They called me to a lab today.
No explanation. Just two guards and a quiet hallway walk, like I was nothing more than a shipment being double-checked.
Inside, it smelled like bleach and paper.
Old machines blinked.
A woman in a coat tapped something on a screen and didn't look up.
"Sit."
I sat.
Two men stood in the back. One with a clipboard. The other muttering to himself.
Then one of them said:
"I think that's the only one left in that blood."
"His sister's dead, right?"
"Yeah. That makes just him."
The woman squinted at her monitor.
"No surname listed."
"Wouldn't be. It's been six generations. Line's nearly purged."
The man with the clipboard scrolled through a faded tablet.
"What crime was it again? Solon bloodline?"
A pause.
"Yeah. Says here the original ancestor did something to a minor."
No one flinched.
"Despicable," someone muttered.
"Fifty generations?"
"Says sixty."
The woman leaned in.
"That can't be right. Solon sentencing was always fifty. Unless they reclassified."
A long silence.
Then:
"Doesn't matter. We requested someone from the Ash pits anyway.
He qualifies. He's alive. That's enough."
"Take him to the breeding wing."
They didn't look at me again.
Just passed their papers across the desk and waved the guards forward like I was a crate of medical waste.
That single line: "Take him to the breeding wing."
That's what echoed in my head all the way back.