Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
“We need to act,” I say, my decision made. “My following at Groom Lake runs deep, and not just with GTECHs. The human soldiers sent to battle in their natural, vulnerable form, resent being denied GTECH conversion. We’ll have no problem seizing control.”
“We don’t have the location of the remaining serum.”
“We are the serum,” I say. “We’ll make more. We’ll create it from our blood. I know you can do it,” I add. “We can do it.”
“I’ll do it, but we really need the extra serum for testing.”
“We’ll make them give it to us. You mentioned Addie. We’ll ransom her for it. Lawrence is a bastard, but I hear he loves her.”
“He does.”
“All right then. Let’s go fuck and then plan our takeover.” My fingers wrap around the back of her neck and pull her close. “Do not fear, my beauty. Soon you will be the queen of a new nation that will grow and prosper. No one will stop us.”
“No one will stop us,” she whispers.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Addie
My weekend with Creed ends Monday morning at my place, with us reluctantly saying our goodbyes with one final passionate kiss and plans for dinner. He’s going to windwalk to get us Chinese food, which I’m really excited about. To say that I’m “smitten,” as my mother would call it, is an understatement. It literally feels as if Creed has crawled under my skin and settled somewhere deep inside my very soul. It’s insane, and a scientific mind like my own has a hard time with that kind of fanciful idea. But I still feel it, and if my mother were alive, she’d have a million ways to analyze it, too. God, how I wish she were here to do just that, because while I learned a lot from her, objectivity on oneself is a tough hill to climb. I think—well, I think this must be what falling in love does to a person, and I’ve just never really experienced it before. But all these things contribute to my guilt over the one thing I didn’t tell Creed.
That being the fact that my father is considering locking up the GTECHs.
I decide the best way to voice that problem is to talk my father out of that mistake, which was always in my plan anyway.
Driven by this idea, once I’m at work in the underground facility, my father is in my sights. The minute my things are put away in my desk, I start the charge toward my father’s office. I arrive at seven thirty, and while his secretary is not yet in, his office door is open.
I step to the entryway to find him sitting with his head pressed to his hands and resting on his elbows. “Dad?”
He glances up and motions me inside. “Shut the door.”
I do as he says, with concern rocking my belly. “What’s wrong?”
“Just sit first,” he says, his tone irritated, but I get the impression it’s not at me, but rather a problem he can’t seem to solve.
I sit. “Dad?”
“What if I told you the X2-positive lab rats became violent, and some of them killed each other?”
My stomach sinks, but I remain composed and logical. “I’d say I’d want to know a whole lot more detail to understand what triggered such a reaction, and it is a reaction. No such behavior happens suddenly and in unison to other living beings, that is not triggered. But I’d also say this could actually be promising. Only three of the X2-positive have been aggressive. We find the trigger that set off this aggression, we isolate the problem.”
“Well, that’s a different take.”
“Than who? Chin’s?”
“Yes, but you need to hear the rest of the story. There’s more.”
“There’s always more. I’m listening.”
“A blood exchange between these ‘lifebonds’ as some of the scientific team are now calling them, at least in the lab rats, had an interesting reaction.”
“Which was?” I prod.
“Fertility.”
I blink in surprise. “Okay. I’m a little shocked by that one, but we are dealing with alien DNA. But again, I’d need to see the data. There are literally coincidences, and you have to deal with a large enough control group to deliver real answers. It could simply be that the males recover their fertility at some point after the serum injections.”
“Either way, we could breed GTECHs whose offspring could possess their skills. This means an evolution of human soldiers to super soldiers, but what if we breed X2 monsters?”
“First of all, if it’s the blood exchange, that’s not a natural thing to do. No one will know to do it if we don’t tell them to do it. Who knows?”
“Chin and his assistant.”
“Then keep it that way. I mean really, Dad, who would think to exchange blood?” I don’t wait for a reply. “There’s a rumor you locked up the marked women and the men connected to them.”