The stench of her haunted him. Every alley he searched stank of her blossoming cunt. Lowering his nostrils, he roughly inhaled the skin of his fingers. “Mm,” he moaned.
Another army nearly found them in the city. He knew his brother would be dumb enough to visit the old safe house, but he didn’t expect to be greeted with the sight of their helicopters. His intelligence team let him down, nearly steering them into a suicide mission. Naturally, they would have to be put to death.
Cassian was given Vash’s charcoaled kits, the DNA swabs ruined by the swift demolition. If Cassian didn’t find his brother first, he would surely die from the parasite.
A fiend of an alpha stood before Cassian, displaying the picture of an unknown beta. “Got one squawking in the barracks.”
Cassian didn’t move. “Kill him.”
Everything had been in reach until Vash stepped in. This was supposed to be the time when his empire manifested from underneath his calloused feet. It had to start with the omega. Without her, he couldn’t achieve greatness.
He could hear his mother’s breathing mix with the radio signals in his earpiece. Adjusting the silicon knob, he bit down and prepared for the abrupt change in frequency. “I didn’t want to leave our quarters,” he said.
“It was for your own good. You’re getting closer to finding her every single day,” she said.
He’d rather be back with the copies. Even if they were too dumb to understand their situation, it gave him more comfort to be around his creations than mix with the brutes on the outside. “And if they’ve already knotted her? You have carefully avoided the question.”
“You mustn’t manifest these images,” his mother said, voice crawling into his cerebral cortex.
Cassian’s eyes searched for someone else to blame other than himself. Noticing an officer of the high command walking from a set of tall pillars of cracking rock, he locked eyes with the man. “You’re right, Mother. I will remain… optimistic.”
He imagined her pleased face, wrinkles caressing a noble smile. “Good boy.”
The thuggish creature stopped and threw a blade into the sand. Kneeling with grace, the brute bowed his head. “Sir. We’ve found a lead.”
Cassian reached for his blade to slowly run it through his gut, but the alpha had said the words he had been waiting to hear for weeks. “A specialist was found crushed in the pipes. Says he knows where to find your brother.”
Cassian followed the officer to the corroded steps away from the sands. Barnacles clung to the edges as the toxic water clung to them. The smell was rancid—Cassian always loved the shores of this continent.
“He was never my brother,” Cassian muttered. “Where is the specialist?”
“The Omega Unlimited nightclub.”
Cassian looked up at the skyline of the city and felt nothing. The fires from the areas of destitution fanned against the looming buildings. The entire horizon was sulfur yellow.
Cassian brought his hand around the butt of his blade and squeezed the tough leather. “You took him there?” But before the man could speak, he cut into the trader’s abdomen and watched him gawk with perplexity.
He abhorred that place. Naturally, all of the talent was of her code. EC23. Wren. They were flawed units. As new varieties were born, the old models were filtered out through a time-based system. Four years of work before complete eradication.
He despised seeing the old models.
The substandard copies could not bear life. Still, they weren’t like the betas. They produced slick and pungent scents. Cassian monetized the ones he didn’t kill, banishing them to a different kind of slavery.
The club sector was a cesspool of debauchery and scum. As he pushed his way through the crowded streets, he looked up at the neon insignia in the middle of the courtyard. The image of a black mamba gagging on its tail was the perfect metaphor for everyone around him. Time would catch up to them, and once it did, they’d be forced to choke on its excrement.
Below the luminescent entrance of Omega Unlimited, a speaker blared the words: “I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning of the end.”
As soon as Cassian set foot in the darkened establishment, everyone stopped to gawk at the brute. Even the copies stopped dancing to gaze at him.
Walking toward a drunken trader, he forced his hand around his throat, tightening to an extreme. “Where is he?”
The man gagged as Cassian collapsed his cartilage. “Useless,” Cassian said, tossing him to the side. Feeling his anger get the best of him, he walked toward the copies.
“I could kill you all just like him. One by one, I could watch your bodies burn on the shore.”
“You are looking for your brother?” The thin and wavering voice reverberated from a nearby room.
Cassian didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he made his way toward the doctor, fists tightening. “You cured him,” he finally grunted.