The top-secret experiment aimed at human modification

Lysenko, the mad scientist who conducted a human experiment to serve his stubborn belief

Keke, the sole survivor who managed to escape after living as a human subject for twenty years

The truth that was kept under the veil for decades is finally revealed

Vicious Genetics begins with the story of a young man. A bombing targeted to hijack a cash-laden wagon occurs in a small town square. Without any change in expression on his face, the man who led this incident kills his own guy, then looking down at his terrorized hometown, he turns away pitilessly. 

Six years later, the man returns to his hometown. In the meantime, his wife Cato and his father Vesso have already passed away. The reason the man stopped by his hometown is to see his mother before the day he leaves for an unescapably far and cold place called Turukhansk, where he is put into exile after going through a series of arrests and escapes due to various crimes he has committed, such as rioting, terrorism, strikes, arson, robbery, and assassination. Upon hearing about her son’s exile to Turukhansk, Keke, the mother, decides to finally tell him about the secret that she has kept to herself until now. 

As one of the participants in a human modification experiment, Keke was taken to a mountainous village located in Turukhansk when she was one. Once called “Keke the Miracle,” she had times filled with happiness, love, and excitement as a baby, but soon she became nothing more than a laboratory rat. She explains to her son in detail the twenty years of misery she had lived through and how she eventually escaped the camp with Vesso. Knowing it might be the last night of them together, Keke tells her son the whole truth behind the experiment, as he prepares to leave for the place where she once lived herself.

The main man behind the human experiment was Marquis of Lysenko. A prodigy born from a fallen noble family, he wasn’t much different from people from the working class. The emperor noticed his talent, however, and he supported Lysenko’s studies abroad. Lysenko, who had a keen interest in genetics and evolution, traveled to multiple countries to study under renowned scholars in their fields. The year he turned twenty-two, Lysenko returned to his home country and decided to test in actual humans the hypothesis he had formulated. Lysenko’s objective—that is, to strengthen his country by building an invincible nation that doesn’t feel the cold—gained full support from the emperor and that marked the beginning of the experiment involving hundreds of children as its subjects.

Approximately ten years before and forty years after his exile, the man spends his life tormenting and killing numerous people, framing it as “an act of revolution.” In the end, in order to take power, he subjects thousands of people to suffering and death through his reign of terror. The man who happens to be the final fruit of the secretly conducted experiment ends up becoming a ruthless villain. What exactly made him so? 

Marquis de Lysenko from Vicious Genetics is a character modeled after a biologist named Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Besides Lysenko, the stories of real-life historical figures are intricately woven into the novel.