Monarch: A Contemporary Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 2)

by Schow, Ryan

  “I know. Still, I guess I just wanted to have some connection with my mother.”

  “You realize you just called her mother, right?” he says. He’s a good enough friend to know that’s only happened a few times in my life. This makes me feel even closer to him.

  “She was trying hard with me when she got out of rehab and I got back from school. But then the family who bought our house was murdered and she got smashed on wine. It wasn’t prescription drugs or cocaine, but I lost faith in her, you know?”

  “I was terrified when I saw the news your family had been killed. I cried all day.”

  “You cried?”

  “All day long like a big blubbering baby, but don’t tell anyone. Damien called and told me it wasn’t you, though.”

  “I was terrified, too. Then I saw a side of Margaret I haven’t seen in years, or really ever. She was trying to be a mom. It didn’t last long, though. She pretty much admitted she’s so screwed up that, even sober, she doesn’t really know how to be a mother, or even a decent person. And now she’s with some douchebag from the country club and my father’s all alone.”

  Somber, he says, “I remember when my mom moved out and my parents got divorced. They say ‘it’s not your fault,’ but when we’re as ugly as we are, or were in your case, it kind of feels like maybe we had something to do with it.”

  “Their disappointment in us,” I say.

  “No one wants swamp donkeys for kids.”

  I say, “If ever there was someone worthy of falling out of love with, it was Margaret, but my father is still into her, even though he barely admits it.”

  “My dad says falling out of love with my mother made him want to screw women again. He said it like it was a good thing, but the truth is, I miss my real mother a lot.”

  “Your dad’s a little blunt. And not in a polite way.”

  “If you’ve ever been on an oil rig and listened to the way those guys talk, you would think him tame by comparison.”

  “Yeah. Well, switching subjects, I need your help. Georgia, Victoria and Bridget are at the school somewhere—at least, that’s what Gerhard, in some screwy way, eluded to—and I need your computer skills to find them.”

  “No kidding?”

  “For real.”

  “It’s just like last semester,” he says, “but instead of finding one girl, we’re looking for three.”

  “Are you game?”

  “Uh, hello…do fat guys fart in the shower?”

  3

  Brayden is killing my keyboard, like some idiot savant with hyper-warp fingers and a lightening quick mind to keep up. Then, outside, I hear a knock on the door. Not my door. Blake’s. No one answers, so the knocking persists. Finally Blake’s voice, muffled through the door says, “Go away!”

  “It’s me,” says a voice. Is that Julie? I think it might be.

  “Not now,” Blake says, less irate.

  Then nothing. Julie starts knocking again, harder until I can’t take it. Finally the knocking starts on my door and I’m like, for the love of Jesus!

  Brayden looks at me and I look at him. He raises an eyebrow, as if to say, “I’m not sure if you should get that.” He folds the computer screen down and I answer the door.

  “What seems to be your problem, officer?” I say.

  “Theresa told us what you did!” Julie growls.

  “Then you know you shouldn’t be at my door.”

  She looks past me and sees Brayden. Confusion floods her eyes. “This is Savannah Van Duyn’s room,” she says.

  “That big fat pig doesn’t live here anymore,” I say. “This is Abby Swann’s room now.”

  Glaring at Brayden, she says, “What’s he doing here?”

  “We’re friends you motherfreaking baby killer.”

  She reels back, like before, but then something in her straightens up and the part of her I shut down in the cafeteria miraculously recovers.

  “You say that out loud again,” she snarls, “and I’ll kill you.”

  “I dealt with girls like you at my last school,” I say, calmly, but with the coldest glare my eyes can muster, “and I found they will push you until you break. But I won’t break. I’ll never break. That means, whatever you do to me, I’ll do worse to you.”

  “Worse than death?” she says.

  “You haven’t got the balls, so don’t stand here pretending you do.”

  “And you do?”

  “They’re big and hairy and forged of steel.”

  On that note, I slam the door in her face. Brayden’s eyes are like tea saucers, and inside, my cast iron exterior softens to a steady wave of tremors. On the other side of the door, Julie is screaming at me, but I don’t care. When she persists, I grab the Terminator stun gun, open my door and light it up in front of her face. The screaming crackle mixed with the bright arc of blue light sends her on her way, but not before she can turn around and show me her two middle fingers. I so badly want to tell her I’ve seen her middle fingers already and they don’t mean shit to me. But I don’t.

  By this time I realize a few heads have popped out of their rooms and there are three girls huddled together just staring at me. They aren’t mean stares; they’re looks of curiosity.

  “What?” I ask. “I don’t like bullies.” No one responds, but my message is clear, so whatevs. Heads pull back in their rooms. Doors get closed.

  I shut my door and Brayden says, “When did you become such a bad ass?” I ask him if he thinks I overreacted and he’s like, “That girl’s every bit as toxic as her friends. And what did you do to Blake and Theresa anyway?”

  I tell him everything. If he was surprised to learn I’m the late Savannah Van Duyn, he acts even more surprised that I attacked Blake and Theresa as viciously as I did.

  “I don’t know why this is a big deal to you Brayden. You were there when I killed that monster, and when I shot Gerhard in the leg.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what? I’ve been bred with aggressive DNA, masculine DNA. And I’ve been bullied all my life by my sociopath mother, the cockroach paparazzi, all those tabloid magazines, kids at school and boys I liked, and I’m done with it.”

  “Holy crap,” he says, “you’ve officially snapped.” He says this like it’s exciting.

  When two kids get into a fight, everyone but the kid getting the snot beat of him enjoys the show. Am I the show? I don’t want to be the show.

  “Just get back to work,” I say. A few minutes later there’s a knock on my door and I’m like, what now? I answer it and it’s Maggie.

  “What did you do to Julie? She’s gone completely off the deep end. And she yelled at me that I’d better keep you in line or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  Maggie shrugs her shoulders then says, “That’s all she said.”

  I tell her what I did and she immediately leaves my room and heads next door to Blake’s room, leaving me and Brayden to wonder how she’s feeling, or what she’s doing. She starts knocking on Blake’s door, which is inches from mine, considering we share a wall.

  “Blake, it’s me.”

  “What do you want, Maggie?”

  “Open the door.”

  I still haven’t closed my door. It’s the gossip girl in me wanting to know what’s going to happen between those two. Blake finally cracks the door open and Maggie says, “Is it true? Did Abby really do those horrible things to you?”

  “Yes,” Blake says, humbled, not realizing I’m eavesdropping.

  For a second Maggie doesn’t say anything, then she says, “Good.” Deaf people would’ve heard Blake’s jaw drop. “This isn’t like your last school, and it’s not like home. If you want to act like a jerk here, these are the consequences.”

  Before Blake can respond, Maggie pushes past me and breezes into the room. I lean my head out and see Blake looking hung over and abused, and say, “You alright?” I really want to know because, the truth is, I shouldn’t have done what I did. At least, not to th
at degree. There had been throw up, urine, a lot of drool and bubbled snot. I’m no stranger to having purged myself of all the above, and more than once at the same time, but for Theresa and Blake, it had to be terrifying.

  Then again, wasn’t that the point?

  Blake slams the door so hard a small piece of mortar from the hallway’s brick wall breaks loose and falls onto the carpet. Walking by, a girl I don’t know says, “Quite the first impression you’ve made this week.” I don’t know how to take her, and she just keeps walking.

  I want to say, “There’s a whole lot more where that came from,” because it would have sounded ballsy and tempered, but honestly, I’m feeling extremely vulnerable here. I hate this person I’m becoming. And I hate the part of my new DNA that makes me so aggressive. Girls aren’t supposed to be like this. They’re supposed to be sophisticated and intelligent, poised and charming. Lately I’ve been anything but those things, and this makes me very, very nervous.

  And the way I’ve been treating Julie about the abortions? It’s unconscionable. No, it’s worse. Who knows what the aborted kid might’ve grown up to be like with Julie as a mother? All I know is using her tough choices to punish her is inexcusable.

  On the upside, at least I’m not thinking about sex right now.

  4

  “So I’ve got eleven new girls in our class, and seven of last semester’s girls gone, including you, Georgia, Bridget and Victoria,” Brayden announces. “They could be any one of these names, or they could be none of them.”

  Me and Maggie are sitting on the bed watching TV when Brayden announces this. I mute our show, then turn and say, “Okay…”

  “What exactly did Gerhard say about them again?” he asks.

  “He wasn’t clear on anything, but he hinted that some, or all of them, might still be here. So either he was yanking my trunk or he was having a moment of decency. Knowing him, it was probably the former, but still, we have to be sure.”

  Brayden hands me the sheet of paper with the names and says, “If they’re here, this is where we’ll find them.”

  Rise of the Kitten

  1

  Wolfgang Gerhard sat in his easy chair in front of the TV with a Hungry Man microwave dinner balanced on his lap. His cat stood perched, half on his thigh and half on the arm of the chair, eating gracefully, almost silently from Gerhard’s tray. Salisbury Steak, mashed potatoes, GMO corn. Punching the remote, Wolfgang skimmed the channels looking for something to watch.

  But there was nothing.

  He was bored out of his mind, so it was either find a good show, go back to the lab, or turn in for the evening. Or zone out completely, which was option number four, and the most likely scenario.

  Lately his work extracted its pound of flesh. Some days he made great progress, other days nothing made sense and he seemed to slide backwards into a vast chasm of empty headedness. More days than not, he struggled. Today was one of those days where he would’ve been better off not going to the lab at all.

  Instead of watching TV, he switched to Sirius XM, choosing the Chill station. It was only nine o’clock, but for the life of him, his eyes wouldn’t stay open.

  The music cleared his mind. He drifted off. Felt the involuntary twitching of his body reacting to the start of his dreams and knew REM sleep was close.

  Then the phone rang and he was jolted awake, his mouth cursing loudly on its own.

  The cat’s claws punctured his leg; the TV dinner flipped over on his lap and then on the carpet, startling the cat in rapid succession. The cat leapt to the ground, bolted five feet then spun around with his tail puffed up and glared at Wolfgang. Snatching up the ringing phone, he all but shouted, “What?”

  “Wolfgang Gerhard?” the male voice said.

  “This number is unlisted!”

  “Warwick Bundy,” the voice said, cautious, “asked me to call you.”

  “What’s your name for Christ’s sake?”

  “Shelton,” he said, sounding rattled. “Shelton Gotlieb. From Monarch Enterprises.”

  Rubbing his eyes, he said, “You tell that goddamn sociopath if he wants to talk to me he can pick up the phone and call me himself! And at a decent hour no less!”

  Very quickly, like he sensed Wolfgang was about to slam the phone down, Gotlieb said, “We have an asset at your school.”

  Gerhard shot to his feet, stepping in the overturned meal. If Monarch had an asset at the school, he had bigger problems than lost sleep or a ruined dinner. Kicking aside the food, looking at his meat stained socks, he said, “You what?”

  “Autumn LeBeau. She’s your new assistant PE teacher.”

  He considered this for only a minute before saying in a calmer voice, “I don’t mingle with the faculty, so you’ll have to email me the particulars.”

  “I already have, doctor.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “Um—”

  “Speak!” he barked.

  “We’re short a handler because Warwick, he…well, we’re short a handler and Gem—that’s LeBeau’s—”

  “I know what Gem is.”

  “Anyway, Gem is talking about the system and how it’s spinning.” All the personalities fighting for control of the body at once.

  “You sent her here without a handler? Are you insane?”

  “Warwick insisted. Said you could step in if things got bad. And it’s not like she doesn’t have a handler, she does. It’s just, with her being out there and—”

  “Tell Warwick I’m not a babysitter! I’m a scientist. Do you here me? A scientist!”

  “There are fringe benefits,” Gotlieb quickly added, but the meekness and the shakiness in his voice betrayed him. “I was told to tell you that.”

  “What do you mean?” He knew exactly what that son of a bitch Warwick meant.

  “Just look at the photo, or better yet, go see the woman.”

  “Did you email me her command structure?” Gerhard asked. Then he added, “For all of her alters?”

  “Yes. Warwick thought you might be interested in the Beta alter.”

  “I don’t have sex with slaves,” Gerhard snapped. The Beta alter was the personality most often referred to as the kitten alter, or the sex slave. This was usually the alter saved for Presidents, dignitaries and heads of state. Gotlieb started to speak, but Wolfgang hung up, enraged by the idea that he would act as this woman’s handler in return for sex. If he wanted sex, he’d go see Arabelle. What he didn’t want, what he most definitely didn’t need, was a teacher coming off the rails here at Astor Academy.

  Rubbing his slack face, he shook with flashbacks of the Jonestown Massacre, and Waco, Texas. He wasn’t anxious to have Astor Academy added to that shameful list.

  He went to his computer, clicked on the internet and logged into his secure email. Sure enough, there were the extensive files detailing the specific commands, triggers and coding for each of Autumn LeBeau’s seven complete personalities. It wasn’t far off from the general programming format he put together decades ago, which was at least one good thing about this mess.

  Of the different alters, one of the more complete was the Delta alter, a.k.a. the assassin alter. Not good. He needed to assess her before she killed someone. Then he saw the Omega alter was just as developed as Delta. The Omega alter was the suicide alter, which meant she might kill herself if left alone for too long. He didn’t like this. Not one bit. He had to get to her.

  He needed to go tonight.

  2

  Still sitting in the corner of her bed, rocking, Autumn’s mouth had eaten her fingernails to the quick and was now just crying and pulling out strands of hair. Inside, she was turmoil. Inside she was chaos. The alter named Natalya missed her baby like crazy and kept trying to figure out who the father was, but she couldn’t.

  She ate the father.

  With a small stack of pulled hair sitting in a neat pile on the comforter beside her, she felt the tiniest flickering of sanity trying to take hold, but then Natalya blacked out
and the alter named Autumn woke later, taking control of the body. The room was torn up. Piles of hair scattered everywhere. They weren’t supposed to be scattered like that, Autumn thought! The hair had to be safe!

  In a pile it was safe.

  But it wasn’t in a pile, and it wasn’t safe, not while it was out in the open. Not where hands could get to it. She had to hide it. She needed to build the pile, then protect the pile.

  Slowly, and without water, she ate the bundles of hair, swallowing, gagging, swallowing them all down. When she was done, she scurried back to the bed, tucked herself in the corner of it, against the wall, started to clip her toenails. They needed to be safe, too. She’d almost lost her hair. She couldn’t give any more of herself away.

  One by one, she fed her mouth the crescent shaped toenail clippings, polish and all. “You have such pretty feet,” the voice from the mouth said.

  Several of the toenails got stuck halfway down her throat, the sharp edges digging into the delicate flesh of the esophagus walls. Tears sprung from the eyes. The body pulled itself into itself again, then resumed the rocking. Resumed the barely audible moaning.

  Then the door opened and a man she had never seen came into the room. He was not a terribly handsome man, nor was he ugly. He was neither tall nor short. The person in the doorway was familiar, but not. Irrelevant but somehow important.

  “Name,” the man said. When he opened his mouth and she saw those two front teeth and the gap between them, something in her relaxed.

  “Dr. Green,” her voice said.

  He closed the distance between them, fast, his face stern. Her body backed up into the wall so fast, the impact made a hollow, audible thumping sound.

  “Name!”

  Terrified, she said, “Autumn. LeBeau.”

  “Good. Sleep child.”

  “I really want to sleep,” she heard her voice say.

  “Sleep,” he repeated.

  “Okay.”

  She felt herself falling backwards inside herself.

  “Sleep.”

  Then she was falling, falling, falling, and dreaming of a bedroom at the end of the yellow brick road.