Their Memoriam: A Reverse Harem Romance (Utopia Inc Book 1) Page 10

  “I gave you the order,” I said, acid burning the back of my throat. “I’m the one who told you not to answer that question didn’t I?”

  Wiping a hand against his bloody lip, Dirk sighed. “Yes.”

  “What the actual fuck?” Hatch’s voice dropped dangerously low. His cheerful offer to extract our pound of flesh echoed in my ears. Then his gaze pinned me. “It’s your fault we’re here?”

  The air seemed to thicken, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to meet the gazes of the others. Hatch took one step toward me, and Dirk was suddenly a wall in front of me, standing in the breech between me and the other three.

  I couldn’t do another fight.

  I couldn’t handle the idea that this…nightmare was my invention.

  “Excuse me.”

  I didn’t wait to hear what any of them said.

  I just fled.

  Chapter 8

  The past is never where you think you left it. - Katherine Anne Porter

  An hour later, I sat with my second glass of wine and stared at the computer screen. No search I requested revealed any answers. My tablet didn’t have any data prior to waking in the biosphere. Turned out Biosphere One had a name—Memoriam. The name was buried, deep down, in a single administrative file. It was a slap in the face or the punchline to a terrible joke. I didn’t recall anything about how or why I would have accepted this position.

  Or even been dragooned into it.

  I avoided government contracts. To be pure, research needed to take place outside of the expectation whether medical, governmental, or personal. Oversight should only involve safety measures around the research—preventing viruses from being released on an unsuspecting populace or keeping hazardous materials from exploding. Safety should always be a concern, but otherwise, the research should be undertaken without presupposition or bias.

  Governments wanted results to increase their power or to monetize, which ultimately lead to power. The one with the most toys or the greatest access, won. Choosing my mother’s surname most often led to universities, research facilities, and governments to want nothing to do with me. I was bad for business.

  I liked it that way.

  “Yet, here I am.” Tipping the glass upward, I drained the last swallow. The inside of my skin itched, and I rose from the desk lounge chair to pace across my white hell to where the wine bottle waited. I was so tempted to throw the glass, I left it next to the bottle and paced away.

  None of my current situation made any sense. Dirk Rossi’s reactions, though. He didn’t seem to be manufacturing the responses to create conflict. And he obeyed my orders without hesitation.

  A shudder crawled up my spine and left me shaken. “None of this makes any damn sense.”

  “I do not understand the nature of your inquiry.” The computer’s voice intruded on my terrible day, and I glared at the screen.

  “You don’t understand the nature of any inquiry.”

  “Searching the nature of any inquiry.” Sometimes, it didn’t seem to matter how far we’d come, we were still stuck in some endless cycle of technological malfunction.

  Before I could tell the machine to disregard, the computer said, “The nature of inquiry requires a verbal password, and is coded to the voice print of Dr. Valda Bashan.”

  What?

  “Explain.” My heart jackhammered against my ribs. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d be concerned about actual injury.

  “Scientific inquiry starts with observation. The more one can see, the more one can investigate.”

  Martin Chalfie—was that a clue?

  A low-pitched buzz hummed through my rooms, and I pivoted to face the door.

  “Hatch Benedict is requesting entry,” the computer announced.

  Requesting was better than stampeding inside, however, I wasn’t sure I could handle him on my own. Not after his anger earlier. Justifiable anger. I couldn’t fault him for it, not when I was at a loss to explain myself.

  “Valda,” Hatch’s voice came through the intercom. “I’ve come to apologize for losing my shit. I promise, you’re in no danger from me.” I didn’t know him well enough to say whether his contrition was genuine.

  Blowing out a breath, I shook my head. I couldn’t live in a state of fear. If Hatch was outside my door, chances were Dirk knew.

  “Enter.”

  The door hissed open, revealing Hatch standing there, the redness of a bruise forming on his cheek and a bottle of wine in his hands. His gaze went from me to the table where my own bottle sat open, and a rueful grin crossed his lips. “You started without me.”

  “I wasn’t expecting company.” One earned trust by giving it, so I gave him my back and returned to the counter holding my glass and my wine. After pulling out a second glass, I filled both about halfway. “But thank you for showing up.”

  “Thank you for being so gracious. I definitely don’t deserve it. I was a jackass.” As he stepped inside, I caught a glimpse of Andreas standing a few feet away down the hall. He wore the most curious expression, but the door hissed closed and blocked him from view before I could disseminate what it meant.

  “You were angry,” I said, then sighed and held the glass out to him. “You have every right to be. You all do.”

  “No, we don’t,” Hatch spoke gently as he wrapped his fingers around mine on the glass. The lingering connection intensified as I met his gaze. “You told us something that made you vulnerable, and then we ran headfirst into whatever the hell Dirk is sitting on.”

  I swallowed. Propriety said I should pull away. I barely knew this man. Yet at the same time, the weight of his fingers on mine offered a comfort I hadn’t even realized I needed.

  “You were being honest about not knowing something, and you meant it when you said five years, didn’t you?” This close, he trapped me with his gaze.

  There was no point to lying. “Yes, I meant it. I’ve tried to dig into the archival system of the computer’s files, but there’s very little there. The date I emerged was a few days after my fortieth birthday, but I’m not forty.” The number didn’t bother me except for the fact the last birthday I could recall was my thirty-fifth. “I spent my last birthday, in Dubai taking a meeting.” A meeting I hadn’t wanted to take.

  “Do you remember with whom?” Hatch continued to hold my hand, and I didn’t make any move to extract myself from the situation.

  “As embarrassing as it may be to admit, yes, I do recall. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Frederick Torrens?”

  Hatch grimaced. “President Lascelles’s Chief of Staff?” The president had a most loathsome history of autocracy. The United States had formally abandoned democracy under his leadership.

  “For a brief time, he was.” The worst time.

  “Why the hell would you meet with him?” The swearing didn’t bother me, though his grip tightened. For a split second, he glanced at our hands, then visibly relaxed as his shoulders eased and he exhaled. “Clearly, I wasn’t a fan. Five years ago, I was sitting in a brig awaiting court martial for failure to follow orders. That asshole’s orders. Let’s get your wine,” he continued, releasing me finally before retrieving my glass. “Are you all right with talking more?”

  “I am,” I assured him, and we moved into the sitting area. Hatch’s gawking reaction to the jade scarf across the white sofa amused me.

  “That’s a great idea. The sheer amount of white in this place reminds me of a rubber room.” He stood next to the sofa, not alighting until I took a seat and curled my legs up next to me. Instead of choosing one of the chairs or the far end of the sofa, he sat right next to me.

  “I need more color in here. Though you might like this—I happened across it a little while ago.” Twisting, I pointed to the large screen on the wall in the center of the room. “Computer, activate panorama.”

  The screen illuminated with a view of an ocean reef, populated by colorful fish. The soothing view hadn’t done much for my state of mind, so I’d simply dismi
ssed it.

  “Well, that’s cool,” Hatch said, his tone more musing than impressed. “Does it show other places?”

  “Computer, scroll settings on the panorama.” The scenes changed one by one—the beach, a park in the city during the day, a skyline of a Manhattan at night, then London, Paris, even St. Petersburg. Other natural wonders replaced them—a redwood forest in California, snowcapped mountains, foggy ones, even the Grand Canyon.

  “Stop,” Hatch ordered when the image included a stunning glacier lake framed by glorious pine trees with a snow decorated mountain beyond. It was the sky that captivated me, however. The light was almost pink and purples in the sky, separated by a stunning green of the land and giving way to a soft blue on the water where the snow-capped peaks were reflected in a different color.

  “Do you know it?” I knew he’d come to talk to me, and we had some serious matters on our minds, but the combination of pleasure and pain in his eyes held me hostage.

  “It’s Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks.” Emotion clogged the words and his voice turned rough.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “More than you can see here,” Hatch sighed, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s magnificent to have the color and heart wrenching at the same time.”

  Resting my hand on his arm, I pulled his attention to me. “We can change it. That’s at least one thing we can control.”

  This close, the roughness of his features struck me. His nose had a faint crookedness to it. At some point in his life, he’d broken it. The stubble on his jaw hardened his near-boyish good looks. Even the tumble of his hair over his forehead gave him a younger air. His blue eyes held elements of torment and loss. They disputed the rogue and leant him an air of gravitas. Already curious about him, I was hungry to know more.

  Covering my hand with his, Hatch smiled, a bittersweet curve to his lips. “You were telling me about meeting Frederick Torrens.”

  Unable to contain my grimace, I took a sip of wine before diving back into the unpleasant topic. “I didn’t intend to meet him. I’d gone to Dubai to raise funds for my research. I don’t know how familiar you are with the position most of us were in due to anti-science laws in several of the Western countries, but most governments didn’t subsidize research unless they could dictate the course of it.”

  “Yoke it, shoot it, or stuff it. The laws were a kneejerk reaction to a tragedy.” That was one way of putting it.

  “Exactly, I learned from a very young age to avoid any type of government involvement.” I didn’t need to delve into it further. “The conference I’d scheduled to attend was held by a private consortium of investors and scientists, most wealthy enough to pool their money to fund specific projects they felt had merit. When I arrived, however, I was swept into a meeting with Torrens.”

  The moment I’d walked into that room, my gut dropped. Even now, the hairs on my arms rose and I shivered. My father used to say the chill was someone walking over your grave. When Torrens closed the door behind me as I stepped into that room, I experienced what seemed to be the truth of that statement then and now as I recounted it.

  “He ambushed me. Arranged the whole conference just for the opportunity to lure Aloria Bashan’s child to meet him, and I fell for it.” When Hatch set his wine aside and slid his arm around me, I didn’t object. He was a lot warmer than I was. The ice along my soul began to crack and splinter. “I didn’t want to talk to him, but I tried to control the situation.” Wincing at how that must sound, I glanced at him to try and measure his reaction, then raised my eyebrows at the knowing smile he wore.

  “Control the situation, babe? You?” The sarcasm was so tangible I thought he might leave stains where it dripped.

  Pushing away, I tried to shrug off his arm.

  “Babe, sorry…but truth hurts, and you do have a control thing. That said, I totally got off on you being all in charge when I yukked up my guts.” The warped apology helped, and I settled for glaring at him. It was hard to stay mad, though, when he kept smiling. “Eh? C’mon…you can do it.”

  Laughing, I relented. “Yes, I like to control my environment, my thoughts, and my reactions. I’m a scientist; I prefer tangible data I can quantify. If I can manage the conditions, I can control the reaction.”

  “Fair enough. I like to shoot them all and let God sort them out, but I can get behind your deal, too.” When I didn’t try to pull away again, he relaxed against the sofa and settled me at his side. The offer of companionship was truly the most tempting thing I’d ever encountered. “You tried to control the situation with Chief of Douchery…”

  The wine wasn’t the best quality—two glasses and I was barely tipsy, so I went ahead and took another swallow of courage before pressing on. Admitting the loss of five years had been difficult. This was even tougher.

  “I dictated terms. I told Torrens I charged ten thousand dollars an hour, three hours minimum, to take any consultation and the amount was for my time—not for results.” I’d grated the words out, chin up and not bothering to give the man my attention beyond the statement. “Drawing a line in the sand isn’t hard. You have to accept that the other person may let you walk across that line and keep walking. I had no problem with the meeting ending right there.”

  “It didn’t.” The quiet intensity with which he focused on me contrasted with the gentle stroke of his fingers against my shoulder. It eased the coil of tension wrapped around my gut.

  “No, he transferred thirty thousand U.S. into my public account, then he said now that I have your attention, we have a potential outbreak…” Another shudder cascaded through me.

  “Another one?”

  Another sip of wine, and I nodded. “Exactly what I said. Since the pandemic thirty-six years—forty-one years ago—” The thought nauseated me. “—there hasn’t been a significant outbreak of an uncontainable virus. As he’d managed to capture my attention, I wanted to know.” If the world faced another pandemic so soon after the first, we could have been looking at an extinction event.

  Claiming his wine glass, Hatch took a drink, but he didn’t release me. Odd how comfortable it became to sit there leaning against him.

  “After his rather shocking statement, he went on to explain the declining birth rate. One would expect the number of overall children would have declined with so many deaths attributed to the viral outbreak before I was born.”

  “Make sense. Lower population. Lower number of births.” He accepted the correlation data as causation, but I hadn’t been so lucky.

  “Unless the number of overall births versus surviving population had dropped by more than half. That’s a significant number, and they didn’t reach it all at once. It took nearly thirty years to gather enough data to notice.” The decline began with the generation immediately affected by the virus. Then the children who’d grown up in the aftermath. Then my generation.

  “That’s a big number, then?” Hatch frowned. “Why the hell didn’t anyone talk about it?” The muscles in his arm went stiff.

  “The panic you’re feeling right now—wondering as I tell you this? Now imagine what would happen if they released the information to the news?”

  “Son of a bitch,” Hatch blew out a breath. “So, what the fuck happened? Did you figure it out?”

  There was the horror of it. “For me, that meeting was just a few days before I woke up here.” It had taken me a few days to identify the shedding in my DNA—the same shedding no longer present.

  “Fuck. Me.” The tautness in his hug pressed my cheek to his chest and the thump of his racing heart filled my ear.

  “I’m sorry.” Such flimsy words.

  “What the hell are you sorry for? I’m a jackass, as I proved earlier. But I don’t shoot the messenger.” He didn’t pull his verbal punches. Leaning away a little, I studied his bruised cheek and eye. Apparently not holding back was a lifestyle choice.

  “I’m sorry, because I know what that gut churning nausea feels like, and I don’t
have any answers. Based on your reaction, in the five years since they revealed this to me, nothing was shared with the public. Which literally tells us nothing, because if we resolved it, then there was no need to frighten people.”

  “And if you didn’t, they still don’t want to panic the population.”

  After draining the last of my wine, I set the glass down and stood. The loss of contact left me cooler, but I paced in a slow circle. “But I’m not affected…not anymore.”

  “What?” His glass joined mine on the table, then he rose. “You were infected?”

  “The decline in population—genetic malformation caused by DNA pairs shedding or twisting. It made procreating impossible.” Why couldn’t I remember what I’d done after I got my results? I had to have done something.

  “Valda,” Hatch said, intercepting me on my next circuit. “You’re infected?”

  The warmth of his hands on my shoulders steadied me. “I ran tests on my DNA. I often used myself as a baseline for research. I needed to check to see if what Torrens told me was true and also because I needed to start somewhere.”

  “Hit the punchline, babe. You’re killing me here.” A strained note tautened within his voice.

  “I had the issue then. I tested positive…but I don’t have it now.” In this place. “My DNA is normal again, no longer shedding or twisted.”

  Had I solved it? Was that why we were here?

  What would I have done to correct the issue? I could think of a half-dozen tests to begin experimenting, but they would take…

  Hatch wrapped his arms around me. “We’re going to call that a win, and right now, I don’t care if Tarzan out there listens to everything you say or if you were behind us being here. If you were affected and you aren’t now, then you solved it. Maybe this is how you solved it.”

  He was getting way ahead of where we were.

  “That makes you a hero in my book.”

  I barely had time to process that sentiment when he pressed his lips to my forehead. An entirely different kind of shiver burst from my core and seemed to cascade over me.