The abandoned Eon Systems warehouse greeted them with air so thick with dust it felt like a cotton fog — a blend of rust, wet concrete, and old oil. They hid in a narrow aisle between two stacks of shrouded equipment, where the air was dry and sharp, humming with metallic cold. Drafts moaned through the cracks of the steel door, like uneven, raspy breathing from the past.
Jisong sat cross-legged, the light of his phone cutting his face from the darkness, casting harsh, cold stripes across his forehead and cheekbones. He was reviewing the recovered data on missing test subjects, lips pressed into a tense, thin line.
Ryon turned away, pretending to work — repairing an old analog receiver, trying to catch any signal other than Min-Ki's. Yet he could feel Jisong's gaze on him, an invisible, searing current through the dark — studying, unyielding.
Suddenly Jisong froze. The flashlight beam stilled on the screen.Ryon didn't ask what he saw, but his body reacted instantly — he felt the heat of Jisong's tension flare through the air like static.
Jisong scrolled further; his fingers trembled slightly. Ryon knew what had flashed by — his brother's face. Pale. Marked with an ID tag on his neck. A lab archive photo. Jisong said nothing, but his posture changed: he leaned closer to the screen, as if trying to shield what he'd found — from Ryon, from the world itself.
Ryon's palms shook — not from the cold, but from the realization that the truth was too close to hide.The bitter tang of stress filled the air. He dug his nails into his palm to suppress the pheromone surge.
He's guessed it, crossed Ryon's mind.He's realized I'm not human — just code built from his brother.
That fear cut deeper than any instinct for survival: if Jisong learned the rest — about his emptiness, his inability for real attachment — he'd turn away in disgust. And that would be the end.
To hide the tremor, Ryon placed a hand on the metal wall of the stack and leaned back against it. Jisong moved too — without lifting his eyes from the screen — and his back found Ryon's.
They sat like that, back to back, still and rigid as sentinels. Ryon felt the heat seeping through the fabric of their coats and shirts, bringing unbearable relief to the cold room. Jisong's steady breathing pulsed down Ryon's spine like a tuning fork, trying to align his fractured rhythm.
That warmth was both exquisite and dangerous.Ryon's body — his neural lattice, his engineered network born from Eon Systems — began reacting to that breath. The suppressants worked, but weakly; stress and cold threw his hormones into chaos. His body felt the Alpha's proximity as necessity, even while his mind resisted. It was the first quiet malfunction — subtle, but irreversible.
Jisong stopped typing. The flashlight hovered above the keyboard.Ryon realized he'd drifted into half-sleep, surrendering to exhaustion and the fragile safety of this corner.
Ryon allowed himself one moment of forbidden weakness. He turned his head ever so slightly, pressing his temple against Jisong's hair. Slowly — like a thief moving through darkness — he breathed him in: warm, clean, faintly sharp, the scent of an Alpha without aggression, rain-damp and tired.
It was a crime — stealing warmth, stealing peace while Jisong slept.
Ryon reached down with a fingertip, tracing along the edge of Jisong's collar where the skin was warmest, softest — where his pulse beat slow and steady.He drew an invisible, burning line there — a mark of belonging — and erased it with his breath.
Realizing the danger of this secret tenderness, Ryon jerked away so fast his shoulder ached from the movement.It was a desperate theft of warmth, leaving a lingering ache beneath his skin — a reminder of his human error.
He forced himself back to the receiver. His fingers trembled again — and then he caught a signal, thin but clear.
— Min-Ki? — he whispered.— I'm here. Did you see something?— Yes. I saw Jisong's brother. He was a subject too. J-13.
A long, taut silence followed.
— I warned you, — Min-Ki's voice came at last, not angry but weary to the core. — Their link to you runs deeper than you think. Their genetic code was used to "refine" your matrix. You're part of their family, Ryon. Biologically.
Ryon clenched his jaw. Min-Ki's voice cut through him like an invisible knife, slicing open the deepest fear.
— Jisong doesn't know, — he lied, shame burning his throat.
— He does, — Min-Ki corrected softly. — Your pheromones are unstable. He senses your fear, your warmth. You're becoming too human around him. And human is a flaw.
Ryon cut the line. His hand trembled.He turned carefully and leaned against Jisong again, seeking that anchoring heat.Jisong stirred in his sleep but didn't wake — only exhaled heavily.
Ryon breathed him in — clean, grounding — and let that warmth soothe him.He understood that every second spent beside Jisong was a violation of code, but that violation was the only thing keeping him alive.
Outside, the wind slashed against the walls; inside, stillness rang — broken only by the faint biological resonance of two bodies that should never have been near each other.And that closeness was the sweetest, most painful truth of all.