The house smelled like dust and lavender—the same scent that clung to my mother’s coats when she hugged me as a child. Her old place sat hidden in the hills, forgotten by the world, but every step inside felt like walking into a trap set decades ago.
The lights flickered on automatically as I crossed the threshold. “Iris,” a familiar voice said softly.
I froze.
The hologram shimmered into shape in the center of the living room—my mother, exactly as I remembered her before the illness hollowed her cheeks. Dark hair pulled back, eyes sharp, lab coat immaculate. She looked alive enough to break my heart all over again.
“If you’re seeing this,” she said, “then Aldrich has gone too far.”
My hands clenched into fists. “You don’t get to explain now,” I whispered, but my voice shook.
She did anyway.
Thirty years ago, she and Dr. Aldrich had been partners—brilliant, idealistic, dangerous together. She discovered he was using orphans as test subjects, editing embryos without consent, erasing failures as if they were corrupted files. She tried to expose him.
“He threatened you,” the hologram said, voice cracking for the first time. “He said my research funding, my reputation, your safety—all of it would vanish.”
So she made a choice. The wrong one. Or the only one she thought she had.
She joined him publicly. Privately, she collected everything—files, videos, DNA records—burying them in systems designed to outlive her. The plan Aldrich was building wasn’t just profit or prestige. It was genocide by spreadsheet. A future where “defective” genes were erased, and people like Lily, like Caspian’s sister, never existed.
Then came the truth that split me open.
“My greatest sin,” my mother said, eyes heavy with something like shame, “was you.”
I felt sick.
She had edited me before I was born. Not to make me better—but to make me useful. She altered my reproductive genome so my eggs could repair damaged DNA. She turned my body into a weapon. A countermeasure. Insurance against Aldrich.
“You were never meant to be used,” she said. “Only to be ready.”
I screamed and hurled a chair through the hologram console. The image flickered violently but stayed intact. “You engineered my suffering,” I shouted. “You stole my choice before I even had a heartbeat!”
My uncle stepped out of the shadows, face lined with grief I’d never let myself see before. “She begged me to tell you,” he said quietly. “But she was afraid you’d hate her. Her last words were: Let Iris choose.”
I laughed—a broken, hysterical sound. “I never had a choice. Not once.”
The world didn’t wait for me to grieve. By morning, journalists were camped outside the property, drones buzzing like insects. Someone had leaked the Aldrich connection. The Gene Justice hackers found me before the authorities did. They were efficient, ruthless, and furious.
That night, the evidence went live. Videos. Contracts. Donor death records. Children sold like art.
For six minutes, the world held its breath.
Then Aldrich struck back.
On every major network, a forged document appeared—my mother’s signature authorizing human experimentation. Consent. Complicity. The narrative flipped in seconds. Victim or villain. Whistleblower or heir to madness.
The comments were brutal. She’s just like her mother. Monster blood. Burn the witch scientist.
I collapsed in the bathroom, pain ripping through my abdomen like glass. Blood soaked my hands. The hospital lights blurred as doctors shouted. Someone said placental instability. Someone else whispered diamond uterus failure.
“You’re on the edge of miscarriage,” the doctor said grimly. “If the implant ruptures, you’ll bleed out.”
I lay there, numb, until I felt it.
Movement.
Then another.
Both babies. Fighting.
Something inside me went still. The rage burned out, leaving clarity so sharp it hurt. I wasn’t my mother’s experiment. I wasn’t Aldrich’s asset. I wasn’t the public’s symbol.
I was a mother.
I called the hackers back. “Tomorrow night,” I said calmly. “Eight p.m. I’ll stream everything. The birth. The files. The truth. If they want a spectacle—fine. I’ll give them a reckoning.”
I closed my eyes, one hand over my stomach, the other over my heart.
They tried to make my life a weapon.
Now I would decide how it was used.