Chapter 13 Chapter 13
A helper or a threat
"Here's what I find interesting," Mr. Xiang said, leaning back in his chair. "Your old pack has been
looking for you for five years. There's actually a substantial bounty for your capture, posted
through supernatural channels. But now I'm wondering... why? What makes you so valuable that a pack would spend five years and significant resources hunting one runaway?"
"Maybe they just don't like loose ends," I suggested.
"Or maybe," Mr. Xiang said, "they know exactly what you are. A Primal. Genetic gold mine. And
someone's been funding their search, someone with resources to mobilize multiple pack
territories. Someone who wants you badly enough to maintain a manhunt for half a decade."
He pulled up something on his computer and turned the screen to face me.
It was a photograph of a research paper. The authors were listed as E. Wisely and C.
Wisely.
My parents.
"Your mother and father were geneticists," Mr. Xiang said. "Quite brilliant ones, actually. They
published extensively on supernatural genetics under pseudonyms. This particular paper
theorizes about the existence of Primals—shapeshifters with multiple transformation pathways
instead of single fixed forms. They proposed that such individuals could be the key to
understanding and potentially replicating shapeshifting abilities in non-supernatural humans."
My hands clenched into fists. "My parents would never—"
"Never what? Never experiment on their own daughter?" Mr. Xiang raised an eyebrow. "The
evidence suggests otherwise. You weren't born broken, Mia. You were engineered. Your
parents deliberately manipulated your genetics in utero, trying to create a Primal. They succeeded. And when you actually manifested those abilities at sixteen, when you killed your
father, it wasn't an accident. It was the culmination of their research."
The words hit like physical blows. Engineered and deliberately manipulated. My entire life, my
brokenness, my difference—it wasn't some random genetic mistake. It was planned.
"You're lying," I said, but my voice shook.
"I wish I was," Mr. Xiang replied. "It would make this simpler. But the genetic markers in your
blood confirm everything. You were designed, Mia. Created to be exactly what you are. Y
parents' murder wasn't pack justice for killing your father. It was an assassination ordered by
someone who wanted to silence them and claim their research. Someone who's been hunting
you ever since, wanting to finish what they started."
I looked at Charles. "Is this true?"
He hesitated, then nodded. "The pack received orders—Money and instructions to find you and
deliver you to someone they called the Alpha King. I didn't know why until recently. I've been
trying to uncover who's behind it."
"And that led you here?" I asked.
"That led me to multiple research facilities," Charles said. "All connected to the same network.
All studying supernatural genetics. All funded by the same mysterious organization. When I
joined Xiang's security team, I was trying to gather evidence. I never expected to find you."
"How touching," Mr. Xiang said dryly. "This reunion is lovely, but it doesn't change the situation.
You're valuable, Mia. Perhaps the most genetically valuable individual currently alive. And now
I understand why. your parents created something unprecedented, and I intend to understand it
completely."
"Over my dead body," I said.
"If necessary," he replied calmly. "But I'd prefer you alive. Dead subjects are so much harder to
study long-term."
Charles came forward. "You can't do this. She's not a research specimen. She's a person with
rights—"
"She's property," Mr. Xiang interrupted. "Intellectual property, technically, created through
genetic manipulation and funded by research grants that technically make her research outcomes rather than an independent person. The legal framework is complicated, but I have excellent lawyers."
"That's insane," I said. "I'm not property. I'm—"
"A genetic construct," he finished. "According to the law, at least the laws we operate under in
this facility. Your rights are... limited."
I felt something break inside me. Not the Primal form emerging—something deeper. The last
desperate hope that there was some legal recourse, some authority I could appeal to, some
protection afforded by being human.
But I wasn't human. Not legally. Not according to the twisted framework Xiang operated under.
I’,m a property.
Created, engineered, owned.
"I want to see those research papers," I said quietly. "All of them. Everything my parents wrote. I
want to know what they did to me."
Mr. Xiang considered this. "That could be arranged. In exchange for full cooperation with our
research protocols. No more resistance. No more attempts to protect information. You help me
understand what you are, I'll help you understand why you are..."
It was a devil's bargain. But I was out of options.
"Fine," I said. "I'll cooperate. But I want those papers. And I want answers."
"Deal," Mr. Xiang said, smiling. "Dr. Mitchell, please escort our subject back to her room and
provide her with the requested research materials. Mr. Charles, you'll continue your security
review but will report any concerns about this subject directly to me. Understood?"
Charles's jaw clenched, but he nodded.
As the guards led me away, Charles caught my eye one more time. His lips barely moved, but I
read the words: "Trust me."
I didn't know if I could. But right now, he was the only person in this entire facility who'd acknowledged I was human.
It would have to be enough.
The research papers arrived in a manila folder, thick with decades of my parents' work.
I sat on the bed in the white room and opened it with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. The first
paper was titled "Theoretical Applications of Multi-Pathway Genetic Expression in Shapeshifter
Populations." The second was "Engineered Transformation Flexibility: A Proposed Method for
Creating Adaptive Supernatural Phenotypes."
They'd written about me before I existed.
They'd planned me.
I read through the night, through the next morning, through every spare moment between tests.
Dr. Mitchell brought meals I barely touched. The words on the pages consumed me more than
food ever could.
My mother's notes were clinical but passionate. She believed Primals could revolutionize
supernatural society—individuals who could adapt their transformations to different situations,
who weren't locked into single forms. She saw it as evolution, as progress.
My father's notes were colder. More practical. He focused on the applications—military potential,
security applications, the commercial value of creating controllable shapeshifters.
Together, they'd developed a method to alter genetics in utero, introducing markers from
multiple shapeshifter lineages and carefully balancing them to prevent rejection. They'd tested it
on mice first. Then rabbits. Then…
I stopped reading when I got to the section about previous attempts. About subjects who'd died
in development. About the three pregnancies before me that had ended in miscarriage because
the genetic manipulation was too unstable.
I was the fourth attempt.
The successful one.
The one who survived long enough to be born and studied and used to prove their theories.
I closed the folder and pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to stop the tears that wouldn't come. I was too shocked for tears. Too fundamentally broken by the revelation.
Everything I was—my difference, my power, my suffering—had been deliberate.
A knock on the door made me look up. Dr. Mitchell entered, but she wasn't alone. Charles was with her.