Word Count: 212 Rating: G Summary: I’ve got an idea for a sci-fi story in my head, this is part of that.
They were different.
They knew this from very early on – some claimed to remember the instant after conception, but those were the ones who died of screaming madness, so no-one believed them. First had been Her. Then She was spliced into Him. Then He sired the Three. They sired Many.
But Many never become more than that. Something went wrong, somewhere, even though the scientists would never admit it. Pure human genes were tricky enough to manipulate – adding the alien simply made it worse. They could never reproduce Him – even the Three were flawed in small ways, although there flaws were easily overcome when They worked together. But their progeny was fatally flawed.
There were twelve. Many species and religions considered it a perfect number. But one by one they died - of madness, of deformities – until only the two youngest were left. One boy, one girl, and the hopes of the scientists were that if both could survive the agonies of puberty, they’d breed and fix whatever the lab workers would never admit that they broke.
Two siblings called themselves the Others, different from everyone else except their family. They listened to their fathers, heard the whispers of their grand father, and knew that they would make everything right for them.