by Kate Tailor
Gabe turned to Raleigh. “You ready to go?”
“Against who?” She’d lose to every one of these guys if she couldn’t influence.
“Ninety-seventh here will take her,” one of the guys whooped as he hit Adam on the back. “Or I can take her, but not in the ring.”
Gabe shot the guy a look that was so severe it shut everyone up. Then he turned to Raleigh. “I’ll go up against you, and we can do it over here, so we don’t get comments like that.” They moved into a corner. “Show me your stance.”
Raleigh positioned her body the way she’d seen the guys in the circle do it. Gabe repositioned her arms.
“Hit me,” he said.
Raleigh’s fist flew past his jaw without making contact.
“How many fights have you been in?”
“None. Are we in some bad fifties’ sitcom? People don’t get in playground fights in real life.”
“We don’t send teams to playgrounds.” He motioned for her to come at him again.
“Maybe if you didn’t favor me, they wouldn’t dislike me.”
“Or you could tell them the truth about why you’re here.”
“If I tell them the only thing they’ll care about is my Lucidin. I’m more than that. I don’t want to end up sitting by the pool like Dale.”
Gabe repositioned her arms again. Then he showed her how to adjust her weight as she threw a punch. “They’ll respect you. That’s why you’re training. When we’re out in the field, I’ll pair you with some of the bigger guys. That way, if influencing is out, you’ll have them.”
Raleigh turned her attention to the guys in the circle. One of them gave her a wink. “They’re assholes.”
“There aren’t many girls around. They’ve lost their manners. I’ll talk to them again about not fraternizing.”
“They just joke about being interested. Their bodies are more concerned with Lucidin than sex. Not having girls here because it would be a distraction doesn’t hold water as an excuse.”
“We don’t usually train girls as Receps because we don’t want them to get the shit kicked out of them by the Designed.” Gabe made his point by taking her down with one fluid move.
Her back hit the mat hard, jarring the wind from her lungs. She coughed once and pushed herself back up.
“Did that make you angry? Come on, Raleigh. Show me what you got.”
She went for him and he easily dodged her. “If I could influence, you’d be screwed.”
“All right. Let’s see it.” Gabe secured his mental barricade and assumed his sparring position.
“You’re barricading.”
“Yeah. Can you break it?”
Raleigh pushed out her mind, trying to tease out any holes in his mental defenses. His barricade reminded her of a sheet of cardboard. Some of the other barricades were as flimsy as paper. She’d sensed those two days ago. Her own barricade was more like a brick wall. She sent the strongest signal to Gabe she could. Using the phone analogy to explain it, she’d say the ringer was set to deafening. In her head she screamed at him to listen and the barricade fell, giving way to her power.
Gabe’s eyes grew wide, and the playful smile disappeared from his lips. She could feel a slight bounce in his feet as he bobbed away from her. He paused, and she threw a punch, cutting him across the cheek. It wasn’t hard enough to repay him for flooring her.
Emotion flickered in his eye. Was it anger? She pushed up her barricade to be on the safe side. This wasn’t like with Collin. She didn’t need Rho to save her now, but instead of attacking her, Gabe grinned.
He walked over and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. “Good. Very good. You’re amazing. After practice I’m going to take you to meet the intelligence crew. I want you to get involved with their work.”
They returned to the group. The sparring increased their competitiveness. Fires simmered in their chests—from the fighting, the Lucidin, or both.
Dustin’s eyes traversed between her and Gabe. His eyes darkened, and his mouth pressed into an angry line. She was going to have to keep her eye on him. Luckily, with his large size and thundering steps, he wouldn’t be able to sneak up on her even if he barricaded.
Dustin squared off against Adam. With no influencing it was a relatively fair fight. A lot of the lower percentiles compensated with extra strength training, and Adam’s morning runs made him quick. Dustin landed a blunt hit on Adam’s shoulder, harder than necessary. Dustin’s eyes darted to Raleigh. If he was going to target her friends, then she might have to put him in his place, but not today. Adam could hold his own for now.
The session wrapped up, and Raleigh left the gym. Despite the ache in her calves, her feet moved quickly in the direction of the locker room. The intelligence team sounded like a promising lead. It should help her find Mu and Tau. Stripping down quickly, she turned on the shower and scrubbed the smell of sweat and mud from her skin. There was no languishing under the water today.
As she put on the fresh black clothes, she considered Mu and Tau. If she did find them, would she be able to get them out? Would they be in the same weakened state as Rho? Or physically abused? Or on the inducer? The task felt insurmountable. Could she leave without them? Rho was angry that she’d defied him. If she returned empty-handed, he may withdraw the offer of running away. Even if they did run, it would probably be futile. With the inhibitor and the tenacity of Grant and Able, it seemed inevitable that the Designed would be caught. She didn’t want to leave here just to be captured in a raid on the Designed. There was also the heavy thought that abandoning Grant and Able robbed her of the chance to become a doctor. There was no doubt in her mind that Mu and Tau deserved to be free, but so much good came out of the Lucidin they provided the doctors. How many lives would be saved by forfeiting theirs?
Raleigh jogged out of the locker room.
“Hey Ninety-six!” a Recep named Felix said.
Whirling around, Raleigh found him close to her. Too close. She shoved his chest. Some of his testosterone must have rubbed off. “Do you know how dehumanizing that is?”
“Call me Ninety-Nine anytime you want.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Felix. I’ve got to be going.”
“Where are you running off to?”
Raleigh flipped her damp hair over her shoulder. “That isn’t your business.”
“It’s to hang out with Gabe, isn’t it? Are you sleeping with him? Is that why he’s giving you preferential treatment?”
“No” Raleigh used her shoulder to push past him.
He turned and darted in front of her, preventing her from getting outside. “Because fraternization is against the rules. You know that, right? Even if Gabe might give you extra doses.”
“I know.” Raleigh took a step to the side. “I’m not with Gabe.”
He still didn’t move, but his sneer dissolved. “I wanted you to know that I’ve never been one for rules, and, well, I wouldn’t mind breaking that one.”
Raleigh stopped trying to skip around him and focused on his eyes, which were wide and questioning. It was clear that she’d misjudged. Felix clearly maintained his sex drive with or without the yearning for Lucidin.
“No.”
“Think about it. A ninety-sixth could do much worse. That, and I could make sure some of the guys go easier on you.”
“I won’t need that.”
“You know, a good Recep uses all the tools at their disposal. Since you’re lacking strength, you might think about what that means for you.”
“Raleigh!” Gabe approached them his hands open. “I thought we were meeting out front.”
Felix didn’t scurry away, but he gave her a sly wink that Gabe didn’t see before he turned and walked toward the main door.
“It’s nice to see that not only the lower percentiles are talking to you now. Felix is one of the higher ones.”
“I don’t consider it talking when he’s making a pass at me.”
Gabe’s face hardened. “He shouldn�
�t have. I’ll talk to him.”
“Don’t bother. I’m sure it’s just another way for him to ‘bolster the competition.’”
“You can’t date any of them.” Gabe furrowed his brow.
She wondered if he’d tell her about Gamma being assaulted on the island for his Lucidin. Raleigh couldn’t say for sure that Gabe wasn’t one of the attackers, but on second thought, she couldn’t see it. Gabe was the type of guy who clung to morals and the notions of right and wrong.
“Promise me you won’t date any of them.”
“I won’t.” She didn’t want to date any of the Receps. Thoughts of Collin filled her head. She pictured the way he looked at Rho, and they weren’t sleeping together. No way. And none of them came close to Rho. The thought of never seeing him again produced an aching in her chest. “Felix accused me of getting extra doses from you.”
Gabe rubbed his chin and looked at the gymnasium. “I’ve told the guys that we’re going to need to start rationing. None of us like it, but the stockpiles are running out, and those in the field and the doctors need it more.”
“But Dale, Quinn, and I have been giving.”
“That and we have the two captured Designed, and Dale and Quinn are extracting three times a day. Still, it’s going to be a much larger problem if we don’t head it off now with rationing. It won’t affect you.”
“I could give three times.”
“Honestly, the most helpful thing you could do would be to get the Designed. And to do that, you need to familiarize yourself with them. Let’s go to Intelligence.”
21
GABE SWIPED HIS keycard to open the door of the squat cement Intelligence building. A burst of cold air drifted out of the antechamber. Additional security features in the form of an eye scanner and keypad awaited them. Whatever they kept in here, they didn’t want very many people seeing. Gabe leveled his face with the narrow box in the corner of the antechamber. A flash lit up his eyes, and a beep changed the light over the door from red to green. Gabe turned to her. “Put your eye to that green screen. I’m going to register you with the system.”
Obeying, she stepped forward, her eyes staring into the box. Her eyelid itched to close, fearful that it would be like the alarming puff of a glaucoma test. Thankfully, it was only a flash of dull light. Gabe typed in a series of commands on the nearby box.
“Put your index finger on the red dot,” he said, pointing to a quarter-sized spot.
Raleigh pressed her finger against the light. She waited until it turned green, and the heavy door slid open. They stepped in, the dark interior a stark contrast to the Arizona sunshine outside. The door slid shut behind them, and the ominous lock clicked into place.
“What’s all this security for? You aren’t keeping the two captured Designed here, are you?” Surely, anyone would be curious about their whereabouts, not just a spy.
“No. They’re on a boat in the ocean that docks occasionally for supplies and to drop off the Lucidin. They’re on the inhibitor, so they aren’t a danger to the crew. We assume that eventually the others will come to break them out. They’re fiercely loyal to one another. This adds an extra level of difficulty for them.”
Unfortunately, it added an extra level of difficulty for her, too—perhaps insurmountable. Her chest tightened. There was a good chance that she would never get the opportunity. If so, her mission here was an utter failure. She inhaled, willing away the frustration, she had to mask her emotions around Gabe. “That’s very clever.”
“The security here is to protect our information. We keep track of the synthetic trade and the Designed. We can’t risk having just anyone see it. I know it’s a lot of cloaks and daggers, but most of the people in here are geeks.”
It was true. The fluorescent and natural light revealed computers lining the walls. Intelligent-seeming men and women hunched over the keyboards. Trevor would’ve been at home here. The stale air slipped into her lungs leaving a metallic taste in her mouth, the static kind that reminded her of the computer banks back at school. Back pains ailed the programmers who had sat too long. These were the folks she’d sensed when she was snooping. None of them looked up, or seemed to care, that she and Gabe were there.
A gigantic four-by-three electronic grid caught her attention. Each column had a Designed triplet set with green, blue, or red backlighting. The first of the four columns was Sigma’s. Sigma, distinguished by his lack of smile and small symbol, sat above Rho’s grinning picture. Both were backlit in red. Underneath Rho was their third triplet, Pi. His square was dimmed. The next column was the Psi, Kappa, Mu triplet. Psi in red, Kappa backlit in green, and Mu in blue. The remaining triplet trios occupied the last two columns.
Gabe pointed to the board. “Red means that we kill them on sight, green means we capture them, and blue means they’re already taken. The images that aren’t lit are dead. When we started, all of them were lit up. The synthetic dealers are doing some of the work for us.”
The red border around Rho made her squirm. Kappa, at least, was in green. Psi, Sigma’s right-hand man, was red like Rho. Personality-wise Psi and Kappa were different, but physically they were replicas. “How can you tell Kappa apart from Psi?”
“They each wear a necklace with their symbol. If you aren’t sure, then err on the side of caution.”
“You mean kill them?”
“You’re making the mistake of thinking they’re human. They look it, but they aren’t.” Gabe went to a nearby computer, typed in his password, and pulled up a video.
The grainy quality of the video made it hard to discern details. Raleigh moved closer to the monitor to see better. On the screen, scientists, very similar to the ones she’d met in the lab yesterday, were at their stations. They clawed at their necks and clutched their chests. Their faces contorted in pain, their mouths open. She didn’t need the sound to know the depths of their agony. One by one they crumpled to the ground. The twelve Designed passed through the lab leaving a trail of death in their wake. Sigma led the grim march—the way he mercilessly walked past the bodies, it had to be him. These weren’t peaceful deaths. They were vicious and not necessary.
“Why kill the scientists?” She wanted to look away but her eyes fixed in place. The Receps, who held them prisoner, she could understand fighting in self-defense, but this was the murder of defenseless workers.
“They didn’t want them to continue their work on Lucidin. They set fire to the building. Those that were injured burned to death. The ones that died before the fire were lucky.”
“And Agatha’s husband?”
“Is one of them.”
“And it was all the Designed?”
“Count them up if you want. There are twelve.”
Raleigh tried to tell their faces apart. Xi, Gamma, and Upsilon, with their black skin, stood out from the other nine. One with dark hair, she guessed was Rho, checked bodies before he ran over and grabbed Sigma. Arms flew in a heated exchange, but the killings didn’t stop. This couldn’t have been a plan Rho agreed to. But how could he not have known Sigma would do it? Once it started, he could’ve fought his brothers, he could’ve stopped the killings. The weight of those deaths hung on all twelve of them. And it wasn’t in self-defense—as she’d been led to believe.
Raleigh’s stomach flipped, and her mouth dried. She was on the wrong side of things. Gabe was right about them being monsters.
“I don’t need to see anymore.” She turned her face from the screen unable to stomach it.
Respecting her wishes, he turned it off. “Let’s talk about something else.”
They hadn’t really talked about the Designed. They didn’t need to. The video spoke volumes. A jolt of regret shot down her spine. It had been wrong to trust them. She’d known Rho for what, a week or two? The joke was that he was charismatic, but his looks alone would’ve been enough to sway her. Raleigh wasn’t the type of girl who fell prey to that, at least she thought she wasn’t. But now, as she examined her feelings closely, how many
times had she thought about him since coming here? The answer was a lot. She was smitten, and that clouded her judgment.
A fire rose in her belly as she clenched her jaw. She could tell Gabe about the home in California, and he and the Receps could be there with the inhibitor in hours. No, she couldn’t do that. Rho and Kappa didn’t deserve to be killed and captured. Sigma had led the massacre, they’d just failed to stop it. She couldn’t see any way to give Sigma to Gabe without all the others. So, it had to be none.
Yesterday she’d come to the realization that staying with Grant and Able would help her become a doctor. Not only a doctor, a savior to all the sick who’d lost hope—like her before treatment. Today she saw the error of the Designed. Even if some of them weren’t bad, a few were wicked.
“It’s really upsetting,” Gabe hovered over her shoulder, but didn’t touch her. “Do you want to talk about it? Are you ready to see some of our intelligence?”
“Show me.” If she was going to be a Recep, she might as well know everything.
He led her to a table with a large monitor displaying a map of the world. “This is a map of the Lucidin trade, or as much as we know about it anyway. It’s called Lucid on the streets.” Gabe twisted his finger over Europe, causing that portion of the map to expand across the whole screen. Bright dots, with small pictures next to them, covered the map. He slid his finger over a dot and pulled up the information about that particular dealer. Raleigh’s eyes quickly scanned for Brent’s name. He wasn’t there, but Marcel was.
“There are two or three synthetics out there. Most of them are worse quality than the one we make. The market is odd. Since Lucidin isn’t a street drug, it doesn’t have the same laws associated with it. That’s to their advantage. Their main problem is that so few people use it. Anyone can get high off heroin, but only a handful of people can sense on Lucidin. Because of that, the cliental is different for Lucidin than other drugs. The goal with most drugs is to get high, but with Lucidin, it’s to have more power. They make some back-alley deals, but most of it’s done in broad daylight with people who can afford to take it regularly. Once they get a client, they have them for a while.”