Specimen

  “She’s Graham Mills’ goddaughter, for one. Having someone close to him run to the other side is embarrassing, if nothing else. There’s some report indicating she may have had some information about the assassination of Robert Grace.”

  “Riley’s father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t have any intel on that.”

  “Maybe an oversight?” Isaac shrugs before he goes on. “Errol Spat from the tech division is the last one. He developed our implants.”

  I nod as I retrieve the information.

  “Any of those could be the target,” I say. “There are countless others as well.”

  “Those are the most likely,” Isaac says, and I agree with his assertion.

  “I guess we’ll find out eventually.”

  We hang out in the lounge all day. When we run out of topics to discuss, I begin to get restless. Riley has been gone a long time, and I wonder what is keeping her occupied. She’s left me to attend meetings before, but they usually only last an hour or two. She’s been gone for six hours and seventeen minutes now.

  “Long meeting, I guess,” Isaac says as if he’s reading my mind.

  I can’t hear the thoughts of my comrades, but I can definitely sense their presence and mood. The closer they are physically, the stronger the sensation. When we’re linked for a training exercise, the feeling is emphasized.

  “I wonder if they’re talking about the mission Pike mentioned. Wouldn’t Dr. McCall be in the same meeting? I wonder why she didn’t leave Pike here.”

  “There’s no telling,” Isaac says. “It’s not like we’re given a lot of extraneous information.”

  “Need to know basis,” I mumble, and he smirks.

  Riley appears at the door, and I immediately stand to greet her. She’s visibly troubled by something, but when I ask what it is, she just runs her hand up the inside of my arm and tells me everything is all right.

  Dr. Rahul comes into the room as well. Her expression is more passive than Riley’s, but she doesn’t smile or greet me like she normally does. She quickly collects Isaac as Riley leads me back to the lab.

  “What’s going on?” I ask when the door closes behind me.

  “No one is listening to me.” Riley slams her tablet down on the desk. “In other words, status quo.”

  She starts to pace back and forth, running her hand over her careful bun, causing some of the strands to get loose. She grits her teeth and shakes her head slowly.

  “Idiots,” she grumbles.

  “What happened?” I ask again.

  “They’ve decided you’re all ready for an actual mission,” she says. “I keep telling them we need more trial runs first, but they’re insisting the timing is right. It’s all so fucking political!”

  I flinch. I’ve never heard Riley so upset, and I can’t recall her cursing at all unless she was on the verge of orgasm. I’m concerned for her mood but also turned on.

  “What’s the mission?” I ask, wondering if Pike had been correct.

  “Intelligence wants you to go out and retrieve a defector.”

  “Who?”

  “Errol Spat.”

  “The tech who designed our implants.”

  “Yes, that’s him. There has been some information regarding his whereabouts, and more importantly, where he will be in the near future.”

  “Where will he be?”

  “There’s a main road that parallels the Grey River, right by the border between Mills-controlled Yorkstown and Carson-controlled Haprin. Can you access it?”

  “Yes.” I see it all clearly in my head.

  “There is rarely any travel on that road due to the proximity of the border. Do you see our border wall there?”

  “Yes, it’s just on the edge of the river.”

  “That’s it. The road connects Carson City with Haprin. We believe there will be a convoy carrying grain to Haprin and that Errol Spat will be transported from Carson City to Haprin and then further into Carson territory to Martinsberg. Carson Alliance has recently built a new tech facility there.”

  The route is clear, but the location of the tech center comes up as unknown.

  “I don’t see the tech center.”

  “We don’t know exactly where it is.”

  “If we knew the timing of the convoy, we could swim the river without detection.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “You aren’t ready for this, Sten! None of you are! I haven’t completely finished the data based on the last upgrade of your medication. I’m getting some anomalies from your sleep-patterns, and I don’t know what they mean.”

  “Anomalies?” She hadn’t mentioned this before, and I am again reminded of my dreams.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she says again. “It could be nothing. It could also indicate a malfunction in your implants. Not knowing puts you at risk.”

  “I feel fine,” I tell her. I don’t want her to find a problem. I don’t want her to figure out that I have dreams about my past. “My performance is still good, isn’t it?”

  “Your performance is exemplary.” Riley drops in the rolling chair and sighs. “That’s the problem. If you weren’t doing so well, they wouldn’t consider this action. As it is, they’re sending you out tomorrow.”

  “That soon?”

  “The intelligence just came in, and the convoy is supposed to pass that point by the wall in two days.”

  “We’re ready,” I say, trying to reassure her.

  “Any miscalculation could be devastating. We can’t afford to risk this, not yet.”

  I take her in my arms and pull her against me.

  “I’ll be all right, Riley. You’ve trained me so well. You’re the best doctor here, and I know we can get this done.”

  “I hope so, Sten.” She coils her arms around my waist and places her cheek to my chest. “It’s not like they’re giving us a choice.”

  *****

  I’m frightened but determined. The shotgun feels heavy in my hands as I sneak behind the barracks, searching. My head spins, and I’m standing over two uniformed soldiers with holes from a shotgun blast in their chests.

  I say nothing as I’m surrounded. The shotgun is yanked from my grasp and my arms are pulled behind me before I’m shoved roughly to the ground. My mind whirls again, and I’m sitting in a hard plastic seat with a phone receiver pressed to my ear.

  “Jesus, Galen! What were ya thinkin’, son?” The familiar old man stares at me from the other side of a glass window. His eyes are wide with terror as he places his hand on the glass.

  “What else was I supposed to do, Hal?” I feel tears streaming down my face as I place my hand opposite his. The glass is cold. “What are they going to do to me?”

  “I don’t know, son.” He shakes his head sadly. “I just don’t know.”

  Someone comes up behind me and pulls me from the chair. My hands are cuffed behind my back as I stare at the father-figure behind the glass.

  I know I’ll never see him again.

  When I wake, I’m curled up in a ball with tears streaming down my face. My throat hurts, and my nose is running. I push myself off the bed and go to the sink to wash my face.

  It’s early, and Riley hasn’t arrived yet. I hate waking up and being alone. Without her as a distraction, I am left with too much time to think about the strange, unconfirmed images in my head.

  The dream had felt so real but disconnected at the same time. I don’t understand the images in my head. The old man—Hal—has been in my dreams before but never in such a setting. Most of my dreams have centered on the farm and my sister. The barracks and the strange glass window are different.

  Had I left the farm and become a soldier?

  I think about the shotgun I’d held in my dream. It was a simple weapon and not one resembling military issue. I consider the bodies that had been lying at my feet, and my stomach tightens.

  None of it makes any sense
.

  Maybe it is all just a dream.

  But I know it’s not.

  *****

  Riley is late.

  She’s never been late before. She’s always here at the same time, give or take ten minutes.

  The more I think about it, the more agitated I become. I take a shower. I dress. I try to come up with something to occupy my mind, but I know every piece of equipment in the lab. There is nothing of any interest here. I try to access more information about Errol Spat, but I find nothing new.

  It’s been over fourteen hours since I last saw her.

  Since the day I first woke up, I haven’t been apart from her this long. My hands begin to shake and my thighs start to tremble. I swallow a couple of times, but I can’t get rid of the sour taste in the back of my throat.

  If something has happened to her, I have no idea what I will do.

  Briefly, I consider what might become of me. I know there are other doctors who share Dr. McCall’s belief that my treatments have been a mistake. What if she were left in charge of me? Would she alter the treatments or just have me voided, whatever that means. Would they wipe out my memoires again and make me start over?

  Kill me?

  I have no idea.

  I’m already heading to the door, not sure what I will do other than bang on it and scream for someone to find Riley, when the door opens and a haggard Riley walks in. I immediately grab her up in my arms and hug her tightly to me.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” My voice carries both anger and relief. I’m practically crushing her to me, but I can’t relax my grip.

  “Sten…oh, Sten, I’m so sorry!” She reaches up and strokes the side of my face and then my arm. “I didn’t mean for all that to take so long.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I’ve been appealing to Colonel Mills to abort this mission. He’s not going to do it though. He says Spat is too important, and this is the only chance we may ever get.”

  Her fingers rub the skin on the inside of my arm, and I felt like melting into her.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t back here sooner.” She smiles at me.

  “It’s all right now,” I say. It is, too. Now that I have her in my arms, smell her sweet scent, and feel her skin against mine, everything is fine.

  Chapter 11

  Isaac, Pike, and I are loaded into a passenger car on a monorail. We’re briefed by Captain Mills along the way to the border.

  “I know I don’t have to remind you, but this is not a training exercise. This is a real mission and a critical one at that. Errol Spat defected from the Mills Conglomerate eighteen months ago, and this is the first real intel we’ve had on his whereabouts since that time. He holds critical technical information, not just about Project Mindstorm and the implants that provide each of you with the abilities you have but also about other advanced projects as well. He’s a technical genius, and we can’t afford to let him out of our grasp again.”

  She focuses on the tablet in her hands before providing us with the specifics of the caravan—the number of trucks and what each is carrying. I sit back and take it all in my head as Riley jots down notes.

  “If we can take control of the grain vehicle,” Captain Mills says, “it will make the rest of the season very hard on Haprin and give us a definite advantage. It could even put us in position to take control of the area. Still, this is secondary. Your primary goal is retrieving Errol Spat.”

  I wonder why the Carson Alliance uses roads instead of rail. As soon as the question is in my head, I discover the answer: they simply don’t have the technological resources available to the Mills Conglomerate. The monorail systems they have were sabotaged early in the war, and they haven’t been able to repair them since. Errol Spat’s importance makes more sense to me now.

  A few questions are asked and answered as the monorail speeds through desolate countryside. We pass near a few drab cities but never slow down. Before long, I see the top of the wall on the horizon. It’s twenty feet high and topped with razor wire. Guard towers stand every five hundred meters with armed guards watching the perimeter.

  The monorail slows to a stop inside the perimeter of the base. We get looks from many of the uniformed soldiers we pass as we disembark and make our way to a hangar, but no one addresses our group until we get inside. An older gentleman with a colonel’s insignia awaits our approach. Captain Mills walks up to him.

  “That’s Colonel Graham Mills,” Riley says quietly. “He’s the head of the whole Mills Conglomerate.”

  I nod. I recognize his face from the historical information inside my head.

  “The Captain’s uncle, right?”

  “Right.”

  There are no introductions. It’s late, and Riley and I are led to quarters with two small beds and a bathroom where we are left alone. Other than the beds, a small dresser is the only furniture. The walls have a dark wood paneling, and a bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. The bathroom has a small sink, a shower stall, and no room to actually put any toiletries.

  I deposit my duffle bag of clothing and personal items on the floor near the dresser.

  “Cozy, huh?” Riley says with a forced smile.

  “Fixable,” I reply. I move over to one of the beds and push it up against the other one. I fix the blankets to make it appear as if it’s one big bed. “That’s better.”

  Riley chuckles.

  “It’s better than you think,” she says. “There are no monitors in these rooms.”

  “Oh, really?”

  She smiles slyly as she saunters over to me. She reaches up and wraps her arms around my neck and then stands on her toes to kiss me. I return the embrace, running my hand down her back to grip her ass as I find her mouth with my tongue.

  She’s never made the first move before, and I like it. She slides her hand over my shoulder and down my chest. Her fingertip circles one of my nipples, making my balls clench. A moment later, she moves her hand lower and runs it over my erection.

  “Always ready, aren’t you?” She hums against my lips. “Is there ever a time when you don’t want to fuck?”

  I swallow—hard.

  “Not when you’re around me,” I say.

  “Are you thinking about how warm and wet my pussy is for you?”

  “Holy shit.” The words come out in a near-silent whisper. I swallow again.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” She runs her hand down, forcing my legs slightly apart so she can cup my balls. She presses her thumb at the base of my cock, and I gasp.

  “I want to suck your cock.”

  I blink. For a moment, my brain seems to shut down entirely.

  Riley has never said anything remotely like this before, and I don’t know what to do.

  “Okay,” I finally whisper in a husky voice. I swallow and repeat myself. “Okay, yeah…uh…that works for me.”

  She presses her lips together but can’t stop her grin. It lights up her whole face as she drops to her knees in front of me. She grabs the buckle on my belt and releases it. I don’t move. I can barely wrap my head around what she’s doing as she grips the hem of my pants and yanks them down along with my boxers.

  Resting back on her heels, she looks me over appreciatively. My dick bobs in front of her face as if it has a mind of its own, and the only thing it wants is her touch. It’s very close to the truth.

  She drags her finger over my balls and up my shaft. She circles the head with a fingertip as she caresses my thigh and then wraps her hand around me. She tilts her head up, her eyes on mine as she slowly moves forward and takes me in her mouth.

  She sucks me in until I feel the back of her throat against me. I tense, holding myself still and fighting the urge to shove myself farther in. She pulls back, releases me, and then licks my cock up and down the shaft. She circles the head with her tongue, then takes me in deep again.

  Her eyes never leave mine. I think I now know the definition of “bedroom eyes.” Her lids are half closed but her gaze st
ill intense. I reach out slowly and place my hand on the back of her head, twisting my fingers around her hair. I don’t pull. I want this to be all her.

  I’m overwhelmed by the softness of her hair wrapped around my fingers, the caress of her lips on my shaft, and unceasing suction around my cock as her tongue slides over me. All of that combined with the look in her eyes as she sucks me farther in is too much.

  I can’t look anymore. I tilt my head back and close my eyes. It doesn’t help. The tension is still rising through my cock and balls. My thighs tremble. I grit my teeth, trying to hold back, but I can’t.

  “Riley!” I tighten my grip on her hair. It’s the only warning I can give her.

  She hums around my shaft and sucks me farther into her mouth until I’m pressed against the back of her throat. My cock spasms, and I’m unloading into her mouth. She grips my thighs tightly but doesn’t release me from her mouth.

  My knees almost give out on me, but I manage to stay upright—barely. Riley keeps sucking, swallowing everything I’ve given her and then licking around the head of my cock before she finally releases me.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now,” she says.

  “Wha…wha…why did you wait?” Coherency is lost to me.

  “I don’t care for an audience.” Riley smiles and shakes her head. “It can’t be avoided in the lab.”

  “The mirrors.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But…whoever is in there, they’ve seen us.”

  “They’ve seen you have sex with me,” Riley says. “It’s part of the program, as far as they’re concerned. It’s just you releasing energy like you do at the gym or in a training session. Tonight will be different.”

  Tonight will be different.

  The future tense isn’t lost on me.

  “More, then?”

  “Definitely more. I have data to gather, you know.” She winks at me.

  “Data?”

  “I want to know what your minimum refractory period is.”

  “Refractory period?” I know I sound like an idiot, but I’m still trying to come to terms with her changed demeanor.

  “How long it takes for you to be ready to fuck me. How many minutes before that thick cock of yours is hard and throbbing again.”