chapter 2

JOURNAL ENTRY FOUR

Date: June 15th, Year Zero
Location: Mendel Research Institute

My sister was itted today.

Sarah. Thirty-one years old. Corporate attorney. The smartest person I've ever known—smarter than me, certainly, though she'd never say it. She argued cases before the Supreme Court. She read four languages fluently. She was supposed to be immune—she was supposed to be safe.

I went to see her in the observation ward. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall, her usually sharp eyes dull and unfocused. When she saw me, she smiled—but it took her a moment to place my face.

"Eleanor," she said slowly. "You're Eleanor. My sister."

"That's right, Sarah. How are you feeling?"

"Stupid," she said, and her voice cracked. "I feel so stupid, Ellie. I tried to read a contract yesterday and I couldn't... the words didn't make sense. I've read thousands of contracts. And now..."

She started to cry. I sat beside her and held her hand, feeling the tremor in her fingers.

"It's okay," I lied. "We're working on a treatment. We're going to figure this out."

"I know what the treatment is." Sarah's voice dropped. She leaned close, and I smelled something different about her—a muskiness I'd noticed in other subjects. A change in pheromones, perhaps. "I know what they've been giving the other women. I've heard them talking. The nurses. They say it helps."

"Sarah—"

"Find me a man, Ellie." Her grip on my hand tightened. "Please. Just for a little while. I need... I need to think clearly again. I need to feel like myself."

I should have refused. I should have maintained professional distance, protected my objectivity, preserved the integrity of my research.

Instead, I called in a favor with one of the male orderlies.

I watched through the observation window as my sister—the brilliant, formidable Sarah Vance—knelt before a man half her intellectual equal and worshipped him with **** gratitude. I watched her swallow what he gave her, watched the fog lift from her eyes, watched her sit up straighter and speak with sudden clarity.

"Thank you," she told him, and she meant it. "Oh god, thank you."

When she saw me afterward, she took my hands in hers.

"It's not just the clarity," she told me quietly. "It's the way it makes me feel. Like I'm fulfilling some... some purpose. Like this is what I was always supposed to do." She paused, and her eyes—clear now, intelligent, but somehow different—met mine. "Does that make me a monster, Ellie? Because I don't feel like one. I feel like I finally understand something I was missing my whole life."

I didn't have an answer for her.

I still don't.

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JOURNAL ENTRY FIVE

Date: August 3rd, Year Zero
Location: Mendel Research Institute

The decline is accelerating.

Sarah has been with us for seven weeks now. In that time, I've watched her IQ drop from 156 to 89. She can no longer read complex texts. She struggles with basic arithmetic. Her vocabulary has simplified dramatically.

But she's happier than I've ever seen her.

The transformation is almost complete. Sarah spends her days in the common area with other female subjects, talking and laughing in simple sentences, their conversations revolving around food, comfort, and—always—the men. The male staff have become the center of their world. They light up when a man enters the room. They compete for male attention with a subtle but unmistakable intensity.

I watched Sarah flirt with Dr. Harmon yesterday. She batted her eyelashes. She twirled her hair. She giggled at his jokes—jokes she would have eviscerated with her wit three months ago.

And when he took her aside for a "private consultation," she went eagerly. Gratefully.

I know what happened in that room. I've learned not to knock during private consultations.

Afterward, Sarah found me in the break room. She was glowing—literally glowing, her skin flushed, her eyes bright.

"Ellie," she said, and her voice had a dreamy quality I recognized from other late-stage subjects. "Dr. Harmon says I'm making excellent progress. He says I might be ready for the transition program soon."

"What's the transition program?"

She blinked, struggling to focus. "It's where they help us... find our place. Match us with men who need us. Men who'll take care of us." She smiled, and it was a sweet smile—a simple smile. "Doesn't that sound nice? I won't have to worry about anything anymore. No more contracts. No more court cases. Just... being taken care of."

"Sarah, you were one of the top attorneys in the country."

"I know." She nodded slowly, as if recalling a distant memory. "I being her. But she was always so stressed, you know? Always so worried about everything. I don't worry anymore. I don't have to think so hard." She touched my arm. "You should try it, Ellie. You think too much. It's better this way. Everything is simple now."

I looked at my sister—at what remained of her—and felt something cold settle in my chest.

She was gone. The woman who had argued before the Supreme Court, who had read Dostoevsky in the original Russian, who had debated me for hours on constitutional law—that woman was gone. In her place was someone simpler. Someone happier. Someone whose entire world now revolved around pleasing men and being pleased in return.

The worst part? She didn't seem to mind. She didn't seem to miss who she'd been.

She seemed relieved.

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JOURNAL ENTRY SIX

Date: October 19th, Year Zero
Location: Mendel Research Institute

I've made a breakthrough. A terrible, terrible breakthrough.

The blood samples I've been analyzing—the ones I've been hiding from Dr. Harmon—finally yielded results. There's a compound present in affected women that shouldn't exist. It's not a virus. It's not a bacterium. It's something new. Something synthetic.

This wasn't natural. This was created.

I traced the molecular structure back through chemical databases. It matches a compound developed by a pharmaceutical company—GeneSys Labs—twelve years ago. The project was supposedly discontinued. The research sealed.

But the compound is here. In these women. In my sister. In thousands of women across the world.

I broke into GeneSys's archived files last night. What I found made me sick.

Project Lilith. A "behavioral modification protocol" designed to address the "problem" of female career focus. The documents talked about "restoring natural gender dynamics" and "alleviating the stress of modern womanhood." They described the compound's effects in clinical : reduced cognitive capacity, increased suggestibility, heightened sexual responsiveness, and—most importantly—an instinctive drive to seek out and consume male genetic material.

The documents talked about it as a solution. As if women's intelligence was a problem to be solved.

Someone released this. Someone did this on purpose.

I need to tell someone. I need to expose this. But I don't know who to trust. Dr. Harmon has been revising our reports. The government has classified all research. The official narrative is that this is a natural mutation—a mysterious virus.

They're lying. They're covering up the truth.

And I think they're winning.