Origin

Page 28

“Stay there, Daemon.”
I turned my head slowly, aware that the other guards had moved between Kat and me. “Why? I did what you wanted.”
“We haven’t seen anything yet other than the fact you healed him.” Nancy moved around the chair, watching the doctor and Largent. “How are his vitals?”
“Perfect,” the doctor said, standing as he wrapped the stethoscope around his neck. He reached inside his lab coat and pulled out a small black case. “We can start Prometheus.”
“What is that?” I asked, watching as the doctor pulled out a syringe full of shimmery blue liquid. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Archer cock his head to the side as he stared at the needle.
“Prometheus is Greek,” Kat said. “Well, he was a Titan. In mythology, he created man.”
A flash of amusement flickered in my eyes.
She shrugged. “It was in a paranormal book I read once.”
I couldn’t hold back a small grin. Her and her nerdy reading habits. Made me want to kiss her and do other stuff. And she picked up on it, too, because a flush stained her cheeks. Alas, wasn’t going to happen.
Dr. Roth rolled up Largent’s sleeve. “Prometheus should act faster, without the need to wait for the fever. It will speed up the mutation process.”
Hell, I wondered if Largent really was okay with being the first guinea pig. But it didn’t matter. They shot him up with the blue gunk. He slumped over—not a good sign—and Roth went into doctor mode. Vitals were through the roof. People were starting to look a tad bit nervous. No one was really paying attention to me, so I started inching toward Kat. I was halfway there when Largent shot up from the chair, knocking the doctor on his ass.
I put myself between Kat and the general area of where Largent was standing. He stumbled forward and then bent over, grasping his knees. Sweat poured off the guy’s forehead, dripping onto the floor. A sickly sweet stench replaced the metallic.
“What is happening?” demanded Nancy.
The doctor started to unwind the stethoscope as he went to the soldier’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder. “What are you feeling, Largent?”
The man’s arms were trembling. “Cramping,” he gasped. “My whole body is cramping. It feels like my insides are—” He jerked up, throwing his head back. Throat working, he opened his mouth and let out a scream.
A bluish, blackish substance spewed from his mouth, splattering the doctor’s white lab coat. Largent wobbled to the side, his hoarse scream ending in a thick gurgle. The same liquid leaked from the corners of his eyes, streamed from his nose and ears.
“Oh boy,” I said, backing up. “I don’t think whatever you injected him with is working.”
Nancy cut me a dark glare. “Largent, can you tell me what—?”
The soldier spun around and ran—and I mean he ran at full light speed—toward the door. Kat screamed and then clasped her hands over her mouth. I moved to block the grisly sight, but it was too late. Largent smacked into the door with a fleshy, wet thud, hitting it at the kind of speed jumping out of a fifty-story window would do.
Silence descended, and then Nancy said, “Well, that was disappointing.”
…
Katy
As long as I lived, I’d never be able to scrape from my mind the sight of the soldier going from relatively normal to something that looked like stage one of a zombie infection to going splat against the door.
We had to wait in that room until staff came and cleaned up enough of the mess that we could leave without stepping in the…uh, stuff. They wouldn’t let Daemon or me get within an inch of each other as we waited, like it was his fault somehow. He’d healed the guy—he did his part. Whatever was in Prometheus had done this. The blood wasn’t on Daemon’s hands.
Out in the hallway, the soldiers took Daemon down one wing, and Archer took me down another. We were halfway toward the elevators when one of the elevator doors on the right opened, and two soldiers stepped out, escorting a child.
I skidded to a complete stop.
Not just any child. It was one of them—the origins. Tiny hairs on my body rose at the sight. The boy wasn’t Micah, but he had the same dark hair cut in the same style. Maybe a little bit younger, but I was never good at judging ages.
“Keep walking,” Archer said, placing a hand on my back.
Forcing my legs to move, I didn’t know what it was about those kids that freaked me out. Okay. There were probably a lot of things about those kids that could freak me out. The main thing was the abnormal intelligence gleaming in their oddly colored eyes and the small childlike smile that seemed to mock the adults around them.
God, Daemon and I needed to get out of this place for a whole truckload of reasons.
As we crossed paths with them, the little boy lifted his head and looked straight at me. The moment our gazes collided, a sharp tingle of awareness traveled up my spine and exploded along the back of my skull. Dizziness swept through me, and I stopped again, feeling strange. I wondered if the kid was doing some kind of weird Jedi mind trick on me.
The kid’s eyes widened.
My fingers started to tingle.
Help us, and we’ll help you.
My mouth dropped open. I didn’t—I couldn’t. My brain stopped working, and the words repeated themselves. The kid broke contact, and then they were behind us, and I was standing there, quaking with adrenaline and confusion.
Archer’s face came into view, eyes narrowed. “He said something to you.”
I snapped out of it and immediately went on guard. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you have a freaked-out look on your face.” Dropping his hand on my shoulder, he spun me around and gave a little push toward the elevator. As the doors slid shut, he hit the stop button. “There are no cameras in the elevators, Katy. Besides the bathrooms, it’s the only area in the building free from watchful eyes.”
Having no idea where he was going with that and still mind-blown from everything, I took a step back, hitting the wall. “Okay.”
“The origins are able to pick up thoughts. It’s one thing that Nancy didn’t tell you. They can read thoughts. So you better be very careful what you’re thinking when you’re around one of them.”
I gaped. “They can read minds? Wait, that means you can do it, too!”
He gave a noncommittal shrug. “I try not to. Hearing other people’s thoughts is really annoying more than anything else, but when you’re young, you really don’t think about it. You just do it. And they do it all the time.”
“I… This is insane. They can read minds, too? What else can they do?” I felt like I’d fallen through a rabbit hole and woken up in an X-Men comic. And all of the things I’ve thought about around Archer? I was sure at some point I had thought about escaping here and—
“I’ve never told anyone anything I’ve picked up from you,” he said.
“Oh my God…you’re doing it right now.” My heart pounded. “And why should I trust that?”
“Probably because I’ve never asked you to trust me.”
I blinked. Hadn’t Luc said something like that? “Why wouldn’t you tell Nancy?”
He shrugged again. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Yes. It totally—”
“No. It doesn’t. Not right now. Look, we don’t have a lot of time. Be careful when you’re around the origins. I picked up on what he said to you. Have you seen the movie Jurassic Park?”
“Uh, yeah.” What an odd question.
A wry smile appeared. “Remember the raptors? Letting the origins out would be like unlocking the gates on the raptor cages. You get what I’m saying? These origins, the newest batch, are nothing like what Daedalus has had in the past. They’re evolving and adapting in ways no one can control. They can do things I cannot even think of. Daedalus already has problems keeping them in line.”
I struggled to process all of this. Strangely, common sense kept spewing out denials, when in reality I knew anything was possible. I was an alien/human hybrid, after all. “Why are these origins different?”
“They were given Prometheus to help accelerate their learning and abilities.” Archer snorted. “Like they needed it. But unlike poor Largent, it worked with them.”
Largent’s mangled body flashed before me, and I winced. “What is the Prometheus serum?”
He looked at me skeptically. “You know what Prometheus was in Greek mythology. I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out yet.”
Gee, way to make me feel stupid.
He laughed.
I glared at him. “You’re reading my thoughts, aren’t you?”
“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry at all. “You said it yourself. Prometheus was credited with creating mankind. Think about it. What is Daedalus doing?”
“Trying to create the perfect species, but that really doesn’t tell me anything.”
He shook his head as he reached over and tapped a finger along the fleshy part of my elbow. “When you first mutated, you were given a serum. It was the first serum that Daedalus created, but they want something better, something faster. Prometheus is what’s being tested now, and not just on humans healed by Luxen.”
“I…” I didn’t get it at first, and then I thought about those bags in the room where the sick patients were receiving Daedalus’s own breed of medication. “They’re giving it to humans who are sick, aren’t they?”
He nodded.
“Then that means Prometheus is LH-11?” When he nodded again, I forced myself not to go any further with the realization, lest Archer was being nosy. “Why are you telling me this?”
He pivoted slightly and restarted the elevator. Casting me a long look, he simply said, “We have a mutual friend, Katy.”
Chapter 17
Katy
I could barely contain myself waiting for a few moments alone with Daemon. We hadn’t been abusing the bathroom privileges, knowing that’s what they wanted us to do. It took forever before I felt the familiar tingle along my neck. Holding off a couple of minutes, I then bum-rushed the bathroom and knocked softly on the door to his cell.
He was there within a second. “Miss me?”
“Do your Lite-Brite thing.” I moved from one foot to the other. “Come on.”
He looked at me strangely, but a second later he was a glowing comet. What’s up?
In a rush, I told him everything about the creepy kid in the hallway, what Archer had said about them, what Prometheus really was, and what Archer had said about us sharing a mutual friend. I don’t trust any of this, but either Archer hasn’t told anyone what he’s picked up from you or me or he has, and for some reason we haven’t been called out on it.
Daemon’s light pulsed. Jesus, this just keeps getting more and more bizarre.
You’re telling me. I leaned against the sink. If they decide to shoot someone up with it again… I shuddered. Maybe they’ll just wait until the mutation takes hold this time.