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The setting sun paints the sky resplendent colors, orange, red, and purple blending on the horizon.
Till is not paranoid, per se, but he’s far from relaxed. He’s useful, is the thing, and the bastards at A Pharmaceuticals know that.
He exits his dingy apartment on the dodgy side of town with a hat pulled over his head and glasses perched on the bridge of his nose—the less he looks like himself, the less likely it is that he’ll be recognized.
Humidity makes the air suffocating to wade through. He sweats as soon as he closes the damn door, furtively glancing in both directions before he wades into an alleyway, taking a detour to go to a convenience store half a mile away from the one he usually goes to.
With his arms full, he has every intention of slithering back from whence he came. Instead, an unfamiliar hand is clapped over his mouth. His assailant sprays something into his nose. For good measure, the shadowy figure chokes him out, dragging him off with his things left scattered on the ground.
The people who live here know better than to call the authorities.
Till is jolted awake by the sensation of cold water splashed on his face, gasping for air as his lashes flutter. “What the fu—”
“Keep your voice down,” a smooth voice says, lazily latching and unlatching a switchblade. “You certainly picked an inconvenient place to hide. Congratulations are in order, I suppose.”
Groggily, the world comes into focus. An abandoned warehouse with blown out windows, restraints tied around his arms and legs—apparently, he’s been taken into custody by a Cleaner. Wonderful. “You can’t kill me,” Till says, false bravado causing the words to come out rough.
“No,” the Cleaner agrees. “I can’t. Not without authorization.”
Relieved, Till sighs. Presumably, the Board is busy deliberating, trying to decide if he’s better off under constant surveillance or whether they should bury him alive. He encrypted the files. He burned the notes. He all but destroyed the preliminary samples.
His skill as a pharmacist is the only thing keeping the Cleaner’s knife from digging into his throat. The Cleaner hasn’t been authorized to kill him, but that doesn’t mean Till is in the clear. Torture is something Mikhail takes particular delight in signing off on.
“Listen to me,” Till starts, only to be interrupted by a smack on the cheek that stings so much, he’s confident capillaries burst. He considers himself lucky he didn’t sustain whiplash. “That hurt, dammit.”
“They warned me that you were a talker,” the Cleaner says, tone droll.
Till curses under his breath. How kind of them to send their best.
“Did they also tell you—”
Another smack lands, harder than the first. “That you’re a once in a lifetime genius and an unparalleled talent? Yes.”
Overprepared piece of shit.
“Why are you so determined to give me brain damage, then?”
The Cleaner’s lips curl into a lazy smile. “Surely a mind like yours can withstand a concussion or two. Losing an IQ point or two is hardly going to bridge the gap between you and the rest of humanity.”
Smart, clever, and strong? Mikhail really had learned his lesson.
“If you’re not afraid of what I have to say, let me say it.”
Abruptly, a hand wraps around his throat. The Cleaner only uses a single hand, but it’s broad. The black gloves do nothing to hide his strength, digits flexing with ease. He winds Till for the briefest of moments. “Afraid? No. Amused? Perhaps.”
The Cleaner is toying with him, batting him around like a cat playing with a mouse. With a glossy-eyed gasp, Till glares.
“I have to give a status report in thirty minutes. Tick, tock.”
Till’s proposition is garbled and rushed, impeded by the Cleaner’s microaggressions. No matter how close the blade comes to his eyes or how fervently long fingers dance up Till’s throat, he refuses to falter, chest heaving after all of the words have been expelled.
In the aftermath, the Cleaner hums. He stalks off, turning around within four paces. Till considers straining against his bonds, but ultimately decides to wait the Cleaner out, studying the stranger’s silhouette. It’s dark in the warehouse, but he can still see, tracing the shape of a firm jawline, sharp face framed by silky hair. There’s a cavalier sort of power to him, something sinewy that tells Till this Cleaner fears no god or man. Reckless, wild, menacing—something scratches at the back of Till’s brain, forming connections.
Like it or not, he's a researcher at his core.
“Let’s say that I choose to join you,” the Cleaner supposes. “What, exactly, do you think we’re going to achieve?”
Till is not delusional enough to get his hopes up. The Cleaner is obviously intelligent, autonomous enough to make his own decisions. They didn’t have to drug him to keep him obedient. Absently, Till wonders he was clever enough to dislodge his tracking chip, keeping it on his person but out from underneath his skin.
He inhales. Exhales. “I’d like to burn A Pharmaceuticals to the ground, for a start.”
The Cleaner barks out a laugh. Humorlessly, Till mirrors him. The noise is involuntary, really.
“I suppose I should have expected grandiosity from someone like you.”
Someone like me. Till wonders what the hell that’s supposed to mean.
“Tell you what,” the Cleaner starts, untying Till with a blank expression. “Let’s give this a trial run. We’ll see how far your harebrained scheme gets you—on one condition.”
“Anything,” Till rasps, rubbing at his wrists.
The Cleaner pins him to the ground. Mounts him like a wolf. Breathes hot on his face. “The minute you start to bore me, I’ll kill you.”
Till’s mind fills with questions, the first of which being: What about your orders? There’s a manic gleam in the Cleaner’s eyes that deters him from asking, swallowing as fear creeps into his veins. Confinement would be a simple solution. Death, simpler still.
This? Is unpredictable and dangerous.
“Alright,” he agrees.
The alternatives are worse, after all.
Four days removed from the heart of the city, the Cleaner introduces himself as Ivan.
Till doesn’t recognize the name. If he could just check the database—out of the fucking question. Not only had his access been revoked, but connecting to the internet with or without Ivan’s help would give Mikhail and the rest of the Board their coordinates.
Jia is a rancid bitch to him, but he offers Till and Ivan a place to sleep in his sty of a place. Furthermore, he drafts up the necessary documents to get them across the border.
The news outlets buzz. There are whispers of a bounty being put on their heads. Lazily, Ivan cleans his weapons. Jia lies through his teeth when the authorities do a sweep, his entirely unwanted guests hiding in a room hidden by a rotating bookshelf.
It’s only after they’ve loaded up with a suitcase full of illegally obtained ammo, clothes, and food that they wander into the wilderness. Till becomes completely dependent on Ivan’s skills to survive.
As Till huffs and wheezes his way through the mountains, there are a few things that become obvious about Ivan.
One: his sense of pain is dull.
He comes back to the cave they’ve called home for the past two days with blood dripping down his sleeve. Ivan reassures him that he’s ambidextrous so it’s not a big deal, but Till doesn’t give a shit about that. Hurriedly, he digs through his things, fishing for the first aid kit.
On instinct, Ivan points a blade at him. Stubbornly, Till refuses to back down. “Sit down, moron—the last thing we need is for you to get infected. Fuck.”
Obediently, Ivan lowers himself onto a rock, watching Till scoop river water into a shirt. Nimble fingers thread the needle. He apologizes for the lack of painkillers. Ivan shrugs, nonplussed.
He does not so much as wince as Till stitches him up, dark eyes tracking Till like a hawk.
Two: his morality is skewed.
This is to be expected from anyone in association with A Pharm, but it’s still off-putting. Till can safely say he’s never met anyone like Ivan before, as mercurial as he is predictable. Some days, he does nothing but stare, content to remain silent for hours. Other days, he speaks like words are going to go out of fashion, like he’s been waiting for an opportunity to wax poetic about all of the extraneous knowledge they stuffed into his head.
Three: he’s oddly physical.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Till should be wary. He is wary. However, the world feels overwhelmingly vast and overbearing when he thinks about it for too long and Ivan is the only person around to talk to, so.
Frequently, Ivan nicks him. It feels more like Till has been approached by an animal than a stone-cold killer, nipped at by pointy teeth, blood pearling on his fingertips as Ivan watches it ooze. Once, he does it while Till is asleep, disturbing his slumber if only to dig his fingers into the wound then lick them clean.
“It doesn’t taste any different than mine.”
“No shit,” Till snarls.
For weeks, they travel. For months, they lie low. The news cycle changes. They enter a new town. Till and Ivan do not discuss how they come by money nor supplies; some things are better left unsaid.
The city is crowded enough for them to mill about unnoticed. Ivan stands out on the merit of dark, bulky clothes and his striking face. He’s overdue for a haircut, but Till tells him to leave it alone for a few more days—he needs to call someone and it will be better if Ivan keeps watch in the shadows, casually avoiding the security cameras while he stands guard.
It takes three tries for Luka to pick up. “I suppose I should have expected this.”
“I need a favor.”
“Obviously,” Luka drawls.
“I need to get into the laboratory in West Lake.”
“That won’t do you any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“They abandoned the facility.”
Till curses. “What about North Shore?”
“It’ll cost you.”
“Look, I can’t—”
“I never said I wanted money.”
He licks his lips. He glances at Ivan. All clear, Till signals. “I need transportation.”
“It will take ten days for Hyuna to get to you.”
Faster than he expected, really. “I’m not exactly in a position to complain.”
He’s about to hang up but Luka makes a noise. He’s always been soft-spoken, but he’s talking so quietly Till can’t help but wonder if Luka actually wants him to hear. “Your father isn’t going to take this lying down. Someone needs to fill his shoes. Come up with something good. A vaccine, and something else. I’m going to take advantage of the power vacuum.”
Till grips the flip phone in his hand so tightly, he’s surprised the device doesn’t snap. “Selfish pig.”
“I’m doing you a favor, if you’ll recall. Good luck.”
That said, Luka hangs up.
“You’re going to get both of us killed,” Ivan says, staring at the array of weapons on the floor; everything is locked and loaded. Till nearly trips and dislodges the safety on a handgun but Ivan catches him, smirking as Till blanches.
Till glances at his notebook, filled with half-baked formulas. “I don’t mind dying on my own terms,” he says, picking up a pen then putting it down.
Among the countless little tics of Ivan’s that Till has picked up, this is something new: pure curiosity.
It’s far from the first time Till has had people stare at him like a circus act, but it’s the first time the interest has felt so—innocent. Childish, almost. In contrast to his father’s harsh words and harsher punishments, Ivan looks like he’s thinking about something he can’t put a name to.
Forlorn is the description Till would use if pressed on the subject.
“You look like you wanna ask me something,” Till says, pulling off his glasses at long last. “Ask.”
“You seem familiar,” Ivan hums, crouching over him for the nth time.
Till snorts. “Pretty lame come-on.” Ostensibly, the Board had given Ivan a folio filled to the brim with photographs. Till had been recorded on the premises dozens of times, featured in newspaper articles. Boy Genius; Breakthrough Trials; Revolutionary Ventures—so on and so forth.
Ivan snatches his jaw, gazing deeply into Till’s eyes. “The color…it’s rare.”
Blue eyes occur in an estimated eight percent of the population. Green, two. Ivan is not wrong to say that the tint of Till’s irises is unusual.
Shaken, Till weakly attempts to push him away. “That’s what they say.”
More touching ensues. For a brief, harrowing moment, Till thinks Ivan is going to kiss him, or maybe choke him again, but he does neither; instead, he traces Till’s lips, thumb drifting to Till’s chin.
He pulls away to finish cleaning his tools.
Valiantly, Till does not ask him, Who are you? What’s your story?
They fall asleep on separate sides of the bed, Till curled up on his side, Ivan still as a statue on his back.
The raid goes wrong. “Fucking Luka,” Till snarls, blaming the first person who comes to mind.
The truth is, a number of variables that led to their demise, not the least of which being Ivan’s indiscriminate killing spree. At some point, Till had come to truly, genuinely trust him; a personal failing. Whilst watching Ivan lob someone’s head off with a shiv then shoot someone point-blank, covered in blood, Till remembered: Shit, he’s not really on my side.
Half-baked betrayal or no, they’re forced to go their separate ways because the building starts collapsing. Hyuna snatches Till by the waist as plaster falls on his shoulders, telling him that they can’t waste any more time.
His father will know what they’ve done. What they came to do. The piece of code Till stole, the formula he pulled out of the quagmire—they buried it, but not deeply enough.
He discovered another file while he was poking around. He managed to copy a series of documents onto his USB stick: Initial Research and Case Studies for Chemical Compound Defluximus Hominum Genome Accelerans (DHGA) and Private Test Subjects 4700-4800, Records.
Till narrowly avoids getting his head smashed in by an enemy, then by debris. Hyuna yells, “Get moving or we’re gonna leave your sorry ass behind,” and so Till moves, cursing as something whistles past his temple, blood oozing into his eyes.
There is carnage in the aftermath, but also water. He gulps like a dying man, lifting his shirt to wipe away sweat.
“Where is he?”
One of Hyuna’s flunkies kicks a tire. “I can’t believe you have the audacity to ask. Son of a bitch turned traitor! I hope he’s dead.”
Unlikely, Till thinks.
“I don’t know,” Hyuna replies, “but we’re not sticking around to find out.” She hands him a device, small but outfitted with the port he needs. “It’s got enough juice to last you a couple of days. Good luck.”
“Thanks for the help.”
She pats him on the shoulder, fires up a cigarette, then she kicks the car into gear, melting into the shadows, driving as far away from the scene of the crime as possible.
Till’s options are limited. The flop is half a mile away on foot and their designated meeting spot is compromised. The best thing to do is act like everything is normal and enter a shop, but he looks like he stumbled off a construction site.
He walks in winding patterns until a public restroom comes into view, splashing water on his face and his clothes. It’s warm enough that the stains will evaporate in half an hour, making him look more like he had an unfortunate run-in with a hose than a person of interest being pursued by a special investigations unit.
With a hood pulled over his head, he places the device on his lap and plugs in his USB. It wakes up without prompting, touchscreen responsive.
He swipes until he finds the latest information. Underground facilities. Bodies rejecting knockoff drugs. Rare acceptances. People tearing out their hair and foaming at the mouth, muscles expanding and contracting. Hearts giving out. The reports are disappointing, not surprising.
This is why Till threatened to become a whistleblower in the first place. All that’s left is to find a platform that hasn’t fallen into his father’s insidious hands, providing proper evidence and amplifying his voice. He knows who he’s going to approach, knows they’ll probably listen, but accessing them is easier said than done.
Without Ivan’s help, he’s screwed.
Speaking of Ivan. Black combat boots enter his field of vision right as he opens the Test Subject file. “You know, you really should flush the toilet if you don’t want strangers to come knocking.”
It’s ill-advised, but Till unfastens the latch and lets Ivan in.
“You look like shit,” is the first thing Till says. “You owe me a new pair of pants.”
“It’s not as if you soiled yours.”
“I almost did.” Earlier, Ivan fired at Till’s left ear. Till narrowly managed to hold it, too scared to piss himself. “So?”
“Hm?”
“Is this where it ends? You here to drag me back?”
Ivan turns to the side to dislodge mucus. A spot of blood accompanies spit. “I’m not bored yet.”
Relieved, Till heaves a sigh. “We need to get to the skip.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Ivan says, glancing at his wristwatch. “That area is going to be unapproachable for the next two hours.”
He scowls. “We can’t stay here.”
“I concur.”
“Well, great. You come up with something, genius.”
Plump lips curl into a wicked, crooked grin. “What a compliment, coming from one of the finest minds of our time.”
“Ass,” Till grumbles.
Ivan tells Till his plan. Till, hissing, says it’s the dumbest shit he’s ever heard. “If you have a better plan, then please, by all means,” Ivan replies, theatrically spreading his arms wide.
Hatefully, Till concedes. Thus, they slink into the sewers, following Ivan’s directions until they emerge on the other side of town.
Without his glasses, Till is forced to squint, pinching the bridge of his nose when his eyes get tired. They’ve showered and changed into clean clothes, but the scent of rats, discharge, and sanitizing solution clings to Till’s nose, difficult to get rid of.
Ivan remains disaffected, doing push-ups on the floor. He’s damn-near silent, barely breathing.
Once more, Till scrolls through the files. There are familiar names among them. Names of dead people, or rather people who had been declared dead prior to the timestamped date.
And yet, there they are outlined in color on the screen, photographed in high resolution. There are more lines on his mother’s face than he remembers and his father looks sallow, but all the same, they’re recognizable.
You seem familiar, Ivan said.
Apparently, he wasn’t being facetious.
Doctors Io and Adrian Fischer, his parents, lead researchers on the topic of genome splicing, had been held captive, forced to oversee a project that A Pharmaceuticals kept under lock and key. Hundreds—nay, thousands—of children, predominantly orphans, had been siloed in laboratories across the country, subjected to terrible experiments.
His parents kicked off those experiments, but Till’s research accelerated progress. It had been an accident, genuinely. He had been hailed as a savant.
“If you’re going to be sick, do it in the bathroom,” Ivan says, alerting Till to his presence.
Till stumbles to the sink, whereupon he retches for several seconds. Ivan observes, watching and waiting as Till wipes his mouth, then brushes his teeth.
“You didn’t know,” Ivan comments, matter-of-fact.
Aquamarine eyes dart to the device, knocked to the floor in his haste. Upon arrival, he had not slept so much as collapsed, but the blank period would have given Ivan enough time to review the documents Till painstakingly retrieved.
Till shakes his head. “I never would have agreed to look into DHGA if I had known what they were using it for.”
Ivan, who’s been cagey about his left arm since the beginning of their journey, abruptly rolls up his sleeve. There’s a barcode on it, skin raised and burned to the third-degree to promote integrity. Underneath that is an inked set of numbers and letters, all randomized. Series four, Till deciphers, paying attention to the roman numerals in the middle.
Furious tears well on his lashes. Ivan couldn’t have been any older than Till was when he was brought into the program, enduring pain excessive enough to break grown men while Till was playing with beakers. Chemistry had always been his passion, breaking and repairing bonds. Honestly, he had been flattered when Urak agreed to take him in after his mother and father had been declared dead.
Pale fingers swipe at his eye. Reflexively, Till shuts it. Out of his other eye, he watches as Ivan licks his thumb clean. “I didn’t mind. The researchers were nice to me.”
Till finds that hard to believe, but he longs to take Ivan at his word. It hurts his heart to know that his parents were at the helm of something so ugly.
He wonders if Ivan was well-behaved. Ideal.
He certainly seemed like the sort.
“Why?” Till whispers, aching for him. For all of those children. For the many, many more trapped in the cogs of his adoptive father’s machinations. Ivan, as much as it pains Till to admit it, is one of the lucky ones.
It’s a loaded question and one without an easy answer.
Ivan had just gotten back from another mission when the Board sent him after Till, as pointless as all the rest. Till’s attitude, Till’s stupidity, Till’s honor and recklessness and most importantly, his eyes, captivated Ivan.
It had been a whim, really. He wasn’t lying when he said he was bored.
Ivan hums. Lightly, breezily, like he’s talking about the weather, he says, “When I saw you struggling, I thought to myself: Ah, so this is what it means to be alive.”
Till attempts to tackle Ivan. Ivan is too sturdy to fall, gaining the upper hand in no time at all, deadlifting Till then swinging him into bed.
There’s an acrid quality to Till’s tongue that tastes like guilt. He mumbles something and Ivan mutters back, but there’s nothing to be done. Ivan is not going to lie and say that Till is blameless because he isn’t. He played his part. He wants to make things right. Contradictory human.
The initial spark of life gained kindling as they continued to travel together, Till’s expressiveness thawing the ice around Ivan’s heart. He still feels more machine than anything else. His instincts tell him to plunge his fingers into Till’s chest and be done with it, to spare himself the indignity of attachment, but every time he places a palm over Till’s heart, thinking to himself, it could be so easy, he refrains.
It’s far from the first time Ivan has bitten Till or groped him or even inspected his groin. He’s clinical about the last part, usually, touching Till like he’s making sure he’s still in one piece, but today, there’s a sense of depth to Ivan’s physicality.
Till’s breath hitches as Ivan peels him out of his clothes. His eyes are half-lidded. His gaze is intent.
It’s no surprise when Ivan licks his way into Till’s mouth, biting as often as their tongues touch. Kissing feels a little bit like fighting. The push and pull is dependent on the other party reading signals; they trade blows.
He groans as Ivan slots a knee between his legs, mauling Till’s neck without a care in the world. Alive, Till thinks, taking stock of Ivan’s pulse. What is it like to feel less than alive?
The air in the room grows warm, then warmer still, as Till digs his nails into Ivan’s back. He’s hiccuping by the time Ivan slides down the length of his body, canines sharp as he tests them against Till’s sensitive flesh.
Ivan’s motions are sloppy. Till wonders if he’s ever touched another person like this before realization slams into him with the force of a freight train.
All of those casual prods, Ivan’s intense analysis; he was studying, wasn’t he? This thing he’s been doing with Till is the closest Ivan has ever come to intimacy. Till’s parents wouldn’t have been allowed to lift Ivan up and play with him like a boy—he would have been treated like a rat, discarded as soon as he outlived his usefulness.
Tears spill down Till’s cheeks in earnest. Ivan is torn between lapping at the space between Till’s thighs and licking his face.
“Does it hurt?”
Till shakes his head.
Granted permission, Ivan focuses his efforts on Till’s lower half. Till sobs as he achieves a modest orgasm, spilling in Ivan’s waiting hand. His eyes blow wide as Ivan flips him over, exploring Till’s hole regardless of protest. “That’s unsanitary,” he gasps.
Ivan pulls away long enough to say, “You crawled through the sewers with me.” Till cannot refute that.
He hopes the experimental cocktails they pumped into Ivan’s veins included a resistance to sepsis.
Till is wheezing and drooling as Ivan scissors him open, rough and unyielding about it. He attempts to bite his bottom lip to suppress his moans and fails. In due time, pale, callused fingers wrap around his neck.
“I ran into Mikhail, by the way,” Ivan murmurs, pausing in his deliberations of sliding in and out of Till, stretching him wider and wider until Till is a mess, equal parts uncomfortable and aroused. “He made me a counteroffer.”
Mikhail has long been Urak’s second-in-command. A stern man with some sort of military background, he is one of Till’s most formidable enemies and Till knows it.
“He trained me,” Ivan explains, short-circuiting Till’s brain by restricting his airflow. He rubs at something in Till’s ass that makes him twitch, skin sticky with sweat. “He was the one who assigned me to the task force.”
“You killed him.” It’s not a question. If Ivan hadn’t killed Mikhail, they wouldn’t have gotten away.
A hum of agreement hits his ears. Till unspools, dizzy with desire.
“I’ve been told that I’m not very careful with my things.”
This is a warning. A threat. Till remains calm, however, snapping that Ivan needs to get on with it already. Ivan doesn’t necessarily understand what he’s supposed to be getting on with until Till tells him to stick in, then he obliges, marveling over the experience.
Ivan is nearing his peak when Till comes a second time, shivery and spent. He grabs Till by the hips, bruising him until Till sobs.
He licks Till clean from top to bottom. Till stops him before Ivan can put his tongue to Till’s chin. “Put that away. It’s been nasty places.”
“Insinuating that you yourself are unclean.”
Till is, and not only in the literal sense.
There’s plenty of work to be done. Bringing down A Pharmaceuticals is only the beginning.
He clings to the vain hope that they can pull this off. If Ivan deigns to make him pay for the blood on his hands after Till’s primary goal is accomplished, Till can live with that.
And if he can teach Ivan how to live a little bit along the way, he’ll consider it a job well done.