"Discard the rest," said the woman with flowing red hair, her voice sharp and cold but her eyes betrayed something else.
Not hesitation, but urgency. Her fingers, usually still and composed, tapped against the lab table.
"But Miss Aria," a scientist said, his voice shaky, "this could be the breakthrough. We've never had this kind of response since warmonger."
"I don't care." She cut him off too harshly. "I have what I need."
Her gaze was fixed on the data flashing across the monitor but on the numbers, graphs, variables twitching with life. She was watching something change in real time, something that shouldn't be happening.
Her hand clenched.
One of the other scientists noticed. "Are you alright, Miss Aria?"
She turned toward him with a snap, her expression locked back into place. "I said discard the rest. I don't want another warmonger."
But her tone had shifted. Not enough for the untrained ear, but in the sterile hush of the lab, every syllable echoed louder than it should have.
A hiss of bubbles erupted from the tank. The boy inside moved again, faster this time. His eyes opened wider, fully alert now, darting from face to face beyond the glass. He wasn't just waking up. He was reacting.
One of the assistants muttered, "He's aware."
Aria's lips twitched. The collar of her coat felt too tight as she adjusted it with one swift motion, fingers lingering there for a second too long.
"He's stable," a voice from the monitors reported. "Core activity is increasing. Vital signs climbing. Faster than any other specimen, even warmonger."
"He shouldn't be that far along," another scientist whispered. "The sedation levels were calibrated-"
Aria stepped forward, ignoring them all.
The boy's hand slammed against the inside of the tank. A dull thud echoed through the room. Then another. A thin crack formed near the center of the glass.
"Contain him," Aria said quickly. The calm was still there, but barely. Her words were clipped, her tone sharper.
"Miss Aria, he's panicking. This is not good."
"I said contain him!"
They weren't moving fast enough. The yellow-haired woman hesitated, eyes locked on the boy.
Aria's voice spiked. "DO IT NOW!"
But it was too late.
The tank cracked wide open. The boy tumbled out in a heap, coughing, choking, slick with the tank's fluid. Shards of glass scattered across the floor like ice.
Aria flinched, not visibly, but her breath was hitched.
The boy gasped for breath, and the sound hit something inside her. Not pity. Not guilt.
But fear.
'He was alive. Conscious. A core that powerful is stable and aware? He is another warmonger. A danger.'
'Jason would find out for sure. Maybe he already had.'
Her eyes snapped to one of the scientists. "Did anyone transmit the core logs?"
He blinked. "No. I don't think so."
"Don't think," she hissed. "Check."
Someone tossed a towel to the boy. Another assistant reached for a scanner.
Then the man said, "Jason knows."
The words hung in the air like a gunshot.
Aria went still.
Her lips parted, just slightly. Her pupils narrowed. That facade of control slipped an inch. Not enough to fall apart but enough to freeze her for two full seconds.
"How?" she asked in a silent voice. And that silence said more than a scream ever could.
"I don't know. But he's coming. Soon."
Aria's jaw worked. She inhaled deeply this time, and forced her shoulders straight.
Then she smiled.
Not a kind smile. Not even a real one.
A sharp, thin, dangerous curve of the mouth, something between a lie and a plan.
"Then we'll give Jason exactly what he wants," she said. "A success story. Something clean. Something useful."
She turned to the boy, who had just managed to stand. He swayed, soaked and bleeding and half-naked, eyes wide with fear.
"Give him to Harold," she said. "He's starting that new company. He'll need someone like this. I could keep an eye on him too."
And just like that, Aria regained her footing, on the outside.
But inside?
Her pulse was climbing. Her fingers, hidden beneath the folds of her coat, clenched into a fist.
If Jason had seen the logs, she was already behind.
She needed to buy time. She needed control.
And that meant Edoran couldn't be taken away by Jason.
Not yet.
"You forgot the collar," the yellow-haired woman said quietly.
"Ah. Right." Aria held out her hand.
The collar was black, lined with a faint orange glow. She didn't hesitate. She fastened it around Edoran's neck.
He screamed. The pain was instant. White-hot. A spiral of black markings spread from the collar like wildfire, branding his skin. He clawed at it, desperate to tear it off, but it was too late.
Aria stood over him, unmoved. "It's necessary," she said.
Edoran gasped, the burning still searing through his body. His head spun. His thoughts scrambled.
'I have to get out. I have to run.'
But the collar pulsed again. His body froze. Another wave of pain, this one deeper, like it reached into the center of who he was.
"You'll get used to it," Aria said. "Just don't try anything stupid. Hurt me or anyone in my family, and I'll rip out your core and use it to power my house."
He stared up at her, horror in his eyes. "Please… let me go. I'm alive. Just like you."
Her expression didn't change. "Not anymore. You belong to the Faulkner family now."
Then he heard it, inside his mind. A voice. Calm, quiet. Unshakable.
(Listen. Obey. Live.)
He staggered. The voice wasn't just in his head, it was his head. It burrowed deep, wrapping around his will like vines.
(Move. Don't resist.)
He sat in a truck which Aria brought, but his mind wasn't in the truck.
It was still back in that lab. Still inside the tank.
The cold burn of the fluid in his lungs hadn't left him. He could feel it even now, every breath dry and raw like sand scraping through his chest. He pulled the towel tighter around himself, not for warmth, though he was shivering but because his skin felt wrong. Like it wasn't his.
He stared at his hands. They trembled with a subtle, involuntary rhythm. Like a machine glitching. The glass had cut them, left small slashes across his knuckles and palms, but the wounds were shallow. Still, he couldn't stop staring at the blood. It didn't look real. Was it even his?
He looked up, cautiously. The woman, Aria, was sitting across from him, her gaze fixed on a data pad. Like none of this mattered. Like he didn't matter. Her presence radiated control, every movement deliberate, sharp, composed.
He hated how composed she was.
Every time he moved, the collar pulsed, a gentle reminder that even his panic had limits. That he wasn't allowed to spiral too far without being reined in.
'Am I real? Am I just something they made? Something they use?'
His thoughts felt too loud in his skull, and his pulse thundered in his ears.
"You okay?" the driver asked him once, glancing in the rearview mirror. His face showing the slightest hint of pity.
Edoran didn't answer. He wanted to scream.
He wanted to rip the collar off and run into the woods, even if it meant dying.
But all he could do was sit there, trembling in silence.
When Aria began speaking again, her voice barely registered. Something about food production. About how the savages had solved global hunger. Her tone was bright, almost cheerful, like she was giving a museum tour.
He clenched his fists.
'This is normal to her.'
Bodies processed for energy. Monsters fed into machines. People turned into tools.
He was a tool.
His breath was ragged.
The air was too thin. Or maybe there was too much of it. He couldn't tell anymore. His lungs convulsed, his ribs aching with each gulp of air that wouldn't quite land right. The inside of the truck blurred.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
And then the voice came back.
(Calm. Comply. Obey.)
It didn't yell. It didn't threaten. It didn't even sound cruel. It was gentle. That was the worst part.
It felt like it cared about him.
The warmth crept back into his chest, pulsing from the collar. Soft, and soothing.
He whimpered, curling tighter against the wall of the truck.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered, his voice shaking. "I didn't ask to be born."
Aria didn't even look up.
When they arrived at the mansion, the world outside was bright and green and beautiful but Edoran didn't care.
The sunlight stung his eyes. The breeze felt too clean. His bare feet touched the paved stones of the driveway and recoiled; it felt too solid, too real. The mansion loomed like something out of a forgotten dream, majestic, artificial and unwelcoming.
People stood near the entrance. Guards. He heard their words, but it was like they were underwater.
"Is it true his core is full savage?"
"He's on par with the Warmonger?"
"Looks young. Is it stable?"
'Stable. They keep saying it.'
Every time someone spoke, he felt smaller. Further removed.
Aria spoke for him. Always. Never once did she ask him how he felt, what he wanted, if he was scared.
'Why would she? I'm just a product.'
Then the collar pulsed again, this time colder.
He flinched.
"You're shaking," one of the guards noted.
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
Inside, the noise of the party was like an explosion in his skull.
Voices, laughter, glasses clinking, footsteps echoing against marble.
It was too much.
Everything felt too fast, too bright, too loud.
He stopped walking and crouched low behind a potted plant near the hall. His arms curled around his knees. The towel slipped off his shoulder. He didn't care. He couldn't make himself move.
His stomach turned. He gagged.
"I—I can't," he mumbled.
Someone touched his shoulder.
He screamed.
The collar flared. His body went stiff, the pain immediate and searing. He bit back another cry, clamping his mouth shut, tasting blood where he'd bitten his tongue.
"It's okay," a new voice said. Young. Kind.
Edoran opened one eye. The boy knelt next to him, not touching him this time. Just close. Calm. He said his name was Harold.
"Hey," Harold said softly. "You're safe here. I promise."
Edoran stared at him, unable to speak. His whole body still buzzed with the collar's punishment.
Harold's eyes flicked toward it, and then to Aria. His jaw clenched.
"We need to do something about that," he muttered under his breath.
Edoran's lip trembled. A strange, desperate laugh almost escaped him.
'Safe? You think this is safe?'
Harold didn't look at him like he was a thing. Not quite. He didn't look away when Edoran's eyes filled with tears.
He just sat there with him.
For a while, that was enough.