Progenitor

by Cassandra Chandler

  “Agreed.” Vaughn shook his head. “And there is a romcom I’m going to insist we watch together as soon as possible.”

  “This is a lot to take in,” Meg said.

  “I wish we had more time, but I want you to be settled as much as possible before…” Brock let his voice trail off.

  “Before you go into stasis,” Vaughn said. “We’re so close to finishing the test chambers.”

  “You made more than one?” Meg asked.

  Vaughn nodded. “Just in case we decide to put Dexter and Porter in with him. Bradley and Zachary have been working on stasis chambers for their bases as well. Malcolm even made a set for their safehouse. Worst case scenario, everybody jumps in right before Brock’s next split to relieve the load on his brain at least.”

  That wasn’t Brock’s worst case scenario, but he let Vaughn and the others have their dream. Brock hoped it gave everyone some comfort.

  His nightmare scenario involved all of the Blades discovering they’d been following dwellers all along and disbanding. Most would go back to being hunters, and his dream of leaving behind a world where humans and dwellers could get along would be lost.

  “Werewolves and pixies and ghouls may seem like part of a fairy tale, but they’re not,” Brock said. “The technology is so advanced, the creatures are so…alien to our experience. We don’t understand it all yet, but if we write it off as magic and stop trying to understand, we never will.” He stood and offered Meg his hand.

  “It’s time to look behind the curtain and see how the world really works,” he said.

  She stared at his hand for a long moment before reaching out to grasp it. As he pulled her to her feet, he let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He didn’t think she’d let him touch her again after finding out what he was.

  Vaughn stood as well. “You can’t take her to the ship. It isn’t safe.”

  “I’m not taking her to the ship,” Brock said. “I’m taking her to Porter’s lab.”

  Chapter Eight

  Meg’s stomach was in knots as she walked down the hallway with Brock. Everything was white. Floors, walls, ceiling. The smooth surfaces and high-tech…everything made it actually feel like she was walking through a spaceship.

  She shivered. Vaughn’s technology was amazing, but that didn’t mean she was an alien.

  Roy had heard and seen everything in the other room. Her collar hadn’t so much as buzzed. Apparently, he didn’t have a problem with them telling her all these ridiculous things. Roy probably thought she would believe him no matter what the Blades said. He could see this as a test of faith.

  Maybe he just doesn’t care.

  Her stomach felt leaden at the thought—and the ring of truth that seemed to resonate through her. Roy didn’t care.

  But did that mean he’d been lying?

  The pack had taunted her before, teased her with promises they never intended to keep. What if they had lied when they told her she was a monster? It could have been yet another cruel joke.

  She’d thought that was just how all packs behaved. Tessa and Marcus—everyone here—had proven that was wrong.

  They could be putting on a show for Meg, gaining her trust before revealing their true natures, but they seemed so sincere. Meg didn’t know what to think.

  Brock paused in front of a black panel with a keypad beside it. He entered a code, then rested his hand on the smooth rectangle. Leaning forward, he stared at a small black circle. Beams of blue light shined on his eye, scanning it.

  “This place doesn’t seem real,” she murmured.

  He straightened and smiled at her. “And yet, here we are.”

  A section of the wall slid aside, revealing a doorway. Brock gestured for her to enter first. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

  The space appeared smaller than Vaughn’s ops center at first, but only because of a large glass partition. On the other side of the window, Meg could see row after row of shelves holding shiny metal boxes.

  There were large pieces of equipment, too. One table was topped by a glass chamber with gloves built into the side. Another had metal rods on each corner, with currents arcing between them, creating what looked like a box made of electricity.

  A machine with three mechanical arms hung from a track on the ceiling. Each arm ended in a different tool—pincers, maybe some kind of drill, and a prong whose function she couldn’t guess at. It seemed like everything on this level was either chrome or that white material they made the walls, floors, and ceiling from.

  More counters lined the room, with smaller pieces of equipment scattered around and monitors here and there on the walls. There were tiny shelves with petri dishes at one station, another with beakers and flasks—some empty, some containing different colored liquids and lumps of things she couldn’t identify.

  A large metal table that could have come straight out of a morgue was pushed up against the wall at the far end of the room. There was a wheeled cart next to it, loaded with saws, scalpels, and knives.

  Monsters vanished after they died. Meg knew that much. What did the Blades use that table for?

  Porter was sitting on a stool, looking through an enormous microscope. He wore a white lab coat over his black clothes. His broad shoulders were hunched as he peered through the eyepieces.

  He straightened when they entered, then bowed his head.

  “Progenitor,” he said.

  Brock let out a huge sigh. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “You were pretty clear earlier about how I’m supposed to address you. Or am I not being submissive enough?” Porter glared at Meg. “You seem to have discovered a taste for it.”

  “Now you’re being an ultra-dick,” Brock said.

  “I’m sorry.” Meg stepped closer to Brock. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble between you.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to him.” Brock put his arm around her, his touch as gentle as his tone was harsh.

  One of the monitors flickered on, showing Vaughn’s face. “Guys, could we just stay focused here?”

  “Right,” Porter said. “I’m supposed to stop what I’m doing to convince Meg that dwellers are aliens instead of fairies. It’s not like I have anything more important to do, like finishing my tests of how stasis may affect Brock’s physiology.”

  She couldn’t believe Brock was making this his priority. His life was at stake. Why would he be so concerned about what she thought?

  “You should keep working on the stasis chamber,” Meg said. “I’m not that important.”

  “Yes, you are,” Brock said.

  No one had ever told her she was important before. Her vision blurred and she couldn’t seem to breathe. She was glad for that. It helped her stop the sobs she could feel building in her chest.

  She stared at the ground, not wanting Porter—or Brock—to see her struggle. She had a mission. She had…

  What do I really have?

  A psychotic alpha who hurt her every chance he could, because she was the “omega” and that was her job. To take his punishments, even when she’d done nothing wrong. Roy had her so twisted around, she’d always thought that was just the way the world worked.

  He had been lying to her all along and now he wanted her to kill the kind people who were caring for the rest of her pack—the sane members. Well, except for Tessa…

  What exactly did Roy have planned using the collar? Meg doubted he was going to electrocute Brock through it. It took too long for the power to build.

  No, he wanted her to stay close to Brock. To gather everyone near her. Roy was biding his time, waiting for the best moment to strike.

  He wouldn’t care if Meg was hurt in his attack. He wouldn’t even care if she died.

  She swallowed hard, the collar taking on a whole new weight in her mind, against her skin.

  It could relay sight and sound. Roy had demonstrated that. It could shock both Meg and those around her. What if it could do more?

  She started
to shake. Her skin itched and her fingertips hurt.

  She couldn’t change. Omegas didn’t change.

  Unless that was another lie.

  “Hey.” Brock’s voice was achingly gentle. He pulled her against his chest, pressing her face to the strong muscles there and wrapping his arms around her.

  It didn’t matter that this was Dexter’s body. Brock was the one hugging her, and when he held her like this, she felt safe for the first time in her life.

  Meg hugged him back, grabbing his shirt to keep herself from hurting him as her fingers curled into claws. The only way to really keep him safe was to leave, but she didn’t think he’d let her. And she couldn’t explain what was going on without giving herself away to Roy.

  She couldn’t even write something down or try to signal them. Roy would see what she was doing, see their reactions and know something was wrong. It might push him into taking action, killing whoever was near her at the time.

  She was trapped.

  “It’s okay,” Brock said.

  He rocked her side to side, soothing her with his voice, his touch. If Porter hadn’t been in the room…

  “We actually do have something of a time crunch,” Vaughn said. “Porter, did you pull the storage chamber I requested?”

  She heard Porter stand.

  “I didn’t have to,” he said. “I’ve never stopped studying it.”

  There was something different about the way Porter was talking—beyond his tone losing some of its menace. She turned her face away from Brock’s chest, but kept her arms around him.

  “You keep saying, ‘I’,” she said. “What happened to Dexter?”

  “You’re hugging him.” Porter opened a compartment on the front of his microscope and pulled out a small chrome box. “Didn’t Brock explain this already? That body is called ‘Dexter’. This one is ‘Porter’. Brock calls our merged consciousness ‘DP’.”

  “Which I’ve told him not to do,” Vaughn said. When everyone turned to stare at his monitor, he added, “Because…reasons. I am not explaining it to you.”

  Porter went on as if Vaughn hadn’t interrupted. “When I’m using both of my forms, how I perceive myself manifests in how I talk. ‘We’ are Dexter and Porter. When I’m condensed in just one of my bodies, shut off from my other form’s senses, I use ‘I’. It isn’t something I do on purpose or can control.”

  “You seem really different, though,” Meg said.

  “My bodies have small variances in their personalities,” Porter said. “Whichever form I’m using manifests the most strongly.”

  “Porter’s the chatty one,” Vaughn said. “I’m glad I’m recording this. It’s going straight in your Dwellers Database file.”

  “You even have a file on Brock and his replicants?” Meg asked.

  “A classified file,” Porter said.

  “Do you record everything that happens in the ranch or just the sublevels?” Meg glanced around the room again, but realized Vaughn could probably make cameras so small she’d never be able to notice them. She wondered if there was a way she could use his recordings to get a message to them.

  “The ranch is covered, too,” Vaughn said. “It’s a security thing. But I don’t watch all the feeds. I’ve written algorithms that tell me if there’s suspicious activity anywhere, so you can shower and use the bathroom in peace.”

  Porter lifted the small box in his hands higher. “Now that we’ve sorted all of that, can we please get on with this?”

  Brock tensed. He reached up and gripped Meg’s arms, gently pulling her away from him. He slid his hands down to hers and held on to them, though.

  “Some of the alien organisms that escaped from the ship are microscopic,” Brock said. “Like the ones that colonize humans to create werewolves. Some are large creatures that either interbred to make hybrids or mixed their DNA with Earth-based life forms in ways we don’t understand yet. Others act as parasites. Like my biological father.”

  He looked over at the box Porter held.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Porter asked.

  Brock nodded, then let go of Meg’s hands and stepped away from her. Once again, her stomach started to tighten. What could be in there that had filled Brock with so much dread?

  Meg forced herself to approach Porter, knowing Brock wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Even knowing that Vaughn was watching reassured her.

  “One more thing,” Porter said. “No matter what, you can not tell Tessa or Marcus that we still have this specimen. They would not take it well.”

  Brock was sharing this with her to try to help her, even though it obviously made him profoundly uncomfortable. She’d kept secrets for and from her pack before. She could do this for him.

  “I won’t tell them about it,” she said.

  “Good.” The smile Porter cast at her didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Shivering slightly, she peered into the box. It was the size and shape of a shoe box, but without a lid. The sides were made up of a shiny silver metal. The “open” top shimmered, almost like liquid light covered it. Some kind of force field?

  “You don’t have to worry about it infecting you,” Porter said. “Even if it wasn’t in stasis, it can’t affect someone who’s already colonized.”

  “What can’t?” She squinted at the box, trying to see what he was talking about without getting closer.

  Porter shifted the box to cradle it in one arm, then pointed with his now-free hand.

  A small white squiggle floated in the center of the box. It wasn’t resting on the bottom or clinging to the side. It was just floating.

  One end of it was thread-thin, but it thickened in the middle to about the size of a shoelace.

  “Is that a tapeworm?” she asked.

  Vaughn let out a laugh, then cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

  “It’s not a tapeworm,” Porter said. “It’s the last segment of the hive creature that created Brock.”

  Meg shook her head. “Wait… That was your father?”

  “Yeah.” Brock’s voice was a low rasp.

  “Actually, that is Brock’s father,” Porter said. “As we understand it, each segment of a Hive Father or Hive Mother contains all of their knowledge and experience, as well as the DNA templates needed to transform another living being. If this dweller were able to find its way into a human, it would be able to recreate the Hive Father known as Edgar Eaton.”

  “Oh my God…” Meg said. “Why don’t you kill it?”

  “Because they’re trying to save me,” Brock said.

  “We’re studying this life form as we try to build a bigger version of this stasis field.” Porter lifted the box a bit.

  Meg recoiled, then realized how her action must have looked to Brock. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Brock gave her a sad smile. “I get it. Believe me, I get it. But that thing can’t hurt you. That’s one of the benefits of already being colonized.”

  “Edgar infected Tessa with a variant of his own dweller, trying to create a mate,” Porter said.

  Meg let out a gasp. “But you told me that when people get infected or colonized or whatever, we become the thing that infected us. How is she a werewolf if this thing had already infected her?”

  “Tessa was able to contain her infection in her right forearm,” Porter said. “We took this one out of her before Edgar attacked our base and activated the dwellers that he’d put in her. When he did, she cut off her own arm to keep the infection from spreading. Marcus infected her with the werewolf microorganism to stop her from bleeding out. That’s why he changed her.”

  The room seemed to spin around Meg as she visualized everything Porter was saying. Surrounded by all this high tech equipment, seeing the creature—the dweller—in Porter’s box, she believed them. It made too much sense to ignore.

  “I think I need to sit down,” she said.

  Brock took her arm and led her to a stool that was tucked under one of the counters. He pulled it out and sa
t her on it, keeping his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  The door to the lab whooshed open and Tessa walked in. She wasn’t wearing anything, and was flexing her fingers into claws and fists. Meg slid right back to her feet, pushing Brock behind her.

  “Where’s Marcus?” Porter asked.

  “Upstairs,” Tessa was looking around the room, her eyes oddly unfocused.

  “Forget Marcus,” Brock said. “Where are your clothes?”

  “Upstairs,” Tessa repeated. “I had to check on Meg. Something told me to—” Her gaze landed on the box in Porter’s arm.

  “Tessa…” Porter said. He curled his arm tighter to his chest, extending his other hand as if that could fend her off.

  “What is that?” Tessa said. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Let me explain.” Brock tried to step around Meg as he spoke, but she wouldn’t let him.

  The situation was about to go terribly wrong. She didn’t want him anywhere near Tessa when it did.

  “I cut off my arm!” Tessa shrieked. “I cut off my own fucking arm so I would be safe from that thing. So we would all be safe. And you kept a copy of it in the basement this whole time?”

  “We need to study it to help Brock,” Porter said.

  “You need to destroy it,” she yelled. Her eyes were glowing so brightly that gold light spilled out of them, illuminating Porter’s face.

  Meg leapt forward just as Tessa reached for Porter. Even though it went against everything Meg had been taught, everything she felt was right, she grabbed Tessa by her shoulders and pulled her away from Porter.

  “Let me go,” Tessa screamed. She ripped herself loose from Meg’s grip, then turned and grabbed Meg by the neck, the metal of Tessa’s hand clanging against Meg’s collar.

  Tessa’s robotic arm started to spark. The lines of blue tracing the grooves worked into the metal grew brighter in erratic bursts. Electricity coursed into Meg, making her body convulse. Pain arced along her nerves, her neck a ring of fire.

  Meg could see the panic in Tessa’s eyes—and the pain. The skin closest to the metal of her arm turned bright red, then started to blister.