The Science of Pleasure

by Jacquelyn Frank

  The walls had kept people out of the Dark Cities, but not in. The pestilence of poverty and violence had been creeping over the walls slowly, bleeding into the New Cities as well as the workhouses, industrial parks, and the low-income housing along the Dark City walls that no one else wanted to be near.

  And then the Morphates had come.

  Much in the way Native Americans had been given reservations, the Federated government had given the Morphates the dubious benefit, at Nick Gregory’s suggestion, of taking over the Dark Cities. Normal people had been given the illusory comfort of putting the scary Morphates they hardly understood behind high walls with all the other things they didn’t understand or were afraid of, and the Morphates found themselves in charge of huge amounts of real estate that, up until then, had been controlled by the baddest asses of the moment. Well, there was nothing more badass than a Morphate. It hadn’t taken long for the criminal element behind the Dark City walls to realize there was a new sheriff in town, and that sheriff couldn’t be dealt with the way they had dealt with previous mortal competitors.

  Each Alpha in each City ran things his own way, and those Alphas took part in the Alpha Council, which was loosely responsible for keeping each group of Morphates under a modicum of control and helping the Morphates maintain representation in the government. After all, what the government had given, the government could just as easily decide to try and take away.

  If they were stupid, that is. But no one had ever accused the government of being overtly smart. Over the past seven years, Dark New York and Dark Philadelphia, the cities run by the Gregory brothers, had undergone massive restructuring. The cleanup was moving along in both cities and, for the most part, the criminal element had been cleaned up along with it.

  Kincaid smiled, a feral showing of his teeth.

  Not that they’d had many other options, he thought.

  Kin watched the monitor as Devona made nice with the new doctor, his eyes narrowing on the delicateness of Jenesis DeBreuhl’s wrist. The monitors were sharp, the cameras high-definition color, to the point that he could see the beat of her pulse through the tiny veins there. The sight of it was a little like dangling chocolate in front of a PMSing woman. There was an instant reaction of craving inside his body as a whole, quickly followed by the push/pull effect of wanting something on a visceral reactive level and yet knowing it wasn’t good for him in any way except to provide a brief moment of pleasure, but with no real long-lasting satisfaction.

  Kin frowned. He didn’t usually drop and get hard at the idea of the warm blood in a woman’s body, even though there was always a craving for it. But ever since his transformation, he had directed his craving solely at Morphate women. The only women, in his opinion, who were capable of holding up under the savage need a Morphate male felt when sexually aroused. In fact, it was something of an unwritten law among Morphates that they should only breed and feed amongst themselves. Both feeding and breeding could get so out of control sometimes that fragile mortal lives could easily be lost. They had learned that in Paulson’s Phoenix Project, when he had “fed” unchanged humans to the Morphates. Just for shits and giggles. Just to see what would happen.

  The results had not been pretty. True, the Morphates had just been turned and had had very little idea of what they were and even less control over what they had become, but quite a few of them had been scarred by their own savagery and behavior.

  Kincaid shrugged a shoulder harshly, pushing the heat-inspiring reaction to the doctor away. He put it down to a lifetime weakness for blondes, especially the pale pretty ones. And this blonde in particular looked like she hadn’t been touched by sunlight once in her life. It wasn’t an unattractive paleness. It was a cool, fragile one. If he looked at her pulse points, like along her long neck or her cleavage, which was presently being displayed in the simple white blouse she was wearing, he could see the spidery blue ghosts of her veins painted delicately beneath her skin. That had once been a mild turn-on for him in a strange secondary way, but now there was nothing mild about it. It was hard and brisk. Right in his face.

  Strange. While she was measurably pretty, she wasn’t as drop-dead hot and viscerally sexual as the Morphate women who had been gracing his bed since . . . Still, he found her physically compelling. But only enough to acknowledge it and push past it. He had uses for Jenesis DeBruehl, and they absolutely did not include bedding or blooding her.

  2

  The next morning, Jenesis arrived at the lab very early, needing to get there before anyone else. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt she needed a few minutes of silence and exploration on her own to connect to the nuances of what she was going to have available to her. This way, shallow, surface things like judgmental looks and outright hostilities wouldn’t distract her. She needed to find her stride, dig in her own roots. The rest, including the opinions of her staff, would fall into place slowly over time. She recognized that they felt she deserved censure. Besides, who knew how many of them were actual Morphates? It was very likely a large majority, considering the lab was in the heart of Dark Philly. After all, there were very strict rules about regular mortal humans entering and exiting the Dark cities. Not many volunteered for that sort of thing. Only people who were desperate to make money or make a new start would put their necks on the line and do such a thing. The Morphates paid huge salaries in order to coax fresh manpower into the jobs they had available.

  But though the pay was impressive, she hadn’t come here for money.

  “Right, boys?” she said to the rows of rats housed in the room. She leaned forward to peer through the cage bars at a strangely spotted rat, his pink nose wobbling fiercely as he munched on something he’d captured between his front paws.

  He was up on his haunches and his glassy black eyes were fixed on her carefully as he ate. “I see you don’t trust me either,” she observed.

  “Should he?”

  Jenesis made a small exclamation of sound, whirling around to face the man who had spoken up behind her. She hadn’t even heard him approach her. There’d been no telltale click of a door opening or closing, no squeak or tap of a shoe on the brisk floor tiles. Not even so much as a rustling sound from the crisp oxford shirt he wore or the worn denim jeans that fit him like the proverbial glove. Then again, denim wouldn’t really make a sound if it fit that well, now would it?

  “I-I didn’t know anyone else was here,” she said a bit lamely as she let her instinctively analytical mind work in the background to figure out who he was. A lab worker? Where was his coat? Where was the I.D. she had been told everyone must wear clipped to their lapel or on a lanyard where it could be immediately seen by security at all times? Even the janitorial staff had to have their I.D. on them. It had been made very clear to her that security was of paramount concern in the lab. “I’m sorry, you are?”

  “You’re here very early,” he noted, ignoring her hunt for identification.

  “So are you,” she returned with a frown. She eyed him carefully, and not a little bit nervously. She might be 5’9”—relatively tall for a woman—but there was no way she could go head-to-head with a man as big and, if she were going to be blunt, buff as he was. That pale blue oxford shirt was stretched out tight over a pair of thick shoulders and impressive biceps. There was nothing easy about his build. It was clearly something that was worked at and religiously maintained. Nothing ridiculously bulging, but he was a strong and imposing man, no two ways about it. Imposing enough to make her nervous, being in a vast lab seemingly all alone with him. She glanced at the glass walls and deeper into other parts of the lab, looking for what she already knew was not going to be there. Her gaze shifted to the cameras in the corners of the room, and he took notice of the obvious action.

  He smiled in what she could only describe as a feral fashion.

  The anger of the insult he felt was in his dark blue eyes, and she imagined she could see the hackles of his short, military-grade haircut prickling up along the back of his neck. He w
as just shy of being a blond, and probably would be more apparently so if he let his hair grow out. Just the same, he would be a very different sort of blond from her own waves of obvious gold, which were tucked up and around in a relaxed, pretzel-like knot at the base of her skull.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor? Afraid to be alone with one of your own creations?”

  He leaned in closer, purposely taking away all of her personal space, coming so close her nose touched his sternum for an instant before she backed up a step. But her backside almost immediately came up against the steel lab table behind her.

  She was stuck there with the rats at her back and what she now realized was a Morphate male at her front. Her stomach bottomed out, her fear blossoming to such a degree that she thought she could taste it on her own tongue, and it wasn’t a pleasant thing to experience at all. Her heart began to race and she tried not to let all of her instinctual reactions be obvious, but he was a Morphate, for God’s sake. She had heard the stories, watched the news, and read every tell-all book anyone who had been in the Phoenix Project had thought to write. Where most of the Morphates had chosen to be more circumspect about the details, not wishing for the normal human race to be any more afraid of them than they already were upon learning they drank blood during some of the most savage sex known to man, as well as for sustenance, other Morphate individuals had made their stories public. And while for everyone else it might be a morbid fascination like craning your neck to see what is happening when you’re passing a car wreck on the highway, for her reading them had been an exercise in self-recrimination.

  It was a wonder she’d ever set foot in a lab again.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her words bursting out in a combination of bravado and resignation. After all, she’d always felt it was only a matter of time before the Morphates cornered her, pinned her down, and made her pay for what she had done to them. “Whatever it is you feel you need to do, just do it and get it over with. Or go slowly if that’s your preference. Make me suffer. There’s nothing I can do to make you happy. None of it will make you what you used to be.”

  His face was handsome and somehow familiar to her, though she couldn’t figure out why. When he lifted a brow it made him look curiously amused, even though nothing else about him looked at all entertained. He was a crowding wall of genetically hyped-up masculinity obviously looking down his nose at her—literally as well as physically.

  “Are you really so naïve that you’ve stepped into yet another lab, Doctor, without realizing what that lab’s purpose is? What your work is going to be used for? Haven’t you learned from your mistakes yet?”

  Jenesis swallowed and forced herself to meet his eyes. She was frightened and she was guilty as charged, but she was no coward.

  “No, I’m not that stupid,” she bit back. “The party line is that you’re looking to understand what you are, what you’ve become, and searching for ways to better your lives as Morphates. But I knew the minute you came looking for me that what you were really looking for was a way to change yourselves back to human.”

  He took a slow breath in; she could see his nostrils flaring and she knew it had very little to do with the need to breathe. He was taking in her scent. His lip lifted momentarily, a brief flash of teeth that made her heart seize in her chest with wild shock.

  “Really?” he said. “So you think we hate ourselves so much that we need you to fix us? That we are so reprehensible?”

  “I don’t think you are anything of the kind. I think you are wondrous and unfortunate. I think you are miraculous and tragic. I think you might end up being the ones to inherit this earth because you are invincible in the face of the things that may one day destroy the rest of us.” She swallowed as she saw him tighten his hands into fists, the clenching of the muscles of his arms rippling up his forearms and biceps, and turning his shoulders visibly hard as rocks.

  “So you think we want you to change us back. To make us weak and civilized like you. To make us better, hmm?” He made a sound of utter disgust as he reached up to nab her by the chin, making certain she was there when he looked into her eyes. His irises were a strange marbleized blue and gold, the blue as cool as the feathers of a jay with veins of gold swirling throughout like stardust in a picture of the cosmos. “So in your estimation, I despise myself?”

  “I don’t know you.” Jenesis breathed softly. “And I would be the last person to presume to make any kinds of judgments about you. It’s not my place. It’s no one’s place. You never asked to be what you are any more than I asked to be what I am. But the only reason you could possibly want me, the dregs of the Phoenix Project and the inventor of the tag that was so instrumental in changing you, would be to create more change . . . or reverse the process.”

  “Perhaps.” He tilted her face left and then right, examining the shape of her brows, the way the widow’s peak of her hairline made a classic sweetheart shape of her face. She was an understated sort of pretty, but he found the more he looked at her, the more appealing she became. And this time Kincaid couldn’t blame it on the attractive beat of her pulse under her skin, although he could clearly see that at the line of her neck where the thick carotid artery was working overtime to compensate for her stress and fear. “But the best-selling books and news ex-posés about us are not all that in-depth, Dr. DeBruehl. There are things we don’t care for the public to know about us. And you are going to help us with one or two of those things.”

  “I’ll help you. There’s no need for you to bully me or try to intimidate me. I’ll help the Morphates in any way I can.”

  It was the least she could do.

  She didn’t say it out loud or even think it to herself in that moment, but it was the unspoken understanding between them—she thought it out of guilt, he as accusation—and each of them understood the other’s position quite clearly. What Kincaid didn’t understand was why she would ever agree to set foot behind Dark City walls. Was it really all about some skewed need for redemption? Or was it more that she wished to be punished for her crimes? The courts had not found her guilty, and with quite a bit of ease considering other members of Paulson’s teams had been legally eviscerated. The Federated government didn’t want to admit that it had fallen down on the job, that it had allowed such atrocities to go on for so long and with such a horrific end result, and that in the end they had let Paulson get away from them. Someone had to pay, and Paulson’s staff members, those who had survived at any rate, had taken the brunt of it. And for the most part, “I was just following orders” had been found to be an incredibly lame defense.

  But Dr. DeBruehl had never claimed that kind of defense. She and her staff had been guilty of nothing more than total ignorance, and their handwritten data had proved that.

  Lucky for them. Paulson had destroyed all remnants of electronic data. If not for their fastidious note taking, they would have been lumped in with the rest of those to blame. Kincaid wasn’t certain they still shouldn’t be. And he could tell after just a few moments of talking to her that she felt exactly the same way.

  “Fine. Let’s start with me.”

  Kincaid grabbed her by the hand and, turning on his heel, yanked her along in his wake. He pulled her into one of the phlebotomy sections of the lab, threw himself into the chair, and presented her with his arm as he rolled up his sleeve in quick, distinct jerks. Everything about him screamed that his anger was barely repressed, and she very nervously approached him. She looked around at all the sample tubes, the typical chairs for drawing blood, the boxes of gloves and packages of sterile needles and catheters. She plucked out a pair of medium-sized gloves and put them on, frowning as she habitually looked at the integrity of his arm for the proper vein she required.

  “It’s not so easy,” she muttered as she popped open packages and chose the tube types she wanted. Even as she was resisting him verbally, her curious scientist’s brain was getting excited by the idea of looking at his blood composition on all levels. From the basics to t
he nuclear, she had been wanting to see a Morphate blood panel for quite some time now. Sure, the overall animalism in their natures fascinated her, particularly their need for blood both nutritionally and sexually, but what it really came down to was the indestructibility of their cells. That had been the ultimate side effect of her work. Her tag had sought out the healthiest cells, the goal had been to keep those cells healthy for longer than their natural life span, but who would have ever thought they would so thoroughly overshoot the mark? And where, in any of it, had they stimulated the cells to regenerate in such a rapid fashion? They had planned to get to that eventually, but as far as her lab had been concerned, they had not yet reached that stage of the experiment.

  But then again, as far as her lab had been concerned, they had not yet reached the stage for human testing. As far as her lab had been concerned, the rats they had been testing on were only at a seventy-three percent success rate. Not enough of a success, in her mind, to warrant moving up to primate testing. And nowhere in her testing had they noted the primal behaviors the Morphates ended up exhibiting.

  “What’s not so easy?” he asked her. “You have a guinea pig. Start testing it. I know you’re dying of curiosity. It’s your nature, I think, to be curious to the point of recklessness.”

  “Shows what you know about me,” she bit out as she ran her finger over one of the many ropey veins wending its way down the length of his arm. The plastic of the glove snagged infinitesimally on the dark gold hairs that peppered his skin. “I am curious, I won’t deny that, but never to the point of recklessness. I never knowingly hurt anyone. Or anything, for that matter. Except for maybe a few hundred innocent rats. Perhaps I’ll have to answer for that when I meet my maker.”

  “I’d say you have a lot more to answer for than the deaths of a few hundred rats.”

  Jenesis pressed her lips together and sent the needle into his arm. She popped the first tube into the hub and it immediately began to fill.