"You need to understand I won't be physically there." Golden Eyed Obie tapped her head with her other hand. "I'll be here."

"Where will I be?"

She answered. "In my old body where the sensations of my past life will be very real to you. It is a memory. You can't see it in third person. You will be remembering it."

Obie hesitated, fear crawling down her neck in the form of hives. "These sensations...how bad can it get?"

"As bad as it is real. I can't change it. I'm not going to pull you out either. This is something you have to stick through."

"To understand why we are the way we are?"

"And how you came about. I don't understand why I am this way. Being born a certain way is beyond the comprehension of people."

Obie shook her head, feeling terrible about this. "Then, let's get this over with. Okay?"

She respected it. "Okay?"

The last "okay" seemed almost sympathetic.

Just almost.

"How-"

Suddenly, Golden Eyed Obie pushed the light sphere into her body. Obie's body bent backwards as she screamed out loud.

Where am I?

Golden Eyed Obie answered, You're in your father's lab.

Golden Eyed Obie was right; however the lab was not empty as it was when she discovered it with Logan. The countertops were decorated with scientific décor; drowned with written lab documents that were dangerously below the lab equipment. It was the ones seen on a television series or movie screen, where they had the microscope, balance scale, Benson burner and test tubes, beakers, graduated cylinders, and flasks with different, vibrant colored liquids. Some were bubbling and hissed of a menacing smoke that came out as a warning whistle.

It was then she saw her father reaching for the burner to turn it off as he rolled over with his elevated black stool. He had on his black scrubs, although a lab coat and a button down would have sufficed. She remembered he felt freer with scrubs as he felt restricted with a heavy white coat. His hair was concealed under a pale blue scrub cap as well as his black sneakers.

He had a pen hanging from his thick lips underneath his thick mustache and returned to the desk, while cleaning his hand with hand sanitizer. He rolled back over to his desk, further from the lab materials and placed his head into a folder of work.

Obie tried to get up to look at the documents, but she found her body locked onto a silver table. Her limbs were sealed onto the cold shiny board with only her fingers in movement. A clear IV bag was hanging above her head with normal saline while another medication dripped into the tube line that flowed into her body. She couldn't look up too much because her head was fastened with a leather strap. She could only see by straining her eyes, and that was hazy in itself.

If she had to guess, she was drugged up with anesthesia and waking up from it.

You're right, Golden Eyed Obie said.

What was he doing to me? Obie asked her.

She was sickened to the pit of her stomach.

He's operating.

On me?

You need to look. Do what I did and look as much as you can.

At who?

Him, she answered.

Obie's eyes hurt when she looked at him again.

Her father was in the process of turning on his laptop.

How old am I?

Too young.

I'm feeling sleepy.

Yes, I was. But I held on, so you will too, Golden Eyed Obie reassured.

Obie tried to concentrate as her old self once did. She watched her father fold his arms and watched a video load onto his screen. He was fiddling with the pen in his mouth and bouncing his leg strongly. Mumbling incoherent words to himself, he impatiently reloaded the video to try to quicken the upload.

"What am I missing?" She heard him say plainly.

The video started to play as her father sighed in relief, but cursed as he could not get the volume up.

Concentrate on the screen Obie.

She listened to her old self.

In the video, it showed an operating room with multiple medical staff surrounding one patient on the table. Within the closest space of the patient, it seemed the most essential personnel was present; the surgeon, the scrub nurses and others. If she had to guess the "others", they were familiar to her as she's seen her father, Osier and Uncle George in their full operating room wear. She could recognize them anywhere.

The patient was surrounded by a curtain as the surgeons worked in the middle. One of them was her father and Uncle George remained on standby by the patient's head.

With profound dizziness, Obie stared as the bloody tools bounced around the hands of surgeons. She thought it was strange to recognize it as all too familiar. The dance of surgery swayed amongst the group of medical handlers as one passed the tools, another sang the song, and others stood on the outer field, waiting to applaud.

Obie. Pay attention. Golden Eyed Obie said.

To what? She asked her.

Us.

Obie silently croaked in astonishment.

The disbelief rocking her mind back and forth within the shell of her hard skull as she stared piercingly at the screen. Out of the coven of shields that surrounded the patient's abdomen, a bloodied newborn arose within the doctor's hands like the product of great scientific victory; hummed by the approvals of the doctors' whispers, and their methodical declarations to the camera to use for future reference so they may recollect the event.

They noted the newborn baby did not cry but was breathing soundlessly. Those eyes widened with an impeccable silver shooting out of unusually large pupils that were outlined by thin golden irises. The gender was spoken loudly, evident by the female genitals between the babe's legs as the rest of her was analyzed in midair.

Her father murmured, admiring the event recorded. He spoke out loud to Obie, but not to her directly. "You were so small, Obie."

Obie did not know whether to feel sad or angry or confused, but what was certain was she felt like a lab experiment on this table as much as she was in this video.

It's called being numb, Golden Eyed Obie corrected.

This was nothing more than a C-section.

Abruptly, one of the nurses in retrieving the newborn knocked the table.

Obie silently gasped as her mother's hand fell out of the blanket and hung lifelessly over the floor. But it wasn't Michelle's. It was the hand of someone who did not look human as their hand was separated prominently between their thick digits with a long palm and long fingers except a small thumb which were tipped with fine tiny claws. Its arm was decorated with coarse dark brown hair which was wet against her light brown skin and bulging, inflamed yellow veins that pulsed in different shades of gold with tiny lines of red within the gilded passages.

What is that?

Our mother. Our real mother. Golden Eyed Obie answered.

No.

This was impossible.

"Preparing for the imprint." She heard Uncle George say in the video as the cameras followed the transfer of Newborn Obie to a connected operating room.

In the next operating room was the mother she's always known. Michelle Holloway was in a hospital bed, dressed as if she had just given birth as the newborn was positioned in her arms. She smiled brilliantly as Newborn Obie was pressed against her chest; skin to skin.

"Do the neonatal assessment while she's imprinting on Michelle." Her father, in the video, said to the surrounding nurses.

Uncle George grinned at her mother as she fed Obie, using an artificial breast latched on to her chest. "You look comfortable like this. Maybe you can stop torturing Osier and give him a child of your own."

Her mother scoffed in the video. "Being parents are not in the cards for us."

He nodded at Newborn Obie. "She's going to need a mother."

"We just need the imprint to last long enough that she can thrive before 1." Michelle caressed Obie's cheek. "Then, I'll withdraw myself from her."

"The separation wouldn't be detrimental?"

"We discussed this." She disapproved.

"Yeah, we did." Uncle George said wondrously but said excitingly. "We should take a picture, because today we made history."

"Here." In the video, her father assisted wrapping the newborn in a blanket and commented. "Brock and the rest of the team are too busy right now with the vessel to take a pic."

"Then, we'll take another later with them." Uncle George shrugged and asked a nurse beyond the camera screen. "Take our picture, Jackie?"

"There are other nurses to do the job, George. I'm documenting." A gentle voice, known as Jackie, responded

"But you take the best pictures." He complimented. "Just look at our Christmas party photos."

In annoyed tone, she said, "In a minute."

Her mother frowned. "Her eyes must change. Normalize it a bit."

Her father looked as well. "Interesting. We should leave her be."

Uncle George agreed with her mother. "We can alter her phenotype to change her outer appearance without altering any essential properties of her DNA as we did when she was in utero. When she gets older, we'll see how she develops and if her eyes shift."

"If anything her pupils will get smaller and iris will get bigger." Michelle peered around the bright yellow. "We can't hide her forever. So when she sees other people, they need to her as normal."

"We'll add a little green like yours. Brown mostly. Her silver pupils, I'm not sure how much we can change."

"You all are taking things too far." Her father shook his head. "Brock wouldn't want her to even touch the ground outside the facility."

"Would he rather want a satisfied child who had just enough experience of society or a rebel with unmeasurable abilities?"

"We don't know if she has these capabilities."

Uncle George challenged his uncertainty. "She's an exact replica of her mother with a completely changed phenotype. She'll have them. The mother's DNA we inserted into the chimpanzee models show they exist, but not to the full extent as we hoped, which is why needed to birth a copy of the mother in which those properties can fully exist. Look, she's not rejecting the breast milk."

"Which means?" Her mother asked.

Her father answered. "The chimpanzees showed indisputable cravings for fluid connective tissue-"

"-Blood-"Uncle George clarified for her mother.

"I wasn't told this?" She said in shock.

"We leave the psychiatry to you, Michelle. The rest is on us." Her father answered. "The newborn is accepting the breastmilk from her mother. Now, it could mean one or two or three things. She could have a normal Homo Sapiens appetite, or this appetite will resolve, and she will resume to requesting plasma or maybe both. We don't know."

"We have her whole life to find out." Uncle George said in fascination.

Her father looked down at the newborn babe and caressed the top of her full head of hair. "She's going to be extraordinary."

Jackie, the nurse, passed by and said out loud. "Ready for the picture?"

Abruptly, her father in the memory paused the video and began to rewind to the scene when they removed Newborn Obie from her real mother's abdomen.

Golden Eyed Obie said Obie, he's going to study some details now. He needs to know how to proceed with the operation through watching our birth.

Too numb to understand. Obie said back, I thought he wasn't operating.

Not on you. Do what I did. Look to the side.

I can't turn my head.

Use your eyes.

Obie strained her eyes. It was blurry and seemed almost impossible. Her neck cracked and stressed as her skin wore against her forehead strap. She tried her best to get as much as an angle as she could.

Her mind trembled, blown by the discovery of further betrayal and unimaginable horrors of scientific trialing. Beside her was a smaller, silver lab table. There laid her best friend in the entire world.

Baby Burrito's body was sprawled out. Her organs were displayed out in the open as she laid on her back. Her mouth was wide open, showing the repetition of smaller and bigger fangs in their own pattern according to her genetics. Her eyes were flat and cold as the table they laid against with just as much sharpness of death in her father's surgical tools. The lifelessness was further exemplified by the absence of vital signs, which should have been displayed brilliantly with numbers on the machine to tell the story of her physical state of living or dying.

She was neither.

Burrito was dead here.

She was dead when she wakes up as well.

I know you can't cry, because I wasn't able too. I didn't know who Burrito was at the time. She was simply a dead animal. Golden Eye Obie informed.

What is he doing to her?

The tubes.

Inserted into Burrito's inwards were lines of dark scarlet red tubes. As she watched, the paleness of Burrito's organs became lively and pink with the cast of a ruddy coloring.

You're about to go back to sleep.

I don't want to. I want to see what happens to Burrito.

You know what happens. She lives.

Obie was taken out of the memory and back into the forest graveyard of her past self.

Golden Eyed Obie stood above Obie, watching the grief-stricken girl breakdown.

Obie couldn't stop curling back as her abdomen clenched to vomit the little contents of her stomach. The automatic mechanism, triggered by the great stress and sadness of her death, had no means to end. Although, it failed in its attempts to release any digested foods through her esophagus and out her mouth. In its place, gas rounded up and moved throughout her digestive system like a silent nuisance and made Obie belch, continually. Eventually, her belching halted as what came out of her mouth was nothing, but whimpers. Whimpers that later progressed to inimitable screams of terrible anguish.

Golden Eyed Obie circled her, observing Obie as critically as the doctors who created them. "It's hard for me to understand what you're going through to this level. Betrayal can be immortalized through different entities of life, but it's our responses that gives it potency. To have grief engrained in the soul they have created has to be more catastrophic than what I have experienced. With betrayal, I evolved with the hopes of becoming what I am meant to be, not what they made. With betrayal, you are...very human."

She hated herself. Both of them.

She couldn't stop shaking as if her soul quaked to find a way out of its grief that manifested through her body.

"Our real mother is dead or in the hands of those doctors who are using her again. Either way, Michelle Holloway is not our mother. As far as I can tell, though a man's sperm is needed to reproduce with an egg cell, any one of those doctors could be our father. Even your Uncle George. Or none." Golden Eyed Obie reaffirmed the truths as Obie had dilemmas with the life that once belonged to her.

Obie dug her fingers into the earth as she listened, while the winds began to soar with her growing rage.

All this time she protected her parents and refused to kill them as they stalked her for three years on end.

How? If they weren't her parents.

"That is the ultimate question, is it not? The infected attaches themselves to their biological relatives. Osier may be our father and he follows us, but it does not explain Michelle." She squatted down. "There's more, Obie. Emotionally, this is probably the worst of it for you. But it's the beginning."

"H-how?" Obie croaked. "How can-how can I r-remember all of this. It's too much."

She sighed. "You will have no choice once I ascend."

Obie looked at her and snorted with a whimper. "What if I don't want to?"

"That's misery."

"No," She shook her head. "It's a choice."

"Not the choice you need." Golden Eyed Obie lifted her chin. "Obie, you're smart. We're smart. Something inside of you denied what you know to be true."

"That's a lie. I wouldn't have known my parents lied to me!" She yelled at her.

"Burrito." She said one word.

Obie looked away, traumatized by the images of her beloved.

"Opossums live for 2 to 4 years. Considering, Burrito is a fluffy Virginia opossum, she was meant to live for 4 years at most. She is well past that."

She rather swallow cotton balls than say it, but, "Burrito was dead."

"Yes."

"He brought her back to life. How-"

"Don't ask how. Just know."

Obie gave up on her knees and hung her head forward. "She was getting a blood transfusion."

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess where he was getting the blood from." Golden Eyed Obie admired. "That man defied nature beyond humanity."

"This...this is too much." Obie rubbed her face down till it hurt.

"They were never our family." She said. "Our real mother wasn't necessarily our family either if we're thinking by nurture."

Obie remained silent.

"Do you want to know why I killed those women and why I have no problem killing anyone for that matter?"

"I don't want to know." She murmured.

"I want you to know this." Golden Eyed Obie said.

"You said I will know either way."

She picked Obie's head up again and forced her to stare into those dangerous orbs. "You have to, now. Then, you will understand. I won't be the monster you secretly despise, but a monster you'd want to become."

Obie touched her hand, softly. "I will never want to become you."

"You will." She clasped her digits around Obie's with perfected tension to warn her but not hurt her. "You're not ready."

Obie tried pull back.

"But I don't care."

She screamed as she was pulled back into another memory.

Another nightmare.

A/N: Double Update. Chapter 63 & Chapter 64. Refresh when you can to get to chapter 64 if you don't see it. 

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