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

  “True.” His agreement with my assessment didn’t seem to cost him anything.

  “You’re here to do a job, and you want me to give you examples of what the treatment to fix my DNA might also cause, when I don’t know precisely how they affected the change.” It was my turn to raise my eyebrows as I folded my arms. “I might be bright, Dirk, but I’m not all-seeing or all-knowing. I can speculate, I can experiment, and I can study to see what was done. Long-term effects? What will happen? What could happen? That might take my whole life to know.”

  If I caused another pandemic? If this mysterious treatment killed millions?

  I’d shoot myself first.

  “Got it,” Dirk said, then he put his hands on my shoulders and tugged me out of the chair. The move, so unexpected, didn’t give me time to resist. Then he hugged me. “I don’t know what they did either, Doc. I have tremendous faith that you will figure it out.”

  Being held by him was far too intoxicating. He was so—male. Thankfully, when I pulled away, he released me. “You make it sound so simple.”

  With a shrug, he settled against my worktable. “You called me Dirk, didn’t you?”

  Had I?

  Oh hell.

  I had.

  I opened my mouth, but the computer said, “Back up complete.”

  Dirk winked once then said, “What we need is a plan of action for our time here. We all need to be on the same page. Think you can come back and join us?”

  I couldn’t argue with his logic. “I think so.”

  “Excellent.” He straightened. “What are the chances anyone here knows how to cook?”

  What a dreadful prospect. “I won’t pretend to know. I wouldn’t advise allowing Andreas to do it, though.”

  Releasing a bark of laughter, Dirk twisted to grin at me. “Agreed. So, let’s hope the flyboy or the other doc have some cordon bleu in their DNA.”

  “Are you hungry, Dirk?” What possessed me to ask such an obvious question? His gaze clashed with mine, and my pulse increased to a rapid cadence.

  “Starving.” Every syllable rolled over me like a caress.

  My stomach went taut.

  Me, too.

  Thankfully, I kept that thought to myself. We didn’t have time for flirting.

  Not now, but maybe later. We are here for a year.

  Ignoring the sketchy suggestion from my less than angelic side, I took the lead. It saved me from further admiring his rippling muscles.

  Chapter 6

  The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret. - Salvador Dali

  Day Nine

  It took us a full week to catalog the biosphere. Dirk split the tasks out, assigning Oz and I to take a full medical and research inventory. In the meanwhile, he and Hatch mapped the facility and the gardens. The size was comparable to five football fields, give or take a few yards. It was a fully closed system. The maintenance hatches led to corridors for the power grid and the network heart of the computer—but nothing led outside.

  “Not a single exit?” Andreas gritted out what we all had to be thinking. “What about a view window?”

  “Nope,” Hatch declared, flopping onto a sofa. Amidst their mapping of the facility, the guys had also found a rec room along with an attached kitchen with comfortable seating, a huge wall screen for movies or show viewing, as well as a pool table, a fully stocked bar, along with non-nutritious snacks, some classic arcade games and a generous selection of books.

  There was even a finely crafted chess set. If someone were to ask me about the choices placed here, I would hazard they sought to provide a place where each of us could be engaged mentally. The books included some of my favorites, and more by authors I’d wanted to read but never had the time.

  “This is ridiculous,” Andreas complained, and scrubbed a hand over his face. Over the course of the week, he’d begun to bounce back from his poisoning. None of us had let him cook or go anywhere near the food. Oz had handled the survey of the crops level and brought me samples of everything there.

  “It’s a perfectly sealed and balanced biome. Beyond the crops are a rain forest, an ocean with a coral reef, some mangrove wetlands, savannah grasslands, and a fog desert. The agricultural system covers at least a half-million square meters, not including the other bio-systems.” Oz sat on the edge of one chair, a glass of bourbon in his hand. “I collected more than three hundred samples in the last three days, so we’re going to be busy testing everything.”

  “It’s not just the tests,” I had to add. The fact all of these existed in one place, one small place, made no damn sense. Yet that was exactly what we had. How? Why? “It’s knowing what to test for. At the moment, I’m looking only at the genetic structure of the food. We have records of what edible food structure should match so, in theory, we can at least prove the food is safe for consumption. I’ll cross match for any possible allergies, and I’d like to run another blood sample for each of us.” I’d run mine every day so far.

  The changes to my genetic structure were irrefutable. Or I’d lost my mind.

  I couldn’t decide which I’d prefer.

  Dirk exited the kitchen and set a plate of grilled vegetables and fish on the table next to me before dropping into a seat closest to mine. The kitchen had extensive food storage in addition to what we each had in our suites. The inventory of those turned up alcohol, tea, coffee, and assorted snacks—all to personal preference—as well as freeze dried fast meals and very limited amount of sandwich goods.

  The last would expire swiftly, so we’d all pooled those together and eaten them. Medicines were plentiful—thankfully, the infirmary had a much stronger stock.

  “We have no idea where we are,” Dirk said, digging a spoon into the bowl of stew he’d gotten for himself while he cooked my dinner. Apparently the others were on their own. Hatch, as it turned out, was a decent chef. He’d even thrown together some stew that most of the guys loved but was too rich for my tastes. I wasn’t overly fond of beef products and tended to favor fish or fowl. Despite Dirk’s declaration that he didn’t cook, he prepared meals for me.

  The food smelled good, but the knots in my stomach didn’t promise an easy reception, so I kept sipping my water. I’d been in the lab for hours. Too many hours reviewing results, running tests, and trying to solve the mystery of what was wrong with my brain. I would run an MRI and other tests, but I’d need Oz for assistance on that one, and I wasn’t sure I trusted everyone enough to walk that road.

  “I don’t think we’re on another planet,” Dirk continued after washing down his bite with a drink. “We have gravity, we have water reclamation, and we have independent piping systems and passive solar input, at least from what we can tell on the systems.”

  “You don’t think the sun can reach another planet?” Given how rational Andreas was most of the time, he did seem prone to panic—an interesting flaw in a psychologist.

  “Arguably, any planet within range of a star which also has earthlike conditions would be able to gather solar energy. However, it’s theoretical and planetary research ended thirty years ago.” When I was a kid.

  “That we know of,” Hatch argued, and settled his feet one ankle over the other on the table. No matter what we were doing, he always managed to look comfortable and lazy. The difference between the man who hung out and the man who retched for hours, shaking and weak, after emerging from the lifepod, was profound. “Look, it doesn’t matter where we are, there’s no obvious exit. We’ve done a full walk of the facility. Checked all the maintenance corridors and studied the reclamation systems. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out. Everything is recycled, including the air we’re breathing. Extractors cycle everything through Eden, which scrubs the carbon dioxide and picks up the oxygen given off by the trees and the plants.”

  “And the solar rays in the subterranean garden?” I hadn’t been able to work that out. How had they manufactured that?

  “Luxor Industries designed a system of faux skylights for u
nderground complexes during the initial outbreak of the pandemic about fifty years ago. They’ve modified them over the last few decades and tested them both in underground farms and living areas for radiance and effect on life.” Oz raised his glass. “The fact everything is flourishing both in the land masses throughout the sub-level suggests they perfected it.”

  “But how could whoever the hell sent us here have set all this up? The trees are fruit bearing, the plant life is abundant, and we’re going to have to harvest soon. So, the question becomes, fine, they set up this biodome, and they provided everything we could need for survival, and our job is—what? Survive? Harvest? Learn to get along with each other?” Andreas blew out a breath. “Logically, it doesn’t fit.”

  “It does if they prepared this and we’re the test subjects.” While the mind might boggle at the sheer scope of what we’d found, all prepped and ready for our awakening, the truth could be far simpler. “We don’t know that we’re absolutely the first arrivals here. We know we woke here.” The weight of their attention crowded in around me. “We know what we found when we emerged. This may not even be the first biodome they’ve constructed. Or on the first planet. If we’re running on suppositions, since we can’t identify anything from a logo or marking, nor do we have any new details other than what we have access to, and that we’ll likely not starve.”

  As things went, it wasn’t bad news.

  “Then you’re proposing we merely play along?” Andreas narrowed his eyes, as though scrutinizing me. “To what end?”

  “To find answers,” Oz spoke, but his attention didn’t appear to be on any of us. “We have more tests to run, and a generous estimate would be a month perhaps to go through all the samples and full panels on them. In the meanwhile, we’ve identified several of the fruits and vegetables which are edible and ready for harvest.”

  “Is anyone here a farmer?” Hatch glanced around. “Or a gardener?”

  “I had a tomato garden,” Oz admitted. “Cucumbers, tomatoes, and some herbs. But far smaller than what we have down there.”

  After Andreas’ poisoning episode, we’d all gone down together. The sheer size and scope had left us all silent. As we’d been unable to find a single window or door out of the complex, the fact an entire world seemed to be thriving beneath our feet remained a challenging prospect.

  “No one else is standing up to say they’re it. I got the main meals covered, you’re going to have to tackle the harvest schedule. That leaves the rest of us for grunt work.” Hatch sounded very certain.

  I wish I shared his conviction. “What do we do with it once we harvest? We have full storage for meats.” A small blessing, since at least we didn’t have animals to tend. The storage methods might give us six months with what was in the freezers. Then we’d have to resort to alternative protein sources.

  “One problem at a time, gorgeous.” Hatch grinned at me, and I responded to the smile. Like Oz, it was hard to ignore the men when they favored me with those fascinating twinkles in their eyes and relaxed expressions. “We have to do something.”

  “Not really,” Dirk spoke for the first time since he’d joined us. He’d finished his stew and set his bowl aside. He claimed the plate he’d set next to me and handed it to me directly. “You haven’t eaten near enough calories for the day, Doc, and stress is hard on the body—so eat.”

  It was easier to just eat rather than argue. He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t eaten very much. The more we learned, the more my appetite faded. I’d been struggling with the closed quarters, the men who filled rooms with their presence, and oddly, even the solicitous manner with which they approached me. As companions went, they all appeared to be exceptional and attractive men.

  They weren’t the problem. I took a bite of the fish. The scent and the taste didn’t match. Somewhere in the room, the computer tracked the food I ate, the number of calories, and volume of water as part of the health-monitoring program. The same or at least a similar program recorded everything we did. Someone, somewhere, might be watching us at this very moment. The idea turned my stomach to acid.

  “Why don’t we have to do something, Dirk?” I wanted the attention off me, at least until I figured out what if any reaction I planned to have. We needed to notify the others of the observation, but Dirk had only shaken his head when I managed to ask him with a slip of paper. Maybe he was right. He’d done the security backup, and bought us ten minutes once. It might look suspicious if we did it twice so close together.

  How did he plan to warn the others?

  Or did he?

  I still had other questions I hadn’t been able to ask.

  “You said it the other night, we have to survive. That’s our mandate. We have food, we have water, and supplies. Most of us have recovered from time in a lifepod. Some of us need more exercise and movement,” Dirk glanced at Andreas and the psychologist snorted. “If we don’t need the food down there, then why harvest it?”

  Sadly, I’d already come to this conclusion. “We have limited protein stores for a year’s stay. We’ll need to alternate our diets to take into account what we have in storage and what we can harvest. If we leave the food down there, if we don’t harvest, we run the risk of rotting and decay. We might not be able to grow anymore.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Oz said, sighing. “If we can harvest some of it, we can make other foods, like jams or desserts. It might increase our quality of life. A small rooftop garden and a nana who used to do her own canning doesn’t qualify me as expert. I can’t imagine for the life of me that whatever the hell we five signed up for, living as farmers on an alien world in a bubble was part of the deal.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “I can’t imagine saying yes to anything like this.”

  “No?” Hatch probed quietly. “Why not?” The man was difficult to pin down. He flirted openly, smiled easily, and then went sober and direct. It was unnerving. Unforgettable in many ways—Dirk intimidated me, sucked in all the oxygen. Oz left me tingly, and warm. I wanted to trust him. Andreas got on my nerves, but he seemed genuine. Hatch? Hatch made me laugh, flirted with me, and then turned it all around into probing, too insightful questions.

  “Because I like my privacy,” I admitted, unashamed. These men were too distracting. “I work alone most of the time, and I prefer it that way.”

  “I would imagine someone with your last name might feel that way.” Andreas didn’t sound accusatory, but Dirk stilled and glared at him. The psychologist lifted his hands. “I’m not trying to be rude. Her last name is Bashan. Most people spit when they hear that name.”

  When no one disagreed, I sighed. “Yes, they do. I avoid government or corporate entities for many reasons, but my last name does play a part in that. No one wants to offer me an employment contract, and fewer still would want to be seen as engaging in any research with me. All of this suited me fine. I preferred my solitude. Now, let me ask all of you, would any of you have volunteered for this kind of project?”

  Suddenly, I didn’t care if our observers could hear every word of this conversation. I wanted answers. Somehow, I managed to eat most of the food without tasting it and I rose.

  I needed air.

  Real air.

  Our Eden level would have to do. “If you will all excuse me.”

  I didn’t wait for a response, I just strode out of the room. If they left me alone to do my work, I was certainly capable of figuring out something to do. Instead, we had to get along, and they wanted open dialogue, and shared tasks and… my heart raced as I slid into the lift and it dropped to the gardens.

  When the doors opened, and I stepped out into the air, I closed my eyes. I needed to find my center. I needed calm. I needed to stop thinking about the men and their attributes. We had enough questions to try and answer. My libido had never caused me issues before.

  I refused to allow it to do so now.

  I left the trees to walk out into the dazzling sunlight. Shading my eyes, I tried to look up to see where it hung i
n the sky. The blue was so perfect, but the brightness too harsh. Eyes watering, I looked at the ground and blinked. The dark spot in the center of my vision warned me I’d burned my retinas. It would pass.

  The taste of citrus was on my tongue, and the breeze carrying the rich, freshness of grass tickled my nostrils. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself anywhere in the world—not the island I’d grown up on, but some place in California, maybe. I’d gone there once, and we’d hiked in the mountains. The air there had tasted clean, and the grass so new and real.

  Regulating my breathing took a moment, but I opened my eyes and stared out over the fields. It was perfect.

  Too perfect.

  No place in the world looked so pristine. There were spaces between the crops, perfectly even for walking. The ground wasn’t totally level, it rose and fell, but there weren’t rocks to kick or gopher holes to fall in. I wasn’t an expert, but the land was pristine—no, pristine wasn’t the right word.

  It was untouched. What I could see with my eyes was out of sync with what I knew to be true.

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  Hatch.

  Dammit.

  “I’m fine,” I told him without turning around. “You didn’t have to follow me down here.”

  “Not about having to,” he said as he closed the distance and appeared in my peripheral vision. “Wanted to take a walk with you.”

  Maybe I should have gone to my suite. They didn’t follow me there, though more than one had checked in on me. “Are you expecting me to do something wrong?” That was paranoia talking, and I refused to give into the kneejerk response.

  “Nope.” The corner of his mouth quirked into a ghost of a smile. “Don’t care about the whole Bashan legacy or whatever. Never have.”

  Folding my arms, I blew out a breath and walked in the direction that would take me away from the fields. Somewhere out there was an ocean shore and coral reef. Maybe the water would make me feel better, even if I couldn’t get my mind to accept that all of this existed below the facility we were living in.