Specimen

“You misunderstand,” the captain says. “I encourage the relationship.”

Riley is obviously dumbfounded. She looks down to my chest as the captain’s hand slowly caresses my skin.

“Excuse me?” Riley finally says.

“Dr. Grace,” Captain Mills says as she takes her hand away and stands up straight, “I’m saying you should consider it. Granted, the last batch of specimens didn’t work out and ultimately had to be voided, but they sure were a lot of fun when they were alive!”

She chuckles and starts to walk away.

“I’ll put seventy-two down as yours!” she calls out as she leaves the room.

Riley pauses the video, waiting for my response.

“You didn’t want that kind of relationship with me.” I turn to Riley, unsure of what to think.

“I’m a doctor,” Riley says. “Under normal circumstances, I keep a completely professional relationship with everyone I work with—colleagues, test subjects, students—anyone. I had no idea what they had in mind, not before then.”

“You still resisted.”

“It felt so wrong to me,” she says. “I’ve told you this before. I felt like I was using you. It didn’t seem…consensual.”

“You thought you were raping me?” I find the idea absurd.

“I was, in a way.” She looks to the floor and lifts her hand to smooth back her hair. “How could you give true consent, given the circumstances?”

I see the logic in what she says, but I can’t agree with her conclusion. I never thought of it that way, and I still don’t. Of all the things she’s had a hand in doing to me, this is the least of my concerns.

“I wanted it. I always wanted it, even before you allowed me. It was all I ever thought about outside of training.”

“And why do you think that is? Do you think you would still feel that way if I hadn’t pumped you full of drugs and manipulated your circuitry to cater to my every whim?”

I look at her closely—her silky hair wrapped up in a bun, her crystal clear eyes, her soft hands that have brought me so much comfort—and everything I see reminds me how much I want her even now, knowing what I know. Maybe it is ingrained in me. Her point could be completely valid, but it seems immaterial to me. Knowing that I’ve been programmed to want her doesn’t lessen the intensity of the feelings I have for her.

“Yeah,” I finally say, “I do.”

Chapter 19

“How can you even say that?” Riley takes a step away from me.

“Because I still feel it,” I tell her. “Even when I wasn’t sure how much you knew, how I felt about you didn’t change.”

“You only feel like that because of what we did to you.”

I narrow my eyes.

“How long do the drugs stay in my system?” I ask her.

She stares at me for a moment before answering.

“TST levels remain stable for three days, enough to keep you at ninety percent or better for ten. After sixteen days, it’s nearly gone. FOG works on something similar to half-life. After a week, it drops to fifty percent. Two weeks without additional injections, you’d be down to twenty-five, and so on.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Seventeen days.”

“And the FOG injection—tha

t’s the stuff that includes the hormones and whatever makes me drawn to you?”