Chapter 269

The boy whose face had been half-blown away remained erect for some time even after rigor mortis set in. Stranger still, nodules protruded from the base and mid-shaft of his penis—structures that could not be found in humans. It looked like a grotesque hybrid of canine anatomy and human genitals. This was no longer the realm of mere physical variation among Homo sapiens, but a new, functional trait that marked a different species.

Even more bizarre was the body of the man who had died from the gunshot wound to the leg. During autopsy, examiners discovered a reproductive canal branching from the intestines. His anatomical structure was distinctly unlike that of either a male or female human.

But what shocked the coroners most was something else entirely. Incredibly, a dead fetus was found inside the man’s body. Judging by its physical development, it was estimated at over fifteen weeks’ gestation. Genetic analysis determined the fetus was male, and its DNA diverged significantly from that of Homo sapiens.

This pulp-science-fiction horror was designated top secret after being relayed through intelligence channels, and the report was filed into the CIA archives. Just before the police could close the case, the two perpetrators under custody and the two corpses were transferred to a federal security facility.

What had begun as a backwater shooting investigation was swept into an entirely new current once federal agents were deployed. A joint task force was formed from investigators drawn from the CIA, FBI, and the BRI.

The survivors, victims, and suspects quickly had their identities and pasts uncovered. Gezar Bazelli and Yuri Berec—two young scientists once hailed as promising minds—had suddenly liquidated their assets and relocated under false identities to a coastal town in the deep South. Cutting ties with families hostile to their homosexuality seemed far too drastic a reason; their flight resembled that of fugitives covering up a crime. Investigators soon traced links between the biker gun murders and the men’s disappearance, uncovering the truth about the hereditary affliction that clung like a curse to the Bazelli line.

Suspect Gezar Bazelli answered none of the investigators’ questions. He sat in silence with a vacant stare until, during a lapse in surveillance, he attempted to escape and set himself on fire. The suicide attempt failed, but ironically it revealed a new truth: Gezar healed with unnatural speed, his severe burns recovering at a rate that seemed impossible for any human.

Having discovered Gezar’s miraculous regenerative power, the authorities eventually extracted from him the proto-human transformation protocol he and Yuri Berec had devised. Yet it was only a half-success. No matter how much they coaxed or threatened him, Gezar never yielded so much as a fragment of knowledge that might reproduce another like the deceased Yuri Berec.

Still, with the “alpha” transformation protocol in hand, the federal government launched Project AX-66, a national-security program to weaponize the alpha subspecies. At its head was Dr. Manu Singh, senior researcher at the Federal Biological Research Institute.

The project’s very first test subject was Isaac Bazelli, a boy only fifteen years old. Until the day he set fire to the laboratory and escaped, he had been caged like a lab rat in the BRI’s underground facilities, his body torn apart and burned through countless tortures.

That Isaac had been delivered into the lab’s hands was no accident. It was the price Gezar demanded in exchange for surrendering the alpha transformation protocol. His terms were simple: the sole survivor, Isaac, would be turned over as a subject, and Gezar himself would be imprisoned on death row to atone for Yuri Berec’s murder.

Gezar’s mind was like a dead television screen, a channel cut to static. Where once Yuri Berec’s emotions had come through, there was now only white noise. Sometimes, listening to the crackle, he could almost hear Yuri’s last scream echoing from the moment of his death.

And always, threading into it, the noises of reality: the drone of the ventilation fan sucking stale night air, the mechanical whir announcing six a.m. The realization cleared his foggy head—he would never hear that sound again.

Today was the day of his execution. In five hours, he would be dead. Having long awaited the end, Gezar felt no fear. If anything, his chest swelled with the anticipation of at last meeting the death he had so longed for.

An hour later, two guards came to his isolated cell. As they had told him the night before, they handed him a razor and ordered him to shave his head and beard.

Under their heavy gaze, Gezar shaved himself clean. It was part of the procedure for those bound for the electric chair: any remaining hair could ignite during the execution.

Then came his final meal. Having requested nothing special, he received the usual: a piece of bread, thin coffee, and oatmeal. When he finished, the guards immediately offered him a pastor’s last prayer, but Gezar refused.

After changing clothes, he asked the guards’ permission to walk to the chamber under his own power.

The execution room smelled of disinfectant and old refrigeration. Compared to the narrow cell where he had spent nearly twenty years, it seemed vast. In the center stood the electric chair he had seen only in films—its polished back gleaming, its armrests blackened by the hands of countless condemned, the headpiece ready to be strapped down. Gezar drew a steadying breath.

Then Warden Malcolm entered. The man who had, like a fossil, long faded from memory only to animate Gezar again, stood before him with a somber face. Lowering his head, the warden read the formal sentence: the date, the location, the crimes, the legality of the proceedings. At the end he asked:

“Do you have any last words?”

To his own surprise, Gezar smiled. If his hands weren’t bound, he might have embraced the warden and patted his back. After all, thanks to him, he could still look upon Isaac’s face steeped in mute despair.

That silent, statuesque boy had harbored such depraved lust within him. When Gezar had asked whether he had raped Yuri Berec, Isaac had never once denied it. He only averted his gaze, avoiding Gezar’s eyes without a flicker of shame or guilt.

After escaping the lab, Isaac had gone on to work as a mercenary, raping and killing countless men. Gezar had learned this long ago from Joseph Elliott, who visited the prison and bartered information about the imprint in exchange for conditions of its activation.

The condition was love. The hormones secreted in those who fall in love opened the synapses of the brain; those released during knotting locked them shut like a clasp, binding two beings into an inseparable union.

Love.

To Isaac, demanding love was like asking a murderer drenched in blood to cross an untouched field of snow without leaving footprints. An impossibility.

Gezar thought of the men who had visited him three days earlier. A strange trio: the dazzlingly beautiful young man, bright and cheerful despite his peril; the fierce Albanian-speaking woman, hardened and sharp; and Isaac, shrouded in fatigue and death.

If his mind had been clearer, if he had more time, Gezar would have told the beautiful youth everything about what Isaac truly was. The chance had passed, but it was enough. It was enough that Isaac’s fragile hope shattered the instant he realized the condition for imprint was love.

If he could only savor and replay Isaac’s face as it broke into powder, he would gladly mount the execution chair again and again.

“Love.”

That was all the last words he left behind.

With a serene smile, Gezar nodded, gazing at the warden’s flinch with the face of a saint.

The guards strapped him into the chair. Belts tightened at his waist, shoulders, wrists, and ankles. A sponge soaked in brine was placed on his head, the electrode helmet fixed into place, and finally a black cloth was lowered over his face.

He wanted only to think of Yuri. As death closed in, the reason for life burned sharper. He had endured all these years of atonement only to reunite with Yuri beyond the grave.

Of course, there would be no heaven, no hell—only endless darkness, silence, atoms scattering into the void. But that was enough. He was ready to dissolve into nothing, knowing that somewhere in the universe, amid the glittering stars, the atoms of the one he loved might brush against his own once more. That was his final wish.

In that moment, the inside of his eyelids flared bright. The current roared through his body in an explosion of heat and light.