Chapter 16: Possession
The words hung in the antiseptic air, soft and devastating.
Pace stared at the naked man on the floor, the echo of his own voice asking such a raw, innocent question. A father. The concept was so alien, so grotesquely misplaced, that for a moment he felt nothing but a hollow ring inside his own ribs. He saw Sebastian flinch as if struck. He saw Lina’s sharp intake of breath.
Then Pace let out a sound, a rough exhalation that was part cough, part bleak laugh. “No,” he said, his voice grinding like stones in the deep. “I’m not your father.” He shifted on the bed, the muscles in his jaw tightening against a wave of pain. His dark eyes held John’s identical ones. “I’m… the authentic one.”
John processed this. His brow—Pace’s brow—furrowed in a way Pace had never seen in a mirror. It was his own face, stripped of cynicism, of history, of armor. The confusion there was profound, unguarded.
“I don’t understand,” John said. His voice was Pace’s baritone, but the cadence was different, the words forming with a careful, unpracticed precision.
Lina moved then, a slow step forward, her lab coat whispering against her legs. She held her hands out, palms open, a biologist approaching a skittish, rare creature. “John,” she said, her tone lower, softer than it had been all night. “My name is Lina. I’m a doctor.”
At the sound of her voice, John’s head snapped toward her. His eyes, which had been merely confused, flashed with a sudden, visceral fear. He scrambled backward, his bare heels slipping on the polished marble, a frantic crab-like motion that ended with his back against the cold leg of the obsidian operating table. He was looking at her hands.
“You…” he breathed, his gaze fixed on her slender fingers. “You hurt me.”
The accusation was simple, devoid of malice, just a statement of fact. It landed on Lina with more force than any shouted insult. Her clinical composure fissured. A wash of something genuine—remorse, shame—passed over her features before she could lock it away.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, the words leaving her as if pulled by a force she couldn’t control. She took another careful step, then slowly knelt on the cool floor, putting herself at his eye level. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was scared. You were new, and I didn’t know… I needed you to be safe. It was a mistake.”
John watched her, his breath coming in quick, shallow pants. The fear was still there, a wild animal gleam in the dark depths of his eyes, but it was tempered now by her proximity, her quiet tone, the naked apology.
“It burned,” he whispered.
“I know.” Lina’s own hand trembled slightly as she extended it, not to inject, but to offer. “It won’t happen again. You’re safe now.”
He stared at her open palm for a long moment, then, with a hesitant slowness, he reached out his own hand. His fingers, which were Pace’s fingers—long, capable, marked with the same faint scars from old fights—brushed against hers.
The touch was a circuit closing.
John let out a shuddering sigh, a release of tension so profound it seemed to soften the very lines of his body. His shoulders slumped; the wild fear drained from his eyes, replaced by a deep, exhausted calm. He didn’t just accept her touch; he leaned into it, his fingertips pressing against hers as if drawing stability from her skin.
“Alright,” Pace’s voice cut through the quiet intensity, a strained grunt from the bed. “I need to get up from this damned thing.”
He pushed himself upright, muscles corded in his neck, his face pale under its olive tone. The movement was clumsy, powerful but uncoordinated by pain. He swung his legs over the side of the high bed, the IV line pulling taut.
“Lord Augustus, please!” Sebastian squeaked, rushing forward only to halt under the sheer weight of Pace’s warning glance. “Sir, you’re still unstable. The tissue regeneration is metabolically intensive, you could tear something, you could–”
“I could lie here and watch my own face have an existential crisis,” Pace grated out, his feet finding the floor. A wave of dizziness swamped him; he braced a hand against the mahogany bedpost, his knuckles white. “Aw, bloody hell,” he hissed through clenched teeth, his head bowing. “It hurts.”
The admission, raw and unvarnished, hung in the chamber. Pace Augustus did not admit to pain. He endured it, he wielded it, he ignored it. He did not complain about it.
From his place on the floor, John watched him, fascinated. His head was tilted, his hand still resting against Lina’s. He looked from Pace’s pained grimace to Lina’s kneeling form beside him. The connection seemed to form in his uncluttered mind, a logical, emotional leap.
He turned his large, dark eyes up to Lina. The question was inevitable, born of the only two reference points he possessed.
“Are you,” he asked, his voice soft with a dawning hope, “my mother?”
Lina froze. A shock went through her, visible as a slight stiffening of her spine. Violet eyes wide, she looked from John’s earnest, waiting face to Pace’s pained, incredulous one. A faint, hysterical laugh threatened to bubble up in her throat. She swallowed it.
“No, John,” she said, her voice firm but gentle. “I’m just a doctor. I’m… Lina.”
John listened, but he didn’t seem convinced. His gaze drifted down to where his hand still touched hers. He moved his fingers, tracing a line across her palm. A faint, puzzled smile touched his lips—a ghost of Pace’s charming smirk, but innocent, unburdened.
“Lina,” he repeated, tasting the name. Then his smile faded, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated wonder. He stared at their touching hands. “It’s warm.”
He wasn’t talking about body heat. He was describing the sensation. A connection. A belonging.
From his vantage point by the door, Sebastian watched, his terror momentarily eclipsed by scientific awe. He saw the way John calmed at Lina’s touch, the way his vital signs on the portable monitor, which he’d discreetly checked, had smoothed into a serene rhythm the moment their skin made contact. He saw the way Pace, now standing shakily, glared at the point of contact, a possessive, dark flare igniting in his exhausted eyes.
And in the silent surveillance room, Jace Augustus leaned forward, his own pain forgotten, a delighted, venomous smile spreading across his face. He watched his brother—proud, invincible Pace—looking weak and unsteady. He watched the clone—this blank-slate John—looking at Lina with a proprietary fascination that mirrored Pace’s own.
“Oh, little brother,” Jace whispered to the glowing screen, his voice dripping with glee. “You built a perfect competitor. And he doesn’t even know the rules of the game.”
Back in the medical chamber, Sebastian’s eyes darted from the heart rate monitors to the two identical men. A cold, clinical realization dawned on him, colder than any fear of retribution.
The patterns. The neural pathways.
John’s calm was specific. Directed. It wasn’t a general sedation; it was a response to her. And the flare in Pace’s eyes wasn’t just pain or possessiveness. It was a reflection of something deeper, something written into the very code of them both.
The vessel was identical. The capacity for obsession was, too.
Sebastian took a step back, his heel clicking softly on the marble. He had seen the future in that shared glance, and it was a collision course.
He had seen the future in that shared glance, and it was a collision course.
The thought was still crystallizing in Sebastian’s mind when John’s hand jerked away from Lina’s as if shocked. A sharp, fractured gasp tore from his throat. His eyes, wide and unblinking, lost their focus on the present, the dark pupils dilating as they stared at something internal, something terrifying. The placid calm shattered.
John’s hands flew to his temples, fingers digging into the flesh of his scalp. A stinging, white-hot wire of pain lanced through the center of his skull. Flashes, jagged and unbidden, erupted behind his eyes. The cold fear in Lina’s violet gaze as she plunged the needle toward his neck. The sterile, oppressive ceiling of this very room. The precise, melodic rhythm of her voice explaining cellular decay. The sharp scent of her—antiseptic and something like frost. It wasn’t a story or a memory. It was sensory data, a brutal download of instinct and impression: her capability, her clinical distance, her underlying, ferocious will to protect what she deemed hers.
The pain crested and broke, leaving a ringing silence in his head and a new, overwhelming awareness thrumming across the surface of his skin. Every nerve ending felt scraped raw, exposed. A wave of heat, sudden and unfamiliar, washed over him from the inside, prickling across his chest, down his arms.
“John?” Sebastian’s voice was thin, worried. He took a tentative step. “Are you alright?”
“Ahh… my head…” John groaned, the words thick. He pushed against the floor, his movements no longer hesitant but driven by a need to escape the sudden onslaught of sensation. He rose, unsteady, his powerful frame unfolding to its full, naked height before the obsidian table.
“Oh no, John, please,” Lina said, rising quickly from her knees. Her earlier softness was gone, replaced by flustered, practical alarm. “Cover yourself.”
John looked down at his own body, then back at her, genuine confusion smoothing his pained expression. “Why?”
Lina turned slightly toward Sebastian, her voice dropping to a frantic, mortified whisper. “Bash, he’s a baby. A def giant-ass baby.”
John’s attention was already diverted. He was looking at his own abdomen, his head cocked. He poked a finger into his stomach, watching the skin depress. A faint, fascinated smile touched his lips. “What is cover? Ah… what is this thing?”
Lina closed her eyes for a second, a silent plea for patience. “Oh no. Lord help me.”
Pace, who had been leaning heavily on the bedpost observing the chaotic awakening, let out a short, exasperated breath. The dizziness had receded, leaving a grim clarity. He gestured vaguely with his free hand, wincing at the pull in his side. “That thing is your body,” he stated, his tone flat, instructional. “And then your arms. The thing down there is your manhood. And legs.”
A crackling, distorted laugh erupted from a hidden speaker in the ceiling’s ornate molding. Jace’s voice, tinged with morphine and malice, filled the chamber. “You’re not gonna teach him sexual education the first day he’s born. That is uncanny.”
“Shut up, Jace,” Pace snarled at the air, his patience evaporating. He focused his dark, intense gaze back on John, who was now experimentally lifting a foot and staring at it. “John. Listen to me. You are me.”
John’s foot lowered. He looked from his own limbs to Pace’s face, the confusion returning tenfold, washing away the nascent curiosity. The concept was too vast, too abstract for his newborn cognition to hold. “What? I don’t… huh?”
Pace stared at his own bewildered duplicate. The sheer, colossal absurdity of the situation—the danger, the vulnerability, the philosophical nightmare—hit him with fresh force. He brought his good hand up and pressed his palm hard against his closed eyes, letting out a long, strained breath.
“Oh,” he muttered into the darkness behind his eyelids, the word heavy with resignation and dread. “Great.”