MICHAEL
“I REMEMBER YOU,” Ademund said.
He didn’t look anything like the boy who’d once knelt in the ash of a burning farm, sobbing into the bloodied soil, fists full of grief. That boy had been slag. Charred and cracking.
This man—standing in sunlight split by the window’s lattice—was steel. Straight back. Polished. Unforgiving.
And it was Big Mike kneeling now. Chains rattled as he shifted, wrists bound to the cold wall behind him. Stone scraped his spine.
Ademund took a step closer, boots silent on the floor covered with grit. His coat swept behind him like a shadow that never belonged to him.
He studied Mike the way a butcher might inspect a stubborn carcass.
“Do you know what I wanted to do to you, huh?” he asked.
He pulled a long blade from his belt. Thin, wicked, gleaming where it caught the high sun leaking through the slats above. Too small and too far to matter. Unlike the knife.
Mike stayed. Of course he did. Nothing good ever came from opening your mouth to a man holding a grudge and a blade.
Ademund tilted his head. And smiled.
“I wanted to gut you like a pig. From here—” He pointed the tip to Mike’s lower belly,
“—to here.”
Dragged it up to the ribs, slow, deliberate. A line of imagined pain.
Mike didn’t flinch. Just pretended it didn’t impress him in any way. And kept quiet.
“You wanna know why I’m not gonna to that, huh?” Ademund asked.
Mike kept his eyes on the blade, not the man. And didn’t reply. There was no point to.
“‘Cause of my sister.” Ademund sheathed the knife with a snap. “You should thank her.”
He leaned down, close enough that Mike could smell the leather and the iron on his breath.
“Oh, wait,”he whispered. “You not gonna have a chance, ‘cause you ain’t gonna see her. You’ll rot in this hole.”
Mike watched the slatted sunlight move across the floor and said nothing. Of course he didn’t.
“Amaia told my something,” Ademund muttered, almost to himself. “She said you were sure Yanick wouldn’t kill me on the farm. Because his father did something similar during the war.”
He let the words hang. Waited. But he could waited until the end of time, because Big Mike was not going to answer.
“Tell me something,” Ademund said, turning back. “Why’d you come for her, huh?”
Mike lowered his head and kept quiet.
“Answer me!”
That yell cracked through the cell like a whip and could easily send shivers. There was not even an ounce of desperation in it or even a lack of patience. It was a show of dominance. Pure and unshaken.
Old Mike would ignore it. Of course he would. No engaging, not interference outside the orders. It was not a part of his mission. Except he was not on a mission anymore. And he wasn’t old Mike anymore.
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“Her baby is the reason,” new Mike replied. Voice low. Solid.
Ademund’s lip curled.
“Oh,” he said, long and mocking, like it tasted sour. “Yanick’s baby.”
“It’s not his child your sister carries.”
The knife was at Mike’s throat before he even saw the flash of movement.
Steel bit the skin. Just enough to warn.
“You calling my sister a whore?” Ademund hissed. “Huh?”
Mike didn’t blink. Didn’t pull away.
“No.” Simple answer. Then the truth that came after. “I don’t think she had any other man apart from Yanick. Yet the baby she’s carrying is not his.”
Ademund recoiled like the words had stung him.
Took a step back, like madness might be catching. His eyes scanned Mike’s face with suspicion, as if insanity left bruises he could spot.
“What are you talking about?” Ademund put and accent on every word.
Mike drew in a long, deep breath.
***
MIKE SCANNED THE ORDERS given him by the kid guard. He checked every listed flight, every coordinate. He saw it almost instantly and when he read the mission description a shiver ran up his back, and it wasn’t the night air.
Flight number: E365;
Destination: 55.6617, 49.0993;
Officer: Gabriel XII;
Assistant: Pvt William III;
Passenger: Amaia Nemethdóttir;
Flight mode: Automated;
Mission priority: TOP;
Description: Cargo is a female, age 18, pregnant. Fetus genetically engineered by Engineer Elijah IX under directive from High Council.
Details: Subject is unaware of the true nature of conception. She maintains belief that the biological father is Yanick Erickson — the original test subject administered with the Supreme Gene Modification Compound (SGMC-01). Subject displays no current signs of physiological rejection or autoimmune failure in response to the modified genome. Transition remains stable, though development is proceeding at a slower-than-anticipated rate.
Primary Objective: Locate and retrieve Yanick Erickson. Subject escaped Station Alpha prior to completion of final-phase testing. Immediate recovery is prioritised. Psychological profiling suggests that emotional leverage — specifically, the subject's belief in shared parentage and emotional attachment — will increase likelihood of voluntary compliance. Use of force is to be avoided unless necessary.
Directive: Cargo must be transported to temple in Astoris. Delivery is to occur under controlled conditions with Council-certified medical personnel in attendance. In case of mission compromise, fetal extraction and preservation protocol is to be initiated. The fetus remains Priority Asset.
Signed: Maria IX, High Council Head Chair
Mike closed his eyes. First it were the letters to Nemeth, now this. This madness reached deeper than he could ever imagine.
***
“WHAT?" ADEMUND SHOUTED. This time there was no dominance, only pure desperation. “Am I supposed to believe that, huh?”
“Believe what you want,” Mike replied, steady as stone. “It’s not going to change the reality.”
Ademund spun away.
Paced.
His boots scuffed the floor in sharp, erratic steps. Hands flexing and curling at his sides, one moment combing through his hair, the next drumming against the hilt of his blade. He walked the narrow space like a caged wolf, jaw clenched so hard it seemed ready to splinter.
“So what, Yanick was injected with something, huh?” he barked. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure what the original intent was,” Mike said, voice low, controlled. “What traits it was meant to enhance. Strength? Endurance? Obedience? But I know this—every gene mod has one side effect in common.”
He looked Ademund dead in the eyes.
“Infertility. We’re all sterile.”
Ademund scoffed, a bitter, choked laugh.
“Then how the hell were you born? How do you multiply, huh?”
“It’s called IVF. In vitro fertilisation. Artificial. External.”
Mike let the foreign words land.
“We’re lab-born. Every last one of us.”
Ademund stared, eyes wide, but not blank. Working. Churning. His chest rose sharp and uneven, each breath dragging through flared nostrils like he’d been running. Like processing the truth had knocked the wind out of him. Of course it could.
“And the baby… My sister,” Ademund stuttered. “You’re saying she was injected with something like that? Injected with a baby. It’s that what it is, huh?”
“Simply put—yes.”
Ademund turned away again. One step slow, deliberate. Another faster, like his legs were trying to outrun something his mind refused to process. By the third, his hands curled into fists. He stopped.
Stood still for a breath, two, spine rigid as iron.
Then he pivoted back, sharp and sudden, as if yanked by a string, eyes burning with something not yet named. Too many emotions, none of them settled.
“So whose baby is it? What’ll it look like? A mixture like me and her? Like a Nordling? One of the Svarts or the damn Sajanos? Or maybe it’s gonna be a dwarf, huh?”
Mike shook his head.
Ademund’s breath was still loud in the cell, uneven. The kind that filled the space like steam before a storm. Big Mike could hear the soft creak of the chains straining against the wall, feel the heat rising behind his ribs.
For a second, neither man moved. The dust in the air seemed to freeze.
“This child could be anything,” Mike said quietly. “It may even not be a human at all.”
