Dr. Helena Moreau

Dr. Helena Moreau Helena Moreau calls them her children. Then she makes them watch while one of those children is whipped in front of everybody else. That scene says more about her than any speech about improving humanity could. She wants to be the brilliant scientist who created a new kind of life, the mother they love, and the authority nobody questions. When those things conflict, the authority wins. In Red Agent: Island of Dr. Moreau, Helena is a geneticist who worked for HiboCorp on human-animal hybrids intended as supersoldiers. The project was shut down, people were killed, and an explosion left her presumed dead. There wasn't a body, though. The servers had also been wiped before the explosion. By the time Britney and Avril are brought into the investigation, somebody is attacking people connected to that shutdown, and the creatures doing it look a lot like her work. She even leaves a signature. The investigators find an unusual repeated DNA feature, and the conversation turns into an H/M clue pointing to Helena Moreau. The lab scientist actually pushes back on how they're interpreting the chemistry. I liked that little detail because otherwise it's easy for a story like this to throw a technical word at us and act like the explanation is finished. There is a real science starting point here, but Moreau takes it well into comic-book territory. Genome editing changes DNA at particular locations. CRISPR uses a guide to direct an enzyme to a target, and the cell's repair processes become part of the edit. That is a very different thing from producing a coordinated human-animal body. Getting wings, muscles, bones, nerves, and the rest of the body to function together isn't explained by saying that somebody mixed the right DNA. Moreau's technology does what the story needs it to do. We don't have to pretend that makes it a realistic next step for CRISPR. What interests me more is what she does after she succeeds. On Ship-Trap Island, she's built an entire society around herself. Some of her creations are guards and hunters. Others serve dinner or unload cargo. She has a right-hand enforcer in Manolo and a Sayer of the Law who turns her expectations into rules for everyone else. They're supposed to stop behaving like animals, but when they disobey, Moreau explains the punishment by saying they're beasts who respond to it. That's a pretty convenient arrangement for her. They're advanced enough to obey her rules and do her work, but not advanced enough to deserve a choice. The wolf servant makes the problem especially clear. He disappointed her because he didn't have the killer instinct she wanted. Being made a servant was his punishment. But when Britney and Avril need help, he's the one willing to risk himself. He fights to protect them, trusts Britney enough to jump into water when he can't swim, and ultimately dies saving her from one of Moreau's shark hybrids. She looked at him and saw a failed weapon. The women he saved saw a friend. Moreau doesn't seem capable of learning from that distinction. She wants the fugitives hunted down, sends the sharks after them, and later puts Britney into a fight with Manolo. Even her promise about winning the fight is a promise of a quick death. She has no intention of allowing an outcome where her authority is genuinely challenged. The people she has been controlling eventually provide that challenge anyway. The leopard servant who was publicly punished helps the women, then leads other hybrids into the fight. They aren't just standing around waiting for outside heroes to solve everything. They take up weapons, free Avril, and turn on the guards and the system keeping them obedient. Moreau runs. Avril destroys her escape boat, and for a moment it looks finished. But the last page makes a point of taking that certainty away. Helena is alive on another island with her bat-winged companion. After days unconscious, she wakes up thinking about getting out, rebuilding, and revenge. Nothing in that response suggests she's reconsidering what she did to her creations. As far as she's concerned, the problem is that she lost control. That's the part of Helena Moreau that sticks with me. She really did create something extraordinary. Some of those lives turned out kinder and braver than the person who made them. Instead of recognizing that as an achievement, she tried to punish it out of them. https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/genomicresearch/genomeediting/ Spoilers for Red Agent: Island of Dr. Moreau #1–5.