Chapter 297

Yoon Siron glared at the medicine pouch Jackson had held out, as if he couldn’t believe it. After a long stretch of time, he took the pouch with a trembling hand.

The capsule, no larger than a fingernail, was packed tight with powder as fine as sand inside a translucent shell. He’d only gone through a single heat cycle, but the memory was seared into him—his brain melting sweetly like chocolate under noonday sun, not a grain of rational thought left. It was a dreadful and, perversely, rapturous experience, like being reduced to a crude bundle of nerves that only reacted to stimulus—too shameful even to call a rutting beast.

He swallowed hard and, fixing Jackson with a hard stare, spoke.

“Liar.”

He flung the medicine pouch at Jackson’s face.

“You people haven’t even seen the shadow of an Omega, and you expect me to believe you made a suppressant without one? I know I’m the only Omega.”

“A sharp point. But there were Omegas before you.”

“...Yuri Berec.”

Jackson tilted his head at an angle.

“Right. From the fact that he studied his own body and made a suppressant, it seems he regarded his Rut as something miserable.”

Jackson picked the pouch up off the floor and held it out to Siron again. But Siron still couldn’t trust him. Isaac had never once mentioned an Omega suppressant. If Isaac had known it existed, he’d have had no reason to hide it from Siron.

“Whether you take it or not is your choice.”

Still doubting Jackson’s intent, Siron took the pouch back from him.

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“Because your heat cycle isn’t far off.”

Jackson watched, as if savoring the thin shock that crossed Siron’s face, then spoke in a gentle tone.

“If your pheromones spread inside a closed tunnel, we’ll have trouble. The facility is crawling with Alphas barely holding their instincts in check. We went to no small trouble to acquire an Omega, and the last thing I want is the accident where your body gets torn to pieces by their greed.”

Jackson smiled in a way that hinted at more than he said and checked his watch again. His expression was serene, but the way he kept glancing at the time gave the impression he was being chased by something.

“Busy, are we?”

Siron asked with a crooked edge. He’d been kidnapped and dragged here by force, and the sight of the man flicking his eyes to the watch right in front of the victim made heat flash behind his eyes. A curse clawed up his throat, but he forced down the premature anger with effort. He still had a mountain of questions he wanted to ask.

“He aims to fulfill the promise God made to Isaac, through an Omega like you.”

The reason he’d been kidnapped into this suspicious underworld—he knew it was wrapped in the hazy words Gezar had once given him.

“Please, don’t ever catch his eye. If you do end up facing him, just pull the trigger on your own head!”

Siron recalled Gezar Bazelli’s warning not to draw the Designer’s gaze—that it’d be better to flee into death. With his face tight, he asked Jackson:

“What promise did God make to Isaac?”

For the first time, the man who had been feigning calm let his expression slip. But a warm smile rose at once and smoothed over the fissure.

“No doubt Gezar told you.”

He clicked his tongue lightly and went on.

“Isaac is the name of a man called by different forms across cultures—Yitzhak, Ishak, Isaac—known by the familiar English name Isaac.”

“...Isaac?”

Siron reflexively pictured Isaac Bazelli’s face, and then just as quickly the image of a musty old Bible came to mind. He wasn’t a Christian, but through school and countless media he knew a few of the names from Scripture.

“Isaac, the son of Abraham?”

Jackson nodded.

“As you know, Abraham is the forefather of Israel and the starting point of its faith. God made a crucial promise to his son Isaac, one that would later form the identity of the people of Israel.”

Jackson paused. Like a scholar faced with a knotty problem, he furrowed his brow in thought. After a time, his tightly closed lips finally parted.

“I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and give to your offspring all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth shall be blessed. Genesis, chapter 26, verse 4.”

In a calm voice, low like one delivering a eulogy, Jackson recited the verse and then pressed his mouth shut again. His gaze, faintly wavering, tracked each change in Siron’s expression. Watching Siron’s face grow paler and paler, he added:

“God promised Isaac three things: his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, the land of Canaan would be given to his offspring, and through his offspring all nations would be blessed. Likewise, if, through you—the only Omega in this world—descendants with more evolved, flaw-free traits can flourish, Alphas can carry on their line forever.”

Jackson sighed and then spoke as if everything he’d said until now were just light banter.

“For better or worse, your blood work shows your body is incomplete as an Omega. There are signs you’ve had a heat cycle, but your germ cells are still immature. In short, you can’t have a child as you are now.”

Siron felt a great wash of relief even as his vision tilted in disbelief. Simply hearing a discussion of whether he, a man, could become pregnant made a violent revulsion surge up.

“Of course I can’t—I’m a man!”

He lunged toward Jackson with a shout, and the blond hulk who had been suppressing his presence like a shadow behind Jackson surged forward and blocked him, despite his massive size. Siron only managed to tug at Jackson’s scarf before being stopped, and as he stood there panting in frustration, Jackson’s face, watching him in silence, showed its first crooked smile.

“A man? You’re an Omega. Nothing but a lump of sexual appetite debased into something neither woman nor man. In that respect, I wonder what really sets you apart from an Alpha.”

Siron’s mouth fell wide in shock. The poise Jackson had kept until now vanished without a trace from his face. In its place, words steeped in scorn and mockery spilled out one after another.

“You will beg for sex with an Alpha every breeding season for the rest of your life. Think of the suppressant I’m giving you as a gift for the wretched life you’re going to live.”

Siron looked at the man’s face—plastered over with spite—with a feeling gone cold. The reality under the torn-off mask was unspeakably ugly. Siron was confused. Jackson seemed to despise not only Omegas but all Alpha trait-bearers. Yet he didn’t stop at using Alphas to rake in illicit money; he was preparing their next generation. Siron glared at the bundle of contradictions with eyes full of disgust.

“Truly unfortunate.”

“What is?”

“You say you want Alpha descendants to be as countless as the stars. But what then? I’m a man; I’ll never be able to get pregnant. The God of Abraham made me that way from the start. So spare me the ‘incomplete’ crap.”

At Siron’s sniping, Jackson spoke with a faintly sorrowful smile.

“Sadly, science continues to advance in astonishing ways. Even if you remain an incomplete Omega forever, with just a bit of your skin tissue we can make germ cells—oocytes.”

Siron felt gooseflesh ripple over his whole body at the grotesque words coming out of Jackson’s mouth. Ignoring Siron’s shiver, Jackson continued evenly.

“There’s a technique to reprogram cells taken from skin and blood, returning them to a primordial state so they can differentiate into any cell in the body. Program those reverted cells, and you can make cells like oocytes.”

Siron frowned at words that defied belief.

“...That’s possible?”

“It’s not public, but just two months ago we delivered a healthy Himalayan monkey via artificial oocyte.”

Siron felt the wound on his back throb. Clear as day, he saw Dylan Brown and the bespectacled researcher cutting a piece of skin from him and dropping it into a cryogenic container the size of a rice cooker, mist curling up from it.

Jackson said:

“From the instant sperm and oocyte fuse into a single zygote, what we call an embryo comes into being.”

“An embryo?”

“It means the journey of life has begun.”

With a look of odd relief, he gave Siron a brief once-over and checked his wristwatch again. Then he signaled with his eyes to the blond hulk standing behind him. At Jackson’s glance, the hulk opened the locked door, and relatively fresh corridor air spilled inside.

“It’s time I was going. You stay here and mull over my words at your leisure. What could be done with a fertilized embryo. How boundless the possibilities are.”

With that, Jackson disappeared into the corridor with the blond hulk. The footsteps receded beyond the firmly closed door, leaving Siron locked inside.