Several days ago...
"Mama, don't go! I don't understand what's going on, but it's me! Please don't go!"
Adela, refusing to hear the desperate words coming from whom she deemed a monster, walked towards the elevator.
Until the doors closed shut, the brunette kept a cold expression on her face. However, as soon as she realized she was alone, that cold expression melted and revealed a mother that was deep in sorrow.
"Callisto..."
Uttering that name brought Adela so much pain that she started screaming her lungs out inside the elevator.
"Ahhhh!!"
When she came to the hospital after learning that Raymond and Phillip conducted the Mutated DNA Fusion on Callisto, Adela truly hoped that what awaited her was a scene different from years ago.
Unfortunately, the moment she locked eyes with Callisto, that hope immediately crumbled out of fear.
*
*
*
Roughly five years ago, a lady in a business suit, her assistant, entered Adela's office.
"Miss Adela, I got an urgent call from Mister Raymond. Leona is dead."
"I see... so the operation failed."
Adela wanted Leona and Callisto to live more than anything else in the world. What she didn't want was for them to cling onto false hopes. Because seeing them do so made her heart ache out of pain and helplessness.
Even so, the mother knew that her daughters had the right to make a choice for themselves. And so, even though she did not like the sound of it, Adela allowed Raymond and Phillip to perform the Mutated DNA Fusion on Leona.
"I'm going out. Move all my appointments for this week to the next."
"Yes, Miss Adela."
Did Adela regret not stopping the operation on Leona when she had a chance? Certainly. After all, if she had a chance to decide for her daughter, Adela would rather be by Leona's side in her final moments instead of the opposite.
"Adela... sorry," Phillip said, lowering his head in shame.
"I want to see Leona," Adela calmly pleaded.
"Yeah. Follow me," Raymond replied, leading the way to where Leona was.
Given that this was the very first attempt of performing the Mutated DNA Fusion on a human being and the chances were one in a million, Adela already expected this outcome. Time and time again, she forced herself to accept the painful reality, hoping it would make it less harder to go through it when the inevitable finally happened.
However...
"Huh?"
All that mental preparation went for naught when Adela saw what Raymond and Phillip presented to her as the lifeless body of Leona Mandjet.
"Who is... this?"
Though they were already past their youthful days, Raymond's attractiveness and Adela's beauty were still making a lot of heads turn their direction. Everywhere they go, no matter who they came across, the Mr. and Mrs. Mandjet would always make for the main topic of a discussion.
That being the case, it was no surprise that their daughters, who inherited both their genes, also had the same beauty and attractiveness that steals people's attention.
That beauty and attractiveness was something Adela could no longer see from Leona.
"Who is this?!"
Leona's appearance went through a very drastic change. Her hair, her face, her skin tone, and even her height were very far from the Leona Adela used to know. It was almost as if the corpse Phillip and Raymond showed her was of somone else rather than her daughter.
"We do not know what exactly went wrong, but..."
"The operation failed. I couldn't save our daughter."
"No! This is not my daughter!"
Adela refused to believe that it was Leona. Even if her appearance changed drastically, there should have been something that would make Adela recognize that it was her daughter's dead body. There should have been a connection.
But Adela wasn't getting any of it. Not at all.
"Where is Leona?! Leona, where are you?!"
"I'm sorry, Adela. But no matter how you look at it, it's our daughter right in front of you."
Adela's disbelief led to her not attending Leona's burial.
There was a point where the mother wished that her husband and her friend were just making a fool of her. She thought about forgiving them for doing something rather unpleasant as long as Leona would come out of the doorstep, alive and well. Unfortunately, reality was rather cruel towards Adela.
Eventually, Adela accepted the fact that her eldest daughter had passed away, but she refused to accept that the body Raymond and Phillip showed her was Leona.
*
*
*
Some time later, Raymond suggested to do the Mutated DNA Fusion on Callisto. Despite what happened to their eldest child, the father strongly believed that the operation will turn out successfully. All Raymond needed was the permission of his wife and he would drag Phillip back from overseas to help him once again.
Adela refused to let the only daughter she had left undergo the MDF. Not after what happened with Leona.
"Listen to me, Adela! It will work! I can save Callisto!"
"My answer will not change, Raymond."
Their quarrels were like an unpredictable storm. One day, they would come across each other and have a calm argument.
"Come on, Adela. We've got to take this chance."
"I'm not taking anymore chances."
The next day, they would just start screaming at each other.
"Adela!"
"I said no!"
Their back and forth argument didn't seem like it was going to end. But it did, just like how a storm would make landfall and eventually leave.
*
*
*
Roughly five years had passed since Leona passed away, Callisto was now also at the end of her rope.
"I don't care if it's caused by a mistake you two couldn't figure out, if the DNA you used wasn't compatible or whatever, or if god forbid Leona to live! Callisto will not go through that operation!"
"But if we let things as they are, Callisto will die!"
"Then so be it! I'd rather be by my daughter's side when she passes instead of letting you turn her into someone else like you did back then!"
This was the last time Raymond and Adela argued about Callisto going through the MDF, though the brunette wasn't so sure at the time knowing how stubborn Raymond was.
It was now the month of April. The days where Raymond's presence were nowhere to be seen came by like the wind.
"How unusual."
Her husband's lack of presence made her guess that something was going on. Or maybe Raymond simply gave up.
Adela thought her husband finally realized that keeping by their daughter's side until the end was more important than wasting his time and breath trying to save Callisto's life using an operation that had no guarantee of success.
Well, she definitely thought wrong.
"Miss Adela!"
One day, while Adela was having a break in her office after her hands were busy trying to fix the problems in her company that suddenly popped out of no where all at once, disrupting the workflow in her company at a great scale, her assistant rushed out of the door towards her.
"What's wrong, Karen? Is there another issue? I'll get to it later. I haven't visited Callisto in a while so I'm thinking of doing so today."
Trying to catch her breath, Karen informed the brunette, "They did it... they did the MDF on Callisto."