The Kin

Because apparently I don't learn... I'm having a go at something more than a short story.

ETA: Future chapters will be appended to this post. Also, for the curious, this grew out of an attempt to create a backstory for my horse-girl online persona.

Genesis

Most people know what the Kin are: a genetically-engineered group of species combining the human genome with various animal genoma. Few, however, know how the Kin came to be, nor why, to this day, the UN patrols their secluded tropic island with a heavy-handedness very much at odds with the UN’s humanitarian image. For it is not to keep the Kin in, but to keep the world out that the United Nations Kin Protection Task Force was created and to this day guards that island. Few enough of the Kin travel; fewer still are the humans permitted to their island home.

The Kin were created by GeneSys in the early half of the 21st century. GeneSys was a multinational biotech corporation, ostensibly investigating the promise of genetic research to better the human condition. Under those fair words, however, darker forces were at work, taking the full tally of human knowledge and perverting it to foulness. In all fairness, GeneSys’ board of directors most probably had no idea what was being done; the sheer size of such a multinational protected the human beasts who lied in reports, misdirected funds and furtively built their secret complex. It began innocuously enough; various papers appeared in such distinguished organs as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Theoretical Biology and Genetica, discussing various aspects of genetic engineering – methodology, applications, benefits, risks; others discussed the grafting of genes from one species to another in exploration of transferring various characteristics. Nothing published in these scholarly publications even hinted at the travesties unfolding at the GeneSys Institute…

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being able to attend on such short notice.” The speaker, clad in the white lab coat ascribed to the popular stereotype of scientists, shuffled his notes on the podium. “Though we still have quite a lot of development work still to do, I think – I hope – you will find my presentation today encouraging and remarkable in itself for what we have achieved so far.”

The audience for the presentation were sitting on comfortable sofas ranged in a loosely stretched circle, anchored at one end by the speaker’s podium. Behind him, facing his auditors, a heavy curtain was drawn across the wall behind. Low tables stood between the sofas, holding water carafes and glasses. The lights in the room were low, affording the audience a measure of anonymity. A dozen men and two women lounged at their ease in those sofas, sleek and expensive. Here was gathered a significant fraction of the world’s wealt