What a turn, Jess!
i thought that ominous forboding atmosphere you created through your worker hive member was going to boil over, but man was i underestimating the patience of the collective.
you did a great job crafting a film-esque SciFi setting, brick by brick, i like how you built things from the ground up, but also left the reader enough space to be a bit offput and nervous and maybe even scared.
the observation and disconnected fascination with the display of ultra-violence, it feels inhuman, then to have that tension snap, only to be dragged back out - man, feels like every muscle in my body tensed.
fun read, Jess, truly enjoyed it.
I'm so happy you mentioned this because that's something I really would love to explore in a longer work from this. How much of the disconnection is GT and how much preexisted it in these killers? Was the gene therapy not only a mistake in giving them the level of non-verbal communication and collaboration, but also in further desensitizing already-murderers to human suffering?
Perhaps we shall see.