The Change (Unbounded)

by Teyla Branton

  “Are you all right?” He seemed solicitous and sincere, so maybe his previous emotions hadn’t been directed toward me but simply stemmed from frustration at his life.

  “I’m fine.” To my relief the bell rang and the elevator doors slid open.

  “Your quarters are below ground, I’m sorry to say. Near the nurseries.”

  “Nurseries?”

  “That’s where the offspring of our female Unbounded stay while their mothers are at work or on assignment. Sort of a daycare.”

  “So they keep their children with them.”

  He shrugged. “Some do and some don’t. It’s up to them. Mostly. Some prefer to adopt them out and wait to see if they’re Unbounded. It really depends. Right now we have more children here than usual because the Triad’s pushing for babies, and with the progress we’ve had recently, more children are Unbounded than before. That makes it easier to keep them. Unfortunately, there are only so many children a woman wants to have, as I’m sure you understand.”

  Thinking of my own conception I said, “With all the genetic research I’m surprised they haven’t started a bunch of test tube babies and put the embryos in the general population.”

  “Oh, they’ve tried, believe me.” A strange glee emanated from him now. “But eggs from Unbounded women don’t survive unless they are in the original mother. It’s been quite a problem.”

  So Keene hadn’t lied—I really was my mother’s child, and unsuspecting women the world over weren’t being tricked into birthing the offspring of female Unbounded.

  We emerged from the elevator, passing two more guards, both Unbounded this time. Jonny’s pace quickened as we moved down the corridor. “These are only the babies,” he said, pausing before a large window that reminded me of a hospital nursery. “Older children are in another room, but they’re taken out during the day. Can’t have them cooped up down here all the time.”

  Inside the room, women—not Unbounded—were rocking, playing with, or bottle-feeding tiny infants. About ten babies if my count was correct. “What’s their chance of being Unbounded?”

  “We’re talking up to fifty percent,” Jonny said. “If we could manipulate the egg, it’d be more like seventy or eighty, but those experiments keep failing.”

  Half of these babies wouldn’t be Unbounded, but they’d know the Unbounded secret and be forced to serve the Emporium. They’d be second-class citizens in an organization that looked down upon ordinary mortals. I felt saddened at the thought. No wonder some Unbounded women might choose to have their child adopted at birth rather than subject them to that life.

  If I had a child, I’d want her or him with me.

  Even if he or she had to endure prejudice?

  Even if I had to watch the child grow old and die before I’d aged another year?

  In the corner I saw a dark-haired Unbounded woman I hadn’t noticed before. She sat in a rocking chair, her back mostly toward us as she rocked an infant in her arms. Something in the way she stared down at her child made me pay attention. I sensed love, the deep love of a new mother. She lifted the baby, and I caught a glimpse of unruly dark hair before she resettled the infant on the other side.

  She’s nursing, I thought. I could see the side of the mother’s face now as she watched her baby suckle. Logically, I knew she served the Emporium and their questionable agenda, but for that moment she could have been any loving mother anywhere in the world—an Unbounded mother who desperately hoped her daughter would also be Unbounded.

  “Come on,” Jonny said.

  I followed him, my thinking changed by what I’d seen. So many victims on both sides of this conflict. “How old are you, anyway, Jonny?”

  “A hundred and fifteen.”

  That meant if he’d changed at thirty-one, biologically he’d be thirty-three. “Really? You look younger.”

  “That’s because I Changed at eighteen.”

  I stopped walking. “But I thought—”

  “Gene manipulation. They wanted to see if they could force the Change to come earlier. Hard to determine because the gene can’t even be isolated until well into adulthood. But by giving the therapy to a bunch of potential Unbounded, they succeeded in speeding up the process in a few of us. Unfortunately, there are side effects.”

  “Side effects?”

  His smile was gone. “I’m aging at five times the rate of normal Unbounded. Biologically, I’m twenty-eight. I’ve aged ten years in the past century, when I should have aged only two.”

  I felt his anger at being cheated. I supposed living only four hundred years seemed short for someone who’d expected two thousand. “I’m sorry, Jonny.”

  He shrugged. “Anything for the Emporium.” There was no sincerity in his words now.

  I caught another glimpse of a thought from him, and I knew that at least one of the other potential Unbounded had died from the experience. A girl Jonny had loved. But try as I might, I could sense nothing more.

  We started walking again down the wide hallways, which were extremely well lit and at least a full foot taller than normal ceilings. Large paintings of the outdoors lined the whole corridor. Not like your usual claustrophobic underground office building.

  “Jonny, how many siblings do we have?”

  “Dozens. A hundred. Maybe more.” He shrugged. “I really don’t know. Stefan keeps those of us who are Unbounded or in the organization a little busy for family reunions. Some of the mortals work for us, but most were adopted out as babies and are on the outside living regular lives. They have no idea we exist. We check up on their children, usually around thirty-two, but often not until thirty-five. A lot of our people have been changing close to the outer age limit these days. Unfortunately, there have been far fewer Unbounded from our genetically altered lines than we expected.”

  “Wait. Are you saying that if the genetic alteration results in a mortal, the children of that person are usually mortal, too?”

  “That’s right. Still, it’s worth it to get more Unbounded up front. So far those who do turn out to be Unbounded seem to be able to pass on the active gene to their children at the same rate as any other Unbounded. Stefan’s been pleased.”

  When I’d been with Stefan, I’d felt his strong connection to his family, but I realized now that he wasn’t raising and loving a family so much as he was making creations, bricks to be used to build his empire. I doubted either he or any of his offspring could understand how much I loved my own family. How much I wanted to be with them. How readily I would give my life to save theirs.

  We walked in silence a few more feet before I said, “I have two brothers, Chris and Jace. Chris is older than me. Jace is younger.”

  “I know.”

  Of course. They knew everything about me. Jonny’s openness was likely one more part in Stefan’s plan to win me over.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to them,” Jonny added quietly.

  “Thank you.”

  Around the next corner, he stopped and put his hand on a pad to the side of a door. The door made a buzzing sound as the lock came open. He leaned closer to me. “Look, you’d do best to forget your old life. You could really be someone here.”

  “What if I can’t agree with the Emporium’s agenda?”

  He blinked. “We want the survival of our species. That’s all we’re fighting for.” I knew he believed what he was saying. Maybe he had to believe in order to justify what had been done to him. He pushed open the door. “I’ll see you again, Sis.” He smiled and gestured for me to go inside.

  I went in, not surprised when he pulled the door shut behind me and the lock slid into place. I had no illusions but that this was one more gilded prison until I could convince Stefan—and probably Delia—that I was on their side.

  Of course, if they kept me locked in here alone for a hundred years, I might begin seeing things their way in order to preserve what little might remain of my sanity. Yet thinking of my father’s still figure and Jace’s pale face, the idea made me i
ll.

  I walked down a short entry hall, and into a large sitting room with pristine, off-white furniture and decorations. There were three doors leading elsewhere. One door revealed a kitchen, the second a hallway, and from the third, partially-open door came the blare of a TV.

  I’d been wrong. I wasn’t alone after all.

  I FOLLOWED THE SOUND OF the TV, stopping cautiously at the door. I had no weapon, nothing to defend myself. Laying my hand flat on the door, I pushed it open a little at time. My stomach relaxed as I saw two blond-headed children lying on the carpet playing video games, their gazes fixed on a huge screen hanging on the left wall.

  I opened the door wider and stepped inside, relief flooding my senses. They were safe. My niece and nephew were safe.

  “Erin!” A man jumped up from the couch from my right. He’d been obscured by the door, but I knew him as well.

  “Chris!” I flung myself toward my older brother, who looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. He held me tightly as my head buried into his shoulder. The video game paused, and the children turned in our direction.

  “Hi, Aunt Erin.” Kathy waved a hand, as though nothing out of the ordinary were happening. The slight twelve-year-old was a miniature of her pretty mother.

  And what of Lorrie? Was she really dead? Did they know? Her absence seemed to indicate that Cort had been telling the truth.

  “This is a way cool game.” Spencer was two years younger than his sister, but he looked even younger than ten, his face still plump with baby fat.

  “Cool,” I forced myself to say.

  They took that as permission to keep playing, and I let them, though I really wanted to examine them inch by inch to make sure they hadn’t been hurt. Or maybe to hug them as tightly as I was hugging my brother.

  Chris pulled away. “I’ll be right back, kids.” He dragged me to the door and into the sitting room. Once out of the children’s view, his face crumpled. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I can’t believe this is happening. They shot Lorrie!” Sobs convulsed his body, his grief a palpable thing. “She’s dead!” he whispered hoarsely. “Dead!”

  Pain—his and my own—knifed through my heart so deeply I wondered if I would survive the onslaught. How could Lorrie be gone? The future was utterly bleak. Only the children made life worth continuing at all. Barely. The barrage of Chris’s emotions made me feel weak and desperate. Like dying. Giving up. Instinctively, I pushed his emotions away like I had with Delia’s thoughts, stopping when they lessened to a tolerable level. My head ached from the effort, but that was nothing in comparison to his terrible grief.

  There was nothing I could do but hold him until the convulsing eased. He pressed his hand against his mouth in an attempt to smother his cries, and I knew that despite his pain, his first thought was for the children. Tears wet his cheeks and mine, mixing together. I’d never seen my brother so distressed, and my hatred for the Emporium rose to a new level.

  “What happened?” I whispered, needing to know every bit as much as he needed to tell me.

  “They broke in right after you called. They shot her.” He gasped between each whispered sentence as he struggled for composure. “If not for your other friends, Laurence and the blond guy, they would have killed me, too.” He darted a glance toward the door, where the sounds of the TV hopefully covered our tears. “The children were at a party—I haven’t told them yet. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What the hell is going on? Why have they brought us here?” His eyes begged for answers.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t even know you were here. Last I heard, you’d left your house after the break-in and were on your way to pick up the kids.”

  He heaved a shuddering sigh. “Laurence went with me, but before I could get the kids out to the car, some people drove up and made us go with them. They had guns. It was broad daylight, and there were people watching, but no one did a thing.” He scrubbed a hand over the day-old growth on his face.

  “Did you recognize them? The people with the guns?” I wondered if Laurence had tried to stop them, or if they’d taken care of him first in Chris’s car. A bullet to the heart would have put him out of commission long enough to do something more permanent.

  “No. Two men and a woman with long red hair.”

  Justine. My thoughts raged, but I tried to keep my face impassive.

  “The woman was definitely in charge, but it was the men who brought us here. We took a commercial flight without going home for anything, which I guess was a blessing because the children didn’t have to see what happened there. They had IDs for us and everything, so it was well-planned. They kept me separated from the kids, and no way would I leave them, so I couldn’t break away or risk asking for help. Never felt so helpless in my life.” He was breathing hard from both grief and anger, the wave of new emotions briefly breaking through the block I’d placed in my mind. I was glad for the anger. It helped with the pain.

  He struggled to get himself under control. “What about Mom and Dad? Jace? Are they okay? The men said something about things going wrong at the house.”

  “Dad and Jace were both shot. They think Jace will be fine, but Dad needed surgery. That’s all I found out before they got to me. Mom’s safe, though. And Grandma.”

  “Why are they doing this? Who are these people?”

  “The Emporium, the group Ava told us about.”

  “They’re like you—Unbounded.”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. Whether intentionally, or not, my existence had put my entire family at risk.

  “How did they find us?”

  “The woman you saw is Tom’s sister, Justine. Apparently she’s been spying on me for a lot of years, but up close for at least the past six months.”

  His eyes widened with the implication. “You mean she didn’t die in the accident?”

  “Turns out she’s Unbounded. She had a locating device that was activated when her vitals vanished, so her people got her out, like Ava did for me.” This led to telling him the rest: Cort’s and Tom’s betrayals, Justine overstepping her orders, the stolen sperm and the identity of my birth father.

  Chris was shaking his head before I was finished. “I can’t believe Ava took advantage of our family like that. What about Jace? Who’s his father? The same as yours, or someone else?”

  “I don’t know. Unless a miracle happened, he’s also engineered.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense why they’d attack us now. Not when they want you on their side.”

  “Maybe Justine thought she could blame your deaths on the Renegades and that it would bind me more tightly to the Emporium.” Or to her and Tom.

  Chris ran his hands through his hair, pacing a few feet away and then back again. Tears stained his cheeks, and his eyes were swollen. “I can understand why they’d want you, but what do they want with me and the kids?”

  Unfortunately, I knew. “They do a lot of genetic experimentation here. I think they might try to use the kids to create more Unbounded with a certain talent that runs in our family.”

  “Talent?”

  “Sort of like ESP. Ava has it, and—” I’d been about to say, “and so do I,” but I wondered belatedly if someone might be listening to our conversation. So far we hadn’t talked about anything that would jeopardize my plan to fit in, but I wanted my ability to remain a secret for now. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

  “The bathroom?” He blinked.

  “Take me there.”

  He led me through the far door, which opened to a hallway and three bedrooms, each with an attached bathroom. Inside one, I flipped on the overhead fan and turned on the water as far as it would go. Then I flushed the toilet for good measure. “In case they’re listening,” I half-mouthed, half-whispered. “What I was going to say is that they think I’m talented in combat like my biological father, but I’m not. I can sense like Ava.”

  “You’re saying you can read my tho
ughts?”

  “Sh, not so loud. More like I can sense what you’re feeling. Sometimes I see flashes of scenes. Some people can block me, though. A lot of people.” I grimaced. “Okay, pretty much everyone, if they try. But that might be because I’m so new at it.”

  Chris, ever the pragmatist, didn’t believe me. “What am I feeling now?”

  I released the pushing out sensation in my mind, the block that had started to become second nature. I touched Chris’s arm and fleeting sensations slid before me, in no apparent order. Rapidly, as though my brother didn’t know what to think about first. Then a flash of someone aiming a gun at Chris. His numbing fear of dying. To his side a movement as Lorrie threw herself in front of him. The weight of her body collapsing against him, blood seeping from her wound. It was the clearest image I’d seen from anyone.

  I withdrew my hand. “Lorrie,” I whispered, my voice barely audible above the running water. “You thought you were going to die, but she saved your life. You wish it had been you instead.” The impact of reliving that moment was like being punched in the stomach. The agony, the guilt. I fought to find something coherent to say. “Chris, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t! If anyone is to blame, it’s me.”

  He stared at me for long seconds before gathering me into his arms as he had when I was a child and had fallen off my bike and skinned my knees. My big brother who wanted to protect me. I’d forgotten that relationship. “No, Erin, not you. You’re right. None of us is to blame for any of this, except the monsters who brought us here.”

  “We’ll get out. I have a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  I nodded, pulling away and wiping my tears. I flushed the toilet again. “My plan is to do everything they say, to become my so-called father’s daughter, and when I get enough power and freedom and information, I’ll get us out of here. Then you’ll take the kids so far away that no Unbounded, Emporium or Renegade, will ever bother you again. But you can’t tell anyone about the sensing. Not the kids or anyone. If the Emporium finds out, they’ll be guarding their minds, and I won’t learn as much.”