Climatic Climacteric Omnibus

by L. B. Carter

  They had triggered her the first time. Now, she found that they felt tranquil, smooth, safe, like the flat ocean Grandpa had carved in his last buoy. Last buoy. Those words hit her hard. He had been her only family, the only family she may have ever had now she knew the truth about the car accident. It was a double loss; she had no one and no where she belonged, not even a known species she belonged to, it sounded like.

  That wasn’t true. What had been that inane comment Reed had made at the bonfire party before… before the attack about family? It had stuck with her and made more sense after they met in the woods.

  Blood doesn’t have to mean family. Anyone you protect is family. Or anyone who protects you.

  Kayna had been family. Liam and Tilly were family. Nor had been there for her, even before he knew she was his job. He saved her from the hospital, even after she used him. He knew, he knew what her body could do. And he was still saving her.

  If you forgive yourself, I’ll do the same. That was the deal she and Reed made in the woods. Well, she couldn’t forgive herself all of it yet. She could make baby steps though. Like Dr. Spelmann had assigned her. Heck, she was sitting next to Reed’s brother now. Talking to him.

  She lifted a hand from her lap and held it out, palm down, between them, still holding eye contact with his ocean eyes. “I trust you,” she whispered aloud, and placed her palm on top of Nor’s warm hand on the cracked leather seat. “And it’s Rena.”

  Epilogue

  Rena was in the back of an ambulance. What had happened? Another accident? Had she imagined him breaking her out of the hospital? Think, think, think.

  “Nor?” Panic infused her voice and her limbs rattled.

  “Shhh.”

  Rena’s eyes snapped to the person sitting on a bench next to her. Lab coat, female, blond hair.

  “Quiet.” It was sharp, irritated. Not a recommendation. This was no EMT. One of Them? They were taking her back. No.

  She remembered the passenger door opening up behind her and something stabbing into her arm. “Did you drug me?”

  “We had to. I said be quiet.”

  The engine started up, vibrating her body. Were they taking her back to the hospital again? Her gurney jerked around, the engine revving, then brakes squeaking. She was starting to get dizzy. Where was she being taken? Where was Nor?

  Someone knocked on the wall behind her head. “Coming up to the guards,” said a second, muffled female voice. The engine quieted and their brakes announced a stop.

  “Keep still,” came the light yet sharp threat of Rena’s neighbor.

  Then something settled over her face. Her chains clanked as she lurched. Taking stock, Rena realized it was light—a sheet. She could still breathe. That settled her a bit.

  “Don’t move or speak,” she was reminded. “And don’t breathe. Or else they’ll take you back.”

  They? They as in They? Or did she mean the Stanleys? If that was even their name. Or Stew? Her kidnapper breathed fast making up for Rena’s lack. Rena didn’t do it to obey but because she didn’t know who to trust. If only she could turn into a spectre and sneak out. Where was Nor?

  “What’s this?” came a loud authoritative voice.

  “New model going out,” said a second, male voice from the front of the truck.

  “At this time of night?” the first man sounded suspicious.

  “Check your log.”

  There was a brief pause. “All right. You’re cleared.” Rena’s companion let out a soft and long exhale. “Wait who’s with you?”

  “Engineering,” came the female voice with a slight waver. “I’m needed for the install.”

  “As it says in the log,” the first pointed out slightly exasperatedly. “We need to get going to get this set up at Faneuil before daybreak.” Faneuil. They took her to Boston? Nor said they’d head north.

  “Open the back.” The guard didn’t sound convinced.

  Rena’s company was panting. The door screeched open and a light shot in, sweeping around, taking stock, much like the lighthouse’s light swooping around.

  “Who are you?”

  The legs next to Rena’s head shifted. “Genetic biology department. I work with Katheryn Tate.”

  Rena jerked. Tate. Her kidnapper was Shayna Tate? Was this payback for the clay? Rena longed to cry out, to ask the security guy to help her. She held her tongue. She didn’t want to be stuck in the hospital with Them either.

  “Did that thing just move?”

  “No.”

  Rena held still as footsteps approached on the metal floor. She shut her eyes to try to fade away even further. Just as well because he whipped off the sheet and the backs of her lids turned orange in a sudden glow.

  “Looks human,” he grunted.

  “Then we’ve done our job. Still have to program it to breathe though; it weirds people out with the chest still like that.”

  Rena kept immobile, her lungs perfectly content to wait.

  The man grunted, walked away and leapt to the ground with a loud clap of boots on pavement and shudder of the truck. Rena kept her eyes shut; the cloth remained off. She couldn’t run; she was still tied down. If she called out, there was no telling what would happen—back with Them or somewhere else since the guard thought she wasn’t even human. Was she not?

  The doors swung shut with a shriek of metal on metal. Rena was now prisoner of one of the people she hated most in the world, not knowing what had happened to the most …loved. She didn’t allow herself time to think too long about that word. Nor was family. Was Nor safe?

  “Carry on,” the guard grunted from the other side of the walls caging Rena in.

  They remained silent as they rumbled on and the truck swayed this way and that, the outside noises picking up with honks, other engines. Unless it was a traffic jam, the noise confirmed they weren’t in the hospital she’d been in before; the area around it just wasn’t that populated to have that many cars on the road, especially if this guy said it was night.

  Rena breathed. She had to, to ask her questions. “What—?”

  “I’m sorry,” the voice said again. It didn’t sound like Shayna. She’d never use those words on the Spectre. “We needed to get you out first and foremost. This was the only chance we had; my mom is meeting with her colleague Professor Hutchins,” she put a strange sarcastic emphasis on the title.

  “Mom?”

  “Professor Katheryn Tate,” she mocked with hatred.

  Tate. It had to be Shayna. Rena opened her eyes to look over. It was too dark, almost pitch black.

  “You don’t remember her.”

  Rena shook her head.

  “I figured as much. They’d make you forget your past, for the purpose of their trial. You won’t remember me. I’m the one who named you Sirena—like a Siren instead of XP47. Seems you recalled only that much. Even though we used to hang out.” She sounded rejected.

  Rena frowned. Hang out? With Shayna? Before the accident?

  “When you were allowed to be awake of course and weren’t undergoing tests.”

  “Who—?”

  “I’m Jen.”

  But… “Shayna?”

  “Ugh, my bitchy cousin. Don’t remind me. I’m glad I don’t live near her anymore.”

  Rena agreed with that adjective. “Where?”

  “Oh, we’re leaving BSTU. Which is where you used to live. Where you were invented. Where you were brought, unconscious, last night.”

  Rena froze. She tabled the last part to ask, “Invented.”

  “By Professor Hutchins, who then flips around and tries to use you against your purpose.”

  She had a purpose? The girl had called her an invention, as though her existence, her uniqueness was intentional. “Purpose?”

  “You’re the next generation.”

  That was …anticlimactic.

  Jen knew it too because she let out a little huffing laugh. “I guess to get more specific: you’re the first of the newest advancements in syntheti
c genetic biologic modification. The intention was to make a new and improved human, sustainable in a climate changed environment; adaptation. Sort of an anthropogenic kick start to evolution that would be too slow to keep up with the changing world, if you will. Human adaptation. At least that was the original point. For others, its more about creating an army of superhumans.”

  Neither sounded good, not much better than freak, or spectre. At least she was human—sort of.

  “With your enhancements, like increased lung capacity, which is why you are great at holding your breath, we can deal with lower oxygen levels. Hence the water tanks they used to test you in. Torture I say,” she snapped. “It’s good you don’t remember that.”

  Water tanks. Rena imagined herself underwater with—with whom? Was the lip-sucking part of her design too? Did they know about that? Based on his shock, it didn’t seem likely. Would they keep her if they knew about it? The hospital at home had stuck her in a tank only a few days before. Did They work for these BSTU people?

  Wait. BSTU…

  “Stew?”

  Jen harrumphed. “Don’t get me started on that kiss-ass. He’s just like them. Academics,” she spat. “I never wanted to be one of them. Even Dad loved his work, his kids more than me.”

  A fellow enemy of Stew? Did that put them on the same side? But Jenny was taking Rena away from Nor. “Dad?”

  “Mr. Tate. You probably heard of him. He taught chem at the school you were at, if not for long. That was where he went wrong. Too obsessed with science. He let Mom back in. Dangerous game. He got out with the divorce, he should have stayed that way. It was heartbreaking cutting him off from her permanently. And because of that, I had no one else to go to but her. Well, I’ve stuck it to her now. Me and Mark.”

  “Mark?”

  “I guess you don’t remember him either. Though he was the last one with you.” Rena’s mind flashed an image of the gaping mouth, dark beard, sightless eyes. “Maybe it’s better that way. So, I can’t ask what Mark’s last moments were like. It haunts me. But it’s better if I don’t know, I think.”

  Rena’s eyes shut again. Her vision. Her dad. Did that make this woman—? No, she said Rena was invented. The necklace at her throat tugged and Rena’s eyes snapped open.

  “Sorry. I gave him that. As a good luck charm.” She let it fall back on Rena’s chest. “He was a better dad than my real one. He was my mom’s boyfriend. Her student, disgustingly enough. I think he really realized how bad a person she was when she started talking to Dad again. Broken hearts do great damage. That’s why Andrew wouldn’t help me save you.” She sighed.

  Save her? From what? She had no idea who to trust anymore. Where was Nor? “Nor?” Rena whispered, fear clutching her lungs as tight as they’d been in that tank.

  “Nor?” Jen sounded unsure of the name. Definitely not Shay.

  “Norton Stanley?” Rena prodded, heart in her throat.

  “Who?”

  “Protect me.”

  “Oh, from the organization I hired?” She shook her head. “I had to get you away from them, too. Stew figured out who they were. They can’t protect you anymore.” Jen tossed them aside like garbage, tossed aside Rena’s family.

  Maybe it was fair; she’d killed Mark. Did Jen know that? Rena couldn’t even grip the locket in comfort; it felt vile like a noose now.

  “Where to?” Rena inquired wearily.

  “We’re taking you somewhere capable of keeping you safe. I thought about terminating you, but then that’d make me no better than the dickwads at this prison.”

  “Prison?” She had been taken to prison?

  “Not a real prison. Well, depends on who you ask. Some say it’s ‘an institution of higher learning.’ I’d say welcome back to BSTU, but goodbye is more appropriate here. Here’s to getting you away.”

  Rena didn’t want to say goodbye. She wanted Nor’s arms wrapped around her, for the first time in her life. In fact, she refused to let him go, opening her mental box wide, fists curling. They’d made her a killer, even if they didn’t realize it. She’d gotten free once—at the car crash, before Stew took most of her memories.

  And Nor wouldn’t let her go either. He and Reed would hunt her down, even if it wasn’t Nor’s job. She believed that. She trusted him.

  Probably Stew and these Professors would be on their tails too. Maybe somewhere safe couldn’t hurt. Could she trust Jen, her so-called old friend, who’d helped her escape supposed torture?

  “Where are you taking me?” she repeated, with force.

  “To Valerie.”

  FADED FLARE

  Climatic Climacteric, Book Two

  L.B. Carter

  Chapter One

  “Tag, you're it."

  The sing-song voice sounded more appropriate from her little sister several years prior than it did coming out of the copper-coated lips of the statuesque face staring down at her. Frankly, it was hard to tell if the slightly parted lips even moved on the frozen face of the mannequin-like ballerina, posed with arms curled as though hugging a beach ball, one foot balancing on the worn milk crate, the other on her knee in a poor approximation of a static pirouette. Coated in paint, from the bun balanced on her tilted head to the gaudy foil-like tutu spread around her thin hips, the ballerina looked just like a life-size music box doll.

  What some of the people who’d dropped coins on the cobblestones at her feet didn’t know was that she was …essentially. It was an android.

  The full-size models were being tested in the jobs least likely to be visually obvious. The public needed to ease into the idea; most were fearful of a ‘robot take-over’—that they might become the servants.

  Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

  Regardless, they were primitive still. Something capable of mutinying was years off, as far as technological progress went, no matter how the media phrased the University’s advances for the biggest splash.

  Not that her research wasn’t complex—hadn’t been complex.

  It wasn’t really her research anymore. And any plans for a literal splash with any of the models had been dashed along with Henley Bickford’s career aspirations, and life as she knew it, less than a week ago.

  If not for the sudden dilation of pupils, the ballerina might have been a superb street performer, triggered to dance at regular intervals only when the performance was watched. However, the words weren’t hers. The ballerina was oblivious to what had just escaped her mouth. BSTU was in complete control, zooming the cameras in on Henley’s face.

  "Gotcha," a deep voice taunted from behind like this was a game between children. It seemed like it, facing a juggling green-wigged clown, his wide, red, smiling mouth and happy, diamond-bordered eyes an eerie contrast to the veiled threat.

  “Peekaboo!" The bag-pipe player on the unicycle with the pipe clenched between his teeth simultaneously blew bubbles bigger than his head into the air while wheeling back and forth on the cobblestones, teetering his arms for balance.

  It was a feat of engineering, admittedly.

  Henley involuntarily jerked back into the ballerina. Proving that it could indeed be triggered to move and had the poise of whom she impersonated, the doll barely wobbled before shifting to both feet on her pedestal, toes pointed apart, maintaining character.

  The clown ambled over in an awkward gait that was accepted as part of his act, the grin pulling disconcertingly at his make-up. His balls continued their aerial cycle with precision.

  "All right, miss?" A man from the clown’s audience followed, the concern that distorted his paint-free face less severe, more curious.

  She didn’t want his attention either. A deep, hollow feeling, combined with alarm, darted like panicked fish through her veins and prevented her from responding. This man couldn’t help; he was making the situation worse. More of the clown’s audience drifted over as if they’d found a new street performer to entertain them.

  Her supervisors were clearly entertained, watching through the eyes of t
heir—her—creations.

  She shut her eyes against the worried gazes. Three weren’t genuine—a programmed response—while the others—the human response—needed to be diverted. They would be collateral damage if they got between. And the one person who should be concerned, Buster Acton, had run off.

  They hadn’t really had an established friendship before, more of a regular acquaintance in the waiting room of their respective weekly mentor meetings. However, their agreement to coordinate an escape from that hell-hole of a so-called institution of higher learning lent the understanding that they would assist each other throughout the entire process, not just in getting off-campus. They each had their reasons for breaking out, but that was cold even for the Bus.

  Honestly, it had surprised her that he was capable of running at all. That said, the loner had already astounded her when they’d met, as planned, in the dead of night with another student who brought her research experiment along.

  Henley could understand the unwillingness to leave all that work behind. Truthfully, she had taken a prototype of her own project with her, too.

  Feeling the ballerina’s shins move against her back in warning, Henley spun on her heel, whipping the kind man in the face with long mousy-blond hair, darted under the ballerina’s grasping arms, and sprinted across the cobblestones.

  The harbor was the best place to hide. Ironically, the recent storm ravage made it a safer place, at least for Henley. Water—the natural enemy of technology—was a friend at the moment. Though its company would be a minor comfort as Henley Bickford ran for her life.

  ◆◆◆

  They were definitely gone by now, her fellow deserters. Henley had been in charge of foraging for food while the other three ditched their stolen vehicle.

  But now she was cowering at the pier, her butt wedged between two enormous yachts that had been lifted and deposited on the sidewalk after the storm surge a few days previously.

  With a shrug, she opened the bag of stolen popcorn that she’d not dropped when she ran, thanks to her inhumanly tense fist, and Henley began to snack on the salty treat, hoping it would calm her nerves.