by Nya Rayne
Phia turned and caught sight of a reddish bob currently making a beeline for the front of the room and her mother. “Ice,” she whispered, trying not to draw too much attention to herself. “Ice!”
Ice turned, her brow furrowed as if she were annoyed, and then she relaxed in recognition. “Phia!”
“Where the hell are you going in such a hurry?” Phia grasped Ice’s arm and pulled her aside and out of the path of the people milling in from outside.
“I want to see if I can get a picture with the Higher Highness.”
“Too late. She left right after her speech. She didn’t even stay long enough to eat.” Phia could see the disappointment in Ice’s now transparent eyes, and for a moment, she felt bad for her, but pushed it to the side. “Where’s Donté?”
Ice glanced around them and stepped closer to her. “I brought him with me like you told me. We got into the opening ceremony and got really good seats in the third row. A couple of speakers did their usual speeches and then your boy-toy maddoxxed during the middle of that mongrel, LaDina Shunt’s speech,” Ice said, her tone laced with spider venom.
Phia was certain Ice’s disdain toward Lady LaDina Shunt had everything to with her daily proximity to the Higher Highness and very little to do with who LaDina Shunt was as a person. “Maddoxxed? What are you talking about, maddoxxed? Where’s my—”
“I don’t know! He went in full default, jig-sawed, spazzed out! Whatever you want to call it, he did it! The mongrel was introducing the Higher Highness, but before she even finished, he like…like crashed and was gone!”
“Crashed how? What the hell are you talking about? He can’t crash, dummy!”
“He got like stiff and stuff. You know? Like his wiring was bad, or…or like he was in some kind of loop. You know?”
“No, I don’t know. I swear to the heavens, Ice, if you don’t start making some—”
Ice cut her off with an impatient roll of her eyes and a flutter of her now diamond-tipped lashes. “Like I was saying, he mumbled something and started grabbing at his hair and stuff, and when I asked him what was wrong, he looked at me like he didn’t know me and bolted.”
Memories of her first encounter with Donté flooded Phia. She found it nearly impossible to think through the foreboding feeling which began to encase her. What did this mean? What could it mean? What would have caused him to have a reaction so similar to the one she’d witnessed when she’d first seen him at Manco?
“And you didn’t go after him?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“You told me to bring him and I did. You didn’t say I had to doggy-sit.”
“You’re unbelievable!”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay, but he’s a big boy. He’ll be fine.”
Phia growled low. She wanted to lash out at Ice for her stupidity. She couldn’t do that. He wasn’t Ice’s responsibility; he was hers. Telling herself that, however, did nothing to assuage the anger she felt toward her best friend.
“You said you never ask me for anything—well, now I understand why I’ve never asked you for anything.” Phia turned and started away as she barked over her shoulder, “Thanks for nothing.”
“You’ve done wonderful work, as always.”
Dr. Lobush smiled, her head nodding in acknowledgement of the praise. “For clients such as you, I do my best, Your Highness.”
The Higher Highness smiled, her soft brown eyes warm against the stark white walls of the laboratory. “Please, I insist you call me Gloria. I get so tired of people calling me ma’am or Your Highness. If it continues, I think I might eventually forget my own name,” she finished with a sultry giggle.
With a slight bow of her head, Dr. Lobush said, “If you insist…Gloria.”
They smiled at each other for a minute or two before the Higher Highness turned her attention back to her newly acquired personomale. She walked around him for the fifth time since she’d arrived at the facility, her eyes devouring him the way a vulture devours rotting flesh.
This woman, Dr. Lobush knew from previous encounters, was like none of the Higher Highnesses before her. Yes, she carried herself with the same grace and elegance, spoke with the same serene and melodic tones, and had a smile which could put anyone at ease. But her eyes at times were as cold as the polar caps, and she, unlike any of the others, was surrounded by stories and innuendos of malevolence.
There were whispers from some of the women who had worked for the Higher Highness at one time or another of four commandments which no one dared to break, and which they were called to recite daily. When she first started hearing the tales of the wickedness occurring at Haven, the Higher Highness’s compound, she found herself wanting to believe it was simply gossip, tales developed by overly active minds. But then she started receiving some of the throwaways with missing genitals, teeth, and tongues, and battered and bruised bodies. From those throwaways, she was expected to harvest what she could to be used on FAPs and destroy what was left.
Being a hound for knowledge as she was, when she caught wind of another woman going missing or heard one of the other doctors talking at one of their conversion conferences about a grad student who had vanished under the care of the Higher Highness, she would go into detective mode, researching any and everything she could find on the missing girl. Not once had her search led to anything more than a dead end. It was always as if they had never existed. It hadn’t taken Dr. Lobush long to decide there was a grain of truth to the stories.
“Shall we go, then?” the Higher Highness said to the room as a whole, drawing Dr. Lobush from her musings.
Lady LaDina ordered, “Xavier, please fall into line behind Aro and Justin.”
“Thanks again, Lorraine. You truly do outstanding work here,” the Higher Highness said as she started through the door.
Dr. Lobush watched them go, the solar-powered lights in the hallway dimming behind them as they disappeared farther down the corridor and finally extinguishing altogether once they stepped in the elevator.
Once she was certain she was alone, she leaned back against the cold steel of the examination table, unable to stop her hands from shaking and her heart from racing. It had taken a full three days to carve Xavier out of a form previously savaged by the Higher Highness and dumped back on their doorstep to be destroyed.
First, she had found and sent her assistant Ariel to a four-day conversion seminar. She then contacted a friend at the Berkeley, California, conversion facility who was in need of an Inventory Specialist. Within twenty-four hours the position was confirmed and Kyra was boarding a sky-tram under the pretense she was being transferred in order to keep her safe from the person guilty of stealing Xavier.
Once she was able to be alone in the lab, Dr. Lobush focused her full attention on carving a god out of a commoner. Getting the hair and eye colors right wasn’t an issue for her, but she had to widen the bone structure of his back and chest, lengthen his arms and elongate his femurs, tibias, and fibulas. This had taken the largest amount of time, since she had to match everything perfectly in order to get the required six foot three and a half inches. She then turned her attention on properly distributing the appropriate muscle mass in the correct areas of his body.
Thankfully, she had a photographic memory, which proved invaluable during the more intricate parts of the conversion, such as the reconstruction of his facial bones, his cranium, his nasal passages, and his chin. When she stepped back and looked at what lay before her, she knew it was truly a work of art—a mere copy, but still her finest work to date.
She had also taken it a step further and uploaded a few of the mannerisms she had witnessed Xavier display during his stay with her at the facility, but she knew it was a waste of time. To the Higher Highness, he would serve one and only one purpose: sexual gratification.
It was a shame, in fact, with all the potential that human altered personomales held, to treat them as nothing more than worthless frehores. In all actuality, frehores were treated better than HAPs. Frehores
weren’t raised in captivity, and were free to choose whom they wanted to be with and when. But from the moment a HAP was birthed, his life was one of servitude to the Higher Highness of Serenity and her tight-knit group of Elites.
Dr. Lobush left the room, more determined and sure than ever that she’d done the right thing. She’d done what no one else in her position had the courage to do. As she reached the elevators, she pulled her c-pod from her coat pocket. She accessed a blank screen and scribbled with the tip of her fingernail, “It’s done. I’ll see you soon.” and pressed the send button as she stepped onto the elevator.
Madness filled Donté’s head, a montage of whispers he didn’t understand and faces he knew but couldn’t place. It had started slowly, curling outward and devouring the reality he now knew. One minute he was sitting there, listening and watching like the rest of them, and the next, he didn’t know where he was or why he was there.
The woman’s voice had started his descent into madness. From the moment she’d stepped to the podium and started speaking in her droning voice, he’d told himself he’d heard it before. He fought feverishly to keep open the door separating him from his memories. The more he fought, the worse the pain became. Right before the door slammed shut, locking him out again, he was able to pull out broken shards of faces and voices. He still didn’t know where he knew the woman from, but he had names like Kail, Savior, Cash, Trinity, and Jarvis.
His temples throbbed, and he bent forward, clutching at the sides of his head. He wanted it to stop. Deep down, he knew it wasn’t going to, at least not tonight. As the tram slowed, he rose sluggishly to his feet.
Stepping onto the curb, he shuffled in the direction of Phia’s home, the only place promising him a semblance of normality. His home. He paused as the wind twisted around him and whispers of words rolled through his mind. Utopia… Nurturer… Goddess… Favor… Chosen…Donté staggered, but caught himself on a decorative lamp post. He inhaled a few times, determined to regain his composure, before pushing off and moving to the door again.
He made his way quickly through the lobby, up the elevator to Phia’s floor, and stopped as he stared at her door without seeing it. Glimpses of an oversized military-style area appeared before him. It was a room where people slept, he knew immediately, because beds lined the walls. There were no windows, and the walls were made of gray cinderblocks.
He turned and looked around as faces materialized before him, only to vanish and be replaced by other faces he didn’t have names for. He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes and the images dissipated.
Donté pressed his hand against the reader, punched in the code Phia had given him, and stepped through the door the minute it slid open.
“Home alone, Donté?” the condo’s voice asked.
He ignored it, stripped out of his jacket, and dropped it on the floor, as he shuffled to the couch. Don’t think! Don’t think! Don’t think! Pulling at the ties the held the steel vest closed, he kicked off his shoes, leaving them where they fell, and then another memory came like water bursting free from a dam. Blonde hair, eyes the color of sand, black leather straps, whips, and agony. He dropped to his knees, clutched at his stomach, and doubled over as every slash resonated through his body.
Chapter Eleven
Dr. Lobush took a quick look around the room, and went to kneel beside the couch on which Donté was sprawled. “How long has he been like this?”
“Since last night,” Phia said, her eyes traveling anxiously from the doctor to her lover.
“What was he doing before he collapsed?” Dr. Lobush asked as she placed her forefingers against the pulse at the base of his right wrist. She reached into her satchel and pulled out a primitive sphygmomanometer. She wrapped the flat nylon portion around his bicep and squeezed the black plastic ball at the end of its short black plastic cord.
“I had to go to the benefit dinner for the Higher Highness last night, so I had my best friend, Ice, bring him with her. She said he maddoxxed at the beginning of the speech. When I found out, I came straight home, and I found him a little better than this, but as the night progressed he kept getting worse.”
Dr. Lobush looked up at Phia, who was standing a few feet away from her in a formal gown that looked like she had not only slept in it, but had also enjoyed a few rolls in a bed of rocks. “Maybe you should go change your clothes, Phia.”
Phia glanced down at herself with vague surprise. She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, fisted her small hands in the material of the garment and shuffled her feet, but did not move to leave the room. “I’m really sorry for my appearance, but changing clothes was the last thing on my mind,” she said softly. “When I found him, he was on the floor over there.” She pointed to a small area between the white deco couch he was stretched out on and the teletron. “With the help of the concierge, I was able to get him on the couch.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “He slept so fitfully that it became a fight just to keep him on the couch. He’d sleep for thirty minutes or so and then wake up in cold sweats, his hands reaching out to phantoms. He’d murmur things I couldn’t understand and names I’ve never heard of, and then he’d slip away again. Each time he awoke, it was like…it was like he was a little farther out of my grasp. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to call you. I was so…I was so…”
Dr. Lobush crossed to Phia just as the first of many tears began a slow descent down Phia’s flushed cheeks. “It’s okay. I promise you, he’ll be fine.” She pulled her into her arms, held her close for a brief moment, and then leaned away from her. “It’s going to be fine.”
Phia wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. “You don’t know that.” Her voice filled with uncertainty. “What if he doesn’t wake up? What if he wakes up and he doesn’t remember me? What…what if my mother was right? What if he’s damaged?” She shook her head with vehemence and stepped out of arm’s reach of the doctor. “I can’t go back to life before him.” She shook her head again; her eyes filled with such torment, Dr. Lobush found it hard to not cover the short steps between them and pull Phia back into her arms. “You have to fix him. For me, you have to fix him,” she pleaded. “You have to give him back to me. Please, you have to.”
If she could have magically made the world all right once again for this one woman, Dr. Lobush would have. She glanced over her shoulder at Donté’s prone body. Things such as this, however, were not easily fixed. She forced a smile for the young woman’s benefit and said, “If you promise to calm down, I’ll promise to do everything in my power to bring him back to you just as he was.”
Phia nodded, and wiped at the tears trailing down her cheeks.
“Good, now go wash your face and change your clothes, and I’ll get to work on my part of the deal.”
Phia brushed her hair away from her face and squared her slim shoulders. “When he’s all better, I’ll change, but I’m calm enough now for you to do what it is you have to do.”
“Phia, that’s not a part of the deal.” Dr. Lobush wasn’t trying to get rid of her. It was just hard to do her job in front of anyone who had an emotional attachment to the patient.
Phia shook her head once, but did not respond. Her face was set in a mask of defiance, her hands clenched at her sides. She didn’t need to speak to get her point across. She wasn’t going anywhere until her lover was up and about and his usual self.
An apologetic smile slipped over Dr. Lobush’s face before she turned and went back to Donté’s side. “Fine, just remind me never to make a deal with you ever again.” Pulling a syringe filled with a creamy substance from her bag, she made quick work of locating an acceptable vein before placing the titanium cylinder end of the apparatus to the vein and pressing the trigger to inject the substance in one quick burst.
“What did you inject him with?”
This was a perfect example of why she hated to work in front of emotionally attached mistresses. They always thought she was doing something underhanded. Placing the empty syringe back in h
er satchel, she said, “It’s only pain medication and a very mild relaxant.” Donté’s tense body relaxed, his brow un-furrowed, and his fists unclenched. Settling back on her haunches, Dr. Lobush continued, “See? He’s settling down.” She pulled an electronic pad from her satchel and finished, “We’re going to have to wake him up so I can figure out what’s going on inside his head. If he were a computer like the FAPs and the PAPs, I could use this to tap right into his memory without bothering to rouse him, but—”
“So you have no idea what’s wrong with him?” Phia cut in.
“I have an idea, but I’m not a therapist, so I don’t work on assumptions and guesses. I need to know exact facts.”
Phia stepped closer to the couch so she was nearly leaning over, staring into his face. “Dr. Lobush, I need you to tell me he’ll remember me.”
Placing a small plastic cylinder device on each of Donté’s temples, Dr. Lobush responded as she began keying on her electronic pad. “I don’t think remembering you will be the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
Before the doctor could respond, a soft groan issued from Donté and his eyes fluttered open. His eyes roamed the ceiling, ran the length of the walls, and then landed on Dr. Lobush, whom he scowled at, his lips set in a thin line, his face distorted. He tried to sit up, but the doctor pushed him down.
“Lie still. You’re all right, but you need rest,” Dr. Lobush said.
He complied with apparent reluctance.
“Is he okay?” Phia peered over the back of the couch and into his face.
Dr. Lobush had forgotten how mesmerizing his eyes were until he turned his attention away from her and put the full force of his gaze on the woman who had cried for him.
Phia stepped back and to the side, trying to step out of his line of sight. His brilliant gaze tracked her with ease as if she was his quarry. She stepped over to one of the pillars separating her kitchen and viewing areas. Her face was full of despair as she looked away from Donté and disappeared around to the other side of the pillar.