Human Error

BOOK 1 // FIVE: A Dark Hour

And that was all I got to see. At the time, I couldn't work out what was going on, or what exactly in Nova's eyes had caused so much panic. I wasn't given another opportunity to ask. My mum went out to fetch contacts the next morning, and from then on, I never saw her without them. As far as that problem was concerned, they were on top of things.

If only that had been the end of it.

The final argument was the worst. The restrictions they'd placed on my sister were driving her crazy, and it wasn't safe to hold that kind of anger in somebody so flammable. I would never forget the look on her face right before she lunged for my mother; even without an exceptional memory, it was the type of thing that would be burned into my head for the rest of my life. My dad had stepped in to break them up, but not before she'd got the first punch in – and Mum had drawn her head back with blood dripping from her nose.

It happened to Nova. And, two years later, it looked like I might be following her lead.

The realisation was preventing me from sleeping. I'd been lying beneath the covers for at least three hours, tossing and turning so much the covers were falling halfway off the bed. Projected into the air above my bedside table, the time was now past three a.m., but I couldn't have felt more awake if I tried.

I couldn't come to terms with what had happened. As if the disastrous interview wasn't enough to keep me up, this had been thrown into the mix. The memories kept replaying over and over, like some kind of twisted movie inside my head. Was I really going down the same path as Nova? The side effects were her downfall, what had ripped her from this family in the first place. What if, two years down the line, my parents had adopted the same indifferent stance regarding my disappearance in their newly childless home?

I hadn't eaten in hours, but I felt sick to my stomach. Venturing downstairs for dinner had not been a viable option; it felt too much like wandering back into a warzone. Remaining shut up in my room was worth the hunger now clawing at my insides.

Resigning myself to the fact I wasn't getting any sleep tonight, I sat upright, clicking once to turn on the TV at the foot of my bed. The screen came to life in the wall, its luminous glow lighting up the entire room. Three in the morning was hardly primetime scheduling, even with thousands of channels, so there wasn't much to choose from. Channel Six was offering a re-run of the earlier news – any other time, I would've skipped past, but right then it captured my attention.

The man centred onscreen had grey hair and thick eyebrows; I didn't recognise him, but he was captioned as Max Snowdon, New London's Officer of Public Health. It was the banner running underneath him that caught my eye.

DESIGNER KIDS, it exclaimed in huge text. THE CITY'S DARK SECRET?

It was hardly the news report to settle my mind, but I couldn't resist swiping the volume up anyway.

"What exactly do you think is so worrying about the Eva Kelly case?" the reporter was asking. "We all know there's been growing unrest among the public, but what's really going on?"

"Well, Zed, I think the public are right to be worried." Max Snowdon's voice was totally level. There was no doubt he'd been trained intensively in public speaking; every word out of his mouth sounded like an opinion not to be challenged. "Some of the findings from the case have been incredibly concerning. The mounting evidence of Ms. Kelly's distorted DNA is only adding fuel to some of the wilder claims out there. We know this city is at the forefront of genetic research, and what these findings are hinting at is that it has been proven possible to modify the human genome."