Chapter 2
The next morning, Jenesis arrived at the lab very early, needing to get there before anyone else.
She couldn’t explain why, but she felt she needed a few minutes of silence and exploration on her own to connect to the nuances of what she was going to have available to her.
This way, shallow, surface things like judgmental looks and outright hostilities wouldn’t distract her.
She needed to find her stride, dig in her own roots.
The rest, including the opinions of her staff, would fall into place slowly over time.
She recognized that they felt she deserved censure.
Besides, who knew how many of them were actual Morphates?
It was very likely a large majority, considering the lab was in the heart of Dark Philly.
After all, there were very strict rules about regular mortal humans entering and exiting the Dark cities.
Not many volunteered for that sort of thing.
Only people who were desperate to make money or make a new start would put their necks on the line and do such a thing.
The Morphates paid huge salaries in order to coax fresh manpower into the jobs they had available.
But though the pay was impressive, she hadn’t come here for money.
“Right, boys?” she said to the rows of rats housed in the room.
She leaned forward to peer through the cage bars at a strangely spotted rat, his pink nose wobbling fiercely as he munched on something he’d captured between his front paws.
He was up on his haunches and his glassy black eyes were fixed on her carefully as he ate.
“I see you don’t trust me either,” she observed.
“Should he?”
Jenesis made a small exclamation of sound, whirling around to face the man who had spoken up behind her: She hadn’t even heard him approach her.
There’d been no telltale click of a door opening or closing, no squeak or tap of a shoe on the brisk floor tiles.
Not even so much as a rustling sound from the crisp oxford shirt he wore or the worn denim jeans that fit him like the proverbial glove.
Then again, denim wouldn’t really make a sound if it fit that well, now would it?
“I-I didn’t know anyone else was here,” she said a bit lamely as she let her instinctively analytical mind work in the background to figure out who he was.
A lab worker? Where was his coat? Where was the I.D.
she had been told everyone must wear clipped to their lapel or on a lanyard where it could be immediately seen by security at all times?
Even the janitorial staff had to have their I.D.
on them. It had been made very clear to her that security was of paramount concern in the lab. “I’m sorry, you are?”
“You’re here very early,” he noted, ignoring her hunt for identification.
“So are you,” she returned with a frown.
She eyed him carefully, and not a little bit nervously.
She might be 5′9″—relatively tall for a woman—but there was no way she could go head-to-head with a man as big and, if she were going to be blunt, buff as he was.
That pale blue oxford shirt was stretched out tight over a pair of thick shoulders and impressive biceps.
There was nothing easy about his build. It was clearly something that was worked at and religiously maintained.
Nothing ridiculously bulging, but he was a strong and imposing man, no two ways about it.
Imposing enough to make her nervous, being in a vast lab seemingly all alone with him.
She glanced at the glass walls and deeper into other parts of the lab, looking for what she already knew was not going to be there.
Her gaze shifted to the cameras in the corners of the room, and he took notice of the obvious action.
He smiled in what she could only describe as a feral fashion.
The anger of the insult he felt was in his dark blue eyes, and she imagined she could see the hackles of his short, military-grade haircut prickling up along the back of his neck.
He was just shy of being a blond, and probably would be more apparently so if he let his hair grow out.
Just the same, he would be a very different sort of blond from her own waves of obvious gold, which were tucked up and around in a relaxed, pretzel-like knot at the base of her skull.
“What’s the matter, Doctor? Afraid to be alone with one of your own creations?”
He leaned in closer, purposely taking away all of her personal space, coming so close her nose touched his sternum for an instant before she backed up a step. But her backside almost immediately came up against the steel lab table behind her.
She was stuck there with the rats at her back and what she now realized was a Morphate male at her front.
Her stomach bottomed out, her fear blossoming to such a degree that she thought she could taste it on her own tongue, and it wasn’t a pleasant thing to experience at all.
Her heart began to race and she tried not to let all of her instinctual reactions be obvious, but he was a Morphate, for God’s sake.
She had heard the stories, watched the news, and read every tell-all book anyone who had been in the Phoenix Project had thought to write.
Where most of the Morphates had chosen to be more circumspect about the details, not wishing for the normal human race to be any more afraid of them than they already were upon learning they drank blood during some of the most savage sex known to man, as well as for sustenance, other Morphate individuals had made their stories public.
And while for everyone else it might be a morbid fascination like craning your neck to see what is happening when you’re passing a car wreck on the highway, for her reading them had been an exercise in self-recrimination.
It was a wonder she’d ever set foot in a lab again.
“What do you want?” she asked, her words bursting out in a combination of bravado and resignation.
After all, she’d always felt it was only a matter of time before the Morphates cornered her, pinned her down, and made her pay for what she had done to them.
“Whatever it is you feel you need to do, just do it and get it over with. Or go slowly if that’s your preference.
Make me suffer. There’s nothing I can do to make you happy.
None of it will make you what you used to be. ”
His face was handsome and somehow familiar to her, though she couldn’t figure out why.
When he lifted a brow it made him look curiously amused, even though nothing else about him looked at all entertained.
He was a crowding wall of genetically hyped-up masculinity obviously looking down his nose at her—literally as well as physically.
“Are you really so naive that you’ve stepped into yet another lab, Doctor, without realizing what that lab’s purpose is? What your work is going to be used for? Haven’t you learned from your mistakes yet?”
Jenesis swallowed and forced herself to meet his eyes. She was frightened and she was guilty as charged, but she was no coward.
“No, I’m not that stupid,” she bit back.
“The party line is that you’re looking to understand what you are, what you’ve become, and searching for ways to better your lives as Morphates.
But I knew the minute you came looking for me that what you were really looking for was a way to change yourselves back to human. ”
He took a slow breath in; she could see his nostrils flaring and she knew it had very little to do with the need to breathe. He was taking in her scent. His lip lifted momentarily, a brief flash of teeth that made her heart seize in her chest with wild shock.
“Really?” he said. “So you think we hate ourselves so much that we need you to fix us? That we are so reprehensible?”
“I don’t think you are anything of the kind.
I think you are wondrous and unfortunate.
I think you are miraculous and tragic. I think you might end up being the ones to inherit this earth because you are invincible in the face of the things that may one day destroy the rest of us.
” She swallowed as she saw him tighten his hands into fists, the clenching of the muscles of his arms rippling up his forearms and biceps, and turning his shoulders visibly hard as rocks.
“So you think we want you to change us back. To make us weak and civilized like you. To make us better, hmm?” He made a sound of utter disgust as he reached up to nab her by the chin, making certain she was there when he looked into her eyes.
His irises were a strange marbleized blue and gold, the blue as cool as the feathers of a jay with veins of gold swirling throughout like stardust in a picture of the cosmos.
“So in your estimation, I despise myself?”
“I don’t know you.” Jenesis breathed softly.
“And I would be the last person to presume to make any kinds of judgments about you. It’s not my place.
It’s no one’s place. You never asked to be what you are any more than I asked to be what I am.
But the only reason you could possibly want me, the dregs of the Phoenix Project and the inventor of the tag that was so instrumental in changing you, would be to create more change … or reverse the process.”