Curiosity Met Chaos
My name is Kyle, and for the longest time, I believed I was part of something greater than myself—a grand design, a purpose beyond comprehension. Growing up, my parents, Drs. Rider and Arla Johnston were revered scientists, known for their groundbreaking work in genetics. Our family appeared normal from the outside: two successful parents, three intelligent sons. But what no one knew was that I was different.
Not just different. Special.
My older brother Axel and younger brother Kade followed traditional paths, finding careers, love, and purpose in mundane places. But I always had questions—about myself, about my origins, about the inexplicable talents I possessed. I could hear whispers before people spoke, predict movements before they happened, and I never got sick.
“Kyle, have you ever wondered why you’re… different?” my mother once asked me, her eyes filled with something unreadable. I had. But I never voiced it, afraid of what the answer might be.
Then, on my twenty-fifth birthday, my father passed away suddenly, a heart attack in the middle of a research presentation. My mother took his death hard—too hard. She secluded herself in her lab, whispering to herself, poring over old research files. Then, one night, she called me in.
“Sit down, Kyle,” she said, placing a thick folder on the table. “You need to know the truth.“
I swallowed hard as she slid the file toward me. Inside were documents, charts, and photographs of a fetus—an embryo with an alphanumeric code attached to it.
Experiment A-17
I stared at it. At me.
“You were never meant to be our son,” my mother said. “You were an experiment. Our greatest creation.”
The air in the room grew suffocating. My mind screamed for denial, but the evidence was undeniable. I had no birth certificate, no hospital records. I had grown, developed in a lab, engineered to be something more than human.
“Your father and I… we designed you to be perfect. And you were. But then, we became attached. We raised you as our own. But Aaron… you are not like them.”
I stood abruptly, my chair scraping against the cold tile. “So my whole life—my memories, my childhood, all of it—was a lie?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “We had to protect you. The world isn’t ready for what you are.”
A chill ran down my spine. If my father had died to protect this secret, who else knew? And more importantly, what else was I capable of?
I looked at my mother then, truly looked at her, and for the first time, I realized she was afraid. Not of the world. Not of the secret being exposed.
She was afraid of me.
