by Kate Tailor
“I don’t think that will help. I’m sure they’ll behave. The problem is more about him not keeping up down the road.”
“At least we won’t have to worry about it today. Maybe we can find a sport he’s good at.” Raleigh considered asking Adam to scrimmage them in basketball some mornings.
They followed the others to the basketball courts. Their bodies reveled because of the Lucid. The drug whispered through them, easing the constant yearning they had in its absence. Bittersweet, they knew that tomorrow they wouldn’t get Lucidin, and their bodies braced for it.
Dale arrived dressed in Recep black. He sheepishly waved to them as he approached. A nervous flutter filled his stomach.
Raleigh hoped that they’d be playing basketball—because Dale was fairly tall. No. There were ten green balls on the half-court line. Dodgeball. She’d seen the tail end of a game a week ago. It conjured up fun memories of playing in the field behind their development complex when she was younger. The game rewarded agility and aim rather than height and size. She might have a good chance, but Dale was going to be at a disadvantage. The rubber from the balls gave the room a whiff of elementary school. Squeaking sneakers drove the memory home.
Gabe straddled the center line with a foot planted on each side. “Hunter, Dustin, you’re team captains.”
Hunter, a quiet kid in the ninety-eighth percentile, didn’t waste any time. “Carlos.”
Dustin gave him a sneer. “Isaac.”
“Adam.” Hunter gave Adam a fist bump as he came over.
From the first picks it was clear what the stratagems were. Carlos was a shorter, slim guy. Adam, too, was on the slender side. When Raleigh was picked, it was obvious that Hunter was going for hard-to-hit targets. Dustin, on the other hand, chose the beefier guys, hoping for strong throwers. It surprised no one.
“Don’t leave Dale last,” Adam whispered to Hunter when it got down to the last two.
Hunter glanced over his shoulder at Adam. Reluctantly he turned back. “Dale.”
Raleigh could tell that Dale knew he would’ve been selected last. Instead of showing any sign of disgrace, he jogged over and nodded his head to the team. “This is going to be fun.”
Hunter gave a short head bob back. “We should be faster than them. Our best chance at winning is to take the first shots, so get to the middle and get there fast. Try not to get hit, or it’s going to hurt.”
Gabe’s whistle sliced the air silencing them. “Listen up! You should all know the rules, but I’ll recap. If you hit someone with a ball, they’re out. If they catch it, you’re out. Stay on your side of the court. Good luck!”
The teams backed up to the free throw lines, their attention focused on the ten balls. Raleigh sensed the muscles in their legs tighten, like springs ready to be sprung. Their ears waited for Gabe to signal to start, not wanting to waste a precious second. Gabe let the whistle hang on the rim of his thin lips, prolonging the wait until it was uncomfortable. The shrill whistle sounded, and everyone took off for the middle. All the morning runs with Adam paid off. Echoing squeaks of sneakers filled the air as twenty-two players shot toward the balls.
Raleigh lunged through the air, catching a ball. The guy across the way, realizing he’d been beat, retreated. Raleigh, too, scuttled back, knowing from enough elementary school games that the middle was not the place to be. She lobbed the ball and it touched the foot of her opponent.
“Isaac, you’re out!” Gabe yelled.
As soon as Isaac left the court, one of the green balls hit her arm with enough force to propel her backward. Hands out, she braced her fall. Pain shot up her wrists and jolted her arms. Getting up, her face flushed in anger.
“Raleigh, you’re out!” Gabe didn’t show her sympathy, over the past month he’d learned to let her hold her own. She was one of them now. He showed her the indifference he showed the rest.
Raleigh rubbed her shoulder, noticing Dustin smiling across the way. This had the promise of matching the bruise he’d given her on her hip last week. Jealousy hung ugly on him. Raleigh used her Lucidin to numb her own pain, denying him the satisfaction. She rarely barricaded because she didn’t want them to know how powerful she was.
The first round ended soon enough. Her side lost. But there was little time to coddle their egos as they were once again out on the court. The second game was similar to the first, with the exception of Raleigh’s shot falling short and Dustin hitting her in the leg. This time she left the game with a welt on her thigh and a fire in her belly.
“Next time, don’t go for the center,” Hunter ordered her. “Dustin is gunning for you, and you’ll stay in longer if we get him out first. Hang back.”
Raleigh didn’t want to be benched, which this felt like. All month Dustin had targeted her. He was an immature bully, and she had grown tired of him.
Dale, winded, stood next to her. “Dustin’s a jerk.”
“I don’t think anyone here’s going to argue with you.” Raleigh focused on Dustin across the way.
At the start of the next game, Raleigh crouched down in a sprinter’s pose, like the others. The whistle sounded but Raleigh moved back, planting her legs apart and readying her hands. If a ball came her way, she was going to catch it regardless of how hard it came at her.
As the others shot to the middle, Dale, just shy of getting a ball, retreated. Even with Adam’s help, he wasn’t up to snuff. But Raleigh admired how he tried anyway. Running back, Dale’s legs stopped, the muscles no longer under his control. Across the way, Dustin gripped a ball tightly in his hands. He breathed slowly, a telltale sign of influencing.
“Dustin’s influencing.” She waved her arms over her head to get Gabe’s attention.
Gabe didn’t take her side. “It’s not against the rules.”
The ball hit Dale in the shoulder, and he fell over like a statue. Dustin laughed, and Raleigh fumed.
“Dale, you’re out!” Gabe shouted, his face filled with indecision. It was unfair that Dale couldn’t retaliate. At the same time, the point of this exercise was to hone skills.
Raleigh marched forward. “Screw this! You think you’re tough? Picking on someone who can’t influence, you lowly ninety-nine?”
Dustin grinned.
Seething, Raleigh threw up her barricade and froze Dustin’s entire team. Using the phone analogy, it was a conference call, and she was in charge. Their side stood inanimate. Raleigh grabbed a ball and ran to the middle. She slammed the ball into Dustin’s gut, knocking the air out of him. Then she prevented him from doubling over.
“Dustin out!” A smile glimmered in Gabe’s words. From the first day, this was what he’d wanted.
Raleigh grabbed another ball and turned to her teammates. “Are you going to help me?”
They stood silent, fear of her written in their expressions. Raleigh’s abilities dwarfed theirs.
Adam picked up a ball. “Yeah, we’ll help.”
One by one, they took out their opponents.
Gabe was entertained. “A win for Hunter’s team. No more influencing. Raleigh, release them.”
Raleigh gave Dustin a wicked smirk before letting them go. Then she turned to Dale who whooped loudly on the sideline. Half the guys cheered, the other half unsure of what a display like that meant. Gabe could only influence one of them at a time. This wasn’t as grisly a demonstration as the Designed had given on the island, but all of them understood the power she had.
Dale patted Raleigh on the back, and Dustin ran across the line, plowing into her. They landed on the ground together, her head hitting the floor with a smack. Dazed, she righted herself a moment before his fist connected with her cheek. Pain erupted across her eye.
“Dustin!” Gabe shouted.
Dustin barricaded, and it was pretty strong, but Raleigh pushed through it like a bullet through paper. She halted his arm as it wound back for another blow. His weight pinned her, and she didn’t doubt that the moment she let his arm go it would be connecting with her face. Her
best chance was to incapacitate him. Focusing, she could feel the smallest part of his lungs, his bronchioles, hungrily taking up oxygen. She stopped them with little prompting. Dustin’s good arm grasped at his neck, as if that was going to do anything.
“Raleigh! You’ll kill him!” Gabe yanked Dustin, who turned purple, off of her.
She stood up, watching Dustin flounder on the floor. Rho was right. Some people didn’t deserve Lucidin, and Dustin was one of them. She released him, and he sucked down the air in gulps. Coughing, Dustin got his color back.
“She’s been training outside of us,” one of the guys said. “She’s been getting extra doses like Brandon!”
“I don’t need doses.” Raleigh tore the sweatband from her arm to display her port. “I extract twice a day.”
Silence permeated the room, everyone speechless but Gabe. “Dustin, next time, I won’t stop her.”
“You didn’t make me stop.” The adrenaline wracked Raleigh.
Gabe pointed to the door. “Raleigh, let’s get that eye fixed. You’re each down a player. Captains are now refs. No influencing. We’ll be back.”
Gabe walked with Raleigh to the makeshift infirmary. She hopped onto one of the tables, and Gabe pulled a cold compress from the freezer. He wrapped it in a towel and pressed it against her temple.
He asked, “Is this your first black eye?”
“Of course, it is.”
“Well, It’s going to be swollen shut for a few days. Then it will go down.”
“Dustin’s an ass.”
“His behavior is unacceptable.” Gabe’s hands cradled her face, his mind elsewhere.
The goofy look wasn’t romantic. He’d never given any indication of liking her like that. Awkwardness still crept up her spine. She took the compress. “I can hold it.”
Gabe stepped back quickly, leaving a good distance between them. “I’m going to suspend him for a week. I knew they’d discover what you’re capable of. But I certainly didn’t think it would come out like this. You’re as good as them, Raleigh.”
“I’m way better.”
“I don’t mean the Receps. The Designed. Back there, freezing them all, that was something they’d be able to do. You’re ready to go out. You’re ready to face them. I’m going to get you into the field and let you head the team. You can take Adam if you want.”
“I have the benefactors’ dinner.”
“After that. Next week.”
She was ready for the field, the goal of all this training. Like Gabe, she could be a leader. Better than that, she could be the Recep to follow. Screw their percentiles. She set a new precedent. She would get Sigma, and she would make sure Rho could hide.
24
RALEIGH RETURNED TO her cottage with an icepack clutched to her eye. It swelled and throbbed with pain. Prodding the skin, she wondered if this made her tougher or weaker. Maybe in addition to running, she could practice boxing in the mornings before training, not that she was going to be training much longer.
After giving her parents a call, she decided to eat dinner in her room. When she headed out for her evening extraction, she made sure no one saw her.
“It’s all true!” Quinn marveled at her eye. “Does it hurt?”
“What do you think?” Raleigh sat down and attached herself to the extraction machine.
“Makes you wonder if the Receps aren’t the ones we should be worried about.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.” Or at least that’s what she’d been thinking since the rationing.
“They say it still isn’t safe for us to go home.”
“Do you really want to go home because of this? I’m sure you’re not in any danger.”
Quinn lifted up his chin. “I’m going to be an uncle.”
Raleigh didn’t expect to hear that. Quinn rarely discussed anything besides his online gaming. The impression he gave her was that he’d floundered back home and Grant and Able was a welcome relief—a job he could do without really doing anything. Unlike Dale, he didn’t want to work in the labs.
“An uncle?”
“I’m much younger than my sister. She’s thirty and will be giving birth in a few months. My parents had an easy time getting pregnant with her, but it took years of trying to have me. They had to do IVF.” Of course they had, that’s how the scientists had access to Quinn’s embryo in the first place, to make the modifications. “My sister also had issues, but she’s having a healthy baby as far as they can tell. I want to meet it. Agatha said it’s going to be tough. But she might let me go as long as I take a bunch of Receps.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“Yeah, but I want to go home and help now. My sister’s on bed rest. Do you know much about that?”
“No, sorry.”
“Anyhow, Agatha said that I could see the baby, but she can’t spare me before it’s born. My sister could really use the help, and my online courses would be fine to take from home. But I guess that doesn’t matter.”
Things here suddenly didn’t seem so good to Quinn. It was inevitable. Raleigh said, “I’m sorry that you can’t go home.”
“You’ve got to catch the Designed quickly.” Quinn frowned at his arm port.
Raleigh didn’t have the heart to tell him it was unlikely that the Designed would be caught anytime soon. Even if they were, the synthetic sellers would remain a threat. They knew about the Designed, and they’d probably find out about the Modified, if they didn’t already know. Defusing that threat would be a challenge. The large board in the intelligence room with the faces and names of the Designed came to Raleigh’s mind. She knew Quinn wasn’t going to be a part of his niece’s or nephew’s life until they were much older.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.
“She wants it to be a surprise. But my mom said she thinks it’s a boy, from the ultrasound.”
“Congratulations.”
“Gabe is taking me into Phoenix tomorrow to pick out a baby outfit as a gift.”
“Sounds fun.” Raleigh couldn’t picture tough Gabe wading through tiny baby clothes. But she knew he was the best person to handle any danger that might arise.
Quinn finished extracting and unhooked himself from the machine. He gave Raleigh a smile as he left holding the door open for Dale, who had just arrived.
Dale rushed over, crouching down to see her face. “Your eye looks horrible! Is that why you missed dinner?”
“Yeah, and I wanted to call home when my sister would be around. I also wanted to avoid all the gossip—well, as much as possible, anyway.”
“There’s a lot of talk. I’ve been swamped by the Receps asking questions. Thanks for letting me field those.” He sat down in the chair beside her and began his extraction. “They wanted me to sit with them at dinner.”
“Which table?”
“I had my pick, zero receptors and all. I guess I’m one of the cool kids now.”
“Good for you.”
“They all wanted to discuss you, but I was bit tired of it, so I just sat with Quinn.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’m glad I was at the famous dodgeball game to see everything for myself. You didn’t need to stand up for me. But thanks.”
“I wasn’t doing it for you. Did you see what Dustin did to my arm and leg?”
Dale smirked. “Now he’s scared of you. They all are... a little.”
“I’m going out in the field in a week. After today, there’s no question. Gabe even offered to let Adam go with me.”
The corner of Dale’s mouth dipped into a frown. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Did you hear that Quinn’s going to be an uncle?”
“Did you here that they aren’t letting him go home? Maybe once the baby gets out, but it sounds like that will only be for a weekend visit. His sister needs help now.”
“I’m sure she’ll manage. A lot of people do fine without the help of their little brother. I can’t picture Quinn being very good with babi
es.”
“The point is that he can’t leave.”
“I know. It sounds like you two are going to be here for the long haul.”
“If the Designed can do what you did today, the Receps don’t stand a chance.”
“You’re forgetting about the inhibitor.”
Dale threw up his arm that wasn’t attached to the extraction machine. “Raleigh, we could be here for years. That’s if we’re lucky. What kind of plan is that? They should’ve left us at home or explained to us that we’d be signing on for a long time. I thought it would be a year, maybe two. Not forever.”
“You could still go home, it just wouldn’t be as safe.”
“Quinn said he’d risk it and Agatha said no. We’re stuck here, Raleigh. I hope you do a good job out in the field.”
It was possible that the Designed would never be caught. Rho and the others had strong networks. Yes, G and A were training Receps and developing the inhibitor, but the Designed weren’t waiting to be caught. Who knows, if she failed to come back, maybe they’d send in another mole.
Raleigh could tell Agatha about Sigma’s house. She knew enough to direct them to the general locale, within about a block. Most of the Designed still hid there, waiting for Raleigh to sound the alarm, and so they could rescue Mu and Tau. Maybe with Sigma and a few of the others gone, G and A would be able to relax a little. The problem was there was no way to get Rho and Kappa out without letting everyone know something was up.
Dale squinted at her. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. It’s just that there are eight Designed out there. Even if we catch one or two a year, it’ll take five to ten years to get them all. That’s a substantial chunk of your life.”
The number walloped Dale, his mouth flapping open. “Raleigh, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I’m not sure there’s a lot you can do.”
Frustrated, Dale pounded his head against the soft leather of the chair three times. How much of him staying was for safety versus G and A’s growing need for Lucidin? The Designed weren’t people to G and A, and Raleigh hoped that they’d never take that view of the Modified. People shouldn’t be made to produce a drug, receptors or not. Raleigh pondered this as the hungry machine filtered the Lucid from her veins.