One too-short nap later, we pulled up at the end of a gravel driveway in front of a nondescript concrete building nestled in bushland. I dragged myself all the way out of my snooze and looked around. There were no signs anywhere.


‘Welcome to Darkhaven,’ Stephen said, relief melting the furrows in his forehead. I pushed open my door. Before I could move, Savah leapt across my lap, dashing around the side of the building.


The windowless, single storey structure stretched back into a forest of eucalypts, banksias and khaki-coloured native shrubs. Donovan led us up wide, concrete steps, slapped a key card against a panel next to the heavy door and strode through, vanishing into the cool gloom. Still wrapped in the blanket, I followed Stephen down a long corridor punctuated by unmarked doors, my footsteps muffled in the pervasive silence, questions loud in my head.


Stephen showed me into a room that was a study in stainless steel, from the bench lining two of the walls to the deep sink to the multitude of cupboards. A table and chairs broke up the tiles in the middle of the space and a blue sofa crouched beside the door. At Stephen’s gesture, I sat on the rigid cushions.


Stephen pulled out a chair, clacking it across the tiles, and sat facing me. His gaze was intense – eyes the same grey as mine – but his voice was reassuring when he spoke. ‘I’m sorry we had to bring you in like that. You must have many questions.’


Questions tangled like spaghetti. I didn’t know where to start. I looked around and blurted the first thing that came to mind. ‘Is the whole place like this? All steel and grey?’


Stephen chuckled. ‘Not all of it. There are even some windows on the eastern side.’ He sobered. ‘How are you feeling, Gabby?’


My head ached. My eyelids felt like I’d spent the day on a windy beach, my body was heavy like I was still stuck in a nightmare and my brain felt like it was churning through thickened cream.


I shrugged. ‘Fine.’


‘I’m sorry,’ Stephen said, sounding genuinely apologetic. ‘But we don’t have a lot of time and –’


An idea formed in the cream and I cut him off. ‘Is this all about the lightning strike? Something happened, but I’m good. I mean, I feel crap, but I shouldn’t even be walking around, right? Then I’m kidnapped, and now…’ I gestured around the room. ‘Why am I here? How am I still alive?’


Stephen’s forehead creased as he steepled his fingers, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘You’re here because you have a choice. And you’re right. Lightning does more than people think it does, and humans have more potential than they know. So when lightning strikes, well, most people will be affected as you’d expect, but you are different.’


I raised my eyebrows at him. Before I could ask for more, the door banged open and Donovan charged in, a handful of papers in one hand and a soft bag in the other. She tossed the bag at me, then busied herself at the bench, extracting cups and a French press from various cupboards. I peered in the bag to find some clothes and a towel as the smell of coffee wafted through the room.


‘Thanks,’ I said, setting the bag aside. My eyes tracked Donovan’s fluid movements before I turned back to Stephen, another question pushing to the front of my brain. Impossible things had happened. I had to ask. ‘Um. So. Question.’


Stephen waited, expression open.


I swallowed. ‘Donovan was run over by a car … how is she walking around?’


‘Perceptive,’ Donovan remarked.


Stephen shot her a reproachful look. ‘Yes. That will probably increase.’ He turned back to me. ’Have you heard of turritopsis dohrnii? It’s a biologically immortal jellyfish –′


Donovan interrupted. ’She hasn’t heard of turritopsis dohrnii.′ She slapped the papers on the table and pulled out a chair, scraping it across the floor. My eardrums throbbed. Some rubber feet on the furniture would not go amiss. And actually, I had heard of the regenerating jellyfish, and I was pretty sure it didn’t just instantly repair itself if it got squashed by a truck. I opened my mouth to say so, but Donovan pulled her paperwork towards her, slurped at her coffee and stared me down. ‘Humans have the potential to regenerate. Rapidly. And do a lot more. The Netica Project developed a virus that programs the right genes but doesn’t switch them on, so to speak, until it’s activated. The virus is called the Praegressus program. Lightning is the trigger.’


She opened a file and began reading; apparently that was all I was going to get. It sounded crazy, but somehow, it sounded true. Part of me was still waiting for reality to reassemble, the magic to fall apart at the wrong word or query. Like wanting something in a dream, only to wake as soon as I had it.


‘So you were injured,’ I said tentatively. ‘And you recovered – regenerated – in a few minutes?’


Donovan didn’t look up. ‘Seconds, for gashes and scrapes. A minute for internal bleeding. Broken ribs…’ She rubbed her side. ‘They still hurt. Bones take longer.’

I looked at Stephen. He regarded me warily, like I might self-combust. My curiosity bubbled. ‘Rapid regeneration. Does that make you, like, unkillable?’


He nodded. ‘Plus our telomeres don’t shorten as quickly, so we don’t age normally. We’re not entirely sure how that will go over time.’ A strange smile played over his face, like he was sharing a private joke.


I frowned. ‘What does that mean? How old are you people?’


‘I’m closer to fifty than forty.’


My mouth fell open. He looked about twenty-five. ‘Donovan?’ I pressed. I’d have guessed her to be mid-forties. But if Stephen was forty-something…


‘Now,’ she said, smirking, ‘it’s not polite to ask a lady her age.’


Stephen snorted. ‘You are hardly a lady.’


Donovan turned over a page and slurped more coffee. ‘You only say that because you have outdated ideas about what a lady is. I was born in 1896.’


Stephen turned back to me, carrying on despite the dumbfounded look I was sure was slathered on my face. ‘We think we’re among the first to get the program to trigger with any reliability. Donovan was the original Netica subject, so she’s a bit different, but I had a lightning Event, and so did Liam and Catherine, the other two here at Darkhaven. There are other things too, like enhanced physical strength and speed, which makes some sense in the lab, but then there are abilities that seem more nuanced. Communicating with animals is something only I can do so far. Liam developed clairvoyance. Catherine would swear she’s not special, but I think she’s a medical medium – someone who can tell what is wrong with a biological system without diagnostics. It all starts with a genetic alteration program that we developed based on Donovan’s altered DNA, and the effects are triggered by the lightning strike. This’ – Stephen waved his hand around the room – ’is Darkhaven, our research facility. Donovan and I are the only ones left from the original team, but we’ve been studying the program together for years, trying to understand it.′


I attempted to sink back into the unyielding sofa. It was kind of how my brain felt about all this information. But it had happened in front of my eyes. The cat behaviour. Donovan’s regeneration. My throat tickled and I coughed. ‘It’s like magic,’ I whispered.


Stephen gazed at me levelly. ‘Quite possibly. As I said, we don’t fully understand it. We can’t rule magic out.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘But we don’t know how to test for it either.’


Quite possibly magic. The words settled over my racing heart like fairy dust. It sounded like a dream, a glimpse into an alternative reality where anything was possible. I hadn’t asked the most pressing question because I was afraid it would break the spell, kill the dream, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I took a deep breath. ‘What has all this got to do with me? Why was I abducted, twice?’


Without a word, Stephen stood and started gathering mugs and teabags from the cupboards.


Donovan huffed and laid her papers down. ’The Netica Project started in 1867 in Austria. The aim was to find a reliable way to activate what they call the “immortality” gene. It’s a misnomer. The Austrian lab was discontinued, but about twenty years back, a man called Jan recruited three of us to set up a new research team: Stephen and I, and Luci Douglass, a gifted geneticist. Jan secured government funding to continue the Netica goal and create the perfect soldier.


‘We almost did it. Luci developed the single-dose Praegressus and a way to trigger it with extreme voltage, and our job was to find the right candidates. It all fell apart when we couldn’t fix the enhanced empathy. The subjects wouldn’t step on a bug, let alone shoot another human. They shut us down and killed our active subjects. We escaped and started our own private lab, because we knew they were looking to eliminate us, but we each felt we needed to continue the research on our own terms.’


‘Not for war.’ Stephen’s voice was quiet.


Donovan shrugged. ‘You always were the romantic. Anyway, Jan snitched. Luci burned the lab to the ground, but they caught her before she got out.’

Stephen was staring somewhere past the sink, tea forgotten.


Donovan took a deep breath. ‘They tortured Luci until they killed her, and then they came after us. No one knows about Darkhaven, but we’re at risk when we pick up new Eventers – people who’ve just been triggered, like you. Liam’s clairvoyance usually gives us some clues about upcoming Events, but we don’t know how the Taskforce are getting to them.’


Stephen re-busied himself with the mugs. Something still didn’t fit. I cleared my throat again. ‘So I’m an Eventer.’ Nervousness flickered across my body like tiny lightning. ‘But how? What do you want with me?’


Donovan glanced at Stephen. ‘Luci Douglass was your mother.’


***


The first thing I felt as the shock wave subsided was a flash of anger at Dad. He’d lied about my mother. What she did, who she worked for, how she died. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘So she had the program, and I…’ Inherited it? No. I knew there was more. The impossibly lithe, forty-something-looking 120-year-old stacked her papers and stood.


‘Just before we shut down, we applied the Praegressus program to a number of children in a secret cohort. Including you.’


With what might have been an attempt at a sympathetic smile, Donovan drained her coffee and left. I stared at the space she had vacated, churning. It was unbelievable, but all my life I’d felt like something was wrong and I didn’t know what. Maybe this was why. I thought I’d be excited, but instead of butterflies, my body felt hot and my hands were trembling. My head still pounded.


A steaming mug appeared beneath my nose. Stephen sat beside me on the sofa. I took the cup and wrapped my hands around it. ‘There’s something else, Gabby,’ he said quietly.


My eyes flashed. ‘Oh, so my mother was a genetic engineering scientist who applied her crazy program to unwitting babies, including her own daughter, and then went on the run from the government and got herself tortured to death. And there’s more?’ I was trying to be angry, but my voice cracked at the end. I wanted it to not be true. I’d pictured my mother as someone who must have loved me, in our short time together, not … not this.


Stephen looked into his own mug. ’I’m sorry. It’s a lot. And yes, it was completely unethical, but there’s more to your mother than that. There is a government Taskforce pursuing us because they want to ensure no one ever finds out the military was funding the program. Our advanced evolution model created enhanced empathy and increased aversion to violence. They have no use for soldiers who won’t kill, so they’ll hide the research. It was never meant for civilians.′


‘Just us test subjects,’ I said bitterly, then recalled the shots from the SUV after Donovan had pulled me out. ‘Donovan kills people.’


‘She’s different. You have a choice,’ Stephen continued. ‘Your DNA is undergoing the transformation process, but it takes a bit of time. We have an antiserum that can stop it if you don’t want it. Because if you go through with it, you have to stay here.’


‘What, like live here?’ That in itself wasn’t an appealing prospect, but the look on Stephen’s face suggested there was more.


‘As far as everyone else will know, you died in the lightning strike. We’ll take care of the details.’


I could feel the blood drain from my face. ‘Why?’ I whispered. Stephen shifted. His forehead creased.


‘The Taskforce will keep coming for you until they get you, or until they know you’re not a threat to their cover-up. They won’t kill you now if they don’t have to, it’s too messy. So either you go back with no memory of what happened, and you’ll be like a regular lightning survivor. A lucky one with no serious after-effects. Or we file your death certificate, and you join Darkhaven. I’ll tell you everything I can about Luci.’


‘Don’t they know you’re sneaking people out of the system?’


Stephen sighed. ‘It doesn’t happen often. More Eventers were caught by the Taskforce than picked up by us before we found Liam. As far as the Taskforce knows, we’re just the original team in an unknown location.’ He paused, smiled and turned his palms up. ‘You would be a welcome addition.’


My mental clot lifted, replaced by the stark clarity of the decision: leave my entire life behind and be literally superhuman, or go home and forget that such a thing was even possible. Assuming, of course, that all this wasn’t some hideous and unfunny joke.


‘How long?’ I asked, knowing that a hundred years would not be enough for me to make this decision. I couldn’t even decide what to study at uni.

Stephen looked at his watch. ‘Timing on the antiserum is crucial. To be safe, you have an hour.’