“That’s enough to get you started. If you have any questions, ask or message me if I’m not here. I’ll start by sending you a to-do list every day until you get a better grasp on how you should spend your time. Once you get the hang of it, it should go pretty quickly.”
Kaleana went to her desk, and Will got busy sorting messages. He could see how doing this well could help free up Malcolm’s time. Maybe he could talk him into a post-lunch trip to the loft. An alert showed a new message in his personal inbox. When he opened it, he found the to-do list Kaleana had promised.
“1. Smile. He likes to see you smile.”
He smiled and looked up to see Kaleana watching him. She returned the grin. For some reason, that one little thing put him at ease. He moved on to number two.
About an hour later, Kaleana left to take care of something. As soon as she was gone, Malcolm stood behind Will at his desk.
“How are you doing?”
Will was in the middle of running a report. He spun his chair to look up at Malcolm. “Seriously, this is what you do all day?”
“I told you it was boring.”
“Well, yeah, but this goes beyond boring.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot.” Malcolm reached over and pulled up a game of Solandra. “Very important to make sure you haven’t, in fact, died from the boredom.”
“Very funny.”
“Suit yourself. You’ll play it soon enough.”
“So what are you going to be doing now that I’m doing all of this?”
“Well, I’ll be returning messages more promptly than before. I’ll also be able to go to meetings without having to worry about all of this.”
“What? So I’m still not going to get to see you all day?”
“Don’t pout. It also gives me an incentive to try to arrange things over video conferences and through the comm instead of travelling to meetings in person. Let me know when you get through Kaleana’s to-do list. We’ll celebrate by taking a little trip to the loft.”
“Really? So how many reports can I run at a time?”
Malcolm smiled and returned to his desk.
Will went back to his reports, still bored but filled with satisfaction and the promise of things to come.
32
Thirty-Two
Malcolm checked the encryption on the message one more time. Was seven layers enough? They were all at an illegal strength, but eight was better than seven. Then again, it’d do no good if he encrypted the message so heavily that it would take Oculus days to even be able to read it. He sent it before he could think it over again. He could easily drive himself crazy worrying about covering his tracks. With the message sent, he went back to deciphering some data from his hack.
“Done. Got time for the loft?”
Malcolm looked over to see Will smiling at him. In the three weeks since Will’d started working, they’d developed the nice habit of going to the loft for sex or just some private time after Will finished for the day. Whenever Malcolm had been too busy to go, Will sent him provocative messages that pretty much ensured he wouldn’t get anything else done anyway, successfully training Malcolm to always take him up on these offers.
“I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”
Will left the office, and Kaleana smirked at Malcolm. Nothing got by her, and he was well aware she knew exactly what they were up to. He didn’t care. For the first time in his life, he felt he had something resembling balance. Will had taken to the work well, and they’d discovered he had quite a knack for numbers. He could find trends in data that he and Kaleana would have missed. Most of all, he seemed as happy as Malcolm was.
Malcolm finished typing out a message to Trent and then locked down his computer.
“See you at dinner,” Kaleana called after him.
That was another benefit of this new arrangement. Malcolm rarely missed meals these days. And since he and Will spent so much time together during the day, they didn’t feel the need to rush off after dinner. They also got to spend the afternoons with the boys at least a couple of times a week.
Will was already naked and lounging on a cushion by the time Malcolm made it to the loft. They’d gotten a step stool for the closet so Will could make it up by himself. Malcolm didn’t waste any time in joining him.
“My leg really doesn’t bother you?”
The question took Malcolm by surprise. They lay together in the afterglow of a rather quick fuck, looking at the clouds through the skylight.
“I thought I’d made that abundantly clear, but I’m happy to do so again. You’ll just need to give me about a half hour.”
“I don’t mean that. I’ve just seen the way people look at it, the way they wince. I know you wanted to fix it.”
Malcolm hadn’t even considered that his desire to mend Will’s leg could be taken any other way than it had been meant. “To relieve your pain. The only thing that’s ever bothered me about it is that you had to live through it. And without any drugs? I shudder to think about it. How did the pain not kill you?”
“Honestly? I was so mad at the fucking horse that I wasn’t about to die before I’d had a chance to kill the beast.”
Malcolm laughed. “That’s one form of pain management. Did you get your chance?”
“No. Of course not. Damn Alpha cared for the horse more than he cared for me. At least the horse got a nice painkiller for his sprained ankle.”
Malcolm squeezed Will to him. It was a miracle he had survived. If the bone had pierced the skin, he would have died. Every day, Malcolm reminded himself that he needed to bide his time until he found the perfect moment to exact revenge on Vincent. It hadn’t come yet, but it would. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry just the same. You know I love you.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you never had to go through that.”
“I don’t. If I hadn’t, we would have never met.”
Malcolm saw perfect, clear sincerity in Will’s face. “You really mean it.”
“Of course.”
All that pain. A lifetime limp. The horror of sitting in a cage, waiting to die. It’d been worth it to Will—because of him. Malcolm didn’t feel deserving of such trust and love, especially knowing that he kept some of himself from Will. They had shared their deepest, darkest thoughts, fears, desires. Will had held nothing back, but Malcolm always did. More than ever, he wanted to tell Will about Oculus, what he really did all day. He even opened his mouth to do just that but shut it again. He couldn’t.
“What?” Will’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion at Malcolm’s aborted attempt at speech.
“Nothing. I was just trying to figure out how to respond to that, and I’ve got nothing.”
“That’s all right. I don’t need any words. I know.”
Malcolm kissed the top of Will’s head where it rested on his chest. Maybe someday it’d be safe to tell Will everything.
33
Thirty-Three
Will restarted his game of Solandra. Malcolm had been right. Watching a progress bar as a program collected data and ran reports had the potential to turn a man nutty. It never took too long to run each individual report, but he did it enough times a day that the minutes added up.
Patent searching was the most interesting part of his job, but he’d gone through all recent filings pretty quickly, and new ones weren’t posted very often. There were some fascinating developments being made, almost entirely by Betas. Alphas swooped in and bought them up. Will wondered if he would have been able to start his own business or invent something if he’d been born a Beta. His thoughts never lingered there long. His life wasn’t really missing anything.
The report finished. Will minimized his game and read it. Malcolm insisted he had a mind for numbers, and Kaleana backed up Malcolm’s assertion, but Will didn’t think there was much to it. Besides, the computer did all the work. He just looked at the results.
The current report was stra
ightforward. Malcolm’s portfolio was huge. As massive as the compound was, there still wasn’t nearly enough space to produce all of their tech, and Malcolm wouldn’t license any of it out. Will examined the growth and profitability of every product currently in production over the last ten years to see if there was room to cut off the less profitable items and replace them with something else from the portfolio.
Malcolm had been right when he said they made hardly any money off the Geneticists. From a strictly profit standpoint, the supplies for the Eval Centers should be cut, but that was out of the question. The real value was in their exclusivity agreements, which gave them a reputation for being the best. Will knew they were the best at what they did because he saw all the money spent on safety and development, but that’s not why the Geneticists bought from them. In their eyes, they weren’t the best, only the cheapest. Yet another reason to hate them. Of all people, the Geneticists should be concerned with quality. They steered the fate of humanity.
Even though Will knew he couldn’t recommend they cut any products produced for the Eval Centers, he still included them in the reports. They served as a nice baseline. Anything that netted them less clearly needed to be dropped. He looked at the raw data on one screen and the correlating graphs on the other.
“Huh. That’s weird.”
“What?” Malcolm called from his desk.
Will hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. “Nothing. Just looking at some reports. Give me a minute to figure it all out.”
He took a closer look. The graph had to be wrong. He’d probably made an error in selecting which columns from the raw spreadsheet to use. Another glance said the graph was correct, but Will forced himself to look through it row by row to make sure.
“Malcolm, have you noticed how the orders for collars have increased over the last ten years?”
Malcolm came and looked over Will’s shoulder. “They always increase. The number of Zeds tends to be a percentage of the population. As the population grows, so does the number of Zeds.”
“But the population would have to be growing pretty fast to justify these numbers.”
“Maybe the Geneticists have finally fixed the fertility problem.”
“Well, if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean they’re closer to fixing the genome? Shouldn’t there be fewer Zeds?”
“It probably is a small percentage, but a smaller percentage of a much bigger number is still going to be more than a bigger percentage of a smaller number.”
Obviously. Why was Malcolm talking down to him? “Still, I don’t see how the population can grow this fast. Surely we’d hear about it.”
“They keep population numbers pretty quiet. They don’t want to instill false hope or worry people.”
Will shook his head. “Where are they housing all these people? If the population really is growing at this rate, there’d have to be constant construction.”
“You don’t know what goes on outside this compound.” The condescending words were about as hurtful as the frosty tone they were delivered in. “It doesn’t really matter. The Geneticists can order as much or as little as they want of anything they want. Let’s focus on what we can control.”
Was that the problem? Will knew Malcolm valued control more than almost anything, but more than he valued finding out the truth if something wasn’t right? Malcolm’s eyes made it clear the discussion was over. “All right. It just seemed odd. I’ll finish the report and let you know what I recommend. I only use the collars as a baseline to gauge profitability.”
Malcolm’s eyes softened. “I’ve never doubted your methods. You’re good at your work.” He leaned down and kissed Will’s temple and whispered in his ear, “As soon as you’re done, we can go over your recommendations in the loft.” When he pulled back, his expression was almost back to normal, but his eyes were still cooler than Will would have liked.
“Sounds good.” He smiled, and Malcolm nodded, seeming satisfied that the matter was closed.
Will focused back on the report, reminding himself that they were both trapped in the same system doing the best they could. Still, numbers didn’t lie.
34
Thirty-Four
The flow of information from Malcolm’s hack into Geneticist Walken’s system had stopped. Someone had found the leak and fixed the weakness he’d exploited. Malcolm hoped he had the data he wanted. He still hadn’t been able to sort through it all, so he wasn’t exactly sure what was there. Will’s observation the previous day had prompted him to search for population numbers. Now that Will had pointed it out, Malcolm felt stupid for not noticing it before. He knew orders for collars had been increasing, but he had believed it was for the exact reason he had given Will. It had never occurred to him to follow the math through to the end to discover that no reasonable population growth could account for the increase.
He wrote a quick little spider and sent it crawling for the data he needed. None of the files he’d taken from the hack were indexed or searchable. It’d been a long process to decrypt everything first. While the spider did its job, Malcolm replied to some messages and tried to go about his regular work.
It didn’t take long for him to start getting pingbacks from the spider. Forty years of detailed population data were available. He hadn’t thought he’d get so lucky. Malcolm opened one of the files and scanned the information. From the format he saw that he’d be able to write a script that would take all the information, compile it, and sort it, breaking it down by area, caste, and year. In a few minutes, he’d have the answers Will had wanted, even though Malcolm wouldn’t be able to share them.
As soon as he started the program, he heard a nearly deafening scream. It didn’t stop. Malcolm’s heart clenched, and he overturned his chair in his rush to the window. Below was a Beta girl who had apparently been riding her bike and crashed. Her leg lay contorted in an unnatural position. Malcolm’s stomach lurched. He put up his hand to ward Will off.
“Will, stay there.” The last thing he wanted was for Will to see something so gruesome, especially if there was even a chance it would remind him of his own accident. “Kaleana, come with me.” He raced out of the office and down the stairs.
Outside, the wind whipped at his body. A storm was coming in later. Horrible weather for a young girl to ride her bike in. By the time he reached her, a crowd had already gathered. “Does anyone know who her parents are?”
“Yeah, they’re at work.”
“Get them.”
The young boy who had spoken took off running at Malcolm’s order. “Kaleana—”
“I’ve already got an emergency team on the way. They’re bringing a Med Machine. She’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
Malcolm knelt next to the little girl and took her hand. “It’s all right. What’s your name?”
“Lorna.” It was barely audible through her tears.
“That’s a pretty name, Lorna. Help is on the way. Try not to move, and squeeze my hand if it hurts.”
The girl squeezed his hand tighter than he thought possible. Her nails dug into his skin, eventually breaking it. “Everything’s going to be all right.” He kept his gaze steadfastly away from her leg.
Two emergency medical techs arrived a couple of minutes later, wheeling a gurney holding the Med Machine. “The doctors are here, Lorna. They’re going to make all the pain go away.” She refused to let go of his hand, and he couldn’t blame her. He helped the two men lift her into the machine.
The capsule that always reminded Malcolm of a coffin closed around the girl. The two techs operated the Med Machine, pulling up a three dimensional X-ray image of the leg and using the precise laser controls to first numb the entire leg and then set it.
“Is she going to be all right?” Malcolm tried his best to keep the anxiety from his voice.
“Of course. The leg’s set, and the rapid cell regenerators are working. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. It was a clean break and didn’t puncture the skin or muscle.”
Just like that. A few minutes, and Lorna would be good as new. Maybe a little wobbly but not in pain. Even though Malcolm manufactured these machines, it was easy to forget how amazing they were since he never used them. He looked in on the little girl and saw that she was still crying, probably scared of being trapped in the enclosed space. By the time her parents came running, the process was finished. The rapid cell regeneration was complete, and the bone was fused. The medicine would continue to work until it left her system in a few hours. The girl was lifted out of the capsule by one of the techs and ran to her parents.
Ran.
It seemed there were no limits to what modern science could do. Malcolm looked up to his office window, thinking of Will, and his jaw slackened in shock. Will stood at the window, the pain on his face so evident it pierced Malcolm’s heart. Pain at the memory, sympathy pain for the girl, or pain at the injustice of a world that could heal this girl’s leg in a matter of minutes but not his because she had been born into a higher caste, Malcolm didn’t know. Probably all three.
He ignored the thanks of the parents and strode back to the house. Will needed him.
“Malcolm, Trent has a Geneticist at the residential gate.” Kaleana rushed to catch up with him, but he didn’t slow.
“Who?”
“Walken.”
Malcolm stopped. The blood drained from his face, leaving him lightheaded. “Is he alone?”
[In Distress 01.0] In Distress Page 25
