Delmar sat beside me in silence, his body stiff, hands clenched on his thighs like he was trying to stop himself from shaking. He hadn't said a word in the last ten minutes, not since we left the apartment. We knew how dangerous what we were going to do was. Liam had come at 3 AM and delivered the supplies for the infiltration. The security uniform and his badge to get access to restricted zones. It was a sucide mission. And even though I didn't care...I knew Delmar did for me.
I stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye. His jaw was locked tight, and cap he wore cast his face in shadow, I could still sense the storm brewing underneath. I know he didn't want me to accompany him. He thought he could do this alone but I knew he couldn't. Neither could I without him. We needed to be a team if we wanted to save those Faringues.
We were supposed to park two miles out, far enough from HMORC that we wouldn't be seen, close enough so we could walk. Liam's mental map of the place had given me some idea of where we needed to go. I was somewhat aware of the layout from the last time I had been in the B-wing.
In theory, it sounded simple. Get in. Find the lab. Find the captive Faringues. Get out.
But I knew better. HMORC wasn't just any research facility. It was a fortress dressed as a university project. Cameras. DNA scanners. Unofficial rooms with no paper trail. Places even researchers weren't allowed to speak about in whispers.
And yet here we were.
By the time we parked the car, darkness had swallowed the road behind us. The sun wasn't about to come for for another two hours. The only light came from the street lamp. I killed the engine and took a long breath, holding it in my chest like it might help me stay grounded.
"You ready?" I asked, voice soft.
Delmar nodded once. "I've never been readier to do something."
I smiled tightly. "Let's do this."
We stepped out and changed quickly. The guard uniform felt strange on my skin, itchy, synthetic, ill-fitting but it did the job. Delmar's baseball cap stayed up, shadowing his sharp features, and when he buttoned the jacket and adjusted the cap, he looked convincing enough to pass for human in dim light.
We walked the two miles in silence, alone in the . My thighs burned halfway through, but Delmar didn't slow down. He didn't even breathe heavily. Just kept walking all determined.
The institute loomed ahead,tall fences, blinking red lights, and the distant hum of machines operating. The air smelled of sterilized metal and chlorine. The all too familiar building took it's true form, a prison, a confinement for santient beings. No wonder the walls around the facility were mounted so high. They thought high walls could hide their ugly deeds.
We took the service gate meant for delivery trucks and maintenance crews. It was tucked at the back, out of range from the main cameras. I flashed the badge Liam gave me at the guard station. The bored security officer barely looked up before waving us in.
Delmar didn't speak, didn't blink. Just followed my lead.
We entered through the first checkpoint, passing towering walls and silent, sterile corridors. Every step we took was a gamble.
The emergency maintenance door to B-wing stood ahead was locked. I approached it carefully, pressing my palm against the metal. My heart thudded in my ears as I whispered, "If it still works..."
Peter had shown me this few months ago, a flaw in the frame, a weakness the engineers never bothered to fix because no one expected an intern to need it. If you hit the right point with enough force, the door would bypass its locking system and slide open.
I balled my fist and slammed the panel.
Once. Twice.
Click.
A slow hiss of air escaped as the metal groaned open.
I turned to Delmar, my heart pounding.
"We're in."
He nodded, eyes burning with something ancient.
And we slipped into the darkness beyond, not knowing that every step forward would pull us deeper into the secrets that had been waiting for us all along.
"You remember the route?" I whispered, my voice barely audible over the buzz of fluorescent lights overhead.
Delmar nodded, eyes scanning the empty corridor. "Two rights, service elevator, fourth sublevel. Sector B-4."
His voice was calm, too calm. That always meant he was on edge.
"Good." I swallowed around the lump in my throat. My palms were already sweating and legs shaking a little. "Let me take the lead. Don't talk to anyone. Don't even look at them. If someone stops us, I'll handle it."
"Kash," he said quietly, stepping a little closer. "If things go wrong...run."
I turned sharply to face him, the fake security badge clipped to my chest swinging slightly with the motion. My jaw clenched.
"No," I said. "I'm not leaving without you."
He didn't argue. Just swallowed once, throat bobbing. "Kash..."
"No!" I said firmly. "We are in this together."
He clenched his jaw before giving me a silent nod. That was enough.
I turned and started forward, keeping my posture casual but purposeful, just another guard doing his rounds. The badge Liam had given us slid into the scanners with a soft beep at every checkpoint. Each green light that flickered to life felt like a small mercy.
Delmar followed behind me, silent as a shadow. He kept his head down, cap covering the sharp lines of his face, the curve of his neck hidden beneath the high collar of his borrowed uniform.
The hallways felt colder down here. Maybe it was the climate control, maybe it was the dread pooling in my stomach. The hum of the lights echoed in the silence like a warning.
We passed the genetics lab where I'd once snuck in with Peter.
Further ahead, we moved past the dim office where I'd first glimpsed the strange slides Peter had shown me, evidence of something fishy going on here. I kept walking. No time for ghosts.
Down here, the air was thicker. More sterile. Even the walls felt like they were pressing in tighter. The occasional guard barely looked at us, just a flick of their eyes and a nod once we flashed the fake IDs we'd printed the night before. My heart thumped harder each time but we kept moving, step by step, deeper than I'd ever dared to go.
At last, we reached a tall, reinforced metal door. It loomed before us like the mouth of something ancient and terrible. The number above read:
Sector B-4. Sublevel 4.
This was it.
I exhaled slowly and turned to Delmar. His eyes were locked on the door. Not afraid. Just... waiting.
"Ready?" I asked, voice trembling more than I wanted it to.
He looked at me then, and for a second, I saw through the layers of fury and fear and alien otherness, to the man who wanted to save his species. A hero. And victim both.
"Only if you are," he said.
I lifted the badge and pressed it to the scanner.
The door unlocked with a heavy click.
And we stepped inside.
A rush of icy, sterile air hit my face, sharp with antiseptic, metallic with the tang of electricity. It smelled like a place meant to erase life, not preserve it.
The lab was silent. Too silent. The kind of silence that weighed on your shoulders, made you want to whisper even your thoughts.
Rows of water tanks lined the vast, dimly lit room. Thick glass cylinders, each filled with murky water tinged blue under the fluorescent lights. And inside... bodies.
Faringues.
Or what was left of them.
Some were curled into themselves like they were still in the womb. Some floated limp, their gills barely fluttering. Others had tubes running through their veins, wires embedded like invasive roots into their skulls. Their skin was pale, slick, almost translucent in places. Life barely clung to them.
Delmar froze beside me.
I turned to him, whispering, "These are all... Faringues?"
He didn't answer at first. His body was rigid, breath slow and deep, as if he was holding back a scream. Then his voice came, low and broken.
"They're too far gone to be recognized." His fists clenched. "What the fuck have they done to them?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My throat had closed.
We moved down the line, silent footsteps echoing too loudly on the cold tile. Each tank felt like a grave. A museum of mutilation.
Then we stopped.
My heart thudded once, twice, and then halted.
At the far end of the room was a tank taller than the others. Its water clearer. The body inside more intact.
A male.
Lean. Young. And skin like mine. His eyes were closed, face slack with the stillness of deep unconsciousness. A thick breathing tube fed into his mouth, and his gills twitched faintly with each slow inhale. He wasn't dead. But he wasn't awake either.
Delmar stepped closer to the glass, his voice tight. "Are you... seeing what I'm seeing?"
My legs felt numb. "He is...different race. Faringues don't have human black ethinicity like human"
Delmar nodded slowly. "Exactly. That's... not normal. How did—"
He didn't finish.
Because at that exact moment, a sharp hiss of pressurized air sliced through the silence.
We spun around just in time to see the entry door slide open and a group of guards poured in. Black armor. Weapons up. Faces unreadable.
And at the center of it all... was Peter.
Wearing a white lab coat. Smiling like the villain in a horror film.
Delmar's body shifted in front of me in an instant, shielding me without a second thought. His back arched, that low growl in his throat rising fast.
Then something hissed through the air.
Not a bullet. A dart.
It sank into Delmar's side.
He staggered, turned his head toward me once with apology, with regret before collapsing to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut.
I knelt beside him, heart hammering, helpless.
And then Peter walked closer, his eyes burning.
"You really thought I was that stupid, Kashton Berry?" he sneered, head tilted to the side. "You thought I'd wag my tail around some sweet-talking twink and spill my secrets because I was that pathetic?"
I stared at him. "Are you not though?"
Peter chuckled. "Oh, Kash. You still don't get it, do you?"
I stood, fists clenched, voice low and trembling. "Why? Why the drama? Why keep me close?"
He stepped toward the tank behind me, the one with the boy who looked like me and yet foreign, a Faringue, and tapped the glass with his finger. "Because we were watching you. Studying you. Waiting to see what a Faringue raised on land, without ever touching water, might become."
My breath caught. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Peter's smile widened. "Your father wasn't who you think he was. He wasn't just a scientist. He was part of the core team building Faringue hybrids. Until he got all noble and tried to back out when he realized what the government was planning. He was going to blow the whistle. Reveal everything."
He stepped closer. I didn't move.
"So we had to ruin him," Peter went on. "Deemed him mentally unstable. Discredited him. But he was clever. Right under our nose, during the female Faringue's birthing experiment... she delivered twins. We were told one died. He even gave us a body to dispose of. But that was a lie."
I stared at him, my blood turning to ice.
"He sedated one of the newborns and disappeared with it. Raised it as his own. Hid it from everyone."
Peter's grin turned wicked. "You, Kash."
I couldn't breathe. The world tilted.
"No," I whispered. "You're lying."
Peter pointed behind me. "And there's your twin. The one who stayed behind. The one who isn't human or Faringue, just like you. I guess Dr Berry got the better twin. Because this one is fucking useless. Don't you see the resemblance Kash, don't you?"
My eyes flicked to the tank. To the boy who wasn't breathing. Who had my face.
I backed up, hit the glass. "No. No, that's not possible."
Peter's eyes gleamed. "You're the missing variable. You always were."
I didn't move.
Couldn't.
The weight of Peter's words crashed down on me like a tidal wave, twisting everything I knew about myself into something grotesque and unrecognizable.
I wasn't just Kash. I wasn't just some guy who got lucky enough to land a research spot at HMORC. I wasn't even... just human.
My chest heaved, my body cold despite the sterile heat of the lab. Behind me, Delmar lay motionless, still breathing, thank god but too still. Too quiet. I wanted to crawl to him. Touch him. Pull him into my arms and wake him up from this nightmare.
But my feet stayed planted.
Peter's voice broke the silence again, low and calm, like he was reciting something from memory.
"You were never some clever boy who snuck his way into a secure research center. You were allowed to. We let you. I let you because we wanted to," Peter said.
He turned to the guards. His voice changed, sharp now. Final.
"Take him."
My breath caught.
"No—"
"Do not damage him," Peter added, cutting me off. "He's far more valuable than he looks."
The guards moved.
Boots pounding. Tranquilizer guns rising. Some hit my right in the middle of my shoulder. I fell on the ground and everything went black.
***
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