Hello, everyone! As you know, this one's been in the works for a long while (I've been making notes in my planning book for five months, so it's been a while). Of course, it's wildly different from the teen fiction I usually write, but I really hope you enjoy my bold leap into dystopian fiction. Feedback and comments are always appreciated. If you're reading out of your comfort zone for me, then I can't thank you enough.

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            My sick day was pencilled into the calendar.

It had sat there for months: a red marker cross through Tuesday the first, a day written off before even the weather forecast came in. For this, preparation had not been taken lightly. The details were smoothed over before I made it out of bed. My lift to school had already been cancelled, today's catch-up work was idling in my inbox, and there was a box of last night's leftovers sitting in the fridge for my lunch.

Some things were not left to chance. This was one of them.

When Mum said goodbye, I wasn't tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle, nor was my head slumped against the rim of the toilet bowl. I was perched on one of the kitchen stools, eating cereal with one hand and flicking through two thousand TV channels with the other. She didn't take my temperature, or leave a doctor's number on the table in case of emergency. Instead, all I got was a light hand on my shoulder – the most intimate gesture she was capable of – and the wish of a good day.

For some people, across the city, this may have been out of the ordinary. For us, however, there would've been more cause for panic if I'd showed anything less than perfect health.

I spent the morning exactly as I intended. By noon, the pile of schoolwork on my desk had dwindled to almost nothing, and there were several messages on my phone from Orla and Verity, providing a play-by-play account of the school day. I didn't need to be within the iron gates of Kristopher Holland Academy to keep up with current events. I already knew that Ms. Holland-Drew-Vaughn had tripped on the stairs during morning assembly and furiously given a fortnight's detention to anybody who laughed. I'd been told of Henry Whitmore's ego inflating to new sizes, as he bragged to anybody who'd listen about the sports scholarship he'd just landed at the city's top university. And I'd heard that KHA was on track to being named best school in the country for the eleventh year running – like that had ever been newsworthy in the first place.

Everything was running on schedule. With today's catch-up lessons already covered, and a six-page Modern Humanity essay reeled off in fifty-seven minutes flat, the morning had been as productive as I hoped for. I was in a good mood as I headed for the kitchen, aiming to settle my growling stomach with last night's leftovers. A click of my fingers had the TV turning on behind me, and the theme tune to New London Lunch – the midday news broadcast – rang out across the kitchen as I shoved the plate into the microwave.

At first, I wasn't paying too much attention. Only once I'd grabbed a fork from the drawer and bumped it closed with my hip did the newsreader's voice really occur to me.

"Police are today investigating a suicide on the University of New London campus..."

Turning around, I stopped chewing my first mouthful, making an upward swipe in mid-air to turn the TV volume up. The presenter's silvery voice became clearer, to match the perfectly focused image onscreen.

"... Eighteen-year-old Eva Kelly, best known for her triathlon success in the National Athletics Championships last summer, was found dead in the early hours of this morning after appearing to have jumped from the roof of her student housing block."

They'd pulled up her photo, but I didn't need it to picture her: the dark complexion and Afro ponytail had been plastered over every noticeboard at school last September, the academy's latest success story. A record-breaking athlete, on track for the New Olympics, student at UNL – she was what we were all supposed to aim for.

Until now.

The shot changed, sweeping across the university campus; I recognised some of it from the pre-application tour we'd been taken on a few months ago. Striking glass architecture was kind of their thing – but the buildings shone a little differently in the light of emergency blue.

"Friends and family of Ms. Kelly reported no indication in recent weeks that she had been having suicidal thoughts, or even that she was unhappy with any part of her life. We spoke to the University of New London's student welfare advisor, Peggy Rayburn, who told us that Ms. Kelly had just received news of her near perfect exam results from last semester, and was training hard for the upcoming New Olympics. There was no indication from any source that she was intending to take such drastic action."

I'd stopped eating altogether now, heat from the plate threatening to burn my hand as I stood transfixed by the TV screen. The presenter appeared again, the perfect lines of her make-up turned down with solemnity.

"However," she continued, "development of this story since last night has hinted there may be more to this than meets the eye."

I could feel my heart speed up. Not by much, but enough to notice.

"Early DNA tests, intended to confirm the identity of the body, have yielded some unusual results. Though an initial set of samples were scrapped under the assumption of human error, it seems like that may not have been the case. Further testing has been equally unsuccessful in obtaining a normal reading. Some forensics experts are even reporting the identification of distorted DNA – that is, DNA that appears to have been altered in some way from its natural state."

The heat was searing my skin now, but I couldn't move; every muscle in my body had locked into place.

"These reports are unconfirmed, but they do hint that there may be something more sinister going on. Genetic alteration of humans has been illegal since the technology was developed, but this case is now fuelling speculation that it may already be happening under our noses. People are now beginning to ask how many of Eva Kelly's athletic successes were down to talent, and how many may have been helped along by designer DNA.

"Are genetically modified individuals already living among us? It's too early to say for sure, but New London Lunch will have more on this story as it breaks."

Though the theme song was playing, the programme already moving into its next segment, my brain refused to follow along. The only thing strong enough to rouse it was the pain in my hand, and I dropped the box onto the counter, rubbing two fingers over the forming red mark. In the space of a few seconds, my appetite had vanished, and the forkful of rice now felt like cardboard in my mouth.

I hadn't expected this to happen. Not now, not today, not ever. Something along similar tracks had stayed nestled in the back of my mind – there since the day Nova had been bundled in the back of a police car for no crime at all – but it had seemed like a worst-case scenario more than anything. It was what plagued nightmares, yanking my brain in a cruel tug-of-war until I woke up sweating in the sheets. Not headline news. Not now.

But maybe there were some secrets all the guarding in the world couldn't keep.

As far as my family went, my parents hadn't held back any explanation. I'd been aware of how I came into existence from the age of five. It was, after all, the easier answer to the age-old question, the pinnacle of innocence: "Where do babies come from?"

I was special, they told me, and not in the way everybody else in the world got to claim. Nothing about me had been left to chance. Everything was carefully selected, kind of like those virtual doll games I'd played as a kid. There was nothing awkward about my explanation: my parents had sat cooped up for hours in an office at BioPlus headquarters, poring over a catalogue to choose exactly how they wanted their second child to turn out.

Curly blonde hair. The brightest blue eyes they could find. Porcelain skin with not a single freckle. A better memory than anybody else could wish for.

In their social circle, it was a common practice; my father's old school friend had been the one to make the offer. Why would you leave anything to biology when you could take matters into your own hands? The research had been done, the procedure was safe... all that remained was to sign the contract.

And so it happened. The stitches of the secret were sewn into me, like they were into all of us, pulling our mouths shut to stop the words escaping further than the walls of our house. We were all defined by the same taboo.

I was surrounded by similar stories. Striking blue eyes weren't out of place at the academy – not when everybody else's parents had been following the same bold colour code. A photographic memory wouldn't turn heads, nor would perfect exam scores across the board. Even Eva Kelly warranted little more than polite applause when kids were being engineered for success.

At times it could be frustrating, but school was also the easiest place to blend in.

And therein lay the reason for the sick day. While playing around with your kid's genes, why not go all the way and give them a super-charged immune system to match everything else? No risk, no sickness – just perfect health, guaranteed. The days off were a formality. Five hundred kids and no absences would look odd on record, so we each had to do our bit to stay off the radar. A day or two off, here and there, and nobody on the outside would be any wiser.

I tossed the rest of the food into the reactor; no change of heart could get another mouthful down my throat. The news report had sent me off kilter, shaking just hard enough to induce an unpleasant nausea in the pit of my stomach. Here was a rare occasion to hate my exceptional memory; while the newsreader had since moved onto less pressing topics, every word of the Eva Kelly story had been etched into my brain. The harder I tried to avert my focus, the deeper it seemed to bury.

And there it was: just like a real sick day, the rest of the afternoon had become a write-off. It was hardly simple to lose myself in maths problems with the threat of a nationwide scandal descending.

That evening, things failed to improve. Mum's key turning in the door gave way to heeled footsteps on the marble floor, both of which I could hear from upstairs. Instead of heading to the kitchen, or even calling up to me, she went straight to shut herself in the study: the best room in the house to make a private phone call. Pressing an ear against the door would achieve nothing by way of eavesdropping, and I was now old enough to know not to waste my time.

I could only assume the emergency caller was my dad; the moment his car pulled up on the drive, the study door opened, and the other half of the conversation was brought right into the house. Their words were muffled, but it hid nothing. They'd obviously heard the news, and the setting atmosphere proved it was sitting about as well as it had with me.

Only once Mum called me for dinner did I emerge from upstairs. Family meals in the dining room were mandatory; it was the first golden rule of the house, and it'd take the end of the world to break the routine. When I stepped into the room, a conversation seemed to fall short of the space between them, and I was faced with the same look from two directions.

"Astrid." It was my father who broke the silence, forcing a smile that looked about as fake as some of my DNA. "Hello."

"Hey." I crossed the room, taking my usual seat, all too aware of the way my parents' eyes were following every step. "Good day?"

"Busy," he replied, sparing half a second's glance for the phone sitting beside his plate. This in itself was odd; my mother's second golden rule was that mobiles were kept out of the dining room. Though Dad wasn't exactly a devoted follower of this one, he usually made the effort to at least conceal his phone in a trouser pocket. Leaving it in such plain sight was proof enough that something was amiss. "How about you?"

"Fine," I told him, trying to keep my voice breezy. That way, at least, I could avoid mentioning that I'd spent most of the afternoon up in Nova's room, braving the cold winter chill for a rooftop view. It was the only place in the house that could really calm me down.

The conversation ended there. My parents made their own small talk as we ate, but we needed words of colossal magnitude to cover up the blanket of tension settled over the table. The obvious swelled inside the room, weighing down the glass tabletop, leaking out from beneath my mother's expensive Persian rug. In fact, the obvious had made it so far down my throat it was a wonder I was still managing to swallow.

How much longer were we going to avoid it? The elephant in the room was no longer just that; it had grown so large it was practically forcing the three of us out the door. And there was only so long I could stand it.

I was the one who dropped my fork, and it hit my plate with a clatter that silenced both parents at once. "You don't need to pretend," I said, somewhat accusingly. "I was at home all day. I saw the news. They were talking about us."

The atmosphere shattered like a pane of glass; I could almost feel fragments raining into my lap. My dad stopped chewing, his gaze flickering once in my mother's direction before making it to me. "Eva Kelly made a stupid decision," he said slowly. "That's all. It won't make the news forever."

Like this was answer enough. "The truth might."

"No, it won't. The truth's too heavily protected. There are hundreds of people whose entire jobs are dedicated to stopping things getting out."

"But it's never made the news before." This time, it was my mother speaking up, and the dash of worry in her voice was poorly concealed. "Even what happened a couple of years ago... they managed to keep that quiet."

My dad's expression didn't move. He never was – and never would be – one for big displays of emotion, but this was something else. Even Mum looked like she was begging to be let inside.

"Really," he said, "there's nothing to worry about."

"The campus was crawling with police today," she told him. "The whole place was on edge. Only half of my students actually turned up to class."

Mum had been a lecturer at UNL for years now, educating the best of the country's youth on Modern Humanity. Combine this with the fact that the academy was pretty much a constant feeder of students into the university, and it was safe to say the pressure was on to ace my upcoming interview. She wouldn't shout, but I didn't want to imagine the disappointment on her face if I came back with a rejection.

If she'd been confident, maybe I would've had less to be concerned about. But when my mother – the one with an all access pass to campus and the Eva Kelly case – looked this worried, it was hardly reassuring.

"You know the media's going to blow this way out of proportion." Dad's phone had come to life on the tabletop, the vibration shaking our plates, but he didn't pick it up. The insistent tone just seemed to make everything worse. "I won't deny they'll jump on the story. But they always get carried away with things. Before you know it, their claims will start getting so ridiculous that nobody in their right mind would believe them."

Nobody in their right mind. Unfortunately, Eva Kelly – the girl who should've been in the rightest mind possible – was not-so-living proof that the boundaries had become a little blurred.

"Seriously, you two." He sounded almost irritated now, at the lack of conviction written across our faces. "You don't need to look so terrified. Everything will be fine."

I looked right at him, my gaze locking with dull brown eyes, and hoped the challenge came through. "You think BioPlus can handle this?"

I kind of wanted him to duck away, to avert his gaze, to finally answer that bloody phone. At least then I might know what to prepare for. But he stared straight back at me, his tone so level he could stack his facts on top. "It's a multi-million-pound organisation against one case. I know they can."

At last, the phone stopped ringing – but the lack of vibration against the table just left the silence that much louder. I picked up my fork to break it, but the tension was back: somehow, it was like we'd never had the conversation at all.

I should've been used to it. The same thing had been happening for two years, ever since Nova's seat at the dining table had become empty. Shouting matches, emotional breakdowns, mind games – all were as useless as each other when I wanted answers. There were some discussions I just couldn't manage to drag us into, no matter how hard I tried.

Ironically, in that way, our house was a mirror of the outside world. However much flowed freely, there would always be at least one taboo.

One was enough to draw the boundary, and from there we all fell into line.