Recommence ° Edward Cullen[Rewriting]

[012]

Chapter Twelve | Cracks in the Shore

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The hum of the fluorescent lights was deafening, too much like the buzz of flies over something already dead.

Dr. Ekaterina Volkov's hands trembled as she flipped through the files she'd stolen from the restricted wing, the thin pages whispering with every turn. The words were familiar, her own annotations scrawled in the margins, but reading them now, knowing they applied to her, made her blood run cold.

Subject 413: fetal stage viable.
Serum integration: confirmed.

Mutagenic resilience: high
Projected behavioural outcome: predatory dominance, limited empathy response, advanced regeneration.

Her breath hitched.

Subject viability exceeds all prior projections.
Accelerated neural developments.
Instinct triggers at the fetal stage.
Host experiencing psychosomatic instability.
Parasitic compatibility: optimal.

She read the words again and again until they grew blurry. Host. Parasitic. 

The host was her. . . and the parasite was her child. Her creation—her sin. The folder slipped from her hands, and papers scattered across the tile. Her own handwriting stared back at her like a betrayal. She had thought herself prepared; she had overseen the injections, calibrated the doses even, but seeing the chemical logs, the protein grafts, the splice signatures. . . she understood now.

They hadn't chosen her for her intellect. They had chosen her for her flesh. There was something inside her, alive and wrong, threading itself into her bones and blood like a parasite learning her shape. She pressed a shaking hand to her abdomen, where the subtle bulge betrayed what was growing. Beneath her palm, something alien shifted. Every pulse, every flutter, was foreign—other. Her body was no longer her own; it was a cage.

Ekaterina staggered backward, horror twisting her face. "No. . . no, no, no." The overhead speaker crackled. "Dr. Volkov, you are not authorized to access that data. Please step away from the console." Their voices were everywhere, calm and detached, a sickening echo of the same tone she had used when dissecting the creatures in the cages. Even now, she could hear her own voice louder than the uncertainty of her colleagues. . . "Sacrifice is the law of nature."

Her laugh came out cracked and wet. "Sacrifice," she spat, the word leaving an acrid taste on her tongue. She hit the panel beside the door with a trembling hand, the magnetic locks hissing as they slipped into place, trapping her in with the reek of sterilizing agents and her own fear. Fists slammed against the other side. "Ekaterina! Open the door!"