Mimic (Wardens Legacies - Ancient Blood III)

11 - EVOLUTION

After so long on Earth memories start to melt together. To be honest, immortality was never supposed to exist. Mixing blood and centuries of evolution made it possible. I do not even think beings like me were truly meant to live forever. Then again, there is always the chance that we will not.

Several years before the war broke out, while working at a shelter, I met a young man about sixteen. His mother had lost her job, home, and husband in a one-week period. Now you may be asking what does this have to do with the price of tea in China. Let me explain.

His mother met a man at a bar, had a few too many, and goes home with this same man. Inside of them is a dormant gene so incredibly old there was no way they knew they were carrying it. It was probably passed down generation to generation, where it laid invisible waiting for the perfect combination of pairing before becoming active. The carriers were not immortal, nor where they truly special as some humans are. They were just merely vessels, that during a one night stand created something extraordinary. The real example of evolution and the perfect pair of genes.

I have been alive since before Jesus walked the Earth, nice man sucks what happened to him. I have already mentioned many husbands and children. While none of my babies became a mutated species of human, they apparently carried my odd gene. They passed it down from parent to child until one day a matching gene was found in a partner, this then created a shifter child. It did not happen with every pairing, but it did happen often enough.

This sixteen-year-old boy, as I was saying, was dealing with a severe case of mistaken identity. Untrained and unaware this young skinwalker found himself changing at periodic times. He was frightened and quite confused the day I saw him crying in an alleyway. His mother had known nothing of her genealogy, so there was no way that she could pinpoint what caused the mutation in her son. Sometimes evolution is not so kind.

I wish I could say where the gene originated, but after a very awkward test learned that this remarkable boy came from my bloodline. This is why I say memories begin to melt together. I could not tell you where the gene came from, or even who he resembled, even when I tried to match any connection. The only thing that I knew is the child held no connection to Phillip and his psychotic family.

I took that boy under my wing, and I trained him. We corrected his shifting habits, arranged his diet, and taught him history. I even moved him and his mother into my home and gave her a job. This granted me access to the boy, plus gave me the opportunity to keep my eye on him. Dustin and Joshua were thrilled to have another human in the household and took to the mother easily. They had been surrounded by gifted beings for so long, that finally being able to have a sub-human life made them happy.

You may be wondering his name by now, and if he will become a more substantial part of my remaining story. You may also wonder if he was plagued by the same spirits that followed me around regularly. His name was Jason Smoot, and while I wish I could say he was a companion of mine to this day, sadly I lost him during the battles of the East Sanctuary. Sure it still stands to this day and houses a substantial number of survivors in New York. While I believed he was bothered by his own set of spirits, he never once spoke of them or gave me any indication they were present.

While he may be gone, his presence is always near me. I pray that he will never become a faded, almost transparent memory as so many in my life have become.

These mutated genes are what drew me to the Fire Warden. Her inner circle of friends consisted of one skinwalking shapeshifter in particular. This young man's power was beyond anything that I had seen caused by evolution. Not only is he able to change his own image at will, but he can transform into any creature that he feels will give him an advantage.