Genesis Lost - Books 1 - 6, page 57
“Well, technically, your pre-cum could get me pregnant. Besides, what if you already came a little inside me without noticing?”
The way his brows furrowed made something heavy settle at the bottom of my stomach. Nothing about what we did was right. But even if the consequence would be a lasting one, I wouldn’t regret it one bit.
He kissed the mound of my breasts, caressing their folds with his warm tongue. I enjoyed the warm sensation which spread across my body. But the thoughts that followed I battled for life and death.
It was of no use, and the truth settled down on my chest like an elephant on a chair, squishing my top-security fortress.
I showed all the signs of being in love.
A tingling in my guts when he was close. Check.
A pulse going ninety when he touched me. Check.
A ram tearing down the wall I had built around me. Double check.
“I guess there is nothing we can do about that now.” He let out a sigh that seemed to carry the burdens of the world and propped one arm underneath his head. “Do you want children, Autumn?”
“Always did,” I said, and his chest froze in place. There was no rising. No falling. Just a silence in his lungs and all around us, making worry creep up on me, turning me into its prey. Did that mean he didn’t care for children?
I had a dozen question for Max, all boiling down to one: would he come back to the Clan with me? I didn’t dare to ask it now, fearing his answer might burn.
He began kissing my stomach all the way down to my triangle, caressing my hip bones with his lips and tongue. Then he spread my legs apart, leaving me open and vulnerable.
His head disappeared between my legs, tossing, turning, backing up and coming closer once more.
I placed my hand on his, resting on my pubic bone. “What the hell are you doing?”
His head popped up with that boyish grin of his. “Research!”
Curious like a group of adventurers, his fingers pulled my lips, circled my entrance and prodded my clit. I moaned and spread my legs wider, the heat radiating from my core extending a silent invitation.
He turned it down with a single kiss on my little nub, jumped up from bed and wrestled his erection into a fresh pair of briefs.
“One of them is awake,” he said. “You better get dressed, and we can meet downstairs for that breakfast you mentioned.”
Disappointed that his research was interrupted, I left through the connecting door, jumped into the hygiene pod and let my hands rediscover my body. Unchanged from the outside. But inside, I felt as if I had been turned inside out and upside down both at the same time. Not in a bad way. Just… different.
By the time I stepped onto the patio, Ruth and Max sat over a cup of coffee and a plate filled with fresh fruits and grilled asparagus.
“I am so sorry for what happened yesterday,” Ruth said, her usually radiant skin covered in a veil of sheer gray. “And I know Max is, too. We wouldn’t want you to think we had anything to do with this.”
“No worries.” I grabbed my plate from the kitchen bot and sat down at the head of the table. “It was my own stupidity that got me into this mess. I shouldn’t have trusted them. And by them, I mean everyone but you.”
“I will confront Kenya about this tomorrow,” Max said. “Ruth and I are supposed to show you around at one of the fertility clinics, and I am pretty sure she will be there as well. She has her office upstairs. It’s unacceptable.”
I looked around the kitchen where the bot had stepped back into its charging station. “Where is Svea?”
“Still asleep, I guess.” Ruth hid a devious grin behind her palm. “Probably a teenager thing. You think she knew?”
Max put his fork down and leaned back, the rising sun behind him making his brown hair sparkle in specks of gold. “She said something weird yesterday when I asked her if she knew. She kinda mocked what Ruth said on the train, that the council knows what’s best and all that.”
“She is weird,” I said, goosebumps rising on my arm, triggered my both, the morning chills and my own words. “How can she be so young and serve on the council. Certainly, even her world record IQ can’t make up for her lack of maturity?”
“The thing is…” Max pushed his chair back, went inside and came back with a blanket which he draped across my lap. “The thing is, I tried to look her up in the databank once.”
Ruth leaned closer to the table in a posture that screamed conspiracy. “And? Who was her mother, and who on earth was her donor?”
“Gosh, I hate when you say that word… donor,” I said.
Max shot me an earnest glance and shook his head ever so slightly as if brooding over a heated question. I had no clue why, but it somehow made my shoulders tense, overshadowing the lightness our sex had left behind.
“There’s no data as to who her mother was,” he said. “And the donor line is blank as well. It’s almost like the council doesn’t want anybody to know where she came from. Guess we will never find out because I’m sure that information is on the classified server.”
My spirits picked up once more. “Classified server?”
“Uh-huh. At the research center where my lab is. It’s a server with all the classified info normal mortals like me have no access to.”
My scalp prickled as if an idea cooked underneath it. A dangerous one. One that made my heart beat faster and my breath grow shallow. Something about that girl was out of place — I had to find out what it was!
Ruth rose and picked up her half-empty plate. “Maybe one prodigy is enough, and the council tries to avoid more of them. Those headaches of hers are probably a side effect of being so super smart.”
“Sharp observation.” Svea showed up between sliding door and frame, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Did you figure that out all by yourself, or did it actually take a hive mind to draw this conclusion?”
My chest, legs, arms, face, everything turned bloodless from one second to the next, leaving me paralyzed and dipped in embarrassment. From what I’ve seen in the faces of Ruth and Max, they didn’t feel much different. They joined me in awkward silence until Svea herself broke it.
“The council always told me no price is too high to pay for greatness.” She flung herself into a chair and grabbed a piece of melon from Max’s plate. “Easy for them to say. After all, it’s not their brain cells being fried by sunlight or loud noises all the time. To be honest, I’d rather be as dumb as a stick in the woods, than the glorious future of the Districts.”
We threw each other uncertain looks, Ruth sinking so deep into her chair she all but fused with the backrest. Max rubbed his index finger over the glass table, creating squeegee noises with each pass.
“So…” I pushed my plate toward her and offered the rest of my melon, putting my best don’t-bullshit-me face on. “Did you, or did you not know?”
She picked up her legs, knees in front of her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. Then she leaned forward, took another piece of fruit and sucked the juice off the pastel-orange cube. “Nope. But it didn’t surprise me either. Most council members voted against the trade agreements with your clan. And the same ones voted against the exchange.”
“Wait a minute.” I did a quick mental count. “If most voted against it, how come I’m here?”
“Kenya holds the most votes in the council since she’s the oldest living member,” Max said. “She sat on the council since, like… at least —”
“Sixty-nine years,” Svea added in a slow, drawn-out way. Her face turned into an emotional patchwork. “Every full set of ten years gives her an additional two votes. I think it’s safe to say that Kenya is the reason why you are here, and Ayanna, one of our teachers, is with your clan.”
For a long time after she finished her last sentence, I studied the expression on her face. Was it bitterness? Concern? Puberal rebellion? All of them at once?
I couldn’t figure it out and fell back on another question, “And what did you vote? For or against the exchange?”
“I didn’t vote at all. Kenya asked me to be on the council so I can observe and learn. But I have to be seventeen to cast votes.”
Max’s face turned grim, his eyes darting around as if he chased behind his own thoughts. “But why would Kenya sabotage the interview if she voted in favor of the exchange? It makes no sense.”
“Well, duh.” Svea tapped her finger against her forehead. “Of course it makes no sense. Before Kenya became a councilwoman, she participated in an exchange herself. Back when they were still more common.”
Ruth sat up straight, her embarrassment forgotten. “I never knew she went to one of the clans.”
Svea held her index and middle finger up. “Two years in the mountains. Apparently, she came back a rebel, fighting for the integration of the clans like a lioness for her cub. They dragged her from one psychologist to the next where they, you know, talked sense into her.”
Ruth lowered her head and tap, tap, tapped her fingernail on the glass table. “You’re saying that Kenya wasn’t the one who sabotaged the interview, but someone else instead.”
“I’m not saying anything. Remember, I’m just the weird teenager?” She pulled her mouth into a fake smile and quickly dropped the corners once she had made her point.
Max folded his hands in front of his chest as if begging. “Ok if nobody else is gonna ask it, then I will. Who are your parents?”
She gave the plate a push which slid over the table for a foot or two. “What makes you think that I know? If you read some articles, you might know that I grew up in a community home since birth, yet nobody ever cared to reveal the name of that home.”
“Are you saying you don’t have parents?” Ruth asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” Svea hissed. “Everything has parents or at least two donors. But believe it or not, for once I am happy there is something I actually don’t know. Ever heard of the saying ignorance is bliss?”
Svea’s voice had gone from know-all to rebellious to bitter in a matter of minutes, her posture turning stiffer at every question.
“Alright, enough,” I said. “There’s really only one thing I want to know. If you could have cast a vote when it came to this exchange, what would it have been?”
She rested her gaze on me, fanning her fingers out across her breastbone as if flattered that my question invited her to the grown-up table.
“I would have voted for it,” she stated quick and clear.
“That’s odd,” Max said. “Most younger generations are against that kind of inclusion and dialogue.”
Svea said, sitting up a bit straighter. “It makes perfect sense to me. Don’t you think it should, Max, considering all the things I know?”
Max’s eyes darted from one perfectly trimmed hedge to the other, but there was escaping Svea’s stare. For a moment they locked eyes, talking secret code about something they knew but I didn’t. Ruth apparently didn’t either, but she just shrugged her shoulders and picked up her plate, marching into the kitchen with it.
“Well…” Svea rose as well and headed to the patio door. “We better get ready, so we can catch the first train back to the Obsidian district. I want to discuss that interview mess with Kenya, but so far she hasn’t picked up any of my calls.”
Then she turned around and gifted me a warm smile. “Sorry, you couldn’t experience the ocean, Autumn. Maybe next year you’ll have better luck. I’m sure we can arrange it.”
Chapter 18
Max
“How is this building even supported?” Autumn pointed at the upside-down pyramid in front of us, a large canvas blocking the view of its base. Workers busied themselves behind it, listening to the morning program on station three. “It looks like you stole one of the Gizeh Pyramids, put it belly up and poured concrete over it.”
I tried to get a glimpse behind the canvas, but one of the workers noticed and draped some more cloth over the freestanding frame. “Scientific formulas and equations, Autumn, that’s all.”
Kenya’s name was covered, but that didn’t make me forget that I promised myself a confrontation. The memory of the sadness in Autumn’s eyes on the day of the broadcast still made me clench my fists. I had to know the culprit.
She stopped until I caught up with her, then she whispered, “I hope those formulas work better than yours. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to go in there, worrying it’ll all collapse on top of me.”
Like I collapsed on her?
Her words tickled my ear and upped my pulse. Complete failure never tasted as sweet as it did last night in the pool. Yet, my conscience haunted my inappropriate daydreams over it.
It wasn’t so much my desire to do it again that scared me. Sure, I wanted to push balls deep inside of her once more. Make her moan my name. Stain her, and leaving my mark. But I also wanted to hold her in my arms after. Take in her sweet scent and bring her over for dinner with dad.
Now that stuff scared the shit out of me.
Ruth pointed at some of the letters which poked out from behind the canvas. “They engrave the base of the pyramid with the names of our council members. It kinda sinks into the ground a bit, which is enough to support it all.”
A trowel scratching over stone sounded from the base, along with the voice of the host from station three. He talked about the eye-opening interview with the clanswoman, and how she had converted.
I shook my head at Autumn. “Just ignore it and let’s go inside.”
“You sure love your concrete.” Autumn looked around and stepped onto the colorful Newgenics logo, sleeping under a protective sealant.
A green tree: the trunk in the shape of a woman’s body. The toes on her feet intertwined roots. A child grew from her crown.
“Our concrete requires less water,” I explained. “And we found an easy way to turn it back into its raw state, which makes it a lot more environmentally friendly than its predecessor.”
“We use old buildings and crush them up,” Ruth added.
A lady from the reception took our pictures and equipped us with access cards, then we took the elevator to the second floor.
Ruth hurried to one of the application pods and scanned her card. “Check this out, Autumn. This is where you can access the databank with all the donors. It contains everyone from all the districts. As well as those men from the clans who meet the criteria.”
“Let me look someone up,” Autumn said, her voice more excited than I liked.
“Who is that guy?” I stepped closer and gazed up at the hologram, the light projecting the epitome of a man. Tall. Ripped. Handsome. My mouth went dry, the squeeze on my chest making me gasp for air. “He’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
“A bit much of what, Max?” Ruth asked. “He has a pretty high IQ for a donor from one of the clans, and I kinda like his smile. It’s almost like an invitation.”
Autumn flicked her hand through his info, a wide grin on her face. “He can be charming when he wants to be, though he usually —”
“Wait, you know that dude?” it blurted out of me, the tone of my voice almost accusing.
“Um, yeah, why?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and leaned away from me, her eyes narrowing into a thin slit. “He is one of my brother’s most trusted men. We went on a couple of dates together.”
“But?” Ruth asked.
Autumn shrugged her shoulders, but it helped little to make my breath return to a normal rhythm. “But nothing. He’s nice enough, and I like him, but I just couldn’t develop any deeper feelings for him.”
“That’s hard to believe.” Ruth walked around his hologram, taking him in from all angles. “I know nothing about the love between a man and a woman, and even I feel like I might fall in love with him.”
Autumn chuckled and opened the search bar once more. “There’s a lot more to it than muscles and a nice smile.”
“Like what?” I asked.
She turned, and our eyes met, making my heart jump to my throat. “I want my heart to beat faster when he is staring at me. And trust. I need to be able to trust him.”
I knew she trusted me. She said so herself. But the question if I affected her heart at all drove me insane.
She jumped up and flailed her hands around. “Just for shits and giggles, how about we look up what a child between Max and I would look like?”
My heart unclogged from my throat and went down, down, down until it smashed against the deepest bottom of my stomach. “Please don’t…”
“Oh come on Max.” Ruth gave me a stern look, clearly asking me to stop being the party-pooper of this group. “Don’t you think it would be fun to see?”
No. I didn’t think it would be fun. But I didn’t get a chance to answer, and within seconds, my hologram pulled up above the projector.
“Where do I press?” Autumn asked.
Ruth answered with a flick of her hand, and the databank spat out the hologram of a baby boy. Maybe around ten months old, sitting in front of us, rotating slowly around his own axis.
His smile reminded me of Autumn’s, true and sincere. Brown with only a hint of red, his hair was a fair mix between both of us. His eyes, however, left my body bloodless and were neither mine nor hers. Not even a mix.
They were Nathalie’s eyes, and it caressed my soul and kicked me into my deadly twisted guts all at the same time.
“Shut that off.” I hasted toward the station.
Too late.
Autumn’s finger pointed at the not-so-small red blinking dot right next to our son. “What does that mean?”
Ruth turned around and looked at me, her eyes ponderous and apologetic. “I’m really sorry Max, I didn’t know.”
I waved my hand at the hologram, but Autumn flicked it away. “Didn’t know what? What does that red dot mean?”
My hands dropped by my side like soaked diapers, my arms too limp to move. Ruth stared at the floor shaking her head. But Autumn bore her eyes into me, demanding an explanation.
“It means…” Gosh, where were my no-nonsense scientific answers when I needed them? The way she looked at me, half confused and half fearful, made me feel like the biggest regret in her life. “The red dot means there is a genetic incompatibility. That child you see up there would be born with the risk of developing a disease during his life. Could be heart issues, could be a learning disability. In my case, I know it’s cancer. Lung cancer to be precise.”
