Outlaw

by Imogen Keeper

Genres: action adventure romance; suspense; paranormal romance; science fiction romance; urban fantasy romance

Synopsis

The sexy, action-packed first book in The City of a Thousand Lies trilogy by award-winning Imogen Keeper.

THE GOVERNMENT drugs us with ‘vitamins.'
They monitor us with nanochips.
They subjugate us with fear.

Citizens obey.
Outlaws are hunted down in the streets.

NO ONE knows that better than me.
Four years ago, my mother died, my father rebelled and was instantly Outlawed, leaving me responsible for my sick sister, a stack of bills and both our lives.
So I kept my head down and I prayed the government would never look my way. But now, they've found me anyway and have issued an impossible command. I have to write the code to convert nanochips to mind control devices and take the final freedom away from all of us—our own minds.

FOR A TEST SUBJECT, they gave me Romeo-Three, a captive bio-engineered soldier as dangerous as he is irresistible.
The reckless hope that saturates his every word ignites inside me a longing for a life beyond obedience.

LOVING HIM is an act of war.
The price tag of his freedom is my life, leaving us with no choice but to rebel—even if rebellion means certain death.

A seductive, breathtaking book that blends Romance, Fantasy and futuristic elements into an unforgettable read.

Release date: June 29, 2021

Publisher: Mindless Muse, LLC

Content advisory: This novel is intended for mature adult readers.

Sample

PROLOGUE

I AM NOT A MAN

 

 

ROMEO-THREE

I am not a man. I am more than a man and I am less than a man.

I can see in the dark. I can go nine days without water, a month without food. I can regenerate limbs. My skin is thicker than any human’s. It heals more quickly. My muscles are stronger, more elastic. My bones are denser, less brittle, and I am faster. By far.

They built me to be a weapon, these IdentityCorps employees who serve a faceless government.

They built me to be a weapon, and that is exactly what I am.

I’m a weapon in the shape of a man. So are my brothers and sisters beside me, bio-engineered beings like me, designed to be beautiful, deadly, unstoppable.

Nova stands beside me, his booted feet rooted to the pitted and crumbling tarmac beneath our feet. The wind tosses his dark blond hair across his brown cheeks and into the blue sky behind us.

“Are we ready for this?” I ask.

Tensy’s eerily white face tilts toward me, her ghost white hair flying around her. Prima doesn’t bother to look at me. She keeps her dark eyes on the prize, the rising glass towers of the Headquarters of the People’s Republic of the Northern Americas, in the distance, glittering in the blinding glare of the hot sun.

The others stand ready too, squinting into the light, scenting, listening, scanning.

“Yes,” they say as one, because that’s what we are too. One. A family. A pack.

We stand together on this final stretch of broken highway that leads from the wild freedom of the jungle at our backs to the robotically pristine stretch of road, studded by solar panels, wind turbines, and soybean farms.

We come barehanded, without knives or guns. We don’t need them.

The others fan out behind us.

There are twenty of us total. Ten men and ten women, built from the DNA of humans and animals alike, raised and trained from birth to kill. They kept us as their secret weapon until we cut our freedom from them at gunpoint.

For three years we lived free.

For three years we knew the power of choice.

For three years our destiny was our own.

That ends today. Today, we surrender ourselves to them. Or at least, thirteen of us do. They took one of our own. We’re here to get him back.

“Then, in we go,” I say.

As one, we start to move, our boots digging into the asphalt, passing the buzz of solar panels, the whir of turbines, the driveways that lead to depots and outposts, until the maniacal tidiness of food farms and energy farms give way to geometric greenhouses, cleanly paved walkways, towers of glass that block out the sky. The comingled scents of the lake and river and canal hang swampy and thick in the hot summer air. I draw it deep into my lungs, knowing full well it will be one of my last breaths of fresh air for time unknowable.

No one notices us at first.

Not as we pass the first of the greenhouses that fringe the city. But when we get to the apartment blocks, white-washed and glittering with windows, bedecked in living walls of climbing sweet pea and beanstalks, we are seen.

At first by children.

They run around us in circles, calling out, reminding me of another child, only two weeks ago. A child with chubby cheeks, a child who got sick, a child whose mother was killed, a child who started this all.

He is the reason we are here.

The children chase us as we walk, shouting out jeering, taunting, laughing words. A few of the older, bolder ones throw stones at us. OUTLAW, they say. Because that is what we are. We are Outlaws who dared to rebel, who bucked the cage of this monitored Citizen world.

Their parents arrive not long after. Outlaw, they whisper. In their world, Outlaws run the other way, terrified of Killers and Citizens alike. They run in fear, and linger as blood-puddles left to bake in the sunshine.

Outlaws do not walk together, slow and unafraid. And they certainly don’t march in the direction we are, straight toward Headquarters.

A kid’s thrown stone hits Kaksi in the cheek, and a trail of blood drips down. He doesn’t bat an eyelash.

It’s Vix who bares her teeth at them.

It’s Quatro who laughs, and catches the next stone thrown, volleys it back among their throngs, and sends them scattering.

No one else bothers us as we stalk deeper into the city, though the crowd swells around us. Tidy people, the blue letters of their holographic feed over their heads telling me everything I could wonder about their safe, obedient lives. CITIZEN. Cattle.

No one bothers us. How could they? These meek obedient souls who’ve spent their lives on their knees would stand no chance against us. Our smallest could take down their biggest without breaking stride.

So we march unaccosted all the way to the pristine, grassy lawns, bisected by tidy walkways that stretch outward from the outer ring of the Headquarters like rays from an epicentric sun.

Only then do we meet resistance.

Shoulder-to-shoulder across the bold green grass, stand armored guards with guns and helmets and bullet-proof shields. A hundred of them at least. The police that keep the peace in this orderly city.

“Stop,” calls their leader. Her very voice sends every hair on my body rising with revulsion. Baldwin. She lifts her powder-white chin my way, and stop we do.

All of us. We freeze right there under the beating noon-day sun, on the grass-flanked walkway, and lift our hands to the sky.

“We surrender,” Prima calls.

“Why now?” Baldwin’s steel eyes glitter in the sun. She knows why. She may not understand loyalty or family or love, but she has to know we’d never leave Oct inside, alone, in her prison.

“Good a time as any.” A hot wind whips up, sending Nova’s hair swirling all over again, rising into the sky like an inverted dark blond tornado.

“Where are the others?” Baldwin asks.

“They declined to join us.” Prima wets her lips, a smile dancing there.

“On your knees,” Baldwin grates back. The self-satisfied gleam in her arctic eyes makes my lips twist with hatred for the meaning behind the gesture, but I drop to my knees before her.

“Hands behind your heads.”

My fingers thread along my scalp.

Baldwin tosses her head and it’s my gaze she settles on. “How did you disable your trackers?”

I look for a lie, search that face I know so well using every inhuman sense I possess, and find nothing but truth. She doesn’t know then? Or she’s just that good?

I grin. “We didn’t.”

She sucks in a breath, exultation crossing her features, like I just confirmed her secret, deepest hope.

“Lie down. Faces down.” Her eyes gleam like all her dreams are coming true. The shadow at the corner of her lips tightens. She just threw a mental victory party.

We press our faces to the dirt, the smell of sun-hot grass rich around us.

I turn my face toward Nova. “Did you see the look on her face?”

His tawny eyes gleam. “Why was she happy about it?”

“Fuck knows why that woman does anything. I hate everything single about this moment,” Sev grunts from behind me.

“Shut up and absorb the vitamin D. You won’t feel it for a while,” Vix, another of our sisters hisses.

“Focus on why,” I say.

“For Oct,” Prima bites out.

“For all of us.” I press my face into the grass, try to remember the feel of the sun on my skin, and make no move of protest as the guards slap cuffs around my wrists, around my ankles, link chains between them.

For freedom, Nova hums at a sound frequency no normal human could hear.

For life, comes the response, as natural as air. For life is right, because there is no life without freedom. 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

ENORMOUS, MS. JONES

 

nearly eighteen months later ...

 

TIERNEY JONES

Dr. Caruthers, my interviewer, clears his throat, cutting through the silence of his office. “We have a position for you in the Department of Human Engineering.”

My bland smile is forced. “Human Engineering?” That’s what my dad did. Made people. Created them, one gene at a time, making him a human god of sorts. A hard fact to grapple with, it’s never sat easy.

Dr. Caruthers taps his thumb on the desk, leaving striated marks on the chrome surface like a row of footprints on sand, trailing straight toward me.

He’s a big man—6'4" according to the glowing blue letters of the holographic feed over his head which lists his name, ID number, height, weight, address. And his body, beneath his suit, speaks to exercise and strength. Wide shoulders, lean hips, a face that speaks to mingled ancestry. European and Indian maybe, or South American. Thick dark hair, tan skin.

“Yes,” he says.

A hundred ... a thousand questions bubble up, but I force my brain to go quiet. The less you reveal, the safer you are. Mom’s number one rule from the day I was old enough to form complete sentences. Just do whatever they tell you, was her number two. Rules I’ve lived by.

He scratches a thumb along his hard jaw, through the dark hair of his beard, and one side of his mouth tightens into a hard line.

“Your thesis work on the coding of nanochips for sleep induction was very good.” His imitation-leather chair creaks and, somewhere behind glossy black walls, a pipe runs, ticking in the silent room. “Do you socialize much, Ms. Jones?”

He knows the answer. It’ll be in my file along with everything else about my mom and my dad and my crazy sister and the mountain of bills I never manage to pay, the house I can’t afford. “No.”

“What made you choose sleep?”

I force my fingers to unclench their death grip on the chair. “My mother was a bad sleeper. She used to joke that if only we could ...” I stop myself. To him, my mother was nothing but a human warning, a renowned government psychologist whose death sent her husband raving and her eldest genius daughter into the psych hospital and her youngest there to sweep up the mess. “She used to joke about a magic button to make ourselves sleep. It occurred to me, maybe I could make such a button.”

“It may be the most novel—and ambitious—concept I’ve ever seen from a grad student.”

I clamp down on my tongue so I won’t grimace. Mediocrity has ever been my armor. I hoped sleep was sufficiently boring to avoid notice.

“We tested your thesis in a select group of Outlaw test subjects. Your scientific knowledge is impressive.”

He studies me like I’m a dull beige caterpillar who suddenly and unexpectedly mutated into a pipevine swallowtail butterfly. “We inserted the second chip into the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus. They did the work themselves, just as you hypothesized. It was seamless.”

My lips part, and in spite of myself, am instantly curious. I am my parent’s child after all. Science fascinates me and so does solving problems. “It put them to sleep?”

“Yes.”

This is a massive breakthrough. “How long does it keep them asleep? Is there any kind of developmental immunity? Any effect on daytime drowsiness?”

I swear he almost smiles at me. “Keeps them asleep for as long as their body normally would. Mild developmental immunity. No effect on daytime drowsiness.”

This is huge. Huge! The implications are sweeping.

Boundless. Too boundless. He keeps talking but my eyes are lost outside the window, fixating on all the potential. Outside the massive window behind his desk, carbon-dioxide-absorbing vines on his balcony flutter in the breeze like ghosts.

Human Engineering. Mind Control. A thousand whispers from drunken voices at parties in school. Whispers about eugenics, drugs, secret government programs, breeders, warehouses full of men with their testicles all frozen up like ...

Dr. Caruthers’ words cut through the noise, “ ... enormous, Ms. Jones.”

“What’s enormous?”

He blinks. “The scope of this project.”

Oh. My hands drop. “May I see the study?”

His lips twitch.  “The idea was reviewed and accepted by one of our top executives, Titania Baldwin. Your bank account was updated this morning. You’ll begin immediately.”

I draw in a shaky breath. The increased money will mean I can afford to keep my sister Swann’s day nurse for another few months. When dad was declared Outlaw, the government claimed our parents’ savings as compensation for crimes against the state. We have the house, and I work nights doing contract coding, but we barely ever have enough money left over for food and taxes after paying the nurse.

Without the nurse, Swann wanders off, falls, forgets to eat, stumbles into public and runs her mouth saying dangerous things.

We’ve been drowning since mom died. Maybe this job is finally our dry land.

“You and Dr. Baldwin will be working on an ... adjacent project.” He sucks in a long breath through his nose. “You know what else that area of the brain controls, Ms. Jones?”

“The hypothalamus? Impulse control, Dr. Caruthers.”

“Yes.” He lets the word hang in the air.

“You want me to write coding to enhance impulse control?”

“We have some test subjects who we’d like to make more ...  amenable to their circumstances.”

His words wash over me, as chilling and damning as a blast of water from the frozen expanse of Lake Michigan outside the window, endless ice as far as the eye can see.

So the opposite then of enhanced impulse control. He means ... . “Mind control.”

He glances up at the camera in the room’s corner, its round red eye all-seeing. A reminder or maybe a warning. Someone is always watching. “We’d like you to write codes just like your sleep study.”

I open my mouth, ready to offer a hundred reasons why it’s nothing like my sleep study.

“Starting a hundred years ago, the chips were outfitted with everything they need to perform self-alterations, repairs, augmentations. They’re pre-equipped to do this. It’s just that no one has quite figured out how to execute it. Until you, and you did it without even knowing about those extra parts.”

I swallow and tap the heels of my shoes together on the fake pony-fur hide carpet, wishing to be someplace far far away from here.

What am I supposed to say?

“Of course, if you aren’t interested ...” His lower lip pushes out, full and mauve-pink under the beard.

IdentityCorps has a way of always getting what they want. If it’s not me, it will be someone else who’ll use my thesis. They’ll develop it anyway. And I need the money for Swann.

My eyes burn, and even though it shreds off a jagged shard of my soul, I force a smile. “Okay, Dr. Caruthers. I’d be happy to accept the position in Human Engineering.”

He offers a thin smile. “I’ve raised your clearance. Do you need to be reminded that speaking of this to anyone outside of work would be an F-code violation?”

I swallow. Violations of Codes A-F are felonies, and a felony means immediate status change from Citizen to Outlaw. And Outlaw means ... total loss of company and government protection. It means the law no longer applies to you. It means being hunted down in the streets by government mandated Killers or worse, being taken away by someone for god knows what.

“I won’t talk about it.” I wouldn’t ever dare break the law. I know exactly what happens when you step out of line. The only safety lies in obedience, no matter the cost.

“I’ve brought in Bob Reynaldi to assist. He’s good. He works in Analytics. You’ll lead but he can provide support.”

His mouth twists like he’s running his tongue along his front teeth. “I want you to know you can trust me, Ms. Jones. You can come to me with any ... reservations or fears you may have.” He clears his throat, his brown eyes burrowing into me like he’s looking into my soul. “I am here for you.”

So spake every lying executive ever, fiends with hidden necessities, every single one. My mother and father probably included. There’s so much about them I never understood, but here I am, with yet another rule to stack on my rule pile. Trust no one.

Rules mean safety. Rules mean life. I live by rules.

So, I smile blandly, push my glasses farther up my nose and say, “Thank you, Dr. Caruthers. I’ll keep that in mind.”

With a nasal sigh, he uses the fabric of his shirt to clear away his own thumb prints, rubbing his elbow over the marks. It must drive him nuts, the constant imperfection of his own hands marring his desk. He must clean it all day long. “You’ll be briefed when you get there. They’re waiting for you.”

He just stares at me with that blank handsome face of his, and it takes me a second to realize I’ve been dismissed.

  

CHAPTER TWO

ABANDON ALL HOPE

 

TIERNEY JONES

When Dr. Caruthers’ door hisses shut behind me, Bob Reynaldi is standing in the hallway. He’s leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, the buttons of his yellow shirt strain over his belly. A tiny pair of round glasses perch on the end of his nose. He’s so tall that to see his feed, I have to crank my head back.

It displays all his information. He’s listed as an engineer, specialty analytics. Three years older than me at twenty-five. I try not to look at the text line that delineates his weight.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask.

“Sort of. Our new boss is waiting in the lobby of Ring 1.” If he has any reservations about our new roles in Bio-Engineering, he hides them well.

I raise my brows but don’t comment. Ring 1 is populated by only the highest-ranking of executives. I haven’t been since I was a kid visiting with my dad.

We make our way to the elevator bank and ride down in silence.

I don’t know much about this Bob but he seems comfortable with silence. He doesn’t break it as we walk through the massive black marble and glass lobby to the security access points to Ring 1.

If I harbored any doubts about the importance of this department, they evaporate now. Ring 1 is serious business. I hold my breath as black-masked guards with glossy rifles across their chests surveille me.

An AI scanner reads my feed, and the polarized glass blockade slides open without a sound—my information has indeed been changed. We walk down a long, mirrored hallway and into Ring 1.

A woman waits at the end.

She has steel gray hair and irises so icy they’re almost white around the pupils. Her pale face has even less affect than Dr. Caruthers’. She wears a charcoal skirt suit that probably costs close to what I earn night-coding in a year. The set of black pearls around her neck definitely costs more than I’ve earned in my whole life.

There’s something familiar about her as she studies me with an intensity typically reserved for the contents of a petri dish. I’d swear we’ve met, but I can’t fathom when.

The blue feed above her head says her name is Dr. Titania Baldwin. Executive. She’s tall too, but I’m used to looking up at people. It’s the being looked down at part that bugs me.

At her side is a short man with a very shiny pant suit, a goatee, diamond-stud earrings, a face I know well from my childhood. Curt Schwitters. When he smiles, every single time, I could almost swear he winks.

Some people just sparkle as if their very souls are amused—he’s one of them, always has been. “Well, if it isn’t Tierney Jones. The infamous, the tantalizing, the talented ...” he all but makes a final comedian’s drum baddumptssss for sound effect and coos out the final, “The Teary.”

I groan as he pulls me in for an air hug.

“Don’t.” I hate that nickname. They gave it to me in my junior year because I cried when someone asked me about my father. It was just ... still raw. Mom was freshly dead. He had just been turned Outlaw, and I lost the stupid war with my emotions and ran out of class. Everyone called me Tierney the Teary for the rest of the year. “Please don’t let that follow me,” I whisper as he faux kisses my cheek.

“Mum is the word, then.” He spreads his hands wide, face simpering into a gotcha expression. “It’s good to see you, love.”

I air kiss him back. “I had no idea you worked in Human Engineering.”

He leaves a waft of soft expensive cologne in his wake. “I don’t. Actually, my specialty is more along the lines of ...” He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Coercive psychology.”

Dr. Baldwin touches her pearls. “I wasn’t aware you knew each other.”

Curt lifts a lazy shoulder and widens his eyes. “Surprise. We were in boarding school together.”

“Interesting,” she says as if it’s anything but.

I get the impression no one takes life as seriously as this woman—especially not Curt.

“Follow.” Dr. Baldwin leads us down a silver-and-black hallway.

Her sharp heels clatter on the tiles as Bob and I follow them past two more checkpoints and finally to a hydraulic door.

Turning back, she lifts one carefully tweezed brow, and again, I try to figure out where I’ve seen her, but it’s hiding at the edge of my brain, only a thought half-formed, like looking at a star in the night sky. If I look too closely, it disappears.

She doesn’t say anything, but she may as well tell us this is the gate where we abandon our hope for all the weight in that glare. There’s something in those icy eyes. A warning maybe, or a tinge of regret.

Curt clucks his tongue. “I would ...  prepare yourselves. If you’ve never seen Outlaws up close ...  it can be a bit shocking.” His nostrils flare like he’s trying not to laugh. But I’m not. I’ve seen very few Outlaws up close, and all of them were terrified, running, one breath from death. “And they’re huge.”

“Just remember, these are not men and women.” Baldwin’s voice is flat and hard. “These are not Citizens. These are not even humans. They do not have rights like you and I. They are Outlaw. They are monsters.” She says it all with a downward tilt to her mouth, as if the very word itself were distasteful, but there’s something else in the words—a dare almost, a challenge.

She lowers her thumb and leans forward so her eye is level with a blue-lit scanner set in a panel beside the door. A red laser crosses her retina with a series of faint beeps. The door hisses open.

“These are now coded to open for your retinas and thumbprints as well,” Curt says with a tight smile, and in we go. “No one can get in or out without dual authentication.”

The smell hits me before anything else. It’s primal. Human. It smells like captivity.

Then the sounds, they come next. Someone snores. A man sings softly. Another hums.

But after a single raw strained second, the sounds cease, and I have the distinct feeling of a packed assembly hall, of a thousand bodies eagerly awaiting an esteemed speaker.

Bob’s red trembling face reflects every single thought racing through my own confused mind.

The lab has high brightly-lit white counters, shiny sinks, and data screens, but everywhere else lies in shadow. A massive black mainframe covers one wall, tiny blue lights winking and unwinking across the board. White-coated lab-techs move silently from station to station, casting furtive glances our way.

Guards stand along the walls, rifles in hand.

Ten windows mar the concrete wall directly across from us. Three are empty.

“This is the Romeo wing,” Curt says. “Part of a bio-engineering program to design super soldiers twenty-seven years ago. The Sierra Program.”

“We made twenty of them, your father and I.” Baldwin pivots on her cool gray heels to regard me. “Ten men and ten women.”

That’s why she looks familiar. We probably met when I was a child.

Baldwin’s teeth are even and white, sharp in her mouth. “We now have seven of each in custody here. The females are in the Foxtrot wing.”

“Seven?” I glance at the cells and the hulking forms of captive men inside them. “I count six.”

“One of them is being held elsewhere for his own protection.”

In the cell closest to me is a single man. He’s naked, an endless line of sleek muscle and smooth pale skin. If he’s ever been ashamed of his nudity, he’s past it now.

He sits with his back against the rear wall, long, muscled legs stretched out loosely in front of him, elbows resting on his knees. Hair, long and dark, falls nearly to the middle of his back.

Above his head, in bold holographic letters the bright vermilion of a male cardinal’s wing at the end of a fruit-rich summer, is the single word OUTLAW.

I’ve never been so close to one before, only seen a few in the distance, always running, the flutter of frantic red over their heads. Or far more often, a fading red-brown stain on a city sidewalk, the final lingering vestige of a life snuffed out, a reminder that my dad might still be one among their desperate flock.

This soldier, this creation of my fathers doesn’t move a muscle, just stares through me with eyes too pale to make out from the distance, but the look in them makes my soul shudder. I’ve seen that look in the eyes of wild animals in the zoo downtown, in the pacing tigers, and the prowling bears. Cautious. Observant. Cunning.

Baldwin said they had them in custody, but this is more than custody. This is prison.

“Why are they Outlaw?” I ask.

Curt’s hands land on his hip. “They escaped a few years ago. Outlaw was their punishment.”

“Escaped? Were they always prisoners?”

Baldwin’s nostrils pinch tight, and a muscle beneath her eye twitches. Closer now, I can see the powder sitting on her thin skin, the fine lines and wrinkles. “They were created for a purpose. We gave them life.”

My hand rises up to touch my chest, rub at the faint ache there.

She steps closer to the window where the dark-haired man sits, staring at us the way I imagine a lizard looks at a fly. “This is Romeo-Three.”

The window spreads from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, broken only by a series of holes across the middle. Six circles the size of blueberries in the center of his glass provide his only auditory contact with the outside world.

There’s nowhere he can hide. He doesn’t even have the illusion of privacy. No decorative palm fronds offer creature comfort. No water feature to splash in. No cave to hide in.

I look away, swallowing a surge of bile at the back of my throat, and glance at the other lighted cells. Other Outlaw men stand in the windows, different colored eyes and skin and hair, all beautiful, all in peak physical condition, all watching me closely.

Schwitters steps up beside me. “He’s our most difficult subject.” He draws out the words as if they are delicious on his tongue.

Bob walks down the line of windows, peering into each one. “And the others?” He says it like he really doesn’t want to know the answer.

“All Romeos. Each has a number. We’re missing Romeos Five, Six, and Ten.”

“Why call them Romeo?”

“We were commanded to use military alphabet. M for male would have left us with Mike but that just seemed too common.” Baldwin points to the left. “It’s sort of poetic, isn’t it?”

“Romeo kills himself in the end. You know that, right?” I say before I can stop myself.

“I’ve read Shakespeare too, Ms. Jones.” Dr. Baldwin raps her knuckles against the glass wall. Then again, harder, and I can’t not look to see how he responds.

“What are the women called?” asks Bob.

“Foxtrots,” Schwitters murmurs. “F for female. We call them the Foxies.”

There’s something about the way he susurrates the word ‘Foxies,’ but his face is devoid of emotion. He was like this in school too. Glittering one second, indifferent the next.

Baldwin smacks the glass again, but Three doesn’t move. Not so much as a single muscle tenses. His eerie unmoving gaze settles on me, and it’s like a physical blow, the strength of those eyes on my face.

His head tilts to the side.

I rest my hand on the glass. “Why are they naked?”

Dr. Baldwin purses her lips. “Your father designed them to be highly adaptable. That’s a strength of many species. Ability to evolve. The second generation will outperform the first.”

I force my brows to unfurrow and settle into a mild curious line. “They can reproduce?”

Dr. Baldwin’s chin tilts upward. “They’re not sterile. Never were.”

“And the Foxtrots? Are they sterile?” Women are largely infertile. Have been since the end of the 23^rd century. We must first gain the approval of the government if we wish to have children. And only then are we given the needed hormones. But perhaps that can be bio-engineered away. But if it can be, why haven’t they done so for the rest of the women in the Republic?

“Of course not,” Baldwin says.

Bob clears his throat. “You’ve withheld their suppressors.”

“Suppressors?” I ask.

“The general population is medicated to experience only the mildest of sexual arousal. And to suppress ovulation and sperm production. It’s how they reduced population.” Schwitters’ eyes glitter. “But, now just how do you know that, Bob?”

I turn to him too, too astonished to do more than blink. I bite down on my lips to keep my mouth closed. All this time, I’ve been drugged? We all have?

Bob stammers, visibly blanching, and Schwitters laughs, clapping him on the back. “Don’t worry. We’re like a family down here. We won’t tell your secrets, if you don’t tell ours. Besides”—he flutters his hands through the air—“F-code violations and all that jazz.”

I’ve swallowed a tiny pill every day of my life. My vitamin. Everyone does. It’s supposed to help provide needed nutrients to supplement for the lack of animal protein in our diets. “The population is drugged?”

Shock has my word rising upward. I knew I was watched, but I had no idea how deep their control went.

“For the greater good.” Schwitters sparkle-smirks.

“We’ve tweaked a few things.” Her fingers flutter over her pearls as she looks at Romeo-Three down the length of her narrow aquiline nose.

He rises to his haunches in a flurry of shifting shadows, the knuckles of one lax hand resting on the floor. The raw muscles of his thighs gleam in the light.

He’s frozen so still it’s as if he isn’t even breathing, as if his heart has stopped beating. Then he pushes off, rising to his full height, and he’s even bigger than Bob. At least taller, with wider shoulders, solid muscle and not much else. No second chin or trembling cheeks, just one hard jaw, a roman nose, a stubbled chin with a slight cleft in the center.

He shakes his hair back and slow-stalks toward me, all rippling muscle, and maybe I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help myself because ...

Dr. Caruthers was right about the scope of enormous.

I jerk my gaze back up to his face.

Baldwin blows out a sigh. “No matter what we put in their water, no matter how we threaten or coerce, reward or manipulate, they refuse to perform. That’s where you come in.”

I close my eyes against the burn. He’s already a captive locked in a cell, and now I’m here to take away his final freedom. His own mind.

For the greater good.

Romeo-Three stops on the other side of the glass. Up close, his eyes are an otherworldly pale, unsettling gray, almost white in the centers and darkening at the edges under thick black lashes.

I can feel his eyes as they trace along my cheeks, down my nose, linger on my lips.

He’s predatory stealth straight-up.

I have to catch my foot as it lifts to backstep. “Did they cooperate as soldiers?”

“Not always as intended, though they were useful.” She lifts a shoulder, and her expensive silk lets out a shimmery sigh that has me tugging on the hem of my cheap blouse. “In the eighteen months we’ve had them here, they’ve attempted to escape on three different occasions, exhibited aggression and disobedience. They’re extremely intelligent, coordinated, high degrees of mental and moral flexibility. We made them that way.” She clears her throat. “One three separate occasions, multiple of them have broken free, smashed computers, terrorized the staff.”

Romeo-Three’s teeth sink into his lower lip.

“Like a pack,” I murmur, but they ignore. They’re like a wolf pack, probing the flanks of the flock, testing for weakness.

Baldwin’s silver-nailed fingers flutter by her side. “Foxtrot-One tied together the strings from her tampons and strangled a guard. It was ...  distressing.”

She glares up at Three.

“And counterproductive. Meals are now served in isolation at gunpoint. All we want is children from them so we can get started on developing the next generation soldier. They refuse. The result is their own discomfort. We’ve made them extremely aroused, hoping it would provide sufficient motivation. We’ve had to resort to some ... archaic means of encouragement. They’ve forced us to.”

Three moves closer to me, still staring at my lips in a way that makes me want to cover them with my hand. He shifts his shoulders experimentally, rolling them in a volley of thickly bunching muscles.

“You’d think they’d be happy to perform,” says Schwitters.

“Sexually?” Bob asks in a strangled sort of voice.

“Why not?” Baldwin laughs, brittle and chilly. “It’s been three weeks since his last nocturnal emission with a nearly permanent erection. We don’t allow them to masturbate. They’re monitored all the time, and we can tell from their brain signals that they’re aroused, painfully so. And yet they refuse.”

Bob shifts his feet. “There are other ways.”

“We’ve tried starving them. Drugs,” says Schwitters. “We’ve strapped them down. It’s no use. The women, the Foxtrots, refuse as well.”

I sink my fingernails into my palms. This is who I work for. I try to catch Curt’s eye, but he doesn’t look my way. “And them? What do they want?” I ask.

Three just stands there, looming. He stares at me like I hold some key, a secret he’s been waiting for. His hands are loose by his sides, nothing but a pane of glass and a massive erection between us.

Dr. Baldwin sighs, her expression almost wistful. “They want freedom.”

That’s the first thing that’s made sense all day. I catch a wistful sigh before it can leave my throat. They want freedom. Freedom is a dream as simple as it is impossible.

Three’s eyes flare.

“And they want Romeo-Eight brought back in,” Schwitters whispers.

“The one in solitary?” I ask. “Why is he there?”

“We had no choice,” Baldwin says in a flat voice. “Romeo-Eight took a wife, had a child. They all escaped together. Then his wife died, and we had to separate him from his child. He hasn’t taken it well.”

Is it really any wonder they won’t bring children into this world they inhabit? I certainly wouldn’t want to give the company children if I were them.

Three’s breathing hard through flared nostrils, his body flexing, fists tightening.

I have to ask. “Did you kill Romeo-Eight’s wife?”

Baldwin’s chin juts even higher. “Delilah was a casualty.”

Romeo-Three’s pale eyes laser from my lips back up to my eyes, like I’m a map, and he’s reading me, following every path and road that brought me here.

He bangs on the glass with a fist. “Her.”

Me? “Me what?”

He cocks his head, still zeroed in on me with electric intensity. I can practically hear a hum in the air. It’s like he can see straight into my soul.

Baldwin laughs that frosty laugh of hers.

“You want me to fuck someone,” he says in a voice like raked gravel. “I’ll fuck her.”