Chapter 303

Siron jabbed a finger at the man who had flinched in shock.

“The one who walked around carrying a rice cooker!”

“A rice cooker?”

“The canister with the piece they cut out of me. About this big...”

“‘This big’?”

“Ah—no. That’s not the point.”

With his arms spread to the width of a rice cooker, Siron suddenly made up his mind and rammed the man. As the man tumbled backward out the door, Siron vaulted over him and sprinted into the corridor—only to whirl back a heartbeat later. He hauled the fallen researcher up and dragged him at speed back into the lab. Then, as the man wobbled like a sheet of paper, Siron shoved him into a chair and lashed him to it together with the chair using a mattress strap.

“Haah, Omega. You could have just said so.”

Stung by the address “Omega,” Siron yanked the strap around the researcher’s arms even tighter.

“If you want to keep your life, you’ll start answering what I ask—straight.”

But instead of cowering before Siron’s menace, the man went dazed. He stared at Siron’s face as if he couldn’t believe it, pupils quivering by a fraction, then swallowed dryly and asked:

“When an Omega’s traits shift like an Alpha’s, does the exterior change too?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your face is just... too beautiful.”

Siron, about to unload his irritation, stopped short—and an unhidden burst of laughter broke bright across his face. He clapped a palm over his mouth to smother it, blinked hard, and reminded himself this was not the moment. Pushing his fringe back, he answered with affected indifference:

“God. I looked like this before I ever became an Omega.”

“Ah... so even if one becomes an Omega, there’s no outward change.”

The researcher breathed the words in a daze.

Damn it. With a face that overwhelmingly, rapturously beautiful, there was no way to induce fear. Abandoning the idea of scaring him, Siron decided to coax him instead.

“Were you kidnapped like me?”

At the question—thrown to change the mood and build a little common ground—the researcher’s expression darkened. Pain seemed to press up from memory; he nodded with a stricken look.

“The Black man who stormed out a moment ago—was he kidnapped too? He was alone at the bench, got mad, and walked out.”

The researcher looked surprised that Siron knew the man, then glanced around the room. He flinched at the glass shards scattered across the floor, and only after that lifted his eyes to the gaping hole in the ceiling vent. Understanding where Siron had come from, he sounded almost impressed.

“The one you mean—Marvin—was taken comparatively recently. Ah, and I should have introduced myself sooner. My name is Dexter Baker.”

Siron, by habit, almost gave his own name, then checked himself and said nothing. Baker continued anyway, unbothered by Siron’s reaction.

“For reference, there are abductees in the section right next to this one.”

“And the Alphas?”

“They’re quartered on the floor directly below.”

Siron’s mind worked fast. This was an underground space of at least two levels. If he got lucky and found an exit toward the surface on this floor, he might avoid running into any Alphas.

“So—you moved through the ventilation?”

At Baker’s question, Siron nodded. Baker shook his head with a skeptical look.

“It’s not as if I never tried escaping through the vents myself. You’ll just wind up circling the same sector over and over.”

“Then I’ll open the door and walk out.”

No sooner said than done, Siron strode straight up to Baker. He tugged the small loop of cord peeking from the front pocket of the lab coat and drew out a card that looked like an access pass.

“Even if you take that card, it won’t help you get out.”

“Have you tried it?”

Baker lifted his shoulders, whether in resignation or in a sudden decision to cooperate—it was impossible to tell.

Siron hung the pass on his neck, scanned the room, then moved quickly to the lockers. He rummaged through them, pulled out a spare lab coat, and shrugged it on over the stinking one he wore.

“Was it a monkey you kept in that cage?”

A complicated expression crossed Baker’s face.

“How did you know?”

“From Jackson Cliff. He said you made a monkey from skin tissue.”

“To be precise, it was a technique that reprogrammed somatic cells of a Himalayan macaque back to the embryonic stem cell stage, then converted them into oocytes. In that technique, at least, I can say I’m currently ahead of anyone in the field.”

But the pride that tinged his face was immediately washed by shame.

He had fertilized an artificial oocyte with sperm from a male macaque and implanted it into a female macaque; the result was a healthy male offspring. Because the artificial propagation of higher-intelligence primates violates ordinary bioethics, Baker added—almost defensively, as if the words slipped out of him:

“The male macaque that was born was sent to a zoo with its parents.”

Relieved of his fear that the monkeys had met some horrific end, Siron pointed toward another barred cage.

“What’s that?”

“Mice.”

“I can see they’re mice.”

Chastened by Siron’s retort, Baker tried again with more patience.

“House mice and brown rats. The genetic distance is on the order of human to chimpanzee.”

A bad feeling shadowed Siron’s face.

“And what are you doing with them?”

An emptiness flickered across the researcher’s features.

“It’s not my specialty, so I can’t give you detail.”

“Give me some detail anyway!”

“Under orders from the Designer... they’re studying whether embryos of another species can be made to implant in the womb—specifically the immune response.”

“Immune response?”

Looking toward the rats confined in the cage, the researcher continued:

“Just as an organ recipient takes immunosuppressants to reduce rejection, the experiment aims to prevent immune cells from attacking an embryo of another species.”

Siron pictured women laid out on operating tables and asked, uneasy:

“How do they test that.”

“I’m told they isolate immune cells from the female’s blood and observe whether those cells attack the embryo of another species. ...Whether that yields anything meaningful in practice, I don’t know.”

So: not trials on actual humans, not results measured through surgical procedures. But it was too soon to be reassured.

Siron could now make out, faintly, the overall outline of the picture the Designer named Jackson was drawing. He would harvest skin tissue from Siron, turn it into reproductive cells, fertilize them, and use women’s bodies to multiply the headcount.

Siron recalled news about Surrogates he’d seen in the media. From the first time he encountered the concept, it had grated—treating people like tools—and the discomfort had always followed.

From Hybris’s standpoint, though, it would be welcome: a way to spike numbers in one stroke. Alpha or Omega—choose and manufacture at will.

But was such a thing truly realizable? Siron stared down at the glass fragments strewn over the floor. They had come from the glass plate the researcher had just hurled against the wall, unable to suppress his rage while working in the lab a moment ago.

“No. Goddamn it, no. There’s no way closely related species can interbreed!”

Siron asked:

“What are ‘closely related species’?”

Baker’s brow twitched, as if Siron had asked an unexpected question.

“Species that diverged from a common ancestor comparatively recently. Evolutionarily close—like humans and chimpanzees.”

“Can closely related species interbreed?”

Baker gave an awkward smile—as if he wanted to commit to nothing. But Siron remembered precisely what the researcher who had just stormed out had said: interbreeding among closely related species was impossible.

“It’s impossible, right? The researcher who ran out said interbreeding among closely related species is impossible.”

Baker, wearing a troubled smile, avoided Siron’s eyes.

“Or is it possible to implant a house-mouse zygote into a brown rat’s body?”

Again Baker dodged the answer. Siron, his chest tightening, raised his voice a notch.

“Have you told the Designer? That his fantasy has no chance of working.”

“...You know the Designer?”

Siron pictured Jackson Cliff’s face and answered:

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He was here today.”

“Today?”

The researcher regarded Siron with a confused look, then sighed.

“If he realizes that implanting an Alpha–Omega zygote into a Beta’s body is an unrealizable delusion, the Designer... that man will kill everyone—the researchers, and the abducted people alike. He won’t let us walk out intact. And since his first seizure, he’s clung to his calling all the harder.”

“His... first seizure?”

“Ah. You don’t know what the first seizure signifies.”

For a moment the researcher looked as if he might explain kindly—then chose other words.

“You’ll learn in time.”

A deep regret crossed Baker’s face.

“I’ve told you far too much that I shouldn’t have. Today, you and I did not have a conversation. So untie me. Now.”