Progenitor

by Cassandra Chandler

  “Did you need something, Vaughn?” Brock said, in that same cold voice.

  This was Vaughn? Meg smiled at him, wanting to thank him…after he was done talking to Brock.

  “Yes, Brock.” Vaughn emphasized Brock’s name, which was strange. “Actually, Meg needs something.”

  “We’re sure we can take care of Meg,” Brock said.

  Vaughn sighed. “Stay here for one minute.” He tapped on the plain silver surface of his watch, then said, “FYI, I’m locking down all the doors for sixty seconds to make sure you don’t leave.”

  He slipped past them, then jumped through the opening to the garage. She heard him mutter something about fixing the door. A few moments later, he stepped back into the hallway, her shirt and jacket in hand.

  “Here you go.” He held them out to her.

  Brock finally let go of her arm. He stepped back, giving her room to pull her shirt over her head and shrug into her jacket. She noticed that he kept himself between her and Vaughn’s lanky frame.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Any time.” Vaughn ran his hand through his hair, making the spikes stick up even more. “Look, I… I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” Meg asked.

  “For what Tessa did to you,” he said. “She’d told us that omegas can calm members of the pack, but never how. I didn’t know she was going to do that to you. I never would have told Brock to bring you back here if I’d known.”

  Meg actually laughed. She couldn’t help herself.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “No, it’s not,” Vaughn snapped. He paused, letting out a slow breath. “Sorry. It’s just been rough around here the last few weeks. We should take you to Porter to have you checked out.”

  “She doesn’t need to be checked out,” Brock said. “She’s a werewolf.”

  A muscle in Vaughn’s check started to twitch. “I don’t care. She needs to be checked.”

  The power dynamic in the Blades was much more complex than in her pack. Meg had no idea who the alpha was. Brock ordered Marcus, but Vaughn seemed to order Brock. She didn’t know who she needed to defer to in order to keep the situation diffused.

  She was supposed to stick with Brock. Siding with Vaughn against him didn’t seem the way to do it.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Really.”

  Vaughn sighed again. “Are you sure?”

  “Omegas heal even faster than regular werewolves,” she said.

  “You see?” Brock said. “Everything’s fine. Now, why don’t you get back to work on that stasis chamber. Porter and Eli are waiting for you.”

  “What about Meg?” Vaughn asked.

  “We’ll take care of her.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Vaughn muttered. He turned to Meg and said, “If you need anything, just ask. Okay?”

  “Yeah.” She couldn’t manage more. Her throat was so tight, even without the collar. Everyone was being so kind to her—well, except Brock in the last few minutes. And she was going to have to betray them all.

  Vaughn nodded, then headed back down the hall. He slipped through the open door he’d originally emerged from, and it shut behind him with a soft whoosh, leaving her alone with Brock.

  “Let’s get you to your room,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  Soft voices surrounded Brock. Familiar voices, but he couldn’t remember who they belonged to.

  “He hasn’t come around yet.”

  “I know.”

  “If he doesn’t wake up—”

  “He will wake up.”

  “But if he doesn’t, we have to consider our options.”

  Brock’s body felt even heavier than usual, his thoughts sluggish and strange. Glinting visions flickered across his mind. A city skyline, a view from the Eiffel tower, a small room filled with faces he knew he should recognize but couldn’t.

  He forced his eyes open, letting his own senses overpower the input from his replicants. “Dad?”

  “End communication.” He felt someone take his hand and squeeze it. The bed dipped at his side as they sat next to him. “I’m here, son.”

  Brock had to blink a few times to clear his eyes. How long had it been since he’d seen the room his actual body was occupying? He avoided it as much as possible.

  The ceiling was gunmetal gray, like the rest of the surfaces on the ship. Wires hung down in the edges of his vision, a jerry-rigged system Vaughn had set up to connect the hospital bed and all its sensors to the ranch above them.

  The electrodes that sent cycles of stimulation into various sections of his body were shut off. Vaughn had helped Porter and his dad create a machine that would not only keep Brock’s body from atrophying but actually help Brock build muscle. They’d designed a special diet and IV cocktail to go along with it.

  Brock was convinced they were grasping at straws, trying anything that might help him survive the next split. Losing half his body mass might not be as rough when he’d put on over a hundred extra pounds of muscle, but there was a hell of a lot more to a split than the physical trauma.

  He still wasn’t looking forward to looking like a fucking skeleton afterwards. His body put the weight back on pretty fast, but the replicants always filled out faster. They hadn’t figured out why.

  Yet another mystery that would probably never be answered.

  Brock’s dad leaned into his field of view. His blue eyes were lined with red and bloodshot, dark circles under each. Even with his thick gray and white beard, Brock could see how hollowed out his cheeks were.

  There wasn’t much time left to worry and fret. Pretty soon, his dad would be able to take care of himself again. That was at least one small mercy about Brock’s upcoming birthday.

  “How are you feeling?” Dad asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Didn’t I teach you not to lie to your doctors?” His dad was quiet for a moment, then said, “Your brothers pulled a mean trick, shoving you back in your body. I didn’t know they could do that.”

  Neither did I.

  “Porter explained why they did it,” Dad said. “I can’t say I completely agree with them, but I know their hearts were in the right place.”

  “How did they do it?” Brock asked.

  “They’re all keeping pretty close tabs on you, even if they can’t be here physically. I think it’s tightened the quantum links between the entire group. From what I gathered, they all had to work together to make it happen.” Dad smiled. “I understand the new girl upstairs has made quite an impression on you.”

  “Meg.” Brock actually tried to sit up.

  Dad chuckled as he gently pressed Brock back against the pillows. “I’ll say she has. And that’s a good thing. We need you to keep fighting. Just for a few more days, while Vaughn and I finish testing the stasis chamber.”

  “Even if you can suspend my biological functions, nobody knows how the quantum stuff will handle it.” Yet another topic that Vaughn had gone on about, leaving Brock scratching his head. Even the replicants had trouble following the convoluted science behind their link and how the stasis chamber would affect things.

  “It’s our best shot.” Dad squeezed Brock’s hand harder. “I’m not ready to let you go.”

  “Dad…” Brock didn’t know what to say.

  His dad had already lost so much. He’d been the one to convince Brock’s “mom” to raise him instead of killing Brock when he was born. And then Dad had walked away from the real family they had started—a biological, human family—to protect Brock from a very delayed execution.

  If Dad had stayed, maybe he could have saved his wife and spared Tessa from everything she went through while she was being held captive by the Hive Father—Brock’s real father. Marcus wouldn’t have had to turn Tessa to save her. She wouldn’t be fighting for her sanity.

  But Dad had seen Brock and all of the replicants as his sons. He’d sacrificed everything for them. Now, he was about to lose them all.

  At first, Brock thou
ght that being reunited with Tessa would be a blessing. With her bursts of rage becoming more frequent and harder to bring her back from, it seemed like just another loss waiting to happen. Brock wouldn’t be around to help Dad through it. To help any of them.

  All their work building the Blades of Janus, trying to make the world a place where dwellers and humans could coexist peacefully, was about to crash and burn. When the replicants vaporized, the teams would know their leaders had been dwellers all along. There were some Blades who wouldn’t take that well.

  “Don’t give up on me, Brock.” Dad’s voice was a husky whisper. “Not yet.”

  Brock nodded, knowing there was nothing he could say that would give true comfort. He pulled his hand free. “I’m going to rest a little while.”

  Dad laughed. “There you go, lying to your doctor again.” He patted Brock’s shoulder as he stood. “Just try not to exert yourself too much, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Brock closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. He felt the pull toward his closest replicants immediately, like a current that lifted him up out of his body. Lights sparked around him forming a tunnel that sucked him up to the ranch above.

  Everyone was sitting at the table in the dining room. Vaughn insisted they try to gather for at least one meal a day. He always set two extra places for Brock and his dad, even though they never made it up. Vaughn brought them plates of food in the ship afterwards and stayed to keep Dad company for a while.

  For the millionth time, Brock was grateful Porter had discovered Vaughn and recruited him as a Blade. They owed him so much.

  Dexter and Porter were at the ends of the table. Vaughn had one side to himself, sitting close to Porter and across from Marcus. Tessa was next to Dexter, of course, so he could help keep her under control if she lost it at the meal. Meg was tucked between Marcus and Tessa.

  Brock wanted to see what it looked like when Meg let her hair down. Her bun looked like it was pulling on her skin, making her strong cheekbones even more pronounced. He wouldn’t mind the librarian or ballerina look on her if her bun didn’t seem almost sadistically tight.

  Today, the meal was a brunch spread that would have put any three-star restaurant to shame. It seemed a bit of a waste, with Tessa and Marcus’s plates filled with slices of bloody meat. Meg’s plate actually had an omelet, toast, biscuits and gravy, and some vegetables in what looked like a mushroom and butter sauce.

  If this is what Vaughn brought him, Brock might actually be able to get some real food down today, instead of just dealing with the IVs of…whatever it was his dad was pumping into him to keep his biomass where they needed it.

  There was a little pile of something Meg had pushed aside on her plate. Brock wanted to know what it was and why she didn’t like it. People seldom turned down Vaughn’s cooking, unless they had special needs, like Tessa and Marcus only eating raw meat. Even then, Vaughn prepared their food so that it looked appealing.

  Brock was grateful that Meg was eating at all, but it bothered him that she was wearing the same outfit she’d arrived in. They had plenty of clothes on hand that would fit her.

  “Did you hang around trash bins outside of restaurants ever?” Tessa asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Meg said. “Those were the best.”

  “Especially when you make a racket.” Tessa grinned and Meg smiled back.

  “I have a feeling I’m going to regret asking this, but why trash bins?” Marcus said.

  “When someone comes out to see what’s making the noise and they see you, they usually feel sorry for you and give you the best kitchen scraps,” Tessa said. “Sometimes they’ll even make you something fresh.”

  Hearing Tessa talk about the time when their family was separated was always hard. She’d been through terrible ordeals. The pain and the weight of supporting his replicants hadn’t been a walk in the park for Brock, but at least he’d been with their dad.

  It sounded like Meg had endured more than her share of suffering as well.

  Meg nodded. “It works best when you’re young. They stopped feeling sorry for me when I was around thirteen.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Vaughn dropped his fork on his plate with a loud clatter, then covered his face.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Meg asked.

  Vaughn placed his hands carefully on the table. “My problem isn’t with what you said, but that you can say that at all. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “The world isn’t perfect.” Meg’s voice was measured and low. “Human or otherwise. When the pack found me, they saved me.”

  She looked over at Marcus and smiled. He kept scowling.

  “My experience was…very different,” he said.

  Meg bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”

  Marcus and Tessa both reached out and rested their hands on Meg’s back.

  “You don’t have to keep apologizing.” Tessa cast a look at Dexter that screamed murderous intent. She always glared at him, but this was amped up about a million times. What had Dexter done to piss her off so bad?

  “We all had very different experiences with our transformations,” Marcus said.

  One of Tessa’s eyes started to twitch.

  Vaughn let out a sigh. “I’m never leaving the kitchen again. I think it’s one of my new missions in life to keep you two fed.”

  Brock couldn’t agree more. He would even add that to the list of Vaughn’s permanent assignments.

  “Enjoying the show?”

  Brock wondered when Dexter would pick up on his presence.

  “Depends on if you’re going to try to trap me in my body again,” Brock projected.

  “We were protecting you. You were trying to get out of the van.”

  “I was trying to help Meg,” Brock thought.

  “We took care of Meg.”

  Brock didn’t like the timbre of Dexter’s thoughts. There was more smugness to them than usual.

  “What did you do?” Brock thought.

  “What needed to be done, as always.”

  He would have to look into that, but not while Dexter was so connected to his mind. Brock could sense all the replicants’ mental energy, so close that their thoughts almost felt like they were entwined.

  He could work with that.

  Leaving one part of his attention in the room, he drew himself toward the center of the energy source—his own mind. By a stroke of luck, his dad wasn’t in the room with Brock’s body.

  “Activate monitor,” Brock said.

  The ceiling above the foot of his bed flickered. A screen tilted down so that he could easily see the view without having to sit up.

  “Key on the werewolf known as Meg.”

  He was sure Porter had already given her a dehumanizing designation number, but hoped Vaughn’s computer software was smart enough to figure out who Brock meant.

  The screen split into two views of the dining room. Both entrances were covered and he could see Meg from the different angles.

  “Rewind…” How long had he been asleep? He only had three days left. He didn’t want to sleep through them. “Play back footage from the garage when Meg first arrived.”

  He watched himself tear into the garage, spinning the hoverbike in a semi-circle as he braked. Damn, that looked cool. But what came next was not something he wanted to see again.

  “Skip ahead twenty minutes. Continue to key on Meg.”

  The view changed to the hallway. Meg and Dexter were talking to Vaughn. The conversation seemed innocuous enough. Vaughn went back to work in his ops room and Dexter led Meg to the elevator at the end of the hall.

  That was good. Brock wanted Dexter to feed her and help her settle in. But if Dexter had helped her, why was she still wearing the same ratty clothes that Brock had first seen her in? She didn’t look like she’d showered or rested, either, from the deep shadows beneath her eyes and the grit still on her skin from being attacked at the park.

  The elevator ride lasted too long. If Dexter had taken h
er up to the ranch, they would have already arrived. Had he taken her to the ship? No, he’d never do that.

  Brock’s heart rate picked up. He could hear it on the machines next to his bed. He took a few breaths to calm himself. If his dad came running in, he’d interrupt Brock’s search for answers.

  There were only three sublevels at the ranch. The main sublevel contained ops, a couple of labs, the armory, and the infirmary. The second level had the more “volatile” labs, plus the Boom Room for testing prototypes.

  Then there was sublevel 3. The pit.

  On the monitor, the elevator doors opened to a gunmetal gray corridor. Holding cells lined either side. Vaughn had designed sublevel 3 to be a long rectangle, with some kind of impenetrable metal on the floors, ceilings, and exterior walls.

  The interior walls that separated each holding cell and the hallway were made of a clear material that was harder than ballistic glass. They could see every corner of the level from anywhere they stood.

  Most of the small rooms had a bench attached to the exterior wall, and various amenities meant to handle the type of dweller being contained. Some had an electric current that would activate when the cells were prepped, creating a barrier that would shock anyone or anything that tried to escape. Others could be made to drop below freezing temperatures or had fire grates built into the floor along the walls.

  After the incident with the Hive Father escaping custody, they had modified a couple of the cells to be airtight.

  Only one cell was meant for humanoid dwellers without specialized needs. The same one that they could use to hold human hunters if needed. It had a toilet, a sink, and a bench that was made of foamy material that would be comfortable as a bed.

  Dexter grabbed Meg’s arm hard enough that she winced. He half-dragged her down the hall, past the cell that might have given her some comfort. He threw Meg into the farthest cell from the elevator.

  She stumbled forward from the force of his push, then spun around in the center of the chamber. Dexter stepped back and sealed the room.

  Brock clutched the sheets in his hands, willing himself to calm down. Werewolves needed physical proximity. Tessa had explained that they used touch and closeness to calm themselves and each other. And that being isolated could drive a werewolf insane, turning them into rogues.