Fragments

by Aya DeAniege

  “With these,” he said, tapping the ones on my head, “I can track brainwave activity more accurately than Blane’s little air based what-have-you. It works, his wireless system, but it only really tells us that there has been a spike, not where in the brain the activity is. If I can pinpoint where, it may help me in identifying what is happening, as well as help you figure out how to do what you do, on purpose.”

  Then he went wheeling about the lab again. Sounds went off, things beeped and other things seemed to give little notification sounds. I couldn’t tell what any of the machines did, to my eye they were just computer monitors. The ones I had seen in the past had been massive things, but Blane’s were the sleekest, thinnest things possible, and if Gerrid’s wheeling about was any indication, it was entirely possible that the main monitor was the top of one of the counters.

  The machines worked almost in pace with an Alpha’s voracity for information. Gerrid hardly had a moment to stop and ponder before another one went off and he scooted across the lab to the next one. He’d always return to that first one, though, in the middle and seemed to be entering information into it from each of the screens he visited.

  Really, if Blane was smart, he’d just have all of the screens feeding into the same one.

  Unless he used the placement of the others to keep him busy as things worked out. Blane might have done it just so, given the distance between them all, so that he could get some exercise while looking up test results.

  Finally, he approached me with several swabs and dabbed at everything once more. My neck, my head, arm pits, the whole bit.

  “Uh,” he hesitated with the last one and blushed as he looked away.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This one is for between your legs,” he said.

  “You didn’t do that one the first time.”

  “This one’s mainly curiosity. And I know, it’s weird, but you give off all sorts of pheromones from down there. Even normal men can smell a normal woman who is ovulating. It’s nothing that they consciously recognize, but it’s there. I need to swab.”

  “Why are you apologizing to me like I’m Rachel?” I asked.

  “Because sex won’t follow?” Gerrid asked awkwardly.

  “Ah, right, okay, go ahead.”

  He slipped his hand, and the swab, into my underwear. With a strangely expert flick, Gerrid swabbed me without looking, hand bent at a funny angle. Like he had done that before, done that a great deal before. I watched him pull away, then as he went off to start doing the tests on the swabs.

  “You knew how to do that,” I said when he gave no explanation.

  “Swabbing is basic work,” he said with a shrug.

  He almost managed to sound like he wasn’t hiding something. But I grew up with a brother who had gotten into all sorts of trouble, and I knew that practiced tone of voice.

  “Without looking?” I asked. “In my pants?”

  “Oh, that,” he said, then spun around and swung across to another screen.

  He did not elaborate, which annoyed me to no end. Gerrid’s focus was entirely on what the monitors were spitting back to him, the information he was collecting from my tests.

  Rachel entered, phone in her hand. She walked up to me and handed me the phone, then turned on Gerrid and put her hands on her hips. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was glaring at Gerrid. For his part, Gerrid seemed not to notice.

  I sat there with the phone in my hand, not understanding what she was wanting me to do with it. Rachel knew I wasn’t a table or something of that sort, so she may have wanted me to look at something on the phone, but she hadn’t specified, so I simply held it in confusion.

  Gerrid turned eventually and raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Rebecca, would you be a dear and read the text?”

  I held up her phone and frowned at the screen. It had gone black. I activated the screen and found that her phone was only locked with a swipe.

  In an estate full of rivals, she should have at least had a pattern locked into it. In the text messages, I went to the most recent one, which was from someone called Master.

  “A test isn’t a test with one subject. Stop hiding like a little bitch and get to the lab.”

  I backed out of the message and noticed that there was also a sender named Blane. He may have kept two different phones. One for his work as Master, and one for his personal use. Separating them would certainly make it easier to tell which part of Blane’s duties necessitated the call or text message.

  “I didn’t send that,” Gerrid said. “If I wanted you here, I’d send you a dick pic. Fastest way to get you down here and you’d be spitting mad. It’d work out great, and I could get samples just from you manhandling me. Since you are here, Rebecca, come over here and Rachel, take her place.”

  “You’re a jerk, Gerrid,” Rachel said.

  “Why?” he asked. “I didn’t ask Blane to send the message either. Rebecca?”

  “Sorry,” I said, walking around Rachel and approaching him.

  “Only to make certain the tests aren’t changed by your smell being on me, I’m going to ask you to stand over there,” Gerrid said with a motion to a computer on a desk on the other side of the lab. “Matt set it up with a bunch of games and such. You can play games while I work with Rachel, but you don’t have to leave the lab.”

  I moved to the desk and sat at it. I didn’t bother turning the computer on, choosing instead to watch as Gerrid went through the same routine with Rachel. The tests took about an hour, and then Gerrid came to that last swab and he hesitated once more.

  “Uh,” he said in a hesitant fashion.

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  “This one is for between your legs,” he said. “It’s weird, I know, but you give off all sorts of pheromones from down there. Even normal men can smell a normal woman who is ovulating. It’s nothing that they consciously recognize, but it’s there. I need to swab.”

  Almost word for word, what he had said to me only an hour before. Rachel considered the swab, then looked past it, to Gerrid. She frowned and seemed to have a moment of panic as she realized what he meant by the words.

  “Can I do it myself?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “You want to run this along the folds of your labia. Not into the opening, but around it. Your folds make a shape like this,” he made it with his thumb and index finger. “Prettier than this, of course. The swab follows this line up and over, over your clit and not across it, then down again.”

  “Over my clit?” Rachel asked.

  “The bundle of nerves you play with when masturbating.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’d say the same to you,” he said, holding out the swab. “You don’t know where your own clit is?”

  “Shut your whore mouth.”

  Gerrid held up his hands in defeat and walked away. He turned his back to Rachel, and I kept my eyes on him. He was even so inclined to duck his head, looking at the floor rather than appearing to be looking around, or at an object that cast a reflection.

  “I know where your clit is. I just thought you’d know too. Follow that line.”

  “I’ll follow it,” Rachel snapped.

  Gerrid returned a moment later and took the final swab from Rachel. Then he went spinning about on that stool again. I swear he had a little smile on his face as he scooted around.

  He enjoyed wheeling about on that thing in an almost childish delight.

  Rachel found herself a seat and simply waited. I watched her watch Gerrid. He didn’t seem to be bothered by her gaze at all, simply continued along. At the end of the hour, he stopped and sighed out, then turned to us.

  “Okay, how should we go about this, I wonder?” he asked. “Rebecca, come over here please, so I don’t have to raise my voice.”

  I stood and walked over to Rachel, taking her hand in mine. We turned to Gerrid as one, catching just the moment when he forced his face to relax.
The expression that he had had, I wasn’t certain, but I think he had been wincing as we focused on him.

  “All right. Genetically speaking you two are not identical.”

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  “We knew that already,” Gerrid said. “Outwardly you are identical physically. To a glance, or to an eye that doesn’t have a chance to be up close and personal, even one that sees you with makeup on, you are the same. But, let’s face it, your eyes are not the same. Your hair colour isn’t quite the same.

  “There are a couple of little lines of code that are different. To the undiscerning eye, absolutely, you two are the same. It took us some serious work to figure that out. Blane and I. At the end of the day, we’re thinking identical twins aren’t actually identical, it’s just that science and the human eye can’t tell the differences yet.”

  “What you mean is, you created a whole new categorization because of us?” I asked.

  “We had to change the rules in order to explain your existence,” Gerrid said. “The egg split, creating two babies.” He held up his hands and made fists. “Two things which are almost identical, but are mirror images of one another. Right? Except, my hands are only similar to a glance. My right hand is dominant, my left is actually smaller than my right. True story, different ring sizes on my hands. But, to a normal, outside observer, my hands are identical, exactly the same. That’s you two.”

  “Which is your right, which is your left?” Rachel asked.

  “Depends on who you ask,” Gerrid said with a shrug. “For me, Rebecca is my right. For Morgan, you would be the right. Rebecca’s lines of code are those that may have been activated by physical things. She gave birth so it activated a part of her genetic code. When you give birth, it may do the same thing, but for the moment, you two are not identical.”

  “Okay, right, I think I get that,” Rachel said.

  “Now, your biological unit, the other half of your genetics, was a Mother.”

  Rachel had mentioned that biological unit. The female who the previous government had found in a tomb and assumed was a female Alpha. They had recombined her genetics with that of our biological mother. Some lines had been missing, the sample had obviously not been perfect because of the age and who had handled it, but that was one of the reasons why we had been created by… an odd sort of fertilization.

  Blane had told Rachel that he thought he could reverse engineer what had been done so that same sex couples could have children together. I’m not certain there was a market for such a thing, but sometimes Alphas did things just to prove that they could.

  Oh, and that same technique could be used for couples who found themselves infertile. That, at least, I knew there was a huge market for. Alphas preferred biologically conceiving children. None of them had really invested in fertility besides as an area of study, to figure out how a person was fertile, or how Alphas always beget Alphas on certain women during the previous government.

  “What’s a Mother?” I asked.

  Because Rachel had admitted to not knowing, and none of the Alphas had clarified yet. I knew they thought I was special, I just didn’t know why.

  “You’re a Mother, Rebecca.”

  “No, but what’s a Mother?” I asked again.

  “Mothers and Daughters were titles given to women who were born of Alphas. The Daughters, those like Rachel, would continue to live as if they had never reached maturity. They could have sex, they could have children, but they were always treated like daughters. The Mothers, well, they could walk into an Alpha’s land, any Alpha’s land, and gain loyalty. We’re still looking into it. As was suggested last night, it may be that a Mother is labelled as such because after giving birth, they give off that scent for all Alphas.”

  “You mean Matt was right,” Rachel said with a thumb jabbed toward me. “She’s a mother to all Alphas?”

  “Preliminary data says yes. I’ve never had a daughter, neither have Blane or Abraham. Let’s face it, few Alphas have had daughters besides one or two adoptions thanks to the old government. But I’m betting that protective extension that we offer you has something to do with you giving off the pheromones that a daughter of an Alpha would. You, Rachel, would be cherished, loved, spoiled absolutely rotten, and protected by the Alphas. Your children would likely afford the same sort of protection until they were grown.”

  “While Rebecca…?”

  “Is the epitome of woman to us.”

  “That makes no sense,” Rachel said with a shake of her head. “We’re the same. Just because she was forced to have children, doesn’t mean that she’s a different person.”

  “It actually does. Even if she let Blane fix the cosmetic damage, her body has gone through a massive transformation. In order to carry a child to term, a woman’s body changes. The hips widen, the jaw widens and the feet get bigger. Your body is pumping fetal cells through your bloodstream and they can remain in the body for the rest of your life. You can even take those cells and pass them on to future children. If the mother suffers damage, especially organ damage, during the term, the fetus will send stem cells to repair her. That creates a bond like you would not believe.

  “Not to mention the mental changes. Where it basically eats your brain while you’re pregnant and the sleep deprivation afterwards can make that permanent if you aren’t careful. The metabolism slows down, it’s an evolutionary point there. Your body assumes you have the same amount of food, but now have to split it between two mouths, your metabolism slows down so that you can give half of your food to a hungry mouth.

  “You cannot deny the changes that a mother’s body goes through. You can’t reverse that. You can do cosmetic changes. You can repair tears to the vagina and the vaginal opening, but under the skin, there is no way to take that hormone out. There’s no way to remove the instinct of a mother to the cry of a child, even if that child isn’t her own.”

  “We’re the same,” Rachel insisted.

  “Except, you aren’t,” Gerrid said in an almost gentle fashion. “Even if you have a child, I can’t see you going through the same changes as Rebecca. Physically, you’d be the same then, and I hope you have twins your first time around just like her. It’d be a myth for Blane’s line of work. They’d lose their minds. But you are not the same.”

  “Except physically,” I said.

  “You’re like my hands. To an outside observer, yes, you are exactly identical. Except you have stretch marks and Rachel doesn’t. Oh, and your mouth. Have Blane fix that.”

  “Why? What?” I asked.

  “You have cavities in your teeth, I’m guessing he didn’t feed you right. We’ll give you a multivitamin to get everything back where it’s supposed to be, but get Blane to fix your teeth. He’ll remove them and give you something, then you’ll be good to go. You want to keep the stretch marks, fine, but you don’t get to keep nasty teeth.”

  “Can if I want to,” I said.

  “If you don’t get it done now, you have to pay for it later,” Gerrid said. “It may seem whimsical and nice now, but Blane charges a lot for his drug. You can’t take other brands, they aren’t safe and clean like his is, they use fillers, his is the pure product.”

  “Oh, okay, getting my teeth fixed now,” I said.

  “And maybe your eyes,” he motioned around his eyes. “You’ve been squinting. Possibly from bad light, maybe from malnutrition, get him to fix that. Let him do a full scan of you, if he hasn’t already. There was no time before you got wrapped up with Abraham. He’ll give you the breakdown. He will tell you what you need to have done and what’s cosmetic damage. Let him fix what’s broken. Okay?”

  “I will consider it.”

  “You only have one body,” Gerrid said. “Don’t let pride get in the way of you living a full and healthy life.”

  “Anything else?” Rachel asked.

  Something beeped behind Gerrid when he opened his mouth to respond. He wheeled on over and considered the screen for a long moment, a smile slowly spread
ing on his face.

  “Of course, of course,” he said.

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  Gerrid wheeled back over.

  “I can replicate this. Uh, Rebecca’s pheromone, to make a catnip spray for Alphas, so to speak.”

  “With my permission,” I said.

  “I have no intention of ever letting the recipe out of my hands,” he said. “Blane will wipe the computers.”

  “That was fast,” Rachel said. “I figured it would be months before you figured anything out.”

  “Blane’s tech has to be fast to keep up with him. Having him wait around for days or even weeks for the information? That would be a very bad thing. Death all over. Or orgies all the time. That could be a fun outcome.

  “Normally speaking it would take about six weeks for those results. We’re doing quite well.”

  Quite well?

  It was a bit more than ‘quite well’ from my perspective. From six weeks down to an hour or so was like suddenly discovering a way to travel faster than the speed of light. I wondered if Gerrid was downplaying the test times because he was jealous, or simply because he knew Blane might be watching and wanted to poke the Master.

  “Gerrid,” I said.

  “I have no intention of doing anything stupid,” he countered to me. “My main concerns are health issues. The pheromone that a mother gives off is very important for the development of an Alpha. At this point, an Alpha loses his mother, we no longer have to worry about him becoming disconnected from reality or going mad. For Owen’s boys, oh wow. We can separate them and give the mothers the choice, if we can bring them back enough to make that choice.

  “And then there’s Blane.”

  “What about Blane?” Rachel asked. “He’s perfectly normal.”

  “No, he’s not. He was part of a study of Alphas who lost their mothers. None of the others have bred either. It seems without a mother, even if they do survive adolescence, an Alpha cannot make that connection. Whatever happens, it doesn’t quite work. One day with Rebecca, a couple of minutes in his study with her and then sniffing her head just last night. Did neither of you notice that change?”