Chapter 234

Lewis cut the yacht’s engine and easily lifted the man sprawled limp like a giant rubber doll across the second row of seats, carrying him up onto the pier. Then he hauled the kidnapped man into the trunk of the car waiting at ground level.

When Lewis climbed into the back seat, the “Manager” waiting behind the wheel started driving. Lewis silently studied Dylan Brown, the governor’s son, diagonally across from him. Dylan was absorbed in the road with a hardened expression. Something had clearly gone wrong; he looked deeply unsettled.

Just then, a dull thud came from the trunk. The man had regained consciousness. Panicked, he thrashed and kicked at the trunk lid.

“Is that guy going to become an Eta too?”

Ted stroked his glossy chin with his palm as he asked. Dylan frowned and shook his head.

“No. He’s an immunologist. A leading authority in microbiological immunology.”

“Microbiological immunology?”

“That’s right.”

“Hm. Let me guess. You kidnapped him to cure alpha diseases, didn’t you?”

“Something like that.”

“Ha, I knew it. He looked exactly like the shut-in egghead type.”

Dylan didn’t give a definitive answer, but it was reason enough for Ted to feel certain. Lewis, meanwhile, hated the fact that this idiot alpha shared the same rank of “Executor” as himself.

They were followers gathered by the Architect’s selection, instruments for enacting the Architect’s will. The handful of alphas chosen as Executors knew a brutal truth: alphas did not live past thirty-five, and alphas and betas, being separate species, could not reproduce together. This was the raw truth.

But the majority of alphas—“Guests,” as they were called—had not been chosen by the Architect and knew nothing of these truths. Some might have vaguely sensed a flaw, but outright acknowledgment was forbidden.

Authority always loses value the moment its expiration date is revealed. If alphas fell into nihilism, they would lash out in terror and violence, dragging their entire caste into self-destruction. That was why the Architect made it the foremost survival strategy never to publicize their flaws, no matter the cost. What they needed was simply time to correct them.

For the evolved human species known as alphas to avoid extinction, they required their complementary counterpart—omegas—to shore up their vulnerabilities.

According to the Architect’s teaching, to alphas an omega was like the Holy Grail. Just as Arthurian knights set off in pursuit of the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper, the omega was the vessel through which alphas would reach the pinnacle of evolution. Outwardly, they looked like ordinary betas, indistinguishable at a glance—but pheromones made them instantly recognizable.

Lewis had already experienced omega pheromones long ago. It was something impossible to imagine without living it. Like the blind suddenly seeing, like the deaf suddenly hearing, it revealed to him a lack he had never known—and left him unable to ever return to his former life.

“What’s so amusing?”

Dylan’s voice was cold from the driver’s seat. Lewis hadn’t even realized he was smiling. But he kept his composure, answering with the same faint smile.

“Why wouldn’t I be amused? We pulled the job off perfectly.”

He thumbed behind him, at the trunk. The man’s thrashing had already gone quiet, leaving only the pitiful sobbing of an animal caught in a trap.

“If everyone had been as useful as you two today, I wouldn’t feel this wretched.”

Dylan flicked a glance in the rearview mirror as he changed lanes, then added:

“Isaac Bazelli has returned to Baggers City.”

“What?”

Ted lurched forward toward the front seat.

“The bastard who shot my ear? You mean that fucker?”

“Yes.”

Bracing a hand on the seatback, Ted almost climbed over it in excitement.

“Fucking dogshit, I’ll tear him apart this time. Rip his fucking head off and jerk off with it!”

“You still haven’t learned to curb that filthy tongue, I see.”

Dylan sighed and shook his head.

“I’ve told you countless times—capture comes first.”

“Fine, then at least leave me his ear. That’s fair, isn’t it? Just one ear.”

Ted scowled, rubbing the ragged scar that puckered the side of his head. Dylan snorted.

“Too bad. Your father lost the chance to give you that little revenge.”

“Lost the chance? What do you mean?”

“We tagged Isaac’s motorcycle with a tracker. But at some point it went dark. He must have noticed and removed it.”

“Huh? Wouldn’t it have been better to capture him right away instead of wasting time with trackers?”

“Isaac wasn’t the target. What mattered was finding his final destination. But your father ruined it, insisting on using those idiot cops against orders not to pursue him directly.”

“Motherfucker! I’ll lose my mind! This is what happens when some inferior beta forgets his place!”

Ted hammered his thigh with his fist in raw frustration. Lewis let the beta-bashing wash over him, silently turning over the truth he knew.

They were chasing the wrong trail. Contrary to Dylan’s theory, Isaac Bazelli hadn’t traveled over land—he had gone by sea.

Lewis finally spoke, breaking into their exchange.

“Why bother confirming Bazelli’s destination? Is that really more important than capturing him?”

“There’s an omega there. One created by Bazelli.”

The air in the car instantly shifted.

“An... omega? Omegas actually exist?”

“Oh, Ted. You still doubt the Treatise on Traits?”

“N-no, not doubt, it’s just... the passages about omegas always felt kind of like science fiction, you know?”

He swallowed hard and quickly added:

“Of course I don’t mean I don’t believe! How could I ever doubt the Architect’s words?”

The Treatise on Traits was a compilation of the Architect’s private memorandum expanding the Hybris system. It resisted genre classification. It was neither scripture nor essay; if anything, it was part manifesto, part ideological treatise, part propaganda—an anthropology of human subspecies. Every alpha in the world ought to have studied it. But for security reasons, only a chosen few had access now.

The first mention of omegas appeared in Part I, Chapter 13, “The Struggle Toward Survival”:

Omegas are a twin-born human subspecies, emerging from the same hierarchy as alphas, designed to test and check each other’s instincts. ... Their pheromones overstimulate the alpha’s instinct for dominance, provoking uncontrollable upheaval and conflict. Because the existence of omegas carries the latent potential to shatter alpha hierarchy forever, Hybris bears the burden of seeking ways to coexist with them in order to preserve order.

Indeed.

Lewis recalled the petty tug-of-war he’d once had with Baekgyeong over Siron. Memories that now felt like a distant past life, hollow husks.

On the empty road, Dylan flicked on the left blinker. He checked the mirror, changed lanes, and steered up onto an overpass. His voice was {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} sharp and unyielding:

“An omega was born on Lemon Island. To be exact—reborn.”

“On Lemon Island? When?”

Ted leaned in, suddenly very interested, as though the words Lemon Island held special meaning for him.

“While you were spending your rut cycle on the island, the subject’s genetic data was uploaded to the research archive servers. I don’t know the science. What matters is: a normal beta was remade into an omega there.”

Lewis had never heard this before. Not Siron, but a second omega had been born. Which meant there could just as easily be a third, a fourth...

Ted gave a metallic laugh, barely keeping it contained.

“So the experiment worked? You mean they can keep making omegas now? Hah, like rebooting brains to make alphas?”

Dylan shook his head.

“Unfortunately, that subject is the only omega in the world. Isaac destroyed all the data and left Lemon Island with the subject.”

“Argh! That fucker’s not even worth drinking down!”

Ted’s furious breath whistled through his nostrils. He clenched and shook his fist, trembling with rage, then managed to tamp it down enough to ask:

“Tell me—what happens now?”

“Isaac won’t cooperate with us. His days are numbered anyway. So instead of chasing him, we have to find the subject.”

Ted rubbed his chin with deliberate slowness.

“And who is this subject? Someone I know? One of the homeless?”

Lewis stared at him blankly.

“Homeless?”