Chapter 1

"This ribeye is cooked just right. Leave it a minute longer, and it'll be too tough to chew. Gerald, give it a taste."

A familiar voice drifted to me. I floated in midair, eyes fixed on the man raising a glass of red wine. It was Dad.

He wore casual clothes and was relaxed in a way I had never seen before. The woman beside him, dressed in a silk gown and cutting her steak with quiet grace, was Mom.

"Not bad at all." Gerald Calcraft, a heavyset man, swallowed his beef and gave a thumbs-up.

"You two really know how to live it up. This place is gorgeous."

I looked down at my transparent hands. Ten minutes ago, those same hands had been soaked in blood.

Down in that moldy basement, I had been sawing at my wrist with the sharp edge of a tin can, bit by bit, so they could have one more meal. The pain tore through my whole body.

I thought I was doing something brave. I thought I was saving my parents.

"Speaking of which…" Gerald set down his wine glass and pointed at the lawn beneath their feet.

"How's your kid holding up down there? Most parents wouldn't have the nerve to put their child through something like this. Total isolation, end-of-the-world style."

Dad cut his meat without a single pause, the knife scraping softly against the plate. He speared a piece, chewed slowly, and only spoke once he swallowed.

"Couldn't stomach it? That's the parents who are failing their kids. Young people today are way too soft.

"You'll never know what they're capable of if you don't push someone to the edge. We're giving her the ability to actually survive out there. That's what real parenting looks like."

Mom took a quiet sip of her wine.

"I just glanced at the data. She's doing well and already broke the record for the 72-hour fast. This kid's potential is the kind you have to force out."

I hung above their heads, wanting to scream, wanting to claw at those smug, composed faces. A fast? They were calling it a fast?

That was the last of our food. All three of us had been sharing it, and I went without so they could eat. My stomach churned with acid. I chewed on the wooden frame of my bed just to feel something.

"You two are bold, I'll give you that," another woman at the table said, shaking her head with a little laugh. The tone was pure admiration.

"If I had that kind of nerve, my lazy son would have actually turned out decent by now. Honestly, you two are way ahead of the rest of us. This kind of extreme, end-of-the-world environment. Truly elite parenting at its finest."

Dad smiled, quiet and self-satisfied. "Kids these days are completely spoiled. The second things get hard, they fall apart. All we're doing is cutting the weakness out of her so she can become something stronger. Something genuinely new."

I was so hungry. I drifted to the edge of the table and reached for the steak on Dad's plate. My hand passed straight through.

Right. I was dead. I didn't even qualify as their test subject anymore.

A big dog nearby seemed to sense something. It barked twice, sharp and sudden, aimed right at where I was floating. Dad frowned and gave its head a pat.

"Settle down, Max. You're one of the observers. Act like it."

A dog? An observer?

I stared at the small camera strapped around its neck, and everything suddenly made sense. The "mutant creature" I had seen lurking in the basement was this dog.

Dad had told me it was some kind of dangerous monster from the outside and made me hide. I pressed myself under the bed, trembling, too scared to even breathe.

So to them, I was worth less than a dog. The dog got to be an observer, got fed, and got to sit in the sun.

Me? I was just a data point. Something to be used and thrown away.

Mom glanced down at her diamond-studded watch. "It's almost time. Ten more minutes and we can start today's stress test."

She looked over at Dad. "We should shake things up a little. She's been way too quiet the past couple of days."

Dad nodded and pulled a remote out of his pocket. "Yeah, the readings have been too flat. It's not useful. Since everyone's here anyway, why don't we all watch today's feed?"

He gestured toward a massive LED screen set up not far from the table. It flickered on, the image almost completely dark, save for one small corner lit up by the cold, pale glow of an emergency light.

That was the basement I had lived in for 18 years.