The eye of the lion

A week later, Marina boarded Alitalia flight 5052 Rome-London, ready to embark on a new phase of her life, despite her fear.

She didn’t understand why, but according to what the blond man had mentioned to her the first time she saw him, she had been chosen from among more than two thousand women, from all over Europe, to assist the company in a delicate genetic process for which she had been determined by a superior computer to be the most compatible subject.

The experiment, they explained, would give vital help the world of medicine in helping to prevent, from before birth, future illnesses that a human would suffer from as an adult.

At first all that had intimidated her. But when they showed her a contract in which NETGEN committed to pay her twenty thousand Euros for her services, plus all expenses, she stopped doubting. She took the pen that the firm’s lawyer held out to her, and signed.

Now the future was, in her eyes, like the stunning, glowing sunset she could see from her window, reflected in the Mediterranean sea: A glorious, golden brilliance of heavenly light.