by Rena Marks
She snorted. Like she could ever forget that. “Your tongue is unforgettable, Steele.”
She realized what she said as soon as he grinned and let his gaze fall along her body.
“You really need to quit getting me all flustered. Blush is not a good color for me.”
“I disagree,” he said softly. “The delicate pink of your cheeks goes well with the rich, dark tones of your hair. The smokiness of your eyes. So sultry, soft and muted. Velvety. Soft and subdued. I get lost in the depths of your eyes.”
“My eyes? I wish you could look into yours. It’s insane that a man gets such a frame of lashes. Sexy, sooty lashes.”
Dammit. She said the word. She was going to avoid that word. But it was too late. His beautiful eyes were staring into hers, making her lose herself in him. Somehow she was in his arms.
“I can’t stop thinking of you. Day and night,” he admitted.
“We’re going to do something, and then we can be together. We want to try and get you all freed, to live life upland.”
“How?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. “But I’m working on it as fast as I can. I figure we have a few months.”
“Let me help.”
She took a deep breath. “My biggest problem is you all were revived using a computer processor that jump starts your organic brain. Unfortunately, what brings life can also take it away.”
“It can be used in reverse,” he said.
His hand reached for hers, his thumb rubbing across the top.
“Yes. Not that I think it would be used out of spite. But we have to neutralize it somehow before they can ever think to use it.”
“It is the beginning of cyborg technology. The combination of robotics and man.”
“Where did you hear that term?”
“I am not sure.”
This was more evidence that they were alive once before. She nodded slowly. “We have had robotics for years. They don’t have consciousness. But yes, this is a cutting edge breakthrough. While you don’t consciously use the computer processor embedded in your head, it was used remotely to revive you, like a battery starts a car. The other piece of the puzzle is: what is the link that enables your DNA to merge with human? No one else has caught on to this. But because I seem to have a fascination for a certain Zetan,” she grinned teasingly, “I realized something. You are from a race unable to procreate. Yet you’re here. What has enabled your DNA to merge along with all the others who can procreate?”
He blinked. “That is easy. We would apparently produce…it would be a chemical that smoothes the transition. I would say it’s a chemical we are able to turn on and off. It inhibits breeding—like an internal birth control.”
“A chemical? Undiscovered?”
“Think about it. What do all three races, cyborgs, various alien—for a lack of a better term—and human have in common? Nothing. Yet all three DNA samples were successfully merged. That is why cyborg technology has never been successful. On its own, it lacked this other component. Our bodies began to produce a chemical that allows the three to work in tandem.”
Robyn shook her head to clear it. “Wow, there’s that Zetan intelligence I’d heard about.”
He smiled. “Now it’s simply a matter for you to find, trace, and name this chemical. When you study its strengths and weaknesses, you should be able to discover if it can be used to inhibit the cyborg portion of our makeup. The battery, I believe you called it. If the battery can be shut down permanently, we will no longer be anyone’s puppets to control on a whim.”
He was onto more than he knew. She had a feeling they were puppets more times than she and Amanda knew.
“Steele, you’re genius,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him soundly. “You have no idea.”
He groaned. “If I had known that was all it took to impress you, I would have psycho-babbled weeks ago.”
“Impress me? You always impressed me. I’m going to get us out of here, I promise. And then you and I can be together.”
He brought one hand up to cup her face. “I’d like that.”
His head dropped to hers, drowning out the harsh light in the room.
A soft knock at the door interrupted them, where they pulled apart casually. Amanda stuck her head in the door.
“Mandatory meeting for both of us,” Amanda said. “Are you ready?”
“Mmm,” Robyn said, grabbing her clipboard from next to her and rising from the bed. “Steele, you look healthy,” she said with a cheeky grin. “I’ll be back later.”
“Careful,” he teased, stretching out on the bed she just vacated. “You’ll make Beast jealous.”
Amanda smiled as she led her from the room. She turned her head down to speak without the cameras picking up her lip movements. Her voice was low. “Odd that this is the first time we’ll both be there. Time’s running out. They’re pressing us to leave the Xeno Sapiens alone for the first time.”
“I agree.”
“We need to confront them.”
“We can’t. They still have all the power. Until I can find something proving the government’s involvement, we need to lay low. We need to bullshit them some more.”
“I’m getting concerned with that. They’re getting impatient.”
“I know. I’ll stay up all night if I need to, just to find something to use. Did you tell Renegade and Pax we’d be away for an hour or two?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I mentioned it to Beast and Steele.”
“Did both seem overly concerned?” Amanda asked as they walked down the hall. They turned into the decontamination unit to be processed.
They did, now that she thought about it. “Yes. I expected it from Steele. His protectiveness—and intelligence level—are both growing. But Beast? He normally has a teasing tone with his personality. It completely slipped away as he asked me if I was sure all would be well.”
“Renegade is also protective. Leadership qualities. But what caught my attention was Pax’s unease. It’s very unlike him.”
The unit finished and both quieted as they began to walk down the hallway to the sub-elevator, aware of cameras that watched. Once in the elevator, Robyn pushed the button for the main floor. The halls were empty, which meant everyone in the building was waiting in the conference area.
Robyn felt her palms grow damp. The men sitting around the table immediately quieted as they noticed them walking down the hallway through the window.
Amanda pushed open the door. Smiles were the first thing they noticed. Huge smiles around the conference table where everyone sat. Even the aids were present.
“Dr. Becker. Ms. Saraven. Please, sit.” Director Meade waved his arm at the two empty seats across the table from him. “Congratulations on a spectacular revival, ladies. I knew you two would be a great team for the job, but it’s been almost six weeks and time to move forward. Now, give us the latest update.”
Robyn sat down. “Subject EKO-2 has an unusual anomaly that’s manifested. He is able to absorb nutrients transdermally, as well as process food internally.”
“That would be an interesting feature. If we could strip that feature for our own use…”
“We’re a long ways away from discerning how to manipulate individual genetic features onto others,” Amanda said.
“Are we?” Director Meade said mildly.
“Of course,” Robyn said, trying to steer the attention from Amanda.
It didn’t work. “I have additional concerns.” Amanda began abruptly. “Your people knew to strap the Xeno Sapiens down. Yet it wasn’t in the plans. Why?”
“Dr. Becker, I’m surprised at your aggressiveness. Are you sure the testosterone isn’t rubbing off onto you?”
A few of the aids snickered.
Amanda looked taken aback. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Director Meade smiled, his lips thinning and his cunning eyes setting deeper into his puffy face. “Let’s cut the crap, ladies. We k
new it wouldn’t be long before you figured out everything was not as it seemed. Yes, the creatures were alive once before. Living and breathing from the get-go. But they were aggressive, unstable. We chose to terminate the program, but the wonderful Global Government that funded us refused to fund a new one. We were forced to use the same bodies with a clean slate. We killed them, so to speak, to begin anew. The computer technology was necessary to revive a dead brain. It’s never been done before, and chances were slim that it would work. But look at you two. Working together, you made it happen. It opens the doors for endless possibilities! Granted the creatures have unique DNA, but this paves the road for new experiments to avert death. We will begin experimentation immediately.”
“We didn’t sign up for this,” Robyn said. “There’s no transparency on your part. I refuse to help you do anything unsavory or inhumane as experimentation.”
“I understand.” He smiled thinly. “We’ll make sure to let the creatures know that you two alone were responsible for their revival.”
He said it like it was an honor, but Robyn felt a prickle of cold run down her spine.
“And now, perhaps, you’ll realize why we keep them chained. Their aggression levels are off the charts when they die.”
Someone brushed up behind her, pressing a pin prick into her neck. She was barely aware of the same thing happening to Amanda. “What the hell?” But even as she spoke, her words immediately slurred.
Her heart began to pound, beating against the inside of her chest. This was the foreboding the Xeno Sapiens had sensed. She wished she had paid attention.
Next to her, Amanda gave a soft moan.
Director Meade grinned. “Relax and let it happen, ladies. No harm will come to you, I assure you. We just can’t have you interfering in what we need to do. This is a paralyzing agent, and it’ll take about eight hours to run its course. Remember, the only thing keeping you two alive is my generosity.”
Her limbs felt like lead, too heavy to move. The only thing moving was her eyelids right now. Even her lips grew number with each passing second.
“Roll them in,” Director Meade instructed. “Not only do I want them to watch to learn a lesson for later, it’s important that the test subjects see them.”
Whoever it was that stood behind them gripped the back of the chairs and pushed. Dr. Sabin, sitting next to her, calmly reached down and lifted her leaden feet to place on the base of the chair.
They were wheeled back into the elevator from whence they came, riding it down until it reached the Level One room. They positioned the chairs in front of the recessed areas of the wall. They’d already strapped Steele, Renegade, Pax, and Beast into the backboards along with the other still unrevived Xenos.
“What is going on? Who are you?” Steele gritted, his muscles bulging against the straps. “Robyn, are you all right?”
Robyn wanted to call out, but her lips wouldn’t move. Her eyes couldn’t move. The only thing she felt was a throbbing of the pulse at her throat, in tandem with the tension in the room.
“Robyn?” Director Meade sneered. “Even I honor her with the doctorate she earned.”
Steele ignored him. “Robyn? What’s going on?”
“Relax, EKO-2. Or Steele, I guess we can call you, thanks to the help of our female doctors. It never even occurred to us to name you. Dr. Robyn simply doesn’t wish to carry on her farce with you any longer. It served its purpose.”
Steele’s gaze cut to hers, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything to let him know she wasn’t in on this—whatever this was. She gave it her all to try to lift her arms from the armrests of the chair, but they were pinned by gravity.
“I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to let you know, you’re an experiment in progress. You weren’t revived a month ago. You were killed…or your brains were, at least. For all intents and purposes, you were dead. But this revival has been a most successful learning experience. Drs. Robyn and Amanda were able to get to know you and able to determine that you do have successful hormones and…” he guffawed. “Feelings. For human females. As if!”
Renegade wrenched his head, staring at Amanda as if demanding for her to deny it. Like her, Amanda sat frozen. But worse was watching the expression on Steele’s handsome face. The glassy look that came over his eyes whenever he tried to protect himself. That look was carefully expressed on his face now.
“It’s more successful than when we tried to force you to breed together.” Dr. Meade watched Beast’s eyes narrow. “Come now, gentlemen. Surely you didn’t believe these two professional doctors…the best in the world…were interested in you in a way other than professionally?”
He threw his head back and laughed. Robyn felt her stomach flip, as if she’d vomit but be unable to spew it forth with her body frozen.
“Now, we want to do this with the least amount of damage this time. No additional scars to those sleek physiques! We’d like to place a gas mask over your face, but understandably, my colleagues are wary. Some of you tend to bite. No? No matter then, we can do this the old way. It’s just a bit more traumatic for that precious, precious brain. And we can’t keep doing this!” He guffawed to the other doctors, who snickered back.
With a push of a button, a piece of glass came down over the recessed walls, trapping the Xeno Sapiens in. They began to struggle, as if they knew what was coming.
A cloudy gas began to fill the chamber. Robyn watched Steele’s chest expand as he tried to hold his breath, but the exercise was futile. Minutes passed, slowly ticking by, slow torture. She wanted to scream, but she could do nothing but…watch. Steele’s eyes grew wider as he fought for breath.
No! She couldn’t stand this horror, watching him suffocate slowly. Next to him, Beast was jerking on the backboard. He used his brute strength to snap one of the straps, and raised it to break the glass. Too late. Suddenly, his hand fell weakly against the glass as he lost consciousness.
No! They were…dying. Their lives were being sucked away before her eyes. She couldn’t shriek, she couldn’t avert her eyes from the horror in front of her. She couldn’t even beg and plead. Not Steele! She’d had so little time with him. Why hadn’t she tried to move forward quicker? Foolish of her to think she had the full six months of her term to work with.
The last image she had was of Steele’s dawning realization of his demise. His eyes bored into hers, the position fixing on her as he lost sight. She was the last thing he saw when he died.
“Shut down the processor,” Meade barked.
“Brain waves flat,” Doctor Chen called.
“Infuse with oxygen! Then let’s open them up and get life support to the organs. Come on, people, you know the protocol. Bobby? Please get the ladies into their suites to sleep it off while we take on the destruction of their toys.”
Robyn’s head fell forward, unable to hold up her neck as her chair was jarred from behind. No, no, no! Not Steele, please not Steele.
“And ladies? You’re welcome to come down as soon as you’ve recovered. Remember this time, you’ve seen who’s in charge. So no more fucking around and letting us believe our testosterone was poisoning them. Dammit,” he snickered to someone. “I can’t believe we fell for that.”
She wasn’t sure who rolled Amanda’s chair though she could hear it squeaking behind hers. When they got up to her room, the lab technician lifted her hand to imprint the door lock. He dropped it and snickered when it landed, heavy as a rock. When the door slid open, he wheeled her into her apartment.
Bobby lifted her from underneath her arms and hoisted her onto the bed. She plopped onto her side, able to watch him as he left her suite, grinning at her as he waved.
It took six hours for a tear to roll down Robyn’s cheek.
Chapter Eight
Two months later:
“Good morning.” The doors of the lab slid shut behind Robyn. It was a much different place than it had been several weeks earlier. It hustled and bustled with lab-coated aides. Now it would be
impossible to remove a fingernail and slide it into the USB port of the computers.
Amanda looked up from the small desk in the middle of the room. “Good morning, Robyn. We’re reviving today.” Her voice was coolly professional.
“Which batch is this?” Preparations had been occurring for weeks now, ever since the murder of Esson Four. A new batch of beings would be selected and named for the next test group. The first were on life support as possible organ donors.
“Esson Four.”
“What?” The original batch. Renegade, Steele, Beast, and Pax.
“They decided to see if they could revive them after the brain death. If successful, reviving the other groups will be a breeze.” Amanda’s face was carefully neutral, but that in itself belied the horror in what they’d both witnessed the last time they’d seen those four. Neither one had spoken of that hellish day two months earlier. Neither one had really talked to the other except for professional, courteous—careful phrases. They’d walked around for a couple of weeks like emotionless zombies, carefully held in check.
“Will we do it the same as before?”
Amanda’s slim shoulder shrugged. “It’s what worked. If they revive this time, we’ll immediately induce them into a coma. They’ll be hooked to the language downloads and begin processing. For familiarity’s sake, we’ll keep the same subjects. You take Steele and Beast. I’ll take Pax and Renegade.”
Robyn took a deep breath. “Do you think we can do it twice? Will they be all right?”
For the briefest second, Amanda’s face showed a horrendous grimace—horrified torture—her face frozen into ugly despair as if she was stuck recalling a memory from that fateful day two months earlier. Then it changed, briefly washing into a calm—lying—mask she wore as a doctor. “It doesn’t look good. I doubt if their brains will be functional. More than likely they’ll remain in a vegetative state.” She turned away, unfeeling once more.
Robyn knew better. They’d had their share of puffy skin and red rimmed eyes those first few weeks, even as they averted their eyes from each other. But this…this moment was what Robyn had lived for. The last two months had been a slow, torturous hell. She’d spent every spare moment hacking files, researching how they’d pulled off the revival in the first place, and watching the live feeds of the oxygen deprivation killing until it was ingrained in her memory. Until the horror no longer settled like a gut clenching rock in the pit of her stomach but instead felt like a vaguely remembered nightmare.
