Chrysalis, p.23
Chrysalis, page 23
We came to a stop in front of a lab window, which was clouded over and opaque. I could only see the shadow of someone moving around inside. If I had to guess, it was probably one of the techs.
“What’s in there?” I asked curiously.
“SEP 3.0. Project Atlas,” Dobroslav said. “I think we’ve fixed everything wrong with Project Titan. They’re almost ready to come online.”
The nameplate on the door read Geneza. I immediately recognized the word as Polish for Genesis. “What was so wrong with Project Titan?”
“We had too much baggage.” Chaos’s voice came from behind me, and I met his cold eyes in the glass. “We all came here with our own ideas. Motivations. Limits. Having history makes us less perfect in his eyes.”
“Not less perfect,” Dobroslav argued. “Just…flawed.”
“And 3.0?” I forced the words out because part of me wasn’t even sure I wanted to know.
“You will know about 3.0 when the time is right,” he said imperiously. “And not one minute before.”
“You’re creating monsters,” I said, more to myself than anything else.
“They’re not monsters, Chrysalis. And neither are you. You have a few alterations, that’s all.” He waved a hand as if altering my body was all in a day’s work. “A few tweaks here and there, and you could’ve been my finest creation.”
The days of puttering around in Gray’s house—cooking dinner for each other, curling up on the couch at the end of the day, and curling up in a chair with a good book in his reading sanctuary—had never seemed further away. I wanted that life. I wanted it so bad. I didn’t want this life of spies and clones and killing.
“I’m having a difficult time fathoming your audacity to play God by experimenting on people,” I said quietly. “Why would you do this to me?”
“To you?” His eyes widened as he stared at me for a few moments, looking a little flummoxed. “Sometimes I forget your amnesia isn’t just a carefully constructed ruse.”
“What are you talking about now?” I asked crossly.
“Chrysalis, I didn’t do this to you. I did this for you.” His brow creased as he stared at me. “You begged me to.”
“That’s…that’s not possible.” My knees felt a little weak.
“You took your shot at Vargas, and you failed. Your team brought you back because they knew you were special to me, and I’d want the body. You were still alive, but just barely.” He shook his head slowly. “You asked me to test the serum on you. You said that you would be the prototype. You wanted another shot at Vargas, and it didn’t matter what you had to do to make that happen.”
I wanted to deny it as I stared at the Genesis room, but I could hear the sincerity in his voice. A whisper of something tingled in the back of my mind. Instead of trying to squash that whisper, I leaned into it. I pressed my forehead on the glass, heedless of leaving marks on the pristine surface, and let the memory wash over me like beach foam over eager bare toes.
I could feel him watching me carefully as he continued. “You said I have nothing to lose. They already—”
“Took my everything,” I finished quietly as the truth of that settled in my bones. “I won’t stop until I return the favor.”
“The serum isn’t ready,” Dobroslav fretted. “We’re not even sure how long it will take to work and what the long-term effects are. We don’t know if you’ll need another dose, when you’ll need another dose—”
Dr. Granger laughed, and it wasn’t a nice laugh. “We don’t know if it will work at all.”
“I don’t care,” I said determinedly. “Every project needs a prototype. I’m willing to be the guinea pig.”
“What are his odds?” Dobroslav asked quietly.
“I have no idea,” Dr. Granger said, her mouth pursed. “As I mentioned before, we’ve never tried this on a human before, and the studies on the rats are not complete. And I certainly didn’t anticipate testing my serum on someone so close to death.”
Both gazes whipped toward me, and the doctor grimaced. I wasn’t offended. They weren’t telling me anything I didn’t know.
“It’s going to wreak havoc on your system,” Dr. Granger warned. “I don’t know if you’re strong enough to survive it.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that perfectly clear,” I said dryly. It was hard to manage a sarcastic tone with a bullet in your stomach, yes. But I’d yet to see the day when I couldn’t muster up enough strength to be a snarky bitch.
“I just want you to fully understand your circumstances, Christian,” she said quietly. “This can, and probably will kill you.”
“If I’m dying anyway, what do you have to lose?” I coughed up more blood and she flinched. “Even if it doesn’t work, you’ll have parameters for how it interacts with a human system.”
From my prone position on the gurney, I could only look up at them. I was a broken, battered, bloody mess, and frankly, I was surprised I was still alive. Not happy, not sad, just…surprised. Maybe that should’ve given me pause. You should be happy that you’re still alive or sad that you’re close to death. You should have someone you wanted to say goodbye to. Instead, I had one goal and one goal only—I wanted to take that bastard Vargas with me.
Dobroslav gave me a short nod, and I tried not to let the satisfaction show on my face. If anyone understood single-minded thinking, it was Petar Dobroslav. Nothing mattered above his Special Enhancement Project. Nothing.
“You’ll be the prototype in Project Anielski,” he said crisply.
The name made me smile faintly. Angel. If they kept talking, blood loss was going to make me one of those anyway. “Thank you, Dziadek.”
He smiled faintly. “Of course.”
“I don’t agree with this,” Dr. Granger said, her eyes liquid pools of worry.
“I didn’t ask you,” Dobroslav said coolly. “Now let’s get this show on the road.”
“You’re starting to remember,” a voice said gently by my ear.
I blinked and met Dobroslav’s gaze in the glass. I turned to face him slowly. “You changed my face.”
“That I did.” He nodded shortly. “They brought me a book full of samples, and I figured I’d do you a favor.”
“Maximillian DeVoss,” I said flatly.
He smiled. “You noticed.”
“So I’m not related to him.”
“No, I just thought you might enjoy looking like a model, pet.” He smiled indulgently. “Your father wasn’t a terrible-looking man, but he was a bit homely, wasn’t he?”
“Homely,” I choked out. He was the kindest man I’d ever known…other than Gray. They had the same generous and giving spirit. It was probably why I’d gravitated toward Gray in the first place.
“Yes, that’s right,” Dobroslav went on. “We prefer some of our agents to be nondescript. Being John Anyman allows them to move about unnoticed. If you do notice them, it’s only for a second, and they are so nondescript that you forget them almost immediately. But I didn’t forget about the flip side of that coin.”
“Which is?”
“People do all sorts of things they’re not supposed to for beautiful people.” He shrugged. “Your altered physical attributes suited our purposes.”
He’d given me a face that wasn’t my own and expected me to be happy about it. He’d stolen my heritage. Every line and wrinkle and curve of my face was the last thing I had of my mother and father other than a decrepit old farm.
“You took everything.” The words inside my head sounded like a shout, but they came out as a whisper.
“I gave you back your life.” His hands settled on my shoulders. “It’s time you repay the favor.”
Even though I saw that coming a mile away, I was still a little speechless now that the moment was here. Was he actually suggesting that I rejoin his kill squad? I had no desire to come back to that life, looking over my shoulder every second. Not to mention I wanted no part of helping further a type of technology that probably should remain unexplored.
I decided to play dumb. “I’m not coming back to the fold, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“Come back?” He scoffed. “We’re a little beyond you coming back. I want to know where you stashed it.”
Given the fact that I had no bloody idea what he was talking about, it became a lot easier to play dumb. “Stashed what?”
“You stole from this facility, Chrysalis. From me.” He frowned at me. “Now stop playing games. I want the flash drive and the serum, and I want it right now.”
Ah. I’d stashed them both in that stuffed teddy bear back at Gray’s. But I wasn’t too eager to hand anything over to this man. “What’s on the flash drive?” I stalled.
“That’s none of your concern.”
I tsked. “Now, now. You’re not acting like a man who needs a favor.”
“And you’re not acting like a man who wants his boyfriend to live,” he snapped.
Even though my heart rate increased markedly, I kept my face expressionless. “Gray broke up with me several weeks ago.” My voice was decidedly cool. “So I’ll ask you again. What’s on the fucking drive, Dobroslav?”
He gritted his teeth. “The makeup of the chemical compound Xgr-41. We plug that flash drive directly into our compound machine, and it creates the serum. Without that serum, SEP Geneza will not work. Or any other future SEPs for that matter.”
My eyes widened. “Super-soldier serum?”
Chaos snorted. “Will you stop that? God, you’re like a broken record.”
“Did he or did he not just say that without the serum, his super-soldier program is useless?” I demanded.
“The serum does not create super soldiers,” Dobroslav said with a frown. “But it does prepare their bodies for acceptance of our technology.”
“Why don’t you just ask Dr. Granger to create more? It’s her fucking formula.”
“The good doctor had an attack of conscience,” Chaos said wryly. “MAXim and Blackstone Industries have parted ways.”
“I’m surprised you would accept no for an answer,” I said, directing my comment at Dobroslav. “You don’t seem like the type.”
He glared as Chaos filled in the blanks again. “Granger disappeared in the middle of the night. Left her job, her home, her car…just left everything behind. So either she’s on the run or dead.”
“You about done?” Dobroslav snapped. “Or do you want to give him my Social Security number and underwear size?”
“Smedium,” Chaos mouthed at me.
I turned a snort into a fairly convincing cough. “Have you tried to create SEPs without the serum?”
“Of course. Without it, their bodies will continually struggle to reject every new implantation, and you can forget installing a port. We tried it with a test subject after Granger disappeared. The skin around it grew red and puffy and leaked with discharge. Within two weeks, we had to strip the port out of the skin.”
“And the test subject?”
He stared at me for a few moments. He didn’t bother to bullshit me. “Where are the serum and the flash drive?”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know what former demons drove me to become this…this person. But whatever those demons were, they’ve been exorcised. I’m not helping you with your super freak program, Dobroslav. I want something different for my life.”
“What life?” he snapped. “If I hadn’t agreed to put you in Project Anielski, you’d be dead on the front lawn of Vargas’s compound all those years ago. You owe me. I created you, Chrysalis.”
And I’ll end you.
We both heard the rest of that unspoken sentence loud and clear.
“Where’s Gray?” I asked softly.
“He’s safe. For now,” Dobroslav said. “And he’ll remain safe as long as you do what you’re supposed to do, pet.”
Keep calling me pet and I’m going to let off a few practice rounds in your face.
“So you’ll let him go,” I said slowly, staring at his face intently.
He returned my gaze with sincere eyes. “Absolutely,” he said earnestly.
“And no harm will come to him,” I said, hardly blinking as I waited for any reaction. His eye twitched, and his heart rate increased. I glanced at Chaos and knew he could hear the same. He didn’t react. I expected no less.
“Dr. Laurie will come to no harm by my hand,” Dobroslav said sincerely.
You’re going to kill him. I knew that just as I knew the sky was still beautiful and blue. And then you’re going to kill me.
I just didn’t know why. The memories were trickling in dribs and drabs, but it was still like an unfinished patchwork quilt up there. But the cruel twist of his mouth suddenly seemed so familiar.
“I want to see Gray,” I said softly.
His smile was bright as he clapped me on the shoulder. “Of course. Chaos, you and the rest of your team take him to wherever he stashed that flash drive.”
I scowled. “I don’t care about that. I want to see—”
“Mission first. Gray second.” His smile didn’t mean jack shit. I could feel the threat clear to my toes.
So I let him know where I stood. “Gray first, mission second.”
The tension stretched between us, rubber-band tight, until he finally nodded. “Bright and early tomorrow, you take the team to find the drive. Chaos, take him back down to the sleeping quarters.”
Calling those glass fishbowls “sleeping quarters” was stretching it a tad, but as long as I got to see Gray, I didn’t care. I decided to make that clear as crystal. “If you’re screwing me over, Dobroslav, it’s going to take more kill squads than you can create to stop me.”
Something flickered deep in his eyes, so quickly that I thought maybe I’d imagined it. Fear? “I’d expect nothing less,” he said pleasantly.
21
I paced the length of the room as Gray stared at me, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall. He looked a lot less shell-shocked than I expected from all the information I’d just thrown at him. I’d been word-vomiting for a half-hour, and he hadn’t done much more than the occasional nod.
That wasn’t to say he wasn’t having trouble with it. From the sound of his heart rate and the slight scent of his perspiration, he was affected. Just not as much as I expected given how much things had changed in his life in twenty-four hours.
After all, he’d been threatened and kidnapped in his own garage and then thrown in a room with his crazy ex. Then so-said crazy ex—me—proceeded to tell him a feel-good tale of genetic engineering and palingenesis. It was my one-man adaptation of Ten Ways to Lose A Guy In Ten Days. I was thinking of calling it, One Way to Lose a Guy One Bloody Second.
“What teddy bear?” They were the first words Gray had spoken since I began my story. I was pathetically grateful for them. And a little surprised.
“That’s your first question?” I demanded. “I just told you I’m a genetically altered assassin, and you want to know about a teddy bear?”
“It’s the only thing that matters now, isn’t it?” he asked reasonably. “We need to give him what he wants so he’ll let us go. Now, what teddy bear are you talking about?”
I shouldn’t have been all that surprised. He was a doctor, after all. At most, he could allow himself a few seconds of uncertainty before he had to get to work. But talk about a letdown. I hadn’t wanted him to have a freak-out—I just figured it was inevitable. Then I would get to comfort him.
I didn’t even get the chance to hold his hand, I thought begrudgingly.
“Chris?” He raised an eyebrow. “Which bear?”
“The nauseating one on the dresser. He wears suspenders and a bow tie.” At his blank looks, I sighed. There was only one bloody bear in the whole damn house. “He also says, I love you beary much if you make the mistake of squeezing his paw.”
“Oh.” He snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that belonged to…someone else.”
I could tell he was being purposefully vague, and that made me immediately think of his sisters. I tried to remember whose name had been scrawled on the boxes in the spare bedroom, and for some reason, Ally came to mind. She had a boyfriend named Cash, if I remembered correctly.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “It doesn’t really matter who it belongs to. We just need to grab the bear, give Dobroslav his stupid flash drive and serum, and you can get out of here.”
“Problem.” He squinted at me. “And don’t you mean we?”
“What?”
“You said that you can get out of here.”
“Right, right. We.” I waved a hand. “Now what’s the problem?”
“The bear is gone. Apparently, his owner had a cleansing ritual for all things related to the ex.”
I sighed as I walked over to the bed and plopped down on it. My shoulders slumped as I rubbed my eye sockets. Hard. “That…could not be more problematic.”
The bed depressed some more as he sat next to me. He didn’t leave a whisker of space between us, his thigh solid and warm against mine. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“For what?” I laughed humorlessly. “I’m the one that got you in this mess. And my ticket to get you out of it just burned to a crisp in an episode of 90210.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “Like you know anything about pop culture.”
“I know things,” I insisted.
“Name three cast members. I’ll spot you Brenda.”
I huffed. “Brandon, maybe. And I think there was someone named Dillon.”
Nick had some weird-ass things on his Netflix, and I’d done a lot of program surfing on Madame Bitch the Futon.
His mouth lifted. “Okay, fine. You passed on that one.” Just as quickly as his amusement came, it fled as his slight smile disappeared. “Maybe you made a copy before you hid the flash drive in a box of pancake mix.”
I could’ve baked a secret compartment into a fucking pancake as far as I knew. Old Me had been just about the craftiest motherfucker on the planet. New Me didn’t quite see the point.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at my hands. “And if I did, I’ll probably never find it.”
