, ignoring the towel still extended toward her, ignoring the voices behind her, until she stopped

before the glass, her palm pressed flat against the cold surface.

On the other side, suspended in her luminescent fluid, Freyja opened her eyes.

It was an agonizingly slow movement—the goddess had ceased moving days earlier, her body reduced to little more than a container from which to extract, drop by drop, what

remained of her essence. But now, before that palm pressed against the glass, something in her stirred enough to turn her head, her half-lidded eyes settling on the girl with heartbreaking recognition.

*They took something of mine*, that gaze seemed to say, without words, without any of the scientists able to hear anything. *And now you carry within you everything that remains of me.*

The girl pressed her forehead against the glass, her eyes closed, her breathing growing uneven for the first time since she had emerged from the incubator. The golden veins

beneath her skin pulsed in synchrony with those, now faint, of Freyja's dying body—two different hearts that, for an instant, beat as one.

*I'm sorry.* The thought did not entirely belong to her. *I don't even know who I am. But I know that what they took from you is now inside me, and I didn't choose it.*

Freyja did not respond in words. A tear slid down her grayish cheek, golden, luminous, dissolving into the fluid—and the girl felt that pain pass through her entirely, a grief that was not hers and yet shook her to the bone.

— Move her away from the glass. — Aldric's voice turned sharp. — Subject A's parameters are collapsing, we cannot afford prolonged interaction—

Two technicians grabbed her arms, pulling her back with a force that made her stumble. She offered no resistance—she remained staring at Freyja's capsule as they dragged

her away, her eyes still glistening with a pain that, for the first time, seemed authentically her own.

They led her into the containment chamber, a white coat thrown over her shoulders without her seeming to notice, the fabric swaying around her body like an oversized

garment, white as the ash she was about to create.

---

Marcus Delaney could still smell the odor of his own dried sweat beneath the hood.

He had been bound to that metal table for hours, his wrists marked by the bite of the handcuffs. At increasingly sparse intervals, he thought back to the Utah cell, to the electric

chair that should have awaited him, to the death certificate already signed that made him, in the eyes of the world, a man who no longer existed. He had come to hope that that

would have been the gentler end.

Then the door opened.

Not a mechanical creak—something more subdued, almost a sigh, as if the air itself had withdrawn to make way for whoever was entering.

The footsteps that approached were light, measured, almost absent. Marcus held his breath, every muscle taut against the handcuffs, while that presence stopped beside him, motionless.

— Who—who is there? — His voice came out fractured. — What do you want from me?

No answer. Only the rustle of fabric, then two cold fingers lifting his hood.

The light blinded him for an instant. When his eyes adjusted, he saw a face suspended above his own, and for a moment terror gave way to something like hope.

— You're— — His voice broke between relief and confusion. — You're an angel?

She tilted her head, a slow gesture, as if that question merited genuine consideration. Then she smiled.

Marcus saw it happen in real time—the lips curving, perfect, and the eyes remaining still, empty, two bottomless pools of dark honey. It was in that instant that he understood,

with a cold certainty that ran down his spine, that he was not facing any angel.

He had stopped praying hours ago. He had stopped pleading. But now, looking at that motionless face, he felt his body tremble with a violence that no prayer would ever stop again.

She leaned in, stopping a palm's breadth from his face—not hesitation, but a studied pause. Her eyes slid along Marcus's chest, where his heart pounded so violently it seemed visible beneath the skin.

— You're cold. — It was not a question. A statement delivered with the distracted sweetness with which one notices a stain on a tablecloth.

Her hand settled on Marcus's cheek. It was only a touch, for an instant. Cold. Unnatural, but bearable.

Then her fingers sank in.

Marcus felt his own skin yield as if it had turned to water, a pain that was not yet pain but something far more wrong—the sensation of being sucked dry from within. He tried to

scream. No sound came out: his throat had already dried, reduced to a conduit of dust incapable of vibration.

In the last moments of consciousness, he saw his own hands shrivel on the table, the skin crumpling with a thin sound, like paper being crushed. He felt his wrists grow too

small for the handcuffs, which slid off with an empty jingle, final.

The last thing he saw, before the darkness swallowed him, were those honey-colored eyes—motionless, indifferent, watching him fade with the same attention you'd give a glass emptying.

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Beyond the glass, Aldric and Halloway remained motionless, their faces devoid of emotion. Only silence. A silence that, in that chamber, proved more terrifying than any scream

—because in it the two scientists were not judging. They were measuring. Evaluating whether what they had just witnessed was enough, or whether they should push further.

On the table, what remained of Marcus ceased to be a body.

It did not crumble into pieces. It disintegrated into dust—fine, golden, rising into the stagnant air, dancing lazily, catching the gray neon light. The particles settled on the floor in

a thin, uniform pile.

The girl remained staring at that dust for a long time, the coat swaying around her motionless body. Then she brought a hand to her chest, where something—no longer simply

an emptiness, but an emptiness that had just learned how to fill itself—now pulsed with a new rhythm.

— What a horrible taste. — Her voice came out barely audible, a whisper that betrayed more bewilderment than satisfaction.

She turned toward the glass, her eyes meeting Aldric's.

— Is it enough? — she asked. — Is this what I was supposed to become?

Aldric did not answer in words. She wrote something on the tablet, the scratching of the stylus filling the silence like a sentence already pronounced.

— Compatibility confirmed. — Halloway's voice trembled. — Complete lethal absorption in less than twelve seconds.

Aldric approached the glass. — Bring her the weapon. — she whispered. — She is ready.

The girl did not react. She remained staring at the pile of dust—all that remained of a man who, until a few hours earlier, had still had a name—and felt the emptiness between

her ribs open again, silent, patient, already waiting for the next meal.

---

Almost four hours had passed since the death of Marcus Delaney.

The girl sat on a metal chair in the transit room they had assigned to her. The coat hung open from her shoulders. They had brought her a tray—bread, water, something

colorful in a plastic bowl. She touched the bread. The crust was rough, dry. It told her nothing. That was not the nourishment her body, now, recognized as true.

She set the bread down and remained still, her gaze fixed on an empty point on the wall.

The emptiness had returned.

It did not burn, not yet—but it grew, slowly, like a tide that rises without haste and without the possibility of being stopped. And beneath that familiar emptiness, something else.

Something new, that had nothing to do with hunger.

Her hands trembled—not from weakness, but from a tension that rose from her wrists to her shoulders, an electric shudder along the golden veins like a charge held too long.

Her heart accelerated for no apparent reason, her breathing growing shorter—and with it, a thought that did not entirely belong to her began to insinuate itself among her own.

*Destroy them.*

It was not a voice. It was an impulse, primordial, climbing along her spine like something alive. She saw, for an instant, a flash that did not belong to her—a battlefield shrouded

in fog, fallen bodies, the sky divided between those who would go to one god and those who would go to another, and in the midst, a figure on a chariot pulled by enormous

beasts, her eyes alight with a hunger identical to her own, but infinitely older.

*Freyja.*

The name exploded in her mind without anyone ever having taught it to her, and with it the certainty that that hunger was not merely the need to feed. It was also the desire for

dominion. The same thirst that had driven a goddess to claim half of the fallen in battle only for herself, without mercy for those who remained on the ground.

She rose abruptly, the coat slipping from one shoulder, her eyes narrowing as the room seemed to constrict around her.

*I want out.*

The thought erupted in her chest with physical violence. She was no longer the confused girl who had wept in silence before Freyja's capsule a few hours earlier. Something

inside her was reorganizing itself—not erasing what remained of her human part, but superimposing itself upon it, like a second skin too tight that was beginning to suffocate the first.

She struck the wall with her fist. The concrete cracked beneath her hand, the dust rising around her knuckles, unharmed, perfect.

*I am a prisoner. As she was.*

The thought lodged in her chest—the memory of those golden eyes met through the glass, the shared pain, the grief of a dying goddess that now lived also within her. And

beneath that pain, rage began to grow, fierce, fueled by an impulse that had never entirely been her own.

It was in that instant that the door opened.

---

The young man who entered could not have been more than twenty-three. Gray technician's jumpsuit, a badge hanging askew on his chest, a toolbox banging against his knee

with every step. He looked up, saw her, and stopped on the threshold.

— Oh, sorry. — He stepped back instinctively. — I didn't know anyone was here. I just need to check the temperature sensors.

The girl turned toward him, and for an instant—very brief, almost imperceptible—something in her eyes wavered, the human part still struggling to regain control. *Don't do it. It's

not his fault.*

But the emptiness was too vast, the impulse too hungry for something that went beyond mere nourishment—she wanted to feel that power again, that surge of absolute dominion.

— Don't mind me. — Her voice came out soft, a tone she had not consciously chosen but which her body now produced as an instinctive lure.

The young man entered, the door closing behind him with a soft click.

— Are you new? — she asked, her voice still taut from the effort of restraining something that was already moving too fast beneath her own skin.

— First day. — He approached the panel on the opposite wall, unaware. — My name is Elias. Maintenance.

The girl observed his neck, the regular pulse beneath the smooth skin, and felt Freyja's impulse rise again, stronger—a desire to take, to bend, to prove to herself that this concrete cage could not contain her.

— It's freezing in here. — Elias blew on his fingers, distracted.

She stood. The movement was slow, but beneath that slowness vibrated a predatory tension that the young man, turning around, did not have time to recognize.

— You're cold too. — It was not a question.

Elias laughed, nervous. — A little, yes.

She raised a hand. The golden veins now pulsed with an almost blinding light—and in that instant, the last resistance of her human part shattered completely, overwhelmed by

an impulse too great for a body born only a few hours earlier.

— Don't worry. — Her voice came out low, almost a growl beneath the surface sweetness. — It passes quickly.

She placed her hand on Elias's cheek.

This time there was no hesitation. The impulse took complete control, and her fingers sank into his skin with a violence that had nothing of the ritual slowness of the first time.

The flesh beneath her palm undulated like boiling water, the tissues tearing in a web of dark cracks spreading from the point of contact. Elias's blood did not spill out—it was

sucked inward, his veins swelling beneath the skin before collapsing upon themselves, emptied of every fluid that was not the gold she was draining.

His body convulsed. Bones gave way under the pressure of the vacuum forming inside him, his spine arching as if in an attempt to escape something from which there was no

escape. His mouth opened wide in a scream that never came—only a muffled, gurgling sound, drowned in blood already clotted in his throat.

Her fingers closed deeper. Her amber nails, lengthening, sharpening, dug into the young man's cheek, leaving deep grooves from which blood briefly flowed before being

swallowed by the gold pulsing beneath her skin.

The body collapsed. Ligaments gave way, bones broke, the toolbox fell with a dull thud, tools scattering across the floor.

When the girl withdrew her hand, her palm was covered in blood—not Elias's, but her own, gushing from her wrist where the gold had risen too fast, tearing the tissues before

closing again. She stared at that red hand with the same curiosity one would give a freshly crushed insect.

Her chest rose and fell in rapid, almost euphoric breaths—not the detached calm of a few hours earlier, but something closer to exultation, the taste of power mingling with that

of a life just consumed.

She brought her hand to her mouth and licked. The blood—her own—had a metallic taste, warm, different from anything she had ever experienced.

Elias's shell crumbled into golden dust. But this time the dust was not pure. It was mixed with blood, with shreds of flesh, with fragments of bone not entirely dissolved—an

amorphous mass that still retained the trace of what had been, like a memory that refused to fade.

The girl remained standing over it for a long moment, breathing. Then she sat back down on the metal chair, crossed her legs, and waited.

---

The door opened after exactly three hours. The girl had not counted. She had remained seated, fingers tapping a slow rhythm on the armrest, her nails—long, sharp, the color

of burnt honey—leaving invisible traces on the metal.

The hiss of the door made her look up.

Two entered.

A guard—young, broad-shouldered, his face partially hidden by a reflective visor—carried a garment bag covered by a black cloth. Behind him, not only Aldric, but also a

second figure: a technician in her thirties, hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, a tablet clutched against her chest.

— Subject B. — Aldric's voice was harsher than usual. — Genesis has approved your equipment. Put it on. We need to move you.

The girl stood. The coat slipped from her shoulders, falling with a dull rustle. She wore nothing beneath. The guard flinched visibly—but it was the technician, not him, who first caught her gaze.

She took the garment bag, lifted the black cloth, and looked.

It was not a dress. It was armor of leather the color of fossil amber, burnt honey, dried blood on boiled hide. She touched it. Cold, almost damp, and yet it seemed to recognize

her, like a memory that did not belong to her but that coursed through her veins together with the gold.

*Freyja.* The goddess who wept golden tears. The goddess who chose the dead among warriors, half for herself, half for Odin. The goddess of war—and of seduction, two

faces of the same blade. A low tension tightened her stomach, the golden veins of her belly pulsing stronger. The desire to take. To possess. To bring down and make surrender

in the same gesture.

She pulled on the pants, the clinging leather molding to her legs. The bodice, stiffened by golden laminae, tightened around her hips like the ribs of a predatory beast. The

boots, the blade heel striking the concrete with a metallic sound as she straightened.

She looked at herself in the wall mirror. Then her gaze shifted toward the technician behind Aldric.

The woman had not moved, but her eyes had followed every gesture of the dressing with an attention that betrayed more than simple professional curiosity.

The girl noticed. And she felt the impulse awaken—not the hunger of before, but something slower, warmer, a magnetism that did not need to sink its fingers to take what it wanted.

She took a step toward the woman. The leather rustled with a dull, animal sound.

— What is your name? — Her voice came out low, soft.

— A-Adaeze. — The woman swallowed, the tablet trembling between her hands. — Biometric support technician.

— You are afraid of me. — It was not a question.

— Yes.

— Good. — A slow smile curved her lips, the first that was not entirely empty. — At least you know I'm here.

She extended two fingers, barely brushing the woman's wrist, and the golden veins pulsed—not from hunger, but from something closer to satisfaction. The subtle pleasure of

watching someone yield without a single drop of blood being spilled.

— Subject B. — Aldric's voice cut the air. — Focus. The transfer cannot wait.

The girl withdrew her hand, slowly, almost with regret.

— It's just skin. — She turned toward the door, her voice turning cold again. — Hers. Mine. It is the same thing, sooner or later.

She exited. The metallic heels resounded on the concrete, regular, slow—each step seeming to measure the space between life, death, and anyone unfortunate enough to cross her gaze.

On the floor, where she had dressed, only one thing remained: a flake of amber leather, torn from the bodice during the donning—and beside it, the imprint of a blade heel, carved into the concrete like a scar.

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