Note: Okay, so I caved too and decided to write a prologue/companion piece to the brilliant RP, Genetics X, that I am part of at the SRA forum. Since the RP is still under process of being written, details may be incorrect. A link to it can be found on my profile page.

This is by no means a story I’m putting a lot of work into. I’m writing it purely for myself and anyone else at the forum who might be curious about Sean.

Genetics X

Chapter One: Secrecy

The virus changed everything.

It twisted the natural order of things, reformed it into something far more lethal, far more chaotic than humanity was equipped to deal with, and as a result people were left to fend for themselves in the midst of the raging pandemic. Some humans fled in blind panic to escape certain death. Others went into hiding in hopes of waiting it out, for the pandemic to blow over without touching them.

Societies crumbled, and with it the economy and trade collapsed like a stack of cards. The governments and kingdoms across the world soon followed. Humans suffered, bled and fought amongst themselves for their own survival.

And in the wake of the sickness and destruction something frightful rose.

Vampires, ghouls, werewolves, shape shifters- former humans whom had survived the virus and being subjected to changes to their DNA. Their numbers grew as the months passed, and the remaining humans banded together in fear of these new beasts, these creatures that more often than not stuck to the shadows and the night.

War broke out.

xXx

Being born the first son of Conrad Lawrie, a high ranked General within the American military, Sean knew the true meaning of the word ‘expectation’.

He had spent his childhood in training facilities, in the woods, at the shooting range, in make believe battle fields created by his father. There was never room for leisure, never a break from the training he received that was meant to mold him into a soldier that Conrad Lawrie, who came from a long line of Generals and Colonels, could be proud of.

His father scowled with disapproval when he failed to complete a given mission, always silent and unwilling to reprimand his son by the use of words. The silent treatment followed. Sometimes it only lasted for the duration of the evening; other times it stretched on for days until Sean’s nerves were rubbed raw from walking on eggshells around the strict, proud man whose blood he shared. There was never an exchange of apologies or encouragement between the two of them, though Sean desperately craved to be told that he’d done a good job, that he was good enough, for once.

“The purity of races is important, son,” his father occasionally told him with a grave face. “Things go wrong when you mix blood- people become wrong.”

Sean did not agree, but he didn’t have the courage to disagree openly with the stubborn man.

His mother hovered in the background, quiet and full of strange thoughts that she wouldn’t share with him. Her mind was always elsewhere, it seemed, even when Sean was right there in front of her. She was such a fragile thing, his mother, whom cringed at the smallest noise. Still, her eyes remained dull.

Sean was eleven when his parents called him to the kitchen to tell him the news of his unborn baby brother.

There was pride on his father’s face as he stroked his wife’s belly. Sean could just barely see the swell under her flowing white shirt, and he remembered thinking ‘is my brother really in there? He must be so tiny’. He was only eleven- death might not be a mystery to him, but birth was.

In the following months there was a constant tenseness in him; worry over his whimsical mother, worry over his unborn brother.

On the night that Pryce was born Sean was standing at the shooting range by himself, firing bullets at the target twenty feet away. There was no nanny or family member to watch him over night, but he’d assured his father that he was a big boy- he could spend the night alone.

The look of approval in the man’s eyes had been payment enough, though it frightened him to be by himself in the large house he’d grown up in.

What if my mother is in too much pain? What if something goes wrong with my brother?What if he’s not breathing when he comes out?

Holding the gun poised in both hands helped him calm down a bit, at least enough that he could shoot without missing. When he first unlocked his father’s weaon locker and took the gun in his hands he hadn’t been able to stop them from shaking.

Dawn was already breaking by the time he left the shooting range, and Sean’s eyes were sore and itchy from concentrating so hard over an extended period of time. He collapsed on the couch, utterly exhausted, and slept.

It was the cries that startled him awake hours later; the wailing cries of the little baby that now was his only sibling. His mother’s face was so pale, almost beyond recognition, but he was too fired up to take much notice of her state. The bundle in her arms stole away all his attention.

Pryce was beautiful.

His eyes were closed as he wailed, his tiny fists waving about in the air.

Sean’s face broke into a huge smile as he touched the top of Pryce’s head and stroked the fluffy, dark hair there. It felt soft as silk under his fingertips. He held his breath when the crying stopped. Pryce’s eyes were blue and curious, searching without finding or being able to focus properly.

“He knows his brother, he does,” his mother murmured softly.

It was the proudest moment in Sean Lawrie’s life.

xXx

“Sean, take care of Pryce and your mother.”

Fifteen year old Sean raised his head to find his father standing in the kitchen doorway, hands working on the tie around his neck. The medals on his chest caught Sean’s eyes- they had lost their shine. Conrad Lawrie was much too proud a man not to polish his achievements, but Sean supposed that all the late hours must have made him forget.

“Yes, father.”

Silence filled the room once the door closed behind the man.

Sean knew that the military had been working on something special for the past months, but his father had not breathed a word to him about the details. He’d heard his father return home early in the mornings, boots heavy in the corridor outside his bedroom door.

It was Thursday the following week that he coincidentally overheard his parents talking in the kitchen.

Midnight had come and gone, but Sean was too restless to sleep. His limbs hurt from the training he’d been put through earlier that day. Downstairs light seeped out from under the kitchen door, and though he’d been taught that eavesdropping was a bad thing his father’s words caught his attention.

“-project is progressing. We are getting closer to success, but something still seems to be missing.”

“Conrad…You know how I feel about government business,” his mother sighed. “I think you should have turned down the offer.”

“It’s not that simple, Lousia.”

“Why not?”

What isn’t? What are they talking about?What is my father working at?

His heart pounded like mad. If his father caught him snooping around he’d be sure to get a slap across the cheek.

“I have responsibilities as a General. My superiors put their faith in me when they asked me to lead the project.”

“But messing with genetics is wrong, honey.” There was a pause. “I wish they’d see that too. They can’t break the natural order of things and expect there to be no consequences.”

“Just…Please let me do my job, Louisa.”

The information he’d just obtained kept repeating itself in his head, broken down into fragments that he had trouble fitting together.

Just what was the military messing with? Genetics? He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

“Boy, what are you doing down here?”

Sean froze as the sliding door opened and gave him away.

xXx

His father kept all his important documents in the second drawer of his wooden desk, which was locked to keep prying eyes and fingers away. The key hung from a chain around the man’s neck.

Sean closed the door behind himself as quietly as he could, and the tiny wince of the hinges made him cringe and freeze to listen for his father’s heavy footsteps. None came. He heard the sound of his own heart throbbing inside his head, a sound that drowned out every other noise. His pulse ran rapid. The bruise he’d been given by his father on the right cheek was still sore and ugly; he had no desire to add another to his face by getting caught. Sweat broke on his skin as a result of the jittery nervosity in his system.

He crossed the room in three long strides and bent by the desk, fingers moving across the smooth surface in search of the lock that separated him from the answers he wanted. A little jolt of excitement ran through him when his fingertips landed on the metal.

This is it. Father is going to murder me if he ever finds out that I was snooping.

Deft fingers pulled a hairpin out from behind his ear and began to pick the lock.

It was his father’s fault for teaching him how to pick locks in the first place, he thought wryly.

The sweat on his hands made him lose the grip on the hairpin.

“Come on…”

He grit his teeth.

The minutes stretched on and on, the sense of impatience fueled by the adrenaline that was pumping through his body. A couple of times he thought he heard footsteps, which had him ducking under the desk in pure terror and mumbling curses directed at his own stupidity, but his imagination was playing him. He was alone, for the time being.

A tiny ‘click’ sounded as the lock gave in and twisted, and Sean released a long, relieved breath. The corners of his mouth tilted up in a small smile. Very carefully he stuck his hand inside the drawer and fished out a yellow folder, much similar to the ones you saw in police movies, then flicked on the mini torch he’d been carrying in his pocket. The light it gave off so weak that he nearly got a headache from concentrating on getting the letters to become sensible words.

But they did, and with every passage he read his eyes grew wider.

It was horrifying.

His father was partaking in a military project that strived to alter the genetic structure of human test subjects in order to create better soldiers- better humans.

He couldn’t understand most of the medical terms, but it was obvious that the military was fucking with something far beyond their control. Dry mouthed and shocked he skimmed the last passage before moving on to the medical reports attached in the back of the folder.

The first three reports all told him the same thing; their DNA had successfully been altered, but there had been complications of various kinds. One had died from a rapidly changing blood pressure and blood vessels that burst, another had died a slow, painful death because she no longer could maintain the needed level of salt and water in her body. However, it was the fourth and last report that made his hands tremble while he read the details.

Female, fifteen years old, had become something entirely non-human after participating in the experiments for four months. Her sanity had fractured as her body tried to adjust to its changes, and eventually she had developed several mental disorders that for some reason did not respond to medical treatment. The why and how of it remained a mystery to the doctors.

Non-human. She….stopped being human? How can you stop being human?

Sean held his breath when a photograph fell to the floor. The loopey scribble on the back said “Subject 267, 14 days prior her death”.

He felt sick to his stomach when he turned it to look at the picture.

The girl’s dark hair must have been beautiful once, but in the picure it had lost its shine and vitality. It hung in a tattered mess over her tiny shoulders and clearly she had pulled at it a lot, because some places hair just seemed to be missing. Her lips were nearly as white as her sickly skin. And the eyes…Sean had never seen a pair of eyes that blank before; there was no reason or logic behind them, no thought or feeling of self. Even his mother had livelier eyes than this girl, and that was saying a lot. Their colour was wrong, wasn’t it? They looked yellow, not brown.

He slipped the photo back in between the reports and turned to the last page. Two more photos had been attached to the back of the girl’s report, and his insides churned in disgust at what he saw.

A doctor was prying the girl’s mouth open to reveal a set of teeth that should have belonged to an animal. He thought he could see four rows of them, all sharp and uneven and very able to chew the doctor’s hand off at the wrist with a snap. It reminded him of a shark.

It was also, possibly, the sickest thing he had ever seen.

The second photograph showed her naked arm and shoulder. Beneath her skin the veins were coloured a dark blue and black, and in certain places, like the wrists, they protruded sharply from it, as though they were trying to break free from her body.

Sean closed the folder and put it back. The drawer locked itself when he shut it, with no evidence of ever having been opened without permission. Something like that normally would have given him a sense of triumph, but he was too disturbed by what he’d read and seen to think about anything else. He turned off the torch, stuck the hair pin in his pocket and sneaked back to his own bedroom. No sooner than he crawled into bed did he hear the door to his parents’ bedroom open.

He couldn’t sleep.

A single thought was stuck in his head.

They are creating monsters. My father is creating monsters.