It’s not that I don’t want that. I do. But the human half of me knows what the beast won’t admit—that in my current condition, I’d collapse before I got anywhere near Lilliana. And she won’t come willingly with a stranger who’s already scared her, and there are enough men with her to put me in my grave, in my weakened state.
So I hunker down, shielded from sight by a clump of underbrush, and eat my last protein bar while I wait for Lilliana Marie Morgan to come out of that building alone.
5
CARSON
I wake with morning sunlight glaring on my face, and it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to remember where I am and how I got here. Staring at the building in the distance doesn’t jog my memory. I can’t remember why I’m lying just inside the woods, my head resting on a backpack I’m pretty sure I stole from a dead man.
Then the front door of the building opens, and a woman steps out. It’s the woman from the holo-vid. The lesser woman the large man was staring at. And just like that, I remember the other woman. My woman.
Lilliana Marie Malone.
A man follows the lesser woman out of the building and into the woods. They pass by without noticing me, and I follow them from a distance while they chat. But once I realize they’re not talking about Lilliana, my thoughts refuse to focus and I can’t concentrate on what they’re saying.
I need that man’s form. He came from Lilliana’s building, which means he likely knows her. She probably trusts him. And he looks healthy. If he won’t take me to her—give me a proper, non-threatening introduction—I will take his form and get to her on my own. That’s less than ideal. But so is waiting.
With adrenaline fueling my actions, in place of actual energy, I carefully circle the pair and approach them head-on. The man goes still when he sees me, his words frozen in his throat. He and the lesser woman chat in soft voices about my identity, and vaguely I realize the woman recognizes the form I’m wearing. Though she seems surprised to see it in such rough shape.
“Are you okay?” she asks, but I don’t know how to answer her question. And the answer doesn’t matter. What matters is finding Lilliana.
“What’s your name, man?” her companion asks, and their lack of aggression—even though they’re clearly wary—eases a little of my tension.
“Carson,” I tell them. “Who’re you?”
“What do you want, Carson?” he asks, instead of answering my question.
“The woman.” My head is spinning. It’s difficult to concentrate, but as I try to sort through his reply, I realize he thinks I want the woman he’s traveling with. That I want to buy her.
I try to explain that I want Lilliana, but that I don’t want to buy her. That she belongs with me, and I just need to find her. Because I can no longer remember where I saw her. And at some point, I realize that it isn’t this man who knows Lilliana—it’s the woman. Which makes sense, because they are in the catalogue together.
Yet no matter what I say, they both look at me as if I’m making no sense.
“Take me to her!” I finally demand. I have no more energy for conversation, and my thoughts are so muddled I can’t concentrate on anything but the face haunting my memory and the name dancing on the end of my tongue. “You know her!”
I lunge toward the woman, determined to make her take me to Lilliana, but the man steps between us. I hit him full force, and he stumbles backward, but keeps the woman out of my reach.
I grasp for her, desperate, because every single cell in my body feels pulled toward Lilliana, and the only thought I can hold onto is that this woman can take me to her.
The man shoves me backward, and I rebound, my fist flying out of desperation. Out of training so ingrained that intent doesn’t even enter into the equation. It’s not a real blow. My bone spikes don’t break through my un-seamed skin, nor does my plating emerge. Yet I hear a soft crack from the man’s side. I’ve broken his rib.
“Warren!” the woman shouts.
“Run!” he yells at her, and after a moment’s hesitation, she takes off in the direction opposite the building where my Lilliana is being kept from me.
The man is hurt, but I recognize the determination in his eyes as he puts himself between me and the fleeing woman. He will protect her with his life if he needs to, not out of lust, but out of…honor. Because I had no right to lunge for her. To make demands of a woman I don’t even know.
He’s right about that. Desperate as I am, I’m in the wrong. So I stand down.
“Apologies,” I murmur, hoping the man can hear me, because there isn’t much strength left in my voice. Then I turn and head into the woods. Only hours later, after I’ve found both food and drink and have taken a little rest, do I remember that I was supposed to assume that man’s healthy form.
I wander the woods again, silently cursing my own muddled thoughts, and every step eats up valuable energy I can’t replace, short of finding another burrow of rabbits. Thinking feels like wading through waist-deep water, each idea dragging in the current. Trying to pull me down.
As the sun sinks toward the horizon, I hear a familiar voice. “This way. The only reason they wouldn’t be at the shelter is if he got to them. Come on!” Shielded by a thick tree trunk, I watch as the man I met earlier today—Warren—leads another man and a woman through the woods, clutching his side, where I cracked one of his ribs.
The familiarity of his face and voice are enough to draw me in. I can’t remember what I needed from him earlier today, but I remember that I didn’t get it. That I still need it. So I follow them through the woods and watch as they head through the tree line toward a building, the back half of which has been…crushed. As near as I can tell, there’s only one entrance.
For a while, I watch from the edge of the woods. The building is too far away for me to hear what’s going on inside, but I can tell they went in looking for a fight.
If Warren dies—or even just leaves blood behind—I can…
Yes, that’s what I needed from him. Blood. Or some other substance that carries DNA. Because I need a new, healthy form. Any new, healthy form. So I can go get Lilliana.
Just as I start to step out of the woods, the front door opens. Warren and his friends come out, followed by the man I saw with the holo-disk yesterday and the woman I met this afternoon, whose image is on that holo-disk, along with Lilliana’s. They look relieved. They look…pleased, emerging from the building with the confident gait of victors. And the large, silent man is splattered with blood, which means someone in that building is shedding DNA, free for the taking.
When they step into the woods, heading back the direction they came from, I sneak toward the building as quickly as my unsteady legs will carry me. My nose—the beast’s nose—leads me toward a room on the left side of the entry. Toward the scent of blood.
Inside, I find five corpses. They’ve all shed blood, but I kneel next to a man whose brains are literally leaking through a large crack in his skull. Both of his arms are broken and bleeding, where bones have pierced his skin. His form looks the least physically threatening.
I take a finger full of his blood and taste it. Beneath the coppery tang, I can taste…health. Maybe if I’d thought to examine the sample last time, I could have avoided taking on a sick form. Maybe I could have avoided wandering around in the woods for days, struggling to remember my own damn name. To remember to eat and bathe.
But this sample is good. This form is healthy. It’s clean, on a cellular level. Yet I have no idea how to…assume it. I’ve never done that intentionally. Before, when I needed a new form and had a sample of DNA, the beast just kind of…took over.
Right now, I really need a new form, and—
The burning begins, deep inside, like an attack on every cell in my body. But rather than clenching my fists or fighting the pain, this time I embrace it. This is what I wanted. What I needed.
Less than a minute later, the fire fades and I look down to see that my hands are…new. My arms are pale, wit
h dark hair and the occasional mole. I can’t see my face, except for the end of my own nose, but I know that I look exactly like the man lying on the floor in front of me, only without the cracked skull and broken arms. Without the tattoo on his right palm. I hope no one notices that.
My thoughts are clearing up already, as dark clouds recede from my mind. I’m ravenous from the transformation. And probably from my irregular eating patterns, over the past few days. Or weeks. I could have been wandering around in zone three, in a total mental fog, for two or three weeks, for all I know.
Kneeling again, I search the man’s pockets, hoping to find food, and I come up with a sealed protein brick and a familiar flat, round object. I pull out the holo-disk, both confused and delighted to have found it in a dead man’s pocket.
Surely, it’s the same disk I saw Lilliana Marie Morgan on. What are the chances of there being two different holo-disks in this one area of zone three?
I race out the front door and into the woods, following the people who just left the building. In this new, healthy body, I can easily hear both their footsteps and their voices, as they chat. They’re exuberant over their victory.
One of the men sees me coming and warns his friends. They turn, and tension pulls their frames tight. It tugs their smiles into aggressive scowls. The large, silent man grabs a steel rod and approaches me with murder in his eyes. “Barrett, wait!” His woman—the one from the disk—grabs his arm.
“Please. Where is the woman?” I ask her. Through the fog that is my recent memory, I recall that I scared her earlier, and I don’t want to do that again, so I keep my distance.
She exhales, staring at me with wide, shocked eyes. Which is when I remember that I look like a man she and her friends just killed. She must think she’s seeing a ghost. But before I can try to explain, a hesitant sort of comprehension washes over her features. “Carson?” she asks, and I nod. Something about either my voice or my bearing has clued her in. She’s very perceptive. “How are you... What are you?”
Barrett pulls her away from me, scowling.
“The woman.” I turn to him. “From your disk. In the woods. I need to find the woman.” In my desperation, I’m not stating my case very well.
“How do you look like Varian?” his woman asks me. “When you looked like Cody earlier today?”
“That form—your Cody—was…damaged. On the cellular level. Cancer, originating in the brain. The mutation is normally slow to progress, but when I reproduced his DNA to clone his form, it...accelerated. That form was unsustainable in the long term. When I was following your trail, I found this one, and its DNA was readily available. Leaking everywhere, in fact. So I took a sample and assumed this form to replace the damaged one.”
“What the hell did he just say?” one of the other men leans forward to whisper.
“Who are you?” the smaller woman asks again. And she deserves an answer. Surely UA wouldn’t bother hunting down convicts because they know too much. It’s not like they can leak classified information from a prison planet…
“Captain Carson Sotelo. 112th Infantry.” I frown at the words that rolled off my tongue out of habit. I’m no longer that man. “At least, I used to be. I am asking for your help.” I pull the holo-disk from my pocket and set it on the ground, then I press my thumb to it.
The small woman gasps as her image appears, stark naked, and I feel bad about that. I didn’t intend to embarrass her. I tap the disk until I reach the image I need. “That woman.” I stand. “I need to find her.”
The other woman in their group—her toned physique reminds me of Dreyer—crosses her arms over her chest. “And just who—or what—are you? And I’m looking for something more informative than your name, rank, and serial number, if you don’t mind.”
I blink at her, and just as I realize that I’d rather be wearing my own skin for this conversation, that brutal burning begins again. It flows over me from the inside out, lighting me on fire in every single cell. The woman in front of me gasps as she studies my new face. Which is really my old face. I recognize my own hands and arms, and for the first time in a long time, I feel…right.
Evidently all it took to reacquire my own form was clarity of thought.
“I told you. I am Captain Carson Sotelo. Formerly of the 112th Infantry, from the planet Tethys. My team and I are now sentenced to Rhodon, zone X. And I need to find this woman. Lilliana Marie Malone belongs to me.” Though there was probably a better way for me to say that.
“Whoa. What the hell just happened?” Warren demands, staring at my face as Barrett, the silent man, pulls his woman away from me. As if she might catch whatever’s wrong with me. “How did you do that?”
“Wait a minute,” the dark-haired man says, and I gather from his resemblance to the toned woman that they’re siblings. “There’s a zone x? Are you sure that’s not zone ten? As in, Roman numerals?”
“Sebastian.” His sister elbows him, still staring at my face. Her frame is tense, as if she hasn’t yet decided I’m not a threat.
“Sylvie,” he mimics her. “I’m just trying to find some humor in the fact that this weird fucker who can change his face as easily as I change my underwear is basically asking us to help him kidnap Lilli.”
His casual use of a nickname for her raises the hair on my arms. Just how well does he know my Lilliana?
I kneel to turn off the disk, then I pocket it. “I know you’re all Lilliana’s friends. Neighbors. I know she trusts you, and that you want to protect her. Please understand that I don’t mean her any harm. I’m not sick anymore, and I want to meet her properly.” The human part of me understands how strange that must sound. Yet the rest of me—the part that can hear rabbit hearts beating from within their burrows and knows how to alter my physical form on a cellular level—feels a pull toward her so strong that I can’t seem to think about anything else. Now that I can think.
“Yeah, first we’re going to need to hear about this face-changing thing,” Warren says, clutching his cracked rib. “How’s that work?” Despite the casual phrasing of his question, his stiff posture belies tension, though he doesn’t seem to have realized yet that I’m the one who injured him.
Barrett grips his steel rod with white-knuckled fists, and Sylvie’s hand is in her pocket, where I can tell she’s clutching some kind of small weapon. Probably a blade.
They are all on edge, and I can’t blame them. They’ve just seen me do something that shouldn’t be possible.
“It’s a long story, and it’s not really relevant. I just…” Say something normal. But that’s a tall order, considering how long it’s been since I was normal. “I met Lilliana—Lilli—yesterday, in the woods, but I was sick, and I didn’t represent myself well. I’d really like a second chance to make a first impression. If that makes sense.”
“You met her?” Sylvie, the well-toned woman, turns to her friends. “He’s the man Lilli and Danna…saw. Lying in the stream.”
“Yes, that was me. The shock of the cold water helped me focus my thoughts. But like I said, I’m afraid I scared her, and that wasn’t my intent. I just couldn’t think clearly, in that other form.” And my foggy brain seems to have given the beast more liberty than he should have had over my impulses.
“She definitely found you…interesting,” Warren says.
“How did this happen to you? UA got ahold of you, didn’t they?” Sylvie studies my face, as if answers might be written there. “Not the prison, but the scientists.”
“Universal Authority has scientists?” the smaller woman glances at her in surprise, and Barrett keeps himself close, where he can pull her out of harm’s way, should I suddenly attack.
“Their prison business is just one head of the hydra,” Sylvie explains. “There was an article a few years ago about a breakthrough they made in genetic editing. It caught my attention for obvious reasons. I was a science teacher before…prison,” she adds, evidently for my benefit.
And that’s interesting, because she
looks like a soldier. A fighter.
“The story was pretty vague,” Sylvie continues. “More of a public relations puff piece than anything. But that’s what they did to you, isn’t it? Genetic editing?”
I nod. “Not just me; my entire team. And we’re only the latest iteration. There were evidently hundreds before us, while they were ‘perfecting’ the process.” I’m not here to talk about myself, but if that helps them trust me…
“If you’re a research subject, how did you get into zone three?” the smaller woman asks. “Were you on the blimp when it crashed?”
My brows rise. “Do you mean the party yacht?”
“That was six weeks ago, Mallory,” Sebastian says, and I blink at him in shock. Six weeks? I’ve been wandering out here in a mental fog for six weeks? How can it possibly have been that long? My team must think I’m dead!
Mallory—the small woman—shrugs. “That’s the night Cody died, so I figured if Carson used Cody’s DNA, he must have gotten it around then.”
She’s right. But I still can’t wrap my head around that.
“I wasn’t on the yacht,” I tell her. “I was on a shuttle that got diverted to the rescue effort, then had to make an emergency landing.” But again, we’re veering from the subject. “Please, will you introduce me to Lilliana? I want to apologize—”
But the moment I mention her name again, tension rises in the group. They’re obviously very protective of her, and they don’t trust me. They don’t even know me. And what I’ve shown them of myself so far probably hasn’t helped my case.
They’re not going to let me see her, and if I insist, this will come to blows. I could probably take them, but I’m not going to repair Lilliana’s first impression of me by hurting her friends.
Dreyer’s advice comes back to me—this is a puzzle to solve, not a bone to break. I’m going to have to come at this from another direction.
Escape (Project Vetus Book 1) Page 6