- 'It wouldn't take long for both species to recognise that the only way for two apex predators to survive was to cooperate on terms of survival and success.'
---
The night before the meeting, Lucian lingered in the lab after hours, long after the others had left. The cages along the far wall were restless, the drugged rodents twitching in their beds of sawdust, squeaking at shadows that didn't move. He had grown used to their noises, but tonight it seemed different — a kind of pleading chorus, as if each throat was a cracked pipe in the same organ.
Lucian sat cross-legged on the floor, the folder of data balanced on his knee, but he wasn't reading. He was listening. Some rats had already gone still, collapsed on their sides without wound or fever, perfectly intact bodies that simply refused to continue. Others jerked, spasmed, their tiny paws clawing at air as though suffocating on something no air could cure.
He didn't feel sympathy. He felt recognition.
One rat — mottled grey, scar scabbed on its muzzle — dragged itself to the bars and fixed him with the dull glaze of its eyes. Lucian stared back, unblinking, waiting for it to blink first. It didn't. Its chest rose and fell like the bellows of a dying forge until, very slowly, it went still against the bars.
A metallic tang seeped into the air. He realised he'd been clenching his teeth, so hard the inside of his lip had split open. He wiped the smear of blood with the back of his hand and shut the folder.
The rats had shown him what the meeting tomorrow would confirm: survival had rules, and mercy was never one of them.
---
"Lucian Vexis. Your presence has been requested at the current STAE* report meeting. Bring your findings and a thorough documentation of your work for the past week."
The anaesthetist's voice carried the weight of a verdict—gentle, formal, with benevolence balanced precariously over steel.
Lucian complied. His hand moved with meticulous precision, sliding a black folder free from the pile of reports at his desk. The handwriting on the cover—Kael's—was unlike anyone else's: sharp, deliberate strokes, an architecture of aggression. It read Batch rodent testing via vein injection.
"May I bring Malevoleux to the conference? I trust he'll be capable of offering insight on his documentation."
The scientist paused. Lucian saw it: a silent assessment, calculation moving behind his eyes. Then a smile, polite and practiced. A nod. Permission granted.
Lucian turned, walked through the glass-slit door, and entered the adjacent chamber. The lab was low-lit, a cathedral of silence save for the faint hum of refrigeration units. He found Kael exactly as expected: hunched at the dissection table, a scalpel discarded beside him, the dead rat split open across its chest cavity.
Kael wasn't merely recording the specimen. He was illustrating it. His notebook lay open, the page no longer blank but alive with grotesque artistry: a heart, rendered in obsessive detail, notched and torn, painted with blood. Wax dripped from its surface in his imagining—searing, molten, eating the organ as it bled.
Lucian stood behind him. For a moment, awe erased propriety. His voice came unbidden.
"It's beautiful."
Kael's reply was immediate, as though the words had been resting on his tongue, waiting to be used.
"It is."
The silence afterward was fuller, denser, charged like static. It was Lucian who broke it, reluctantly reminded of his summons. He leaned forward, fingers brushing the page where his hand smudged the edge of a painted artery. He left the faint trace of his touch there, almost reverently, before withdrawing.
"You're wanted in the meeting."
Kael closed the book with a crisp snap, wiped the blood from his hands with clinical ease, and followed.
---
The meeting room was cold and utilitarian, a crucible designed to burn away excess humanity. Fluorescent lights glared across polished metal surfaces. At the head of the table sat the department director, flanked by the organisation's research head and several senior scientists whose expressions already bore the tautness of suspicion.
Lucian entered with the calm efficiency of someone who already knew how to occupy such spaces. He set the folder down with reverence, as though it were an offering to a god, and took his seat. Kael shadowed him—too still, too silent—like a figure carved from stone.
"Proceed," the director ordered.
Lucian opened the folder. His voice was steady, precise, his diction stripped of flourish but heavy with authority.
"Our latest round of trials on rodent subjects resulted in a mortality rate of seventy-eight percent. The drug itself produced no measurable cellular damage when isolated on human samples in vitro. Yet in vivo, we observed sudden systemic failure: paralysis, erratic heart function, convulsions. Cause of death remains undetermined."
A ripple of murmurs passed along the table. Ticks waiting to feast on efforts that weren't theirs.
One of the senior scientists—Dr. Orven, a gaunt man with hawkish features—leaned forward, suspicion curdling his voice.
"You expect us to accept that without error? That your testing was accurate? Seventy-eight percent mortality and no clear causation?"
Lucian didn't flinch. "Our documentation is thorough. Double-blind control groups. Isolated variables. Consistency was preserved."
Orven sneered. "Convenient."
Kael moved before Lucian could respond. He hadn't spoken since entering the room, and the sudden sound of his voice was like glass cracking.
"It is not convenient. It is correct."
Every head turned. His tone was calm, but there was something predatory beneath it, a quiet violence caged in restraint.
"The deaths occurred despite the drug leaving no visible cellular disruption. That paradox is not a failure of our work—it is the work. The process itself revealed an anomaly no one accounted for. An anomaly that demands attention, not dismissal."
The silence was profound. Even the lights seemed louder.
Kael's gaze moved slowly along the table, weighing each face like he was choosing prey. "You wanted accuracy. You wanted unflinching data. That is what we gave you. Question the outcome if you must, but do not insult the precision of the execution."
The words lingered, not shouted, not forced—merely delivered with a certainty that brooked no contradiction.
One by one, the scientists looked away. It was the research head who broke the stalemate, lips curling faintly in satisfaction.
"Efficiency," he said. "Unusual, but effective." His gaze flicked to Lucian, then to Kael. "Your collaboration will be formalised. Both of you will be elevated to trainee positions. We expect results. Do not disappoint us."
The decision landed with finality. The meeting adjourned.
---
Once the room emptied, the research head lingered with a few scientists, thumbing through the folder Lucian had left behind. The pages were immaculate—lacking humanity, full of precision, detailed observations, an obsessive orderliness that unsettled even the most hardened professionals.
"They are indeed efficient," he said again, almost with admiration.
One scientist, a woman with tired eyes, frowned. "Sometimes I doubt they're just children. Still in college, and yet—"
"They wouldn't have been recommended here otherwise," another interrupted.
"Yes, but—" She hesitated. "There's something about them. A… detachment. Especially Vex. And Kael—" She trailed off, searching for the right word. "He doesn't behave like the rest of us at all."
"Sinister," someone muttered.
The research head smiled thinly. "Perhaps. But even that can be valuable. We are not here to be comforted. We are here to succeed."
---
Outside, the evening air was cold and metallic, heavy with the smell of wet stone and the faint ozone bite of passing trams. Lucian and Kael walked side by side, leaving the facility behind. The streetlights fractured their shadows across the pavement, long and jagged.
At the train station, the crowd pressed around them, a tide of noise and bodies. Yet they moved through it as though insulated, untouched.
Lucian exhaled, a faint trace of satisfaction slipping into his voice. "The pay increase will be useful."
Kael glanced at him, eyes unreadable. "You're welcome."
Lucian allowed the smallest smile. "You spoke well. Better than I expected."
Kael's lips twitched, not quite a smile, more a sharpening of expression. "I'm starting to enjoy the work better than I expected."
The announcement board flickered. Their trains would depart in opposite directions. They stopped at the junction where their paths diverged, the noise of the crowd swallowing their silence.
For a moment, neither spoke. Two predators caught in the realisation that survival was more certain together than apart.
"Until next time," Lucian said.
Kael inclined his head, the gesture sharp, deliberate. "Next time."
They turned away, disappearing into the crowd.
---
Later that evening, after the train had taken Kael east and Lucian had returned home, he found himself unable to sleep. He pressed his palm to the cold glass of his bedroom window, watching his reflection lean into his own touch.
The city outside was quiet, silver-lit under a sickle moon. Neon signs buzzed faintly in the distance, half-dead with flickering bulbs. He saw himself framed by both the reflection and the world beyond: one face staring in, one face staring out, both belonging to him, neither entirely human.
He thought of Kael's words at the station, the half-smile that never reached his eyes. Enjoying this more than he should.
Lucian wondered if he was the same. He tilted his head against the glass, listening for the sound of a heartbeat. He waited, and waited, and waited — until he wasn't sure if he had one.
---
*Abbreviation of the name of the medical organisation department they're working for - 'Scientific Testing, Analysis and Evaluation'