Specimen(106)

“You can’t do this!” Riley screams at her. “You fucking bitch! Leave him alone! Leave him alone!”

“You’re a traitor,” Dr. McCall tells her. “Lucky for you, we have a solution that will benefit everyone, and you’ll be able to return to your work.”

“No!” I scream as I struggle. “I made her go with me! I abducted her and forced her to go! It was all me!”

“No one believes that.” Dr. McCall tilts her head and raises her eyebrow at me.

“I will never work for Mills again!” Riley screams at her. “You can’t force me to do that! I’d die first!”

Dr. McCall laughs.

“You will do exactly as you will be programmed to do.” She steps up to Riley as the specimen holds her arms to her sides. She leans close and sneers. “This time, we’re going to do things my way. Take her away!”

She gestures toward the door, and the specimen hauls Riley through it. I scream her name again and again as she is dragged from my sight. I can hear the whirring of helicopter blades outside. The sound increases as the machine takes off into the sky, Riley held captive aboard the craft.

She’s gone.

I can’t breathe right. I can barely bring myself to move at all. She’s gone, and the very idea of existing without her is moot. It’s pointless and without meaning. I look at my hands as they’re bound in front of me and try to figure out what I should have done with them to keep this from happening.

I failed. I failed. I failed.

I continue to stare at the door as a gurney is brought next to me and I’m lifted into the air and deposited in the center of it. Hands hold me down as straps circle my body, restraining me on the rolling table. I look around me at the faces of those who have defeated me, and I don’t even want to exact revenge. All the tactical information in my head tells me there is no chance. No matter what I do to them now, she’ll still be gone.

“Put him down.” Dr. McCall sneers every word as she glares down at me, gloating.

I feel a sharp stabbing sensation on the right side of my head as a hundred metal probes are shoved into the skin of my neck and behind my right ear. I try to pull away from the pain, but someone’s strapped my head in place.

I can’t let this happen.

“Riley!” I scream again. I twist my arm, hear the tear of muscle under my skin, but manage to free myself from the restraint. I grab at Dr. McCall, catching her by the lapels of her lab coat, and turn the fabric in my fingers until she’s gasping and choking for air.

Someone is pounding my chest while someone else hits my face over and over again. Dr. McCall’s face turns red then blue. There’s a knee on my shoulder, and a hand pushes against the device they put on my neck and head right before a pulse of electricity runs through me.

My hand shakes. I lose my grip, and hear Dr. McCall gasp before she drops to her knees, clawing at her throat. Another jolt goes through me, and everything in my head starts to merge together.

Inside myself, I begin to fall.

It’s a long drop. Images of my life fly past me. I see my parents sitting in the sun on our front porch—Dad is smiling, and Mom is holding my baby sister. I see my sister skipping home from school as I tend the dry fields. I see Riley’s face when I first wake up in the lab. I see her beautiful smile as I lay her down on a soft mattress and press my lips to hers…

My eyes fill with a bright white light and then nothing but darkness.





Epilogue


I wake in a stark, white room.

“Caucasian male, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters, weighing eighty-nine kilograms…”

I turn my head toward the sound of the voice, but I can’t see much from where I am. I shift my shoulders, trying to sit up, but I’m strapped to the bed. I can’t move my arms or my legs. My heart begins to pound in my chest as adrenaline surges through my system.

I fight against the restraints, but they seem to hold me down everywhere—arms, legs, shoulders, and torso. I can’t get enough leverage against any one strap to free myself, and panic rises.

This is wrong. This is dangerous. Move. Get out. Escape.

“Relax.” A woman appears beside me, brushing her fingers over the inside of my arm.

Calm covers me like the waters of a warm bath, soaking into my skin from the point where she’s touched me. I drop my shoulders back to the mattress as I look into her soft green-brown eyes. My heart slows, and my breathing returns to normal.

“Where am I?” I ask. I try to look around the room from my vantage point on my back, but all I can see are tables and carts full of medical equipment. “I don’t remember how I got here.”