Prototype

Reggie and Nathan returned to Paul’s apartment prepared to find the place ransacked. They expected the computer to be gone and the furniture to be overturned. The lights were off, but everything else was in pristine order.

Nathan, weapon drawn, inched toward the light switch, turning it on.

Reggie continued to inch forward, searching for Paul’s current location. She entered the bedroom and found Paul lying on the bed.

Reggie slowly stepped toward him, reaching down to his jugular artery for a pulse. The coldness of her fingers alerted Paul, waking him from a deep and recuperative sleep.

Paul let out a startled scream as he opened his eyes and saw a shadow of someone carrying a firearm.

The scream alerted Nathan to come to Reggie’s assistance. Paul was gratified when he recognized these intruders as Reggie and Nathan.

“God, you two scared the crap out of me,” Paul informed them while he was swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. “You could have knocked on the door instead of just coming in, you know.”

“You said you needed us immediately,” Reggie said. “We hurried to your assistance.”

“What did you want us back here for?” Nathan inquired, as if hearing the wheels turning in Reggie’s mind.

“I received an important phone call. A gentleman named Ron Thompson. He said he had information that would be of extreme relevance to Reggie,” Paul produced a piece of paper from his back pocket, handing the slightly bent and warm piece of paper over to Reggie.

“A private detective?” Reggie inquired after reading the paper’s information.

“I don’t know anything else,” Paul admitted quickly. “Just that he knows you very well and he desperately needs to talk to you. He also said it’s very important and not to let it wait. I already programmed the directions to his office to Shelby; she’ll direct you there as soon as you’re ready to go.”

Reggie glanced over at Nathan for a cue as to what was expected of her. Dealing with individuals outside the influence of NexGen was completely new territory for her. Nathan glanced back at her. At first, he wasn’t sure why she was looking at him, but rapidly figured out she was trying to understand what her next move should be.

“Did he mention anything else?” Nathan asked. He wasn’t going to make the decision for Reggie. He knew that was what she wanted, but it needed to be her decision not his.

“He said that… he knew what happened to your ovum donor,” Paul admitted slowly.

“We need to see him immediately,” Reggie said quickly. She needed no cues to know she wanted to know what happened to her biological relative.

“Then let’s go,” Nathan insisted. “We can’t waste any time.”

* * *

Nathan knocked on the door to the office of Ron Thompson, a private detective who wanted to speak with Reggie as soon as humanly possible.

A heavy set older man with ginger hair graying at the roots opened the door.

“Yes?” he asked.

He didn’t wait for an answer. He saw Reggie standing next to Nathan and immediately opened his door and invited them to come in.

“You look so much like your mother,” Ron said as the two took a seat.

“Excuse me?” Reggie asked.

“Your mother, you look so much like her. It’s almost unsettling…” Ron said. He took the reading glasses off of his face. He extended his hand to Reggie, “I’m Ron Thompson.”

Nathan made the first move, taking Ron’s hand, “I’m Nathan. I’m Reggie’s partner.”

Reggie mimicked the action of shaking Ron’s hand, “And I’m Reggie.”

Ron looked her up and down. He couldn’t get past the well-established resemblance between her and her mother. A wave of quilt, feeling as heavy as a car parked on his chest covered Ron and filled in his throat. He swallowed to try to contain himself, but his eyes were burning from all these years of unspoken secrets.

“How did you know my ovum donor?” Reggie asked.

“I didn’t know an ovum donor,” Ron corrected, sitting down in his rolling office chair. “I knew your mother.”

“Don’t quibble with her; you’re the one who approached her. You should have been prepared to give answers,” Nathan said.

It did not escape Ron’s attention that both of his guests were armed. He could see the military training in Nathan’s carriage and the way he made direct eye contact. And in Reggie… Well, he knew Granat all too well. He already knew how dangerous she could be.

He sighed deeply, “Granat paid me to kill your mother.”

Reggie behaved entirely on impulse, quickly getting to her feet, withdrawing her firearm and discharging a bullet into the wall next to Ron’s head. Ron was surprised to see how fast she moved, and even more surprised that she missed him. No, she didn’t miss. She aimed to intimidate; if she wanted him dead, he would be dead already.

“Reggie, don’t,” Nathan tried to command. He was equally surprised by how quickly she moved, and the fact that she missed.

“Granat did a lot to you,” Ron said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “But he ordered me to kill your mother, or at least take her life away.”

“A vegetative state?” Reggie asked. Her weapon remained trained on his face, finger still on the trigger.

“Yes, I was instructed to make her disappear from her world so Granat could continue to use her for her ova.”

“And me?” Reggie asked.

“A product of primitive conception, I’m glad to say,” Ron told her, standing up, holding his hands up so she could plainly see he was not armed. “You were conceived the same way as me and Nathan.”

Ew, Nathan thought.

“How did Granat get her then?” Nathan chimed in.

“Stole her, then completed her gestation using an artificial uterus.”

Ron continued to recount the whole story of Granat’s history with Samantha Parkhurst, and his own involvement. Reggie holstered her weapon and resumed sitting, listening in quiet thought to his story. She could hear in his pulse he was entirely truthful, though ashamed of his actions.

“I wanted you to know the truth about where you came from before I turned myself in,” Ron concluded his story.

He tossed a manila folder labeled “NexGen files” onto the coffee table in front of Reggie and Nathan. Nathan thumbed through the paperwork, seeing file after file of incriminating evidence, including photographs with the beings created by Project Bathos, and Reggie herself in a test tube.

A few files incriminated Ron Thompson too, clearly showing transactions for services and explicit instructions where to leave the car so the police would rule it a suicide and close the case.

“This evidence puts you in prison for the rest of your life,” Nathan said.

“I’ve lived with this as long as Reggie’s been alive. Being ‘free’ living with justice never being done is worse than being in prison. It’s time I held myself accountable for what I did, and for what Granat did too.

“I’m going to call the FBI three hours after you leave here. Put as much distance between here and yourselves as you can. Once he’s taken into custody, your name will be cleared.”

“Thank you for your help,” Nathan said. He shook Ron’s hand one last time.

Nathan escorted Reggie out of Ron’s office.

Heading down the stairs, Reggie collapsed to her knees, her face against her hands.

“Reggie, what’s wrong?”

“What am I?” Reggie asked.

“You’re Reggie. You’re a human being like me,” Nathan told her. He couldn’t imagine how she felt after hearing what she heard.

“I’ve known I was different all along,” Reggie said. “Granat raised me to be a machine, nothing more, nothing less. I didn’t realize where I actually came from, or that there was a family that anticipated me.”

“Granat can’t take that away from you,” Nathan told her. “Only you can make yourself. You can choose at any time to be more than what Granat wanted from you. That’s what it means to be human; getting to choose how we live in the short time we occupy this planet.”

“Why has it taken me so long to understand all this?” she asked. Tears were pooling in the corners of her eyes; she touched her eyes and looked at the strange water coming out with surprise. Her reaction to them told Nathan she never shed a tear before in her life.

“Granat didn’t let you see the outside world because he knew you would understand,” Nathan consulted her.

“I wasn’t the only one either,” Reggie said. She rolled up her sleeve to show Nathan her Omega symbol tattoo. “Derived from the Greek Alphabet; that means I am one of as many as twenty-four. How many were in that mental hospital? How many more are out there? Are they suffering too?”

“We’ll get this sorted out, Reggie,” Nathan said, touching her cheek softly. “I promise we’ll do this together.”

Nathan’s words were comforting, but Reggie felt such internal pain she never experienced before. She experienced gunshot wounds, a crow bar to the abdominal muscles, tear gas in the eyes, and torture techniques; however, it was nothing compared to the mental anguish she was feeling at the moment.

“The best thing we can do is go after Granat. His research is dangerous and he’s destroyed people’s lives.”