Genesis Revealed (The Genesis Project Book 2)

by S. M. Schmitz

  “Does he think he’s on vacation?” Saige asked.

  “If so, he needs to rethink his vacations.”

  “He needs to rethink a lot of his decisions,” Saige agreed, “which is the problem. Not a lot of thinking goes into anything he does.”

  Cade stuck his head through the doorway and ordered, “Firewood! Now!”

  I crossed my arms stubbornly and insisted, “Nice try. You’re not Dr. Parker.”

  “So?” he retorted. “You don’t listen to him either.”

  There was something remarkably gratifying about hearing Cade so casually mention my disobedience to the man who thought he could control me, the man who thought there was nothing wrong with trying to control me. I let my arms fall by my side and offered, “Just for that, I’ll go. But if I get eaten by a giant alligator, you deserve to get captured by the Project.”

  “Nobody deserves to be captured by those assholes,” Saige argued. “Except maybe Ramirez.”

  I nodded seriously and stepped onto the porch, looking between the boat and the bank.

  “Uh… how do I actually get to the land?” I asked.

  “Drake, you’re killing me,” Cade sighed. “Seriously. Lamest cyborg ever.”

  “I don’t think I’m a cyborg.”

  Cade shoved a fishing pole in my hand and gestured toward the river. “See those huge black and red grasshoppers on the side of the houseboat? Grab one. Stick it on the hook. Throw it in the river. Pretty sure not even you can screw this up.”

  I glared at the pole then the grasshoppers and called after his back as he walked away, “Pretty sure I can!”

  “Come on,” Saige laughed. “Sit with me. If Cade can do this, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

  I handed her the fishing pole and wrinkled my nose at the grasshoppers. I didn’t really want to catch one and pierce it with a hook, but I also didn’t want to look like an incompetent jackass in front of Saige. I swiped one from the side of the houseboat where it had been enjoying the sun and held it in my closed hand.

  Saige and I both stared at the hook at the end of the line as if daring each other to be the one willing to impale the poor insect.

  Finally, I offered, “We could lie. Just tell him some fish must have eaten it off the hook.”

  “We could,” she answered slowly. “But I don’t think either of us are very good liars. Just… give me a second. I’m psyching myself up to do this.”

  There was no way I was going to let her do it now. I picked up the hook and stuck the grasshopper on it before I could change my mind.

  Saige pushed the button on the reel and cast the line into the water. I marveled for a moment at how effortlessly she released the line, how perfectly it sailed into the middle of the river then wondered if we’d ever gone fishing together, if I’d ever been fishing at all. She fixed the rod between slats in the railing so it wouldn’t fall into the river and we sat by one another and watched the orange and yellow bobber for a few minutes, neither of us speaking. Finally, she reached for my left arm and ran her thumb over the new scar through the black and blue rectangle.

  “Do you think it will work this time?” she asked. “Is it broken?”

  I had to swallow and concentrate on my breathing because, as usual, her touch was both arousing and intimidating. I wanted to assure her I could somehow permanently extricate myself from everything that made me so vulnerable, so different, so dangerous. But how could I do that when there was no escaping what I’d been designed to be?

  “I think,” I finally said, “our best chance of living through this will involve destroying every piece of data associated with the Project and me. Even then, what’s the likelihood the DOD won’t come after us?”

  “If the Project can’t control you, what’s the point?”

  “To punish us.”

  “This is why I thought going public wasn’t such a bad idea,” Saige countered.

  “Then we’ll have two stories: Theirs and ours. And the only thing the American public will hear is that we’re dangerous—that I’m dangerous and killed innocent people.”

  “Well,” Saige replied with a sad smile, “you’ve had help.”

  She still held my arm, and I looked at her fingers, gently holding me, and I took a deep breath. “Saige… am I different now?”

  “How?”

  I shrugged, but she saved me from trying to explain.

  “No, Drake. He somehow made you forget events, but he obviously couldn’t touch your personality because that’s entirely you. It’s never been part of a program. Cade told me when he first met you, you didn’t know how to talk to people. And even five years later when we met, you were shy and awkward, but you’re also smart and funny and so gentle and caring. Falling in love with you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “But…” I whispered, but she didn’t want to hear my many reasons I believed I didn’t deserve her. She leaned closer to me and kissed me gently, softly.

  I wished that kiss reawakened memories or at least familiarities, but the only things that happened were I stopped breathing again and that sense of arousal and intimidation intensified.

  “Are you kidding me?” Cade groaned. “I leave for ten minutes, and you two can’t keep your tongues out of each other’s mouths for ten minutes?”

  I didn’t bother telling him nobody’s tongue had entered anyone else’s mouth. I was, however, about to yell at him for scaring the shit out of me, but he sighed in aggravation and pointed to the river. “And my bobber’s underwater!”

  Saige looked at the river then back up at him. “You should probably reel that in then.”

  “You’re both assholes,” he muttered. He shoved the dry sticks at me and asked if I could manage to build a fire without screwing that up.

  I shuffled them in my arms and nodded. “I actually have that information.”

  “I know you do,” he said as he reeled his line in. He held up a yellow perch the size of his hand and smiled at me. “This one’s mine since you had better things to do.”

  My cheeks warmed, but I completely agreed with him: I’d much rather kiss Saige again then go fishing.

  That night, Cade and I took turns staying awake so we could try to escape if anyone approached us. I kept stealing glances at Saige’s dark form lying on the floor, sleeping fitfully as she tossed and turned because the laminate floors of the houseboat didn’t make for a comfortable bed. If there had been furniture in here once, most of it was gone now.

  I’d occasionally touch my lips as I recalled the way hers had felt against mine. I wanted to take that feeling with me to the grave because the crushing fear that we were only running to buy ourselves hours or maybe days wouldn’t leave me. Chris had given Cade and Saige a hope I couldn’t share. Apparently, I thought I’d escaped them once only to find myself in their control again where Parker had taken everything from me that mattered the most: He’d taken my past.

  And in the end, the Project would either get what it wanted, or Parker would get his revenge.

  Chapter 12

  We spent three days in that little houseboat on the river where we strategized how we’d return to Lake Charles and destroy the new research facility Parker had set up. Chris would most likely assist us in the destruction of property, but it seemed so wrong to involve him when we knew his father’s murder had to be on our agenda. That was the one thing we didn’t discuss though. Even thinking about killing Parker made that head-splitting pain return so Cade had simply told me this part of our plan wouldn’t involve me.

  I felt oddly conflicted about that.

  For two days, I almost enjoyed myself. Despite my continued protests, Cade taught me to fish, and as it turned out, it was more fun than I thought it would be. We occasionally explored the marshy land behind the houseboat and not surprisingly, we did encounter both snakes and an alligator. Cade wanted to shoot the alligator so we could skin it and throw it on the fire pit, too, but I really didn’t want to figure out how to skin it. I also
stubbornly refused to try to clean any of the turtles we found.

  And Saige insisted she’d rather starve than eat a snake.

  I wouldn’t admit it, but I was totally on her side with that one.

  At night, after we put out the fire so it wouldn’t attract attention, we would sit inside the small houseboat with the windows open because even once the sun set, the temperature remained high and the air balmy. The screens kept most of the mosquitoes away from us, and Cade and Saige reconstructed my life for me. Most of those five years had seemed awfully boring until I met Saige. Even Cade agreed she’d changed everything for me. She’d changed me.

  “Were we friends before?” I asked him. “Before I met Saige, I mean? It sounds like I was kinda boring.”

  “You were,” Cade agreed but he smiled at me. “But yeah. After the first couple of years, I began to consider you a friend. By the third year, I began suspecting you were hiding your own thoughts from me… like there was all this stuff going on in your head, and you were afraid I’d find out. That’s when I started drinking too much. When I realized you were just this normal guy that the Project kept fucking with and they were making me be a part of it, too.”

  “Why didn’t you ask to get reassigned?” I asked.

  Cade snorted and stretched his legs across the floor. “And let you end up with some asshole like Ramirez? Drake, I was never trying to get away from you. I was trying to get away from what they were doing to you.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  He waved a hand in my direction and exclaimed, “This! You’re here because you want to be. You think I didn’t know exactly why Saige was standing outside my door crying hysterically that night? And I opened it anyway. It took her to make you fight back, but part of me was relieved you’d finally done it.”

  I shook my head and sighed. “I can’t imagine there are many men in this world like you, Cade. I might have ruined your life, but I guess having you assigned to me was one of the luckiest things that could have happened to me.”

  Cade shrugged off my compliment, and Saige wove her fingers through mine. “I think what Cade meant to say is that he has no regrets. You turned out to be a better friend than he’d ever thought possible when he first met you inside the Project.”

  “Well, yeah,” Cade interrupted. “That’s not saying much considering I thought the guy was a robot.”

  I nodded conspiratorially. “Cyborgs are way cooler anyway.”

  “Drake,” Saige sighed.

  Cade laughed and added, “You definitely didn’t have a sense of humor at first. That’s why I don’t think Parker actually made you forget anything. It’s just… shut off or some shit like that. If he’d really wiped everything out, we’d be back to square one. And God, I don’t think I can go through that again.”

  I lifted a shoulder as if the possibility that every memory I’d once held might not be irretrievably lost were unimportant, but truthfully, it was the second most important thing to me, only behind ensuring Saige lived.

  She leaned against my arm and yawned so Cade told us we could both sleep. He’d stay up for the first half of the night then I could take the second. I lay beside Saige on the floor, but as the past two nights, I found it difficult to fall asleep. I wanted to permanently etch her image into my mind so that no matter what happened, Parker could never take her away from me again.

  On the third day, we decided to move on even though there had been no sign of Parker’s men. We were packing our belongings when the unmistakable sound of an outboard motor nearing this narrow cut out sent us all scrambling for our weapons. Cade had just thrown his backpack in the boat when he shielded his eyes from the bright morning sun and sighed.

  “It’s Ethan,” he said.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” I asked even though Cade couldn’t have possibly known. He shot me a look that told me that was every bit the dumb question I’d thought.

  Ethan cut the motor and paddled his boat up to the deck of the houseboat. “I don’t often get to play good news deliveryman.”

  “We could use some good news,” Cade responded.

  Ethan tossed his paddle onto the bottom of the boat as he threw a rope to Cade so he could tie it off. “It worked. Chris somehow disabled the program that lets Parker not only track Drake but send those signals as well.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. I couldn’t get my hopes that high. It had to be a glitch, something easily fixable and soon, that buzzing would return and Parker would be there, as he’d always been there and would always be there. Saige took my hand and Cade glanced at me as he finished tying off Ethan’s boat.

  “How long until it’s running again?” Cade asked.

  Ethan shrugged. “The program’s destroyed, Cade. I’m not clear on all the technicalities, but apparently Chris did something to the program itself… kind of like giving it a virus. It shut the whole thing down.”

  “Holy shit,” Saige whispered.

  “So what is Parker doing?” Cade asked cautiously.

  “What do you think? He’s trying to get it running again,” Ethan answered. “He doesn’t know yet that Chris is the one who targeted it. If we’re lucky, Parker won’t find out either since Chris is our biggest asset. His father trusts him, which means we can get close to Parker and his research.”

  “And if he has to start from scratch?” Saige asked. “How long does Chris think that will take?”

  Ethan shrugged again. “The original program took them years to build, but that was largely because they had to experiment and find out what worked and what didn’t. If he’s just recreating the same thing, I doubt it would take him that long.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “What do you mean they were experimenting with the program? How could they have experimented with it when I supposedly woke up the first time with a program already in place.”

  “Don’t know that either,” Ethan said. “I’m just repeating what Chris told me. All programs have some sort of beta testing, right? Only makes sense that they had some way to test this program.”

  “This could be the chance we need,” Cade exclaimed. “He can’t track Drake or interfere with his thoughts so it’s the perfect opportunity to go back to Lake Charles and blow these assholes to Hell.”

  Ethan grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, about that,” but Cade interrupted him by groaning. Ethan looked up at him and sighed, “Chris had to tell them you all escaped. There’s still a manhunt for you. He sent them in the wrong direction, of course, but Cade… we’ve got a small army in the city right now. You won’t be able to get anywhere near that facility. Maybe it’s best if you just find somewhere to hide for a while.”

  “Until when?” Cade demanded. “He gets this program running again and can track Drake’s every move? We’ve tried that already. It didn’t work out well for anyone.”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan admitted. “But if you go back into the city, you’ll end up dead.”

  “Look around!” Cade shouted. “We’ll end up dead anyway! We’re hiding in a goddamn swamp!”

  “Enough,” Saige hissed. She looked up at me, her gray-blue eyes both scared and hopeful, and asked, “What do you want, Drake?”

  “To be free,” I told her without thinking.

  Cade waved a hand toward me and told Ethan, “And there’s only one way to do that.”

  Ethan shook his head but his resolve appeared to be weakening. “What’s your plan then?”

  “Well,” I replied before Cade could answer for us all, “as long as Parker is preoccupied with repairing or rebuilding this program, we should get back into the city and go after the Project and anyone capable of getting it running again. We try to force the DOD’s hand and get them to negotiate with us.”

  “Didn’t you learn anything in Mosul?” Ethan retorted. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  So I smiled at him and said, “I guess we’ll just have to change their minds.”

  “I’m totall
y on board with this going back to Lake Charles plan,” Saige interjected. “I haven’t showered in three days.”

  “That’s definitely high on our priority list right now,” Cade joked.

  Saige nodded in what I assumed was real agreement.

  “All right,” Cade relented. “Showers first then blow the new Project to Hell.”

  “I don’t think blowing it to Hell worked in Virginia,” I pointed out.

  Cade waved me off. “We didn’t blow hard enough.”

  “Dude,” I started, but he stopped me before I could even give him a hard time about it.

  “Say it and you’re on your own.”

  I crossed my arms and tried to decide if he were serious or not. Probably not considering his only chance at getting his life back resided in me.

  “I can still say it,” Ethan chimed in.

  “Would you all stop?” Saige groaned. “I just want to get out of this houseboat and back to civilization.”

  Cade shot me one last look that warned me to keep my mouth shut about his gaffe then hopped into our boat. Ethan offered to follow us back to the landing where he’d launched in case we ran out of gas. After several days in the stifling heat, I welcomed the warm breeze as we rode down the river. The motor on our boat had just begun to sputter when Ethan pulled up beside us and pointed to a dock jutting out over the water. We intended to leave the boat here since it had never been ours to begin with, but Ethan also docked on the other side so I glanced between him and the landing, wondering if he were just waiting for someone to help him.

  He climbed onto the dock with me and patted my shoulder. “Not my boat, Drake. We don’t need to pull it in.”

  “We steal a lot of shit,” I said.

  Cade rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, because that’s our collective crime you should be focusing on.”

  Ethan pointed to a blue Dodge extended cab and asked, “Where to then?”

  “I guess anywhere with a shower,” I told him.

  “Yeah,” Ethan agreed. “You all reek. I’m glad I borrowed this truck.”