Hélio Veras's city was breathing. Literally.

  As the Dreadnought advanced through the streets of Genesis—the arrogant name my father gave his domain—the ground beneath our treads rose and fell in a bradycardic rhythm. The asphalt had been replaced by a thick, porous dermis that absorbed dust and exhaled a sweet aroma of anesthetic pollen.

  The buildings weren't constructed; they were cultivated. They were towers of calcified cartilage and cellulose as strong as steel, with windows that looked like half-closed eyelids.

  "This isn't a city. It's a giant intestine with balconies," murmured Valéria, gripping the truck's yoke with disgust.

  "Park here, children." Hélio's voice sounded through bio-synthesizer loudspeakers scattered among the trees. "Arthur, come up. The rest of your peculiar troupe can wait in the courtyard. My Gardeners will ensure they don't go hungry. Or get eaten."

  Valéria stopped the truck in a circular plaza made of polished bone.

  I looked at my hands. The right one, human, trembled slightly with adrenaline. The left one, made of Black Crystal, glowed with a lethal, cold purple light.

  "Valéria, Gristle. Stay in the truck. Keep the air filters on max and don't eat anything they offer.

  "Luna, stay in the turret. If I scream, you sing. And sing to break everything."

  "Go on, Doctor," Gristle sharpened the cleaver on her palm. "If he's a bad father, we'll collect child support with gunpowder."

  I got out of the truck.

  Two Gardeners—those chimeras of tree bark and muscle—escorted me to the base of the central tower. There was no elevator. There was a muscular sphincter that swallowed me and gently ejected me at the top of the tower through a pneumatic channel of warm air.

  The dining room was a masterpiece of bio-architecture.

  The ceiling was an organic glass vault showing the red, starry sky of the mutant Cerrado. The long table was made of a single piece of ivory, polished until it reflected the light of pigeon-sized bioluminescent firefly chandeliers.

  And at the head of the table, cutting a piece of meat that still twitched slightly on the plate, was him.

  Hélio Veras.

  He pointed to the opposite chair with a silver knife.

  "Sit down, Arthur. Wine? It's a fermented vintage of blood grapes. Excellent for iron replacement."

  "Skip the pleasantries," I remained standing. The Parasite in my liver hissed violently, sensing the presence of the man who forced it into my body when I was a child.

  [THREAT ALERT: THE CREATOR. TACTICAL SUGGESTION: IMMEDIATE DECAPITATION.]

  For the first time in a long while, I agreed with the voice in my head.

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  "Always so clinical. So impatient." Hélio took a sip of wine. He looked at my Black Crystal arm with evident disgust. "I see you contaminated yourself with Silas Vilela's scum. Technology. What a disappointment. I gave you the apex of alien biology and you graft a flash drive onto your own shoulder."

  "Technology saved my life from a hive mind that wanted to format the planet," I retorted, finally sitting down, but without taking my eyes off him. "You vanished on Day Zero. Left humanity to burn while the Devourers descended from the sky. You said the Genesis Initiative was to protect us."

  Hélio laughed. It was a genuine laugh, which made it even more terrifying.

  "Protect? Arthur, you still think like a paramedic. You think humanity was the patient."

  He stood up and walked to the organic window, looking out over his living empire.

  "Humanity wasn't the patient. Humanity was the tumor."

  "We were fragile. Sick. We destroyed the ecosystem and died of ridiculous things like coronary failure and viral infections. When I discovered the Parasites... I didn't see a weapon against the aliens. I saw the perfect scalpel."

  "You used the Devourers as an excuse," my voice came out dangerously low.

  "They were the catalyst!" Hélio opened his arms. "The world needed a thermal shock to force evolution. I didn't create monsters, Arthur. I created the Next Apex Species. What's out there... that jungle, the Gardeners, the chimeras... they don't get sick. They don't pollute. They are perfect."

  "The apocalypse wasn't the end of the world. It was a spring cleaning. And we are the new furniture."

  "You are a sociopath playing God."

  "God was an amateur civil engineer. I am a geneticist." He pointed at my chest. "And you were the bridge. The proof of concept that human flesh could withstand the Parasite without losing individuality. But look at you now. Patched up with cybernetic garbage. Clinging to weak refugees."

  Suddenly, the radio in my ear crackled. Static cut through my father's monologue.

  "Arthur..." Valéria's voice sounded terrified. She was whispering.

  "What is it?" I replied through the communicator.

  "Gristle went to investigate the 'greenhouses' behind the plaza... Arthur, they aren't plants."

  "They're cocoons. Thousands of them."

  "The servants of this city... the Gardeners wearing masks and hoods... Gristle opened one of the defective cocoons in the trash."

  I felt a chill that didn't come from my crystal arm.

  "Arthur... it has your face." Valéria's voice broke. "All of them. They are all you."

  I fell silent. Slowly, I raised my eyes to Hélio Veras.

  He didn't seem surprised. He smiled complacently, swirling his wine glass.

  "Clones?" I whispered, reality hitting me like a punch to the stomach. "You didn't make me the bridge. You made me the mold."

  "Science requires trial and error, my son." Hélio shrugged, indifferent. "The Parasite rejection rate was 99.9%. I needed genetic material that had the same tolerance you did. But cloning your personality proved... problematic. They were born docile. Useful tools, like the Gardeners. Without the fire you have."

  "You were Batch 42. The only one that stabilized and maintained consciousness."

  He leaned over the table.

  "But now that you're back... I can use your marrow to correct the defects. We can create an army of perfect Arthurs. Together, we will cleanse what's left of Leviathania and Petrópolis. We will be the Adams of this new Eden."

  I stood up slowly. The Parasite, understanding the dimension of the violation—not just of itself, but of my own being—pulsed with a rage I had never felt before. It wasn't survival instinct. It was pure hate.

  My Black Crystal arm began to radiate a freezing purple smoke, chilling the air around me. The ivory table cracked under my right hand.

  "My name is Arthur Veras," I said, my voice sounding double, one human and one guttural and monstrous. "I am not a batch. I am not an Adam. And you are not God."

  "You are just another tumor."

  I activated the communicator on an open frequency.

  "Valéria, Gristle, Luna.

  "The diagnosis has changed. The city is in metastasis.

  "Burn the greenhouses. Burn everything."

  Hélio sighed, disappointed.

  "What a waste."

  He pressed an invisible button under the table.

  The organic floor beneath my feet opened like a maw full of cartilage teeth, swallowing me into the darkness of the tower's lower levels, straight to the genetic slaughterhouse.

  The Family Dinner was over. The autopsy of the family tree was about to begin.