by Kate Tailor
If she didn’t know what they’d done to the Designed, she would’ve bought into all of this. Had they seemed benign to Rho and his brothers when they first arrived on the island? Rho didn’t discuss it much. To Raleigh, Agatha appeared welcoming and Gabe protective. She hoped that they intended to leave her in the small cottage and not a cell.
16
THE CLOCK OVER the second story dining hall door read 6 pm sharp when Raleigh arrived. Pausing, she poked her head in, not sure it was open. The twenty large wooden tables sat vacant, the sturdy chairs empty, and the thick cloth napkins untouched. A low rumble of an air conditioner drifted through the open space. Stepping inside she found an older man standing by the far window, his eyes directed to Phoenix in the distance, but it seemed his mind was elsewhere.
“Excuse me?” Raleigh wasn’t sure if she was in the right place.
The man turned, his suit uncomfortably bunching up on his large stomach. “You must be Raleigh.” His contemplative scowl transformed into a wide smile. “I’m Oliver Able.”
“Nice to meet you.” She reached out to take his extended hand.
The thin dry skin over his meaty hand pulled taunt as he shook hers. A pain shocked his knee as he leaned toward her—distracting her from the heart disease and diabetes that plagued him. Unlike his business partner, Agatha, he wasn’t healthy.
He slapped his knee with a metal cane. “You can feel my arthritis, can’t you? I know it’s a sin to be so unhealthy around people who can sense it. But I’m old and haven’t aged well.”
Raleigh didn’t know how to respond. “I’m sorry it hurts.”
“Have a seat.” He lumbered into one of the chairs at the far table and motioned for her to take the one across from him.
Glancing towards the door she wondered if it would just be the two of them. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“The pleasure is mine. I’ve spent a long time studying Lucidin, and I’ve never met a person like you. The lab results Sabine provided us are nothing short of extraordinary.”
“Thanks.”
“How is Sabine doing these days?”
“Good. She seemed good.”
“It feels like ages since I’ve spoken with her.”
Raleigh observed that his unhealthy heart kept an even rhythm. Being the head of Grant and Able, he surely would’ve known how Sabine was... if they were keeping tabs her. Maybe they weren’t watching as close as Rho feared. There was something familiar about Oliver’s face. “You were in the article.” The picture she’d seen of him was from thirty years ago when he was considerably thinner, but this was the same man. “You’re the scientist who discovered the tribe.”
“That’s me. Back then, there was no Grant and Able. It was only me slogging through accounts of people like you. There are many stories of healers, and it took a lot of time to tease out the ones who used Lucidin. After I found the tribe, I managed to set up a small team, and years later we have this.” He waved his arm expansively.
“The article didn’t say where the tribe was from.”
Oliver tapped his nose. “Few people know that. I promised to keep it a secret.”
“They drank something to help them use the Lucidin, right?”
“Yes, an inducer. It causes a person to make more Lucidin for a short time. I never did get them to tell me the ingredients. To this day, we have people tinkering in the lab trying to recreate it.”
“I’m late, and you’re starting without me.” Agatha hurried across the floor to their table taking a seat between them.
Oliver leaned back in his chair, adjusting so he could turn to Agatha. “We’re discussing the tribe. All you’ve missed is a history lesson. It’s time to eat.”
A waiter appeared with salads and tiny boats of dressing. He positioned them in front of the three, the thick ranch dressing jiggling as he set them down.
Raleigh did her best to remember all the etiquette pointers her mother had chided her for over the years. Politely, she opened the crimson napkin and placed it neatly across her lap. She poured some dressing on her salad. Agatha put so little on hers that it probably wasn’t worth doing and Oliver acted as though he was trying to drown his.
“Is the inducer one of the things I’ll be working on in the lab?” Raleigh asked.
Agatha speared a few leaves. “Yes, but we hope to have you not only in the lab but training with Gabe and the other Receps.”
“We call them that because they have a lot of Receptors,” Oliver explained.
After chewing her delicate bite Agatha turned to Oliver. “Gabe explained who they were. Raleigh seems to have an elementary understanding of Lucidin, and her personal experience gives her insight into it.”
Raleigh didn’t want to train with the Recep army. Her heart tugged her towards medicine and helping people, not being a cog in their weaponry. However, if she was going to find Mu and Tau, training with the Receps would give her the best chance.
“If Receps aren’t being trained as doctors, what’s their purpose?” Raleigh asked. This had been glossed over, she wanted answers and to see how truthful they would be.
The lines of Agatha’s face fell into a flat seriousness, and Oliver let out a laugh. “She’s a smart girl. Don’t look so upset, Aggs. The purpose of this dinner was to bring that up, and it was your idea.”
Agatha put down her fork. “Normally, Raleigh, the Receps have a month at home before they’re brought here. During that month, the trainer Recep in charge teaches them meditation and determines if they’d be a good fit for our program. When they come here, they’re eased into training and learn what’s expected of them.”
Oliver said, “We can’t train people at home. The logistics of it don’t work.”
“Yes, that’s why we bring them here.” Agatha rested her hands on the edge of the table, not gripping, but stabilizing herself. “But we didn’t have a month with you at home. That puts you in the awkward position of being thrust into training.”
Raleigh sensed the jumble of emotions competing in Agatha, a heart aching sadness, a long dormant anger strung in her muscles, and a worry pinching right between her eyes. Raleigh kept her own face neutral. “I’m a fast study. I’ve been sensing for years, and Gabe seems to think that influencing won’t be too hard for me.”
A ragged sigh escaped Agatha. “It isn’t the actual training I’m concerned about... it’s what you’re being trained for. We’ve done a lot of good here at Grant and Able. Our doctors in Chicago and New York are making a lot of progress. However, there have been a few missteps and mistakes made along the way.”
Oliver stopped eating and opened his hands. “The problem with Lucidin is that there isn’t enough of it. I discovered a miracle drug but never found a good way to make it. Most people who create it do so randomly, like you. But some people inherit the trait from a parent or parents. The tribe is a good example. Marriages were established to help give the babies the best chance of creating Lucidin. I contacted a geneticist, John Grant, Agatha’s father, to help figure out what was going on in these people. Around the same time, I had organic chemists working to synthesize the drug in a lab.”
“My father was eccentric, but one of the best minds in his field.” Agatha picked her fork back up but didn’t eat.
Oliver gave Agatha a fatherly smile. “The synthetic we made was a poor substitute for the real thing.”
“We still use it though,” Agatha quickly said. “We mix it with real Lucidin so that it stretches. It’s sort of like stretching lemonade with water—did your mother ever do that?—but instead of diluting it, the real Lucidin makes the synthetic stronger.”
Everyone quieted as the waiter arrived at the table. Enchiladas, keeping with the Southwest theme, were the main course. Cilantro leaves on top gave them a clean aroma, and they were fancier than the ones she ate with her family at the local Tex-Mex restaurant back home.
Oliver hovered his fork over his food as he dutifully continued. “Ideally, we would’ve had an anim
al produce Lucidin. We looked into cows and monkeys, but it didn’t work.”
Raleigh winced, not liking the idea of using animals that way.
Agatha flicked her hand in the air. “It’s not unusual. Hormones like Lucidin can often be produced in other animals and used in humans. Pigs are used to make thyroid, cows made insulin, and horses are still used to make estrogen.”
Oliver cut into his food. “Lucidin is uniquely human and that caused some problems. We couldn’t get the secret of the inducer from the tribe, and, even if we had, it may not have been enough. We were desperate and had one of the best geneticists at our disposal.”
A chill ran down her spine, and she fought the urge to shiver from it. Good thing only she could sense. For a moment, she wondered how different things would be if they’d succeeded with an animal. Lucidin would be readily available. There would be no Designed. No Rho.
“Ethically, it was a gray area,” Agatha said. “I was young then, in my early twenties, and my dad was confounded by how to use what he’d learned to enable people to make more. Ultimately, we decided that it wasn’t ethical to alter embryos. Who do you choose? Your own children? Other people’s? Who do you set up to have this sort of power?”
“Does a person have to have a lot of receptors to make Lucidin?” asked Raleigh. “Sabine said that they’re found together. But if you have the choice of having one and not the other....”
“I’m going to be happy to have you in our labs. You’re a clever one.” Oliver pointed the tongs of his fork approvingly in her direction. “Yes, you can have one without the other. But we didn’t want that. We wanted them to have receptors so that they would be able to heal and use the drug. For all I’d learned about Lucidin, I had no inkling that people could influence. We didn’t know the power that we’d be bestowing.”
The heartache in Agatha won out over the other emotions. “And we bestowed it. My father made twelve babies from scratch. He joked that he felt a bit like Frankenstein. But his creations weren’t ugly. They were beautiful, intelligent babies. We adopted them out to families to give them a normal upbringing. Sabine and Henry raised two of them in their orphanage.”
“They didn’t mention that.” Raleigh tested the waters of lying. It didn’t come naturally to her, and she was careful not to overdo it. “She said that she’d never known anyone who makes Lucidin like I do.”
“No one natural. You’re the only one who does that hasn’t been designed to. That’s what we called the twelve, the Designed. Sabine wouldn’t have brought that up,” Agatha said. “It’s a dark part of our history, and we all wish it to remain that way.”
“Are they here, the people who make it?” Raleigh prayed that her youthful face made her appear innocent.
Oliver adjusted in his chair. “They’re evil. Slowly they stumbled on influencing. We hoped to bring them here when they were older, to train them as doctors. Then one of them nearly killed another boy by stopping his heart.”
“With influencing?” Raleigh tried to act surprised.
Oliver nodded. “He claimed it was a mistake, but there were warning signs along the way. They are charismatic, but something was always off. You can’t design a soul, and I believe they don’t have them.”
Agatha’s fork scraped the top of her food, the conversation dulling her appetite. “They were rounded up and brought to an island where some of our Receps conducted research. We hoped to inspire them with the good work we were doing with Lucidin. Some of them showed genuine interest in what we did, or at least they had us believe that they were on the same side as us. That wasn’t the case.”
Oliver picked up the story. “They betrayed us a few years ago. Agatha and I were in Chicago to establish our clinic. While we were gone, they massacred everyone... scientists, Receps, even some of the janitorial staff.”
“My father and husband were killed.” Agatha gulped down the sadness that filled her throat. The memories evoked a physical pain in her. Raleigh was taken aback by such a raw display of emotion. She wanted to comfort Agatha but didn’t know how.
“Why wasn’t this in the news? Why haven’t I heard about this? Did you go to the police?” Raleigh was still shocked that the technology and the Designed were never brought to the attention of the authorities or the public.
Oliver twisted in his seat. “We couldn’t. Ethically, creating people is a gray area. We could never convince people that it was worth pushing the ethical limits. For them to understand the importance of our work they’d have to see the value of Lucidin. People don’t want to believe Lucidin can do all that it does. Even with our progress and our outcomes, people would rather pin its success on things like God, luck, and fate. It wasn’t possible to convince them that Lucidin is important enough for us to create people who make it.”
With glossy eyes, Agatha gripped the table. “Most of the dead were suffocated. The Designed influenced them simply... well, not to breathe.”
“Agatha, she doesn’t need the details,” Oliver said.
Not following Oliver’s directions, Agatha continued. “We told the families of the Receps, boys younger than the ones we train now, that there’d been a carbon monoxide leak. A few ran into the sea to escape... and drowned.”
Oliver patted Agatha’s hand. “Enough. Don’t put yourself through that again.”
“Where are the Designed now?” Raleigh pictured them sitting around that large table in California.
“Two are dead.” Agatha straightened her back and wiped a tear from her eye. “The synthetic was leaked before the Designed escaped. An illegal trade has been set up around it. Gabe will talk to you about that in depth sometime soon. It’s why Sabine wanted you here. All you need to know is that the two who died were drained to death by people in the illegal trade. We’ve captured another two of them. Their Lucidin fuels our Receps. The other eight are at large.”
Agatha touched Raleigh’s hand. “That’s why we had to bring you here, to keep you safe. Gabe will see to that. He was my bodyguard on the trip to Chicago. I remember telling him that I didn’t need one. How naive we all were.”
“You think they’d do me harm?”
Oliver didn’t hesitate with his answer. “They would. The fact that you’re as powerful as they are is reason enough. They’re a crime against nature. You’re what nature created to combat them.”
Grant and Able wasn’t only interested in her Lucid. They would have her be a soldier in their war. Not a soldier, their champion. High expectations, but everyone at the table knew she was capable of living up to them. Part of her wanted to tell them that the Designed weren’t as evil as they thought, that they hadn’t hurt her, or at least Rho hadn’t.
Agatha turned so she looked at Raleigh directly. “We need you to help us defeat them.”
The whole meal soured for Raleigh. Rho’d said a few people died during their escape. He didn’t say that they’d killed innocent people like the custodians. Sigma’s arrogance chilled her, he wasn’t bluffing when he said he would’ve killed her. Taking a sip of water, she fought the sinking feeling that she might be on the wrong side. Mu and Tau were more like Rho, weren’t they? For now, she had to focus on rescuing them. That thought caused a wave of apprehension to flow across her shoulders.
Everyone quieted. Agatha and Oliver let Raleigh process what she’d been told.
“Yes. I will help you,” Raleigh said. If nothing else, she respected their candor. Sabine hadn’t been honest. Raleigh thought Rho had been, but now she wondered how much he glossed over. If nothing else, Agatha and Oliver wore their emotions, exposing their vulnerability in a forthright fashion. Out of the three people at the table, Raleigh was the one keeping secrets. Lying and spying was only altruistic if she was on the right side of things.
Small talk proved impossible after discussing the massacre. They ate the remainder in silence. Raleigh tried to picture how she would act learning of the Designed in this context. Would she eagerly take up their cause? Hearing Rho’s side first had drawn
her to it. After hearing what Grant and Able said, she was on the fence. One thing wasn’t changing. She was going to stay here, either to help Grant and Able or Rho, and that meant training as Agatha proposed.
After dinner Agatha walked Raleigh down the steps to the main lobby. At night, with no one around, it looked larger.
“We’ll extract twice a day, opposed to once,” said Agatha. “Before, you were doing it simply to ward off the blackouts. Our goal now is to get more Lucidin to train our Receps and aid our doctors.”
“Twice should be fine.” In Paris she’d undergone twice daily extractions with no consequence.
“It’s right through here.” Agatha escorted her past a recreation hall with a pool table and pinball games. “Receps and lab workers go there to blow off steam. Feel free to hang out there if you’re bored. This is our extraction room. You access it with your thumbprint. I’ll put mine down first, and then you will register yours by placing it down next.”
Agatha pressed her thumb over the tiny light and then motioned for Raleigh to do the same. A high pitch beep sounded, and the thick door slid open. Raleigh followed Agatha into a narrow room. To her surprise, the two normal-appearing boys from the cafeteria were inside. Exposed ports on their arms connected to an extraction machine.
“Who’s she?” one asked. He had shaggy blond hair, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt for a band she’d never heard of. A skater kid, he was younger than her. So was the other one. The second one didn’t attempt to look cool. His khaki pants and polo shirt were better suited for someone twice his age. He was heavyset and had difficulty keeping eye contact. Raleigh knew the type.
Agatha made the introductions. “This is Raleigh. She’s a natural who makes Lucidin. Raleigh, this is Quinn and Dale.”
Quinn whistled. “A girl. Finally.”