Alex Mercer had always been able to read the story written in blood. As a forensic geneticist, it was literally her job—extracting narratives from DNA left at crime scenes, telling stories that the dead could no longer tell for themselves.
But now, standing in her late mother's bedroom, staring at the strange pattern of dark stains on the underside of the mattress she'd just flipped, Alex was confronted with a story she didn't want to read.
The stains formed an unmistakable pattern—not random splotches but precise marks, almost like script in a language Alex couldn't quite identify but somehow recognized. Her fingers hovered over the marks, not quite touching.
It had been three days since the funeral, three days alone in this house that had grown increasingly strange. Alex had come back to her childhood home to settle her mother's affairs, expecting the process to be straightforward. Eleanor Mercer had been organized and practical—qualities Alex had inherited—along with what her mother had always called "the family gift" for science.
"It's in our blood," she would say with a wry smile. "The Mercer curiosity."
Now, looking at these stains, Alex wondered what else might be in her blood.
The headaches had started the day after the funeral—blinding pain followed by vivid flashes of memory that couldn't possibly be her own. A dirt road Alex had never walked. A woman in antiquated clothing, her face disturbingly similar to Eleanor's, standing over a crude wooden table covered with botanical specimens. A man—familiar yet unknown—whispering in a language that Alex somehow understood despite having never learned it.
"The knowledge passes through blood," the man in the vision had whispered. "What one knows, all may know."
Alex pulled back from the stained mattress, suddenly aware she had been reaching toward it. She carefully flipped the mattress back over and left the room, locking the door behind her.
In the study, she opened her laptop and pulled up the family genealogy research her mother had been conducting before her unexpected stroke. Eleanor had been systematic in her documentation, tracing the Mercer line back to 17th century Massachusetts.
There was Johannes Mercer, a Dutch physician who had immigrated in 1654. His daughter Abigail, who had "demonstrated uncommon knowledge of the natural world" according to a journal entry Eleanor had transcribed. Then Elias Mercer, who was described in a 1740 town record as having "the constitutional ability to perceive matters beyond ordinary ken."
Page after page detailed Mercers who had distinguished themselves in medicine, natural philosophy, and later, biology and genetics. A family of scientists, just as Eleanor had always said.
But as Alex scrolled through the family history, she noticed a pattern her mother had either missed or deliberately omitted. At least one member of each generation had died young—usually in their late thirties—following reports of "nervous exhaustion," "brain fever," or "sudden melancholia."
Alex was thirty-five.
The pain struck without warning—a hot needle driving through her left eye into the brain. Alex gasped, gripping the edge of the desk as the study dissolved around her.
Wet earth under fingernails. The smell of loam and something metallic. Digging in the darkness, the moon occasionally emerging from behind clouds to illuminate the work. The hole is deep now, deep enough. The bundle wrapped in oilcloth is heavy, requiring all available strength to roll into the pit. "The repository must be maintained," a voice whispers—her own voice, yet not. "The knowledge must be preserved."
When Alex's vision cleared, she found herself on the floor of the study, hands filthy with dirt that couldn't possibly be there. But it was—soil embedded under her fingernails, smeared across her palms.
With trembling hands, Alex texted Dr. Santos, her mother's neurologist.
Need to talk about mom's condition. Urgent. Genetic component?
The response came quickly: Office hours tomorrow 10 AM.
Alex spent a restless night, waking repeatedly from dreams of digging, of hidden texts, of knowledge written in an ink that glistened too red in candlelight. Each time she woke, some new detail in the bedroom seemed subtly wrong—the pattern of shadows on the wall, the arrangement of items on the dresser, the smell of the air.
By morning, there was a persistent itch under Alex's skin, as if something were moving beneath the surface. In the bathroom mirror, she examined her face, noticing with alarm a network of faint red lines spreading beneath her skin like text becoming visible on a page.
Dr. Santos looked concerned when Alex described the headaches and visions but became visibly uncomfortable when Alex rolled up her sleeve to show the strange markings that now covered her forearms.
"Your mother had similar markings," he admitted reluctantly. "I referred her to a dermatologist, but she insisted it was a family condition she could manage herself."
"Did she say anything else about it? About our family history?"
Dr. Santos hesitated. "She mentioned once that the women in your family have served as... repositories. I assumed she was referring to some cultural tradition." He shifted in his chair. "The brain aneurysm that killed her—it was unusual. The brain tissue showed signs of... reorganization is the term the pathologist used. Neural pathways formed in patterns that didn't match normal brain development."
"And you didn't think this was worth mentioning at the time?" Alex asked, struggling to keep her voice even.
"Ms. Mercer, we see unusual pathologies frequently in our work. Your mother declined genetic testing and experimental treatment. She seemed to understand exactly what was happening to her."
On the drive home, another vision hit so powerfully that Alex had to pull over. This time, she was in a small laboratory, recognizably from the early 20th century. A woman who could only be Alex's great-grandmother was carefully transcribing something from memory onto a thin sheet of what looked like animal membrane.
"We are the keepers," the woman murmured in the vision, using the strange language that Alex somehow comprehended. "When the writing on the skin is complete, the knowledge transfers to the next vessel."
Writing on the skin.
Alex looked down at her arms, where the red lines had darkened and become more complex, forming patterns that reminded her of neural networks, or perhaps root systems. Or text in a language never meant to be spoken aloud.
At home, Alex went straight to her mother's collection of family heirlooms. In a small cedar box, she found what she was looking for—a set of thin, translucent sheets that had always been described as "ancient family documents." Alex had assumed they were some kind of parchment.
Now, holding them up to the light, the horrible truth became clear. These weren't animal membranes. They were human—skin preserved through some process that had kept them supple and marked with that same script that was now emerging on Alex's own skin.
The next vision came without pain this time, slipping into her consciousness as naturally as a memory.
Johannes Mercer extracting knowledge from accused witches in Salem, not through torture but through a process he had discovered in the Netherlands—a way to absorb information directly through blood contact. The knowledge of generations of wise women, their healing techniques, their understanding of the natural world—all taken and stored within his own cells, transcribed onto his skin from the inside out. When the burden became too great, he passed it to his daughter through a blood ritual, transferring the repository to a new vessel.
"We're living libraries," Alex whispered to the empty room.
That night, the itching beneath her skin became unbearable. Alex drew a bath, hoping to get some relief. As she soaked in the hot water, the markings on her skin seemed to pulse and shift. The water gradually took on a pinkish tinge, not from blood but from something leaching out of the lines themselves.
When Alex finally stepped out of the bath, she caught her reflection in the mirror and froze. The markings had changed, becoming more precise and intricate, now covering her torso, neck, and beginning to creep up onto her face. In the center of her chest, directly over the heart, the pattern formed a clear symbol—the same mark Alex had found on her mother's body during the funeral preparations, the mark the mortician had discreetly covered with makeup.
Another vision washed over her:
Eleanor Mercer, sitting in this same bathroom, examining the same mark on her own chest. "Too soon," she whispers. She reaches for a small knife kept in a leather sheath. "I must buy more time."
Alex understood now why her mother had always worn high-necked clothing, why she had so many "minor surgical procedures" over the years. She had been cutting out pieces of the text as it formed, trying to slow the process, to delay the inevitable transference.
But to whom had she intended to pass the repository? Alex was her only child.
In the study, Alex searched through her mother's papers with new understanding, eventually finding a hidden compartment in her desk containing a leather-bound journal. Inside, written in that same strange script that was now inscribed on Alex's skin, was the complete history of the Mercer bloodline—the true history, not the sanitized version in the genealogy files.
Johannes Mercer had not been a physician but an alchemist who had discovered a method of extracting and preserving knowledge through blood and skin. He had created the first repository from an accused witch, absorbing her botanical knowledge. Finding the burden of the absorbed consciousness too much to bear, he had passed it to his daughter through a blood ritual.
Generation after generation, the repository had grown, each keeper adding their own knowledge before passing it on—usually to a daughter, occasionally to a son. The knowledge transferred completely only upon the death of the previous keeper, but the process began whenever the current keeper recognized their successor.
The markings were the physical manifestation of the repository preparing itself for transfer—the knowledge literally writing itself on the skin of the new vessel.
The final pages of the journal contained entries from Eleanor, becoming increasingly desperate as she realized what was happening:
The repository has chosen Alex without my consent. I've never performed the recognition ritual, yet the transfer has begun. The knowledge has become too vast, too hungry. It no longer waits for permission.
I've tried removing sections of text, but it regenerates faster now. The voices of the previous keepers have become so loud I can barely hear my own thoughts.
I will not allow this burden to pass to my child. There must be a way to break the bloodline.
The date of the final entry was the day before Eleanor's death.
Alex closed the journal, her hands shaking. The marking over her heart pulsed painfully, and she could feel the pressure of foreign thoughts pushing against the boundaries of her consciousness—dozens of voices speaking that strange language, sharing their knowledge, their memories, their lives.
In the basement, Alex found what she was looking for—the fresh cement patch in the corner that hadn't been there during her last visit six months ago. Using a shovel from the garden shed, she broke through the thin layer of concrete to find exactly what the inherited memories told her would be there.
A small oilcloth bundle containing the tools for the blood ritual. And beneath it, a far older box made of iron with complex symbols etched into its surface—symbols that matched the central marking now throbbing on Alex's chest.
"The original repository," Alex whispered, recognizing it from Johannes Mercer's memories now filtering through her consciousness.
She opened the box with trembling hands. Inside was a small glass vial filled with a dark liquid, stoppered with wax and wrapped in a piece of parchment covered in the now-familiar script. Alex didn't need to read it; she already knew what it said. The knowledge was already inside her.
The liquid was the distilled essence of the first repository—the concentrated blood of the original source of the knowledge. The ritual required the current keeper to drink it upon the death of their predecessor, completing the transfer and fully integrating the repository.
Eleanor had hidden it away, hoping to break the cycle. But the knowledge had found its way to Alex regardless, writing itself beneath her skin, filling her mind with the memories and wisdom of generations of keepers.
The markings on Alex's skin burned now, the text continuing to spread across every inch of her body. Soon it would reach completion, and the final integration would begin, with or without the ritual. Alex would become the living repository of centuries of accumulated knowledge, her own identity subsumed beneath the weight of dozens of others.
Unless she chose another path.
In the vision that came next, Alex saw not the past but a possible future— her identifying a successor, watching as the marks began to appear on another's skin, the cycle continuing endlessly. Knowledge preserved, but at the cost of individual lives and identities.
With perfect clarity, Alex understood why her mother had chosen to die rather than complete the transfer. And why she had hidden the original repository where Alex would inevitably find it.
She had given her a choice she never had.
Alex looked down at the dark liquid in the ancient vial, then at the markings covering her skin—the knowledge of centuries literally written in her blood, demanding to be preserved.
The seductive whisper of generations of keepers filled her mind: Drink. Complete the ritual. Become the repository.
Alex's own voice, growing fainter beneath the chorus: Break the cycle. End it now.
With decisive movements, Alex carried the vial to the utility sink in the corner of the basement. One simple action would end it—pour the liquid away, breaking the connection to the original source. The repository would remain incomplete, the transfer disrupted. The knowledge would lose its anchor and fade from Alex's body and mind.
Centuries of accumulated wisdom would be lost forever.
Alex's hand tightened around the vial as the markings on her skin burned with increasing intensity, the text continuing its inexorable spread upward to her face, downward to her feet. Soon there would be no unmarked skin left, no part of her that remained fully her own.
The chorus of voices grew more insistent: preserve, maintain, continue.
Eleanor's voice, suddenly distinct among the others: I tried to protect you. I failed. Forgive me.
And then another voice, one Alex recognized with a shock as Johannes Mercer himself, the first keeper: The repository demands completion. Blood calls to blood.
Alex uncorked the vial, the metallic scent of ancient blood filling the basement. The markings on her skin pulsed in response, as if sensing proximity to their source.
In that moment, Alex understood the true horror of her inheritance—not just the knowledge itself or the physical transformation, but the insidious way it preserved itself through generation after generation, using each keeper as a temporary vessel, compelling them to continue the cycle.
They were not keepers of knowledge. They were hosts to something that had evolved its own will to survive.
With hands that no longer felt entirely her own, Alex raised the vial.
The markings burned like fire now, the script writhing beneath her skin as if alive and eager. The chorus of voices had become a deafening roar, drowning out Alex's own thoughts.
Blood calls to blood.
The repository must be maintained.
The knowledge must survive.
Alex Mercer had always been able to read the story written in blood. Now, she understood the ending that had been written for her centuries ago.
Unless she wrote a different one.