First Species

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

The ride to Final Enforcement, the premier bounty apprehension agency in the world, is uneventful.

  I remain in the back of a (now illegal) suped-up fossil fuel-guzzling vintage Camaro driven by Enforcer Adrienne, only half-listening to their banter as I watch soft rain slide down the windowpane of the car.

  “My breasts are angry melons,” she groans, wrapping one arm over her chest.

  “Thank you for that unsexy visual, love,” Enforcer Murphy comments in a droll tone.

  She casts him a dirty glance.

  I turn away from their talking, gazing back outside the window, feeling a small smile cross my lips. Being a mother isn't always glamorous, and it seems that being a vampire doesn't make parenting easier.

  The sun is a fiery ball in an October sky. Summer hangs on tenaciously, so Halloween's approach will be one of the rare warm ones, bringing record-breaking temperatures predicted to reach almost thirty degrees celcius.

  But for now, it rains.

  “Global warming” the media screams from all pulse networks. Nobody can escape that reality. Now they're working on new super-highways, fueled by solar power and generating heavy magnetic roadways, repelling vehicles that race through the air meters above the aged transport lanes we're currently traveling on.

  Its implementation is five years out, but it'll happen. There was even bipartisan support in our government for the first time in America's history.

  So maybe my days of car rides are almost over.

  Though it doesn't matter. In my case, I make such shit money I can't afford the associated fees of owning a car.

  I bike. There's huge bike lanes for people like me, which is almost everyone nowadays. Minnesota Avenue used to be a congested mess. Now it's a single lane for one-way fossil fuel vehicles and three lanes for bike and pedestrian traffic.

  We've become the Netherlands. That's all they have there. Bikes, cheese, and misty weather. Not that I've been, my mind supplies wistfully.

  With a sigh, I turn my head and let it fall against the window, absently listening to the two enforcers volley back and forth.

  If I didn't know better, I'd say they were a married couple.

  “I'll enter first,” Murphy states, his British accent escaping his mouth like machine-gun fire.

  “I'm not an invalid.” Then Narah adds, “It's been a year and a half since I had the twins.”

  I can't see Murphy roll his eyes, but I can feel it.

  Leaning forward from my perch in the narrow back seat, I neatly insert my presence in the middle of their debate. “I can go in first.”

  Murphy half-turns to face me, he and Adrienne barking no at the same time.

  I flop back against the seat and dig inside my purse, extracting my pulse, and thumbing the doc I think the device out of hibernation.

  Final Enforcement, I think into the device.

  Google instantly throws wiki and a few other sources as top page info.

  I think my scroll through the bullet-format information, gleaning what I can. I mean, I'd read and heard a lot from just being a breathing human being on the planet in the ten years since FE's inception.

  Not much had escaped anyone's notice, and if that weren't enough, enforcement agents had the most coveted badges in the world.

  Pretty much, if you were FE, you were the holy grail of the law. That is where all bucks (now called credits) stop.

  Both Adrienne and Murphy wear lanyards that hang around their necks, proclaiming their stats to the world.

  They only operate on the person they're intended for. A complete genetic code is embedded and matched with the subject who agrees with the information—genetically. How hateful would it be to have to wear everything you were and everyone to know it all? And now, even lanyards are becoming outmoded.

  A new, forehead model is being enacted. I shut my eyes. Sometimes technology robs everybody of the simple pleasures. Where's the damn mystery if you say—want to date a cop? The poor dude forgets to turn off his “badge.” His stats are flashing at you from across the candlelit dinner table.

  I can see it now: Homicide. Street beat. Two hundred thirty pounds (could stand to slim down).

  Etcetera.

  Nope. Not really progression as I see it. Six months ago, they wanted to do it to everyone.

  People like me who were just your lowly cocktail waitress. The talk of embedding “tell-all” badges for every human being got people wound up like tops.

  Public servants will get the shaft.

  Government officials.

  Criminals.

  But why can't we regular humans just live and have some degree of privacy? I mean, I didn't sign up for tabloid facts to flash across my forehead.

  That particular bill got shut down. For now. But that lawmakers thought to strip us of our anonymity is frightening.

  “Stay here,” Murphy says with more bite (hardy-har-har) than I think he would've had if I hadn't volunteered to go into the FE building on my own.

  We'd rolled into a neatly delineated parking slot, and I'd been too deep in my thoughts to notice.

  Taking in the Final Enforcement sign, my eyes run over the neon lettering. Bold and individual, it's a bright, lightning blue. Underneath the main two-word script is the motto, the absolute law. That part shares the striking, electric blue of the main sign but is outlined in opposite-the-color-wheel orange.

  To the right of the door is a largish pulse doc plaque. About the size of a dinner plate, it has neon green lettering that glows within the roughly square shape. The letters mimic those of a pulse device, listing current enforcers and their accompanying pedigrees.

  Murphy exits the vehicle in that blurring swiftness vampires employ, and I automatically tense, my body producing a shiver.

  Adrienne pauses before her exit, eyes scanning the parking lot, breastmilk leaking like twin dots through her uniform shirt.

  Great timing, I can't help but think.

  I'd seen the enforcersʼ badges—they're both proficient tens, the top shelf of lethal.

  In my lingo: they can kick ass.

  Murphy blurs to the front door of FE, depresses a thumb in the large doc that has smaller docs beside each enforcer’s name, and chooses his. This action takes a split second for a vampire.

  A chime sounds, and the glass door slides open, disappearing into a seamed slot within the cavity of the wall.

  Another enforcer eases through the threshold, eyes bright on the car that holds me. Small, like Adrienne, her lanyard has the symbol for vampire. She's a proficient nine.

  I can see those details from the back seat because lately, my eyesight has sharpened. Though I am not sick. Like so many hybrid females are busy becoming sick as they move toward their transitions, I've experienced an improvement in my traditional five senses.

  The change in my own aura, of course, is a sense I've kept a closely guarded secret for obvious reasons.

  Narah swings the door wide, smoothly standing, her silvered eyes take in my position in the back seat, and her teeny-tiny cornrowed, platinum braids whip as she does yet another scan.

  What the hell is all this hardcore surveillance for?

  Me.

  Frowning, I turn the idea over in my mind that it's not like there isn't a hybrid found somewhere in the world each day. I take a look at the position of the three enforcers. Two at the door, one here by the “acquisition.”

  Without looking, Enforcer Adrienne touches my door handle and swings the door open.

  “Can I get out?”

  “Slowly.” Frost hangs on the word.

  I don't even want to get out now. The car seems safer after watching the caution of the vampire pair.

  When a piece of shit clunker pulls into the parking lot, Adrienne is suddenly crouched protectively in front of me, hissing.

  Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, I think, hauling my feet off the parking lot ground and tucking my knees beneath my chin.

  A man emerges from behind the wheel. Turning, his eyes sweep the menacing vampires,
and he slowly raises his heavily muscled arms above his head in the classic, I mean no harm, stance.

  Somebody's going to die. I'm so tense I feel light-headed. I hang my head between my knees. Let them all kill each other off. I can still make the rest of my shift, I have time to assure myself.

  Then, the world erupts all around me.

  Shouts and fighting pound against my ears. But when a scent invades my nose—one I thought to never smell—one I didn't know I needed, my face rises.

  I meet the gaze of a bigfoot guy, amber golden-eyes revolving slowly as he bores that intense gaze at me. Through me.

  I promptly pass out.

  Chapter 5

  Camille

  S hort,” I tell Jordan, and she flicks her eyes to mine, the bruised look that normally fills her light-irises has changed to concentration instead.

  “Ahhh.”

  “That's right—ah.” After a moment's hesitation, I lift my finger from the word and give my full attention to my student, who is excelling in my remedial reading class. “Awesome.”

  Jordan smiles.

  Her expression reveals the omission of two front teeth, so it's a gap-toothed smile. All the same, she's happy.

  Switching to Spanish, Jordan asks if she's doing better.

  “Yes, you are,” I reply in English.

  A frown mars the flesh between her beautiful pale gray eyes. “Are you mad I'm speaking in Spanish?”

  “Absolutely not, but since English is your second language, we need to work doubly hard to get that language down pat so you're not fighting communication when school becomes more challenging.”

  “Ms. Becker.” A voice I hate filters inside my classroom.

  I swivel in my chair as do all the eyes of my other five students.

  Our principal stands like an impervious pillar, filling the doorway with a neutral expression that is somehow smug, rocking back on his heels and gifting me with an indulgent half-smile.

  Uh-huh.

  Dale Lindberg folds his arms over a muscled body. “Shouldn't you be using simpler verbiage with the students?”

  I lean back in my chair, carefully crossing my legs. Which is duly noted by my lech of a boss. “Actually, no. I believe children rise to whatever challenge that is put forth—and dumbing myself down, in turn, dumbs them down.”

  Dull red color climbs Lindberg's nape.

  Serves the bastard right. Side-seat driving my classroom. The prick. Of course—I control my expression as well as I can. I'm not known for locking down my emotions. A trait I thank my mother for, God rest her soul.

  The students silently watch our interchange.

  Tension is palpable like a rank smell invading my classroom.

  Suddenly, Lindberg grins.

  I won't let him see how uneasy his odd smile makes me.

  “Of course, you don't have to be so defensive.”

  A heartbeat of time thumps by. “I'm not. I'm restating the facts as I see them.” Silently, I add, come at me, as some of my teen students would say when challenged by someone.

  Indeed. Come. At. Me.

  I understand my internal monologue is immature. Nevertheless, I can't refrain from allowing it. This administrator hasn't spent a tenth of the time working with special needs kids—I have.

  Lindberg has never seen the small victories. He will never see the losses. I absorb them all, at my own emotional peril. So he can fuck right off. Every day I engage these children I fall more in love with them and, in the process, lose a little of who I am.

  He does not.

  Lindberg chooses not to, so don't judge my methods, you insufferable clown.

  Those unorthodox methods work.

  We engage in a staredown. Then Lindberg knots his hands behind his back (not an easy feat as he spends a lot of self-love time at the gym). “As soon as you're done here, you need to visit the clinic for blood work.” His eyes level on me. “That was my sole purpose for stopping by.”

  Damn.

  Jordan breaks our staring match with a light touch on the sleeve of my blouse. “Are you sick, Miss Becker?”

  I shake my head. Just the normal—let's-see-if-you're-a-hybrid-female-semi-annual crop up.

  Lindberg's grin turns smug. He's more than happy to interrupt my time to drill that particular thorn in my side.

  “I'll go there as soon as my hour's up.”

  “Excellent, see that you do.” He pivots in the opposite direction, striding to the next classroom to deliver the same message, I assume.

  Sighing, I finish my work with Jordan with a lot less vigor than when we began. Jordan masters not only all the short and long vowels but has remembered a few sight words.

  My chest swells with pride for her. As it is, I only have five students. There aren't very many kids anymore. Since the inoculation of 2015, the resulting population decline and subsequent dangerously low birthrate have made each child special.

  Of course, from my vantage point, they already were.

  Now, women who are forty-two years old or younger have mandatory blood work requirements for fertility—far too frequently, in my opinion.

  The government claims it's for the prosperity of humanity. Women must be vetted. They must produce; it's our civic duty. I'm certain that discovering which females have mixed genetics is no small part of that mandate. That we're part-Lycan or vampire. Or the newest of ʻus allʼ—First Species and the sister species to that (as I think of it), prehistoric.

  But I won't be relegated to the heap of females who are pigeon-holed into the great holding tank for the next shifter revelation to spirit me away.

  My body. My terms.

  My mind.

  I cup the back of Jordan's skull, feeling beyond lucky to have her in my life, along with the few other children who call to me, who I've been blessed with through a providence that isn't of our choosing.

  Lindberg can pack sand as my hardass Marine grandpa used to say. I'll get the bloodwork accomplished when I'm done with something of greater value. Teaching. I need to be present. Lindberg took away from that presence I maintain by interrupting my work. He could have just pulsed me the directive. That's not his style, though.; Lindberg prefers the personal touch.

  I turn back to Jordan, and her look of expectation tells me that I was on target all along. She never thought I'd leave her, abandon our lesson for an authority figure who has no point-of-reference for the intricacies of what I do.

  What I have done.

  Besides, I'm thirty-nine years old, pretty long in the tooth to hold out hope (not that I particularly care) I need to be added to any kind of “breeder pool.” After all, the markers were discovered when I was well into adulthood. The population decline became common knowledge when I was already in my thirties.

  There's no husband for me. No children except the ones who lay claim to the pieces of my heart I dole out because I want to.

  But it's the same government dog and pony show of the newest sensitized blood tests. They promise that this batch is the most accurate, the most thorough, the most refined.

  So Lindberg interrupts my class to make, essentially, a non-viable female take a test that should be reserved for young women. But until a women's forty-second birthday, testing is compulsive, quarterly. Fine. I'll do the mandatory blood work. When I'm done with the important task I'm currently involved with.

  I flip a palm out. “You've got this wrong—it can't be. I was only tested last quarter.”

  The lab tech, a young guy who's maybe twelve years old, moves his shoulder into a shrug. The motion lifts his bright white lab coat, wrecking the perfect crease of the uniform all med people wear now.

  I shake my head as though the motion will clear the comment from cluttering the attic of my brain.

  Which had been: you have untypeable blood.

  I can't be identified. But last quarter I could. I was nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Though there was a hefty government stipend if I wanted to get pregnant. By any man.

  I dismiss my
internal narrative. “Shouldn't I be manifesting symptoms of a transitioning female if I were anything other than fully human?” I ask logically. For cripes’ sake, I'm too old for this nonsense.

  Another shrug to go along with the first.

  Okay, now he's just pissing me off. My eyes flick to his med badge worn lanyard-style that shouts his credentials—my ass.

  So I was off by a few years. Alexander Torres is twenty-five. I refrain from an eye roll. Instead, I take a deep breath, letting it out slow. “Listen, Mr. Torres...”

  “Alex,” he says with an apologetic tone.

  “Alex,” I repeat, trying for patience, “let's run the test again.”

  “It's protocol to run this lab three times.” Again, I feel apologized to.

  “I'm older.” I try that line. Because it's the one that makes absolute sense.

  He nods. “I can't deny that you're at the outer age range. But not only are you viable to have a human child,” he flicks a thumbnail against the pulse results that have unknown stranded at the top in glowing, phosphorous-green letters, “you're also pinging supe.” Another shrug.

  The movement makes the impulse to give him a throat chop nearly impossible to ignore. There wouldn't be any shrugging then, by God.

  I'm not a docile female. I'm an expert in self-defense. Sure, some men could take me. But an unskilled man would have his hands full. An unbidden image of Dale Lindberg rises to the surface of my weary brain, and even the thought of giving him what-for can't give my spirits a lift.

  My spine straightens as I shake off the disquieting visual. My confidence is inherent through experience, not arrogance.

  I cross my arms, holding the results of the test ensconced in my pulse device. I don't even have a paper to crease and crumple.

  We're not killing trees anymore in the year of our Lord, 2026.

  Instead, I shake my slim, credit-card sized pulse device at Alex. “So, now what?”

  “Not to be condescending…”

  Oh no, he's not even a little bit of that. I snort.

  He frowns, carefully going on like the brave soul he is, “I think all females whose results surface as supe get put on an auto-list with Final Enforcement to assist in their safe transition,” he adds quickly.