The Change (Unbounded)

by Teyla Branton

  The surgery on my leg was over within fifteen minutes. My leg was thoroughly numb, and I wished it could be my heart. Ritter was right. As the numbness I’d felt after the attack on my parents wore off, it was being replaced by hatred and anger. And worry.

  Cort looked at Keene. “I have something that will help her heal in the fridge.”

  “I don’t want it!” I wished I could add that I didn’t want anything from him, but I’d save that little speech until later. Preferably when I had Ritter around to hold him for me while I took out my anger on his nerdy face.

  Keene laughed. “Smart. If it’s anything like our version, the stuff’s poison. But like it or not, Edgel did inject some around your wound already.” He turned to the Unbounded who’d performed the operation. “I’ll take it from here, Edgel. Get to work. We move in an hour.”

  “What about him?” Edgel motioned to Cort, obviously unsure of his status.

  “I’ll take care of him.” Keene casually leveled his gun at his brother.

  Cort’s blue eyes narrowed, and the brothers stared at each other for a long moment in silent challenge. They didn’t look much alike, except perhaps in their build and the coloring of their hair. Keene appeared stronger, more capable, better looking, and his green eyes were every bit as compelling as Cort’s blue ones. By rights he should have the Unbounded gene.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Keene said to Cort for my benefit.

  Cort shook his head. “I’m not stupid.”

  This whole little act was stupid.

  Keene pulled two sets of handcuffs from a pocket in his tan cargo pants, and using only one hand, he set one pair around Cort’s hands, locking him to the headboard, and the second around his ankles.

  I couldn’t have planned it better myself.

  I had reserves of energy that had been gathering in my body since I left my parents’ house. Maybe I could take Keene down and get away before Cort could alert the others. I opened myself, absorbing nutrients that came through the air. I took in as much as I had time for.

  Now.

  While Keene was still bent over, I kicked out at his gun with my good leg, using one of the moves Ritter had taught me. I executed it perfectly and the weapon went flying. I followed the move by coming to my feet and slicing down on Keene with a chop that should have sent him crashing to the floor, writhing in pain.

  He moved too fast. With near Ritter-like speed, he avoided my attack and came back with one of his own, aimed at my mid-section. I jumped to the side, clumsy because of my leg, but managing to block with one hand while slamming my foot into his wounded calf. He grunted but blocked my next attempt by shoving my body up against the wall and grabbing my fist. Too late I remembered Ritter’s warning about letting myself be pinned against a wall. For a moment we were locked together, bodies touching, breath coming fast. With his hair falling back, I could clearly see an ugly scar that ran the length of his right cheek near the hairline. Worse than being pinned against the wall was the fact that my overactive imagination was suddenly giving me another vision of why we might be so close. My head ached with sudden pressure.

  “You can’t beat me,” Keene scoffed, his voice unnervingly calm, though there was something akin to admiration under the surface. “At least not yet, even if you have a combat ability. I’ve worked too long and too hard. I may not have my father’s Unbounded gene, but that also means I don’t have his aptitude for science.” His voice became derisive. “I’ve been in training since I was five. Unlike you, I can’t rely on family talent.” He spoke as if it were a dirty thing.

  I relaxed my body and gradually we let our arms fall to our sides, stepping apart. I was relieved that the strange attraction I’d felt for him seeped away. “Who are you?” I whispered.

  It was Cort who answered. “He’s the son of one of the most powerful men running the Emporium. At least that’s what it says in our files. The rumor is that he’s better at fighting than even Ritter.”

  That I seriously doubted.

  “What do you want with me?”

  Keene shook his head. “I don’t want anything with you. I’m following orders. But there is someone who does want you.”

  “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  “My father?” I clenched my fists, ready to make another attack. “Thanks to you my father is struggling for his life.”

  In a quick motion, he bent down and swept up his gun from the floor, leveling it at me. “No, Erin. Your father, like mine, is one of the three Triad members who run the Emporium.” He saw my surprise and emitted a bitter laugh. “You didn’t know? See? Just when I think I’m disgusted enough with the Emporium that I might join your Renegades, I find another reason to stay. Your friends lied to you, Erin. You are as much engineered as I was. Only my engineering failed.”

  Engineered? What on earth was he talking about? I had no way to reference anything he was saying. It meant nothing.

  “Tell her, Cort,” ordered Keene. Then he added, “You might as well. That’s the reason we were able to find her in the first place.”

  Cort sighed. “He’s right, Erin. At least to a point. You aren’t who you think you are.”

  “Liar!” I spat.

  For an instant, Cort flinched, but then he went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “Ava wanted an Unbounded descendant, but you were seventh generation, and there wasn’t much chance of that.”

  I remembered Stella saying something about the sixth generation being the last possibility for Unbounded, but I hadn’t bothered with the math. Ava was my fourth great-grandmother. Four plus my grandmother and my mother did mean I was seventh generation.

  “So when your mother had fertility treatments, it was too good an opportunity to pass up,” Cort continued. “Ava decided to give you a better chance of being Unbounded.”

  “My mother has a tipped uterus,” I said. “That was the only reason she went to the doctor.”

  “Well, what your doctor didn’t know, or couldn’t tell, is that your father’s sperm would never have resulted in another child. He was lucky to have fathered Chris. So when the time came for the insemination, Ava replaced the sperm.”

  Replaced the sperm? Horror bled into my thoughts. “What does this have to do with the Emporium?” I managed to say.

  “Oh, they didn’t replace it with just any sperm.” Keene’s tone was still bitter. “Ava had her Renegades raid our facility. She knew we’d been able to engineer Unbounded sperm to result in the highest percentage of Unbounded offspring, and also that it would join only with a likely ovum, rejecting those with markers for genetic defects. Of course, that still left a lot open because none of us have managed to actually alter the eggs themselves to show which will result in an Unbounded child, but it was nearing a forty percent possibility with a mother like Erin’s who at least carries the latent gene. Of course, with an Unbounded mother, the results are far higher.”

  Cort nodded. “Ava knew the Emporium sperm would bounce the odds up, and it was either that or start over with a new baby of her own, which I still think she should do, by the way.”

  I sagged against the wall. My father wasn’t my father after all. The man who’d raised me, the man who’d come to all my soccer games, the man who’d taken a hundred pictures the night of my first prom. The man whose footsteps I’d once wanted to follow into the courtroom. And he didn’t even know. Neither did my mother. Ava had never given them a choice. And what about Jace who’d been born after me?

  There wasn’t any overt difference in my physical features compared with my brothers, nothing to lend suspicion. Chris had darker blond hair, but we both had our mother’s gray eyes.

  Despite Jace’s lighter hair and the blue eyes we’d always joked must be a throwback to some past relative, his face was similar to ours. As I pictured his face now, I realized that while Jace and I looked like Chris, we didn’t resemble our father at all.

  I wanted to be furious. I wanted to hate Ava. But if what they were saying was tr
ue, Ava had given me a chance at life. An Unbounded life. I wasn’t yet sure if that weighed for or against her. Then again, if I hadn’t been Unbounded, I would be decidedly dead. I owed her my life. Twice.

  “I stole the sperm,” Cort confessed. “Ritter and me. I’m sorry, but I still think it was the right thing to do.”

  Swallowing hard, I looked from one to the other. I could feel their expectation like a weight on my shoulders. Okay, I’d oblige them. “How did the Emporium find me?”

  Keene smiled. “We had tracking devices on the sperm container. We followed it to the clinic, and it was easy enough after that to discover which of the clients had the procedure that day and which were likely candidates. After a little research, we knew it was your family, though we didn’t realize you were Ava’s descendant until more recently. Then we watched and waited.”

  “We didn’t find the tracking device until later,” Cort added. “That was my fault. We did as much damage control as we could, and we thought your family was in the clear, but apparently it wasn’t enough.”

  It sounded like the truth, not a cover up for his own betrayal, but I knew better than to believe him. The Emporium had me now because of Cort. End of story.

  “Are you sure I’m really my mother’s child?” I asked. The idea was haunting. If switching sperm was seen as acceptable, then why not the ovum? If they’d used an egg cell from an Unbounded mother, they would have had a likelier chance of creating an Unbounded child.

  “Of course,” Cort said. “We would never force a woman to give birth to another woman’s child.”

  “Only because it’s impossible,” Keene sneered. “An Unbounded ovum only survives in the body it was created in.”

  Relief flooded me. At least my entire life was not a lie—that is, if Keene was telling the truth. There was no way to be sure.

  I stepped toward the door and Keene followed me with his gun. “What matters is that we want Unbounded offspring, Erin. You are a prize.” Regret tinged his voice, and I knew he desperately wished to be in my place, to be the Unbounded his father desired.

  “I don’t want to join the Emporium.”

  Keene snorted. “You want to be with people who lied to you?”

  “Lied to me? You tried to kill my family!” I yelled this despite the gun in his hand. “You work for monsters, and I will never be part of that.” That went for Cort, too, but I didn’t spare him a glance.

  Keene and I glared at each other for long seconds before he shrugged. “You’ll come around as I had to. But since you’re feeling so chipper, I think I’ll move you down the hall.”

  So Cort could get away without me, of course. To further betray Ava and her friends. I wanted to dive for his gun in an effort to fight the separation, but for the moment I couldn’t emotionally face another bullet.

  Thinking of Ava reminded me of something important. Back at Stella’s, Ritter had said I wasn’t talented at fighting, and yet everyone else, even Keene, indicated that I was. I turned back to where Cort sat shackled on the bed, his face ghostly in the light of the lamp on the nightstand. “Ava isn’t talented at combat, is she?”

  He slowly shook his head. “No, but your father is. His genes should be the stronger because they’re less removed, though it doesn’t always happen that way. A lot depends on your other Unbounded ancestors.”

  “What’s Ava’s talent?”

  Cort’s jaw worked but nothing emerged.

  “Tell her!” Keene hissed, white-lipped with fury. “Enough with the lies.”

  “Fine.” Cort’s eyes flashed anger of his own. “Ava is sensitive to thoughts and feelings. We call it sensing.”

  Sensing? Did he mean some sort of ESP? She’d mentioned the talent, but never related it to herself or our family line. “You’re saying she knows what people are thinking?”

  “More like she senses their emotions. There’s a wide range of ability within the talent. And of course there’s a way to block.” Cort spoke confidently, and I knew he was right. After all, Ava hadn’t known he was working for the Emporium.

  Which was, of course, why Cort had wanted me to tell him when my ability kicked in. He hadn’t wanted to record it for the sake of research, he was simply trying to cover himself in case I took after Ava instead of my biological father. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Cort shrugged. “Ava believes that knowing before the sensing ability manifests sometimes delays or skews the ability. She wanted to wait and see in the off chance that you developed that talent instead of combat.”

  Emotions were sliding off Cort now, a mixture of frustration and anger. I couldn’t tell which was directed toward me and which were for Keene, or possibly Ava. But at that moment everything fell into place. Maybe the Change or curequick hadn’t made my hormones go wild. Maybe the feelings—the out of control ones for Ritter, and the lesser ones for Cort and Keene—weren’t mine but belonged to virile men who just happened to be somewhat attracted to a woman.

  Me.

  If sensing was my ability, that might also explain why I could tell at a glance if someone was Unbounded. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I’d taken after Ava, not my illustrious sperm donor. The explanation fit all the emotions I’d experienced these past days—the strange thoughts and visions, and headaches.

  Better yet, since everyone was still unaware of my ability, perhaps I could somehow use their ignorance to my advantage.

  “So, I take after my biological father,” I said. “That’s why all the focus on combat training.”

  “You certainly have the guts for it,” Keene replied.

  Cort nodded. “You would have been trained anyway to some extent, but after seeing you attacking Keene, I’m pretty sure.”

  I didn’t see the point in telling either of them that my actions had come solely from desperation and not from talent. Ritter would have known the difference. No wonder he’d believed me when I talked about the Unbounded at the restaurant. After training me, he’d suspected my true nature.

  Keene reached out and pushed me gently but insistently toward the door. I had the sense of anger from him now, nothing more. No attraction. Well, that made two of us.

  Without a glance at Cort, I moved out the door and down the hall. My leg was still numb from the medication, but that was better than pain from the freshly stitched wound. At least without the bullet, I’d heal faster.

  Meanwhile, I’d watch for the opportunity to escape.

  Keene stopped and patted me down in front of the door at the end of the hallway. His hands went methodically over every inch of the blood-streaked dress.

  “Making sure I don’t have more hidden knives?” I arched a brow. “I still might, you know. Better check again. I tend to stick things in my bra.”

  A rush of feeling from him about knocked me over, but this time I recognized the attraction wasn’t my own; my hatred for him burned far too bright to mistake that.

  Ah.

  Not that it was really me he desired. I’d dated enough men in my thirty-one years to know that attraction for any halfway pretty girl was something men felt on a regular basis—even ones they didn’t necessarily like.

  The emotion vanished almost as soon as it appeared. “Shut up and go inside.” He leaned past me and opened the door. It was a bedroom similar to the one we’d just left. Queen-sized bed, dresser, window. Nothing elaborate or beautiful. Cort obviously hadn’t planned to stay here long term.

  “My, the lengths you’ll go through to get a girl alone.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting who has the gun?” Keene lifted the weapon slightly for emphasis.

  I leaned closer to him. “Aren’t you forgetting that my so-called father is running this little kidnapping scheme? Besides, it’s not like you can actually kill me with that thing.”

  I’d struck a nerve because he was glaring at me again, anger peeling off him in sheets. He really should learn to control his temper. “Both our fathers are running this show—and the Emporium. Now
, as pleasant as this conversation is, there might still be a chance to rescue some of my men before I take you to your father. Plus, the faster I get rid of you, the faster I can get to Oregon and hunt more Renegades.” He shoved me through the door, and it was all I could do to stay on my feet.

  “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.” I didn’t know what had come over my mouth, but it was better than giving into hysteria.

  Keene laughed tightly. “I do. Make no mistake about that.” He paused before he shut the door. “Oh, and Erin, don’t be too sure you know what’s going on here. You’ve only just begun to uncover the lies.”

  I wasn’t about to beg him to explain, but I wished I knew better how sensing worked. This far away from him, I wasn’t receiving anything except anger—and that made my head hurt.

  The door banged shut, and I stood there, tempted to wrench it open and scream obscenities at him until I was hoarse. The Unbounded side of me, I thought. No doubt that would give whoever he assigned to stand guard over me a good laugh. I turned resolutely from the door.

  I heard water running, the sound coming from a connecting door that was slightly ajar. Carefully, I pushed it open to reveal a full bathroom. The water noise became louder.

  “Who’s there?” A man called, his voice freezing me in place.

  The water turned off and his hand emerged from behind the shower curtain to grab a towel. Seconds later the curtain opened.

  Tom.

  Things just got better and better.

  ONE OF TOM’S EYES WAS black, and bruises lined the right side of his jaw, but otherwise he appeared healthy. He smiled, and my heart did an unexpected jump, which didn’t please me at all.

  “Good, you’re here. I’ve been worried.” He stepped out of the shower and reached for me, his chest muscles rippling under his bare flesh. I moved away; Tom in a towel was not what I needed right now.