Chapter 114: 17.1.2

The hunter slept. Not the chemically-enforced blankness of before, but a true, deep, metabolic coma. Gabriel watched the readings shimmer in the air above the divan, a complex schema of vital signs and spiritual resonance. The subject’s biology was a paradox. It burned through sedatives and neuro-inhibitors like cheap liquor, yet it demanded staggering caloric intake to fund its constant, silent labor of regeneration. Admirable. Problematic.

He’d adjusted the IV drip hours ago, feeding a solution of concentrated ambrosia derivatives and elemental proteins directly into the brachial artery. Even unconscious, the hunter’s body was consuming it at twice the projected rate. The scanners showed microfractures in the tibia and three ribs—old injuries, poorly set and long since healed over—dissolving and reforming into pristine, optimized bone. His body wasn’t just healing; it was perfecting itself, using the sudden influx of celestial-grade nutrition as both fuel and blueprint.

This changed the timeline. Profoundly.

The standard domestication protocol called for psychological pacification first, then gentle physical refinements once the celeset was emotionally pliant and trusting. This one would never be pliant. The drugs were a stopgap, a leash to yank when necessary, not a permanent solution. His will was a resilient, nasty thing, a weed that grew back thicker each time it was cut.

But a body… a body could be persuaded. A body, even one as stubborn as this, followed biochemical commands. It could be sculpted.

Gabriel let his gaze travel over the sleeping form. The blanket had been tossed aside again, revealing the powerful lines of him. Broad shoulders, thickly corded neck, heavy musculature built for explosive violence and durable resilience. It was a functional design. An ugly one. The very architecture of him screamed threat, predator, problem. It invited challenge. It embodied the feral chaos Gabriel was tasked with eradicating.

He couldn’t work on the mind reliably. Not yet. But he could change the vessel. And in changing the vessel, he might just calm the storm inside.

He moved to the high-security cabinet anchored not in space, but in a folded seam of intention. The Class-G xenodrugs. They weren’t mere hormones; they were conceptual sculpting tools, cellular petitions to the body’s own latent blueprints. With them, one could suggest delicacy where there was bulk, softness where there was hardness, a harmless prettiness where there was a dangerous appeal.

He prepared the array with meticulous care. A primary inducer to open the cellular pathways, a flood of command signals to guide the restructuring. A targeted osteoreducer to gently diminish bone density and prominence—those heavy brow ridges, that square, stubborn jawline. A myofibril realigner to slim the heavy musculature into something less brutal, more graceful. A subcutaneous lipid redistributor to soften edges, to round hips, to create a topography meant for cradling, not for combat.

He paused, holding a vial that would lighten the body hair to a fine, downy softness, and another that would subtly alter the pitch of the voice. He set them aside. Not yet. First principles. Structure, then finish.

Gabriel returned to the divan. The hunter’s chest rose and fell, his breath even. The freckles stood out against skin that was already smoothing, becoming poreless under the influence of the ambrosia drip. He looked peaceful. It was a lie, but a useful one.

“This is for your own good, little terror,” Gabriel murmured, attaching new reservoirs to the IV line. The fluids shimmered, opalescent. “You’ll thank me. Eventually.”

He activated the flow.

The change wasn’t immediate. For a long hour, nothing seemed to happen. Then, the sensors began picking up a frenzy of low-level activity. Cortical bone remodeling. Myocyte apoptosis and hyperplasia. A silent, total reconstruction.

Gabriel watched, fascinated. He saw the subtle shift first in the shoulders. The deltoids lost their sharp, loaded tension, the trapezius muscles relaxing down from the neck, making the collar bones appear more prominent, elegant. The thick column of the neck softened, the sternocleidomastoid muscles becoming less like cables and more like slender ropes. The hunter’s face, in sleep, underwent a quiet revolution. The heavy brow lightened, the jawline losing its aggressive squareness, tapering toward a more delicate chin. His lips seemed fuller, not by addition, but by the recession of the hardened flesh around them.

It was still him. The ashen hair, the freckles, the sharp canine teeth. But it was a softer him. A him that looked like he might bruise. A him whose strength would be a surprise, not a foregone conclusion.

The body, deprived of its fortress-like structure, seemed to shrink in on itself. Gabriel checked the metrics. Height reduction: two point three inches. Musculature density down by thirty-seven percent. The readings scrolled on, a story of planned obsolescence for violence.

Perfect.

As the primary phase concluded, Gabriel administered a second, stabilizing cocktail to lock in the changes and accelerate the healing of the restructuring itself. The hunter would wake sore, as if from a deep, deep illness. He would feel weak, strange in his own skin. He would be off-balance, literally and metaphorically. It was the ideal psychological state to introduce the next lesson: dependence.

It was the ideal psychological state to introduce the next lesson: dependence.

The silence of the salon was broken hours later not by a gasp, but by a low, pained groan. Gabriel looked up from his correspondence, the glowing script of a minor principality’s complaint fading as he focused. The hunter was stirring. His movements were slow, uncoordinated, as if he were trying to swim up through layers of cold oil.

His eyes opened, but they didn’t focus. They were hazy, the vibrant orange dulled to a weak amber. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, his brow—lighter now, more arched—furrowed in profound confusion. He tried to push himself up on his elbows, a simple motion that had once been effortless. His arms trembled violently, slick with a cold sweat, and gave out. He sank back into the divan with a soft, helpless thud.

“Wha’s…” The word was a thick, slurred mess, his tongue clumsy in his mouth. He blinked, trying to clear the fog. “Wha’s happenin’?”

“You’re recovering,” Gabriel said, his voice a smooth, calm contrast to the hunter’s struggle. He didn’t move from his desk. “You pushed yourself too far. Your body is catching up.”

“‘M… cold.” The hunter’s voice was small, thinner than Gabriel remembered. He shivered, the fine linen shirt sticking to his skin. The blanket was in a heap on the floor. He looked at it, then at the distance to the floor, as if assessing a perilous climb. He didn’t move.

“I can see that.” Gabriel finally stood, walking over with deliberate slowness. He retrieved the blanket, shaking it out. He didn’t immediately drape it over him. He held it, watching the hunter track his movements with blurred, sluggish eyes. “You could have asked for it, you know.”

The hunter’s face contorted. Thinking was clearly a physical effort. His new, softer features made the confusion look more like puckered distress. “A… ask?”

“Yes. ‘Gabriel, I’m cold. May I have the blanket?’” Gabriel’s tone was instructive, gently mocking. “It’s simple. Try it.”

Koen stared at him, his lips moving soundlessly. A flush, weak and pink, spread across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. It was an entirely new kind of frustration, born of mental fog and physical incapacity. “‘M cold,” he repeated, the slur lessening by a fraction, replaced by a pathetic stubbornness.

“Better.” Gabriel smiled, draping the blanket over him with a flourish. He tucked the edges around the hunter’s shoulders, his hands lingering. The body underneath was noticeably different—the planes of his chest and shoulders less mountainous, more yielding. “There. Isn’t that nice?”

The hunter didn’t answer. He was staring at his own hand where it rested on the blanket. He turned it over, fingers flexing slowly. They were the same hands but seemed more slender and delicate. He brought his other hand up, pressing his palms together, his eyes narrowing as he compared them.

“S’wrong,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Gabriel.

“Nothing is wrong.” Gabriel sat on the edge of the divan, the proximity making the hunter flinch back weakly. “You’re just seeing things clearly for the first time. Without all that… unnecessary tension. How do you feel?”

The hunter’s orange eyes lifted to his, glassy and searching. “Heavy. ‘M all… heavy. An’ floaty.” He tried to shake his head, abandoning the effort halfway. “Jus’ wanna… sleep more.”

“The medicine is still helping you heal.” Gabriel reached out, brushing a strand of damp, ashen hair from the hunter’s forehead. The skin was fever-warm, the cellular activity still furious beneath the surface. The hunter leaned into the touch, a slow, automatic nudge like a cat seeking warmth, before his blurry consciousness caught up and he stiffened. “You should drink something.”

A carafe of water sat on a low table, shimmering under a preservation glyph. Gabriel poured a crystal glassfull, the sound loud in the quiet room. He held it out. The hunter looked at it, then at his own trembling hands. He didn’t reach.

Gabriel understood. The pride was gone, burned away not by humiliation but by simple, drug-addled incapacity. He was stranded in a body that wouldn’t obey, a mind that couldn’t form a plan. This was the foundation. This utter, helpless neutrality.

“Here.” Gabriel brought the glass to the hunter’s lips, supporting the back of his head again. The hunter drank, swallowing with slow, audible gulps. Water dripped down his chin. Gabriel wiped it away with his thumb, the gesture proprietary. “See? Not so hard.”

The hunter finished, his head falling back against the cushion. His breathing was already evening out, the sedative pull dragging him under again. But his eyes held Gabriel’s for a last, struggling moment. The confusion was coalescing into a dawning, horrid suspicion.

“Wha’ddyou… do t’me?” The words were barely a whisper, each one a labor.

“I’m making you better,” Gabriel said, his voice soft and final. “Hush now. Sleep.”

The orange eyes fought it, the demonic stubbornness flaring one last time in the dying coal of his awareness. Then they fluttered shut. His body went truly limp, the last of the tension melting away into total, vulnerable surrender.

Gabriel stayed there, watching the gentle rise and fall of the blanket over a chest that was now less a barrel and more a sloped plane. The physical shaping was a success. The psychological groundwork was laid. The hunter—no, the celeset—would wake again weaker, hungrier, and profoundly disoriented by the new parameters of his own flesh.

He looked forward to it.

The next awakening was different. Gabriel sensed the shift in the room’s atmosphere a full minute before the hunter’s eyes opened. The deep, sedate rhythm of forced sleep shattered into a sudden, electric alertness. There was no groggy confusion this time, no slow swim to the surface. One second, the figure on the divan was still; the next, every line of him was taut, a coiled spring on worn velvet.

Orange eyes snapped open, clear and horribly focused. They fixed on the ornate ceiling, dilated with a shock of pure, undiluted recognition. He remembered. He knew.

Gabriel set his stylus down, the motion deliberate. He watched.

Koen shoved the blanket off, a violent, jerking movement. He swung his legs over the side of the divan, his bare feet hitting the cool marble. He stared at them for a half-second, as if confirming they were his. Then he pushed himself upright.

And immediately stumbled, his legs buckling under a weight they weren’t prepared for. He caught himself on the divan’s arm, his grip white-knuckled. A harsh, startled breath tore from his lungs. He looked down at his own body, clothed in the soft linen, and his expression morphed from confusion into dawning, abject horror.

“What,” he said, his voice not a slur but a raw, sharp crack. “What did you do?”

He took a step, a testing, terrible step. His gait was wrong. His center of balance was off, his stride shorter, his hips moving with an unfamiliar pivot that made him list to the side. He looked like a man walking on ice for the first time, every muscle fighting a geometry it couldn’t comprehend.

“I refined you,” Gabriel said, staying seated. His voice was a calm counterpoint to the cracking tension in the room. “You were overbuilt. All that crude aggression in your posture. It was inelegant.”

Koen didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring at his own hands, turning them over, bringing them close to his face. The fingers were slimmer, the knuckles less pronounced. He touched his own jaw, his cheeks, tracing the new, softer contours with trembling fingertips. His breathing accelerated, each inhale a short, sharp gasp.

“No.” It was a whisper, then a snarl. “No, no, no.”

He turned his head, his eyes—wide and wild—locking onto the archway. The exit. The impossible ward. Panic overrode disorientation. Run. The only command his mind could scream. He shoved away from the divan and lunged.

It was pathetic. His body, trained for explosive pursuit, betrayed him utterly. His feet tangled, the unfamiliar alignment of his legs refusing the command. He pitched forward, not into a run but into a stumbling, graceless sprawl. He hit the marble with a sickening thud of flesh and bone, the impact shuddering through him. He cried out, more in shock than pain, scrambling immediately onto his hands and knees.

Gabriel sighed, a soft exhalation of mild disappointment. He rose from his desk. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Stay away!” Koen roared, scrambling backward like a crab, his limbs uncoordinated. He got his feet under him again, swaying. He tried to run once more, aiming for a different archway. This time he made it three stumbling, shuffling steps before his ankle turned in a way it shouldn’t have. He crashed sideways into a slender column, knocking a porcelain vase to the floor where it exploded into a thousand crystalline shards.

He didn’t pause. He pushed off the column, breath sobbing now, and tried to dart past Gabriel toward the main hall. His speed was a ghost of what it had been, a clumsy, frantic shamble.

Gabriel didn’t even need to move quickly. He simply stepped into his path. Koen tried to dodge, his body telegraphing the move a half-second early. Gabriel reached out, not with magic, but with plain, physical ease. One hand clamped on Koen’s bicep—the muscle there felt softer, less dense—and the other hooked behind his knees.

He lifted him. Effortlessly.

Koen was weightless, a frantic, twisting bundle of panic and sharp elbows. He screamed, a raw, wordless sound of utter violation, and lashed out. A fist connected with Gabriel’s shoulder. It lacked all the punishing force it should have carried; it was a weak, impotent blow. The reality of it seemed to freeze Koen solid for a heartbeat.

Gabriel carried him the few paces back to the divan and deposited him onto the cushions, not dropping him, but setting him down with an insidious, gentle finality. He released him and took a single step back, observing.

Koen stared up at him from the velvet. He didn’t try to get up again. He looked at his own fists, then at Gabriel’s placid, unmoving form. The final understanding slammed into him, not as a thought, but as a physical collapse inside his chest. His breath hitched, stopped, then started again in rapid, shallow pants that couldn’t find air.

“I can’t—” he choked out. “My legs—my gun—I can’t—”

His hands flew to his hair, gripping fistfuls of the ashen black strands. His eyes darted around the room, seeing not an architecture but a prison, his own body the foremost cell. A high, thin whine started in his throat, the sound of a creature caught in a trap with no teeth left to bite. Tears, hot and humiliating, welled in his furious orange eyes and spilled over, tracking through the freckles on his cheeks. He shook violently, each tremor rattling the divan.

“Breathe,” Gabriel instructed, his voice cool. “You’re having a hysterical reaction. It’s unattractive.”

This only made it worse. Koen wrapped his arms around himself, folding in half, his forehead pressing into his knees. His shoulders heaved with silent, racking sobs that quickly became audible, wrenching gulps for air he couldn’t catch. He was hyperventilating, the panic a feedback loop of terror and impotent rage. He was shattering, right here on the velvet, and the pieces would be too jagged to easily reassemble.

A broken celeset was a useless one. The mind was the last frontier, and this was a rout, not a surrender.

Gabriel moved to the cabinet. The Class-E xenodrugs were simple, utilitarian. Not for sculpting, but for control. A powerful, fast-acting anxiolytic and a neural dampener. He loaded a slim injector, the fluid inside a tranquil, pearlescent grey.

He returned to the divan. Koen was lost in the storm, unaware of his approach. Gabriel sat beside him, the cushion dipping. He put a hand on the knotted curve of Koen’s spine. The hunter flinched so hard he almost fell off the divan, scrambling away until his back hit the armrest, eyes wide and streaming, face blotchy with panic.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t you fucking touch me!”

“This will help,” Gabriel said, his tone leaving no room for argument. He reached for him.

Koen batted his hand away, a weak, flailing motion. Gabriel caught his wrist mid-air, the grip unbreakable. He pulled Koen toward him, ignoring the choked scream, and pivoted him easily, pulling him back against his chest, pinning his arms. Koen thrashed, his back arching, heels kicking against the divan, but he was enclosed, immobilized.

“Shhh,” Gabriel murmured into his ear, the sound a vibration against the hunter’s sweat-damp skin. He brought the injector up, pressing it to the side of Koen’s throat, just under the jawline. “Just let go.”

The hiss-click was soft. Koen went rigid for a single, protracted second, a final silent scream locked in his muscles.

Then the chemicals hit, a wave of artificial peace so absolute it was an annihilation. The tension bled out of him in a sudden, wet sigh. His rigid spine softened, melting back against Gabriel’s chest. The frantic hammering of his heart slowed under Gabriel’s palm. The ragged, choking breaths evened out into long, slow draughts of air.

The panic drained from his eyes, leaving them hazy and half-lidded, staring at nothing. A strand of saliva trailed from his slack lip. He was gone, pulled under a warm, dark tide that muffled everything.

Gabriel held him there, feeling the delicate weight of him, the unfamiliar fineness of the bones in his wrists. He stroked the damp hair back from Koen’s forehead, his touch now met with a slow, submissive nudge into his hand. The fight was erased, temporarily scraped clean from the canvas.

“There,” Gabriel whispered, adjusting the limp form into a more comfortable position against him. Koen’s head lolled onto his shoulder, completely pliant. “Was that so hard?”

He sat in the quiet salon, holding his sedated celeset, planning the next dose. The mind had proven fragile. The body, however altered, was acceptably his. The balance would require careful, constant management.

all told from gabriel’s pov. hours later koen wakes up fully present and immediately tries to run but doesn’t get very far because he isn’t used to this new body and is extremely clumsy. koen continues trying to get away until gabriel easily scoops koen up and sets him back on the divan. at this point koen realizes just how powerless he is and starts spiraling hard, having a full blown panic attack. not wanting his new celeset to mentally break gabriel uses some class-e xenodrugs (Sedatives and assorted relaxing agents.) to force koen to calm down