by Shanon Hunt
But it wasn’t a government ID photo. It was his Wilshire Grand badge picture, taken only three days ago. Beneath the picture, the name read Victor Beaumont.
Abder, you beautiful little Egyptian hacker genius. I love you, man.
Nick slammed his open mouth shut before Aroyo could catch him gaping at the result. He tucked his long floppy hair behind his ear.
Aroyo hit a buzzer on his desk and scowled at Nick. “As of this moment, you’re on my radar. Understand that you’ll be observed carefully over the next three days—and mark my words, if I see so much as a nostril flare, you’ll be on the next bus out. Handcuffed. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Nick nodded without a hint of the satisfaction he felt. He’d perfected the solemn promise expression by his twelfth birthday. “Thank you for the opportunity.”
He offered a hand, but Aroyo didn’t move to shake it. As he followed the mall cop escorts out of the boss’s office, Aroyo called out.
“Oh, one more thing, Mr. Beaumont.”
Nick froze.
“That mobile phone you’re trying to hide in your boot won’t work out here. We have no cell service or Wi-Fi connectivity outside the Colony. You can leave it at the recruiting center and collect it on your way out.”
He was marched like a prisoner from the boss’s office and down the hallway past the open door to the surveillance control room. Oh, what he’d give to have a look in there.
“Do you mind if I take this phone out of my shoe?” he asked as humbly as he could. “Now that the cat’s out of the bag, it’s been killing me.”
He squatted down and fiddled with his bootlaces, turning his head ever slightly to check out the expansive wall of monitors. The views changed every few seconds, affirming his initial instinct that the entire campus was covered by CCTV. He also registered the camera surveillance team: one dude with his feet up on the desk, shamelessly playing games on an iPad. That meant the cameras were more for show than actual prevention, and that would surely be to his benefit.
As he rose, burner phone in hand, he spotted an unmistakable head on one of the monitors. The candlewick girl sat among a group of white-pajama-wearing buddies in a large cafeteria, comfortable as a fish in the sea. She’d been a plant.
He kept walking, but he felt his mouth twitch.
Game on, EGNX.
41
October 2022, Mexico
Layla waited until afternoon naptime cleared the great room of carriers and children before she slipped out of her room. She scanned the vast empty den and lifted her gaze to the loft. The building was quiet, giving her a window of opportunity to poke around. What was so special about these children and their carriers? Why did they get a country club life while the others got a prison cell?
She wandered between the sofas to the play area. The sofa pillows, smashed flat by pregnant carriers, smelled like body odor and bacon. She stepped through a two-foot yellow gate that opened into the play area. The floor was uncluttered and the area meticulously organized. All the toys were put away. Did the carriers clean up before they gathered the young ones for naptime, or did the children clean up after themselves?
Educational toys were abundant. Blocks, puzzles, and interlocking toys of assorted sizes and shapes were stacked on small shelves along the perimeter. Freestanding stationary play cubes, maybe three feet tall with tiny doors for opening and interacting, were spaced a few feet apart in the center of the room.
God, how old were the children? How long had the program been going on?
She eased herself into a tiny plastic chair facing one of the cubes and opened a small door. There was nothing behind it but a panel. She pressed her palm against it and felt a small vibration, as if there were a motor inside the cube. She put her hand on top of the cube. No vibration. It was a peculiar sensation, and she was about to touch it again when she heard a voice behind her.
“We’re not supposed to be in the playroom,” a woman said. She held the hand of a young boy with jet black hair, whose black eyes were locked on Layla.
Layla rose slowly, unnerved.
“The area is designated for the offspring.”
The offspring. It was an unusual way to describe a human child.
The boy released his mother’s hand, entered the play area, and began pulling Legos from a bin. She watched him organize them into piles. He wasn’t organizing them by color or size. What was he doing? He didn’t seem to notice her standing over him until she spoke.
“You missed one. A red one.”
He froze like a statue, his back still turned to her. He remained frozen, like a robot that had been switched off, for a few seconds, then resumed his sorting without touching the red Lego.
Layla stepped out of the playroom, chilled to the bone.
The woman patted the sofa next to her. “I’m Susan.”
She didn’t sit. Her eyes flashed to her room, and she wished she hadn’t left it.
“I was in your purification program early on, before I joined the carriers.”
She sighed and studied Susan’s face. The woman appeared lucid and friendly, but Layla was struggling to feel at ease. She tried for small talk. “How old is your, uh… How old is he?”
“He’s seventeen months. He’s the oldest of all the offspring.” She tilted her head as she monitored his play, eyes sparkling with the pride of a mother.
Layla studied him, too. He didn’t look like he was playing. He looked like he was working, intently reorganizing the blocks in piles, his hands operating simultaneously but independently. Ambidextrous. Multitasking.
A shiver ran up her spine, and she forced herself to look away, almost afraid she’d be hypnotized by his rhythmic movements.
“What’s his name?”
Susan threw her a look as though she were crazy. “They don’t have names. They don’t like to be singled out as individuals. At least that’s what I hear. Tasmin—she’s the other carrier that’s been here almost as long as me—she says the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Maybe that’s all the same thing. I don’t really get it.”
Layla subtly took another step toward her room. “What do you mean when you say that’s what you hear? The doctors told you that?”
“No, silly, the offspring.” Susan returned her attention to the boy. “You don’t hear yours?”
As if on cue, the creature inside Layla’s belly stretched. She looked down in time to see her belly change shape from round to rectangular and then back to round again. Every time it moved, a wave of apprehension rippled through her.
She sat down next to Susan, suddenly more fearful of the alien inside her than Susan and her black-eyed offspring. “Why are they so quiet?”
Susan shrugged. “A long time ago, in my poisoned life, I worked at this behavioral center. You know, one of those places where they teach kids who have mental disabilities?”
Layla nodded to keep the story moving.
“Yeah, so they had these kids there. Autistic, they called them. The teaching staff and doctors always said they were special, like they had gifts that were different from regular people. This one girl? She was like ten, and she could play the piano like a professional, but she couldn’t read or write or do math or anything like that. And she didn’t talk.” Susan raised her eyebrows in the direction of the child. “The offspring are just like them, I figure, but they’re smarter. Even more gifted.”
Layla lay back against the sofa pillow to calm the snakes coiling in her stomach and risked another look at the toddler in the play area. A gifted monster busily organizing blocks. What are you making, little freak?
The boy stopped moving, and Layla’s heart jumped into her throat. Had she spoken out loud? She wanted to turn to Susan to read her expression, but her eyes were fixed on the child statue.
The boy rose and walked toward them with oddly deliberate steps for a child his age.
Layla couldn’t swallow the lump in her throat. Was he coming for her? Would he attack? Her muscles tightene
d, and she hunched slightly. He was just a child, but that stony face and those listless eyes, which never seemed to blink, made her feel as though she should brace for attack.
But as he neared her, her rigid muscles relaxed. Her heart rate slowed. He reached out for her hand, and she offered it.
He took her hand in both of his. Warmth flowed from his fingers to hers, moving up her arm and radiating throughout her body. Her mouth dropped open, and her breath came so slowly and regularly she might as well have been snoring.
Another child appeared from nowhere. He was smaller, not quite as coordinated as he crawled up onto the couch and wrapped his arms around her round belly.
Layla’s eyes drooped. She was weightless, floating in blissful oblivion.
We are not the enemy.
The words appeared in her head, but they weren’t hers. Nor had they come from the child. They had formed out of nothing. Her eyes closed entirely as the sensation of floating dissipated, but she didn’t have the strength to open them again. Or the will. She wanted to sleep.
We are not the enemy. A whisper now.
Susan spoke in a voice that sounded far away. “Oh my god. I’ve never seen them do that before. Tas, look!”
She wanted to know what that meant, but the heaviness had completely overtaken her now, and she allowed herself to be swallowed by darkness.
***
By the time Dr. De Luca appeared in Layla’s room, with that smug look on his face, she was livid.
“What happened to me in there?” She stabbed a finger at the living room. “That is not natural. Those kids are not kids.” Her voice escalated with each word. “It’s like they hypnotized me. Or drugged me. I lost two hours of my life.”
Dr. De Luca sighed as if she’d already exhausted him. “We believe it’s simply a hormonal rush, a flood of dopamine released based on proximity between the carriers and the offspring. Like the McClintock effect, yes?”
“No.” She despised doctors who couldn’t speak in lay terms to those not medically trained.
“It’s menstrual synching,” he replied. “Sometimes when women live together, their menstrual cycles will begin on the same day. What we’ve observed here appears to be a lot like that. The offspring secrete high levels of pheromones that have an intoxicating effect on the carriers.”
One hand drifted to her mouth. This was like witchcraft.
“We monitor the synaptic transmissions that signal the release of dopamine across a wide proximal range of the offspring. It’s a sliding scale, yes? The nearer the carrier is to the offspring, the faster the synaptic transmission. A physical contact event can make the dopamine levels rise so much that it mimics the reaction of a powerful opioid or a high dose of cocaine.”
“But why? Why did those things crawl on me?” She felt violated. They weren’t babies wanting the soothing physical bond of a parent. They had purposefully manipulated her. Impossibly, they knew what they were doing.
Dr. De Luca removed his glasses and gazed past her into the great room, his eyes twinkling. His voice was low. “This is a new behavior, indeed. We’ve never observed the offspring choosing to make physical contact, even with their own carriers. This is an extremely interesting development. Perhaps there’s something about you, specifically, that seems to attract them. Truly extraordinary. We will observe the behavior over the next days, yes?”
Layla’s mouth fell open. “You can’t keep me here.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m not safe.” Her voice rose. “This place isn’t safe. You need to take me out of here.”
“This is a research facility. An observation unit. You stay until we’ve gathered the data we need.”
She lunged at the window and slammed her palms against it. “You son of a bitch!”
Dr. De Luca looked her in the eyes, his voice so low she could barely detect his accent. “Do you feel this rage, Layla? Can you feel your blood boiling under your skin? This is what happens when you are separated from your kind. This is the first phase of withdrawal. It isn’t healthy for you or the fetus. It’s important that you bond with the carriers and the offspring. Go now. Go rejoin the circle.”
Her voice dripped with the venom that now coursed through her veins, and she spoke through gritted teeth to control the volume of her voice. “I refuse to be bonded to those things. They’re not … they’re … they’re unnatural.”
His expression dulled with an exaggerated sigh. He pulled a small cloth from his pocket and cleaned his glasses as if they were talking about nothing more important than the weather. “There’s no such thing as natural when we speak of the human race, cucciola. Not anymore. There’s evolved and unevolved. A relic like me will one day be viewed with the same disdain as we might view a Neanderthal: an earlier form of our species, more animal than human.”
Layla winced.
“You’re a pioneer of this evolution, the first of the pure humans, isn’t that right? What did you think that meant, if not evolved? Maybe you should think about how you define ‘unnatural.’ I’m not the one who needs to be on that side of the window, yes?”
“You!” She was practically screaming. “You did this to me! I didn’t ask for this!”
He leaned in, now as enraged as she was. It was his turn to speak through gritted teeth. “Like everyone in Colony, you will do as you are told. That is the only purpose you serve. That is the only reason you are here.”
Layla roared with fury and pounded her fists onto her desk.
She surged away from the window to the edge of her room. The offspring were working, as usual, but the carriers had halted their languid chatting to find out what all the commotion was about. As soon as she crossed the threshold, the carriers stood to face her. Even the offspring turned their attention to her. They were waiting for something, but what?
Dr. De Luca was right: Her blood felt like it was boiling under her skin. Her pulse picked up. Her breaths, forced through clenched teeth, made her sound like a hissing snake.
The freak with the black hair and black eyes trundled toward her. She slid one foot forward in a fighter’s stance, arms bent, hands relaxed. The world went silent.
Layla felt a familiar thickness around her skull. Mud in her ears.
We are one. It was a man’s voice, not a child’s, and it was so loud she covered her ears. Like the voices of the women in salvage, the words were inside Layla, filling her entire head. We are not them.
She pushed her own voice into her head. Don’t come near me.
The offspring froze. We are at your will, it replied in its adult voice.
She tried again. You’re a monster. You should never have been born.
The boy’s empty eyes seemed to fill with life, and he opened his mouth in a silent scream.
Susan rocketed off the sofa in a panic, snapping Layla out of the soundless vacuum surrounding her.
The piercing shriek that broke from the offspring was deafening. The other offspring joined him, unnaturally frozen in random positions, their mouths open as wide as those freakish, unblinking eyes, screaming and pausing only to take in a long breath to start again.
The oldest boy, Susan’s boy, stopped screaming and lifted an arm to his face as if he were going to block a sneeze. He opened his mouth wider and, using his tiny front incisors, he bit down into the flesh of his arm hard enough to draw blood. His eyes never left Layla’s face as he raised his head, blood dripping from his chin. He bit down a second time.
The next oldest child fisted his small hands and beat them against his face, again and again.
Susan screamed. “Make them stop! Please, help!”
Several security guards burst in and pulled their weapons, aiming at the screaming children.
Yes, shoot them. Layla’s stomach fluttered.
But Dr. De Luca’s voice came over the loudspeaker, drowning out the screaming children. “Not the children. Remove Layla immediately.”
Layla turned in a wobbly revolution, uncertain whether to
seek an alliance with Susan and the others or to retreat to her room.
“This is Layla’s doing.”
42
October 2022, Mexico
“Layla! Layla, I demand a response!” Dr. De Luca’s lanky body leaned over the small interview table at which Layla had been forcibly placed. Both his hands were fisted, and his face flushed a deep red. Two armed guards flanked the door and glared at her with stony intensity. The temperature in the room was rising by the second.
But something was intriguing about this dynamic. Something about his anger and aggression made Layla feel that the power in their relationship had changed. Somehow she’d gained the upper hand. She sat perfectly still in her chair, her hands folded gently over her lap, her facial muscles so relaxed that she looked simply angelic in her reflection in the one-way mirror.
The doctor, however, exploded into an adult temper tantrum, throwing his arms up in exasperation. His lips drew back in a snarl as he glared at her from behind glasses that had slipped down his nose from the sweat. She fought the urge to remind him that aggression was not a virtue the Colony tolerated; she was rather enjoying his uncivilized means of communication. He looked like an ape waving his arms, making himself look big and scary in a display of dominance. Funny how strong emotion devolved even the most sophisticated humans into dumb primates.
“Talk.” Spit sprayed from between his clenched teeth.
His interrogation had degenerated steadily over the last twenty minutes, fraying under her unflappable composure and her refusal to give him the satisfaction of an answer. Finally, she decided to take him up on his explicit invitation.
“Fine,” she replied so quietly he was forced to scuttle to the table and lean toward her. “I’d like a meeting with the council. I want to speak to Stewart and the others—those you insist are so interested in the praefuro offspring.”