Leo ran to the public gene library. Using the cracked scanner's bypass, he accessed the original H-GEN XYZ white paper—the one never released to parents.
Instead, it showed a countdown.
Stability for forty years. Just long enough to work, consume, raise one child. Then the built-in apoptosis cascade—every neuron carrying the XYZ marker would self-destruct over eighteen months. No dementia. No nursing homes. Just a peaceful, inevitable fade to zero. h-gen xyz