Grandpa hasn’t changed much since I last saw him. If anything, he’s grown younger—taller somehow, more elemental. Like time decided to honor him instead of wear him down.

  “Eva, have you missed Grandpa?” His voice booms across the lawn—commanding, full of vigor, the kind that makes lesser men straighten their backs.

  He stands with arms wide, silver hair swept back, spine straight as a blade, eyes sharp enough to slice through any pretense. A living monument.

  I run to him like a teenager, straight into his embrace. He might intimidate everyone else, but not me. Never me.

  He’s the one man who makes me feel safe. No matter how brutal life gets, I know I can count on him. I always have.

  I’ve always been his favorite. Driven. Disciplined. The one who never strayed. My siblings stumbled—rebellions, detours, addictions, drama. Not me. Honors student. Scholarships. Yale double major in Biochemistry and Computer Science. MBA from Wharton. I met every expectation, every time.

  When I told him I was going to the Ruby Republic, he hesitated—but only briefly. “You’re the one I can trust to go there,” he said. And I believed him.

  Now, standing in his arms again, something breaks loose inside me. I start to sob—quiet, involuntary tremors. He feels it, pats my back gently, and says, “I know, I know. You’re home now.”

  “I’m just happy to see you,” I whisper, wiping my tears. But the truth is, I’m relieved. Because in his arms, I don’t have to be strong. Not for a moment.

  … …

  After a bath and a brief nap, dinner is served—not in the formal dining hall, but in the glass conservatory overlooking the garden. This is where Grandpa used to read to me as a child, where I learned chess on rainy afternoons. Surrounded by greenery and memory, I can finally breathe.

  Eddie has left, after briefing Grandpa on business. Grandpa’s in a good mood—his posture relaxed, his eyes bright with something deeper than approval.

  “The Ruby Republic has changed you,” he says, studying me. “In a good way.”

  “Did you read my proposal?” I ask, eager to finalize the launch plan.

  He nods, smiling. “Excellent.” Then his expression shifts—serious, searching. “What did you have to give up to get a deal like that?”

  It's not an interrogation, but loving concern. He's aching for his treasured little princess. He may not know the intricacies of Ruby politics, but he knows its brutality. Nothing there comes free.

  Tears well up again. I don't know where to begin. I don't want to lie to him, except about the Night Witch. But some things simply can't be spoken in front of your grandpa.

  He walks over, places a hand on my head, and lets me cry into his chest like I’m twelve again. When the sobbing fades, he presses the buzzer. Dinner arrives.

  It’s light but exquisite—chilled asparagus soup, smoked trout rillette, followed by tapas of herb-crusted lamb, pan-seared halibut, and wild mushroom risotto. Pommes Anna and buttered vegetables on the side. Dessert is Earl Grey panna cotta, just the way I like it.

  We talk softly through the meal. Grandpa shares stories from his hunting trips in Mexico and Canada, his new jet, and his fascination with suborbital travel. EMALS technology, he says, is the future—Beijing to Los Angeles in under an hour.

  I tell him about the Republic. The breathtaking infrastructure. The obscene privileges of the powerful. The silence around suffering. The helplessness of the commoners. The way dignity gets traded for access.

  He listens, then stands, gazing out at the garden.

  “As much as I hate what you’ve endured,” he says, “we need the Ruby Republic. We need a place where law bends. Where the impossible becomes possible.”

  His voice grows quiet, reverent.

  “The Sanguine Institute couldn’t exist in the States. Too much morality. Too little flexibility. Only in the Ruby Republic can we pursue unhinged research—create life on our terms.”

  His eyes gleam.

  “That’s what drew me to CRISPR. DNA isn’t just code. It’s clay.”

  He turns to me. “I’ve told Eddie you’re in full control of the Institute. He’ll support you in every way.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then he waves his hand. “Come.”

  I follow him into the garden. The sky is still tinged with the soft hues of twilight. Yet, the moon, full and luminous has climbed above the eastern hills. The air is thick with jasmine and the hush of dusk. Roses bloom in clusters, citrus trees hang heavy with fruit. The gravel path crunches beneath our feet as we pass the sundial, slip under the wisteria arch, and push through the wrought-iron gate into the old grove.

  The mausoleum waits at the far end, nestled between two ancient oaks. Pale stone veined with ivy, its surface cool even in the warmth of May. I’ve visited it before—left flowers, whispered wishes to a grandma whom I never met.

  But tonight, Grandpa moves with intent.

  Inside, the air is still. The tomb rests at the center, the inscription carved in elegant serif:

  Rose Kennedy Hightower

  Loving wife of Alaric Hightower

  May 7, 1937 – June 28, 1987

  Grandpa places his hand on the tombstone. Not to mourn. To activate.

  Then, with quiet force, he grips the stone and turns it.

  A low grind echoes through the chamber. The floor shifts. The tomb slides open with mechanical precision.

  Stairs appear.

  I freeze. The air drifting up from below is colder, older. It smells of stone and secrets.

  Grandpa doesn’t look back. “It’s time you knew,” he says.

  And he begins to descend—one step at a time, into the dark.

  I follow.

  The stairs plunge deeper than I expect—stone giving way to steel, the air cooling with each step until it feels subterranean. The silence is total, broken only by the faint hum of machinery buried in the walls. Grandpa walks ahead, steady, like he’s done this a hundred times. I follow, heart pounding, breath shallow.

  At the bottom, we reach a corridor—walls of brushed concrete, lit by recessed LEDs that cast a sterile, bluish glow. At the far end stands a door. Not just a door—a vault. Thick steel, reinforced, the kind used to guard nuclear codes or priceless artifacts. No markings. No keypad. Just a retinal scanner and a palm plate embedded in the wall.

  Grandpa places his hand on the plate, leans into the scanner. A pulse of light. A low click. Then the deep groan of metal unlocking.

  The door slides open.

  Inside, the chamber is vast. Cold. Abandoned—but not forgotten. The architecture is clinical: stainless steel counters, glass partitions, surveillance cameras blinking red in the corners. Motion sensors line the ceiling. This place wasn’t just built to be secure—it was built to be watched. Controlled. Contained.

  I step in slowly. The air smells of antiseptic and something older—dust sealed in memory, iron, and the faint trace of decay.

  Along the far wall, industrial refrigerators hum quietly. Each one locked behind glass. Inside—jars. Dozens of them. Each labeled with a code and date. Each filled with deep crimson liquid.

  Not samples. Not vials. Jars. Tall and wide.

  I feel it in my bones—chilling and heavy. This isn’t a lab. It’s a vault of fate. A place where biology was rewritten, where ethics were discarded, where something sacred was broken.

  “Is that… blood?” I ask, voice thin. For the first time, I’m afraid of Grandpa. Not the man. The ambition. The hunger.

  “Yes,” he says. “Witch blood. Vampire blood. Lyra’s blood.”

  I flinch. Lyra’s blood?

  “All of it from one person?” My voice barely escapes me. My mind spirals. I see her—Lyra—trapped in this sterile tomb, stripped of dignity, her body exposed to cold steel and clinical hands. Caged. Drained. Again and again. No warmth. No mercy. Just extraction.

  Was she my age? Younger? Did she cry out? Did anyone hear?

  The thought guts me. I’ve endured the Republic’s cruelty, its games and compromises—but compared to this, my suffering feels ornamental. A performance. Lyra lived through something far worse. And I—God—I’ve admired her. Desired her. Imagined her powerful, untouchable. But now I see the truth: she was broken here, piece by piece, while Grandpa called it progress.

  And I let myself be part of it.

  Grandpa walks to the center of the room and turns to face me.

  “Yes. One person. But not human.” His eyes lock onto mine. “She’s a vampire. Capable of witchcraft.”

  “She carries extraordinary DNA—four billion letters. Regeneration. Perpetual youth. Boundless strength.” He looks at the jars, eyes burning with something between reverence and envy. As if he wants to drink them. Become them.

  Then his face darkens.

  “But every other full moon, she suffers. Unbearably. Far worse than anything I’ve done to her. That’s what tipped me off.”

  He lifts his gaze to the ceiling, as if it were glass, as if he could see the sky beyond.

  “And tonight is one of those nights. Right now, she’s twitching, convulsing, crying out. Each time she dances with death. And each time, the blood thickens. The pain deepens.”

  He smiles, but it’s twisted—part delight, part dread.

  “That’s why I founded the Sanguine Institute. To harness the power without the suffering. To build a future where we don’t just live longer—we live forever.”

  He steps closer, voice rising.

  “Then I found a paper—Japanese, obscure. CRISPR. Back then, no one knew it could be used for gene editing. No one except us. By the time the world caught on, we’d already been working on it for nearly twenty years.”

  “But now, every eye is on CRISPR. The Institute can’t stay hidden. The States are no longer safe. We need to move.”

  He pauses, eyes softening.

  “When you volunteered to go to the Ruby Republic, you didn’t know how happy that made me. Only you could pull this off. Your brother wouldn’t last a month. Sera might adapt, but she’d be consumed.”

  “You’re different. You can work the system without being worked by it. You belong to no one. You stay above the fray.”

  He looks at me—kind, proud, hopeful.

  “Now I pass this quest to you. You’ll have the full support of the family. If you succeed, it won’t just be the Hightower Group. The world will be yours.”

  /*CRISPR was first discovered in 1987, but its significance unfolded gradually over decades. Here's a concise timeline of key milestones:

  1987: Yoshizumi Ishino and colleagues at Osaka University accidentally cloned a segment of unusual repeated DNA sequences in E. coli, later recognized as part of a CRISPR locus.

  2005: Mojica and others discovered that CRISPR spacer sequences matched viral DNA, leading to the hypothesis that CRISPR acts as an adaptive immune system in microbes.

  2012: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, along with George Church and Feng Zhang, adapted CRISPR-Cas9 into a revolutionary gene-editing system capable of targeting and modifying DNA with precision.

  2015: Science named CRISPR the "Breakthrough of the Year."

  2020: Charpentier and Doudna were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on CRISPR-Cas9.

  */