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Well this is disappointing, she thought, catching a slight frown before it became sullen. Smoothing out the soft bow of her lips, she spread her fingers over the oak surface of her desk, leaning forward to a better vantage of the goings on outside her window. Ignoring the faint rustle of her aunt's over fondness for lace and growing boredom, she squinted slightly against the glare of the afternoon sun.

She couldn't hear anything yet, but she knew that would change in a matter of moments as the object of her scrutiny came closer to her home, waddling with a complete lack of shame as a fair 10 stone rolled freely over belt and without benefit of a fitted shirt. As her gaze flicked upward it was all she could do to hold back a sharp inhale of breath as his florid features gleamed with sweat dripping from an abominal swatch of hair ginger in colour... GINGER of all things and a back handed swipe of meaty fist against forehead.

There was nothing she could do to stop the wrinkling of her nose, the patrician slope losing its perfection into something stunning in its outraged disdain. Yes... he was coming up her path. Now she imagined she could hear him. The grunts of strain even this slow walk would cause upon his joints. The wheezing breaths. The beat of his strained and fat incased heart. Filthy really.

The rustling from behind her picked up, heralding her aunts approach as well. It was become difficult to keep her fingers from fisting against the exquisite wood, assaulted on all sides as she felt... wait... was that a bible the ginger demon was carting under his elbow?

"Guests!" squawked her aunt, the mercury Noemi had been feeding her in small amounts beginning to tell in the harsher rasp of Isoldes voice. Perhaps it was time to adjust from seven pinches to nine..

"yes Aunt Isolde. It seems the Good Lord has sent us a Missionary, one who seems about to martyr himself upon our doorstep via stroke."

Her aunt gasped and leaned over the soft slope of Noemi's aristocratic shoulder, taking her nieces outrageous comment as fact due to the unemotionally practical deliverance. "Do you really think so? Should we call someone ma petite?"

really it was all one could do not to roll her eyes, but instead turn a soft albeit false, smile and pat her aunt's hand. "I am the someone you would call Isolde." the sternness of her voice was lessened by the soft, breathy French her speech was laced with and her aunt clucked with agreement, "of course, of course. I seem to forget things...."

Noemi didn't wait for the finished thought from her aunt. It was likely never to come, and she instead extricated herself from the woman and stepped out to the foyer to receive the ginger joke about to press her entry bell.

Some days it just didn't pay to leave the lab.

( to be continued )

Smoothing the smoke gray of her pencil skirt over shapely thigh, her Italian Bolino's echoing over the gleaming marble of her foyer the good doctor walked to the door as the soft chime of the bell announced the biblical tragedy upon her porch.

As predicted, the opening of the door had barely registered when "Good afternoon ma'am, have you heard the good news?" shot her through the temples. Another false smile, pink tinged lips, Chanel antique rose, parted over gleaming teeth as she swung the door wider. "Please, won't you come in? I could never forgive myself if manners were not kept." she watched his eyes widen as her true French made a mockery of his Canadian twang. As it should. Plebians. Farmers and merchants, the lot in this new world. So very crass. And certainly NOT in the amusing les enfantes way.

Stepping far aside to let the behemoth into her sanctuary, her aunt already clicking her tongue and making motions to have their one maid Andressa begin tea, Noemi regretted her decision to leave Isolde alive. Conveniences at the bank be damned. She was top of her class, a stellar and talented surgeon, her feats in the British Emergency rooms upon her residency were legend. She would be well enough with money very soon.

"Beg pardon ma'am, but it wouldn't be right me entering a ladies home without benefit of her menfolk. The talk..." he stammered out as he caught the full effect of her countenance. It was alarming really, the stark beauty, and many had tripped over their speech when confronted with it. Ignoring the reaction she sagely nodded, and for her own perverse enjoyment offered the ginger nightmare a rather well done smile of sultry proportion.

Comical, she thought as he reddened even more, jiggled from foot to foot and then shoved his bible between them. "We... that is I, well really we as its my church, but I'm here and they're not, so myself as well... we, I would like to invite you to our worship. Yes. that's it." he really did look as if he were choking on the devils Pradas now. "I would love to discuss this wonderful welcoming you offer my Aunt Isolde and myself, over tea of course. I'm perfectly chaperoned as you may attest."

She found she simply HAD to see how his heart was able to hold up to this amount of torment. HAD to see if perhaps this heart was strong enough... was this one finally it? Was this the answer she had been waiting for? A heart so sound it could carry this wretch from door to door without fail? Noemi swallowed slightly as she turned, her mouth fairly watering as she lost herself to thoughts of her poor sweet dear, immobile, almost alive... but for her failure to find a heart strong enough...

Her mind raced as she found herself jolted back to the now, the wheezing juggernaut walking with her aunt into the parlour... thats it... just steps away from the hidden entry to her lab... calculating every move from here to get him there... fingers curling around the small vial she kept in her pocket... curling around what would soon be her greatest triumph...

The faint scent of formaldehyde left a soft burn inside her nose, letting her know she needed to take a moment to clean up, change gloves and mask. As soon as that thought entered her consciousness, it left as her gaze moved from the heart laying before her, still beating from jolts of electricity conducting through it, and settled upon the covered form to her right.

snap of glove and a toss into the rubbish, she lowered her surgical mask, the open chest of the dead man before her barely registering now that she was done with the bible thumper. The hum of her machinery soothing in its static consistency, making promises she needed to hear...

Her fingers steady though she had to glance at them, her excitement making her sure her composure was surely compromised, but no... not even a twitch, perfectly balanced... gently pulling the sheet down from the covered figure. The slab gleamed metallic, concave toward a drain, cold and sterile as it bore testimony of the face only Noemi could love.

It wasn't that she had disservised the face, her technique was as beautifully done as any fashion house artist, scarring would be minimal. It wasn't the swatch of black curls gleaming cherubic and fallen against bloodless alabaster skin, wrong somehow if one could place it...

It wasn't the lips, as pale as the snow fresh fallen in her beloved Alps, surely the colour of an angels kiss. No...

There was nothing in the perfection of his countenance that one could pinpoint, so opposite of the fat carnage on the table beside him, gore slithering down into the waste units, chest peeled open and broken as if his God had taken back in a moment of fury that which he had given... oh she was a master of removing hearts as they still beat...

There was something just WRONG with the angelic form. Something unnatural and eerie. Well... to anyone that didn't see him as Noemi did. To the French beauty, she who had sacrificed everything for this, given everything... the lives she had ended...


no matter.

HE was going to be her moment. There were no Gods in all the universe... until now....

"You will live my darling..." she whispered through soft lips "You will live."

Her reflection stared back at her, pale, immobile, devoid of emotion. The elegant vanity handed down for generation... saved from the fires of rabble dreaming of an equality they didn't deserve... returned to her mother when Noemi was but a babe as a birthing present from family that wished her dead. The better to gain her title.

She could not even bring herself to smile as thoughts of her rancid little fiance, so reminiscent of some sort of starved hare, chinless as he was spineless... killed by his own whore with his own letter opener.

A single tear welled against the green of her intense gaze, unable to fall as she lifted her chin, looking down at herself in that vanity mirror. It wasn't for poor, poor Renaud that she wept. Never him. She would have eventually ended him herself... timing it better of course, his funds the only thing worth note of him... but, the little harlot should have been lauded, not hanged... at least he never spawned.

With a swiftness brought on by rising rage, her hand swept over her vanity top, sending soar the small bottles, pieces of jewelry and hair combs that had naught to do with her anger.

She failed. Inconceivable. She had failed her sweet angel once again. The heart had burst with the second full surge of electricity. Exploded really, if one were being plain. It was more than she could bear.

and now the tear fell. splashing against the mahogany, mixing with her spilt perfume. Where had she gone wrong? She went over every step, for the thousandth... no millionth time... and could find nothing to change. No way to change the outcome... Except...

The heart. That was it. Inferior peasant heart. Of course it failed. Of course that obese oafs organ disintegrated when put to true aristocracy. True heaven. Adam. Noemi stood, further knocking her precious baubles, her robe swirling in silk fury around her soft form as her head fell back and she let loose a single, horrible wail.

Spinning on heel she dashed to her wardrobe, almost toppling it as she tore the back hidden door open, a set of servants stairs laid bare but barely registered as she dashed down the well to the depths of her laboratory.

Her rage mounted with each descending step, her teeth set and grinding as she held back screams of fury, until the obese corpse was within grasp. Mindlessly grabbing a tray she began smashing it over his hated face, over and over, flattening the nose, caving the temples, viscal fluid pouring from burst eyeballs, unable to stop until she had killed him again... and again, and again...

as fast as the fury erupted it was over. sobs tore through her one last time as she slid to the floor, gore dripping from her ebony curls, scarlet scars creating a roadwork of insanity on the white silk of her robe...

Noemi didn't move from the floor. Not until the sun had once against risen and began its descent into the new night. When finally she stirred herself it was with a purpose. A renewed vigor one would say...

if there were nothing but failures due to genetics in this town... well she would just have to move toward success... nothing less would do... she would. not. fail.

Harpers Rock... her eyes glanced over the laptop screen again as if somehow the information she was seeing would change. Never one to lie to herself she had secretly hoped Montreal... Quebec.... well, nothing for it.

Looking around the now almost bare room, Noemi closed the laptop as she stood, sure that she was making the right move. Weeks she had studied the strange phenomenon that seemed to be commonplace in her soon to be new home. For weeks she had studied genetic patterns from census and hospital records. She wasn't wrong. Couldn't be wrong. It was like a melody stuck in your head, tugging at your memory until you have to find the lyrics. Unignorable.

She really never did believe in destiny, unless she herself were directing it. But this... it was just RIGHT.

"Adam... " she whispered to herself, imagining his eyes opening for the first time. Imagining his first attempts at speech... Imagining finally mastering both life and death... to truly BE death...

Her smile became more pronounced, not even the soft shuffle of fabric and elderly kitten heels could mar. "Are you ready Isolde?" she asked in French, "I know how you dislike traveling at night, so we must be off." Of course Noemi found it poetic, the knowledge that Isolde would be proven correct in her fear of night travel. A lovely little accident should solve her funding issues along the way... it really was a shame she didn't have more time to create something even more stunning, artistic... Isolde deserved that at least, a glorious ending...

"Our fate awaits us dear Aunt."