Chapter Text
The snow fell upon the ruins of Berlin, burying the remains of stadiums and palaces under a blanket of absolute, almost sacred silence. Alexis Ness had lost count of the days—or perhaps months—trapped in the gloom of a stone cell in the bowels of the Ministry of Excellence. He was blindfolded, a systematic punishment for pregnant men, designed to erase their sense of the world and prevent them from memorizing the faces of their executioners.
Yet Ness didn't need his sight to grasp the magnitude of the disaster. The suffocating silence that gripped the city was irrefutable proof: the Secondary League's resistance had been annihilated; the map of football and freedom had been redrawn in blood.
When they finally ripped off his blindfold, the violent light of a gas lamp pierced his pupils like a knife. Before him, an elderly woman in a starched gray uniform—one of the regime's ruthless enforcers—scrutinized him with the coldness of someone assessing cattle before slaughter.
"You're lucky, 08," the woman declared, her voice crackling like sandpaper on wood. "You've been claimed by the High Commander. You won't rot in the labor colonies or serve as fertilizer in the fields."
The woman moved closer, forcing him to tilt his head to examine the back of Ness's neck, where the skin was still reddened by the ink and cauterization. The Brand of Discard shone there: a stigma that screamed his uselessness to the system, but his exclusivity to an owner.
"You'll go to House Michael," she added with an icy smile. "Discard like you could only find refuge at the altar of a god."
Ness tried to speak, but his throat, parched from days of water rationing, only produced a pitiful croak. Auntie didn't wait for a reply. With a brusque gesture, she signaled to two guards who stood in the shadows, their faces hidden behind leather masks with brass filters. They lifted him up; his legs, weakened by the atrophy of captivity, barely touched the ground as they dragged him toward the processing room.
“Don’t break him yet,” Auntie growled, her hobnailed boots clattering in time with the rhythmic, metallic sound of them. “The Commander wants him intact. He’s a purebred specimen, even if his mind is infected with sedition.” They threw him onto a cold metal table, a modern-day sacrificial altar. There, the ritual of stripping was absolute.
The removal of his clothes wasn’t an act of undress, but an amputation of his identity. As the guards held him immobilized on the steel plate, Auntie pulled out a pair of cold, heavy surgeon’s scissors. They didn’t unbutton his resistance uniform; they sliced it.
The rough fabric, soaked with the sweat of the trenches and the dust of bombed stadiums, fell to the floor in black shreds. With every inch of cloth that gave way, Ness felt like he was losing a layer of his own skin. Now, under the overhead light of the lamp, his body was exposed: an anatomy of fine lines, marked by prominent ribs and the bruises of captivity.
“Too thin,” Auntie remarked, running a gloved hand over his torso with clinical curiosity. “But the pelvic structure is perfect. Omega genetics always hide well beneath the soldier’s willpower.”
He was washed with a caustic solution that smelled of chlorine and sulfur, designed to erode any trace of the resistance’s grime. His hands, those that had once devised masterful tactics and impossible passes, were scrubbed until his skin was raw, erasing his glorious past with each rub.
“From this moment on, you cease to be a man,” the woman hissed in his ear as she placed the red robe, the color of arterial blood, over him. “You are a Waste Womb. A vessel for the Commander’s glory.”
Auntie injected a thick solution into the base of his neck, right above the Mark. Ness felt a searing heat course through his veins—a chemical awakening his body had tried to suppress during the war years.
"The Secondary League's suppressants have stopped working, 08," she continued with a cruel smile. "You will revert to what nature dictated and Excellency demands. You will revert to being an Omega. Your sole purpose is conception. Should you fail to conceive the Commander's bloodline, your body will be returned to the Ministry for biomass recycling. Do you understand?"
Ness nodded slightly, his gaze lost on the white ceiling tiles that were beginning to spin with hormonal fever. He was no longer Alexis, the wizard of the countryside. He was a Spare Incubator, an object of luxury and punishment in a world of rubble, destined to carry within him the seed of his own captor.
When the caustic solution fell on his chest, the pain was immediate. It wasn't just the chemical sting; it was the sensation of being erased. They scrubbed him with stiff-bristled brushes, removing the dirt, the smell of gunpowder, and finally, any trace of his autonomy. The icy water washed away his past, leaving him like a blank canvas, pale and trembling.
He was simply sorted meat, an organism destined to be claimed. The red robe they placed on him afterward wasn't a relief from the cold, but a shroud for the man he used to be, marking the beginning of his existence as the absolute property of the High Commander.
The transfer was a journey into the void inside an armored wagon, a metal coffin where the only reminder of the outside world was the crunch of snow beneath the heavy wheels. As the doors slid open, the opulence of Michael Manor hit Ness like a physical blow. It was a fortress of black and gold marble, an ode to tyranny erected on the hunger and bones of Germany.
Escorted through corridors that whistled in the winter wind, he was led to the private office. The double doors swung open, revealing a sanctuary bathed in the dim light of candles and the roar of a fireplace devouring wood with an almost animalistic fury. Michael Kaiser stood before the bay window, his back to the entrance. His white military uniform was a stain of absolute purity in the gloom; the blue rose at his neck seemed to throb, a reminder that he was the architect of this sterile order.
“Leave us alone,” Kaiser ordered. His voice was a caress of silk wrapped in a razor blade.
When the echo of the guards faded, Kaiser turned with calculated slowness. His blue eyes, icy as the Berlin ice, scanned Ness with predatory intensity, lingering with obscene intent on his abdomen, where the red robe clung to his emaciated frame.
"So this is the famous strategist of the rebellion," Kaiser said, closing the distance with an elegance that made the silver collar around Ness's neck feel like lead. "You look so fragile in red, Alexis. You look like an open wound begging to be closed." Kaiser stopped inches away. With a gloved finger, he lifted Ness's chin, forcing him to meet his gaze. The pressure increased, forcing Ness to stand on tiptoe to avoid being overwhelmed by the weight of his authority.
“The Ministry wanted to send you to the colonies as a common breeding bitch for the soldiers. A vulgar fate for a mind like yours. But I saw your file; I remembered the way you moved your pieces on the field. It would be a sin for such intelligent genetics to be lost in the mud of the trenches.” Kaiser smiled, an expression devoid of any trace of humanity.
“I have claimed you to be my personal womb. You will never see the light of day again, nor will you hear any voice but mine. You will be my secret, my tool of creation, my most precious and hidden possession.” Kaiser leaned close to her ear, and Ness could perceive the scent of sandalwood and power emanating from the Alpha. His warm breath burned Ness's cold skin as he whispered the final sentence:
"If you dare sabotage this process... if your body rejects my seed for a last vestige of political pride... I will cut you open myself to tear away that freedom you think you still possess."
Ness closed his eyes, feeling Kaiser's hand descend with violent possessiveness toward his belly. In that winter palace, the war hadn't ended; it had transformed into something intimate and terrifying. He was the refuse, the incubator, the trophy; and Kaiser was the absolute master of his destiny and his insides.
The silence in the office grew thick, a physical mass broken only by the crackling of the wood burning in the fireplace. Kaiser didn't remove his hand from Ness's stomach; instead, he began to undo the heavy brass buttons of his military greatcoat with terrifying slowness, his other hand keeping Ness anchored to his will.
"This red color marks you as property of the State, Alexis," Kaiser whispered, and Ness felt the vibration of his voice reverberate against the bones of his neck. "But in this house, I am the State." With a brusque movement, devoid of any pretense of delicacy, Kaiser gripped the collar of the crimson robe. Ness felt the pull of the stiff fabric against the back of his neck, a reminder that Kaiser wasn't looking for a lover, but rather to dismantle the "Wastewrap" to find the man still trying to hide beneath it.
Kaiser yanked the fabric with violent force, ripping the shoulder seams in a dry echo that died against the marble walls. His hands, now free of their leather gloves, felt hot, almost feverish, against Ness's pale, bruised shoulders.
"Off," Kaiser ordered, shoving the robe down contemptuously. "Off with this slave skin." The red garment fell to the floor, pooling around Ness's bare feet like a puddle of old blood. Exposed in the dim candlelight, Ness shivered; it wasn't just the cold marble, but Kaiser's gaze, which scanned him with the precision of an appraiser examining property acquired at a war auction.
Kaiser paused when he saw the scars on Ness's ribs, remnants of interrogations at the Ministry. He ran his fingertips over the V.D.-08 tattoo on the back of his neck, a caress that turned into a possessive grip, forcing Ness to let out a ragged sigh.
"Look at yourself. You're marked, Alexis. You're a womb that's been humiliated by men who don't know how to appreciate the value of what you carry inside." Kaiser knelt before him. In any other context, the posture would suggest submission, but in that office, it was profoundly predatory. With expert movements, he untied the last few straps of his underwear, leaving him completely exposed. The dehumanization was, in that instant, total. Ness was no longer a soldier, nor the brains of the resistance; he was an extension of Kaiser's ambition.