In May's mansion, there was an uneasy silence after the commotion in the living room.
She chased the birth control pills down with one swallow and a toast that she barely savored. She turned without a word and walked towards the door.
April scowled
"May—where are you going?"
May did not cease walking.
"To relieve stress."
August straightened up at once
"No. No, no, no. I know that look." She took a step closer. "You're going hunting again, aren't you?"
May glanced back at her, a sly smile creeping slowly onto her face.
"Maybe
Then softer—dead
"Perhaps not."
She went missing from the living room and down into the basement beneath the garage.
The air was cool, clammy, thick with fear. Prisoners were lined up along the walls in chains, bruised, battered, broken, waiting. May entered like a queen touring her domain. "I'm releasing one of you tonight," she declared calmly. "Si tu survivais cinq minutes après ton éviction, tu étais libres sortir," Murmurs echoed in the room. "And you all know the rules," she continued. "I will select one contestant." "She nodded towards the guard."
The door creaked open and a man was dragged forward-Hulio. He was covered in blood. His face was swollen, his body trembling, tortured nearly beyond recognition.
May studied him like a scientist choosing a specimen.
"You have a head start," she said, turning the timer on on her phone. "Five minutes."
The handcuffs snapped open.
Hulio ran.
He weaved through dark corners, his breaths ragged, his heart slamming against his ribs. He followed shadows until-light.
An exit.
The garage.
Hope exploded in his chest.
He sprinted toward the cars, snatching keys from the wall, fumbling, shaking as he tried one vehicle after another.
Nothing.
None of them replied.
Why isn't any of it working? he thought, rising panic.
Then behind him, a voice echoed—soft and amused.
"There you be."
Hulio froze.
"You didn't even run fast enough," May said, stepping into the light flanked by armed guards. "That's really disappointing."
She cocked her head to one side, mock sympathy in her eyes.
"That wasn't fun at all."
She closed the distance.
Desperation seized him, and Hulio lunged with a punch. May dodged with ease and threw him to the ground, slamming him onto it. Crouching beside him, her lips grazed his ear as she whispered:
"You really thought you could get away?
She smiled.
"The keys were fake."
Hope was shattered in his eyes.
May rose and turned.
"Pedro. Your glasses."
Pedro demurred-but did as he was bid, taking them off and handing them over.
May snapped them cleanly in half.
Before he could scream, she drove one sharp edge into his eye.
Again.
Once again.
She stabbed without emotion, without haste-smiling as the blood soaked her dress, pooling beneath him. Hulio convulsed once… then went still.
The silence came back.
"Take him away," May said matter-of-factly.
She passed the broken glasses back to Pedro.
"And here."
Pedro was staring at them.
"Get yourself a new pair."
"Yes, ma'am," he said forthwith.
May wiped her hands, turned, and headed back toward the stairs, stress finally relieved.
Because hunting is therapy for her.
May went back into the sitting room, her hands stained in dark-red colour.
The room fell silent. April reacted first. She sprang to her feet, horror and anger flashing in her face. "I said stop it, May. It's not therapy to kill people."
August crossed her arms, her voice sharp, yet controlled. "But psychologically traumatizing people is therapeutic to you, April.
May didn't reply.
She didn't argue. Didn't defend herself. She merely turned and walked away, her feet steady as she climbed the stairs. In her room, she locked the door behind her and climbed into the shower, washing away the smell of blood and metal.
She stood there a long time, lingering in the warm water.
Because it hadn't always been like this.
****
It all began in the place they called an orphanage.
In some corner of Naples, masked by charity receipts and altered inspection results, a center existed not to save children, but to produce them. Scientists were genetically altering sperm cells and egg cells from elite individuals, breeding children to be delivered to mafias, business magnates, billionaires, and politicians who were eager to have children, crafting them to perfection.
It was in one of these secret laboratories that worked Maria Bernitez.
A brilliant but unstable scientist.
Maria had been a failure for years. Her creations were defective who were children with mental instability, terminal illnesses, or characteristics that did not live up to the impossible standards of the organization. Every failure led her one step closer to execution.
Then came her breakthrough.
Maria was observable in the darkest room of the installation, bent over a workstation and working on a lone sperm and egg. Her hands were shaking—she was not scared, just eager.
There, she created her masterpiece.
She named it P-1.
Perfect One.
P-1 outperformed every other child raised in the lab for over thirty years. Intelligence that couldn't be measured. Emotional understanding that couldn't be replicated. Physiology that made even the scientists afraid.
P-1 is May.
This immediately promoted her to Head of Operations of P-1, where she closely monitored every aspect of the production, including the children produced later on. But her obsession remained with P-1.
The years went by, and P-1 developed in the institution. She was trained. She learned. She observed.
There, she met the others
N-20 –August
N-11 –June
N-55 - April
They were bred, trained, and conditioned together—siblings not by blood, but by design.
But then, as Maria observed P-1, she noticed there was a problem.
Flaw.
Not weakness. Not instability.
Curiosity
A dangerous one.
Maria understood that if it were discovered, she and person P-1 would both be fired.
So, she was acting in secret.
She inundated P-1 with books—psychology texts, anatomy studies, strategies—while she herself was under constant surveillance. And then Maria was away one night, and P-1 behaved in a way that proved her worst fears.
P-1 autopsied one of the babies.
Not out of malice.
Out of fascination.
And so Maria now set about developing a bacteria—it was something to suppress, to counteract the actions she'd inadvertently produced.
Since perfection, as she realized too late, comes with a price tag.
And May…
Was never intended to feel remorse.
Noticing the potency of the medicine, Maria decided to raise the dosage because she was sure that it would inhibit the defect she feared so much.
But that is where she was wrong.
The medication did not weaken P-1. It refined her.
****
During the usual test in P-1's special ward (a room kept off CCTV from all corners, for obvious reasons, due to "confidential procedures"), one of the scientists assigned leaned in too close. He never saw it coming.
P-1 moved precisely.
The man had died, his body arranged not in chaos but in a careful, deliberate order by the time the alarms went off. It was not rage; it was study.
It was control.
Luna, one of the junior scientists assigned to monitor P-1, came into the room a few seconds later. She froze at the sight before her and let out a terrified scream. With this, she slapped the emergency panel, alerting security.
In a few minutes, the matter reached the big bosses.
The facility went into lockdown.
Maria knew immediately who they would blame.
Before the organization could act, P-1 did.
They took Maria from the office that night, locking her away in one of the underground cellars-ironically, the very place reserved for failed subjects. What transpired wasn't really revenge, per se.
It was punishment.
Every day, Maria was subjected to psychological torture masked as games. P-1 would tell her she was free—if she could solve a puzzle.
if she could escape this sealed room, if she could pass another test.
She could not.
And torture continued all through.
****
Years went by.
The business continued to run its operations—until four years later when it was quietly acquired under a new corporate name.
Bernard Russo
His official title in life was philanthropist. What he was buying, he knew precisely.
"The orphanage was shut down.
"Records were erased.
"Scientists were killed.
He adopted May, who became
Along with August, April, and June.
To the world at large, it was an act of mercy.
However, no amount of care from their parents could undo what had been perpetrated on them. The pain, conditioning, and learning of dark truths remained in their souls far beyond what protection from Santos ever could.
"Because May wasn't broken."
She was constructed.
And what the facility produced