I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of Hannah the first time I saw her. I could tell she was Engineered, of course. Even without that brow ridge, everything was just a hair off with her—legs too long, chest too deep, hips too narrow. It wasn’t bad. I mean, she wasn’t like the Engineered basketball players or wrestlers. I don’t know where they were getting the genes that they cut those guys with, but I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t from anything human. Half of them looked like they’d grow fur if they didn’t shave every day.
Hannah was different. She was definitely human—just more so.
We did a unit on classical philosophers that fall in Humanities II. Most of it was just noise to me, to be honest, but there was a bit about Plato’s Cave that stuck with me. The idea was that everything we see here on Earth is really just like a shadow cast on a wall. Every cat is just a shadow of the perfect cat. Maybe one gets the whiskers right, but he’s got a crooked tail. Another one has a great tail, but his claws aren’t quite right. If we look at enough cats, though, we can start to get an idea of what the real thing, the thing casting the shadows, must be like.
Hannah was the real thing.
The running was part of it. I read once that long-distance running is the only sport where humans aren’t just embarrassing themselves in front of the other animals. Take leaping, for example. I’ve seen ball players who could pretty much dunk their own heads if they wanted to. A jaguar, though . . . I once saw vid of one of those guys leaping fifteen feet straight up into a tree with an antelope in his mouth.
Long-distance running—that’s the one thing we really do well. Make the race long enough, and a human can outrun a horse.
Well, not just any human, of course. My mom couldn’t outrun a horse. Not unless it was a fat, diabetic, chain-smoking horse, anyway. Me, though? I hadn’t lost a race at any distance since I was fifteen. I’d have crushed one of those hay munchers without breaking a sweat. And Hannah? Well, she was just a kid. Still, after watching her stride, I wouldn’t have bet against her.
Poor Tara. She’d been chomping at the bit to take over the number-one position on the girls’ team for two years. I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when Hannah showed up to our first summer practice.