Tempting Trade, page 5
part #1 of Desolate Lands Series
The Altereds? They weren’t human, or at least not fully. Their presence meant our reassuringly simple idea of life being us, human, against the non-human, didn’t stack up.
They also scared us, with their superior senses and strength. But if we fought them, then we’d have one more enemy stacked against us. So, we didn’t do anything. They lived amongst us, but we didn’t speak of them, or what they were. And we couldn’t prove it, and they didn’t admit it, so the whole thing became a weird open secret.
When we were younger, and less discreet, Simon and I used to play at trying to guess who the recipients of the gene therapy were. As we got older, and realized the way the world worked, the game became too loaded with danger, so we stopped.
The program itself had been stopped after some Altereds had murdered their captors and ransacked the lab where they were being held a few years back.
Some said the Altereds did it because those holding them, experimenting on them, were already infected by the virus and halfway to becoming Foamers, but the bloodshed was so bad, no one could really tell what had happened. The program ended, but already there were too many Altered out in the world to be contained. Released to various roles and duties as enhanced humans, they were supposed to restore order after The Collapse. After the laboratory fiasco, they went from being our future saviors, to being tolerated so long as they didn’t do anything else. They might be enhanced, but they were still flesh and blood, and could be killed by guns and knives same as any other human.
In the end, once the virus went epidemic, it suited both sides for a strange kind of truce to develop. They carried on their previous roles in positions of protection within what was left of the police and the army, and as guards in various compounds. Neither we, nor they, acknowledged openly what they were, and the world carried on.
But now, this huge hulking man had openly admitted to being spliced and loaded with messed up DNA to make him something not-quite human. “So, you can’t take her,” Greg pushed. “You fuck her, and she might give birth to kittens, or bear cubs. Who knows what shit you’ve got inside you.” Greg laughed at his own joke.
Jackson moved so fast it took me a moment to catch up with what was happening. A brief delay occurred between my eyes seeing it and my brain deciphering it.
He had Greg in the air, against the wall, one huge hand wrapped around his throat. Greg’s face began to turn red as he scrabbled at the fingers pinning him to the yellowing paint at his back.
“You don’t know the first thing about who or what I am. If I fuck her, she’ll have normal human babies, except they’ll be quicker, stronger, faster, and smarter than any of you schmucks, and that’s why we scare you so much. Now stop being a prejudiced piece of shit, or I’ll rip your throat out.”
He dropped Greg, who fell to the floor gasping, bent over, coughing and spluttering.
“Not sure if you guys can keep working with us now you’ve openly admitted you’re Altered,” Chris sighed.
“Oh, come on. You all fucking know. So are most of the guards who look after these precious little things,” Jackson swept his hand behind him to the cage. “I didn’t take you for a prejudiced idiot. We don’t turn into bears, or big cats, or any of the other shit people say.”
“I know. That’s not the issue,” Chris laughed and shook his head. “The issue is, most Altereds are the good guys. They work as guards, in the military, what’s left of the police force. They say that in America, you lot are leading the nation back to success. So why the hell would an Altered be doing what you are? It’s not that I give a shit what you are, what your DNA is, it’s that I don’t get why you’re buying and selling arms. Or why you’re helping us move people. I thought it went against everything you were programed to do and be?”
Jackson laughed, and the sound grated because bitterness dripped from it, like acid from a corroded battery.
“Oh, most of us are good, or at least we try to be. To control our more…animalistic impulses. But some of us got sick of it. We’re stronger than you, faster, smarter. We can’t be turned by the virus, either, so why should we skulk around, helping keep humanity safe but having to hide what we are because weak humans think they are so precious. It’s true that back in America, Altereds are leading a new renaissance, but they are doing so on their terms. I’m here for the good of me, and my men. Some of us in this space right now are Altered, some human. We all want the same thing. Territory and money. If I wanted to make some brave new world, I’d have tried to return to America.”
Ah, so that explained the accent.
“Now, are you going to sell me the girl or not?”
He trailed one finger down my arm, and I shivered under his touch.
“I don’t get the issue on this, Chris.” Slim cocked his head to one side, then raised his hands as Greg shot him a venomous look. “I know I’m not involved in anything to do with the girls, but it seems to me you’ve got a good offer on her, and from someone who we can easily exchange the money with. If I had an offer like that for a cache of weapons, I’d take it. Altered or not.”
“A million in coin or weapons, if she’s intact.” Chris glanced at me, then to Melody who was pouting.
A million? He’d never agree to it. Thank God.
“Done,” Jackson said with a grin.
I covered my gasp of horror up with a cough. I never thought he’d say yes.
His smile was wide, and his teeth perfect. White, and healthy and so, so pretty when many humans had yellowing teeth with various gaps from lack of toothpaste and dentists.
I had great teeth, because my Aunt was a dentist before The Collapse and she had stockpiled supplies when the news broke about the unrest, the famines and droughts across Africa, the second bank collapse, the dirty bombs in America, and the crashing financial markets. She’d turned her garage into a storeroom filled with toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, and every other thing you could think of. She’d even got a dentist chair in there, and the tools to work with if she had water and electricity. She’d been one of the people who had started to react early in the chain of catastrophic events that ended the world as we knew it.
Who could blame those who didn’t see it coming, though. Things didn’t end with a bang, but a slow motion, grinding, boring collapse. The virus was simply the last straw. Humanity’s last indignity as first hundreds, then thousands, turned into frothing, foaming monsters who’d lost all reason and became little more than violent and animalistic.
Once the virus hit and started spreading, my Aunt had already got her impromptu dentist office set up, and enough food to last two years. Her food was mostly gone now, but she still had some toothpaste and other stuff, and she shared it with us regularly. She didn’t have kids of her own, so Simon and I were her precious babies.
Blake of course had good teeth because his family was rich and powerful enough to get anything on the black market.
This guy, though? His teeth were awesome. So was his smile. He was incredibly good looking, if you could see beyond the build, and the height, and the scowl.
Not good looking enough for me to want him to buy me, though.
There wasn’t enough beauty in the world that could make me want to be some man’s property.
I looked to Greg and his dirty nails, his gut under his greasy t-shirt, and his thinning hair, and I told myself to be grateful. After all, I’d been purchased by a man who would have turned most girl’s panties damp in ten seconds flat.
Plus, he clearly had clout in this new world. Power, even. If I went with him, I might have a better chance of finding Simon and Blake. I’d been willing to try and sleep with the odious Greg to save my brother, so surely a few rolls in the hay with Mr. Devilishly Handsome would be a walk in the park in comparison.
“I suppose you’ll be doing her first, Doc. Make sure your purchase is all shiny, new, and clean,” Chris said. “There’s the usual room set up.”
“Come on.” Jackson took hold of my upper arm and something within snapped.
I was sick of people leading me around like some sort of dog on a leash. If one more person grabbed my arm I’d scream. I yanked my arm away, and Jackson let go. He gave me an undecipherable look, and then took my wrist instead, and pulled me after him.
Doc followed as we walked past the cages full of huddled, scared girls. Tears filled my eyes when I looked at them. They were going to face hell on earth soon. We came to a dark blue door, the paint peeling and curling in places.
Doc opened the door and Jackson pushed me roughly inside.
I stumbled and turned to glare at him, only to see him looking at me with something akin to wonder. He blinked, and the expression was gone. “Took you long enough to turn up,” he muttered.
His words were a mystery. What did he mean? Clanging to my right grabbed my attention before I could ponder it further.
The doctor rummaged around in his bag and took something out. He then proceeded to scan the walls, ceiling, and floor.
I watched in complete puzzlement as he did this. Then he turned to Jackson.
“No bugs, or cameras. We’re good to go.”
I backed into a corner. I didn’t want the good doctor looking at me, looking at my most intimate parts, while Jackson watched. It was an indignity too far.
“There’s a table behind the screen in the corner. Go hop up and take your panties down. There’s some paper for you to cover yourself with.” He opened his bag and rummaged again as he said this. It was one of those proper old-fashioned doctor’s bags that snapped shut at the top, the kind we got to see on the Westerns streamed on the two remaining TV channels.
I snorted at his attempt at giving me some dignity. This man was going to see my most intimate places, right inside my most intimate places, against my will, and he thought a bit of paper to cover my knees would make all the difference?
Fucking men!
“No,” Jackson spoke.
Oh, God. No paper? Why? Please don’t let him want to watch, I prayed.
“No need for the vaginal exam,” Jackson went on. “Just check her blood to make sure she’s not incubating the virus, and then put the tracker in.”
No vaginal exam? I was grateful as fuck but confused. Why not? He was buying me to fuck. Surely, he’d want to know I was a virgin and in full working order?
The exams were mortifying, or so my friends told me who had already gone through them within the more civilized world of our compound. A lady doctor did them back home, but you were still checked. An internal inspection came first, to make sure you were intact. Then an ultrasound to check your womb and ovaries. Bloods too, and sometimes, if any anomalies showed up, further tests.
“You sure?” Doc asked.
“Fucking, yes. I don’t give a shit personally, if she’s a virgin or not, you know as much. Anyway, she is. I know it for a fact. No need to humiliate her as well. Stop fucking about. Just check for the virus and put the tracker in.” He grabbed my chin roughly, his fingers digging into my sensitive skin. “And you, little Milly. Don’t utter a fucking word of this out there. You tell anyone I didn’t give you the exam, I’ll make Doc here do it on stage so the whole world sees your pussy. And you mention the tracker and I’ll take you and leave you naked for the Ferals. Do you understand me?”
I understood him, alright. He was a vicious, nasty piece of work, and I didn’t know what he had planned for me, but I didn’t think it was anything good.
The doc took a load of blood, and then he injected something into the nape of my neck. It hurt.
He inspected the blood using the machines that read the results in super-fast time. It made me laugh that we had this sort of technology, but half the time didn’t have electricity or even clean water. We could check fertility, but finding antibiotics proved more and more difficult as world trade had simply dried up. You could get a state-of-the-art scan to tell you what sort of problem you had, but finding a surgeon willing to operate when water and power were sketchy was super difficult. The world was all kinds of fucked up.
Doc scuffed his heavy boots against the wall as he waited, and then he bent his head to read the results. He turned to me, frowning.
“Do you have periods?”
“What?”
Doc sighed and stared at me, and for the first time, I took him in. He was big for a doctor. Looked more like a rugby player. Of course, he wasn’t big compared to gigantor lurking in the corner of the room, but heavier built than most men, and all of it muscle from the way his clothes fit.
His face was handsome and pleasant. He didn’t look like some barbarian, unlike the warlord.
“Hey.” He waggled his fingers at me. “Beautiful. I asked you a question.”
“Yes, I have periods. Why?”
“Because your hormone profile is all off. Wrong. You will need more tests, but you might not be fertile.”
My heart pounded. Not fertile. That meant I was doomed. In my old life, in the compound, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I could have gone to work as a nanny for a super wealthy family, but now? Now these men wouldn’t buy me, which suddenly didn’t look like such a bad option, because even Greg wouldn’t want me now.
I’d probably be sold to the brothel and used and abused until I ended up dead.
“It can’t be right. I’m totally healthy. Normal periods, the works.”
Except…they were irregular. Badly so, and I’d not thought much of it. Young women often had irregular periods. Although, I started mine at age thirteen and so by now at almost twenty-one, they should be settling down.
“Well, the bloods don’t lie. We need to do more tests.”
He turned to Jackson, who was scowling and looking more warlord-like by the minute.
“I’m thinking it doesn’t, but does this change the plans at all?” He asked Jackson.
“No, why would it? I doubt Sienna needs her to have kids for the plan to work.” Then the warlord upended my entire world. “I told you, it’s her. She’s the one I’ve dreamed about. She’s the one the Resistance needs.”
Oh, God. It was him, my dream lover. Of course, I’d known it on some level and now the proof was incontrovertible. He’d dreamed about me. I’d dreamed about him. Me and this hulking man possessed some sort of crazy weird link to one another. Shit. What the hell did it all mean?
Doc cleared his throat. “Well, I wasn’t sure if it changed things or not. The fertility thing. I mean…You know…we heard. Alex said…he saw once into a dream you had…by accident and he says, well, you sometimes sex it up with her in your sleep.”
Jackson gave Doc a look so dark, it would have had me running out of the room. Doc merely grinned. “Our rooms are close, and there’s no other noise at night if the Foamers are quiet, brother. Heard you and then Alex explained because he’d had a tiny glimpse in your head.”
“Yes, but she’s more than my dream lover.” Jackson made air quotes and for some reason the sight of this hulking guy doing so made me smile. “She’s also more than a simple asset. She’s an Altered, and not in the way we are. She’s special. And she’s going to help us.”
The smile dropped from my face. What the hell? Altered? I shook my head. This poor deluded man.
“I’m so not an Altered,” I informed him. “I can’t run for shit, never mind as fast as a cheetah, I don’t have super hearing or strength, and I’m convinced I need my eyes tested. You’re dead wrong.”
“Hmm,” Jackson purred at me. “Of course, I am, and I’m sure you didn’t feel me digging around inside your mind just now? I can see you.”
I froze. Holy hell.
“You’ve dreamed about me, too.” He cocked his head in challenge.
“H-h-how do you know?”
“Because I was there, in your head. And you’re not quite the little innocent you pretend to be.”
My cheeks heated.
He leaned in, ran a finger across my skin, almost tenderly. “Pretty.”
“Fuck me. She’s a Seer? One of the ones they got into the minds of and gave the sight to? I thought that was just rumor.” Doc blew out a long breath.
“Nope. Not a rumor. Reality. She’s not the only one, either. There aren’t many of them, though, and a lot of them are more like me. Their power is weak, but not this one.”
“What good will she do us?” Doc stared at me as if I were some bacteria under his microscope. “You can read minds to a degree, so can Alex, why do we need her?”
Jackson snorted. “I don’t think Alex or me will appeal to the bastards running things in London, do you?”
Doc nodded as his eyes narrowed. “You’re going to use her to get information on her back? This makes us as bad as those fuckers out there,” he growled. “You didn’t give me all the details, Jack.”
Jackson shook his head, but there was discomfort in his gaze. “No, it doesn’t make us as bad as them. As Sienna says, the end justifies the means. Plus, these will be…you know, gentlemen or whatever the fuck. Old dudes who will spill their guts out to a pretty young thing like her. Our little Blondie here is going to help us get the cure for the virus. Some things are bigger than your moral code, Doc.”
For the moment, my mind filtered out that they were alluding to some very bad things to come for me. Instead, it lasered in on one fact. Cure? There was a cure? No way. There couldn’t be a cure. It made no sense.
“There’s no cure,” I blurted out. “Don’t you think they’d have used it by now if there were. Humanity is being destroyed.”
“Yes, and some people are doing very well because of it. Including those in power.” Jackson paced away from me to look out of the grimy, bar covered window.
I had never been outside the safe zone of the compound, except on a couple of supply runs with Dad and a few others, so couldn’t argue with certainty, but the TV news showed a government in a run-down capital trying like hell to salvage a dire situation.
“I don’t understand how.” I shook my head. “It makes no sense. The world would be better for everyone, rich or poor, if the virus were eradicated.”
“Never underestimate the capacity of certain men to do terrible evil in order to enrich themselves and keep their power,” Jackson said back. “Think about it. Really think. The world was on the verge of outright collapse, revolution possibly. There’d been a second financial crisis, a nuclear terror attack on American soil, and uprisings happening all across the developed world. Resources were low, and immigrants were pouring into Europe from across Africa. Bankers were killed, some swung from lampposts, for God’s sake. The powers that be were holding on by a thread. But what if you could do away with much of humanity? You don’t have to worry about revolutions, or uprisings. You can live like feudal Kings and Queens of old. Then a virus comes along that turns everyone exposed to it into mindless animals, walking death. How handy. What marvelous timing. No more planned revolutions, no more going after the people that really caused the crash. Just enclaves of humanity trying desperately to protect themselves and believing the shit their TV spouts a few times a day.”
