Sirius Zero: Building A Corporate Kingdom After Being Expelled

Chapter 167: A breakdown and Revelations

"What happened?" asked Edward, as Ruth entered the living room with Mikaela.

"Got suspended for a week for standing up for myself," said Mikaela, flopping down on the couch.

Edward raised an eyebrow at Ruth, who gave him the full explanation.

"I see, well then. I’ll go get the spare room ready," he said, leaving Mikaela to unwind on the couch.

"I have to get back to the office to set up a meeting with Ivan and Stefan, OK?" said Ruth.

"Sure. I’ll be fine," said Mikaela.

Ruth gave her a warm hug, before she turned and left.

"OK, Mikaela. Everything is ready," said Edward coming back down into the living room.

"Thanks, Captain Hawkins," said Mikaela, getting up from the couch.

She went up the stairs, and into the spare bedroom that she used to stash her things.

Locking the door, she pulled off her hoodie, to reveal the formal stealth-corset blouse she was wearing underneath.

She gave her sleeve a tentative sniff, checking if it smelled of sweat.

Satisfied that it was not smelling, she went into the en-suite bathroom and quickly washed her face.

Feeling much better about herself, Mikaela went back down into the living room.

Her phone buzzed, and she opened it to reveal a text from Annette.

She deleted the text without reading it, as Edward set a cup of tea and some cake down in front of her.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"Yeah, thanks, Captain Hawkins," she said, taking a small sip of tea.

"Well, your mom is back now," said Edward nodding at the living room window where they could see Annette’s Hyundai Ioniq 5 pulling up to the house across the street.

"Meh, I’ll get my stuff once Ms. Hirschfield is back," said Mikaela.

The doorbell rang.

"I don’t want to see her, or listen. Call me when she leaves," said Mikaela, rising to go to the spare bedroom.

"OK," said Edward, steeling himself.

---

"I want to explain myself," said Annette, as Edward opened the front door.

"I don’t really think you can, Annette. Mikaela’s pretty upset," said Edward, letting her inside.

"Look. I know that what happened was unfair, but Mikaela had no right to violate another girl’s modesty like that!" said Annette.

"This ain’t about that! This is about you, not being in that office with her!" shot back Edward.

"Maria is her homeroom teacher at school! Mikaela is her responsibility, and Ester is my responsibility! And don’t think I haven’t forgotten what Mikaela herself said! At school, we are not mother and daughter! So she doesn’t get to complain!" shouted Annette.

"Oh yeah? You’re supposed to be the damn adult in this situation and not use a fifth-grader’s own emotional immaturity against her! Bottom line Annette, your daughter saw you hugging the girl responsible for getting her suspended for a week! There ain’t any way you can explain around that!" snarled Edward.

"What was I supposed to do? Not try to comfort a traumatized student?" asked Annette.

"What did that girl get anyway for tryin’ to bully Mikaela?" asked Edward.

"Nothing, Principal Randall said that her trauma was severe enough without additional disciplinary action," said Annette.

"Jesus Christ! This twisted logic is giving me a headache! All right. I’m telling you this just once. If you don’t get your ass back to the school and fight tooth and nail to get Mikaela’s suspension dropped, you’re losing her," said Edward.

"I can’t do that! She has to face consequences!" snarled Annette.

"In that case, so do you. Now get the hell out of my house, before I throw you out," said Edward, his eyes blazing in fury, and his fists clenched.

Annette shuddered at his tone, and scurried out of the living room.

---

"Daddy!" squealed Mikaela, running into Ivan’s arms as Ivan walked through Edward’s door.

"Hey, Princess. I’ve got everything prepped. We leave tonight," said Ivan, hugging Mikaela.

"We do?" asked Mikaela, scarcely believing her ears.

"Yes. I held back on this thinking that your mom has your back, and even when she was being harsh, it was out of a place of love and wanting you to be good. This little incident proves otherwise. You’re coming with me," said Ivan grimly, as Mikaela vibrated with excitement.

"By the way, I bought this new blouse, you like it?" asked Mikaela twirling around to show off her blouse.

"Oh yes I do. Money well spent. Now sit tight here, I’m going across the street to get your stuff," said Ivan.

"No. I’m coming with you. I think I can handle seeing Mom," said Mikaela.

"Are you sure?" asked Ivan.

"Yes, I’m sure," said Mikaela, pulling a hoodie over her blouse to hide it from Annette.

"Ok," said Ivan, leading her to the house.

---

"Seriously? All this over a damn one-week suspension?" asked Annette, her hands shaking as she held the paperwork Stefan had given her.

"You’ve had this coming, Annette. Everyone, from me to your own damn therapist had warned you repeatedly to clean up your act, and you still pull stunts like what you did today," said Stefan.

"What are you saying? That this is all my fault for Mikaela traumatizing a girl in retaliation?" screamed Annette.

"What I’m saying, and what everyone has being saying, is that you should treat Mikaela like a daughter instead of a bad student!" thundered Stefan, as Ivan and Mikaela walked into the living room.

"Look. I’m going to school tomorrow to get the suspension against Mikaela lifted. Yes, I was upset by what happened, but even I know that it was unfair. There’s really no need for this," said Annette, a tremble in her voice.

"You can do that and come back to collect Mikaela once it is done, and that’s if Mikaela herself decides she wants to come back," said Stefan.

Annette sprang to her feet and flung the papers down.

"You threaten to take Mikaela away from me, and now ask me to beg for the privilege to be her mother? How dare you?!" she screamed, and ran to the kitchen.

She seized a kitchen knife and held it to her throat.

"If I’ve been a bad Mom, then I don’t deserve to live! Go ahead! Take her! Take her and let me die!" she screamed.

Mikaela, stared in shock at Annette, her hands trembling.

Ivan quickly closed the distance between him and Annette.

"Stay back!" screamed Annette, breaking the skin on her neck with the knife blade.

Ivan reached her, and with a quick movement, seized her wrist, and twisted the knife out of her hand.

"Don’t ever try to pull that stunt again!" snarled Ivan, keeping a firm grip on Annette’s wrist.

Stefan quickly pulled a shocked Mikaela towards him and shielded her face, as Annette bit into Ivan’s hand and started to violently claw and fight against him.

The front door burst open, and Officer’s Camille Vasquez and Michelle Martinez who had been stationed outside just in case, quickly pulled Annette away from Ivan, and wrestled her into handcuffs.

"Let me go! I wanna die!" screamed Annette, trying and failing to grab either of their side-arms.

Camille quickly pulled out a first-aid kit from one of her utility pouches, loaded up a sedative syringe and injected it into Annette’s bleeding neck.

Annette quickly went limp, and slumped unconscious.

"Central this is unit 256, we need a bus at 114 Pine Springs," said Michelle into her radio.

Ivan staggered onto a couch in the living room, clutching at his bleeding hand where Annette had bitten him.

"Are you all right Princess?" he asked, as Mikaela poked her head out from behind Stefan.

"I-it’s OK, Daddy. I-I’ll stay with Mom," sniffled Mikaela.

"Hey, don’t worry," said Ivan, but Mikaela vigorously shook her head.

"I don’t want Mommy to die. I’ll stay with her, it’s OK," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I’ll not force you to do anything, Princess. We’ll talk about it after everyone has calmed down, OK?" said Ivan, giving Mikaela a warm hug.

"Professor Zakhrov, I’m afraid you and Mikaela will have to come to the hospital as well," said Camille.

"OK, we’ll come," said Ivan, allowing Camille to bandage his bleeding hand.

---

Annette awoke slowly in a hospital bed.

She realized that her hands and feet were strapped to the bed, and the walls were thick and padded.

The door opened, and Natsumi entered with a clipboard and pen.

"What is your name?" asked Natsumi,

"H-hey Doc? Why am I strapped like this?" asked Annette hoarsely.

"Your name please," pressed Natsumi.

"Annette Petra. Seriously Doc, I don’t have amnesia," said Annette with a bite of impatience.

"Age and occupation?" asked Natsumi, ignoring the rest of what Annette had said, and just writing on the clipboard.

"Ugh! Fine! I’m 47 years old, I teach English at Boston Public School! Can you take these off please?" growled Annette, struggling in her shackles.

"Family members or next of kin?" asked Natsumi, still taking notes.

"One brat daughter, one asshole ex-husband, and one disowned son!" snapped Annette.

"Last thing you ate?" asked Natsumi.

"Vegan pasta!" snapped Annette.

"Wrong, try again, think and tell me what you really tried to eat last night," said Natsumi.

"What the hell are you talking about Doc?" snarled Annette.

"Patient, has no recollection, sedation and further observation recommended," said Natsumi, scribbling on her clipboard.

"Hey! I remember just fine! I had vegan pasta, and then my ex-husband and his shark lawyer tried to take Mikaela away from me over some school claptrap!" snarled Annette.

"So you remember that, do you? Well, given how you acted, those restraints are not coming off. I’d rather not have you snack on my hand," said Natsumi.

"OK, seriously what’s with that!" shouted Annette.

"Hmm, so you don’t remember switching from vegan to cannibal and trying to bite Ivan’s hand clean off. Interesting," said Natsumi.

"Don’t piss me off, Doc! It’s bad enough that I’m stuck in this bed!" snarled Annette, struggling against her restraints.

"And with good reason! Threatening suicide, biting and clawing, traumatizing Mikaela, I’m tempted to have you committed!" snapped Natsumi.

Annette took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.

"There’s no need for that. I did what any mother would do when threatened so," she said.

"If you are admitting that you intentionally traumatized Mikaela to get her to stay with you, that only makes it worse," sighed Natsumi.

"No! Things just got out of hand! I was angry and scared! And for a terrifying moment I did want to end things there!" screamed Annette.

"I see. Well, this is still a pretty big mess. Look, I’m keeping you here for observation for at least another 24 hours, while I come up with therapy plan to deal with your fear of abandonment issues," said Natsumi, and left the room.

---

"Final pieces of the puzzle!" crowed Alexandria, as she observed the test results from the samples of Mikaela’s and Annette’s blood.

"Final pieces?" asked Kavitha.

"Yes. Those inactive sequences? They’re alive and firing in Annette’s sample. I’ve figured out what they are doing. They neutralize a genetic anomaly in Annette’s baseline genetics, one that points to a low cognitive intelligence potential," said Alexandria.

"Are you able to find out how much of a neutralization effect that has? I mean, Annette’s pretty unstable from what just happened. If this genome does that to people, then this can be pretty dangerous," said Kavitha.

"No, Annette’s psyche isn’t affected by the genome. All that this does is raise a previously suppressed potential. Hers is the only sample that shows this so far," said Alexandria.

"OK, but still, by how much? I’m guessing this stuff was there on purpose. This genome is too perfectly engineered to have something like that come bout by accident," said Kavitha.

"Without a sample that exhibits a similar anomaly, I’m just guessing. But if we assume that the neutralization effect is supposed to be the baseline, then this thing is designed to boost it by about 30%," said Alexandria.

"In other words, Annette was supposed to have cognitive intelligence of 30% below average, making her basically a moron, and this has brought it up to average?" asked Kavitha.

"Potentially. Environment, education and nutrition affect cognitive abilities far more than base genetics. What this does is make those things a little easier, but if you don’t give somebody the proper education and free-thinking environment, there isn’t much this can do," said Alexandria.

"I see, what about Mikaela’s sample?" asked Kavitha.

"That one is basically identical to what we’ve seen with Natasha’s sample. She isn’t a functional clone like Aaron, even if she is a designer baby, all things considered, her results look almost normal compared to the shockers that were Ivan’s and Aaron’s samples," said Alexandria.

"So..." said Kavitha slowly.

"So, this genome is perfectly safe to transmit, and even use as gene therapy. We’re sitting on a serum that will make the human race permanently youthful, fertile to death, and with potentially a higher cognitive floor," said Alexandria.

"Ugh! And here I was hoping against hope for an excuse to not go ham on this," grumbled Kavitha.

"Our sample size is still small, and there is no way we can do any clinical trials except lab DNA sample interactions," pointed out Alexandria.

"OK, let’s get this report to Aaron," sighed Kavitha.