Genesis Revealed (The Genesis Project Book 2) Read online

  Someone was four feet outside the passenger window.

  My chest ached from slamming into the seatbelt, but I leaned against the passenger seat anyway so I could wait for a visual on the man outside. His steps became shuffles as he inched toward me.

  And then they stopped.

  A voice called out to me in perfect, unaccented English, “Drake, did you really think you’d be able to escape us?”

  I inhaled sharply, which made that biting pain in my chest spread to my lungs. But I’d left nothing behind me in Virginia.

  The Genesis Project had been with me the entire time.

  Chapter 2

  I couldn’t look away from the blown out window where an employee of the Project waited beside the van. Cade moved closer to the center of the cab and whispered, “I can try to outrun them.”

  My mind threatened to shut down. There was no greater Hell than being forced under their control again.

  “Drake,” Cade hissed. “Snap out of it!”

  “Run?” I whispered back. “And go where? What spot on this Earth could we possibly find where they won’t find me?”

  “Drake,” the man outside called again. “We took care of the…problem…you and Cade created back at the docks. Just get out of the cab slowly, and let’s not have a repeat of Virginia.”

  My throat seemed swollen and unbearably dry. I couldn’t speak. The world had stopped spinning, and I’d been thrown from its orbit. A voice next to me yelled words—words some part of me recognized—but they remained incomprehensible. I set the pistol on the seat in front of me and my fingers automatically traced the scar beneath the black and blue rectangle on my arm.

  My freedom had always been an illusion.

  The voice next to me was still yelling, but I shouted over it. “I’ll get out if you let Cade go.”

  Something hit my arm. I blinked toward my shoulder then looked up at a familiar face scowling at me.

  “You get out of this cab and I’ll shoot you in the back,” he threatened.

  “Drake, we can’t just let him walk away,” the man told me. “There are extradition orders for him. Where could he even go?”

  “Rescind the orders,” I insisted. “Parker has the connections.”

  The man’s feet shuffled outside and his weight pressed against the van. “Then take it up with Dr. Parker. You can both come with us, and we won’t hurt him. We’ll bring you both to Mogadishu.”

  That voice beside me scoffed, and this time, I recognized it as Cade’s voice, the same man whose life I was trying to save now. “You think we don’t know exactly what Parker will do? Dude…we’ve been through this already. It didn’t end well for you guys. You need to back off.”

  I glanced at the Beretta on the seat and shook my head. Cade was right: The last time we were this badly armed, it didn’t end well for a handful of SEALs. Based on the sounds coming from outside and the number of vehicles we’d heard during the pursuit, we were already surrounded. We’d probably always been surrounded, and Parker had allowed us to get this far because we were in fucking Somalia. Who the hell would care what happened to a couple of Americans here?

  “Call Parker,” I demanded. “Now. Get his guarantee that Cade will not be hurt even after we’re taken in. He gets an honorable discharge, and he’ll agree to keep his mouth shut about the Project and everything he knows.”

  “Have you lost your goddamn mind?” Cade snapped.

  “No,” I answered quietly. “But I can’t keep doing this to you and Saige. My life for yours and hers.”

  “I risked my life for you to have a chance to live!”

  “I know,” I said. “Which is why I’ll bargain for your freedom now.”

  “Drake,” he protested but the man outside cut him off.

  “I have Dr. Parker on the phone, Drake,” he said. “I’m going to approach the window and pass you the phone. Don’t do anything stupid. That friend you’re trying to save is already in four snipers’ crosshairs.”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. “Just bring me the phone.”

  My eyes stayed closed until I heard the soft sound of the phone landing on the seat. And then I heard his voice.

  “Drake?” Dr. Parker said. “Tell me what you want. We can make a deal.”

  Something cold and unnerving traveled down my spine and I shuddered. I glared at the phone like the Devil himself was going to materialize from the speaker, but there was no way out of this one, not for me.

  “Cade walks,” I demanded. “He’ll get a full pardon and honorable discharge.”

  Parker sighed then his end of the line got disturbingly quiet. “We hold him until I’m sure you’re cooperating again.”

  Cooperating? I bit my lip so I wouldn’t scream at him. I’d never cooperated with him. He’d never given me the choice.

  Parker quickly added, “He’ll be comfortable. Regular meals. His own room. Probably two to three weeks. And the woman who started all of this...she’ll be left alone as long as you leave her alone. I have no reason to lie to you knowing his well-being is what will keep you…pacified.”

  “Drake, don’t listen to him,” Cade whispered. “You know we can’t trust any of these assholes.”

  I opened my eyes and stared out the window toward the black sky, punctuated by a thousand pinpoints of light. “None of it was ever real, you know,” I whispered back. “Believing that we’d ever have a choice about anything. People died for it. For a lie.”

  “Drake,” Cade said louder. “You’re letting him mess with your head when he’s not even in it.”

  I lowered my eyes to the phone on the seat in front of me. “He’s always been in it, Cade, even when I can’t hear him.”

  Cade tried to reach across the cab so he could grab the phone—God knows what for since it’s not like he could actually kill Parker through a cellphone—but I pushed his hand away and hurriedly told Parker, “I’m getting out.”

  “Drake!” Cade shouted at me, but I’d already pushed the door open and the man who’d been standing outside was waiting for me.

  Dr. Mike Parker entered the hospital room in Mogadishu that felt more like a prison cell. He carried a tablet much like the one I remembered from my first moments awake, and as soon as he stopped by my bed, his eyes scanned me as if searching for damage to his expensive property, his life’s work and only success.

  I didn’t think I was a success at all, but I was the closest he’d come.

  His eyes finally settled on the scar beneath the black box with blue lines, easily visible since I was restrained and couldn’t move. I couldn’t even turn my arm away from him, which I desperately wanted to do. He sighed and shook his head at me then tapped on his tablet.

  I hated everything about this man, from his short gray hair to the brown slacks he always wore. In the five years I’d known him, he never changed. He always looked exactly the same to me. I hated that about him, too.

  If he never changed, how could I ever expect him to understand how much I had?

  He lifted his stylus from the tablet and pointed it toward my arm. “Do you have any idea how difficult that’s going to be to repair?”

  “Do you have any idea that was the whole point?” I retorted.

  He nodded and tapped again. I gritted my teeth and looked away from him.

  “We’re not leaving Mogadishu until I’m confident we’ve salvaged you,” he said. “You asked for confirmation that Cade wasn’t being mistreated. There’s a live video stream from his room. Would you like to see it?”

  I kept my eyes on the window even though they’d pulled blackout curtains over it. “No,” I answered.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Cade as their prisoner, even if he were perfectly fine. He’d once told me he’d rather die than belong to them as I always had, but I wasn’t even man enough to let him go. He would have done it for me. He would have let them kill us both to prevent this fate. I’d been too much of a coward to see my only friend murdered.

 
“Drake,” Parker said, his voice adopting that nauseatingly paternal tone. “Once I’ve wiped your memory clean, this will be far easier on you.”

  “Yeah,” I spit out. “I’m sure your decades of experience doing this to other people have taught you that.” I finally looked at the man who’d created me. “Oh, right. There isn’t anybody else.”

  Parker was as unruffled as ever. “No, there isn’t. And if any of my next generation projects were going to survive, you ensured that would never happen. Not in my lifetime.”

  “You want an apology?” I snapped. “I saved them. It’s the only decent thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  Parker raised an eyebrow at me and tapped on his tablet again. “I’m sorry you believe that. I’ll make sure your coding gives you a greater appreciation for your existence.”

  I laughed and rolled my head toward the ceiling. “Good luck with that.”

  “I’m not your enemy, Drake.”

  “You’re my only enemy.”

  “I’m the only one who can save you,” he stubbornly insisted. “I need to repair the port first. We’re going to put you to sleep so I can install a new one.”

  He wasn’t asking for my permission so I didn’t bother responding. I kept my attention on the ceiling and clung to memories that would soon be erased but that had allowed me to live a lifetime in only a few short months. They were my memories with Saige.

  Parker almost certainly thought there was some error in my programming that had allowed me to want her touch, to want to touch her, that had made my relationship with her possible in the first place. And maybe he was right. For five years, I’d kept others at a distance because that’s what Parker had wanted. But from the moment I met her in my favorite hamburger joint, I’d known Saige was different. Every moment I’d spent with her made me believe that maybe I was more human than I’d always thought. Maybe I was a man, after all.

  Parker was still speaking but not to me. Someone else had entered the room and approached the right side of my bed where an IV had been placed in my arm. He injected something into it that stung as it hit my veins but I never turned my head to look at him. On the dirty tiles of the ceiling, I watched my last memories with Saige play before my eyes as we said goodbye to one another before Cade and I left for Somalia. She had wanted to come with us, but I convinced her to stay with Jake who was going to take her to California where they’d hide out with a friend of his. For some reason, he seemed completely confident no government agency knew about this friend’s existence.

  He refused to offer more details, but we had no other options anyway. I would never agree to let her come with us because keeping her alive was the only thing keeping me alive.

  She had so much confidence in me that I’d be returning for her.

  I was going to break her heart again.

  God, I hated myself.

  My eyelids grew heavy as the same man pulled a mask over my mouth and nose. I didn’t like the way it smelled. The memory on the ceiling became blurry, but I tried to fight it. I wanted to see her one last time.

  “Drake,” she said softly, stroking my cheek as she stared back into my eyes. She was so breathtakingly beautiful. “Don’t be gone too long, ok?”

  I smiled at her and teased, “You sure you don’t need a lengthy break from me after all of this?”

  “Never,” she replied, smiling back at me. “It’ll always be you, Drake.”

  “I love you, Saige,” I whispered.

  It will always be you.

  Chapter 3

  A pulsing pain in my arm woke me and for a brief moment, I wondered if I’d been shot again. The bright fluorescent lights above me turned the dull throbbing headache into a brain-splitting one, and I squinted and tried to lift my arm. It wouldn’t budge.

  Again.

  I groaned and let my head fall back onto the pillow. My left arm had a large white gauze bandage covering the port. As quickly as my body healed, it wouldn’t be long before Parker could use it.

  As if thinking about him could mysteriously summon him, the door opened and his lanky figure approached the bed, that omnipresent tablet in his hand.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Go to Hell,” I mumbled back through a mouth full of cotton. I moved my tongue around to see if someone actually had filled my mouth with cotton, but it was apparently empty, only a side effect of anesthesia and not having anything to drink for a while.

  “It’ll wear off,” Parker assured me. “By this evening, I expect we’ll be able to test the new port.”

  I suddenly felt like I was back on that goddamn ship again. The room began to spin and my nausea swelled. I retched but my stomach was empty. Parker grabbed a plastic bowl from beside the bed and held it next to my face anyway… just in case. It seemed like hours passed before the compulsive spasms passed. Given my arms and legs were still restrained, I couldn’t even roll onto my side. I groaned again and turned my head away from him.

  “Want something for the pain?” he asked me.

  “No,” I muttered.

  “The gunshot wound in your leg healed well,” he said. “Enhanced cell regeneration. One of the more complicated genome sequences to reconfigure.”

  “What the hell makes you think I care?” I sighed.

  “Haven’t you always?” he replied. “Even before your… breakdown… you expressed an interest in what you are.”

  “I’m a man,” I insisted.

  “You’re made to look like one,” he corrected.

  I sighed again and gave up. “Then what’s so different about me? You messed with my DNA. You put a handful of microchips in my body. But what’s so different?”

  “That’s precisely what makes you different, Drake. If I were to show you the sequencing of your DNA compared to a human’s, it would like quite different. Humans are genetically more similar to chimpanzees. Do you know what percentage difference there is between species?”

  For some odd reason, I did know. And hearing I was more different than humans than a fucking ape made my stomach want to turn inside out again. “About 1.2%,” I told him.

  “That’s right,” he responded. The approving tone in his voice made me want to beat the shit out of him. “There’s almost a three percent difference between you and humans. And differences in DNA only tell part of the story. Even the genes you share with men like me are expressed differently. Many of them are amplified in you to make you stronger, faster, less susceptible to disease and injury. You are truly one of a kind. Nothing else like you exists.”

  Nothing else like you exists.

  And nothing I’d been told had gutted me like those words. I’d always assumed I was different—that much was obvious—but if Parker was telling me the truth, then I wasn’t just different. I was farther removed from humanity than apes that shared some common ancestor with modern humans from millions of years ago.

  Parker tilted his head at me. “Why do you think we’ve fought so hard to get you back into the Project? And why do you think we’ve allowed you to walk away from so many deadly altercations?”

  Because I’m not a man. I’m not human.

  “Cade…” I whispered weakly.

  “I gave you my word. He’s fine.”

  “Your word doesn’t mean shit to me. Once you wipe my brain clean, you’re just going to kill him anyway, aren’t you? What difference does it make if I don’t remember him and I no longer know that’s the deal we made?”

  “If he upholds his end of the bargain, I have no reason to kill him,” Parker lied.

  “He was right,” I murmured. “I was stupid to trust you. I couldn’t watch him die so I took the easy way out.”

  “Well, if you really believe that then you should take some comfort in knowing we have absolutely no idea where Saige disappeared to,” Parker told me.

  I snickered because if I didn’t believe him about Cade’s safety, why would I believe him about Saige? For all I knew, she was already dead. “Aren’t you ready t
o start torturing me again?”

  “I never intended to cause you pain,” Parker explained. “Connecting you to the terminal is necessary in order to run diagnostics and recode. Your arm should be healed in about an hour and we’ll test the new port.”

  Parker turned to leave then changed his mind, eyeing me for a few moments with that tablet firmly in both hands. “None of this will matter soon anyway, but since you don’t believe you should trust me, I will demonstrate I have nothing but honorable intentions with our promises.”

  No. God, no, don’t bring him in here… don’t let him see me like this.

  But I couldn’t speak. My fear and shame paralyzed me. If I’d eventually found my voice, it wouldn’t have mattered. Parker twisted on his heels and left my room, and I was still strapped to a hospital bed, one with presumably stronger support bars or maybe they were keeping me weak. Perhaps that’s what the other man kept injecting into my IV.

  All I’d done in Virginia was teach them exactly what to prepare for and how to counter it.

  I stared at the door for agonizingly long minutes, waiting for the Boogey Man to pass through it. Except I wouldn’t be afraid of the Boogey Man. No mythological creature could frighten me. I’d been created by a monster, created into one myself. But the judgment of one of the two people I loved, the only man I admired and respected, was a Hell all on its own.

  My breaths became shallow as I continued to stare at the door, and I allowed myself to hope he wouldn’t come.

  I should have known my life never worked out that way.

  The door creaked open and a guard nudged a reluctant Cade through it who immediately sucked in a quick breath and narrowed his eyes at me. He didn’t need to say it: This was my fault. And whatever Parker used me for in the future would be my fault, too.

  Cade glanced over his shoulder at the guard waiting behind him. “Why am I here? He’s not my business anymore.”

  That comment hurt far worse than anything else Parker would soon do to me. The guard just shrugged.

  “Take me back to my own room,” Cade demanded. “I’m done.”