Specimen

“I love you, Galen.”

I stand there, stunned into silence.

My feelings for Riley have always been strong, with drugs or without. They’ve been a focal point of my existence since I was changed. I never bothered to give those feelings a name, and I’d never considered how she might feel about me. My assumption had always been that I am only work to her—her masterpiece. She can’t possibly feel that way about me.

“Wha-what?” I’m already convincing myself I misunderstood.

“I love you, Galen,” she says again. “I’m in love with you. It isn’t supposed to happen, but I am.”

“You are?” I’m dumbfounded. I’m also exalted. “Really?”

Riley tilts her head and raises her eyebrows. I realize I have a ridiculous grin on my face. I don’t know what to say, so I just grab her and kiss her hard. I coil her up in my arms and hold her as tightly as I can as I try to express how I feel about her with actions because words aren’t good enough.

I need to be inside her. I need to make her scream out my name. My real name.

Without breaking the kiss, I consider the furniture in the room and decide on the couch. There’s probably a bedroom with a proper bed in it behind one of the doors, but I can’t wait that long. I pick her up in my arms and carry her to the living area, stopping at the couch before she pushes back, shaking her head.

“As much as I’d like to take this further as well as make up for last night, we don’t have time now.”

I close my eyes and try to rein myself in. I don’t like it, but I know she’s right. I nod and relax my grip on her but don’t let her go. My thoughts and emotions are churning inside of me, but I have to find focus.

If Riley comes with me, I have to be more careful. I can’t allow her to be harmed. I look down at her, and tears are falling from her eyes. She reaches up and wraps her arms around my neck.

“God, Galen,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry for everything I did! Maybe…maybe I should have just let you go in the beginning, but I couldn’t.”

Let me go. She means have me killed.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you were never a lab rat to me.” She strokes the side of my face. “I knew you were the specimen I wanted as soon as I saw you. The more time I spent with you, the more…attached I became.”

I think about how drawn I was to her from the beginning. As soon as I saw her, I wanted her, needed to be close to her. Is she saying she felt the same way?

“How much of that has to do with the drugs you take?” I ask.

“None,” she says. “That’s all a one-way street.”

“Maybe it was never the drugs,” I say, and Riley looks at me quizzically. I hold her to my chest and kiss the top of her head. “The word isn’t adequate, but I love you, too. It’s not the drugs or anything else. It’s just you. I love you.”

I want to hold her right here in my arms forever, but the clock inside m

y head is ticking. I break our embrace and look her in the eye.

“Are my implants really malfunctioning?”

“Yes.” Riley leads me back to the kitchen and clicks around on the computer screen. She frowns in frustration. “I can’t access that side of the network from here, but the diagnostics from the tech show that there is a fundamental flaw in the appliance.”

“The fence that holds back my memories.”

“Fence?”

“That’s how Errol Spat described it.”

“The techs didn’t say anything that specific,” Riley says. “Dr. McCall was trying to convince everyone that it had to do with my diversion from the originally prescribed treatment, but I don’t think that’s it. If there’s a problem with the memory block, and there obviously is, that was there from the beginning.”

“A technical flaw in the primary implant.”

“Exactly.”