Authors: Joanne Brothwell
I began to pace.
#
We were gathered up like a herd of sheep and led to an area that looked like a cross between a hospital room and a science lab. The presence of four tables/beds outfitted with maternity-style stirrups and an adjustable overhead light only served to make it look like a birthing room.
Even Marcus was emasculated, his abnormal abilities prevented by the gelatinous-looking device wrapped around not only his wrists, but now also around his throat. If Malcolm knew how to stop Marcus, then he probably knew about everything we could do. And then what hope was there for us to get out of here?
Surrounded by guards, we waited. Malcolm entered the room. “Welcome back,” he said with a smile. The gap between his front teeth looked even more pronounced than what I remembered. “I realize none of you have eaten in some time, and undoubtedly you are growing hungry. However, before we have our meal, we need to get the preliminary lab tests underway. If we have reasonable cooperation, your experience here will be far quicker and much more pleasant.”
“What are you testing for?” I asked.
“Ah, yes, Kalan. Excellent question.” Malcolm stepped toward me, gap-toothed smile filling up his face. “We’ll be performing a basic metabolic panel, molecular profile, cellular evaluation, the usual.”
“What do you need these results for?” I asked.
Malcolm laughed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’re so quizzical. After all, your intelligence
was
selected for.” Malcolm smirked and walked away.
If only I had ten minutes with you alone, old man.
“This is crazy.”
“I’ve been told that before, Kalan. So, I suppose, despite the obvious cliché, there is a kernel of truth in the statement.” He looked over at Genevieve, his head angled to one side. “I believe it was your mother who made that proclamation, some twenty or so years previous to this day.”
Genevieve held Malcolm’s gaze, but said nothing.
“Okay.” Malcolm clapped his hands together. “Enough idle chitchat. Let’s begin,” He nodded as if there was a small army of people waiting along the sidelines for his signal. There was. From two side doors flooded numerous people, some in lab coats, others in riot gear. They walked with purpose toward us and branched off to each individual. We each had one or more assigned to us.
Two burly men grabbed my arms and pulled me forward while two women and a man in lab coats followed behind. A burning pain shuddered through my upper forearm and then in the soft spot behind my ear, where they gouged their thumbs into my flesh.
My knees buckled and they took the opportunity to twist me up like a pretzel.
Adriana struggled too, the same tactical techniques used on her, except she screamed and kicked in defence. Marcus had a gun against his back in addition to the transparent Taser around his wrists and neck. Genevieve went in cooperation to the examining table without a word and watched us in silence. Her face was the embodiment of pity.
The guards led me to an exam table. Behind me was the usual array of medical instruments, including oxygen, a blood pressure cuff, and other examination devices.
They strapped me down, the adjustable belts pulled tight across my chest, waist, wrists, upper thighs and ankles. I was immobile. A middle-aged woman with brown hair pulled into a tight bun slid a needle beneath my skin and removed two vials of my blood. She stuck a thermometer under my tongue. She pricked my finger with a tiny lance.
I heard Adriana’s voice from across the room. “What are you doing to me?” she asked.
The nurse beside her responded robotically. “We’re checking to see if you are ovulating.”
"THE AFFINITIES of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.”
-Charles Darwin
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ADRIANA SINCLAIR
My throat ached from screaming. It wasn’t even five hours since they’d drained half my blood, and already I was getting hauled back into the lab. Every time I screamed, the guards’ grip on my arm got tighter and their fingers dug into the skin of my arms and ribs even further. I yelled as they strapped me down, even though I knew it was in complete futility.
The worst part was the realization that all of this could have been avoided. If I wasn’t so needy, so emotionally dependent and starved for someone else to validate me and confirm my existence, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I would have walked away from Kalan at the first sign of trouble. Why couldn’t I stand on my own two feet?
Because I’m needy. That’s why
.
Was all of this because I couldn’t accept that Analiese was dead and face the future without her? Of course it was. I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone. I couldn’t accept that Analiese was dead. And I couldn’t accept that Analiese betrayed me.
A woman in pink scrubs with eyes the colour of coffee grounds rolled an apparatus on casters over to my exam table. It looked like an ultrasound machine. The nurse ignored me as she turned the contraption on. Her straw-coloured hair was pulled back into a severe bun, the effect making her eyebrows look like she was from the planet Vulcan. Was a tight bun part of the dress code for this place?
“What are you doing to me?” I said with as much menace as I could muster.
The woman’s face was expressionless, which only added to her alien characteristics. She ignored my question as if I hadn’t even spoken at all.
She pulled out a needle and, without warning, inserted it into the flesh at the crook of my elbow. It was nearly painless, her expertise and experience at her work readily evident. She pulled out a long tube with another needle attached to the end and set it beside me.
The doors of the lab opened. Kalan, three guards and Malcolm entered the lab. Kalan looked at me, strapped to the table, machines and gadgets all around me, and his face blanched. Then an expression of intense concentration took over.
The pressure inside my head changed and my ears popped.
“Adriana. Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” popped out of my mouth before I could stop it. My mouth snapped shut. The nurse looked at me and her eyebrows shot up on her forehead, her first real expression.
“Don’t speak out loud. I’m talking to you inside your mind. Can you answer without speaking?”
“Yes. How are you doing this?”
The guards led Kalan toward a side door, into a separate room altogether.
“That doesn’t matter right now. I’m going to get us out of here. I want you to ask to use the washroom. Say you have a stomach ache. When they unstrap you, make a run for the outside door, okay?”
I swallowed as the woman opened my hospital gown and squirted clear gel all over my abdomen.
“What about you?”
“Call to me with your thoughts. I’ll be in here
,
but I’ll hear you.”
“Okay.”
Kalan disappeared into the side room and Malcolm closed the door behind him.
Immediately, I yelled out, “Ouch!” and leaned forward as far as my restraints would let me. “My stomach, it hurts. I think I’m getting my period.”
“That’s not possible, you’re ovulating,” said Vulcan woman, her eyes narrowed.
I had to do something dramatic. I turned my head to the side and made retching noises, complete with spitting onto the floor. The woman wheeled her chair backward and stood up with a look of complete revulsion on her face. Her second real expression. She glanced around as if unsure what to do. Two guards rushed over as I moaned and continued to wretch. I cried out in choked gasps. I heaved for so long, my stomach churned and I actually threw up onto the floor.
Spock lady’s mouth dropped open and she ripped all of the attachments off me, including the needle from my elbow.
“Get her to the bathroom,” she said to the guards. She waved her hand as if my germs dripped from her fingers.
They removed my straps, making no effort to do it gently. They did everything possible to avoid touching me or my vomit. Maybe I finally had the upper hand.
I retched once again, right onto their pants. A little got on their hands and sleeves. They yelled and jumped back as they yanked their hands away. I was almost free from the restraints, save for one strap that held down my right hand. I easily wriggled out of it and launched myself off the table. I was halfway to the door when the sounds of footsteps resounded behind me.
“Kalan! I’m at the door!”
The door burst open and Kalan ran out holding up his pants that were missing a belt. I held the door open for him while the guards ran to intercept us.
Kalan stopped and turned to stare at the guards. His eyes were wide and intense, and oddly, the guards stopped dead in their tracks. Their eyes widened, mouths open as if they were paralyzed.
What…?
I didn’t have time to wonder. Kalan ran for the doorway and I followed. We took off down the hallway, our bare feet slap-slap-slapping against the cold tile.
I slowed as we approached an open door where I heard several voices inside. I peered partway in, and saw a large table with chairs around it. A boardroom. I grabbed Kalan’s arm and stopped him. If we ran past, we’d only alert even more people to our missing whereabouts.
I was about to run the opposite direction when I heard Malcolm’s voice, loud and clear, his English accent making him sound haughty and self-aggrandized. “Her DNA is not a throwback at all,” Malcolm said with unrestrained contempt. “It is a
forward
evolution. Her DNA has evolved once again to its maximum potential. At a time of early symbiosis. The energy potential of the mitochondria in those three is so advanced we cannot even begin to estimate its influence on gene sequencing.”
“Isn’t there a chance the embryos will have negative recessive traits? We are talking about two generations of consanguinity, Malcolm,” said another voice.
Consanguinity. I knew this term from biology. In layman’s terms it meant inbreeding. Two generations of inbreeding.
Now Malcolm’s tone was beyond contempt. I could imagine the sneer on his face. “Of course they will. That’s why we’ll
select
the zygotes we wish to proceed.”
“You’ll dispose of the rest, then?”
“No.” Malcolm’s voice. “We’ll harvest them for parts. I’m certain we can learn from their physiology. They don’t need to be sentient, of course, because that would be
unethical
,” he chuckled. “But they don’t need brains to be of use to our research.”
My skin went cold. He was completely self-focused, intent on what would be of use for him, and him alone. Did he not have a fatherly bone in his entire body? Didn’t he look at Kalan and Marcus and have even a twinge of loving emotion or even empathy? Or did he see them as mere specimens? Grown up zygotes?
We’ll harvest them for parts
. I shivered.
“Just imagine the press release where I reveal what I’ve created. First, Adriana, the
Mitochondrial Eve
. Then, the fathers, Marcus and Kalan, the
Adam Chromosomes
, and finally, the newest offspring,” he paused. Then with great theatre, he said, “The child with the
God Sequence
.”
I was literally vibrating now, every muscle twitching. I forgot to breath. My lungs screamed for oxygen. Kalan grabbed my arm and pulled me in the opposite direction. We’d listened too long, our window of opportunity to escape rapidly closing. We broke out in a run.
The heavy footsteps behind us underscored my words. We picked up speed, but as we came to a point in the hall that split off into three curved hallways, we stopped.
“This way,” Kalan said and we veered into the hall on the left.
An alarm started. At the other end of the hallway two guards ran toward us. I hesitated, but Kalan didn’t slow his pace. Then, Kalan held his arms out in a
stop
gesture. Like in the lab, the guards went immobile.
We picked up speed and barrelled past the guards who watched in their helpless, frozen state. We reached an exit. Kalan shoved the crash bar of the door with his shoulder, but the massive double doors didn’t budge. They were locked.
“Goddamn it!” Kalan yelled. He glanced around, his eyes wild.
“If you can stop them in their tracks like that, then we can go through the front entrance, where we came in,” I said.
Kalan’s lips pursed as he contemplated it, and then nodded. “Right. Let’s try.”
My heels burned from running in bare feet. The whole building was like a damn maze. We reached the massive open foyer of the entrance. Faint classical music was heard, barely audible beneath the sound of the screeching alarm.
There was a flurry of activity. People scurried about at faster than normal speeds, but in deliberate, controlled movements. Kalan pointed to a door beneath the staircase that led outside.
“That door. Maybe it’s unlocked.”
I grabbed Kalan’s hand and we ran down the stairs, two at a time.
We crashed through the door, immediately plunged into inky darkness of nightfall. It took several minutes to regain my bearings. When I did, I realized we were surrounded by small buildings.
“There,” I said. I pointed to where the road snaked between the buildings, toward what looked vaguely like a wrought iron gate.
We ran down the road, the rocks and gravel grinding into my feet. It felt like I was walking on razor blades. I tried to steel myself against the pain, but the jagged stones were so sharp in the soft flesh of my feet I couldn’t stop the odd gasp from sounding.
I glanced over and saw the grimace on Kalan’s face, he was struggling too. Speedy healing didn’t mean pain reduction.
There was no sound, a reprieve from the alarms inside, only the slight hum from one overhead light. All of the buildings were closed, no lights on inside. Crickets chirped, lending an eerie, isolated feel to the situation. Even the moon was a half-crescent, doing nothing to improve my visual acuity.
We neared the gate, and when we did, a loud, electrical whine started up, followed by the whir of mechanical hydraulics.
The gate was closing.
We took off in a flat-out sprint, the gate almost halfway closed. Never had I run so hard in my life, every muscle in my legs ached, my feet burned and an odd metallic taste filled my mouth.
As we grew closer, I knew. It was too late.
The opening between the gates had less than the width of a person between them. Kalan grabbed the gate, and shoved against it, using his upper body to push against the movement. But it was useless. The iron came together with a resounding
clang
.
The height was twelve or more feet, and the retaining wall beside it was solid concrete. There was no possibility of scaling the wall.
I tried to catch my breath. Kalan’s eyes were wild, the silvery sheen flashing near-white in the minimal light. There was nowhere else to run. The sound of footsteps in gravel grew closer. We were about to be discovered. Kalan pointed to a building.
We took off for it. When Kalan pulled on the door, it was open. Inside, it became clear the space was used for storage. Boxes and boxes were stacked one on top of the other, the skull and crossbones sign prominently displayed on each and every box. In another corner were shelves with innumerable yellow plastic bins with “Biohazard” written on them. Old computer monitors sat in the middle of the space, and large blue plastic tubs with the word “Flammable” all over them.
Kalan grabbed my hand and led me to the farthest back corner where he found a ladder. He turned to me, and there must have been something he saw in my face, because he let go of the ladder and pulled me to him. I put my arms around his neck and he folded me into his chest. Immediately, our heartbeats combined to make an irregular, frantic thumping, our breaths still coming in great gasps.
Kalan kissed me, his lips closed. “There’s something I need to tell you, before they find us.”
I swallowed, bracing for what he was about to say. “Okay.”
“They are going to use you, like my mother. They want your genetic material as a base.”
“A base.” A lump formed in my throat. “For what?”
“He wants to genetically engineer a person, selecting for what he thinks are perfect traits.”
My skin prickled and the ends of my fingers tingled. “Why? The perfect human, like Genevieve said? To win the Nobel Prize and finally be good enough for Daddy?”
Kalan nodded his head. “And because he has a God complex. Daddy issues and something to prove. He wants to do it, and he wants the fame and recognition for achieving it. So he’s going to go through with it, no matter who gets hurt.”
A string of curses erupted from my mouth. “It doesn’t sound like anyone thought about his feelings growing up.”
Kalan kissed me again, and this time, the kiss was long, and desperate, as if we may never see each other again. I never wanted this moment to end, being held tight against Kalan, his strong arms holding me as we hid from the horrible realities of the world. Consanguinity or not, I felt for this man.
Kalan pulled away, but his mouth hovered right in front of mine, so close, his hot breath touched my cheeks. “I’ll have to kill him. If my father is dead, there will be no one calling the shots. Maybe then we’ll have a fighting chance at getting out of here. Listen for my cue. I won’t be speaking it out loud.”
“When did you realize you could do that?” I asked. I ran a hand through his downy-soft hair. Would I ever get to touch his hair again? “Speak mind to mind?”
Kalan shrugged. “My mother did it when we left the hotel. She told me there’s more to my ability, but I need to be open to discovering it. That’s what I’m trying to do. It appears there is a lot more to my abilities than I’ve ever allowed myself to accept.”
“Like stopping those guards in the hall?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kalan said.
“What about that weapon he used against Marcus? Will it work on you, too?”