[In Distress 01.0] In Distress

by Caethes Faron

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t know. If he had even the slightest suspicion, he’d be accompanied by others. And he wouldn’t wait at the gate. If any of them had any idea Malcolm was even thinking of doing what he’d done, they’d storm his home with force.

  After the scene at Eval, Malcolm had expected this, only he thought it would have happened by now. Outside of Geneticist facilities, Malcolm’s compound was the most secure place in New Cali. It was only a matter of time before one of them came poking around, making it clear that no matter how close he got to them, he would never be one of them. Even as an Alpha, he was less than them. It was an old-fashioned pissing contest, one Malcolm couldn’t win. Putting up a fight now would only drag it out and expose Malcolm and his Zeds. As much as he wanted to tell Walken to fuck off, he couldn’t.

  “Let him in and message everyone to go to their rooms and stay there until I say otherwise.” Malcolm’s mind flew to his computer and the open program that was still running. He normally locked it down before leaving his desk, but in the hurry he’d forgotten.

  “Lock down my computer NOW. When that’s done, go to the loft, and wait for me there. Close the door, and replace the ceiling panel behind you. Keep the lights off and stay quiet.”

  Malcolm flagged the message and sent it to Will. Once the confirmation screen came up, he deleted it from his list of sent items. He barely made it to the sitting room before Kaleana showed Walken in. He let his carefully cultivated wall of ice surround him. He couldn’t afford the slightest slip.

  35

  Thirty-Five

  Malcolm’s message startled Will from his position at the window. He didn’t know why Malcolm needed his computer locked down, but he’d never sent him a message flagged urgent before.

  He sat at Malcolm’s desk. A window on the screen bounced. Apparently, some task had finished while Malcolm was away. Will clicked on it, only intending to make it stop. However, he couldn’t pull his eyes away from what the window displayed. It was the results of some sort of data pull from what appeared to be dozens of databases. It couldn’t be right. If it was, everything Will knew was wrong.

  There wasn’t time for this, but he didn’t know if he’d have another chance to look at this information. Malcolm had kept it hidden from him for this long, and for good reason. He copied the raw data set to his Glass Tab. He’d be able to parse it later. Chances were his eyes had simply been drawn to one bit of a larger picture. It would all make sense once he looked at it as a whole.

  With the information on his tab, he shut down the computer. The screens folded into Malcolm’s desk, and Will activated the lock. Misgivings sank in his stomach. He hoped his delay hadn’t caused any trouble. In all likelihood, it was nothing. Malcolm was his lover. He wouldn’t keep such secrets from him. However, Will wouldn’t let love blind him to what happened around him. He couldn’t afford to.

  He remembered Malcolm’s message and went to the loft, following his instructions. Time seemed to drag by as he tried not to think about what he had seen, what he had on his tab. More than once he thought about going to his room, but something inside him insisted he trust Malcolm and follow his orders.

  In actuality, his tab said it was no more than fifteen minutes later that Malcolm appeared, looking both relieved and worn out.

  “Are you all right?”

  Will didn’t know how to answer that question. It took a moment for it to occur to him that Malcolm referred to the girl. So much had happened since then it seemed like days had passed. However, it provided a decent cover for his distress. “I’ll be fine. What happened? Why the urgent message?”

  “A Geneticist showed up unannounced. It ended up being nothing. He was extending a personal social invitation.”

  Will saw that there was something more, but he was too preoccupied with his own concerns to pry. Malcolm came toward him, and Will knew he needed comfort, reassurance. They both did, but Will couldn’t tear his thoughts away from his tab and the information it contained. Before Malcolm could reach him and melt him with his touch, Will spoke. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’d kind of like to be alone right now.”

  Malcolm stopped his advance. Will saw the hurt in his eyes. “Of course. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Will wanted to be in the library. A small part of him thought that in its comfortable openness, dark realities would be banished. It was nothing more than superstition, but Will supposed there was a reason humans developed superstitions in the first place. They provided a measure of comfort in a world that didn’t offer much on its own. He’d be in the library looking over the data he’d stolen from Malcolm’s computer, but it seemed too public a place, even though he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. His deceit called for the privacy of his room—a place he hadn’t spent time in for weeks.

  That’s all it was: deceit. Will knew it, and he already felt ashamed. More than once, he’d convinced himself not to pursue the data further. Trust formed the cornerstone of his relationship with Malcolm. It always had. They’d fought hard to build it, and it was sweeter for their struggles. But if his first fleeting impression of the data he’d seen was correct, it transcended their relationship. In fact, it would nullify it.

  A cold shiver passed over his skin and into his bones, gripping his stomach and refusing to let go. If he continued in ignorance of what his tab held, he could go on being happy with Malcolm. What did it matter? Will had struggled all his life. Life didn’t have to be hard anymore. Hadn’t Syrus and the others told him from the beginning that he needed to be grateful and accept what he had?

  But they didn’t know.

  Did he?

  Will took a deep breath and opened the raw data. Immediately, his mind processed the data in the same way, but he couldn’t let initial perceptions and the bias he brought to the project color his process. If there was ever a time for objectivity, it was now, and it had never been Will’s strong suit.

  He ran a quick program to do some preliminary sorting and parsing. He didn’t want to clutter things with unnecessary data, but he also didn’t want to ignore something that would provide valuable context. Everything would be resolved in a few minutes, and it would likely be nothing. Then he’d go to Malcolm, confess what he’d done, and ask for forgiveness. When the program finished, he turned a blind eye to what he thought he saw and instead isolated the data he needed and fed it into a spreadsheet.

  In seconds, he had graphs that clearly confirmed his suspicions.

  Cutting across the graph in a steady upward direction was the percentage of Zeds culled from the yearly births. The percentage of people enslaved as Zeds had doubled and doubled again. Another graph was almost a mirror image. This was the percentage of people destined to be Alphas. It’d been shrinking to an almost miniscule percentage.

  Will shook his head. That was only the data he’d originally viewed on Malcolm’s computer. Perhaps it was an anomaly. Perhaps it was a geographic sample that had some sort of problem the Geneticists were trying to fix. That had to be it. Malcolm had to have this data in order to help figure out why the number of Alphas was decreasing and the Zeds were increasing. Malcolm was a smart man and worked closely with the Geneticists. It wasn’t completely improbable that he’d be in a position to weigh in, to try to figure out what the problem was, and to help correct it. After all, he’d be the one manufacturing the tools to fix it.

  Wishful thinking in a world that had taught him from birth that science ruled all and didn’t deal in such fanciful things as wishes. But then here he was, a Zed in a mansion with an Alpha he loved, truly living, not just surviving. Will’s life was a wish.

  He went back to the raw data and applied different filters, sorting out the data for various locations until all the numbers were accounted for. He didn’t want to look at them one by one. That would play with his emotions in ways that couldn’t be healthy. Once each set of data had been organized, he pulled up twenty-four different graphs, seeing six at a time until he’d seen them all. They al
l confirmed what he’d already seen. There were also the more obvious discrepancies, the ones they all knew existed but no one mentioned. Natural born children of Alphas often didn’t qualify as Alphas on their own merit. One of the graphs clearly showed that an overwhelming majority of natural born Alphas didn’t have the genetic scores to remain Alphas, yet they did anyway.

  There had to be more. An explanation. Digging into other parts of the file revealed that there was an explanation, just not the one he’d hoped for—one he hadn’t even let himself consider.

  The genetic baseline for determining which caste a person would spend their life in had been changed. Repeatedly. Every year, it rose, guaranteeing more people were condemned to life as Zeds, and fewer were given the privilege of being an Alpha.

  His heart became a cold stone, dropping to the ground so resolutely he’d thought he’d never reclaim it. In every single instance, the number of Alphas decreased and the number of Zeds increased. It wasn’t recent, either, not the product of a failed experiment by the Geneticists in a genuine effort to restore the human genome. No, the numbers spoke with a volume that left Will’s ears buzzing. This was deliberate. Forty years of data were before him, and there wasn’t even a single point that veered off course. It was perfect. If he had been born earlier, he might have been a Beta for all he knew. The test was meaningless. The castes were meaningless.

  Will stood from his chair and gripped the tab so hard the edge of it dug into his palms. He wanted to throw it, but then he’d risk destroying the only evidence he had. Emotions swirled inside of him so hard and fast he worried they would tear his skin apart in their effort to get out.

  Anger. More than anything he wanted to be furious, to scream and yell and stomp and rage. But he wasn’t.

  The whirlpool of anger was overtaken by a wave of sadness so large and tumultuous that it escaped his chest through his eyes in hot streams. He threw the tab on the bed and grabbed a pillow, wrenching it in his hands. A yell boiled up inside him, demanding release. He fell onto the bed and bit the pillow, using it to muffle his screams.

  “Noooooo!”

  Sobs violently racked his body. His eyes swelled, and snot filled his nose, forcing him to release the pillow from his mouth. “Why?”

  The better question was, why hadn’t he expected this? He’d known from the beginning it was too good to be true, but he’d allowed himself to be deceived. It was his fault. Malcolm couldn’t be blamed for being like every other Alpha. Will was the one who’d acted out of character in this drama.

  Part of him resented his outburst as if he were a spoiled brat. It was necessary. He’d get it all out now. When he left this room, the time for grieving would be over. Grieving for the man Will had thought Malcolm was, grieving for the love he’d come to cherish, grieving for the life he thought he knew.

  The initial waves of passion passed. The storm inside him settled. He was wrung out. The bursts of emotion burned until they were just embers. Weakened from his ordeal, his mind allowed the hopeful thoughts to enter. It could be a mistake. There could be a reason for this. Even though Malcolm possessed this information and did nothing about it, even facilitated it with his business, he somehow might not be complicit. Could he live with that? Could Will be with a man who supplied the Geneticists with the very materials used to unjustly enslave people? He’d been fine with it before. Really, nothing had changed.

  Except everything had changed.

  Before, Malcolm was just another cog in the machine with no more choice than anyone else. Someone had to manufacture the tools for the Geneticists. If Malcolm didn’t do it, someone else would. It had been fine because it was part of something bigger. As much as Will hated the world and the existence it dictated for him, he’d always been mollified—they all had—by the knowledge that it was necessary. Making people Zeds was a necessary evil in order to save the human race. The whole system was horrible, but the ends had always justified the means. Will, Syrus, Carson, Tony, Nick, Stu, Rufus, Kaleana. They suffered so that, someday, no one would have to.

  Only now their suffering was just that: suffering. Pointless. Unjustifiable. Wrong. Still, Will couldn’t help hoping that Malcolm had an explanation—something to say that would make everything better. Surely he’d produce the words that would put Will’s world back together and make everything right. He had to. He always protected his Zeds. It was unfathomable that he could betray them at the same time.

  Will wiped his eyes and retrieved his tab. Shudders still passed through him at intervals, but he needed to look again. He needed to familiarize himself with it all, dull the sharp edges that tore at him every time he thought of it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to confront Malcolm, and he needed to give him a chance to explain. He owed him that. He tried not to let himself hope for more, but he couldn’t move forward until he’d gotten Malcolm’s response, and he had to do it soon. Dinner was fast approaching.

  36

  Thirty-Six

  A cold splash of water on his face, and Will was as ready as he was ever going to be. It didn’t occur to him until he was outside his bedroom door to be afraid. If he was correct—and every indicator pointed to that being the case—chances were he’d be dead soon. He’d accustomed himself to that idea once before, but it’d be harder now. The last months had softened him. Real food, family, being treated like a human being: they all made him want to hold on to life with both hands.

  His footsteps faltered. Maybe it’d be wise to keep his discovery to himself. It wouldn’t change anything. He could go on living safe and happy. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to continue his relationship with Malcolm. It wouldn’t be hard to put a stop to it. Malcolm seemed to half expect Will to end it any day. Living in the same house as Malcolm wouldn’t be easy, but Will had lived through tougher challenges. It could work.

  Except Will couldn’t picture a life without Malcolm in it. He’d come to rely on their relationship as much as Malcolm did, perhaps even more. He had friendship with the others but not the intimacy he shared with Malcolm, the sharing of something that transcended physical boundaries. Chances were that relationship was lost to him no matter what, but if he didn’t confront Malcolm with the truth, he was shutting the door on them ever being together. He had to let the hope that there was a satisfactory explanation lead him, no matter how small that spark of hope was.

  He continued, wiping his palms on his pants to remove the sweat pooling there. At Malcolm’s door, he raised his hand to knock. Already, he felt he could no longer simply walk in as if he were familiar with Malcolm. He shook his head and opened the door as he would any other time.

  As expected, Malcolm was dressing for dinner, changing into more casual clothes as had become his norm. For a moment, Will doubted whether this was the appropriate time to handle such a serious issue. Perhaps he should wait until after dinner. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them or the others to disrupt everything right before mealtime.

  No, he needed do this now. He couldn’t go through the rest of the night as if nothing were wrong. He’d be lying to Malcolm, and while Malcolm had almost certainly violated his trust, Will wasn’t going to do the same.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Will envied Malcolm’s ability to so easily hide himself from the world even when he was in plain sight. Then again, after this much time together, it wouldn’t matter how much natural skill Will had at masking his feelings.

  Malcolm came toward Will, and Will couldn’t stop himself from stepping backward, not allowing Malcolm to get any closer. As soon as Will took that first step, Malcolm stopped.

  “Will?”

  “Don’t. Just let me speak.”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “I found something when I locked your computer down. I wasn’t snooping,”—he didn’t know why that little bit was important in the face of recent revelations—“but there was a program that had finished running, and it was bouncing, you know how they do.” Will’s stomach climbed up his spine when he saw Malcolm’s
cold mask slip into place. “So I clicked on it to get it out of the way. I couldn’t help seeing the data. You know how my mind is with numbers. A few things jumped out at me. Worrisome things. I copied the data to my tab so I could analyze it further. I didn’t want to violate your trust.” Again, Will had no idea why he felt the need to make this clear, perhaps to distance himself from Malcolm’s own deceit. “I couldn’t let what I’d seen go. I figured after I analyzed it, I’d see that I’d been mistaken. But I wasn’t.”

  A pause. A need for an explanation. In the absence of an explanation, at least a plea to not let it matter. Nothing.

  “The Geneticists have been playing us. The data from your computer proves that they’re manipulating the genetic baseline in order to create fewer Alphas and more Zeds. You have proof that they’re unjustly enslaving people. You have this data, and still you work for them. You supply them. You allow them to do this. You know, and you’re doing nothing to stop them. That makes you complicit. Yesterday, when I asked you about the collars, you went on about how the population was growing. You lied to me. You knew they were increasing the percentage of Zeds, and you lied about it. To me. Do you have anything to say for yourself? Any possible defense? Please.”

  Malcolm’s eyes closed. He stood silent for a moment. Will’s breathing was loud to his own ears in the stillness of the room. His eyes were riveted on Malcolm, hoping for something. He didn’t know what, but he couldn’t bear the reality that Malcolm was everything he had ever detested about their world. It wasn’t possible that he had given his heart to a man who had betrayed an entire caste.

  Slowly, Malcolm’s eyelids rose. The eyes that stared back at Will were devoid of all warmth. It was as if Malcolm stared at a stranger. “No.”

  Will wanted to shake him, to demand more, but the coldness in Malcolm’s eyes warned him away. He had his answer.