Chapter 21: Reckoning Preparation
The water was scalding. It pounded down on Donghae’s shoulders, turning his skin an angry red, but he didn’t adjust the temperature. The heat was a purifying fire, a distraction from the cold dread that had settled in his bones since Heechul’s call. Hyukjae stood under the spray with him, her back to his chest, her head resting against his collarbone. They hadn’t spoken since the phone call. Words were useless now.
Her skin was slick under his palms as he smoothed them over her rounded belly. It was fuller, harder. A constant, surreal proof. He could feel the faint, fluttering kicks sometimes, a secret life moving to a rhythm he couldn’t comprehend. His thumbs stroked the taut curve, a gesture of terrified wonder.
“He’s going to want to cut me open,” Hyukjae said, her voice barely audible over the drumming water. She wasn’t looking at him; she was staring at the cracked white tiles, her gaze hollow. “To see how it works. To take it out and measure it.”
“No.” The word was a vow, gritted out between his teeth. He turned her roughly to face him, water sluicing down her face, plastering her dark hair to her cheeks and neck. Her breasts were heavy and full, swaying with the movement, nipples dark and peaked in the steam. “That’s not happening.”
Her eyes, wide and scared, searched his. The bravado, the crude jokes, the fierce defiance he’d fucked into her last night—all of it was gone, washed away by the morning’s grim reality. She looked young. She looked like his best friend, trapped behind a face he didn’t know how to stop wanting.
A desperate, clawing need rose in him. Not just for sex, but for proof. Proof that she was here, his, tangible. That he could still affect her, protect her, even if it was just with the primitive, animal comfort of his body.
He pushed her back against the cold, tiled wall. The contrast between the hot water and the chilled ceramic made her gasp. He captured her mouth, his kiss brutal and consuming, all tongue and teeth and shared breath. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claim.
She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back, nails leaving half-moon crescents. Her legs parted for him instinctively, wrapping around his hips as he hoisted her up, pinning her against the wall. The rounded curve of her belly pressed between them, a vulnerable, intimate barrier.
He didn’t wait. He was already hard, a throbbing, insistent ache. He guided himself to her entrance, feeling the hot, slick readiness of her even through the water. He shoved inside with one relentless thrust, burying himself to the hilt.
“Fuck!” she cried out, her head thumping back against the tile.
It was tight, impossibly so, the water making everything feel more intense, more slippery and raw. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, driving into her with short, hard pumps of his hips. The sound was lewd—wet skin slapping, water splashing, their ragged grunts echoing off the narrow walls.
“Is this what you want?” he growled into the crook of her neck, his voice ragged. “Before we go in there? You want to be full of me?”
“Yes,” she hissed, her thighs tightening around him. “Yes, you bastard. Do it. Mark me. Let me feel it for fucking hours while he talks at us.”
He obeyed. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, each thrust a punctuation to his silent, furious thoughts. Mine. Not his. Ours. Stay.
Her breasts bounced with the force, water and a few drops of milky release beading at her nipples. He ducked his head, capturing one in his mouth, sucking hard, lapping at the thin, sweet fluid. She screamed, a raw, shattered sound that was pure pleasure-pain.
“Harder!” she demanded, her voice breaking. “Fuck me harder, daddy! I want your cum dripping down my thighs when we face that bastard tomorrow!”
The filthy words, a grotesque parody of the night before, lit a fuse in him. He slammed into her, over and over, the angle hitting a spot that made her see stars. Her internal muscles clenched around him in rhythmic, vice-like pulses. She was coming, her orgasm ripping through her with a violence that shook them both, her cries swallowed by the steam.
It pushed him over the edge. With a final, deep grind, he emptied himself into her, a hot, pulsing rush that felt less like pleasure and more like a ward, a ritual. He held her there, pinned, as he shuddered through it, his face buried in her wet hair.
They stayed like that as the water began to run cold. Slowly, he loosened his grip, letting her slide down the wall until her feet found the floor. She was trembling, from the cold or the aftershocks or the fear, he didn’t know. He turned off the water.
The silence was deafening.
He pulled back the curtain and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around her first, rubbing her arms briskly. He avoided her eyes. He dried himself quickly, mechanically.
Back in the bedroom, they dressed in silence. Hyukjae pulled on a loose, dark sweater and jeans, the fabric doing little to hide the swell of her stomach. Donghae dressed in simple black trousers and a grey hoodie. They looked like they were going to a funeral.
Hyukjae paused by his shelf, her fingers brushing the chipped ceramic of the Hyukjae & Donghae Forever mug. She picked it up, held its weight in her palm for a moment, then set it down carefully, turning it so the drawing faced the wall.
“Okay,” she said, her voice flat. “Let’s go end it.”
The ride to the university campus was a blur of grey streets and blurred pedestrians. Donghae drove, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Hyukjae stared out the window, one hand resting on her belly. The other was curled in her lap, trembling slightly. He reached over, without looking, and covered it with his own. He felt her flinch, then her fingers laced tightly with his, her grip desperate.
Heechul’s lab was in the basement of the Advanced Biosciences building. A place of sterile fluorescence and quiet hums, far from the cluttered warmth of Donghae’s apartment. The door clicked unlocked as Donghae swiped the keycard Heechul had given him months ago, a sickening courtesy.
The main lab was empty, pristine. Vials gleamed under lights. Screens showed scrolling data in waveforms they couldn’t understand.
“Ah. Punctual.”
Professor Kim Heechul emerged from an adjoining anteroom, not in a lab coat, but in a impeccably tailored grey suit. He looked like a CEO, not a researcher. His sharp eyes took them in with a single, sweeping glance, lingering on the shape of Hyukjae beneath her sweater, on their clasped hands. A smile, thin and razor-like, touched his lips.
“Donghae. And Subject E.” His gaze fixed on Hyukjae. “Or should I say, Hyukjae? You look… well. Blooming, even.”
“What do you want, Heechul?” Donghae’s voice was low, a warning rumble.
“Direct. I appreciate that.” Heechul strolled to a central workstation, gesturing to two cold metal stools. “Sit. We have much to discuss. The gestational development alone is a marvel. The hormonal readings I’ve been able to capture remotely are unprecedented. But remote is insufficient now. I need imaging. Tissue samples. A full work-up.”
Hyukjae didn’t move. “No.”
Heechul’s smile didn’t fade. It simply grew colder. “This isn’t a negotiation. You volunteered, Hyukjae. You signed the forms. Your body, and everything it produces, is intellectual property of this project.”
“I didn’t sign up for this!” Her voice cracked, echoing in the sterile room. “You never said it could do… this!”
“The potential was always in the substrate. Your masculine biology provided a fascinating baseline, but the feminine transformation was always meant to be… comprehensive.” He leaned forward, his eyes alight with a fanatical gleam. “You’re not a patient. You’re a prototype. And I need to see how the prototype performs under full, natural strain.”
Donghae stepped in front of Hyukjae. “You’re not touching her.”
“And how will you stop me, Donghae?” Heechul asked softly. He tapped a key on his console. A faint, digital click sounded from the door. “Security is already on alert. You are here as my assistant, and she is here as my subject. Any… altercation… ends with her in a secured medical bay, and you in a cell for assault.”
The air left the room. Donghae’s plan—vague, built on bluster and desperation—crumbled to dust around him. Heechul had thought of everything.
The professor stood, smoothing his suit jacket. “Now. The examination room is through here. Hyukjae, come with me. We’ll begin with a transvaginal ultrasound. I need to measure fetal growth and placental integration.”
He walked towards the anteroom door, expecting compliance.
Hyukjae looked at Donghae, her eyes wide with a pure, animal terror. The same look she’d had the first morning she’d woken up like this, in this very lab. The look that had started it all.
Donghae met her gaze. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Then he turned back to Heechul.
“Professor,” he said, his voice strangely calm.
Heechul paused, hand on the doorframe, glancing back with mild irritation.
Donghae’s hand closed around the heavy, glass-encased model of a DNA helix that sat on the lab bench beside him. He didn’t swing it. He simply lifted it, its weight solid and promising in his grip.
“We’re ending it,” Donghae said. “Our way.”
Heechul’s eyes narrowed, finally registering the threat. The sterile silence of the lab shattered, replaced by the roaring of blood in Donghae’s ears.