The Genome Legacy Read online

  What does he looks like underneath his clothes? He wasn’t bad looking with them. The extra eyes weren’t even a turn off. Things like that aren’t rare for our kind. Nor are extra legs or arms, but that glitch hasn’t happened in a generation or two.

  I close my eyes. My fingers inch down my stomach, closer to my center. I lose the war between my mind and body, as I imagine what a shower with him would be like. What kind of lover is he? Not that I have any experience in that department.

  “I’m glad you decided to join me, Squeak.” We enter the shower stall. There’s just enough space for us to walk around a bit: a group stall, for when the privates are taken.

  I can’t say anything. He smiles at me, pressing the button to turn on the water. It rains down on us. My eyes travel over his body. Lean build, barely a hint of defined muscle or hair, but he’s fit. His circumcised cock stands at attention, and I smile.

  “I know. I know my sexiness is overwhelming for you. Take a second to commit it all to memory.” My smile turns to a wide grin.

  He steps forward. His pointer finger tilts my chin up. My eyes flutter closed. Soft, warm lips brush against mine, testing the waters. Heat moves through me. I like this. I deepen the kiss, the tip of my tongue moving across his plump lower lip. A smile pulls at his lips. He opens for me.

  His arms pull me closer to him. My hands rest on his hard chest. I gently bite his lip and pull it toward me. He lets out a soft growl. The head of his cock presses against the middle of my stomach, warmth radiating from it. His hands move lower to cup my bottom. I move my body against his, creating friction for his aching member. He groans as I pull away. His lips chase after mine.

  I walk over to the soap dispenser. Before I can press the button, he pushes me up against the tiled wall.

  He leans in close, pressing his body flush with mine. His lips hover next to my ear. “Let me help you with that.” His breath rushes past, cool against my wet skin. Teeth scrape along my earlobe, tugging on it. A shiver goes down my spine. My hand moves up to cup the back of his neck, before sliding down to a strong shoulder. His lips travel down my neck and across my collar, nibbling deliciously every few inches.

  I moan with loss, as he pulls away to press the button for the soap, holding out a hand to catch it. “Now you know how I felt.” Lathering the soap, he starts with my shoulders, while kissing me. His fingers massage my skin, as he works his way down my arms to my fingers. The soap runs through my fingers.

  Moving to my hips, he runs slightly rough hands up my sides. He holds them there. Breaking the kiss, he shifts to my breasts. One at a time, he takes a taut nipple into his mouth. I let out a small moan, my hand going into his long, silver hair.

  Up my stomach and with each breast in his hand, he soaps up the rest of my front. “Turn around for me.” His voice comes out gruff.

  I turn and lean into the wall. Down my spine and over my bottom, he leaves a soapy trail. He kneels. What could he be doing? He pulls my legs farther out and forces me to stick my butt out. “There we go.”

  I swallow hard. He sits down and goes underneath me. His back faces the wall. My center mere inches away from his face. Heat floods both my center and face when it dawns on me what he is doing.

  His fingers spread my folds. I jump a bit when the tip of his warm tongue touches above my clit without touching it.

  The tip makes a large circle around the aching bud of nerves, never going close enough to touch. Gripping at the wall, my fingers turn white. The stiff tip travels down to my entrance and slowly penetrates the opening. I moan, moving my legs further apart. In and out I pumps. With every lick, more of my juices flow. More moans leave me without thought. A tight ball forms in my stomach.

  “I like the sound of your moans, Squeak.”

  I bite my lip. The nickname turns me on even more. His tongue slides back up my slit and softens as it laps at my clit. Two long fingers replace what his tongue was doing before. They curl inside me, and a knuckles brush against a spot that almost makes my legs buckle.

  His fingers piston, and his tongue runs over my clit with long, broad strokes. Screams of pleasure echo off the shower walls. My inner walls spasm around his fingers, as the tight ball explodes, and every inch of my body fills with a wonderful heat.

  I slide down the stall wall. When I pushed up against it, I don’t know. I take my hand out from between my legs. My center still spasms with an orgasm. I’ve been doing this for years, but never have I come that hard. Now, I wish I had taken his offer.

  I make it through the doors to the auditorium, just before they are about to close. “Almost didn’t make it, girl,” says the head guard, Richards. I look at him, the way he said ‘girl’ makes goose bumps spread up my arms in a bad way. His eyes are looking my body over. He sneers at me when our eyes make contact. I resist the urge to turn invisible, and scurry across the room, putting as much distance between him and me as I can.

  I’ve never been so close to being late before. It’s all that spider guy’s fault, Octavius. I search the room for him, but I don’t spot him. He’s pushing his luck, at this rate he will get punished. I sit down. The doors close with a bang. That’s it, anyone who comes through them now will be punished. Did Octavius go to the infirmary for his toe? He said it would grow back on its own, and that he could cauterize it himself.

  The lights go down and the holographic display shines from the front of the room, it’s big enough the entire room has a perfect view of what will play for us. I already know the gist of most of it. They will tell us what we are, where we came from. The same thing we’ve seen since we were four and considered intelligent enough to comprehend it. I hope there will be more to it than that. This is the graduation showing, after all.

  It starts with a man’s voice saying, “In the year 2020, British and American scientists came together for an evolution project called Splice. Their goal for this project was to eliminate genetic diseases and instill new abilities within the human race.” A bunch of patriotic things fade in and out on the screen, trumpets play in the background.

  The trumpets fade away and a darker sounding viola plays. As if they are truly saddened by the next part to come. “In order to change the human DNA structure, many trials and errors were done on human female eggs, which had been donated for medical use, all experiments failed. With the eggs unable to sustain and grow within the artificial womb created for them. Dr. Harold Whitmore was the first to figure out what needed to be done for the embryo to live and the DNA to work. He theorized that the human cells needed to be past the embryonic stage and already be a fetus for it to survive within the artificial womb and take on the foreign DNA chromosomes…”

  The doors to the auditorium creak open, shining light into the darkened room and dimming the hologram’s power to remain solid. A white head pokes into the room and then a full body. It’s Octavius. My eyes go wide. He came? Even after the doors had been closed? Why wouldn’t he just wait for them to find him later and issue a punishment for his absence in private? He gives a goofy grin before the door closes behind him and the darkness descends again.

  “Stop the hologram!” Richard yells. The lights come back on in a flash. I squint from the sudden assault on my corneas, for the second time in one day. I glance around to see why he stopped it. It couldn’t have been because of Octavius, right? They could punish him after.

  Richards rushes Octavius and vice grips the back of his neck. He drags him to where the hologram stood, before it was shut down. He shoves him to the ground. Octavius’s hands slide out from underneath him, making the side of his face scrape along the rough wood floor. I wince and turn my face away.

  “This, creatures, is a thing that doesn’t like to follow the rules. Want to know what happens to creatures that don’t follow the rules one too many times? This. Strip SS692000.” That must be his ‘real’ name, his case number. ‘SS’ stands for Spider Series. My curiosity gets the better of me. After my fantasy in the shower, I kind of want to see how close I was to
how he looks. I should be ashamed of myself.

  Octavius stands and stares to all of us. He smirks. “Someone get me my stripper music!” He lifts his now orange shirt over his head. “Da! Dun! Da! Dun!” he calls, as his head disappears behind the shirt. People laugh and I cringe; them egging him on will only make his punishment worse with Richards heading it. The man likes to inflict pain way too much.

  Richard’s pulls out his sawed-off shock-shot gun. He points it Octavius’s head. “Shut up and fucking strip, or I will put one of these in your head!”

  The laughing stops. The rest of his clothes come off in an instant. He stands naked before us. I feel ashamed for gawking at him, but he’s better looking than even how I imagined him. His abs are well defined and his circumcised cock longer.

  Richards kicks him in the back of the knees, forcing him to the ground with a thud. He faces us, no fear on his face. Is he brave or stupid? The buckle of Richard’s belt comes undone and he pulls it out of loops. Small spiked studs line it, as he folds it over and snaps it. I flinch, for Octavius’s sake.

  The belt comes, down onto the skin of his back. “Oh, yeah! May I have some more?” Octavius groans.

  Richards growls and pulls back, the belt gives resistance, the studs are stuck in his skin it rips as it gives. Again, and again the belt comes down. Octavius takes them all without an ounce of emotion or even a single flinch, but he no longer speaks. This only seems to anger Richards more, as he delivers more blows to his back each one harder than the last. His back must be one gaping wound by now.

  Sixty licks total. How is the boy still conscious? Richard snaps his fingers. Another guard comes forward and together they lift him up by his arms. They drag him down the middle aisle. Just as they make to the center of the aisle, a girl with rainbow streaked hair falls off her chair and down into their path. What the hell?

  “What the fuck is this? Get up, girl!” yells Richards. She doesn’t move. I’m not even sure if she’s breathing. “I said get up!” His steel-toed boot goes to her stomach with a hard kick. Her body rolls over from the force. She’s out cold. One of her arms has been ripped off the white knobby bone still sticking away from the flesh. No wonder she fainted. Why didn’t she go to the infirmary? That type of wound should’ve excused her from having to attend this thing.

  “Shit!” Richards snaps his fingers again. Another one of the guards comes up. All the underlings look the same to me. “Take her to the infirmary. What a troublesome bitch!” The guard bends down and picks her up cradle style. Together, all five of them leave. I wonder if Octavius will be okay?

  Chapter Three

  Names

  An hour has passed since the viewing. Time to pick our forever names. We’ve earned it. I write ‘Velma’ onto my paper slip. One of the things they let us watch as children was a cartoon called Scooby Doo. It started in the 1960’s. It’s been around for almost two-hundred years, revamped for each generation. I really liked the Velma character. She wore my favorite colors, and I like the way the name sounds. It was the only one that kept popping up in my mind while I tried to come up with a name for myself.

  Walking up to the bin, I start to drop it inside. But before I let go, the paper gets ripped out of my hand. I peer up. Richards stands on the other side of the bin. I swallow hard. I didn’t see him do this with any of the other papers.

  “Velma? That’s the best you could come up with?” He drops the paper and it falls to land on top of the others.

  I step away and go back to the hoard of people. I glance around. My eyes go wide when I spot Octavius. How is he already out of the infirmary? He stands with a small group, which includes the girl with rainbow-streaked hair who collapsed during the meeting.

  Richards speak again. "You're all free to go once you submit your slips. Except for Velma.”

  A chill runs down my spine. Why does he need me? I fidget with my hands as I step over to him, waiting for an order. We can’t disobey any of the guards.

  I shake when he pulls me closer. “I saw you in the showers. I heard you, too. I could scratch that itch you have.”

  His stench for breath washes hot over my skin. I take a step away, half of my body already invisible.

  My gaze falls on Octavius as he walks from the field with the rainbow girl following a few steps behind him. I want to call out to him, to stop him from leaving. The way Richards is acting scares me.

  Please, Octavius, save me.

  But everyone leaves the field, and I’m left alone with the guard. I stare at Richards. What does he want with me?

  He sneers. “Come help me move some things around in the gardening shed.”

  My body freezes, my heart races as I scan for an escape route. I can’t get my legs to move. I begin to turn completely invisible. Perhaps I can escape and stay out of his way until tomorrow.

  Something sharp pricks my arm. I flinch.

  Richards came up behind me and stabbed me with something. “Don’t even think about using your ability. Now follow me, or I’ll give you a worse lashing than the one that creature got during the meeting.”

  I try to turn invisible again, but nothing happens. My ability won’t turn on. He’s done something to stop it from working. I follow him out of the building and across the yard, my feet dragging. The sun beats down on us we pass other people going about their day. I should say something, anything, to alert someone that I’m with him. The ball of ice has entered my throat again. I swallow hard when we reach the shed. He opens the door and motions for me to go ahead of him.

  Maybe I can run.

  “Run and I’ll shoot you dead.” His hand rests on the sawed-off shock-shot gun.

  I force myself to move forward. My body vibrates with anxiety.

  The door closes behind me. Fluorescent lights, like the ones from the challenge, light the shed and hum with electricity. I can’t get myself to turn around. He stands behind me, inches away from my back.

  A hand touches my hair, stroking it. He lifts a strand and smells it. “I wonder if your cunt smells as good as the rest of you.”

  My body quakes with a shiver of fear.

  “I don’t even have to worry about you screaming. I read your file. You’re a psychological mute when confronted with strong emotion. Don’t worry, though, you’ll have fun while you get that itch scratched.”

  I don’t want anything scratched by him.

  Hand on my shoulder, he forces me to turn around and face him. Wrinkles line the sides of his mouth. His dark-brown beard does little to hide them. His shit-brown eyes gaze into mine. I try to wiggle out of his grip, but he holds on tighter. Why can’t I fight against him? What’s happened to the decade of combat training I’ve been taught?

  He walks forward, forcing me to stumble backward. My butt hits the edge of a discarded wooden desk. His hands move down my sides, bunching up my shirt. The touch of his rough, sweaty skin against mine makes it crawl. He presses his body into me and forces my face up. When he crashes his thin lips onto mine, the stench of his breath enters my mouth. The sweat on his upper lip transfers onto me. A fat tongue forces its way down my throat.

  I put my hands on his chest to push him off, but he doesn’t budge. My strength has disappeared.

  He pulls away from me, and I gasp for air. He smirks. “You won’t be able to fight me. The serum I gave you earlier has neutralized your ability and your strength. You’re now as weak as a rag doll.”

  His penis grinds against my stomach. I turn my face away from him. How am I going to get out of this? A hot tear escapes my eye and travels down my cheek.

  “Shhh . . . don’t cry. You’ll like this as much as I will.” He grinds harder and groans.

  Moving slightly, he reaches up behind me and pulls down a laser cutter and a box. My eyes go wide. What is he going to do to me with that? He pulls a long strand of hair away from my face and makes a clean cut using the laser cutter. I flinch when it almost grazes my skin.

  He smiles at the reaction, and holds up the strand of
my silver and iridescent blue hair. “A keepsake to remember our time together.”

  He ties a knot at the top. Taking a deep breath in, he smells it. His eyes close, as if that alone gave him the most euphoric orgasm.

  I watch his every move as he opens the box, revealing more strands of hair. My eyes go wide. How many people has he done this to in the past? Why hasn’t anyone ever said anything? Surely the leaders of the compound wouldn’t stand for this type of behavior. Did he kill them? No, people would notice if someone suddenly didn’t report in each day. There’s no way to escape this place. It’s more locked down than when North Korea was still a dictatorship country.

  The box closes with a thud and a sense of dread fills me. There’s no way I can get out of this situation by myself.

  His focus turns to me again. Sweat lines his brow. If I run, he shoots me. He drugged me with something to stop my ability and decreased my strength to useless.

  He points the laser cutter at my shirt. I suck in a breath as the light comes out. It makes a cut down the front of my shirt, narrowly missing my skin, the shirt falls down my arms like a button up, exposing my small breasts to him. My arms rise to cover myself. I don’t want him to look at me.

  “No, no, I won’t have any of that.” His voice comes out cheery, as if he’s just won an entire month’s worth of food tokens.

  The door to the shed slams open and Richards turns. In the next instant, he’s sent flying into the drywall, and it crumbles under the force. A heavy piece lands on his head, and he falls unconscious.

  I scramble off the desk and stumble. My legs buckle, I fall to the ground. When I look up, two boys stand before me. The one that threw Richards has eyes as white as snow. Is he blind?

  He comes to crouch in front of me. “Are you okay?”

  Only two words come to mind. “Th-thank ya-you."