Chapter 1

Tuesday, October 10, 2045

"Everyone! Listen!" Darryl ranted once again. His blond hair was slicked back as always, but his normally impeccable look was ruined by the fact that his right arm was strapped tightly to his chest and encased in a cast. He stood in the middle of the room that we used for our meetings. I glanced up at him and smiled as I watched him wince when his right arm tugged against the bandages holding it against his torso. Darryl had been rushed to the hospital yesterday after a failed attempt to jump a changed sophomore, and it was clear that he was uncomfortable with his injured arm.

As he continued to scream at the gathered students, I took a moment to scan the room. It was immediately clear that only his girlfriend, Gina, was paying him any attention. I had to smile about that. He might consider himself the leader of the "pure" faction at Independence High School, but few of the others followed his lead. He did have a nasty reputation, and often bullied newly changed kids, or weaker ones when he could catch them, but the larger student body cared nothing for his quest to "make Independence High a beacon of purity in the valley."

I'd just about given up on Darryl finishing when I heard him call my name. "Hector! Hector, you big oaf!" he cried. "Why don't you join in and lead this great crusade?"

I turned back to Darryl and wondered again how he had ever mastered the team's offense well enough to be a quarterback. Actually I wondered how he remembered to tie his shoes in the morning. Coach Davis was a fair man, but he was going to be livid that Darryl was missing a week of practice because of that broken arm. Stories and rumors were still circulating, but the most often told was that Darryl had stalked and cornered Irene Connors, a bird hybrid, and threw her against some lockers. He was following that up with a punch when Eddie Gershom jumped in the way and took the punch on his back. Eddie is a turtle hybrid and the effect was the same as if Darryl had attempted to punch a brick wall, shattering one of the bones in his forearm. As Darryl collapsed in pain, Eddie and Irene ran away before any of Darryl's shocked followers could intervene. Now Darryl wanted someone to punish Eddie.

"Why don't you give it a rest?" I replied as Darryl and Gina glared at me. "It's not like anything short of a heavy sledgehammer is going to hurt Eddie. Besides, this incident didn't happen because Irene strayed into any of the pure hangouts. You ambushed her outside the library, which has always been neutral territory. You might like living dangerously with beating on the 'brids, but I'm due to graduate this year and I'm not going to get suspended or expelled for tilting at windmills."

I heard a snort of laughter from one of the tables behind me. Probably Angela, I thought. The freshman was a lover of classical literature, and only attended these meetings to support her best friend Tina.

Of course my lack of support only made Darryl madder and his face turned red while his left hand clenched into a fist. Gina watched him and then turned to glare at me.

"I can't believe you!" she screamed. "A human. A pure human has his arm broken by one of those filthy animals and all you can say is that you don't want to be suspended? What about the purity of the race? These hybrids aren't human. They don't belong at school with us. They should be locked up in cages!" She turned to the rest of the students in the room. There were about thirty today, which was a decent turnout considering that Darryl was the one who'd announced the meeting. "How about the rest of you? Are any of you brave enough to stand up for purity?"

My instincts were to shake my head and laugh, but I squashed that thought and concentrated on keeping a neutral face. Gina and her militancy always amused me though. She was a junior like Darryl, and had been dating him for more than a year. However, where Darryl was against hybrids mostly to impress Gina and the other students, Gina honestly believed that she was untouched by the syndrome because of her spiritual purity. She hated anyone different and feared that being around hybrids would contaminate her. Her parents had petitioned to have all hybrids thrown off campus when she first arrived. Principal Smith refused, but I had noticed that during her three years at Independence with nearly half the student body being MORFS survivors, Gina had never sat in a class that had any hybrid students.

I decided to spend a moment looking over Gina before responding. She liked to act like some kind of incredible beauty, but I always found her looks to be somewhat lacking. She had hair as golden blond as Darryl, although she let hers fall down to her waist, and her blue eyes could be striking. I knew a few guys who were in awe of her large breasts and slender waist especially when she was dressed for cheerleading, and I must admit that she did stay in excellent shape. However, she always seemed to be scowling at someone or something and it gave her a pinched and bitter look. She was someone I could tolerate at a distance, but I never had any interest in getting to know her better.

"Gina," I called out, after no one responded. "We all are sorry that Darryl got hurt. It's not going to help the football team, and it's an embarrassment to the pures. But what can we do? Darryl did a great job proving just how hard Eddie's turtle shell is, and somehow I doubt that any teachers are going to ignore one of us bringing a weapon that might actually hurt Eddie onto campus. Now, we have spent most of our lunch here listening to Darryl talk about his injuries. But, I think its time to end this meeting and start heading to our lockers. We still have more classes to attend today."

Gina scowled and Darryl frowned, but everyone else was nodding and gathering up books and notes. Darryl stalked up to me, but I rose from my chair and although he could look me in the eye, I outweighed him by a good twenty pounds of muscle and didn't have a broken arm, so he backed down quickly.

I watched Darryl walk over to Gina for a quick kiss before he grabbed his bag and headed to his math class. I was putting the homework I'd been working on into a folder when Tristan Pendergast walked over. Tristan is a good friend and starts at right linebacker to my left linebacker spot on the football team. As I was finishing gathering my stuff a small piece of paper fell from the folder. Tristan moved to pick it up, but I recognized it and quickly reached down to grab it before he could look at it.

"Love letter?" Tristan said with a smile. He knew about my reputation for not dating and saw the opening.

"Just something personal," I replied. "Sorry, but the rumor mill at this place is just a bit too efficient."

"Well, since we share biology class, shouldn't we start walking?" Tristan said, as I slid the paper into my shirt pocket. With a smile he headed to the door, just as the warning bell for the end of lunch rang. I grabbed my bags to follow him.

I'm sorry. I just realized that you probably are wondering who is writing this tale, and what is happening.

My name is Hector Lynwood. I'm a high school senior trying to make his way in what my father calls the crazy post-MORFS world. Right now I'm attending Independence High School in southwest Bakersfield. It's actually part of a cluster of schools now. Independence High was opened in 2008, shortly before the outbreak of MORFS. Once the effects of MORFS were better understood, the county decided to expand the campus and establish Liberty Elementary and Freedom Junior High Schools next to the first campus, so that "local students could have a stable educational environment". Included in this expansion was the establishment of a school uniform code. For boys this meant clean slacks, a white button-down shirt and black tie. Girls could wear a similar outfit or they could replace the slacks with a knee length or longer skirt. A number of studies claimed that having a school uniform improved learning and reduced stress on the students, all I can say is that it did make deciding what to wear in the morning much simpler.

I'm currently in the top ten of my class academically. I do start at linebacker for the school football team, and a few smaller colleges have visited and watched me play. But while at six foot two and two hundred thirty pounds, I am perfectly sized for my position; so many players at the college level are MORFS survivors that a pure human struggles to be competitive. A few scouts have told me that they are impressed by my tenacity and drive, but that I would not succeed at their school. I should be disappointed, but while I enjoy football, I know it will never be a career for me. My father and I have often talked about my future and he knows I plan on attending Bakersfield Polytechnical University to study psychology. He has always supported me and during several evening discussions has helped me map out a plan for the future.

As my introduction indicated, I am a member of one of the high school's "pure human" organizations. In fact, I've often found myself the spokesman and leader for the group in the last year. It's not something I'm proud of. My mother signed me up for the Pure Human Patrol when I was ten, and as the years passed, I have not made any effort to leave the group or the friends I made there. As my friends joined other anti-MORFS groups I have quietly followed, although I find it increasingly hard to accept the hatred and fear that permeates them. If my mother was still part of my life, I might care more, but she left my father five years ago and took my younger sister and brother with her. She said that the only way to protect children from MORFS was to maintain a high spiritual purity and that Bakersfield was not sacred enough. My father did not want to move, and I choose to stay with him. From the letters Heather and Howard send me, mother had taken them to Kansas and is now married to some minister of a rather nasty anti-MORFS group. Both of my siblings are attending meetings of anti-MORFS youth groups, and mother has ordered them to cut off all contact with father and me. They send letters regularly and I try to reply through friends, even talking a couple of the scouts who visited me into mailing letters for me once they returned to their home campuses. I miss my siblings.

As for the paper I hid. It was a simple note from my father: "Come home right after school. I'd like to talk to you." I know you might think that it was innocent, but it might have inspired Tristan to ask questions I was not ready to answer. I had a suspicion as to why my father wanted to talk, and if I was right I would be very happy for him, even though it was going to cause trouble with the more militant pures like Darryl and Gina.

Well, now back to where I was, just after the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

Naturally, I hurried off to my next class. I had Biology immediately after lunch. It was a subject I found interesting, especially since we had a good teacher, who was willing to talk about MORFS and its effects on the biosphere. Yvonne Masters reportedly had been a professor somewhere north, but her interest in the new species created by MORFS and the changes the biosphere underwent to accommodate them had resulted in the university she worked at refusing to grant her tenure. She soon discovered that the university and its professors poisoned her reputation and no other university was interested in hiring her. She might have remained unemployed had not one of Independence High's science teachers quit just days before the start of the school year. Yvonne heard about the opening and managed to talk Principal Smith into hiring her. Once hired, she decided that her senior year classes would concentrate on developing an understanding of MORFS and she was putting a great effort into making the class interesting and informative. I heard a few freshmen complain that her classes were boring, but I was learning more about MORFS than I ever thought possible without a full university science lab. Early on she had made it clear that the transformations were not prevented by prayer, or caused by evil. She did explain that conventional science said that the syndrome, which was actually caused by a failure of the body to prevent massive mutation of the DNA, should be killing its victims rather than simply modifying them and changing them, but obviously the current science was inadequate for the reality it faced. It was equally obvious that she had done some extensive research into this.

The period ended, and everyone rushed to his or her next class. My school day finishes with home economics. My father had often bragged that a man who knew how to cook could always impress the ladies, and I had decided to challenge this. After one month of classes, I must admit that I was enjoying the experience, and realized that my father was highly skilled at cooking. When I signed up for the class I got my father to agree that I would cook one meal a week, and I was determined to impress my father with a well cooked meal before the semester ended. The challenge this represents keeps me working hard and concentrated in class, so I'm always surprised and a little disappointed to hear the teacher call for everyone to clean up before the bell rings indicating the end of class.

Once the class let out I started to walk home. Normally I would stay at school to attend practice, but Coach Davis had given everyone the day off as we didn't have a game on Friday, and he wanted everyone to have some extra rest.

My father and I live in a house just on the edge of one of the town' s commercial districts. We have moved here after my mother decided to leave and my father had the house modified to serve as a combination home and office for his insurance sales. The front part of the house is now an office for people to come and confer with him or his employees on their insurance options, while the back of the ground floor and the second floor are our private living space.

His insurance business is one of the most successful in the Central Valley. Normally this might be a difficult job to do well in, but once mother moved he started to offer hybrids insurance policies at fair rates. Most other agents in town do not treat hybrids well, and my father's agency and reputation have grown rapidly. He now has a thriving business with a second office in the town centre.

I hurried home because of his note, and entered through the office door rather than the side door, which opens directly into our living area. I smiled to see the brightly colored sign on the door. "Horace Lynwood, Insurance Agent. We Work to Protect your Future." The sign was a design of Janice Gordon, a young lady who lives two doors down the street from us. Her parents had been killed four years ago during a riot sparked by some anti-MORFS fanatics. To help make ends meet she used some of the insurance money to establish a sign making business in the house she inherited, and my father had been so impressed with her courage and dignity that he'd ordered the sign. Janice still comes by regularly to visit and to eat with us. Soon my thoughts, however, turned to the note as I looked around the front office.