Upgrade(25)

Betrayal and rage.

She’d been alive when I stood trial for her crimes.

She’d been alive the day I was convicted.

Alive and free that first night in prison, and all the nights after.

She’d been alive the day I regained my freedom.

Alive on my wedding day.

The night of Ava’s birth.

She had never bothered to contact me.

And as the final insult, it appeared that she had played god again. Not with crops and locusts. With me. Her own son.

The lights had gone out hours ago, and the only illumination came from the blinking LEDs in the terminal behind me. I knew someone somewhere was sitting at a monitor, watching my every move, my every breath, my every tear.

I had to get out of this place. I had no idea how.



* * *



—

Overhead lights tore me out of my troubled dreams.

I raised my arm to shield my eyes, wondering how long I’d slept.

An hour? Maybe two? And yet I felt surprisingly refreshed and sharp thanks to the upregulation of my BHLHE41=DEC2, NPSR1, and ADRB1 gene network.

I sat up and saw a man I had arrested seven years ago on a snowy night in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming standing on the other side of the glass.

“Hello, Logan,” he said, his voice emitting through the speakers above me.

“Dr. Romero.”

“You remember me.” He seemed surprised.

“There’s rarely a day that I don’t think about that night.”

“Same,” he said sadly, and it was only for a fraction of a fraction of a second, but his lower lip tensed and a vertical line flashed in and out of existence between his eyebrows. He was still angry with me. And no doubt with good reason.

This was the third time I’d intuited someone’s emotional state based upon subtle facial cues. Another new attribute of my upgrade?

I stood and stretched.

“When did they let you out of prison?” I asked.

“Four years ago. Could you step over here, please?”

I could see that he was standing near two metal slots in the glass. One accommodated a food tray. The other was circular and just larger than a closed fist.

I walked over.

“Put your arm through the smaller one.”

He was holding a hypodermic syringe.

“Why?”

“I need to draw some blood. Going forward, we’re going to be analyzing your genome on a weekly basis.”

I didn’t move.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I stared at him through the glass, wondering how the GPA had convinced someone with a mind like Anthony Romero’s to work in a scientific black site.

I said, “You’re not putting a needle in my arm.”

He let out a sigh, set the syringe down on a tray beside him, and lifted a tablet. I couldn’t see the touchscreen, only his fingers moving.

A sound kicked on above me. I looked up at a vent in the glass wall, just below the ceiling. The cage began to vibrate as a motor behind the vent became louder and louder.

The first sensation was a tightness in my chest.

Though I was breathing faster and faster, I still felt like I was holding my breath.

The motor behind the vent went silent.

The only sound was my gasping.

I went to my knees.

Bright spots exploding and fading across my field of vision.

I fell over.

I could feel my extremities tingling as they starved for oxygenated blood, but it was nothing compared to the fire in my lungs and the explosive pounding in my head.

Each passing second was torment.

Darkness crept in from the sides.

My field of vision narrowing.

And then my dying brain observed a noise. At first, I thought it must be some auditory hallucination, but it kept getting louder and clearer.

The motor behind the vent was running again.

I opened my eyes.

The darkness was retreating.

The world brightening.

I was gasping again, but now the breaths were touching a place deep in my lungs with a satisfaction that far surpassed cold water to parched lips.

I sat up.

Dr. Romero traded the tablet for the syringe.

“It gives me no pleasure to hurt you,” he said, “but I’ve been tasked with studying what you are. What you’re becoming. You need to understand that your compliance is nonnegotiable. Now slide your arm through the hole, please.”

I complied.

As he drew my blood, I said, “I want to talk to my family.”

“I’m just here to track your evolution. If you have concerns, you should ask—”

“Ask who? I’m in a glass cell. Against my will. Can you be a human being for—”

“No. I can’t. I was once. You were a part of the apparatus that took my humanity away from me.”

“I’m sorry for that. Truly. I was just doing my job, and—”

“You didn’t have a choice? Neither do I.”



* * *



—

“Are you feeling alert?” Dr. Romero asked.

“Yes.”

“Would you like more coffee? I can have some brought in.”

“No thanks.”

“Are you hungry?”