Not dramatic.
Just sudden and irrevocable and very, very breakable.
“A… what,” I say blankly.
“A Reaper,” he repeats, still quiet, still not moving any closer. “Alliance-engineered. Biologically augmented. Designed for black-ops containment and deniable enforcement work. We were built to survive things normal soldiers don’t. Heal from things normal soldiers don’t. Kill things normal soldiers can’t.”
My stomach drops.
Hard.
“You’re—” I stop myself, swallow, start again. “You’re an experiment.”
“Yes.”
There is no defensiveness in his voice.
No pride.
Just a flat, exhausted acceptance that makes my chest tighten in a way I don’t like.
“They started building us generations ago,” he continues. “Selective breeding. Genetic splicing. Neural conditioning. Instinct engineering. Most of us don’t even know the full extent of what they did to us.”
I stare at him.
At the ridges under his skin.
At the faint, metallic sheen to his flesh.
At the scorch marks on his shirt that used to be my restaurant.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
He exhales slowly through his nose, like he’s bracing for impact that already happened a long time ago.
“I don’t work for them anymore,” he says. “I ran. I’ve been off-grid for years.”
“Because they did this to you,” I say.
“Yes.”
The utility light buzzes overhead.
The antiseptic smell feels stronger all of a sudden, sharp and invasive.
“And the thing,” I say, my voice dropping. “The thing you called it. The… jalsha?—”
“Jalshagar,” he supplies quietly.
My mouth twists.
“Yeah. That horror movie bullshit.”
His jaw tightens.
“That is not what it is.”
“Then what is it,” I snap. “Because from my extremely limited, extremely traumatized perspective, it looks a whole lot like your body deciding I belong to it without asking my opinion.”
