Exceptional

by Jess Petosa

  Her head still felt heavy from the drugs they had given her, and she had lost all track of time. The room was brightly lit but had no windows that she could see from the position she was in. No one had even been in to see her or her brother. Maybe, now that Aden had his answer, he would send Guards into the Wilderness to look for David. They wouldn’t find him there, and when Aden realized that, he would come back to her looking for more information.

  There was also the fact that she had abilities, and strong ones. Aden had been able to see them firsthand when she tried to use them against her, and now he most likely had big plans for her future. She also knew exactly why her brother was still alive, stationed just out of her grasp. Aden planned to use him against her, just like he used her against Luke in the Institute. One way or another, he always got exactly what he wanted.

  A door opened behind her head, and she laid still. Had they come to take Stosh? Had they come to take her? Ally had no fight left; her body felt depleted and her mind numb with the death of her mother.

  “I think the sedation has worn off enough,” a female Exceptional said, leaning over her.

  Ally heard something metal clang to her right. “I’ve been instructed to drawn some blood and take a tissue sample, and they wanted you fully aware for the procedure.”

  Ally didn’t respond. She kept her eyes trained on the bright lights above and waited. The nurse dabbed something cold into the crook Ally’s arm and tied a piece of cloth tightly above the same area. Ally had her blood drawn several time in her time at the ORC, so this felt all too familiar. A quick skin prick later and the nurse was filling four vials with blood.

  “This part will hurt a little worse,” the woman said.

  She lifted a sharp instrument in the air and leaned over Ally’s arm. Ally cried out as the blade sliced into her arm, a white-hot pain filling her senses. Since she was making the change into an Exceptional, her nerves wouldn’t be as sensitive, so she wondered what this would have felt like if she were still an Ordinary.

  The woman kept the blade in place and used another instrument to retrieve the tissue sample she had cut out of Ally’s arm. She put the instruments back on the tray, released the cloth tie, and bandaged the wound.

  “Aden asked me to sedate you once I was done,” the woman used her fingers to flick a syringe in her hand. “I hope you’ll understand.”

  Again, Ally saw no need to speak. It wasn’t as though she had any choice in what was happening to her. You always have a choice, Aden had told her. Yes, but only if the choice benefited him. She felt a small pinch on her arm and soon a heavy veil of darkness was sweeping over her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Luke knew the moment Aden left the house with Ally that they wouldn’t be going to the Institute. No, Ally would be taken to his father’s office in the City Center. He worried about what Aden had planned for her, but if he wanted any hope of getting in to see her, he would need to play by his father’s rules. With that in mind, he headed straight to the Institute once he was ready, arriving early for his first lesson. Today he would focus on training sessions, which would mean more exercises to increase his abilities. After the previous night’s drain on his energy, he could already tell his trainer was going to be disappointed with his work. He went through the motions in his lessons, getting by with average work and progress.

  It was as he was preparing to leave the Institute that he remembered his promise to talk to Coarse. He fought the urge to leave the building anyway and go straight to Ally, but he doubted Aden would be allowing her to go anywhere anytime soon. He slipped into the cafeteria and peered around the room, looking for his target.

  “Hey Luke, glad to see you up and walking after last night,” an Exceptional he recognized, Drexel, slapped him on the shoulder as he passed by.

  He spotted Pax and Maver but pretended not to notice them. He knew they would have a ton of questions about Ally, and would want to trail along with him to his father’s building. Finally he spotted Coarse sitting at a table along the back wall of windows. Three other Exceptionals sat with him. Luke strode across the room and stopped at their table.

  “Coarse,” he said, not acknowledging the others.

  Coarse looked up from his food. Even though he was still attending the Institute as a medical student, he was technically considered an adult Exceptional now. He showed this by having allowed his hair to grow out. It fell in dark curls around his face.

  “Luke,” he responded. “I heard about last night.”

  Luke shook his head. “That isn’t what I’m here to talk about. I would prefer if we spoke in private, though.”

  Coarse nodded to the others, who stood and left. Luke took a seat directly across from him.

  “I heard you’ve recently acquired an Ordinary from ORC.” Luke leaned back in his chair and set his hands on the table.

  Coarse smirked. “Yeah. What’s it to you?”

  “This Ordinary has certain interests to me.”

  Coarse laughed. “This isn’t the Warehouse, Luke. I’m not going to barter.”

  Luke leaned forward. “All I’m asking is that you pass her along to me. We don’t need to settle this in the Warehouse.”

  He flicked his finger and watched as Coarse’s tray rose a few inches into the air and then smacked back down on the table. “Like I said, she has certain interests to me.”

  Coarse pushed his chair back. “Look, I’d like to help you, Luke. I really would. But I sent her back to the ORC three days ago. If you want her, you can go get her yourself.”

  He stood and grabbed his tray, leaving Luke and table behind. Luke groaned and turned around to catch a glimpse of his friends. Looks like he would need their help after all.

  AN HOUR LATER, and much later than he would have liked, Luke stormed into his father’s office. He had been surprised how easily the Guards let him pass, but then again, he was sure his father was expecting him.

  “Luke.” Aden sat at his desk, a porta-comp in his hands. “You arrived much later than I was expecting.”

  “I had a few things to take care of,” Luke responded, stepping further into the room. “Where is she?”

  “Sedated.” Aden said in a tone that suggested he was bored with the fact.

  “Sedated?” Luke’s body went stiff. “What did you do to her?”

  “I didn’t do anything to her,” he grinned.

  “Enough with the word games. Tell me what happened.” Luke threw himself into a chair on the other side of his father’s desk.

  “There was a misunderstanding with her family. That is all.” He shrugged.

  “Her family? You didn’t bring them here, did you?” Luke felt anger bubbling up inside him. Ally’s family meant everything to her. He should have known that his father would find a way to use them against her.

  “I found it necessary,” Aden said, turning his porta-comp off.

  “And?” Luke still didn’t understand why Ally was under sedation.

  Aden motioned behind him. Luke turned his head and for the first time noticed a group of Exceptionals gathered around one of the meeting rooms. Two medics stepped from the room pulling a portable bed. A bloodied sheet hung over what was obviously a human body.

  Luke jumped up, energy vibrating through his arms. “Who?”

  “Her mother.”

  Luke felt the energy explode from his palms as he threw his father up against the window behind his desk. The glass barely moved, having been specifically made for ensuring Aden’s safety, but Luke still felt some satisfaction at the sound his father’s body made as he hit it. He could sense the Guards making a move behind him, so while still using one hand to hold his father in place; he used the other to send the Guards flying backward into the far wall.

  “You’re getting stronger.” Aden’s eye glowed with pleasure. He didn’t fight back against Luke, or struggle on his hold.

  “I could kill you,” Luke responded.

  “But you won’t.” Aden spoke the truth. Luke coul
dn’t kill his father, despite what he had done.

  “Does all of this have something to do with the ORC?” He released his hold on his father, noticing that his arms felt weaker than usual.

  “ORC?” Aden said the word carefully, but there was a hint of worry in his tone. “Why would this have anything to do with ORC? That facility has been functioning normally and with out issue for almost ten years now.”

  “And I’ve never thought to question it until now,” Luke responded. “Until Ally.”

  Aden slammed his hand down on the table. “These questions are what destroy whole societies, Luke. People start to doubt, and soon they feel as though they can’t trust their leaders. Then they revolt, and we have a war on our hands. You remember what happened to the City in the south.”

  The southern City was one rarely talked about, and Luke was surprised to hear his father mention it out loud. Almost all Exceptionals and Ordinarys had cut it out of stories, training their memories to forget it. Four Cities stood after the world crumbled around the SS-16 virus. The virus that made Exceptionals what they were today. The City to the south started out just like the others; with the Exceptionals rebuilding and the Ordinarys being assigned to labor forces. But a group of Ordinarys revolted against the system, claiming they had just as many rights as the Exceptionals. They wanted to live in the City as equals. The leaders laughed in their faces and sent them back to their settlements. But soon, the Ordinarys were able to convince several Exceptional Guards to join their side in the revolt, and to help them bring down the leaders.

  Exactly one year later, the southern City crumbled to the ground with the war between the two sides. Dozens of Exceptionals and Ordinarys were able to escape and travel to one of the other three cities, but their memories had been wiped upon arrival. The leaders of each City met and decided that they would allow Ordinarys into the cities to work, but they would still be a lesser people. They also made the decision to cut off communication with each other and become their own unified Cities. They feared that communication would lead to curiosity and greed, and possibly land wars in the future.

  “I’m not trying to raise questions in others, Father.” Luke sat back down, making an attempt to regain his strength. He might need it yet today. “I want to know. I need you to trust me, and tell me what is going on. You say you want me to lead the City with you some day. If that’s true, you need to explain things to me.”

  Aden narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure you have the City’s best interest at heart.”

  “I’m more concerned with Ally’s best interests.”

  “Exactly,” Aden sneered, still standing by the window.

  “But maybe these interests are one and the same.” Luke probed for information. “I plan on being with Ally forever, and if I’m going to be the City leader one day, she is going to be by my side while I do it.”

  Aden sighed and brought his hand to his forehead, the lines of his face visibly creasing. It was one of the weaker moments Luke had ever seen from his father.

  “I’ll need to show you.” He pulled his key card from his pocket and waited for Luke to stand. “But I’m warning you now, you are not going to like what you see.”

  Aden led him down the hall and into the elevator. He inserted his key card into a slot in the wall and they moved downward several floors. Rather than the doors opening from the way they came in, a door in the back of the elevator slid open. Luke had ridden in this elevator dozens of times and had never noticed that it opened on both sides.

  They stepped into a bright, white hallway void of windows and pictures. Two doors, one on each end, were all that filled the space. Aden took a left and led Luke down the hall, using his key card to gain access through the door at the end. Two Exceptional Guards stood waiting on the other side, and they required Aden and Luke to do thumb scans and have their internal tags checked. They even had their fingers pricked and droplets of their blood were tested for DNA matches. Luke had never seen his father succumb to these checkpoints before. He was normally allowed access to any part of the City with out question.

  “As you can see,” Aden looked over his shoulder, almost as though he read Luke’s mind. “This requires the highest security precautions we have.”

  The Guards moved to let them pass and they stepped further into the room. The layout was circular, with several large windows spaced evenly around the back half. Machines and test tables were scattered through the middle of the room, and half a dozen doctors wandered around in white lab coats.

  One of the doctors, a younger male, saw Aden and approached him immediately. “Sir.”

  “Dr. Gould,” Aden nodded. “I’m assuming you are bringing me further reports on Subject One?”

  The doctor’s face grew grim. “It isn’t looking good, Sir. The experiment we ran has backfired. His genes are mutating at twice the speed.”

  He spun on his heels and hurried to the first window on the left. Aden followed, motioning for Luke to come as well. Luke stepped beside his father and peered through the window. What he saw made him catch his breath. A human, or at least what remained of one, sat curled up in the corner of a small white room. If he wasn’t looking toward them with large, violet eyes, Luke may not have realized that he was some sort of Exceptional. His thin arms were wrapped around his bony legs, and his pointy chin rested on kneecaps that jutted out. His skin had taken on a putrid green color and was so wrinkled it hung off his body in places. What hair he had left hung in ratty knots around his face.

  “What happened to him?” Luke placed his hand on the glass.

  “Dr. Gould,” Aden said, giving the doctor permission to explain.

  “What you see here is a Rogue,” the doctor started. “An Exceptional whose genes have mutated beyond control. He has no sense of humanity left and is more or less an animal.”

  “How did this happen?” Luke had never seen or heard of anything like this.

  “That is what we are trying to figure out,” Aden responded.

  “Did he come from the City?”

  Dr. Gould paused. “Not technically. He came from a City, just not ours.”

  “Is it an illness?” Luke knew that illnesses were a thing of the past for Exceptionals, but sometimes Ordinarys in the City would fall ill with fevers or a cough.

  “No,” Aden’s face grew hard. “It is our future.”

  LUKE PROCESSED his father’s words for several minutes before he hurried to catch up. Aden and Dr. Gould had moved on to window two, where a female Exceptional, or Rogue, sat on a white hospital bed. She had the same discolored skin and patchy hair, and her eyes were starting to turn a muted gray color.

  “Our future?” He watched as the female they were observing leaned forward and bit into her pillow, ripping a large chunk of cloth off the cover.

  “It took one hundred years for the Exceptional genes to fully evolve to what we are today. The first generations of Exceptionals were strong, but not as strong as we are now. They had extra abilities, but no more than one, where we can have multiple. It would seem that our genes are beginning to evolve further, mutating into what Dr. Gould addressed as a Rogue.”

  “All of us?” Luke swallowed at a lump in his throat.

  “At first we weren’t sure,” Aden responded. “But then we got a message from the eastern City. It has been almost fifty years since I last heard from the leader there, and just about as long since a roamer came to our City from theirs.”

  Aden never took his eyes off the female Rogue as he spoke.

  “What did it say, the message?” Luke asked.

  “It was a distress signal, sent almost a year ago. It started with how they had been experimenting with a new serum, one that would further enhance our DNA. The second half of the message was asking for aid, stating that they were under attack by their own. The message was cut short, and we never heard from them again, even though we sent responses.”

  “Their own?” Luke thought. “Is that where these Except— Rogues are from?”<
br />
  Aden nodded. “I think whatever serum they came up with, unleashed a new virus. They probably had no idea what was happening until it was too late to contain the infected. We sent a patrol six months ago to survey the situation.”

  “What did you find?” Luke prompted, trying to keep the conversation moving.

  “We found the City in complete disarray. Their City is smaller than ours, but ran very similar. There were a dozen settlements outside their boundary wall, and we found that they were completely empty of life. There were several signs that the Ordinarys had made a hasty exit, but there was also carnage,” Aden paused. “The City was overrun with Rogues. We flew a transport overhead and were able to capture images of them tearing into buildings and houses, creating mass destruction.”

  “What about the Ordinarys, were you able to track them down?”

  “We didn’t have time. A few Rogues spotted the transport and took interest in it. We captured these three, and the others followed underneath it for several miles outside of the City until we were able to lose them. When we arrived back at the City, we started research immediately. Fortunately, we have discovered that this virus is transmittable through blood, saliva, and sexual interactions; it is not airborne like the previous virus.”

  Luke took a deep breath, trying to calm the nerves that were doing jumping jacks just beneath his skin. “What does this have to do with the ORC?”

  Aden pointed his finger to the next window. “Your answer is in there.”

  Luke raised his eyebrow and moved toward it slowly, expecting another Rogue like the last two. The room did hold another Rogue, but this one was much different than the other two. He had yellowed, sunken in eyes and had gone completely bald. His skin was a darker green than Luke had observed on the previous two, and was less wrinkly than the others. But also unlike the other two, he was clothed, wearing the normal white tracksuit that Luke wore at the moment. The Rogue had been reading a book on his bed, but he took notice of Luke and stood, stepping over to the window. He smiled as he moved, revealing two rows of long, sharp teeth.