The Witch

Penny had taken a chance with sending Ben after The Genie. It was a risk which could kill her. What difference was it going to make? They had already tried once before but she had escaped. She was living on bonus time as it is. She had absolute faith in Ben’s ability to kill The Genie but one couldn’t afford to underestimate that son of a bitch. Well, she had, and look what had become of her. Ohh! How she wished she could take back that deplorable mistake that had cost her everything. She was the magician. She had created superhuman life. Because of her it was possible to create super-people at will. The Genie and Johnny Root used to call her ‘The Witch’. She never did mind that name because for a time there she could have controlled the entire world.

Penny’s childhood was not as interesting as her future would be. She was born and brought up in the East end of London. Her family was poor living on daily wages. Her mother was a drunk and a drug addict. Her father was the one who used to work in a shoe manufacturing factory and support the entire family. When she had turned nine, Penny knew she was much smarter than the kids she went to school with. Unfortunately neither her teachers and nor her parents cared about Penny’s future so Penny had to look after herself. She grew to be a strong, confident and disciplined individual. She passed her competitive tests after high school with flying colors and was accepted into London’s most prestigious medical schools. Although Penny had started out to be a doctor, she soon found her leaning towards biotechnology. After completing her MBBS, she switched fields and went for a masters and PhD. in Biotech. Her amazing work in the field of DNA studies is still recognized.

Coming from an underprivileged background, Penny was always jealous of those born with a silver spoon. She had strived hard for her position in society and she did not deem it fair that others who had worked less should be equal to her. The world though, worked differently. There were always those who progressed in life because of their family name and one such person was Diana. Diana was the daughter of one of the most popular and one of the most generous donors to the university. Both Diana and Penny were in the race to win a coveted professorship and a permanent seat at the university. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Diana but to Penny, it would have been life changing. Desperate for a win and seemingly running out of options, Penny decided to approach The Genie. The Genie was a popular figure in the lower strata of the society. He was a person who could fulfill your wish in exchange for whatever he deemed worthy in exchange. He was responsible for a whole lot of petty thefts and murders only because people with trivial agendas and wishes used to approach The Genie. Penny knew how to get in touch through some of her acquaintances in the East End.

Penny was given a number to call and just leave a message about what she wished and she would get a return call within the next 48 hours. Penny had called the number and said that she wanted the position. She had left the details about the university, the person in competition and herself. She waited patiently the first day but she was fidgety the next one. She had no other options available apart from The Genie and the announcement for the position was in two days. She tried calling the number again but it just wouldn’t connect. Just when she was about to lose all hope, she got a call back. The voice on the other end was recorded. It only said that her wish would be fulfilled only if she would go to a particular location the very next morning. The address was shared with her and she had to meet a Mr. Johnny Root. Things seemed dicey to Penny but what other option did she have.

The next morning Penny reached the premises earlier than expected. She was nervous. She rang the bell. This looked as a deserted apartment building although this was right in the center of the town and there was quite a bit of hustle bustle around. She tried to relax a bit. The door automatically gave way and she entered. A frail looking gentleman in his early 40’s greeted her. He introduced himself as Johnny Root. What he did next was something which Penny was not expecting. He showed her some chats exchanged between the Dean and Diana. Apparently they had been having an affair which was very hush-hush, but somehow the Genie had managed to get his hands on that information and had used it to blackmail Diana to pull out her nomination. Penny would later come to know that the Dean of the university had also been replaced. Johnny told her that only because she was here, she had fulfilled her part of the bargain and congratulated her on the position. Johnny then gave her an option to either leave knowing that her work had been completed or stay back to delve more into the reason why she was called here.

Penny against her better judgment decided to stay and in her immediate future she would thank her lucky stars that she did. Johnny Root was working on what DNA matching. He needed Penny’s help in identifying which of the nucleotides could be adjusted and/or manipulated with in order to create a mix of two or more DNA’s. The end result as Penny had guessed partly was to create a hybrid of some sort. Of course, the mixed DNA could not be transfused into a living being or a dead being since they already had a DNA of their own. They had to be transfused into a non-human to make it human. This was where Johnny Root came in. He was an expert in cloning. He was a part of the team which had successfully cloned a live goat and called her Molly. Johnny was an active supporter of cloning on humans but since that had been banned; he was no longer interested in continuing with where he was. In fact, he had also approached The Genie wishing for a way to clone humans and that was when he had started working with him in order to create clones.

The team of Penny and Johnny was invincible. Within a few months they had successfully matched and created a stable DNA sample in the lab combining the DNA of a frog and a chameleon. They have moved onto the DNA matching of humans after that and within the next 6 months they had created a DNA hybrid of a man from Mongolia and a man from South Africa. Imagine if Nelson Mandela and Genghis Khan had a child together. They transfused this DNA in a clone and voila they had their first hybrid clone. Whatever they had set out to do they had achieved it. With this they could imbibe specific characteristics in the close, imbibe memories and behavior in the clone. Immortality was achievable. This was when she had earned her title, ‘The Witch’. The implications of this would have been earth shattering but The Genie didn’t want to stop there.

Penny had been working with Johnny for over a year. It was ironic that she no longer was a professor at the university for which he had wanted The Genie’s help. She was learning more than she ever could and she had never wanted to wish for anything else.

After they had successfully matched the DNA of two humans, The Genie had given them another challenge.

This time around, Penny did not identify the DNA samples which had been given to her. What Johnny and Penny had realized that there was only a finite combination on how DNA could be matched. Penny had written an algorithm to enable anyone now to match human DNA. But whatever this was it was not human. They tried running this DNA through their algorithm but it failed. They would have to start from scratch on this. They had a set of 7 DNA sample to play with. Another couple of months went by without any breakthrough. They were not able to recognize a pattern to fit in these new DNA samples. Penny had tried asking Johnny on whose DNA samples were these. She would have guessed aliens, since she had never seen such DNA built. They decided to try matching a human DNA sample with the new one. After a few trails they were successful building on their earlier work. Now that they had a base, it was a matter of a few months that they cracked the code. The new DNA samples had matched successfully and transfused to a clone. Unknown to Penny, she had just helped create a hybrid superhuman.

Once the DNA’s were matched, the job became a routine one where new samples arrived every day and the same were matched and fed into the system. They had also started rating the hybrid DNA’s on parameters such as strength, intelligence, muscle flexibility, bone structure and some others. A rating chart was maintained and the count of these hybrids was maintained religiously.

Penny had turned her life around. She loved her work, she had achieved quite a lot and was never ever going to be short of money. She had also successfully figured out the purpose of all her efforts. The Genie was creating an army of super enhanced clones. Superheroes were still rare across the world. With this, every small town would have their own superhero. What she didn’t realize was that it would completely diminish the importance that the society had given to superheroes and that The Genie was ultimately going to rule the world all thanks to her. The latter she did realise in her exile.

As she was leaving her work one day, she had this gnawing feeling that she was being followed. She blamed her long work nights for this and she thought she really needed to take a break to cease her inhibitions. To her utmost shock, she was not wrong. The Genie was an astute and calculating man. Now that his strategy had been executed, he did not want any loose ends. Johnny was still an asset to him since without him he could not make the clones and Johnny did know the price of information unlike our unlucky Penny who had played into the hands of The Genie and had divulged all her work to him and now like any asset, for the Genie, she had reached a point of zero value. She had to be eliminated. He decided to field test one of her creations against her. He had assigned one of the super clones to kill her and make it look like an accident.

She was followed that night and as soon as she reached a crossing, Penny was pushed with a force which she couldn’t counter in the way of a coming truck. The truck unable to stop had smashed penny right on. This should have killed her on the spot yet it was her will that kept her alive.

Penny had always known, since childhood, that it was important to retain a bargaining chip despite however strong your position got. In this case, she had with her a copy to create the strongest hybrid. As she lay on the hospital bed, swinging between consciousness and unconsciousness fighting for her life, she started planning her revenge on The Genie. All she needed was a clone of her own to put her plan into action. She also knew that she would be under constant surveillance and if given another chance she would be definitely killed this time around. She had to plan her escape as quickly as she could.

Penny was a medical graduate and she knew about a few things that could help her feign death. She had to get her hands on adenosine. She was still heavily bandaged and it was difficult for her to move. She started talking up with a nurse. A few friendly exchanges with the nurse and Penny had made her offer - an offer which the nurse couldn’t refuse. The next day, Penny was declared dead and due to absence of any relatives to claim her body, it was incinerated immediately.

She had the beginnings of a plan to seek vengeance. But in all her plans she had to have a clone body. The benefit of working in a small team is that you know the habits and schedules of your team members so well. Penny knew that went out for half a day every Thursday of the week. She knew where the clones were kept. They had manufactures scores of clones already. All she had to do was smuggle one body. She bribed an electrician to take out the power of the entire block to avoid suspicion. In the time frame of 30 minutes, she had successfully managed to get herself a clone. She had arranged for a fake ambulance to pick her up from the building. She had removed the location tag from the clone body so that he couldn’t be tracked. It was almost satisfying how well her plan was working. Maybe it was a sign from the universe that her path was true and her vengeance justified.

Brea Smith was Penny’s roommate in college. For a brief time they were very close to each other. Brea was an orphan and had a small landholding in the town of Inverness. Brea had left Inverness with her parents when she was three and had not returned back there since. After college, they were in touch for a few years, where Brea had told Penny that she was moving to the States with her boyfriend and she would really appreciate if Penny could pay Brea’s ancestral home a visit just to check on things, since Brea did not want to sell her family home. And that is where Penny had decided she would be staying with Ben till the time she was avenged.

As soon as they reached Inverness, Penny got Ben admitted to a hospital. A small town, the hospitals there had hardly any activity. She was able to administer the hybrid DNA to Ben and saw her Excalibur come to life. She imbibed Ben with fake memories mostly from action movies and imbibed and also made him emotionally aggressive. Once Ben’s powers had developed in whole, she fabricated a story of herself and Ben having been wronged by Ben’s father. At this point, she had activated his memories in line with her story. This gave her the advantage of complementing Ben’s emotions with his power thus giving him an edge over others like him. For her, the human emotions coupled with super abilities would be a lethal combination. With that, she sent Ben to achieve his destiny and face his father. In reality, Ben was helping Penny fulfill her revenge.

The next day, Penny was awaiting news from Ben, when she heard someone come in the house. Ben called out, “Mom?” Penny rushed towards the sound. She saw Ben standing right next to the entrance. He looked at her. Penny couldn’t contain herself and asked, “Is it done?” Suddenly Ben’s eyes went complete red and he blasted a laser towards Penny, exploding her head into tiny pieces of flesh. “It is done now!” He exclaimed. “Return back to base, Super-Human” said the voice inside him.