The initial studies conducted by this evil company’s scientists included thirteen subjects, infants and small children gathered from the dregs of the world where no one would miss them. (Babies left at behind garage doors at hospitals, children in bad government care facilities, street kids) The initial experiments are conducted with varying amounts of success: some of the edits create very dysfunctional creatures and some just won’t be able to be put to use as well as they’d like.
Unfortunately, one of the scientists grows a conscience and becomes a whistle-blower, and the government of (Zophos or Philotes or maybe the United Sovereign Territories) comes to raid the research outpost facility. In order to hide the evidence, they plan to just kill off all the experiments they’ve created so far.
However, one of the scientists on the project, Elion Kepler, is in on the deletion plan, but doesn’t want to lose the progress he’s made on this breakthrough (if completely unethical) research. So he kidnaps nine of the children and escapes to try to find a new base of operations where he can study them without being caught.
He hires a smuggling ship to get him and his “children” away from the central planet to a rim planet, a scientific outpost. Halfway through the journey (on a shady medium-rim planet, where they’re gathering more supplies), one of the crewmembers of the smuggling ship figures out what’s going on and tries to keep the children away while they get rid of Dr. Kepler. But some of the kids get lost in the shuffle and Kepler escapes with two of them. He loses one in his first attempt to settle down, but eventually he finds a place to raise his favorite edit child, number seven. Sevin Kepler is raised with a casual mix of kindness and cruelty and becomes Dr. Kepler’s internally rebellious but outwardly even-tempered protégé. The rest of the children get scattered to the wind.