by Shanon Hunt
James replied without looking up. “I just want to hear him out, babe.”
She growled melodramatically and rippled a hand through the rack of hanging blouses, looking for something to add some life to the boring beige skirt.
“You have to trust me, Lay.”
Trust. The word was like a delicate piece of blown glass teetering on a rickety shelf. As soon as she allowed herself to let her guard down, allowed it to just exist in her heart and mind, it would crash to the ground, shattering every confidence she’d built in herself, in James, in their relationship. To James, it was just so simple: Trust me, Lay. A shrug and a smirk.
Well, she had trusted him. She’d trusted him that catastrophic night nearly a year and a half ago when Stewart injected him with the HIV virus; she’d turned her rage on Stewart in that moment, brutally butchering him, but she’d maintained her trust in James. She’d trusted him, even in the face of his own misgivings, when they’d surgically implanted a port at the base of her spine to deliver his untested reversion therapy, an all-out effort to cure her of her brainstem’s desire to kill. She’d trusted him as he slid her into a medically induced coma after the reversion drug nearly killed her.
And when she’d woken from the coma three months later, one hundred and twelve pounds of soft, toneless flab hanging from her skeletal frame, she’d trusted him when he looked into her droopy brown eyes with his impossibly bright blue ones and said, “You did it, Layla. And now I’ll make you whole again, my beautiful girl.”
It had taken weeks of rehabilitation before she could walk to the bathroom of her hospital room, several more before she could lift a five-pound kettlebell. It was six months before she could jog a mile. And she’d never stopped trusting him, because he was all she had to keep her going day after day. James had promised to make her whole, and he had.
Yet when it came to dealing with this new threat, this Nicholas Slater, she didn’t feel the same level of confidence in her gut.
She strode to the kitchen, gripping the blouse she’d selected. “You’re asking me to trust you? Seriously?”
He glanced at her with a flat expression and flopped the stack of photos back onto the table.
“I trusted you when you told me demolishing the Vitapura Wellness Center would take care of him. He obviously didn’t die in that explosion, and you know what? I don’t think you intended for him to die. I think you wanted him to escape. To disappear.”
He raised an eyebrow, and she recoiled. She didn’t have to push her way into his mind to understand what he’d done. Now it was all so clear.
“You did it on purpose,” she breathed. She shook her head in disbelief even though she knew it was true. “You drove him into action. You … you challenged him to come find us.”
His silence was all the confirmation she needed.
“Why would you do that? After all we’ve been through since Stewart and Li Jian released the furos from China. After all we’ve done to find them and bring them home. Now you’ve compromised the Colony and Eugenesis, and you’ve threatened our work … our safety…”
All her energy drained away with her last words, and she leaned her bare back against the doorjamb, wincing from the cold. The now wrinkled blouse floated to the floor.
James rose to pick it up, but she held out her palm and snatched it up herself. She turned her back to pull it over her head and tuck it into the waistband of her skirt.
“Sweetie, your work with the furos has been exceptional. You know that.”
She hated it when he called her sweetie. She wasn’t a six-year-old, for god’s sake.
“But while you’ve been busy curing the virus that has been caught and returned, I’ve been doing damage control. The virus is—”
“Don’t call them that. They’re not virus.” She spoke the words softly because she knew James had only called the praefuro a virus to try to protect the Colony, but she still hated it. The furos were thinking, feeling humans, not some mindless pathogen.
“That’s my point, Lay. You’re inside here with the truth, with all the knowledge of what we’ve done and what we’re doing to change it. I’m out there in the poisoned world, dealing with what the public only thinks of as a deadly virus.”
“They’re not virus,” she repeated dully.
“I’m the one visiting the hot spots. I’m building alliances and allegiances with law enforcement, government agencies, politicians…” He fell back into his chair and slumped over the table. He continued without meeting her gaze. “It’s a delicate balance, leading an organization with such enormity of mission and size while staying under the radar. We need new inductees, but we can’t openly recruit. We provide value, but that value can never be known. And the ever-hungry media will always be on our tail—if not Nick Slater, someone else.”
She wondered if he really believed that. Would they always be running? Would James consider another move of the Colony to a new, safer country?
“You’re implying he can help us in some way,” she said finally. “So tell me. How?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I want to talk to him.”
It wasn’t good enough. “I’m emphatically against this.”
“Duly noted.” He rose and tenderly pushed a lock of hair off her face. “But please open yourself up for some signal from him. Okay? Promise?”
His touch, which she’d known for years now, could still soften her. It was a gentle reminder that she was now filled more with love than rage.
Still, she rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
79
March 2024, Mexico
Nick paced the long wall of a board room on the top floor of an executive office building. His escorts, two security guards in full SWAT gear, hadn’t been particularly chatty as they dragged him from Glitter Gulch to this empty meeting room where he now impatiently waited.
He had no idea what was happening. The only words Allison Stevens had uttered were, Keisha, please call James, and Gentlemen, will you kindly escort our guest out of my sim? We’re trying to work here. And the bald warrior bitch who’d been stalking him—was she the fucking virus or wasn’t she?—had simply hulked away shaking out her hands like a bodybuilder who’d just won the deadlift event.
Stevens had offered no reaction, not so much as a raised eyebrow when he called her by name. Now he was second-guessing himself. Maybe it hadn’t been Allison Stevens. Certainly a five- or ten-second electrocution could kill a few million brain cells. But what really troubled him was the look of utter annoyance on her face, as if he was the scumbag here. How dare he interrupt their training of savage killers?
He’d always known it would come to this showdown. For years, this organization, which he now knew was called Eugenesis, its sci-fi logo proudly displayed above the fancy videoconference monitors along one wall, had threatened him into silence again and again, knowing full well it would only be a matter of time before he was back.
Why hadn’t they killed him like they killed everyone else who got too close to the truth?
Not that it mattered now. He was about to be cactus fertilizer. He’d come to the gunfight packing a revolver, and they’d shown up with a multi-billion-dollar weapon of mass destruction. Boy howdy, had he not seen that coming.
It had to be after midnight by now, and he wondered if they’d forgotten him. He stomped over to a whiteboard, popped the cap of the marker, and wrote his story headline in large letters: “Secret Government Facility in Mexican Desert Created the Virus and Kidnapped Thousands From the City Streets to Feed It.”
That was a tabloid headline, if ever he’d seen one. A shame it was actually true.
He looked into the camera blinking down on him from over the door. “Let’s get this show on the road. I have a story to write.” It was arrogant, but if they were going to kill him, he’d rather get it over with.
He resumed his pacing.
He wondered how long they planned to let him live. Surely they wouldn’t want to soil this impeccable w
alnut furniture with his blood. And then he wondered how he’d die. Would it be cartel style? A long, hot walk into the desert with a burlap sack over his head, followed by a good, bloody beating for their own kicks, and when he’d finally fallen to his knees, a shot in the back of the head? Or perhaps mad scientist style. He’d wake up naked, gagged, and strapped to a gurney. A doctor with perfectly clean scrubs and a surgical mask would enter the hospital room, and with a glint in his eye, he’d methodically remove his surgical tools from a bag and lay them out on a table—
The double doors opened. Three people entered the room, neither cartel members nor mad scientists.
It looked like it was going to be death by fountain pen.
The man leading the way had a Sean-Connery-as-James-Bond swagger, as well as a short beard like Connery sported in later films. Still, he easily recognized the man as a less portentous version of the author of the cult brochure, James Elliott.
Trailing him were two women, Allison Stevens, less Catwoman and more sexy librarian, and another beauty with mocha skin and long dreads tied in a knot. She took a seat next to James, but Stevens remained standing. She leaned back against a console table and folded her arms across her chest.
Elliott extended a hand. “Nick Slater. We’ve been at odds for many years. I figured this day would eventually come. My name is James Elliott.”
Nick didn’t return the gesture, but not because he was finally facing his longtime adversary or because he would never stoop to shake the hand of a man responsible for so many reprehensible crimes.
It was because he instantly recognized the voice. And the whole world turned upside down.
You came to the gunfight with an ice cream cone and a roll of toilet paper, you fool, rattled the maniacal voice of Uncle Jay in Nick’s head.
“You—you’re the voice,” Nick stammered.
“Hmm?”
“The virus. You’re the one who recorded ‘A Desperate Warning to the World.’ ”
80
March 2024, Mexico
Layla felt Mia’s eyes burning into her as they watched James talk to the reporter. Mia was trying to read Layla, to guess what she was thinking by her physical reactions to the conversation. Facial expressions, eye movements, changes in breathing such as sighs or gasps, and of course body language: leaning in, turning away, crossing her arms, that kind of thing. Mia was good at reading people this way—better than most, in fact.
But Mia was still a solid zero on the psychic intuitiveness scale. It wasn’t her fault, of course. She wasn’t a praefuro. She wasn’t part of the collective.
Layla, on the other hand, was a five on the psychic scale and improving each day, as were the other praefuro they’d been cultivating over the last year. Keisha, for example, whose rank was barely below Layla’s at the helm of the collective, was now an eye-popping four; together, they were a force to be reckoned with.
But James hadn’t felt he needed the dynamic duo tonight. He’d invited Mia instead of Keisha because he wanted, as he put it, a human opinion.
Normally, Layla would have concentrated on keeping her body language neutral and her face expressionless, just to torture her friend, but tonight she couldn’t hide her hostility. She refused to sit at the table with the reporter, and she certainly wouldn’t speak to him. Despite his so-called superb investigative skills and writing talent, Nick Slater, was behaving like a petulant child. His inability to grasp the situation was solely due to his refusal to open himself to a new idea. His brain was nothing but a brick.
Frankly, she hoped he’d remain a brick. That would make James’s decision to wipe his memory and dump him back into his miserable, poisoned life a lot easier.
“Jordan Jennings gave you the cure, didn’t he?” the reporter asked. “He figured out a way to cure those monkeys. But they didn’t return to normal. They were different, like they had some kind of telepathic ability.” His voice trailed nearly to a whisper. He was struggling to connect the dots, but apparently he’d connected those two.
Layla’s mind flashed to the elaborate underground primate cage, from where Dr. Jennings’s cynomolgus monkeys signaled to the collective. She could find them if she really tried, but monkeys weren’t her priority. Her furos were.
“Yes, indeed. I see you’ve done your homework.” James’s eyes sparked with an adulation that made Layla want to barf. She couldn’t understand what James saw in this guy.
The night James had recorded "A Desperate Warning to the World" had changed him. The China colony’s release of the praefuro, what scientists had erroneously called a lyssavirus due to the rabid behavior of the ragers, had been a wake-up call to the entire Eugenesis board. Every council member had sobbed, helpless, as they watched the carnage on television. General Harding and Colonel Shaffer had mobilized the US military, but it was ill-equipped to find and destroy this enemy. The praefuro, with their genetic hardwiring, were relentless. With their enhanced intelligence, they often left the scene unnoticed. For over a year, the bodies piled up. The world was losing the war against what they called, to her utter dismay, the virus.
But no one had internalized the devastation as deeply as James had. He had adopted a new mission: not to save the human race, but to restore faith in humanity.
She didn’t share his sentiment. In fact, over the months of her reversion treatment and rehabilitation, she’d grown steadily more critical of unevolved humans. She knew it was irrational. But it was just how the collective mind worked.
“Dr. Jennings’s genetics expertise is like nothing I’ve ever found,” James continued. “Truly a genius. We tried to recruit him, but unfortunately for us, he disappeared.”
“That’s because he knew what you were doing, turning people into … something inhuman.”
She scowled at the reporter but didn’t bother to respond to his insulting assumption. She’d promised James she’d be nice.
James snickered and shook his head. “I’m not surprised by that in the least. As I say, he’s the best of the best. I was disappointed he wouldn’t join us. I know he’d be most encouraged by the work we’re doing here.”
“Creating killers?”
Come on, you moron, try to follow the plot. Layla wished she had the ability to will her thoughts into his mind, but sadly that was beyond her skills. For now, at least.
“Curing the virus.” James’s unflappable composure made her want to scream.
“So you’re telling me that woman, the one who followed me and took me down, is not a killer.” He stabbed a finger at the window. “She’s been cured.”
James leaned back with a satisfied smile.
“And now she’s what? A telepath? Like those monkeys?”
“Telegnostic,” James corrected. “She can’t communicate with you mentally. She gets a sensation, a feeling. That’s how she knew you were here under false pretenses.”
He nodded at Layla as if she might want to contribute, given her own firsthand experience, but she remained silent. The brick wasn’t ready to listen or understand. She didn’t like to waste her time.
“And all those people I saw in that basement with that tube in their backs,” the brick mewled. “They’re being cured?”
The treatments—Layla had endured sixteen of them herself, fourteen of them while unconscious to the world—were the result of the most advanced genetic biotechnology the world had ever seen. Even Jordan Jennings would’ve agreed. So to hear the jerk refer to their subjects as people with a tube in their backs made her want to lunge at him.
“That’s right. They’re subjects in Project Phoenix. Like the mythical bird, the praefuro will rise from the ashes, born again with a new life, a new purpose.”
“What purpose?”
"Evolution.”
The brick narrowed his eyes, and Layla rolled hers. The primitive human mind had a tendency to believe evolution was something that occurred naturally, or worse, something that required divine intervention. This dullard probably thought some god had created hu
manity.
He addressed his next question to her. “And your Vegas sim?” He emphasized the word sim with air quotes. “What is it you’re training out there?”
She didn’t appreciate this smug attitude. She folded her arms and glared.
James answered for her. “The Gallery is a simulation of the real world. We use it as a testing center for our praefuro subjects after we’ve dosed them with the reversion therapy. Keisha, for example, the woman you encountered, monitors the energy in the room. She looks for signs that a praefuro has been released too early. It’s a necessary step in the process because every person’s uptake of the reversion is different. Some subjects need higher doses or even blood transfusions. We need to be sure it works.”
It wasn’t exactly true. Keisha and Layla stayed in close proximity to the praefuro subjects so they could speak to their minds. Direct psychic communication belonged only to the collective. It was something only the praefuro could experience, but that wasn’t something James would ever admit to an outsider.
“So Eddie and other sick people like him, they’re bait?”
James beamed. “Exactly. But rest assured, we’ve never had an incident. Our simulations are heavily supervised. All guests are guarded by undercover security within a three-foot radius at all times.”
This was a waste of time. Normally, she admired James’s dedication for turning a negative impression of the Colony into a positive one. He took great pride in his ability to bring out the best in people. In her opinion, Nick Slater wasn’t deserving of his patience. Especially after a very long day.
Although the reporter hadn’t needed to be convinced that Eugenesis was protected by the US government, among other world powers—he’d discovered that on his own—he seemed incapable of believing that the organization responsible for releasing the virus was also the organization responsible for curing it. In his mind, allowing the Colony to prosper was shameful and corrupt. Classic nirvana fallacy. There had to be clearly defined good guys and bad guys. She and James were in one camp, and he and the people were in the other. It was a sophomoric mentality, especially for a reporter, who should’ve been more balanced in his ideologies.