Before the Fall

Chapter Sixty-Two - A New Beginning

Namjoon

With Li now dead, and most of his army as well, H-Corp was a mess. Order needed to be restored and something decided about the entire operation.

Thousands of hybrids had been created and it was completely unethical to execute them all for
something out of their control. Though if Hoseok has his way, the entire arachnid unit would be hung out to dry somewhere.

We employed some low-level hybrids, mice, lizards, toads, rabbits, among others who were easily manipulated, to filter throughout the company and spread the word a meeting was being called. Li's death was announced immediately, but what was to happen next? Not even I knew.

I sent Jimin and Hoseok to the medical station with Aster. He assured me he would be grilling the scientists there for help with Aster's forced amnesia and addiction. I had little hope that anything could be done, but he assured me we just had to try.

Jimin had patched me up as best he could before he went, grumbling and complaining the entire time about getting tired of fixing me. He declared that if all I was going to do was rip my body open again, he was going to officially retire and leave this horrific job to someone else.

I knew he was all talk.

My men and I were brothers, inseparable in some ways. We were Li's first real hybrid experiments that worked and that made us special. It also gave us reasons to spend a lot of time together and get closer. It was a bond that wasn't shared by any other unit.

Jin and I walked through the human stock houses. I felt sick in my stomach as we passed where the humans were held. Rooms entirely too small for the numbers of people held in there. Some for breeding more humans, some for hybridizing. It was an entirely disgusting operation once you really looked into it.

They looked out at us through the walls of glass, their eyes filled with despair and missing the light of hope. I stood looking at one particular room, filled with young children, and tears began to flood my cheeks. They didn't even play like normal children. Just shuffled around, the same hopeless looks on their faces.

I felt Jin's hand clamp onto my shoulder and pulled me closer to him. I felt a wash of safety wash over me and I leaned into him a bit.

"Hyung," I whispered, "how were we so blind? Look at this. It's horrific!"

Jin sighed and nodded, tears in his own eyes. We may be tough, rock-solid killing machines, but we had feelings, because we were once completely human as well.

"We need to clean this place out. Let these people live, you know?"

I nodded. "It would update be good to meet with everyone together, but I think we should meet with the hybrids separately first, then the humans."

Jin nodded and we walked on, finally reaching the animal stocks. It was like an endless Noah's ark, creatures of all sizes and types enclosed in relatively humane enclosures compared to the humanity we just left behind. It was never a question on what type of life Li valued more.

"What do we do with these?" asked Jin, walking up to a glass wall where wolves were being held.

"I'd say release them where they all belong, but how do we know how long all these animals have been here? Can they even live on their own?" I walked up to the glass and a male wolf snarled and bared his teeth at me through the glass. "I think it would be best to just move them to appropriate enclosures for their sizes and species, and care for them till they die. They deserve a good life."

Li used mostly DNA, but when it didn't produce everything he wanted in a hybrid, such as the augmentations, he was not above cutting ears and tails off of living animals and attaching them to humans, grafting them both together through DNA and anti-rejection antibiotics.