Reading Time: 2 Mins.
The panic in her eyes was so powerful it even made me hold my breath, waiting for what would come next. She stood still as stone.
She looked down at the red on her hands, dripping onto her white tennis shoes.
This was an unforeseen response to the new code.
Not everyone was accepted into the NEST; dark government agencies from all over submitted profiles of their best candidates. What we were looking for in each wunderkind was a simple piece of history:
Had the child ever been forced to run away from something?
We sought children who had chosen flight over fight in life or death situations, though agencies did not realize this. The powers we would be giving them had to be governed by a certain impulse framework.
They came to us quaking aspen, we turned them into oaks.
The inclination towards self-preservation was only one pillar of our program; orchestrating the next evolution of humans required several.
We found, strangely, that those born under the Cancer sign fared best, while Taurus-born children routinely placed last.
Impulse, star-sign, eye colour, irregular heart beat – all main indicators that we had found a child worthy of the new genetic code; however, the most important pillar came down to something so unique it took us a decade, and over 1000 human trials, to discover:
An allergy to coconut.
Kids who had all of these traits were the most receptive to our genetic code upgrade. We welcomed them into the NEST and they became ours, no nation to call their own.
The goal was not to go to war, but to raise them so they could breed.
And here she was as a result: the first granddaughter.
Our eyes were locked for a minute as she wiped at her mouth, pulled fur from the kindergarten’s pet rabbit from her teeth, then she turned and bolted outside, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind her.
I followed the trail down the hall and stopped where it ended, at the door to the supply closet.
I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it, slowly.
Angst turned to dread as the door opened revealing an empty closet. Where had she gone? I needed to get her back to the lab right away and report these recent changes.
I looked left, right, behind me…
Too late I realized, I should have looked up.
Written daily using the #vss365 word prompts on twitter, compiled weekly into a story of exactly 400 words.
#unforeseen #wunderkind #aspen #pillar #nation #trail #angst
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