The guy paused to let out a ponderous scoff, his arms still wrapped around Danny. He nodded at the statue they were tethered to and said, “Can you imagine what would happen if you locked a man away in a room with something like what’s on that fucker’s head over there and then you took the skin-crawling abomination that man would become and you extracted a semen sample from it and then you used that sample to secretly impregnate the wife of an adversary? Can you imagine that, Danny? Because in about four months, you won’t have to.”
“Bullshit,” Danny replied, though his tone was uneasy.
Alderson began to laugh, sounding genuinely amused as he said, “Do I look like the kind of guy who has ever had to bluff anything in his life?”
He really didn’t. It seemed Danny could sense this as well. After a brief pause, I heard him ask, “What will happen?”
The guy began to walk Danny off of the platform as he said, “Honestly? Results vary, so it’s hard to tell you for sure. Maybe nothing for the first 25 years or so. Then the neighbors of your son or daughter, they might start to note a few of his or her stranger quirks. Their coworkers will gossip about how weird they are behind their back, but no one will suspect anything truly heinous until children from the neighborhood start to go missing…”
“Dear god,” Danny muttered as they reached solid ground. He pulled free of Alderson’s grasp and began to dry-heave.
“That’s if you get lucky, though. More often than not, the resulting offspring turns out to be more monster than man and simply kills the mother during labor, along with anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity of that O.R. But don’t worry. I’ll have a clean-up crew on standby to eliminate any witnesses if need be.”
Danny slowly stood up straight as he said, “Why… Why are you doing this?”
Alderson gently placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder and replied, “Why did you betrayed me, Daniel?”
