Their Memoriam: A Reverse Harem Romance (Utopia Inc Book 1) Read online

  “You were there when we emerged…” Kenton pinned me with a look—half-annoyed, half-desperate.

  “I was. The system woke me twenty-four hours before it woke all of you.”

  “So you had a day,” Benedict interrupted Kenton before he could continue. “My first day sucked ass. How was yours?”

  “Uncomfortable and exhausting.” Grateful for his understanding, I sighed and rubbed my forehead. The day had gotten off to a rocky beginning for all of us. My gaze landed on Kenton—rockier for some than others. “Before any of you ask, no, I didn’t really have time to explore or to learn the layout of the facility. I didn’t find my lab until yesterday, after each of you was awake. I had to run some tests—particularly on you Benedict—”

  “Hatch,” he said, correcting me.

  I wasn’t sure we knew each other well enough to be on personal terms. “As you wish.”

  “Oz,” Dr. Morgan added.

  “Andreas,” Kenton agreed.

  Apparently, we were going to make allowances for getting to know each other. Everyone looked to AJ and he chuckled.

  “Does knowing my name answer any of those other questions?”

  I bit the inside of my lip. The urge to laugh shattered my reserve. Inappropriate response aside, I agreed with him.

  “Tell you what, Gigantor, until we figure it out, why don’t we play nice?” Benedict—Hatch twisted to look at him, the ease of his smile disarming.

  “I haven’t been playing,” AJ retorted. “Let’s focus on the key issues—where the fuck are we, how long are they planning on keeping us here, and how the fuck do we get out?”

  “We don’t,” I said, responding to the last statement, and once again found myself the focus of their scrutiny.

  “No?” Skepticism echoed in the syllable and the AJ cocked his head. “The duty of every prisoner is to try and escape.”

  “That presumes we’re prisoners.” Arguably, it was a valid theory.

  “We’re not?” Hatch leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

  It was Oz, however, who folded his arms and straightened. “I might agree with you, Valda—may I call you Valda?”

  The sound of my name on his lips sent a shiver racing over my skin, but I managed a nod. I still didn’t think we knew each other well enough to use first names. “If you insist. I’m sorry, I’m not terribly comfortable with personal situations.” Too bad this wasn’t in a lab or at least over a video chat.

  “You don’t have to be,” he assured me. “I’m simply saying that there was a video in my suite, a video I made, where I stated that I was here of my own volition.”

  He’d had one, too? Leaning forward, I raised my eyebrows. “Do you recall the full content of your statement?”

  “I do, and they were my words. I told myself I volunteered for this assignment and I needed to do my best to make Biosphere One a success story.” It sounded eerily similar to my recording.

  “Computer,” Rossi said. “Is there a recording for me, in the system?”

  “Rossi, Dirk. Captain. The video is labeled private.”

  “Play the video anyway.”

  Everyone glanced to the screen—except Rossi. He stared at me.

  A clean-cut Rossi appeared—his hair was still long, but not as long as it was now. His face was clean-shaven, and his eyes every bit as intense as they’d been in the photograph in the records I’d viewed.

  “Captain Dirk Rossi, you volunteered for the assignment to Biosphere One. You have one job—protect Valda Bashan. Nothing else matters.” Short. Terse. And to the point.

  “Huh,” Hatch grunted, then glanced from Rossi to me, before adding, “Computer, do you have a video for me?”

  “Benedict, Hatch. Pilot. Your video is marked private.”

  “No kidding,” he said with a sigh. “Just play the damn thing.”

  “Hatch, dude,” the voice played before the video fully resolved. The man in the video was every bit as rumpled as the man in front of me. “You volunteered for some bullshit assignment in a biosphere. You’re going to be taking orders from a hot doc, and you’re going to have to make yourself useful. So suck it up.”

  The video ended as abruptly as it began.

  “What the hell,” Kenton sighed. “Computer, play my private video.”

  “Andreas Kenton here.” He spoke directly to whatever was filming him. Half-expecting the confirmation we’d already received from the other two videos, I stared at the background behind him. It was non-descript, a room of some kind with tan walls. Mine had been the same, as had the others. No way to tell where we had been. “I am recording this of my own volition. This is a good opportunity. One year, Biosphere One. All you have to do is look after the other team members and keep updating their psychological profiles. One note, memory might be spotty due to lifepod use. Be patient and help each of the team members to adjust. Psychological profiles are attached.”

  The video ended and the silence in the room threatened to suffocate me.

  “Seems like we all signed up of our volition,” Oz said, though his careful phrasing held elements of doubt.

  “Some of us signed up for personal reasons.” Hatch glanced from me to Rossi, then back again.

  “You need to fuck off.” Still, Rossi kept staring at me.

  “Do we know each other?” It was tantamount to admitting I did suffer from memory loss.

  “I have my orders.” AJ’s reply wasn’t an answer.

  “Way to duck the truth,” Hatch echoed my thoughts.

  “Whether we knew each other or not is irrelevant.”

  Not to me, but I bit my tongue and kept it to myself. Rossi had proven his trustworthiness several times today and continued to demonstrate it now. I wasn’t comfortable with personal discussions and observations. We could take it up later, when we were alone.

  “Says you,” Hatch stood up and paced. “Says all of you. Memory loss—for all of us? Except you? I’d call that convenient.”

  “The captain isn’t the only one who isn’t suffering from memory loss,” Oz offered into the quiet. Thankfully, he pulled all of our attention with the announcement. “I was approached about a specialized program and asked to participate. I was also told it required non-disclosure and it was on a need to know.”

  The description was anti-climactic. All Oz knew was he didn’t know.

  If he told the truth. I didn’t have enough empirical evidence to ascertain whether I could trust his veracity or not. His smile was nice. Pretty faces told lies just as easily as unpleasant ones.

  “So you were recruited for a classified project in an undisclosed location that you knew nothing about,” Andreas summed it up and banged his head against the pillow. “Not helpful.”

  “I didn’t say it was helpful, I wanted to indicate that memory loss or lack thereof isn’t a marker for what we’re doing here or motives for any of us.” Oz made a fair point. We didn’t know each other, and we didn’t know why we were here.

  “What we do know,” I said, trying to compartmentalize the data. “We all apparently volunteered. We filmed messages to ourselves. They also seemed…scripted and they were filmed in non-descript locations with no corporate or even governmental identification. We know we arrived in lifepods, and that we are in a place designated as Biosphere One. We each have a suite, and I am presuming a few personal items each. There is a large garden in the sublevel with a faux sun and fresh air. The air in here is recycled and ionized. I have a laboratory and Doctor Morgan has the infirmary.”

  As I ticked off the details, I was able to organize it. Continuing, I found myself staring at one of the empty beds. “There are only five beds in here, which is odd, because there are five of us—but one would presume we would not all require medical treatment at the same time because there’s no one to look after us. The computer has specified details on us and provided different details to each of us—or perhaps only to the three of us who are scientists. We’re here for a year, and today is day two.”

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nbsp; “Day one for some of us,” Rossi said, his attention fixed on me. “But what does the day have to do with it?”

  “We have roughly 363 solar days to get through if we’re running on Earth time.”

  That had their attention.

  “If we’re on Earth. If not, we may have longer or shorter depending on the solar rotation of the planetary body.” The very thought had the oxygen clawing to escape my lungs. “That is not our primary concern.”

  “Seriously?” Hatch gaped at me, then shook his head. “I’ll bite. What’s our primary concern?”

  An even more unsettling proposition, I feared. “Survival.”

  The conversation devolved after my dramatic pronouncement. I should have considered my choice of phrases, but I didn’t care for political double speak. When the first results of my genetic screenings hit my tablet, I used it as an excuse to step away from the debate. Each man had his own set of concerns.

  Dr. Morgan—Oz wanted to do full physicals, his proposition that we’d been selected as healthy specimens for a long-term study didn’t sit well with anyone in the room. Andreas, though still recovering from his poisoning argued we were more likely the subject of a psychological study on survival and interaction. Hatch dismissed both theories with scorn.

  Unsurprisingly, AJ ignored all of them. AJ had a name—Captain Rossi. He had another name, Dirk. One felt too distant, too formal and the other, far too intimate. I’d adjusted to considering Andreas and Oz, even Hatch, by their given names. Not the AJ.

  Though none of the men interfered when I exited, it shouldn’t have surprised me when the AJ followed me into my lab. I’d barely set my tablet on the counter next to the workstation when he entered. His choice to lean against the wall next to the entrance left me with fresh questions.

  He didn’t ask what I was doing or strike up a conversation about what we’d been debating in the infirmary. Aware of him, I typed in my passwords and began accessing the files one by one. The results captured my full attention.

  Genetic shredding, a lingering effect of the pandemic, had been noted in a journal about a decade ago. Straightening, I closed my eyes and summoned the mental image of the article. Something about the RNA of the virus infected DNA, in some instances breaking down key proteins within chromosomes, other times translocating or inverting them along the chain. Corollary results included infertility in both genders, but also arrested development of the immune response—leading to illness and death as well as advanced development of the immune response leading to fast growing cancers.

  A genetic epidemic—unproven as yet—which could affect generations to come. Even as I recalled the article line by line, the paragraph on pluripotency, or using RNA to reprogram human skin cells to an immature state in order to let them become any type of cell. It had been cutting edge research…

  My eyes flicked open and I swallowed the sudden bile burning the back of my throat.

  Mom. The vitriol directed at Aloria Bashan had come from all sectors. Most scientists had maintained more reserved opinions. After all, one couldn’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. Research was never meant for outside of a lab until complete. Aloria Bashan researched pluripotency for treatment of neural cell disorders and death. At one time, she’d been damn close.

  Then came the pandemic.

  Leaning away from the computer, I blew out a breath. The last research I’d seen on the topic indicated as many as one in five humans showed lingering genetic shed. Birth rates slowed. Cancer rates rose. More people died from common viruses.

  “What’s wrong?” The AJ’s question punctured through my bubble.

  “We’re fine,” I told him. “We’re all genetically very healthy.”

  “All right, I’ll bite. Why is that a problem?”

  Scrubbing my hands over my face, I tried to organize my thoughts. I could give him an entire dissertation, or I could simply lead with the summary. “Because I know for a fact at least one of us was not prior to this test. However, I need to run at least two further studies to confirm my findings.”

  “Back up slowly and explain it to me like I’m five.” The patience generated in his tone pushed away the bubble I wanted to gather closer to my skin. I like the safety I found in science, the quiet certainty. Adding the human factor tended to be more than just an unpredictable variable.

  Turning away from the workstation, I faced him. AJ continued to lean against the wall. The relaxed pose, however, was a façade. Power coiled beneath the surface. The green of his eyes seemed muted beneath the lab’s fluorescent lighting, but they were both restive and intimidating. The impossible contradiction defined the whole of the man.

  And my mind was wandering… “For the purposes of this conversation, may I have your word you will not disseminate anything I share with you with anyone else?”

  “If you mean will I keep my gobber shut, you got it.” Then he raised his eyebrows. “Do you trust my word on that?”

  Without pausing to consider the reasoning behind it, I nodded. “I do. I have no idea why, nor can I quantify the underlying desire to put faith in you. That said, yes, I will believe you if you give me your word.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked a little higher, and he shook his head. “That mind of yours never turns off, no matter what’s going on. Fuck. You have my word. Nothing you say to me will be fodder for discussion with anyone else, not even the rest of the team. Computer—begin back up cycle and cease monitoring, authorization Rossi, Dirk. Ten minutes.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Surprise unfurled within me, and ice slid over my flesh. “The computer is recording every interaction.”

  “It’s likely recording us taking a crap if we do.” AJ pushed away from the wall and crossed to where I sat. “Trust nothing in this place. Whatever it is—prison, experiment, purgatory—someone, somewhere, can see everything we do except when security overrides kick in and we order a backup.”

  “Because during the backup, it can’t record new data. The system is too busy analyzing and verifying everything it’s backing up.” Presumably the AJ knew the hows and whys, since he’d been the one to ask the system to do it in the first place. Why hadn’t it occurred to me? The utter invasion of privacy made my skin crawl.

  “Deep breaths, Doc.” Bracing a hand on the desk, the AJ dropped to a crouch, which took his head lower than mine. The lack of his looming over me helped me obey the order. “Clock’s ticking. Tell me what it is you found.”

  Grappling with the gut churning shift in my reality, I sucked in another breath noisily before admitting, “I had shredded DNA, it made me infertile. It happened in the womb, but I didn’t notice it until I turned thirty. I had the biological clock effect, and I considered insemination.” As mortifying as it was to admit this aloud, it was a thousand times worse to tell this man who may or may not know me.

  “Okay.” Yet his steady expression and frown told me he didn’t understand.

  “No, not okay.” I jabbed a finger toward the screen. “I did a full DNA scan of each of us, and my DNA has no evidence of shredding. The inverted pairs are no longer present. More—I had markers for at least three conditions including breast and uterine cancer. Those are gone.” I needed to study these in full.

  The AJ grimaced. “Probably a stupid question, but are you looking at the right sample?”

  “I’m the only XX here, so it’s unlikely I’m reading this incorrectly.” I’d checked. Twice. The race of my pulse coupled with the cool sweat soaking my scrub top.

  “All right, we’ll accept you’re the expert. What could do that? Time in the lifepod?”

  “No…” Except time in the lifepod might slow the effects of an RNA delivered virus, allowing the DNA to heal while the body remained in stasis.

  “But?” The light weight of his hand on mine pulled me out of the rabbit hole my brain wanted to follow.

  “But it’s theoretical. Injecting changes into DNA is illegal.” Whether we were monitored or not, I had to be ca
reful. “Nearly every civilized nation in the world outlawed the research after the pandemic.” They held Aloria Bashan wholly responsible, or at least her research. The pandemic damaged DNA, so further research in that area would likely doom them as a species.

  Or at least that’s what politicians had screamed from every bully pulpit they’d been able to occupy as the world tried to recover from the worst-case scenario, bury their dead, treat the living, and rebuild what was lost.

  “Have you considered the ultimate test of the biosphere is repairing our DNA?” It was a reasonable question.

  “Was yours damaged previously?” Only his hand on mine kept me from reaching for the data tablet. I hadn’t had time to examine his prior sample. Or mine for that matter. I knew what chains and pairs within my own structure had been harmed. I’d studied it for years—quietly. The last thing I needed were jack-booted thugs coming to tear my labs apart.

  Two people could keep a secret if one were dead, so I’d committed my research to my memory. The AJ stroked his thumb against the inside of my wrist, and the sensation reoriented my thoughts to the man in front of me.

  “I have no idea what my DNA looked like before,” he admitted. The thought didn’t trouble him in the slightest. “If your DNA was…broken and it isn’t now, then that’s a good thing, right?”

  The clock on our conversation continued to count down. We had five minutes, perhaps less. “Only if the change which caused it had no other effects. The type of research and precision to deliver the exact right virus would need to be coded to the individual, and there’s no guarantee it won’t break down and cause other problems.”

  “Such as?” He was so very linear.

  “You just want a target, don’t you?”

  He raised the eyebrow, the one partially affected by a scar at the corner. A cut of some kind had healed with a kind of jagged zigzag. It was both off-putting and attractive. Though he seemed gentle at the moment, and determined, I couldn’t afford to forget he was also dangerous. “A target?”

  “You’re an army jerk.” I pulled my hand away. “A military man, you specialize in getting the job done and following orders. They give you a target, and you take care of it.”