Wow. I'm back.
x
"Are you hurting anywhere? Any abdominal pains? Around the stomach?" Mercy demanded.
Cade unconsciously touched the right side of her body and nodded. "Since yesterday."
"Do you think you know which organ?"
The teenager sighed. "Liver. I was thinking of getting a blood test or transfusion tomorrow. I was feeling light-headed all day."
Alarm bells started ringing in the secretary's head. "We're going to Cadmus."
A bitter taste climbed up Cade's throat. She was most likely sick. Again. And she hadn't noticed the severity.
Not objecting Mercy's observations, Cade rose to her feet, wobbling when a wave of nausea hit her head and made her stumble forwards. Bile rose from the stomach, but Cade slapped a hand over her mouth, stubbornly determined to fight down the vomit. She breathed deeply in and out through the nose, attempting to reorient herself before standing up once more.
But the moment of careful rest didn't help. Once she was back on her feet, a suffocating wave of exhaustion consumed her mind and she couldn't control her legs anymore.
Cade saw Mercy's panic-stricken face before blacking out.
Cadmus was all about biological cloning.
The lab's ultimate goal was to complete their understanding of alien biology and possibly even become a master of control over its sequencing.
However, before attempting alien DNA, and before cloning the Kryptonian DNA into their Superboy, and before even approaching any form of alien biology, Cadmus had to start from the beginning: humans. They had to ground out all the mysteries in the human body before starting on aliens. It was logical, afterall, how could scientists hope to understand alien biology if they couldn't fully master the biology of their own species? The ultimate proof of achieving complete command over human biology would be through cloning.
The scientists first tried to replicate their own species and they began that monumental mission by trying to construct a fetus from scratch. They had failed many times, but with an endless cycle of fervent research, experimenting, testing, and mountains of stress, Cadmus achieved the biological genome for a human baby.
And then the next huge step was growing their fetuses. It was hard, delicate, difficult work to analyze each fluid pod and monitor each one. Each fetus wouldn't survive past the incubation stage, none would last longer than seven months. If a pod did last longer than seven months, then it was missing important parts. A limb or a joint. An organ. The brainstem. Or sometimes there would be no brain at all. No face. Or a deformed eye.
It was absolutely distasteful.
The most despicable part was deciding what to do with the failures.
Throw them away? Or, should the scientists continue to grow them? But, until what point? Until how long do they allow these pods of human mass to live? How do they decide which ones get to stay in the tubes and which ones should be disposed of?
It was daunting and draining work. Their human genome formula was perfected, but actually implementing the process of constructing a living being was entirely different matter altogether. It was as if every tiny fetus gave up on living before it could grow past a certain mark. They had the technology and the resources to make the most precise measurements for each fetus tube, but none would become successful. Morals were challenged every day. Many scientists quit after a few months, unable to unsee the deformed fetus lifeforms daily. There were memory alterations involved every time there was a turnover of researchers; Cadmus couldn't afford the general public to discover what was occurring in their own laboratories. What would the people say, if they were to learn that Cadmus was experimenting with human life?
The scientists of Cadmus racked their brains every hour. What was the secret key? What were the precise measurements of nutrients needed to facilitate the growth of a fetus into a pod baby? What amount of neurogenesis was the perfect amount? Would it be possible to override biological evolution that adapted the human baby to grow inside a womb? Why did the arms grow for Pod #439 and not for #441 if the environment conditions were perfectly identical? How were they supposed to balance cerebrospinal fluid and water in order to facilitate brainstem growth without causing water brain cavities in the future, but not stunt physical development?
Even if a pod lived past the incubation stage, not all of the 'babies' survived past one year outside a sterile environment. Many succumbed to simple diseases, infections, or illnesses. Some immune systems weren't strong enough, or their brain development wouldn't keep up with a natural born toddler. Cadmus were beginning to lose hope until finally and unexpectedly, they watched the weak Pod #764725 grow older than the fated one year. It was their greatest breakthrough, and they were afraid it would cease to breathe any moment.
It lived for eleven months outside of the incubation period and then with utmost care, they transitioned its environment carefully so that no physical or biological harm would come to it. They assigned a brainwashed wet nurse to take care of it like a regular baby in the laboratory. One scientist was especially assigned as the main observer who would also monitor #764725's health and mental growth.
The baby grew up into a toddler, no longer needing a wet nurse. Two scientists acted as its surrogate parents, acting like a father and mother, but observing it at the same time.
They codenamed the baby girl 'Meira', which meant 'to give light', because she was living proof of the Cadmus scientists' efforts.
-Meira-
She gasped and surged upwards.
She couldn't feel anything at first. And then something tugged. It was her skin. Stuff was attached to her skin.
Tubes. So many tubes. And needles.
"Cade, can you hear me? Cade-"
That was Mercy. The cyborg. Luthor's secretary.
Lex Luthor, the billionaire.
He was part of The Light. An organization of villains. From the television show Young Justice. That existed. In her first life. She had a first life. She had been happy. She had a family and friends. A different life. A normal, lively, peaceful life.
This wasn't her body.
She was an abomination. A mound of flesh.
"Cade? We need you to focus."
There's a hand in front of her. Waving. Trying to get her attention.
"Cade?"
Cade….that was her. She was Cade. She is Cade.
Blink. Breathe again.
What was her real name. A sliver of fear struck inside. The memories were getting harder to recall. They weren't as fresh. Living differently for fifteen years made it difficult to hold onto the past.
She felt sad.
She gasped a second time. It felt nice, so she did it again. And again.
And again.
Again.
Was air always this nice?
Again.
"Cade, stop, you're hyperventilating."
Perhaps tone down the breathing.
A pause.
And now she forgot how to breathe.
"Cade? Focus on me-"
That voice sounded so far away. She was trying to remember how to breathe, dang it, she didn't need distractions-
"Meira. Good afternoon, how are you today?"
Something inside her mind snapped. She bit her lip hard to stop the ingrained reflex response and the pain flared. That really woke her up. Cadmus had done their best to take out the biological programming, but the human brain wasn't so easily fixed. The remnants of brainwashing remained.
Cade blinked once and the world suddenly sharpened in color and sensations. She was breathing normally now.
Bright lights above, metal floor and walls, she was lying down in a hospital bed. Thin white sheets. The bed was cushioned. She felt stiff. Her body ached. Mercy was sitting next to her.
People were talking in the background. They weren't alone in the hospital room.
Cade forced herself to pay attention to her surroundings. It was tiring, but she strained.
And then she realized that they weren't in a hospital.
"Cade?" It was Mercy, again.
"My name isn't Meira." Voice sounded like gravel. Felt like it too.
Her neck muscles creaked, but Cade looked at Mercy in the eyes. Her light brown eyes, usually sharp and attentive, were empty pits and tired. There was a sense of animalistic desperation clawing its way out of Cade's eyes, but Mercy could see the girl suppressing the raw emotions. The cyborg looked back almost sympathetically.
"You know I hate it when you use that greeting with that name," Cade whispered hoarsely.
It was more than a greeting and name, it was a code. A program drilled into her psyche. It demanded for her attention, her freedom of mind, her control. It meant that a part of her was less human and more machine. Scientists could choose to implant her brain with anything they wanted.
It reminded her that she was created.
"I know, Cade, I know, but you don't respond to anything else when you blank out like that," Mercy consoled.
The teenager looked down, examining herself. Cade was wearing a gown similar to that of a hospital patient, IV tubes and other needles were connected across her body. When regular humans became sick, they would go to a hospital, but when Cade got sick, she went to Sublevel 38 of Cadmus. Sublevel 38 had been dedicated to human biology and cloning fifteen years ago, but now it was just a space that Cade went to for health problems.
The place was like a miniature hospital, complete with every medical equipment a doctor would need to fully examine a patient from head to toe. The bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling burned Cade's eyes. There weren't many scientists around, only half a dozen milling around, probably taking a break from working on the other sublevels and came here because it was quiet. Her bed was in a separate, closed off space hidden away from prying eyes.
Cade had mixed feelings about this place. Cadmus, her….birthplace. The scientists here at first had adored her, she was their living proof of their scientific breakthrough in the history of biology. And because they had achieved the landmark of cloning a human, they went on to the next goal of aliens. Soon enough, she wasn't of interest anymore; they knew how to successfully clone humans and could do it anytime now. She became an old project, a finished experiment. She didn't have more use to the scientists who had to meet their next deadline of copying Kryptonian DNA. Cade would have been stuck in Sublevel 38, imprisoned to stay below ground level for the rest of her life without seeing an inch of sunlight if Luthor hadn't taken an interest in her.
"So what was it?" Cade questioned. "My liver?"
"Liver failure, from acetaminophen overdose," Mercy answered. "Did you take any painkillers before you passed out?"
Cade frowned. "Yeah, I ate three pills the day before, I was having a killer headache."
The cyborg sighed. "Cade, you know you're supposed to check with the scientists here in Cadmus if you're going to take any medication, it's-"
The girl weakly waved a hand. The movement tugged on the tubes. "It's not safe, I get it, but my head was hurting really bad and three pills wasn't supposed to-"
"You risked an organ for a headache, you can't just swallow any pills-"
"They were normal pharmacy pills-"
"The last time you ate store bought medicine, your kidney shrunk-"
"It felt like a migraine-"
Mercy threw up her hands. "You can't get migraines, Cade!"
The teenager paused. "Wait, I can't?"
The question hung in the air.
The cyborg crossed her arms. "You know the answer to that."
Cade sullenly tore her gaze away from Mercy and stared straight ahead. She wanted to rip out the tubes and get some fresh air, this sublevel was suffocating her.
"When can I get out of here?" Cade mumbled.
"We just have to get a scientists to check on you and you'll be good to go," the secretary answered.
It didn't take long for Mercy to wave over a scientist. The person was a pseudo-doctor in a way, almost every researcher here was with their level of biological understanding, and scanned Cade's heart, brain, and blood monitors before systematically preparing Cade to leave the bed. The scientist-doctor carefully removed each needle and pressed bandaids against Cade's skin until there were at least one or two clear stickers on each limb and three on her torso.
Cade held back a hiss of pain when she moved to get off the bed. Her joints were sore and stiff, and the parts where there had been tubes attached felt badly bruised; her stomach area felt especially tender. Mercy held out a bag of clothes to change into which Cade gratefully accepted, muttering thanks before pulling a curtain around herself so she could change out of the hospital gown.
Once Cade gingerly stripped off the blue gown, she was about to pull on her undergarments when she saw her torso.
Cade lifted her hands and dropped them at her sides in disbelief.
"Mercy?" she called out from behind the curtain. Cade tried hard to sound like she's not getting strangled.
The secretary's concerned voice answered, "What's wrong? Do the clothes not fit? I'm sure I got them in your size."
"No, it's not that," Cade began to count her breathing. Four seconds to breathe in, hold, four seconds to breathe out. Don't panic.
"What is it?"
"Mercy, why do I have stitches across the side of my stomach?"
Cade delicately traced the bumpy sutures and the meshed skin next to her stomach, her mouth forming a tight line. They didn't look fresh. In fact, it looked like they had completely healed, however it didn't feel like they had healed. Cadmus must have sped up the skin stitching process. The stitches didn't hurt, but the entire area faintly ached.
Great. If she was assuming correctly, she had gotten a transplant.
"Ah, you got a liver transplant." Mercy sounded only a little apologetic.
Cade tried to not slap a hand over her eyes. "And you didn't think it important enough to let me know before I see the scars for myself?"
"It's your punishment for not being more careful. This is the fourth time this happened because of your lack of caution."
Cade swallowed hard, closing her eyes and forcing herself to mentally accept it. It was true, this wasn't the first time she had to switch out an organ. There were three other scars across her torso of past surgical operations. One for when she had sudden lung failure, the second when her stomach acid began burning a hole in her stomach, and the third was her kidney. She finished changing and pulled back the curtains. As she tugged on socks and pulled on her old worn sneakers, she noticed that the clothes Mercy had chosen were loose, especially around the hip area. It was an oversized long-sleeved plain grey shirt with baggy trouser pants. It was most likely so that there wouldn't be any pressure around her waist to bother the skin.
"I read somewhere that the average hospital stay for a patient recovering from a liver transplant is two to three weeks," Cade said wryly. "I don't think it's been two to three weeks, has it?"
"No, three days have passed since you blacked out."
"Shouldn't I stay here for a bit then?"
"That's true for normal humans," Mercy contradicted. "You're not normal and Cadmus has patched you up enough to be released today."
The cyborg secretary marched away towards the high express elevator, fully expecting Cade to follow.
"No, I suppose I'm not," the teenager muttered under her breath. She followed without another word of complaint.
"Of course, you're subjected to strict bed rest for the next few days and you'll be taking several antibiotics and other specific medications to maintain your recovery," the secretary explained as the elevator doors closed. "Luthor put a standstill to all of your assignments, so he expects you to fully focus on healing for the entirety of this week."
The elevator lurched upwards, moving up with such startling speed that Cade lifted a hand to her lips, suppressing the nausea. Riding a high express elevator so soon after a liver transplant surgery wasn't ideal.
Mercy noticed. "Bear with it for just a little more, Cade."
All was relatively smooth after they got out of the elevator. The pair of them walked to the garage where Mercy had parked a sleek black car. The secretary only used the silver limousine for Luthor which had become a trademark vehicle that the public easily recognized. Inside the car, Cade sat in the shotgun seat, clipping in her seatbelt.
"When you say I have to be in 'strict bed rest', how strict did the doctor say?"
"No sudden movements, absolutely no physical exercise for the next few days, don't eat anything spicy or too rich, and don't tire yourself out. Also, please note that Luthor wasn't pleased about you disregarding your body conditions."
Cade winced at that last bit. Luthor not being pleased meant that he was almost angry. The billionaire never got angry in general maybe put off, a little frustrated, or exasperated, but never angry. 'Not pleased' was as close to anger as he was ever going to get.
The secretary continued, "He expects you to consult Cadmus any time you need medical attention, now including consultations on medications or other pharmacy pills. He would like it very much if you refrained from allowing this to happen again."
"How come Luthor isn't the one lecturing me about this?" Cade asked curiously.
Usually if she stepped out of line that threatened her safety or health, Luthor would be the one to properly reprimand her.
"He has business to take care of," was the cyborg's clipped reply.
The teenager mindlessly stared out of the car window, watching the traffic, trees, and people zoom by. If Luthor couldn't talk to her himself, that meant whatever 'business' he was dealing with was about The Light. The billionaire would have easily pushed aside any other business matter if he had to scold her.
The fact that Luthor prioritized Cade over his corporation would sound sweet to other people. It was the man's way of showing how much he valued her life. However, it wasn't affection, Cade knew. His care for her was similar to how a rich man would care for his rare, unique items.
Cade was the first of her 'kind', before any other clones. A human made completely out of scraps. The scientists of Cadmus Sublevel 38 had chosen how to design every single cell on her body; her hair, eye color and shape, skin, height, genetic make up had been all decided by them. The result was a teenage girl whose features were 'ethnically ambiguous'. They weren't so worried about her psyche because they only wanted to know how to build a human. The development of the human mind was a later concern, however to everyone's surprise, Pod #764725 had a will of its own from an early age. It (she) asked questions. She was naturally curious and acted like a human despite its 'birth'. Of course, Pod #764725 was by no means similar to a real human in mannerisms and personality; Cadmus psychologists determined Pod #764725 as clinically abnormal, but they could easily count that towards the circumstances of her environment and development.
The only reason why Cade was able to step out of Sublevel 38 was because Luthor wanted to see her for himself after seeing the reports. He had been intrigued by the existence of a fully constructed human that seemed to be functioning quite well. Ordinary human logic would have predicted mental instability, clinical insanity, or lack of any presence of psyche.
But that wasn't case.
Because Cade, Meira, even as a clone, was an abnormality. From the moment she had opened her eyes, she knew the truth about herself.
The drive back to the penthouse was quick and quiet. Mercy took care of home affairs and walked Cade to her bedroom, watching like a hawk and stressing the importance of bed rest.
"If there are any indicators that you used electricity or did something else other than resting, Luthor will place restrictions on your freedom," she warned.
"So, I could be grounded?" Cade mused.
"Exactly."
The threat sounded less intimidating that way.
"Luthor would like for you to halt business with Catwoman until you fully recover."
Cade settled into her bed, her body demanding rest. The cyborg secretary was still talking, but the words were going in one ear and out the other. Currently, she could care less to listen. She wanted to just have some quiet.
"-I'll be back later in the evening to check on you, I expect you to still be sleeping by then. Rest up."
The teenager smiled wryly as Mercy closed the bedroom door, though the loose smile slipped away once she was alone.
Meira-
-a miracle-
-our pride and joy-
Cade shivered and closed her eyes, trying to release the tension built in her body.
Maybe this unfortunate health incident had some good timing. She could really use a week's worth of doing nothing.
Luthor visited her the next day. After several passive-aggressive and pointed remarks about her lack of caution over her body, the billionaire went straight to business.
"I've been supplying Superboy with genetic repressor patches, called 'Shields', ever since I revealed to him his parentage."
Cade refrained from rolling her eyes. Parentage. As if Superboy considered Luthor as a father.
"I'd like for you to make contact with him and loosely reveal your connection with Cadmus to him. Mercy will send you the detailed case instructions and objectives."
The teenager raised her brows.
"May I speak my mind?"
Luthor smiled his confident smile. "Please do, Cade, you know I always welcome other people's insights."
You welcome them because it gives you information about they think, Cade thought sardonically.
Luthor didn't actually care about people's feelings in the same way how an average person would. He only cared about knowing how other people think because it helped him learn how to manipulate those people.
"I believe this will only cause the opposite effect that you want, it'll push Superboy away from taking your side."
The man chuckled. "Cade, I'm not worried about hurting feelings, you know that."
Cade lowered eyes. "Yeah. It was just a thought."
Of course, Luthor was a Machiavellian through and through.
And he expected her to be the same way.
x
A very late bomb drop.
Oh man, readers, thank you so much for reading and for your patience! Hope you have a nice day.