Chapter One
This time was different. Instead of the soft pastels and thin white robes, she was in a paper gown in a cold gray cubicle. The tech had a bald head and thick goggles. He wore a mask over his nose and mouth. The sterile blue light overhead made shadows and glares bounce off every surface, distorting her vision and her perception of the tech who was entering her data in his report on a small tablet affixed to a rolling steel cart.
“This one is still fairly experimental, but it’s passed the non-sentient mammalian trials.”
Wendy nodded, nervously stroking the rash on the back of her scalp, hidden under her rebellious black curls. She waited for the rest of the explanation. She had to sign off before her injection. That was the protocol.
“You and your foster brothers aren’t signing on again?”
“We’re going to live with our... foster sister.” That wasn’t quite the name for Layla, nor was “foster brother” the right term for Elio or Dax, but Wendy wasn’t feeling like small talk. In three days, she’d be leaving Sapien-Three, heading to a new life, a life that Layla promised would be so much better.
The pay was better. She already had proof of that. Her personal computer showed a mind-boggling deposit in credits. One of the techs told her that was a modest wage in the Felix Orbus Galaxy, but she didn’t care. It was life-changing money on Sapien-Three.
Money wasn’t everything, as she had learned the scary way. She would be in control of her own health, her own body. Shecouldn’t say that about the last six years as a permanent test subject at Metro Labs.
“You know what I heard? Heard a bunch of girls from the Pleasure Parks issued their contracts to those cat-beasts. Signed on asentertainment.”
Wendy swallowed but kept silent. The discussion of Pleasure Parks wasn’t professional.
“Entertainment. That’s vague. They should have checked. There will be an investigation soon, I’m sure.”
Curiosity was a terrible flaw to have in this life. “Wh-why?” Wendy asked in a timid voice.
“Because their idea of entertainment was to dump the girls in the middle of some backwater planet that’s basically a mining shanty town full of mithrium, titanium, and steel ore, packed with those seven-foot predators with their claws and teeth! Dumped them and let the predators get back to their roots. They stalked them, caught them, and ripped them to shreds. Like one of the old lions on the original Earth catching a zebra.”
“That’s not true. My foster sister is marrying a Felid. A Leonid named Rupex!” Wendy tried to piece together memories from hurried, hazy conversations.
“That’s what she told you, huh?” A cold steel pinch broke the constantly bruised skin of her arm.
“I didn’t sign off!” Wendy squeaked as the room started to spin.
“It won’t matter,” a grim voice said. “It’s an anti-hallucinogenic they’re making for the narc addicts. On a healthy brain, the effects are startlingly different. A polar opposite, you might say.”
Wendy’s mind swirled. The gray and blue man swirled, and screams echoed in her ears.
“WENDY!”
“No! I didn’t sign! I didn’t sign the consent form!”
Layla gathered her shrieking friend in her arms. “Wendy, you’re safe! You’re not in the Labs!”
Wendy’s eyes opened slowly. “Oh. Layla.”
Layla’s heart slowed down. Inside her growing baby bump, she could feel the twins squirming and rolling restlessly, upset by their mother’s sudden adrenaline spike. Wendy remained collapsed in her lap in her small quarantine enclosure off the medical bay. Wendy, Dax, and Elio were in quarantine for the first week aboard the ship, housed in small rooms that would have been like prison cells, except they were walled with clear medi-grade glass and had nicer amenities.
Rupex wouldn’t appreciate her being on the other side of the glass, especially since Layla was carrying his cubs. Cubs were an incredibly rare and precious sight in the Felix Orbus Galaxy after Queen Fever had killed almost all adult females old enough to have breeding heats. Humans weren’t affected, but even if they were, Layla wouldn’t have gotten sick. When the virus had struck, she’d been safe (sort of) on Sapien-Three in a different galaxy.
While Wendy shook against her, Dax and Elio came to the front of their rooms, opening the floor-to-ceiling disposable curtains that were meant to give them privacy.
“Hey, guys.” Layla exchanged a tired smile with the thin young men in front of her, both looking exhausted and alarmed.
“She did that all day the day before they put her into hypersleep for transport,” Dax explained, shaking his shaggy dark blonde curls out of his eyes.
“What did they give her?” Layla smoothed Wendy’s hair in a soothing gesture.
“One of the psychic classes of drugs. She was the control group for non-addicts,” Elio explained. He paced the front ofhis room, endlessly rubbing his short, jet black crew cut and blinking his dark almond eyes in either a nervous twitch or an effort to see better. Layla wasn’t sure which. “She keeps screaming that she didn’t sign the release, but I used her personal computer while she was asleep on the transport. She did a bioprint release—but that means one of the techs could have lifted her hand while she was out of it and pressed it to the screen. I read the release. I am sure as hell she’d never have agreed to be in the control group.”
“Didn’t.”
