Inherently Innocent

Rising From The Ashes

The only light downstairs was blue. It flooded the basement with the air of the ocean.

Juniper had never been to the sea, nor had any known human alive on Earth at that point, but an ancient instinct made her smell of salt.

And there it was, the colossal empty fish tank. There were wires going into the water, and mechanisms hanging above it. Juniper's nose wrinkled as if smelling something gruesome. She didn't want to imagine what could go on there.

But she didn't have to. The corpse floated near the glass all by itself.

Juniper's throat clenched around her breath. She had to turn away and hold herself up against the edge of a table. Her stomach was reduced enough, she couldn't risk collapsing her lungs.

An orange pulse ticked in front of Juniper, and when she raised her head and closed her panting mouth, she saw the smashed antenna and skinned wires, the agonizing screens with archaic green technology.

They beat unsynced, emanating from a dusty veil. She pulled from the cloth just to read what she was expecting, what a generation grew up filled with bloodlust for.

Searching for connection, it read in basil green letters.

"I knew you'd come down here eventually," Juniper jumped around when she heard it. Cove Marull fixed the ends of his shirt and clicked his tongue. He paid no attention to the corpse floating on the other side of the glass he walked past. "This is why I never brought you to the program before. It was obvious you would run off and find your way in here. A child shouldn't see this," He pointed at the beaming tank with a guilty smile, as if it was just an obscene joke, "But I suppose you are ready now. You should have been for some time already."

Juniper stared like a statue. Her hand tightened around the cloth in her hand and she wished she had taken the gun. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of pulling the trigger.

"Who is that?" The young woman moved her face in the direction of the floating corpse but refused to look at it.

"It's fascinating, actually. Its cells are neither animal cells nor plant cells. They're an entirely new thing. Its cell walls, or membranes, or whatever they are, are made up of receptors that function purely for communication. They are more active than neurons and expand throughout the body. This makes them do their magic tricks effortlessly but also renders them extremely vulnerable. Hitting their hand could feel like shooting them in the head. These ishine cells are just far too different from our own to completely understand how they work yet, but we're getting there." Cove crossed his arms and proudly looked at the water tank. He looked beyond the body, reminiscing his empire of corpses and failures. He smiled. "However, we're mostly getting our information from their offspring. The only way an ishine could viably reproduce with a human is by changing its anatomy to resemble human reproductive parts; we know they can change their bodies at will even if it takes them time. Still, just as we do, their hybrid offspring share about half of the genetic code. However, it seems ishine cells are aware of their... situation and can adapt to human bodies, appearing dormant for years. That's how some ishine seem human, sometimes all their life, until their ishine bodies awake. We're testing to see if puberty has anything to do with it, but we've had no conclusions. Several nymphs seem to be born with ishine traits already, and it's easier to catch those, so our studies may be biased." He turned to smile with childlike wonder. His heart was too far gone to realize his experiments were hurting souls begging to survive. And he was too blind to realize he could have been one of his experiment subjects. "We have such a long way to go. But if we keep studying these ishine cells, and how they vary from one ishine type to another, we might unlock abilities we never thought possible before in humans. Geolocalization like migratory birds, full control of the circadian rhythm, things I've never thought would be options before. This goes beyond our dreams. We could improve both tools, and humans ourselves."