The human-wolf integrated medical clinic smells of bleach, burnt sugar, and the sharp, metallic tang of failing biology.
I stand in the center of the isolation ward, my heavily bandaged hands gripping the cold steel railing of the observation deck. Below me, in the sterile white room, a ten-year-old human girl named Maya is seizing. Her small body arches off the mattress, her jaw clenched so tightly I can hear her teeth grinding.
But it’s her arms that make my stomach turn.
When she first arrived at the Academy three months ago, her forearms were traced with the faint, bioluminescent golden veins of the Adapted. A beautiful, pulsing network of genesis energy that promised a new era of human-wolf harmony.
Now, those golden veins are turning necrotic black. The genesis energy is clotting
