Past tense. - a BL story.

Zayin's past was something he never spoke about-not to Elias, not to anyone. As far as the world knew, he was just another college student, a medical student who had spent his childhood in an exclusive boarding school, away from prying eyes. That was the lie he had built, the mask he wore.

The truth was far darker.

He had never seen the inside of a boarding school. From the age of seven, he had been nothing more than a number in a sterile, white-walled facility-one of many children chosen for a program that had no name, no records, nothing that tied it to the world beyond those walls. Scientists in white coats had studied him, experimented on him, pushed his body and mind past their limits in ways he still didn't fully understand. They had tested his endurance, his pain tolerance, his ability to adapt. He was their project. Their property.

For eleven years, he had known nothing but cold steel tables, bright surgical lights, and the quiet hum of machines monitoring his every breath. He had learned to hide his pain, to obey, to survive. Until the night he escaped.

At eighteen, Zayin had done what no one thought possible. He had broken out, slipping through the cracks of their perfect system, disappearing into a world he barely remembered. He had forged documents, created a past that made sense, and told no one the truth.

But the past had never truly left him. The experiments had changed him-altered him in ways he didn't fully understand. His body healed too quickly. His reflexes were too sharp. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, he could still feel phantom sensations crawling under his skin, remnants of whatever they had done to him.

And now, someone knew. Someone was watching.

The messages weren't random. They were a warning.

They had found him.