Epilogue
Roman
Perfection requires precision. Every detail measured, every variable controlled. The emerald beanie disrupts my desk’s careful order, its bloodstained wool an offense against everything Sterling Labs represents. Each perfectly executed stitch now marred by evidence of failure—hers and mine.
I adjust my cufflinks—platinum, precisely aligned at 45-degree angles. The ritual steadies my hands. Sterling hands. The same ones I see twitching on the security feed where my greatest disappointment lies unconscious. My only beta offspring, chained in the same chamber where her mother once helped advance designation science.
The symmetry would be poetic if it wasn’t so irritating.
“Sir?” Alexander stands at perfect attention, every inch the heir I crafted him to be. His reflection in my window shows none of the genetic weakness that plagues his half-sister. “The press is contained. No outlets received her transmission.”
“And the pack?” The words taste bitter. Like watching years of careful breeding produce a beta—nature’s cruel joke.
“Being delayed by our security forces.” His lip curls slightly. “Though they’re proving more... resourceful than anticipated.”
My fingers trace the beanie’s bloodied pattern. Such careful work, each stitch placed with obsessive precision. Like coding. Like genetics. Like the methodical elimination of designation weakness. Even in this, she shows traces of Sterling perfection—the attention to detail, the relentless drive.
All that potential, wasted on beta blood.
On the monitor, Cayenne stirs. Even unconscious, her hands move in familiar patterns—building, creating, solving. The ghost of what could have been, if nature hadn’t played its cruel trick.
My hands.
Sterling hands.
Wasted on beta flesh.
“Prepare the laboratory.” The words come out colder than the steel and glass surrounding us. “It’s time to correct nature’s mistake.”
The beanie’s emerald wool catches light as I drop it into my shredder. The mechanical whir sounds like progress. Like evolution. Like destiny.
Some bloodlines need pruning to grow stronger.
And I’ve always been good with scissors.