Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (13 page)

DJ peered at it for longer than it could
possibly take for anyone to read a two-letter word, then said it
again, distinctly: “Nang.”

Echo was still trying to figure out what had
struck her as so odd about what he’d done when he turned off the
music.

“I’m dyslexic,” he said matter-of-factly. “I
have to sound out every single letter, every single time, and it’s
hard to figure out which letters are which. I can’t automatically
recognize words, even short ones. By the time I get to the end of a
sentence, I can’t remember the beginning. I can write, but my
spelling and handwriting are terrible, and it’s just as hard for me
to read what I’ve written myself as it is for me to read anything
else. It’s not that bad for most people with dyslexia, but I guess
I’m just special. Dr. Semple sure thinks so.”

Echo wasn’t a book fiend like Charlie, but
she couldn’t imagine not being able to read so much as a single
sentence. “How do you DJ if you can’t read song titles?”

“Icons. Numbers— don’t ask me why I can read
numbers but not words, maybe Dr. Semple will figure it out. If I’d
gotten this iPod more recently, I’d have the song lists memorized.
My laptop at home has voice software, like blind people use.”

Echo looked at his iPod again. The Gloc-9
list had 114 songs on it. “You memorize lists of a hundred songs
each?”

“No, that’s just because I haven’t had time
to sort everything. If I was performing, it’d be broken down into
smaller chunks. It’s easier to memorize five lists of twenty songs
than one list of a hundred.”

Echo was used to memorizing important
information. She could hardly take her dossiers with her on
missions. But the thought of having to memorize
everything
was staggering. Flight itineraries. Entire city layouts, if you
couldn’t read street signs…

“Sorry I tried to pull the wool over your
eyes,” DJ went on. “I don’t actually mind if you know. It’s just
that a lot of people have given me a hard time over it, so faking
it got to be a habit.”

“What sort of hard time?”

“Calling me stupid.” He shrugged, but his
look of unconcern wasn’t especially convincing.

Anger flared hot and red within her. “Anyone
who’d think you’re stupid is a fucking moron.”

“Thanks. I think so too, actually.” His
fingers, which had been tracing their way over the walls, hit one
of the holes where she’d extracted a bug. “Hey, how did you know
where the bugs were?”

“They’re hotter than the walls.”

“You can see heat, huh?” DJ’s bright smile
flashed. “That narrows it down. Not many animals can do that.
Snakes can. And some bugs can, I think. I mean the insect type.
Please tell me you’re not a bedbug-shifter.”

Echo knew she couldn’t play the game much
longer, but she couldn’t resist letting it go for one more round.
“We’re not sharing a bed, so what do you care? Are you prejudiced
against an entire species?”

“‘Fraid so,” DJ admitted, hanging his head.
“It’s terrible, I know. But I’d sleep better if you could reassure
me that you’re something I’d be more comfortable sharing a bedroom
with. Like a pit viper.”

Echo opened her mouth to tease him with the
possibility, then closed it. She might as well tell him. If she
didn’t, Mr. Dowling would. And though she didn’t know why, she
wanted it to be her.

She sat down at the bench press. “I’m not a
shifter.”

DJ leaned against the bar, catching her
serious mood. “You’re not? What are you, then?”

“I was genetically engineered to achieve the
untapped maximum potential of the human body.”

“That sounds like a press release,” DJ said,
looking both intrigued and amused. “Are you quoting someone?”

“Dr. Semple,” she admitted. “It’s true,
though. More or less. I’m stronger. I’m faster. More agile. I can
endure extremes of heat and cold and pain. I can see into the
infrared. I can consciously control a lot of physical functions
that normal humans can’t, like my heart rate. And I heal fast. Not
as fast as a shifter, but almost.”

“Wow.” DJ looked impressed. “You really are
perfect. Except for not being able to turn into a tree. That’s a
real disadvantage, you know.”

Echo wanted to smile, but she couldn’t. Not
after
you really are perfect.
“I was created here. We’re
clones. Me and Charlie and…”

When she couldn’t finish, DJ asked, “And
Althea and Brava and Della?”

Echo nodded. Her eyes and the inside of her
nose prickled, threatening tears. It wasn’t so much the reminder of
her sisters and their fate, as that DJ had remembered their names.
She didn’t know why that moved her so much, but it did.

After a brief silence, DJ said, “I know this
has got to fall into the category of ‘I don’t want to talk about
it,’ so I’m not asking for details or anything, but I’m really
hoping to survive this whole thing. If there’s some specific way
they got killed on the job that I might be able to avoid if I knew
about it advance, can you tell me what it is?”

While DJ spoke, Echo managed to pull herself
together. To her relief, her voice was cool and steady as she
spoke. “They weren’t killed on the job. Genetic engineering is
tricky. My sisters all had major health problems, and that’s why
they died.”

And if Mr. Dowling wanted DJ to know the
details, he could tell DJ himself.

“I’m sorry.” DJ abandoned the bench press
bar, which he’d been spinning around with one hand, and sat down
beside her. “So you all grew up in the lab, huh?”

“On the base,” Echo corrected. “It’s more
than just a lab. There was a set of clone boys, too. Alan, Brian,
David, and Ethan.”

“Four boys, but five girls?”

“No… There must have been five boys
originally. There should be a C. But I don’t remember him.” Echo
frowned, wishing she could at least recall his name, but nothing
came to mind. “He must have died as an infant. The boys had worse
problems than my sisters. I didn’t know them too well because they
spent most of their time in the hospital. The last one died when we
were about ten.”

Even before Althea,
she thought, but
didn’t say. DJ looked so sympathetic already that it was making her
uncomfortable.

“My brother Nutmeg— Dominic— ” DJ broke off.
“Do you know about scent names?”

Relieved by the change of topic, Echo said,
“Sure. The made wolves here have them.”

“Can you smell people’s scents?”

“I can, but I have to be close to them. I
can’t do it from across the room. And I have to focus on it. I
don’t do it automatically.”

DJ looked startled, then pleased. “Can you
scent me?”

Echo closed her eyes, concentrated on her
scent receptors, and took a deep breath. She smelled salt and hot
ash, burning wood and a richness like oil or butter. His scent was
wild yet homey, hard-edged yet sensual. It made her think of a fire
burning brightly under a starry sky.

“Well?” DJ asked hopefully. “What do I smell
like to you?”

Echo opened her eyes, and saw that she’d
leaned in close without realizing it. She practically had her nose
in his hair. She jerked back. “Like someone built a campfire on a
salt flat and they’re frying eggs. What’s your scent name, Sunny
Side Up?”

DJ looked so disappointed that Echo smacked
him across the shoulder with the back of her hand to jar him out of
it.

“I’m teasing,” she informed him. “You don’t
smell like eggs. Let me try again. Salt Fire … Bonfire?”

DJ laughed. “That’s nice. Much more dignified
than my real scent name. It’s Lechon: suckling pig. So you see, you
weren’t that far off. Has anyone ever told you what you smell
like?”

All the sisters could scent people, so Echo
knew. But she said, “Sugar and spice and everything nice.”

“It’s nice, all right. But it’s not sugar and
spice. Your scent name would be New Leaves or Cut Grass. Or
maybe...”

“I don’t want a scent name,” Echo said
hastily, since DJ looked all too pleased at the prospect of naming
her. “I’m not a wolf, so I don’t have to get stuck with something
like Air Freshener or Nutmeg.”

He snapped his fingers. “Nutmeg! I meant to
tell you about him. He’s my older brother, and he was born with a
heart defect. He didn’t get out of the hospital until he was four
months old. He can’t play sports or do anything too strenuous, and
every now and then, he lands back in the hospital. Last time was
two years ago. I’d like to think he’s fine now, but he’s probably
just overdue.”

DJ looked away from her, idly lifting and
lowering the bench press bar in one hand like a normal person might
exercise their wrists with a ten-pound barbell. He didn’t seem to
expect a response. But she was certain that he’d told her the
absolute truth.

Maybe that was why he was so oddly easy to
talk to. They had more in common than physical strength and that
someone they cared for was held hostage to ensure their
cooperation. He too had grown up worrying about a sibling.

“The genetic engineering went wrong for all
my sisters,” Echo said. “Charlie too. They were supposed to have
immune systems that could fight off anything, and they ended up
with immune systems that attacked their own bodies. They were
supposed to be able to consciously control their heart rate, and
they ended up with hearts that stopped beating if they weren’t
consciously making them beat.”

“That sounds terrifying. How does Charlie
manage?”

“She has a pacemaker. And she wakes up if she
stops breathing while she’s asleep. Most of the time, she does
breathe automatically. But sometimes her heart or lungs or stomach
or something switches over to only working if she makes it work,
and then she has to stay on life support until it goes back to
automatic again. It’s usually only for a couple of days. But she
couldn’t survive outside of the base. The doctors here have had her
entire life to learn how to keep her going. No normal hospital
could manage it.”

“Oh.” DJ set down the bar and rested his
forehead on his hands, as if the exercise had worn him out. “No
wonder you didn’t go for ‘Let’s run off together and rescue your
sister.’ I thought she was locked up somewhere, like Roy.”

“No. She could run if she wanted, but she’d
be throwing her life away.”

“I’m sorry,” DJ said again. His dark gaze met
her squarely. “What a fucked-up situation we’re in, huh? Your
sister can’t leave the lab, and you can’t leave without her. I
don’t know where my buddy is, and I can’t leave without him.”

“At least he
could
survive outside, if
you did find him.” Echo didn’t wish anything bad on DJ or his
buddy, but her own bitterness was like ash in her mouth.

“Yeah…” DJ sounded doubtful. He got up from
the bench and began to pace. “They nabbed us when our helicopter
was shot down. He got half the metal in the helo buried in his
chest. He couldn’t speak. He was coughing up blood. It was…”

He trailed off, for once seeming at a loss
for words, and shook his head. “I had to save him. But I don’t know
if I did, really.”

“Did something go wrong when he changed?”

“I don’t know.” DJ paced faster, agitated,
tapping his fingers along the wall, the weights, anything within
reach. “I didn’t notice anything. But it could be too early to
tell.”

He stopped suddenly, facing her. His words
came in jagged bursts. “I don’t know what I’ve done to him. I don’t
know what they’re doing to him. They showed me a video of him. He’d
just come out of surgery. They took away his pain meds to get me to
agree to work for them. So I did.”

The bitter taste in her mouth got stronger.
“They did that to Charlie once. I told them I’d kill them all if
they ever did it again, and to hell with the consequences.”

DJ’s lips quirked in a sardonic smile. “We’ve
got a lot in common. I told them the same thing.”

He dropped down beside her, leaning in as if
he was going to whisper in her ear. His breath slid over her cheek
like a summer breeze. But he didn’t speak.

On impulse, she focused until she could catch
his scent of salt and flame. It made her head spin as if she was
lying outside, watching the stars until she felt as if she was
falling into the sky. She tried to pull her focus away from it, but
she couldn’t. The only way she could stop breathing in his scent
was to turn off her sense of smell entirely. Frustrated and
unnerved, she did so.

The room abruptly seemed cold and sterile,
shorn of the scents of metal and chlorine and all the other
barely-noticeable odors that she’d experienced without registering
them.

Echo felt adrift. Automatically, she focused
on her other senses, trying to ground herself. This steady rush of
air through the vents. The tap-tap-tap of DJ’s feet drumming
against the floor. The darkness of his eyes, one shade lighter than
black. The ripped muscles of his arms that didn’t even begin to
show his actual strength. He wasn’t touching her, but she could
feel the heat of his skin. She could
see
the heat of his
skin when she looked into the infra-red, glowing like a burning
coal.

She pulled away until she couldn’t feel his
breath or the closeness of his body beside her. “They can’t hear
us. You saw me get rid of their bugs. If you have something to say,
just say it.”

He gave her a wry smile. “Well, see, that’s
the problem. I can ask, but I don’t know if I can trust your
answer. For all I know, those bugs were dummies and the real ones
are still there.”

“
I
don’t know that you haven’t been
planted here to fuck with me,” Echo retorted. “If you’re right, the
real bugs are probably there to spy on
me
.”

“I’m not a spy,” DJ said earnestly. “I swear
it.”

Echo gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “You
don’t need to be a spy to lure me into talking as if I think no
one’s listening. You could do that without meaning to. But if you
care, I think you’re exactly what you say you are. You were about
half an hour away from dying when I found you in the canyon.”