Cheating Time (23 page)

Worse than the snakebite pain were the
hallucinations. I felt Jayden hold me in his arms and gutturally
moan as if he'd lost the love of his life. I saw teams of soldiers
swarm our little group of defectors like we were public enemy
number one.

I heard Jayden swear that Tawney and Gran
hadn't been with us for days, that they'd gone out on their own
after deciding we had a better chance if we separated. I saw, felt,
and heard the way the soldiers beat Jayden until he was within an
inch of his life when he refused to be more helpful when it came to
Tawney and Gran.

I pleaded for them to stop. At least, I
thought I did. Instead of words, I heard incoherent moans, groans,
and sobs. Finally, they realized they'd never break Jayden.
Or my hysterical pleas worked.
They
left him and me alone, and I lost consciousness again.
Or the hallucinations stopped.

When my eyes fluttered open a final time, I
could have sworn I'd been out for less than a few minutes. I was
wrong.

I was in a tent I'd never seen. It was
large, roomy, and if a tent could be considered luxurious, I'd say
that was exactly what this one was. It had cots with mattresses,
and those mattresses were covered with cashmere blankets. Honestly,
if I hadn't been hurting so terribly (and I were sweet, innocent
Tawney and not mean, hateful me), I'd have assumed I'd died and
gone to heaven because there was so much white surrounding me.

The fact that I was lying on top of a fluffy
air mattress and had wrapped around and tucked beneath me one of
the pure white blankets felt wrong. I was supposed to be in the
forest with Jayden, Tawney, and Gran, making our way to the next
safe house.

There was no way this tent that prominently
sported President Barone's favorite color belonged anywhere near
our next safe house, because those who support the Safe Passage
Network detested the color white and everything Barone
represented.

At least that's what Mac
and Elle had told Dad and Mom when they were pretending to be
something they weren't, based on Gran's information.

Getting my bearings and checking for a way
out of the tent, I sat up on my elbows and really studied the room,
wondering where Jayden, Tawney, and Gran were
.
At the end of the worm-shaped tent, opposite the
only door in or out, I saw a desk. On that desk waved a
white-on-white flag. Everything about it, the twenty-six stars and
five strips, was white. Only someone up close would know it wasn't
a white flag of surrender, but rather the flag meant to symbolize
our nation, a country split in half—hence the twenty-six stars and
five strips—was on its way toward becoming superior and pure.

At least Barone's sick and
twisted version of superior and pure.

I knew when I analyzed our nation's
statistics that the biggest differences between Barone and Hitler,
another man who was determined to create the perfect race, was
their very subjective definition of a superior man. Hitler believed
the perfect race, the Aryan race, would include a world filled with
non-Jewish, blond-haired, and blue-eyed people because he'd been
conditioned to think one's coloring and religious preferences made
her or him superior.

Given the statistical changes the MicroPharm
had helped Barone bring about, Barone was more scientific and
believed that human race's evolution was dependent on him
cultivating the types of genes he considered superior (old age
potential, strength, intelligence, charismatic tendencies, etc.)
and weeding out genes and conditions he considered weak
(chromosomal abnormalities, early death potentials, and diseases
that drained the nation's government-run healthcare system).
Diseases like autism, Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, and
hemophilia… embryos with these genes would not be allowed to
survive past the first trimester.

For me, that simple white flag sitting on
that desk proved that no matter who had me and no matter where I
was, President Barone was in charge. That didn't matter to me
nearly as much as my worry over Tawney's, Gran's, and Jayden's
location and safety.

As soon as I thought about them, I knew Dad
was going to be disappointed in my pitiful attempt at being the
soldier he'd never had.
The soldier he'd never
been allowed to have.

"At ten o'clock tomorrow morning, have the
MediChopper land in the clearing near the campsite." A man's voice
echoed its way through the flapped door and to me.

I thought about jumping off the bed and
hiding behind it, but the tent—while nice—wasn't big enough for me
to get lost in.

Shooting monkeys in a
barrel,
I thought, rolling my eyes.

Before I could find a suitable hiding place
or formulate a real getaway plan, the tent's flap snapped open and
the oranges signaling a late evening sun flooded the pure white
canvas of the tent.

I'd been caught up and awake. There was no
lying back and pretending I was still comatose. The grin belonging
to the man before me was too big and too happy for me to put any
stock into his cheerfulness. His eyes were a brilliant gold, his
face was so beautiful, and—
dear
God
—his body appeared strong and powerful that I
couldn't help but wonder if he was a new breed of Surrogate.

No… he's perfect, but he's
no Surrogate.

"Carles Anise Enoche has escaped death," he
sang as he strolled through the tent and came to stand at the side
of my bed.

I wasn't sure why, but I didn't trust him. I
didn't trust the feelings he instigated in me. I found him
attractive, and no matter how much I wanted him to think I despised
him, I just couldn't make hate stick where he was concerned. I was
drawn to him, and it infuriated me.

"Who are you?" I asked as if I were angry
with him rather than myself.

With a wicked little grin, he bowed his head
slightly and said, "Ah! It seems as though you and I have not
formally been introduced. I'm Thorne Angleton. My father is…."

"I know who your father is," I interrupted.
"Andrew Angleton. What I don't know is where my family is. Where
our Surrogate Soldier is."

My family was an anomaly when it came to
treating our Surrogate Soldier like family. For Jayden's sake, I
had to pretend as if I barely knew his name. There were serious
consequences for Surrogates who became too familiar with
Procreates. Surrogates were bred to protect and serve. Not to
become so close to us that we thought of them as family.

Thorne stared at me the way I'd just been
staring at him. The admiration embedded within it made me
uncomfortable. I squirmed.

"Where is my family?" I croaked, reminding
me that my mouth and throat were as dry as the desert.

In tune with what I needed, Thorne swiveled
away from me, snatched open a cart, and brought me a bottled
water.

"I think this will help," he said, shoving
the water my way.

It felt like the same type of olive branch
I'd offered Jayden with the granola packs. I wished I had the
luxury of refusing his offer just in case the water bottle was full
of poison, but I didn't. Besides, if he'd wanted to kill me with
poison, he'd have let me die from the snakebites. I grabbed the
bottle, drank its every drop of water, and looked around to see if
there was more where that came from.

"Join me at the table. They'll be bringing
our supper soon, and I'll make sure you get all the water you
want," he promised.

Again, he was holding his hand out to me.
This time, he expected me to take it. Silent, I declined. Instead,
I stood on weak and wobbly legs that felt as if someone had been
beating them all day with baseball bats. I refused to let him see
how much I was hurting or to help me. I didn't know or trust this
man, but that wasn't the reason I wasn't letting him help me.
Standing on my own two feet was a matter of principle and
pride.

It's all I
have.

The man before me was unimaginably gorgeous
and I was absolutely attracted to him, given the way my heart
skipped a beat every time he glanced to the side or offered me a
lopsided grin. Still, I was too weak to insist I be given a few
minutes alone to get cleaned up.

Who was I
kidding?
I wanted to strip naked and see what kind of
scars I was going to be dealing with and what the lingering effects
the poison was going to have on me and my body.

Rather than ask for the alone time I thought
I needed, I walked slowly and carefully toward the candlelit table
that had been set for two as if Thorne knew exactly when I'd awaken
and he'd been preparing to have supper with me all along.

After we were both sitting, I asked
again
, "Where is my family and the
Surrogate who was with us?"

This time I was stronger, and through my
slitted eyes and with my
I dare you not to
answer me again
tone, he knew I meant business.

"So the rumors are true. You are fiercely
loyal to your family and prepared to do anything necessary to keep
them safe," he said as if he'd not believed them before now.

"No one needs to spread rumors about me. I'm
happy to tell you anything you need to know. I am what you see. I
have no hidden agendas or political ambitions. I love my family.
Yes, that means I am loyal to them. I'm willing to give my life—all
day, every day—for any one of them," I said smugly.

Make of that what you
will, Thorne,
I thought.

Rather than get offended or challenge what
I'd just said, Thorne stared at me with admiration. The kind that
Jayden had been showing me the last several days. When I thought
about Jayden, I felt guilty. As if letting Thorne look at me like
that was comparable to cheating on the Surrogate Soldier who'd just
barely come back into my life.

"There's not a man in this nation who
wouldn't give everything they own for a woman who is loyal to him
for who he is, not for his ability to give her a child, not for his
ability to provide for her, but for pure and simple love," Thorne
said, and he had a look that I'd seen a million times in my
family.

It was the faraway gaze Mom and Gran had
when they'd narrowed their sights in on a theory they wanted to
research and recreate. My own eyes grew smaller because I was
suddenly feeling like Thorne had plans for me to be his own special
research project. As the original MicroPharm recipient and Barone's
Eve
, I didn't want or need to be
anyone else's science project.

"I'm not consenting to anything. You will
not draw my blood or analyze my readings, and I won't stand by
while you inject hormones into people and force them to be loyal to
someone who hasn't earned that privilege through actions or
reactions. A MicroPharm-created loyalty would be worse than having
no loyalty at all because it would be nothing more than slavery," I
insisted.

Again, a flash of disbelief crossed his
face. "How… how did you know what I was thinking?" His mouth
dropped in utter curiosity.

I shook my head. "You forget I've lived with
two of the most brilliant scientists in the world my entire life. I
know what it looks like when they see a problem that needs to be
solved, a hormone that could be used to cure or stabilize an
illness or a disease, the next generation of something they've
assumed to be perfect. I know what the open-mouthed and faraway
gaze means because I've seen it almost every day of my life. I
don't know you, and I don't trust you. Because of that, I'd never
turn my body, my blood, or my MicroPharm analyses over to you for
you to use as part of your research. I just can't do that," I said
firmly.

"You're right. You don't know me, so let me
assure you that…" He paused in a scary calm kind of way that
exemplified his irritation. "I have never nor would I ever
experiment on anyone who didn't give me their express permission.
So while it seems intriguing to me that there might be a hormone or
a gene that exists within people to make them loyal, I'd never try
to recreate it for all the reasons you just mentioned. I mean… look
at what happened when your great-grandfather's research associated
with life expectancy got released. Let's face it. Life on Earth
will never be the same now that the guesswork has been taken out of
our natural life expectancy," he said dryly.

Right or wrong, my instinct was to protect
my family, but Thorne's opinion was eerily close to my own. In my
heart of hearts, I knew he was right. Still, it was hard to admit
aloud because it felt almost traitorous to agree that Gran's
seemingly innocent and potentially useful discovery had changed our
nation's procreation methods.
And not in a
good way.

"And let's not forget that if your mother's
MicroPharm hadn't been invented, we wouldn't have to worry about
genetic deformities being eradicated, which of course is a very
real possibility because your mother is so very good at what she
does," Thorne said, and there was a sarcasm about his words that
made it clear to me he wasn't on board with Barone's strive for the
perfect society.
Nor was he a Selma Enoche
fan.

It was as if the mere thought disgusted him,
and right then I understood that I didn't know anything about him.
What I did know was the thought of eliminating babies with
identifiable anomalies turned my stomach.
And
my mother's.

"You act as if my great-grandfather and my
mother meant for their hard work to be used to create the perfect
society or to kill babies. They hate that they've had a hand in the
world Barone has created. They hate that their discoveries are used
this way instead of the ways they envisioned," I defended.