- 'If the extermination of a species will not be total, it will return. And when it does, it will be stronger — immune to the weapon that once subdued it.'
---
It was always obvious.
Lucian Vexis demanded the center. Not merely a seat in the room, but the axis, the pivot upon which the whole diseased mechanism turned. He would never stand among the outskirts, never join the buzzing perimeter where the flies gathered, grazing with their soft mouths on routine and mediocrity. To sit there would mean contamination. To breathe there would mean consent.
Every morning he reminded himself: I am not them. I am not them. I am not them.
If the world required proof, he would provide it, no matter the cost. He would peel the skin from his own bones if that was what it took to separate himself. He would rip the wiring from his soul and stitch it back in crooked, until no resemblance remained. He would burn every shared instinct out of himself, salt the earth of his own mind, if it meant no one could mistake him for one of them.
At 5:00 a.m. the mirror greeted him like an altar. Its glass was cold to the touch, but his reflection burned with a radiance warmer than flesh deserved to carry. He studied it with the precision of a critic and the devotion of a worshipper. He was not simply dressing; he was armoring himself, sealing skin and sinew beneath the crisp exoskeleton of tailored fabric.
Worth, he whispered to his reflection, is not inherited. It is rehearsed until flawless.
Workout. Train. Meditate.
Workout. Train. Study.
Muscle. Mind. Control.
Repeat until reality bends.
---
By 8:00 a.m., when he entered the classroom, he was already months ahead of them. His notes were memorized, his schedule a weaponized map of efficiency. He wore superiority like a perfectly cut coat — uncreased, unshared, impossible to counterfeit.
School, to Lucian, was not education. It was leisure. A public aquarium of underdeveloped organisms, creatures gill-breathing in shallow intellectual waters. He liked to watch them thrash — to observe the clumsy collisions of their urges, their petty rivalries, their rituals of attraction and rejection.
And then, one day, there was Kael Maleveloux.
Lucian noticed him not as one notices a person, but as one notices an anomaly in an experiment: a grey streak across otherwise predictable results. Oak-brown hair fell in uneven collapse, eyes shadowed beneath a fringe that should have made him invisible. His posture was unremarkable. He was not handsome, not striking. Yet—something. Not the usual larval shape, not another translucent grub gnawing on cafeteria scraps.
Lucian stared as Kael drew lines across the page of his notebook. Not neat lines, not diagrams — but jagged, unspooling fractures of ink, as though the pen was dragging something corrosive from the marrow. Boredom emanated from him like a static charge.
Lucian watched and thought: Boredom can be dangerous, in the right soil.
---
The teacher, oblivious as always, prodded Kael with a question. A simple one — last week's material.
Kael barely lifted his head. He muttered that he had already studied it all before transferring. Not just last week's lesson. The year's worth. All of it. Just in case.
A signal.
Lucian's eyes snapped to him like steel to a magnet. Could he be of the same kind?
---
Later, when Kael became a target — as all anomalies did — the insects descended on him with mockery. Predictable. Efficient as termites. They probed for weakness, swarmed for the smallest scent of blood.
Lucian intervened. Not from kindness. He despised kindness — the maggot's instinct to press its body to another for warmth. No. He stepped between Kael and the swarm because degradation was waste. A potentially useful organism should not be dismantled prematurely.
"I think I know what you are," Lucian said, without preamble. His voice sliced through the cafeteria hum.
Kael barely moved.
Lucian set a stack of banknotes on the desk. A deliberate weight. An offer. An examination.
"I work part-time at the university labs. Join me. I need an ally for running tests."
Kael's eyes narrowed, skeptical. "Why should I?"
"It pays. You're different enough to be accepted. Entry requires either recommendation or brutality. I can give the first. So—"
"I get it." Kael cut him off, quiet but final. "Quiet."
Lucian smiled. Not for friendship. Not for closeness.
He sat beside him. The seat had been empty — naturally. No one chose to sit beside the outcast.
"If you say yes," Lucian murmured, "your future will be secure."
Kael didn't glance up. "And why is that?"
"Because I think you're worth my attention. And I invest only in value."
For the first time, Kael's lips twitched. "Seems you've got a good eye."
Partnership. Or the beginning of one.
Kael didn't yet understand. Lucian intended to raze the colony of crawling things around them — and Kael would have the privilege of watching the harvest from the front row.
---
After school, the laboratory was a cathedral of sterility. Empty, but not silent. The white light from the ceiling panels did not flicker, did not falter — it bathed the metal tables in a glare so steady it felt hostile, predatory. The air hummed with the static thrum of refrigeration, the soft whisper of vents. It smelled of disinfectant, sharp and acrid, forever losing its war against the musk of caged animals.
Lucian moved without hesitation. Gloves snapped over his fingers with military precision, every motion exact, unhurried, inevitable. Beneath the surgical lamp, the cages trembled with their contents. Rats, pale as half-grown fungi, huddled in corners, their whiskers twitching in ceaseless panic.
Kael arrived quietly, his presence like a shadow lengthening across the tiles. He did not flinch at the animals. He went directly to the supply cart, opened the second drawer, and removed a blister pack of syringes and vials that glowed faintly amber beneath the light.
Without instruction, he began filling the first syringe. His movements were careful, deliberate.
Lucian glanced only once. "You remember the dosage."
Kael's answer was without pride, without hesitation. "I remember everything."
The first rat squealed as Lucian pulled it from the cage. Its claws scraped at the latex, frantic arcs that meant nothing. His fingers closed around its ribcage like a vise. He felt the frantic tremor of its breath against his thumb.
Kael slid the syringe toward him — point first, a silent offering. A challenge.
Lucian took it. He never broke eye contact with the rat.
The needle slid in like a whisper. The body jerked, convulsed once. Lucian held it until the final tremors stilled, until the silence beneath his thumb confirmed what science and cruelty already promised.
Kael was already writing — dosage, specimen number, time — his handwriting cramped and angled, wasting no space. Not handwriting to be praised by a teacher. Handwriting for records that mattered.
---
Their rhythm formed quickly:
Lucian — select, pin, inject, observe.
Kael — load, hand over, record, watch.
It was not equality. Lucian dictated the tempo, as precise as metronome ticks. Kael adapted perfectly, no friction, no lag.
Halfway through the second cage, Kael spoke. His voice was low, even. "Do you ever wonder what it feels like for them?"
Lucian did not pause. "Irrelevant. The outcome is the same."
"That wasn't the question."
Lucian smirked, sharp as a scalpel. "Then I prefer to imagine they feel everything."
Kael's eyes lifted from the clipboard. Not softened. Sharpened. "Then you're thorough."
Lucian held the next rat longer than necessary, thumb pressing against its ribs as its life thinned beneath his grip. Kael noticed. He said nothing. Instead, he filled the next syringe — slightly overfull. By a fraction of a milliliter.
When he passed it forward, Lucian caught the variance immediately. His gaze flicked to Kael, knife-sharp. "Testing me?"
Kael tilted his head. "Would it matter if I was?"
Lucian injected without hesitation. "No. The end result is always the same."
Kael made a note on the page. Not about the rat.
---
By the final cage, the air was heavier, thick with disinfectant, musk, and the iron tang of something unseen. The sounds of claws and squeaks no longer broke the silence; they belonged to it.
Lucian set down the last empty syringe. His gloves bore faint marks from the animals' desperate scrabbling, but his hands were steady. "You adapt quickly," he said.
Kael stacked the clipboard on the counter. "You expect control. I expect competence. We both got what we wanted."
Lucian studied him, surgical light bleaching his eyes pale. "And if I wanted more?"
Kael met the look without flinching. "You'd have to earn it."
Lucian's smile was thin, unreadable. "Fair."
They cleaned in silence — Kael wiping down the counters, Lucian aligning tools with geometric precision. When the cages were draped in covers and the lights dimmed, Lucian held the door open.
Kael passed him without a glance.
But in the reflection of the glass wall, Lucian watched him.
In Kael's measured stride, in the way he didn't ask questions, Lucian saw something almost sacred: a being that could be kept close without being contaminated.
And in Lucian's hands, steady with killing, Kael saw something he recognized: a person who would use him without apology, without insult.
They understood each other in that moment. Not as friends. Yet. Not as allies. Yet. But as two predators recognizing their reflection in another's teeth.