Microstory 142: Tracy Wickham

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All anomalies were the result of ancient genetic manipulation followed by centuries of evolution’s attempt at stabilizing their makeup. The fairies that ultimately created them performed each experiment deliberately, and in order to fulfill a specific purpose. Most of them were attaching properties of animals and various natural phenomena. The team that resulted in Tracy Wickham was interested in genetic memory. Genetic memory was usually responsible for instinct and intuition, but they wanted to figure out whether it was possible to encode more complex information. On the surface, Tracy displayed no special ability. Both of her parents were extremely athletic, with experience in archery, firearms marksmanship, foot racing, and parkour. Whenever they encouraged her to pursue an interest of their own, she showed impressive aptitude. She even presented skills found as far back as her great grandparents—however, there was a quantifiable decline in her skill according to how many generations that skill went back in her family. The worst side effect of this was the fact that she struggled with skills not found at expert level within the family. She received poor marks in the majority of her classes, and wasn’t even able to graduate from tertiary school. Her brain was so full of generational information that she had an inescapable failure to gather new ideas. Out of frustration, Tracy left home upon adulthood and fell into the hard-to-find world of drugs. She was eventually discovered by a small group of people who were aware of anomalies. They performed further experiments on her in an attempt to make her the perfect soldier; one who wasn’t intelligent enough to break from orders and form her own decisions. Most of their experiments failed, however, they managed to enhance her physique. They gave her superhuman speed and strength, and her most noteworthy feature was how high and far she could jump. Others, like Setsuko Kawaguchi, grew hateful and bitter as a result of these experiments, but not Tracy. After she and her partner, Phaedra Wirth escaped from the facility, she joined Bellevue, which later assigned her and her team to protect the entirety of Europe. They even eventually developed techniques that allowed her to learn at a more acceptable level.