*
GenTek Third Research Building, just outside the deep containment zone.
───One day before this report was submitted.
It was a quiet night.
The iron doors of the GenTek building blinked red warning lights like sleepless beasts, licking at the empty air. At the end of a narrow, lengthy corridor, two shadows faced one another amid the gloom.
One was Raymond McMullen, the towering intellect that had sustained GenTek's heart for decades.
The other was Minazuki Kir, a man who allowed himself humanity only for his family in the darkness at that heart's depths.
Kir wore his usual bright smile, but a strange gleam lingered in his eyes. It was the radiance possessed only by one who genuinely loved something, while also intending to use even that love.
A tension thinner, colder, and crueler than cigarette smoke hung between them.
"—You've submitted another report, Dr. McMullen."
Kir's voice was as bright as usual, but its edge was cold as ice. His gaze did not smile, but it revealed no anger either.
Instead, it concealed the ferocious focus of a scientist who observed closely.
McMullen casually lifted his file folder. It was the gesture of a bureaucratic machine devoid of all emotion.
"It is merely a necessary measure, Dr. Minazuki. We have reached the point where DX-1118 M can no longer be handled as a family matter."
At those words, Kir closed his eyes for a moment. A chilling anger slowly gathered behind his eyelids.
"...That child is my son."
Kir's words were gentle. Yet beneath that gentleness lay a stratum as cold and hard as metal kept below freezing.
"That child is only a 'successful case.'"
McMullen cut him off in a quiet voice.
"Because he was successful, he must be controlled. And because he must be controlled, we need a suppression device."
McMullen took out a document and handed it to Kir.
> [Classified] – Internal Host Parasite Suppressor Design Proposal
Purpose: Immediate host termination in the event of a DX-1118 M rampage
Kir's breath caught as he read that single line.
But what followed was unlike the response of an ordinary father. Looking down at the document, he smiled very slowly and deeply.
"Just as I thought... that's how you'd respond."
"...What do you mean?"
"You're always like this. You fear evolution, try to control uncertainty, and bend the knee first before anything superior to yourselves."
That smile was madness. But it was not the laugh of a mere madman. Kir's madness was philosophical.
"DX-1118 M is a blessing, Dr. McMullen. Not black filth, but the seed of a new age. That child is... the first being who will lead humanity to its next stage."
McMullen narrowed his eyes coldly.
"Evolution? You believe that is evolution?"
"Shouldn't I?"
Kir whispered quietly.
"I'm certain of it. This virus is not a disease—it is an accelerator of evolution, one humanity could never reach on its own."
His voice was like a prayer.
"And Kiria... that child is evolution's prologue."
McMullen firmly shook his head.
"That is exactly why he is even more dangerous."
At that, Kir's smile vanished completely. His eyes took on a red glimmer amid the silence.
"...That child."
He slowly exhaled.
Every word was as sharp and precise as a laser.
"He is evolution's prologue—and he is my son."
Kir's words held a contradictory beauty, like moonlight striking a stainless-steel blade. McMullen replied in an equally unshaken voice.
"Those two things may not be able to coexist. If he is the first being to lead humanity, we must always be prepared to kill him."
In that moment, Kir's expression changed completely.
A gentle smile, passion bordering on madness, twisted conviction, and human pain all layered themselves across one face.
"That child is humanity's future. But... before that, he is my 'family.'"
He whispered low, very low.
"...No one touches family."
"That is why you are dangerous. A scientist must discard emotion."
McMullen did not waver. Yet a tiny twitch briefly passed beneath his eye.
Kir raised his head. Then, in a low voice, he declared:
"Never... touch my child."
McMullen answered in the same tone.
"For now, we will not."
"...For now?"
"But—if necessary, we will."
That was how the two stood facing each other.
*
Only minutes later, their brief but deadly clash became a report in a private conference room on GenTek's fourth floor.
McMullen immediately turned on the monitor.
After a dark red burst of static, a conference room filled with senior Blackwatch officers appeared on-screen.
And at its center──stood a massive shadow missing his left arm.
With wolfish eyes and a face as dry as the earth, he brought the word determination to mind before he did the word human.
Blackwatch commander, General Peter Randall.
A man known by the epithet [Old Man].
Though he carried an aged body, he possessed an overwhelming presence that brought every current in the room to its knees.
"Did you bring the documents?"
It was a blunt command.
Yet his words carried the weighty resolve of a man who had spent decades fighting infection.
Handing over the folder, McMullen spoke.
"Yes, General. This is a comprehensive report on Host M-01's recent growth indicators and the feasibility of controlling it."
Randall took the report in his remaining hand. His footsteps seemed to convey the old scars of his severed arm, echoing all the way to the end of the corridor.
As he turned the pages, he asked briefly:
"Can it be controlled?"
McMullen answered in an unwavering voice.
"...At this stage, it will be difficult. M-01's rate of growth has exceeded predictions."
Randall's gaze slowly darkened.
"Then—that child is ultimately a 'threat.'"
"It is true that he poses a potential threat."
"Then tell me, Doctor. If he cannot be controlled...?"
Without hesitation, McMullen said:
"The parasite suppressor must be injected. So that if he goes out of control—we can terminate him immediately."
Randall nodded and smiled slowly, very slowly. It was the smile of a soldier who had thoroughly seen the battlefield—a smile that bore no trace of emotion even while judging life.
"Good. Then we will adopt all of these proposals."
He issued further orders.
"Accelerate [Project Orion]. Train the super soldiers. Form a surveillance unit centered on Captain Cross. Reassess all GenTek data immediately. We cannot afford to miss it."
To Randall, the only thing that truly mattered was control.
*
The Blackwatch conference room.
As the officers stood in formation, a woman with crisp movements stepped forward. Black, neatly styled hair, sharp eyes, and the breathing of a soldier seemingly born for battle.
Specialist, Captain Gina Cross.
Randall looked at her and spoke.
"You will return to GenTek, Captain."
After a short silence, Gina quietly asked:
"Will I be assigned to monitor Kiria exclusively...?"
Her expression was impassive, but complex traces of feeling faintly trembled within it.
The first test.
The boy's face.
Childlike curiosity and human fear.
He was an 'evolved being,' but to Gina, he was unmistakably—a boy.
Randall answered stiffly.
"It is a subject, Captain. Do not mistake it for a child."
Gina's eyes shook ever so slightly.
But soon, she lowered her head.
"...I will follow my orders."
It was a soldier's response. But faint though it was, unmistakable guilt had melted into it.
*
At that time, deep within the research wing, Kir sat alone before a computer. All manner of indicators, figures, growth graphs, and mutation data moved in long rows across the monitor.
With his hands clasped beneath his chin, he studied the information in utter silence, with lethal concentration.
"At this rate... within a few years, DX-1118 M will become impossible to explain through existing classifications."
Narrowing his eyes, he whispered:
"I must place my son first at the threshold of evolution."
But a dark, long silence followed those words.
Kir slowly closed his eyes.
"But... it is happening too fast for that child to bear."
Kiria's heartbeat, cell density, and containment index for his internal energy patterns.
Every single one pointed, without deviation, to danger.
Yet he knew better than anyone.
Before that child was a being he had created, he was his family.
"Family... and the future..."
The two words overlapped on Kir's lips. But they were a contradiction he could never hold onto at the same time.
And Kir knew that someday, at the center of this contradiction, he would have to choose.
"...No one can lay a hand on Kiria."
He whispered as though making a vow.
But at that very moment──the laboratory door quietly opened.
Under the light streaming through the gap, a silhouette in a dark military uniform emerged.
"It has been a long time, Dr. Minazuki."
The person who entered after quietly closing the door was Specialist Captain Gina Cross.
Kir smiled lightly and waved a hand.
"Oh, Captain Cross. Long time no see. Did General Randall send you back with some hellish assignment?"
Cross's expression did not change in the slightest.
"An exclusive surveillance assignment. M-01."
As if hesitating, she lowered her voice.
"...Kiria, I mean."
Kir smiled, his eyes half-lidded. As though suppressing the unsteadiness in her gaze, Cross shook her head with effort.
"Right now... I am here to carry out a soldier's duty."
"Yeah. I know."
Kir pushed back his chair and rose. Turning toward Gina as he waited for her, he said:
"Are you worried my son will go out of control?"
"Rather than worry───it is an order."
Kir looked into her eyes. Then he recognized that small tremor. The boy's face remained in Cross's heart.
"Captain."
He spoke lightly, yet his voice was as delicate as dust falling onto a wineglass.
"You cannot protect that child, can you?"
Gina closed her eyes.
"...Soldiers do not treat emotions as a luxury."
Kir nodded. But a quiet, chilling shadow fell across his smile.
"...I know. That's why I fear you."
*
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