TWO OF A KIND
BY DIAMOND SODEN
CHAPTER 1 — THE CELEBRATION OF MIRACLES AND OTHER LIES
Present day, night befalls us; the air seems electrified, as if energy flows seamlessly
through it, slipping between atoms with no resistance at all. The sky outside is a velvet
bruise, but inside this undisclosed location a ballroom so large it could house a minor
nation everything glitters. Chandeliers drip crystal tears. Marble floors gleam with the kind
of polish that suggests someone was paid handsomely to pretend morality is also
something that can be buffed to a shine.
The room is swollen with bodies: work colleagues, financiers, press, and the usual
assortment of opportunistic guests who orbit wealth like moths around a flame. They clink
glasses of wine and champagne, feasting upon delicacies so decadent they border on
criminal. A live symphony saws away in the corner, valiantly attempting to be heard over
the roar of human celebration.
All await the CEO’s grand announcements — the triumphs of the past year, the promises of
the next, and the ritual distribution of awards to the chosen few. The air is thick with
anticipation, greed, and the faint perfume of moral compromise.
At one table sit three of the company’s most prestigious stem cell and organ-development
bioengineers — Cassius, Jillian, and Xavier — a trio of brilliance, dysfunction, and
questionable ethics. Their chatter blends with the clatter of utensils and the music,
forming a euphoric broth of sound and sensation.
“So, Cassius,” Jillian says, swirling her wine with the casual menace of a woman who
knows she’s about to pry, “when are you finally going to put all the science aside and find
someone to settle down with? You’ve collected every award and accolade imaginable.
Surely you can spare a moment for romance.”
Cassius, who has the social warmth of a refrigerated scalpel, opens his mouth to respond
— but Xavier beats him to it.
Xavier, lustfully gazing at Jill over the rim of his champagne flute, smirks. “Now, Jill, you
know Cassius has no interest in the mundane mating rituals of us normal folk. His work is
his only love. We’ve never seen him show even a flicker of romantic interest in anyone.
Maybe he prefers men even, ha ha!”
“Don’t you wish,” Jill replies, sighing into her wine.
“What? Now you know you can get it any day of the week, Jill,” Xavier fires back, defensive
and staring at her like she’s the last dessert on the table.
“Oh, more wishful thinking, huh?” Jill laughs.
Cassius rolls his eyes, a gesture he has perfected into an art form. He sighs, the sigh of a
man forced to babysit two bickering children, and cuts in sharply.
“Come on. You both know that the completion of this project is the most important
endeavor this company has ever undertaken. Our financiers are growing impatient. They
expect evidence soon that their investments will yield profit. If we can successfully
combine stem cell and cloning research to recreate human bones, organs, tissue… it will
revolutionize science and medicine. We’ll be at the forefront of a new era. It’s an exciting
time.”
Jillian’s smile falters. A small distress flickers across her face.
“Well… I wish everyone felt that way. Our critics are concerned about all the ways things
could go wrong and rightfully so. Sometimes I wonder if what we’re doing is even morally
correct.”
Xavier raises his glass. “As the great Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park: ‘Your scientists
were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think whether they
should.’ But we’ve already crossed that threshold, haven’t we, Cassius? We’re seeing this
through. And like the financier in Jurassic Park said they’ve spared no expense!”
“So it seems,” Cassius replies.
The company’s CEO, Mr. Tinsdale, approaches the podium. The microphone shrieks with
feedback, slicing through the ballroom. The musicians stop mid-note. The room hushes.
Tinsdale stands there, a man carved from ambition and polished with charm. His smile is a
scalpel wrapped in velvet. His suit is tailored so sharply it could cut glass. His eyes sweep
the room with the confidence of someone who owns not just the company, but the very air
everyone is breathing.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, voice booming with theatrical warmth, “tonight we
celebrate not only our achievements, but the future we are building a future where
disease, decay, and death itself may finally bow before human ingenuity.”
The crowd erupts in applause. Champagne sloshes. Cameras flash.
Cassius watches Tinsdale with a mixture of admiration and unease. The man is brilliant,
yes, but brilliance often casts long shadows. And Cassius, ever the scientist, knows that
shadows only exist where something bright is being blocked.
Tinsdale continues, “Our breakthroughs in regenerative cloning and stem cell organ
development have positioned us at the forefront of a new era. And while challenges
remain, I have full confidence in our team, especially our lead bioengineer, Dr. Cassius
Vale.”
A spotlight snaps onto Cassius. He blinks, startled, as applause swells around him.
Jill nudges him. “Look at you, golden boy.”
Xavier claps loudly, perhaps too loudly; his grin a little too sharp.
Cassius forces a polite smile, though inside he feels a strange tightening , a pressure he
cannot name. Responsibility. Expectation. Or perhaps the faint whisper of something else:
the knowledge that he is on the brink of a discovery that will change everything.
Tinsdale gestures grandly. “And so, without further delay, let us begin tonight’s awards
ceremony and unveil the next phase of our company’s most ambitious project yet.”
The lights dim. The screens behind Tinsdale flicker to life. A new logo appears, a stylized
double helix blooming into a human silhouette.
The room gasps.
Cassius feels his pulse quicken.
Something is beginning.
Something irreversible.
Something that will lead him to Cassy, to love, to horror, to betrayal, to death — and to the
creation of a future he cannot yet imagine.
But for now, he sits in the glow of applause, unaware that tonight’s celebration is not the
beginning of triumph…
…but the beginning of his undoing.
CHAPTER 2 — THE HOUSE THAT SCIENCE BUILT, AND THE MAN WHO SHOULDN’T
HAVE BEEN DRINKING
The gala dragged on long after the applause had faded, long after Mr. Tinsdale’s velvet
tongued promises had dissolved into the usual corporate haze of champagne and selfcongratulations. Cassius endured it with the stoicism of a man who would rather be
dissecting a cadaver than making small talk with financiers. Eventually, mercifully, the
night ended.
He slipped out before the final toast, unnoticed by most, except Jill , who gave him a
halfhearted wave — and Xavier, who mouthed something obscene in Jill’s direction as
Cassius walked away.
Outside, the night air was cool and sharp, a welcome antidote to the suffocating warmth of
the ballroom. Cassius inhaled deeply, savoring the quiet. He preferred the world when it
wasn’t full of people. People were unpredictable. Illogical. Messy. Science, on the other
hand, was clean or at least it used to be.
Cassius Vale left the gala in a state best described as drunk. Not the poetic, brooding kind
of drunk, but the sloppy, lopsided, wine soaked variety that turns geniuses into hazards
and hazards into historical footnotes. The gala had poured him full of vintage reds and
sparkling whites until his bloodstream resembled a sommelier’s fever dream. The wine had
been flowing like a biblical flood, and he, normally a man of monk like restraint, had been
swept away in it.
As he left the night air slapped him with cool indifference. He slapped it back, missed, and
nearly fell over.
By the time he reached his car, he was humming a tune that did not exist, patting the hood
as if it were a loyal dog. His car recognized him before he recognized it. “Home,” he
slurred, collapsing into the seat like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
His car hummed to life, an electric purr. He drove home very slowly — not out of caution,
but because he kept forgetting the speed limit and then forgetting, he had forgotten. The
drive home was uneventful; the city lights blurred into neon smears, like someone had
dragged a wet brush across the skyline.
He replayed Tinsdale’s speech in his mind, the spotlight, the applause. It should have felt
triumphant. Instead, it felt like a weight settling on his chest.
The house loomed ahead — a sleek, modern structure of glass and steel, perched on a
private lot like a secret waiting to be confessed. It was not a home so much as a
monument. Mr. Tinsdale had built it for him personally, a reward for brilliance and a
promise of future fortune.
“Your sanctuary,” Tinsdale had said when handing him the keys. “Your kingdom,” he had
added, with a smile too sharp to be comforting. “Your responsibility,” he had whispered,
almost as an afterthought.
Cassius had nodded then, sober, and ambitious. Tonight, he nodded again, drunk and
swaying.
He staggered up the walkway — and froze.
He arrived home and the first thing he noticed was a large metal cargo container.
It sat outside his doorstep like an abandoned giant infant, large, metallic, and humming
faintly. No label. No delivery slip. No explanation.
Cassius frowned. Packages did not simply appear at his home, let alone cargo containers.
Not without clearance. Not without protocol.
He blinked at it. The container blinked back or maybe that was the wine.
Cassius squinted. “Did I… order a freight?”
He approached it cautiously, scanning the exterior with the swagger of a man who believed
he was walking in a straight line. A biometric panel lit up as he neared, scanning his hand
before he even touched it. The metal was cold to the touch, smooth as bone. The small
biometric panel blinked awake as neared it. The cargo container hummed in response.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The cargo doors hissed open.
Inside lay equipment he recognized instantly and should not legally be in possession of,
outside of normal work protocols.
Cloning modules. Stem cell incubators. Portable gene sequencers. A bioreactor. And at
the center, nestled like a forbidden jewel, a rapid growth chamber, the kind used only in
the deepest, most restricted levels of the company’s research division.
• far more than he had ever been authorized to possess
These were not household items. These were not even legal items. These were the kind of
tools whispered about in back rooms and buried in classified budgets.
Cassius’s breath caught.
This was not a gift. This was a command.
A small envelope rested on top of the rapid growth chamber. He tore it open with drunken
enthusiasm.
Inside was a single card, embossed with the company’s logo.
“For accelerated progress.” No delays. T.”
Cassius swallowed hard. Tinsdale had sent this. Tinsdale expected results. And Tinsdale
did not tolerate failure.
Cassius stared at it, swaying slightly.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s… that’s not good.”
He read it twice. Then a third time. Then he held it upside down to see if it made more
sense that way.
It did not.
Cassius swayed, squinting at the contents. “Tinsdale, you magnificent lunatic.”
He dragged the equipment inside, tripping over his own feet, the doorway, and at one
point, gravity itself. The equipment was hauled inside piece by piece, each item heavier
than the last, not only in weight but also in implication. His home once a sanctuary of
sterile order now felt like a crime scene waiting to happen. By the time everything was set
up in his secret lab under his home which Tinsdale afforded him, he was sweating, panting,
and still very drunk.
Having dragged all the equipment inside. The house lights flicked on automatically,
illuminating the pristine interior minimalist furniture, polished floors, and beneath it all, the
secret heart of the home.
CHAPTER 3 — DRUNKEN ACCIDENT
The lab, Tinsdale had designed it personally, claiming Cassius needed “a place to think
without interference.” To enter, Cassius had to press his palm to a panel hidden behind a
bookshelf. Which caused the wall to slide open with a soft hiss. The laboratory stretched
out before him, a gleaming subterranean chamber built into the foundation of the house.
Cassius had always suspected it was also a place to work without oversight.
He descended the stairs, humming again. The lab lights flickered on, revealing the
equipment already installed:
Stumbling through his home laboratory, he was humming tunelessly, coat half buttoned,
hair in mutiny. The forbidden equipment Tinsdale had sent gleamed in the dim light like a
row of metallic temptations. Cassius squinted at them, swaying slightly.
“Right,” he slurred. “Let’s… let’s do some science.”
The rapid growth chamber hummed softly, its lights pulsing like a heartbeat.
Cassius stared at it.
“You’re pretty,” he slurred.
The chamber did not respond, which he took as encouragement.
He stumbled to his storage cabinet, retrieved a vial of his own genetic material, something
he normally handled with reverence and held it up to the light.
“You,” he said to the vial, “are the key to everything.”
He kissed it. He immediately regretted kissing it. He wiped it on his shirt.
He approached the console, squinting at the interface. The buttons seemed to multiply,
dancing in and out of focus.
“Okay,” he said, cracking his knuckles.
He was supposed to be working on organ regeneration. He was supposed to be growing
tissue, not… anything else. But the equipment Tinsdale had sent was so technologically
advanced and seemly surpassed the limitations even he knew existed. It was for whole
organisms.
A chill crawled up his spine.
He paced the room, muttering to himself, a habit he had developed during long nights in
the lab.
“This is unnecessary. Irresponsible. Dangerous. Entirely outside protocol. Entirely outside
ethics. Entirely outside”
He stopped.
A thought flickered. A possibility. A temptation.
He had been struggling with one particular problem: stability. Cloned organs degraded.
Tissue collapsed. Chromosomal drift ruined viability.
He approached the console. His reflection stared back at him in the glass sharp eyes,
sharp mind, sharp loneliness.
He had never loved anyone. Never wanted anyone. Never needed anyone.
But he needed this. He needed to prove he could do what no one else could.
He pressed a button. The wrong button. Then another. Also the wrong button. Then he
pressed several at once, which was definitely the wrong approach.
He fumbled with the console, tapping buttons with the precision of a toddler playing a
piano. Vials clinked. A pipette rolled off the counter. He caught it, barely and bowed to no
one in particular.
“Still got it.”
He did not, in fact, still have it.
He said it with the confidence of a man who should not be allowed near scissors, let alone
cutting-edge biotechnology.
The machine beeped angrily.
Cassius beeped back.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Daddy’s working.”
He inserted the vial into the chamber with the precision of a man threading a needle during
an earthquake. The machine whirred, lights flickering. He fumbled with the cryo-sealed
genetic material, squinting at the labels. “Human… plasma… bone marrow… oh good, a
sampler platter.”
He loaded the materials into the bioreactor, humming off-key. He connected the
sequencers, though not necessarily in the correct order. He tapped commands into the
console, each keystroke a gamble.
A warning flashed:
GENETIC MODIFICATION PARAMETERS UNSTABLE.
Cassius nodded sagely. “Same.”
He attempted to input a sequence of commands, but his fingers kept slipping, adding extra
digits, deleting others, rearranging chromosomes like a drunk man rearranging furniture.
The machine beeped louder.
Cassius patted it. “It’s fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine.”
He pressed ENTER with the solemnity of a man baptizing a child.
The chamber roared to life.
Lights pulsed. Mist swirled. Data streamed across the screen in frantic, panicked lines.
Cassius watched, mesmerized.
“Pretty,” he murmured again.
Then he yawned. Then he blinked. Then he sat down “just for a moment.”
And promptly passed out.
He dreamed of nothing. Or everything. Or something in between a heartbeat, a whisper, a
shape forming in the dark.
But he did not see the chamber glow brighter. He did not see the silhouette inside take
form. He did not see the machine complete its cycle.
He only felt, in the fog of unconsciousness, a pair of warm arms lifting him gently from the
cold floor. A voice soft, curious murmuring something he could not understand.
He felt warmth. He felt breath. Responsibility. Expectation. And something else something
he couldn’t name. He felt the presence of someone who should not exist. And then he felt
nothing at all.
CHAPTER 4 — THE FIRST MORNING OF THE END
When Cassius finally woke, his head was pounding like a drumline, with the kind of
headache that suggested someone had replaced his brain with a malfunctioning
microwave. His eyelids felt glued shut. His tongue tasted like a crime scene. His spine
ached in ways that implied he had slept on something cold, hard, and deeply unapproved
by chiropractors.
He groaned.
He became aware of a few things:
1. He was warm.
2. He was not on the floor anymore.
3. He was not dreaming.
4. He was not alone.
A soft voice answered.
“You’re awake.”
He was lying in the arms of a woman
A face hovered inches from his familiar, unfamiliar, uncanny. Eyes like his. Expression not
like his. Calm. Observant. Curious.
He jerked upright with a strangled noise, only to realize he was lying in someone’s arms
held gently, almost protectively, as if he were the fragile one.
The figure sat upright on the lab floor, supporting him with steady strength. Her presence
radiated warmth, her posture composed, her expression serene.
And she was unclothed.
Not in a sensual way nothing about her posture, expression, or presence suggested she
even understood the concept. Her nudity was clinical, anatomical, the default state of a
being who had not yet learned shame, modesty, or the human obsession with covering
skin.
Cassius blinked rapidly. “Wh, who, what”
The woman tilted her head, studying him with unsettling clarity. “You fell asleep,” she said
softly. “I woke up. You were on the floor. I thought you might be cold.”
Her voice was melodic, calm, impossibly steady for someone who had existed for minutes.
Cassius scrambled backward, nearly tripping over a power cable. His head throbbed. His
mouth tasted like regret and merlot.
“You’re, you’re”
She nodded. “Yes. I am.”
He stared at her, mind racing, stomach lurching. She was fully developed adult, complete,
whole. Her features were unmistakably derived from his own, yet softened, reshaped,
reimagined. A reflection in a funhouse mirror that had decided to become real.
“I’m Cassy,” she said. “I think that fits.”
He swallowed hard. “I… I didn’t mean to— I wasn’t trying to, I was drunk”
“I know,” she said gently. “You were talking to the machine. And to yourself. And to a
pipette.”
Cassius groaned, covering his face. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” she replied, with a faint smile.
He peeked through his fingers. “You’re… stable?”
“I feel stable,” she said, flexing her fingers experimentally. “I feel… alive.”
He exhaled shakily. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
She considered that. “And yet it did.”
He stared at her — at the impossible result of his drunken tinkering, at the living proof of his
brilliance and his recklessness colliding in spectacular fashion.
Cassy reached out, placing a steady hand on his shoulder, not intimate, not suggestive,
simply grounding.
Cassius yelped, a sound he would deny until death and scrambled backward, nearly
knocking over a tray of instruments.
Cassy tilted her head. “You’re very loud in the morning.”
Cassius pressed a hand to his chest. “You, you, why were you, why was I”
“You fell,” she said simply. “You were cold. I moved you.”
He blinked rapidly. “You moved me?”
“Yes.” She flexed her fingers, testing them. “I am stronger than I look.”
Cassius swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t… you shouldn’t be this developed. You shouldn’t
be this coordinated. You shouldn’t”
“Exist?”
He froze.
Cassy smiled, a small, knowing smile that made his stomach twist. “But I do.”
She stood, moving with fluid grace, utterly unselfconscious in her unclothed state. Her
body was simply a body, functional, new, unburdened by the cultural weight of nakedness.
She offered him a hand. He hesitated, then took it. Her grip was warm, steady, unnervingly
familiar.
Cassius rose to his feet, wobbling slightly. The lab spun. The world spun. His life spun.
Cassy watched him with an expression he couldn’t decipher — part curiosity, part
concern, part something else entirely.
“You’re hungover,” she said.
“I’m aware.”
“You should drink water or something.”
“I’m aware of that too.”
“You should also sit down before you fall again.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then sat down.
Cassy nodded approvingly. “Good.”
Cassius rubbed his temples. “Okay. We need to… we need to assess your cognitive
development. Your motor function. Your”
“I can help.”
“You can’t help,” he snapped. “You’re the subject.”
Cassy blinked. “But I know what you know.”
He froze.
“What?”
She tapped her temple. “Your memories. Your knowledge. Not all of it. Not perfectly.
But enough. Enough to understand what you’re trying to do. Enough to understand
you.”
Cassius felt the room tilt again, though this time it wasn’t the wine. “That’s… that’s not
possible.”
“It is. I am you. And not you. A version. A variation. A possibility.”
He stared at her, throat dry. “You shouldn’t be this articulate.”
“You shouldn’t drink that much wine.”
He glared. She smiled.
The dynamic was already forming, unsettling, intimate, inevitable.
Cassy wandered the lab, examining equipment with the familiarity of someone who had
used it for years. She paused at the rapid growth chamber, placing a hand on the glass.
“This is where I began.”
Cassius swallowed. “Yes.”
“It feels… strange. Like remembering a place I’ve never been.”
He didn’t know how to respond.
Cassy turned back to him. “You’re afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“You are.” She approached him slowly, gently, as if approaching a wounded animal. “But
you don’t have to be.”
He backed up until he hit the counter. “Cassy, listen. You’re a scientific anomaly. A
miracle. A mistake. I don’t know what you are yet. I don’t know what you’ll become. I don’t
know if you’re stable. I don’t know if”
She placed a hand over his heart.
He froze.
“You don’t have to know yet.”
Her touch was warm. Her presence overwhelming. Her existence impossible.
Cassius felt something crack inside him — fear, awe, loneliness, all tangled together.
Cassy stepped back, giving him space. “You need food. And water. And rest.”
“I need to run tests.”
“You need to not pass out again.”
He hated that she was right. He hated that she knew he hated it.
Cassy walked toward the stairs. “Come. The kitchen is upstairs. I can make something.”
Cassius blinked. “You can cook?”
“I think so. You can’t. So someone has to.”
He followed her, dazed, confused, and deeply unsettled.
As they ascended into the house, Cassius glanced back at the lab, at the chamber, the
equipment, the scattered evidence of his drunken brilliance.
He had created life.
And life had opinions.
And for the first time in his life, Cassius Vale, genius, loner, architect of miracles and
mistakes felt truly, terrifyingly seen.
I write stories that bend reality, fracture identity, and spiral into the unknown. Author of TWO OF A KIND. Join the descent.
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