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ABANDON ALL HOPE
TIERNEY JONES
When Dr. Caruthers’ door hisses shut behind me, Bob Reynaldi is standing in the hallway. He’s leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, the buttons of his yellow shirt strain over his belly. A tiny pair of round glasses perch on the end of his nose. He’s so tall that to see his feed, I have to crank my head back.
It displays all his information. He’s listed as an engineer, specialty analytics. Three years older than me at twenty-five. I try not to look at the text line that delineates his weight.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask.
“Sort of. Our new boss is waiting in the lobby of Ring 1.” If he has any reservations about our new roles in Bio-Engineering, he hides them well.
I raise my brows but don’t comment. Ring 1 is populated by only the highest-ranking of executives. I haven’t been since I was a kid visiting with my dad.
We make our way to the elevator bank and ride down in silence.
I don’t know much about this Bob but he seems comfortable with silence. He doesn’t break it as we walk through the massive black marble and glass lobby to the security access points to Ring 1.
If I harbored any doubts about the importance of this department, they evaporate now. Ring 1 is serious business. I hold my breath as black-masked guards with glossy rifles across their chests surveille me.
An AI scanner reads my feed, and the polarized glass blockade slides open without a sound—my information has indeed been changed. We walk down a long, mirrored hallway and into Ring 1.
A woman waits at the end.
She has steel gray hair and irises so icy they’re almost white around the pupils. Her pale face has even less affect than Dr. Caruthers’. She wears a charcoal skirt suit that probably costs close to what I earn night-coding in a year. The set of black pearls around her neck definitely costs more than I’ve earned in my whole life.
There’s something familiar about her as she studies me with an intensity typically reserved for the contents of a petri dish. I’d swear we’ve met, but I can’t fathom when.
The blue feed above her head says her name is Dr. Titania Baldwin. Executive. She’s tall too, but I’m used to looking up at people. It’s the being looked down at part that bugs me.
At her side is a short man with a very shiny pantsuit, a goatee, diamond-stud earrings, a face I know well from my childhood. Curt Schwitters. When he smiles, every single time, I could almost swear he winks.
Some people just sparkle as if their very souls are amused—he’s one of them, always has been. “Well, if it isn’t Tierney Jones. The infamous, the tantalizing, the talented ...” he all but makes a final comedian’s drum baddumptssss for sound effect and coos out the final, “The Teary.”
I groan as he pulls me in for an air hug.
“Don’t.” I hate that nickname. They gave it to me in my junior year because I cried when someone asked me about my father. It was just ... still raw. Mom was freshly dead. He had just been turned Outlaw, and I lost the stupid war with my emotions and ran out of class. Everyone called me Tierney the Teary for the rest of the year. “Please don’t let that follow me,” I whisper as he faux kisses my cheek.
“Mum is the word, then.” He spreads his hands wide, face simpering into a gotcha expression. “It’s good to see you, love.”
I air kiss him back. “I had no idea you worked in Human Engineering.”
He leaves a waft of soft expensive cologne in his wake. “I don’t. Actually, my specialty is more along the lines of ...” He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Coercive psychology.”
Dr. Baldwin touches her pearls. “I wasn’t aware you knew each other.”
Curt lifts a lazy shoulder and widens his eyes. “Surprise. We were in boarding school together.”
“Interesting,” she says as if it’s anything but.
I get the impression no one takes life as seriously as this woman—especially not Curt.
“Follow.” Dr. Baldwin leads us down a silver-and-black hallway.
Her sharp heels clatter on the tiles as Bob and I follow them past two more checkpoints and finally to a hydraulic door.
Turning back, she lifts one carefully tweezed brow, and again, I try to figure out where I’ve seen her, but it’s hiding at the edge of my brain, only a thought half-formed, like looking at a star in the night sky. If I look too closely, it disappears.
She doesn’t say anything, but she may as well tell us this is the gate where we abandon our hope for all the weight in that glare. There’s something in those icy eyes. A warning maybe, or a tinge of regret.
Curt clucks his tongue. “I would ... prepare yourselves. If you’ve never seen Outlaws up close ... it can be a bit shocking.” His nostrils flare like he’s trying not to laugh. But I’m not. I’ve seen very few Outlaws up close, and all of them were terrified, running, one breath from death. “And they’re huge.”
“Just remember, these are not men and women.” Baldwin’s voice is flat and hard. “These are not Citizens. These are not even humans. They do not have rights like you and I. They are Outlaws. They are monsters.” She says it all with a downward tilt to her mouth, as if the very word itself were distasteful, but there’s something else in the words—a dare almost, a challenge.
She lowers her thumb and leans forward so her eye is level with a blue-lit scanner set in a panel beside the door. A red laser crosses her retina with a series of faint beeps. The door hisses open.
“These are now coded to open for your retinas and thumbprints as well,” Curt says with a tight smile, and in we go. “No one can get in or out without dual authentication.”
The smell hits me before anything else. It’s primal. Human. It smells like captivity.
Then the sounds, they come next. Someone snores. A man sings softly. Another hums.
But after a single raw strained second, the sounds cease, and I have the distinct feeling of a packed assembly hall, of a thousand bodies eagerly awaiting an esteemed speaker.
Bob’s red trembling face reflects every single thought racing through my own confused mind.
The lab has high brightly-lit white counters, shiny sinks, and data screens, but everywhere else lies in shadow. A massive black mainframe covers one wall, tiny blue lights winking and unwinking across the board. White-coated lab-techs move silently from station to station, casting furtive glances our way.
Guards stand along the walls, rifles in hand.
Ten windows mar the concrete wall directly across from us. Three are empty.
“This is the Romeo wing,” Curt says. “Part of a bio-engineering program to design super soldiers twenty-seven years ago. The Sierra Program.”
“We made twenty of them, your father and I.” Baldwin pivots on her cool gray heels to regard me. “Ten men and ten women.”
That’s why she looks familiar. We probably met when I was a child.
Baldwin’s teeth are even and white, sharp in her mouth. “We now have seven of each in custody here. The females are in the Foxtrot wing.”
“Seven?” I glance at the cells and the hulking forms of captive men inside them. “I count six.”
“One of them is being held elsewhere for his own protection.”
In the cell closest to me is a single man. He’s naked, an endless line of sleek muscle and smooth pale skin. If he’s ever been ashamed of his nudity, he’s past it now.
He sits with his back against the rear wall, long, muscled legs stretched out loosely in front of him, elbows resting on his knees. Hair, long and dark, falls nearly to the middle of his back.
Above his head, in bold holographic letters the bright vermilion of a male cardinal’s wing at the end of a fruit-rich summer, is the single word OUTLAW.
I’ve never been so close to one before, only seen a few in the distance, always running, the flutter of frantic red over their heads. Or far more often, a fading red-brown stain on a city sidewalk, the final lingering vestige of a life snuffed out, a reminder that my dad might still be one among their desperate flock.
This soldier, this creation of my fathers doesn’t move a muscle, just stares through me with eyes too pale to make out from the distance, but the look in them makes my soul shudder. I’ve seen that look in the eyes of wild animals in the zoo downtown, in the pacing tigers, and the prowling bears. Cautious. Observant. Cunning.
Baldwin said they had them in custody, but this is more than custody. This is prison.
“Why are they Outlaws?” I ask.
Curt’s hands land on his hip. “They escaped a few years ago. Outlaw was their punishment.”
“Escaped? Were they always prisoners?”
Baldwin’s nostrils pinch tight, and a muscle beneath her eye twitches. Closer now, I can see the powder sitting on her thin skin, the fine lines and wrinkles. “They were created for a purpose. We gave them life.”
My hand rises up to touch my chest, rub at the faint ache there.
She steps closer to the window where the dark-haired man sits, staring at us the way I imagine a lizard looks at a fly. “This is Romeo-Three.”
The window spreads from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, broken only by a series of holes across the middle. Six circles the size of blueberries in the center of his glass provide his only auditory contact with the outside world.
There’s nowhere he can hide. He doesn’t even have the illusion of privacy. No decorative palm fronds offer creature comfort. No water feature to splash in. No cave to hide in.
I look away, swallowing a surge of bile at the back of my throat, and glance at the other lighted cells. Other Outlaw men stand in the windows, different colored eyes and skin and hair, all beautiful, all in peak physical condition, all watching me closely.
Schwitters steps up beside me. “He’s our most difficult subject.” He draws out the words as if they are delicious on his tongue.
Bob walks down the line of windows, peering into each one. “And the others?” He says it like he really doesn’t want to know the answer.
“All Romeos. Each has a number. We’re missing Romeos Five, Six, and Ten.”
“Why call them Romeo?”
“We were commanded to use military alphabet. M for male would have left us with Mike but that just seemed too common.” Baldwin points to the left. “It’s sort of poetic, isn’t it?”
“Romeo kills himself in the end. You know that, right?” I say before I can stop myself.
“I’ve read Shakespeare too, Ms. Jones.” Dr. Baldwin raps her knuckles against the glass wall. Then again, harder, and I can’t not look to see how he responds.
“What are the women called?” asks Bob.
“Foxtrots,” Schwitters murmurs. “F for female. We call them the Foxies.”
There’s something about the way he susurrates the word ‘Foxies,’ but his face is devoid of emotion. He was like this in school too. Glittering one second, indifferent the next.
Baldwin smacks the glass again, but Three doesn’t move. Not so much as a single muscle tenses. His eerie unmoving gaze settles on me, and it’s like a physical blow, the strength of those eyes on my face.
His head tilts to the side.
I rest my hand on the glass. “Why are they naked?”
Dr. Baldwin purses her lips. “Your father designed them to be highly adaptable. That’s a strength of many species. Ability to evolve. The second generation will outperform the first.”
I force my brows to unfurrow and settle into a mild curious line. “They can reproduce?”
Dr. Baldwin’s chin tilts upward. “They’re not sterile. Never were.”
“And the Foxtrots? Are they sterile?” Women are largely infertile. Have been since the end of the 23rd century. We must first gain the approval of the government if we wish to have children. And only then are we given the needed hormones. But perhaps that can be bio-engineered away. But if it can be, why haven’t they done so for the rest of the women in the Republic?
“Of course not,” Baldwin says.
Bob clears his throat. “You’ve withheld their suppressors.”
“Suppressors?” I ask.
“The general population is medicated to experience only the mildest of sexual arousal. And to suppress ovulation and sperm production. It’s how they reduced population.” Schwitters’ eyes glitter. “But, now just how do you know that, Bob?”
I turn to him too, too astonished to do more than blink. I bite down on my lips to keep my mouth closed. All this time, I’ve been drugged? We all have?
Bob stammers, visibly blanching, and Schwitters laughs, clapping him on the back. “Don’t worry. We’re like a family down here. We won’t tell your secrets, if you don’t tell ours. Besides” —he flutters his hands through the air— “F-code violations and all that jazz.”
I’ve swallowed a tiny pill every day of my life. My vitamin. Everyone does. It’s supposed to help provide needed nutrients to supplement for the lack of animal protein in our diets. “The population is drugged?”
Shock has my word rising upward. I knew I was watched, but I had no idea how deep their control went.
“For the greater good.” Schwitters sparkle-smirks.
“We’ve tweaked a few things.” Her fingers flutter over her pearls as she looks at Romeo-Three down the length of her narrow aquiline nose.
He rises to his haunches in a flurry of shifting shadows, the knuckles of one lax hand resting on the floor. The raw muscles of his thighs gleam in the light.
He’s frozen so still it’s as if he isn’t even breathing, as if his heart has stopped beating. Then he pushes off, rising to his full height, and he’s even bigger than Bob. At least taller, with wider shoulders, solid muscle and not much else. No second chin or trembling cheeks, just one hard jaw, a roman nose, a stubbled chin with a slight cleft in the center.
He shakes his hair back and slow-stalks toward me, all rippling muscle, and maybe I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help myself because ...
Dr. Caruthers was right about the scope of enormous.
I jerk my gaze back up to his face.
Baldwin blows out a sigh. “No matter what we put in their water, no matter how we threaten or coerce, reward or manipulate, they refuse to perform. That’s where you come in.”
I close my eyes against the burn. He’s already a captive locked in a cell, and now I’m here to take away his final freedom. His own mind.
For the greater good.
Romeo-Three stops on the other side of the glass. Up close, his eyes are an otherworldly pale, unsettling gray, almost white in the centers and darkening at the edges under thick black lashes.
I can feel his eyes as they trace along my cheeks, down my nose, linger on my lips.
He’s predatory stealth straight-up.
I have to catch my foot as it lifts to backstep. “Did they cooperate as soldiers?”
“Not always as intended, though they were useful.” She lifts a shoulder, and her expensive silk lets out a shimmery sigh that has me tugging on the hem of my cheap blouse. “In the eighteen months we’ve had them here, they’ve attempted to escape on three different occasions, exhibited aggression and disobedience. They’re extremely intelligent, coordinated, high degrees of mental and moral flexibility. We made them that way.” She clears her throat. “On three separate occasions, multiple of them have broken free, smashed computers, terrorized the staff.”
Romeo-Three’s teeth sink into his lower lip.
“Like a pack,” I murmur, but they ignore me. They’re like a wolf pack, probing the flanks of the flock, testing for weakness.
Baldwin’s silver-nailed fingers flutter by her side. “Foxtrot-One tied together the strings from her tampons and strangled a guard. It was ... distressing.”
She glares up at Three.
“And counterproductive. Meals are now served in isolation at gunpoint. All we want is children from them so we can get started on developing the next generation soldier. They refuse. The result is their own discomfort. We’ve made them extremely aroused, hoping it would provide sufficient motivation. We’ve had to resort to some ... archaic means of encouragement. They’ve forced us to.”
Three moves closer to me, still staring at my lips in a way that makes me want to cover them with my hand. He shifts his shoulders experimentally, rolling them in a volley of thickly bunching muscles.
“You’d think they’d be happy to perform,” says Schwitters.
“Sexually?” Bob asks in a strangled sort of voice.
“Why not?” Baldwin laughs, brittle and chilly. “It’s been three weeks since his last nocturnal emission with a nearly permanent erection. We don’t allow them to masturbate. They’re monitored all the time, and we can tell from their brain signals that they’re aroused, painfully so. And yet they refuse.”
Bob shifts his feet. “There are other ways.”
“We’ve tried starving them. Drugs,” says Schwitters. “We’ve strapped them down. It’s no use. The women, the Foxtrots, refuse as well.”
I sink my fingernails into my palms. This is who I work for. I try to catch Curt’s eye, but he doesn’t look my way. “And them? What do they want?” I ask.
Three just stands there, looming. He stares at me like I hold some key, a secret he’s been waiting for. His hands are loose by his sides, nothing but a pane of glass and a massive erection between us.
Dr. Baldwin sighs, her expression almost wistful. “They want freedom.”
That’s the first thing that’s made sense all day. I catch a wistful sigh before it can leave my throat. They want freedom. Freedom is a dream as simple as it is impossible.
Three’s eyes flare.
“And they want Romeo-Eight brought back in,” Schwitters whispers.
“The one in solitary?” I ask. “Why is he there?”
“We had no choice,” Baldwin says in a flat voice. “Romeo-Eight took a wife, had a child. They all escaped together. Then his wife died, and we had to separate him from his child. He hasn’t taken it well.”
Is it really any wonder they won’t bring children into this world they inhabit? I certainly wouldn’t want to give the company children if I were them.
Three’s breathing hard through flared nostrils, his body flexing, fists tightening.
I have to ask. “Did you kill Romeo-Eight’s wife?”
Baldwin’s chin juts even higher. “Delilah was a casualty.”
Romeo-Three’s pale eyes laser from my lips back up to my eyes, like I’m a map, and he’s reading me, following every path and road that brought me here.
He bangs on the glass with a fist. “Her.”
Me? “Me what?”
He cocks his head, still zeroed in on me with electric intensity. I can practically hear a hum in the air. It’s like he can see straight into my soul.
Baldwin laughs that frosty laugh of hers.
“You want me to fuck someone,” he says in a voice like raked gravel. “I’ll fuck her.”