The Bloodline's Call

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead in The Genetics Laboratory. Dr. Elena Vasiliou held the DNA sequencing printout at arm's length, as if distance would change what the data showed. Mediterranean cluster, sample ROK-847.

She pulled up her own genome analysis from last year. The markers matched. Perfectly.

"Empirically speaking, this is impossible."

Her voice sounded hollow in the empty lab. She checked the sample ID once, twice, three times. The numbers didn't change.

The centrifuges spun their quiet rhythm. Row after row of microscopes stood at attention in the sterile light. Everything here could be measured, explained, quantified.

Elena's fingers found the evil eye pendant at her throat. Yiayia had pressed it into her palm the week before the diagnosis. The metal felt warm against her skin, though she told herself that was just body heat.

She locked the lab at 11 PM. Her apartment was dark when she arrived.

The vision struck at 2:47 AM.

A woman in ancient robes materialized in her bedroom doorway. She spoke archaic Greek—words Elena shouldn't understand but somehow did. "The mountains call us home."

The woman turned toward a window that showed snow-covered peaks instead of Elena's third-floor view of the campus parking lot. She walked forward with terrible purpose. No hesitation. No fear.

Elena's pulse hammered against her ribs. She pressed two fingers to her wrist, counting. Monitoring the symptom. Treating this as data to collect rather than a message to receive.

When she blinked, her bedroom was her bedroom again. 3:12 AM by the clock.

She didn't sleep.

Morning found her in Dr. Amit Kapoor's office before he arrived. Her hands trembled as she gripped her coffee. The cup rattled against the saucer when she set it down.

"You are here very early."

Amit stood in the doorway, messenger bag still slung across his chest. His eyes went to her shaking hands, then to her face.

"I need to tell you something. But you'll think I'm—empirically speaking, the data doesn't support—"

Her words fragmented. Came apart. This wasn't how she spoke, wasn't how she thought.

Amit set his bag down slowly. Pulled out the chair across from his desk. "In my experience, data is not always the best framework for understanding."

So she told him. The DNA match. The vision. The woman who spoke dead languages and walked toward impossible mountains.

Amit steepled his fingers while she talked. His expression stayed neutral, but his eyes sharpened when she mentioned the mountains.

"My grandmother spoke of something similar," he said finally. "She called it 'the Keeper of Paths.' Those who guide the called ones to sacred places."

Elena's scientific training revolted. She'd built her career on quantifiable data. Distanced herself from her grandmother's descent into what the doctors called schizophrenia, what the family whispered about at holidays.

"I'm describing a hallucination," she said. "Stress-induced. Possibly temporal lobe—"

"Or you are describing something your grandmother also experienced." Amit removed his glasses, polishing them with deliberate slowness. "Something that runs in families. In bloodlines."

The word settled between them like a stone dropped into still water.

Before Elena could respond, footsteps echoed in the hallway. Marcus Webb filled the doorway—all cargo vest and weather-beaten confidence.

"Listen, I've been looking for you two." He pointed at Amit, then Elena. "Got a proposition. Documentary crew, full funding, expedition to Roopkund Lake in six weeks."

Elena's vision tunneled. The pendant burned cold against her chest.

"The skeleton lake?" Amit's voice came from somewhere far away.

"Exactly. Biggest mystery in the Himalayas." Marcus pulled up photos on his phone—bleached bones emerging from ice, hundreds of them. "I need geneticists, anthropologists. People who can explain what we find up there."

He swiped through images. Skulls. Femurs. Spinal columns arranged like rosaries in the snow.

"You in or not? Because I've been doing this for years, and this is the find of the century. National Geographic is already interested."

Elena saw herself in each image. Saw the woman from her vision. Saw yiayia's face superimposed on ancient bone.

The bloodline doesn't lie.

"I'm in," she said. Her voice sounded like someone else's. "I need to solve this empirically."

Marcus grinned. Amit's fingers stilled on his glasses. His eyes met Elena's, and in them she saw the question he wouldn't ask aloud.

Do you really believe you can solve this with data?

Elena touched the pendant again. It had stopped burning. Now it just hung there, heavy as destiny, warm as a warning she was choosing to ignore.