Author’s note: This chapter contains one big fat hint, tho. If you guys were Sherlock enough and catching it right away, you could send me the answer through private message. Let’s see what can I do to the ones who guessing it correctly... :>

***

Building B? Seolhyun vaguely remembered hearing someone mention another building attached to this one underground but had no idea what or who was housed there.

Sergeant Choi stormed out of the room without saying words. Choa cursed under her breath as she spun toward the door. “Wook, them back to their room immediately.” She pointed at another guard. “Shut this room down. No one goes in or out.” Then to the doctor. “Follow me, Park.”

Seolhyun turned to Yuna as the douches left the room. “What’s going on?”

Wook stepped forward. “You ask too many questions and need to learn when to shut up.”

Seolhyun blinked. That was all it took, and Hyejeong had the guard by the neck and pinned to the wall. “And you need to learn to speak to the ladies with a little bit of manners,” she snarled.

“Hyejeong!” Seolhyun screeched, preparing herself for the Clio.

But it never came.

Hyejeong pried her fingers off the gasping soldier’s throat, one by one, and stepped back. The soldier slumped against the wall. “You let her do that?” Wook accused, pointing at Yuna who had done nothing. “What the hell, girl?”

Yuna shrugged. “She had a point. You need to learn manners.”

Hurrying to Hyejeong’s side, Seolhyun wrapped her hand around hers and squeezed.

Hyejeong looked down, not seeing her at first. Then she lowered her head, brushing her lips across Seolhyun’s forehead.

“Whatever,” the man spat, then spun on his heel, exiting the room and leaving Yuna to fend for himself with the two of them.

Seolhyun took a ragged breath. “Will you at least tell us what’s in building B?”

Yuna looked at Hyejeong and then Seolhyun. Voice low, she said, “I’m sure they’ll show you eventually, and you’ll probably wish they hadn’t. Gwynths are kept in that building.”

“Gwynths?” Hyejeong repeated, brows furrowing. “What the hell is that?”

Yuna shrugged. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Hyejeong’s hand tightened around Seolhyun’s, and then she swooped down, catching Seolhyun chin in her other hand and tilting her head back. was on hers, and the kiss... the kiss was fierce, hard and branding, curling Seolhyun’s toes inside her sneakers and stealing her breath. Her free hand fell to Hyejeong’s chest as the touch of their mouths rearranged. In spite of the audience, luscious heat rose as Hyejeong angled the kiss, pulling Seolhyun hard against her.

Yuna exhaled loudly.

Lifting her head, Hyejeong winked at her. “I didn’t mean to break your fangirl heart.”

Then a siren sounded with an ear-piercing shrill. Lights on the ceilings flashed red. Patients and doctors looked around in alarm.

“Yuna, really, what’s going on?” Seolhyun asked again. Like hell she wanted to go back to her room when things were obviously just getting fun. Out in the hall, lighting was dim and the blinking red light caused an annoying strobe effect.

Soldiers poured out of rooms, locking them down and taking up guard in front of them. Another came down the hall, clutching a walkie-talkie in a knuckle-white grip. “We have activity on elevator ten, coming out of building B. Lock it down now.”

“You okay?” Hyejeong asked, eyeing Yuna. She also had her hand on her weapon, but she wasn’t watching them. Her eyes were on the middle elevator. She was hearing something in her earpiece and, by the look on her face, she wasn’t happy.

Instinct suddenly told Seolhyun that maybe being in their rooms would be a good thing. “This has never happened before?”

Yuna shook her head. “No. Maybe it’s a drill.”

Double doors at the end of the hall suddenly burst open, and a swarm of officers in SWAT gear came through, armed to the teeth with rifles, faces shielded.

Reacting immediately, Hyejeong swept an arm around Seolhyun’s waist and shoved her back against the wall, shielding her with her body. “I don’t think this is a drill.”

“It’s not,” Yuna said, drawing her weapon.

The light above the middle elevator blinked from floor seven to floor six and then floor five.

“I thought the elevators were locked down?” someone demanded.

The men dressed in black shuffled forward, going down on their knees in front of the elevator. Someone else said, “Locking down the elevators ain’t going to stop it. You know that.”

“I don’t care,” the man yelled into the radio. “Shut down the damn elevator before it reaches the top level. Drop cement down the shaft if you need to. Stop the damn elevator!”

“Stop what?” Hyejeong glanced at Yuna.

The red light blinked on the fourth floor.

When Yuna didn’t answer her, Hyejeong’s gaze swung back to the elevator. Part of her wanted to storm out to see what the hell a Gwynth was and why they were acting like the monster was going to come out of the elevator shaft, but Seolhyun was here, and obviously whatever was about to rain down on them wasn’t a friendly.

“What the hell is up with them recently?” One of the men in black gear muttered. “They’ve been acting up nonstop.”

Hyejeong started to turn, but Seolhyun smacked her. “Don’t, baby.”

A ding ricocheted through the floor, signaling that the elevator had arrived. Hyejeong was seconds from just picking Seolhyun up and throwing her over her shoulder. The elevator doors slid open slowly. Guns were clicked, safeties going off.

“Don’t shoot!” Dr. Park ordered, came back from nowhere, waving a syringe around like a white flag. “I can take care of this. Whatever you do, don’t shoot. Don’t–”

A small shadow fell out of the elevator, and then one leg appeared, covered in black sweats, and then a torso and tiny shoulders.

Seolhyun’s mouth dropped open.

It was a kid. Probably no older than five, and he stepped out in front of all the grown men with really big guns trained on him.

The kid smiled.

The kid’s eyes were purple, like two amethyst jewels with those weird lines around the pupils, just like Hong’s. And they were cold and flat as they scanned the officers in front of him.

Dr. Park stepped forward. “Kyu, what are you doing? You know you’re not supposed to be in this building. Where is your –?”

Several things happened so fast and, seriously, Hyejeong wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

The kid lifted a hand, and there was a succession of several pops, bullets leaving the chambers of the rifles. Seolhyun’s horrified gasp said she was thinking the same thing she was. Were they really going to shoot a kid?

But the bullets stopped, as if the kid were a Felix or Hybrid, but he wasn’t one of her kind. Hyejeong would’ve felt that. Maybe he was a Hybrid, because those bullets hit a shimmery blue wall around him. The blue light expanded, swallowing the bullets, dozens of them, lighting them up like blue fireflies. They hung in the air for a second and then popped out of existence.

The kid curled his fingers inward, like he was motioning them to come play with him, and in a total badass way, the guns flew from the officers’ hands, zinging toward the kid. They, too, stopped in midair and lit up in vibrant shades of blue. A second later the guns were dust.

Seolhyun’s hands dug into Hyejeong’s back. “Holy...”

“,” she finished.

Dr. Park was trying to push past the soldiers. “Kyu, you can’t–”

“I don’t want to go back to that building,” the kid said in a voice that was oddly high and flat at the same time.

Wook moved in, holding a pistol. Dr. Park shouted, and Kyu’s head whipped around. The guard’s face paled, and Kyu closed his fist. Wook hit the floor on his knees, grasping his head as he doubled over. Mouth open in a silent scream, blood poured from the guy’s eyes.

“Kyu!” Dr. Park shoved an officer out of the way. “That is bad! Bad, Kyu!”

“Holy crap,” Seolhyun whispered. “The kid is like Spock from Star Trek.”

Hyejeong would’ve laughed, because with the bowl-cut black hair and slight, mischievous grin, he did look like outer space creature in movies. Except it wasn’t funny because the freaky kid was now staring at her with those purple eyes.

Gosh. I don’t like freaky kids.

“He was gonna hurt me,” said Kyu, never taking his eyes off Hyejeong. “And you all are going to make me go back to my room. I don’t wanna go back to my room.”

Several of the officers shuttled backward as Kyu took a step forward, but Dr. Park remained, hiding the syringe behind his back. “Why don’t you want to go back to your room, Kyu?”

“A better question is why is he staring at you, baby?” Seolhyun whispered to Hyejeong.

True, though.

Kyu cautiously made his way around the officers, who were now giving him a wide space. His steps were light and extremely catlike. “The other ones don’t want to play with me.”

There are more of him? Dear God...

Dr. Park turned to him, smiling. “Is it because you’re not sharing your toys?”

Seolhyun choked on what sounded like a near-hysterical laugh.

Kyu’s eyes slid to him. “Sharing is not how you assert dominance.”

Holy. .

“Sharing doesn’t always mean you’re giving up control, Kyu. We’ve taught you that.”

The little boy shrugged as he turned his gaze back to Hyejeong. Two dimples appeared in his round cheeks. “Can she play with me, Dr. Park?”

He nodded. “I’m sure she can later, Kyu, but right now we need you to go back to your room.”

The little boy’s lower lip stuck out. “I don’t wanna go back to my room!”

Hyejeong half expected the kid’s head to start spinning, and maybe it would have, but Dr. Park shot forward, syringe in hand.

Kyu spun and shouted as he balled up his tiny hands. Dr. Park dropped the syringe and went down on one knee. “Kyu,” he gasped, pressing his hands to his temples. “You need to stop.”

Kyu stomped a foot. “I don’t wanna–”

Out of freaking nowhere, a dart slammed into the kid’s neck. His eyes widened, and then his legs gave out. Before he fell face-first, Hyejeong shot forward in light speed and caught him in her arms. Kid was freaky as hell, but still, he was a kid.

She looked up and saw Sergeant Choi standing to the right. “Good shot, Myungjoo,” the sergeant said.

Myungjoo/Yuna slid the gun back into her holster with a curt nod.

Hyejeong turned back to Kyu. His eyes were open, and they locked onto hers. He wasn’t moving at all, but the kid was in there, fully functional. “What the hell, dude?” she whispered.

“Someone get Wook to the med room and make sure his brains aren’t completely scrambled.” Choi was giving out orders. “Park, get the kid into an exam room immediately and find out how he was able to get out of building B, and where in the hell is his tracker?”

Dr. Park stumbled to his feet, rubbing his temple. “Yes... yes, sir.”

Choi stepped up to him, eyes glinting and his voice low. “If he does it again, he will be terminated. Do you understand?”

Terminated? Jesus. Someone appeared at Hyejeong’s side and grabbed for the kid. She almost didn’t want to let him go, but that became a nonissue. Kyu’s hand caught the front of her shirt and held on as the officer picked him up.

Those strange eyes were even more bizarre up close. The circle around the pupils was irregular, as if the black had bled at the edges.

“Help us and I’ll help you.”

Stunned, Hyejeong jerked back, breaking the grip on her shirt. The kid’s voice was in her head. Impossible, but it had happened. She watched in disbelief as the officer had him now and was turning away.

That kid wasn’t like Seolhyun or her. That kid was something completely different.

This kid had just disarmed about fifteen men and probably would’ve done a hell of a lot more if Yuna hadn’t shoot the kid. To be honest, Seolhyun didn’t even know what she just saw or what the kid was, but Hyejeong looked substantially more freaked than she felt.

Pushing off the wall, she hurried to her. “Are you okay?”

Hyejeong ran a hand through her hair as she nodded.

“Someone needs to get these two back to their rooms,” Sergeant Choi said, taking a deep breath and then barking out more orders. Yuna moved toward them.

“Wait.” Seolhyun wrapped an arm around Hyejeong’s, refusing to budge. “What was that?”

“I don’t have time for this.” Choi’s eyes narrowed. “Take them back to their rooms, Myungjoo.”

Anger rose inside Seolhyun, bitter and powerful. “Make time for this.”

Choi’s head snapped toward her, and she glared back at him.

Hyejeong was tuning in to the conversation, fixing her attention on the sergeant. “That kid wasn’t a Felix or a Hybrid,” she said. “I think you guys owe us a straight-up answer.”

“He is what we call a Gwynth,” Choa answered, coming up behind the sergeant. “As in a new beginning: the origin of the perfect species.”

Seolhyun opened , then clamped it shut. The origin of the perfect species? She felt like she’d fallen headfirst into a really bizarre science-fiction movie, except this was all real.

“Go ahead, Sergeant. I have time for them.” Choa tipped up her chin, meeting Choi’s incredulous stare. “And I want a complete write-up on how and why there have been incidences with the Gwynths in the matter of twenty-four hours.”

Choi exhaled loudly out his nose. “Yes, ma’am.”

Seolhyun was sort of stunned when he snapped his heels together and pivoted, but her suspicion about Choa being the one who ran the show was confirmed.

She extended an arm toward one of the closed doors. “Let’s sit.”

Hyejeong turned to Choa, brows raised. “Nice decorating you got going on here.”

She ignored it. “Sit.”

“What if I prefer to stand?”

“I really don’t care.” She turned to where a camera was perched in the corner and nodded. The red blinking went off immediately.

Keeping an arm around Hyejeong’s, Seolhyun followed them. As Yuna joined them, forever their shadow, she remained by the door while the three of them sat.

Hyejeong dropped an elbow on the table and a hand on Seolhyun’s knee as she leaned in, her eyes fixed on Choa. “Okay. So this kid is a Gwynth. Or whatever. What does that mean exactly?”

Choa leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. “We weren’t ready to share this with you yet, but considering what you witnessed, we really don’t have a choice. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, so we must adapt.”

“Sure,” Seolhyun said, placing her hand over Hyejeong’s. She flipped hers up, her fingers threading Seolhyun’s, and their joined hands rested on Seolhyun’s knee.

“The Gwynth Project is Icarus’s greatest achievement,” Choa started, her gaze unwavering. “Ironically, it started as an accident more than forty years ago. It began with one and has grown to more than a hundred as of now. As I said before, sometimes what we plan for doesn’t happen. So we must adapt.”

Seolhyun glanced at Hyejeong, and she looked as bewildered and as impatient as she felt, but Seolhyun had this sickening, sinking feeling. On some level she knew that whatever they were about to hear was going to blow their minds.

“Forty years ago we had a Felix and a Hybrid who he/she had mutated. They, very much like you two, were young and in love.” Her upper lip curled in. “They were allowed to see each other, and at some point during their stay with us, the female became pregnant.”

Oh, jeez.

“At first we weren’t aware, not until she started to show. You see, back then, we didn’t test for hormones related to pregnany. From what we’ve gathered, it is very difficult for a Felix to conceive with another, so it didn’t cross our minds that one would be able to conceive with a human, Hybrid or not.”

“Is that true?” Seolhyun asked Hyejeong. Baby making wasn’t something they never talked about. “That it’s hard for Felix to conceive?”

Hyejeong’s jaw worked. “Yes, but we can’t conceive with humans, as far as I know. It’s like a Tom and Jerry getting together.”

Ew. Seolhyun made a face. “Nice comparison.”

Hyejeong smirked.

“You’re right,” Choa said. “Felix cannot conceive with humans, and for the most part, they cannot conceive with a Hybrid, but when the mutation is perfect, complete on a cellular level, and if there appears to be a true want, they can.”

For some reason, heat crawled up Seolhyun’s neck. Talking about babies with Choa was worse than having the talk with her mom, and that had been bad enough to make her want to punch herself in the stomach.

“When it was discovered that the Hybrid was pregnant, the team was split on whether or not the pregnancy should be terminated. That may sound harsh,” she said in response to the way Hyejeong stiffened, “but you must understand we had no idea what this pregnancy could do or what a child of a Felix and Hybrid would be like. We had no idea what we were dealing with, but thankfully termination was vetoed, and we were given the opportunity to study this occurrence.”

“So... so they had a baby?” Seolhyun asked.

Choa nodded. “The length of pregnancy was normal by human standards, between eight and nine months. Our Hybrid was a little early.”

“Felix take about a year,” Hyejeong said, and Seolhyun winced, thinking that was a hell of a long time to be stuck carrying triplets. “But like I said, it’s hard.”

“When the baby was born, there was nothing remarkable in appearance, with the exception of the child’s eyes. They were purplish in color, which is an extremely rare human coloring, with a wavy dark circle around the iris. Blood work showed that the baby had adopted both human and Felix DNA, which was different from the mutated DNA of a Hybrid. It wasn’t until the child started to grow that we realized what that meant.”

Seolhyun had no idea what that meant.

A smile graced Choa’s face. A genuine one, like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “Growth rate was normal, like any human child, but the child showed signs of significant intelligence from onset, learning to speak well before a normal child, and early intelligence tests put the child over two hundred in the IQ department, which is rare. Only a half of one percent of the population has an IQ over one hundred and forty. And there was more.”

Seolhyun remember Hyejeong telling her before that Felix matured faster than humans, not in physical appearance but in intellect and social skills, which seemed doubtful considering how she acted sometimes.

Hyejeong slid her a long look, as if she knew what Seolhyun was thinking. Seolhyun squeezed her hand. “What do you mean by more?” she asked, turning back to Choa.

“Well, really, it’s been limitless and still a learning experience. Each child, each generation, appears to have different abilities.” A certain light filled Choa’s eyes as she spoke. “The first one was able to do something that no Hybrid has been able to do: he could heal.”

Seolhyun sat back, blinking rapidly. “But... I thought only Felix could do that?”

“We believed the same thing until this kid we found in China, Jeon Hen Gyul, came along.”

“Wait, “Hen”? I think it’s more likely “Han” as Korean name?” Seolhyun raised an eyebrow.

“We named him Jeon Hen Gyul, as “Hen” means very in Mandarin, and “Gyul” as shortened meaning of innocence in Korean. Well, he was this special.”

“’Jeon is very innocent’?” Hyejeong snorted. “What a creative name, ma’am. What do you shorten it to? Inno?”

Seolhyun smacked her arm.

Choa made a face. “We simply called him Jeon.”

Hyejeong shrugged. “What about his parents?” She asked.

“Jeon’s ability to heal others and himself ran parallel to Felix ability, obviously inherited from his father. Just as we found him at Changbai Mountains, over the course of his childhood, we were able to learn that he could speak telepathically with not just Felix and Hybrids but humans, also. Clio and Calyx mixtures had no effect on him. He had the speed and strength of a Felix but was faster and stronger. And like the Felix, he could tap into the Source just as easily. His ability to problem solve and strategize at such a young age was off the charts. Jeon was the perfect specimen.”

It took a few moments for all of this to sink in, and when it did, one thing stood out among everything Choa had said. “Where is Jeon now?”

“Jeon is no longer with us.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was gone, simply put. We assume he’s dead. But he was not the last. Several more were born, and we were able to learn how the conception was possible.” Excited, Choa’s speech sped up. “The most interesting