Category: Science Fiction Publisher: Daniel Piros
ISBN-10: 1257860461
Type: Fiction
Pages: 162
Copyright: 2011
ISBN-13: 9781257860463
Three kids find out they were genetically engineered to save the world as part of The Project, and must begin by fighting crime in their town.
Three kids must fight crime-- once they manage to find it-- in the small "town" of Keswick, Virginia, to prove themselves worthy of pursuing their true destiny, and finding out more about the mysterious Project New Age that their parents genetically engineered them for.
But The Project has a past that comes back with vengeance, and they soon find out that The Project gave them the ability to do more than just turn into wolves.
Excerpt
It happens to everyone: one day, you just wake up and find out that you’re part of The Project, genetically engineered by your parents to have superpowers, which they’ve been hiding from you until you were ready to start saving the world. Oh, sorry, that’s just us.
I stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed some eggs and bacon from the fridge. Ugh. Hungry. Need food. Hate mornings. Looooove bacon.
"Happy birthday,” Sarah said from behind me.
"Oh, yeah.” I turned around. "I forgot. Happy birthday. Same goes for you, Sam.” Sam and I are (non-identical) twins, but Sarah isn’t even related to us. Our parents were great friends, though, and when they died, they left Sarah in my parents’ care. As you’d imagine, she was upset, and felt kind of out of place in our house, like she was just a guest, not really a part of the family. Mom and Dad wanted to show her that they cared for her, too, that she was really part of the family now; that she’d never be left out. So they decided not to leave her out of the celebration of our birthday, which was a little over a week later. So now the three of us celebrate our birthdays on the same day.
"Happy birthday,” Mom said when she and came upstairs with Dad a little bit later.
"The bacon should help make it happier.” I inhaled the scent deeply. It woke me up better than Mountain Dew.
"Is something wrong?” I heard Sarah ask Mom in a worried voice.
"No. Er—yes. Maybe.”
"What?” I turned around. Mom looked worried. Very worried. Perhaps even a little scared. "What’s going on?”
"We have something important to tell you,” Dad said, "But it can wait until you’re done cooking. It’ll take a while to explain.”
Dad looked concerned, too. I could have sworn I could almost smell his fear.
"Okay.” I was certain it wasn’t going to be good news. So it’s probably best that I have some bacon while I find out. Trust me; bacon makes me a lot easier to deal with.
I finished cooking breakfast and sat down at the table. "What’s the news?”
"We—we probably should have told you this a long time ago,” Mom began, "But we were waiting for you to be old enough to understand.” She took a deep breath. "You’re… you’re not entirely human. None of you are.”
"Then what are we?” I was sure they were just pulling my leg, but I wondered what exactly they were claiming.
"You’re part wolf,” Dad said, "You’re the result of a top-secret project that your mom and I—along with Sarah’s parents—were in. I can’t tell you much about it, but the basic idea was to create superheroes through genetic engineering.”
"What?” I laughed.
"Yeah, right.” Sam rolled his eyes.
"We’re not kidding,” Mom said, "This is serious.”
"Last time I checked,” Sarah said, "We didn’t have any superpowers. Or at least, I don’t. Maybe the rest of you do…” She turned towards us for conformation. Just on the off-chance that one of us was going to say, "Oh, yeah. I have superpowers. Didn’t I tell you that?”
"I have sarcasm,” Sam said through a mouthful of eggs, "Does that count?”
"You don’t have them now.” Dad set three test tubes down on the table. "But you did before. We suppressed them so you could live a normal life for a while. But now, the time is up, and you have to do what you were created for.”
"What’s in those test tubes?” I took another forkful of eggs.
"I’m sorry.” He looked down. "But we have to give you this. It will unlock your powers.”
"I’m going to need some kind of proof before I believe this outrageous story,” I said.
"We knew you’d be skeptical.” Dad took a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, then put it on the table in front of us. "Take a look at this.”
It was a printout of a genetic analysis. Comparing the three of us, our parents, and a wolf. According to the printout, we shared a lot of DNA with the wolf.
You’re probably thinking that our parents could have easily just taken our cells and cells from wolves, analyzed them as one sample, and claimed that all of it came from us.
I could tell that wasn’t the case. If they had done that, then there would be a full human and wolf genome in the samples. But there was no full set of DNA from a single species. It was one coherent genetic code. Hybrids.
Us.
This was the proof we needed. They weren’t lying to us. Well, not anymore.
I glanced at Sarah, and could tell that she believed it, too.
This was real.
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