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Drink blood.

My breath came faster, but something told me I didn’t even need to breathe. I couldn’t ignore the feeling inside my body, the changes. Even if I wanted to pretend he was spouting lies, it was clearly true. My senses were sharper. My arm was healed and scar-less. A thirst unlike I’d ever felt before overwhelmed everything else, and without knowing how, I knew I needed blood.

Phillip sat on the bed next to me, a blood bag balanced on his palm. “I transitioned two-hundred and forty years ago. I was one of the first to survive this particular set of genes. Since then, I don’t know how many, but there’s been a couple more Hunters made with that genetic set. The genetic makeup of these genes kills embryos 99.99% of the time. And if the embryo survives the initial process, very few make it to a viable gestation. Even less to the age of two. To my knowledge, there have been no other females. When the Y chromosome interacts with the genes, it changes the genetic makeup, making it less potent. Female embryos are the only ones who don’t change in the interaction. So, understandably, females keep all the genetic attributes unlike their male counterparts.”

Bitterness sat in my throat, ready to taint my words, but I stayed quiet out of fear of what I might say.

Genetically created. A lab experiment with the very same blood as the creatures I was sent to eliminate. A life built on a lie. Created for the purpose of becoming a weapon.

“Did my parents know?”

Phillip quieted and then took my hand. “Not many know about this. Mostly top-brass. The Organization uses Hunter infertility as a gateway for experimenting. Female Hunters have their eggs frozen from early on. The embryos are then manipulated with the genes before sperm introduction. Female Hunters can’t get pregnant without intervention. Most are aware that the genetic disposition of our bodies makes intervention necessary, but not that the Organization is experimenting with their bodies and the embryos.”

I shouldn’t be surprised.

The Organization essentially militarized children. But gene manipulation and playing with us like we were theirs and not living, breathing things was beyond angering and a whole new level of what the fuck. It made me wonder what lengths they’d go to in order to employ Hunters, and for what reason.

I’d never hated the fact that I was born a Hunter so much until that moment.

“Rose never explained how she knew about you, but she did before I said anything. She’s clever, so I don’t doubt she figured it out somehow without anyone outright telling her. After your parents were killed, she contacted me. It was her idea for me to train you.”

“Train me, then what?” I asked, voice softened by grief. “I become the weapon the Organization wants me to be?”

Phillip’s sigh hit my face, then he tilted my chin up with a finger. “What do you want?”

I struggled to answer. “I don’t even know anymore.”

I’d never been given a choice to want anything.

His thumb brushed my lower lip, the sensation almost too much. “You can succumb to their fabricated fate for you, or you can fight with me and overthrow them from within. It’s your choice.” His stern voice startled me for a second. “The girl I’ve gotten to know over the last week and a half doesn’t strike me as a do-as-they-say sort. But I don’t know. I’ve been wrong before.”

I lifted my gaze to his, glaring. “Do you think they had anything to do with my parents’ deaths or why I’m being tailed right now?”

“Hard to know for sure. They’re very good at covering their tracks. I’m well respected and trusted, so I doubt they’d send someone when it was them who sent me to you. But Anita was a several-witness death, as noted by higher level Hunters. Her death was documented so well no one would ever question it. That makes me wonder.”

Stealing the blood bag out of his hand, I felt my incisors lengthen. I didn’t have the headspace to deal with all the crazy ironies that came from a Hunter munching down on a blood bag, but the thirst was painful and getting worse by the second.

I trusted Grams. I trusted that she brought Phillip to me for a reason and that she wouldn’t leave me in the hands of a sociopath. I also couldn’t deny that everything he said made sense.

In the scheme of things, I never really got how we somehow ended up with vampire-like abilities. But I did have questions. Questions like: how did they develop genetic technology over two centuries ago when it wasn’t anywhere in the human world. Or how they got the vampire blood. Or when had someone thought it’d be a great idea to use it to make genetic copies of vampires without all the weakness, just to then turn around and kill them.

But I mostly wanted to know for what reason they did any of this. Why did they create us? What did they need someone like me for?

*

PHILLIP KEPT ME LOCKEDin a hotel room for several days toproperly manage my transition.And like he promised, everything settled down after a few days, and thankfully, I started to feel somewhat normal again.

The plan was to return to life as normal and train for the time being. I was only a month and a half away from graduation, so he wanted it to seem like when I disappeared, it was to college. No one would second-guess an eighteen-year-old who’d flown the nest. In two months, we’d start traveling and building up my reputation with the Organization. Ideally, Phillip wanted to work me up to his level.

The Organization planned it that way, anyway.

Phillip guessed it was the entire reason he was given the go ahead to become my partner. It would work better for us the higher up in the Organization I was. But ultimately, we’d be looking for answers under the guise of loyalty. It was the only thing that kept me trekking on after I learned the Organization created me as some kind of perfected weapon.

I refused to become a cautionary tale.

I would find out what really happened to my parents. Even if they did die because of a mission, it was all for the sake of the Organization who cared about us as much as a corporation-owned cattle farm.

Still, we could do more damage from within.