Chapter 20 DNA Impossible (Vivian POV)
The administrative building was quiet at 1:47 a.m., too quiet. Only emergency lights glowed in the corridors, casting long shadows that made every corner look like it was hiding something. I moved fast, key card in hand. Ironwood heir privileges still opened most doors on campus, even after midnight. I’d swiped the master from the security office two weeks ago during a “routine check” and never returned it. No one had noticed yet.
I reached Hendricks’ office. Yellow crime-scene tape still stretched across the doorway like a warning. I ducked under it.
The room smelled worse than it had earlier, blood had started to turn, metallic and sour. Moonlight spilled through the half-open blinds, painting the overturned desk and the dark stain on the carpet in cold blue. Hendricks’ body was gone, but the outline remained: chalk lines on the floor, blood soaked into the fibers. I swallowed bile and crouched beside the largest pool.
My gloved fingers, borrowed from the chem lab, found the hair first. Long, dark, unmistakable. Rowan’s. It clung to a drying smear on the desk leg. I bagged it carefully, sealed the evidence pouch with tape, wrote the date and time on the label in block letters.
Next: blood traces. I scraped flecks from the bookshelf with a sterile swab, sealed that too. Another swab from the carpet near where his hand had fallen. Three samples total. Enough to run comparisons.
I slipped back under the tape, retraced my steps to the service exit. No cameras in this wing after 1:00 a.m., budget cuts. Lucky for me.
The science building was locked. I used the side door, the one the night janitor propped open with a brick when he smoked. Inside, the hallway smelled like bleach and old experiments. I took the stairs to the third-floor bio lab. Mr. Larson’s room. He never changed the code: 1-9-8-4. His graduation year.
The lab was dark except for the glow of the emergency exit signs. I flicked on only the small desk lamp over the workstation, enough light to work, not enough to be seen from outside. I pulled on fresh gloves, laid out the samples.
First: the hair. I placed it under the microscope, adjusted focus. Same texture, same pigmentation as Rowan’s, identical cuticle pattern. No surprise there. But I needed more than visual confirmation.
I prepped the PCR machine, small, benchtop model the academy used for advanced bio classes. Extracted DNA from the hair follicle, from the blood flecks. Ran the amplification cycle. Forty-five minutes later, the thermal cycler beeped. I loaded the samples into the sequencer.
While it ran, I paced. Checked my watch. 2:32 a.m. Campus security would do a sweep in twenty minutes. I had to be gone by then.
The sequencer finished. I pulled up the chromatogram on the monitor.
Rowan’s profile, on file from her admission physical, was already loaded for comparison.
I hit overlay.
The peaks matched. Perfectly. Base pair for base pair. No anomalies. No degradation. Identical.
I stared at the screen. “That’s impossible,” I whispered.
I ran it again. Same result.
I leaned closer. Switched to the pheromone marker analysis, specialized panel the lab used for pack-identity testing. Most wolves carried distinct chemical signatures tied to their territory: Nightshade had a faint cedar undertone, Ironwood something sharper, like pine resin, Silvercrest softer, almost floral.
Rowan’s baseline profile, human-passing until recently, showed nothing distinct.
But the crime-scene sample…
I zoomed in.
Multiple markers. Cedar. Pine. Floral. All present. All strong. As if the killer had rolled in every pack’s territory at once.
I sat back hard. The chair wheels squeaked.
I opened the academy’s restricted archive database, accessed through Larson’s login, which he never changed from “password123.” Searched: Project Chimera.
One hit. Old scanned document, dated 2008. Classified. Eyes-only.
I clicked.
The abstract was short:
Project Chimera seeks to develop lycanthropic subjects capable of operating outside traditional pack structures. By neutralizing pack-specific pheromone markers and suppressing hierarchical bonding instincts, subjects can exist as autonomous operatives. Successful neutralization results in a chimeric signature: registers as belonging to all packs and none simultaneously. This allows infiltration and operation without detection by standard territorial scent protocols.
Goal achieved in preliminary trials: subjects exhibit full lycanthropic capabilities with no pack allegiance markers.
I read it twice.
Then I closed the file. Logged out. Wiped the browser history.
My hands shook when I packed the samples back into my bag.
I turned off the lamp. Slipped out of the lab. Down the stairs. Through the side door. The brick was still propping it open. I kicked it away. The door clicked shut behind me.
Outside, the night air hit cold against my face.
I walked fast toward the dorms, mind racing.
Someone had killed Hendricks.
Someone had used Rowan’s exact DNA.
But that someone carried markers from all three packs.