Darkness hummed around them, absolute and heavy. They crept through the service entrance, barely prying open the rusted door of the parking level. The damp, cold smell of concrete, mold, and stagnant water hit their nostrils. Jisong led the way; his broad back in the dark coat looked like an impenetrable shield. Ryon followed, each movement calculated, yet his body felt an unfamiliar looseness — it trusted the Alpha walking ahead.
They descended into the heart of the Eon complex — the server room. The dry, chilled air, steeped with the tang of ozone and dust, contrasted sharply with the dampness of the parking level. Darkness here was not merely the absence of light but something dense and weighty, as if the data itself had condensed the space around them.
Ryon plugged his portable terminal into one of the surviving panels. For a second the vast room came alive with the flicker of screens; the world narrowed to the sound of keys and the rustle of breath.
— Min-Ki? — Ryon whispered into his earpiece; his voice nearly dissolved into the drone of abandoned coolers.
An answer came instantly, sharp and clear despite the thick walls: "I'm already here. They didn't bother very much to erase their own traces."
Ryon launched the hack. Code streamed across the screen in fast green veins, reflected in his dilated pupils. Jisong stood behind him, his presence almost tactile, a constant, heavy warmth. Ryon felt as if he were in the crosshairs — the light of the monitor and Jisong's gaze both fixed on him.
— There's the archive, — Ryon murmured, fingers freezing over the keys.
Among hundreds of encrypted files he found the one he was seeking — brazenly labeled "Subject R." Beside it: "Pheromone Inversion Experiment." A sweet, metallic taste of fear rose on his tongue. His body remembered laboratory stress responses; his pheromone balance skewed sharp and bitter. Yet beside Jisong his pulse did not spiral out of control; instead it oddly evened out, as if his organism surrendered to the Alpha's steady rhythm.
"Anomaly," Min-Ki's quiet voice sounded in his ear. "Link between carrier R and marker J-13 stabilizing."
— What did you find? — Jisong asked, stepping a pace closer; his hot breath grazed Ryon's neck.
— The truth about myself, — Ryon answered without turning. He slowly scrolled through the dossier. "Omega inversion: biological response suppressed, analytical code enhanced. Emotional dependency absent."
Ryon switched the screen to a different archive layer. There, amid the list of test subjects, stood a photograph beside Min-Ki's name. A familiar face — his own, yet with different eyes. Jisong's brother. Marker J-13.
Jisong saw the photo and the name. He said nothing. Ryon felt his body go stone-still behind him. His hands trembled for the first time — not from cold, but from the raw exposure of truth. Jisong understood then that Eon's project, his missing brother, and Ryon were all tangled together.
— He… he's my brother, — Jisong's voice was barely audible, hoarse with shock. — How is he linked to you?
"You don't have to be that number again," Min-Ki's voice came, unexpectedly soft and intimate in Ryon's ear. The phrase hit Ryon like a warm, tender kiss on the neck, catching him off guard. His body shuddered, marking this private mercy amid the crisis.
Ryon snapped the terminal off. The screen went dark. The room plunged back into thick, immediate night.
In that sudden, choking blackout Ryon instinctively reached out sideways for something to steady himself on — a wall, the server casing — to quell the urge to flee.
Instead his hand closed on Jisong's warm, dry palm.
Jisong squeezed his fingers — gentle, but with the unmistakable, proprietorial force of someone saying, Don't disappear. He did not let go; with the pad of his thumb he stroked the knuckles of Ryon's hand, as if checking the fragile thing would not crumble under the weight of revealed truth.
A rush of shame flooded Ryon for reacting uncontrolled, and simultaneously a sudden warmth spread from the palm through his body, loosening the knots in his muscles.
— Breathe, — Jisong whispered, his voice soothing but threaded with quiet demand.
Ryon answered the squeeze, returning the pressure. In that mute, firm contact there was more confession and vulnerability than any words could hold. The silence between them was not a pause but a first, deep breath taken together — recognition of shared fate.
— He was my brother, but he became code, — Ryon finally broke the silence, his voice low and hoarse. He still did not release Jisong's hand; in that grip he sensed safety.
Jisong turned to him in the dark; his silhouette barely more than a shape.
— And he's tied to you through project R-01. You knew him?
— I was his copy, — Ryon said, the bitter truth cutting his tongue. — Not human — a matrix. They made me from his data after he "disappeared," to continue working on the pheromone code.
Jisong closed his eyes. The scent of madness and unbearable pain wove into his Alpha instinct. He carefully pulled Ryon closer, pressing their linked hands to his chest.
— Your memory is not just a matrix, Ryon, — Jisong whispered; his hot exhale ghosted Ryon's brow. — You're human. You're here.
Ryon exhaled; his breath came out sweet and bitter. He slowly interlaced his fingers with Jisong's, surrendering that control. In the server room's darkness, among dust and ozone, their joined hands became the only source of light and heat. Ryon felt his body calm automatically in response to Jisong's strength — a necessity that erased his coded conditioning. He was dependent. And it was his own unbearably human mistake.
***
Ryon realized in that moment — when his essence lay revealed like cold code on a screen — that for the first time he felt real and vulnerable. Jisong waited not with words but with the pressure of his palm.
— He's dead, — Ryon said quietly, finally letting Min-Ki's name go. — But he helped me escape. He's in the network now.
— Then we will find his traces, and we will clean them, — Jisong nodded firmly, his hand over Ryon's tightening. — We'll do it together. No matter who you are or who you were. Now you're with me.
In the dark server room those words sounded like an oath. Ryon squeezed Jisong's fingers harder; his body acknowledged his Alpha, his path, his fate. It was the deepest form of eroticism — absolute acceptance and trust in the face of total danger. Their shared silence brimmed with heat and an unspoken promise.