An airplane flew by overhead as Justin and Allison neared the deep swamplands of Louisiana. A trail of red smoke poured from the wings and Justin muttered a series of expletives before closing the car vents. He never accepted the new world in which they lived. He hated everything about it yet refused to grow old and leave it behind. He feared death. Seizing to exist, nothingness, lights out–the concept terrified him, but Allison didn’t want to live forever. She turned her back on immortality, and Justin, afraid to go on without her, followed suit. But now, he thought, she’s back in the game. Her request surprised him in a way, but he also saw it coming. Misery loved company, and if one addict relapsed, the other would likely follow. Cross-legged and reluctant to speak, Allison surveyed the sudden smoothness of her hands but Justin knew better than to call her out. She admired herself in the passenger-side mirror, running her fingers across her full lips and gently tapping the bottom of her chin. Justin didn’t dare call her out, but he knew the supply would soon need replenishing.

Justin and Allison began taking their injections when they approached their mid-forties. After fleeing Shady Oak, they retained a civil relationship with Vincent, who gave them a six-month supply of the elixir each time they visited. Allison believed his generosity through the years was just a way to keep them under his thumb, maintain his leverage, but Justin disagreed. Vincent isn’t all bad, he thought, just misled. His old friend had always fought against the powers that be, but he lost something in Egypt. When he set out to know his enemy, he lost his way and became his enemy. Allison would disagree, but that’s how Justin saw it.

Dr. Faraday and his team of scientists had made a deal with Vincent–they enjoyed their share of the elixir and Vincent was granted a reprieve. His life was temporarily spared but Dr. Faraday added one more stipulation to the deal, one that Vincent had no problem respecting, both parties agreed the elixir must remain a well-kept secret. They believed that introducing the medicine to the general public would produce disastrous results. Over-population, food shortages, water shortages, carbon footprints, cigarette butts, Styrofoam boxes, baby diapers, fast food trash, sewage waste, human waste–the last thing they wanted was for people to live longer. Back then, Justin had felt the same way, but nowadays he saw through the green lining, he recognized the earth-friendly rhetoric as nothing more than a self-serving agenda. The Faradays considered themselves superior, a pure bloodline, and they intended on expanding their reach.

Before the bottom fell out and The Council of Six took over, Dr. Faraday already began making preparations. He despised the general population, useless eaters he called them, who needed to be reined in and weeded out. Dr. Faraday believed that a population reduction would save the earth and advance the human race, an idea shared by many of his high society dignitaries, but they agreed it must be done incrementally. Justin recalled hearing about the agenda during his college years at one of the private seminars. His father stood at the podium discussing their plans to sterilize the population through the food and water supply, as well as through vaccinations. Justin stormed out of the seminar disgusted by his father, but he never truly believed they’d go through with it, until recently. He watched the airplane dip and circle back around while avoiding its own red vapor trail–he lost his breath at the lateness of the hour. The useless eaters had long been reined in and phase two loomed just around the corner.

Reduce the population and replace them with an advanced race, a superior race–that was the plan, but Dr. Faraday and his team of scientists faced competition. Vincent, the rogue scientist, implemented a counter-movement harnessing his own legacy, his own superior race. Justin wasn’t sure how many designer babies had been created, but he knew there were others, born off the production line and bred by either the Faradays or Vincent; each new generation brought both teams closer to the ultimate goal. As technology advanced, the need for a woman to carry the superior children for nine months gave way to artificial wombs, eliminating the need for a mother. It seemed insane to Justin that Gabriel and Paige survived their births, but Vincent lost numerous specimens before bringing them to full-term. They were his first successful prototypes, the perfect mix between Michael and Ashley, created from one of Regan’s donor eggs and incubated in the same artificial womb.

Justin and Allison prepared in advance for their new baby girl. Vincent’s paranoia reached new heights after creating Gabriel and Paige, his two masterpieces that he claimed would spark vengeful jealousy in the heart of the Faraday camp. He feared for the safety of his newest creations, insisting that Justin and Allison take the female and change their last name to protect her identity. Justin knew his father would eventually find out, but he welcomed the name change, something he’d wanted to do since his college years. When the newly named Mr. and Mrs. Holland arrived to take Paige, Justin remembered seeing tears in Vincent’s eyes. He remembered thinking at the time, that just maybe, his old friend was coming back around, but his father’s newest discovery derailed Vincent’s recovery. Dr. Faraday and his team of scientists had successfully broken another code. They too, discovered the fountain of youth.

The news infuriated Vincent, who, once again, feared for his life. He warned Justin and Allison that the Faradays might be coming for Paige, but they took Gabriel instead. Unannounced and frantic, Vincent arrived in the middle of the night and begged for Justin to intervene, dey gonna kill him, Justin, dey gonna kill my baby boy! He screamed and pounded on their backdoor until Justin let him inside and reluctantly called Dr. Faraday. Ten years had passed since he last spoke to his father and the sound of his smug voice enraged him. That arrogant, stiff-lipped voice, he thought, cringing behind the wheel. The conversation lasted less than five minutes as Dr. Faraday explained the terms and consequences for Justin to relay. Vincent took the news with a silent nod, kissed Paige on the forehead and sauntered out the backdoor, tipping his hat and lighting a cigar before peeling out of the drive. Gabriel, four months old at the time, was returned unharmed and Vincent honored his end of the bargain. Forced into retirement, his days of creating the perfect race were temporarily shelved, but he set to work on an unfinished project, one he began working on when Valley died. After handing Gabriel over to Michael and Ashley, he became a recluse, locked away in his laboratory determined to resurrect his legacy. The Faradays might have regained their leverage, but Vincent’s new and improved elixir would re-solidify his glory eighteen years later.

By the time Paige turned three, Justin and Allison were making bi-annual trips to Shady Oak. Although his old friend never showed face during those visits, Justin suspected he watched from behind the curtains, supervising while one of his servants delivered the medicine and sent them on their way. Fifteen years would pass before he saw Vincent again, when Gabriel died and Paige disappeared, his old friend arrived on their doorstep with quite the story to tell.

Their relationship with Ashley at the time was strained at best, still is, Justin thought, but they remained close to Billy Boy. He spent most weekends with his parents helping out around the house or babysitting Paige, but Allison grew increasingly paranoid as the years passed. By the time Paige celebrated her seventh birthday, Allison thought it best that Paige not know about her unique heritage, and Billy, though hurt and reluctant to let go, stepped out of the picture. Justin had sided with his wife at the time, but time is subject to change, time threw him for a loop and spit him out at the starting line. History is repeating itself, he thought, driving fifteen miles over the speed limit. Instinct told him to expect the same results.

They wanted Paige to enjoy a normal life. By playing the role of typical straight-laced parents, they hoped that Paige might escape the perils that afflicted the Doucet children along with their youngest son. Justin knew it’d been the wrong thing to do, and his relationship with Billy never fully recovered, but back in those days he perfected the craft of turning a blind eye. He knew his daughter struggled with her unique talents, but they discouraged her from using them. They wanted to suppress her talents and sweep the past under the rug, but after a family trip to New Orleans, the inevitable happened–Paige discovered the truth.

She’d been fifteen at the time. Left alone in the hotel room, a teen heartthrob tracked her down, knocked on the door and exposed all those secrets they’d spent years trying to erase. The floodgates were opened, and Paige spilled through the breach kicking and screaming and vowing to disown her parents. Justin couldn’t blame her. She had every reason to resent us, he thought. After they returned home from their vacation, Paige snuck out of the house, boarded a bus to New Orleans and embarked on a search for her estranged family. Michael drove her home the next day but Paige kicked and screamed and vowed to run away again. Boarding school had been Allison’s idea. Justin agreed their options were limited, but he worried about letting Paige out of their sight, then again, she’d grown out of control.

Paige and Gabriel became inseparable. She snuck out of the house almost every night to meet him and her unique talents were no match for her parents. Gabriel taught her how to manipulate thoughts, read minds and move things by thought alone. He latched on to Paige and awakened her true potential, but it was more than that, Justin thought. Gabriel turned her against them and persuaded her to run away. He told her she belonged with him and his family, that he needed her, that he wasn’t complete without her, and Paige became equally obsessed with him. Boarding school had been a gamble. Justin feared the inevitable phone call, the one informing them that Paige went missing, but it never came. She toughed it out until graduation and then returned home and stayed for almost a year. She claimed she hadn’t been in contact with Gabriel but Justin knew she’d been lying, and come mid-October, his suspicions were confirmed. He and Allison awoke one morning to a note by the coffee pot that read, gone to New Orleans to be with my own kind. A week later, Gabriel died and Paige vanished.

Justin drove with a heavy conscience. The Shady Oak Sugarcane Plantation waited about two hours down the road as he accelerated across an endless single-lane bridge. He thanked his wife for the coffee and stretched out his arms on the steering wheel as the swampland closed in around them on all four sides. Covered in red moss, the vast gray landscape possessed immunity from the changing world. He admired the swampland, adaptable and fearless, the swamp devoured environmental nuisances like trash, acid rain or red moss–the swamp thrived off death and decay. Justin hadn’t seen Vincent since Gabriel died twenty-seven years ago; it’d been even longer since he last spoke to his father. Dr. Faraday, along with a handful of scientists, resided on the Council of Six—all but one descended from the Faraday bloodline. The lateness of the hour terrified Justin. The world deteriorated as The Council supplied false solutions that only exacerbated the sick environment. From the oceans, to the lakes, to the birds, to the bees, to all humanity, the earth died a slow death, but the swamps, the swamps adapted and thrived.

Justin wasn’t consumed by hypocrisy but he detested his reflection in the mirror. Guilt could drive a well-adjusted man to the brink of suicide, but the persistence of time offered a slow death, corrosive and all-consuming. Cheating old age was supposed to have been a thing of the past, but he wanted to see things through, watch the saga unfold and come out on the other side–a persistent adversary to his own corrupt lineage. Most of all, he wanted to take his family and run for hills.

The rhythm of the bridge gave way to smooth pavement as he picked up speed and traveled deeper into the swap. He reminded himself that Billy Boy would never let anything bad happen to Paige, but taking her to Shady Oak desecrated the radar.