The biotech patch was solid green. Kai stared at it in the mirror, toothbrush idle in his mouth. The light held steady for a moment, then began to pulse like a heartbeat. He touched the skin around it, felt the faint warmth that was becoming a constant presence.
Suppression Stable.
He rinsed his mouth, spat, and leaned closer. His reflection looked tired. Not sick. Not broken. Just... dull.
He hadn't always felt this way. There were moments—brief, flickering—when something inside him surged. A heat in his chest. A pressure behind his eyes. But the patch always responded. Always dulled it.
Cash said it was normal. Said the patch was working.
Kai wasn't so sure anymore.
---
The next day at work, the lights seemed too bright. The air felt too cold. The building too damn quiet.
He moved through the day like a robot. Logged data. Answered messages. Attended meetings. Smiled when prompted.
At lunch, he sat alone. Again.
The familiar heat began to build beneath the patch on his neck.
It wasn't painful, exactly. More like sharp electrical jolts from within, a feeling the patch was struggling to suppress. A pulsing, humming shock that ran deep beneath his skin, under the patch. He pressed his fingers to the spot, trying to soothe it.
Across the cafeteria, the man from the day before was there again, glancing at him. His eyes lingered. Longing. Kai looked away.
He didn't know or recognize the man. He finished his meal and walked towards where the man was standing but by the time he got there he was gone, but something in the scent he left behind, not in a bad way, but a familiar smell of comfort that made his stomach twist.
---
That night, the dream came again, clearer this time. More details.
He was fourteen again. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, choking.
Screams. Fire. Heat.
He ran. This time he found his father on the floor, bleeding. Was he breathing? He couldn't tell but he could tell that his mother was definitely gone.
Then the figure. Tall. Cloaked. Flames seeming to bounce off of him. Eyes like silver fire and a nose made specifically for the beautifully divine were all that was visible.
Kai collapsed. The man knelt beside him, gently grabbing his face, tracing the line of his exposed collarbone, then bit him.
Not violently. Not cruelly. But with purpose. He then bit himself and rubbed the blood from his own wound across the bite mark on Kai's neck.
"YOU ARE MINE!"
Kai gasped. The pain was sharp, then warm. And again, everything went black.
---
He woke with a jolt.
The patch was blinking erratically between red and green.
His neck was on fire.
He sat up, his heart racing. The room was dark. The air thick.
He touched his neck to check for the scar that had to be there, because what he just felt this time was all too real. To his surprise there was still no scar. Still no mark. Still just skin.
But the throbbing was there. Faint. Rhythmic.
He changed the patch immediately out of fear and frustration because he didn't know what was happening and he didn't know what the red blinking meant.
ESTÁS LEYENDO
Slaved by an Alpha, Saved by an Enigma
Fanfiction~Every 'defect' is a weapon. Every new bond, part of a revolution.~ The Architect built a world where only perfection is allowed. Those born blind, deaf, scarred, missing pieces, or too broken to bond are branded "defects"-discarded, erased, forgott...
