Microstory 134: Phaedra Wirth

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Although there were fewer than a hundred people who were considered anomalies, and presented special abilities, they were not technically the only ones of their kind. Years ago, when the test subjects from the original anomaly experiments were released from their captors, they moved on with their lives. Some had children with each other. Others had children with normal people. Their altered genes spread throughout the human population in a random pattern, and the traits that made them special continued across the centuries. During the time just before and during Bellevue, a number of their descendants were activated by The Keystone, but many thousands more were left normal. There was a particular organization interested in tapping into anomaly abilities, and finding ways to replicate them. They kidnapped and experimented on the handful of people with abilities that they could find. Phaedra Wirth was not born with abilities, though she did share genetic similarities with the kidnapped, suggesting to the team’s scientists that there might be some way to turn someone into an anomaly through further science. Phaedra volunteered for the super soldier program, hoping to gain abilities of her own. The scientists were unable to find a way to activate Phaedra, but they did find a way to transfer—not copy—someone else’s ability to her. One victim perished as a result, but the procedure was perfected, and the others survived. Most of them grew angry and violent for what had been done to them, and ultimately joined the primary opposing force to Bellevue. But after what she had been through, and what she had unwittingly done to the first victim, Phaedra became determined to focus her energy on preventing these scientists, or any others, from trying such procedures again. Armed with a plethora of new special abilities, she turned on her superiors and broke out of the facility. She discovered files containing intelligence on Bellevue, as well as an island of anomalies with physical mutations, which the organization had scheduled to be kidnapped for a second round of experiments. She managed to travel to the island with the help of a partner in order to protect the mutants from her former employers, and later spearheaded the effort for them to all join Bellevue.