Creation began on 10-07-10

Creation ended on 05-11-20

Splice

What's the worst that could happen?

A/N: I saw the film the day before I decided to create this and saw how perfect the idea of having Brother Correction in this one. It takes place after end of the film, many a time after. I do believe in such a thing as a second chance at life and repenting for one's own mistakes.

Elsa Kast lied in the hospital bed for what seemed like hours; a full-term pregnancy within a matter of three months. She was due any time now, and yet she couldn't help but think of the events that had caused her to go through with the risks she was taking. Only three months since she had lost her boyfriend, his brother, their boss and what felt like much of the control over her life, and to what truly was her own mistake. She never questioned herself in the beginning why she persisted in creating Dren, but now she found herself with plenty of time to ask herself. Dren, the only other thing that she viewed worse than herself, created by her abusing science and genetic engineering just to satisfy her curiosity of using human DNA to further future advancements in the field of genetics.

Oh, that would've won her multiple Nobel Prizes in such a short time. All of that and more, except it cost her lives she hadn't wished to end. Now, all she had was her future, however much was left of it for her, enough hush money to live a subtle life that she had wished to live with Clive, and an obligation never to tell anyone what had transpired when Dren was made.

"What's the worst that could happen?" She thought, looking at the television's news broadcast; it was one of the only things she ever really did while waiting for the scientists and medical staff to return for her and help her through the delivery of the…the…

Elsa couldn't even bring herself to call it what it could've been viewed as: A baby, a child, an abomination, a monster, a crossbreed or other such names to something that was the result of a twisted achievement and perverse attempt at playing God.

"What's the worst that could happen, indeed, Elsa Kast," she took her eyes off the television and right towards a chair by the window; there was a young man sitting there, looking at a large book with a picture she couldn't make out from the distance between them, but assumed that it was the last novel of the Harry Potter franchise. "I've foreseen the worst…and I don't want it coming to pass at all."

As Elsa tried to reach for the button to call in security, the man placed his book down and revealed himself to be of African-American status, but there was something about his eyes that made him different from an ordinary man of color. It was like he was wearing a mask that seemed surrealistic and you couldn't tell the difference between a real man and something else altogether entirely different.

"Did you ever hear of the television series called Witchblade?" He asked her. "It dealt with a situation similar to what you're facing. I'm not here to cause trouble; that's already present. I'm here to converse with you and, hopefully, put an end to your sadness."

Realizing that her hand was still hanging over the button, Elsa set it down; she didn't feel threatened by this man, despite his angry look. Just what was he?

"Who are you?" She asked him. "And how did you get in here?"

"I've always been here," he told her. "I've always been with you…in spirit. People are related in spirit, so much related that all living things are connected by the very spirit itself. I'm your brother. I was Clive's brother and his brother's brother, and even your boss' brother. I'm a brother to all. Brother Correction's my name and undoing past and future mistakes is my game, motivation for existing and sole purpose for myself."

"And why would you think I'm in a mistake?"

"Because that child's going to be the death of you. Literally. Personal risk or not, you can avoid this fate by going back to the day this all started."

"The day this all started? You mean, the day I decided to create Dren?"

"Yes," he responded. "Think about it. You can rewrite history by preventing yourself from making a choice that was going to cause problems you couldn't comprehend until it was too late…just by turning away. But I can't force this choice on you. Free will and alternatives is the power of all beings with souls. Only you can choose whether or not to accept this opportunity to undo the loss. I am sorry that your relationship with your mother was poor and abusive, more emotionally and verbally than physically, and that your father left you when you were little, but you can't fix the flaws of your past by creating a…a chimera with some of your genetics but couldn't ever be recognized as being human by the world. Even if you treat something as being human, because it is also something not viewed as human, like a horse or a cat, it can't ever belong in a society. It'd be just one stepped removed from being inhumane. Severely inhumane if just brought up to be a science experiment with no other purpose than to provide solutions to present-day problems. But with Ginger and Fred, it was permitted to a degree because they were just chimeras without a shred of humanity that could provide solutions to small problems. Helping to improve livestock by making them bigger, making crops with a longer expiration date. The responsibility of any scientist is to help make the world a better place. I still believe in that drive, because deep down, I want to believe that you want to believe in that drive. Still, I can't force you to make this choice. That is something only you can do. So, please, think it over before you get rushed off to delivery. Not many people get a second chance to make up for their faults. In truth, hardly anyone gets a second chance to atone for anything they did."

He then bowed his head and turned to walk out of the room.

"Tell me," she stopped him, just wanting to know one thing, "will I remember anything?"

He turned back to face her and nodded in the positive.

"You will recall most of everything, but not everything," he informed her, and then walked out the room to give her privacy.

Go back to before Dren was made? She thought. Save Clive, Gavin and Barlow? But could I really undo any of this? Should I even undo any of this?

"You never wanted a normal child," she remembered Clive's words regarding the revelation of why Dren had been created, "because you were afraid of losing control."

"What did you expect when you made it?" Gavin had asked them. "Didn't you have a plan?"

She didn't have a plan. There had been no plan at all; she just wanted to create a chimera with human DNA so much to find more solutions to problems they needed answers to making a thing of the past. But none of that had happened at all, just studying Dren and discovering what she had been capable of and what her behavioral qualities were like. In a way, it was no different from raising a child in a lab and watching it grow up into full maturity and then watching as all semblance of control went out the window.

"Inside you," Dren's only words had been to her when she turned into a male version of her female form.

And then Dren had gotten inside her…and a part of him was still inside her.

"That child is going to be the death of you," Brother Correction had warned her.

Seconds later, she felt the unborn child shift inside her.

The opportunity to alter the fates of everyone that was killed by Dren was tempting, but the pursuit of science finding new remedies and treatments was also a tempting venture. But she indirectly caused Clive's death by hesitating to kill Dren, cost him Gavin's life…

"Not many people get a second chance to make up for their faults," Brother Correction told her, and yet he was offering her a second chance to repair her mistakes before Dren came along and she let her…him…ruin their lives and future.

-x-

"Human cloning is illegal," Elsa told Clive when she opened the door to talk to him. "This won't be human. Not entirely."

Clive busted in to stop her before BETI could implement the ovum fertilization with the chimeric DNA. But was strange, however…was that Elsa didn't stop him from stopping her.

Wait, didn't I convince Clive to let us go ahead with this to see if we could do it? Elsa wondered; she thought they had done this and the creature developing in BETI ended up a malformed organism that was nothing more than a shell casing for the actual organism that was more developed and still growing. God, I could've sworn that we made a human-sized creature.

"Believe me, you're better off just thinking that it's nothing more than a fantasy," she thought she had heard herself say to herself at some point, but she couldn't recall ever saying that.

Still, Elsa could've tried again, to persuade Clive to go ahead with the experiment.

"Wait five years!" Her voice had yelled to herself as she and Clive returned their success at amalgamating human-spliced chimeric material back into the liquid nitrogen container.

She must've been going crazy a little, but she was hearing herself telling herself things she shouldn't do and actually listening to these crazy instructions, as if she was being warned by a version of her that had gone ahead with what she and Clive almost did, only it didn't pan out for them. But still…maybe if she…

"You'll kill Clive and Gavin if you persist!" She heard herself yell again, as if actually having spoken these words at some point.

Okay, Elsa, maybe you talk more about your childhood to a therapist, she considered as she and Clive walked back to their car.

When the car drove away, neither occupant saw a woman that looked like Elsa with a different hairstyle and a swollen belly wearing a blue dress standing by with a dark-skinned man dressed in blue jeans and a green shirt.

"Why was I persisting?" She asked him. "She kept wanting to…"

"You're persistent," Brother Correction told her. "However, today was the start of the new future. You didn't create Dren yet."

"But if I'm persistent, then it's only a matter of time before I convince Clive to do it."

"What was it you once told Joan Chorot when she disapproved of using human DNA?" He asked her. "If you didn't use human DNA in animal splicing, someone else would? But the crazy thing is that there are research groups all over the world doing animal experiments in secret that don't ever see the light of day, but many of them don't run the gauntlet of mixing human DNA into the concoction. I know what must be done to ensure that your new present self doesn't echo the actions of your past self. When a forest grows rank and needs clearing for new growth, a purging fire cleanses the land of deadwood."

-x-

Epilogue

N.E.R.D.'s research and development facility had been broken into and ransacked in various places. While the equipment and files could be replaced, the preserved genetic material that had been stored at N.E.R.D. was stolen and a note was stuck to the wall explaining the theft.

"Animal splicing is an abomination in the eyes of our Lord! Next, you'll be trying to splice gorillas with augmented human DNA! Or create dragons that actually spit fire! Stick to your permitted boundaries, or the world will end!" The note had read.

Elsa and Clive saw this as a warning against what nearly happened the day before. If they had gone ahead with developing the new template using human DNA, the damage here could've ended up being worse. Whoever did this could've lit a match and set the whole place on fire.

"Suddenly, spending the next five years digging through pig shit for medicinal proteins doesn't seem bad," Elsa was forced to accept, getting the feeling that the human-spliced genetic material harvested the previous day was what whoever did this was after, just to keep them from playing God with human genes.

A man on a bike rode past the people that worked there, nobody really paying attention to him, and he gave a small smile. It was Brother Correction, having disposed of the genetic material and ensured that this new Elsa couldn't echo the actions her previous version had made the first time.

"I'll stick around for a bit," he told himself as he continued down the road. "The truest reward for stopping persistence is the wise becoming wiser than they were before."

To be…or not to be…for now

A/N: What's the worst that could happen? I pray that we never know for sure. Now, I'm actually glad I found the time to finish this. I hope others enjoy it and let their minds expand to where it could or rather, won't go.