Chapter 5: The New Pantheon
The silence after the transformation was its own kind of sound. It was the hum of the refrigeration units, the drip of a distant leak, the shared rhythm of their new, powerful breaths. Yuna stared at her hand, then closed it into a fist. The tendons in her forearm stood out like cables, the jade skin stretching taut.
She looked at the nearest piece of intact equipment—a stainless steel worktable, bolted to the floor. Without a word, she drew her arm back and drove her fist into its center.
The impact wasn’t a bang. It was a deep, metallic groan, a profound shudder that travelled up through the floor and into Lia’s bones. The two-inch thick steel folded inward like wet cardboard, the legs shrieking as they tore from their anchors. Yuna pulled her hand back. Her knuckles were unmarked.
A slow, wide smile spread across her face. It was an expression Lia had never seen on the old Yuna—pure, unfiltered thrill. “Okay,” Yuna breathed, laughing. “Okay, that’s… that’s something.”
“Told you,” Lia said, her own grin mirroring Yuna’s. The jealousy, the suspicion, the reckless curiosity—it all felt like a prelude to this. They were in the story now, not watching from the margins.
“So we go find him?” Yuna asked, flexing her fingers. “Confront him? See the look on his face?”
Lia considered it. The image was satisfying. But something else prickled at her. Lewis was meticulous. This lab was a front, the vials were diluted gifts. The real architecture of his work, his intentions, would be buried deeper.
“He’ll keep,” Lia said, running her palm over a flickering holographic terminal. The screen blipped, password-protected. “I want to know what we’re actually dealing with first. What he built us for.”
Yuna’s new eyes, those dark pools flecked with blue fire, scanned the room. The quiet subordinate was gone, replaced by a fierce and focused curiosity. “Then let’s take his playhouse apart.”
They moved through the space not as burglars, but as archaeologists of their own catastrophe. Yuna tore the door off a filing cabinet; it came away with the sound of ripping tin. Papers fluttered—printed genetic sequences, medical observations in Lewis’s precise, clinical hand. Subject Y-07 shows increased mitochondrial efficiency but reported anxiety over minor social interactions. Dose deemed appropriate.
“Appropriate,” Yuna scoffed, letting the pages drift to the floor.
Lia found a drawer full of hard drives, each labeled with cryptic codes. She crushed the lock with her thumb and forefinger. The simplicity of the destruction was intoxicating. As she sifted, her shoulder brushed against Yuna’s arm.
A spark. Literal, visible. A tiny arc of static electricity, blue-white, snapped between their skins where they touched.
They both froze.
It wasn’t just a shock. It was a feedback loop, a sudden, resonant hum that vibrated deep in Lia’s core. The air thickened, charged with ozone and the raw, biological scent of their new bodies—green leaves after a storm, damp earth, lightning.
Yuna turned her head. Her gaze was heavy, magnetic. “Did you feel that?”
“Yeah,” Lia said, her voice lower than she intended.
Every incidental contact after that was amplified. Passing a data slate, their fingers grazing. Brushing past each other in the narrow aisle between lab benches. Each touch sent another jolt, another wave of that resonant hum through them, building a charge in the cool air.
Lia forced her focus back to the search. “Safe,” she said, pointing to a seemingly blank section of wall. The epoxy coating was seamless, but the vibration under her feet changed when she stepped there. Hollow.
Yuna didn’t hesitate. She drove her fist through the drywall, pulverizing the gypsum. Behind it was a steel face. A real safe. She hooked her fingers into the metal around the dial. Muscles she’d never possessed before corded in her neck and back. With a grinding shriek, the entire front of the safe peeled outward, revealing a dark cavity.
Inside were no vials. Only a single, slim tablet, sleek and dormant.
Lia reached for it. As she did, Yuna reached to steady her, her large hand settling on Lia’s waist.
The contact wasn’t incidental this time.
The charge that had been building between them ignited. Lia gasped as it lanced through her, a bolt of pure, resonant energy. She dropped the tablet. It clattered, forgotten.
Yuna’s hand tightened. The look in her star-flecked eyes wasn’t just curiosity now. It was hunger, recognition. A mirror. Lia saw her own reckless want reflected back at her, magnified.
“This is…” Yuna whispered, her other hand coming up to cradle Lia’s jaw. Her thumb stroked the high ridge of Lia’s cheekbone. The touch was scalding, electric.