Quicksilver Read Free

so we sent a few genes for sequencing…”
    My knees buckled. I clutched the edge of the sink, nausea spiraling in my stomach.
    The police had my DNA.
    I should have seen it coming. When I was missing, they’d needed a way to identify my body, if they ever found it, and to help bring my supposed murderer to justice. And at that point, all the evidence pointed to Alison, the strange and possibly schizophrenic girl I’d been fighting with just before I disappeared. They’d found blood on her hands and bits of tissue stuck in the ring she’d been wearing—of course they’d wanted to know if the blood and tissue were mine.
    “The results were extraordinary,” Dr. Gervais went on rapidly. “None of us have seen anything like your daughter’s gene sequence before, and we can’t account for the discrepancies between her DNA and that of an average young woman. We believe…” She checked herself and continued in a graver tone, “We’re concerned that Tori may have a rare genetic disorder. One that could be harmful, or even fatal, if not treated.”
    Genetic disorder—so that was what they were calling it. Maybe they even thought it was true. Maybe they were sincerely concerned for my well-being and wanted to help me out, even though it wasn’t part of their job.
    Or more likely they’d known for weeks that they were sitting on the biggest scientific discovery of their careers, and now that they’d found out I was alive, they’d say anything, do anything, to get me under their microscope again.
    Well, screw the advancement of science. I’d just escaped from one man who thought he owned me, and it had been the most terrifying experience of my life. I wasn’t about to become anybody else’s lab rat. Not ever.
    “I’m sure you’re mistaken,” I said coldly. “Tori is perfectly normal, and we’ve never had the least concern about her health. Obviously your results were compromised, or tampered with in some way.”
    “That’s a possibility, yes,” said Dr. Gervais, not missing a beat. “And we’re looking into it. But the easiest solution would be to take a scraping of cells from your daughter’s cheek or get a blood sample for comparison purposes. If you’d be willing to cooperate—”
    “No,” I snapped, and slammed down the phone. With trembling fingers I erased the message and added Dr. Gervais’s number to our Blocked Callers list.
    But I knew that wasn’t the end of it. Now that she and the other scientists at GeneSystem had seen how unusual my DNA was, they’d never be satisfied until they knew why. No matter how many times I said no or how hard I tried to avoid them, they’d keep hounding me until I gave in. Or until they got impatient enough to stop asking and start looking for some legal—or not so legal—way to force my hand.
    And then all my dreams of living a free and happy life and becoming a successful engineer one day would be over. Because once Dr. Gervais and her people realized just how extraordinary I was, they’d never let me go.
    As if to prove the point, the phone started ringing again. This time I didn’t wait for the message or even look to see who it was. I ripped the plug out of the wall and ran to find my mother.

(1.2)
     
    The worst of it was, there was nothing good about my weird biology. Sure, I didn’t get sick often and when I did, the symptoms were usually mild, but Lara rarely got sick either, so I didn’t put much stock in that. I had a knack for figuring out how machines worked and making them work better, but there were plenty of engineering prodigies in the world. It wasn’t like I’d been gifted with super-hearing or X-ray vision—nothing like Alison and her synesthesia.
    Yet as far as our DNA was concerned, Alison was perfectly normal. I was the freak.
    “We always knew something like this might happen,” Dad told me, as we held our conference around the dining room table. He patted my mother’s shoulder—as usual she’d been calm and decisive