Raven: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 6)

by Ryan Schow

  Brooklyn explained how the third variation of New York’s DNA cocktail finally caught. The first two hadn’t taken, so they used a different super virus for the delivery. As of two days ago, the genetic material was stable and replicating properly. She said this was great news, and timely considering school was starting tomorrow.

  Brayden arrived at the lab expecting to see Quentin, but hoping to see Brooklyn. What he did not expect was to see a new girl filling Arabelle’s desk already. An image of the Russian woman leapt into his mind. He was in the SF lab and Abby had just been shot and killed when Gerhard walked back in the lab with Arabelle draped over his arms. She was dead. And it was a horrible image he couldn’t seem to shake. One that left him feeling gut-punched and blue. He staggered backwards a step, his head swimming, then regained his balance.

  “Are you okay?” the new girl asked.

  She was beautiful, every bit as stunning as Arabelle, but younger, maybe late teens, early twenties. Her hair was cut short, an A-line that came to her chin, and her makeup was bold reds and smoky eyes. The most unsettling thing about her, however, were her eyes. Like Arabelle’s they were deep purple. Amethyst. In that second, he realized she was one of Holland’s subjects, a product of his science. A GMO girl.

  But those eyes…

  “I’m okay, it’s just, I knew the woman who was here before you, Nurse Arabelle.” When she didn’t reply, he cleared his throat, then extended a hand and said, “I’m sorry. I’m Brayden, and you are?”

  She looked at his hand, didn’t take it and said, “Raven. Who are you here to see?”

  “Raven, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  Just then it dawned on him. “You took Rebecca back to Palo Alto the other day, right?” This seemed to unsteady her a bit. She nodded. “You should’ve stayed. What you did for her was…it was really nice. If you knew the sacrifices we made to get her back home, you would understand.”

  She didn’t blink her eyes. Not once. And she didn’t smile. She was every bit as cold as Arabelle. Perhaps she was Arabelle’s daughter. If not of flesh and blood, then of her DNA.

  He withdrew his hand and said, “I’m here to see Quentin Russell. Or Doctor Holland if he’s available, but preferably Quentin. Unless Brooklyn is available. I’m okay seeing her, too.”

  She smiled an empty, placating smile, then in a monotone voice said, “I’ll get Quentin for you.”

  “I’m not sure if he’s expecting me,” Brayden said, but she was already on her way down the hall leaving him with deep, troubled thoughts. Was he ever going to shake the aftereffects of this summer?

  When Quentin arrived up front, it was with Raven, and she wouldn’t take her eyes off of him. In her he saw a sadness he couldn’t identify, or perhaps she lost some of her personality in her transformation, if that’s how she became the way she was. Either way, he wanted to spend a little more time with her, but he couldn’t.

  He followed Quentin Russell down the hallway listening to the man talk about Georgia’s progress, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Raven and her purple eyes. They were Arabelle’s eyes, and Abby’s eyes for a short while, and they were both startling and upsetting.

  “Who is that girl?” Brayden interrupted Quentin to ask, like he hadn’t been listening to a single thing the man was saying.

  “I don’t know,” Quentin said. “She’s new.”

  “Her eyes—”

  “Yeah, I know. Anyways, I was just beginning the process of waking her up when you arrived. I’m about to drain her.”

  Georgia.

  His heart couldn’t take much more of this. There was so much hope and fear and anxiety in him that it all sort of crammed together and fought each other all at once, leaving him feeling like he wanted to puke or scream or break things. More than anything, he was dying to be done with this place, with the GMO version of his friends, and just start school. The sooner he could leave his past behind, the better.

  That’s when his cell phone buzzed. It was Netty. He silenced the ring. After she’d told him earlier today she couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see her because her mother was throwing a bitch fit all over the place about Brayden, he was like, “It is what it is.”

  In the lab, Georgia was one of seven people in glass canisters. There were four girls and two boys in the others, all of them floating in stasis, all of them beautiful beyond measure. He wanted to ask Quentin if they were clones or bought-and-paid-for children. Honestly though, he didn’t want to know. After what happened with Rebecca and Abby, Brayden couldn’t afford to let himself care.

  Quentin pressed a sequence of buttons. The wake up solution was pumped into the pink liquid Georgia was floating in, and moments later she started to move. Quentin pressed another series of buttons, and the container began to drain while shifting from its vertical to its horizontal axis. When she was laid flat out, Brayden realized just how attractive she was, and how much he missed her. Of all the people who deserved to be well again, it was Georgia. There wasn’t a wrong bone in her body, even though she could set people on fire and kill them.

  “Technically you’re not supposed to be here,” Quentin said, “especially with our clients in various states of undress.”

  She was nude.

  “Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Brayden said. He wasn’t avoiding looking at her, but he wasn’t staring either. His heart was a hot, throbbing mess wondering if she would wake up with emotions in tact this time. He was praying she would. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve seen her in this state of undress on numerous occasions, so it won’t be a big thing.”

  When the fluids were drained from both the canister and her, Georgia opened her eyes, blinking several long, slow blinks. Brayden stood over the top of her, his eyes looking for any signs of life in there. She started to focus on him, and this was good. He let himself breathe.

  “Brayden?” she said, her voice breaking.

  He brushed wet strands of hair out of her face, then cupped her cheek and said, “Yeah, it’s me.”

  It took her a few minutes to fully come to, and when she did, she looked down at her body, at her nudity, and then she started to cry.

  “What’s wrong?” Brayden said.

  “I’m embarrassed that I’m naked right now,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. As Quentin put towels over her breasts and vagina, Brayden’s heart exploded with joy. He knew exactly what that meant: she could feel again.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” he said with a shaky voice.

  A few moments later, while Georgia was beaming and telling Brayden she missed him, Raven entered the room. She just stood in the doorway watching. A moment later, she turned and left. Then, a man who looked a lot like Holland, except larger and more muscular, came in behind her, looking chipper, which had Brayden’s brain doing flip flops. Was this Holland or not? He couldn’t be sure, even though he felt like the beast of a man was indeed the psychotic school doctor.

  “Brayden,” he said.

  “Enzo.”

  “And Georgia, my child. How are you?”

  “Who are you and what have you done with the other Dr. Holland?” Georgia replied, looking at him like he was a piece of abstract art she didn’t understand.

  “Like you, I have had a few adjustments made, and like you, my mind feels right again. I am so happy to see you smiling once more.”

  “The gap is gone,” she said, looking at Holland’s two front teeth.

  “And I feel like a new man because of it.”

  “Well there’s entirely too much sunshine in here for me,” Brayden said, feeling so much better that his mind automatically went to the new girl—Raven. He wanted to talk to her, to get the skinny on her. “Georgia, I’ll be waiting for you when you’re done with your tests.”

  “She has already passed her tests,” Dr. Holland said.

  She nodded at Brayden, took his hand in hers and said, “Thank you for everything you’ve done.” Tears formed in her eyes, giving the
m a lustrous shine. Honestly, that was the best thing he’d seen all summer. His friend was back.

  “Enzo,” Brayden said. His way of saying you still suck, good-bye.

  “Brayden,” he replied, his tone the same.

  Up in the lounge, he looked for Raven, but she was gone. In her seat was a delicate child with black hair and curious eyes.

  “Who are you?” Brayden asked. He already had an idea, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  “Alice,” she replied.

  She was wearing a long white dress with sparkling sandals that looked fitting for her if she was from the eighteen hundreds. Ah, the indelible Alice. The creepy little thing he heard so much about but never met in person. She didn’t look so scary. She was cute, actually. But in a scruffy sort of way. She looked up, brushed the bangs out of her face and all he saw was a child.

  “Alice, have you seen Raven?”

  Alice simply got up and left the receptionist area. She went down the hall. “Okay,” he said, dragging the word out.

  A moment later—somewhere down the hall—a door opened, and then a door shut. Then, when he was getting ready to grab a seat in the receptionist area until Georgia was done getting dressed, he heard the sound of the same door opening again.

  Raven came into the lounge. “Yes?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he said. Her expression gave nothing away. And he could not stop looking at her eyes. He was practically mesmerized.

  “Why?”

  “Are you a student here?” he said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Well are you new to the area, or are you a local?”

  “No. I don’t know. I’m busy right now,” she said. She acted like she wanted nothing to do with him. Which was weird because, before, she couldn’t stop staring at him.

  “Me, too. I’m about to start reading one of these super interesting magazines that have been sitting here since last semester. Those in the out-of-date section, which is the only section here, really. I like the one where Kim Kardashian isn’t pregnant yet. The first or second time. I’ve read about her struggles with…whatever…three times already and it’s still such an amazing story I really can’t remember at all.”

  She actually laughed, and this filled him with hope. Maybe he hadn’t lost his game after all. And maybe she wasn’t such a robot, either.

  “So if you’ll please excuse me,” he said, waving her off, “I’ve got things to do, too.”

  With a smile, she left. To him Raven’s smile was a small but sufficient victory. Several minutes later, Georgia appeared bright-eyed and airy, and for a moment, he forgot about Alice, Raven and Abby, and thought only of her.

  “You look radiant,” he said, and she hugged him fiercely.

  “I almost forgot what it was like to feel,” she replied when she was done crushing on him with her appreciation. “Walk me to my room?”

  “Do you have your key?”

  She made an empty expression, then said, “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll go to admin and get you a new one. Then we’ll order you some clothes online since those were the same ones you wore in here last time,” he said, pointing to her jeans and blouse, “when I dropped you off at the San Francisco office I mean.”

  “What about my bags?” she said. “From Vegas?”

  Oh, yeah, he thought. From when she’d come to see him. He’d forgotten all about them. A moment later, Alice came hobbling out of the back room with Georgia’s suitcase. She looked so tiny trying to wrestle it forward. Georgia merely looked at her, as if the sight of the girl was somehow offensive. Then Brayden remembered the story of Gerhard forcing her to kill a young boy, and how when she did, it was Alice who set his corpse on fire.

  Alice, her sister in DNA.

  “Alice,” Georgia said, like the taste of her name on Georgia’s tongue was foul. Alice didn’t look at her right away, she just steadied the bag at her feet, then looked up through her bangs at Georgia.

  After a stare down no one was winning, Alice said, “Can you still do it?”

  “Do what?” Georgia said, low and mean.

  And this is where Alice’s skin started to assume a strange, greyish pallor. “Burn things,” she said with a fair amount of delight in her voice. Brayden wasn’t sure, but for a second, the room seemed to rise a degree or two in temperature.

  “I don’t know,” Georgia said, making her hands into fists. Not to fight, but to hide the circular pattern of little stingers if they were, in fact, still there.

  Those things scared Brayden.

  “Try,” the girl said, almost excited, her skin still assuming a very different shade. Her eyes were getting darker by the second.

  “No,” Georgia snapped. Then turning to Brayden, she said, “Let’s go. Now.”

  Brayden didn’t wait. He ushered her to the front door and then out onto Astor’s main campus.

  Outside, students were everywhere. The campus actually had that busy feeling like it had been asleep for three months and was now waking up again. “That’s one unsettled little girl,” he said.

  Walking beside him, Georgia looked at him and said, “You have no idea.”

  “Georgia?” someone said behind them.

  Georgia and Brayden both turned around to see Cicely and Tempest, formerly Victoria and Bridget before their most recent transformation. The three of them were the non-triplets at one point in time. They were inseparable and they each looked exactly alike, but they weren’t blood related. An error on Gerhard’s part he rectified with Victoria (now Cicely) and Bridget (now Tempest), but not with Georgia until recently. Cicely and Tempest looked different; only Georgia retained the better part of her “non-triplet” looks.

  “Yes?” Georgia said. Then the two girls squealed and ran to Georgia.

  “It’s us,” Cicely said, grabbing her.

  The way they fell into excited hugging and giddiness, it was like old times. Lately there had been very few moments where Brayden felt anything good, and this was surely one of them. He savored the freedom of it, the lightness of the moment. He joined them. Brayden’s reception was nearly the same as Georgia’s.

  Nothing can compare to friends, he thought.

  Nothing.

  At the same time that was happening, Julie and Cameron were walking by with Theresa. The three of them were smiling, too, and Julie was looking at him. Cameron was in some deep conversation with Theresa and Theresa was trying to include Julie, but Julie was not listening to a word she was saying because she was looking at him, at all the girls around him.

  Social proof, he was thinking.

  Yep.

  His eyes met Julie’s and she didn’t frown or flip him off. And then Georgia startled him by kissing him near the mouth and saying, “This guy saved me, seriously.”

  He came back to the three of them; all eyes were on him.

  “He got me to Vegas, then San Francisco, then here,” Georgia said. “Without him, and I am not exaggerating, I wouldn’t have endured. You’re my guardian angel, Brayden. Seriously.”

  She hugged him again, super tight and Cicely and Tempest were like, “Awe…” but super drawn out.

  The day was starting well, his junior year even better.

  But just then, a good looking kid—a boy who could be a sophomore, a junior or even a senior by the look of him (he was six feet tall, and a good two hundred pounds of proportioned muscle)—breezed past them. It wasn’t the new kid who caught Brayden’s eye, though. It was the girl in the Yoga pants and long blouse walking beside him. There was something about her he couldn’t identify. A familiarity he couldn’t place. Tempest watched the two of them, talking amongst each other in the way two strangers who are out of their element busy themselves with surface conversation so they don’t have to talk to others. All other eyes followed.

  “Jesus,” Cicely said, “look at him.”

  “Look at her,” Tempest said. “You can already tell she’s going to be a turbo bitch.”

  Just then Cicely gasped, like she’
d seen a ghost. “Do you know who that is?” she all but whispered.

  “No, who?” Georgia asked, leaning into the group, fighting not to be obvious. Everyone else on campus, however, they were doing the exact same thing in the wake of the girl: leaning into each other, fast whispering, doing that over-the-shoulder gawking thing.

  The name fell out of Cicely’s mouth like a dying breath. “Sindee.”

  “Who’s Cindy?” Brayden said.

  “No, Sindee,” she said, spelling it out for him. “From the TV show Lies & Lays. She’s only the hottest thing on TV these days.”

  Now Brayden was staring, but not getting it. She was cute, yes, with a sensational figure, but then again, that was practically everyone at this genetically sound school.

  He didn’t really get it.

  “She’s on the CW,” Cicely said. “She’s Deandra—a delightfully shy sophomore in high school by day, and Sindee with an S—a high dollar escort—by night. It’s like a show on secrets and lies and multiple identities. It’s pretty racy, even for the CW, but super intense, too.”

  Brayden thought she looked snotty. The way she wouldn’t look at any of them when she strutted her shit across campus, he didn’t know what to expect, only that every guy is school was going to drool and make fools of themselves to know her name. That’s how it was here, when a new special someone arrived—they got all the attention. One other thing though, her ass was not just an ass, it was a work of art.

  “I want her butt,” Georgia said.

  “Me, too,” Brayden echoed. Then he realized what he had said and tried to regain his composure. “But honestly, Georgia, your ass is every bit as sexy as hers. More so actually.”

  “Really?” she said, batting her eyelashes in mock exaggeration. “More so?”

  “It’s because it’s attached to you, and I’m practically in love with you, so there.”