"Most of my life," I explained, "I've been able to see things before they happen. About three months ago, give or take a month, I started seeing a girl in my dreams. She was lying on the track and a train was approaching. A few days later, while walking home from school, I found my dream to be real. That's how I met Laura. After that, things kind of went through the blender."
I explained to her what had happened to us at my house, about the attack by the Erasers, about us being captured and being sent to Haven. I told her what they did to me, how they changed me, the exercises they put me through, the 'training' I had been forced to take part of. I explained to her of our escape from Haven and the fight that ensured with the Erasers, where I found out my brother had been transformed into an Eraser. It seemed that Dr. Susan Yeats, as she was called, had encountered Erasers, but only in their human form. I told her of our flight away from there, into the wilderness and then about the events that happened in there leading up to how Laura ended up being wounded. What interested be though, was the fact that Dr. Susan seemed to know Keira, or at least recognize the name.
"Now that I've explained who we are and how we got here," I said, "do you mind telling us how you know about our kind and everything that is going on?"
"About three or four months ago," Susan began, "I was working a late shift here at the hospital. I was the only doctor on at that time of night, along with about three nurses, when a girl and her older brother came into the emergency department. The girl had been shot in her left shoulder; the guy looked like he had been mauled by a wolf on his right forearm. The boy's wound was, although messy to look at, easy to set right, a few stitches and some bandages."
"The girl, on the other hand," Susan continued, "her wound was more severe than at first look. The bullet had entered her shoulder and shattered the collar bone into three pieces before it exited her shoulder and clipped her wing. It was while I examined the shoulder that I found out about the wings. To be honest, at first I thought it was some sort of angel costume. I went to examine it and the girl pulled back. I saw blood on my hand from the wing and could believe it. It wasn't a costume, the wings were real. I put my astonishment aside and continued helping the girl out, pretending as if she was a normal patient with a bullet wound. I was able to set her collar bone back into place, but it was more difficult since your bones are hollow. You're metabolisms are faster than normal, so that explained the quick healing, but still it would require time for the girl to heal. I could tell her brother didn't like this, but he backed off when she said it was alright."
"The girl explained who she was and how she had received the wounds," Susan continued, "But she was reluctant to tell me how she came to be like she was. I let her be and left her to heal, but made sure access to her was restricted to people who had my permission, but even then, I was the only one to know they had wings. Eventually, the day before they left, the girl told me everything, about Haven, the place where she was born and experimented on. She explained how her DNA had been altered before birth to give her the wings and the other differences. The next day she was gone, her brother with her and there was no sight of them. I wouldn't have believed it, but they had left one thing behind. A feather. They left in on the dresser with a note addressed to me. The note had said whether you choose to believe us or not will make no difference, but speak to no-one of what you know, your life could be in danger. It was signed with one name…"
"Keira," A voice replied from the doorway. I turned my head from Susan to look at the new figure who had arrived in the doorway. It was Keira, "It was signed by me," She finished, "To thank her for what she had done and to warn her. Glad to see you are still alive, Susan."
"Glad to see you are still alive and well," Susan replied, "As for believing you? Well it's getting harder and harder to ignore now that more and more people like you are showing up. Mind you I think I believed it when you first told me I still have the feather. You never mentioned you had a sister."
"She's not my sister," Keira replied, "I don't even know who she is anymore. She was a clone of me, trained to kill me. But now I don't know why she still lives. They want to kill her, I can't trust her."
"You may not care for her, Keira," I replied, "But I do. She's no longer the girl that was sent to kill you. That person died the day she fought you. Laura…Laura only wants to fit in, she only wants to live, if you'd just let her."
"You said clone?" Susan replied, "That might explain it. I used a sample of DNA from Laura as you called her and examined it. There was something different about her. I then took a sample from your wounds, um…"
"Nathan," I replied, "My names Nathan."
"Anyway, Nathan," Susan replied, "I took a sample of your blood and compared the two. Even if Laura survives the wound she received, I'm not sure she'll survive any longer than another week or two."
"Why not?" I replied, suddenly alarmed, "Is something wrong?"
"It's her telomeres," Susan replied, "The section of DNA that controls the lifespan of a living being. Nathan, yours and Keira's are perfectly healthy, but Laura's is shorter, as if in her life of seventeen years, she has experienced almost three times that. In short, Nathan, Laura is dying. Unless her telomeres can be repaired, which would require state-of-the-art science equipment and a healthy telomere to replace it with; she will die within the next two weeks."
Laura, I thought, Laura… I can't lose you.
Chapter 54
"But would something like that work?" Dead asked, speaking for the first time since I had woken up, "I mean most of us were altered while we were still embryos. Trying to alter the genetic information at the age we are now… well Nathan, you could explain it better than I could."
"As I finished explaining before," I replied, "I was once human, a normal teenager going to a normal school… until I met Laura. During my stay at Haven, I was injected twice. The first was part of a gene therapy, where they altered my DNA using a viral protein coat to infect the cells and replace my DNA with the restructured human bird combination, but for that they required an original blood sample from me. After that all they required to do was alter the DNA, place it in the viral protein coats and inject it into me, where the gene therapy virus would infect the cells and replace the old DNA with the new stuff."
"It doesn't sound too hard," Susan replied, "They way you say it makes it sound easy."
"It may sound easy," I explained, "but even if you have the right equipment to do it with, it also depends on the health of the patient and how quickly the DNA is able to be altered before the body picks up on the changes and rejects them. My experience… well I can tell you it wasn't pretty and at times I wasn't sure if I could even survive it. The body goes through changes, my bone structure, muscle structure and neurological pathways were literally re-written in a matter of days, and my body was left to catch up over the weeks. It felt as if someone had filled my veins with molten steel. The second time was when my mother tried to 'cure' my foresight. All it did was remove my natural eye colour and change it to blue. I experienced a minor headache and some unconsciousness, but other than that, I was fine."
"How do you know all of this?" Susan asked, "Do you even know what effects it could have on Laura?"
"To answer your first question," I replied, "I used to study Genetics when I went to school. Did even after I was kept at Haven, but because of the re-written neurological pathways, I was able to understand more. I was interested in how they were doing this so I began to look things up on the internet. I found a backdoor around Haven's security sensors while surfing the net for things. I came up with a few theories and some facts as well. Gene therapy was the best bet. People were capable of doing it, but it had never been tested on human patients, the people at Haven were doing it illegally.
"As for your second question," I continued, "The effects on Laura… I can't really predict. This has never been tested. What we are trying to do is reset Laura's biological clock so that she can regenerate her cells to their proper health. What we are talking about is prolonging life beyond its normal length. The effects could be minor or major. It could be nothing more than stiff joints, or it could be worse than that. The body may pick up on the alterations before they are done and a war will break out in her body - the cells will start attacking each other. It could result in death. If her body cannot handle the strain of having the DNA altered, she could die from it."
"So, we are talking about major risks here," Susan replied, "I can tell you the most sensible way of going here, but I can tell you won't let her die peacefully. You'd try and save her, won't you?"
"But why?" Keira replied, "Why do you want to save her, Nathan, was it? She was cloned to be my replacement, made to kill me and who knows what else. How can you trust her?"
"Because I have spent the past three months of my life stuck in captivity at Haven," I replied, "With Laura and Dean as my only company. Because I see no similarities in the way she behaves compared to you. She is no longer you're clone, Keira, but her own person. After the battle where she fought with you, she had no sense of self. All she wanted to do was die, and she was going to let them kill her. But emotion won and took over; she couldn't face the fear of dying. She wanted to live, just like everyone else, to experience life anew where she could feel emotion of her own free will. But the main reason why I cannot let her die, Keira, is because over the past three months I have fallen in love with her."
The room had gone silent after my little outburst. Not many people had know what I had gone through and after the loss of sleep and loss of blood; I finally ended up letting it all out. I couldn't come to face losing her because I had come to know the real her, because I had felt complete when she was in my life. Losing her, would be like losing a part of me. I think all my humanity was gone, but losing Laura would end me. I would just be an empty shell of who I used to be. I lay me head back on the pillow and let them ponder what I said, including Keira. It was about time she stopped judging based on the past and judge based on the present. I was relieved when I wasn't the next person to speak. Even more relieved to hear her voice.
"Now I know how you felt when Dean and I were discussing escaping with or without you," Laura whispered. Her voice was weak, but it was better than her remaining lifeless. "You may not be willing to take the risk, but I sure am. I don't want to be lying in a hospital bed for the last week of my life, afraid of death. Do what you have to do; I won't stop you… but Nathan, if this doesn't work out…"
"It will," I replied, wanting to believe it with every fibre of my being, "it has to, Laura. I can't lose you, not after I've lost almost everyone else. It would destroy me."
"I know," Laura replied, "that's why I want you to promise me, that if this doesn't work out, you will continue living for me. Promise?"
"I…" I began, "I promise Laura. I'll continue living for you."
"And Keira," Laura said, "I know what I've done in the past is wrong. It's what I was lead to believe my life was meant to be for. They made me feel no emotion and so I didn't feel regret in doing it, but after I started feeling again, I… I wanted to apologise to you and I hope that we could get along, if not identical sisters, then at least friends?"
"Don't count on it," Keira replied, but I could tell she was thinking about it, "Some wounds run too deep."
"Right," I said, "Now that we've sorted that out, I think I have a plan…"