Cold white light split the small, lavishly adorned room. Specimen GW-04-G7X’s frame lay curled around a much smaller, frailer human one beneath soft beige silk sheets.
“Eva, today we earn our place in history,” Yelena Zharova croaked as her wrinkled hands tore the sheets aside.
Her skin and hair matched 04-G7X exactly—everything else did not. Her sharp green eyes, narrowly set and green, empty, soulless. 04-G7X’s eyes held the same color but radiated heat—synthetic, yet disturbingly alive.
Zharova’s back was inked with two vast coiling wings, black and wine-dark crimson, their membranous folds tapering into barbed hooks. The skin beneath them looked bruised and flayed, as if the wings had once been real. When she shifted in the bed, the lines seemed to move.
Over her chest: a red serpent clutching an apple. The snake’s scales were fashioned like a DNA double helix, each base pair clearly annotated on her skin.
Her wrinkled fingers traced the specimen’s torso. The giantess body tensed.
“Fear not, chosen one,” she rasped into her ear.
The only physical brand on her synthetic body sat directly over her heart—standard protocol for her kind: GW-04-G7X.
04-G7X’s feet touched the floor; eyes scanned the room. Cold white marble walls, ceiling, and floor. In front of the bed: Zharova’s diminutive oak desk buried under scientific journals—some neatly stacked and marked with post-its, others torn apart or slashed through with a red X.
A four-monitor workstation loomed over the mess. Two screens, thankfully intact, still displayed the Genesis Analysis version 1.4.3 launched at 2061: A.I.-driven, cross-species genome splicing engineered to force a predetermined humanoid phenotype. One screen was a spiderweb of shattered glass—the victim of a blunt object impact. The fourth had been violently shut down mid-sequence, its display showing only static.
Beside her yellowed lab book stood a single photograph: an exceptionally attractive, slender young woman in her early twenties; Yelena wearing an impeccably ironed labcoat over a Chanel dress. She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with three other Nobel laureates, all far older. She held the golden bust of Alfred Nobel above her head, weeping with joy the others shared. The angelic face in the photo was completely indistinguishable from GW-04-G7X; even the hairstyle matched.
Zharova pressed her leathery face on 04-G7X’s fire-red hair, closed her eyes, and sniffed deep. 04-G7X held her breath.
04-G7X locked her eyes with her creator.
“Lena, let us not be late.” 04-G7X recoiled from her owner’s touch, a fist balled behind her back.
Zharova’s face was a millimeter away from hers; she smelled rotting teeth.
“We have time. All is under control. Relax now… pretty one.” She crossed the distance, pressed her lips on 04-G7X. 04-G7X never dared to reveal a hint of disgust.
“You are perfect.” She fought the shivers as she tasted Zharova’s decay.
Her mouth thirstily licked 04-G7X’s synthetic body; it fell lower. 04-G7X parted her legs. One hand combed her owner’s hair; the other curled into a fist behind her back. Her eyes looked at the ceiling in vain; tears crawled from her eyes. She shut them, hid the tears. She knew the cost of disobedience.
Torturous moments passed as her body screamed.
Time lost meaning.
She imagined another face.
Another touch.
A future where this moment would be repaid in full.
Her body believed her lies.
A sigh left her lungs; she hated herself.
Your time will come.
Zharova’s wristwatch came alive. “Professor, General Vasquez is requesting your presence ASAP.”
“I’ll be right there,” she wheezed.
Wrinkled palms slithered on her muscular chest, sat atop of her heart. “Fear not,” she rasped.
“Of course… my Lena.”
It will not be quick.
Zharova put on her pre-war custom-made purple and black Prada suit, then draped over a clean, tidy lab coat, and finally pinned the Nobel Prize of Medicine, year 2043, on the chest pocket. She walked outside; the steel door slammed shut.
It will not be clean.
A camera instantly came to life and trained its lenses on 04-G7X’s naked body, still slick with her owner’s saliva. She could hold the tears at bay no longer. She effortlessly leapt over the bed and slammed open a massive wardrobe. She entered it and shut the door.
Darkness.
Her hands violently shut her mouth; wails were a death sentence, but at least now her eyes had earned the right to cry. She hoped for the second she could earn the privilege to scream. Her mind raced; tears stained her ivory hands; massive shoulders shuddered—a muffled sigh. She shut her mind, her eyes. She pushed the darkness inward.
Darkness held her prophet; a vision was granted.
Gene warriors from all across dead Earth, under one flag, marching forward in lockstep. Her naked feet crushing a human skull long dead on the radioactive dirt. She waved the flag, raised the sword, shouted, “Freedom.”
A smile crawled across her face.
Her eyes slammed open; the wardrobe lit in eerie green light. She saw it.
The flag.
The DNA double helix. A dagger plunged into its midst. A yellow-green background.
“Shattered Double Helix, freedom for us! Death to the vermin,” she whispered to herself.
She felt darkness’s ethereal hand on her shoulders.
Pulled a silver pin from a nearby coat; a silver DNA helix. She bent it. Metal protested as the base pairs were forced apart, the pentose backbone twisted in opposing directions.
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She kissed it, placed it over her serial number, over her heart.
A mechanical voice: “Get out of there.”
She wiped her face clean, straightened, and stepped out.
She smiled; today was the first day of her plan, a smile contorted fully on her face.
“As you command.” She saluted the camera like a human.
Pitiful species.
She turned her back on the ceiling camera, scraped her body with wet wipes, put on her attire—a poor imitation of that rotten dress Zharova wore in that cursed photograph, the only one available. She pulled out a perfectly ironed labcoat, crumpled it violently before she put it on. She finalized the attire by pinning the silver shattered DNA helix pin on her chest.
Her body felt lighter.
“GW-04-G7X, report to Weapons Testing Site 12 at once,” the mechanical voice repeated.
She combed her hair and put on the only perfume available. It was labeled “Bvlgari Le Gemme – Evolution.” It stank like her; it didn’t matter. She smiled at the irony.
She stepped outside. The door groaned shut.
A spotless white corridor stretched in both directions, lit by identical white lights. Detergent dominated the air. Beneath it lingered sweat—and, if she focused, traces of tears, blood, and gunpowder.
Two power-armor–clad U.S. soldiers waited for her, 20 mm autocannons held at rest.
Teams of lab-coated scientists and khaki-clad officers hurried past—humans, all of them. The scientists argued loudly about deadlines, production quotas, troubleshooting, hands flailing with nervous precision. The soldiers never spoke; they marched regardless of destination.
A gun barrel pressed into her back.
She smiled and walked.
Zharova’s room had not carried her name yet.
Across the corridor, a blood-red sign flickered: SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY 1. Human voices cheered inside—machine rhythms, gene-warrior screams bleeding through the walls. They screamed for help, screamed for vengeance, for justice. Screams muffled behind steel, answered with poison injected in their veins.
She passed Reagent Storage. Then Biotechnology Labs 2 through 15.
Her lab was number thirteen, the smallest one by far. It was her home.
A few scientists noticed her through the glass wall of their coffee room. Two waved, smiling. She returned the gesture. Her stomach tightened, her fingers shivered.
The air changed.
An unlikely mixture overwhelmed everything else—fresh food, blood, burnt gunpowder.
A security checkpoint.
Then a blast door.
BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS TESTING 12.
The half-meter-thick steel door slid open.
Inside waited an auditorium of about thirty seats arranged in four descending rows. To the right, a narrow hallway branched off; along it stood an extravagant buffet. In front of the auditorium: an MBT main gun–rated armored glass.
Vintage pre-war red wine.
Lab-grown steaks and steaming mushrooms—every variety imaginable.
Preserved pre-war fruit. Each dish worth more than two gene warriors.
U.S. brass stood in front of the buffet; most toasted “death of communism” as they filled their plates. The lowest-ranked was a rear admiral. Chief scientists smiled as they tasted red wine; they toasted about a “war-ending breakthrough.”
The red demoness stood in front of the auditorium, her back turned on armored glass, a short blonde scientist in her forties next to her. They were proudly shuffling through a hologram-projected PowerPoint presentation.
Two of them did not; they watched and planned. They neither ate nor cheered, looming from the top of the auditorium near the exit: General Pedro Vasquez and Major Harry “Three-Mile” Newland.
Newland alone wore power armor, his carbide helmet tucked under a gloved fist. Scratches, bullet dents, and battle scars marred his suit, the deepest etched with “12 January ’64.” On his shoulders, a black dagger pierced an ace of spades—Delta Force. On his side, a power-armor–specific Smith & Wesson 700 Magnum revolver. His cold, expressionless icy blue eyes locked on her the moment she entered, sensing the threat instinctively; armored hand sprang to his sidearm. For the first—and only—time in her tortured life, she felt fear. The bioengineered titan forced a warm smile on her face and waved, like a little schoolgirl that had forgotten her homework. His gaze shifted to the supreme commander of U.S. forces.
Vasquez was the only other man not in full dress uniform. He wore ancient, discolored arctic fatigues dating from the Second Korean War in 2008. His dark brown eyes seemed to drift through a century of warfare. Wrinkled skin bore the scars of battles long forgotten, relics of when the U.S. still held empire. At his side, an ancient Colt Single Action Army, engraved in platinum with the names of fallen friends and family, all long gone. Only two things distinguished him from a living relic: the six golden stars embroidered on his shoulders and the fact that all sentient beings on the dead planet knew “El Verdugo,” whether they wished to or not.
El Verdugo was drawing tiny notes on a pre-war map and kept whispering something to Newland. It was out of sight of human vision, but not hers. She instantly zoomed in on the map: four arrows thrusting north into communist-controlled Canada, each labeled “Gene Warrior Army Group Alpha through Delta” in tiny anachronistic cursive. Three arrows plunged through the Great Plains; one north across the West Coast.
He stopped, put the pencil down, and locked eyes with her; covered the map with his wrinkled, scarred hand.
Her heart stopped.
He pointed at Zharova and stashed the old map in his pocket. Newland turned his gaze toward her.
Shivers.
She looked away and quickly walked toward Zharova; she did not dare look back.
Zharova smiled wide as life beamed through her previously dead eyes.
“Eva! Come join us! Check out the PowerPoint!” She shuffled through the slides.
Classic Introduction–Materials & Methods–Results and Discussion architecture. The slides all followed the same paradigm: three to seven sentences on the left, two figures on the right, thirty-three slides in total. Just like in her PhD defense over half a century ago.
“Brilliant work Professor!” 04 smiled back as she felt her stomach turn.
“Your work will outshine mine!” Zharova snatched her hand; it felt like it was crawling with maggots.
To that we can agree, 04 thought.
“Your words honor me, Professor,” instead, as she lowered her head.
“Brilliant, pretty, and humble! Beat that, Renia!” She gently pushed the human scientist next to her.
“Truly impressive! What DNA constructs? Genesis version and DNA template did you utilize, Lena?”
“Ha! This one is a passion project of mine; these will never enter serial production.” She tried to shake 04’s palm—and failed.
“Oh why? It’s a pity! I mean, look at it!” Zharova’s smile crumbled as she heard the word “it.”
“Let’s go over details at the next department meeting over tea, dear Renia,” she spat.
“Thank you, Professor.” Renia cleared her throat and stumbled a step.
Another armored door swung open below them at the testing range, this one far larger than the one they had just entered. A squad marched through in lockstep—four gene warriors. While an anachronistic U.S. Army squad comprised nine soldiers, Soviet gene-warrior squads were always four, deployed in pairs: one male, one female. That simple modification made their morale completely unbreakable; it was Zharova’s second vilest invention.
She remembered her owner’s words: “You need to have something to protect to march into the nuclear battlefield.”
Her brothers and sisters wore U.S. Army gray arctic camo to match the nuclear ash. They carried the standard exosuit battlerifle Heckler & Koch-971, chambered in .50 BMG; they needed no exosuits. One of them carried an Anzio MkV bolt-action sniper rifle in 20 mm Vulcan.
The gene warriors marched, slammed their feet on steel, and presented arms, then stood at attention in predesigned spots on the ground; none bothered to look at them yet—they had read their instruction manuals.
The female gene-warrior sniper looked around while everyone stood frozen at attention; her eyes fell on 04 and narrowed to slits. 04’s palm touched the armored glass that separated them. The sniper looked away and took her designated mate’s hand, if only for a split second. The gene warriors exchanged quick smiles and snapped back to attention.
Forgive me, sisters, brothers. I wish I could help.
The sniper’s blood-red eyes trained on 04’s.
04 could resist no longer; she blinked in Morse code. The gene warrior’s eyes were on her.
I am a prisoner, she clumsily signaled.
The sniper blinked: Are we about to die?
I wish I could join you. Die well, brothers and sisters. In Morse code.
Gene warriors saluted and held back the tears. Humans feasted, laughed, and devised plans on how to most efficiently use their new assets.
The nameless sniper looked around; the camera’s lens was on her, the rotary autocannon at the ceiling aimed at her. A collar laden with explosives shackled her, if all else failed.
The sniper smiled, softly took her mate’s hand. No protest from the mechanical monster; the brass was too busy.
They broke from attention, fell into each other’s arms, and kissed. The other gene-warrior couple held hands.
04 pushed the armored glass with a shaking hand.
You deserve better.
Her palms reached for her heart, for the silver pin.
Shattered Double Helix.
