I can’t define how I feel about Riley. Love is too simple a word.
Though I have spent approximately the same amount of time with both Isaac and Pike, I identify more with Isaac. Pike smells too much like Dr. McCall, and I don’t trust her. She has it in for Riley, and despite the adjustments Riley made to keep me from going after Dr. McCall when she says something derogatory about Riley, I still struggle against the desire.
I flip another page of the manual, and there’s a photograph of someone planting seedlings in rough soil. The man in the picture is older and red-faced with sweat on his brow. Many of the seedlings are already turning brown.
They won’t survive.
I blink, the image reminding me of the dream I’d had last night. A vision of my hands pushing tiny seeds into little paper pots fills my head.
“Do you ever dream?” I ask Isaac.
“I guess,” he says with a shrug. “Sometimes I’ll dream about one of the training missions from the virtual center. Usually it’s because I thought of a better way to accomplish the objectives—like my head wants to try it out again.”
It isn’t the kind of dream I want to hear about, but I can only nod. Though I have similar thoughts in my head, I don’t recall actually dreaming about missions. All my dreams are on a much more personal level.
But I can’t tell him that.
The doors open, and Pike strides in.
“I hear they’re getting ready to send us out on a real mission,” Pike says as he takes a seat across from me.
“Oh yeah? Who said that?” Isaac leans back in his chair, making the two front legs rise up in the air.
“Who else do I ever talk to?” Pike says with a laugh. “Helen slipped me the info while I was slipping her the dick.”
Isaac chuckles, but I just roll my eyes. I know the others are just as sexually conditioned as I am, but the very idea of having my dick anywhere near Dr. McCall leaves me feeling a little queasy. How can they talk about missions while they’re fucking?
“Did you get any actual information?” I ask.
“Something about a defector,” Pike says as he shrugs his shoulders. “I was a little preoccupied and didn’t ask for a lot of detail.”
“Perks of the job!” Isaac says. He reaches over and punches me in the shoulder. “With all the extra drugs you have in your system, you have to be all over Dr. Grace all the time.”
I can’t help the grin that spreads over my face. There is no denying it. Since the first time she let me fuck her, I’d been inside her as often as possible. I try to wait until she isn’t busy, but sometimes I have to resort to distraction techniques. I’d come up behind her when she’d be working on the computer, slip my arms around her, and kiss her relentlessly until she’d let me fuck her on the desk.
Pike laughs loudly when I don’t offer a verbal response. I’m not comfortable talking about my sexual relationship with my doctor, so I try to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“I’ve got information on several defectors,” I say. “When Riley uploaded historical data into my head, there was a bunch of stuff on technical people who went rogue last year.”
Isaac and Pike both pause for a moment, retrieving the information for themselves.
“She didn’t give me a name,” Pike says. “I don’t know which one it might be. Have you done any virtual training on recovering people?”
“No,” Isaac and I say in unison.
“Huh.” Pike frowns. “I’ve done two of those.”
“I thought most of our training was on the same timeline,” Isaac says. “Are there any other anomalies?”
We discuss the types of virtual missions we’ve done, but the schedule is identical with this one exception.
“Weird.”
“Maybe you have another one going on today,” Isaac says as he nods toward the entrance to the lounge. Dr. McCall is heading in our direction, but she doesn’t acknowledge me as she retrieves Pike. He leaves with a quick “See ya later” in a tone too low for his doctor to hear, but she gives him a stern look anyway.
“Three likely candidates,” Isaac says.
“Candidates?”
“Defectors.” He leans forward again, and the legs of his chair bang against the floor. “Spencer Cannon from the medical division. He fought against Project Mindstorm from the beginning. Annabel Jarvis, also from medical is a likely candidate.”
“She made claims against synthetic food production.” I tilt my head as I access the information. “I understand Cannon—he knows a lot about the drug treatments for Project Mindstorm. Why Jarvis?”