by daisy harris
Book three in the Love-Bots series.
When a riot erupts in Built’s stein-building lab, the alpha stein Kee drags a
submissive young lab assistant into his cage. Kee’s been studying the human. Ben’s sad eyes and slender form call to Kee—urging him to equal parts lust and possessiveness.
Prisoner to the alpha, Ben surrenders to the stein’s fierce determination and gentle seductions. He’s long hated his job, feeling like a monster for following his boss’s orders, especially once he’s seen intelligence flickering in the alpha’s green eyes.
If Kee’s to escape, he needs Ben’s help to learn about the world outside the
laboratory—a world full of people, sex and experiences Kee’s only beginning to
discover. And guilt-ridden over the things he’s done, Ben can only forgive himself if the alpha forgives his sins first.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Chapter One
“He’s starting to look like a gorilla.” Lab assistant Ben Speigel spun back and forth on his stool in the cage room of Built Laboratories. His fingers in their rubber gloves beat a nervous tune on the counter. “Should he be so developed?”
The reanimated human inside the right-most cage hung from the bars on the roof of
his cell. He lifted his body over and over again in a rough approximation of pull-ups.
The stein, as reanimated humans were called, dropped to the floor and growled.
Ben darted a look at the stein over the top of his microscope. The creature’s muscles stood out, enormous under his thin blue hospital scrubs. It was oddly sexy. Odd because while the stein was built like a porn star, he was also undead. Ben shook his head, feeling like a complete pervert.
In the cage next to the huge stein, five more subjects mulled near the wall close to their leader. The room contained ten cages total—one for the largest stein, six housing three to five inmates, and three that were empty. Built Labs reanimated corpses to serve as control samples for medical studies. They shipped to research facilities all over the Northwest. However, most of this batch had passed their “sell-by” date.
Next to Ben, the lead doctor jotted down a few notes in a yellow pad. When Dr.
Frith looked up his eyes were bloodshot. “Who?”
Ben tilted his head toward the giant stein in the corner and whispered, “Him.”
One of the smaller steins hooted at their leader, speaking the short name they’d
given him, “Kee”. All the lab’s steins seemed to turn to that one when they were upset.
When hungry or frightened, they eased in the direction of the stein alone in the far right cage, cooing for a smile or a nod of encouragement.
Every time they did, Ben felt even crappier about his job—and crappier about his
life. He’d grown up with a mom suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease and a dad who bailed on the family as soon as Ben turned eighteen. As far as Ben could tell, the steins were better people than humans. At least the one they chose to take care of them didn’t shirk his job.
The stein eased his hulking body across his cage and reached through the bars to the others. He gripped shoulders or patted heads. The others appeared comforted by the touch and quieted.
“You mean the alpha?” Frith pulled out a laptop and began transferring his notes
and making calculations. “Of course he’s bigger than the others.” Frith let out a long breath. “He’s the alpha male. By definition, he’s going to be the most intimidating.” He returned his attention to his computer. “And the most intelligent.”
In cages farther away, steins made that “ooo ooo ooo” sound Ben was getting so
sick of. The steins did it for food, for attention.
This was Ben’s first job out of technical college, and he couldn’t wait to move on to something better—maybe a job at a university in a real city. If his mom’s death hadn’t left behind piles of bills, Ben would never have agreed to work in the middle of nowhere, at a stein-building factory.
“Huh.” Ben peeked at the stein out of the corner of his eye. The alpha looked like an ancient chief of some barbarian clan—a solid wall of muscle with wild blond hair and piercing eyes.
The alpha stared at Ben, his gaze dark and murderous. Mostly, the study-steins looked… Well, they didn’t normally look like anything. All of them were male, white, scruffy and varying degrees of dumb. Except for the alpha, no recognizable emotion filled their gazes.
Unlike other types of steins, the ones built for research weren’t programmed with
data or linked to a server. Lab-steins’ circuitry just sent random pulses of electricity to their brain stem—enough to keep them barely conscious for a few weeks of medical studies. However, over time the signals reached other parts of their brains, making them smarter. Built’s oldest steins were almost two months, and the alpha looked all-too human. “Have you noticed he has green eyes?”
Dr. Frith tsked and put down his pen. “His eye color is not important. But I am interested in the social structure the animals are forming.”
Ben trained his attention back on his work and tried focus on the fluids he was analyzing under his microscope, but his attention drifted to the text message he’d received the day before. Some organization calling themselves the “Zombie
Underground” had contacted him, asking for information. They wanted to set the steins free. Ben glanced over his shoulder at the undead in their cages—most of them shuffled around with blank looks. Sure, killing them seemed wrong. But setting them loose was probably even worse.
He shot a guilty glance at the alpha and whispered to his boss, “I’m just worried
perhaps we shouldn’t have…” He lowered his voice to a murmur. “Taken his friend.”
A clang of metal sounded, the alpha slamming his body against the bars of his cage.
The stein howled a word that sounded like, “Low.” The sound tore through Ben, ripping his gut open with a fresh lurch of guilt.
All through the labs, noise erupted. The “ooo ooo ooo” loud and excited, then slowly becoming a more gentle and soothing “oooh oooh oooh” until the alpha settled onto the bars of his cage with his head bent between his beefy forearms. If Ben didn’t know better, he might have thought the stein was sobbing. Ben half wanted to cry along with him.
A week earlier, Frith had ordered Ben to remove the alpha’s cellmate and ship him off to a study. The doctor had thought the giant stein would hurt the other, since his cellmate was small and weak. But Ben knew better. The two steins had been close, and the alpha didn’t seem like the kind to abuse his power.
Frith pinched the bridge of his nose. “I told you not to mention that.” The scientist stacked some files and headed toward the cages. Frith ambled to the leftmost ones
where they kept the weakest steins. “We need two more for today.” The scientist snapped his fingers.
Ben swallowed the remorse that rose like vomit. “Which ones do you want?” He knew Frith wouldn’t answer. It would be up to him to choose which steins would be shipped off to a new study. Ben would retrieve the subjects in question—threatening each shuffling corpse with a stun gun or cattle prod until he subdued the right pair. Ben didn’t know whom he hated more, Frith or himself.
He lifted a weapon off the counter and opened the door to the cage. The steins fled into corners and tried to hide behind each other.
“Okay, guys, I’m not going to hurt you…” Ben reached for the thinnest one, a neutral, barely two weeks old. The narrow corpse toddled along next to him, his face empty. The youngest steins always reminded Ben of his mother. He could hardly remember a time when she’d still recognized him.
At least the steins got smarter over ti
me. They were built to die, but it brought Ben comfort to know their short lives would be a series of discoveries, rather than a slow descent into darkness.
When Ben closed his fist around a second wrist, calls and hoots sounded along the cages. By the time he led the placid steins down the hall and to the door of the surgical suite, the lab was alive with noise. The miserable howl of the alpha raised above all the others.
Kee watched them leave, struggling to control the sobs that racked his body. His hands gripped his forearms, clutching them as he recalled his lover. They’d taken Lo a few days prior, and Kee felt the loss like a broken, aching limb.
He closed his eyes and remembered. He pictured the day they brought Lo to stay in his cage. The small, red-haired stein had tried to hide at first, but Kee had treated him with softness, coaxing him to comfort. Soon they spent every night entwined on their blankets. Kee would wake to the sounds of Lo’s soft murmurs, and with Lo’s slender sex in his hand.
Lo wiggled his behind, cocking his head around to smile at Kee. He cooed his eager sounds.
Lo never learned to say more than “ooo” or “ahh”. He couldn’t even speak the simple language between steins in the cages. But he communicated every desire with his eyes.
For a few brief weeks, Kee had been happy. Then Frith snatched Lo away in the
night while Kee slept. He’d woken to find his cell empty, and had lived alone since.
Determination filled Kee’s being. He didn’t know what the humans did with the steins, or where they went when they left the wide, white room. Kee would learn. He’d find out the answers some day.
In the corner, a small machine perched on the counter. The humans turned it on often, though they seldom looked at the screen the way they studied their other machines. The box showed pictures telling stories. Kee’d heard the smaller human call it a “tee vee”.
All the steins enjoyed looking at the tee vee, but Kee observed it differently. There were sounds coming from the machine. Sounds like the humans made when they communicated. Kee and the steins had a language of sorts—gestures and noises they made as signals. But it wasn’t the way the humans spoke.
Though the tee vee was quiet, Kee listened hard. The man on the screen was handsome. He was pounding on a door like the one to the white room. He called out, “Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?”
Under his breath, Kee whispered, “Hewow.” When a person on the tee vee screen opened the door and replied, “Hello,” Kee tried again. Into his hand, he breathed,
“Hellow.”
Though the action on screen continued, Kee ignored it, still rehearsing the one word he’d learned. The meaning seemed obvious enough. It was a greeting. Kee had heard the humans say it on occasion.
The door to the cage room opened and the smaller of the humans returned. His skin had turned pale and he was sweating. His gloved hands shook as he lifted one of the
objects on the counter. It was a delicate-looking tube. The human peered through the liquid inside, though it was obvious he wasn’t seeing the contents. A tear rolled down his cheek.
Kee felt a surprising surge of sympathy for the human. The man was slight and narrow. He seemed very scared. Though Kee wanted to hate the human, he wanted to
protect him more.
The human stared past the tube in his hand to meet Kee’s gaze. He mouthed words Kee didn’t understand. When Kee didn’t answer, the human spoke louder. Tears
streaming down his face, the human said, “I’m sorry.” Then he turned away.
Kee wondered what the human meant. He thought of his one word of language— actually, two counting his name—and wondered what he could possibly say to the human. Kee wanted to ask questions, to know how this human came to be here, to
know where he went when he left. He wanted to ask for Lo back. But he didn’t know how to do any of those things. So instead he turned his attention back to the tee vee.
When the characters shouted at each other, “Stop” or “Get out” Kee mimicked the sounds in his mind. He mouthed the words, though he didn’t say them aloud.
The human seemed to notice Kee’s rapt attention, because he adjusted the controls to make it louder. Perhaps it was because Kee watched the tee vee so closely that the human began leaving it on every night.
Three months later…
They didn’t reply. Ben peered down at the screen of his smartphone as he sat in his parked car in the empty Built lot. He pinched his forehead between his thumb and forefinger, beating himself up for not contacting the Zombie Underground sooner.
Tufts of weeds poked through the cracked concrete. Vines and bushes crowded the edges of the black top. The bordering woods seemed to encroach on the lab. Ben peered around at the disarray. Since Built ran out of funding no one had come to maintain the grounds. The staff had been progressively cut back until only Ben and Frith remained.
He didn’t know whether he was happy about that development or not. On the one hand, he’d kept his paycheck and been there to make sure the steins didn’t get mistreated. On the other hand, he’d been forced to watch Frith slowly become more desperate and unstable.
As Frith became less able to manage the day-to-day tasks of the labs, Ben had shouldered more responsibility, as well as taken on the role of cheerleader. He fucking hated it—despised having to reassure a man he was pretty sure was evil.
He checked the phone’s spam folder again, hoping the Zombie Underground’s
response got lost amid the ads for sexual enhancement and watches. He’d sent them a
message the day before. Yeah, it was probably too little, too late. The Department of Health had ordered the shutdown of Built weeks ago. Frith requisitioned the body bags for the steins the day after.
With a heavy sigh, Ben opened the door of his hatchback and stepped out into the late-summer heat. Frith passed by in his sports car, and parked in the loading zone. The labs didn’t receive deliveries anymore, or send out any subjects, but Ben never felt right blocking the exit with his car.
“Hello, Dr. Frith.” Ben nodded to his boss and crossed to the door. He couldn’t bear to look at the guy, so he hurried ahead.
“Good morning, Mr. Speigel.” Frith’s greeting was somber and professional as always.
Ben’s hand shook as he reached for the handle, but he dragged the door open before Frith could catch up. He strode through the storage room and into the narrower hallways leading to the cages. Ben wanted to see the alpha one more time. Crap—he wasn’t… Well, the stein wasn’t human. But Ben couldn’t help feeling as if they had a connection of sorts. At least, Ben liked the alpha better than he did anyone else.
Plus, they were both stuck in Built against their will, they were both gay and they both— Okay, that was the end of their similarities. If Ben were honest with himself, he didn’t have any more relationship with the alpha stein than he did with the sportswear model he’d briefly stalked on the internet.
The alpha was flesh and blood though, and Ben saw him every day. That made him more real than any other person in Ben’s life besides Frith. Years of caring for a dying parent had scared away all of Ben’s old school friends, and certainly any potential lovers. After a while, he’d given up trying.
With a deep breath, Ben opened the door to the cage room. The steins wandered or crouched in their cells as always. In the end cage, Kee reached through the bars to stroke the head of a stein in the next one over.
The gesture was so sweet and caring, Ben’s heart stuttered as if it were skipping a beat. He yearned for someone to touch him gently, to tell him everything was okay— even when it wasn’t. Ben was pretty sure no one had ever taken care of him as well as the alpha cared for his pack.
Kee looked up and locked eyes with him, and Ben felt as if they were the only two beings on the planet. It didn’t matter that Kee wasn’t human. Ben would have felt the same connection to a dog. He’d learned a long time ago that animals were more loyal than people. It was too bad he’d never been able to af
ford a place that allowed pets.
“Big day ahead of us.” Dr. Frith patted Ben’s shoulder as he pushed past. “I appreciate your punctuality.”
Ben tried to mutter his agreement. He looked away from the alpha, resigning himself to staring at the floor. He pulled out a fresh set of latex gloves and put them on, trying to force his mind away from the sight of the stein’s emerald gaze. He pushed back the feeling of connection he’d experienced watching the alpha stroking his friend.
Ben knew this thing with the stein was all in his imagination, just like the rest of his romantic life. But that didn’t stop him from feeling miserable to have to kill the closest thing he had to a friend.
Kee studied the two men, wondering as he often did why the one called Speigel always looked away. He wished the human would meet his eyes again, perhaps answer
Kee’s gaze with heat or interest.
“Did you transfer the files to the external server, Dr. Frith?” Speigel balanced on the balls of his feet, pretending to fiddle with some papers on his desk. “We’ve only got another hour until…”
Kee cocked his head, listening for what the human hesitated to say.
Doctor Frith slammed his hand on the table. “We only had two more weeks to go to validate these findings.” He ran his fingers absentmindedly along the black counters.
Frith stared at the dark screen in front of him.
Every day Frith grew paler, more sickly. Kee saw how he was losing his hold on his subordinate. Speigel often met Frith’s eyes now. Sometimes Speigel even shouted and
threw up his hands, trying to usurp power. Kee felt proud of him every time.
“I suppose.” Speigel’s hooded look meant he didn’t agree with his superior.
Kee drew his lips back from his teeth, his excitement building. He wandered to the edge of his cage where his second-in-command, Gar, stood with his shoulder leaning on the bars. Kee spoke in his lowest tone. “Do it now.”