Given: Project Xol

by Amabel Daniels

  “I’m not giving her anything, Rosa.”

  “You better not. Even at the risk of losing me.”

  Jesus. Don’t say that. There has to be…a loophole. Another way out of this. I couldn’t lose her too.

  “You’re too expressive to hide your feelings, Cassidy. I know what you’re thinking. Do not risk saving me to beat her. You cannot let her get a hold of the beta subspecies. She cannot have Scott’s code to get them.”

  “Why? What’s so special about that beta DNA?”

  “They didn’t show a statistically significant probability for the proclivity to acerbate unmanageable endocrine production.”

  I squinted. “In English?”

  “They didn’t cause hormonal problems.”

  I slowly nodded. “Okay…” So, what? Tami wanted to make nice mutants now? I bit back a snort.

  “Fertility, Cassidy. Think of the hormones associated with fertility.”

  Fertility? Well, sure, there were lots of hormones in the reproductive end of life.

  Oh. Whoa. I blinked at her. Oh…no…

  “All the Xol patients are adults.”

  From what I saw, they were.

  “Infants and children have been turned into Xols.” Rosa licked her lips and simply said, “And now, I think there might be a chance she wants to breed them.”

  Chapter Six

  Cassidy

  Jolene returned to the room I shared with Rosa before we could speculate any more on what Tami was working on next—what she was hoping to do with the beta axolotl DNA. Or with me.

  Breed? I refused to dwell on that particular panic. I’d never agree to be a baby farm for her freaks. They could kill me before they—

  No. Wrong, Cass. They could and likely will push me to death’s edge, then pump me up with that Last Time crack, and then take what they wanted.

  I shivered and watched as Jolene backed up to the door and wheeled Elena into the room. She was asleep, or too drugged up to move.

  “Dr. Shaw will be with you in a moment,” Jolene said, too chipper for my mood.

  For Rosa’s either, it seemed, because she retorted, “Oh, stop calling her a doctor. She faked her death before she completed her thesis.”

  That Rosa was miffed Tami called herself a true graduate… I was sure I’d appreciate the humor another day. If I lived to see one.

  “And she’s not a doctor in any other sense. She’s not here to help anyone be healthy,” I said.

  Jolene scowled at me. “When Dr. Shaw came to me and offered me a cure, do you know what I was? A weak, feeble failure of a human. My body betrayed me.”

  She was a cancer survivor, only she’d gotten her second chance at life with the accessories of unnatural strength, unpredictable emotions, and a warped sense of dedication to her rescuer.

  “Now…” She splayed her hands at her perfect body. “Now I am invincible. All thanks to her genius.”

  “What about everyone else who’s suffering from cancer?” Rosa challenged. “Or everyone else who’s weakened by disease? If you can have your invincibility, why can’t others? You have no right to pick and choose.”

  Jolene tossed a tired sigh to Rosa. “Because everyone would want it. And not everyone deserves it.”

  “Well, aren’t you little Miss Hitler,” I drawled. “Only special people can be made invincible. Let me guess, all the ones who aren’t special enough are used for your experiments?”

  “Those who sacrifice for the research of bettering us is only—”

  “Inhumane!” Rosa roared.

  “That’s enough.” Tami followed her words by striding into the room. “Jolene, if you can take Rosa to the next room, please.”

  “No.” I jerked against my binds. “No!”

  “Don’t, Cassidy,” Rosa said calmly as Jolene came to her chair.

  Don’t? If this was her version of a goodbye, telling me to not give in to Tami for the sake of saving her… Fuck. No. I wasn’t going to let Rosa be a martyr.

  It wasn’t until Jolene tapped the toes of her high heels to the ends of Rosa’s chair legs that I noticed the small wheels. With the brakes unlocked, my only family was taken from the room.

  “Now. Without that judgmental old hag to interrupt us…” Tami rolled the stool closer to me and sat. “Where were we?”

  “I don’t know what you were doing but I was suffering through your puppet’s vow for your so-called amazing science.”

  Tami halfheartedly smirked. “Jolene… I knew she was a keeper from the beginning. You see, sometimes it helps to condition patients with discipline.”

  I snorted. “Yeah. Like training them to be killers for your sick cause.”

  “Among other things. Security is a necessary branch of our goals. But we also implement what I like to call sublimation cleansing, so they can understand my team and I are their trusted source of guidance as their bodies adapt.”

  I mock gasped. “Oh. You mean, like, brainwashing.”

  She glowered. “Is it entertaining? To waste so much time on dramatics and sarcasm? Are you ever serious?”

  “Like you give a shit what kind of a person I am.”

  Leaning back, she crossed her arms. “You’re right. I don’t.”

  I arched toward her, yelling, “Then why the hell am I here?”

  She smiled. The coldness in her eyes mocked the curve of her lips. A cold spike of fear ran up my spine.

  “Did Rosa ever tell you about your birth?”

  Seriously? “No. Didn’t you hear me the first time? She never felt you worthy of any mention.”

  Her smile dropped and it pleased me that insinuating she didn’t matter was a jab. “When you were born, you destroyed me.”

  I laughed. And laughed. Until she slapped me. Harder than before. Crying with tears, I waited for my vision to clear. If you can’t laugh, cry… Sitting upright once more, I still chuckled—maybe it was hysteria now—as I said, “I hate you.”

  “Oh, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “I destroyed you? How poetic.” She’d hated me on principle that much? Her having to carry me to life was so damn awful? Could she be any more selfish?

  “Literally. Your placenta ruptured prematurely and I was taken for an emergency C-section. During that procedure, they’d found that my uterus had been damaged and they partially removed it.”

  “Bummer.” I could not feel one speck of pity for this evil person.

  She gritted her teeth. “It is unfortunate. It ruined my chances of having more offspring.”

  “Because you love kids so much.”

  Another slap.

  “Only, it took me too many years to realize that wasn’t the problem. Even in vitro yielded no births. That was when we’d started to focus on the hormonal differences of Xol patients.”

  “Ya fucked it all up, huh?”

  “No. We just haven’t perfected it yet. After trying several techniques, we went back to the original research, to find a solution to Xol infertility. And that’s where we dug into those pieces of data about the beta DNA.”

  I wasn’t surprised Rosa had guessed right. She had a brilliant mind. Tami was after the beta axolotl subspecies for procreation.

  “My eggs are useless.” She cocked her head to the side and peered at me. “But yours aren’t.”

  I froze, feeling my face going slack. If I hadn’t been grinding my teeth together at the atrocity of being in her presence, my jaw would have dropped. Blinking faster, I struggled to comprehend why she needed to declare that obvious comparison.

  Too selfish to resist the temptation of invincibility and near immortality, she’d ruined her hormones and eggs. And mine were fine.

  “You want me—”

  “Jesus. I don’t want you.”

  Because she never had.

  “I want your eggs.”

  Yeah. I had connected the dots right the first time. This deranged woman was really sitting here pointedly explaining she wanted my eggs. Like it was an ordinary request any wo
man might make to another. Could I borrow a cup of flour, ma’am? No? How about I shop around your ovaries, then, hmm?

  I started to shake my head. How to reject her in the most irrefutable way…? “Fuck no.” It came out on an incredulous laugh.

  “Do you truly think you have a choice?”

  I did. I sure as hell should. Unless she wanted to playact that she was some self-righteous dude in Congress, I did own the choice to do what I wanted with my body. In a normal world, that was how it should be. But here, I wasn’t so cocky or deluded to think I could fight her. She could tranq me, cut me open, take my eggs, and dispose of me once again.

  “Why me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re my daughter.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “In every biological sense of the word, yes, you are.” She pointed at her chest. “My DNA is in yours. Whether you accept it or not, you are my bloodline.”

  Bloodline? What, was she going to start spouting about having a reign and some divine bullcrap next? “I don’t care.” I did, really. I’d rather be the child of literally any other woman on earth but I couldn’t change the past.

  “I care. You—your DNA—it’s mine. It belongs to me.”

  Dear God. This freak was too far gone. What kind of a person assumes their kid is borrowing their genes?

  She twisted one side of her lips up and drew a deep breath, like she was readying to lay down a lecture. “Jolene had a very valid point.”

  I rolled my eyes. Sure. Her brainwashed patient was only parroting Tami’s points.

  “If the Xol treatment were available to the world at large, do you know what would happen?” she asked.

  “I bet anger management classes would spike.”

  She shook her head. “Everyone would want it.”

  Hardly. If everyone knew it’d trip you into a tweaked-out moody mess, many would opt out. That wasn’t the point, though. No one should play God like that. If a true cure existed—without the craziness and manipulating lifespans, it shouldn’t be hidden from the weak and vulnerable.

  “If everyone could get their hands on it, then Xol recruits would be…common.”

  Two words stuck at me. Recruits, like she thought her patients were her minions and soldiers. And common. She pasted such a dirty edge to it.

  “I haven’t spent my life seeking this cure to let just anyone have it. This…” She stood abruptly, sending the stool crashing to the wall. “This cure is mine. I created it. I perfected it. Do you understand?”

  That she had control problems? Definitely.

  It must have been a rhetorical question because she paced and carried on. “Xol belongs to me, and those I deem worthy of it. I am the one who decides who should be saved. For years, I have arranged a specific formula for who can receive the treatment, but it is no longer enough. Because for every new recruit we save—”

  “You’re not saving anyone! You’re making…an army of cult-like, nearly immortal freaks!”

  She nodded, her expression still furiously serious. “True. I’ve been amassing recruits and followers as a baseline to my cause. Together, we will form a new human subspecies to rule over all else.”

  Oh. My. God. She was unhinged. The Xol had more than fried her eggs. It had nuked her damn brain.

  “In order to preserve a new and improved human subspecies, we must ensure they can procreate and carry on their genes.” She stopped pacing and faced me with her hands behind her back. “And I’m going to start in the most logical part. With myself, with my genes—in you. Because I will never forfeit this power.”

  Chapter Seven

  Luke

  For hours, we strategized in the hotel room.

  Zero had already given me the coordinates of the building he’d tracked Cassidy’s plane arriving at. Hours ago. I rubbed at my face, loathing the wait of even one minute more. There was no telling what they might do to her. The unknown fear drained my concentration.

  “Luke,” Jonah said. He tapped at the map on the screen.

  I shook my head and sat forward to pay attention.

  He’d had his laptop with him and it was on there that we were plotting and testing our plan. The screen presented the blueprint of the facility that was otherwise regarded as a health clinic. We knew better. It had to be a mutant clinic if Project Xol operated it.

  Across the room, Dale spoke on the phone with Zero. Since the moment I’d introduced the men, they’d been hashing out plans. What documents to send to which reporters. Which congressman could speak to which contact for assistance. How one Interpol officer could assist in which country. Arranging an internationally webbed whistleblower effort took a lot of talking and even more persuasion.

  “Luke,” Jonah said again, pulling me back from watching Dale pace, cell phone to his ear. “I know. You want to get Cassidy back. We will. But you gotta focus first.”

  I sighed and tipped a finger from my hands folded together. Pointing at Dale, I asked, “Do you think he can pull it off? Expose them?”

  “Dale?” Jonah glanced at the man who’d mentored him through AA and beyond. “Of course.” Then he raised his brows at me. “Can Zero?”

  Zero had the easier end of it. In our phone call where I’d posed the solution of exposing Project Xol to the world, Zero had stated he had more than enough proof and evidence to share. It was more a matter of condensing it into something that could go viral and make sense to any ordinary citizen.

  “Of course,” I echoed.

  “Then since they are handling their shit in this shitstorm we’re brewing, how about we go over our roles again.”

  I scooted forward in my seat to study the screen again. His reassurance was more cockiness than confidence, but it had roused the fight in me. Dale and Zero could dismantle Project Xol by attacking them at their weakness. Confidentiality. Project Xol existed because it was top-secret, matters that were hushed by too corrupt rulers and businesses. Once we let the cat out of the bag, there would be no way they could continue.

  Jonah’s scold was legit. He and I had different tasks to complete, and if I let myself get distracted by worrying about Cassidy or loathing the surmounting odds against us, I’d be useless in rescuing her.

  I’ll have her in my arms tonight. And I’m never letting her go.

  A month ago, a relationship was the last thing I’d even think about.

  After meeting Cassidy, I was only glad I’d had a chance to experience the little I had with her.

  No. No more of this. If they don’t have the vial of beta DNA, then she should be safe. We’ll have a future together. We’ll have each other again. But only if I could concentrate now.

  I nodded and followed along.

  “Come on, man,” Jonah groused, tapping at the screen. “We’ll enter here…”

  Jonah and I went through our place of breaching the Xol clinic. Posing as waste disposal employees, we’d enter the labs from the basement. We’d retraced our planned path over and over. Basement, to the kitchen, then up to the floor with patient rooms. Borrowing my impromptu move in Mexico, we’d obtain uniforms of whatever kind they had to fit in. Then we’d get Cassidy, wherever she was being held. The one reassuring fact I clung to was that she had to be there. No other planes or vehicles had left the site. Unless they had underground transport, Cassidy was there.

  Just as we ran through scenarios of thwarted escapes, singling out which exits might be easiest if it all went to hell, Dale waved us over.

  “I’ll put them on speaker,” he said into his phone.

  “Luke?”

  It was Zero. “Right here.”

  “Good news or bad news?”

  “Bad,” Jonah said, butting in. At my glare, he shrugged. “That’s the best way to go.”

  “Fine. Bad news?” I said.

  Zero sighed a high-pitched noise. “The vial’s gone.”

  I frowned. “Gone…how?” I brightened at even this so-called bad news, because if Zero knew this, it might mean he had to have b
een in touch with Tramer. Probably what the good news was.

  “He didn’t say. Just that it was gone. As in, he doesn’t have it.”

  “Does the Xol patient have it?” Dale asked.

  “He didn’t say. It wasn’t the best reception.”

  “Okay.” I rolled my shoulders, relaxing a little more. If the vial was gone and the Xol couldn’t obtain it, that had to be a plus for us. In the grand scheme of things, at least. Without that genetic material, Tami couldn’t go forward with her next messed-up experiment. Dale had already told us about the most recent development from Xol labs, some kind of painful, insanity-inducing treatment to regenerate people near death. None of us knew what the vial’s DNA could do for more developments, so with it out of the picture for now, nothing worse could happen.

  Then again, I’d hoped to have that vial for an exchange in getting Cassidy back. A hostage negotiation of sorts.

  “And the good news?” I asked.

  “Uh. Just that Tramer’s alive.”

  Yeah, I’d figured that one out. Too bad we couldn’t have another small win. Regardless, I was glad he’d survived.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Leaving Mexico. He’s injured but he said he was getting out of there.”

  “To go where?” Jonah asked. “Here, with us?”

  “He’d asked for Cassidy’s location and I gave it to him. Kind of. The call ended before he could confirm it. And now, he’s gotta be in the air.”

  Damn. We could use his help infiltrating the lab, but we couldn’t wait for him. Our window was slim. Zero had found the waste disposal’s schedule of pickups and the truck was scheduled to be there in two hours. None of us wanted to wait until the next pickup time—tomorrow evening.

  It wasn’t long before Dale drove me and Jonah to the waste disposal warehouse. Zero had already hacked into their computers. First, he’d canceled the order for pickup so no one on the staff would head out there. Then, he’d added us as employees with key passcodes to get into the building.

  “Ready?” Dale asked as he set the rental in park. He glanced in the rearview mirror at each of us.