Bridget Carter
"WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?!"
As his voice screamed into my ears I lost all composure and slammed to the ground, defeated…
"The Chimeras" Antonio answered paul, and for the first time since I entered the mall everywhere went silent. No bussing, no clicking or scraping of metals, no screaming, no nothing.
"They were made" he continued "by Nova Genesis Institute, using Dr. Carter's findings."
And there it was, my effort and hardwork, the years and months spent trying to forget and keep myself and Katie in hiding, all wasted, torn to pieces, by my foolish ignorance.
Immediately the memories began flowing back so sharp they carve new wounds.
Even here and now hiding in the shadows of this rotting mall, with monsters closing in on all sides, it's not the creatures that haunt me most.
It's the ones in lab coats.
It's what I did for them.
¤¤¤¤¤
*Flashback to Bridget's time in Nova Genesis Institute*
Two years ago, I was Dr. Bridget Carter, the girl wonder, the youngest molecular bioengineer to ever win the Nobel Prize. The papers called me "the DNA Whisperer." It felt too much but they weren't lying about it. I could bend strands of life the way an artist bends paint, mending broken genes, the way a welder mends bent iron, patching fatal flaws, like a tailor, building perfect defenses from microscopic blueprints, like a constructor.
I was a God in the lab, I could create and mend. I was wanted by every lab institute in the world.
When they —Nova Genesis Institute— came to me, they called it Project Alpha.
A radical answer to the chaos we kept waking up to on the news, extremist factions, chemical attacks, terrorism, pathogens that killed thousands before breakfast, war. They showed me projections: how a single unit, a single living, breathing weapon, could detect biological threats, dismantle them, and heal the infected in minutes. They showed me a future that wasn't far-fetched, they showed me the beginning of new things. They called them Sentinel Organisms. The next step in bio-defense.
I was 25, brilliant, hungry for success, selfish, and so damn naïve.
I didn't see the polished floors, the decorated lies, the hidden texts, the "secret location" in the Everglades, the armed guards in the hallways for what they really were. I just saw a chance to save the world, and prove to those who doubted me that I was meant for greatness.
And I'm sure that's how they manipulated me, using my own flaws against me.
So I said yes.
I remember the first months in the lab like a half-lit dream, glass tubes pulsing with new cells, my laptop screen glowing with helix models that danced at my fingertips.
I felt alive, doing what I'm good at.
The first few months were disappointing, we tried many DNAs, and hundreds of them failed, either because they were unstable or just baseless.
But I did not have plans on giving up. I worked tirelessly. Day and night I was in the lab, mixing, mending, building, creating.
We tested hundreds of genomes, spliced genes from the strongest, hardiest creatures:
A crocodile's immune system, almost immune to infection. A mantis shrimp's muscle fibers, spring-loaded, faster than a bullet. A naked mole rat's cancer resistance. A wolf's pack behavior, to keep them loyal.
We combined the DNAs of a Black mamba, Axolotl, tardigrad, octopus, goblin shark, African clawed frog and Human DNA (type D-negative) for adaptability and human like cognition.
I spent sleepless nights cross-linking sequences, patching incompatibilities like tiny ticking bombs. My entire life became about the perfect balance, strength, regeneration, loyalty, reflexs, control. A protector that couldn't be corrupted.
And then a month later the final prototype was created. I remember how beautiful it looked on the screen. An organism designed to adapt in real time, its cells rewriting themselves under threat to fight any toxin, any enemy. It was glorious, I was unstoppable. I did it.
Project Alpha. Humanity's best hope.
¤¤¤¤¤
When the first embryo took hold, they threw me a party in the sterile conference room. We made a toast to the greatest creation ever made, champagne flutes clinked, feels danced on tiles.
Althought everything was about me, something felt off… like there was a deeper meaning to the jubilation. I remember Jasper, the lead geneticist, pulling me aside, telling me it was all thanks to my "godlike hands." He said the word "godlike" with a smile too wide to be comforting.
I laughed it off. He must have been excited about the amount off funds he was about to rack.
But maybe that should've been my first clue.
¤¤¤¤¤
They told me the subjects would be bred in carefully controlled tanks. That each one would be chipped, monitored, trained from birth to protect. That they'd never be used on civilians. I believed them. Oh how naïve i was. They must have laughed so hard at my foolishness.
What they didn't tell me was that they had other tanks. Other embryos. Other buyers.
I found out by accident, a folder left open on a shared server. A single word at the top of the page in bold, stamped red: Project Chimera.
At first, I didn't understand what I was reading. These were my DNA matrix, but twisted. Expanded. The loyalty genes were stripped out. The aggression pathways left unchecked, multiplied. The regeneration turned up to eleven — unstoppable. Unkillable. Almost nearly uncontrollable.
In the moment it hit me like a boulder thrown from a hundred feets into water. They didn't want protectors.
They wanted apex predators.
Weapons….of mass destruction.
¤¤¤¤¤
I confronted jasper that night, his intern Antonio Vaiez was there, witnessing everything. I burst into his office so angry I couldn't breathe.
"What the hell are these?!!" I demanded, slamming the printed files on to his desk.
"This wasn't what i was told, what i spent my sleepeless nights and restless days working on." He did not say a single thing.
"These are monsters, weapons, beasts. No good will come out of this!"
I demanded he shut it down, or I'd go public.
He just smiled — that same wolfish grin I'd brushed off the night of our jubilation.
"You should be proud" he boasted.
"your designs were just so perfect. I'll admit i was this close to actually choosing the 'right path', but nah."
I stood there confused and heartbroken.
"Project–what was it? Alpha?" He turned to Antonio.
Antonio nodded aggressively, scared out of his mind.
"Ah yes, Project Alpha was never real darling, it was all a ruse. Why waste such perfection on do-good fantasies? Oh grow up!" He tossed the files i had slammed on his desk to the ground.
"I don't care what they are or weren't meant to be, this was never MY intentions. Never my plans. And now I want them erased. Either you stop this madness or I stop it myself."
He stared at me like I had spoken in a different language
"Stop it? Erase it?"
While walking over to me he told me something I still hear every time I close my eyes;
"Bridget, you didn't build saviors. You built kings."
He told me I either join them or they ruin me. I couldn't, I couldn't stay and create a disaster that was bound to come back and bite me.
So I ran, I ran away with everything, all the files, and erased the records from the system. But they still had the test subjects secured away. Nine of them, the perfect weapons.
In the cold rush of my panic the rest started clicking to me: the hush-money NDA, the guards at my apartment door "for my safety."
I ran with nothing but a flash drive stuffed in my bra and the baby girl in my belly I hadn't told a soul about.
Katie never asked why we moved so much after that. I just told her we had to stay ahead of the bad people.
I never told her I was a part of them.
And now… now the Chimeras are loose, my monsters, wearing the skin of my betrayal, devouring everything I thought I stood for.
I want to believe we can still kill them.
I have to.
Because if we don't, if i dont push through with hope, then I'm not just the woman who ran, I'm the woman who made the end of the world.
And that is something i can't live with.