Tracey H. Kitts - Lilith Mercury 1 - Red Read Online Free PDF Page A

I entered the kitchen, I found Alfred standing at the counter. Without asking he took out my favorite mug and poured me some coffee. He turned around, handed me the deep purple mug, and sat down. Feeling awkward after the way I had spoken to him, I sat down, not knowing what to say.
    “Alfred—”

    “Don’t,” he interrupted. “Just don’t. You can’t kill someone for self defense.
    Let’s not argue over this. There are bigger issues.”
    “Such
    as?”

    “Such as, Elijah’s right. These so called animal attacks are getting harder to pass off as truth. People have seen things they can’t explain … they’re just not buying it anymore.”

    “You were serious today when you suggested making … what, some sort of public statement?”

    “I don’t know if I’d go that far, but something needs to be done. It’s not just political extremists we’re dealing with. There are innocent people at stake.” He waved his hand absently toward me. “You saw that yourself … people are being infected at a RED
    Tracey H. Kitts
    18
    growing rate and the fact is … they’re not the bad guys, just because they’re lycanthropes.”

    “You’re right. I’ve thought so for years now.” I took a sip of my coffee, relieved he wasn’t going to yell at me, but I wasn’t entirely sure I preferred this conversation to being yelled at. “A lot of the people that escaped to this planet in the first place were innocent. It wasn’t their fault the city they lived in was a target area.”

    “To the first Hunter, that didn’t matter, though.”

    “So I’ve heard, but we’re all over now. Why did they send just one? In the beginning, I mean. That just doesn’t make much sense to me.”

    He sighed. “It wasn’t supposed to be this big of a problem … they thought he could handle it.”

    “What made them think one man could handle a viral outbreak that turns people into wolves? Who did he think he was, God?”

    Alfred laughed, but he didn’t really sound amused. “No, but the guy who messed with his DNA did.”

    “What do you mean, ‘messed’ with?”

    Alfred told me what he knew about the first Hunter sent to Earth. His name has long since been erased from the record books, but his story is legend. He was part of the original group of Hunters formed to control the virus on planet Terra. Shortly after the first year of infection, his family was killed by werewolves. All of them. This was around the time people were escaping to Earth in order to avoid execution. He volunteered to be part of an experiment to become the ‘ultimate hunter’, a weapon against the werewolves.

    He was injected with a synthetic twenty fourth pair of chromosomes. These chromosomes would, in theory, make him super human. He would have superior night vision in order to hunt more effectively at night, when most of the werewolves were active. His strength would rival that of the monsters themselves. This individual was also rumored to have been blessed with many psychic abilities, as well as descended from wizards.

    The Terran people naturally age slower than people on Earth. Telomeres, the ends of chromosomes, are known as the ‘molecular clock’ of the cell. Cell division is directly affected by telomere length. After each cell division, telomeres get shorter. To explain the significance of this as quickly as possible, the Terran people have exceptionally long telomeres. This slows the aging process significantly. As an unexpected side effect of the introduction of the twenty fourth chromosome pair into his system, this ‘super hunter’, had his aging process slowed even further, with the potential to even outlive wizards, whose life spans are close to one thousand years.

    “You never know how much to believe,” Alfred finished.

    “Whatever happened to him? Was he killed?”

    “Killed? No. He just disappeared … somewhere around the middle ages, I believe. Heard he lost his mind.”

    “Was that a side effect also?