Page 128 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“Can we please look at the files?”

She holds my gaze for another second—long enough to make her point—and then her expression becomes more serious.

She sets the stack of folders on my desk with a decisive thump.

“Right,” she says, pulling up a chair beside me. “So. Before we start, I need you to understand something. What I’m about to show you is highly confidential. Level-three clearance. You signed the NDA when you started, which covers everything in this wing, but the clinical documentation is a step above the rest. It doesn’t leave this floor. It doesn’t get discussed outside of the research and clinical teams. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.” I pull the first folder toward me and flip it open.

It takes me about ninety seconds to realize this isn’t what I expected.

The first page is a cover sheet—standard formatting, Synthera’s logo in the corner, a string of reference numbers across the top. Below that, a title in bold type:

CLINICAL TRIAL PROTOCOL—PHASE II Study Reference: SYN-EQX-0047 Subject Designation: Omega (Female)

Clinical trials. Right. I knew about these—I’d seen the feedback sessions.

This has to be more of the same.

I turn the page. Participant consent forms. Medical screening results. Dosage protocols.

Dosage protocols.

Not device testing, then. Medication.

I scan the documents more carefully now. Observation logs with entries in clinical shorthand—hormonal levels, physiological markers, response metrics. Neurological assessments.

“What exactly is being trialed here?” I ask, keeping my voice light. Curious assistant, nothing more. “I assumed it would be the heat management devices, but this looks like⁠—”

“Medication,” Evie confirms. She leans back in her chair, tucking one leg beneath her. “It’s not the devices. Those get tested differently—more like product reviews, user feedback, that kind of thing. This is pharmaceutical. A new compound.”

“What kind of compound?”

Evie hesitates, her expression more careful now.

“Honestly? I’m not entirely sure. The specifics are above my clearance level. Not a lot of people are in the know—it’s Mr. Brooks, a couple of the senior researchers, and the clinical team. Top secret stuff.” She taps the folder. “What I can tell you is that it’s something new. Not a standard suppressant. Something they’ve been working on for years.”

I keep reading.

Participant profiles. Photos.

I scan the faces—a woman in her twenties with bright eyes and box braids, a tired-looking woman in her forties, a young woman who can’t be older than twenty-one with a nervous smile. Omegas, all of them. Different ages, different backgrounds.

Different ages.

I flip through the profiles more slowly now. Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. Thirty-four. Forty-one. Fifty-six.

Seventy.

I stop.

Participant 03. Female. Age: 70.

I stare at the number. Read it again.

Seventy years old.

Why would a seventy-year-old omega be in this trial? She’d be decades past menopause, with no heats to suppress and nothing to manage.