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Double Helix Ch. 01

By: FelHarper



The car slid backwards and into a tight turn as soon as I was clear, reversed and headed down the street the way we had come. I watched it go with a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. I felt like I had forgotten something, and quickly realized it was because most of my pockets were empty. My phone and car keys had been confiscated and destroyed within minutes of my being picked up by the agency. My wallet had been given back to me after being stripped of any ID and credit cards.

Hefting one suitcase and a canvas bag, I walked slowly up the driveway, past a yard filled with lava rocks bordered by beds of multicolored gravel. The door opened before I reached it, and a blonde-haired woman peered out at me. She was slightly overweight, but carried it well. Mentally, I guessed her age at forty, maybe forty-five years of age. "Good evening, come on inside," she said. She spoke perfect English, but her voice was heavily shaded with a Russian accent. She stepped back to give me room. The interior of the house was as well-kept as the outside, right down to the spotless, nearly white carpeting. "I am Sasha Gray," the woman said, putting out a hand.

I put down my suitcase and took her hand to shake. "Norm. Nice to meet you." I had been drilled on this point for over two hours at the agency's processing center to ensure that the lie would come quickly and naturally. My old name, by now, would have been entered into national and international watch list databases. My new name was really a descriptor of who and what I was, a kind of code to distance me from my old identity.

Sasha smiled in response. The effect on her appearance was immediate and dramatic. She looked ten years younger, forcing me to reassess my first impression. She picked up my suitcase before I could reach for it. "A good answer, my friend. Come with me, I'll introduce you to the others."

Seeing a pair of shoes sitting on the tile at the entryway, I removed my own. "No. Take them with you, please," Sasha said. I felt like kicking myself for the slip. A pair of large men's shoes lying in her entryway would almost certainly attract unwanted questions from visitors. 

"My mother lives here with me," she said, as though responding to my thoughts. She led me through the living room and into the kitchen. "She's in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but she's coherent most of the time. She knows about the agency and the guests I have here, but she can get confused now and then. If that happens when she is with you, stay calm and keep talking to her. She's sleeping now, but I'll bring her to meet you soon."

Sasha had stopped next to a door just off the kitchen. It opened to reveal a walk-in pantry. She rapped her knuckles against the bare wall at the back before pulling her phone from a pocket. "The lock is electronic and keyed via bluetooth," she said, tapping the phone's screen. After a moment, she pushed on the wall, and it swung back, creating an opening that exactly filled the space between the shelves to either side. I could see how the seams had been carefully concealed by the shelf supports. A narrow stairway sloped down to the right. "The lock can be manually opened from the other side," she said, showing me the mechanism. "I have a low-light pinhole camera here." She pointed to a tiny camera mounted high up and pointing in through the wall of the pantry. "And a touchscreen monitor there." The screen was mounted high up and angled down, where it could be seen from the stairs.

"Is this the only way in or out?" I asked.

Sasha shrugged. "I asked the agency about putting in another exit, but they assured me that it would be pointless. If the feds ever discover this place, they'll lock down the whole subdivision before moving in. This is here to keep you safe from casual inspection. Can you close the door and follow me down?"

Still carrying my shoes, I made my way down the creaking stairs, illuminated by a single hanging light. Long lengthwise cracks were clearly visible on many of the steps. "These stairs are original to the house," Sasha explained, her voice apologetic. "I would have them replaced, but as you might imagine, getting a carpenter in here to do the work is a bit problematic, under the circumstances."

I could hear voices speaking quietly from below as we descended. At the bottom of the stairs was a small wooden landing and below that, concrete floor. Looking over my new home, I couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment. The basement, while large and clean, was sparsely-furnished and lit by lifeless florescent lights. A desk with a monitor and terminal client took up one corner of the room, and a man sat in front of it. Next to that was a large table and folding chairs with a flower arrangement at the center.

An old-style flat screen television hung on another wall, with a large rug and a sofa in front of it. A girl sat watching it with a black and white cat curled in her lap, and a women sat in the recliner, both oblivious to us as we entered. The sound on the TV was off, but subtitles flashed along the bottom. Other parts of the basement had been cordoned off with hanging cords and bed sheets. The toilet and shower, both surrounded by bed-sheets, had been obviously jury-rigged into the plumbing, and the sink was a large, plastic tub under a faucet that was spliced into the pipes. The room smelled faintly of stale sweat and antiseptic. The little touches of decoration meant to liven things up, in my mind, served only to highlight how dismal it was.

"Everyone," Sasha said loudly, "can I get your attention?" The man at the terminal stood and moved around the desk to come closer. I recognized the female in the chair as an elf at once. The high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, tall, lean frame, and prominent taper to her ears all matched the Tolkienesque ideal. Her red-gold hair fell nearly to her waist. Two others, a man and a woman, emerged from the partitioned area a moment later.

"This is the new addition I told you all about," Sasha said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "You may call him Norm. This is Nissi," she pointed to the elf woman. "That is Nock." The man who had been on the terminal nodded, and a pale green glinted from behind his pupils. "That is Wendy," she continued, pointing to the girl on the sofa. "Stan," she pointed to a young black man of athletic build and a ruggedly handsome face. "And Stansy." She had a similarly attractive, athletic figure, but with feminine features and fair skin.

"Hello," I said, more cheerfully than I felt. "It's great to meet you all." I had heard of most of their gene lines growing up, and my agency briefing filled in the rest. The proper term for my new roommates was "genetically modified humans", genemods for short. The term could also stand interchangeably for "genetic model", referring to the particular model of genetic modification made to the person's DNA. Some used the more general "genetically modifed organism" or geemo, but that was usually reserved for plants and animals and was deemed an insult when applied to a person.

Nissi came from the Tolkien word for female elves. Nock was short for Nocturnal. His gene line had been engineered with a minimal need for sleep, with eyes that contained slit pupils and a tapetum lucidum to increase vision in low-light conditions. Wendy and Peter mods were engineered to stop aging before reaching adult development. Stan and Stansy, short for standard upgrade, represented genetic engineering for human ideals of strength and beauty. Standard upgrade was one of the more popular genetic models, right up until designer babies had been outlawed in the 90s.

"Tilly, honey?" Sasha called. "Can you come out and meet Norm, please?"

Silence greeted her, and Stansy rolled her eyes. I searched my memory, but I was pretty sure I didn't know what model a Tilly was.

"Well, maybe she is sleeping," Sasha said, giving Stansy a slight shake of her head. "You'll find an empty bed with clean linen, and I'll bring dinner down within the hour. Go ahead and get comfortable. I will see you again in a bit."

She retreated back up the stairs, leaving me to chat with my new housemates. "So you're human normal, huh?" Stansy asked. "Must have done something pretty outrageious to get put here with us, huh?"

I ignored Stansy's uncomfortable question and set my bag against the wall where Sasha had left the suitcase. "Mind if I sit down? What are we watching?"

"National news," Wendy said. She made room for me on the sofa.

"I'm going to lie down and read for a while," Stansy said. She sounded irritated. I made a mental note to work on that. I didn't like having people dislike me, especially people I had to live with.

Stan sat on the arm of the sofa next to Wendy. Nock had returned to his seat by the terminal, but he watched me surreptitiously over the top of the monitor screen. On the television, smoke columns billowed up from a large sheet metal building. Subtitles flashed and disappeared, just a bit too fast to follow, so I asked Wendy to turn it up. ". . . thorities believe this latest attack to be the work of the terrorist group Vindicavit In Libertatem."

"Bullshit," Wendy and Nissi said, almost in unison.

The newscaster continued. "Five deaths and at least a dozen injuries resulted when the explosive device went off sometime early this morning. FBI Deputy Director Katherine Reynolds issued the following statement at a press conference just minutes ago..."

Wendy changed the channel just as a middle-aged woman appeared on the screen. "I don't know why I bother watching that crap," she said, ruffling the cat's fur behind its head. It cocked its head, yawned, and tucked tighter into a ball. "The media just reports what the government feeds them."

"It's getting worse out there, isn't it?" Stan said, looking at me.

I nodded, but did not elaborate. If they had television and internet, they already knew as much as I did. During the last few years, dozens of domestic terrorist groups had sprung up in response to McCain's declaration of martial law. Bombings, fires, and shootings were almost becoming a daily occurrence.

"Well, guess I'll go first," Stan said. "I've been here for two months. Before that, the agency placed me in a safe house in Phoenix, Arizona for about six years. I had to go into hiding once the audit started in '07. Moved around from one place to another before that to stay safe. Took odd jobs, paid in cash. I never stayed in one place more than six months. Before the Ban, I was a senior software engineer with IBM. Never married, no kids."

"Second-wave?" I asked. Standard Upgrade was one of the first widely-available designer genemods, emerging in the early 1970s.

"Yeah, you got me." Stan gestured with a thumb. "Wendy's older, though."

"Seriously?" I said, turning to Wendy. "You're first-gen?" It was odd, given the variety of mods that had appeared before the ban, that Peter and Wendy mods were some of the most difficult to put your mind around. The first generation of genemods, narrower in scope and and milder in effect than later mods, had emerged in the late 1960s. That put the apparent pre-teen on the sofa at somewhere in her mid 40s.

"Shh, you make me sound like an old lady," Wendy said. She pushed fine, wavy blonde hair out of her eyes. "Yeah, I'm first-gen mod, and I turned forty-six this year, not that anyone's counting. You could say my parents had more money than sense. They spent over a hundred grand so that their daughter could remain a darling ten-year-old forever. I've also been here the longest after Tilly, four months. Everyone who was here when I got in was smuggled out over time. Apparently the agency has a hard time placing stunties. Anyway, I was a biochemist before the Ban. I quit my job and managed to hide out at home with the parents for a few years, passing as their granddaughter. When the gene audit started, I had to go into hiding for real, which is how I ended up in Miss Gray's basement." She looked over at the elf. "You're up, Nissi."

Nissi shrugged and turned to meet my gaze. Her eyes were a startling shade of green with little gold flecks. "I have been here for just over a month now. Before that, I was in hiding with four others of my model in northern Arkansas. It wasn't an agency safe house, just very rural. We fled to the agency when we got warning that the FBI was searching our area for mods. I made it out, but I have no idea if the others are safe. I was third generation, so yeah, early eighties. My father was a Tolkien fanatic, and my mother agreed to my mod only on the condition that my two siblings were to be human normal. I was a musician before the band. Probably no one you ever heard of."

I looked over at Nock, but he had suddenly taken an interest in whatever was on the monitor in front of him. I sighed and began. "Okay, well. I was an assistant professor of anatomy at UCLA until just a few days ago. This was my first year in the position. Honestly, I don't know much of anything about this life. I was told that the agency is working on getting me out of the country, but I wasn't told when or how that might happen."

I caught the slight frown on Wendy's face at my omission, and I think I saw similar looks from the others. I knew they were all thinking the same thing. Why was I, a human normal, under agency protection? It happened sometimes, usually with the agency's own members who had been exposed, but the fact that I wasn't talking about it made them suspect that there was more to it.

"Well, you might be here anywhere from a few weeks to a few months," Nissi said. "It all depends on whether the agency can get sponsorship for you and when they can get passage on a ship going there."

"What happens if they can't get sponsorship?" I asked.

"Well, if they can't find an industrialized nation willing to risk taking you in, they'll put you off wherever they can. Africa, South America, parts of East Asia. And you really don't have a choice in the matter."

We settled into an uncomfortable silence as I let that sink in. The United States, working through the United Nations, put enormous political and economic pressure on the other nations of the world to capture and contain genemods, but many of the governments and citizens of those nations were sympathetic to their plight. While none were willing to openly defy the UN directives banning geemo research, many saw it as a violation of their human rights to revert genetic modification in humans, and worked covertly to help shelter them. The Genemod Relocation Agency had some international support from those nations, but mostly it ran off donations from those it had helped to get out of the US. From what I understood, the agency had managed to get tens of thousands of genemods to safety during its several years of operation, but well over a hundred thousand were still waiting in long-term safe houses and thousands more hid on their own. 

"Your turn, Nock," Wendy said.

"Dinner first," he said, pointing to what looked like a cupboard next to the stairway. No, a dumbwaiter, I realized. He inhaled deeply through his nose. "Vegetable stew, again."

Stan opened the door to the shaft and pulled out a large tray containing a steaming pot and several bowls and silverware. It did, indeed, smell like some kind of vegetable soup, though I hadn't detected any scent at all just a moment ago. Stan carried the tray to the folding table and set it in the center.

"Nock likes to show off," Wendy said. She dropped the cat on the sofa's arm and stood up. "He got scent and aural upgrades along with the rest."

Nock smirked. "Hey, don't be jealous just because your super power is being a rug rat."

Wendy tapped the side of her face with her middle finger. "Never underestimate the power of cuteness, bat boy." She raised her voice. "Stansy, you having food?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," the other woman said, emerging a moment later from her curtained-off section of the room.

"Bat boy?" Nock said, shaking his head. "That hurts, baby doll."

"Vampire."

"Reverse jail bait."

"Alright, you two, knock it off," Nissi said, but smiled as she said it.

"What?" Wendy said, ignoring her. "Reverse jail bait? That doesn't even make sense."

"Think it over while we're eating," Nissi said. "I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

"This isn't over," Wendy said in a mock-menacing tone. She punched Nock on the arm.

I was glad to see that the others were already apparently adjusting to my arrival, acting more like themselves and less like they were trying to put up a good front for my sake. I took a seat on the end next to Wendy and was handed a bowl of stew from Stan. "That smells wonderful," I said, and it did.

"Miss Gray turned most of her backyard into a greenhouse," Nissi said. "She makes this stew about two or three times a week. Trust me, you'll start to get tired of it after a while."

I caught Nock's glance to my right. A woman, barefoot and dressed only in a threadbare nightgown, walked up to the table. She was shorter than the others, other than Wendy, of course, with tussled brown hair that reached to her shoulders. She kept her eyes down, but I could see that there were dark circles ringing them. She was thin, and not in a way that looked at all healthy. If I had encountered her on the street, I might have thought she were homeless.

"Hello, Tilly," Wendy said brightly. "I'm glad you could join us for dinner."

"Hi," the woman murmured. She pulled out a chair and sat. Stan set a bowl of stew in front of her and she began to eat, chewing and swallowing quickly and mechanically. Like most genemods, her symmetric and proportioned features gave her an attractive appearance, but the it was harder to see due to her lack of care and dullness of spirit. I realized that the others were studiously avoiding looking at her.

"So we were in the middle of introductions," Wendy said into the silence.

"Yeah, yeah," Nock said, setting his spoon down. I turned to give him my attention. "I was an entrepreneur and head of a small investment firm. When the Ban hit, I tried to get out of the country, but I found out that the feds had already set up border patrols and airport screenings. I've been bouncing from agency safe houses ever since. I have a girlfriend, but I haven't seen her in seven years. I hope she's still in hiding or out of the country by now, but, of course, the agency won't tell me. I've been here for about three months."

"I was an attorney," Stansy began, as soon as Nock finished. "I worked for corporate interests, did some criminal defense cases before that, but I didn't care much for trials. When I heard about the Ban, I thought there was no way it would stand, but I was wrong. I barely got out in time when the feds showed up at my firm to arrest me. My husband filed for divorce after I disappeared and got a private investigator to somehow track down a rep from the agency to give me my papers. The bastard didn't even wait a week, and he's got my son." She blinked several times and quickly reached for her water. "God, it still hurts, you know? I'm sorry if I came across as a jerk earlier, Norm. I'm just fed up with this shit."

"I'll drink to that," Stan said, reaching for his own water glass.

"Hey, do we still have that bottle of Cabernet?" Wendy asked. "This is a bit of a special occasion. New roomie and all."

Nock went in search for it, coming back a few moments later with a bottle of California wine.

"Sometimes Miss Gray brings us gifts," Wendy explained as Nock pried the cork. Wine wasn't rationed, but I knew that it was quite expensive.

"What about you, Tilly?" I asked. "What's your story?"

Tilly dropped her spoon into her bowl, splashing brownish liquid on the table. The rest of the table had gone suddenly quiet. Wendy placed the wine bottle carefully on the table. She stared at Tilly and chewed at her lip.


Double Helix Ch. 01



Tilly's eyes lifted to meet mine for the first time, and I came close to physically recoiling from the pain I saw there. Her gaze quickly lowered again and she pushed away from the table and hurried back to her partition. I watched her go, feeling confused and sick. 

"Norm, can I speak to you a moment?" Wendy said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

I stood and followed her. In my mind's eye, I imagined how ridiculous the situation would appear out of context, a literal teacher being taken aside by a ten-year-old for misbehavior. She led me into the stairwell and we sat, side by side.

"Okay," she said with a sigh. "You can probably already tell, Tilly's got problems. When I showed up here, she wouldn't say more than two words to me, or to anyone else. She's been here for close to half a year, which is a long time to stay at a transition house. I hate to say this about any mod, but Tilly isn't sane. I don't know what happened to her before she came here. I don't even know if the agency does."

"Has she ever been violent?" I asked. Coming from a education in medicine, my first impulse was to diagnose the ailment.

"No, never," Wendy said. "Just extreme withdrawal and depression. And I think she has nightmares. You want to be really careful what you say to her. This evening was the first time she's been out of her room in nearly a week. She forgets to eat, so I try to bring her food, but even then, she doesn't always take it."

"Have you tried to get help for her? From the agency, maybe?"

"Miss Gray says she has put in requests, but the agency is either unwilling or unable to help."

That made a kind of sense. The agency was a strange alliance of selfless volunteers like Sasha Gray working alongside career criminals who possessed the know-how to conduct illegal business and pass below the radar of the FBI. They ran off of donations, much of it from expatriate genemods, as well as the movement of black market goods into and out of the country. The agency's first priority would be to get Tilly out of the country. Then she could get help from whatever benevolent government she landed under.

"Any idea what Tilly's model is?"

"No" Wendy said, "She wouldn't tell me when I asked. If she doesn't feel like answering a question, she'll just ignore it. Come on, let's go have that drink."

I sighed. "Alright. Thanks for explaining things to me."

The others seemed to have recovered quickly from what had happened. If anything, they seemed more comfortable to have Tilly gone. I finished my stew and sipped the wine. I had no clue whether it was a good vintage or not. My colleagues at the university liked to tease me for my preference for what they called "girly" drinks: margaritas, sangria, daiquiris, that kind of stuff. In any case, what we had didn't go very far, certainly not enough for anyone to even get tipsy.

We talked for at least an hour. I found out that Stan was a Broncos fan, that Stansy liked historical fiction and that Nissi had once met an elderly John F. Kennedy and a young Kurt Cobain. I talked about my career when asked, though I didn't like to dwell too much on that. I was pretty certain that wherever the agency sent me, my skills would be in demand, but it wouldn't be the same. I had poured my heart and soul into getting that position at UCLA. Now, my best hope was that I might end up in Japan or India, where I could at have modern facilities and the possibility to teach at university level. Near eight o'clock, it looked like things were beginning to wind down, with Nock and Stansy heading for the television to catch an episode of America's Next Pop Star.

"I noticed there's just one terminal," I said to no one in particular. "Am I able to use it?"

Wendy answered me. "Our policy is that you get an hour at a time when someone else is waiting. Most of us have a routine. Nock spends more time on it than anyone, but there's really not much else for him to do in the middle of the night. Stansy and I use it in the mornings, and Stan has a project he works on in the afternoon. Nissi likes to browse evenings sometimes."

"Yeah, I was going to get on there after we clean up," Nissi said. "You want to use it first?"

I shook my head. "No, that's fine. I was just curious."

I helped Stan, Nissi, and Wendy with the dishes, which we rinsed in the sink and put back in the dumbwaiter for Sasha to wash upstairs. I took a bathroom break, a very awkward experience considering that the only thing between me and the rest of the room was a thick sheet. It once again drove home to me how desperate my circumstances had become.

Stan and Wendy had gone over to join Nock and Stansy at the TV. I did the same, but I quickly grew bored and restless. Reality TV had never interested me much, so before the show was half over, I gathered my luggage and excused myself to my "bedroom". The partitions lined both walls of the back half of the basement, with a space running down the middle as a kind of hallway. The curtain was pulled back for my area, the third of four partitioned areas on the right. Along the wall was a twin, single mattress bed with the top sheet and quilt turned down. A table lamp sat on a nightstand at the head of the bed. At the foot of the bed was a small dresser, and above that, a rope draped from two points on the ceiling with several coat hangers attached. A canvas laundry sack also hung there.

I unpacked everything I had and spread it onto the bed. Two suits, two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, some polo shirts, a pair of dress shoes and a week's worth of socks and underwear, besides the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing. I frowned at the designer suits, guessing they would probably never be worn again unless the agency let me take them overseas with me. Still, I packed the suits away carefully in the bottom drawer of the dresser and hung up or folded the rest. 

From the sounds outside, it seemed that Pop Star was over and most were heading for bed. I pulled the curtain across for privacy, stripped to my underwear and lay on the bed without bothering to pull up the covers. I reached above my head and snapped the lamp off. Plenty of light still reflected off the ceiling from lights elsewhere in the basement, and my sight quickly adjusted to the reduced light. I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come, but it was a futile exercise. Though I was physically exhausted from travel and the day's events, my mind still raced. I lay there, listening as, one by one, the others headed off to bed. The volume of the TV reduced to a faint murmur.

I was just beginning to drift off when I heard a voice murmuring in the dark. I waited, listening, and it spoke again. "No, not again. Don't make...again." It was coming from the partition next to mine.

"Tilly?" I whispered.

"No, please!" she said more urgently.

"Tilly," I said, louder, and rapped my knuckles on the nightstand. "Wake up. You're having a nightmare."

Her voice cut off suddenly. I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow.

I lay in the dark for a few moments, listening to her calm down. "I wanted to tell you, I'm sorry for upsetting you at dinner."

She inhaled sharply once more and then went quiet. I thought she had heard me. That was something at least. I turned to face the wall and burrowed deeper under the covers. Tilly's breathing slowed and the sound grew more faint. Soon, I too, fell asleep.

Nock woke us with breakfast, already set out on the table. I wasn't terribly excited to see that it was oatmeal, but the fresh fruit that Sasha had given us helped to liven it up considerably. That, and the coffee, which was making my mouth water. I took a sip and was pleasantly surprised by how smooth and rich it was. "This isn't coffee ration, is it?" I said aloud.

"Nope," Stan said, grinning. "We get the good stuff, imported. The agency delivers food for us once a week, and most of that has to be smuggled in from offshore. It's one of the perks of being on the run, I guess. This comes from Indonesia. Miss Gray keeps us well stocked with it."

"What does she do for a living?" I asked.

"Business analyst," Wendy said, "as far as we can tell. She telecommutes most days, but on days where she has to go in to the office, she prepares meals in advance and leaves them in the fridge."

I finished my food quickly and stood up. "Is it okay if I use the terminal?" I asked.

"I've already been on it," Stansy said.

Wendy shrugged. "Go ahead, I'll use it after."

I sat behind the terminal and let out a long breath. Where to start? I connected to Wikipedia and typed "Tilly" into the search box. There were a number of people with a last name of Tilly, several locations in France with that name, and the short form name of the plant Tillandsia. I tried a Markov search and came up with dozens of examples to match the results Wikipedia had given me. I thought of a dozen different ways I could narrow down my search, adding terms like "genemod" or "model", but doing so was risky. The FBI and FCC monitored internet traffic, and the former had subpoenaed search services like AskMarkov and various computing service providers countless times over the last decade to track down genemods when their monitoring turned up suspicious activity. I sighed and leaned back in my chair.

"Anything I can help with?" Stan said, coming over.

"I don't think so," I said, but he pulled the second chair up next to me anyway and looked over my most recent search.

"Hmm, looking for info on our housemate, huh?" he said, quietly enough that I guessed that no one but possibly Nock would hear. "Here, let me show you how to connect to a proxy computing server."

"What will that do?" I asked, moving back to give him room.

"It will allow us to make your session private. We route through the local CSP, but use a secure, encrypted connection from the terminal to the proxy. The terminal has just enough power to decrypt in real time with a moderately long key if you know how to hack the kernel. That way, anyone trying to snoop at the CSP gets a face full of encryption."

"Isn't that illegal?" I asked. The Domestic Information Security and Transparency Act of 2007 had given broad surveillance and police power to the FBI. It had also outlawed the use of encryption by private citizens, leading to the immediate demise of all but very short-ranged wireless data communication.

"Technically, yes, but we get around that because Corporate inter networks need to keep customer data private, so ordinary non-citizens like us can get away with using the same encryption standards that they do. For all the FBI knows, our traffic to the proxy is no different than Sasha logging in to work." He leaned closer. "Don't tell her we're doing this, by the way."

I followed what Stan did. Apparently he had some kind of script stored on the terminal's memory cache already set up to run when needed. "Now you can search for whatever you want."

Stan slid backwards so that I could try again. I tried AskMarkov again with "Tilly genemod", "Tilly genetic model" and "Tilly gene line". The results were far more esoteric, but I still came up with nothing promising.

"You have to realize," Stan said. "The nicknames usually showed up after a model was in production for a while, and some of them weren't invented until after the Ban. It could even be that the agency didn't know what to call her and just picked a name at random."

"Yeah, you might be right," I grudgingly agreed. I gave up after a few more tries and let Wendy use the terminal. 

Later that morning, Sasha came down to see us. She asked how I was adjusting to my new home, and I was gracious and told her that everything was fine. "Would you like to go out shopping with me this morning?" she asked. "My mother will be at the doctor's office for a few hours and I took the day off from work."

"I—can I do that?" I stammered.

"Sure," she said, with a faint smile. "I checked with the agency to be sure. You're safe as long as you don't break any laws or say the wrong thing in public. No one is going to be looking for you here."

"Okay," I said. "I'd like that." At the same time, I felt oddly guilty about it, knowing that the others were trapped down here, able to leave only once the agency managed to smuggle them out.

I dressed in the closest thing I had to winter clothes and then followed Sasha upstairs and out to the garage. "I need to pick up food rations and toiletries," she said as we got into her SUV. "Have you ever been to Seattle before?"

"No, never," I said.

She started the car and it's automated systems flashed ready after a moment. The garage door automatically began to rise. "Well, now you have. Your name for the time being is Jeff Kimmler. You attended college at U-dub, but you moved out east for a job after graduation."

I smiled. "Wow. I never knew that about myself."

Sasha's eyebrows went up. "This isn't a joke."

"Sorry," I said, chastened by her tone.

"Now repeat it back to me."

"I'm Jeff Kimmler. I went to the University of Washington and moved back here from the east coast."

"Good," she said. "Car, set destination: North Seattle FEMA Food Bank." The screen on the dash plotted our map to the destination and the car backed smoothly down to the street to merge with traffic.

Sasha let go of the steering wheel and shifted in her seat to face me. "Let me do most of the talking if anyone stops to engage us, but go ahead and answer any direct question posed to you as long as there is a innocent and obvious answer you can give. I'll get a fake ID for you in a day or two."

I tried to absorb everything she told me. I realized that, despite the casual manner in which she had invited me along, that she was taking a risk and placing great trust in me. I was as much a fugitive as the others. The only difference was that I could pass a DNA test where they couldn't.

"Have you told the others yet why you're here?" Sasha asked.

The question took me by surprise. "The agency told you?"

"It's my position as a host," she said. "It's more dangerous for me not to know the risks I'm taking on. So, did you?"

I sighed. "No."

"Good," she said. "I thought about it a lot last night. I think it's better that you keep it to yourself. Those people have enough to worry about."

"I won't tell anyone," I promised. I felt relieved that the choice had been taken from me. We passed the next minute or so in silence. "Miss Gray?"

"Oh, you picked up on that, did you? Wendy started that. You can call me Sasha if you prefer. What's your question, Mr. Kimmler?"

"Do you trust me, Sasha?" I made it a point to try out her first name.

Now it was her turn to sigh. "Honestly, I don't know, but I'm sort of stuck with you. You can tell me your side of things if you think it will help."

I thought about all the ways I could spin it, to make myself look better. But that would be a lie. "I screwed up," I said. "I broke the rules and a lot of good people got hurt."

"I appreciate your honesty. And it will not happen again," Sasha said. Her voice was steel. "You understand?"

"I understand."

We waited for over nearly an hour in line at the food bank. Sasha assured me that it was pretty light for a Saturday. We left with a large bag of rice, two containers of tofu, a somewhat wilted cabbage, four oranges, four cans of tuna, powdered milk and powdered eggs. It was supposed to be enough food for Sasha and her mother for one week. FEMA's food banks provided 1500 calories to every man, woman, and child each day, by executive order and at enormous cost, about $2 trillion annually. If that was a little lean for some people, well, you just learned to cope, or you built a greenhouse like Sasha had done. Of course, that brought with it its own set of challenges to overcome.

We picked up toothpaste, toilet paper, soap and laundry detergent at the market. "You have privileges the others don't, so I expect you to help with the chores," Sasha told me as we headed for the checkout. "I will still wash clothes on the weekend, but I want you to take over for me on Tuesday and Friday. I'll get today though, since you're still settling in."

"That's only fair," I agreed.

"And you can do your own laundry whenever I'm not using the machine. Just remember to check the monitor at the top of the stairs on your way up. I set a warning message to flash on the screen if I have visitors, planned or otherwise."

We climbed back into into the car and it started the moment the doors closed. "Oh, we're running late for lunch," Sasha said. "Car, send an alert to the house, please."

"Can I ask you something?" I said, as the car started away towards home.

"Oh, the old asking permission to ask a question bit," she said, smirking. "That usually means the question is a either rude or personal. Sure, I will bite."

"Why do you do this?"

"You mean, why do I open up my home to fugitives? Risk prison just so that I can cook and do laundry for a bunch of non-citizens?"

"Well...yes."

Sasha shrugged. "You should know as well as I. It is the right thing to do. They're human beings too, no matter what the government says. Am I scared of what will happen if I'm found out? You're damned right I am. But at least I'm doing something to try to make a few lives better, you know?"

I rode in silence for a time, lost in my own thoughts and what Sasha had told me. "I meant what I said earlier, by the way. I won't let you down."

"That's good to know," Sasha said, sounding distracted. "And oddly relevant. Looks like we have a checkpoint."

I realized that we were coming up to a line of cars. I could see military vehicles up ahead, barricading the road.

"What is your name?" Sasha asked.

"Jeff Kimmler," I said without hesitation.

"Good. You left your wallet back at my house. Apologize for that and be polite. Act as if you're meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time. We'll be fine." Despite her words, her voice had a tense edge. She took control back from the car, probably to give her something to do with her hands.

We rolled slowly forward as the line inched along. As the car in front of us cleared the barricade, a pair of national guard moved in on either side of the vehicle and motioned for us to roll down our windows.

"Sir," the female guard on my side said crisply. "Can I see some identification?"

I pretended to fish in my pockets for a moment, my heart racing. "I'm sorry, ma'am," I said. "I, uh, I guess I left it at home."

"Full name, sir?" she said. I gave her my alias. "Open your mouth, please, sir."

The woman ran a swab quickly along the inside of my mouth and brushed it across a test kit. She watched the kit's face for a moment. "No markers. He's clean," she announced. She made her way along the side of the SUV, peering in the windows. "No passengers," she said.

"This one's clean too," the male guard on Sasha's side said. "Thank you ma'am, sir. You have a nice day."

I waved as the car started forward and the windows rolled up. "God, I hate those," Sasha said. She let the car take control again and leaned back, closing her eyes. "I used to shake for an hour after every time I went through one. You did good."

I smiled wanly and took a deep breath to quell the roiling in my stomach. Fortunately, we didn't have much further to go. I had suddenly grown impatient to get back to the relative safety of the house.

"Do you cook, Norm?" Sasha asked when we were back in the house and putting the meager foodstuffs away.

"Yes, but I'm not very good at it," I admitted. "I usually only make food for myself."

"I'll teach you how to make some large, easy meals," she said. "That way you can cook if I have to be out of the house. The fridge and pantry downstairs are stocked with some basics, but the perishable stuff gets used up steadily and I like to save the non-perishables for emergencies."




Double Helix Ch. 01



She started by having me help her with lunch, a dish made with rice, tofu, and bok choy. Standard American cuisine had shifted quite a bit since the Rot to include ingredients less commonly found in western dishes. Meat of any kind usually only came through black market sources and cost hundreds of dollars for a single serving.

"Let's eat downstairs with the others," Sasha said as we gathered the dishes to place in the dumbwaiter. It was concealed from this end, I saw, in what looked like the decorative bottom half of an armoire. 

Sasha lowered the tray and we went downstairs, where the others were already gathering. "Hello, Miss Gray," Nissi said, nodding. The others gave their own greetings as we settled around the table.

"So how are you all?" Sasha asked as she took her plate. "Does everyone have their laundry ready for me?"

Nock had apparently forgotten and got up to fetch his dirty clothes to add to the laundry bags stacked by the door.

"I was hoping you might pick up some new books for me," Stansy said. "I'm almost done with the last one."

"I'll do it the next time I'm out. Next two on your reading list, I take it? Norm, are you going to need some more clothes? There can't be a lot in that suitcase and bag you brought."

"I don't want to be a bother," I protested.

"Nonsense," Sasha said. "The agency provides me with a stipend for each of you, and if I don't spend it and account for everything, that money is lost. You give me your sizes and a list of what you need by this evening."

"Alright, I'll do that, Miss Gray."

"Hmm, I thought you were going to call me Sasha."

"So did I, Miss Gray," I said.

We all laughed at that. I wondered suddenly how Sasha's situation had affected her career. Everything I had seen of her so far told me that she needed to be managing people, but that just wasn't something you could do from a home office. Sasha went on to engage each person in conversation, and even took a moment to look in on Tilly, though it sounded like a one-sided dialogue.

I passed the afternoon watching television and talking to the others. It turned out that Nissi was from Orange County, and she had a lot of questions for me about how things had changed in LA over the last eight years. She had left the city before I ever got there. I had been an assistant professor for two and a half years, and had been a graduate student at UCLA before that. The biggest change was the depopulation, close to a million people streamed out of the area each year. Rent controls were supposed to give everyone affordable housing, but the cost of living still outpaced the meager pay that most took home after taxes, and most urban dwellers did not have room for gardening on any practical scale.

We had dinner again together, and before we were all finished, Wendy excused herself to take Tilly some food. Nock and Stansy again headed for the television. I was not looking forward to another night like the last and realized that I needed to find something else to do with my time. I supposed that I could read, like Stansy, but I would need to ask Sasha about getting books.

Then I saw Nissi still sitting at the far end of the table with a notebook open in front of her. She tapped her fingers rhythmically on the table a few times, and leaned over and scribbled something down. I just watched her for a moment. Every movement of her hands, every gesture, was pure grace. I moved down to sit across from her and watched as she added a musical note here or there and scribbled notes in between the staves she had made across the pages.

"Bored?" she asked without looking up from her work.

"I never watched much TV," I said. "You're composing music." I tried not to make it a question.

"Oh, is it that obvious?" she said with a grin. "And here I thought I was getting away with something. It's a solo piece, piano with vocals. I'm still working out the lyrics."

"Do you always work this fast?" In the few minutes I had been watching her, she had filled the right-hand page and looked to be putting just the finishing touches on it.

She gave me a wry smile. "It's kind of silly, actually. Ever read Tolkien?"

"Years ago," I admitted.

"Well, anytime there were elves around, Tolkien would have some hanging out in the trees and singing. You see?"

"So you and all the other elves are musical geniuses?" I said it half-jokingly, but saw that Nissi wasn't kidding.

"With perfect pitch and a damn good head for math besides," she added. "But sometimes it feels like a curse. Once I get music in my head, I can't sleep until I get it out. It takes over my brain. There, that should do it." She flipped the page back to show that she had filled the previous two pages as well. "Now for the hard part: lyrics."

"What is it about?"

Nissi hummed a few notes and then began to sing them, not real words, just making the sound of the notes. Her voice, clear and resonant, sent a shiver up my spine.

"That sounds kind of sad," I said when she stopped. "Lost lover, maybe?"

"Ugh, another one of those," she said, frowning. She looked thoughtful for a moment. "But you do have a point. How about not lost, just separated for a long time? She's pining for him because she's beyond her reach. That could work, right?" She turned the page and sang a few of the notes, still no words. Somehow, though the melody was the same, there was now a hint of hope in it. "She thinks she's going to see him again soon."

"Can you sing the first line again?" I asked.

When she sang the notes, I spoke the words that came into my head. "I can't feel your touch," I said, in time with the melody. "Each day without you hurts so much."

"Not bad," she said, and jotted it down. "I think that's our first hook. Have you done this before?"

"I used to write poetry. I haven't done it in years, though."

I found that Nissi had a much better ear for hooks than I did, but she did use a few of my suggestions. She sang our latest line, then shook her head. "I don't know if that works with the music here. Damn, I wish I had a piano." It was not the first time she had said it.

I repeated what she had said, but singing it falsetto to the tune of the song "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover". Nissi laughed out loud. "Dork. But you might have a good voice if you got some training."

It suddenly occurred to me that the TV was off. Everyone but Nock had already gone to bed. He was seated at the terminal, clicking the mouse every few seconds. Nissi and I had been at it for hours. "It's late," I said at last, leaning back in my chair. "But that was fun."

"Finish up tomorrow?" she asked. "I think we're far enough along that I can sleep now."

"It's a date."

I stood up and started for my room, but Nissi intercepted me. "If we're having a date tomorrow," she said smoothly, "then tonight was our first date. And that means...." she moved close to me. For the first time, I really took notice of our height difference. She stood about three inches taller than my own 5'10". "...a kiss good night?"

I looked up into her face, such a strange feeling. I had never been this close to someone taller than me before. My thoughts were fuzzy, indistinct. I breathed in her scent, a mix of vanilla and the barest hint of something else, something earthy and rich. My hand found the back of her head, her silken hair slipping through my fingers. Our lips touched and it felt like sparks exploded inside my head. It lasted only a moment, and quite chaste compared to kisses I had shared with girlfriends, but it left me breathless and we both swayed as we broke away. 

"How long since you've done that?" Nissi said, running a finger down the line of my jaw.

"Two years, I think. You?"

"Too long." She stepped back. "You know, you're kind of cute."

"And you're kind of amazing," I breathed.

She smiled at me. "Dork. Tomorrow, then."

She glanced over her shoulder coyly as she slipped past the curtain into her partition. I suddenly remembered Nock. He gave me a grin and a thumbs up and I tried not to groan. I would have to get used to the lack of privacy.

I settled into bed and closed my eyes, lulled by the sound of Tilly's slow breathing just a few feet away beyond the curtain.

The next afternoon, Thursday, Sasha invited me to help her in the greenhouse. Stepping into the backyard I was immediately impressed by the attention to detail of whoever had designed it. The structure was hermetically sealed, with filtered air pumped from the outside. Sasha had me go in first, explaining what to do. The glass of the shower was frosted and the chamber served as a kind of airlock to the greenhouse proper. The water was so hot it took my breath away for a moment when I first stood under it. I scrubbed every skin surface thoroughly with disinfecting soap and braced myself again to rinse. I left my clothes hanging in a compartment in the shower and moved on to the next chamber so that Sasha could come in. I found a clean t-shirt and shorts from the closet and put them in while she showered.

The shower shut off and I turned to face the wall just as Sasha had instructed. She emerged, dried off, and dressed quickly. "Alright, safe to look now," she said. She had a loose-fitting t-shirt and shorts much like I wore. It was a strange look for her, but I could understand the reason for it. The air in here was tepid and moist. 

"You didn't skimp on the fungicide, did you?" she asked. I shook my head. "Good. I've kept this greenhouse clean of Rot for eight years. That's no small feat. All it takes is one slip-up for a spore to get in here and start wreaking havoc."

The Rot, as it was known to most people, was a bioengineered organism that had been unleashed on America's food crops in 2004. It was based on a naturally-occurring form of life called oomycetes, similar to mold, that infected the roots of plants in moisture-rich soil. This strain was far hardier and more destructive than natural oomycetes, and within just two months had infected crops from California to Iowa, and that was just the start of the worldwide food crisis.

McCain had wrested the presidency from Bill Bradley that year, promising swift and effective action in response to what many considered to be a terrorist plot to undermine the US. The Ban had been passed three months into McCain's first term, making it illegal to create genetically modified organisms of any kind, while also redacting the citizenship of all living genemods. 

Sasha opened the inner door of the chamber and we stepped into a place out of time. The greenhouse was eighty feet long, twenty feet wide, with a sloping glass roof that must have been fifteen feet tall at its highest point. Aside from three paths that ran the length of the building, plants filled the entire space. Potatoes, carrots, onions and other roots and bulbs were among the vegetables planted at floor level. Above, them, soil boxes hung suspended by chains every few feet, with tomatoes, beans, peas, and squashes and others growing in them. "How much is all this worth?" I asked.

Sasha shrugged. "The food in here is worth thousands, for sure. But much more is the value of the plants themselves. I would quarantine each new plant for a month before I brought it in, to make sure the Rot wasn't on it. I don't do that anymore. I gather seeds and cuttings from what's here to replace any plants that die. With what is in here, I can add a few hundred calories a day and a lot of nutrients to the diets of every person in the house. Come on, I think some of the peppers and onions over here were about ripe."

She gave me a large basket and began to give me tips on how to know if a vegetable was ready to pick. We managed to fill that basket and part of another with the peppers and onions, plus a few more. It looked like more food than all of us could eat in a day. "Whatever I can't use, the agency takes off my hands," she said, "but with nine people to feed now, I won't get a lot of surplus."

At dinner, we got a surprise when Sasha's mother came down to visit. Her name was Nonna and I liked her immediately. She was what my own mother would have called a "little old lady", warm and polite, but with a spark of wit that turned up when you least expected it. And she made us cookies. They were loaded with chocolate chips and walnuts and still warm from the oven. It was an extravagance to use flour on a desert dish. Rice flour was normally your only option, which you could make with a little work out of white rice, but wheat-based flour ran several dollars an ounce on the black market. Sugar was often even harder to come by. It had been years since I had eaten a cookie, and my mouth watered in anticipation when I saw her carrying the plate.

Nonna had come over from Russia after Sasha had divorced her husband, about a year after the Ban. I knew that Russia in many ways had fared worse than the US when the Rot had begun to spread overseas to Europe and the Far East, before strict immigration and trade controls had slowed it. Deaths in the States in those first two years had totaled nearly a million people. In those same years, Russia had lost over 20 million--more than a tenth of its population--to starvation, before things began to stabilize. 

Dinner was salad, with grilled tofu where chicken would have been, if meat were not rare, expensive, and closely rationed. Still, Sasha had managed to liven it up with fresh strawberries and tomatoes and a sweet and tangy vinaigrette that she made herself. Sasha and Nonna didn't stay, heading back upstairs to eat their own food in the dining room. The plate of cookies sat near the middle of the table. I'm sure it was on everyone's mind to wait and savor them later.

I saw when Wendy was finished that she took a clean plate and started dishing salad into it.

I quickly ate the last few forkfuls from my bowl and stood up. "Can I take that to Tilly?" I asked.

Wendy looked up and blinked. "Oh, uh, are you sure?"

"Please," I said. "I want to help out." When I still saw hesitation, I said. "Don't worry, I won't upset her again."

It looked like I had hit upon the very thing that she was thinking. "Alright," she said. "Just don't get angry if she won't talk to you, okay? It's fine if you want to leave the food and I'll go back and pick up the dishes when she is done."

I agreed, and she handed me the bowl. I picked up one of the cookies as well, and did a double-take before reaching for another. There weren't enough for everyone. No one else had taken one yet, but we were one short. Sasha's mother must have forgotten about me. Well, no reason to deprive someone else, I reasoned, and didn't reach for another.

I went back to the partition next to mine and stood outside. "Can I come in?" I asked. When I got no response, I said. "I'm coming in," and pushed the curtain aside.

Tilly was lying on her bed, her gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the ceiling. I set the salad on the table and she jerked upright, her eyes roving wildly for a moment before settling on me. "Hello, Tilly," I said, realizing as I said the words that I was speaking in the same voice I would use on a frightened child. "I'm Norm. I brought you salad."

Something about her expression shifted, and I felt the same wave of fear and anguish that I had last night. I wanted to be away from there, away from her. The forcefulness of my mind and body's response, so primal and unreasoning, was what made my rational mind reject it. There was something off here, something I didn't understand, but nothing I couldn't deal with by reasoning my way through it. I looked away from her gaze, focusing on the salad bowl and my task.

"I was just thinking of my grandmother," I said, as I stirred the salad to coat the dressing throughout. "We went to see her almost every weekend when I was a kid. She lived alone in a little house in Ventura near the ocean." I speared a few pieces of lettuce and a cherry tomato with the fork. "I loved playing on the beach when we went to visit, but I also loved my grandma."

I could feel Tilly's gaze on me as I lazily lifted the salad toward her. Our eyes met again and the wariness was back. She opened her mouth and let me feed her, chewing in the same distant, mechanical way she had last night. "She taught me a lot of things, things I didn't even know I was learning, about compassion and responsibility. I think I became a teacher because of her. She taught elementary school most of her life." I didn't tell her the rest of the story, about the cancer that had ravaged her body, stripping her of her health and her dignity in the last year of her life. I had known somehow by her look, even at the age of eight, that all she wanted in those last days was to die, to escape the endless pain and humiliation of it. "She was a wonderful person," I said, and fed Tilly another bite. "She loved her life and made others feel the same way."

"I can feed myself," Tilly said in a small voice.

I handed over the salad and she ate it in the same focused, deliberate way that she had on my first night there, as though she had to think about each bite to decide whether or not she needed to eat it. "Wendy's a bit like that," I said, "like my grandma. I think that's why I liked her almost the minute I met her. I knew a few genemods in high school, and I met a few more when I went to university. I don't think I've ever met anyone like you, though."

She didn't respond to the unspoken question, but I let it pass, giving her a minute to finish eating. "Nonna made cookies," I said, showing her the treat, wrapped in a napkin. There was still a little warmth yet left in it.

"I don't need one," she said, and handed me the nearly empty salad bowl. She regarded the cookie with what almost looked like distrust.

"Really?" I said innocently. I slowly unwrapped the cookie. "Well, I suppose you're right. I mean, it's mostly just sugar and chocolate. Still, it seems like a shame to see it go to waste after Miss Gray's mother put so much work into it, don't you think? Here, I'll eat half if you will."

I broke the cookie in two pieces and put one side in her hand. She looked at it, her eyes again narrowing. I took a nibble from my piece, sighing contentedly at the taste of nuts and chocolate mixed with salty sweetness. Tilly watched me savor my bite, her mouth moving slightly as though she, too, were chewing and tasting it. She brought her own piece to her mouth and bit off a bit without ever looking at it. Her eyes closed and she inhaled sharply as she chewed. She sighed as I had, but longer, throatier, almost a moan. Her shoulders rolled slightly as a shiver seemed to go through her whole body. After a long moment, her eyes opened and she looked down at the rest of the cookie in her hand with obvious longing. That look faded almost instantly though, and she held the cookie out at arm's length toward me. "Take it," she said, almost a growl. "I don't want it."

Confused, as much by her extreme reaction as by her sudden rejection, I took the rest of the cookie back from her. "I'm sorry," I said, though I wasn't sure what I should be apologizing for.

Tilly turned on her side, putting her back to me. I picked up the dish quietly and left. Wendy was waiting for me just outside. I winced inwardly, expecting recrimination, but she gave me a half-smile and patted my arm. "Not bad, newbie," she said. "You got her to talk to you."

"Yeah, I guess I did," I said, feeling a little better. Looking back on it, I wasn't sure why I had felt so guilty about offering her a cookie.

The dishes had already been cleared when we came out and I again joined Nissi at the table so that we could work on her song. She gave me another kiss, leaning across the table as I prepared to sit down, once again catching me by surprise. "Been waiting for you," she said, handing me a sheet with a few lines of lyrics printed neatly on it. "What do you think of these?"




Double Helix Ch. 02



Note: In case you haven't figured it out already, this story takes place at approximately the present, but in a different timeline from our own, one where computers and genetics took a very different development path. Enjoy!




Sasha gave me my new ID on the Friday of my first week, along with the new clothes she had bought me. The Washington state drivers license stated that I was Mark Winston, age 25. The same name appeared on my new social security card and birth certificate. Sasha also handed me a new leather wallet, with a bank card inside. "I got the agency to agree to a small allowance that will be automatically deposited once a month," she told me. "I still suggest you not go out of the house on your own."

I didn't think that there was any danger of that. My trip out on Wednesday had been more stress than I wanted to experience again just yet. I wasn't sure how Sasha could stand it.

I saw that the terminal was free, so I logged in to check my bank account, entering the name and password that came with my card. There was four-hundred dollars in it, more than I expected, and that set my mind working. I needed to do some research first, though.

It was my day to do the laundry, so I gathered the cloth sacks from the rack by the stairs and brought them up. Sasha's washer and dryer were not quite commercial grade, but they were large and looked expensive. She had left instructions taped to the top of each machine for what settings to use and how much detergent. As I passed her office on my way back to the basement, she asked me to look in on the tomatoes and zucchini in the green house to see if some of them were ready to pick.

I was starting to think that Sasha had actually made a request with the agency to get me stationed here. There was an astonishing amount of work involved in running her household, and I got the impression that she was only easing me into my role as her assistant. I allowed myself a moment of indignation at the workload being thrust on me as I stripped for the shower at the greenhouse entrance. Wasn't I as much a refugee as any of the others? But no, that was hardly fair. With my responsibility came additional freedom. Wendy had likely not seen the outside of those four walls in the year-and-a-half she had been there.

At dinner, Tilly quietly joined us, sitting on the end next to Wendy. Nissi sat across from me. We didn't touch or even talk much during the meal, but just having her there, casting smoky glances across the table, electrified me. I almost missed something Stan had said. "Wait, what?"

"Yeah, it's all over the internet," Nock said. "Nothing on mainstream media yet, but they're probably waiting until the McCain administration gives them the go ahead to run the story. It was a rural safe house with over twenty genemods and a husband/wife running it. It looks like one of the mods went and turned himself in."

"That's awful," I said. "Did anyone get out of there?"

"Nope, looks like the feds found everyone. Damn it, what could make a person do something like that?"

"Believe me," Stansy said, "I've thought about it from time to time. I know they would revert my mod, but I'd do it in a heartbeat if I thought that it could get me my son back. As it is, the courts would probably never let me see him, let alone have custody, so it's a moot point."

"I'd never give up what I've got," Nock said. "Do you realize how much time you waste sleeping every day?"

"You never have to worry about getting sick, old or fat," Nissi added. "I love who and what I am."

"I plan to live forever, if that's possible," Stan said. "Things suck right now, but the world's going to get better, even if it takes a century."

I looked over at Tilly. She gazed at a spot three feet in front of her. Her mouth opened each time her spoon neared it. She chewed each bite exactly ten times before swallowing. I had counted several times to be sure. Was she even aware of the rest of us and what we were talking about?

"What about you?" I asked Wendy.

She smiled. "All of the benefits of immortality, but they stuck me in this pint-sized body. I actually don't mind it as much as you'd think. It's part of who I am and I'm not sure I'd like to be different. Though I've always wondered about sex."

"Oh God," Stansy said, putting her spoon down with a clatter. "I didn't need to hear that. My son's going to be fourteen soon. That's nightmare fuel."

"No, really," Wendy said. "The hormones aren't there, so I have no libido, and even if I did, well, my physiology just isn't developed for it. But most of the human race seems to think sex is pretty fun. Not to mention falling in love. People get uncomfortable at the mere suggestion that a stunty might want those things. I don't like feeling left out of the experience."

"I would think it wouldn't be too hard to get your body to age to adulthood," I said. "Couldn't you just take hormones?"

Wendy shook her head. "No, hormone treatments won't work. My body won't respond to estrogen like most women. It would have to be at the level of the cell nucleus to work, reprogramming cell receptors, though I'm sure it could be done with the right equipment. Not while we have the Ban, though. And if I turned myself in, they would just take away everything. There's a lot about me I don't want to give up. So I guess you're all safe from me."

When the others began to get up from the table, Nissi and I were still talking. I had just admitted to her that while I enjoyed music, I didn't have the knowledge to keep up the kinds of conversations she wanted to have, delving into theory and topics like how much rock had been influenced by gospel. That's when I discovered her other great love, movies. We both thought that Spielberg's craft had gone to shit when he quit making movies with Disney, but where she thought that Seth Michael was under appreciated, I agreed with the critics that everything he had turned out since Titanic had been special effects drivel.

"Okay, Cyberbots III was pretty bad," she agreed. "But I only think he did it because everyone thought he could revive the franchise after Verhoeven killed it."

"Couldn't be saved," I said. "But Leonid Minksy is a genius," I said.

"Why, because every single damn movie he directs has a twist ending you 'never saw coming'?" Her fingers made quote marks around the words. "That formula is going to wear out eventually. When it does, people will stop taking him seriously. It was already starting to wear pretty thin in 'Birthday Girl'."

"Three-hundred forty million at the box office says otherwise," I said.

"And he's a purist," Nissi added.

"No, he isn't."

"Yes, he totally is. Just look at Vector. Luddite, purist garbage. Rogue lab produces supervirus that threatens to wipe out everyone in the world? I wouldn't be surprised if the McCain administration funded that piece of crap. It just serves to reinforce the average person's fears about technology. Look at that TV show, Buffy. Who do you think the vampires and demons are really supposed to be?"

I sensed that she was becoming genuinely angry, that I had crossed a line that needed to be uncrossed, and I thought maybe she had a point. I decided to hedge. "Well, I never thought of it that way, I'll be honest. But he still makes good movies."

"Sorry, not going to agree with you."

We must have forgotten about Tilly, because we both turned in surprise when she spoke, even though her voice was barely audible. "Joss Whedon wrote the Buffy comics. Minsky just adapted them for TV. And it wasn't a metaphor, not like you're trying to say." She stood without saying another word, her bare feet slapping against concrete as she went back to her partition.

"Was that Tilly talking?" Nock said over his shoulder.

"Okay, so enigma girl agrees with you," Nissi said. "You're still wrong."

I decided that my best option was to change the subject. "So what do you think of Monty Python?"

"Overrated, unfunny nonsense," she said. I pretended to swoon, but then she smiled. "Just kidding. They were bloody brilliant. Too bad about Terry Gilliam, though. It just wasn't the same after he died."

By the time we were done, I realized that I felt a lot more comfortable around Nissi. I was starting to accept that she really did like me for who I was, that she did not regard me as her inferior or hold a grudge for the way her kind had been persecuted by normals. But when Nissi didn't offer me a good night kiss, I was afraid that our earlier conversation had offended her. Feeling a bit disheartened, I went to my partition and got ready for bed.

"Hey, can I come in?" a female voice whispered outside my curtain a short while later.

I jumped at the unexpected sound, then hurriedly rolled and wriggled myself under the covers, just in case she decided to let herself in anyway, before answering. "Sure."

The curtain moved aside and Nissi stepped in. "You always sleep in the nude?" she said with a grin, swaying towards me.

"I forgot to ask Sasha to get me some pajamas," I said sheepishly. "I'm used to being alone when I sleep."

She sat on the edge of the bed. "That's a shame. I was hoping you might like some company tonight."

I was beginning to see where this was going. "Do you always seduce men on the third date?" I said, echoing her earlier question.

"Only the cute ones," she said, brushing my lips with a finger. She grew more serious. "Norm, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. I just—my model has a pretty strong libido. You might not want to hear this, but last night, after that kiss, I had to get myself off twice before I could go to sleep. Long courtships just aren't my thing."

The thought of Nissi masturbating was too compelling an image to resist. Warmth began to pool in my groin and a flush crept up my neck. Also, I knew that the normal risks of spontaneous sex were just not there with a genemod. Anyone of second gen or later had immunity to most known diseases, and any unknown diseases would find Nissi's body to be a very hostile environment. Also, all gene models required an external hormone trigger for pregnancy, for both males and females. The lack of risk made it that much harder to think of a reason to refuse her. "Um, okay," I said. 

She leaned over me and her hair draped around our faces like a curtain. "Okay? I would hope it's better than just 'okay'. You are about to have sex with an elf. Your inner geek should be drooling and gushing blood from his nose. Oh, I forgot. You're all geek, through and through. And yet, no drooling or gushing."

"Shut up," I said and pulled her gently down for a kiss. Her lips were soft and delicate, but her tongue pressed confidently against mine, stroking the tip playfully and diving deeper inside. She was definitely breathing harder when we finally broke apart, and so was I. My cock was already beginning to stiffen beneath the sheets.

"You have a certain way with words," Nissi said, "but I really like your follow-up." I sat up as she stood to unbutton her nightgown and let it fall to the floor. Like most female elves, her breasts were not large, but made up for that in their exquisite shape. The same could be said for her hips, which looked prominent mostly in comparison to her very narrow waist. Taken together, it was a very alluring picture, further stoking my excitement. I reached out to run a hand up Nissi's back, then back down again to cup a firm buttock. 

She sighed contentedly and leaned down for another kiss. My other hand found the soft flesh of her breast and I brushed a finger lightly over her erect nipple. She moaned into my mouth and pressed herself more insistently against me, giving me my cue. I pinched and kneaded her nipple, lightly and first, then as she moaned louder, with more force. I could feel the heat of the flush on her skin as she pressed closer. She pushed back the covers and her hand wrapped around my cock. "Oh, I think I found something," she teased. "I wonder what this thing is for?"

"I can show you what it's for if you like," I said, or, at least that's what I was going to say, before she began to stroke slowly up and down. I only got about the first two words out. The rest was lost in a groan. I reached for her and she edged her legs apart. My fingers slid over the smooth skin of her pussy and I parted her nether lips. She was wet, near to dripping, and I pressed up and into her. Her breath caught and she gave something between a whimper and a sigh.

"Mmm, that's good," she said, as I rolled my fingers around the firm patch inside and at the front of her pussy.

"Elves have a g-spot," I mused, and stroked my fingers back and forth along it.

"Mm-hm," she moaned in agreement. "The girls, anyway. Keep doing that." She turned her body a bit, so that she was halfway laying across me, and smoothly took my cock into her mouth.

The feel of her warm lips sliding down my length got another groan out of me. She slapped playfully at my hand, which had stopped its slow thrusting in and out of her. She alternated licking my cock and sucking me into her mouth with pumping her fingers slowly up and down its length, giving little twists that shot pleasure into my body.

"I need you inside me," Nissi said. She stood and sank onto her knees at the edge of the bed. One of her legs swung over to straddle me and my cock came to rest against the warm wetness of the lips of her pussy. She leaned over me to kiss me hungrily. Her body flexed so that she slid forward slightly. When she moved again I slipped inside her. I felt her breath warm in my mouth and she shuddered. "Oh, yes," she whispered.

I sighed in contentment. Nissi's tongue quested back into my mouth once more, and then her teeth caught my lower lip and pressed down, settling right at the edge of pleasure and pain before she released it. Slowly, she sank down, taking all of me inside her. Nissi was warm honey and velvet on my cock. When she hit bottom, she ground herself against me as if to trying to take more. She inhaled long and slow, moving up along my body, then let it out again in a muffled wail as she pressed back down. I felt a kind of fluttering pressure as she came to rest. Her cunt alternately gripped my cock and relaxed. "You like that?" she asked, her lips brushing my ear.

She rocked forward, then back again, a different stroke that sent new waves of pleasure cresting through me, following with more of those little squeezes. "I'm going to come soon if you keep doing that," I warned.

Nissi paused to give me another kiss before leaning back. I cupped a hand around each breast. She cooed as I moved my fingers across her nipples and rocked again. Her eyes closed. "More," she murmured. I lightly squeezed each nipple between a thumb and finger, rolling first one, and then the other. She began to fuck me in earnest once more, moving in long, slow strokes. The tension of my impending orgasm had retreated somewhat, but it quickly returned as she slid herself up and down the length of my cock, crying out softly with each stroke. 

I gave a long moan, both in sheer pleasure and as a warning that I was nearly there, but Nissi never slowed. The tension coiled tighter, tighter, past the point of no return now, finally cresting in a release that drove the air from my lungs. Nissi slowed to a shallower and more languid pace as my orgasm played itself out. She was panting when she came to rest, leaned into me and pushed her hands beneath me so that she could wrap her arms around me. We lay together for a few minutes without speaking. "You have no idea," she said at last, her cheek pressed against mine, "how much I've missed the feeling of a man coming inside me."

"That was..." I started, but words couldn't match up. "I've never had a woman take control like that," I said. "I think I like it."

"I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of fun trying things you've never done," she whispered and kissed my cheek. "Speaking of which, when do you think you might be ready to go again?" She wiggled her hips as she said it, and my cock, which had begun to flag, pulsed and began to grow hard again inside her. "Uh oh, I think I woke it up again."

She began to move again, tentatively at first, testing that I was past the sensitive refractory period, but she soon began to increase her pace, giving little grunts each time my cock slid home all the way inside her.

"I want to fuck you now," I said.

She moaned at my comment, driving herself down on my cock hard one last time. She pulled her body free of me and pressed herself against the wall so that I had room to get out of the bed. Once I was clear, she lay on her back on top of the covers and I climbed atop her, my cock easily finding her pussy once more.

She gave a wail as I pressed into her in one stroke and she clutched at me, her fingers pressing hard enough into my arms to hurt. I growled and thrust in and out of her wildly. Her hands released their grip and fell to the sides as she cried out her pleasure. Her hips lifted in time to my thrusts, trying to drive me even deeper. Her eyes were closed, her body writhing as she moaned. I could feel, distantly, another orgasm rising within me, but I tried to put it out of my mind, focusing solely on Nissi and drinking in her every sound and movement.

Her voice, that rich and melodious singing voice that I had discovered just two days earlier, rose in pitch as her cries became louder and more ragged. I felt her body tense and she pulled a deep breath into her lungs. She cried out, a long, dissonant trill as her orgasm began. She gasped for air between moans as her body shook and her legs and arms flexed and straightened, like she was trying to climb out of herself. Finally, it passed, leaving her limp but panting.

I started to get up, but her arms went around me, pressing me hard against her. "Just stay." She said it between gasps. "I like. You lying. On me." I relented, letting her take my weight, and she gave a satisfied sigh.

"Do you think Nock heard?" I whispered. "You were pretty loud."

Nissi laughed. "I'd be surprised if Miss Gray didn't hear. And you were pretty loud yourself. But you know what I could really go for right now?" She rocked her hips suggestively. My cock had begun to go soft again, but it was still inside her.

"Let's save some for tomorrow," I said, laughing.

She laughed with me. "You know, you're going to have to learn to keep up with me if we're going to do this on a regular basis."

"I was wondering..." I said, trying to figure out how best to broach the subject. I climbed off of her and sat on the edge of the bed, comfortable in my nudity. The air was always a little too chilly down here, but I was still warm from our lovemaking. "The others are going to know what's going on with us if they didn't already, and, uh, I'm not sure how to ask you this..."

"You want to know if I have been with any of the others?" Nissi finished my thought. "I tried to hook up with Stan when I first got here, but he and Stansy were already kind of an item."

"What, really? I would never have guessed."

Nissi sat up and pivoted to swing her legs over the edge so that she could snuggle into my shoulder. "They keep it pretty toned down. I don't think they want us to know, so they're very quiet. I think he cares for her more than he lets on. That leaves Nock, who got here after I did, but he's got his girlfriend. He's completely devoted to her and wouldn't even consider it. It must be nice, having control over your own endocrine system. When I brought it up, he said he wasn't interested and that was that."

"So I was the only option left?"

"Aw, don't say it like that. I'm glad it was you. Nock's way too pragmatic. I like that you've got your head in the clouds a little bit. And you're smart. Good-looking too." I was glad that she didn't add "for a normal".




Double Helix Ch. 02



She stood and stepped in front of me, giving me a delicious view of her naked body before she drew on her night gown. Kneeling, she planted another kiss on my lips before drawing back. "Good night, lover," she said. She slipped away and back to her own bed without another word.

I was prepared for the jibes the next morning. Wendy was the first to broach the subject when I emerged for breakfast. "So, how was your night, Norm?" she asked innocently. The knowing smile on her face said it all.

"Oh, I had a good night, thank you," I said, equally innocent.

Nissi was already up and looking fantastic in her simple blouse and pants. Her hair, usually combed neatly and either up in a ponytail or spilling down her back, was in sexy disarray. I went over to give her a kiss good morning, which she accepted easily and without hesitation. It seemed pointless not to be open about our relationship.

I spent a few hours after breakfast researching videos and how-to guides and pricing. Once I had it all worked out, I went upstairs. I found Sasha having coffee and watching the Travel Channel with her mother in the living room. "Can we talk?" I said.

"Let's go to my office. I'll be right back, Mamka."

She closed the door and had a seat behind her desk. "Alright, what can I do for you, Norm?"

I unfolded the piece of paper I was carrying and held it flat on the desk. She looked over the list of items I had with prices in another column to the right. "Okay, what's this for?"

"That's a bathroom," I said. "There's enough lumber and drywall to enclose the toilet and shower, plus a door, all the tools I need, primer and paint. I've pre-measured everything. It will be six feet by twelve feet. I would like to replace the sink, but it's a bit out of my budget."

"What about the water? Won't you need tile in there around the shower?"

I was pleased to see that she didn't just shoot my idea down. I pointed to one of the line items. "Paperless drywall. It's water resistant. We'll want to keep the plastic curtain up in there for the time being to protect the walls from direct water, but I'd like to get tile up when we can. An exhaust fan would also be nice, but I need to look into how to duct it to the outside."

"I notice that your budget seems to run just shy of $400. That is not a coincidence."

"Right. I wanted to use what I have in my account to pay for it."

Sasha leaned back in her chair, frowning in contemplation. "Do you have experience with this sort of thing?"

I grinned and shrugged. "I have the internet and a little DIY experience. What more do you need?"

She laughed. "Alright, I'll agree to it, on one condition."

"Let's hear it."

"I want a new set of basement stairs. If I supply the materials, can you and the others make it happen?"

I nodded almost immediately. I'd never done anything like that, but there had to be instructional videos I could look at. In any case, the work would be a welcome break from the boredom. "I'll start learning about it as soon as we're done here."

Sasha took me shopping with her to the hardware store that afternoon, after borrowing a pickup from a friend. The garage door rolled down after we backed in, the bed loaded with lumber and drywall panels. I carried the first 8' x 4' drywall panel carefully to the basement and downstairs, remembering the advice from a video tutorial that advised it was very easy to dent or tear a panel if you bumped into an edge or corner. Sasha grabbed the hammer, nails and toolbelt, that last coming out of her own funds, and followed me down.

"What's all this?" Stansy asked as I carried the panel across the room.

"It's part of your new bathroom," I said in a matter-of-fact tone. I couldn't help feeling a little smug satisfaction.

"Oh, my God. Really?" Stansy said, at almost the same moment that Wendy said, "Norm, that's awesome!"

"We could use some help," Sasha said. "I'll need to keep watch on the house, though."

The three women and two men all followed us back up. While Sasha went to her office to monitor the CCTV cameras on her computer, the rest of us hurried to the garage. Stan was first to arrive behind me. After I had taken a panel off the top of the stack, he looked at it for a moment, then grabbed four of the remaining eight panels and followed behind me, bearing the nearly 300 lbs. of weight effortlessly.

I warned Stan to watch out for corners as we wended our way back through the house and down into the basement. Stansy carried the remaining four panels, while Nissi and Nock between them brought the lumber and remaining tools. Wendy was the only one besides me who possessed human normal strength, actually human ten-year-old strength, so she carried the buckets of paint and primer. Once everyone had set down their loads, I looked over the materials stacked near the wall in satisfaction. We had everything we needed.

"Okay," Stan said, "what do we do to get started?"

We worked on it all through the day. I would like to say that everything went flawlessly, but as none of us had any real construction experience, some mistakes were bound to be made. Still, we managed not to outright waste any of the materials, and had built and raised both walls of the enclosure's frame by the afternoon. After that, the drywall went up quickly. "Wow, are we almost done?" Wendy asked as the last panel was being hung.

"Not really," I said. "There's still a lot left to do."

Now we had to sand and joint the panels. Everyone took turns at this, even Wendy, who had complained about feeling useless during the construction process. It would take a few days of that before we could paint, though, so we went ahead and constructed the door frame and hung the door. I finished that task before dinner with Wendy and Nissi's help, making the new room completely functional.

I stood next to the shower to inspect our handiwork. My muscles were knotted and sore, but I was happy. The shower took up most of the width at the end of the room, but there was a bit of space next to the new wall, where we had used the waterproof drywall. The toilet was a short distance away against the concrete wall. Next to that was a partial wall, with the sink just beyond it. We had placed the door near the structure's corner on the short wall, opening inward.

"I really want a mirror," Wendy said, "here", she pointed above the sink, "and here," now at the opposite wall. "That one needs to be full-length. Better lighting would be nice, too." We had brought in a floor lamp and placed it across from the sink where the door wouldn't knock it over, which wasn't the safest or best-looking solution.

"Maybe we can get one next month."

"Towel racks," Nissi said, "here next to the shower. And it really would be nice to have proper tile and a shower door."

"We'll do that too, in time," I said. "And maybe an exhaust fan."

She turned and folded me into her arms. "Thank you for doing this for us," she said. The hug soon turned into a slow and sensual kiss.

Wendy cleared her throat. "If you can pull your tongue out of his throat for a moment, Galadriel..."

I released Nissi and Wendy threw her arms around me. She just came up to the center of my chest and I had to resist the urge to pat her head. "Norm, this means so much to us."

"Don't thank me yet," I said. "Miss Gray made me promise to rebuild the stairs as soon as we're done here. I think I'm going to need everyone's help."

Nissi and I moved out to give Stansy, Nock and Stan a chance to have a look. "I think Wendy intends to move in," Nissi said to them and we all laughed. It felt gratifying to have made a difference, even if it was just to bring some privacy and comfort to the lives of the people here. 

Tilly didn't come out for dinner, so I again offered to take her food. While she ate, I told her about the trip I had taken to Alaska right after I got my bachelor's degree, but she didn't say anything back to me. I suppose it was naïve of me to think that I had made some kind of breakthrough with her, but her movie comment last night had given me hope that she might be trying to reconnect with the people around her.

As she held her plate out for me to take, I noticed a pair of scars on her wrist. I didn't say anything, and tried to keep my expression neutral, but she reacted anyway to my momentary shock. The plate dropped through my fingers to shatter on the floor. Tilly rolled over on her bed to face the wall. "Go," she said in her small voice.

I knelt to pick up the pieces of the plate that I could find. I had never seen her wear shoes or socks, and I was concerned that she would step on a piece I might have missed. Once I was sure I'd gotten them all, I retreated as quickly and quietly as I could.

I sought Wendy out to tell her what I had seen and we went to the stairwell to talk. "I noticed them too," she said. "Two cuts on each wrist. There was a woman who took care of Tilly before I got here, an Edie. You know, Eidetic? She said Tilly had them when she first got here. I've heard that if someone is in depression deep enough, they lose the will to even try to take their own life. I've often wondered if it's like that with her."

"Genemod physiology isn't supposed to work like that," I said. "It's all serotonin and dopamine levels. Those kinds of problems were screened out, even in your generation."

"Could she have been made this way?"

That possibility hadn't occurred to me. "Why would someone deliberately build a genemod to be depressed?" I asked.

Wendy threw back the logical response. "Why would anyone make me? What about Nissi's compulsion to write music?"

"It's not really the same," I said. "Human brains are programmed to take delight in children, so that's at least understandable. And Nissi has a creative drive, not a destructive one. Tilly's condition makes no sense. Maybe it was a mistake. Or something happened to her in development."

"I think the only way you're going to find out is to ask her and somehow get her to answer you. I gave up on that months ago. Now I just do what I can to keep her comfortable." There was a tone of admonishment in her words.

"I won't push her," I said. "I just want to help."

"I know that. And I know you have good intentions, but I worry that she's in a fragile state. You've seen how she eats. I'm afraid that one day she might just stop. I'm not telling you not to try. Just to be careful."

Wendy stood and offered me her hand. I took it, but did nothing to help lift myself. After a moment, she was leaning back, pulling for all she was worth, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing. "You ass," she said, and punched me in the shoulder.

"That was a mistake," I said in as menacing a voice as I could muster. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in to tickle her in a maneuver long perfected on my little sister.

"Ah! No!" she squeaked before dissolving into uncontrollable laughter. "Stop!" she protested again through a fit of giggling.

I let her go and she lay fell back against the stairs next to me, panting. "Oh, that was so not fair," she scolded, but then she giggled again and sighed. "I'll get you back, you just wait."

We went back out to join the others and I approached Stansy. "I was wondering if I could borrow one of your books," I said. "Anything you would recommend?"

She led me back to her partition. It looked much like mine, but with a few changes to the locations of the furniture. She also had a thick rug next to the bed and two paintings hung on the concrete wall.

"Are these originals?" I asked. One was an expressionist watercolor of horses grazing in a pasture under a purple sky. The other was an oil painting of a woman with dark hair and bright, intelligent eyes. She was looking off angle to the viewer. Her expression was hard, determined. The face was coolly beautiful. Both the woman and the background were rendered in intricate detail, with the brushstrokes serving to enhance the dimensionality of the scene.

"They are," Stansy said. "I painted them. That one was a portrait I did of my mother when I was eight. I painted dozens more growing up, but I stopped when I started law school." I noticed then the small white pieces of paper that had been taped over the glass right where artist's signatures would be. Stansy's real name was hidden behind those.

"So," Stansy said, opening the top drawer of her dresser, "do you want my recommendation or would you like to pick?"

"What would you suggest?"

"Well, I think it's always good to start with the classics." She showed me the cover of the paperback. The title was "Dreadnought" and the author was C.S. Forester. "It takes place onboard the HMS Dreadnought during the World War and seems to be pretty accurate. I'm kind of partial to naval warfare. I used to have all of Forester's books, but this was the only one I got to take with me when I fled.."

"Okay, I'll try that one," I said. After she handed me the book, I said, "Have you ever thought of taking up painting again?"

She shrugged. "It actually never occurred to me. Why?"

I shrugged. "It would give us something to put up on the walls, if nothing else. I'm no judge of art, but I like what I see here."

A smile touched her lips briefly. "Well, thanks for the compliment."

I took the book back to my sleeping space and returned to the main living area. Nissi was watching a movie with the others, seated on the rug with her back to the sofa. Wendy sat above her on the sofa, legs crossed and leaning her head on Stan's shoulder. I sat next to Nissi and she took my hand. It was an old movie, with Humphrey Bogart as the lead. I never found out what the title was and mostly stopped paying attention when Nissi snuggled up against me a few minutes later. I ran my fingers through her hair and down her back through the rest of the film, making her hum and sigh in appreciation. When, by chance, my fingers touched the pointed tip of one ear, she shuddered slightly.

I could tell that the close contact and stroking was getting her worked up. She put her hand on my leg in a gesture that was perfectly chaste at first, but soon it began to wander, creeping ever upward. My erection was straining at its confines before long, even though her touching never quite made it that far. "Did you want to stay for the end?" she whispered, and her fingers tapped the inside of my thigh just inches from my cock.

"Hell no," I whispered back. It looked like a good film, but I had far more pressing matters on my mind.

Nissi stood, stretched and walked nonchalantly towards the sleeping area, throwing a "good night, guys" over her shoulder. I waited a few moments and made myself yawn. "I think I'm done for the night," I said.

"Have fun," Wendy said, and then yawned herself.

Shaking my head in amusement, I made a stop at the bathroom. The door was closed so I knocked. "Wait," Tilly said from the other side of the door.

I leaned against the concrete wall a few steps away and waited. The sink ran for a few seconds and Tilly emerged. She looked at me, but her eyes didn't quite meet mine. "You built this?" she asked.

I nodded. "Everyone helped, though. You like it?"

She turned to look through the open door, then back at me. Her lip trembled slightly and she blinked several times. Finally, she nodded. Her eyes settled on the floor and she walked past me and back to her partition.

I used the bathroom and washed up, thinking as I did that we needed to get some kind of storage cabinet in here so that everyone could keep some personal hygiene items on hand.

Nissi was already waiting for me when I slipped past my curtain. She had pulled back the covers on the bed and lay there naked. Her fingers teased her pussy in slow circles. "There you are," she said. "I had to get started without you." My arousal, already at a low burn, flared to life at the lascivious vision before me. Nissi never paused in her self-ministrations. 

"I wonder if Tolkien ever imagined such a thing," I said, as I unbuckled my belt.

"Probably," Nissi said. "Men are barbarous pigs who only think about one thing. Now hurry up and get your pants off before I rip them to shreds."

I did undress faster, but not for the threat to my clothing. Naked, I leaned over and gave her a kiss. She returned it eagerly, biting my lip, though not hard enough to hurt. "I want your cock, not your tongue," she said.

I was only too happy to agree. I knelt at the edge of the bed and she took me in her mouth without hesitation. I sighed as pleasure radiated out into the rest of my body. Her moan of delight was muffled, which turned me on even more. When she released me a moment later, I let out a breath that I didn't realize I was holding.

"Fuck my mouth," she breathed.

I had never have a woman ask for that before, and it took me a moment to realize what she wanted. I grasped her by the hair at the nape of her neck and pressed my cock to her lips. She eagerly opened her mouth to let me inside and I began to thrust slowly back and forth. She moaned again and her fingers moved more urgently over her clit. I maintained that languid pace for a time until she grabbed the base of my cock long enough to gasp a single word, "Harder."

I responded by gripping her hair more tightly and ramming my cock into her. I had been concerned at first that she might gag, but whether through experience or some feature of her anatomy, she took the length of it easily. I knew though, that if I continued at this pace much longer, I was going to come, and this time I wanted to make sure that Nissi was taken care of first.

"Stay right there," I told her. I swung my leg over to straddle her head and lowered myself so that I was parallel to her body. She guided my cock back into her mouth and my tongue sought the warm, wet cleft between her legs. It felt a bit awkward at first, but quickly found my rhythm, plunging my cock deeply into her mouth as I licked and sucked the lips of her pussy. This new sensation distracted her enough that I was able to moderate the pace of my fucking and allow my arousal to recede somewhat while hers soared.

In no time at all, her body stiffened and I heard the muffled sound of her moaning in ecstasy. I slowed my pace just enough to hold her at the edge a few moments longer, so that when her climax finally came, it was that much stronger. I stopped my movement to let her ride out the waves of pleasure wracking her body.

As her orgasm began to fade, Nissi sucked fiercely at my cock once more. I let her suck it for a time, and she made a disappointed sound when I climbed off. "Do you mind...I mean, do you like to do it from behind?" I asked.

She casually flipped herself over, putting her petite bottom up in the air and settling her chest against the bed. "I do like me some doggy style," she said, and wiggled her hips in invitation.

Now how could I resist that? I climbed up behind her, pausing a moment to kiss the flawless, satiny smooth skin of her ass before I maneuvered in close. It took me a moment to get the positioning right, but no sooner had the head of my cock found the warm, soft lips of her pussy than she pushed back, letting her breath out all at once in a soft cry when it went deep inside her.

"That feels fantastic," I said and rocked very slightly as she pushed back against me. I had never been with a woman so sexually open before. I felt freed from the usual anxieties of being with a new partner. It felt like nothing was out of bounds, like she and I could do anything together.

"You should feel it from my end," she said.

I grabbed hold of Nissi's hips and began to ride her. She responded by moving along with me, my opposite but perfectly in sync. I tried to go slow, to draw things out, but very soon, the front of my legs and my waist were slapping hard against her ass and the backs of her thighs, and she was wailing in pleasure and matching the force of my strokes with her own. My orgasm built with surprising slowness but I knew it would not be much longer. "I'm going to come soon," I said.




Double Helix Ch. 02



Nissi responded by thrusting a hand under her body and between her legs. I could feel her fingers fluttering over her clit each time my cock sank into her, and her wails grew even louder and more urgent. My orgasm broke over me in a wave, shooting up my thighs and spreading up my back. I continued to thrust into Nissi as electric heat coursed down the length of my cock, and before my own orgasm had waned, Nissi came as well. Her legs shook as her pussy fluttered and pulsed around me. I slowed, but did not stop until the raw ache of post-orgasm forced me to. Nissi was still moaning and shaking, and when I withdrew from her, her legs slid out straight. She melted, gasping, into the bed, completely spent.

I lay on my side next her her, an arm across her back and cupping one cheek of her ass, completely satisfied and at ease. Our breathing gradually slowed and Nissi came back from wherever it was she had gone. Her hair had fallen across her face and she brushed it back with a laugh. "That was amazing," she said. "Better than last time."

"I liked it too," I said and kissed her cheek. "I'm glad I have you."

"I think--" Nissi began and stopped. She breathed in and out and spoke again. "I think maybe I could fall in love with you."

I felt a knot of worry form in the pit of my stomach. The words both excited and terrified me. I didn't know what to say, so I just stroked her bare skin and kissed her shoulder. Nissi took another breath. When she spoke, she sounded distressed. "I mean, I know that the agency could send either one of us away at any time and we'd never see each other again, but if, somehow, we could make this work..."

"Shh," I said. "Let's not think about that yet. Let's just enjoy what we have, okay? Take it one day at a time."

"Yes, of course," she said. "You're right."

Had I felt her stiffen slightly at my words? I sensed that I had said the wrong thing, or at least, not the right thing, but that was how I felt. Thinking about the future filled me with dread and uncertainty. I had to live for the present.

"I'd better get back to my room," Nissi said, and disentangled herself from me.

I watched her get dressed, neither of us saying anything for a time. "Nissi, did I say something--"

"Forget it," she said. "I meant what I said. You're right. I want something that I can't have. That doesn't mean I can just stop wanting it. Let's just pretend I never said anything, okay?"

I climbed into bed and lay back, feeling by turns confused, ashamed, and aggravated. "So what does she want?" I asked out loud.

"She doesn't want to be alone."

I sat up in bed, casting about for the source of the sound. I realized that it had been Tilly who had spoken. "What are you," I asked, unable to control my irritation, "the fucking oracle of Delphi?" I immediately regretted my words. "God, I'm sorry, Tilly, that was wrong of me. I, uh, I appreciate the advice."

She didn't speak to me again and I mentally kicked myself. I had been feeling so proud of myself earlier, and now I had to go and make an ass of myself to two different women in the span of a few minutes. Sighing, I picked up "Dreadnought" and began to read, knowing it would be awhile before I could start to think about sleep.



Double Helix Ch. 03



The next day, Sasha brought back the materials for the basement stairway, based on my measurements, and we started the project immediately. Wendy and Nissi kept up with the completion of the bathroom, sealing and sanding in preparation for painting. Stan, Stansy, Nock and myself spent that first morning and part of an afternoon just in dismantling the old stairs. Once that was done, we had to anchor the stringers before we could begin placing the treads and risers. It was fortunate that Sasha could lower our meals through the dumbwaiter, because we were less than halfway to the top by the time dinner came and we agreed to stop for the day.

Things between Nissi and me were strained. We were polite to each other, but that was all. I was not surprised to go to bed alone that night. Tilly, though, said good night to me when I turned out my light, so at least she seemed to have forgiven me.

We finished the stairs the next day and began to apply the sealing coat to the wood. That same day, Wendy announced that the bathroom was ready to paint. Both projects came to a close the next day, and I already began thinking ahead to the next.

I had been spending time with Tilly at meals, and my efforts seemed to be drawing her out a bit. Wendy even admitted to me that Tilly spoke to me more often than she did to anyone else now. Still, after another week of me visiting her at meals, I thought we had reached a plateau. She might volunteer a sentence or two for seemingly no reason at all, or she might sit passively through one of my stories for a full fifteen minutes and never comment once. More importantly, nothing seemed to move her out of the dismal haze she was under. I never saw a smile or laugh.

I had been thinking, too, about what Tilly had said to me that night after Nissi had expressed how she felt about me. It felt right, from what I knew about Nissi. That kind of perception in Tilly seemed at odds with how disconnected and withdrawn she was. How could she understand Nissi's feelings so well while secluding herself from all of us? For that matter, why did she feel driven to hide away from everyone?

I wondered if it might be because of how the others treated her with pity or thinly-veiled derision. I was certainly guilty of the former. Feeling bad for her was largely what motivated me to want to help. Maybe she didn't need my pity. Maybe she needed, more than anything, was for someone to treat her as if she were normal. That was what sparked my idea.

The next morning, I went upstairs and met Sasha in her office. Her hand moved in long, sure strokes, penning a flowchart on a large sheet of graph paper. "Can I help you, Norm?" she said, looking up briefly but returning her eyes to her work.

"Miss Gray, I want to bring Tilly into the greenhouse to work with me," I said.

"No, absolutely not," she said, the words delivered without anger but in a tone that brooked no argument.

I argued anyway. "She doesn't look like a genemod," I said. "Anyone peeking in over the fence will just assume she's human normal."

Sasha picked up a sheet of paper and glared at it. "It's still too risky."

"She's ill. I want to help her."

She dropped the paper into file folder and snapped it closed. "The agency is helping her."

"The hell it is!" I said, and slapped my hand on her desk, loudly enough to make her jump.

"Keep your voice down, Norm." Sasha's words, though spoken in a conversational tone, made my spine prickle with the ice in them. She cleared the drawing and other various papers from the desk in front of her and gestured to the chair in the corner. "Sit. Explain yourself."

I sat slowly, collecting my thoughts. When I was settled, I raised a hand and began to tick off my fingers one by one. "She's depressed. She spends all of her time alone. She barely eats. And it looks like she cut her wrists at least once."

Sasha's eyes narrowed. "What? The rest I have seen, but what is this about cutting? I knew nothing of this."

"Wendy says it happened before she got here, but if she was suicidal at one time, she might be again."

She frowned. "Still, she should have told me. I've known Tilly was not right in her mind somehow. She is eating still?"

"For the moment," I said. "She's suffering, though. You must know that."

Sasha lowered her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. I waited for several seconds of uncomfortable silence before she raised her head. "Look, I've been fighting and arguing with my agency contact almost since that girl got here, trying to get them to send someone to look at her. They tell me just to hold on, take care of her as well as I can. They will take her off my hands soon. But 'soon' never comes."

"That's why I want to try treating her myself.".

She gave me an appraising look. "And how do you think you can help?"

"I have some ideas," I said. "But the main thing is to take her mind off of whatever is eating her up from the inside."

"And do you have any formal training in psychology?"

"Well," I faltered. "Before I decided to teach, I was going to enter med school. I did take a psychology course as an undergrad. And there's Professor Wikipedia." I grinned, feeling like a complete fool.

"That at least can be remedied," Sasha said. "I will get you some texts."

"So, does that mean you will let me take Tilly to the greenhouse with me?" I asked hopefully.

"It means I will get you psychology books. I'll think about the greenhouse. If you can show me that it will be therapeutic for her, that will add to your case."

It seemed like the best I was going to get. "Alright, I appreciate that you're willing to help."

The next few days passed quickly for me. I did the chores that Sasha assigned me during the day, and spent my evenings reading. "Dreadnought" had captured my interest once I got past the first few chapters that established the setting of the Great War and introduced various characters. The huge and technologically advanced vessel had just left Portsmouth and was headed out to sea for its first mission of the war.

Sasha brought the first of the books she had promised me, a copy of the DSM and a book on psychodynamic therapy. I started by outlining every symptom that I had observed from Tilly. Immediately, the manual seemed to be pointing me towards a diagnosis of clinical depression. My layman's interpretation of her actions certainly matched it, but the manual made it crystal clear. I felt like there might be more to the picture than that, but it was definitely a place to start.

Armed with these insights, I went to Sasha and again pleaded my case. I started to lay out Tilly's symptoms, but she waved me to silence.

"Please just do whatever you feel is best, Norm," she said. 

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You're letting me bring her up from the basement?"

Sasha shrugged. "I called up a few of my agency contacts and explained your concerns, including the cuts on her wrists. The first one flatly refused to help, the worthless sod. The next seemed interested, but claimed to be unable to do anything for me once I gave her Tilly's name. I pressed her for a reason, but she just came up with an excuse to get off the phone. Tilly apparently has some kind of history that the agency is aware of but is unwilling to divulge to me. The whole thing smells of bullshit. As you've said, the risk is minimal, and now I'm willing to go behind the agency's back if that's what it takes."

"I'll make sure she understands how to properly sterilize, and I'll bring her in and out as discreetly as possible."

"Yes, see that you do," Sasha said.

I had greenhouse duties the next morning, so I stopped outside Tilly's room after breakfast. "Can I come in?" I asked. I waited several seconds, knowing that it would make no difference, before stepping inside. Tilly was lying on her back on the bed. Her gaze wandered over to me. "I thought I could use your help in the greenhouse today," I said. "I've already cleared it with Miss Gray."

She stared at me for a moment before her gaze slid off me and back to the ceiling. I considered picking her up bodily and carrying her upstairs, but dismissed the thought immediately. There were just too many ways such a scenario could go wrong. "Please, I think you might enjoy it."

She looked at me again and her eyes narrowed. "Leave me alone."

Though she said the words quietly, the tone sounded almost angry. I thought that just maybe that was a good sign. I decided to take a gamble. When I spoke, I was firm but not unkind. "You might be fooling the others that you're an invalid, but I know you're perfectly capable of pulling your own weight. Now, get your shoes on and come out to the greenhouse with me. We have work to do."

She stared at me as if I had just sprouted another head. I didn't give her a chance to tell me "no" again. I left her room and went to the edge of the living area. There I waited, hopeful but anxious. If she didn't come voluntarily, I wasn't sure that there was anything I could do. Several minutes went by, and I was just beginning to think it was hopeless. It was then that she appeared, wearing a pair of faded jeans and white running shoes. Her usual lifeless shuffle had changed to a more purposeful walk, though she kept her gaze on the floor as she approached.

"Ready to work?" I asked.

Tilly dipped her head very slightly in what I took for a nod.

She walked two steps behind me as we headed for the stairs. All conversation in the room died when we crossed the room. I had told the others what I was doing, of course. Most had been cautiously supportive. Stansy had snorted and said, "Yeah, right." I don't think that any of them had thought I would get her to go through with it.

Wendy came over to us. ""Have a good time out there, Tilly," she said. In a lower voice, she added, "Be careful out there, Norm."

I nodded and began to climb the staircase. When we emerged into the back yard, Tilly inhaled sharply. I stopped to look at her. She was staring up at a bright blue sky. "You haven't seen it in a while, have you?" I asked.

She shook her head very slightly, as if trying to clear it, and moved to follow me again. I decided to have her go first, giving her careful instructions for how to use the shower and where to find the clothes inside. I took my shower quickly, concerned that she might wander off into the greenhouse without me, but found that my worries were unfounded. She sat against the wall inside the changing room, staring straight ahead at the frosted glass of the door that led inward.

She looked different, and it took me a moment to place it. Her hair which fell just to her shoulders, looked shinier, healthier, even though it was still wet. It was pulled back away from her face now, instead of hanging down into it, and I could see her large, blue eyes clearly. Her skin had a rosy sheen that it had lacked before. Had she even stopped bathing herself? Most genemods since the 70s possessed a set of different mechanisms in their immune systems, digestive tract and dermis to regulated both internal and external bacteria to minimize body odor, so it was possible that she had gone many weeks with no one the wiser.

I retrieved a clean set of clothes from the closet and stood to the side of Tilly. She was completely uninterested in me, so I dropped the towel and began to dress. She chose that moment to turn her head and look. Her gaze roved quickly up and down my mostly nude body before she turned back. I could feel my cheeks heating up even after the scalding hot shower, but had that been just a hint of a smug smile on her face? Surely it was my imagination.

"Okay, I'm ready," I said. Tilly stood to follow me. The door slid to one side when I pushed it, then rolled back to close automatically once it was released.

I inhaled deeply, taking in the loamy scent of moist soil, the pungent odors of peppers and the faintly sweet smell of strawberries. Tilly did the same, closing her eyes and rocking back slightly on her heels. "Nice, isn't it?" I said. The moment didn't last. When she let her breath out, the brief spark of life disappeared with it. Her shoulders slumped and the slackness returned to her features.

I pointed to the gardening implements arrayed at the near corner of the greenhouse. "You'll need a hoe. Today we'll be planting onions and potatoes."

She selected the long-handled tool from among the assortment, while I picked up a small spade. I brought her to the empty soil planter, which was about four feet wide by eight feet long, and showed her how to turn over the soil. While she worked down the length of the planter, I stopped and dug small holes with the spade, placed a bulb from our transplant tray and covered it just enough so that the top was still visible. When Tilly was finished, she came back to stand next to me and watched as I planted a few onions. She went over to the tools and came back with a spade of her own. She held out her hand to me.

"Here, you can start another row over there." I said. "Plant the bulbs six inches apart, and don't cover them completely." 

I handed her a transplant tray and paused to watch her plant her first one. "Like this?" she asked, when she had pressed the soil in around the bulb. She had a smudge of dirt on her face, right next to her nose. The dullness had fallen away from her eyes as she focused.

"That's right," I said. "Keep going until you reach the end. We want a total of six rows in here."

We worked in silence for a bit. The warm, damp air soon had us both sweating. "They tried to help me, you know," Tilly said suddenly.

I stopped working and looked at her. "Who, the agency?"

She lifted free a clump of soil and placed a bulb in the hole. "They took me to a psychologist in Chicago."

"I take it things didn't work out?" She didn't answer, preferring to focus on carefully sweeping the dirt in around the bulb. I tried again. "Do you want to be helped?"

She didn't answer right away, so I began to plant onions again. I was nearly finished with my third row and she was halfway through her second. "I'm . . . broken," she said, haltingly.

I stopped again to look at her. I wanted to ask what that meant, but held back. I sensed that the admission had taken a great effort on her part, and I didn't want to belittle that. Instead, I puzzled over the meaning and purpose of her words. It almost sounded like she was trying to warn me off trying to help her.

"We all feel that way sometimes," I said after a pause. Then I shook my head. "Bleh, that sounds patronizing, even to me."

"It was," Tilly agreed. I laughed at that, half expecting her to laugh with me, but she didn't.

I tried a few more leading questions, but it seemed that she was done with talking. So, I told her about the greenhouse irrigation system, and how we would need to monitor soil moisture from time to time on the vegetables we just planted. After about an hour, we had a planter full of onions and another with seed potatoes.

"Let's bring some tomatoes in," I said. I knew that Sasha was getting low in the house. "Oh, and those strawberries are looking ripe."

Sasha met us at the door on our way back into the house. "Why don't you change back into your clothes in the bathroom?" she suggested. We were still wearing the sanitized work clothes. "Then I can wash those."

"We brought you tomatoes and strawberries, Miss Gray," Tilly said softly and in a rush, holding up her two baskets, one large and one small.

"Why, thank you, Tilly," Sasha said, smiling broadly and, I thought, sincerely. She opened the door for us. "I was just thinking that we could use more preserves. Put them in the kitchen, please. On your right."

Sasha stopped me with a hand on my arm. "How is it going?" she whispered.

"It's promising," I said.

"I'll say. In Russia we have a saying." She rattled off a few words in her native language. "It means, 'a workman is known by his work'. Did you know she's never spoken to me directly before?"

"Well, has anyone ever told you that you can be intimidating?"

"Once," she said, letting her accent flow thick through the words, "but I cold-cocked the bastard and he never spoke of it again." She deadpanned it so well that I thought for a moment that she was serious. 

I went into the kitchen to leave my own basket of tomatoes but stopped in the middle of the floor. "Tilly!" I called. My heart had just jumped into my throat as I hurried towards the front door. She couldn't have. She wouldn't just bolt, would she?

"She's right here," Sasha called. "In the bathroom. She's getting changed, like I asked her to."

I smacked my forehead and slumped against the wall, working to come down from the scare I had just given myself. "Okay, thanks," I called.

Tilly emerged from the bathroom in her own clothes and I swapped places with her. By the time I emerged, she had already gone back downstairs, so I followed after. Wendy and Stansy were on the couch, Nock had the chair and Stan was at the computer. Nissi was seated at the table, tapping her pen rhythmically on a notebook.

"How'd it go?" Wendy asked.

"Fine, fine," I said. She nodded, taking the hint that we would talk later.

I glanced over at Nissi again and hesitated, reconsidering my original plan to go back to my room and try to relax with Stansy's book. I was feeling good about myself and my confidence had surged. Finally, I shrugged and wandered over to her. "Inspiration strikes again?" I asked.

"Like a falling i-beam," she said, giving me only a brief glance beneath her sharply upturned brows. "Another vocal piece, but with a four-part band."

I looked at the page, into which she was writing the music for bass, drums, lead guitar and vocals nearly simultaneously. "It looks pretty busy," I remarked.

"It's thrash metal," Nissi said, arching one of those perfect eyebrows at me. "The lead guitar will need to be pretty good at sweep picking and two-hand tapping. All-in-all it's pretty demanding. And very angry."

"Are you angry about something?" I asked, trying to make my tone light.

Nissi laughed. "At you? No. I guess I'm angry at our situation. Angry at myself for getting in a little deeper than I should." She paused. "Screw it. Yes, I'm angry at you, too. But I know it's not your fault. So don't worry about it."

"Maybe it was my fault. You told me you liked me and I told you to back off."

"Well, the way you make it sound, maybe I should be pissed at you."

I sighed. "I guess I was afraid. It's not like you told me you were in love, but that's what I heard. I'm sorry for that. I know you don't want to be alone, and I don't want to see you in pain."

Nissi stared at me, her eyes narrowed. It looked like she was wrestling with her feelings, like one part of her wanted to tell me to go fuck myself and the other wanted to hold me to her. "You're just trying to get into my pants again." For a moment, I thought she had opted for the first sentiment, but then her lips quirked and I saw that she was shaking, barely holding in laughter. It finally burst out of her, and I couldn't help but laugh along with her.

"So does this mean I didn't completely screw us up forever?" I asked hopefully.

"Not yet," she said. "It's hard to stay mad at you when you're so adorable."

"And devastatingly handsome," I added.

"Geeks aren't handsome," she corrected me." You're cute. But I like that better than handsome. All the handsome guys I've known were jerks." 

"So are we going to have to write a lot of furious, angst-ridden lyrics now?" I asked, seeing that she was no longer scribbling furiously at the page and appeared to be looking it over for mistakes.

"Afraid so," she said. "If I don't at least get some of this done, I'll be up all night." She leaned over the table and gave me a brief but passionate kiss. "So let's get started," she said.




Double Helix Ch. 03



Hours later, we put the final touches on Nissi's latest piece. "I could use a shower," she said. "How about you?"

"Is that an invitation to do something a little naughty?"

"Why don't you come find out?" Nissi said, standing and swaying her way to the bathroom. She had narrow hips, but that didn't matter so much when she moved them like that. She stopped at the bathroom door and looked over her shoulder at me. "Coming?"

I jumped out of my chair to follow. Nissi had just started the shower and her back was still to me when I entered. I put my arms around her waist and pulled her back against me. She cooed happily when I kissed the nape of her neck. "Mmm, keep that up and you're going to start something."

"I already have," I said, and pressed my hardening cock up against her. She rubbed the firm curve of her ass against it. I kissed her again as I fumbled at the buttons of her blouse. I felt her hand go up the back of my leg and come to rest on my ass.

Nissi turned partway so that she could whisper in my ear. "I need us out of these clothes, Norm. I need your cock inside me." She gave my lobe a little nibble that sent a tingle down my spine.

I finally managed to get the rest of her buttons in spite of her wet kisses all over my neck and the side of my face. Suddenly, I yanked the blouse off her shoulders and down her back, trapping her arms behind her. She gave a soft cry and I responded by grabbing her arms and pushing her bodily against the wall. She grunted from the impact and then tried to hide a smile from me. I went for the sensitive flesh of her neck and shoulders, first with lips, then with careful nibbles and scrapes of my teeth.

"Oh my God, yes," Nissi breathed. She wriggled out of her blouse and maneuvered her hands in between us, smoothly working to undo my belt. I reached behind her to flick at the clasp of her bra. I peeled it upward, freeing her breasts. Her nipple was already hard as I took it into my mouth and gently squeezed it with my teeth. Her knees nearly buckled, but I pushed my weight against her to hold her steady. She had let go of my belt and her arms hung limp between us. I flicked my tongue lightly across her nipple a few times before going up for her lips. 

Her hands worked faster now as we kissed. She finished with my belt and the fastenings of my pants, then snaked her hand inside to grip my cock firmly.

"I thought we were going to take a shower," I said, pressing myself hard against her again, trapping her arm.

She pushed back with her other hand, and her body's strength was enough to force me back half a step. "You still have clothes on, dork," she said.

I went to work remedying that, stepping out of my pants and boxers as Nissi peeled her own jeans and panties down her body. We came together again immediately and I again pressed her back hard against the wall. "I like when you're rough with me," Nissi said and nipped at my lip. "Put your hands on my ass."

I did as she asked, marveling at the perfectly smooth, firm curve of her body. Nissi put her hands on my shoulders and hopped up suddenly. I was surprised, but managed to maintain my grip as her legs wrapped around my waist. She was light in my arms. Despite being just over six feet tall, she could not have weighed more than 120. "Fuck me, Norm," she said. "I want you to fuck me right now. Like this."

My cock was standing fully erect, and had been for some time. Nissi was above where she needed to be, so I carefully lowered her, maneuvering her into place. Soon, I felt the warmth of her skin against my cock. Carefully, I repositioned and was rewarded by the feel of her pussy lips sliding across the head of my cock. She was dripping wet. 

I watched Nissi's face as as I entered her. Her eyes closed and she bit her lip as my cock eased into her. "I missed you," she said softly. I was so taken by the moment that I could only nod my agreement. Her mouth covered mine in a sensuous kiss, all the while I drove my cock languidly in and out of her.

Our coupling was pure bliss and charge with erotic energy, but I was rapidly tiring from holding Nissi up. I stopped and drew out of her, then set her carefully on her feet. She took my hand and we entered the tiny shower together. Water sluiced between us, flowing over and highlighting every curve of her slim body. "Wash my back?" she said, turning away from me to face the wall.

I lathered her back and shoulders and then worked lower, covering the gentle curves of her ass. Tentatively, I ran my fingers just along the inside edge of one cheek, as much to gauge her reaction as for my own enjoyment. She did not shrink away from my touch, which I took for encouragement. I set one hand lower, to press inward between the backs of her thighs, while the other worked down the velvety soft skin between her ass cheeks.

Nissi chuckled. "Norm, are you washing my back or fingering my naughty bits?"

"I'm getting you clean. Keep your mind out of the gutter."

She moaned when the tips of my finger brushed her rosebud and pushed back against me. "How can I do that, when you keep dragging me there with those fingers?" 

"Oh, that was so lame," I said, and nipped at her shoulder. I lathered her up again and turned us so that the water was hitting my back and wouldn't wash the soap away. Once we were set, I reached one hand around her to find her clit. The other hand slid back down the soapy cleft of her ass to again probe gently at the opening. She jerked slightly when my fingers came to rest on the nub of her clit, but melted as I made slow circles, pressing lightly. I did much the same with my other hand, dipping my middle finger just inside the tight ring of her asshole.

"Do you like playing with my ass, Norm?" Nissi asked between gasps.

"You are such a dirty elf," I chided playfully. "I can't help it."

"Mmm-hmm," she said. Her eyes were closed and her body moved rhythmically to the caress and prodding of my fingers . "That feels. . . so good. Don't you dare stop."

"I wouldn't dream of it." She shivered as my fingers glided down her slit and back again. She began to moan long and loud as I stroked her clit from side to side while the finger at her ass slid in and out of her. When she stiffened and cried out I held her tightly against me. From the way she shook and slumped in my arms, she would have collapsed to the floor of the shower if I hadn't.

"Oh my God, Norm," she said, and laughed weakly. "Don't let go of me. I'll fall on my ass."

"Don't worry, I've got you." I worked the tip of my finger back out of her, still holding her firmly with my other arm.

"I've never had anyone do that before," she said. "I didn't know if I would like it." She turned in my arms and hugged me tightly against her. That pushed my erection up against her. "I think you liked it too," she said, and knelt on the floor of the shower. She got a good handful of lather and closed her fingers around the base of my cock. "Wash my hair for me?"

"Wait, you want me to do that while you--" I began, but could not finish when her mouth closed around the head of my cock. For several moments, I completely forgot her request as her tongue swirled around the sensitive spot on the bottom near the head. When she broke contact, I let my breath out, only realizing then that I had been holding it. My cock still rested on the tip of her tongue, but her mouth had broken into a wide smile. "My hair, Norm? The gray shampoo bottle is mine."

I grabbed the bottle from the hanging basket and quickly squirted some into my palm while I had a moment to concentrate. The hand on my cock was stroking slowly up and down in lazy spirals as Nissi watched my face. I began to run my hands through her hair and she dipped to take my cock into her mouth once more. She kept her hand wrapped around the base, still slippery with soap, and twisted back and forth slowly. She sighed contentedly when I ran my fingertips through her hair and along her scalp. Tilting her head back slightly, she looked up at me. It was such a simple gesture, but it magnified the erotic energy of the moment even further.

Nissi reached for the soap and got a good lather in her hand. She worked it into my balls for a moment with pressure that edged right on the verge of pain, then pressed deeper between my legs. Without thinking, I yielded to her urging and she began to massage my perineum with gentle strokes. The added sensation pulled a groan of pure pleasure from me. Nissi looked up again, and I swear she smiled, even though her mouth was full. She moved her fingers in long sweeping strokes and circles, pushing right back to the edge of my hole. I lost all ability to focus on her hair, but she didn't seem to notice, my moans urging her onward. "I'm close," I told her at last. 

"I know," she said, and immediately enveloped my cock again. A few more swirls of her tongue and strokes of her hand and I was at the edge. She pulled back suddenly, both hands still working my shaft, and I came with a groan, painting her breasts in glistening trails of white. She ran a hand over them, more a caress than any attempt to clean it away. The water, running in thin rivulets over her chest, took care of that. I slumped against the wall to keep from falling over. "Did you like that?" she asked.

"Amazing," I said. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"Freshman year at college," she said. "He liked it too."

We finished cleaning up and headed back to our rooms. I put my things in order and sat naked on the bed, waiting for Nissi. Though I had just come hard in the shower, I could tell that I would be ready to go again very quickly.

Nissi took a bit longer to get ready, but she came dressed in a simple cotton robe. As soon as she was inside, though, she pushed it off her shoulders to reveal a lacy black bra and panties, along with stockings and garters. She turned in place, modeling for me. "Last week I asked Miss Gray to get me something sexy," she said. "What do you think?"

I smiled. "I think she has great taste. And your butt looks fantastic in those."

"Thanks. I thought about asking her for heels, but I wasn't sure..."

It took me a moment to pick up on what she was saying. "But you were worried I would feel even shorter next to you?"

It was the first time I had actually seen Nissi blush. She shrugged. "Well, my height is normal for an elf, but next to most people, I always feel like a freak."

"Never say that." She looked startled and I realized that I had said it more forcefully than I meant. "I'm sorry. I just don't like to hear that kind of thing. But no, I don't mind you being taller than me. I actually kind of like it. And I think that you would look fantastic in heels."

She came to sit next to me and gave me a kiss. "Thanks." Her hand had landed on my knee and it began to travel up my leg. She leaned in close to my ear. "I think you should fuck me with my panties on," she said. My cock instantly began to rise to attention. Nissi's hand landed on it and she gave it a playful squeeze. "I'm getting wet just thinking of you taking me from behind with this thick cock."

I fell on her, kissing and nibbling at her neck, her shoulders, every part of her I could reach. I pushed her down on the bed and climbed over her, holding her arms up above her head. I sucked at her nipples through the thin fabric of her bra and ran my tongue across the valley between them. I made my way down her body slowly kissing the sensitive skin of her belly and the tops of her thighs. When I came to her panties, I pushed the lacy fabric aside and knew right away that she had not been exaggerating. She was soaked through. I pressed my tongue into her, fucking her slowly with it.

Nissi sighed and opened her legs wider for me. I could feel my own excitement building as I licked and sucked at her lips. The last time, when we had been in a 69, I hadn't had the angle to do this properly. Her pussy and clit were stiff, engorged, a sure sign that Nissi was aroused to the point that an orgasm would be on her soon. I placed two fingers at her entrance and slowly pushed. They glided easily inside on the combination of my saliva and Nissi's juices.

She shuddered as my fingertips found the slight unevenness that marked her g-spot, and I began to give her long, slow strokes. The pitch and force of her cries increased and she pushed herself at me, but I held off the urge to bring her off at once. I wanted to see how far I could take her. "Touch your breasts," I said. "Play with them for me.

Nissi's hands moved without hesitation and began to knead her own breasts, her fingers rolling and pinching her nipples. I carefully moderated the flicks of my tongue around her clit, building her up slowly, slowly. "Oh, God," she moaned. "Oh, fuck, please."

"Please, what?" I asked mildly.

All that came out of her for a moment was more moaning and grunting as I played her expertly. "Please make me come, Norm," she said in a rush.

I drew her out for a few more seconds, really working my fingers inside her, before giving her the stimulation she was desperate for. She gave a long moan, gulped a breath and cried out so loudly that it startled me. She gave another long wail, arching off the bed, pressing hard against me.

Stansy's voice cut through the noise. "Excuse me! Some people are trying to sleep."

"Uh, we're sorry," I said lamely.

"Don't apologize, you dork," Nissi said, still breathless from her orgasm. "That was awesome. Come up here."

I climbed up the bed over her and she drew me down for a kiss. She bit down gently on my lip. "Fuck me, Norm."

I pushed the panties aside again and slid into her, tender but forceful. Nissi moaned in appreciation and bucked her hips upward to meet my thrusts. I loved the feel of her body beneath me. Her soft curves blended exquisitely with her lean and wiry frame. There was power in that slender body, but graceful feminine beauty as well. I slowed in spite of the rush of feeling, both physical and emotional, and rose to my knees. "Turn over," I said. "Get on your knees."

Nissi moved to comply, presenting her smooth and supple ass for me to run my hands over. I pulled the panties down and off so that she was fully exposed and open to me. I edged up against her and grabbed hold of her thighs. The tip of my cock found the wet warmth of her pussy and I began to push inside. She sighed heavily and relaxed, giving herself to me. I watched in fascination as my cock moved in and out of her.

"God, you get me so hot," Nissi said, and I felt the tips of her fingers brush the under side of my cock as she began to stroke her clit. Her voice was hoarse with need. "Fuck me harder. Please, Norm."

Her words and her long, low moan urged me on. I grabbed her hips and slammed harder into her, slapping against her ass and the backs of her thighs with each thrust. She gave a kind of squeak each time, rising in pitch as her fingers flew over her clitoris. She made a keening, almost strangled sound into her pillow and her whole body shook I slowed my pace but continued to fuck her, relishing the feel of the walls of her pussy gripping me. Her orgasm seemed to go on and on and I think she would have collapsed flat onto the bed if I had not been holding onto her. My orgasm, slow to build this time, crashed over me as I thrust one last time deep within her. She must have felt each jet of semen because she cooed happily with every pulse of my cock.

I finally released Nissi and she sank down to the bed as though melting. She made a few incoherent noises that might have been attempts to speak to me before she gave it up. I lay down on my side next to the wall and she happily spooned up against me and sighed in contentment. I held her in the dark, running my fingers through her silken hair and across her slender shoulders. 

"Want to go again?" she asked.

I laughed softly. "I think you're trying to kill me."

"Can you think of a better way to die?" She pushed back, grinding her ass against my cock, and despite the two orgasms I had already had this evening, I felt a prickle of stirring as it began to harden again.

I moved to angle myself properly and reached over her to finger the slick folds of her pussy. When my cock was ready, I pushed into Nissi, burying myself in her once more. When I began to move, it was slow, deep thrusts in and out of her while my fingers teased her clit. Her climax built slowly and she seemed content to relax and enjoy the moment. She whispered to me how much she loved the feel of me inside her and I kissed the soft nape of her neck.

Nissi grunted and moaned as I thrust into her. She came again, gently this time, but it seemed to go on and on. When she came to a shuddering stop, I went still and just held her against me. She lay there, again unable to speak, though she reached a hand back to caress my thigh lovingly.

"There's something I was meaning to ask you," I said after a bit.

"Hmm?"

"You said before that your model has a high libido. What's the reasoning behind that?" Then I added quickly, "Not that I'm complaining."

"Oh, sure," she said. There was a slight slurring to her words, but it quickly disappeared. "Well, sex was never actually mentioned in any of Tolkein's novels except in a roundabout way. He did write an essay, though, that talks about it. He described sex for elves as 'great delight and joy'. The engineers responsible for building my gene model must have taken it a bit literally. The guys are way worse than us though. This one neri I dated left me so sore the one time we had sex that I could barely walk for two days."

"Are you serious?"

She chuckled. "No, just pulling your leg. I hooked up with a few of the Neri when we hid out in Arkansas together." She smirked. "Sometimes more than one at a time. Good times. I also knew a very nice Donna at a safe house a few years ago with an even bigger appetite than me. She was fun, but I like the cock." She wiggled herself against me for emphasis and I hugged her tighter against my body. I began to think that she intended to spend the night with me, but before I could nod off, she carefully extricated herself from my embrace, put her robe on, and left me to sleep alone.

I lay in the dark, feeling satiated but at the same time strangely unfulfilled. I had wanted Nissi to spend the night with me, and I was not even sure why it was so important to me. 

"Norm?" Tilly's thin, reedy voice.

I sat up. "What is it?"

"You and Nissi are back together."

"Yes, yes we are," I said, smiling to myself.

"You make each other happy."

"Yes we do," I said. I lay back down. "Thank you, Tilly. Sleep well."



Double Helix Ch. 04



Tilly was waiting for me on Monday after breakfast. She was dressed in shirt and pants and sat on her bed with her white tennis shoes on the floor. We were into my fourth week since arriving at the safe house, and routine was starting to become habit for me. Though it was only Tilly's second trip to the greenhouse, she already knew the procedures as well as I did, if not better. Sasha met us upstairs with a bundle of sealed plastic bags containing work clothes for the greenhouse, about ten sets. "I replace them weekly," she explained. "It's your turn to stock them today. Give the bags of clothes a spray of herbicide while you are in the shower, dry them off and unpack them inside."

We went through the same routine of scrubbing clean that I had grown familiar with over the last few weeks, bringing the clothing along when I took my shower. I went through first this time and waited for Tilly just inside the greenhouse so that she could change in private.

"What are we doing today?" Tilly asked. She reached for a pair of work gloves.

"We," I said, drawing the word out as I gestured to several large plastic sacks near the entrance, "are spreading fertilizer today."

Tilly wrinkled her nose as she put on her gloves.

"Don't worry, it doesn't smell as bad as you'd think," I assured her. Inwardly, I was encouraged. It was the first time I had seen Tilly express something as common and natural as distaste. 

We dragged one of the bags over into the walkway and opened it. As I had promised, the smell was more earthy than foul. We fetched shovels and Tilly followed my lead in spreading it over the soil. "I have a question I want to ask you," I said.

Tilly drew a deep breath. "Okay."

"What does your name mean? I mean, what does it stand for?"

She stopped and looked at me. I kept spreading fertilizer, as if the answer didn't concern me all that much.

"Utility." She finished the shovel she had started and went for another.

Now I stopped, propping myself on my empty shovel. "Utilities? Like electricity? Water? I don't get it."

I resumed the work when she didn't answer at first, and my mind went to my education. Economists used the term as a concept for how much something was valued. And it was a central concept in a certain school of normative ethics. "Like utilitarianism?" I asked. "The greatest good for the most people?"

She shrugged, appeared to consider for a few moments, then nodded.

I thought about it some more, but had to admit that I was at a loss. "I still don't get it. Which generation are you from?"

"My model..." Tilly hesitated. "My model is fourth generation."

I knew that each generation of genemod roughly coincided with each decade from the 1960s on. Some people identified a zero generation from the late 1950s, at the dawn of modern genetic engineering. It was in the first generation, however, that a standard set of genetic enhancements like telomer regeneration, and mental health and immune system enhancements emerged to compliment the more distinctive modifications that made up a designer gene model. First gens were generally limited to minor physical changes such as Wendy's developmental block, and only a few models existed. Second gen models greatly expanded the possibilities, but were generally focused on enhancing physical features like strength and beauty. A lot could be done to improve physical and mental development just by throwing out the bad genes that drag everyone down in one way or another, and this kind of cleanup was standard for second gen onwards.

In third generation models, more exotic enhancements and body changes became possible. Nissi's physiology, while nominally human, showed enough divergence to possibly classify her as a new subspecies. The fourth generation forged new territory in beginning to alter the mind in ways not conceived of before. There had only been a few fourth-generation models. The Human Genome Protection Act of 1993 had outlawed genemodding in humans.

"Sharon," I said softly in remembrance, swallowing down the lump that tried to form in my throat.

"What did you say?" Tilly asked.

"Oh, sorry, nothing. Be careful not to smother those seedlings."

In her distraction, Tilly had dropped a large clump of fertilizer on top of a tiny pea plant. I reached over to brush it back so that the plant's leaves were again exposed to the light. As I did, I refocused on the task at hand. Tilly was fourth generation and her model had something to do with utilitarian ethics. "Care to tell me any more about yourself?" I asked.

"Norm, I want to know what made you sad just now."

I looked up at her, feigning ignorance. "Sad? I don't know what you mean."

Tilly's jaw clenched in sudden anger. "Fine. I should have known better than to trust you." She dropped the shovel and walked back toward the entry doors.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, more to myself than to Tilly. I moved to follow her. She was already at the inner door when I caught hold of her arm.

"No, get off me!" she screamed, and pushed me back with enough force to throw me against the door. The air whooshed out of my lungs and I struggled to take a breath. I sank to my knees. My heart was racing as my mind knew for just that moment that I was going to die. Tilly, halfway through the door, turned and looked back. Anger and betrayal were written plainly on her face, as clear as the face of a child. I collapsed the rest of the way and felt cold concrete against my forehead. My stunned diaphragm finally stopped spasming and I gulped greedily at the air. 

"Are you okay?" I looked up to see Tilly standing over me. Tears shimmered in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Norm."

"I'm fine," I said, suddenly wary of the power in that petite body. "You just knocked the wind out of me."

Relief washed over her face. She held her hand out and I hesitated before finally taking it. Once I felt steady on my feet, I began to brush the dust off.

Tilly touched her cheek and looked surprised at the wetness there. "When you grabbed me, I got scared," she said. Now it was horror that she exuded. She put her hands to her head and shook it from side to side. "Oh, no, no, no. I can't think that."

She began to sob and I found myself gathering her into my arms. My shoulder twinged where I had hit the wall but I ignored it. She let me hold her for a minute or so, but her crying quickly faded to a few weak sobs. It was she who disengaged from me, stepping back and turning away as though ashamed.

"Come on," I said. "It's okay now. Let's put the tools away and come back tomorrow." 

As we tidied the greenhouse, my nerves began to calm. It was easy to forget the strength that some genemods possessed. I was beginning to feel certain that Tilly hadn't thrown me back on purpose. She had been angry when she started to leave, but it had changed instantly to terror when I grabbed her arm. 

Once we were back in the house, I took Wendy aside. I brought her halfway up the stairwell, along with my copy of the DSM. "Listen, I'm not a real psychologist, but I'd like to keep some semblance of confidentiality. On the other hand, I don't feel qualified to diagnose and treat Tilly on my own. Can I trust you to keep what I tell you just between us?"

"Absolutely," she said. "You know I have her best interest at heart."

"Alright," I said, and opened the diagnostic manual. "At first I thought Tilly was simply depressed. She has all the symptoms." I pointed to the list, which described Tilly almost perfectly. "The weight loss, the listlessness, the way she sleeps all the time. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing something."

I told Wendy about what had happened in the greenhouse, glossing over the part about Tilly's questioning me just before she went to leave. "And then this occurred to me." I flipped through the manual to another entry. "Post-traumatic stress disorder. It explains her withdrawal every time one of us tries to ask about her past. She might be depressed because something awful or frightening happened to her. Her withdrawal is an avoidance strategy to keep from facing that trauma. I saw her become terrified today when she started to remember it."

"So you think that something happened to her to make her this way. What is the treatment?"

I shrugged. "In our case, psychotherapy. Helping the victim to face the fear rather than avoid it. There are some related techniques, but I don't have much to go on. It's odd though, just getting her out there alone seems to make a world of difference. She talks to me more and I start to see a real personality coming out."

I stopped, seeing that Wendy's eyes had gone round. "Wait. You're saying that something in this basement is making her symptoms worse?"

I considered for a moment. That hadn't been where my thoughts had led me, but there was a certain logic there. I nodded. "It seems that way. Could there be some kind of chemical or biological agent affecting her?"

Wendy sighed. "Hmm, not likely. Maybe you should try asking her."

"Maybe. I'm taking her back out tomorrow. Oh, and another thing. She told me her model name. Utility." Wendy looked at me quizzically and I went on. "Like utilitarian. And she's fourth generation."

"I've never heard of that model. Any idea what it means?"

"No, I don't." I sighed. "I thought I would run a few Markov searches, see what turns up."

"Okay, keep me updated, please. And let me know if I can help."

We were seated around the table for dinner when Sasha came down the stairs. Nock saw her first, and his expression of concern made me turn in my chair to look. She was so pale that at first I thought she was sick.

"I am sorry to disturb your meal," she said. Her voice cracked slightly at the end. Suddenly the room had gone silent and all eyes were on her. She held a tablet screen and glanced at it from time to time. "I just got word that five cargo vessels out of ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific were seized by the US Coast Guard this morning in a joint operation with the FBI. It appears that all five ships were carrying genemods that were being smuggled out of the country by agency arrangements. At least forty people were captured in the operation. Safe houses in Charleston, Boston, Jersey City, San Diego, and San Fransisco have been compromised and additional captures made." She looked up. "Thank God we weren't due to ship any of you out of Seattle for a few more weeks at least. In light of this news, genemod smuggling operations by the agency have been ceased, effective immediately and indefinitely."

Silence greeted Sasha's announcement. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Fear and denial warred for my attention as I tried to wrap my brain around it. The spell was broken when Stansy excused herself and marched quickly away. By the muffled sounds coming from that direction a few moments later, she had collapsed into bed to cry into her pillow.

"What do you mean, indefinitely?" Wendy asked.

It was obvious that Sasha was fighting off tears herself. "It means that no one knows when, or even if, the agency will start moving people out of the country again. This operation was obviously meant to both catch us off guard and scare the hell out of us. Even if the agency were willing to accept the risk, they won't find any shippers who will."

"What's going to happen to us?" Nock asked.

Sasha took a deep breath and some of the color returned to her face. This was a question that she could handle with grace and poise. "You will remain here, of course. The agency has offered to relocate our genemods to other safe houses if any of us wish to bow out, but I'm not going to give in to the scare tactics. You all have a home here as long as you need it."

Wendy got up and put her arms around Sasha. "Thank you, Miss Gray," she said. "You've always been so good to us."

Sasha did start to cry then, and Stan came over to pat her on the back and give his reassurances. I had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask, but I held them back with an effort. Instead, I gave Sasha a hug. "Thank you for everything you've done for us," I told her.

Once all of us had given her our thanks, Sasha retreated back upstairs, still dabbing at her eyes. The meal lay unfinished and forgotten by everyone. Wendy slipped away, no doubt to tell Tilly the news, though I found it unlikely that she wouldn't have overheard, if she had heard me in the greenhouse.

I was in a daze as I took a seat on the rug next to the sofa. All the regular seats were already taken and CNN was on, awaiting the breaking of the story. Stan seemed to think that the agency would restructure, perhaps start sending people across the border into Mexico or north into Canada. 

Nock was less optimistic. "It's done, over. The only thing that will save us now is a regime change. They're going to hunt us down one by one. They'll strip our mods and good people like Miss Gray are going to get put in prison."

"Oh, aren't you just a ray of sunshine?" Nissi said, crossing her arms.

"Hey, I'd like to be wrong, but I just don't see a silver lining in all this, princess."

"Oh, you did not just call me that," Nissi shot back.

I listened passively to the conversation as it grew more heated. I was still too much in shock to try to calm them down. It was Wendy who swooped in to put a stop to the argument. "Alright, both of you cool it right now. What the hell's wrong with you? Do you really want to be doing this shit right now?" Both of them were instantly chastened. Nock stared at the floor six feet in front of him and Nissi flashed me a wince. Wendy's expression softened then. "Alright, you both just think about the people around you before you start lashing out next time."

"I'm sorry," Nissi said.

"Sorry, Wen," Nock said sheepishly.

The story never ran, not even on the evening news. Hours must have passed and I suddenly realized that I was alone in front of the TV. If Nissi had said goodnight to me, I hadn't noticed. On the television, two economists were debating the current worldwide grain shortage. I found the remote on the end table and turned it off.

"Off to bed?" Nock said from his almost perpetual spot at the computer.

"I doubt I'll sleep," I said, wandering over. "What are you up to?"

"Me? I'm watching porn."

I laughed but Nock only smiled faintly. I moved over to his side of the desk to see a woman naked and spread-eagle on a bed with another woman's face between her legs. "Huh. I thought you were kidding. Nissi said you, uh, she said you've sort of turned off your sex drive."

Nock grinned. "Let's just say I have fine control over it. You know, no offense to your girlfriend, but she's just not my type. I wish you the best, anyway. At least someone is getting some around here."

I cleared my throat to try to cover my embarrassment and tried changing the subject. "Well, I think it's cool that you're staying faithful to your girlfriend."

Nock reached into his pocket to pull out a wallet. "They tell us not to do this, but here you go." He handed me a couple of pictures, one showing Nock with a dusky-skinned woman holding his hand and smiling. The other was a simple portrait of the same woman in period costume, early twentieth century by the look of it.

"Wow," I said, "she's incredible. Really beautiful."

"She's an Esther. You familiar with the type?"

"Aesthetic?" I asked. I'd never actually met one. The genemod was female only. They were supposed to possess every possible genetic advantage when it came to beauty and sex appeal.

"Yep. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can almost smell her. She has the most incredible smell, almost like jasmine. She has an amazing voice, but I can barely remember it now. Her scent, though. I don't think I'll ever forget that." Nock was staring off into space as he finished.

I couldn't think of anything appropriate to say, so I just kept silent. After taking , Nock went back to watching the screen.

"So, lesbian porn, eh?" I said.

"I like to look at women," Nock said. "Why would I want to see some guy's naked butt when I can watch two ladies going at it?"

I nodded. I could have argued the point, but I wasn't in the mood. "Do you always watch it with no sound?"

He raised an eyebrow at me. "I can hear it just fine. You want me to turn it up for you?"

"No, I'm fine," I said, but Nock turned the sound up anyway. Moaning and dirty talk began to stream from the speakers. "No, really, I don't want to disturb anyone."

Nock pointed. "Nissi there is asleep. So are Stansy and Wendy. Stan's awake, but he's down at the end and won't hear much, if anything."

"What about Tilly?"

Nock shrugged. "Why would I care what she thinks?" 

The question floored me. That, and the girl on her back was suddenly writhing in apparent orgasm. "She's a human being," I said at last.

Nock's smile was a wry one. "'Course she is. She's just a few cards short of a full deck."

"No, listen to me. I've been working with her. Whatever is wrong with her, I don't think it's her fault."

Nock turned to me. His eyes glowed a pale green. "Look, mental illness is tragic. I get it. But I'd rather not be around her just the same. You got me?"

His words made me angry, but I bit back my retort. Nock went back to his video and I stood up. "I think I'm going to try bed now," I said.

"Suit yourself."

I slept fitfully and ended up waking later than usual. I could hear the others already having breakfast. I stopped at the edge of the curtained area and saw that Stansy wasn't among them. I walked back to her room and stood just outside. "Hey, do you want to talk?"

I waited several seconds for a reply. Just about the time I decided to move on, she answered. "Come in, Norm."

Stansy was seated cross-legged on her bed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair tussled and eyes faintly bloodshot. "Sorry, I had a hell of a night," she said.

"Yeah, me too."

She looked away and chewed absently at her lip, as if considering whether or not to confide in me. "You know, I had a lot riding on this, a lot invested in the idea of starting over. This damned basement is all we have now. At least until they catch us and strip us of everything we're fighting to keep." She paused to frown. "Sorry, I know your situation is different."

"Different but similar. I have a lot to lose too. They'll send me to prison, probably a life sentence."

"What do they want you for, anyway?"

She was looking at me intently now. I realized that I had said more than I intended. "It's complicated," I hedged. "I'd rather not go into it right now. What about your husband and your son? You would be able to see them again."

"Ex-husband," she corrected me. "I've thought about that a lot, but what I realized was that I actually have a good chance of reconnecting with my son if I make it out of the country. I can find him over the web. Maybe he would even come visit me someday, wherever I end up. "

"Yeah, he might," I said. "But did you ever think about trying to contact him now?"

She started to shake her head and stopped. "That's...that's pretty risky. If my ex saw it, he'd take it to the feds. They could trace it back here. I couldn't do that."

"Have you asked Stan if there is anything he could do? Maybe he could make it look like your email came from overseas."

"Well, no. I guess I never thought of something like that. I should probably ask him. That would, uh, that would really help me right now if I could just let my son know I'm still okay." She looked genuinely hopeful.

"Can I ask you one more thing?"

"Sure, anything."

"It's about Tilly. What do you think of her?"

Stansy sighed. "Okay, yeah. I ran out of patience for Tilly a long time ago.. Wendy treats her like she's fragile and could break at any moment. But she's a genemod, for Christ's sake. She's got no excuse to be the way she is. Ordinary humans can go nuts, not us, not since second gen. If you ask me, I think she does it for attention."




Double Helix Ch. 04



"You think. . ." I sputtered, aghast. "You think she starves herself, that she cut her own wrists. . .?"

Her eyes narrowed at that. I realized that she hadn't noticed. But her surprise didn't put her off balance for long. "Don't be naïve, Norm. This kind of thing is actually pretty common. Most attempted suicides are cries for attention. Like I said, there can't be anything wrong with that girl's brain chemistry, so she's doing this by her own choice. Have you considered that maybe she's latched onto you because she thinks you're more gullible than the rest of us?"

"No," I said firmly. "No. She's hurting. I know that." And I don't appreciate the implications of inferior judgment, thank you very much, I thought.

Stansy shrugged. "Well, just keep it in mind. And thanks for the advice about my son."

I took the hint that the conversation was over. I went out and sat at the table to eat breakfast quickly so that I could get my turn at the computer. I tried Wikipedia first on "utility", but came up only with the economics and philosophy pages. Moving to AskMarkov and trying "utility genemod", I came up with a bunch of garbage results on the first page, but one result on the second page caught my eye. It was a pdf of a research paper written by a Dr. Kelly McNally, dated 1985. Only the abstract was available, so I began to read.

The genetic basis of the risk-reward mechanisms of the brain have been well understood for nearly a decade, but this study focused on the philanthropic impulse and its associated feedback mechanisms in mirror neurons and the brain's associated risk-reward centers. A particular set of neural pattern recognition clusters in the brain have been identified which appear to drive this mechanism, and the number and complexity of pattern recognizers devoted to this task shows correlation with the individual's personal level of empathy, compassion, and generosity. A better understanding of the philanthropic impulse and its heritable traits may one day allow its deliberate focus and enhancement in engineered humans, greatly enhancing an individual's socioeconomic utility.

I read and re-read the passage several times to make sure I understood. This researcher had been working to discover what made people want to make others happy. It was intriguing, but I wondered why it had come up in my search. I tried finding the word "genemod" on the page and discovered it buried in a set of notes about the article. That note mentioned a paper written my McNally a few years later, titled "New Horizons in Designer Genemods", where she had reported on additional research in this area.

I blew out a breath as I sat back. Was it just a coincidence that my search terms had dropped me here? I tried a search for the second article and came up empty. Like most geemo research, if it had been on the web at one point, the FCC had forced a takedown. The possibilities tantalized me, but I didn't think I could get any further on it today. 

I closed down the browser after wiping the search history. Stansy had come out for breakfast in the meantime and sat next to Stan, speaking in low tones. Tilly never showed, but that was expected. Wendy had told me that she never ate before lunch.

Nissi was alone on the sofa, so I sat next to her and put my arm around her shoulder. She snuggled against me and we sat, enjoying the closeness. I was only barely aware of what we were watching, some kind of talk show. I only had a few minutes there before Sasha came down to find me. "Get your street clothes on," she said. "We're going shopping."

We made the usual stop at the food bank and bought a few items of clothing and gardening tools from a department store. I expected we would head home from there, but Sasha had one more stop planned.

"Do you know how to shoot a gun, Norm?" she asked me.

"Huh? No," I said. "I've never owned one."

"Well, you're going to learn," she said. I shot her a questioning glance, but she did not elaborate. A few minutes later, we pulled into a tiny parking lot behind a gun store in the downtown area.

Sasha got out and headed for the door. "Uh, is this a good idea?" I asked. I stood holding the car door open. I wasn't sure about having a gun and was even less certain I wanted my new identity under scrutiny.

"Yes, it's fine," Sasha said. She walked back to me and spoke low. "I got a gun shortly after I got involved with the agency. Don't be a baby."

I barked a laugh and followed her inside, shaking my head as I went. Sasha explained to the shop manager that I was a complete newbie, but that she was worried about the area I moved into and thought I should have a weapon with some stopping power. "I was thinking maybe a Colt 1911," she said.

"Good choice," the man said, and brought out a very plain-looking black pistol. "This one is chambered for .45 ACP. Real simple to use, smooth recoil and all the stopping power you could want."

"That'll do nicely. Why don't we get started on the paperwork?"

Twenty minutes later, Sasha and I left the store. We would come back once the waiting period was up to pick up the gun. My gun. Back in the car, I was feeling confused and uneasy. "I find the timing of all this a little suspect," I said. "Do you think we're in some kind of danger since the FBI raids?"

"Call it a feeling," Sasha said, "but I think we are headed for an escalation. The McCain administration is tired of seeing genemods slip through its fingers. Please don't mention this to the others. They--"

"They have enough to worry about," I finished. "Are you saying that if the feds show up, you want me to go down shooting? Wouldn't prison be preferable to dying?"

"Well, we'll see," Sasha said. She sighed, "Just between you and me, I'm a bit concerned about food. My agency contact assured me that they would continue to supply us for the immediate future, but we should start preparing for the worst. I read a paper once about boosting output in a greenhouse by increasing the CO2 in the air. I don't know if it will be enough to make up for the loss of agency shipments, but want you to look into it."

"I can do that," I said.

When we got back, Tilly was seated at the dining table in the basement. She stood up when she saw me. "Ready to work, Norm?" she asked. Her customarily dull voice had a tinge of lightness to it and I saw that she was already dressed to go out.

"Sure," I said, surprised but gratified. I had intended to start on the research that Sasha had given me, but that could wait.

We resumed our work from the day before. I let Tilly settle into it first before I started in with the questions. "I looked up your model," I said, "and I found a paper by a Dr. Kelly McNally and her studies on the philanthropic impulse."

Tilly looked at me. "You know about Kelly?" she said.

"Not much. Do you know her?"

She nodded, getting a faraway look. "She was my mother. Not my biological mother. That would be a breach of ethics. She designed my model and took care of me growing up. She . . . " I saw the beginnings of a smile, but it faded rapidly, her face clouding over.

Stay with me, Tilly, I thought. "Here, you missed that spot over there."

Tilly shook her head slightly and scooped up some fertilizer to spread. The pain etched into her features smoothed away after a few moments. "Are you ready to tell me yet?" she asked.

"Tell you what?"

She grunted as she scooped another shovel full. "Tell me what was bothering you yesterday, and why you lied about it."

Now it was my turn to pause. "I, uh. . . I don't know if I can tell you."

"You're worried what I will think of you. Did you do something wrong?"

I stared at her. "How do you do that? How do you know when someone is lying, what they're feeling?"

She sighed and shrugged, as though the question were unimportant. In my weeks of observing and interacting with her, I can come to understand that she avoided strong feelings of any kind, whether positive or negative. "The data points are all there. I see the micro-expressions on your face, see and smell your perspiration. I can hear the hitch in your breathing and the quickening of your pulse."

I realized that my mouth had dropped open and I casually closed it. "You saw and heard all that?"

"Yes."

I waited, but she didn't say more. Tilly's shovel crunched into the pile of fertilizer. "So yesterday . . .?"

"I got angry with you yesterday because I've come to trust you, and it was the first time you had lied to me. I've stayed numb for so long and I'm not used to those kinds of feelings." She sighed. "You don't have to tell me right now. I can see how much it bothers you."

"If I tell you," I said, "can you promise to keep it between us?"

"I promise," she said without hesitation.

"Okay, just give me a moment. Let's finish this planter and start on the next." We finished the job and Tilly hauled over the next bag while I gathered my thoughts. "I guess I should tell you about my sister first," I began.

"Sharon?"

I nodded. "She was born in 1992. She was a genemod, a Gena model and fourth gen like you. You're probably familiar with that one." Tilly nodded. Gene and Gena come from the term 'g factor' referring to intelligence and cognitive abilities. "My parents were so excited when they heard about the model. This was less than a year before designer babies were outlawed, so they were lucky to have acted so quickly. G's were expensive, but my family was well off and had good credit, so they flew to a clinic in Dallas. Nine months and change later, my mom gave birth to Sharon. She'll be twenty-one later this year."

"She's my age," Tilly said.

I nodded. They would have to be close in age if Tilly was fourth gen. "It was strange, growing up with a sibling like that. Everything came so quickly and naturally to her. She had a fifth grade vocabulary by her first birthday and was doing algebra before she was two. I must have been about nine when I realized that she had passed me up, intellectually. She understood concepts that my juvenile brain couldn't wrap itself around. She soaked up knowledge like a sponge. Our parents put her through an accelerated online education program and she graduated high school about the time most kids are starting kindergarten. Then they started casting about for what to challenge her with next. I mean, she should have been attending university classes, but despite her intelligence, she still had some growing up to do. They settled on just throwing anything and everything her way in the form of textbooks, journals, whatever. Physics, math, literature, biology, economics, most of it at university level. After a few years, special university programs began to appear for kids like Sharon. At the age of seven, she started classes at MIT. At nine, she was a graduate student, and at 12, she had her first doctorate, was working on her second and had begun postdoctoral research."

"What was that like for you?" Tilly asked.

"Not so great, to be honest. When we were growing up, I kind of did my best to avoid her. I used to call her 'freak' and worse if she didn't take the hint. What made it worse was that she never called me on it. She put up with my spite and my envy, and I think I resented that too. I'm not proud of that part of my life."

I glanced over at Tilly. She nodded expectantly, so I continued. "Then came the Rot, and the Ban when she was thirteen. She was served legal papers by mail, informing her that her citizen status had been revoked until such time as she had submitted herself to a set of procedures to reverse her biotech modifications."

"What was strange was that I was the one she reached out to. I was in my second year at university by then. She called me at least a dozen times, often in tears. I consoled her as best I could but eventually urged her to turn herself in. For all the resentment I had harbored for her growing up, I didn't want to see her hurt. It upset her to hear me say that, even after I explained my reasoning. She stopped calling after that."

"I began to worry that something terrible had happened to her. After a few weeks, the FBI began to tighten the screws, arresting genemods who refused to cooperate with the government's decree. That pushed her over. She did call me then, to tell me that I had been right, and that after she got off the phone with me, she was going to the police station to turn herself in. "

Tilly was still working, but had slowed. I went on, afraid I was going to lose her to her depression again. "They injected her with multiple retrovirus cultures engineered to enter her cells to find and replace her modified DNA. Then they had to physically remove her augmented intelligence. In her case, that also meant destroying over half the neurons in her neo-cortex."

"Oh my God," Tilly said with a gasp.

"It was barbaric," I said hoarsely. "She had been engineered with brain cells that were more compact, so she had a lot more of them and her neurons connected in ways that they couldn't in a normal human. They did their best to disrupt all that extra capacity and efficiency. When they were done with her, she could barely speak. It took over a year for her to regain close to normal functioning. She was on medical leave for a few months, and held out hope that when it was all over, she could resume her post at MIT. But after a while, she gave that up."

"I asked her about it and she tried to explain it to me. It was as if the thoughts she had before were suddenly out of her reach. Concepts that seemed easy to visualize before were now frustratingly difficult to grasp, as though she had just woken up, only she never came fully awake. She still had an IQ in the 120s, and I had heard horrible stories of other mods who fared much worse after being reverted, but she felt useless and weak. I was away at college while she found herself back at home and suddenly expected to live as a normal teenager. It made me realize what an ass I had been to her."

I paused, wondering if I had said enough to satisfy Tilly. I had my answer a moment later. "There's more, isn't there?"

I nodded. "Two years ago, I started making some inquiries and made contact with an agency representative. I volunteered my time working with a large safe house operating out of the basement of a homeless shelter. Last month, I went back home to visit. I hadn't had much contact with Sharon for a few years, and I was shocked by what my parents had to tell me about her. They had kicked her out of the house when they caught her taking crystal meth, and she could barely hold down a job for more than a few months at a time. I asked for her phone number anyway.."

"She said she was living with a couple of friends and didn't seem to want to bring me back to her place, but she was happy to come meet me for lunch. Even though she's only twenty-one, I could see that she had been living hard. I got the impression from some hints that she dropped that she'd been picked up by the police a number of times, though I could only imagine the reason for it. Still, we had a lot of catching up to do and I started to feel more comfortable around her."

My mouth had gone dry as I finally came to it, but I pushed on. "I knew I wasn't supposed to talk about the safe house to anyone, but I thought she would be happy to hear that I was helping genemods escape what had happened to her. When we parted ways, I felt like something was off, but I guess I didn't realize what an angry, bitter person she had become. As soon as I hopped a plane back to the west coast, she phoned the authorities and told them everything she knew. They came looking for me at the university while I was driving home, and one of the staff phoned me to ask what was going on, so I was tipped off. I called my contact at the agency to warn them, but it was too late. Sharon had given just enough info for the feds to find the shelter and detain everyone there. Because of me, twelve genemods were captured, along with the two normals who managed the safe house. The agency picked me up, kept me hidden and got me out of LA a few days later. I'm honestly surprised they helped me at all."

Tilly set her shovel down carefully and walked over to me. "Norm, you couldn't have known your sister would do that to you," she said. She took my hand and held it in hers.

My eyes were burning and my breath hitched. "It doesn't matter," I said. "It was my fault. I broke the rules and people suffered for it."

"You didn't mean for that to happen." She gently stroked the back of my hand with her fingers.

I wiped at the trickle that fell down the side of my nose, smudging dirt on my face. "I deserve to go to prison," I said bitterly. "It should have been me, not them. And I'm such a coward. I've been keeping this inside me for weeks now, terrified that all of you are going to find out what I did and hate me for it."

"You made a mistake," Tilly said. "The consequences were terrible, yes, but you weren't the one who put those people in prison."

"I might as well have," I said. I was a mess, sobbing openly now. Tilly seemed unsure of herself and just held my hand until I had purged myself of my shame and grief. A spike of guilt still twisted in my insides, but sharing my story seemed to have dulled the pain at least.

Tilly began to speak, slowly and haltingly. Her tone was flat and distant and her hand went limp in mine. "Kelly McNally was--is--a cognitive psychologist and a philosopher. She put a group of scientists together from other specialties for a project, funded by private investors. There were geneticists, neurologists, sociologists, even an economist, I understand. Together, they envisioned something no one had ever seen before. A new society, is the way Kelly put it. They drew on Kelly's research into the philanthropic impulse and magnified that effect, along with many other physical and mental enhancements. The idea was to create a human being who would maximize happiness, both for herself and those around her. I was the result of that project."

I felt drained of emotion after my breakdown, but tried to focus on what she had told me. "Tilly, I'm not sure that makes sense."

"I told you before I was broken. I--" Her eyes screwed up and her face contorted in pain. "I'm trying, Norm, but I can't . . .I can't go there." Her voice grew soft and her eyes unfocused. I was losing her.

"Okay, that's okay, Tilly," I said, squeezing her hand. "Don't think about it. Look at me. Come back."

She inhaled deeply and blinked a few times. She put a hand to her head. "I'm sorry, Norm. I wish I could explain, but you see what it does to me. Did you have anything else you needed to ask?"

"Just one question. Are there any others like you?"

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. "No, I'm the only one. Kelly raised me until the Ban, but the team had broken up once human genemodding was outlawed. None of them wanted to go to jail for Kelly's dream. Can we stop now, please?"

"Okay," I said. "I think that's enough for today. Let's pack up and head inside."

I followed close behind Tilly as she went downstairs into the basement. Nock, Stan, Wendy and Stansy were playing cards at the table. Nock looked up first and I saw Tilly stiffen slightly with a sharp intake of breath. Her head and shoulders drooped slightly and the energy seemed to drain from her. I stopped walking and watched her shuffle off to her room. The whole event had been so quick and so strange that I kept wondering if I had imagined it. Was Nock the real problem here? Had he done something to Tilly? The thought disturbed me so much that I turned without a word and slowly climbed the steps to go back upstairs.

I didn't know what I was going to do. My first thought had been to describe to Sasha what I had seen and share my thoughts about Nock, but by the time I reached the top of the stairs, I had rejected that idea. I had very tenuous evidence to be making accusations, and I certainly didn't want to make problems for Nock if he was innocent. Besides, I knew for a fact that the root of Tilly's problem had started before she had come here. I settled on a solution that was both less inflammatory and possibly far more useful.




Double Helix Ch. 04



"I need some information," I said to Sasha when I saw her, cutting vegetables in the kitchen.

"Sure, what do you need, Norm?"

I sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Tilly told me that the agency took her to a psychologist in Chicago. I would like to get any records they have from that visit."

"Not going to be easy," she said. "This organization thrives on its secrecy, and even more so in the present circumstances."

"But you'll try?"

"Yes, of course I'll try, Norm. I am just preparing you for disappointment."

I thanked her and started to go, but paused at the doorway and turned back. "One more thing," I said, feeling as I said it that it was a mistake. "I told Tilly about why I'm here. I'm sorry."

The chopping never slowed. "You picked an odd choice to confide in," she said at last. "And I don't like it when people I've put my trust in break their word."

Her words stung. I thought about trying to explain Tilly's apparent ability to detect lies, but dismissed it. It didn't really change the fact that I had messed up, at least in my promise to Sasha.

Nissi and I did not have sex for days following the sobering news about the FBI's raids, but she soon made it clear to me that it was a temporary situation. "I'm going to fuck your brains out tonight," she whispered coolly in my ear as she brushed past me to take a seat at the breakfast table later that week. I gave her a wry grin and a nod. I had missed our nights together.

She leaned toward me, but before she could say more, the speaker near the table gave a chirp. "Norm, can you come up here?"

I looked up in surprise. "Excuse me," I said, setting down my fork and dabbing my face with a napkin. I climbed the stairs quickly.

Sasha was waiting for me just outside the door to the pantry. "I just got an email and printed it out," she said, and held out a single, folded page. "It's not the records you wanted, but one of my contacts did some research. I thought you should be the first to read it."

I took the paper, unfolded it, and began to read:

Hello, Sasha.

I hope you are doing well. I dug around a bit on your genemod, Tilly. She was in a small safe house in Cleveland, Ohio for several years, with a Peter and an Eddie. About six months ago, they were victims of a home invasion. Four ex-cons broke in and held them all hostage in the basement. Maybe they weren't planning on murder, but you never know. One of them had a gun.

Your girl got raped by at least three of them, I'm afraid, worse if rumors hold, and the Eddie was killed trying to stop them. He didn't make it, but the host and the Peter were fine. Afterward, she just went catatonic. Her case worker sent her to Chicago to see one of our shrinks, but he couldn't help her.

I hear you've been raising hell about them dumping her on you and leaving you without support, but I hear they were really trying hard to get her emigrated before the raids. With things as they are now, maybe you can get some traction in getting her real help. 

I'd really appreciate it if you didn't mention who told you any of this.

Bev

I reread it, feeling my insides clench at the thought of Tilly being raped. "Here," I said, passing the paper to Sasha. "You should read it."

Sasha unfolded a pair of reading glasses and settled into the sofa. I watched her expression change from mild interest to horror. She said something in Russian, putting a hand to her chest. When she looked up, her lips were pressed into a line and she actually trembled with anger.

"I think that explains a lot," I said.

Sasha nodded and took off her glasses. "I've heard of this before. Home invasions are a real problem for us in some parts of the country. The bastards know we can't get help from the police. This house has a custom-built silent alarm system and I keep a Makarov with a silencer in my safe in the bedroom. If those punks had shown up here, I'd have put a bullet in their brains and sunk their bodies to the bottom of the bay."

I stared at Sasha. I knew that she was tough and assertive, but this was a side of her I had never seen. She caught my look and rolled her eyes. "Norm, when are you going to realize the seriousness of our situation? The time for being nice, for giving people the benefit of the doubt, that passed when your government declared war on its people. Those people in the basement are depending on me, on us, for their lives. We have to be prepared to do whatever it takes."

"And that's why you bought me a gun?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

I looked at my hands. I could honestly say that I'd never truly hurt anyone my whole life. But I had never been put in a situation where my life or those I cared about were threatened. "Okay, maybe you have a point," I said.

"We should be able to pick up your Colt next week and I'm taking you for a firearms safety course and some time on the range to practice. I got word that you've passed the background check. Congratulations." Well, my identity had. I often wondered about that. Had the agency created a brand new identity for me, or had it simply stolen one?

"Thanks," I said. Taking the paper back from Sasha, I stood. I went downstairs and shared the letter with Wendy in the relative privacy of the stairwell.

Wendy grew visibly upset as she read, and by the time she was finished, tears were flowing freely down her cheeks. "That's horrible," she said, sniffling. "I had no idea."

"And It fits my diagnosis. What happened to her would qualify as trauma, I think."

"So she hasn't mentioned any of this to you?"

"No. I think she's very careful to avoid thinking about it. I think that something about what happened contradicts with the basic nature of her model. It's so overwhelming that the only way she can cope is to block those memories out or to shut down."

"Interesting theory. And why she's better when she's alone with you in the greenhouse?"

I sighed. "I'm still working on that."

I saw that the terminal was free and jumped on to check my bank balance. Just as I had hoped, with a month gone by, it stood at just over four hundred dollars. Smiling, I stood and strolled out to where the others were all sitting, watching TV.

"Hey guys," I said. "I have another project I want to do. I need to clear it with Miss Gray first, but I wanted to hear what you think. I can get enough materials to enclose two of our bedrooms with drywall this month."

Exclamations of surprise and delight accompanied this news, and the conversation very soon turned to planning.

"Your room first," Stansy said immediately, pointing at me. "The two of you," she pointed again, this time at Nissi, "woke me up three times last week. If you have any money left, please invest in some soundproofing too." My face had flushed hot at Stansy's comments, but Nissi was grinning at me mischievously.

"I second that," said Wendy. "Norm's money. He should get dibs." She leaned over and poked Nock in the arm.

"Yeah, sure," he said. "Not like I need it. I barely go in my room except to change clothes."

"Stan?" Wendy asked.

He shrugged. "Sure. We're planning on putting up more, right?"

"That's right, Stan," I said. "Two rooms this month, but I'll have money left over and with some of the walls adjacent, we can get all seven rooms done the next two months after that."

"Who gets the other room?" Nissi asked. "I think it should go to Wendy."

"Oh, that's nice of you," Wendy said. "But maybe we should just build the room adjacent to Norm. Less work that way and maybe next month we can do three rooms with the savings we get."

"So it's Stan or Tilly," I said. "Stan?"

He shrugged. "Let Tilly have it. I'll have a wall on three sides if we do Norm's, 'cause I'm on the end. That's plenty of privacy right there."

Nock shook his head. "It's a damn waste, if you ask me, giving it to the crazy. Maybe we ought to buy some padding for those walls."

Sudden anger flashed white hot in me and I readied a retort, but Nissi beat me to it.

"Really?" She said with a glare. "God, you're an ass, Nock. A real piece of shit, you know that?"

"Hey! Hey," Wendy broke in. "Focus, guys. That is not helping, Nissi. Nock, you said you didn't care who got the room, right? Are you changing your mind on that?"

He chewed on his words for a moment and shrugged. "Whatever. I still say it's a waste."

Wendy looked as though she were contemplating another scolding, but she relented. "Okay, then we're decided, right?"

A chorus of "yes's" and "sure's" came from the others.

"Alright," I agreed, "mine and Tilly's." Although I was not particularly pleased that my sex life had partially motivated the outcome.

I went upstairs to find Sasha. She was in her office, as she was most days when she wasn't doing chores for the house. She listened as I told her my plan, but gazed at me with a peculiar look. "What?" I asked.

She sighed. "It is just that I think that I am supposed to I feel like an ass for not having done this myself years ago."

I shook my head. "Miss Gray, how much of the food the agency ships us do you use each week?"

"All of it," she admitted.

"And how much of your own money do you spend?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Norm, have you been looking at my accounting records?"

"No, I wouldn't do that," I said, raising my hands defensively. "Not unless you told me to. I wouldn't even know where to find them."

"They are locked in this drawer," she said, tapping one of the metal drawers under her desk. "So if you had peeked, I would know that you had to go so far as filching the key or picking the lock. So how do you know that?"

"I can do the math," I said. "Remember, I used to help out at a safe house. I know what agency stipends are like, and how far that will go on the black market. I also know how much we produce out of the greenhouse. There's got to be a few hundred dollars in extra food every month that you're buying illegally to keep everyone as well fed as we are."

"Well, if you know all that, you might as well know that I am hoarding some of that food, and medical supplies as well. One more crime to add to my considerable list."

Hoarding food was an even greater crime than buying or selling it. If Sasha were ever arrested, though, the six counts of sheltering non-citizens and one count of aiding and abetting a felon wanted for genemod crimes would be enough to put her away for life.

"Alright, so you do understand," she continued. "So now it is just a matter of getting my permission for another construction project in my basement."

"Pretty please?" I offered.

She chuckled. "Of course, Norm. You have proven yourself to be a disruption at every turn, but overall a good one."

I needed much the same materials from the hardware store as I had for the bathroom, though I had my tools and plenty of nails, paint and primer. Sasha surprised me by buying a few items for the bathroom, including a mirror for the sink and some overhead fluorescent lights.

Before we started, Wendy went to talk to Tilly and offered her own room up while we worked. The project went more quickly this time because we were more confident and made less mistakes. Though we began after lunch, we were sanding and applying the primer before dinner. "I can't wait to try it out," Nissi said to me, pausing in her sanding. She gave me a peck on the cheek, but her hand slipped down my front to cup my crotch briefly. "Remember what I said this morning."

Wendy went to get Tilly while the rest of us headed for the table. I was exhausted but happy, and though I felt the urgent need for a shower, the rich smells of the food were too enticing to ignore.

I sat down across the table from Nissi, who had already filled her bowl and passed the food on. "Congee and vegetables never smelled so good," she said. "I'm starving."

Nissi dug into the meal happily as Stansy passed me the pot of rice porridge. I glanced over to see Tilly and Wendy emerge from the sleeping area on my left and approach the table. I took two ladles of the porridge and some of the mushrooms and greens that Stansy handed me next.

"Norm," Tilly said, once I had gotten my food. I turned to find her and Wendy standing behind me. Her eyes were bright, much as they had been our last visit to the greenhouse. "Thank you." She patted my shoulder. It was an oddly distant gesture, but seemed heartfelt. "That was kind of you."

I nodded. "Wendy suggested it, though. You should thank her."

"I know. I did." She moved past me then to take the seat to my right, with Wendy taking the last seat at the end.

I caught Nock staring at her and tried to hide a smile behind my hand, recalling his harsh words towards Tilly earlier. She'd given him something to think about, it seemed.

I watched Tilly from the corner of my eye as we ate. She was reserved as always, but alert and listening instead of lost in her own world. 

"Hey, Norm," Stansy said, tapping the back of my hand. "I see you're almost done. There's something I wanted to show you."

I followed her back to her room. Inside, she had set up an easel across from her bed. A large canvas was perched on it. Depicted there was a scene that could only now exist in memory, of a golden field stretching from the bottom of the canvas towards the horizon, a stand of trees and a farmhouse breaking up the border between field and sky. Long, willowy clouds hung in a brilliant blue sky. Somehow, she had made it look as though the long stalks of wheat were gently waving in the breeze. The scene felt sad and wistful, yet magical all at once.

"My grandparents lived there," she said. She smiled fondly. "I went there every summer from the time I could walk. There's an orchard back there behind the house. They grew apples, pears and plums and I got to go pick them right off the tree."

"It's beautiful," I said. "What are you going to do with it?"

She chuckled. "I have no idea. I found my old paints and brushes and was surprised that they were still good. Sasha had a canvas and the easel. Did you know she used to paint too?"

"I think we should hang it in the main room, next to the table."

She started to shake her head and stopped. "Well, if you think the others will like it..."

"Well, I would suggest the refrigerator door, but I don't have a magnet big enough to hold it up."

"You're really funny," she said with a frown. "Well, I don't have a frame yet, but here." She lifted the canvas by the edges and handed it to me. "Hang it wherever you like. I don't have room in here."

I got some curious looks as I hefted the painting out to the main living area, along with a hammer and nail. I hung it right where I had suggested, facing towards one end of the table, where we could see it easily during meals.

I stepped back to gaze at it again and felt Nissi's arm slip around my shoulders. "Wow, Stansy did that?" she asked.

"I dropped her a suggestion a few weeks ago," I said. "I honestly forgot all about it."

"Norm, do you ever think about this?" Nissi gestured to the painting. "I mean, do you think about what we'll do if the Rot can't be stopped? Will we just die off when all the food is gone?"

"Not everyone would die," I said softly. "The Rot kills pretty much every grain, bulb or vine we try to plant, plus most grasses. Trees aren't affected, same with bushes. There was a Nature article a few months back about seaweed farming, so there's that. Large regions of the Earth have been desertified already, and I would imagine that would only get worse if the Rot keeps spreading. You'll have cannibalism where people are concentrated, and in rural areas, people will strip the land and drive most animal species to extinction that aren't starved out already. Still, there would be some pockets that would find a way through. Without agriculture, though, the Earth can only support a tiny fraction of the people that are alive right now. And then there's the Earth's ecosystem. It would have to find a new equilibrium. Mass die off of species before that happens."

Nissi's arm tightened around me and I slipped my own around her waist. "What about civilization, technology?" she asked.

"Near universal collapse," I said. "After the mass die off, there wouldn't be enough people left to keep power and industry running. It would be a struggle just to get enough food to survive, and those who do will have to either cultivate new types of crops or revert to a hunter-gatherer existence. If we're lucky, maybe we go back to an early twentieth-century level. If we're not lucky, it's another dark age."

"If that happens, genemods will die off too," Nissi said. "Any of us that survive can't have kids without the aid of biotech."

I hadn't considered that before, but she was right. Genemods needed hormone treatments to reproduce, given at specific times and in specific dosages. Knock medicine back more than about six decades and they would all be effectively sterile. "But you'd still have your longevity," I pointed out. "In a century or two, civilization will have the chance to claw its way back up. Genemods would just need to survive the collapse and see it rebuilt. If anything, you would have a better chance than non-enhanced humans."

"You're right," she said. "Some of us will survive."

I hadn't missed the change from "would" to "will". I pulled her against me, holding her close. My cheek came to rest on her shoulder. "There's still a chance that it won't work out that way."

Nissi shook her head slowly. "I don't want to think about this anymore."

"Me neither," I admitted. I gave her a kiss on the neck.

"Come on," she said, tugging at my arm.

I thought we were headed for my room, the third one on the right, but she stopped me when we reached the first on the left. "My place this time," she said, with a faint smile.

When she drew back the curtain, it dawned on me that I had never been in her room. Most of the back wall was taken up with a poster of Elvis Presley in a glittering white leisure suit, a lei around his neck and lights shining down from behind. He was reaching down from the edge of the stage towards a pair of hands that were lifted towards him.

Nissi saw where my gaze had landed. "That's from the 'Aloha from Hawaii' concert," she said. "It was his last big concert before his 90s comeback."

I nodded, letting my eyes roam. In one corner, she had a small, two-shelf bookshelf. I smiled at the hardbound copy of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus the Silmarillion and a book on Sindarin, the Elvish language. There were some biographies of twentieth-century figures and several romance novels. The shelf below that was filled with movies, most of them films I recognized. On top of the bookshelf where three neat stacks of spiral-bound notebooks. "Your song collection?" I asked.

"Most of it," Nissi said. "We can look at it later if you want." She sat on the bed and patted the comforter next to her.

I took the three steps to her bed, taking in the rest of her room as I sat. There were posters for Van Morrison, Pat Benatar, N.W.A. and B.B. King, all of them signed by the artists. "No country?" I asked. It was about the only major genre I didn't see represented.

"I had some Johnny Cash memorabilia," she said, "but I had to leave them behind when I fled. Ever seen one of these?" Next to her bed was a stack of audio equipment, complete with turntable. 

I grinned. "My grandma had one of these. Told me never to touch it."

She bent over to pull a large piece of cardboard from under her bed and showed me the front cover. "The Silver Beetles?" I read.

"Yes," Nissi said, removing the vinyl from its sleeve. "You probably know them better by their solo careers. George Harrison and John Lennon?"

"Yeah, sure. Everyone knows John Lennon."

"This is one of the albums that they recorded together with Paul McCartney and Stu Sutcliffe." She put the record on the turntable and switched it on. The music began at once from a pair of speakers situated at the front corners of the room, opposite the bed.




Double Helix Ch. 05



Author's note: Special thanks to my editor, literknight, for finding all those stupid little mistakes that slip past me.




"Don't yank the trigger back," Sasha shouted to be heard through my ear protection. "Keep the sights on your target and put steady, increasing pressure on the trigger until it breaks."

I tried to do as she asked, but when the gun went off, my shot kicked up a cloud of dust ten feet in front of the target. I looked around self-consciously to see if anyone else at the range had been watching.

"Don't do that," Sasha yelled. "No one cares what you are doing as long as you aren't being stupid. Your feet are too close together. Adjust your stance and try again."

The next shot hit the ground nearer the target, but off to the left.

"You are flinching. Relax. Take a deep breath if you have to. Don't think about the recoil. Try again."

The next shot struck the earthen mound at the far end of the range, passing just a few feet to the left of the target.

"Better, but keep your eyes open."

"They were open!" I shouted back.

Sasha chuckled. "No, Mr. Winston. They were not. Finish out the magazine, please, then pass me your weapon."

I was Mark Winston today, at least while we were out of the house. A week had gone by since finishing the new rooms in the basement, and with the waiting period up, Sasha had taken me directly to the store to get my weapon, then here to the shooting range.

I fired the remaining four shots, which flew frustratingly wide and short of the target. Holding the empty gun, I thought about it for a moment, recalling the lessons from the firearms safety course I had completed less than an hour ago. I engaged the thumb safety, removed the magazine and opened the bolt. Pausing for a moment to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, I held the pistol out, pointed downrange and angled so that Sasha could see that it was empty.

"Thank you," she said, taking the weapon and examining it carefully herself. She replaced the empty magazine. "You will do this," she said, cocking back the hammer with her thumb. She sighted on the target. When she pulled the trigger, the gun gave a click, barely audible through the hearing protection. "Do this until I say to stop."

I did as she told me, sighting the target, cocking back the hammer, and dry-firing the Colt, over and over. My thumb and trigger finger began to tire after a few dozen repetitions.

"Getting bored?" Sasha asked, checking her watch.

I shrugged. "A little."

"Good. You have to make your body think that nothing special is about to happen when you go to fire your weapon. I see that you've stopped closing your eyes. Are you keeping the sights on target?"

I had noticed that it was impossible to keep the gun perfectly still. "I'm trying, but it moves around a lot."

"That is normal, especially when you are under stress. Find the center of that drift and hold that on the target. Let the gun wander a bit. Don't try to force it to hold still."

I tried a few more dry fires. "That really helps," I said, surprised.

"Good, now to try with bullets." She stepped back to watch me.

I loaded the spare magazine from the table in front of me and sighted on the target. The first two shots zinged past, but the third and fourth were hits. "Good, good," Sasha said, after two satisfying holes appeared in the paper target, one right of and above center and the other just to the left. Another miss, then a hit. Hit, miss, hit.

"Much better," Sasha said, as I set the empty Colt down on the table. "Reload and try again, please."

I reloaded and set up to shoot again. Only three of the nine shots struck the target this time. I could feel the flinch trying to creep back in. "Can we take a break?" I asked, when I had finished.

Sasha nodded, so I holstered the pistol and we moved back from the range, finding a bench near the parking lot. Once we were seated, I removed the bulky earmuffs and wiped the sweat from my brow.

"You are not too bad for a beginner," Sasha said, "but we'll need to come out here every Saturday for a few hours until you can hit the target consistently. After that, one hour a week."

I shrugged.

"What is on your mind, Mark?" Sasha said, frowning. "I can tell you are not thinking about shooting."

"Well, I've been meaning to ask you, can I get a job?"

Her brows raised. "Aside from the one you have now?"

"Well, yes. I want to earn some extra money. Nothing that would interfere with my normal duties at home, of course."

"I have a feeling you already have plans for this extra money. More of your projects?"

"Maybe," I said with a chuckle.

"Part-time," she said. "No more than 25 hours a week and I need you all day Saturday and on Tuesday and Friday mornings."

"I'll work evenings," I said, trying not to smile too obviously. Knowing Sasha, the negotiations were not over yet.

"And you'll use part of your money to buy a car. I don't have time to drive you and I won't to risk putting you on my insurance."

"I'll get a bike."

:"What if it rains?"

"I'll take the bus."

"And your work with Tilly?"

"I'll figure that out. I'm sure I'll still have time."

She waved her hand. "Alright. Fine. But I'll have you know, I'm not telling the agency what you're doing. There's no way they would allow it."

"I understand."

She stood. "Break time's over. You need to put in more time with your Colt."

By the time we left, my arms ached from my shoulders all the way down to my fingers.

"So where were you thinking of getting a job?" Sasha asked, as we drove back home.

"At the hospital," I said.

"Not as a doctor?"

I smiled. "No, I'm not quite qualified for that. They're looking for a nurse's assistant, though. Mark Winston got his degree in English Lit, the poor sod, so I figure it's a good fit. Can I put you down for a reference? I won't use your real name."

"Sure. Give me some details and I'll spin a good tale for them if they call."

A warbling came from the car's speakers. Sasha thumbed a button on the wheel to answer. "Yes, mamka?"

"Aleksandra, have you seen the news?" Sasha's mother spoke with a thick accent, so it took me a few seconds to puzzle out the words. I could hear the anxiety in her words, though. I had never heard her call her daughter by her full given name.

"No, mamka. I will turn it on."

She hung up and tuned the stereo to a local news station. "--joint operation of federal agents and municipal and county police departments constitutes the largest and most successful organized crime bust ever conducted on US soil. Twenty-two members of the Himura syndicate were taken into federal custody and are facing multiple criminal charges, including illicit goods trafficking, arson, tax evasion, extortion, and conspiracy."

Sasha and I looked at each other. "Shit," she said. The Himura-kai yakuza syndicate was one of the agency's chief suppliers of food and medical supplies. I had learned about that connection within a few months of going to work for the safe house in LA, and it had bothered me for a while, knowing that the same agency that helped genemods did business with a criminal organization. We listened to the details for a few more minutes, until the newscaster began to rehash the facts.

"The crafty bastards," Sasha said. "First the strikes on smuggling boats, now this. They're sending another message, hoping to scare the other black marketeers off from dealing with the agency."

"Do you think it will work?"

Sasha frowned. "Probably it will do some damage. Maybe shortages and disruptions in our supplies. It will certainly raise the price of doing business. How are you coming with the greenhouse CO2?"

I had done some research in the last few weeks, but this was the first time since her initial query that Sasha had asked about it. "It's pretty simple, really. We need to get a generator. They run off of natural gas or propane and cost several hundred dollars. If we do it right, it should boost output by a third, maybe more."

"Good. Find one for me and I'll buy it. That won't keep us from starving if we have to rely on it completely, but it might help me stockpile faster."

When we got home, the others were all talking about the news and what it would mean for us. I gave them Sasha's opinion as well as my own, which was a bit more optimistic. To my surprise, Tilly was seated on the couch, in the middle of everyone. She didn't speak, just watched the television intently. She had her shoes on, which was her signal to me that she was ready to go out and work. It looked like she had put on five pounds just in the last week, but she had needed it. She was looking healthier than I had ever seen her.

I was exhausted from my time on the range, but couldn't quite bring myself to skip out on Tilly. Sasha probably would have understood if I skipped a day of work in the greenhouse, but Tilly's sessions were important, to her and to me. Besides, I didn't feel like sitting around while the others debated just how much worse things were going to get for us.

The work today was light, mostly harvesting, so I tried to use the time we had as much as possible. I spoke to her as we did a walkthrough, checking for ripe fruits and vegetables. "When I bring you out here, you seem so different," I said to Tilly over my shoulder. "You open up to me. Is it because of how the others treat you?"

She nodded. "I see it every time they look at me. Wendy pities me, which is almost bearable, but the rest feel little but disgust. Nissi and Stan just try to ignore me. I don't blame them. They don't understand what h-happened--" She cut off, pressing a hand to her stomach and doubling over as if in sudden pain.

"Here," I said, quickly, "I think some of these onions are about ready. Grab a couple of hand spades, would you?"

She went for the tools, returning just a moment later. "I've been wondering something," I said, as we checked the onions for ripe bulbs. "Last week you told me you knew I was lying, that you could see it. Do you have enhanced senses like Nock?"

She nodded slowly. "It's more than that, though. Have you ever heard of mirror neurons?"

"Right, that paper from McNally mentioned them. What are they, exactly?"

Tilly drew a deep breath. "They were discovered decades ago. When you do something, reach out for that onion, for example, neurons in your brain fire to initiate that action. Researchers discovered that when you observe someone else taking that same action, some of those same neurons fire. Your brain echoes what you are seeing, relating it to your own experience of taking the same action."

"So you have more of these mirror neurons?"

Tilly nodded and smiled faintly. "I have the same compact neurons and enhanced neo-cortex that your sister had, and a greater proportion of them are mirror neurons. My brain can intuit the physical sensations and emotional states of about five people at once with maximum resolution, or dozens at lower resolution. The simulations become more effortless and accurate, the longer I am exposed to someone. Right now I can feel your concern for me, but also pride and the beginnings of excitement." She pressed a hand below her breasts. "It puts a bit of a tingle right here in my chest." 

It was eerie how precisely she had just described how I was feeling, right down to physical sensations. "It sounds like telepathy," I said. "How do you deal with all of that, when you are around multiple people?"

"It isn't telepathy, Norm. And how do you pick out a single conversation among many? I can pick one simulation out from the noise whenever I want to, then its just a matter of focusing on it. Or, I can put my mind on something else entirely and it fades to the background. If I focus on one, I feel everything that person feels, within the limits of how well I know their emotional and physiological responses. That knowledge gets better and better with time and experience."

"So what's the point of it all? I mean, it's an impressive ability, but why?"

"Well, if I know how the people around me feel, I can influence them. The whole point of it was to give me natural, automatic incentive to want to make others happy. That's the other part of it. Most people naturally feel good themselves when they have helped someone else. For me, not only do I want to make other people happy for the joy of the act, but I get to share directly in the experience of it."

The implications of what Kelly McNally and the others in her team had done, or at least had tried to do, was fascinating. "What would you do right now to make me happier?"

"Well, I told you it isn't telepathy. I can gauge reactions and recall past experience, though. Right now I can sense that this conversation is making you happy, so I have a strong urge to continue. In fact, normally it takes effort for me to not act on the that kind of impulse. And I wouldn't even notice it unless I thought about it."

"That's. . . astounding," I said, and went on more quickly in my excitement. "If there were more of your model, and you were living together, your happiness would just continue to feed back on each other, wouldn't it?"

"That's what Kelly and the others imagined. I think she hoped that one day the whole of humanity would choose to be like me. There would be no war, no crime. No one would want for anything. Every moment of every day would be one of pure joy."

My skeptic's impulse wanted to reject what she said as utopian nonsense, but I couldn't see a flaw in the reasoning. Human misery was partly a consequence of scarcity, and partly due to human nature. McNally and her team had hacked human nature itself. When I realized that, the implications were a little frightening. Her model was not just an enhancement. She was an entirely new species, one that could simply dispense with sadness. But where had she gone wrong? "This is a lot to take in," I said. Trying to reconcile what Tilly was designed to be, versus what she was now, I hit upon a thought. "Tell me, why did you get upset with me that first week when I got you to eat a bite of cookie?"

She continued working, as though she hadn't heard. I noticed that she was chewing at her lip. Finally she spoke. "There's this problem," she said. "Pleasure, happiness, a little is fine, but too much of it and I. . . something happened." Her hands began to tremble and she shook her head. She blinked a few times and returned to digging up onions in a slow, mechanical fashion.

It was so frustrating, feeling like I was close to something important, only to have her shrink back into herself. I decided to press on, taking a risk. "I know what happened to you in Cleveland," I said. I had expected that to have an effect on her, but she went on working as though I hadn't spoken. "I know that you were raped." Saying those words took made my heart ache, just like when I had read about it last week, but I went on. "But it's okay. What was done to you was unforgivable, but you are strong enough to get through it. You can heal, if you just--"

"Just what the fuck do you know?!"

Tilly's sudden scream shocked me to silence. I looked at her and shrank back at what I saw, dropping the onion in my hand. Rage and pain warred for dominance, contorting her face, as she stood. There was a tick, tick, tick and then a sharp crack as the plastic handle of the little spade in her hand shattered. I backed away more quickly, my terror of her growing by the second.

"You. . . you pretentious fuck!" She took a step towards me, shaking away bits of sharp plastic that had embedded themselves in her hand. "What do you know about me?"

"Please, Tilly," I said. My back hitched up against the glass wall of the greenhouse. "Please calm down."

She stared at me for a moment more, her chest rising and falling visibly with the violence of her breathing. She looked around, as if suddenly remembering where she was, then looked down at herself. She stared at the cuts on her hand. Slowly, she sank to the ground, sitting down on the dirt path. She laid her arms across her knees and bent her head to rest against them. She began to shake.

My heart was still beating hard in my ears as I stepped away from the glass, careful to avoid crushing more of the lettuce that I had stepped on in trying to get away from her. I wanted to run, to make for the door and get back inside the house with the others, to safety. Instead, I forced myself forward, towards the petite, sobbing woman who, just moments before, I had thought was going to attack me.

I dropped to one knee in the dirt in front of her. Tentatively, I reached out a hand to touch her arm. She jerked at the contact, but didn't pull away. I held my hand there, just letting her feel that I was present. "I'm sorry," I said.

"What's wrong with you?" Tilly said softly, still crying. "Why won't you leave me alone? Don't you see what I almost did to you?"

"I want to help you," I said.

"You can't. I'm--"

"You're not broken," I snapped, surprised by my own sudden anger.

"You don't know anything."

"So tell me," I said, almost pleading. "Tell me what's wrong."

Tilly's sobs had begun to ebb, but she would not look up at me. "Take me back in, Norm. I need to lie down."

I stood and helped her to her feet. She rubbed her face with the back of her arm as I led her outside. I felt just as drained as she seemed to be, and walked with her all the way to her room. She dropped onto the bed, still dressed in the work clothes from the greenhouse, and stared at the ceiling. I hesitated at the doorway, but I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound trite and false. I closed the door and left her there alone.

"You okay?" Wendy said, as I emerged. She and Nissi had gotten up from her spot by the television and stood waiting near the last row of rooms.

I nodded, thought better of it, then shook my head.

Nissi looked over at Wendy, then at me. "Want to talk?"

I came forward and put my arms around her. She did the same, cradling my head on her shoulder. I pulled away so that I could speak to both of them. "I think I just made a big mistake," I said.

"With Tilly?" Wendy asked.

"Yes. She was doing so much better. You saw it. But I think I made things worse." I considered taking Wendy away to speak to her in private, but decided that there was no point keeping this a secret from Nissi. Where she had mostly ignored Tilly in the past, in the last week, she had made an effort to try talking to her. I told both of them everything that had happened.

"Damn, I really wish we knew more about her," Nissi said. "And Norm, I don't know if you should keep going out there alone with her. The way you make it sound, she almost attacked you."

I sighed, looking over my shoulder at the closed door. "I'm not even sure she will go out to the greenhouse anymore."

Both of them protested, of course, but my words turned out to be truer than even I thought. Tilly stayed in her room the rest of the day and all of the next. I tried to bring her food that day, but she refused to eat it and turned to stare at the wall when I tried to talk to her. The following day, our next day to work in the greenhouse, I found her still lying in bed, unresponsive to my promptings. I checked in on her every day or two after that, but nothing I could say or do would make her acknowledge me. Wendy took over feeding her, and had more success than I had. She told me in a concerned whisper that Tilly still wasn't getting enough to eat. 

For that matter, none of us were. After the Himura-kai arrests, our next food delivery was shorter by almost half while the prices for black market food shot up. We weren't starving, exactly, but every meal left us all feeling a little hungry. The next three weekly food shipments was missed entirely, and the one to follow wasn't much better than the first. Coffee looked to be a luxury we might soon be doing without. Sasha told me in no uncertain terms that she would not dip into her hidden stockpile until it became absolutely necessary.




Double Helix Ch. 05



The CO2 generator arrived by mail order several days after the Himura-kai bust, and Sasha and I installed it after carefully dismantling and sterilizing every part of it in the shower room, taking most of a day to get done. We wouldn't see any real results from it for a few weeks, though.

I got the job at the hospital, working three nights a week. My college courses were less helpful than I would have hoped, but I liked the change of scenery and chance to meet new people. The pay was meager, but with almost no expenses of my own, any amount at all would be helpful. I had gotten a used bike cheap with some of the money I had left in my bank account, so at least I had a way to get there faster than walking.

I had intended to save the money from my job and use it to keep making improvements to the basement, but I realized that I couldn't do that in good conscience. The pay was weekly, and when I got my first paycheck, I cashed it and handed it over to Sasha without complaint or regret. She gave me only a curt "thank you". I also applied for food ration vouchers using my fake identity, but there was a backlog of paperwork, and the worker who took my case told me not to expect anything for at least a month. It made me wonder what happened to people who didn't already have a support system in place.

Nissi did her best to take my mind off our problems. Most nights, she slept with me in my room, though we used her room on occasion, when she wanted to listen to her records. Her love of music served to broaden and enhance my own. She lived and breathed it. She seemed to know every work of every single important singer, composer, songwriter, and band of the last five hundred years, and dozens I had never heard of. Sometimes she would start off onto some obscure point of theory or bit of trivia and I would just listen and nod, often completely lost, but enjoying her company and her excitement for her topic.

I started learning a martial art, quite by accident, and from an unlikely source. One morning I had woken up earlier than usual and slipped out of bed to see if anyone had put on coffee yet. Passing by Wendy's room, I could hear slow rhythmic steps on the concrete. I found that Nock had put coffee on and I poured myself a cup with a grateful nod. On my way back, I stopped, curious. "Are you in there, Wendy?" I asked.

"Yeah, you need something?" she asked, pausing for just a moment before resuming whatever she was doing.

I pushed the curtain aside carefully. Wendy stood, hands held out in front of her, knees bent, one foot in front of the other. As I watched, she lifted one foot, pivoted, and moved both hands as if knocking a blow aside in slow motion. She stopped and looked over at me expectantly, one hand held in a fist up above her face and the other out in front of her.

"Oh, sorry," I said, suddenly embarrassed. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's okay," she said. "I was almost finished anyway."

"What was that?"

"T'ai chi Chu'an," she said, in a passable Chinese accent--Mandarin, if I wasn't mistaken. "It means 'supreme ultimate fist'. You want to learn?"

She guided me through some simple forms, relating how she had started learning it twenty years earlier, when her job began to demand more from her and she started keeping late hours at the research lab. She had taken a simple self-defense course, but felt like she wanted something with more form and discipline.

"What does that have to do with these forms?" I asked. The slow movements didn't seem to me to be a very effective way to fight.

"The forms teach you correct posture, balance and movement. Watch."

She abruptly launched a series of open-handed strikes and low kicks, pivoting smoothly as though fighting multiple opponents. I whistled appreciatively when she stopped, breathing hard. "When do I get to learn that?"

"We'll see how quickly you learn the basics. Maybe a few weeks. Try getting up a half hour earlier and come see me tomorrow morning."

Three weeks since the events in the greenhouse, after a delicious but less than filling lunch of rice noodle soup, I was sitting next to Nissi at the table. Her hand was on my knee and she had been making pretty obvious innuendos, a sure sign that she wanted to sneak off to my room with me for a bit of fun. All thoughts of that went out of my head when I heard a crash and Wendy's shout. "Norm! Norm, come quick!"

I threw a glance at Nissi and jumped up, heading back to Tilly's room. Next to the door, the remnants of a bowl lay scattered around a puddle of soup. I stepped over it to get inside, spotting Wendy kneeling next to Tilly, who lay on the bed. Wendy turned at the sound of my approach. Her voice shook as she spoke. "She got a box knife, Norm. She's bleeding." She had a hand clamped over Tilly's wrist, and blood welled between her fingers. More of it dripped from Tilly's limp hand and into the large plastic mop bucket that was normally stored next to the bathroom. I knew that it held about four gallons, and from the amount of blood in it, Tilly had already lost at least a few pints.

"Let me," I said. When Wendy didn't understand, I shouted at her. "Move, Wendy!"

Wendy scrambled out of the way. I took Tilly's arm and gingerly examined the wound. It was deep, not a hesitation cut as her first few scars probably had been. I clamped my hand around the cut to put pressure on it. "I need the first aid kit," I said.

This time Wendy moved immediately, running for the kit that was next to the basement pantry. She almost collided with Nissi coming the other way and I heard her apologize before dashing on.

"Oh my God," Nissi said, taking the scene in.

"Go, get Sasha now!" I yelled. "And tell the others to keep back. They'll just get in the way."

Alone with Tilly, I gave myself a moment to think about what I could do here. I had gotten my four year degree in biology, intending to go into med school, but had changed my mind and gone for a PhD instead. I had plenty of theory. What I lacked was practical knowledge and experience. My time at the hospital had filled in some gaps, but I was hardly a real doctor. If I made a mistake now, Tilly could die because of it.

I caught that thought, held it for a moment and crushed it. If I did nothing, her death was almost a certainty. I needed to know how bad she was. Her eyes were partway closed. I asked if she could hear me and she mumbled something incoherent. Her skin was pale, cool and clammy. I felt at her neck for a pulse. It was fast and weak. She was already in shock.

"Here, I got it," Wendy said, putting the first-aid kit down on the floor and opening it for me.

"I want to get this bandaged first," I said. "Get some gauze and bandages ready."

"On it," Wendy said, finding the items for me.

"Gauze," I said. I took it from her with my free hand and pressed it onto the wound. "Now start wrapping. Make it tight, but not too tight, got it?" I let her finish dressing the sound and cleaned off my own blood-soaked hands with some of the gauze. "Keep pressure on that, please."

I heard footsteps outside a few moments before Sasha appeared. Her gaze jumped from Tilly, to me, to the bucket of blood on the floor. She hissed something in Russian and snatched her phone from her pocket. I waited while she called her agency contact and explained the situation. There was a heated exchange for a moment, ending with Sasha saying, "You will do better than that. If she doesn't pull through this, I'll come down there myself and beat the living shit out of you, you understand?"

She punched the button to hang up the phone and addressed me. "An hour, they say, possibly longer, to get help here. Will she last that long?"

"Hard to say," I said. "She's in shock. She might go into a coma if we don't get her blood pressure up soon."

"What do you need? Tell me and I'll get it."

I thought furiously. We could get Tilly to the nearest hospital in about ten minutes. They could probably save her life, but they would also perform a routine test for genemod markers. They would take her into custody, they would revert her, and the FBI would open an investigation on whoever had brought her in. There was no option there. "You said you had medical supplies stocked. Where?"

"Five minutes from here."

Do you have blood?"

"No."

I knew that had been a long shot. You can't freeze blood, so it couldn't be stored long term. "Any plasma?"

"No."

"Empty blood packs?"

"No, sorry."

"Saline? Sutures? Antibiotics?" I got a nod for each one. "IV catheters?" I held my breath for the answer. She nodded and I felt a surge of hope. "She needs a transfusion. Do you have medical records for everyone here?"

A sharp nod. "Yes."

"Go get everything I mentioned, as fast as you can. When you get back to the house, I need blood types. We need a match for Tilly. Can you do that?"

"On it," she said, racing away.

Stan appeared in the doorway. "Norm, is there anything I can do to help?"

I pushed the bucket towards him. "Find out how much blood is in there. Be as exact as you can."

"You got it."

"Norm, I'm scared." The words from Tilly were slurred and barely audible. Her eyes kept trying to close.

"Just hold on, stay with us," I told her firmly. "You're going to be okay." I tried to will myself to believe the words. I didn't know if Tilly could sense a lie in her weakened state, but I didn't want to chance it.

I heard what sounded like an argument starting up outside. "Stay here and talk to her," I told Wendy. "Try not to let her fall asleep." I got up to go check what was happening.

"You had to have seen her," Nissi said.

"Yeah, she came out last night. I didn't think anything of it." Nock's voice this time.

I emerged into the main room to find Nissi and Nock standing six feet apart, Nissi slowly advancing on him as she gesticulated. Her voice rose in volume. "She hasn't left her room in over two weeks. So she comes out here, gets a box cutter and a bucket, and you don't even say anything? She's bleeding to death in there, you asshole!"

"I didn't know," Nock protested. "She does weird stuff sometimes. I just leave her alone."

"Hey!" I yelled at them both. Nissi ignored me and started browbeating Nock again. I didn't have time for this. "Nissi, shut up!" I might as well have slapped her, by the look on her face. I went on. "You're right, she is dying, but we're going to save her, so I need you to lay off the blaming right now, got it?"

"Yeah," she said, somehow managing to sound both angry and contrite.

Shaking my head, I hurried to the bathroom to scrub down.

"Norm." Stansy stood in the doorway. "What can I do to help?"

"Do you have a pad and paper?"

"Sure, be right back."

"Norm!" Wendy's cry was panicked. I shook the water from my hands as I ran back to Tilly's room. 

"She's unconscious," Wendy said. "I kept talking to her, but she passed out and won't wake up."

"That's okay," I said. "You didn't do anything wrong." 

"My God, she really did it," Stansy said, stepping into the room behind me.

I turned to her. "I need you to take notes. Wendy, I need a timer. Give me fifteen seconds." I felt for Tilly's pulse. "Mark."

Wendy looked at her watch, counting the seconds. "Mark."

Tilly's pulse was close to 140. Not good. I did all the tests I could think to try with what I had available in the med kit and in the room. I didn't think she was in a coma, but it was bad. Probably stage four shock.

Stan appeared in the doorway. "It's just over three pints, Norm. Call it three and a quarter." Stansy jotted this down as he said it.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, Norm."

I just nodded, though I wanted to curse. Given her size, that had to be close to half her blood volume.

"I am here," Sasha said, hauling a plastic bag full of medical supplies. She handed me several sheets of paper. I rifled through until I found Tilly's. "She's A negative," I said, gesturing for Stansy to write it down. "Possible donors are. . . Nock. He's A negative, too. I flipped through the papers again, checking to be sure. There's, um, there's no one else." I couldn't keep a note of panic from my voice. I was going to need at least two pints of blood, and I couldn't take that much from Nock without endangering his health. 

"What about me?" Sasha said. "I'm O negative. Will that help?"

I gave her shoulder a squeeze, almost laughing in my relief. "Yes, that will work."

I found a box of rubber gloves in the supplies and pulled on a pair. I began to set up the saline IV to boost Tilly's blood pressure, and Wendy was looking dubiously at the items that Sasha had brought. "How are we planning to collect the blood? We don't have any blood packs."

"I'm not sure yet," I said. I recalled that Wendy had been a biochemist before she went into hiding. "Do you think you can improvise something with what we have in the house?"

Wendy considered a moment. "I think so. Maybe. Can I borrow Nissi and Stan?"

"Yeah, go."

Wendy grabbed some tubing from the supplies Sasha had brought and hurried out.

Sasha was staring at Tilly. Moving slowly and carefully, she lowered herself onto the top of the dresser opposite the bed. "This is my fault," she said, "my responsibility. Whatever happens--"

"We'll deal with that if we come to it," I said. Like hell, this is your fault, I thought to myself. I had been the one to push Tilly over the edge. "Go get Nock in here."

Sasha returned with him a few moments later.

"You need my blood?" Nock said, his brow furrowed over those slit-pupiled eyes.

"It's the only way we can save Tilly."

"Okay, I'm in."

I started readying my supplies. "We don't have anything to store it in yet, but I want to get you prepped."

"Shit, I hate needles," he said with a shudder, when he saw the catheter. He sat on the ground and rolled up his sleeve. "This gonna hurt?"

I grinned wryly as I rubbed alcohol on his arm. "I have a small confession to make. I've done IVs before at the hospital, but only back of the hand. We'll have to do your median-cubital, up here inside your elbow. You'll be my second try at this. Tilly was my first."

"Oh, that's just great," he said. 

"Squeeze your hand in a fist, please."

Nock averted his eyes as I brought the catheter close to his arm. I slid the needle into the vein in a quick jerk of movement I had learned, blowing out the breath I had been holding when blood quickly seeped up into the clear tubing. It looked like I had hit the vein dead on. I closed off the tube and taped him up quickly. "Not so bad, huh?" I said.

Nock looked at his arm in surprise. "Hey, yeah. Just a little sting. Not too bad."

I checked on Tilly. About half the saline was gone, so I took her pulse again. It had slowed slightly. The saline solution was bringing her blood volume up, but we really needed to replace her lost blood cells.

"Now you," I said, and got to work on Sasha. She sat through the process without complaint or comment, other than to pull out her phone several times to see if her contact had messaged her. When it was done, I knelt by Tilly's bedside, checking her vital signs about once per minute and reporting them to Stansy to write down.

"Norm," Wendy said behind me. I turned. She was wearing rubber gloves and carried in her hand a one quart canning jar. The tubing she had taken had been connected somehow to a pair of rubber grommets that went through a hole in the lid and gripped the tubing tightly, forming a seal. One tube snaked down to the bottom of the jar while the other ended just inside. There was even a small hand pump that had been fitted to attach to the smaller tube as a bellows. "We made a transfusion flask. Will it work?"

I stood and moved closer. "You sterilized it?"

"Of course. Stan and Nissi are finishing up the second one. One of them will be down with it any minute."

I took the apparatus from her and examined it. "I think it might work. Now I'm just worried about clotting."

Wendy shook her head. "Sasha had sodium citrate on hand for canning. We made a solution from it. There's some already in the bottom of the jar."

"Wendy, I could kiss you." I hooked the improvised flask up to Nock's catheter and opened the tube. I used a felt pen to mark the bottle at just over a pint. "Keep squeezing your arm," I told him. "It will help pump the blood out faster."

Nissi arrived with the second flask and I hooked Sasha up. I checked on Tilly again when that was done. Her pulse had definitely slowed some more, but she was still unconscious. "Hang on," I whispered to her. The waiting was nerve-wracking. I knew that it took time to draw off blood, but I kept thinking how every moment brought Tilly closer to dying. I used some of that time to suture her wound closed and re-bandage, with Wendy's help. As Nock's jar neared the level I had marked, I moved close, poised to disconnect him the moment it was reached. "There," I said, closing off the tube.

I quickly swapped out the nearly empty saline bag and replaced it with the jar, working the pump a few times to prime the pressure. Once I was sure that the blood was moving into the tubing and that there was no air in the lines, I slumped back against the wall. I was feeling shaky and a little sick. Close to forty-five minutes had passed since Wendy had first found Tilly, and I was starting to come down from my adrenaline high. Still, I had to remember to pump the jar at regular intervals to keep the pressure inside up

"I'm done," Sasha said, bringing me back to full awareness. I went to unhook her.

"What—what's happening?" Tilly said. Her voice rasped.

Wendy moved in quickly to calm her while I worked on Sasha. "You're going to be okay," she said, stroking a hand through Tilly's hair.

I finished up and came back to Tilly's side with the flask of Sasha's blood. I could see her gaze darting around, taking it all in. "You're giving me a transfusion? Why?"

I checked the flask. It was nearly time to change it, so I stayed at the ready, poised above Tilly. "You would have died without it," Wendy said. The admonishment in her voice was clear. Tilly looked away in shame. "But we're glad you're back with us," Wendy added.

"I wanted to die," she said, so softly that I doubted that anyone in the room but Nock or myself would hear. "I can't live with this anymore." The desolation in those words went straight to my core. For just an instant, I felt an echo of what she must have felt.

"That's enough of that talk." The rumbling source of those words surprised me enough to take my focus off the transfusion flask for a moment. That had been Nock. "You're going to live. You're going to get this problem figured out. But first you're going to thank the people that saved your life. You understand me, girl?"

Tilly stared wide-eyed at Nock, as if seeing him for the first time. "I'm sorry, Nock. And thank you."

I clamped the tube and changed out the empty flask for Sasha's full one while the others had words with Tilly. She didn't speak much, but she acted much more like the woman she had been before our last session in the greenhouse. I removed the needles from Nock and Sasha's arms and bandaged them up. "Okay, everyone out," I said. "Tilly needs her rest."

After they had gone, Tilly spoke to me. "Stansy and Nock don't despise me any more." Her voice had a touch of awe in it. "Why is that, Norm?"

I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. "Empathy," I said. "Human beings are funny that way. Most of us have the ability to understand and empathize with another person's pain, but we also have the capacity to ignore it. What you did today made them realize how deeply your pain goes. They finally understand what it has done to you."

"Sometimes I think I'd like to not know what everyone is feeling. You're all so worried about me. And worried that I'll try this again, I think."




Double Helix Ch. 05



"You won't, will you?" When she didn't answer, I went on. "Tilly, we have to work this out. You've got something tearing you up inside. You're going to need to face it." Again, I was met with silence. I looked up to see that the flask was nearly empty. I waited until it had drained nearly to the bottom of the jar before I clamped it off and removed the catheter from her arm. "Okay, get some rest, then."

I heard footsteps running down the stairs as I emerged and shook my head at the irony of it. "She's resting comfortably," I said to the two medics when they reached the bottom, agency contractors by the look of them. They were dressed in dark blue jumpsuits with no logo and carried plastic cases. "There's a notepad in there with a record of everything I did."

The pair thanked me and went back to Tilly's room. One of them emerged less than a minute later, shaking his head. "There isn't much to do," he said. "That was a hell of a job. Are you a doctor?"

"I almost was," I said. "Pre-med biology track, even passed the MCAT with a 40. But I decided I would rather teach."

"Well, she's sleeping, and in good condition, considering. I'm going to stay overnight to monitor her, but I'll let Nick go." He threw a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the other medic still in Tilly's room. "I'm Mike, by the way. Not my real name, but you know how it is." He put out his hand and I gave it a shake. 

"Just call me Norm. Not my real name either." 

When Nick had gone and Mike had returned to Tilly's side, I went to find Nissi. She was lying on her bed, music turned down low. My brows rose at the explicit lyrics. "Gangsta Gangsta," she said, shrugging, "NWA."

"I wanted to tell you I'm sorry I snapped at you," I said.

"Norm, just because I'm listening to gangsta rap doesn't mean I'm mad at you."

"Nissi, I know you better than that."

She frowned. "True. But you don't deserve it. It's just that you've never yelled at me before. I was being a bitch and you called me on it. And what you did in there for Tilly. . . You don't need to apologize to me."

"What I did for Tilly? Nissi, I'm the reason she tried to kill herself."

"Is that what you think? You think this is your fault? Norm, has it ever occurred to you that you can't take care of everyone all the time?"

I thought of the people in LA that had suffered because of my poor choice. "I pushed her too hard, too fast. She wasn't ready. Maybe it was wrong for me to try treating her."

"You did your best. No one else was even willing to try. Even the agency gave up on her. You need to stop doubting yourself."

I wanted to tell her about Sharon and the safe house, felt a sudden need to confess it, to give credence to my own self-doubt and make her understand. But I also feared seeing rejection and betrayal in those green eyes. Sasha's demand that I not reveal my crime sealed the deal. "I'll talk to Sasha, I guess," I said. I could trust her to be objective. If I had acted poorly, as I felt that I had, Sasha would not pull punches with me.

"So tell me, Norm," Nissi said, "have you ever tried anal sex?"

I gawked at her. "Whoa, where did that come from?"

"I'm changing the subject. Try to keep up, my cute, geeky darling. Now answer the question."

Ice Cube's boasts and threats filled the silence. "Okay. Yes. Once."

"You mean you tried it one time?"

I grimaced. "Yeah, we were drunk." 

"With a girl?"

I laughed. "Yes, with a girl." I felt my cock getting hard at the memory, despite the outcome of that encounter.

"Your idea or hers?"

"Mine, I think. I was nineteen. I barely knew her. Her name was Stacey. No, Tracey. It didn't work out too well." In our drunken state, it had been our solution to having no birth control. We had used saliva for lube and I had tried to push into her before she was ready. Her pained exclamation and warning to stop had cut right through the alcohol haze of my teenage brain. And that had been my one and only time with Tracey.

"Ah, the things we do when we're plastered. Care to try again with a sober girl?"

"Uh, what brought this up?"

Nissi laid a hand on the bulge in my pants and gave it a little squeeze. "Oh, I was just thinking about a certain move you made in the shower a few weeks ago. It made a big impression."

The idea excited me. Since that one attempt, I had been a little afraid to ask for it from anyone since, afraid I might hurt my partner or push her away in disgust. "Sure, we can try it," I said. I attempted not to sound too eager.

"Tonight," she said, stroking her hand over my cock, once, twice, before pulling away. "After your shift. Be ready for me."

It was tough, going to work when I really just wanted to stay near Tilly and make sure she was alright. It looked like everyone was in bed when I got home around 11:30, so I went to check on her. Mike was there, sitting in a chair he had pulled from the main room. Though I was tired, I wanted to ask about Tilly's condition and ended up chatting with him. He was a little older than me and had been a combat medic in the army. He spoke low to keep from waking Tilly. "They deployed us to Costa Rica in '06. You remember the 'Central America policing action'?"

I told him a bit of what I knew. The Rot had started in California and crept eastward. That alone had destroyed about 1/6th of the nation's total agriculture in the first month. It quickly jumped the Rockies and began to cross the Midwest plain states, wiping out corn, soy and wheat crops within a single growing season. Its northward progress was slowed somewhat by immigration and import restrictions hurriedly put into place by the Canadian government, sparing the agricultural regions of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario for two more years.

Geography was the main limiting factor that kept the Rot out of Mexico, but that nation had far less success regulating movement of people and goods across its border with the United States. Once it had gained a foothold in the farming areas of the northern gulf region in the spring of 2005, the Rot swept southward, killing off naturally growing grasses and shrubs and marching inevitably towards the other major growing areas to the south and west. Mass starvation struck Mexico at about the same time, as food prices skyrocketed and US food exports to Mexico plummeted. Those exports stopped entirely in the fall of '05, when the US congress passed the Emergency Agricultural Protection Act, nationalizing farming and food distribution.

With millions dying, Mexico had lashed out in desperation in the early months of 2006, invading Guatemala and Costa Rica within the space of a few months to gain access to the rich farmlands of these nations. The Mexican Army and Navy swept aside the relatively small Guatemalan military, and Costa Rica had possessed no standing army at all. Within a month, the capitals of both nations were captured. That victory proved to be frustratingly incomplete, however, as insurgents based in the inland regions of both countries put constant pressure on occupying Mexican forces, Costa Rican guerrillas even going so far as to set fire to crops rather than let them be harvested and shipped north.

These invasions did not go unnoticed by the United States. After much debate and condemnations of Mexico's actions from both sides of the political spectrum, the McCain administration prepared a massive military response, the first time that US military would be deployed in war in nearly a century. The Mexican air and naval forces were quickly overwhelmed by the arrival of two US carrier strike groups. The deployment of army and marine ground forces in following weeks seemed like a formality, as Mexican forces were already withdrawing. The US military did not pull back as expected, though, once both nations were liberated. 

New trade agreements with Guatemala and Costa Rica were negotiated and pushed through Congress in record time. Honduras followed suit soon after, making the US the sole agricultural trading partner for all three nations, with minimum export quotas.

Mike picked up the narrative. "But the insurgents felt, understandably so, that they had just exchanged one occupier for another. Attacks on US installations slowly increased in frequency and severity, and the guerrillas burned the crops of local farmers who complied with the new trade mandates. So the United States escalated. I was attached to one of several battalions tasked with hunting the insurgents in the mountains all around Costa Rica's Central Valley, Operation Pura Vida." 

He shook his head. "It was a—pardon my French—a clusterfuck. We thought our superior technology made us invulnerable, but the insurgents had the advantage in the mountains. It was one embarrassing failure after another as we tried to find them and wipe them out. And the more we fought, the more people sided with the insurgency, often in secret. We had the numerical advantage only on paper, and we were never safe. They started to strap bombs to people and send them in to popular soldier hangouts. Sometimes even little kids. We responded by razing whole villages if it was even suspected that they harbored insurgents. Half my company had been killed in action by the time I was rotated out of combat. A few months later, the Rot started appearing in pockets in the coffee and sugar cane plantations all over Central America. By the end of 2009, oranges and pineapples were about the only things coming out of there. Such a cost in human lives, and for what? When my term was over, I didn't bother to re-up."

"So how did you end up working for the agency?"

"Two reasons. First, I don't buy into the propaganda about the purity of humanity and all that crap."

"Neither do I," I said. I tended to think that most people thought the same, but that was probably naïve. Both the religious right and the egalitarian left denounced genemods, for obvious reasons.

"The other reason is that the government's response to the Rot is so completely backwards and stupid that it has to be motivated by an agenda. The whole world is faced with a threat that is almost certainly a product of genetic engineering. Why outlaw the only technology that has a chance of defeating that threat?"

I shrugged. "Maybe it was precedent. The same thing happened in the 70s."

"Right, the Berlin Accord. Interesting that you should mention that."

The Berlin Accord of 1978 had been an international agreement to limit access to and development of computer systems. The agreement had come about in part due to a body of work published by Norbert Weiner, in which he projected how the then-current rate of advance in computing power would lead to human-level intelligent machines by the late 1990s. Wiener laid out in detail how this development would disrupt society at every level. He had also outlined how, if we were not careful, the birth of AI might signal the end of humanity.

To prevent such a possibility, further research into AI and processing power was to be closely monitored by the various governments of the world, and strict limits were placed on the computing power that private individuals and firms could own without special license. It reversed a trend towards smaller, faster, and cheaper home computers and servers. Instead, computing power began to be consolidated into large data centers called computing service providers. Those data centers would sell computing time at metered or flat monthly rates to users, who would utilize cheap, dumb terminals for access to it.

"Advances in information technology have stagnated ever since," Mike said. "They effectively broke Turing's Law. But that wasn't even the point. The powers that be weren't afraid of AI. That was just a pretense. No, what they're really afraid of is that their grasp over our lives is slipping. Every step forward in both genetics and computing research is one step closer to a free humanity. 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'. Well, what happens when no one feels like they need a patriarchal government to look after them anymore?"

I felt a little uncomfortable, the way you get embarrassed for someone who is very passionate about an idea that you disagree with. "I don't know, Mike. Things have gotten out of hand in the last few decades, but we were doing fine before then. We need the police and the military to keep the peace, for a start. Then there's a social safety net, and regulations to keep corporations in check."

He smiled, a little indulgently, I thought. "I think it might be fun to try to convince you otherwise, but I know it's late. Maybe another time, eh?"

I told Mike about Tilly's depression and apparent PTSD and asked his opinion of what I should do. 

"Talk to an agency rep," he said.

"Sasha tried that," I said. "And she got nowhere. They won't help."

"Huh." That had genuinely surprised him. "I wouldn't know, then."

"Yeah, that's what I was afraid you would say."

"Hey, tell you what." He took out a pen and small spiral notepad from his jumpsuit and wrote on it. He ripped off the page and held it out. "Here's my cell phone number. If you have a problem like this again, give me a call direct. If I can, I'll drop everything and head over here."

I took the note and pocketed it. "I appreciate that. I hope I don't have to use it." I started to go, but then had a thought. "Do you have somewhere to sleep?" I asked.

"No, but I'll just stay up with her. Have a good night, Norm."

I went to take a shower before heading back to my room. When I turned on the light, I was surprised, but delighted, to find a naked elf lying on my bed, her back to me so that the sumptuous curves of her hips and ass were on full display. "What were you two talking about in there?" she asked.

"Guy stuff," I said. "You know, war, computers."

"Women?"

"Yeah. Mike says you have a nice ass."

Her brows raised. "Did he now?"

"He said it looks so good, he wishes he could taste it."

"Mm. That's nice. What else did Mike say?"

"He told me that he hopes you're still planning to do what you said earlier today."

"Mike said that? Did you really tell your new friend that I want you to fuck me in the ass?"

The dirty talk had an instant effect on my cock. Already growing at the sight of her naked body, it twitched, pushing almost painfully against my clothing. "Well, I don't usually like to brag to people I just met, but. . ."

"Are you just going to stand there all night, or are you going to get out of those clothes?"

"My, you are the horny Eledhrim tonight," I said, as I started to undress.

"Oh, I love it when you speak Sindarin," Nissi said breathlessly. "I need to be fucked so badly." She lay on her back and bucked her hips suggestively. "Come ravish your elven beauty, my Edain lover." She flipped over and wiggled her butt at me. "Come bury your hard human cock in my wicked elven cunt." She paused and winked. "I'm not overdoing it, am I?"

In spite of the fact that she was making fun of me, her coaxing was having very real effects on my mind and body. I raised a finger and thumb, separated slightly. "Just a bit, maybe."

She flopped back over, sat up and crossed her feet in a lotus pose, taking on an imperious air that was pretty well ruined by her complete nudity. She spoke with a faux English accent. "Well then, shall we begin with the affirmations of romantic attachment and then proceed anon to the varied acts of sexual congress?"

"That sounds right lovely, it does," I said in a bad cockney accent. "Might I lick the royal cunt, yer majesty?" I asked.

"If you must, oh boorish rustic," she said, and lay back in a manner that I can only describe as "elegant", considering the circumstances.

I kissed my way up the inside of her thighs, eliciting comments like, "Oh, that is most inappropriate, young man," and "is that any way to serve your queen?" delivered in that coolly disdainful tone. I snickered, forcing a laugh from her as well. "Young man," she said, controlling her humor with an effort, "this reminds me of the time I was having tea with the ambassador of Finland. Charming old fellow. We had a most animated discussion about the imposition of an excise tax on--oh!" I had just lapped at Nissi's inner labia with my tongue. "Excuse me," she said. "Something I ate, perhaps. As I was saying, we were talking about an excise tax on text—ah. . .yeah."

"You lost your accent, milady," I said, after I finished running my tongue along the length of her pussy.

"Nonsense. There is nothing wrong with m-my manner of—oh fuck!"

"Gesundheit, your highness," I said. "I have good news. I think I just discovered the royal clitoris."

"Well done," she said, barely holding her accent as she giggled. "Your queen commands you to launch another expedition immediately."

I had never laughed so hard or so much during sex as I did that night. When Nissi finally came, three fingers deep inside her, she had tears in her eyes and my stomach were hurting. As soon as she recovered from her orgasm she started up again, commending me for my selfless and noble service to the crown. "Stop, please! It hurts," I said. I climbed up next to her on the bed and collapsed, giggling in spite of my best effort to stop.

"Oh my God," she said. "Did that just happen?"

"It was rather silly," I said with a grin.

"Monty Python silly," she agreed.

"Not at all what was expecting," I said, groaning silently at myself for what I knew was about to come next.

Nissi delivered the line perfectly. "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

"No, don't make me laugh," I protested, holding my arms across my stomach. 

"Okay, okay, I'll stop," she said.

We lay together, her in my arms, for all of maybe a minute before she asked, "So, you aren't done then, right?"

I poked her side with my erection, softened somewhat from its raging hardness a few minutes earlier.

"Lay on your back," she said.

I did as she asked and she reversed on the bed and straddled my body, settling into one of her favorites, 69. I felt warm pleasure on my cock as her mouth slipped around it, and her pussy hovered over my face. I began to lick and nibble at it, but she shifted slightly, moving herself further down my body. "You said you wanted to taste my ass, Norm," she said.

I could have protested that it was "Mike" who had said that, but I had other things on my mind. Without hesitation or any real reflection of what I was doing, I ran my tongue down from the base of Nissi's pussy, across the narrow strip of skin between and across her rosebud. "Oh God, that's good," she said, and began to attack my cock with renewed vigor. 

I had never rimmed someone before, but I found the mechanics to be pretty simple, not too dissimilar from cunnilingus. I had expected the taste to be a distraction at best, but I found nothing to detract from the heady experience. Nissi was in heaven, and showed her appreciation by lavishing her attention on my cock with her mouth and fingers. "Use your fingers," she said. "Lube on the dresser." She bent lower to take one of my balls into her mouth.

"Oh, damn, that's good," I said, as she rolled into gently in her mouth. I got my finger good and wet with lube and teased her asshole with it, spreading the lube liberally over it. Coating my finger again, I began to put gentle pressure on her sphincter. It resisted at first, but I waited for a bit and it relaxed suddenly, letting me slip inside.

"Oh yes," Nissi breathed, and made happy noises as her mouth closed over my cock once more.

I moved my finger slightly inside her, curling and twisting it to find out what she liked. There was a lot of resistance at first, despite the slippery lube, but she seemed to be loosening as an experimental tug caused my finger to slide easily out to the first knuckle. I slid it back inside and a kind of shiver went through her. I thrust it into and out of her a few times, testing how relaxed she was. Nissi paused when she felt me withdraw my one finger and press two together against her hole. I hesitated, not sure she was ready after all. 




Double Helix Ch. 06



Note: Thanks once again to literknight for editing. The sex takes a backseat to the storyline in this chapter, and chapter 7 is currently in the works. 

*

"I've been on suicide watch, haven't I? That's what all of this has been about." It had been six days since Tilly's attempt to take her own life. In that time, she had hardly been left alone for more than two minutes except late at night. Everyone had come to visit her, singly or in groups, even Sasha's mother Nonna, who had taken a liking to Tilly immediately, despite having only spoken to her once before, when she had first arrived at the house. For the late night hours, I had gotten Nock's promise to monitor her for me. Even with her walls to muffle the noise, Nock would hear if she woke and would come check on her if she did not come out or go right back to sleep.

I waited to answer until I had finished counting Tilly's pulse. "So, do you mean to say you aren't contemplating suicide any more?" I asked.

Tilly shrugged and looked away.

"All of your vitals look good. It's been six days now. I'd say you are fully recovered. So you need to come join us for lunch." The others were already gathering in the main room.

She looked at me and shook her head slowly. "No, I'd rather not. Can you just send Wendy in with my food?"

"Tilly," I said, exasperated, "why do you insist on trying to go back to what you were before? You aren't that same dull, lifeless person you used to be, not even when you try."

"I know," she said. "But it was a mistake. It's better if I just—just keep to myself, you know?"

"Or you can let me help you get past it."

"Norm, there's a dark place," she said haltingly. "A place in the back of my mind. What's in there, I don't dare let out. I don't dare to even look at it. Don't try to make me. I can't do it."

"What if that's what you need? What if that's the only way to heal?"

She shook her head. "No, you don't get it. There's no healing there. There's only. . . what you saw that day. That. . . that rage. I think I might have killed you if I hadn't come to my senses."

"Hello," Nissi said through the open door. "Nock couldn't help overhearing that Tilly doesn't feel like coming out to have lunch." She stepped into the room holding two bowls of soup, one of which she gave to Tilly. "So, we're having lunch in here with you."

When she said it, everyone else filed into the room one by one, filling the tiny room to overflowing. Stan brought me a bowl along with his own. They all began to converse at once, just as we would have if we were having lunch at the table, and the noise became almost uncomfortable. Tilly looked visibly perturbed at first, but the mood must have started to infect her and she sat up in bed with a faint smile on her face, watching everyone talking and laughing.

Stansy went over to sit next to Tilly, speaking earnestly with her for a few minutes. When she was done, Stansy wiped tears from her eyes, a gesture that Tilly mimicked almost perfectly just a moment later. "So Tilly," Wendy said loudly, which cued the others to quiet down. "If you don't come out and sit with us for dinner, we're going to come back in here and spill food all over your things again." She pointed to a wet spot where soup had dripped from Stan's spoon onto Tilly's dresser, making an irregular orange circle in the dust there. "That's not a warning. That's a promise."

A laugh went up at that, and the conversations resumed. After a bit, Stan and Stansy left, followed a few minutes later by Nock, Wendy, and Nissi. I shook my head in amusement, wondering whose idea it had been for this little stunt. "Do you mind me asking what Stansy said to you?" I said to Tilly, once we were alone.

One corner of Tilly's mouth twitched in a smile. "She said you told all of them about how I sense and absorb the emotions of those around me, and how she and Nock were sorry that their feelings toward me helped to keep me isolated from all of you. I told her that I forgave them, that it really wasn't their fault since they didn't know."

"How did that make her feel?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. "Really good," she said. "It made Stansy feel a lot better to know that. Nock, too."

"It was easier to hide away in here when no one liked you, wasn't it?"

She looked down, her good mood dissipating. When she spoke, the fear in her words was palpable. "You aren't going to let this go, are you, Norm?"

"You can't go back to what you were. That's no way to live."

She sat there in silence for some time, ignoring my presence, so I stood and let myself out.

Heading into the main room, I caught sight of Stan and Stansy seated together at the computer. Stansy looked upset, alternately shaking her head in disbelief and propping her chin up with a hand while she read the screen. I stood there until I made eye contact with Stansy and she waved me over. "Hey, Norm," she said, and cleared her throat gently. "I emailed my son, just like you suggested."

"Wow, that's great," I said carefully. "So Stan helped you set up a proxy and helped you hide your tracks, right?"

"Yeah," she said. "Oh, yeah, Stan was great." She gave his hand a squeeze, possibly the first open sign of affection I had ever seen her give him. It was hard to believe that these two had a sexual relationship. "No problem there. And Chris even got it. And he even responded. Maybe um, maybe you want to have a look?"

I came around the desk and crouched behind it where I could get a look at the screen. Stansy moved the page up so that I could read from the top.

"Mother,

You know, this is really screwed up. It's been SEVEN YEARS since Dad and I have heard anything from you. NOW you want to write me and tell me how much you 'love' me and hope one day that we can see each other again? Guess your conscience finally caught up with you, huh? Well, guess what? It's too late. You should have thought of that BEFORE you ran off. If Dad and I really meant anything to you, you would have stayed. Instead, you thought your precious genes were more important than us.

Dad held out hope for a long time that you'd come back. Whenever I asked him about you, he kept saying that maybe you'd change your mind and come home to us. I finally figured out that you weren't coming home, though I think it took Dad longer. He's got a girlfriend now, by the way, so he did stop waiting for you, in case you were wondering.

If you're really serious about wanting to see me, why don't you do the world a favor and revert your mod already? It's people like you that have turned this country into a hell hole. If you do, don't bother showing up here, though. I'm still pissed at you, especially now that you're writing me, trying to weasel your way back into my life. Maybe I'll forgive you someday. Yeah, fat chance.

Chris."

"That bastard," Stansy said, shaking in her anger. "My husband filed for divorce after one week, but it looks like he never told Chris that. He's made me out to be some kind of heartless bitch."

"He's poisoned the well," Stan said. "Pretty natural thing to do, really, not that it's excusable."

"Now I wish I'd never written him. He was such a sweet kid. That's how I'd like to remember him. Not like this."

"And now he's a teenager," I said, "not a little kid. You have to keep that in mind. Look, one good thing. It doesn't look like he talked to your ex-husband. Seems like he decided to tell you off himself and save Dad the trouble."

"Yeah, that is something," Stansy agreed. "So what should I do now?"

"What do you think you should do?" I said.

Stansy snorted at my throwing the question back at her. "Okay, then. I think I should write him again. Maybe try to explain myself and why I felt I had to leave."

"Tell me why you left," I prompted.

She thought for a moment. "I left because they wanted to change me. They wanted to put things in my body and destroy who I was. I wouldn't have been the same person when they finished."

"That's a good start. Maybe work on some of that purist prejudice, too. It sounds like he's had his head filled up with a lot of nonsense, not just from his father, but probably from his education too. If he's a smart kid, he'll start to realize the contradictions in the things he's been taught."

She sighed. "I don't know. I'm afraid that whatever I say is just going to push him further away. I'd like to tell him what a lying asshole his father is, but I do know enough to realize that won't help. I'll think about it."

I needed to take the laundry upstairs, so I gathered the bags and started up, but paused when I saw a red "X" flashing on the bottom right of the monitor mounted near the door. Moving more quietly, I climbed to the top. The pinhole camera looking in on the pantry showed only a fuzzy streak of light on darkness, so used the panel there to send commands to the house's CCTV system, cycling through the cameras in and around the house. The camera that looked from the front porch toward the driveway showed an unfamiliar vehicle parked there, a large black SUV. I slowly cycled through the house's interior until I came to the living room, where Sasha was speaking to a man and a woman in business attire. I could hear their voices very faintly coming through the door, but couldn't make out anything they were saying.

"Nock," I whispered. "Can you come up here?" He appeared a few moments later, peering up at me quizzically from the landing. "Quietly," I said. "There's people in the house I don't know. I want you to listen."

Nock came softly up the stairs to stand next to me, watching the monitor. He cocked his head slightly. "The man is asking about the greenhouse and how much it produces." He frowned. "Miss Gray isn't being very forthcoming. She said she isn't sure. The woman just said that they need to leave here with an estimate, or they'll be sending a team in to do a survey. Miss Gray is telling them that she can't risk oomycete contamination and the woman just told her that they have procedures to prevent that. Norm, this is some weird shit. Who are these people?"

"I don't know," I said. "Agency, maybe?"

"Government," Nock answered himself. "The guy just said something about the Emergency Food Distribution Act of 2006. Norm, what the hell is going on here?"

The Emergency Food Distribution Act had nationalized food production and distribution nationwide. All farms in the US had been declared government property and every shipping company, grocery store and food processing plant had been put under strict government control. Food service establishments were technically able to continue operating independently, but effectively, that industry ceased to exist when the supply dried up unless the government intervened directly, as was the case for the dining facility in the hospital where I worked.

"I don't know. I'll find out from Sasha once these people leave. You can go back down. I don't think we're in any danger right now."

They moved to Sasha's office and she began to flip through some records, jotting down figures on a scrap of paper. The man took it when Sasha offered and studied it carefully. It seemed to satisfy him and the woman, and they left a few minutes later. I waited for the SUV to drive off and for the "X" to disappear from the monitor before I came out to find Sasha.

"Norm!" she said when I walked into her office. "We have a bit of a problem."

"Who were those people?" I asked.

"'Independent farm assessors', whatever the hell that means. They are from the Department of Agriculture. Someone has been coming up with new ways to interpret the mandates in the Emergency Food Distribution Act. My backyard has been reclassified as a 'farm' and my greenhouse and everything in it is now the property of the United States government. All food produced above a certain minimum is to be seized for redistribution.."

"That's crazy," I said. "They expect you to work to produce food just to have them take it from you?"

"Apparently, if I produce less than they require of me, I could be fined and even imprisoned. Slavery, in other words."

The audacity of it, combined with the sheer inefficiency of collecting food from probably thousands of greenhouses throughout the city, made me furious. They would be lucky to fill up more than a truck or two in any given week. "They can't do this!"

"Oh, yes. Yes, they can, Norm. The paperwork is right here." She handed me a stack of papers a half-inch thick. "I could have refused to sign, demanded to consult my attorney but they would have sent a survey team to perform a thorough inspection of the property the moment I showed any resistance. You and I both know we can't have that."

"But this is insane! We're already barely getting enough to eat as it is. How can they justify this?"

"Because, on paper, mamka and I have everything we need, plus a lot more to spare. To their way of thinking, we're taking an unfair share of the available food. It needs to go to those less fortunate than us." She said something in Russian that sounded like a curse. "They are no better than the Marxists. Does history teach them nothing?"

"What are you going to do?"

Sasha cursed again in Russian. "The estimate I gave those parasites is understated by about 60%. That is not an unreasonable amount for amateur growers. They will take half of that amount, reducing our harvest by about 20%. I am hoping that our CO2 generator can make up the shortfall."

"Do you think that will satisfy them?"

Sasha sighed. "Possibly not. My hope is that if we hand over our quota without complaint, they will see no reason to scrutinize us further."

I could only hope that she was right. It seemed like things were getting more and more dangerous for all of us. "Should I let the others know?" I asked.

"Well, I suppose it will be more trouble hiding this then it is worth. Let everyone know this. Pickup is on Thursday mornings between eight and twelve, starting next week, so the noise must stay low and no one can be out of the basement, not even you."

I went back downstairs to deliver the news, being sure to reassure everyone that the dip in our harvest should be more than offset by the CO2 generator, which had already yielded a good crop of tomatoes, onions, and squash at least a week earlier than usual. Everyone was still troubled by the news, as it meant that once a week, a government worker would be right here on the property to collect the food.

Stansy took me aside after to let me know that she was going to wait to write her son back. She needed time to think through her response carefully. I nodded my understanding of her concern.

"Hey," Stan said. "You got anyone you'd like to look up?"

The thought really hadn't occurred to me. Who would I contact? My parents? They might be happy to know I was alive, but I didn't know what to say to them. My sister? That thought brought an unexpected rush of anger. No, definitely not her. Then I realized who I needed to speak to more than anyone. "Can you just look someone up?" I asked.

Stan shrugged. "You can search through social media, personal web sites, that kind of thing. All the traffic gets encrypted and routed through a server in Thailand. You can pretty much go wild."

I took a seat at the computer and found the launch link for Stan's encryption hack. With a connection established, I started searching various social media for the name "Kelly McNally". A professional networking site named Career Connect listed about thirty. I dismissed the first several that I found that were obviously too young or in the wrong profession. I couldn't be certain that she was even still in the country, but it was likely. When the Ban was passed, one of its provisions prevented genetic engineers and researchers from emigrating.

The reason for that became clear soon enough. There were about fifteen popular genemods that accounted for about 90% of their share of the population, but that remaining 9-10% was a mixed bag of close to thirty more obscure models that had simply never caught on in any great numbers. That presented a problem for reverting them. Where procedures had already been developed by the time of the Ban to remove enhancements from those top fifteen models, geneticists were still needed to unravel the genomes of many of the other models, which often had little surviving documentation from which to work. That work had taken a few years to complete. No one was really sure what the geneticists did after that, except that they remained under the government's employ, mainly in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Further down the page were two Kelly's with nothing in the preview. I clicked through. One of them listed their current city as Bethesda, Maryland, which I knew to be the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health. It was as close a match as I was likely to find. I quickly created a profile using a fake name and sent a request, with the text, "Interested in your thoughts about uTility."

I hoped that the odd spelling would be enough to catch her attention but slip the notice of anyone who might be monitoring her communications. I went to my room to read for an hour, and when I came back, there was a message waiting for my profile. "If you are for real, sign in at 10 PM eastern to the address provided and enter the chat room 'Cheshire' using the same profile name you have here." I wrote back, promising to meet her.

It seemed that our good-natured threat had the desired effect, because Tilly came out for dinner that night to sit on my left, and even stayed to listen to the conversation. I was surprised to see that Sasha had come down as well. Stan said he had a presentation for us, but he made us wait until everyone was finished eating first. "So here's how this got started," he said, standing up and walking to the head of the table so everyone could see him. Behind him was Stansy's easel with a cloth draped over whatever was on it. "You all know that I've done a lot of research into securing our communications so that some of you can talk to the people on the outside. That got me to thinking about ways we might be able to harness those secure connections." He reached behind him to pull off the cloth, revealing a large pad of paper.

"Oh sweet baby Jesus, he brought schematic diagrams," Nissi said, leaning close to my ear. "He's a bigger geek than you are."

"This is a virtual private network," Stan said, pointing to a set of three circles connected by a triangle of lines. A big circle surrounded it with the words "internet". The words "tunneling protocol" were written above each line of the triangle. "A network is established that is encapsulated in, yet separate from, the internet. Each node is connected to every other node with an encrypted channel. It's not too different from the connections we use to hide our web traffic on this terminal, except that the connections persist. That's what makes the network private. Any traffic that gets intercepted is unreadable to anyone who isn't part of the network."

"It's very pretty, Stan," Nissi said, "but what good does it do us?"

"Stay with me," he said. He flipped the page back, revealing the next diagram. Several dots were written on the map along with city names. "Tokyo", "Mumbai", "Bangkok", "Santiago" were all well known genemod havens, but then "Seattle", "Dallas" and "New York" were there as well. Lines connected every city to every other one.

Stan let us look it over for a moment and then went on. "I want to establish a network that connects genemods from around the world. The government declared us non-citizens, and ever since, that's what I've felt like, cut off from everyone in the outside world. The agency could benefit from this arrangement as well, maybe even start to work on the infrastructure that could move our traffic out of the regular internet entirely, making it completely undetectable."




Double Helix Ch. 06



"What would we use this network for?" Wendy asked.

Stan shrugged. "We would communicate. Find out more about the world and about each other."

"We could work on a way to start getting genemods out of the country again," Nock said.

Stan pointed at him. "Yes! Yes. It would allow us to exchange ideas, come up with new strategies. There are over a quarter million genemods living overseas right now and most of those have been voluntarily funding the agency. I know that they would jump at the chance to do more to help us, and this wouldn't cost them anything."

"So what's the risk?" Sasha asked. "You know that what you would be doing is illegal, right? How do you keep it hidden? And," she added before Stan could speak, "don't think I didn't notice the bit about contacting people on the outside, Stan. We'll have a talk later, I assure you."

"Yes, it's illegal," Stan said, looking uncomfortable under Sasha's scrutiny. "Encrypted internet traffic is outlawed in the United States except by special exemption. Enforcement is fairly lax, though. Unless they were looking for it, no one is going to notice."

"But there is a risk," she reiterated.

"A small one," Stan said. "I think it is acceptable, considering the gains. And, like I said, the agency can get to work on building their own network, maybe a mesh network, to bypass the internet entirely."

"So what is it going to take to make this happen?" Nock said.

"Just time and effort," Stan answered. "I'll need to create client and server software to handle the communication. Probably a couple months."

"I like it," Wendy said, and was echoed by most of the people in the room.

"I need more than your assurances of 'lax enforcement'."

I looked over at Tilly, who was staring at the pad in intense concentration. I wondered what she could be thinking of. She looked at me and then over at Stan. "Have you thought about using IP spoofing?"

Stan, who had been in conversation with Nock, looked around for a moment, trying to figure out who had spoken. His gaze settled on Tilly. "IP spoofing? No, that wouldn't be of much use here. We need two-way communication."

Tilly's brow furrowed slightly. "No, listen. Think of it how NAT works to resolve IP addresses. We could spoof with an algorithm that is known at both endpoints."

Stan opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He nodded slowly a few times. "Okay, I think I see what you mean. The IP address gets modified in a way that can be decoded by the other endpoint. Kind of like having an encryption key pair, but instead we have a spoofing key pair."

"We would want to generate new address translation keys at known intervals."

Stan snapped his fingers. "So we perform our spoof with a key that changes at set intervals and in ways only someone with the correct algorithm can anticipate. The proxy on other end undoes the spoof and sends responses back to the correct source. So the traffic we send out is spoofed and cannot be traced back, and the traffic coming back originates outside the United States. We can't be held responsible for what some server overseas tries to send to us, right?" He laughed. "This is going to drive the spooks in the NSA crazy if they ever stumble across it."

Everyone by now was staring at Tilly.

"What?" she asked.

I cleared my throat. "So, back to the topic," I said. "Would that help with the risk?"

"Definitely," Stan said. "I'll have to work to refine the idea some, but it should hold up. It should be very difficult to determine where the traffic is coming from."

I leaned to my left, getting my face close to Tilly's to whisper. "How did you know that?"

She spoke in the same low tone. "I had a broad education from an early age. I told you Kelly gave me the same neuro-enhancement as your sister."

"Sure, but you said it was for these simulations your brain runs."

Tilly's mouth curved slightly. "I never said that's all it was for."

It was close to the time for my chat with Kelly McNally, so I claimed the computer before someone else got on it. I thought about having Tilly stay, but decided I needed some time with Kelly to myself, assuming it was even the right Kelly. I had a lot of questions to ask her and I wanted to prepare her for what had happened to Tilly. I found the chat room and logged in. It was currently empty, so I sat back to wait.

When the rest of the room got up to watch TV, Tilly went back to her room. After she was gone, I looked back down at the screen to see a single line of text from user km593. "I'm shocked. You did show up. Now tell me how I can know you're telling the truth. I get crap on CC all the time."

It took me a moment to realize that 'CC' meant 'Career Connect'. "Is this chat private?" I typed.

"It's as private as we're going to be able to get."

"Hold on while I confirm that." I called to Stan, "Can you come here a sec'?"

I explained what I needed. Stan opened a command line over my interface and typed out some incomprehensible strings of text. After a few moments, several more lines of text scrolled up.

"Yeah, it's a privately-owned chat server and it's definitely in Hong Kong," he said. "You're already routing through the Bangkok proxy. Should be safe."

I nodded. "Thanks." I started typing again. "Okay, the server checks out. As I'm sure you know by now, I'm contacting you regarding Tilly. She's here with me."

"How is she?"

"She's safe. I can't tell you where we are." "I understand. I haven't seen her in seven years. I've been so worried. Can I speak to her?"

"I'm not sure she's ready for that," I typed. Now we came to it. "She's had some kind of trauma. I'm sorry to tell you this, but she tried to commit suicide a few days ago."

There was another long pause, then, "That isn't possible. Look, you must have made some kind of mistake. I've taken a huge risk just speaking to you. Good bye."

I began to type a response, but McNally had already logged off. I slapped my hand down on the desk in frustration, getting a startled look from Nissi and Nock. Closing my connection, I got up and went over to sit next to Nissi on the floor in front of the couch. They were watching a Sherlock Holmes movie, BBC-made by the look of it. She clasped hands with me and I kissed her bare shoulder.

"You okay?" Nissi whispered into my ear.

"Sorry for that," I said. "I just tried to contact the researcher who designed Tilly. It didn't go well. I think she thought I was lying."

"Wow, good idea, though. Don't worry, you'll figure out a way to help her."

After the movie, we spent the night together in Nissi's room, this time digging deeply into her blues collection. Sex followed inevitably from there, somewhere in the middle of "Georgia on My Mind", sung by Ray Charles. The sweet melancholy of the song inspired slow, luxurious lovemaking. The feel of Nissi's body beneath me, enfolding me, was so powerful and so perfect. No words could have sufficed, but I told her anyway how much she meant to me. We made love long into the night, and I fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.

After an early shower, I met Wendy for my T'ai Chi lesson, which we had moved into the main room a few days earlier. The reason for that was that she had finally deemed me ready to begin sparring. Our "mat" was the thick rug that normally sat in front of the television, but dragged over to the empty space near the bottom of the stairs. It had taken me most of the first day to get it out of my head that I had to be careful because she was so much smaller than me. She wanted to focus on defense first, and though her strikes were light and controlled, any hesitation from me she took as an opportunity to show me exactly what would happen if I held back in a real fight. It still amazed me whenever she managed to throw me to the ground.

Tilly joined us for lunch, but was subdued and said little, even when Stan tried to engage her in conversation about his network project. After lunch, I went out to work in the greenhouse. I didn't ask Tilly to go with me. I thought it best to break that routine for now.

I had to work a shift that night, so as soon as I came back in from outside, I had to get myself ready and head for the hospital. Nissi stopped me for a kiss. "Have a good day at work, hon'," she said. "And be careful." She always said that when I went out. At first, I had tried to assuage her fears about being recognized and captured by police, but I knew that she was right to be concerned.

I got home after eleven, as usual, and Nissi spent the night in my room. I was tired from my shift, so the sex was brief and less satisfying than usual. I woke when Nissi got up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom. I looked over at her exquisite form outlined in the light filtering in from round the door as she pulled a robe around herself. The sight got me hard, despite being half asleep. I was on my back and dozing when she got back, but instead of sliding under the covers next to me, she peeled them back and wrapped a hand around my cock. I was fully awake now.

"Do over," she said.

"What was that?"

"I want a do over," Nissi said, and climbed on top of me. She faced away from me, giving me a lovely view of her cute ass. I sighed in pleasure as she began to ride me, her head thrown back and moaning each breath. After a few strokes, she paused, resettling herself. "Never done it this way," she explained.

"It's kind of hot," I said. "And very naughty." I relaxed, enjoying the exquisite feel of our bodies' intersecting pleasure, letting her do the work.

A sound to my left made me turn my head and I saw movement. Nissi had neglected to close the door completely and I had briefly glanced a figure looking in at the crack between door and frame. The surprise was enough to take me out of the moment, but Nissi seemed not to have noticed. She picked up her pace, riding me quickly to her own climax.

"You didn't come, did you?" she asked, neatly turning around without letting my cock slip out of her.

"I'm fine," I said, smiling. "And I like watching your orgasms."

"Men really do get the short end on that, don't they?" she said. "That's what I've heard, anyway."

I shrugged. "Sometimes it's better than other times."

Nissi disengaged from me so that we could sleep. I made sure to position myself to the open side of the bed. Once I was sure she was deep asleep, I got up and put on a shirt and jeans. I could have waited until morning, but my instincts told me that it was best to address this now, when the event was fresh in our minds.

I went into the hall and quietly opened Tilly's door. It was dark inside. "Hello," I said.

"I'm sorry, Norm," she said, and snicked on a bedside light. She was sitting up in bed in a rumpled nightgown. "I wasn't sure you saw me."

"Why were you watching us?" I asked.

She looked away, chewing her bottom lip. "It's complicated."

I barked a laugh. "It usually is. Talk to me as your therapist, though. Tell me what you were thinking."

She still wouldn't look at me. Her brow furrowed as though she were concentrating intensely. "I hear the two of you, you know, even through the wall there. And my mind, well, I kind of get a fuzzy picture of things."

"You mean sex?"

"Yes. I hate the thought of it, but I feel drawn in at the same time."

Thoughts of her rape came to mind as she said it, but I put them aside. "So you are curious about sex, even though you are repulsed by it."

"Yes. And when I watched you and Nissi through the doorway, I felt things. Terrible things. Wonderful things. It was all too much, and that's when you heard me."

I sensed there was more. "What else?"

"Well, I . . ." Her gaze flitted to my face and then down again. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. "I've been having sexual thoughts about you, Norm. I don't really want to. It just happens." She must have sensed my surprise immediately because she looked up again. "Maybe I shouldn't have told you that."

"When did this start?" I said, and was pleased that my tone sounded neutral and professional. Her statement had shaken me, more than I might have expected.

"After that first time you took me to the greenhouse." She shrugged. "I don't think I was even aware of it at first, but it's been too strong to ignore. I try to keep it under control. When I feel too strongly, the pain and fear start to take over."

"You know that nothing can come of these feelings," I said. She had put me in an awkward place, because denying her emotions was exactly what she should not be doing. On the other hand, I couldn't encourage them.

"I know. I'm sure it's just part of what's wrong with me." But I knew that couldn't be true. What was wrong with her was that she kept her emotions bottled up. That she felt something for me, misplaced or not, came from her, not from her mental disorder. "It would be better for all of you if I just went away."

I wanted to scream at her. She looked up in alarm, no doubt sensing my frustration. I got my anger quickly under control. "I won't have you say things like that," I said. "All of us care about you."

"You do, but you just don't know." She didn't explain further, and rolled over to face away from me. "I'm sorry I disturbed you, Norm. Please go back to bed."

I went back to my room and lay next to Nissi, but sleep was long in coming. The things she had told me disturbed me, but even more distressing were my own thoughts. Tilly did not possess Stansy's immaculate beauty or Nissi's exotic good looks and grace, but she had a kind of honest prettiness that came out once she had begun to brush off the layers of neglect. And she had a sweet personality, but her depression had that in a stranglehold. I had willfully blinded myself to any attraction I might have felt, out of the need for clinical distance. I was attracted to her, and we had an emotional bond that was perhaps unavoidable under the circumstances.

She was raped, I reminded myself, letting the pain of that thought stifle my mind's wanderings and freeze my libido. I had to be careful, especially given her ability to read my emotions.

In the morning, I sparred with Wendy, coming away with only a few new bruises. I checked the profile that I had used to contact Kelly McNally, and she had left me a message. "I've done a lot of thinking, and perhaps I judged too quickly. I would like to speak again about your proposal. 10 PM tonight?" The tone was intentionally vague, but I got her meaning. I promised to meet here there, but then sat back, considering. She had said that she was taking a risk by contacting me. Could she have been found out? Was this a ruse to try to entrap me? I would have to trust in Stan's expertise on this one, because I wasn't going to miss out on another opportunity to talk to Kelly.

That night, I had Stan check my connection and evaluate the server again, scrutinizing it to the best of his abilities. "It's as safe as we can make it," he said. "The text of the chat can still be captured, so try not to say anything too overt if you suspect someone listening in, okay?"

I logged in and waited. User km593 was already on. "Hi," I typed.

There was a pause of several seconds before the response appeared. "Describe her to me."

"She's a little over five feet, brown hair, brown eyes."

"Okay, but tell me what makes her special."

"She's a genemod," I typed. "She can feel what others around her are feeling."

"Oh my God. That has to be her. Anything else you can tell me?"

"She said you were her mother, but not her biological mother. She said that would be a breech of ethics."

"LOL, that sounds just like her. Okay, you've convinced me, but I don't understand what you mean when you say she is suicidal."

"I know. I know it sounds strange. She's told me about how she was made to maximize happiness, but something went wrong. She can barely stand to feel anything right now. I was hoping that you could help me."

"What happened to her?"

I sighed and typed it out. "I'm sorry, Dr. McNally. I don't think I know the whole story, but I do know that your daughter was raped."

"I see." I sat for at least a minute, unsure if I should add anything. I could only imagine what this woman was going through right now at the news I had given her. "Okay," she responded at last. "I want to help. Tell me everything you know." I summarized all the things that I had experienced with Tilly. Kelly sat through it in silence. I came to the end and typed. "So, what do you think?"

"I'm really not sure. Let me see if I can piece together what we know into a workable hypothesis. Damn, this is hard for me to even think about. I suppose it would actually depend on the rapist. For some, it is power they seek. They wish to subvert the victim's will. But for some, rape is more a matter of sadism. They seek to inflict pain and suffering on their victims. If that happened to Tilly, everything would be turned and twisted around. Her torment would fuel the rapist's satisfaction. She would feel his pleasure even as he was torturing her. Her own impulses would then be trying to drive her to ever greater fear and anguish."

I stared at the words in shock and revulsion. Kelly had stopped typing. I imagined that she was trying to deal with the implications of what she had typed, just as I was. I rested my fingers back on the keys. "Could that account for the anger and aggression she displayed?"

"I don't know," Kelly answered. "She should have been able to move past it. But her unwillingness to feel anything might stem from that, to experience such extreme pain and pleasure at the same time. It never even occurred to us that something like this might happen. And it's my fault. I made her this way."

I couldn't think of an adequate response to that, so I typed. "How can we treat this, if that is what happened to her?"

"You said she avoids the trauma. I think she needs to face it. She's been pushed into the same avoidance cycle as any normal human with PTSD experiences, but possibly more severe because she's designed to never have this problem. Believe it or not, that anger you saw might have been her mind's last defense to keep her from recounting the memory of her attack. It's just a thought."

"I will look into what you suggest." It was worth browsing through the psychology texts that Sasha had brought me, anyway.

"Please be careful, though. I know nothing about you, but I feel like I can trust you. She's a very special girl."

"I know," I typed. "And don't blame yourself for making her the way she is."

"I appreciate you saying that. Listen, I have to go. I'm under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. Someone is likely to check in on me any time. I've got some notes that I think I can get out to you shortly. I'll just send to your profile on CC. I will let you know the next time I can talk."

"Thank you for your help, doctor," I started to type, but just like the last time, she had already logged off. I sat behind the screen for some time, thinking through what I had learned. Things were starting to fall into place. If Kelly were right about her rapists, what had happened to Tilly would be terrible, maybe even crippling, to most people. To her, it must have been an absolute nightmare. In a way, it truly had driven her insane, upsetting the very foundation on which her mind had been built. And now, it was my task to overturn her world once again.

I checked my profile and found Kelly's message waiting for me. There was a document attached. "I'm putting a lot of trust in you. What is in here, and the fact that I sent it to you, could put me in prison for life. Please keep it safe."

I downloaded the file to the terminal's local storage and opened it with the file browser. It was a text document, over two hundred pages, but organized with titles and sub-headings. I found it intriguing that Tilly's model drew on aspects of several other gene models. I knew that she possessed the neural enhancement of a G and had guessed at the Standard Upgrade's health and nearly superhuman physique, but she also been given an Edetic's supercharged hippocampus, a Hedonic's dense clusters of pleasure stimulating nerves and modified nucleus accumbens, and on and on.




Double Helix Ch. 06



I brought Wendy over to have a look. "This came from Tilly's designer," I said. "This part talks about the regulation of her emotional states and feedback mechanisms between systems. Then we get into neurotransmitter effects and I get lost," I pointed to the screen, "about here."

I looked over Wendy's shoulder as she read through a couple of pages. She looked over at me. "Okay, what are we looking for?"

I sighed, turned and perched on the edge of the desk. "Anything that can help us. I thought maybe we could get some insight from this into how her mind works." I gave her Kelly's suggestion, that pleasure had become a trigger for pain.

Wendy rested her chin on her fists and stared at the screen, swinging her legs in the too-tall office chair. She put a hand to the scroll wheel and slowly ran the page up. I saw her lips move silently as she read. "You know," she started, paused, and started again, "I think a benzodiazepine might work."

She looked at me and I shrugged. "A what?"

"Benzodiazepines, anti-anxiety drugs. I'm thinking alprazolam."

"Oh," I said, understanding now. "So you think we should treat Tilly with drugs?"

"Look, you need to get her to break out of her avoidance cycle. I think this could help take the edge off of her fear and help her think through her trauma. From what I can see here, anti-depressants would have little to no effect, but anti-anxiety drugs might just work."

"I wonder if Sasha could get it for us."

Wendy's brows rose. "You could get it. You work tomorrow, right?"

"Me? You mean . . ."

She nodded slowly. "You're the only person here who works at a hospital."

"I don't like the idea of stealing."

"Well then ask Sasha. But be prepared to wait a few weeks. Or never. She's having so many problems getting supplies."

"What if I get caught?"

Wendy smirked. "Don't get caught." Then her expression turned more serious. "I want to see Tilly get better. Don't you? How long do you think until she slips back into depression and tries to kill herself? Trust me, I think this will help."

That was how I found myself the next night walking up to the pharmacist with a forged request for alprazolam. Her name was Sheila, and I had given her orders for patient drugs at least a dozen times in the last month. Right then, though, I felt like I could have used a dose of the drug myself as I stood there with my heart hammering in my chest while she looked the paper over. "Just one dose?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Well," she said, waving the paper at me, "do me a favor and remind Dr. Karr that I don't like getting four of these in one day for the same person. If he's going to put a patient on medication, he needs to just do it, know what I'm sayin'?."

"I'll be sure to tell him," I said.

I waited while she prepared the medicine, placing two pills into a small plastic container. "Here you go," she said, handing it to me. It rattled as I took it from her. "Anything else I can do for you, baby?"

"No," I said, giving her a smile, "thank you."

I slipped the pill case into my pocket as soon as I was out of sight and remembered to breathe again. My nerves were on edge for the whole rest of the night, but I knew that I was probably home free. I was just terrified that the pill case would fall out or otherwise get noticed before I left for the night.

At the end of the night, I hopped on my bike and pedaled for home. Sasha's house was a bit over four miles from the hospital, so it took me about a half an hour to make the trip if going at a fairly leisurely pace. I could do it in under fifteen if I really went for it, which is what I did now, weaving between the street and sidewalk as needed to find the quickest path.

I took my bike around the house and through the side gate to the backyard. Sasha had told her neighbors that she was renting out a room to me, so no one would find it odd. I came in through the back door and spotted Sasha's mother standing in the kitchen. "Hello," I said in greeting, and started for the basement.

She said something to me in Russian, and though I couldn't understand the words, the meaning was very clear. She sounded outraged. I took a step back, raising my hands. "It's just me, Norm."

Keeping her eyes on me, the old woman edged her way along the counter. She snatched a chef's knife from a knife holder and held it towards me, spouting more warnings in Russian.

"Nonna," I said. "Nonna, it's me. It's Norm."

"Mamka!" Sasha said, skittering to a stop next to me on the slick linoleum. She stepped between me and her mother, speaking rapid-fire Russian. Nonna looked from her daughter to me and back again, anger turning to confusion. Sasha said something much slower and pointed at the knife.

Nonna set the knife down reluctantly. Sasha put an arm around her and guided her out of the kitchen, using her body to block her mother's view of me. I stood waiting, and Sasha came back a minute later. "I'm sorry," she said. "She has some bad days of late. She does not remember you today."

"How have you been?" I asked. I'd barely said two words to Sasha in the last few days.

"Not good," she said. "Come, let's talk about it."

I followed Sasha into the little den that was next to her office. She reached for a large book high up on a bookshelf, set it aside and reached up again, coming down with a bottle of clear liquid that was a bit less than half full. The label read "Stolichnaya". She set it down and got two glasses from a drawer. She poured two fingers in both glasses and motioned for me to sit with her on the couch. She sipped her vodka and sighed with appreciation. "Go on, try it," she said. "I've been nursing that bottle for over a year and I won't have a drop of it go to waste."

I looked at the liquor with new found appreciation and took a sip. The flavor was smooth and mild but burned all the way down my throat. "Not bad," I said. "So what's going on?"

"The agency phoned me today to tell me that we will not be receiving a shipment this week. That will squeeze what we have on hand quite a bit, but we'll be okay as long as they get us one next week, but everyone will be eating a little light."

"Lighter than we have?" I asked.

"I'm afraid so. I wish the bureaucrats would get off their asses and fulfill your ration request. It isn't much, but it would help."

"Sorry, still waiting on that."

"Have you been watching the news?"

I shook my head, "Not lately, no."

"Well, the Senate is set to vote on a bill next week, the Fair Banking, Lending and Investment Act. If it passes, and it probably will, it effectively nationalizes the entire financial sector of this country. You think things are bad now, wait until that thing goes into law. I work for an investment firm. I hear they're already considering how many people they'll need to lay off before the end of the year." She took another, longer sip. "I may not have a job in six months."

"That would certainly ruin my day."

"Well, don't think it won't happen to you, too. We're going to be seeing unemployment double, maybe more, from all the secondary effects that this kicks off. God damn, you'd think those bastards would realize they've done enough damage already." She shook her head and gulped the last of her vodka. "Well, that's enough of my complaining. You probably need to get to bed, yes?"

"I do," I said, and poured back the rest of the vodka. The burn made my eyes water.

"Haha!" Sasha laughed. "Your face is turning red, Norm. I did not know you were such a lightweight."

"There's usually orange juice involved when I drink vodka," I admitted. "And even that is pretty rare. Too expensive."

Sasha nodded. "One thing about the Rot, it cleaned up a lot of alcoholics. That bottle there cost me almost three hundred dollars." She looked at my reddened face and laughed again. "Oh, don't ever change, Norm."

I said good night to her and descended the stairs. Nock raised a hand in greeting and I flashed him a wave of my own. checked my room first. Nissi was there, but sleeping, so I went to Tilly's room, opening the door and letting the light from outside illuminate enough for me to see that she was sleeping. She was sleeping fitfully, mumbling and twitching. Her nightmares had reduced in frequency and severity since I began treating her, but they had never entirely gone away. I put a hand on her arm to wake her. Her eyes focused on me.

"You were having a nightmare," I said.

She shook her head slightly. "No, not really." She reached for the lamp and flicked it on.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "You seemed distressed."

I thought I saw her cheeks color slightly in the pale light. "I was dreaming about you."

I could guess from how she said it what she meant. "So was it a bad dream or a good one?"

She hesitated. "Well, in my dreams, I think and do things that would terrify me otherwise. What we were doing. . ." she shuddered. "It sickens me now, but in the dream I think I must have wanted it."

"Do you know why you feel that way about sex?"

Tilly shook her head and hugged her arms against herself as if she had gotten a sudden chill. She had to know, deep down, that she had been raped, but she had gotten so adept at avoiding it that it was second nature now.

I knelt next to the bed. "Do you trust me, Tilly?"

She looked at me, holding my eyes with the intensity of her gaze. "Yes."

"I want to help you get well," I said. "I think I know how we can do that. Will you let me?"

She turned away. "I just don't know. I don't want to hurt you, Norm. What if I lose control?"

"We'll have others there," I said, thinking it through. "Stan and Nissi. They're just as strong as you."

Tilly seemed to consider this. "If it doesn't work," she said quietly. "Will you help me kill myself?"

"Oh, Tilly," I croaked, and swallowed against the lump in my throat, "please, you can't ask that of me."

"I'll do it," she said, "but that's my condition. I heard you and Wendy talking. You have access to drugs at the hospital. You can find me something that will just put me to sleep and let me slip away."

"I can't." I slumped, staring at the floor. "I just can't do that."

"What you feel right now," she said. "Every moment, that's what I feel. Good feelings don't make it go away. In fact, they make it worse. It just grows and swallows them up. Ignoring the pain takes all my effort, all my willpower. I'm so tired, Norm."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I won't help you commit suicide."

"Fine," Tilly said, an edge in her voice. "Then you can forget about whatever you have planned. I'm not playing along."

I stood with an effort. My body felt heavy and weak. I paused at the threshold to look back. Tilly lay on her back, staring up at nothing, looking just as she had that first time I had brought her dinner. "Good night," I said. I waited for a moment and closed the door.

I stripped out of my clothes, pausing a moment to place the pill case in my dresser drawer, and slid into bed next to Nissi. I gently prodded her to make room and she.turned on her side. Once I was in bed, she snuggled close, grinding her ass not-so-subtly against my crotch.

"Hmm, nice thought," I said.

"But not in the mood?" she murmured.

I sighed. "I'm sorry."

"What's wrong?"

I told her about Tilly's ultimatum. Nissi lay silently in the dark listening, but I felt her tense up, coming fully awake. "I can't believe she would do that," she said, once I had finished. "That's just. . . it's wrong, is what it is. I just want to go over there and slap her."

"I don't think that will help."

Nissi reached back to caress my shoulder. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I don't think we can do this if she won't cooperate."

"Have you considered agreeing to it? You wouldn't have to keep your promise, you know."

"She'll know I'm lying if I do that."

"Oh, right."

We lay in the dark for a time, and I started to wonder if Nissi had fallen asleep. "I'll do it," she said at last.

"What?"

She turned to look over her shoulder at me. "I'll do it. I'll promise to help her kill herself if your plan doesn't work out."

"You can't be serious. No, you can't do that."

"I can," she said. "So you'd better be sure you get this thing right. I don't much like the idea of helping her suicide, either."

I lay there brooding. "No," I said at last. "It has to be me. I can't let you take this on."

"You're going to help her get well," Nissi said. "I know it."

Except that I didn't know it. "I'm going to need you and Stan to help me," I said. "We're going to do this tomorrow. Wendy too. If Tilly turns violent, you'll need to restrain her. Can you do that?"

"I'll do whatever you need, Norm." She brought my hand to her mouth and kissed the back of it.

I started my preparations in the morning. After my morning sparring with Wendy, I went upstairs to find Sasha and explain to her what I needed.

"Five of you in my greenhouse?" she asked. "Why don't you just go from door to door, knock and say, 'Hi, we all live in Sasha's basement'? And what about Nissi? No one can see her and not know what she is."

"She'll put on a hoodie or something," I said. "We'll be careful."

"No," Sasha said, wagging a finger at me. "Not in the greenhouse. You bring her up here, into my living room. The walls here are well insulated. If she does something like she did a month ago, no one should hear her from the outside. I will take my mother out shopping. You call me when you are done."

"Alright," I agreed. "I can live with that." It would change my plans a bit, and I had wanted the evoke the same surroundings as my previous sessions, but a change of scene might actually be a good thing. "I want to start this afternoon."

"Yes, fine," Sasha said. "I can take a break from work."

I returned to the basement and headed for Tilly's room. She was lying on her bed awake, in the same position I had left her last night. "You want to make a deal with me?" I demanded. I slammed her door with enough force to startle her. "Fine. I'll do it. But I want something more from you. You promise to do exactly as I say. No tricks, no games. You do your best to cooperate. If I feel like you are holding back, I'll stop things right then and there, and the deal is off. Do you understand?"

She nodded mutely.

I relaxed and let the anger leech out of me. "Good. I know that this is going to be painful for you."

"I'm scared," she said.

"I know." I wanted to go up to her and comfort her, but I knew that she wouldn't welcome the contact, not right now. "We'll start after lunch, okay?"

She nodded again.

Tilly didn't come out to eat with us, but I decided it was best to give her this time alone. Wendy tried to bring food to her, but she refused it. Again, just as well. She might have a problem keeping her food down.

I took Nissi's hand and gave it a squeeze, stood and went to Tilly's door. I knocked and pushed it open. "It's time, Tilly."

She was dressed and seated on her bed, hands folded in her lap. "Alright," she said simply, and stood to follow me.

Nissi, Stan and Wendy met us in the main room and followed us up the stairs. Sasha and her mother were seated in the living room, all dressed to go out.

"Time to go, mamka," she said, standing and helping her mother to her feet. In moments, they were out the door.

"Have a seat, get comfortable," I said to the others, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. When I came back, the sound of Sasha's car was fading into the distance. Tilly was seated on the recliner, with Stan and Nissi sitting next to each other on the sofa along the adjacent wall. Wendy sat on the rug to leave open the space next to Nissi.

I handed Tilly the water glass, snapped open the pill case and spilled two round, white pills into my palm. "Take these," I said. "They will help you stay calm."

Tilly popped the pills and took two swallows from the glass. I took the seat next to Nissi. "It takes a few minutes for the effects to be felt," I said. "A bit longer for full effect, but we can get started before then."

We made small talk while we waited. After about fifteen minutes, I waved the others to silence. "How do you feel?" I asked Tilly.

She nodded slowly a few times. "Better, I think. A little drowsy."

"Good, that's normal," I said. "Now I want you to think back to before you came to Sasha's house. Think back to the house you were in before, in Cleveland. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," she said.

"Describe the house."

"It was a smaller house and older, one story, blue with white trim. We lived in the attic, but we all had separate rooms."

"Who lived with you there?"

Tilly took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Jeff was our host. He was a general contractor. He was gay and had a regular partner who lived on the east side, in Collinwood. His name was Kenneth, but we never met him. Jeff hardly ever brought him to the house. Besides me, we had an Eddie and a Peter." She smiled slightly. "He was of Mexican descent, so he told us to call him Pedro."

"Good, that's good," I said. "How long did you live there?"

"Four years, eight months. I wasn't quite sixteen when I got there. I lived at another house for two years before that."

"Okay, you told me that you went to see a psychologist in Chicago. Now I want you to think back to what happened just before that. You were there with Eddie and Peter, and something happened, didn't it?"

Tilly was looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. Her voice sounded more distant when she began to speak. "It was late. We had all gone to bed for the night when I heard a commotion downstairs, a crash and some yelling. I woke the others and we waited in the common area. There was a hidden trap door that led up to the attic, with a retracting staircase. It swung down and Jeff came up the stairs. He had a gash over his eye and another on his cheek. When he saw us, he kept saying how sorry he was. A man came up right behind him, holding a gun at his back. I knew he was. . . off. His scent, his posture, the way his pulse quickened when he saw me. I could feel the violence in him."

Tilly had stopped, so I prompted her for more. "What happened then?"

"Three more men came up. Eddie told Peter to go into his room and shut the door, and he did. He told me to do the same, but the man with the gun said, 'no, she stays'."

Tilly's breathing was quick and shallow now. "It's okay," I said. "Take a minute to relax, we'll wait."

Tilly took several slow, deliberately deep breaths. "I'm alright," she said. "Two of the men came over and grabbed me by the arms while the third pushed Eddie over into a corner. He pushed him down and kicked him a few times. The man with the gun sat in one of our chairs, motioning with it for Jeff to have a seat opposite him. 'Have a seat, man,' he said. 'Watch the show.' I could have struggled against the two men, but I kept thinking of that gun, so I let them drag me to the center of the room. The man with the gun said, 'Take off your clothes, girl.'"

Tilly had stopped again. I stood and went to her. Kneeling in front of her, I took her hand. "It's okay," I said, "we're here for you. You can do this, Tilly."

She kept her eyes on her lap, but resumed her story. "I was frightened before. Now I was terrified. He pointed the gun at me and cocked the hammer. 'Take them off, now,' he said. I did, removing first the top, then the bottom of my pajamas. As I did, he took out a cigarette and lit it. All four men looked me up and down. I could feel the desire pouring off them. The man with the gun was the worst. His desire was twisted somehow into a kind of ravening hunger that turned my stomach. 'Bra and panties, too, bitch,' he said. I took off the bra first. I was crying. I don't know when I had started, but that's when I noticed it. I stepped out of the panties and was standing in front of those horrible men, completely naked."




Double Helix Ch. 06



Tears had sprung up in her eyes and her lower lip trembled as she pulled in a breath. Wendy was suddenly at my side, patting Tilly on the shoulder and whispering her own reassurance. "I know it's terrible," she said, "but you have to. You have to get it out."

Tilly gave a convulsive sob. "The men pushed me down. Two of them held me on each side with their hands and their knees, while the third man pulled off his pants. Jeff jumped up and started to protest, but the man with the gun smashed the grip hard into the top of his head and he collapsed with a scream. The two men held my legs open and the third one pushed into me. I must have closed my eyes because he slapped the side of my face and said, 'Look at me.' He stared into my eyes while he used my body. I could feel his pleasure building and my body responded in spite of my fear and revulsion. 'This bitch is getting wet,' he said, and he laughed at me."

Tilly was crying now, with great, gasping sobs. "I was. . . s-so ashamed," she stammered.

"Enough," I said. "You're too worked up. Just relax and let yourself cry. Let it out."

Wendy climbed up into the chair and put her arms around Tilly, hugging her close and letting her cry into her shoulder. I saw that Nissi and Stan had come closer, standing just behind me, lending their silent support. Tilly's sobs gradually slowed, and she went on without being prompted, still leaning into Wendy. "When he came inside me, the feel of him in my mind was enough to trigger my own orgasm. They all laughed at me and told me what a dirty whore I was. Before it had finished, the man had changed places with the one on my left and now he was inside me. I came again before he had finished, getting another round of laughter from all of them."

Tilly had stopped speaking and was taking quick, shallow breaths. She was hyperventilating. "Hey!" I said and stroked her hair to get her attention, "Tilly, hey! Focus, breathe. Slow, deep breaths." I breathed in and out deeply as an example.

Tilly followed my lead and her panting slowed. She closed her eyes as if suddenly exhausted. "I don't know if I can go on. I d-don't want to think ab-bout this."

"You have to, Tilly. Please."

She stayed like that, eyes closed, for probably close to a minute. When she began speaking, her voice was choked. "The man raping me finished and started to change places with the one on my right. But the man with the gun suddenly spoke up, 'No, my turn,' he said, and handed the gun to the one who had just gotten off me. 'This cunt is having too much fun.' I watched as he reached into his back pocket. He came out with a knife, and unfolded it, taking care to make sure I saw what it was. 'Oh, I've waited so long for this,' he said. I felt pleasure and desire bubble up in him." Tilly paused. Her face had gone suddenly ashen. "Oh, no," she gasped. She leaned over the chair arm, away from Wendy, and heaved. A splash of bile hit the floor and she coughed, heaved, and coughed again.

"I'll get it," Stan said, hurrying to the kitchen. He came back with a paper towel roll and began spreading sheets over the mess.

Tilly was alternately coughing and sobbing now. I wavered, on the verge of calling an end to it, reasoning that we might have already done enough. I waited though, and she slowly got herself under control. Her voice was hoarse as she went on. "He-he wasn't hard, not at first. Not until he started cutting me." She gently pushed Wendy away and traced a line with her finger done the center of her chest, across the bottom of one breast, diagonally over her pubic bone. "The pain and the fear was too much. I did the only thing I could think to do. I focused on him, that bundle of emotion and sensation that my mind constructed. I clung to his pleasure and tried to forget the pain in my body. It was a mistake. I lost what little control I had over my mind, and he took over. Every time he hurt me, I felt his pleasure surge and my mind and body responded by giving him more of what he wanted. He burned me with his cigarette." She touched a place on her shoulder and another on her stomach. "I cried. I pleaded with him to stop and it was all for him, all for his enjoyment. Even my body felt weak, because that's how he wanted me to be."

Tilly's eyes suddenly grew wide. "No, oh no. No!" She screamed the last word. "No, don't!"

"What happened, Tilly?"

"Eddie," she said, sobbing again now. "They forgot about him, but I saw him get up. NO!" She surged out of her chair. The fingers of one hand closed on my neck, choking off my breath. I felt her grip grow tighter, tighter, her fingernails biting painfully into my skin.

I could hear yelling, but it sounded far away. My feet kicked at empty air. There was shouting, hands grasping. The world jumped, slamming painfully into my forehead. I screamed, but all that came out was a gurgling sound. I rolled onto my side, gasping and coughing. Something crashed nearby. Gradually, I became aware of voices shouting. ". . . her arm. Get her arm. We need to get her down." Wendy's voice.

I flopped to my back and could see them now, all three of them hanging onto Tilly a few feet away, restraining her. A vase on a side table had fallen and shattered on the ground. Tilly stared at me, naked hatred in her eyes. "You. . .you fucker! You killed him!"

"Tilly!" I croaked. "It's me!"

She fought to free herself from the collective grasp of Stan, Nissi and Wendy for a few more seconds, but my words must have begun to sink in. "Norm?" She stopped fighting and let the others wrestle her down to the couch. Stan had one arm and Nissi had the other. Wendy let go, releasing her grip on Tilly's legs.

I lifted myself to hands and knees. "What happened?" I asked, my voice a painful rasp."Tell us what happened then."

Tilly stared past me. The rage had left her voice, leaving nothing. She spoke with no inflection at all. "Eddie, he knocked the gun away. It flew across the room. Eddie was fighting him. The man that was raping me, though, he turned and stabbed Eddie, right in the middle of his back." Her hands clenched. "Something snapped inside me. Only one of the men was holding me then, and I grabbed his arm and threw him against the wall. I went after the twisted one first, the one that had stabbed Eddie." Her fists unclenched and she looked down at her hands. Tears were running down her cheeks again, but her voice was steady. "I grabbed him by the throat and I squeezed and things crunched and burst and there was blood and he--he just died. There was a table next to me, so I grabbed one of the legs and ripped it free. The man I threw off was coming back at me, so I hit him with the table leg. I hit him in the face and he went down and didn't get back up. The other two were trying to find the gun. I started hitting them, over and over. I hit them until they both stopped moving. I killed them." She stared at me. "I killed them all."

I stood there in shock, staring back at Tilly. "That's it, isn't it?" I said. "That's what's really wrong with you. It's not the rape. It's those men you killed. That's the trauma."

"Four lives," she said. "I ended four lives." She screamed then and thrashed against Nissi's and Stan's hold on her. "I killed them!"

"Good," Wendy said, and though her voice was quiet, Tilly stopped moving to listen. "I'm glad you did it."

"No," Tilly said. "That was murder. I killed them. I deserve to die."

"It was self-defense," I said, finally getting to my feet. I touched my neck tenderly. There would be bruises there, but there seemed to be no serious damage. "You did it to save lives."

"You don't understand," Tilly cried. "I did it because I was enraged. I wanted to see them dead. I'm a killer."

"Why should it matter that you were angry?" I asked. "You, Jeff and Peter came out alive. You would never have done that to them if those men hadn't attacked you first."

Tilly slumped on the sofa, all fight gone out of her. Carefully, Nissi, then Stan, let go of her. "It's not your fault," I said, and I flashed to the memory of that time in the greenhouse, when Tilly had said those same words to me.

Tilly closed her eyes and shuddered. "What happened shouldn't have been possible. I'm supposed to make people happy."

"That doesn't mean you can't fight back when you are attacked," Nissi said. "The men you killed were evil, and I don't say that lightly."

"So tired," Tilly said, and her eyes closed. She was asleep in moments, limbs splayed haphazardly across the sofa.

"I'll stay with her," I said. "It's okay. I think the worst is past."

Nissi, Stan and Wendy reluctantly left me. Over an hour had passed since we had started. I sat and watched Tilly for a minute. Her chest rose and fell slowly and rhythmically. She looked to be at peace, and I hoped it was a good sign. I picked up the phone and called Sasha. "We're finished," I said.

"Okay, Norm. We'll be out for a few hours more. How is she doing?"

"She's asleep," I said, looking over at Tilly again. "I'm not sure yet if she's going to be better, but she was amazing." The hoarseness in my voice had nothing to do with my injured throat. "I'll have to tell you about it all later."

We said our good byes and I hung up the phone. I reclined the chair and rubbed at my face, still coming down from the stress and excitement of the encounter. Slowly, by degrees, I relaxed.

A touch on my forehead stirred me out of sleep. A moment later, a pair of lips touched mine in a gentle kiss. I gave a low moan of appreciation deep in my throat, forgetting for the moment where I was and what had happened. I opened my eyes to ssee a fan of short brown hair framing Tilly's earnest face. She leaned over the side of the chair above me, her eyes closed. Inhaling sharply, I broke the kiss, pulling back from her. "Well," I said with a halfhearted chuckle, "that was a little unexpected."

Tilly reached out a hand, as if to stroke my cheek, but stopped and let it fall to the arm of the chair. Her eyes shone. "It worked, Norm," she said, and laughed. "I woke up just now and the pain is just gone, like it was all a bad dream." She breathed in deep. "I feel alive again. I feel whole."

Tears stung my eyes at the joy in her words. I felt buoyed, overflowing with happiness and relief from all the fear and worry. "I'm so glad," I said, my voice breaking.

Tilly moved back so that I could sit up in the chair. "You were right," she said. "What happened, the things I did were so terrible that I blocked them out of my mind. I couldn't come to grips with it, but I punished myself by reliving the pain I had felt at that awful man's hands every waking moment. I see now that I had to do what I did. I had to stop those men. Their deaths were not my fault."

I stood and put my hand on her shoulder. She didn't flinch away or wilt under my touch. "Why don't we go down and see the others?"

To say that she was like a different person would be a vast understatement. "Hello, everyone," Tilly said, moving lightly on the balls of her feet as she alighted at the bottom of the stairs, instead of plodding and shuffling. There was a collective outburst of amazement as everyone rushed over to meet her. 

She lifted Wendy up into her arms in a fierce hug, swinging her around. "Thank you, thank you so much for taking care of me," she said. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. You did all you could for me. You helped me to hang on for all those months. I wouldn't have made it without your kindness." 

Wendy was crying when she put her down.

"Nock," she said, taking his hand. "Your blood saved my life, and I didn't thank you properly before." She stretched up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "Thank you. If you should ever need the favor returned, you know who your donor match is. The pain you caused me before came from ignorance, not from ill intent. I want you to let go of the guilt you still feel and we can start fresh. Please?"

"Yeah, I can do that, Tilly," he said. He stepped back and turned away, swiping at his eyes quickly.

She had words with the others as well, never more than a sentence or two, but in each case, the person came away with a smile or a few happy tears. Watching her work on everyone was amazing. She delved right into their hearts, exposing their worst fears and nullifying them with what seemed like barely a thought.

She saved Stansy for last, taking a seat with her at the table and asking her how her dialogue with her son was going. She listened attentively while the other woman poured out her soul with only a little bit of prompting. When Stansy had finished, she was sobbing. Tilly hugged her close and began to speak in low tones, reassuring her that she hadn't abandoned her son, that he would see that in time. Tilly told her what Chris must be feeling and counseled her to affirm those feelings first. It made my own efforts to advise her seem clumsy by comparison. Stansy sniffled through her tears, but was smiling and laughing by the time Tilly had finished. She went right for the computer to type up the email that she hadn't been able to bring herself to write before.

Tilly slipped away to her room, but came back a moment later with a change of clothes in her hands. "I'm taking a shower," she said at my questioning look. "I haven't been taking very good care of myself." She said that with a touch of chagrin.

I sat at the table, reading Stansy's book, while everyone else watched television. The Dreadnought had just suffered a strike from a German dive bomber, and the crew was bravely fighting to keep the burning ship afloat and operational.

Tilly emerged from the bathroom after about an hour, dressed in a green blouse and skirt that hung off her skinny frame, but she had done her hair and applied subtle makeup. The effect on her appearance was dramatic. Her large, expressive eyes were framed by long, dark lashes. A touch of color on her lips and in her cheeks made her skin seem to glow. Her hair, always limp or frizzy, had been meticulously combed out and styled to frame her cute, delicate features.

"You look ready to go out for a night on the town," I said.

"I feel different," she said. "I wanted to look the way I feel. You're not a girl, but I think you understand anyway."

I laughed. "Yes, I think I do."

Tilly joined the others in front of the TV, slipping into new habits as if the old Tilly had never existed. I was in a daze, still trying to make myself believe the changes in her personality. There was something a little bittersweet in seeing her move on, knowing that she didn't need me anymore. But I knew that I wouldn't have wanted it any differently.



Double Helix Ch. 07



Tilly sat fidgeting behind the terminal. Her hands rested on the keyboard, but she pulled them off again. "You're sure it's her?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "She knows you. She sent me design notes for your gene model. Look, she just signed in."

On the screen was a blinking cursor and the word "Hello" next to Kelly's chat room ID.

Tilly put her hands on the keys again and began to type. "Hey. It's me, Tilly."

"Tilly, honey, I've been so worried about you. I'm so glad you're safe. How are you doing?"

Tilly's fingers hovered over the keyboard for a few moments before she started typing. "I'm still having trouble believing it's really over. Did Norm tell you what happened?"

"Yes, though not all of it, I think. Is he there?"

Tilly smiled wryly to herself. "Yes, he's looking over my shoulder, and he says 'hi'. I'll tell you more about it when I can, but not right now. So, how are you? What have you been doing?"

"I'm okay, under the circumstances. I'm doing government work, and it really sucks. They're having me evaluate and catalog genetic research documents. Believe me, it could be worse. I've heard stories of some of the things being worked on by my former colleagues. Not all of them are true, I'm sure."

"We have a lot to catch up on," Tilly typed. "I've missed you, mom."

"Look, the only time they give me any privacy is when I go to the bathroom. I've got about five more minutes before someone comes looking for me. Ask me anything you want."

I let the two of them have their privacy to converse. Wendy and Nissi were sitting together on the sofa, and Wendy moved over to make room for me. Once things had settled, one of the first things that Tilly had asked is if she could speak to her mother. She knew that I had been in contact with her from listening in to my conversation with Wendy. It had taken two days to arrange the meeting, but Kelly had been ecstatic in her messages to me.

Tilly came to find me after she was finished. "Thank you, Norm," she said. "I still can't believe you were able to contact her."

The movie that was running on the TV suddenly winked off, replaced a moment later by a view of an empty podium with the seal of the president on the front of it. A voice over announced, "We interrupt this program for a special announcement from the president of the United States."

Stansy came running in from her bedroom to stand behind the couch. President John McCain approached the a podium, flanked by secret service agents and trailed by aides and various officials. He was all business, sparing only a brief smile and nod to members of the audience. He placed a small stack of papers on the podium and unfolded a pair of reading glasses from a breast pocket, then began to speak. "Good evening, my fellow Americans. It is with a heavy heart that I stand before you tonight. Today marks nine years since the Rot was first unleashed upon our world. It has been more than seven years since this administration passed a resolution to ban the genetic engineering that spawned that horrible plague.

"In that time, we have done everything we can to reverse the often horrifying effects of the runaway genetic tampering of the previous half century. We, the American people, have worked to mitigate the damage, not just to our food supply, but to our very way of life. We have extended our welcome to the victims of genetic engineering to bring them back into the fold of humanity, and up to this point have given them every opportunity to do so. Many have accepted that offer and been made whole. Others have rejected it. In so doing, they have rejected their humanity and declared war on all of us. This, we can abide no longer. As president and by the authority of the Emergency Executive Powers Act, I hereby declare that all genetically modified humans currently at large are guilty of treason against the United States."

He paused, and a smattering of applause went up, but quickly died down as he surveyed the audience soberly. "It is a decision I did not come to lightly, and not without regret. However, as a gesture of goodwill and of mercy, any genemod who willingly surrenders to the custody of local or federal law enforcement within the next six months will receive a full pardon for his or her crimes, contingent upon undergoing voluntary reversion of genetic modification. After that grace period, the full force of the law will be brought to bear. Consummate with that order, individuals found to be guilty of aiding and abetting genemods will receive stiff penalties for their actions, up to and including capital punishment. We will search door-to-door if we have to, until each of them is found and brought to justice.

"Once more, I do regret that we have come to this point, but the way forward is clear. The human race cannot survive another Rot. It is time to bring this unhappy chapter of our history to a close. It is time to take a stand against those who would bring humanity to its knees, those who would try to usurp our rightful place as masters of this Earth. Thank you."

The shot switched to a wide-angle view of the audience standing and applauding as Mr. McCain turned and walked from the stage. The secretary of state came forward to field questions from the press.

"Holy shit!" Nissi rasped, getting to her feet. She turned to me. "Norm, did you catch that?"

"Escalation," I said, remembering Sasha's words from weeks earlier.

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"Never mind."

"We are well and truly fucked," Nock said.

Stansy just covered her face for a moment and walked away, muttering curses.

I saw that Tilly had gotten up and wandered over at some point in the speech. She was staring silently at the screen.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she said. She looked for a few moments more and seemed to shake herself out of whatever she had been thinking. "Stan, how are we doing on the user authentication code?"

She and Stan went back over to the terminal and got to work, and Stan looked happy for the diversion. I looked at Nock, who seemed intent on avoiding my gaze. He flipped through the channels until he found one where they weren't talking about the announcement.

I could understand a little of what they were going through. In an instant, our fortunes had flipped. I still faced a long prison sentence for my crimes. The genemods faced execution. They would remain alive only as long as they could remain hidden.

Nissi sat back down and leaned heavily against me. "It just gets worse all the time," she said. "Why can't they just leave us alone?"

I stroked the back of her head. "I don't know." I thought to say something more, about how things would have to get better eventually, but the words rang hollow in my mind. What hope was there for any of them but to escape the madness that had taken hold of the country?

When the movie ended, Nissi took my hand. "Come on," she said, and led me back to her room. She put on a record and Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" began to play from her speakers. Flashing me a smile he took my hand in hers and put other her arm around me, and we danced in the tiny space. I found her pressing her body closer against me and she rested her head on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and breathed her in. "I love you," I said.

Her arms tightened on me reflexively. I felt and heard her take a deep breath, but it hitched in her throat. She whimpered and shook, but wouldn't let me pull away when I became alarmed. Only then did I realize that she was crying. "It's okay," I whispered in her ear, still rocking slowly to the music. I had never seen her cry before, and I got the sense that she wasn't used to it either. The song ended quickly and moved on to the next, but we danced on until Nissi's sniffles had stopped and the tension had left her body.

Nissi finally pulled away from me, turning her back to me as she did. She began to strip, so I did the same, until we were both standing in our underwear. When she turned back to me, she looked like a mess, with her makeup smudged and her eyes red and puffy. She closed the distance between us and kissed me fiercely. When it was over, she pressed her forehead against mine. "It frightens me," she said in a hoarse voice.

"I know it does," I said, thinking that she meant the new presidential order. "I'm scared too.

"No," she said. "It frightens me how much I need you. If something ever happened to you, Norm, I don't know how I could go on." She sighed. "Every time something like this happens, it rips away the illusion that things are normal and all the fear and pain come rushing back. I wanted to bring you in here and fuck you silly, just to forget for a while, but I can't even do that right. Look at me, crying like some simpering little girl."

"It's okay," I said. "I'm not even sure I could get it up right now."

She smiled slightly in amusement. "That almost sounds like a challenge, but really, I think I just want to cuddle."

We got into bed together and Nissi fitted her body against mine, though she couldn't resist a quick grind against my crotch before settling down. I ran my fingers through her hair and planted soft kisses on her bare neck and shoulder. She sighed her contentment. "I love you," she mumbled. Less than a minute later, I felt and heard her slip into sleep. I waited for a bit longer to make sure she was truly out before slipping away to get dressed.

I found my door open and light streaming out into the hallway. "Tilly?" I said, finding her seated on my bed with her hands in her lap. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Hi, sorry. I thought you might be coming back to sleep in your own room, and I wanted to have a word."

I started to close the door, but something about the intimacy of having Tilly in my room bothered me, and I stopped.

"In private, if you don't mind." she said.

I closed the door the rest of the way and stepped toward the bed but stopped. My thoughts flashed suddenly and inexplicably back to that kiss, when she had first awakened following her treatment. A not-unpleasant chill went through me at the memory, but I pushed it from my mind. I held my distance, awkward though it felt, halfway between the door and the bed. "What's on your mind?"

"This latest order," she said, lowering her voice. "The agency's efforts have been a profound embarrassment for the McCain administration. It's no coincidence that this comes after we've been having all of these disruptions in our food supply. Don't you see? They want to make us turn on each other. I'm sure that a lot of safe houses are doing a lot worse than we are right now. Some--maybe even most--genemods are willing to die to remain who they are, but not all of them, I would bet. Defections are going to start happening, and the closer we get to the six-month deadline, the worse it's going to get."

The thought hadn't occurred to me, but it made perfect sense. That bit about searching door-to-door might have been hyperbole, or it might have been a carefully crafted statement to get the American people ready for it. In either case, the threat alone might be enough to get the effect they wanted. "So what do we do about it?"

Tilly took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I really don't know what to do about the big picture, but we need to think about our own home at least. People look up to you, Norm. You see things differently than most people. Look what an effect you've had on our lives here."

I shrugged and smiled self-deprecatingly. "I built a bathroom."

"No. You gave us hope. You've given all of us something to do and to look forward to. Stansy has been talking to her son. Wendy feels appreciated in a way she's never felt before. Stan felt useless before he started on this VPN project. You know, Nissi told me that it was your interest in her music that got her to fall in love with you? Even Nock has lost some of his cynicism. All of that is your doing. You and I are alike in that way."

"I can't take credit for Stan," I said dismissively.

"You inspired him. Trust me on this. And then there's me." She stood and came close, taking my hand. "Can you ever really know what you've done for me?"

Her touch sent an electric thrill through me. I longed to pull her in, the press my body against hers until we joined together. Warmth gathered and pooled in the pit of my stomach, an awakening desire. I reacted without thinking, jerking my hand away.

Tilly withdrew half a step, a question in her gaze. I hated myself for feeling such things, and for inspiring the hurt and confusion reflected back to me in her eyes. I dreaded what she would say to me next, whether question or accusation, but all she said was, "Please, just think about it. We need to keep morale high if we're going to get through this."

"Okay," I said, flashing her a smile I didn't feel. "I'll see what I can do to keep everyone's spirits up. Right now, I'd like to go to sleep. I'll talk to Sasha about your other concern in the morning"

"Yes, I should go," Tilly said, sounding nearly as awkward as I felt.

As the weeks went by, some things got better, others got worse. Stansy had begun exchanging emails with her son on a daily basis now, and though things were still rocky, she seemed to think that he was coming around to her view of things. Stan was absorbed in his work, spending long hours each day building the protocols of his network with frequent input from Tilly. Nock was the same as ever, except that he seemed a lot less prickly and cynical, which I could only attribute to Tilly's influence. Nissi and I were still very much in love.

Our biggest problem was food. In a month's time, the agency managed to get us just two of its normally weekly shipments as suppliers dried up in the wake of McCain's order. Sasha stretched what we had and made up some of the difference through local black market dealers, but she confided in me that each of us was only getting about 1200 calories a day. I started tracking my weight and realized that I was losing almost two pounds a week. Some of that was probably healthy, but if it went on for a few more months, I was going to be under weight. I asked for and was granted an additional shift at the hospital, but it seemed to make little difference in the amount that Sasha was able to purchase. After more than two months of waiting, my FEMA food ration request was still pending.

Beyond that, Tilly continued to surprise and confuse me. She had long and frequent conversations with everyone, but her interactions with me were always polite but brief. Most vexing of all was that when I really thought about it, I was actually glad not to be spending time alone with her. I still didn't know what to think of Tilly, or of my reaction to her. 

One morning, when I went to get Wendy for our T'ai Chi session, I found her sitting on her bed crying. Her cat, Ingrid, was in her lap, purring loudly as she stroked her fur.

"Hi," I said. "Are you okay?"

"No," she said hoarsely, "I'm not, but it's stupid."

"Try me," I said.

Ingrid chose that moment to flip over onto her back to give Wendy access to scratch her belly. "I have to give her up, Norm. Sasha told me yesterday, but it didn't really hit me until now. We can't afford to feed Ingrid anymore."

"Is it really that bad?" I asked.

Wendy sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across each eye. "She only eats about 200 calories a day, but the scraps that Sasha would normally save out for her, she's having to use in our food. She only let me keep Ingrid this long because I eat less than anyone else, so the difference went to her."

"What's going to happen to her?"

"Sasha said she would take her to the animal shelter for me. Maybe they will find her a new home."

I knew that was unlikely. The cost of pet food had gone up along precipitously since the Rot had spread. Household pets were a lot less common than they used to be. Most pets who went to a shelter were euthanized within a few weeks.

"I'll talk to her," I said.

"No," Wendy said, looking down to scratch her cat under the chin. "I appreciate it, Norm, but please don't. Things are bad and might not get better for some time. It's the right thing to do for us. Ingrid's had a good life. It's just hard saying goodbye."

"Okay," I said, "but please let me know if you change your mind." I gave her shoulder a squeeze and let myself out, our T'ai Chi practice forgotten.

Tilly surprised me when she sat down across from me at breakfast. "Can I go work in the greenhouse with you today?"

I looked up from my bowl of oatmeal. She had an earnest look, and I found myself nodding before I could really think it through. "Sure. You can help me plant a new crop of lettuce."

I looked over at Nissi, but she was talking with Wendy, further down the table. My gaze returned to Tilly, who was studying me intently. I had the overwhelming urge to reach across the table to touch her face. I felt a flush creep up my neck and I looked quickly away. What was wrong with me?

I quickly finished my meager breakfast and excused myself from the table to wash my dishes. I hadn't felt this sort of attraction in all those weeks that I had been treating Tilly. Back then, she had been merely my patient, and a very damaged one at that. Now, my stomach churned with so much dread and anticipation that it was a wonder I could keep my food down.

I got dressed to go out and toyed with the idea of telling her she couldn't come with me today. "You're being silly," I chided myself. Besides, what would I tell her? That I was hopelessly attracted to her and needed to keep my distance so I wouldn't hurt Nissi? What did that say about me?

"All set?" Tilly said brightly as I emerged. Her look told me that I had been gone for far longer than I should have for just putting on jeans and shoes.

I acknowledged her with a fake smile and followed her up the stairs. I went through the greenhouse' airlock first and on to get the seed lettuce to start work immediately. I reasoned that we should just get the task done quickly and get out. Though the work was not difficult, we had several plants to go through, and I had barely harvested all of the seeds from the first plant before Tilly came to join me.

"We need to talk," she said, squatting next to me. She began to pull at the little white puffs, like tiny dandelion seed clusters, placing them in the bowl that I had gotten out for this purpose.

"Okay," I said, and felt my guilt and trepidation cinch tighter in my gut. "What about?"

"I've been thinking a lot about the announcement that the president made a few weeks ago," she said.

"Ah," I said, and took a relieved breath. "You're worried about it?"

"Yes," she said hesitantly and paused. I resisted the urge to turn and look at her. "But more than that, I'm worried about what I'm sensing from Stansy."

I stopped picking seeds to look at her, my own petty insecurities completely forgotten. "What about Stansy?"

Tilly sighed. "Well, everyone else reacts with fear and apprehension any time it shows up on the news or in conversation, but more and more, lately, I'm getting something else from Stansy. I'm not sure how to describe it, except that she becomes introspective. I don't really want to start problems with her, but--"

"But you're worried that she's considering turning herself in," I finished for her, picking up her line of thought.

"Maybe," she said, frowning. "How did you know?"

I nodded. "The thought has crossed my mind. You've heard of the Criminals' Dilemma?"

"Of course."

"They want us to turn on each other," I said. "It's going to start happening, if it hasn't already, though I expect most people will want to wait it out until we're a bit closer to the deadline. Genemods are going to start giving themselves up, and taking everyone else in their safe houses with them. How sure are you about this?"




Double Helix Ch. 07



"Like I said, 'maybe'. I can't tell you what Stansy is thinking, only what she feels."

I thought long about my words before answering. "More than anything, she wants her son back. I think sometimes she even regrets her choice to become a fugitive. Maybe she thinks that if she turns all of us in, the government might reward her with parental rights. Maybe she would even try to offer us up in exchange for some kind of guarantee."

Now it was Tilly's turn to think. "I don't know," she said at last. "Stansy knows as much as any of us what we all sacrificed so that we could hold on to our genes. I don't think she would do that to Stan. She loves him, almost as much as she loves her son."

I was reminded once more how strange relationships could be. Nissi had claimed that Stansy and Stan had sex, but a loving, devoted relationship? To all appearances, there seemed to be nothing going on between them. And that was what suddenly got me worried. Did Standard Upgrade models naturally make good liars? I didn't know. It seemed like the kind of useful, general-purpose ability that would make a good selling point to a niche of gene model customers while getting conveniently left out of most advertising campaigns.

"Do you think you could talk to her?" I asked. "Maybe get her to reveal more about what she's thinking and feeling?"

Tilly shrugged. "I'm not sure how, without tipping her off that I know something. And if I'm wrong about this, I stand a good chance of alienating her. And even if this is right, thinking about something and doing it are two different things."

"True," I said. We both worked for a few minutes in silence, getting two more plants done each.

"I guess I'll just try to be subtle," Tilly said. "Maybe set up the conversation to link this situation with her son, and see if she reacts in a way I can decipher."

"Just be careful," I admonished. "Now you have me worried about putting thoughts into her head. All this might be over nothing."

Tilly smiled slightly. "Believe me, we've all thought about it at one time or another. Even me, when I was deep in my depression. Being merely human couldn't possibly have been any worse than how I felt. Fortunately, getting out of bed was more than I could handle, most days."

"I'm just glad that I could help," I said.

Tilly's smile faded, "So, that brings up something else I needed to talk to you about." She didn't speak for a moment and I knew she was gathering her thoughts. "How much do you know about the Don and Donna models?"

The unexpected turns in my conversations with Tilly were going to make me dizzy soon. "Sure, short for hedonistic. 'The happiest model you can choose for you newborn' was the tag line, wasn't it? They had enhanced pleasure centers, but were borderline manic, if I recall right."

Tilly nodded, "That was only in the earliest batch of mods and only in about five percent of cases. They corrected it within a year of release. There was a class action suit against IG Farben USA in '88, but about a dozen claimants signed on."

"Okay," I said. "You obviously know more than I do. What's this about?"

"Right, well, it wasn't that heavily publicized. Sexual pleasure was greatly enhanced in the Don/Donna line, as well as desire. IG Farben claimed that it was a side effect, but there was still a bit of an uproar when a journalist for Nature researched the patent and pointed out the potential for abuse of pubescent minors who were enhanced with the mod. The company execs realized that they were going to get banned in most of the industrialized world if they didn't do something. Their solution was to delay sexual maturity for the gene model. Puberty doesn't start until somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two."

I had stopped working to listen, fascinated. "You have some of the mods from that line in your model," I said, getting some idea where this was going.

She nodded. "I hit puberty right in the middle, shortly after my twentieth birthday, just like over ninety percent of that model is supposed to do. They didn't want to risk the few dozen cases that would hit low on the bell curve and end up becoming sexually active while still minors. The reason I'm telling you all of this is to try to explain some of what I shared with you before my treatment. When those men raped me--" she grimaced, but went on, "when I was raped, it had only been a few weeks since the process finished. I was only just beginning to explore my sexuality. So when I had those dreams and those thoughts about you, I admit that I was very confused. Sex was nothing but pain and degradation for me up until then. Intellectually, I knew that my feelings were wrong, but I wasn't thinking clearly."

She breathed in and out slow, as if purging those bad memories. "But that's all past now. I've been. . ." she smiled a little shyly and looked down. "Well, let's say I've been experimenting with my body in the last month. I think I understand now what all the fuss is about."

I stared at Tilly, glad for her downcast eyes. The image of her lying in bed masturbating had jumped, unbidden, into my head. My face heated at the same moment that my cock began to harden. I tried to think of something else, anything at all but that image and the flood of lust that it brought. I thought of Nissi, and tried to focus on her disappointment if she knew the desire that I was feeling for another woman.

"See, that's what I'm talking about," Tilly said, looking up now, her embarrassment gone. "Where do we really stand, Norm? I don't know what to think."

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said defensively.

Tilly shook her head at me. "Norm, I thought you knew by now that you can't lie to me. Look, I know that you and Nissi are an item, but I can tell that you're conflicted. I can feel your attraction, your desire for me and your guilt. It's not healthy."

I laughed humorlessly. It was almost a relief to finally bring it out in the open. "Not healthy? Of course it's not healthy. You're my patient. It's wrong for me to think of you that way. And Nissi, she doesn't deserve that. She doesn't deserve me."

"Whoa. Norm, calm down."

I realized that she was right. My pulse was racing and my voice had risen almost to a shout as I spoke. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. I'm fine. You needed to get that out. We just don't want to draw attention from the neighbors, right?"

"Right," I sighed.

"So we have a problem, because . . ." Tilly paused and chewed at her bottom lip. "Because I feel the same way about you. I think I started to feel something even before, but when I woke up and realized that I was free, the force of that feeling came on so strongly that I had to kiss you almost before I knew what I was doing. I knew in that moment. . . I knew that I loved you, Norm."

I peered at her, expecting this was some kind of cruel joke. "You. . . love me?"

"Yes."

I laughed again. "No, you don't, Tilly."

She looked stung for a moment, but pressed on. "Yes, Norm, I do. I've never really been in love with anyone before, but I, of all people, should know what it's like. All those little physiological signs I've seen in other people. More than that, I feel it. It's a rush of hopeful, anxious anticipation and joy that makes me feel like I'm floating. It's almost too much to bear. And I've been terrified to tell you. I'm afraid of what happens next."

"You're my patient," I said. "The ethics--"

"Screw ethics," she said heatedly. "You're fired, okay? You are no longer treating me. I'd say you stopped weeks ago. I don't want to hurt Nissi either, but I can't just ignore this. And you can't either. We need to figure this out."

"There's nothing to figure out, Tilly," I said bitterly. "I don't love you. Attraction? Sure, okay, I admit it. I find you amazing, intriguing. That's part of what makes you beautiful, but far from all of it. You can even call it infatuation if you want, but that's all."

She stared at me with narrowed eyes. She opened her mouth as if to reply, but appeared to think better of it. "Fine," she said.

I didn't need enhanced senses and a head full of mirror neurons to understand that tone of voice and that bristling posture. Tilly was furious with me, and I couldn't really blame her. "Let's, um, let's finish up and go inside," I offered.

We finished harvesting the seeds and placed them in rows in a planter. I think that Tilly's irritation with me began to soften by the end, though she turned away quickly when I caught her looking at me. As much as it hurt to see how my rejection hurt her, she had to understand.

Sasha was waiting for us when we got back to the house. She pulled me aside and brought me into her office as Tilly returned to the basement. "The agency has failed to ship us food again," she told me once I was settled in the chair across from her desk. "They apologized profusely, both before and after I reamed them out for it."

I shook my head. "That's two weeks now. Two in a row."

She nodded. "I know. I would like to use your stipend again this month to buy food. I have been in contact with a new supplier who's giving me a deal that's too good to pass up. I'm going to meet him out in Duvall tonight. I hoped you could go with me to help pack the car. Your schedule says you have the night off."

"Okay," I said slowly. "I guess I'll go, but I've never done anything like this before. I mean, we're dealing with criminals."

"Sweetie," Sasha said, "I hate to break this to you, but we're all criminals."

I rolled my eyes. "Point taken. Any suggestions?"

She smiled wryly. "Bring your gun."

It was after 10 PM when Sasha came to get me. The ever present Seattle drizzle had lifted in the last few days. Looking up through the SUV's window, I could and a sliver of crescent moon hung among the few pinpricks of light that could be seen through the glare of city lights. "So where are we going?" I asked.

"Duvall is northeast, twenty miles or so." She let the car drive in silence for a few moments. "We haven't had much chance to talk recently," she said. "How are things?"

I shrugged at the vague question. "Everyone is worried about the president's declaration."

"We're at war. There's no denying it now. Are you interested in knowing the truth?"

"Yes. How bad is it?"

"In the month since the executive order was passed, more than forty safe houses have been raided. Most of those have been concentrated on the east coast, but the rest are scattered across the nation."

"Forty," I repeated, considering. That was at least a few hundred genemods captured and reverted.

"There's more," she said. "We've gotten some leaked intel that the feds have been tapping phones and sending subpoenas to every CSP in the country. They're trying to crack our comm network. The agency has never focused too heavily on that kind of tech, and that's going to cost us now. Phone and data communication is being heavily restricted for now, but supposedly they are working on the problem."

"Any breaches there?"

"So far, fortunately no," she said, "though it almost seems too good to be true. On the other hand, the security measures the agency has put in place are quite draconian. I've been restricted to very brief, coded communication with a single contact once a week, and the information flow is almost entirely one way at this point. But even if the network is not breached, this whole mess is disrupting agency logistics to no end. Of course, that's only going to make things worse as people get more desperate when they aren't getting enough to eat. I expect forty houses to turn into a hundred soon. I'll be surprised if half of us are left by the time we reach the president's deadline."

That was a staggering admission. My best guess was that there were somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand safe houses in the nation, scattered through every major city. Usually when one was found by the feds, it was enough to make headlines. The fact that the recent surge in raids wasn't in the news at all was worrisome.

"So how is Stan's network coming along?" Sasha asked.

The abrupt change in subject caught me off guard. "Uh, well, I'm no software guy, but it seems to be going well. He and Tilly are working on setting up a network node in Santiago with a group of expat genemods to test two-way communication. I can ask him about it when we get back."

"Good. I was nervous at first, but I think that this network is going to be exactly what the agency needs right now. If we can establish a free flow of information between the agency and the various safe houses without risking the identities and locations of any one member of the network, I think it will help tremendously with our security and logistics problems."

I blinked at Sasha in surprise. I had never thought of Stan's pet project as something that could prove so vital. "I'll talk to Stan," I promised again.

The trip out to Duvall took about twenty-five minutes, half of it along a winding road with nothing but trees to either side. The car slowed as it crossed a bridge on approach to what appeared to be the town's only stoplight. "Car, display route," Sasha said. The screen on the center console came to life, plotting the car's course on a map. It was another couple of miles or so to our destination, a bit north of town.

The car moved through the intersection and rolled along the highway for a few minutes before turning onto a gravel road and coming to a stop. "Destination reached," it announced and idled the engine. I looked around for any kind of landmark. What once must have been farmland was now nothing but bare, hard-packed soil in all directions, spotted with occasional rocks and trees.

"Car, manual control," Sasha said. She put the car in gear, drove along the narrow lane for a half mile and made another turn onto an even less well-maintained road. The SUV's active suspension glided easily over the many potholes, resulting in only a slight rocking of the cabin. "There," Sasha said, her arm coming up to point ahead and to the right. There was a barn and a grain silo just off the road, both vandalized and decaying from neglect. A patch of blackened timbers and bricks further down marked where a house had once stood.

Another vehicle, a flatbed truck, waited next to the barn, the moonlight casting its shadow on the wall. The driver, a man in his thirties with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, got out as we approached. He put up a hand in greeting and Sasha waved back.

We stopped next to the truck and got out. "Hey," the man said, "good to see you made it. I wasn't expecting you for another thirty minutes though." He sounded annoyed that we had come early.

Sasha ignored his tone. "Traffic was light. I have the money, but we would like to inspect the goods first."

"Oh, sure, sure. Come on around." The truck door squealed gratingly as he closed it, and the man led us around to the back of the truck. He handed me a flashlight, which I clicked on and held for him to see by. He untied a rope and lifted a tarp to reveal a cardboard box. I played the light over it to reveal dozens of canned goods and several large bags of rice. With the food from the greenhouse, it was enough to feed all of us for at least two weeks, maybe three if we were careful. "It's all here, just like I promised. Unfortunately, the price did change a bit since we spoke."

Sasha growled in exasperation. "And how much do you want for it now?"

The man took a long draw on the cigarette and blew out a puff of smoke. "Two thousand dollars," he said.

"That's fucking outrageous," Sasha spat. "You told me nine-hundred."

"True, true. But I've since gotten some additional offers. Tell you what. I'll drop it to nineteen hundred."

"I'll give you a thousand," Sasha said. "No more."

"Eighteen hundred," he said. "I've already got an offer for that much. Any less and I'll be losing money." "Bullshit," Sasha said. "I know of a dozen suppliers who'll cut a better deal than that. One thousand, take it or leave it."

He put up his hands. "Okay, okay. Yeah, you feel cheated and I understand. So I'll drop it down to seventeen hundred."

Sasha stared at him. She took a step back. "I don't think so," she said. "Norm, come on. We're leaving." She kept her eyes on the man as she backed toward the door of her car.

"Hey, whoa," the man said. "Look, I'm just trying to get a good deal here. I think I can come down close to your thousand. Don't go." He moved forward and reached as if to grab Sasha by the arm.

Sasha's gun was in her hand before I knew it. The cigarette tumbled from his mouth as he put up his hands defensively. "Back off, asshole," Sasha said. "Just stay the fuck back. We are leaving."

She kept the gun trained on him as she opened her door. "Car, start."

The SUV purred into life as I climbed in. Sasha pulled up the back of her shirt and slid her gun into a hidden holster at the back of her hip, then leaped inside. She threw the car into reverse, sending rocks pinging off the body as she tore down the road backwards.

The man watched us leave, his lips moving, though he didn't appear to be shouting at us. I waited until we were back on the highway, roaring south at well above the speed limit, before speaking. "What was that all about?"

"It was a sting," Sasha said. "That guy was a cop, or he was working with them. He was trying to delay us while they closed the net. I could tell he knew shit-all about bargaining, but I could put that down to him being an amateur. When he tried to stop us from leaving, I knew we'd been had. You just don't do that with a buyer. Not in this business. As it was, we got lucky. If they had been more on the ball, we never would have gotten out of there."

"Oh, my God," I said, only now realizing how close we had come to losing everything. I glanced at the speedometer, which was hovering above eighty. "Shouldn't you slow down?"

Sasha cursed in Russian and let the vehicle coast to a more reasonable speed. "Car, route to home and take control."

"So, is that it? Are we alright?"

Sasha considered my question for a moment before cursing again in her native language. "No, we're not alright. That asshole saw my license plate, so they'll have my home address now if they didn't already. All they need is a good excuse for a warrant and we're all fucked." Suddenly she pounded the steering wheel. "Shit! Shit and God damn! I pulled a gun on him, so they can probably get me for assault. I have to get in touch with the agency, get you all out of here, tonight if possible."

Sasha brought out her phone and dialed. After a few moments, she muttered, "Mother fucker," and dialed again. "Pick up," she said, "I don't care if I'm not supposed to call you."

Up ahead, a blue and white car appeared, a light bar across the top clearly visible. Sasha put down her phone to watch as our two cars slid past each other. I turned to look out the rear view mirror and saw red brake lights wink on.

"Car, manual control," Sasha barked. She gripped the wheel tightly in both hands, peering at the rear view mirror at the police car slipping out of sight behind the line of trees as it nosed along looking for a spot to turn around. She stomped on the accelerator as soon as the car was out of sight, throwing me back into my seat, the car fishtailing for just a moment as the engine roared. She steered west at a junction, slowing just enough to make the turn. I glanced anxiously back every few seconds, expecting to see the police car on our tail. Sasha got on the 520 at Redmond, weaving through the city traffic at speeds that had me gripping the armrests as hard as I could.

My heart leaped into my throat when I saw flashing red and blue lights in the distance, maybe a mile behind us. "Sasha," I warned.

"I know, Norm. I see him. So, this is it. Listen to me carefully. They will probably send a car to my house before morning. Keys, phone numbers and combinations are stored in the filing cabinet that I keep locked up in my office. The key to the cabinet is in a magnetic holder under the kitchen sink. The address and space number for the truck are there as well. Take my office terminal with you if you can and plug it into a public network node ASAP. You'll find out why. In the cabinet, there is a grocery list with two items circled. Enter both for the password. If you can't find it, put in an incorrect login five times and it will fry the electronics. I have a vehicle storage space a half mile from you. Inside is a box truck loaded with all the supplies I have been stockpiling. I need you to get everyone to that truck. Get out of town if you can. Once you are safe, try to reach an agency contact and they will help you relocate."




Double Helix Ch. 07



I was barely able to get a grip on the flurry of instructions. "Hold on. What are you doing?"

Sasha veered right onto an exit ramp. "You're getting out, right up here on the off ramp. Get off the road fast and maybe our new friend won't see you. I'm going to give him a merry chase. Tell mamka I won't be coming home." She was pushing me to get out before the car had even rolled to a complete stop. "Go, go!"

I stumbled and nearly went down as my feet touched the asphalt at a bit faster than walking speed. Sasha's SUV accelerated into the red light, swerved to avoid a car coming from the left, and turned to head downtown. I slid down the off ramp's gravel embankment in a stumbling crouch. Above me, the police car went speeding by, siren wailing. I waited a few moments for the sound to fade before heading towards the intersection. I looked around at the businesses and street names and after a moment, got my bearings. The house was maybe a half mile from where I was. I began to run.

The windows of the house were dark when I arrived except for a dim light in Nonna's bedroom. Volcanic rock crunched beneath my feet as I cut across the yard and went straight for the door. Taking great gulps of air, I punched in my code for the security system, but the LED on the key panel flashed red twice. I nearly panicked at the thought that my code had somehow stopped working, but took a deep, calming breath and tried again. This time, it flashed green and the bolt on the door clicked open. I pushed inside and ran for the basement stairs. 

Only Nock and Stan were awake in the main room. "Everyone get up, now!" I yelled.

"Whoa, Norm," Nock said. "What's going on?"

I held up my hand in a "wait" gesture. "Up! Everyone get dressed, now!"

Nissi came out first, wearing a large t-shirt, and from what I could tell, nothing else. She ran up to me and took me by the shoulders. "My God, Norm, what's wrong?"

I wrapped my arms around her, feeling my body tremble from the fear and stress I was under. "The police are after Sasha. She dropped me where I could run back here."

"What?!" Nock said. His chair toppled backward as he stood suddenly.

"She said we have to leave now. They're going to be coming here."

Wendy and Tilly ran out almost together, with Stansy not far behind. "What's the plan?" Wendy said. "Is the agency going to pick us up?"

"No," I said, barely hesitating. "With how things are, they won't take a call from us. We need to get out of the house right now, find somewhere to hide." Sasha's instructions spun around in my head in a confused tangle. She had said there was a storage space and a truck, something about a key to her desk under the sink.

"What's going to happen to Sasha?" Tilly asked.

"I don't know. They were trying to get her for buying food, but she got suspicious and pulled a gun on the guy, so we left. The police probably don't know about us yet."

"We better hope they don't catch her," Stan said. "When they see all this and realize what she was up to, she'll do time no matter what."

"Alright, but we need to go," I said again. "Take one bag each, but we need to get out of here as quick as we can."

We all went to our separate rooms to pack. I threw as many of my clothes as I could into the suitcase I had arrived with and dragged it over to the bottom of the stairs. Tilly was already there and gave me a faint smile of encouragement. I climbed to the top of the stairs and touched the monitor to activate it. I quickly cycled through all of the interior and exterior cameras.

"Come on, everyone," I sent in a whisper down the stairwell. "It's safe for the moment."

Wendy came first, her cat Ingrid perched up on her shoulder as she climbed the stairs with a single packed bag. Nissi, Nock, and Tilly came right behind her, and it looked like they were carrying extra bags, not their own. "Okay, everyone assemble in the living room," I said. "Where's Stan and Stansy?"

"Stan said he had to get something," Wendy said. "Stansy's with him. We carried up their things."

"We don't have time for this," I muttered. "I'll get them. Just go. We'll be right behind you."

"Stan!" I said, raising my voice as much as I dared as I rushed downstairs to confront him. "What's the holdup?"

"I just need a minute," he said. He was tapping furiously at the terminal's keyboard.

"Where's Stansy?"

"She had to get something from her room."

Leaving Stan for the moment, I headed back to Stansy's room. I brushed back the curtain and had to pause, uncertain what I was seeing. She had taken both of her paintings down and removed one of them from the glass. She was busily cutting out the bottom corner of one of them. "These are signed," she said, looking up. Now I understood. The FBI would sweep this house once the police realized that it was an agency safe house. Bad enough that they would collect our DNA, but having a name could make things that much worse. I grabbed the second painting and pulled it from its frame. Stansy made four quick cuts in the canvas and yanked the piece out. She did the same to the other and pocketed both. "Okay, let's go."

Stan was still working on the computer. "Stan, we need to go," I said.

"Almost done. I had to copy the local files up to a remote server, and I'm wiping the hard drive now."

His words triggered a memory. Sasha had said something about her own terminal. "I have to get to her computer," I said. "Sasha said it was important that we take it with us or wipe the drive."

"Okay," Stan said. "The delete is in progress. We can go. What's this about Sasha's computer?"

"There's no time," I said. "We might have to leave it." But another thought occurred to me. I slapped my forehead with my palm. "The kitchen sink."

"Thought we were packing light," Stan said with a bleak laugh.

In spite of everything, I laughed as well. "We are," I assured him.

Stan helped me haul my bags upstairs and we found the others waiting in the living room. "We need to gather a few things," I said. "There's a key somewhere under the sink in the kitchen."

"On it," Wendy said. She set Ingrid down on the couch and rushed off.

"Sasha wanted us to take her computer," I said to Stan. "Any idea why?"

"No clue." 

I really didn't want to take the time, but she had also said that there was a truck we could take. "Okay. Come with me, then. The rest of you get your things and move them out back."

We went down the hall to the last room on the right. Sasha had set up her office in a bedroom at a corner of the house. Wendy arrived at the office with the key just a few seconds behind us. Sasha's monitor was lit up with a screen saver, and I moved the pointer to interrupt the flow of colored shapes. Every instinct told me to flee, to get out of the house and run as fast and as far as I could, but my rational mind knew that we had no chance that way, on foot and exposed. The only problem was that I couldn't be sure if Sasha's hastily-made plan was any better.

Wendy opened the cabinet and pulled out the drawer. There were maybe twenty file folders, neatly labeled. "What are we looking for?" she asked.

"I don't know, should be obvious."

Wendy flipped through them for a moment before pulling one out. "It says 'Emergencies'."

"That should be it," I agreed. "There was a truck and a storage space. Any documents in there for them?"

She pulled out a slip of paper that looked like a contract. "Triple-A storage. Looks like an extra-large space, rented out to a Miss Carla Stephenson. It's just a few streets over." She leafed through some more and pulled out an index card. "This says 'truck key'." There was an old-style mechanical car key taped to it. She dropped a small bundle on the desk. "Those are hundreds," she said.

I snatched up the wad of bills, the contract and the key and stuffed them in my pocket. "How about a shopping list?"

"Yeah, wait." Wendy picked up a stack of papers that she had set aside and went through them again. "Here we go."

"Anything circled?"

"Yes. Three tomatoes. One gallon of milk."

I had her repeat the two items letter for letter and typed them into the password box on the terminal, "3Tom.1galMilk". I hit enter and waited. One, two seconds passed. Just when I thought that I must have entered it wrong, the login screen disappeared, and the UI came up.

"What the hell?" Stan said. "What is this thing running? This is no terminal OS."

I shook my head. "I have no idea. Can we just shut it down and get out of here?"

"Yeah, yeah," Stan agreed. "I need to figure out the interface, hang on."

Stan tried a few icons until something seemed to get the result he wanted. The words "Shutdown in Progress..." appeared in bold lettering.

Stan was already checking the terminal, tracing the little nest of wires at the back of the monitor where all of the other peripherals linked up. "Can we just grab it and go?" I asked.

Stan shook his head. "This isn't what it appears to be. See this cable?" I could see a thick gray cable in the shadow behind the desk. "This is a thin client terminal, but that's no network cable." He moved suddenly to the front of the desk and felt around underneath, along the side of the cabinet. "Yep, something here." He moved something and passed back a wood panel to me. A few seconds later, he shuffled back out from under the desk, an object cradled under one arm.

"What is that?" I asked.

Stan set the object on the desk and looked at it. It was a black and silver rectangle a bit over a foot tall and deep, and several inches thick. "Hello, beautiful," he said. "How did you get in there?"

"Stan, what is it?" I asked, my impatience to get out of there displaced for the moment by my impatience to know what he had found.

"This," Stan said dramatically, "is a microcomputer. I've never actually seen one in person before, just pictures. Gorgeous, isn't she? One of the newer models out of Thailand, I think."

"Well, let's pack your girl up," Wendy said, "and get going."

As we were moving to do just that, emerging from the hallway into the living room, a loud knock sounded on the front door, actually more of a pounding. We froze, Stan nearly fumbling the computer, but catching it in time and gripping it firmly against himself. My heart hammered in my chest as I waited.

"Police!" a voice out front shouted. "We have a warrant. Open the door."

"Out the back now!" I hissed, moving down the hall to the living area. The others were just coming back in from carting our belongings outside, and they reversed course, back into the kitchen and dining area, heading for the back door.

"No," Nock whispered back. "No time. They're already moving to cut us off."

"Close the door!" I said, pointing at Stansy, who was closest. "Lock it!" Stansy rushed to do as I said and the security system engaged automatically when she threw the bolt.

I tried to think of all the cop shows and movies I had ever seen. How long would they wait at the front door before breaking it down? It had been maybe twenty seconds already. My thought was answered in the very same moment by a bang at the front door. Several tiny lights throughout the rooms of the house began to flash red, signaling someone attempting to breach the perimeter. Another bang sounded, and another. I crept to the entryway to look. The door, which I knew to be a quarter inch of steel covered in oak on either side, barely vibrated in its frame when it was struck from the other side. Three more bangs came in quick succession and then stopped.

"We have a warrant to search the premises," the voice outside called. He sounded winded. "Come out with your hands up."

"Norm!" Nonna said, peering from her bedroom door. "What is happening?"

"Get back inside," I said. "The police are trying to break in." Nonna disappeared back into her room.

Another bang sounded, this time from the back of the house, prompting a squeak of surprise from Stansy. She backed slowly away from the door. I could see shadows moving on the frosted glass on the upper door, and object raised in a hand and brought down and forward. This time, the sound was different as a solid object struck, a sharp crackle of sound. A spiderweb of cracks appeared in one of the four glass panels at the top of the door. The object struck again in the same place, causing more cracks but leaving the window pane otherwise intact.

"What do we do?" Nissi said, moving towards me. The hammering on the window pane continued.

What could we do? It was only a matter of time before they defeated Sasha's security measures. "Can anyone tell me how many of them there are?"

"Six, I think," Nock said. "We have two at the front door, two in back. Another car pulled up while they were trying to break in, so probably one or two more."

"Yeah," Tilly agreed. "I just heard the last two get out."

My hand went to the gun behind my hip. I was a fair shot, but could I really kill six policemen? Another sharp crack sounded, this time from the wide living room window. Some of us dropped to the floor, and the rest followed suit a moment later. I looked up and saw the same fine network of cracks as the back door window radiating out from a spot of denser cracks a few inches across. "Gunshots?"

"Tear gas canister," Nock said. And, sure enough, a white mist was rising outside the window. I got shakily to my feet, as did the others.

"If they can't force entry," Wendy said, "they might call in a SWAT team."

Stan shrugged. "Maybe not. Steel doors? Ballistic glass? They are probably already suspecting the truth by now. They might just back off and contact the FBI."

A crash and a shudder that went all through the house put further conversation on hold. The security system's audible alarm began to shriek. 

"The garage," Nock shouted over the noise, and we all understood. They must have crashed one of their cars through the garage door. The door out to the garage was hollow aluminum, and I doubted that the frame was reinforced.

"Out the back, now!" I said, moving to lead the way into the dining area. I drew my pistol and chambered a round. This is it, I thought to myself, fully expecting to die in the next few seconds.

The hammer blows against the glass pane at the back door had loosened the seal along the bottom without actually breaking up the material. As I drew near, a hand pushed through the cracked and flexible pane and worked the deadbolt. "I got it," a man's voice said on the other side. The door flung suddenly open and all I could see was the pistol pointing at me. Time slowed to a crawl as I reacted, squeezing the trigger on the Colt twice, my eyes totally focused on the hunk of metal that was about to kill me. I heard a cry of pain and had the insane thought that it had come from the gun itself, but the scene came into focus suddenly, time resuming its frenetic pace, and I realized that I had shot a living human being. The man staggered backward and went to one knee, clutching at his neck. Blood streamed out between his fingers.

Behind him, another officer ducked out of sight behind the wall. "Shots fired! Shots fired!" he yelled. "Officer down!"

The gun felt heavy in my numbed fingers. Disbelief ruled my thoughts. This was all a dream. Or I was looking out through the eyes of someone else. I could not have just shot him. It was all too easy. Killing a person couldn't be easy.

"Norm, what are you doing?" Nissi shouted at me.

"He froze up!" Nock said. He ran forward to grab the frame of the door, slammed it shut and locked the bolt again, shutting out the view of the police officer dying on the ground outside.

I gripped the gun tightly, forcing myself to feel, to think. I could hear the steady crash of something pounding against the door to the garage, and the creak and squeal of the door frame coming apart.

"I'm okay," I said, and couldn't hear my own voice. The alarm drowned it out. "I'm okay!" I shouted and turned to face the others. We had to get out. The noose was quickly closing around our necks, and it was starting to look like none of us would survive. "We need to get out the back." But as I said it, I realized that something was off. "Stansy!"

"She was just here," Wendy said, looking around as though she might spot the woman hiding behind one of the others. I pushed past Stan to get back to the living room.

At that moment, the door to the garage fell with a crash. I saw Stansy leap back as it came down. "I'm coming out!" she shouted, holding her hands up. She moved slowly forward towards the opening. I thought of Tilly's warning, her suspicions that Stansy was thinking of turning herself in. Beyond her, I could see larger-than life shadows on the wall cast from the headlights of one of their patrol cars. Stansy turned, just a quick glance over her shoulder, but she mouthed the word, "go," and I understood.

"No," I breathed.

"Hold your fire," one of the officers shouted to the others.

"Please, don't shoot," Stansy said. "I'm coming out." She stepped through the ruined doorway, and then moved so fast that I could barely see. There was a yelp of surprise and Stansy reappeared in the doorway, dragging a struggling form in her arms. The female officer in Stansy's grip tried to grab for her gun, but Stansy caught her arm and pulled it behind her back. The officer elbowed her in the ribs, getting little more than a grunt from Stansy.

"I've got three times your strength, honey," Stansy said. "Stop struggling, or I might have to break something."

"You're a genemod?" the girl said, naked fear in her eyes as she twisted her head to try to look back at Stansy.

Two other officers came through the door one by one, guns trained on Stansy and her hostage. "Gun!" one of them shouted, swiveling to point his weapon at me.

I lowered my pistol carefully to point at the floor. "Let's all just stay calm," I said.

"You shut up and get on the floor, geemo!" he screamed, his face red and his Asian features contorted in fury as he moved toward me.

"Stay back!" Stansy said. She did something to the officer's arm and the girl shrieked in pain.

That stopped him cold, and his gun trained back on Stansy. "Let her go, bitch," he said. "Do it now!"

"Back the HELL off, Takara!" shouted the older, slightly overweight black officer that had just come through the door. The Asian man held his ground a moment longer, but then backed off a few steps to stand beside the other officer, a young white man with a blank expression. The black officer turned to Stansy. "Ma'am," he said, keeping his gun at his side and making placating gestures with his other hand, "I'm Robert, Robert Anderson. Listen, ma'am, there's nowhere for you to go. The best thing you can do right now is to let officer Rollins go." He turned to me. "And you, sir, I need you to set your gun carefully on the floor."

"Not a chance!" Stansy growled. "Make a move and I'll snap her neck. Call off your man on the back patio. You can take me in, but you're going to let the others go."

"Stansy, this is insane," Nock said, moving slowly into the room with his hands raised.

"You don't need to tell me that," Stansy said. "Norm, gather everyone and get out of here. I'll hold them until you're gone."

"Not without you," I said. "We're leaving together." 

"Norm, don't argue. Get out of here before this trigger-happy dude just shoots me and his girlfriend."

Takara seethed. "You fucking geemo. You hurt her again, and I swear. . . "

"No one is going to get hurt," Robert insisted. "Ma'am, you're going to release officer Rollins and come with us peacefully."

"Sure," Stansy said. "Call off your man and let the others go."

"I can't do that," Robert said. He keyed the radio at his belt. "112." He waited a moment. "Dispatch, this is 112, over." There was nothing, not even static. He tried again, with the same result. "What the hell?"




Double Helix Ch. 08



Note: Thanks to Liter Knight for the edit. Sorry again for the delay. 

*****

"Somebody grab their guns," Stansy said.

Slowly, reluctantly, I opened my eyes and looked down. If I had been hit, I couldn't see it, and I couldn't feel it, either. In front of me, Robert lay on the floor, clutching a wound low on his abdomen. His face was set in a rictus of pain and his breath hissed out between clenched teeth. His gun lay on the floor, just inches in front of his face. Sasha's mother, Nonna, stood over him in her pajamas, a small-caliber pistol trained on him. She caught my glance and nodded to me. Stan and Takara lay sprawled on the floor next to the wall where they had impacted.

Nock appeared from around the corner and moved to get the gun from Rollins. My legs felt limp, but I made them move, stepping wide around Robert to get to Stan and Takara. The officer was in bad shape, one arm broken, hanging at a sickening angle. The glazed look in his eyes told me he had likely suffered a concussion. I carefully worked his sidearm from its retention holster, ejected the magazine and emptied the chamber before tossing it towards the far corner of the room. I moved on to Stan, who was sitting up, but groaning in pain and clutching at his shoulder. His shirt around his fingers was stained red. "You okay?" I asked.

"Got shot," he said through clenched teeth. "Hurts like a bitch."

Stansy was beside me suddenly, kneeling to cradle Stan's head. "Oh my God, Stan," she said. "Why did you do that?"

I carefully lifted the shredded edges of the hole in his shirt. The bullet had passed through the muscle of his shoulder, maybe grazed the clavicle as it passed under. The blood flow was steady, but not copious. "I don't think it's bad," I said. "But we should dress it."

"No time," Stan said. "I'll be fine."

Stan surely knew his model's capabilities better than me, but I hoped that it wasn't just bravado. "Can you walk?"

"I think so."

Stansy and I helped him to his feet, careful to avoid putting any stress on his injured arm. He took a few steps, wincing from the pain but otherwise steady on his feet.

Now I could take stock of the rest of the room. Stansy had let Rollins go and she sat on the floor, cradling and rubbing what I guessed was a sprained wrist, Nock standing close by to watch her. Robert was whimpering in pain, his hands pressed against his lower back and side to staunch a flow of blood. Nonna still stood over him with her gun, but he seemed unaware of anything but the pain he was in. There were actually tears in his eyes.

Coming closer to examine him, I could see why. Nonna's shot had hit him low in the back, passing just beneath the protection of his bulletproof vest. It must have gone through his kidney, one of the most painful places in the body to sustain an injury. It also was one place in the body where you could get shot and have a good chance of a full recovery as long as you got medical attention before you bled too much. I had to wonder if it had been the shot of a trained professional or simple, blind luck.

I disarmed Robert and moved on to Davis, the one Nissi had struck with a chair. He was out cold, his face a bloody mess. He might really be in serious condition, for all I could tell, but there was little I could do for him in the moment. "What happened to the last one?" I asked.

"Wendy happened," Tilly said. 

I hurried out the open back door and froze, confronted with what I had done. The man I had shot lay on the patio in a pool of his own blood. His hands were still clutched at his throat and his lifeless eyes stared up at the stars. I turned and vomited, not from the sight of blood and death, but from the realization that I had killed another person. I felt Nissi's hand rubbing my back as I coughed and gasped. The nausea quickly passed, but as I let her help me to my feet, I was careful to avert my eyes from the body.

"Hey, 'bout time someone showed up," Wendy said. She stood a few steps back from the final officer, his own gun held in her grip and pointed at his head. He was propped against the side of the house, pinching his nose against a flow of blood that had already soaked his goatee and the collar of his uniform.

He looked over at our approach. "So that's it," he said, glaring at Nissi's elven features. "You're genemods." He looked at Wendy. "And you must be a stunty. Nice trick you pulled, brat."

"What did you do?" I asked.

Wendy shrugged. "I just pretended to be exactly what I look like. He tried to pick me up and carry me to safety. So I broke his nose."

I studied Wendy for a moment. She looked confident, but her stance was off, her weight too far back on her heels. She was a novice. "You should take your finger off the trigger," I told her, nervous that she might accidentally shoot him. "Just rest it along the guard."

Wendy did as I asked with a grimace and a nod.

"You, come with me," I told the officer. He looked like he might try to argue, but Wendy gave him a sweet little girl smile and made the subtle motion with her trigger finger.

I stepped back as he got to his feet and motioned for him to walk in front. The look he gave me as he walked past was pure malice, and I realized that he thought I was a genemod too. I directed him to the basement door, but when I tried my code on my phone, the door didn't open. I remembered the radio interference that the house must still be projecting and fished around for the panel that was hidden at the back of a shelf. This time, the door slid open. I motioned to the officer and he went sullenly down the steps. Wendy stood guard up at the top, propping the door open, while I went back for the others. "You, Rollins was it?" I said, pointing at the female officer.

She was trembling, no doubt coming off the adrenaline high of the fight. "What do you want?" 

"We're putting all of you in the basement," I said. "Stansy, stay with her. We'll need to carry the other three down."

Between me, Nock, Tilly and Nissi, we carefully carried the three injured officers down the steps into the basement. Nock checked each of them over carefully for guns and mobile devices. I pointed out the first aid kit to Rollins, and she got to work immediately on Robert. Once the others were clear, Wendy and I backed up the stairs with our guns held at the ready. "Stan," I called, realizing the weak point in my plan. "Can you jam the lock?"

Stan chuckled on his way over. "This isn't exactly a padlock, Norm."

"Can you do it?"

Stan looked over the touchscreen panel and traced the wires out the back to where they disappeared into the wall. He nodded. "Yeah, the main control is elsewhere. I can just cut access here and it should still lock." He pulled out a pocket knife, grunting at the pain from his shoulder. He cut the wires in two places, tossed the cut pieces into the kitchen and pocketed his knife. Stan stepped out and I released the door. Sure enough, it swung into place and locked with a series of clicks. 

The clock was ticking now. Rollins and the officer that Wendy had taken down were still mobile. They would start looking for a way to get free as soon as we were out of the house. That was actually what I wanted, since at least two of them were in real need of medical treatment, but we also needed to have enough of a head start by then to get safely away. I had even considered placing a call to 911, despite the risks, but I dismissed that idea as too risky.

The others had been busy while Stan worked, getting the last of our belongings out the door. Tilly had taken the job of carrying Sasha's computer. "Where's Nonna?" I asked.

"She's in her room," Nock said.

I went to find her immediately. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her gun in her lap. "That politsiya," she said, "he live?"

I shrugged. "Probably."

Nonna frowned and hefted the pistol, "It is long time since. . . well, is long time. You go." 

"You're going with us," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "If they catch you, they'll throw you in jail and probably never let you out."

She shook her head. "I am old and half senile. I slow you down."

"Then think about me," I said. "Think what Sasha would do to me if she finds out I left you behind."

A ghost of a smile lit up the old woman's face. "She would kill you, da?"

"Yes, so you'd better come with us."

The smile faded. "Nyet. You go. Save others. Me, not worth your time."

My mind fumbled for a way to convince her. "Look, if they have both you and Sasha, they might use you to try to get information out of her. If you go with use, they won't have that leverage."

Nonna appeared to consider that for a moment and nodded. She stood and tucked the pistol into her waistband. "Well, I hope you have plan. I would pack, but no time. We go."

Wendy's cat had disappeared during the police raid, but now she strolled out from under the sofa and rubbed against my legs. "Guess it's your lucky day," I said.

"Sasha didn't get around to dropping her at the shelter today," Wendy said, picking Ingrid up. The cat climbed her shoulder and perched across the back of her neck, using her claws to stabilize herself. "Now I'm stuck with the sadistic little shit head," she said, and grimaced.

The night air was crisp with a chill breeze blowing from inland. Most nights, the total absence of the sounds of insects and frogs didn't faze me, but now, that silence, broken only by the distant sound of cars on the highway, was eerie. We scurried through the dark past the wall of the greenhouse to the back fence at the corner of the yard. Stansy hopped over first, clearing the five feet of wooden fence with a flat-footed jump. Nissi followed next. Wendy scrambled over with a hand from me. Nock lifted Nonna and handed her over to the two girls, who set her carefully on the ground. We helped Stan climb carefully over, gritting his teeth against the pain of the exertion. I clambered up and over, scraping one of my arms in the process. Nock and Tilly followed over as effortlessly as Stansy had done.

We were standing at the edge of a culvert that stretched away to either side, with a few feet of solid ground between it and the fence. Moonlight glittered off a flow of sluggish water at the bottom.

"This way," Nock said, moving to the right along the fence. I could barely see my own feet, but he led us without faltering, taking care to point out places where the ground was uneven. A few houses down, we crossed to the other side through ankle-deep water, coming up in an empty field. I checked on Nonna, who was doing fine, and Stan, whom I was getting more worried about. His breathing was labored and he seemed to be in more pain than ever, but he waved me off when I asked if he needed to rest.

The field ended at another street. We crossed quickly and turned down a quieter side street. In the far distance, a single dog barked, but we otherwise moved through a world of near silence. We came to another muddy field and a chain link fence topped with razor wire. The chain link was a good eight feet, with two feet of the coiled wire rising above that. Nissi took a few steps back, gauging the height. She set her burden on the ground. "Our truck is in here?" she asked.

I nodded and produced the key, giving it to her when she held out her hand. "Wait here," she said. She ran back a few steps, then charged straight at the fence. She threw herself into the air, flipping her body forward once as she cleared the top of the wire. She landed on the other side in a crouch and popped effortlessly to her feet. Chills went up my spine at the feat and I found myself smiling in appreciation and amazement.

"Piece of cake," she said, turning back to us. "Be right back." She jogged off, disappearing behind the nearest row of storage units.

We waited nervously while Nissi searched. Sirens in the distance made us all tense up. "Sasha's house?" Wendy asked.

Nock cocked his head slightly, listening intently. He nodded. "Yes, I think so. The distance and direction seems about right." I checked my phone. It had been a little over half an hour since we had left the house.

Nock perked up. "Hear that?"

Tilly nodded. "Yeah."

I listened and could hear, faintly, the sound of a large engine echoing from between the storage units. It faded, but then came a crash and a squeal, like metal being stretched and ripped apart. A few moments more and Nock said, "Here she comes." He started back towards the street. The headlights of the truck appeared down the street to our left. It was the size of a large package delivery truck, and was painted a flat gray. Nissi pulled up to the curb and hopped out, leaving the engine running. "I had to crash the gate," she said. "It wouldn't let me out. We should get out of here."

Nissi went around to the back of the truck to unlatch the door and slide it up. There were boxes and pallets up near the front end of the cargo area. "There's food, bottled water and medical supplies," she said. "Not a lot, but it's something."

I realized that we were looking at the whole of Sasha's stockpile. I counted eight large boxes stacked on pallets. "It will be enough to keep us going for now, I think," I said.

The others arrived and began to pile their things into the truck. "Where are we going?" Wendy asked.

"I'm still working on that," I admitted. "We need to get out of Seattle."

"Here, you drive," Nissi said, and tossed me the keys. She hopped up into the back of the truck and began to help the others. Stan reached up to grab a handhold with his good arm and paused as if out of breath. I looked at him more closely and could see beads of sweat standing out on his dusky skin.

"Stan, are you okay?" I asked. I saw then that blood had soaked his shirt to below his chest

"Just need. . . a sec."

I started moving before he actually began to fall, catching him from behind. I lowered him to the pavement and my hands came away soaked with blood. Stansy and Tilly hopped down next to us. "He's fainted," I said.

"Stan!" Stansy said, dropping to her knees above him. "Please wake up."

Stan's eyes opened slowly. "Hey, girl," he said, reaching towards Stansy.

She took his hand. "Just stay with us, okay."

"My name is Christopher," he said. "Wanted you to know that, baby girl."

"Damn it, don't talk like you're dying," Stansy said. She looked up, her eyes pleading with me.

I gulped and nodded. "We'll get him help. We need to lift him into the truck, but carefully."

The two women lifted his body while I supported his neck, setting him on the truck's corrugated steel floor. "Wendy, do what you can for him," I said, gesturing at the medical supplies.

"Sure thing, Norm."

"It's Claudia, by the way," Stansy said, looking down at Stan, but speaking for all of us to hear. "My name."

Stan nodded. "Claudia. I like it."

Nissi pulled the door down so that I could latch it, and I went around to the cab. I drove south for a few miles along the surface streets, just to put some distance between us and Sasha's house while I thought about what to do. Stan needed more help than I could give him, but that would mean a hospital. At best, Stan's genome would be reverted. At worst, we could all be caught. That was when I remembered the phone number in my wallet. I pulled over and got out my phone to dial.

It rang three times and a voice answered hoarsely. "Hello?"

"Mike? This is Norm." I left it at that, just in case I had gotten the number wrong.

"Norm, Norm. Oh, yes, the suicide girl from several weeks back." His tone turned more serious. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," I assured him. "But, Mike, we're in a lot of trouble here. The police raided the house. They got Sasha, but the rest of us made it out. I think we're safe for the moment." The line was quiet. "Mike, you there?"

"Yeah," he said, drawing the word out. "I, uh, I don't think I can help you, Norm. I'm sorry."

"No, no, no, don't hang up," I pleaded. "Stan got shot, Mike. Please, he needs help." Silence. "Mike?"

"I'm still here," Mike said, though it sounded like he really wished he wasn't. "You know what you're asking of me?"

"Probably not," I admitted.

"Okay, listen. Can you get to Renton?"

"Sure, I'm already headed in that direction."

"Okay, ah, shit. There's an antique store." He gave me the address, which I relayed to the truck's GPS.

It took about ten minutes to get there, and I parked around the back on Mike's instructions. He pulled into the lot a few minutes later, unshaven and bleary-eyed. "Just got off a long shift," he explained. "Only got a few hours of sleep."

"I'm sorry."

"Not your concern. Let's get your guy inside."

Tilly and Stansy helped to carry Stan, since they could pass for normal if anyone should happen by. Stan was conscious, and it looked like Wendy had done a good job bandaging his wound. Mike unlocked the store's back door and disabled the alarm. "Is this your shop?" I asked.

"No. Best we not go into that. Let's get him downstairs."

We carried Stan to the employee area in the back and down a set of creaky stairs to a store room. Mike unlocked another door at the base of the steps and moved ahead to pull a chain dangling from the ceiling, bathing the room in the stark light from the bright bulb. A table sat in the center of the room, and Mike pushed what looked to be drafting equipment to the side to make room for him, then covered the open space with a towel. While we laid him carefully on the cleared surface, Mike disappeared into another, smaller room. He came back in gloves and a mask, and laid out a set of surgical tools.

The level of preparedness surprised me, and I stepped back out of the way to let him work on Stan. It was only then that I noticed the guns. Assault rifles were racked against walls on both sides of the room. On shelves below them were crates of ammo and other items that I couldn't identify.

I caught Tilly looking over them as well. Stansy's gaze never left Stan, as far as I could tell. I shook my head slightly and mouthed the words, "Not our business." Tilly nodded and we went back to watching Mike examine Stan.

"It got the artery, all right," Mike said. "It's probably just a nick, but I need to repair it or he'll bleed out. Can you assist, Norm?"

"Yeah," I said. "Where can I sanitize?"

When I got back, Mike had selected a syringe and a bottle of liquid from his kit. "I love bioengineered pharmacology," he said. He gave Stan the injection and it put him under in seconds. "Okay, let's get to work."

Mike worked in silence other than the occasional direction for me to hand him an instrument or hold a clip. Once he had sutured the artery closed, though, and we saw that it held against Stan's blood pressure, he visibly relaxed. "Good, let's close him up. So what happened?"

"You want the whole story?"

"Well, we've got a bit of time to kill."

I related our story, starting with my trip to buy food with Sasha. Tilly and Stansy helped to fill in the details. When I was done, Mike whistled. "Wow, luck was on your side tonight, though it helped that your host built her house like a fortress. Norm, you've been through a lot and I wish there was more I could do to help."

"There is something. Can you get word to the agency to contact me?"

Mike considered this while he worked. "I don't think that would help you much. You left people alive who could identify every one of you, and you'll have a murder charge following you, murder of a police officer, to boot. The agency won't take on that kind of risk. I don't know. Maybe if you can stay hidden for a few weeks, long enough for your trail to have gone cold."

"Then where can we go?" I asked.

I wasn't really expecting an answer, but Stansy gave one. "My grandpa's farm."

I looked at her. "The one in the painting?"

"Yeah. I have an uncle who takes care of the land now. Well, last I heard, anyway. It's in the Willamette valley, maybe four hours' drive."




Double Helix Ch. 08



"Would your uncle turn us in?"

Stansy shrugged. "I honestly couldn't tell you. He was always nice to me, but most people's sentiments towards genemods changed a lot after the Rot."

"For what it's worth, I think it's our best shot," Tilly said.

I sighed. "I agree, which probably doesn't say a lot for our chances."

"By the way," Mike interrupted. "What phone did you call me on?"

I got my cell phone out and showed it to him.

"Who holds that account?"

"It's in my name," I said. "Well, my alias, anyway."

"Norm, you'd better let me have that. Those police might be able to match your appearance to your fake identity."

I hesitated a moment, but then handed it over. "I wouldn't want to use it after tonight, then."

"I'll make sure it is disposed of, and I'll try to get the record of your call to me erased."

We cleaned up and I helped Mike dress Stan's wound and set up a saline IV. "Ideally, I'd want to give him a pint of blood," Mike said, "but I don't want to keep you here any longer. His system should be able to make up the shortfall of blood as long as he gets plenty of fluid. I would let him sleep off the anesthetic. He should awaken normally in about nine to ten hours."

"I owe you one, Mike," I said, shaking his hand.

"Me too," Stansy said, and she wrapped her arms around him in a hug. "I can't thank you enough."

Mike loaned us a stretcher to carry Stan out. Once more, I wondered about the medical equipment, the guns and the drafting equipment, but I kept my mouth shut. Mike wished us luck and drove off

We loaded Stan into the truck, and Tilly turned to me. "Can I ride with you up front?" she asked.

"If we go through a National Guard checkpoint-"

"Then they'll check the cargo area," Tilly interrupted. "It won't go any better for us, then."

"Right."

"We should stay off the main highways to avoid those. Until we get out of Seattle, we just hope for the best, right?"

"Yeah," I said grudgingly. "Stansy, where are we headed?"

"Just go south to Corvallis. I don't remember the address. Let me know when we get there and I'll look it up on the GPS."

Tilly climbed into the cab next to me, and I drove out of the lot and headed south. I waited for Tilly to break the silence, but she just stared out her window at the city passing by. "I've been cooped up for so long," she said at last. "If we're going to be caught tonight, I didn't want my last memories of freedom to be of the back of this truck."

"We won't get caught," I said.

"You don't know that."

"What was that about hoping for the best?"

"It was what the others needed to hear. But you and I know better, don't we? What are we going to do when we hit a checkpoint?"

"You're getting into my head again." The bitterness in my own voice surprised me.

"I can't help it. It's part of what I was made to do."

I sighed. "I'm sorry, it just makes me uncomfortable." I hesitated, remembered that it was pointless to hold back, and went on. "Sometimes it feels like an invasion."

"I wish that there was something I could do to change that."

I shook my head. "No, don't think like that. What you can do is a gift. I'm the one with the problem."

She shrugged, "Regardless, it will be a little harder for me now to speak up when I think you're hiding, knowing that it upsets you."

She was talking about what I thought of as her happiness drive. Her mental model of me had just been tweaked. "What does that feel like, going against your drive?"

Tilly grimaced. "It's uncomfortable. Like telling a lie. My heart rate jumps and my mouth feels a little dry. I know I'm doing something wrong."

"Like telling a lie," I repeated. "So, back on topic, we need to have a plan for when we hit a checkpoint." I pulled out the wad of bills that I had taken from Sasha's desk drawer. "Count that, please."

Tilly thumbed through the cash. "Three-thousand dollars," she said. "You think we can bribe them?"

"Maybe. The agency moves an awful lot of food between cities and across state lines. They couldn't do that without bribery and corruption. Any other ideas?"

"One that doesn't involve violence?"

"Of course."

She leaned back in the seat. "Distraction. Deception. Persuasion."

I looked at her and grinned. "All three?"

She grinned back. "Can't hurt. We'll just have to think on our feet."

"Okay, well we're almost to Tacoma. We can get off I-5 there and skirt around Olympia . . ." The words died in my mouth as the road ahead came into view. Barriers blocked off the shoulders of the road and directed traffic down to one lane. A military vehicle was parked off the road and a pair of men stood to either side of the lane as a car pulled up between them. Would they be looking for us? A good ninety minutes had passed since we had left Sasha's house in Bellevue. How long before our descriptions made it up the chain from local law enforcement to federal agencies?

I slowed the truck, looking for an exit, but of course, there was no way off the highway. I pulled up to the back of the line, about eight cars back from the front, then blew out a breath and tried to relax.

"Best hide the money until we need it," Tilly said. "And don't offer the whole thing if we can help it."

I grabbed the cash, counted out a few bills from the total, and stuffed the rest back into my front pocket. I also took a moment to check my gun, still concealed under my shirt and jeans on my right hip. Tilly flipped down the passenger mirror and fussed with her hair and clothing a bit. The others were probably wondering why we had stopped moving, but I trusted that they had the good sense to keep the door closed and stay quiet.

We sat in silence as the National Guardsmen searched the trunk of the car at the front of the line. After a minute, they apparently found nothing and waved the driver on. I sensed movement next to me, and Tilly's hand touched mine where it rested on the gear shift. She took my hand in hers, clasping it firmly, telling me without words that I had her support and her trust.

The remaining cars moved quickly on, and I pulled forward to bring my door even with the guardsman at the highway's median. He was unarmed, but the soldier on the left held an M4, muzzle down. He motioned with his hand and I quickly rolled down the window. "Good evening, sir," he said. "State your name and destination, please."

"Hi," I said, forcing myself to breathe and to speak slowly. "Mark Winston. I'm heading to Portland."

"Are you carrying any cargo, sir?"

"No, no cargo."

"Thank you, sir. Can you please step out of the vehicle and open the back?"

"Uh, listen," I said, "I'm in a big hurry. I'd really appreciate it if you would just let me through." I grabbed the five hundred dollars I had stashed next to me on the seat and held it out for him. My hand shook slightly.

He grinned at me, shaking his head slightly. "God damn, son. What do you think this is?"

"It's a bribe, you prick," Tilly said without missing a beat, giving the man a smoky glare. "You boys suddenly grow some integrity? I thought my people had an understanding with you. Mark here's new, so he doesn't know all the ropes yet. So why don't you just tell him how much money it's going to take to get you fine upstanding gentlemen to let us through."

The guardsmen glanced over his hood as his companion, who shrugged. "Well, uh," he said. "I didn't realize you were with. . . uh, yeah. You're supposed to give us eight hundred. That's the deal."

"You heard him," Tilly said.

I reached into my pocket and lifted three bills from the bundle to add to the five in my hand. He palmed the cash and tucked it surreptitiously in a pocket of his combat fatigues. "Next time try to give us some warning before bringing a newbie through, will ya?" Tilly gave him a smirk and he returned a mock salute.

I put the truck into gear and started forward, all the time watching him for signs of betrayal. We cleared the barriers, but I kept glancing in my rear view mirror for signs of pursuit. After a minute or so, the checkpoint vanished behind a rise.

Tilly gave a dramatic sigh and flopped against the seat, tilting her head back. "Oh, my God. I almost pissed myself."

"Me too," I said, and we both started laughing, more from the relief, I think, than from any humor in it.

"Our exit!" Tilly said.

I quickly slowed and swerved into the exit lane while trying to catch my breath. At the bottom of the off-ramp, I merged onto the street and then quickly turned off into a parking lot. I put the truck in park but left it running. My heart was still beating fast in my chest. I needed a minute to settle my nerves. "So, back there, how did you do that?" 

"The man on my side was pleased by the prospect of a bribe, but the one on your side was suspicious. I didn't sense any real surprise though. From that, I deduced that they are used to receiving bribes, so I tried to deflect his nervousness by projecting confidence. I let him fill in the gaps of who we were."

"That was amazing," I said, still giddy from the event. "Tilly, you were incredible. Just fucking incredible." That was a mistake. Immediately, my mind conjured up an image of Tilly looming above me, eyes closed and lips parted in ecstasy as she rode me towards climax.

The force of my desire shocked me and I turned towards Tilly. She looked at me with wide eyes, chest heaving in quick, shallow breaths. Without warning, she released her buckle and closed the distance between us. She mashed her lips to mine and I found myself responding without thought, my arms going around her slim body. Her lips parted and her tongue touched my own lips. I closed my eyes as a wash of dizzy pleasure went through me, as I let her inside, returning the kiss with equal fervor. I fidgeted in my seat as my cock grew hard, pressing uncomfortably against my clothes.

"I want you," she whispered, breaking our kiss to breathe the words into my ear. I shuddered with heat and pleasure and she kissed her way down my neck. My seat belt came free and she pressed the attack, popping the button on my jeans and unfastening my belt. My hand went to her breast and she gave a little gasp. "Yes, Norm, yes. I need this."

I cupped and stroked the deliciously soft firmness of one breast, reveling in the little gasps and mews of pleasure coming from her. She pulled back slightly with a sigh and reached down to undo my zipper and reach inside. I groaned as her hand found my cock and brought it out. She encircled it in her fingers, studying it intently the whole time. Her tongue actually traced along her bottom lip. She scooted backward on the seat and leaned down. I could feel her breath, warm on my cock. She gave the tip a tentative lick

I sighed with pleasure at the touch, echoed an instant later by Tilly. "That felt good," she said, "let's try this." Her lips closed around the head of my cock, enveloping it in liquid warmth. I gasped at the sudden surge of sensation, and she shuddered and moaned in response.

She began to move, using her fingers, her lips, and her tongue. My hands came to rest at the back of her neck, gently stroking, encouraging. She began to bob her head up and down and relinquished her grip so that she could take me as deeply as possible. I could hear her moaning and at each thrust, as though she were giving herself just as much pleasure in the act as she was giving me. I didn't attempt to stop her or warn her as my orgasm approached. I was too hot with lust, too lost in pleasure, out of my mind with desire.

I sucked in a breath between clenched teeth and let it out in a long groan as I climaxed, pulsing into Tilly's mouth. She trembled and shuddered, then went still. My cock suddenly popped free as she threw her head back to let out a strangled cry. She sucked in a breath and moaned in ecstasy, her body shaking. Her orgasm went on several seconds after mine had stopped, ending with her lying on her side, her head on my leg, and her cheek resting against my cock. "I didn't know it would be like that," she said.

For a few moments, my mind blissfully unaware of anything but the pleasure. She had come right along with me, and I hadn't even touched her body. She was still fully clothed. Then the full import of what had just happened came crashing down on me in a wave of shock and guilt. "Tilly," I said, "get up." 

She moved herself lazily off me and I quickly refastened my pants. "Get buckled in," I said, "it's time to get going." I put the truck in gear and returned to the road.

Tilly did as I told her, watching me the whole while. "Norm?" she said, her voice cracking with emotion. "Norm, you're hurting."

I clenched my jaw. "We shouldn't have done that."

"I didn't mean to hurt you," she said. "What we were feeling. I've never felt anything like that before. I wasn't thinking. I couldn't think past what we were feeling."

"It's not your fault," I said, swallowing down the lump that tried to form in my throat. "It was the danger, the arousal of our fight or flight response. Humans-" I swallowed, forcing down the guilt and regret. "People sometimes mistake the arousal of fear for sexual arousal. That's all it was. You can't tell Nissi. Please promise me that."

Tilly didn't answer. When I looked over at her, she was staring out her window and up ahead at the buildings passing by. Tears glistened in the light of the street lamps. I wished I knew what to say to make it better. I drove in silence for a few miles and turned into a Fred Meyer and parked in the nearly empty lot.

"What are we doing?" Tilly asked.

"Getting some supplies. Stay with the truck." Using some of Sasha's cash, I bought pillows and blankets, flashlights, some inflatable mattresses, and a case of bottled water. 

"Oh, thank God," Stansy said, when she saw what I had brought. I nodded, pushing the items under the door to her. "Too exposed here," I said, apologetically, and closed the door quickly again before I had to look Nissi in the eyes.

We stayed off the main highways for the most of the night. I returned to I-5 for a short jaunt south of Olympia, but headed west about thirty miles outside of Portland, following the coastline south to highway 20, then back inland again. The strategy worked, or we were very lucky, because we didn't see another checkpoint that night

Tilly fell asleep at some point, her head leaning against the window. The stars in the eastern sky ahead were slowly giving way to the deep violet of predawn as the city of Corvallis hove into view. I pulled off the highway into a hardware store parking lot. I parked the truck in a back corner of the lot where the store hid us from view of the road. I left Tilly to sleep and went around to the back to unlock the door and slide it up a few feet.

A bleary-eyed Wendy and Stansy sat up and peered at me from their spot on a mattress next to the door. The two girls had slept huddled together with Stan for warmth. Nissi had shared a bed with Nonna. Nock, as always, had little need for sleep, and sat on the last mattress with his back against the side of the truck. His eyes gleamed yellow-green in the semi-dark as he peered at me, the rest of his face concealed by shadow.

Nissi, looking none the worse for abruptly waking, dropped out of the truck and locked me in an embrace. "Something wrong?" she murmured.

I realized that I was holding her stiffly and made myself relax. "Sorry, rough night. Is everyone okay? How is Stan?"

"He seems fine," Wendy said. I climbed into the truck to give him my own examination. His pulse and breathing seemed normal, but it would take a few more hours for the anesthesia to wear off so that we could know for sure.

"We're just outside Corvallis," I said. "Highway 20."

Stansy went around to the driver's side and climbed in. She spoke commands to the GPS for a few minutes to find and set our destination. Tilly woke during the process but went right back to sleep.

"Okay, we're all set," Stansy said. "There's a barn not far from the house. Maybe park us around the side, out of sight of the road?"

"Yeah, sure," I agreed. I went to the back with Stansy to shut and latch the door, then got back on the road. The GPS took me through town and across the Willamette River. I turned off the highway and headed south, passing through miles of dusty fields. Hardy scrub brush had slowly begun to encroach on the old farms and pastures. If left to go another generation, they would likely fill the land from one horizon to the other.

Approaching Stansy's family farm was at once an exciting and harrowing experience. There was the farmhouse, just as she had depicted in the painting that had hung next to the table for over a month, there the apple, pear and plum trees in the orchard in the distance. But the fields were filled with brown, cracked mud rather than grain. The barn was just down the road from the house, a two-story structure with a hay loft. The paint was cracked and peeling, and a chain and padlock hung from the big double doors. I pulled around to the side, away from the road, as Stansy had instructed.

When I opened the door, Wendy leaped to the ground immediately and ran to the front of the barn to take in the view. Ingrid paused at the edge, looking down warily, but then leaped to the ground and chased after her. "I can't believe we're actually here," Wendy called, running back. "Stansy, you got it perfect."

Nissi and I helped Nonna get down. Stansy and Tilly carried Stan again, but with Nock's help this time. Wendy and Nonna went just ahead of them, leaving me to walk behind with Nissi. The shadow of what had happened last night with Tilly hung over me, tainting what should otherwise be a moment of peaceful intimacy. Nissi either didn't notice my discomfort, or chose to ignore it. She took my hand in hers and we walked together in silence.

"The doors are all locked," Wendy said from the front porch. "Is there a key hidden?"

Stansy sighed and grimaced. "I don't know of one. Looks like we'll have to break in. Here, I'll do it." She picked up a rock big enough to fill her palm and walked over to the front door. She gave one the door's multicolored glass panels a sharp rap near the bottom edge, cracking it, then struck it a few more times to clear the glass enough to reach a hand through and unlock it. "Let's put him in the guest bedroom," she said. "Wendy, can you go make sure the bed is all ready? Go past the kitchen and turn right. It's near the stairs."

Wendy ran on ahead while the other three carried Stan inside. "It's dusty as hell in here," Wendy called. "Give me a sec."

The dust that had apparently settled on the bed's comforter now hung in the air as the others carried Stan into the room and laid him carefully down. "Huh," Stansy said. "Guess Uncle Bill hasn't been out here in a while, or he forgot to clean."

I flipped on the light switch, but nothing happened. "Try the main breaker," Stansy said. "It's in the laundry room at the back of the house."

I found the breakers and flipped the main one to on, and was rewarded with the faint sounds of appliances powering up. I wondered about that, as I checked to make sure that all of the breakers were on. What would Stansy's uncle do when he noticed that we were running up the utility bill?

"Hey."

I whirled at the voice at my back. "Jesus, Nock. You almost gave me a coronary."

He shrugged. "Come out back. We need to talk."

"I really should go check on Stan."

"Stan's fine," Nock said. "Come on outside." There was a door at the end of the laundry room that opened onto a back patio. I unlocked it and we stepped outside. There was an old swinging chair there, the metal rusty and the seat stained with mildew. Nock gave the seat a disgusted look and gestured towards the distant trees. "Let's take a walk."

The cracked ground crunched beneath our feet as we walked. When the house was a good forty yards behind us, Nock spoke. "Last night, after we went through the checkpoint, you pulled off the highway and stopped. I heard everything that happened, Norm. Now, under other circumstances, I would mind my own business, but not when we're on the run and depending on you for our lives. What's going on between you and Tilly?"




Double Helix Ch. 08



"I don't know," I said truthfully. "We were both really hyped up after the checkpoint. It kind of just happened."

"Yeah, I heard that part, too. You know how much Nissi cares about you."

"Yeah," I said, looking down at my feet. "Yeah, I do."

We were nearing the edge of the trees now. These were the orchard trees from Stansy's painting, though they were bare of fruit now. "You know, if I thought you were lying, I'd cold cock you right now. I'm not sure I won't do it anyway, just for good measure."

"I thought you and Nissi didn't really like each other," I said.

He mulled that over. "Yeah, I guess it might look that way to you. I was kind of a jerk to everyone back at the house. I was a wealthy man before the Ban, so maybe I felt like I had lost more than any of you. Maybe it put a chip on my shoulder. The thing is, it wasn't Nissi, it was you I didn't like. When you started sniffing around her, I took her aside and told her it was a bad idea to shack up with you."

"And why did you do that?" I said, feeling a prickle of indignation.

"I know what you're thinking, but it's not that. I have nothing against normals, and I don't give a shit about normals and genemods kissing, holding hands, or even fucking."

I had never known Nock to use profanity, and I realized that the soft-spoken words revealed how angry he was with me. He went on, "I told her to stay away from you because I didn't think you were an honest person. From that very first day, when you evaded Stansy's question about how you got there, I was suspicious of you. I saw what you were doing, making those improvements to the basement, and I saw how it affected the others, and you know what I thought? I thought it was a big con game to manipulate all of us. I thought that Tilly was just another part of the game for you, a way to play off all our sympathies or something. It wasn't until she almost killed herself, and you worked so hard to save her, that I realized that I had been wrong about you. Wrong about Tilly, too."

We had reached the edge of the orchard and turned to walk along it. "So now you're wondering if your first impression was the correct one?" I asked.

He frowned. "I wouldn't go that far. But are you ready to tell us what you did to land yourself in our safe house?"

"Sasha made me promise not to talk about it."

He smirked. "That's actually a pretty good excuse. I'll let you off the hook on that, then. For now." He pulled down a branch to inspect it. "Hmm, budding already," he said. "Long growing season here in the Willamette, I hear." The branch snapped upward when he let go. He turned and began to walk back towards the house.

I moved to follow. "So what's this really about, then?"

"So now I'm just concerned about where your intentions are with Nissi."

A realization hit me. "You really do care about her, don't you?"

"Answer the fucking question."

"I love her," I said. I dug deeper. "I had a girlfriend a few years ago. I thought maybe I could marry her, but we drifted apart. What I felt for her was nothing compared to Nissi."

He smirked. "Well, that's real sweet. It must feel pretty shitty that you let Tilly suck your cock."

My face burned with shame at the rebuke. I stopped, feeling suddenly angry. "You're a real dick, you know that?"

Nock had stopped in front of me. He turned and grinned. "Never denied it, buddy. And that's the honest reaction I was looking for."

I shook my head and stepped past him. "So you gonna answer my question? What's your deal with Nissi?"

"Maybe if things were different. . ." he shrugged. "But I already found the love of my life. So I guess I think of Nissi like a sister. And however much we've fought in the past, I care about what happens to her."

"Look, what happened in the truck was a mistake. It won't happen again, and I think it best if Nissi doesn't know about it."

"Or maybe you should just tell her, let her decide if you're worth her time."

I shook my head slowly. "No. I don't want to hurt her."

"You're scared, admit it."

"Yes, I am. I love her. I don't want to lose her."

"Alright, I'll stay out of your way, then. But I want you to know, I came this close-" he held a thumb and forefinger half an inch apart, "to telling her what happened last night. You think about what that would have meant." He jogged on ahead of me and back into the house. I followed at a slower pace and slipped back in through the back door.

"Oh, there you are," Stansy said, peering out from the kitchen. "Nissi was looking for you. You need to pick a place to sleep. There are three bedrooms upstairs. I think Stan and I are just going to stick with the guest room."

"Is she upstairs?"

"Yeah, think so."

The staircase was near the kitchen and led up to a hallway that ran the width of the house, with rooms on either side. I peeked in the first bedroom, where Nonna was at work changing the bedding. A bathroom was across from it, so I went down to the end where two more doors stood open. One was empty, but in the other, Nissi stood with her back to the door and her arms folded. 

"Hi," I said.

She turned. "Hey, Norm. Stansy told me to look at the master bedroom. Seems like Nonna's going to share a bed with Wendy, Tilly's got the room across the hall to herself, and Nock says he'll just use the sofa downstairs when he needs a nap. So, what do you think?"

The queen-sized bed felt like an extravagance after months of sleeping on a tiny twin bed. A window trimmed with lacy curtains looked out on the gravel driveway. I moved towards the other window, which at one point had given a view of the largest of the farm's fields to the north. I could just make out the post and rail fence that marked the edge of the property. Trees and houses dotted the flat and otherwise empty landscape. A couple of low mountains rose up in the distance. 

I opened the antique wardrobe in one corner and was surprised to find a few men's suits and overalls hanging in the top. The drawers below contained shirts, socks and jeans. "Are we sure no one is living here?" I asked.

Nissi came over to have a look. "Well, Stansy said that her grandpa died suddenly some years ago. I guess no one bothered to clean out his things."

I closed everything back up. I could use the clothing if any of it fit, but I was not yet ready to plunder personal belongings from this place.

Nissi took my hand. "Come check out our bathroom." I half-expected an old claw foot tub. Instead, there was a fairly modern shower and a conventional bath tub. And there were two sinks. I had to stop and stare at that for a moment. For the last few months, I had shared a single sink with six other people.

"Nice, huh?" Nissi said.

"It's nice," I said, running my hand along the tile. "You say Stansy wanted us to have this room?"

Nissi stepped up close to me, and when I turned, she slipped her arms around my neck and drew me close. "You did it, Norm. You got us to safety. I think this is Stansy's way of thanking you."

"I didn't do so much," I protested.

"Always with the modesty. It makes you uncomfortable when people praise you, doesn't it?" 

Her tone had turned abruptly serious and concerned. I knew what she meant. My sister had surpassed me at every turn. One of the ways I coped with that was to downplay the significance of my own accomplishments.

"I'd rather not talk about it," I said.

She nodded. "Bad memories, huh?"

"Yeah, something like that."

She got a devilish smile. "Want to make some good memories?"

I was beyond tired by this point after a night without sleep, and it had been just a few hours since my episode with Tilly. Taken together, I didn't think that my performance would hold up. "Maybe later, after I get some sleep."

"Yeah, that sounds like a plan," Nissi agreed. "I'll hold you to that."

We made the bed and I collapsed into it with half my clothing still on. Nissi spooned up against me and we cuddled until I fell asleep.

I came awake with a start and a shout of fear, flailing at the covers. My hand went to my chest. I took in deep gulps of air and realized that my heart hadn't really stopped, just skipped a beat. The pain I was feeling was not a gunshot, just my own fear. Thunder rolled and rumbled in the distance. It took several more seconds to clear my head enough to realize that the terrible things in my memory were real. I had killed another person.

I sat there, staring at the wall, feeling that same sense of unreality that I had experienced at the time. I hadn't actually meant to do it, I realized now. I had simply reacted through reflexes honed by weeks of training at the gun range. I wished desperately now that I could take that action back. I felt cheated, as if the decision had been made without my own consent. But when I had faced down the other officer, Robert, I had been in full control, and I hadn't been able to do it. That bothered me almost as much.

I took a breath and got out of bed, shaking off those thoughts. I was hungry, but first things first. I stood over the toilet to empty my bladder. It had been scrubbed clean while I slept, along with the rest of the bathroom. I couldn't shake the feeling like I was an intruder in this strange house.

When I was done I went back into the bedroom and dug through my suitcase for a pair of pants. Outside the window, the sun was still shining, but I could see clouds closing in from the west. As I watched, lightning flashed in an arc between clouds. Thunder came several seconds later as a dim roar.

I went downstairs and noticed an immediate difference from when we had first arrived. The others must have been cleaning the whole house while I slept. The washing machine was running, and most of the curtains on the windows had been taken down. The cobwebs that had nestled in seemingly every corner were gone.

"Sleep well?" Wendy asked from a seat in the living room. Ingrid was curled up in her lap and she was reading a book.

I shrugged. "More or less. Is there any food?"

"Nock made some rice earlier, but you'll have to heat it up."

I did a double-take. "Nock cooks?"

"Well, we know he can make rice, at least."

The refrigerator was empty except for the big bowl of rice. I dished some out and heated it in the microwave, then went to sit in the dining room. The table and chairs had been cleaned, giving the room a faint lemon smell. I sat at the head of the table to eat. Though the food was bland, I was glad for it. If Sasha hadn't been hoarding it, our predicament would have been that much worse.

A pair of arms went around me from behind and a veil of reddish hair brushed the side of my face. "Did the storm wake you?" Nissi asked, and gave me a peck on the cheek.

"Yeah, and then I got hungry. You guys have been busy."

"The place needed a little help," she agreed, "but it goes quick with this many people working on it." She nuzzled my neck and then took the seat to my right. "When you get done, Stan's been asking for you. Actually, everyone wants to talk to you. I think the question on most of their minds is, 'what next?'"

I smiled wryly. "And what if I don't know the answer to that question? I asked Mike about contacting the agency, but he told me that they won't touch us right now, not with the police looking for us. He seemed to think they might help, if we lay low for a while first. He didn't sound too sure of that."

"And assuming they do help, then what? They'll farm us out to other safe houses, probably all over the country."

"You're right," I said, setting down my fork and leaning back in the chair. "That's exactly what they would do, to try to mitigate the risk to the rest of us if one of us should be found."

One of Nissi's eyebrows took on an even more pronounced arch. "I hope that bothers you as much as it does me."

I nodded. "It does, Nissi, it does. But it might be the only way to survive. I would rather be apart and know that you're safe, than for all of us to go to prison or be killed. Wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would. That doesn't mean I like it."

I finished the few remaining bites of food and stood up. "I'd better go check on Stan."

I found him sitting cross-legged in bed. Sasha's microcomputer sat in front of him, its innards exposed. "Oh, good," he said. "Please tell me I can get out of bed. The girls all made me promise I wouldn't move until you said it was okay."

I checked the wound dressing, which had been changed, and found very little bleeding. "Looks good." I would have liked to give him some antibiotics, but Standard Upgrade was one of the first truly disease resistant genemods, so there was probably little to worry about. I changed the dressing again for good measure, and Stan went to work putting the computer back together.

"How's the pain?" I asked, going through the boxes of medical supplies that the others had stacked at the foot of the bed.

Stan held up a bottle and rattled it. "Wendy gave me these."

"Ibuprofen," I said, nodding. "Looks like that's the best we've got. Do they help?"

Stan shrugged. "Not enough. What I really need is something to take my mind off of it. So, can I get out of bed? I want to find out what's on this thing."

I sighed. "Alright, Stan, but you have to be careful. No heavy lifting. If you rip those sutures out, we're a long way from anyone who could fix it."

He grinned at me. "Fine. Could you carry the MC for me, then? I need to find a terminal for this thing to drive."

I realized that "MC" was short for microcomputer and picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, and once I had it in hand, I stepped back to give Stan room. He grunted with each movement as he pivoted, scooted to the edge of the bed, and stood. "This sucks," he said.

"Having second thoughts?"

"Not a chance."

We checked the living room just by virtue of it being the closest. The next room appeared to be a sewing room, mostly bare at the moment except for the large, smooth-surfaced table. Adjacent to that room was what appeared to be a den, with a fireplace and bookshelf that went floor to ceiling and covered an entire wall. On a tiny desk in one corner was a terminal that was at least a decade out-of-date.

Stan directed me to place the microcomputer on the floor and hook up the wires. I powered it on and Stan started up the terminal. The screen came up with a list of available wireless network nodes, just three, only two of which had respectable signal strength. Instead of picking one, he pressed a function key to bypass it. The screen winked out and a few moments later the login screen we had seen before came up. Stan typed in the password and we waited while the terminal connected to the MC and loaded its interface. This time, though, a blank window popped up immediately with the words "Connecting to proxy service" in the title. It paused for a few moments before displaying "No connection available, press 'Confirm' to exit.'".

Stan pushed the window to the background without closing it. "Guess we need to connect to a CSP," he said. He pursed his lips for a moment and then cycled through several settings screens. "Ah, there we go," he said and smirked. "You'd think people would know by now to secure their network. Signal's a bit low, but it'll do."

He brought the previous window back up to see lines of black text steadily filling up the white space. "Some kind of scripted application," he said. I looked at the text, which had begun to shift up and out of sight as more text came in, at a rate of about two lines per second. I couldn't make sense of any of it. "Looks like authentication protocols," Stan said, "exchanging certificates and establishing encrypted connections."

The lines of text stopped, the cursor blinking for several seconds, and then a new window came up, this one with a grid. A header in the first column read "account". Next that was "balance", "credit limit", "APR" and other headers. The rows began to fill in until they nearly covered the screen.

"Are these credit card numbers?" I asked, realizing that they all began with a numeral "4" or "5".

"Accounts, I think," Stan answered. "Oh!"

"What?"

Stan pointed to the screen. "The balances just changed."

The balances and limits all ran up into the tens of thousands of dollars, and the balances were increasing by a few tens of dollars at a time. "What's going on here?"

The balances stopped changing and another window popped up with the words "generating report". Now, there was a list of bank accounts with various balances. Several of them noted an increase of several hundred dollars each. The credit card numbers on the other window disappeared, replaced by the message "transfers complete".

I stared at the balances on the bank accounts. Added together, the amount was well over a hundred thousand dollars. "Stan," I said in a warning tone, "whatever this is, it looks illegal. Didn't I hear once that Sasha worked for a bank?"

"Well, that's what we all thought. She did some kind of consulting work, but it seemed to involve financial transactions. Maybe this is a project she was working on?" He sounded doubtful even as he said it.

"I'm telling you, this looks like fraud, or at least some form of money laundering. Can you find that script and have a look at it?"

Stan checked a few logs and then brought up a window with text that looked like a programming language. "I found the source code and brought it into a debugger," he said. He scrolled through a few pages and stopped. "Oh, wow."

"What?"

"This looks like some kind of backdoor exploit. This is definitely not legitimate access." He read through for a few minutes more, changing windows a few times. "Okay, I think I see what's going on here. That first set of accounts must be credit cards, just like you thought. There's a routine that generates multiple transactions for each account in semi-random amounts. Looks like they are all buying up crypto-currencies. Those are eventually used to buy up commodities which are immediately sold off for US dollars and deposited at banks in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia."

"So, credit card fraud."

"And money laundering to boot. You could probably trace at least some of the activity if you knew where to look, but there's some shifting around from one place to another that happens once it goes crypto. I don't know if you could reliably sort that out at all. It explains what the MC was for, but why would Sasha do this?"

"Is there a log where we can find out how long this has been going on?"

"Good thinking." He immediately pulled up a document. "Looks like it first ran about ten weeks ago."

I thought back over the last few months. It didn't seem like an especially important time, except that it had been within about a month of the raids on agency smuggling operations, and about a week after the Himura syndicate arrests. An idea occurred to me. "How much money do you think it would take to smuggle genemods out of the country, after what happened to the agency?"

"Norm, that's. . . that's brilliant. That could be it. You think she was trying to get enough money to buy our way out of the States?"

I thought back to those conversations with Sasha. She had been well aware that things were only going to get worse. "I think that's exactly what she was doing." And it may have been why she was so insistent that we try to take her MC with us. "We need to tell the others about this. This could change everything."

"Whoa, hold up a second," Stan said. "Bank accounts are all well and good, but if you're talking about paying someone to smuggle us, how are we going to get the money out? We could transfer the money to a domestic bank, but it's not like we can walk into a branch and withdraw it."

My enthusiasm dropped considerably. I knew that Sasha had hoped that we could use what we found here, but I wasn't sure we had the resources to do so. Then I had another thought. "All the more reason to bring the others in on this."




Double Helix Ch. 09



Tilly

"One minute to go," I said, just as the wall clock ticked over to 2:59. I started the timer on the desk in front of me. Sitting next to me was Stan, doing some last-minute checks of the handshake protocols. In my hands was a printed, stapled document that was covered in penned notes in the margins from our long weeks designing and coding the framework for this network. I had a checklist on the desk that had most of the items marked off, reflecting our testing and troubleshooting over the last few days.

Stan fidgeted. His shoulder had almost completely healed over the last three weeks, though he still complained of an occasional twinge. That hadn't stopped him from throwing himself fully into the work we had both done. Now, we were about to see the results.

All of the others except for Nonna were gathered around the little terminal in the den. Nissi stood behind Norm, her arms around him. I could feel the warmth emanating from both of them. Love like that was the closest that they could come to feeling what I felt for all of them. I sneaked a glance at Norm. He was listening intently to Wendy telling him how excited she was to finally speak to people who had fled the United States. Norm, the one who had pulled me out of the darkness of despair. He had done more than save my life; he had given me back my joy.

It is difficult to describe to another person what it feels like, to feel joy, meaning and purpose in nearly every waking moment. I'm not sure I could have understood myself what it meant, if I hadn't suffered a mental break and felt it all turn to pain. Harder still is to describe what it is like for me to feel love. I could just sit and bask in the feeling of being near him, if not for the wanting, the craving. Our one encounter the night of our escape had been brief but revelatory. Sometimes I think I would be better off if my mother had edited that part out of my psyche. The strength of that desire could be frightening.

The digital timer ticked down to zero. "Time," I said.

Stan's fingers began to fly over the keyboard as he tapped out commands. "Initial network connection complete," he said, and text scrolled across the screen. "They received our encryption key and we have theirs. The packet origin obfuscation algorithms appear to have synced." 

"Hold on," I said, leaning closer to the screen to scan the rapidly-moving log data. My conscious mind floated on the sea of data, effortlessly picking out the patterns from the noise. "Yes, I confirm that."

"Our endpoint just verified our certificate and has granted access," Stan went on. "Connection established."

"Woohoo!" I shouted, giving Stan a high-five. Stansy leaned down to hug him. I grabbed my pen and marked off the last item on the checklist.

"That's it?" Norm asked.

"What were you expecting, Norm?" Stan said with a laugh. He minimized the log screen and opened a browser. It presented him with a logo for Universidad de Chile. "The whole point is to conceal our net traffic. As of this moment, when we browse the net, to the rest of the world we look like a student using a university login in Santiago."

"What about our friends on the other end?" Wendy asked.

"Yeah, I was getting there." Stan opened a chat session and queried the room's occupants. Besides Stan, there were five people in the room. Four of them were genemods who had escaped the United States. The information that they had about us was limited, beyond the fact that we were based in the US. During our brief chat sessions with them, Stan and I had implied that we were in an agency safe house.

The handle "Alicia:" appeared, with the text, "Congratulations! We see your connection."

Stan and I had coordinated with faculty and IT staff from the university to create the first node in their secure network. I had learned that there were over three thousand genemods currently living in Santiago, and that a few of them had helped in the deployment of Stan's network.

Several more congratulations appeared. One user with the name of Albert said, "So that's a great first step, what's next?"

"Expand the network," Stan typed. "Bring more cities and safe houses in. We were hoping that you guys could help with that."

"We would have to contact the GRA," the user, Catalina said. She was with IT at the university. "I know some people who work with the agency. I'll see what I can do."

"We're glad you made us a part of this," Albert said. "I'm going to get in touch with some genemods I know in Auckland and see if we can get them into the network."

"I'm calling the University of Tokyo, as soon as we're done here," Alicia said. "I think the faculty there would love to help with this project."

"How are you going to keep this thing secure?" That came from a new chat room user with the name Lee.

"What do you mean?" Stan typed. "Tilly and I worked on the encryption and validation protocols for months." To our group, he said, "That's kind of the point of all this."

"Not that kind of security. I mean, what do you do if someone penetrates your network? We're talking about thousands of potential users. How do you vet them to ensure that none of them are US government agents or informants?"

"We'll deploy new measures as the network grows," I said aloud, and Stan typed with a nod. "For now, we limit access and keep sharing of personal data from those still inside the US to a minimum. And we stay diligent against cyber attacks."

"I know someone who might be able to help you out in that," Lee sent back. "He's an expert in security. I'll ask him to contact you."

"That's something else we want to discuss," Stan typed. "We want to start pooling some of the talent out there to help with the situation inside the US."

"Yes," a user named Kevin L. said. "We've heard that the president is stepping up efforts to find genemods. A lot of us have felt powerless to help you guys. I would appreciate the chance to make some kind of difference." The others gave their agreement and promised to do what they could. I felt a surge of gratitude from several people in the room at that. These were good people.

"Let's meet daily, and be sure to invite more," Stan typed. "Would 3 PM pacific time work for everyone?" 

We spent the next minute or so working out the details before people started logging off. 

"Well, that went well, I think," Wendy said. "Great job, both of you." She gave me and Stan a pat on the back.

"We should go over the logs," I said to Stan, and he nodded his agreement.

Norm came over and knelt on the other side of Stan. I kept my eyes on the screen but could see in my peripheral vision that he sent a few furtive glances my way. Having him this close made my heart beat faster with excitement and a little fear. I felt a desperate urge to stretch out a hand and touch him.

"Stan," Norm said, "This Catalina person, what do we know about her?"

Stan shrugged. "Not much. She's the only one of their group who isn't a genemod, and she's a Chilean native, also the only one."

"Well, she claims to have agency contacts, and that's the key to everything we want to accomplish. Do you think that you could set up a private conversation with her?"

"But can we trust her?" I asked. "I don't think we know her well enough yet."

Norm glanced my way, looking surprised that I had spoken to him. "That's why I want to talk to her in private. And then I'd like to verify her credentials. The real question is, can we trust her with a hundred thousand dollars? Otherwise good people would do a lot of rotten things for that much money. If we can trust her, though, I'd like to see if she can get to that money."

"You're still hoping to get us out of the country?" I asked.

"It's only a matter of time before someone finds us here," he said, keeping his eyes on the terminal screen to avoid having to look at me. "The work the two of you have done here is great, but I think we can do even more once we're safe. Just let me know if we can get a chance to speak to her." He stood and headed for the door, still never looking my way.

Norm's discomfort at being near me was so palpable that I thought that even Stan must notice it. I knew what the source of that discomfort was. I had studied the problem from every possible angle since that night, our one and only sexual encounter. The pull of attraction that I felt for Norm was the same pull that he felt for me. The reason that this distressed him was due to the societal norms of relationships, monogamy in particular, which told Norm that he could only have romantic feelings for one person at a time. I knew that to be false, at least in his case, but he insisted on denying it and trying to repress what he felt. The few times that I had attempted to broach the subject, he had refused to listen.

The problem was complicated by the fact that I lacked the feelings of possessiveness that other people had for a lover. I did not begrudge the fact that Nissi had a sexual relationship with Norm. I was glad that each of them had their emotional and physical needs met in each other. I did understand, intellectually, why Norm was so afraid of any intimate contact with me, but the way he conducted himself seemed completely irrational.

Stan glanced at Norm's retreating form, then at me. I could feel his confusion, but he just gave one of his customary shrugs and went back to looking at the logs. It would have taken me less than a minute to scan the fourteen pages of time-stamped entries but I had to wait until Stan had perused them at his own pace. "Everything looks to be in order," he said.

"Yeah, I didn't see any problems," I agreed. "I think we should keep the connection active and set some alerts in case anyone tries to sniff our traffic."

"I was thinking something similar. I can take care of it, though. One of us check back every hour or so?"

"Sure, sure," I said, getting up. "I'll check at four. Just let me know if you need any help."

The carpet felt luxuriant on my bare feet. I had started wearing shoes most of the time at Sasha's house, to get my feet off of the hard, cold concrete. In this house, though, every room except for the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room was floored with thick carpeting, a sensual delight. It was the closest thing I knew to my childhood memories of how grass felt when I ran barefoot in my mother's backyard.

I padded down the short hallway past the living room and into the kitchen. Stansy stood with her back to me, an open cardboard box and a bag of rice on the counter. The white board up on the wall, marked out for the current month, had her name printed in today's square next to "Dinner".

"Hi," I said, stopping at the threshold. I could sense the frustration and helplessness in her crossed arms and off-balance posture. "Would you like some help?" 

"Is it that obvious?" she laughed, turning to me. "I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with rice, powdered soy milk, canned beans, canned corn, canned peas, chocolate syrup, and apricot jam."

"How are our spices?" I asked. "Do we have any curry?"

I already knew that we did, but I knew that Stansy enjoyed feeling like she was part of the solution, rather than having it handed to her. After rummaging for a moment, she produced two bottles. "That's one thing my uncle did leave here. Yeah, I have red and yellow curry." She frowned at the bottles. "I don't know how old it is, though."

"How about some curried rice? Probably should use the yellow curry. If there's some chicken or vegetable bouillon, it will help with the flavor. You can add some of the peas to it if you want."

Stansy nodded. "Yeah, I think I will. Thanks, Tilly. You're a life saver. I probably should have just come and asked you right off the bat. That cream of cucumber soup you made before was inspired."

"Thanks," I said. I had just followed the recipe, but I didn't say that. Instead, I was studying the supply of food that Stansy had laid out on the counter. "Is this everything we have left?" I asked.

"Yeah, not a whole lot to pick from, right?"

Stansy was focused on the poor selection, but it was the quantity that concerned me. It looked like a lot, but we had eight to feed, so it would go a lot faster than it might seem. I wondered how much it actually was, and my mind went to work on the calculation. I had to check a few labels and estimate based on how full some of the bags and jars were, but the figure I came up with was around 70,000-80,000 calories. Assuming a very lean 1500 calories per person, per day, it would last us about another week, maybe.

"Have you seen Norm?" I asked.

"I think he went outside," Stansy said.

"Okay, thanks."

I left the house through the front door and made my way around the side and out back. My breath caught in my throat at catching sight of him. He was walking along the edge of the orchard and I corrected course to intercept him. He kept looking up at the trees and inspecting those branches that were low enough to reach. He noticed me only when I had started to draw close and visibly started.

"Hey," I said, waving. "Do you have a minute?"

I sensed wariness, a hint of fear. It echoed my own trepidation at crossing the barrier that Norm had invisibly erected between us. "Sure," he said. "What's up?"

"I was looking at our food stores," I said. "You know we have about a week left?"

"Yeah, I know," he said, shame registering through his physiology at his failure. He took a breath, mastering his emotions with an effort, and bent a branch down to look at it. "This one's in full bloom," he said. "But I don't know what it is."

I looked at the little pink blossoms and then up at the tree. "It's an apricot tree. It should start bearing fruit around July or so."

Norm let the branch go and it sprang back into place. He wouldn't look at me. His discomfort and anxiety at my presence had quickly returned. "What about the others?"

I looked around and inhaled the scent from the blossoms. "Apples, pears, and peaches. They'll be ready late summer, early fall."

"Damn," Norm said. "I'll admit I'm not much of a farmer, but I had hoped we'd see something within a few weeks, not two months."

"We should start pruning soon," I said, "to get the best quality out of the fruit."

"There's just one problem. I don't know that we'll be around long enough to enjoy it."

"We have to do something," I said, thinking as I did that it was about the most useless thing that a person could say.

"I know," Norm said. "I've been working the problem since we got here. I could go into Corvallis and try to ask around discreetly, but doing that will risk all of us, especially with my face still showing up in the nightly news."

"One of us, then," I suggested. "Me, Stan and Stansy are passable for normal. Even Wendy could go along and help if one of us is with her."

"Too risky," Norm said absently, looking into the distance, over my shoulder.

I turned to look at what had caught his attention. A car was going by on the farm road, sending up a plume of dust. Still about a mile away across flat, empty terrain, it had come in from the highway and was set to go past our driveway. Something seemed off to me immediately. It didn't match up with the usual vehicles we saw. They were rusty old pickups, mostly. This was a black BMW, and a recent model. Either someone had gotten lost, or they were out here visiting. The few scatterings of people who lived in the area didn't drive cars like that.

"We should go back in the house," I said to Norm, "right now." I turned and ran for the back door, a good hundred yards away, and heard Norm move to follow a moment later. I saw the car reach the driveway, and instead of rolling by, it slowed and turned. I was pretty sure that the driver wouldn't see us as this distance, but my heart, beating slightly faster due to my exertion, started hammering as I sprinted the last few yards to the cover of the house and pushed my way inside. I could hear it now, crunching over the gravel.

I found Stansy where I had left her in the kitchen. "There's a car," I told her, "coming up the driveway."

Stansy carefully set down the ingredients she had been handling. "What? Are you sure?"

At that moment, Nock came running down the stairs, followed by Nissi, Norm, and Wendy. "Nock, you hear it?" I asked, and he nodded.

"Okay," Stansy said. "Most likely it's my uncle come to check on things. He probably just got his utility bill. The rest of you should probably wait here while I go out and talk to him."

She walked to the front door, pausing to glance out the window next to it, and I felt a little spike of surprise and confusion from her. She waited until the car had come to a stop at the end of the front walkway before stepping out, and closed the door behind her.

"Something's off," I said immediately. "She saw something odd."

Norm moved towards the door, his hand going unconsciously to his hidden holster. I could feel the fear and dread that he hid so well from the others at the prospect of a violent confrontation.

Stan had gotten up and come to find out what the commotion was. "What's going on?" he demanded, when he spotted Stansy out the front window, talking to the stranger.

"Stansy's uncle, maybe," Wendy said.

The engine shut off and a car door opened and closed. Stansy's voice came through the wall muffled and distorted, but I could clearly make out the words. "Hi there, can I help you?"

"What are you doing in my house?" the stranger demanded, a male voice. I crept closer to the window to get a look.

"This house belongs to my uncle, William Meyers," Stansy said. "Do you know Bill?"

I could get a look at him now. He was young, blond, probably in his mid to late twenties, dressed in faded jeans and an Ozzy Osbourne shirt. Other than that, he was clean-cut and groomed, with a goatee and, of all things, a black wool fedora. "Bill's my dad," he said warily. "I take care of the place these days. Now, who are you?"

Stansy hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at the house before answering. "I'm Claudia. I'm your Uncle Dave's daughter."

The man's eyes went wide and he backed up a step, bumping against the car door. "You're my cousin Claudia? The attorney? But you're a . . . ."

"Yes," she said, and blew out a sigh. "I'm a genemod. Standard Upgrade. I've been in hiding since the Ban."

I wished I was close enough to smell the man. Several different emotions vied for dominance, making his expression and body language difficult to precisely decipher. The anger was rapidly fading. Fear was the strongest, but recognition was there too. "I think we met once. What was it, fifteen years ago?"

"Seventeen," Stansy said. "I was fourteen then. I came to stay for the summer."

"Yeah, and I came for two weeks with my brother. I was twelve." He smiled at the memory.

"You're Daniel, then? I wasn't sure, but I thought it might be you."

"Call me Dan. You look younger than me now, but yeah, I remember you. Crazy. Didn't you move back east?"

Stansy nodded. "Yeah, but I recently came back."

His wistful look told me that he had been more than a little smitten with his beautiful older cousin. His expression quickly turned to concern though. "Look, I'm sorry, but you can't stay here. I have a son. I can't go to jail."

"It's okay," Stansy said. "No one knows we're here."

His eyes went wide and I could tell by the slump of Stansy's shoulders that she knew she had made a mistake. "Wait, 'we'? Who else is in there?"

"You better do something," Nock said to Norm. "Things are about to go south."

Norm nodded and opened the door. He walked slowly up behind Stansy, nodding when Daniel saw him. Behind his back, Daniel fumbled with the handle of the car door. Stansy followed Daniel's gaze to Norm. "Wait, Dan, this is--"

"Mark," Norm said. "Mark Winston. Listen, we don't mean to cause you any trouble. We just needed a place to hide. Just give us a few more weeks and we'll be out of here." I heard him add under his breath. "Maybe." He held out his hand with some bills in it. "Here's enough to pay the utility bill, and then some."




Double Helix Ch. 09



His gaze flicked between Norm and Stansy like a caged animal. He shook his head. "No, I can't risk that. I could get charged with treason just for knowing about you guys."

"We have nowhere to go," Stansy protested. "You have to let us stay, please."

Daniel had finally gotten a grasp on the car handle and yanked it open.

"Hold it," Norm said. His voice held a deadly edge.

Daniel looked over into the barrel of Norm's pistol and froze. His jaw clenched as a flash of anger lit up his features. That drained away instantly, giving way to fear. "Don't kill me," he pleaded. "Don't—don't kill me. Please, just let me go."

"Shit!" Stansy cursed, stamping her foot.

"We better go help," Nock said resignedly.

I was the closest, so I opened the door and emerged into the afternoon sun. Daniel had closed the car door at Norm's instruction and stepped away from the car. "How many of you are there?" he asked.

I could hear the others breathing and moving about, and didn't need to turn to look. "This is all but one of us," I said.

"That's enough," Norm cautioned me. "Don't give him your name, any of you." 

"I'm sorry, Dan," Stansy said. "I thought maybe we could talk this out."

"Looks like the guy with the gun is doing all the talking now," Dan said, nodding at Norm.

I stopped a few feet in front of Daniel. "We might as well go inside," I suggested. "Come on."

Daniel timidly stepped forward, and I moved to let him past. Norm holstered his weapon as we all clustered around Daniel, cutting off his escape. We moved together into the house and into the living room.

"Have a seat," Norm said, gesturing.

Wendy's cat, which was curled up on the recliner, raised her head to cast a wide-eyed look at the newcomer before darting away out of sight. Daniel took a seat in the vacated chair and sighed. He studied each of us in turn, probably trying to figure out what kind of genemods we were.

"So, what do we do with him?" Nissi asked. "We can't let him go, and if he stays here, someone is sure to come looking for him in a day or two at the most. He said he had a family."

"We'll have him call them," Stan suggested. "Tell them he decided to stay and work on the house."

"That buys us, what?" Nock said. "A few days? Better than nothing, I guess."

"Guys," Wendy said, "stop talking like he isn't right here. He didn't ask for this."

"You got a phone on you, Danno?" Nock asked, ignoring her.

"Yeah, it's in my car." There was no deception when he spoke. He was still agitated and deathly afraid of us, but he must have hoped that cooperation would be his best chance for survival.

"Be right back," Nock said.

"We're not going to hurt you," Nissi assured him. "You have to understand we're desperate. We have no choice."

Daniel smirked. "You'll have to forgive me if I don't feel comforted by that fact."

"Couldn't you just claim you don't know about us?" Stansy asked. "Assuming someone actually found us?"

Daniel shook his head. "You haven't practiced law in a while, cousin. Ever since the president's order a few months back, there's a whole new secret court system set up just for prosecuting genemod crimes, which are considered crimes against the state. Habeas corpus doesn't exist there." His fear rose as he spoke, somehow even keener than his fear of us. 

Nock rejoined us. "Got his phone," he said. He placed it on the ottoman. "Would anyone be at home?"

Daniel nodded. "Yeah, probably."

"Norm, you should get your gun out."

"Sure," Norm said. He pulled his gun, but held it out, grip first, towards Nock. "But if you want someone to hold a gun on him, you do it yourself."

He started to reach for it, but Wendy spoke up. "Nock." He looked at her, and she shook her head slightly.

"Okay, fine," Nock said. "No guns." He looked at Daniel. "Unlock it, but don't do anything else. You're going to tell your wife that there was some damage and you're staying overnight to make sure it's fixed. You got that?"

"It's not my wife," Daniel said. "We need to call my parents."

Nock nodded and handed him the phone. He unlocked it and waited while Nock perused his contacts. "Which contact is it?"

"Choose 'Dad'."

Nock selected it and dialed. He put it on speaker phone and set it back on the ottoman. After three rings, it picked up. "Hello?" It was a kid's voice.

Daniel looked at Nock and he nodded. "Hi, Zach. Can you put your grandma or grandpa on?"

"Okay, daddy."

A few seconds later, a woman's voice came on. "Hello, Danny."

"Hi, mom. Listen, I'm at grandpa's old place right now and there's some damage."

"Oh my, nothing too bad I hope?"

"No, no," he said. "Nothing I can't handle. I'm going to need to stay the night here to get it fixed. Can you take Zach to preschool tomorrow?"

"Oh, sure. That's no problem, but you've got work tomorrow. I'm sure it can wait, whatever it is."

Daniel looked at us. Stansy pointed at the front door, where the window had been patched with some tape and cardboard.

"Uh, no, no it can't. A window got broken, probably storm damage or just some jerk throwing rocks. If I don't fix it, the carpet will mold next time it rains and we'll have a much bigger problem to deal with. I'll call in sick, but I have to get this done. I'll let you know when I'm on my way."

"Well, okay," she said uncertainly. "You know I can come down and help. I'll leave Zach with his grandpa."

Daniel rubbed at his forehead. "No, you don't need to do that. I'm just going to get some window panes and glazing from the hardware store and get it done, but I need to stay over and make sure everything sets up okay."

She sighed. "Alright, just let me know if anything changes."

"I will."

"Okay. I love you, Danny. Talk to you later."

"Love you, too."

Nock clicked off the phone and pocketed it. "Okay, good job," he said. "She seemed convinced. That's a Portland area code, right?"

"Uh, yeah," Dan said, gritting his teeth after he said it. "You wouldn't go after them, would you?"

"Of course not," Wendy said. "We're not bad people, Dan."

"So what do we do with him?" Stan asked.

Stansy grimaced. "Put him in the cellar, I guess. Only one door and we can lock it from the outside."

"Is that really necessary?" Wendy protested.

"Yeah," Norm said, "Yes, it is. We need to plan our next move. Better for everyone if he doesn't overhear."

"Come on, Dan," Stansy said. Norm and Nock followed behind, but Daniel didn't try to resist. 

"We have to do something," Wendy whispered once they were gone. "I don't like what's going on here."

"Me neither," Nissi agreed. "This guy's innocent and we're holding him captive. I'm afraid someone's going to suggest we kill him."

"Hey, calm down," Stan said. "No one's going to do that. Besides, all that would do is make things worse. We're just going to talk things out."

"He's right," I said. "We're all anxious, but no one is coming unhinged." I made a cutting-off motion and pointed, indicating to them that the others were about to return. A few moments later, Norm, Nock and Stansy walked through the door.

"He's locked up tight," Stansy said, and dangled a set of key from her fingers. "That's a solid oak door and I have his house and car keys."

"So we've bought twenty-four hours," Nissi said. "Now what?"

"I would say we have to move," Norm said, crossing his arms. "Any idea where we might go?"

"There's national forest all around us," Stansy said. "Plenty of places to hide if you don't mind camping. Not much to eat but pine nuts and maybe the occasional squirrel. No deer anymore. Even the bears are pretty much all gone now."

"Doesn't sound very appetizing," Norm said. "Anything else?"

Silence greeted him as he paced the room. "Okay, the forest it is," he said. "Can someone do some research and find out where we can go that's remote where we still might have some fresh water?"

"Jesus," Nissi said. "Are you serious? Is that really what we're going to do?"

"We don't have much choice," Nock said. "We're on our own. Maybe we'll find another house out there like this one. Or a cabin."

I noticed that Stan was staring down at his hands, rubbing them slowly together. I knew what was on his mind. "So do we turn the network over to the genemods in Santiago?" I asked.

Norm paused in his pacing. "Yeah, and we'd better destroy the MC."

"Whoa," Stan said, looking up in alarm. "If we do that, Sasha's fraud scheme will unravel within a few weeks. Without that money, we're stuck here."

"Well, what choice do we have?" Stansy said. "We can't leave it behind, and we have little hope of finding a convenient outlet sticking out of a tree somewhere."

"He's right," Wendy said. "If we trash that computer, that's it. We're done."

Each person began to chime in with their own opinion, and the discussion began to devolve into a shouting match. "Hey! Hey!" Norm shouted to be heard over the others. "Let's all calm down."

"Quiet!" Wendy screamed in her little-girl voice, shocking everyone to silence.

"One at a time, people," Norm said. "Stan, what were you saying?"

"I just said we should talk to Catalina. Maybe she can get through to the agency for us tonight, or pull the money so we can get it later."

"Okay," Norm said. "Might be a long shot, but worth a try. Let's see if each of you can give me an option. Wendy?"

"What about that Mike guy up in Seattle? Could he help us somehow?"

"I still have his number," Norm said. "And we have Daniel's phone. I can give it a try. Nock?"

"I say we get as far away from here as we can, ASAP. Drug Daniel with anesthetic from the med supplies and leave him in the cellar. His mom will be down to check on him in a day or two, but we'll be long gone."

"What?" Nissi said. "That's terrible. What if he starves to death down there? What if he has a bad reaction to the drug?"

"What if he trips and breaks his neck?" Nock shot back. "That's not really our concern."

"Hey!" Norm interrupted, before they could get going. "Nothing is decided, and you're both talking out of turn. We're exploring options right now. Now what did you have to say, Nissi?"

"Well," she said, giving Nock a sidelong glare. "I think Nock's plan is shit--"

"Hey, I just want to keep us safe, Little Miss--"

"Shut up! Damn it, both of you!" Wendy said, swatting Nock on the ass and making him yelp. It had the effect of throwing both him and Nissi off balance enough for Norm to get control again.

"Nissi," Norm tried again. I could sense his struggle to control his anger, but he held it in check. "Without provoking Nock, can you please give your opinion of what we should do?"

Nissi sighed and spread her hands. She looked at each of us in turn and then down at the floor. "I don't know. Maybe we should just turn ourselves in."

The room was deathly silent. Nissi had just said the unthinkable, but we all knew suddenly that it was the option that made the most sense. Genemods still had amnesty. If we went into the wilderness, we would probably starve and die. Even if we did survive, we had no prospects, no hope for anything like a normal life, and if and when we did get caught, we would probably all be executed.

There was just one problem. "Norm has a murder charge," I pointed out.

"Oh, God," Nissi said, her voice almost a whisper. She sat down hard on the couch and put her head in her hands.

"I'll run," Norm said. "The rest of you turn yourselves over to the authorities. At least we'll all have a chance to live."

"What about Nonna?" Wendy asked.

Norm thought for a moment. "She'll go with all of you. That cop probably lived, and Nonna has Alzheimer's, so it would be plausible to say that she was simply confused. They'll probably put her under house arrest or something." He turned to Stansy.

"I've got nothing," she said, shaking her head. "I'm going to go work on dinner and try not to think about this for a while."

"How about you, Tilly?"

I shook my head slowly. "I don't see any way out of this. But if I have a choice, I'll go with you, Norm."

"Me too," Nissi said quickly. "I'll take my chances with Norm."

Norm exchanged a long look with Nissi, and sent a critical glance my way. "I want you to think hard about that before committing to it," he said. "I can't make that choice for you."

We went our separate ways then, Stan to try to contact Catalina with an email, Wendy and Norm staying in the living room to call Mike. I went to help Stansy. It wasn't that I wanted to avoid the problem, as she did, but that I had a nagging feeling that I was missing something crucial. Brains, once you get past the reptilian part, are just big collections of pattern-recognition algorithms, and mine was no different in that respect. It was just that my pattern recognizer networks had additional layers to support higher levels of abstract thought. Usually when I got this feeling, one of those algorithms was hung up at one of the higher levels, close to a revelation, but missing some key piece of information that would allow me to infer the rest of the pattern.

The curry rice turned out quite pretty good, considering how bland or outright odd some of our meals had been of late, as our store of food shrank. At the start of the meal, Norm announced the outcome of their contacts with Catalina and Mike. The former had promised to make some inquiries, but then told them that it would be a few days before she might hear back. I had overheard the conversation with Mike from the living room, so I already knew that it was a bust, but Norm provided the details I had missed. Mike had already talked to the agency in anticipation of us needing help, and had been told that they had no resources available to aid us at this time.

A pall hung over the meal from that point on. Everyone was scared, myself included, and the psychological experience of fear was something that had not been altered in any gene model since the very first in the 60's. Even my own response was remarkably similar to Norm's, an aching, paralyzing clench of the gut. I found myself unconsciously tuning most of the others out to keep myself from sinking even further under the weight of it.

The evening was only made worse by Nonna, though it wasn't her fault. Wendy had tried to explain to her what we planned, but she was having one of her bad days, constantly asking after Sasha and Nikolai, who we assumed had been her husband. She grew more agitated with our explanations and began speaking only in Russian. Wendy finally took her into the other room and set her in front of the television to distract her.

After the meal, Stan and I went to work on packaging the network source code and all of the documentation for our new friends in Chile. It was getting late, so Stan suggested that we finish in the morning. I think that he was reluctant to let it go until absolutely necessary. We still needed to upload the code and encryption key collection to a secure file store, and then it would be out of our hands, completely unreachable by us.

Everyone had already gone to bed when I made my way upstairs. I could hear Norm and Nissi whispering to themselves, and Nonna's snoring almost drowning out Wendy's light breath. I stopped at the hallway bathroom for a shower. The warm water on my skin was divine. I leaned back and let the water cascade down my face and swirl over my breasts. 

I hung my towel and slipped under the covers, making happy noises as the smooth sheets touched my skin. Good, high thread count sheets are even better than a thick carpet. I sighed with contentment, moving around a bit just to feel the smooth softness gliding across my skin again. It provided a welcome, if temporary, distraction from the problems facing all of us.

Norm and Nissi's room was across the hall from me, and I could generally hear their conversations clearly unless they decided to speak in very low whispers. I could also hear when they had sex, as I could tell that they were just starting now. Nissi's moans and exclamations, muffled as they were, were echoed by my mind as warm waves of pleasure coursing through my body. In my mind, I could picture them together, entwined, pleasuring each other with their bodies.

My own body responded to the sounds, imagery and sympathetic echo. My skin flushed, my nipples contracted and hardened, and my sex grew warm and heavy. I ran my hands across my body, touching my lips with the tips of my fingers, brushing my cheek, caressing the smooth skin of my neck. Lower, my hands went, a fingertip lightly brushing one nipple and sending a jolt of pleasure right down to the wet heat between my thighs. I touched each one in turn, varying the type and intensity of the touch for different effect. I had found that I could bring myself to orgasm just from touching my breasts, but I wanted more.

I kept one hand at my breast, flicking, caressing, and squeezing, while my other hand slipped lower, sliding over my soft, flat stomach and lower still. I pushed off the blankets and opened my legs. The cooler air hit my damp pussy and I breathed out a moan. I had thought to approach it coyly, teasingly, but my need was too strong. I pressed my fingers into the folds of my sex, gasping and arching my back at the sudden intensity of the pleasurable invasion. I pushed two fingers easily into my warm, slick center and held them there, panting as a cascade of pleasure washed through me, like a chain reaction exploding and rebounding. I could feel the moan building inside me, forcing me to turn and press my face into my pillow to muffle the sound that forced its way out of my mouth.

The pleasure receded and I gasped for air. I slowly pulled my fingers out and back inside, shuddering and moaning at the overwhelming sensation. In the other room, Nissi's cries took on a staccato rhythm as Norm made love to her. I closed my eyes and easily imagined her wiry body posed on all fours, her sex being taken and filled. I let her joy and exultation mingle with my own, and in my mind, we were merged, sharing the same body, and in turn, merging and sharing our body intimately with Norm. I added a third finger and again had to stop and bite my pillow as the pleasure swelled and coursed through me.

I waited for the cascade to settle before once more slowly penetrating myself, letting my actions match the fantasy in my mind. Nissi's cries rose in pitch and intensity, and my mind simulated her rise towards orgasm. If I were close enough to see and hear her clearly, and focused closely on the sensation, I could have experienced her orgasm as my own. I had discovered that with Norm, the night we had left Seattle, and his climax had triggered one in my own body. Now, I just synchronized my own rise with hers, letting myself build in perfect step with what I felt from her.

My hand flew from my breast to grip my pillow as the sensations again overwhelmed me, this time building higher and higher. Nissi cried out from the other room and the wave of pleasure rose in me, seeming too huge for my body to contain. My body shivered and convulsed in anticipation, and I buried my fingers deep inside my body and pulled the pillow over my face.

It started deep within me, coursing outward in all directions across my skin. My nipples hummed as the wave washed over them. My legs kicked and lifted my body as it spread downwards, ending in electric tingles at the tip of each of my toes. The warm bliss spread up my neck, washed over my face, tickled across my scalp. It spread down my arms, flowed across my palms and pulsed at the tip of each finger. I arched upward as the wave crested and dropped to the bed with a muffled scream.

The next wave came slower, but just as powerfully, and flowing deeper than the last. The pleasure seeped into my bones, tingling and buzzing, and adding to the pleasure that still played over my skin. A third wave started before the second had even finished, seeming to shoot up my spine and explode across my back. On and on it went, completely beyond my control, every nerve ending singing, my mind a haze of bliss. Carefully, so as not to trigger another climax, I pulled my fingers free and lay basking in the afterglow, punctuated by an occasional resurgence of pleasure, like little aftershocks. 




Double Helix Ch. 09



Conversation now drifted to me from the other room. "How many do you think will go with us?" Nissi asked.

Norm sighed. "I think Nock might. And I think Stansy's going to stay. I really don't know about the others."

"I don't want to lose you," Nissi said. They were quiet for a time, and I started to drift towards sleep. When Nissi spoke again, I came back to full consciousness, pulled by the mention of my name. "Norm? Why do you think Tilly would want to go with us?"

I could hear the beat of hesitation before Norm spoke. "I think it's probably out of gratitude for what I did for her."

"You should tell her not to go. There is no reason for her to suffer and die out there with us."

"You know," Norm said softly. "It might not be that bad."

"What do you and I know about living out in the wilderness? What are we going to live on? Nuts? Roots? Tree bark? All we're going to do is delay the inevitable. She shouldn't have to go through that. She should have a chance to live."

Norm was quiet again for a time. "I'll talk to her," he said.

There was another long paused before Nissi spoke again, her voice slurred slightly. "Norm, is there really no other way?"

"There might be," Norm admitted. "There should be, but we don't know of one. We can only go on the knowledge we have."

The problem that had been nagging at my brain suddenly lurched to the fore again. There was an answer there, so close that I felt like I could reach out and take hold of it, but the more I tried to think it through, the more it slipped from me. There was something that Daniel had said, and a feeling he had when saying it. I needed to talk to him to find out more.

I waited in the dark, listening for more, but neither spoke again. I got up and crept to the door to listen and could hear Nissi's soft, thin breath and Norm's deeper rasp. I stood there for a moment, steeling my resolve while planning my next moves. The door opened with a snick and one of the hinges groaned as it swung back. I paused, listening to the rest of the house. The door to Wendy and Nonna's room was closed. I crept closer and could hear them both within, deeply asleep.

I opened the door and slipped inside. Wendy and Nonna were sleeping back to back, the former curled up on her side, looking small and vulnerable. I tapped her shoulder and her eyes came open, blinked, and came into focus. I knelt down next to her. "I need you to help me with something," I whispered. "Can you get up and come downstairs with me?"

She nodded and peeled back the covers. She was dressed in a set of children's pajamas, colored pink and somewhat threadbare. We crept towards the door and away from Nonna. "What's going on?" she said.

"It's Dan," I said. "I'm afraid we're all making a terrible mistake. I need to talk to him."

She frowned, but I sensed trust and acceptance from her. "He's locked in the cellar. Stansy has the key, probably in her room with her."

"Okay, let's go. Nock is probably on the net, so if we're quiet, hopefully he won't hear us. Follow close behind."

I took careful steps down the hallway, avoiding the creaky board a few steps from Wendy and Nonna's room. At the top of the stairs, I paused to listen, holding out my hand toward Wendy to indicate for her to do the same. From below, I could hear the distant clacking of keys from Nock, using the MC to browse the net, just as I expected. I moved down the steps to the first landing and paused again to listen. There was still no change, so I continued to the bottom.

The lights were off in the living room, but I could see that the door to the guest bedroom was cracked. I motioned for Wendy to wait for me before I crept across the room and carefully pushed it open. Thankfully, this door did not creak. Stan and Stansy were spooned up together in bed, sound asleep. I cast around the little room and quickly found what I was looking for. The keys that Stansy had shown us earlier lay on the mirrored dresser at the foot of the bed.

I took a deep, stilling breath and walked quietly and calmly over to the dresser. I could see Stan and Stansy in the mirror's reflection, behind my own. I grasped one of the keys between my fingers and gently lifted, letting the keys stand up and slide across the old, scarred wood, until, with a tinkle that sounded unbearably loud to my enhanced ears, the half-dozen keys came together and swung from their ring. I closed my other hand around them to keep them from clinking together. The pair on the bed slept on, oblivious to my theft.

I slipped from the room and padded over to the kitchen, Wendy close behind. I knew that the hard surfaces would amplify any sound, so I made an effort to be even more quiet and careful in crossing the linoleum. In a few moments, I was looking down the steep shaft of the stairs that went down to the cellar. The stairs were tall and narrow, so I descended them carefully, but when I was less than halfway down, one of them gave a loud creak. I froze, clutching the keys in my fist hard and gritting my teeth. My heart beat in my ears, once, twice, before the clack of keys resumed from the den. I remembered to breathe, but it took several more seconds before I could make myself move again, shifting my weight slowly off the stair so that it wouldn't creak a second time.

I went more slowly, testing my weight gradually on each step and skipping those where I could feel a subtle shifting that would likely lead to a squeak. At the bottom, I selected one key at a time and tested them until I found the one that opened the door. Wendy came to rest on the bottom step just as I turned the bolt.

The inside was pitch black, but I could hear Daniel's breathing coming from one corner. Once we were both through, I turned and locked the door behind me, then slipped the keys into the pocket of my jeans. I took Wendy's hand and waited for my eyes to gradually adjust to the very dim light that slipped in through the gaps between walls. The constant clatter of typing had finally disappeared, the sound blocked by the thick door. Empty shelves and cabinets lined the walls, and a long table took up the center of the room. The cellar was easily half as large as the first floor of the house, running under the kitchen, living room, and guest room. Daniel lay sleeping on an old mattress on the floor.

I moved over to him and stood for a moment in thought, rehearsing my next action. I knelt above his head and quickly reached with both hands, putting one over his mouth and pinning his arms with my elbows. He came awake immediately and began to thrash against me. "Quiet!" I hissed in his ear. "I'm not going to hurt you. Stop struggling and I'll let you go."

It took a few seconds for that to sink in, but once it did, he stopped trying to open his mouth and pull away. I released his arms and took my hand from his mouth. "Sorry," I whispered. "I couldn't risk you making a noise that might alert the others. Speak very softly. One of the others has enhanced hearing."

He sat up, felt around for the wall, and turned so he could lean up against it. "Who are you? I can't see anything." His pupils were dilated nearly to the point that his irises disappeared, and he looked right past me.

"My name is Tilly," I said. "I'm the brunette you met earlier. Hold on."

I pulled the chain on a light fixture that hung from the ceiling. He and Wendy both blinked at the sudden brightness. My own irises had responded at my conscious thought, contracting just before I pulled the chain, plunging my vision into darkness for a split second, but preventing me from being blinded when the light came on.

"Hello again," Wendy said, when he looked at her. "I'm Wendy."

"Nice to meet you, Wendy and Tilly," he said mockingly. "How can I help you young ladies?"

I blew out a breath and knelt in front of him. I left my instincts take over, modulating my manner, my expression, even my scent, to inspire relaxation, contentment, and trust. "I need to ask you some questions." 

"I have one for you first. Are you going to let me go?"

"What would you do if I did?"

He answered without hesitation. "I would go back home," he said, "and give my son a hug, and be grateful I'm safe and alive."

Wendy sat next to me. "You wouldn't tell anyone about us?" she asked.

"I would be a fool if I did. Like I told my cousin, the federal government is intent on wiping out genemods at any cost, even innocent lives. Amnesty isn't coming to an end, it already ended. That's why you haven't been hearing a lot on the news about genemods being captured, not like you used to. There's good reason to believe the FBI is still making arrests, but that either the genemods that are taken are being imprisoned and tortured or quietly executed."

He leaned forward, meeting my gaze. "The McCain administration has decided that overt threats and pushing public opinion against genemods hasn't delivered the results they need. Now, secrecy and double-dealing is the order of the day. If they can take me in secret, they'll do it for the chance, however small, that I can help lead them to more genemods. Of that, I'm certain."

It was confirmation of the idea that had been nagging at me for hours. Daniel had mentioned a secret court for prosecuting genemod offenses, and his fear had spiked as he said it. The comment had been passed off as unimportant at the time by everyone, when in fact it was critical. Daniel did not believe that his government would give him a fair hearing, even if he broke no law and cooperated fully with them.

I sensed mistrust and suspicion from Wendy, but I had no reason to doubt his sincerity. Even if what he said wasn't true, he believed it whole-heartedly, and that was really all that mattered. Still, I wanted to know more. "Do you have any evidence of this?"

"Yeah, there's a guy who runs a website that leaks classified government documents and tracks FBI activity. He calls himself Renard. The guy's amazing. You'd have to see to understand."

"I'll check it out, but can you give me just one example?"

"Okay, listen. Around the 25th of last month, an entire family in a large household in Denver disappeared. Local media ran a few stories on the subject, but it never made national news. That was a couple in their thirties and two kids. There was a major FBI presence at the house at around the time of the disappearance, but of course they claim to have been searching for evidence of where they had gone. Renard published the public records for the house. It had a large, finished basement with plumbing and wiring. He also somehow got ahold of their utility bills and found that they were significantly above average. It's pretty obvious that they were housing genemods there. The FBI, or whoever was in charge there, made two kids disappear."

I was still skeptical, but I let it drop. "How do you feel about genemods, Dan?"

"You mean before today?"

"Yes, before we assaulted you," I said. I knew intuitively that it was the right thing to say. Daniel expected another apology, but what he really wanted was for us to own up to what we had done to him. He nodded, and I could sense that I had earned some measure of respect.

"I don't know," he said with a sigh. "I don't buy into that purity of humanity bullshit. We've been tinkering with DNA since the late 1930s, increasing crop yields, finding new treatments for diseases. Anyone with half a brain should know that linking the Rot and genemod humans is one huge non sequitur, but somehow no one questions it publicly. I think the whole thing is about fear."

I didn't disagree with his assessment, but I wanted his personal take on it. "How so?"

"People fear that you're going to replace us, maybe even make war and destroy us. 'Posthuman' was what some people called you. You can't tell me that a word like that doesn't have a lot of potential behind it for being misunderstood. Even before the Ban, human genemodding was outlawed back in the 90s. And then there is the fear of the government, what they'll do if you speak out."

I hesitated about my next words, but then went for it. "Dan, the reason we showed up here in your dad's house is that our safe house was raided."

"Whoa, hold on," Wendy said. "Are you sure that's wise, Tilly?"

I nodded at her. "He needs to know." I looked back at Daniel again. "They got our host, a woman named Sasha. You may have seen it in the news?"

He thought for a moment and nodded. "Right, I do remember that from a few weeks back. Up in Seattle?"

"Right, that was us. Norm was the man that they showed in the police sketch."

Daniel gasped in realization. "He—he killed a cop?"

"Quiet!" I hissed. I listened for a few moments, but could hear nothing from the house above. "Yes, that was him."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"To show that I trust you. Besides, that picture is still going around out there, so you would probably make the connection sooner or later. I would trust Norm with my life. In fact, he saved my life personally twice, and then saved all of us by getting us out of that safe house. He had no choice in what he did. If he hadn't shot first, that officer would have killed him. I know. I was right behind him when it happened."

"I don't think I can take this," Daniel said.

"Listen to me, Dan. We are good people, all of us, but we have nowhere to go. Earlier tonight, we were discussing hiding out in the forest. Some of them are going to turn themselves in. I'm pretty sure that's what Stansy—I mean Claudia, is going to do."

"She shouldn't do that," Daniel warned. "I'm telling you. There's no amnesty, not anymore."

"I believe you," I said. "And I'm going to tell the others what you told me, but where does that leave us?"

He considered this for some time. "You need to stay here," he said at last. "I can't send you to your deaths. I won't tell anyone. We'll just all have to take our chances."

"You're a very honest person, Dan," I told him, genuinely impressed. "You've never lied except to your mother, when we made you do it."

He laughed. "You can detect lies, huh? Well, I've just never been very good at it, I guess."

"I have a question," Wendy said. "It's about the fruit orchards."

"Sure. What do you need to know?"

"Do you harvest the fruit? Or do you leave that to the Department of Agriculture?" 

"We harvest it ourselves," he said. "My mom and dad hire a few guys from Corvallis to come help."

Wendy leaned in closer to him. "What do you do with the fruit that you don't sell to the DoA?" I could feel his agitation at the question and wondered why. "Understand," Wendy clarified, "I'm not condemning you. But we're running short on food. If you have a black market contact you can give us, someone you trust, it would be a huge help."

"We do sell it, sometimes," he said grudgingly. "We also can and dry a lot of it. My dad's been putting that stuff back for a couple years now." He sighed. "Listen, if you let me go, I'll give you my contact. I'm sure he won't mind the business."

Wendy looked at me. "We can trust him," I said. "He's telling the truth."

Wendy stood and stepped back, but then had a thought. "You said you have a son, but no wife. Where is the mother?"

"She, uh, my wife died two years ago." The memory brought a stab of pain to him and I reached out reflexively to take his hand. "It's okay," he said, "really."

"But you still grieve for her," I said.

I would have left it at that, but he blew out a long breath and looked up at the ceiling. "It happened during the food riots in March of 2012. She was driving home from work. She called me to let me know she was stuck in traffic, but then called me again a bit later to say that the cars weren't moving and that she had gotten out to walk. Hours went by and she didn't show up. I put on the news and realized what had happened. Her office is just a few blocks from city hall in Portland. I was in my car and on my way over to look for her when I got the call that she was hospitalized and in critical condition. She had been trampled when the police started firing on the crowd." His voice went suddenly hoarse. "She died before I got there." He blinked and swiped at the corners of his eyes. "I didn't know how I was going to raise Zach without her."

Wendy suddenly stepped forward, knelt and put her arms around him, and gripped him in a hug. "We'll get you back to your son," she promised. Daniel was too surprised to move at first, but he slowly brought his arms behind Wendy and returned the hug, patting her back a few times. Wendy stepped back. "It's going to be alright," she said.

"Come on," I said, "We're getting you out of here tonight."

We didn't try to mask our noise coming out of the cellar, and Nock came wandering into the kitchen to check on the noise before I had cleared the stairs. "Tilly?" he said on seeing me. "What the hell is going on? What were you doing down there?"

"We're having a meeting," I said. "All of us. Right now." I moved aside to let Daniel and Wendy come up.

"What is he doing out?" Nock demanded.

"I'll explain when we're all here," I said. "Go get Norm and Nissi, please, Wendy. I'll wake Stan and Stansy. Nock, feel free to help me keep an eye on our prisoner."

"Yeah, I'll do that," he said. "Come on, Danno."

A few minutes later, everyone was assembled once more in the living room, some looking more the worse for having been woken in the middle of the night. I let Wendy tell the others what we had done, only speaking when she looked at me for confirmation of what we had heard. 

"He's also agreed to give us his black market contact," Wendy finished. "If we let him go." 

I watched Nock from the corner of my eye. To my surprise, what I sensed from him was not suspicion and denial, but relief. Norm was more troubled. "I trust Tilly's abilities," he said, with a nod in my direction, "but how do we know you won't change your mind tomorrow?"

"I won't," Daniel said. "And I've been thinking, if you're staying here, we need to have a way to communicate. The DoA does occasional inspections of the orchard, to ensure we're taking proper care of the trees. I thought I would turn on the phone service to the house. Then I could warn you to stay indoors and out of sight."

"And netcast?" Stansy asked hopefully. "Even a basic package would be better than what we get from broadcast."

Daniel nodded. "I'll see what I can do, though paying the utilities on this place is already going to be a burden."

"We never planned on staying permanently," Norm said. He once again offered Daniel several bills, about five hundred dollars, if they were all hundreds. "Will this cover what we've used?"

Daniel took it. "Yeah, that'll probably be enough to cover another month. And I'll get the TV going, Claudia." 

"Alright," Norm said, standing. "Is everyone agreed? We let Daniel go free?"

There were nods and murmurs of agreement throughout the room. Nissi snorted. "Hell, it beats camping out for the rest of our miserable, short lives."

"Great," Norm said. "Dan, why don't you get some rest and leave in the morning?"

"You can have my bed," I said. "It's the least I can do after what you've been through."

The others filed off to bed except for Nock, who went back to the den, and Norm, who waited until we were alone. He took a seat where Dan had been. "What you did for us tonight, Tilly," he said, shaking his head. "I almost made a huge mistake. I wish we hadn't lost Sasha. Filling her shoes isn't easy. Why didn't you come talk to me sooner?"

I shrugged. "I only realized it after everyone went to sleep. And besides, you haven't exactly been easy to talk to lately. I make you uncomfortable."

"You know why," he said.

"Yes, I know." I didn't want to say anything more with Nock listening, so I pointed at the front door. Norm looked, frowned in thought for a moment, and nodded.




Double Helix Ch. 10



~Norm~

The front door opened and closed, and Nock walked into the living room. "Guys? I think he's back."

I got up from the couch and went to the front window to look out, Nissi and Wendy close on my heels. The black BMW from two days before was rolling up the long driveway. We had all agreed that if the FBI were going to show up, it would happen within a few hours of Dan leaving. Two days had gone by since then, and seeing him back here was unexpected and worrisome. "I'll go talk to him," I said.

Nissi grabbed my arm. "Be careful, Norm."

I nodded, patting the lump of the gun and holster behind my hip out of habit as I went for the door. I stood just outside, waiting, until the car came to a stop. Dan got out and waved. He was wearing a business suit this time, and a pair of sunglasses, but that black fedora was perched on his head as before. I had to admit that it looked far more appropriate than the last time I had seen him. He went around to the trunk, which was already swinging open. "Can I get some help?" he called.

I moved toward him, wary but hopeful. "What brings you back so soon?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I made a stop after work yesterday at dad's cabin, where he keeps our stash of food. I thought that this could help." He stepped back and gestured at the contents of the trunk. Inside were four large, open-topped boxes filled with mason jars. He picked one up to show me. "Canned peaches," he said. He replaced it and picked up another. "Apricot jam. There's pears, apples, and blackberries in here, some whole, some jammed or pureed."

"Blackberries?" I asked.

"Yeah, they grow out behind the orchard, down near the creek."

I laughed. "I thought that was just wild brush."

"Oh, well you get a lot of that around here too. People don't bother trying to cut it back when the land is next to useless. We used to get a good crop of strawberries on a big plot next to the house, but the Rot kills those. Nobody really knew at first what crops it hit and which ones it would leave alone, but blackberries are apparently on the no-kill list."

"You didn't have to do this, Dan," I said.

He shrugged. "You guys need help, so I'm giving it."

I helped him carry one of the big boxes to the kitchen. By the time we got back, Stan, Nissi and Nock had just picked up one box each, leaving the trunk empty. Dan started to reach to close the trunk, but stopped and snapped his fingers. "Oh! I almost forgot." He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone. "I used some of the cash you gave me. It's got a few hundred minutes on it. They don't expire, though, so I suggest you save it for when you really need it. The house phone is set to be connected early next week. Let me know if you run out, though, and I can put more minutes on it at the store."

I took the phone. It was cheap, disposable really, but it was priceless, given our current predicament. I shook my head. "Everything you've done, I don't know what to say."

Dan shrugged. "'Thanks' is the usual response, at least where I come from." 

I held out my hand to him. He took it and I pumped it once. "Thanks, buddy."

"Any time. If you guys are still here in a couple of months, we're going to need to figure out what we're going to tell my mom and dad. Or maybe we can lock you all in the cellar until harvest is over."

"Very funny," I answered, smiling.

"Hey, I'm only partly kidding. I don't know what Dad will do if he finds out he's got genemods squatting on his farm. I would seriously consider how we're going to deal with that."

"You want to come inside?" I offered. "We didn't get much chance to talk the last time. We could discuss it."

Dan shook his head. "I've got to get back. I had to visit a client at the university, so I thought I'd use the excuse to drop by. It's good to see you're doing well here. I'll come visit again when I have more time. Tell Claudia, Tilly and Wendy I said 'hi'."

"Hi, yourself," Wendy said from the door. "Looking good, Dan. Love the suit. Tres chic, monsieur."

"Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle," he said, making a show of straightening his tie and puffing out his chest. "My suit jacket brings all the girls to the yard."

Wendy laughed. "Hey Norm! I think you finally found someone who's a bigger dork than you!"

Dan tipped his hat to her. "Thank you, my dear. 'Always aspire to be the best at what you do', that's my motto. Good day to you, mademoiselle." He nodded to me. "Monsieur."

I watched him hop in his beamer and drive off, shaking my head in amusement. Dan's gift wasn't enough to feed us by itself, but it would extend our supply by many days, maybe weeks. It was worth hundreds of dollars, easily. When he turned onto the road, heading for the highway, I started for the house. "Does he know you're forty-six?" I asked Wendy when I drew close.

"No," she said, grinning. "And if you tell him, I'll rip out your trachea and bludgeon you to death with it." She thought for a moment. "Or, I might just pin your testicles to the floor and crush them with a hammer, if I'm in a more forgiving mood."

I winced and put a protective hand over my crotch. "Damn, I hate it when you threaten in specifics."

Nissi pushed the door all the way open behind Wendy. "She likes him," she said. "So I suggest you do what she says. I'm rather fond of your testicles."

"Ew, gross!" Wendy said, and pretended to vomit.

"You got nothing to worry about, sugar," Nock called from the kitchen. "Even if Norm told him the truth about your age, he'd never believe it."

"Are you saying I'm immature, you cosplay reject?" Wendy said, marching over to confront Nock from the kitchen doorway.

"Pipsqueak."

"Insomniac werecat."

"Pollyanna." He spoke in falsetto, "Oh, we should all play the 'glad' game."

"That's it. You die." Wendy disappeared into the kitchen, followed a few seconds later by cursing and yelps of pain from Nock.

Nissi sidled up to me in the doorway and pulled me against her. She breathed in my ear. "Mm, you know, the sound of human suffering always gets me horny."

"And everything else," I said, and gave her a kiss. "I wonder if Tolkien knew you guys were so wanton."

Nissi gave my lip a playful bite before drawing back with a chuckle. "You know, the beard is starting to grow on me," she said, running her hand over my stubbled cheek. I had decided to start growing it out a week ago in the hopes that it would make me harder to recognize from the police sketches.

The scuffle in the kitchen suddenly rose in pitch and volume. "Ow! Hey, that's my. . . Ow, ow!"

"I better go save Nock," I said.

I found him lying on his side in the kitchen, kicking futilely. Wendy had her feet across his neck and one of his arms in a lock at her chest. I had to admit that Wendy did somewhat resemble the Pollyanna from that Disney movie, but I wasn't about to say that our loud. "Wendy," I said in a warning tone.

"Hi, Norm," she said, grunting with the effort of holding the bigger man down.

"Let Nock go, Wendy."

"Not until he apologizes."

"Jesus H. Christ!" Nock cursed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Wendy let his arm go, tucked and rolled backwards. Her legs split apart and her toes touched the ground to stop her rotation and steady her. Balanced on her hands, she drew her feet in and stood in a smooth motion.

"You'll have to show me that move," I said admiringly, and stooped to help Nock to his feet.

"Hey guys," Stan said, peeking his head into the kitchen. "It's about time."

"Yeah," I said. "Be right there."

Nissi and Wendy were already headed to the den, and Nock fell in behind me. We had met with our friends in Santiago for the last two days running, following up each one with a private meeting with Catalina. Today's chat was special, though. Our network was about to expand.

Stan and Tilly were seated together at the terminal, checking over the logs from the last few hours. So far, there had been no evidence that anyone had noticed the encrypted network, but that could change at a moment's notice.

"Alright, I'm logging in," Tilly said, typing out a string of text into a command window.

A chat session opened, and several people logged in over the next few minutes. All of the original six from Santiago were there, plus several more new names. "Greetings from Tokyo University," a user named Shawn D. said. "Haru and Myra are with me."

"A pleasure to meet you," Haru said.

"Hi, there," the user Myra typed.

Lee, from the university in Santiago typed next. "I invited the security expert I was telling you about. He's not on the network, but I asked him to join the chat with us. Say hello, Sam."

Sam typed, "Hi."

Tilly responded. "Hello, Sam. I've got some design docs I can send if you'd like to look those over first."

"Sure."

"Tell us what you think and then I have some source code you can look at."

"Okay."

Stan and Tilly exchanged a look and Stan shrugged. It was hard to tell someone's attitude from a chat session.

"Looks like I'm the only Aussie here," a user with the name Thomas said. "Nice to meet you all."

"Hello, Thomas," Tilly typed.

"Lauren here, from the University of Copenhagen."

"Kristen, from the same. I've got Professor Pedersen here with me in the computer lab. He says 'hello'."

Our little group had grown to over a dozen outsiders. Tilly typed, "Thanks everyone, for coming. The groups in Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Melbourne should have received self-extracting executable files a few hours ago. Does everyone have server space ready for the install?"

A string of yes's appeared, at least one in each of the new locations. Tilly typed, "Okay, the password to unlock the files is dEg+D*wt#5S. Go ahead and start the install now."

"Done," Haru typed, less than a minute later.

"All set," Kristen said.

"Hang on," Thomas said. "Having some trouble with my local network permissions." We waited, and in another minute he said, "Okay, good to go."

"Okay," Tilly typed. "Let's have Todai go first. Haru, the address for Santiago should already be set. Go ahead and make your connection."

"Done."

"Now you, Copenhagen."

"Connected."

"And Melbourne."

"Connected. We're in business, mates."

Tilly minimized the chat window and brought up a command window. She rapidly typed a series of commands and got back columnar strings of symbols and numbers. She flipped back to the chat room. "Okay, I see you all on the network. Great job. We're routing all traffic through Santiago for now. I want to vet all new connections first before we allow point-to-point traffic throughout the network." She looked over at Stan. "How's our firewall holding up?"

Stan was staring at another console window. "Weird. Looks like someone is trying to gain access to the node in Santiago, but the server is rejecting them. They're running through their login attempts, won't be long. How'd they even get the address? Yep, their IP just got blocked. Wait, we have another attack, different IP."

"Should we shut it down?" I asked nervously.

"Not yet," Tilly said. "Can we trace where this attack is originating?"

"Yeah," Stan said. A moment later, "Maybe." Tilly typed in the chat window, "Stand by, everyone."

Tilly moved aside to let Stan get access to the keyboard. He frowned at the data. "Looks like it's coming from inside the university network. Let's see." He pulled up a new console window and straightened, staring at the screen with a befuddled expression. "That's weird."

"Yeah," Tilly said, somehow deciphering the fast-scrolling string of log data on the screen. "What system is that?"

Stan brought up yet another window and typed in a database query. "Student records," he said. "Someone must have hacked the student portal." He exchanged a glance with Tilly. She nodded and he typed into the chat. "I'm sorry, everyone. We need to shut down. Someone breached the student records site and their attacking us from inside Santiago's network."

"No need." That came from Sam. "That's me. Looks like I found a few vulnerabilities. I'll stop my attack now."

Stan flipped between a few windows. "Okay, the attack stopped. And I think my heart started beating again." He typed into chat, "Okay, everyone, looks like Sam just decided to test our security. We thought we were having a real cyberattack."

"It's actually not bad," Sam typed, each sentence appearing as a new line in the chat every few seconds. He had to be an extraordinary typist. "My man-in-the-middle on Melbourne failed, but I was able to grab your IP for the Santiago node. And your spoofing makes the packets pretty slippery. The biggest flaw is that you're more or less wide open to attack if someone breaches the host network. And I didn't get a good look, but I think your initialization vector is too small. I could probably crack your encryption with brute force in a couple of weeks."

"Does he sound smug to you?" Nissi said with a chuckle.

"On the other hand, you noticed my attack right off. I'm assuming that's why you told us all to stand by. If you hadn't noticed me, I was going to have a little fun with your host there."

"Yeah," Stan said. "Guess you only hurt our pride. Are you a CEH?"

"Oh, yeah, strictly white hat. And no one can prove otherwise."

"What's a CEH?" I asked.

"Certified Ethical Hacker," Stan said out loud. "I always hated those guys when I worked at IBM. They try to break in, test the security. And 'white hat' means that he only hacks legitimately, but he's slyly letting us know that's not necessarily true."

"Are you a genemod, Sam?" Tilly typed in chat.

"I am Sam. Sam I am. Veritas vos liberabit." Then, "Sam has left the server," appeared below his message.

"Sorry about that," Lee typed. "Sam's a little odd. What he said about your security was actually high praise, coming from him. He's probably one of the best hackers on Earth, and I don't say that lightly."

"I'll say," Catalina typed. "It took him less than a minute to break into the student portal. I'm going to go have a word with the web dev guys. Some tonto probably forgot to secure against SQL injection attacks. Be right back."

"Off she goes to bust some balls," Alicia typed.

Kristen and Shawn both responded with "LOL."

"We'll continue to work on the security," Stan typed, "but it sounds like we're fairly safe for now."

"What's the scene like in Oz?" Myra asked.

"Not good," Thomas answered. "The legislature hasn't passed any anti-genemod laws since the Krueger Act, but there's been some elements of the Labor party, of all things, who are clamoring for stricter control of genemods. Registration, that kind of thing. People are worried that if we start down that road, things will spiral from there."

"What's the Krueger Act?" I asked.

"The Krueger Act outlawed human genemodding in the Australian Commonwealth," Stansy said. "They passed it shortly after the Ban, under pressure from the US and some of the European nations in the League."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Myra said. "Japan walks a fine line. There's a small genetic research program here at the university, but it was almost shut down last year. This country has narrowly avoided economic sanctions several times."

"Copenhagen has a genetics program too," Lauren said. "I'm even on the team. We get annual inspections from the League of Nations to ensure that it's just pure research and our results have to be kept secret from the public. It would be great if we could collaborate with you guys in Tokyo. Are you trying to find a cure for the Rot?" 

"Sorry," Haru cut in. "We really shouldn't talk about that."

No one said anything for a few moments, and then Myra typed. "So we've got people from Tokyo, Melbourne, Copenhagen and Santiago. Stan and Tilly, you built this network? Where are you?"

"We're in the US," Tilly typed.

"Oh, snap," Shawn typed. "Are things as bad there as they say?"

"Very bad," Tilly answered. "We have reason to believe that genemods and anyone who protects them are being executed in secret."

"No shit?" Alicia said. "Why would they do that?"

"It makes no sense," Kristen said, "unless the government no longer sees a use in demonizing us. 

That's pretty scary. Does the McCain administration believe that it has that powerful a hold on the country that it can stop holding us up as the enemy?"

"Well," Thomas typed, "if their goal is to consolidate power, to eliminate opposition, killing off genemods and their friends are a good place to start. I think your only chance for a change might be if your opposition party gains a majority in Congress this year."

"I'm back," Catalina said.

"Did you give them hell?" Thomas asked.

"Worse. I assigned the whole dev team a basic security training module. We'll close that hole soon."

The banter continued for a while and then people began logging off. Stan went to a private room where Catalina was waiting. "I have good news and bad news," she typed.

"The bad first," Stan responded.

"No one, and I mean no one, is smuggling genemods out of your country. I got word out to a dozen different shippers, big and small, that make the run from Seattle or Portland down to San Antonio. None of them would consider transporting you, not for $100,000, not even when I offered double. Which is doable, by the way. There are enough genemod expats here with money that we could raise that without too much difficulty."

"And the good news?"

"I can get you access to your money. I found a bank in the Caribbean that will handle the transaction anonymously if you want to transfer and cash out. Their fee is 5%, but I think that's reasonable considering they must suspect the money was not come by legally. I would recommend converting to crypto-currency and splitting it up to store it in the cloud."

"What good does the money do us?" Stansy asked. "Other than maybe to keep us fed?"

"We'll come up with another plan," I said. I had been looking into what it might take to go overland. From what I had gathered, hundreds of genemods escaped across the border into Mexico each year. Canada was not an option. Any genemod caught in their borders was promptly extradited. "Thank you, Catalina," Stan typed. "We'll talk it over and get back to you soon."

He logged out of the chat room and swiveled in his chair to face us. "You know, when we pull this money out, we need to think about whether we want to pull the plug or keep the scheme going. It will get noticed eventually, depending on how often the bank conducts audits."

"Keep it going," Nock said. "Let's get as much as we can from this." He looked meaningfully at Stansy. "Keeping us fed is kind of a big deal, actually."

"Any chance of someone tracing this thing to us?" Nissi asked.

Stan shrugged. "They'll trace it to Sasha, if anything. It will be found eventually, sooner if we put a stop to it and the statements stop getting paid every month."

"Wait, you're saying this system pays its own bills?" Wendy said.

"Yeah," Stan said. "Just minimum payments, but it keeps things current. It's all designed to fly under the radar for as long as possible." "Okay," I said, "I think we should go ahead and pull the money, but keep the software active. Does anyone object?" No one spoke up. "Then we're agreed. Let's go ahead and make arrangements with Catalina the next time we talk to her. " I wasn't completely sure that Catalina could be trusted, but if she couldn't, we were essentially at a dead end. We had to put our faith somewhere if we were going to get anything done.

"You still planning on meeting Danno's guy once we have a phone?" Nock asked.

I pulled out the cell phone. "Dan just gave me this, so I guess now's as good a time as any." I flipped it open and pulled from my pocket a folded piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it. I dialed and it was answered on the second ring.




Double Helix Ch. 10



"Hello." The voice was gravelly and had a bit of a twang.

"Hello. I'm calling about firewood," I said. That was the phrase that Dan had told me to use.

There was a pause. "Buying or selling?"

"I'm buying. I'd like to meet you tomorrow night, if that's possible."

"Write this down." I motioned for a pen and pad of paper on the desk and Stan handed them to me. The man on the phone gave me an address in Portland. "Be there at 11 PM. Park around back, get out and walk up to the back door. Wait there for me."

"I'll be there," I promised, and hung up.

"All set, then?" Nock asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. I thought I'd head up in the morning to stake out the location a bit beforehand. I want to be sure I'm not heading into another trap."

"I thought Dan's worked with him before?" Wendy asked.

"He has, but that was last fall. He could have turned informant since then. I'd better go check the truck, make sure it's still running." I started for the door.

"Wait up, I'll help," Nissi said.

We had left the truck on the side of the barn to hide it from people passing by on the road, starting it up every week or so. I put the keys in the ignition and twisted. The truck's engine turned over a few times and groaned to life. It rose in pitch for a few seconds before settling into a smooth idle. "I'm going to let the battery charge," I said and hopped out.

I went around to the back and lifted the door. The cargo area was empty, cleared out weeks before, but I wanted to double check. I closed it and set the latch. It was only then that I realized that Nissi was humming.

"What song is that?" I asked.

"Hmm? Oh, new song. It's been bugging me for like two weeks. I left all my notebooks behind at Sasha's and there's not a whole lot of stationery here, so it's just been in limbo."

I realized then that I hadn't seen Nissi compose a song in weeks. "I can get some notebooks when I go out tomorrow," I said.

"Well," she said, sighing, "it would be nice to get this thing out of my head. But don't take any risks you don't have to, please?"

I gave her a kiss. "I won't, I promise."

I turned off the truck and popped the hood, and Nissi helped me check all the fluids. "Oil's a bit low," she said. "If you stop at the store, you might want to pick up a quart." She replaced the dipstick and stared at the engine while I checked the brake fluid.

"Something on your mind?" I asked.

She started to shake her head, but then stopped, her brow creasing. "I was just thinking. If we can't get out of the country, or even if we can, what do we do? What's our purpose?"

"Our purpose? Staying alive isn't enough?"

"Well, is it enough? Before the Ban, I made a living on my songs. I wasn't a household name or anything, but three of them made it into the top 40. I wasn't saving the world, but at least I was doing something people liked. I mean, think about it. We're defrauding a bank so we'll have money to live on. We broke into this house and pointed a gun at Dan when he showed up. All of these terrible things we've had to do, what's it all for?"

I was glad that she hadn't mentioned the cop I had killed, but I knew it was on her mind. "There's Stan's network."

"Yes, there's that," she admitted. "If we can convince the Agency to adopt it. I'm not all that certain they'll go for it. Didn't Sasha tell you that they were getting downright paranoid?"

"They need this network," I said. "Being isolated makes them vulnerable. And if Dan's right. . ." I trailed off, thinking through the implications. "If Dan's right about what they're doing to genemods, they need to know about it. They need to know that staying hidden is their only chance for survival. There's what? Two more months of supposed amnesty? More and more are going to turn themselves over as we get closer to the deadline." I replaced the last dipstick and let the hood drop.

"Well, if we can make that kind of difference, I guess I'll be happy," she said. She pressed up against me and put her arms around me. "And you make me happy." We held each other close. I hardly ever noticed the height difference anymore, except when she rested her cheek on top of my head, as she did now. She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush of words, "Norm, I want to tell you something."

I pulled back and searched her eyes. "What is it?"

"I want you to know my real name."

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

"We know Stan and Stansy's first names. I want you to know mine." She took another deep breath and let it out again. "It's harder than I thought. Okay, here goes. My name is Amanda."

I tried to suppress a chuckle, but it burst out of me anyway. Nissi frowned. "What's so funny?"

"I'm sorry. It's just, I've always thought your real name would be Tinúviel or something." I barely managed to finish before I hit another fit of giggles. She was still frowning, so I got myself under control. "I'm sorry," I said again. "I like it, really. Amanda. It's nice."

"You don't think it's strange or wrong? I wasn't expecting you to laugh."

I shook my head. "No, it suits you. Like I said, I expected an Elvish name. I was a little surprised."

"Well, that was my mother's influence," she said, smiling. "My dad wanted to call me Mithrellas, so that's my middle name." She looked at me expectantly. "So."

It was my turn to feel trepidation. It had been months since I had heard my real name. I swallowed down the lump of anxiety. "My name is Martin."

Nissi nodded slowly. "Martin. Marty. I like it. Still a little old-fashioned, but not as stuffy as Norman. I won't tell anyone else unless you tell me to, okay?"

"I won't tell anyone yours either," I promised, "Amanda." She gave me another kiss, and we went back inside.

Nonna was sitting on the couch when we walked in, along with Stansy and Wendy. "Hello, Norm, Nissi," she said.

"How are you today?" I asked.

"I am fine. I worry about my Aleksandra." She pointed at the television.

I moved around where I could see. The news program had an inset with Sasha's face. I read the text scrolling on the screen. "She's being remanded to the custody of the Justice Department."

"They charge her with treason," Nonna said, and she was suddenly shaking with anger. She spat something in Russian that sounded like a curse.

I thought of Dan's claim, that genemods and sympathizers were being tried in secret. Sasha's case was different because of the publicity that the officer's death had caused. The McCain administration had seized upon that incident as proof that genemods were dangerous outlaws. No one knew that a normal human had been responsible, or if they did, they were concealing that fact from the public. I felt both ashamed and angry that the government was using my actions to bolster anti-genemod sentiment.

"The trial will take months," Stansy said, "maybe longer. There's midterm elections coming up, and the administration is going to milk this for all it's worth."

"Bastards," Nissi said.

"She come to this country for freedom," Nonna said. "Now they lock her in cage."

"I'm so sorry, Nonna," Wendy said.

The old woman ruffled Wendy's hair. "Is not your fault, little one. Resistance, it is in our blood. Nikolai, my husband, he was caught and killed by KGB. He ran guns to separatists in Ukraine."

It was the first I had heard directly of any kind of violent history in Sasha's family, but I had often wondered. Russia under Communism has suffered dozens of rebellions, revolts, and coups. There had been a brief period in the late 1970s and early 80s of peace and relative economic and social freedom, but a hard line Leninist faction within the party had taken control in the late 80s. The nation had quickly plunged into chaos and violence. After that, the region that was formerly the Ukraine had attempted to overthrow Communist rule, fighting a bloody war that lasted for three years.

"How did you get Sasha out of the country?" I asked.

"After Nikolai was killed, I look for way to get her to safety. Some friends get her over border into Poland. From there, she travel to US embassy and request asylum. I come same way five years ago, during big famine."

That was after the Rot had first appeared, almost simultaneously, in France and Jordan, and began to spread. It had stalled in the arid Middle East, but agriculture in Europe had been devastated. Nearly a billion people had died of starvation and rioting that year. The rot had spread across Europe, missing the UK but showing up in every other country within a year.

When it had begun to spread in the Soviet puppet-state of Belarus, Russia's response had been both brutal and effective. They had simply burned everything in a diagonal line west of Kiev and Minsk out to the very border of Soviet territory, and a three-hundred mile swath across the land between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Though the tactic had worked in stopping the blight from devastating all of Russia's food crops, and potentially continuing East into India and China, it had resulted in the destruction of thousands of square miles of farmland. The resulting famine had very nearly destabilized the regime.

People continued to die each year around the world in the tens of millions. The Rot had not spread to Africa yet, but ironically that continent accounted for about a fourth of the annual deaths. Agricultural firms from North America and Europe had set up massive farming operations in central and southern Africa, after local governments had taken payments to force their own farmers off the land. Under international trade agreements, most of that grain was exported to Europe and North America, leaving many of the displaced farmers in Africa to starve. The outcry in the west had been vocal but depressingly small. Most nations were too busy struggling to feed their own populaces to worry about the poorest of the poor, even if they were being effectively murdered.

I gave Nissi a peck on the lips. "I'm going to go check on Stan."

I stopped just inside the door, seeing Tilly bent over the terminal with Stan. She turned to regard me before I could retreat from the room. "I, uh, I need to go do something," Tilly said, standing. She kept her eyes on the floor as she walked past me.

I walked over and dropped into the chair that Tilly had just vacated. "How's it going?"

Stan took the pen that he had been holding between his teeth and pointed with it at the terminal screen. "We think we know how he got the IP for the Santiago node. When we started having the others connect, he searched out all of the most likely routers that Thomas would use from Melbourne to connect to Santiago. He intercepted the initial handshake request and tried to convince Thomas' node that it was talking to Santiago."

"Who, Sam? The certifiable hacker?"

"Certified ethical hacker," Stan corrected. "He couldn't have done it if he hadn't already known where the endpoints were geographically and exactly when we had Thomas try to connect." Stan sounded defensive, as though he took it personally that this hacker had almost gotten through his security.

"You and Tilly are doing a great job," I told him. "He blew right through the university's security, but never broke into yours."

"Yeah, but they had a serious vulnerability that we didn't think to check. Tilly's brilliant with code, but she doesn't have enough real-world experience with security threats. That makes this my fault. We'll fix it, though."

He looked over his shoulder, checking the door, before leaning close. "Is there something wrong with Tilly?"

I shook my head slightly. "What do you mean?"

"Well, she hasn't been like her old self, but she's not been like her new self either. Not sad, but more subdued. I've caught her staring off into space a few times the last couple of days. I don't know if it's anything to worry about, but I thought you might know."

I shook my head again. The lie came easily. "I have no idea. Maybe she's just been working hard on the network."

Stan nodded. "Yeah, I suppose that could be. We've got four more universities to link up before the end of the week, and I've got to make some changes to our encryption algorithm. Not going to let Mr. Sam I Am make me look like a fool again."

"I'm sure you'll do great," I said, patting his shoulder. I pretended to have just thought of something. "Say, you said when we left Sasha's house that you backed up the local storage on the old terminal. Did you save everything?"

"Yeah, as far as I know. Was there something you needed off there? It's all saved to the cloud. Free backup service based outside the States."

"Yeah, do you think you could point me to the location and give me some time to look through those files? I had some private stuff on there."

"Yeah, sure. Nothing that could give your identity or location away, I hope. You can't be too careful."

"Oh, no, nothing like that. Just something I was reading."

He nodded and pulled up the storage site, entering a login and passcode to get in. "Here you go. The contents of the terminal's flash storage are here, all indexed just like it was before. How much time do you need?"

"I'll come get you. Shouldn't be too long. Twenty minutes, maybe."

"Alright. Be careful." He stood and left me alone with the terminal.

I browsed immediately to the notes on Tilly's model and opened the file. I looked for anything about pheromones, but found nothing to indicate that Kelly's team had employed something of the kind, or even if they had discovered anything new to help with the incomplete and ambiguous knowledge that was out there already. Next, I went through the extensive notes on Tilly's happiness drive and pseudo-empathic abilities, but there was no mention there of sexual attraction.

I started scanning the document page by page for some explanation, but failed to find anything of interest. Sighing, I exited the website, got up and went to find Stan. "All yours," I said, pointing a thumb over my shoulder.

We discussed my trip to Portland over dinner. Wendy told me to get tofu if the seller had any. It was an imperfect substitute for meat, but it did help with the taste and texture of many of the rice dishes we made.

"See if he has any potatoes and onions," Nissi said. "I really miss Sasha's garden."

"Tomatoes," Stan said. "I would give anything for a bowl of spaghetti, even if we have to make it with rice noodles."

"Anyone got a pen and paper?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I got it," Stansy said, jotting the items down. "If you can get some beans, I have all the spice I need to make veggie chili."

"Okay, add that," I said.

"Oh, anyone remember chili and cornbread?" Nock said. "Real beef chili with cheese and cornbread with a little butter on top."

"I haven't had real butter in eight years," Stan said. "Just margarine. What I really miss, though, is ice cream."

Wendy groaned dramatically. "No, don't bring up ice cream. Mint chip on a waffle cone. I can almost taste it now."

"Don't drool, dear," Stansy said, tossing Wendy a napkin. "Brownie fudge sundae with whipped cream."

Nock put up his hand and paused dramatically when the others looked at him. "Bacon cheeseburger," he said slowly.

"Oh, you asshole," Nissi said, and for once, she was good-natured about it. Then she got a wicked gleam in her eye. "Baby. Back. Ribs."

"Nissi!" Wendy and Stan said together, followed by a chorus of outrage from the others.

"Okay, enough with the impossible foods," I said, talking over the others. "Any other legitimate requests?"

"I should go with you," Tilly said.

The rest of the table went quiet, and I turned to look at her. She hadn't said anything to me directly in more than two days. "I'm going alone," I said, speaking to the table at large, rather than directly to Tilly. "I can't risk bringing any of you."

"I can help with the seller," she said. "I can tell if he's lying. If there's a chance this guy might betray us, I'll know it immediately. I've thought about it since you made that call. You need me there."

"No," I repeated. "I'm not going to put anyone else in danger."

"Norm?" Nissi said. "She's got a point. You said the only reason you and Sasha weren't captured that night is that she figured out something was wrong. Tilly can help. I don't like the idea of you going at all, but I'll feel a little better if you take her."

She was right. I could put my foot down and refuse to take Tilly, but it would look downright irrational to do so. The last thing I needed was to have Nissi wondering what I had against Tilly. 

"Alright," I said, and didn't have to feign my reluctance. "I'll bring her with me."

I looked at Tilly, but she was looking not at me, but at Nissi. I wished in that moment that I had her ability to read another person's emotional state. Sometimes I felt like I barely knew her.

Wendy had dish duty tonight, and Nissi and I sneaked off upstairs while the others gathered around the television. We took a shower together, and Nissi couldn't resist "helping" me to wash my cock clean. We toweled off and I caught Nissi staring at her reflection in the mirror, idly touching her pointed ears and the sharp sweep of her eyebrows.

"Is something the matter?" I asked.

"There are times I wish I was more like Tilly," Nissi said. She met my eyes in the mirror. "More like the rest of you, I mean, other than Nock. This face gives me away in an instant."

"You have a beautiful face," I said, and came up behind her to encircle her tall, lithe body in my arms.

She nodded and smiled at me in the mirror, but it quickly faded. "I'm afraid for you, Martin," she said, casting her voice low so that it wouldn't carry to the others. "I can't be there to protect you tomorrow."

"Protect me?" I said. "I'm the only one of us with a gun."

"Maybe it's time to do something about that. Maybe we should all learn to shoot."

I was surprised by the unexpected turn. "Well, I'd never thought of that." There was plenty of room on the property to set up our own range. I had just under two boxes of .45 ACP, which wouldn't go very far if everyone else started practicing. The problem was that my alter ego, Mark Winston, might be tainted now. I couldn't buy guns or ammo without a license. 

"Maybe our black market seller can get us some guns and ammo," I suggested. I felt a little bit sick as I thought about it though. Likely the only reason we would need to have guns would be to defend ourselves against the FBI. They had enough resources to make any resistance we might put up seem childish.

"Yeah, maybe so," Nissi said. She turned in my embrace and put her arms around me. "I hate this," she said, "always being in fear of our lives or afraid for someone else. I wish I had some hope that it might someday be different." All that I could have offered was empty platitudes, so I didn't even try. Nissi held me for a time, but then frowned, stepping back slightly to look down. Her voice changed tone completely. "Oh, that will never do."

"What are you . . .?" I began, but quick as that, Nissi dropped to her knees on the bathroom floor and enveloped my cock with her lips. Under her attention, it didn't take long for it to rise to full length and hardness.

"That's more like it," she said. She took hold of it and caressed it between her fingers. She released me after a moment and stepped around me, into our bedroom. I followed her, enjoying the view of her crimson hair hanging low on her back, swaying above her perfect ass. She stopped at the edge of the bed and turned to face me, pursing her lips in thought. "There's been something I've been wanting to try."

"Oh, I've heard that before," I said with a grin.

"At that house in Arkansas, I used to do some Dom/sub bondage play with that Neri I told you about. It was pretty hot, and I've been thinking about it lately. Think you'd like to try it?" I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was again outside my area of expertise, but I had read and heard enough to at least know the terminology. "Okay. Who's domming who?"




Double Helix Ch. 10



Nissi laughed. "You're doing it to me, of course. We could try switching roles if you really want to." She came close and pressed her body against me. "But I was hoping you might like to have me bent over . . ." Here, she put her mouth close to my cheek, "tied down . . ." She breathed huskily into my ear, "ass in the air . . ." she gave my earlobe a nibble, "while you spank me."

Though I was on fire, a chill went through me at her words. I gave an involuntary groan of desire and barely controlled the urge to push her down on the bed and have her right then. "That sounds pretty good, actually," I said with a groan of lust.

She smiled. "I'd hoped you'd like the idea. Give me a 'sec."

She knelt at the edge of the bed and pulled out a bundle of rope. "I found this in the workshop next to the house," she said. Her tone had gone breathy and simpering. "It's all washed and ready for you, Sir."

I took the rope from her and worried it between my fingers, stalling while I worked out the rules of this new game. "Kneel," I said. She immediately got to her knees on the floor in front of me. I walked slowly around her and she turned her head from side to side to watch me, a faint smile on her lips. I completed one circuit and ended up behind her. "Put your hands behind your back," I commanded.

She did as I said and I squatted to loop the rope around her wrists, careful not to get it too tight. It was soft rope, sturdy but not coarse. I made a leash from the end of it, already thinking of how I would use it. Satisfied with the results, I circled back around to the front of her, standing inches from her face. "Suck my cock, slave."

She attacked my slightly flagging erection, obviously excited by this new play. Well, new for me. She sucked me more vigorously than she ever had before, bobbing her head clear down the length of my shaft and then gasping for air before returning again. "Good," I said, moaning softly. "Good girl."

I let her suck me for a time, loving the charge of sexual energy that she got from being dominated. When I stepped back, she made a disappointed noise in her throat.

"Sorry, you were going to make me come," I said.

"Time out for a sec'," Nissi said, the simpering note gone from her voice. "Let me help you out a bit. You need to be in control at all times. I'm not to express my own desires unless you ask me to. And if I step out of line, I should be punished. Don't worry, though, you're doing great." She closed her mouth and sat waiting, looking up at me with a worshipful gaze.

I got back into character immediately. "What was that?" I said, and grabbed a handful of her hair. "Are you unhappy, slave?"

"No," she said softly. "I just want to please you, Sir."

I snatched up the leash that trailed from her hands. "Get up," I said with a tug. She rose to her feet, only a little awkwardly despite having both hands bound behind her back. "Get up on the bed and bend over. I want your ass in the air."

Having her hands tied should have made it awkward, but she moved quickly and efficiently to do as I had asked. When she was in place, I paused for a moment to admire the sight of her pale bottom, petite but rounded in just the right ways. "You've been a bad girl," I said. Then I brought the flat of my hand down hard across her ass.

Nissi flinched and grunted as the blow landed. I gave her another, nearly as hard, and closer to her inner thigh, and this time I got a sharp intake of breath and a moue of pleasure from her. I began to get an idea of where to strike to give pleasure along with the sting, and where to avoid altogether. I ramped up the intensity of my strikes until her ass began to turn pink. Nissi had her face buried in her pillow, moaning and shaking with pleasure and pain each time my hand made contact.

I stopped and brushed my hand across the curve of her ass, tinged pink where I had spanked her. She hummed at the contact. I swept my hand lower, dipping between her legs to find her pussy dripping and swollen with arousal. "You need to be fucked, don't you slave?" I said, and gave her a hard slap on the rump.

She gasped and actually squirmed. "Yes, Sir. Please fuck me. Please fuck me, sir. Your slave needs her wet little pussy filled."

Flushed and a little shaky now with my own arousal, I climbed onto the bed behind her on my knees. She was still begging me to fuck her in every colorful way that she could think of. I got into position and buried my cock inside her in one smooth motion, slamming hard into her still rosy bottom.

"Oh my God!" she screamed. She panted for air as I slowly withdrew and gave a wordless cry as I drove back into her. Her cries were growing in pitch and intensity as I settled into a rhythm, and it had probably been less than a minute since I had first entered her. "I'm about to come, Sir," she said suddenly, her words oozing subservience.

My first impulse was to keep fucking her and bring her to what would surely be an amazing climax, but I was enjoying this new play space we had entered, and wanted to push things a little further. "No," I said, "not until I tell you that you can." I withdrew my cock and she made that same noise of disappointment as before. I gave her ass a particularly hard slap and she yelped. "You will learn to control your outbursts, slave."

"Yes, Sir," she said. "I'm sorry, Sir." I loosened the knots on her wrists and freed one of them. "Lie on your back," I said.

She did as I commanded, placing her hands across her stomach. My dick still stood erect, as big and hard as it had ever been. She lay, passively alert, as I retied her wrist and lifted both hands over her head. I looped the leash of the rope through the slats of the headboard and tied it tightly, securing her to the bed.

"Now, slave," I said, walking slowly around the bed to inspect my work, all the while admiring the naked beauty lying there. "We're going to try a little exercise to teach you self-discipline. I'm going to lick your pussy. You're going to lie there and enjoy it, but you are to tell me the moment that you start getting close to coming. Do you understand?"

She nodded, "Yes, Sir."

I knelt between her legs and began to lap at the lips of her pussy. She responded with eager moans and tried to push herself up into my face, but I slapped her inner thigh and she instantly settled down. I love going down on a woman, and Nissi's pussy, naturally free of hair and with a flavor both sweet and musky, just begged to be licked. It didn't seem to take long, maybe a minute or two, before she said, "I'm going to come, Sir."

I immediately backed off from her clit. She didn't any make a sound of protest this time, and I felt her body go rigid with the effort not to buck her hips upward. "Good girl," I purred. I added a finger, then two, and slowly fucked her as I licked the spot just beneath her clit and sucked and nibbled at her lips.

"Oh, fuck," she cried, head thrown back in ecstasy, then added a belated, "Sir."

"Do you like that, slave?" I teased.

"It feels so fucking good, Sir. Thank you, Sir." My cock surged back to rock-hardness at her words. "Are you close to coming, slave?"

"Uh," she said, and bit her lip. "Yes, sir." It was almost a whisper.

I stopped what I was doing and summoned up as menacing a voice as I could manage. "And were you going to tell me?"

She answered, still in that small voice. "I need to come, Sir. I can't stand it."

I slapped her on the ass so hard that my hand stung from the impact. She flinched away from bloe, crying out, and I thought I heard in it a note of shock, but she didn't tell me to stop. I gave her a few more hard strikes, and though I could tell she was loving it, another idea had occurred to me. I stooped to pull the belt from my pants and heard her sharp intake of breath as the buckle rattled. Folding it once to form a loop, I brought it down across her rump with a sharp crack.

"Ah!" she cried, and I hesitated, worried that I had gone too far. She panted for breath, her limbs shaking for a moment. She had flinched away from the blow, moving up and to one side, but now she deliberately resumed her position. She wanted this. I did it again, and the air exploded from her lungs and returned in a gasp. A deep red welt had appeared from the first strike. I gave her four more in quick succession before I stopped. I was panting from the exertion, and she was so aroused that moisture was rolling down her thighs and dripping on the bed. My cock had responded to my fear and arousal, and was now standing up stock straight again.

Nissi alternately tensed and relaxed, no doubt trying to anticipate the next strike. Instead, I ran the palm of my hand over her skin. It was hot to the touch, and she stiffened and whimpered as I trailed my fingers over it. Her ass and the backs of her thighs were striped red and white.

"That was pretty intense, huh?" I said, and she didn't answer, bringing my concern back to the fore. I took her by the hips and gingerly rolled her onto her side so that I could assess her. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused and she mouthed words silently. "Nissi?" I said. When she didn't answer, I repeated it again, more loudly. Finally I pitched my voice lower and said, "Amanda." That finally got her attention. She blinked and looked around. When her gaze met mine, I asked. "Are you alright?"

She swallowed and moved her mouth as though trying to form words. Frowning slightly, she just nodded and closed her eyes. I reached behind her back to untie her and she stretched out on the bed, still lying on her side. I lay down next to her and put one arm across her, bringing the other up to stroke her fine red hair. We just lay like that for some time, and I told her over and over again how much I loved and cared about her. Her eyes stayed closed and she breathed soft and evenly.

I rolled onto my back and sighed. "Why'd you stop?" Nissi said dreamily.

"I thought you went to sleep."

"I liked that too much," she said. "I love when you touch me." She gave a snort of disgust then. "Ew, I drooled on the bed."

I laughed. "What? Really?"

"Yeah, ick." She sat up and wiped her mouth and chin. "And I got it all over my pillow."

"Damn, I've never made a girl drool before. What happened to you?"

"I don't know. I just . . . I stopped feeling the pain and I was just drifting inside myself. Kind of the feeling you get when you orgasm, but stretched out, deeper, more emotional." She flipped her pillow over and flopped back down. "I'm going to need to get some rest after that."

"Really? You didn't come at all and you're done? That's a first."

"I need a nap," she said, patting my arm. "I'll wake you when I need to fuck again."

True to her word, Nissi did wake me in the middle of the night. She must have waited for one of my spontaneous nighttime erections to occur, because when I came awake, she was already straddling me, riding my cock. She fucked me until she came, and then lay down across my body, my cock still nestled inside her, and rode me slowly until I had my own climax.

I woke to find myself alone in bed. I got up and went downstairs to find Nissi and Tilly making breakfast and chatting amiably. On the stove was a huge put of oatmeal bubbling away, and a smaller pot with canned peaches that had steam lazily rising from it. We had been eating oatmeal for breakfast almost every day. Sasha had stockpiled bags and bags of it because it was healthy, nutrient-rich, and fairly compact. The peaches came from the new stores that Dan had brought with him the previous day.

"Morning, stud," Nissi said, and gave me a kiss. "I was just bragging how you rocked my world last night."

I forced a chuckle and stole a glance at Tilly. She had her back turned and was stirring the pot of peaches slowly. Nissi might just be pulling my leg. On the other hand, it wasn't like Tilly, who was just across the hall, couldn't hear everything that went on in our bedroom most nights. "Those peaches smell delicious," I said.

"They're pickled and spiced. Here, let me get you some." Nissi scooped a large helping of the oatmeal into a bowl and Tilly spooned several peaches and some of the syrup on top.

"That's too much," I protested, when she handed me the bowl.

"You need to keep your energy up today," she said. "You're going to bring more food back for us, so I want you in top shape. And if you lose any more weight, I might not find you as attractive. You're already close to skin and bones."

It wasn't much of an exaggeration. Before the Ban and food rationing that set a daily quota of 1600 calories per person per day, subject to certain exemptions, I had actually been a little pudgy. I had slimmed down from about 205 to a trim 150 and stayed there for a long time. Since the problems with food supplies had started, and then we had gone on the run, I was closer to about 135. I estimated that, lately, we'd been living on about 1000-1200 calories each. That was getting down near starvation territory for all but the smallest and lightest of us.

"Well, give Wendy and Nonna a little extra too, okay?" Second-gen and onward genemods had metabolic enhancements like bio-engineered mitochondria that allowed them to adapt efficiently to changes in diet and caloric intake. Over the last two weeks, Nissi often complained of feeling fatigued through the middle part of the day, and she and the others had been taking a lot of naps, their bodies' efforts to conserve energy. Even Nock would lie quietly for several hours each day, doing some kind of meditation exercises, not quite sleeping, but something similar. Wendy and Nonna didn't have that luxury. Though Wendy was smaller than an adult and thus needed a bit less calories, I worried about her.

Nock wandered in as Nissi and Tilly were getting their food, and the four of sat at the dining room table. Tilly engaged Nock in conversation, and soon the two of them were talking about stock trading. There seemed to be no subject in which she didn't possess some depth of knowledge. No doubt she had undergone the same kind of accelerated learning that my sister had received.

Nissi asked me about the route that I was planning to take, and let me know that she had gotten up early and made meals for me and Tilly to take with us. I finished my food, excused myself and stood to take my bowl to the sink. I found four foil-wrapped items in a plastic bag in the refrigerator and a milk jug filled with well-water, all with my name and Tilly's written in Nissi's looping script. When I returned, Tilly was just finishing her oatmeal. "Ready to go?" I asked, fighting the urge to argue one last time against it.

She glanced at the items I carried. "Yes, you have your phone?"

"Right here," I said. I also had my driver's license with my fake identity, Mark Winston, and $2000 of our remaining cash. I had fiercely debated with myself about taking less money, in case our new contact tried to rob us, but equally bad would be to bring too little money and miss out on bringing back more food. I did not want to make this trip any more often than I had to. And I might have to make another bribe.

Nissi leapt up and ran around the table to enfold me in a crushing hug. "Just be careful, okay, Norm?"

"We'll be fine," I said, "really."

She stepped back and nodded. "I know you will, but I'm still going to worry."

"Here, I'll get that," Tilly said, and took the gallon jug from me. Her tone was light. "Might as well get a move on."

I followed her out to the truck and we climbed into opposite sides of the cab. I started the engine and put the big truck into drive, both nervous and excited about the journey ahead. I pulled out onto the farm road and from there, to the highway, heading into Corvallis. I glanced over at Tilly but was surprised to find her curled up against the door, already drifting off to sleep. Apparently she was letting her body rest now, conserving her energy for when she might need it.

I stopped in town to fuel up before heading west to take the coast highway north. It took us two hours out of our way, doubling the distance, and I had no way of knowing if the 101 or one of the connecting highways might contain a checkpoint, but it was almost a sure bet that the larger, more direct highways, I-5 and the 99, would have at least one checkpoint along their length.

Tilly slept for the first hour, but when we reached the coast, she woke and stared across at the wide expanse of deep blue under a canopy of gray clouds, with the sun sending shafts of light down to touch the waves. "It's beautiful," she whispered.

I looked at her and nodded. She watched the water for a while longer before going back to sleep once more. I turned inland at the junction with highway 18, encouraged that our trip was more than half over and we hadn't seen a checkpoint. We passed through several small towns, the signs pointing us onward to Portland. My nervousness increased when we merged onto highway 99 and the towns started to get bigger.

At one point between towns, we came to a place cleared of trees where bare earth stretched away for miles like a great brown scar on the land. A sign next to the road proclaimed "Newberg Farming Project" near where an asphalt road branched off from the highway and fed into a large building flanked by industrial grain silos. Beyond that, a sea of metal and glass could be seen in the form of close-packed, boxy structures. Twenty feet all, a hundred yards wide and about a mile long, they were, in effect, large greenhouses, sealed against the outside environment.

Much of the corn and soy to supply the western United States was now grown at facilities like this. The Department of Agriculture built more of them as fast as they could manage, but they were horribly expensive and prone to failure. The sowing, irrigation and harvesting was all done by machines, but the large size of these facilities made them vulnerable to Rot infection. All it took was a single live spore to get inside and infect a plant. Rot took weeks to finally kill, but by that time, it would have begun pumping spores out into the air and soil daily. There were about a dozen of the greenhouses in total, but four of those were currently standing empty, no doubt undergoing intensive sterilization of the soil and every square inch of the inner surface. The only fungicides that could kill Rot tended to be powerful herbicides as well.

We left the farming project behind and the trip continued without incident, and we had soon reached the outskirts of Portland. Tilly must have sensed a change, because she woke and yawned, looking around with interest at the houses and businesses we passed. I got off the highway and took service streets in the rest of the way. The warehouse turned out to be down by the waterfront. The Portland skyline loomed to the west, window glass glittering in the late morning sun. To the east, cargo containers were stacked in long rows and a crane moved more from a cargo ship. Trucks were everywhere, entering and leaving the shipping yard or crawling slowly along the road. 

The GPS directed me past all of that activity and onward for close to a mile. The warehouses and docks here were all abandoned. Trade everywhere had slowed considerably once the world had realized what the Rot was. Shipping worldwide was maybe a tenth of what it had once been, and much of that was food imports from the Far East to the West. Ships going out from ports like this one, to China and Southeast Asia, had to head far out to sea and scrub every inch of their surfaces, inside and out, with fungicides before they were allowed close to the mainland.

At the GPS's bidding, I turned into a wide expanse of parking lot across the road from the river. Weeds burst through every crack and crevice in the asphalt. I drove in and circled the building, a long, low expanse of sheet metal that was visibly rusting in places. A chain link fence bordered it on three sides, leaving only enough clearance for two cars to get by on either side of the building. The businesses behind it had erected solid fencing to hide the sight of the blight. I located the door that our contact had indicated, the entrance large enough to admit a forklift. It was closed but didn't look locked.




Double Helix Ch. 11



~Norm~

The truck rocked and creaked over the potholes of the old country road. Dust blew in through the open windows, but I kept them down. I kept my speed down too, to hear in case Tilly saw me and called out. There had been some small farms here, but many of the residents had moved away after the Rot began to devastate their land. The trees and bushes that had encroached on the road made the task of searching that much harder.

At first, I couldn't imagine what might have happened to Tilly to make her miss our meeting. Then the terrible thought had occurred to me that she might have arrived at our meeting place only after the police officer had shown up. She would have had to stay there and watch me drive off. I had almost turned and gone back north immediately to try to find her, but that idea had some problems.

For one, it was entirely possible that the checkpoint was still in place. Cameras recorded each vehicle's license plate as it went through, and their system would flag me if I showed up again in the same place so soon. I had been lucky that they hadn't recognized me when I went through before. Also, I thought it unlikely that Tilly would just wait on the roadside for me.

My biggest problem was, even if I was right about what she wouldn't do, I couldn't guess what she would do. That was why I was here, driving along a road that was washed out in some places, overgrown by brush in others, along the edge of a large, abandoned ranch. I thought that Tilly might try to walk back home if she had no other alternative, so I had begun to scout the back country roads to the west of highway 99 in the hope that I might stumble across her. I also kept my cell phone plugged in constantly to keep it charged, in case she managed to find a phone to call me.

It was now past noon and I had seen no sign of Tilly. I had not eaten since the previous night outside the warehouse and my stomach had adopted a nearly continuous grumble of complaint. More immediately, the truck was running low on gas. I made my way back to the main road and headed south into Newberg to fuel up. Since I had never gotten my FEMA food vouchers, there really wasn't anywhere that I could go to get a meal. I was feeling wired, amped up on fear and anxiety, but shaky and weak. I stood at the gas pump, watching the numbers climb, and agonized over what to do next. The pump clicked off when it reached the hundred dollars that I had prepaid. I slapped my palm into the side of the truck. "Fuck it," I said.

I climbed into the truck and headed back up highway 99. I passed the place with the barriers and was relieved to see that the checkpoint had cleared, the officers and guardsmen off to set up somewhere else. I had idly wondered many times if the checkpoints ever actually caught any genemods, or if their main purpose was to serve as a constant reminder to the populace of who was in control. The bootleggers certainly seemed to have ways of anticipating or avoiding them.

I turned around a few miles up the road and started back. About a mile past where the checkpoint had been, I slowed and put on my hazard lights. I studied the tree line as I drove, glancing forward every few seconds to ensure I didn't run off the road or into the back of a stopped car. Nothing. 

With no better ideas to go on, I went back to patrolling the back roads. I wondered if Tilly had simply lost her way and gone west instead of southwest, or even north, but she had seemed so sure of herself, even giving me the distance to travel to meet her. I considered getting out and searching the area on foot, but I would have to cover a few square miles, at least, to have any realistic chance of finding her. 

I stopped running the truck constantly and forced myself to wait and make the trip once an hour down the back roads, so that I wouldn't use up the truck's gas and my dwindling supply of cash. Nightfall arrived as I made one last, desperate trip down Roy Rogers Road, which ran due south to Newberg. Of course, I didn't find anything new that I hadn't seen my last five trips down it. When I came to the outskirts of Newberg, I merged onto 99 and continued south, choosing speed over the dubious safety of the coastal route.

I pulled into the driveway of the farm at around ten o'clock, and was greeted by a small crowd as everyone but Nonna ran out to meet me. Nissi caught me in a crushing hug as soon as I stepped out of the truck. "Where were you?" she said in a tone that was somehow both relieved and accusatory. "We thought you'd been arrested. Norm, what happened? What's wrong?"

"Where's Tilly?" Stansy said, peering past me into the empty cab of the truck.

"I lost her," I said in a choked voice. I was just barely holding my emotions in check. "Can we go inside?" I hurried past the shocked looks on their faces.

Stan heated up some of the leftovers from the evening's meal while I told them all what had happened. Nissi clutched at my hand the whole time, as if I might just vanish if she let go.

"It was getting dark," I finished, "and I didn't know what else to do, so I came back here."

Stan put a plate of rice with a side of applesauce on the table in front of me. I took a forkful and began to chew. I was ravenously hungry, but the food could have been sawdust for all that I noticed of it.

"What are we going to do?" Wendy asked.

"Could she make it all the way down here?" Stansy asked. "What is it, a hundred miles or so?"

"Something like that," I agreed. I shook my head dismally. On foot, that would take days, maybe weeks if she kept off of the roads. "Would she know how to get here?"

"She's got Truedirect, or she should," Nissi said. "I'd be really surprised if they left that off, with the mishmash of enhancements she's got."

I looked at her askance. "Truedirect?"

Nissi nodded. "It's a little engineered magnetoception organ that they started putting in mods on about the third version release of Stan Ups, and a lot of other mods. The biotech that developed it had generous licensing terms. I have one. So does Stansy and Nock. If Tilly has that, she can orient herself to the four compass points within a couple of degrees." That pretty much ruled out the notion that she had gotten lost.

Nissi stood up. "We need to look at a map."

I picked up my plate and we all followed her into the den. We watched as she brought up Openmaps on the terminal screen. "Okay," she said, "any terrain features we can use? You said you were south of Portland, but just north of this little town, Newberg. Anything else?"

"Well, there was a bridge," I said. "I crossed it right after I got through the checkpoint. I mean, the bridge was literally right on the other side of it."

Nissi zoomed in the map and searched along the highway. "Okay, here, probably. This says it's the Tualatin River. You know . . ." She frowned and zoomed in closer.

"What is it?" Stansy asked.

"Well, I was just thinking. This is no dinky little stream. You said that both bins were packed heavy with food, so they might not float. Maybe she got to this river and couldn't go further."

It had never occurred to me that the terrain might be impassable on foot. To me it had been just another bridge. I had crossed dozens of them on the way to Portland. "Okay, follow that thought," I said. "Where would she have gone?"

Nissi brushed her finger over the screen a few times, moving the view to follow the course of the river. "Unless it got shallow enough to cross on foot, which looks unlikely, she had to go a couple of miles to the west before she got to this other bridge. Then it's another mile and a half southeast to get to the place she told you to meet her. No wonder she was late."

The bridge off to the west was the same one I had crossed half a dozen times when I was searching the area west of the highway. "Okay, but why wasn't she there when I went back in the afternoon?"

Nissi double-tapped the screen, causing it to zoom back out. "Well, it seems like pretty rough country."

"It is. A lot of it is undeveloped wilderness, and what is developed looks like no one's lived there for a few years, at least."

"And she might have thought it was too dangerous and exposed to wait anywhere near the highway."

"So she's walking back here," Stan chimed in.

"We don't know that," Nissi said. "Would that be the first thing you would think to do? I mean, she had plenty of food. If it were me, I would find somewhere to hole up near a road that was reasonably dry and hidden and wait for Norm to find me, for a few days, at least. If he didn't show, then I would consider heading down here on foot."

"Yeah," Stan said slowly, "yeah, I think you're right."

"Let's go on the theory that she just missed your meeting," Stansy said. "Norm, how long did you say between the time you left her and the time you were forced to move?"

"It was almost one in the morning when we saw the checkpoint," I said. "And the sun was just coming up when the police officer woke me up. Around six, I think. So five hours."

Stansy peered at the screen. "Nissi, can you get distance on the route you think she took?"

"Yeah, sure," Nissi said. She selected an option from a context menu and then traced a curving blue line with her finger. The distance appeared in a pop-up box: 4.2 miles.

"It's plausible," Stansy said. "I mean, it's not the Congo or anything, but if she had to pick her way through the trees at night, I'd say there was a good chance she just didn't make it in time."

"Well," Wendy mused, "the dark wouldn't be a problem. She's got some kind of mod for that. The cellar was pitch dark when we went down there to talk to Dan and she didn't have any problem."

Stansy shrugged. "I'm thinking, that could change things. The terrain isn't identical, of course, but I used to hike in the mountains west of here and could make that distance in under ninety minutes without much trouble, and that's with some vertical climb. That's mostly flat ground out there."

"She's carrying three hundred pounds," I reminded her.

Nock broke in. "So double the time. Hell, add an extra hour if the ground conditions are poor. She still should have made it. There's more to it than that."

"Something happened out there," Stan said. "She ran into some kind of trouble."

"Now we can't know that," Nissi protested. "This is all just speculation."

"Think about it," Nock said. "Norm drove past their meeting spot later in the day and didn't see anything. If you were her, and you just got there too late, wouldn't you at least try to leave some sign that you were there? Hell, write a message in the mud or something. Put your name with an arrow pointing the direction you went."

"She must have been injured," I said. I didn't even want to think of the other alternatives. I studied the map. "Nissi, can you get me the coordinates that make up that area? Everything bound by the highway, the river, and this road in the west."

"Sure," she said. She drew a representation of the roughly triangular area on a piece of paper and jotted down longitude and latitude for each point.

I took the paper when she offered it and stuffed it into a pocket. My dinner had been forgotten during this exchange, but I quickly finished it and took my dishes to the kitchen. I came back to grab the truck keys, which I had left on the desk.

"Norm? Wendy said. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going back out to look for her."

"Whoa!" Nissi said. She stood and ran to grab my arm. "Hell, no. You need to get some rest."

I looked at Wendy for support, but she shrugged. "There's no reason to think Tilly will expect you to be out looking for her at night. If she's out there, she's probably holed up now. A few hours' sleep will do you a lot of good."

"Don't look at me," Stan said, when I glanced his way. "I'd get in that truck myself and go after her if I could, but you look dead on your feet."

"Get some rest," Nock said. "You look like hell, and that's coming from a guy who sleeps four hours a week."

"Alright," I said with a sigh. "Tomorrow morning." Truth be told, I knew that I was in no condition to drive, but in my current mental state, I felt like I was in no condition to sleep either. When pitted against each other, however, bone-deep fatigue won out over anxiety. I passed out within minutes of hitting the bed.

I slept until Nissi woke me at around six, a little before dawn. She had a cup of steaming, aromatic coffee in her hand, the same coffee that I had brought back with me from Portland.

"Mm, I want to kiss you," I said. "But first I want a sip of that."

She laughed as she handed me the cup. I actually took too large a drink and burned my tongue, but I didn't care. It was the best thing I had tasted in months. The kiss I gave Nissi, of course, didn't stop at that. She didn't bother taking off her nightgown, tossing the covers aside and climbing onto me in a frenzy of pent-up need. She fit her body to mine, sinking down onto me in a shuddering sigh. For a few brief minutes, all other concerns were chased away by the warmth and passion of her body as she made love to me. I unbuttoned the nightgown at the top and pushed it down her shoulders so that I could pull and suck at her nipples while she rode me.

"Amanda," I breathed, remembering to use her real name in spite of the fog of lust I was under, "you're going to make me come."

"Yes," she whispered. "Come inside me, Martin. I want you to. I want to feel it."

She straightened and I watched her in profile, cast in the faint light of the still-rising sun. Her face was hidden by the curtain of her hair. She ground herself against me and reached between her thighs to finger herself just above where our bodies came together. I gave a wordless groan as my orgasm pulsed through me. I felt Nissi's fingers flitting over her clit and then she, too, climaxed, throwing her head back, her body shaking as her pussy clenched at my cock.

She fell limply against me and we lay together, warm and safe in each other's embrace. "I made you breakfast," she said, still panting, and added apologetically, "It's probably cold now."

"It's fine," I said. "I'll take hot sex and cold food over their opposites."

"Jesus, Norm," she said softly. "That has got to be the unsexiest pillow talk I have ever heard." 

"Well, I've got lots more where that came from, and I have a captive audience."

She rose to her knees, letting me slip from her depths, picked up a pillow, and smacked me across the face. "Well, sir, I have a pillow, and I'm not afraid to use it." She whacked me again to drive her point home.

I laughed. "Okay, okay. I should really get up, though." She got off me, tugging her nightgown back into place falling into place. I dressed and came downstairs to eat the breakfast that she had prepared. Most of the others were still asleep, but Nock and Wendy were there to wish me luck before I headed out.

Nissi went to the fridge and pulled out a paper bag with two jars of Dan's canned fruit and some items wrapped in foil. "There's two days there for you," she said. "I packed some spare clothes and essentials in the truck. I expect you back here by the day after tomorrow at the latest. Promise me?"

"I'll be back," I said. I hoped that I didn't have to break that promise.

Nissi enfolded me in an embrace. "Be safe," she said.

"I will." Her arms held fast against me for just a moment before she relented and let me go. I opened the driver door and climbed into the cab of the truck.

"Norm," Nissi said.

I had the key in the ignition but waited.

"You'll bring her back," she said.

I nodded, swallowed down the pit of worry in my throat, and started the engine.

~Tilly~

The first thing I noticed was that I was cold. The second thing was that I hurt, a lot. I couldn't locate a source for the pain right away, and it seemed to be growing worse as I roused to consciousness. My head throbbed in time to my heartbeat.

I opened my eyes to darkness. I knew that it wasn't just the dimness of night, but a complete, enfolding blackness. Panic tried to well up from the dark reaches of my reptile brain, but my rational mind quickly rose to the fore as I took a calming breath. I was alive.

I was lying on my side, on a bed of something firm and lumpy. I started to stand up and bit back a scream as fire raced up from just below my knee. I curled up into a ball, sucking quick gasps through clenched teeth, my mind a haze.

With a supreme effort of will, I focused my thoughts. I imagined the pain as a great sea swallowing up my consciousness, and then imagined it receding, like a tide going out. Slowly, the crush of the agony lessened until all I felt was a dull throbbing. I focused a few moments more, setting the block firmly in place. The nerve endings at the edges of the wound would continue to fire, and the signals would still travel up my spine, but my brain had isolated the bundle of synapses sending those impulses and dialed back their weight, so that they would not propagate as strongly and cause the sensation of intense pain. I could have stopped any signals from getting through, but that could be dangerous.

Carefully, I rolled onto my back and then to a sitting position to examine the wound. My fingers found warm moisture. I continued to probe at the wound, tracing a jagged line of torn flesh. It seemed that most of the bleeding had stopped. Gritting my teeth against the flashes of agony that spilled over my pain block, I relented and paused for a moment to rest. My head was swimming.

Once the dizziness had passed, I lifted my hand to touch the source of the throbbing pain in my head. I found a gash high on the right side of my forehead, crusted over and with bits of hard grit mixed into the scab. The area around it was tender and swollen. My memory of what had happened before awakening was foggy, a jumble of images that lacked a coherent narrative.

I remembered waking in confusion to Norm's voice and peering out the windshield of the truck at the lights in the distance. I could just make out a pair of National Guard vehicles and four law enforcement vehicles. "Checkpoint!" I said, "Norm, that's a checkpoint."

Norm murmured his agreement while I thought and observed. Turning around wasn't possible, and leaving the truck behind would lose us a vital asset. There really was only one alternative with any chance of a good outcome. Norm balked at my plan, of course, but I didn't have time to argue.

The bins were heavy, but I thought I could manage them long enough to make the three-mile trek to meet up with Norm. Without stopping to think what I was doing, I dragged both bins out of the truck and pulled the door shut and latched it. I lifted one bin onto my shoulders, and, steeling myself, lofted the other up with one hand and managed to catch and balance it onto my other shoulder with a steadying hand. The weight would be tiring but manageable, but the bigger problem was that I had just perched three hundred pounds on my hundred pound frame. I was horribly unbalanced. I turned and ran for the other side of the road. I knew that it was going to be a difficult jump, but in a few more seconds, I would be in the headlights of the next car. I gritted my teeth, planted my lead foot and kicked off with all of my strength. The landing was jarring, and I very nearly did fall, but somehow kept my footing long enough to stabilize the weight.

The shoulder of the road dipped down into a shallow ditch, then back up. Within a few steps, I had slipped between a pair of pines. There, I came to an ungainly stop and turned to look back. Norm had begun to roll the truck forward, and the flaring hazard lights switched off as he accelerated. My feet crunched over a thick carpet of pine needles as I moved deeper into the trees. I turned my head slightly from side to side, feeling the cardinal directions as faint tingles at the crown of my scalp, courtesy of the tiny magnetoception organ in my skull. I opted to go due west for about a hundred yards, and then parallel the highway's southwestern course. I would remain close enough that I could use the sound of the cars as a point of reference, but far enough away that I wasn't likely to be spotted by anyone.




Double Helix Ch. 11



Other than the faint sound of passing cars, it was so quiet that I could hear bark beetles chewing away inside many of the older trees that I passed. Starlight filtered through the treetops, casting everything in a cold, dim light. My eyes don't reflect and re-absorb light the way Nock's do, but the lenses make up for some of that. Besides having larger pupils and lenses to gather and focus more light, my retina has two foveas. In bright light, my lenses focus light on the fovea centralis, with its high concentration of color-sensitive cones. In dim light, the lenses distort and refocus to my alternate fovea, which lies just above it and is packed with rods. My sight becomes mostly black and white, but a little starlight is enough to let me see details as clearly as I would in full daylight.

After about twenty minutes of brisk walking, and over a mile through moderately rough terrain, I began to hear voices faintly. Turning my head a few times to zero in on the sound, I pictured in my mind a right triangle with one side represented by the road, another side by an imaginary line drawn from my left shoulder to the road, and the third side connecting me to the midpoint of the voices. Knowing the length of the second side and the angle between the second and third sides was about 32 degrees, the answer popped into my head at soon as I thought about it. I would pass the checkpoint in another 80 yards, give or take.

I still had a fair reserve of energy, but the effort of holding the two bins up on my shoulders had begun to make the muscles in my arms burn. Though the onset was slower than in a normal human, the anaerobic energy to power muscles and the consequent lactic acid buildup was something that genetic engineering hadn't yet found a means to replace with something better.

I stopped and carefully set the bins on the ground, standing upright on their ends. I looked around me and spotted a few fallen limbs that I could probably fashion into a sledge to drag the two bins behind me, if I were willing to shred some of my clothing to use in tying them together, but I didn't have time for that. Norm would be stuck at the checkpoint for thirty minutes, maybe a bit more. Once through, he would need to pull over to the side of the road to wait, and I preferred not to keep him longer than necessary.

Leaning against a tree trunk while my body recovered, I heard a new sound just at the edge of hearing. Once I felt sufficiently rested to continue, I squatted and grunted with the effort of lifting the bins back up to rest on my shoulders. As I went, the sound grew louder and more distinct, though it seemed to be diffused over an area. I frowned in sudden apprehension. I was hearing running water.

Sure enough, after another twenty yards, I came to a steep downward slope. I picked my way carefully over damp soil, loose rocks and exposed roots, moving slowly to keep the bins balanced. Trees crowded along the slope, blocking my view of what lay below until I came to the edge of a drop off of about six feet, where the water had eroded and undercut the bank. I stopped there and considered my options.

The far bank was maybe sixty feet away, much too far to jump from a standing start, even if I wasn't carrying all of that weight. The water wasn't flowing very quickly, and I thought about just dropping down, but it was also murky enough that I couldn't see the bottom. If the water was over my head, I would sink right to the bottom with all of that weight. My blood carried a bit more oxygen than an unenhanced human, but I would also be using it up faster from the extra exertion. Assuming the best conditions in such a scenario, I didn't think I could walk along the bottom to the other side in the time it would take for me to run out of reserve. Besides, the bins didn't seem to be particularly water tight, and much of the food would be completely ruined if it got wet. 

I decided to test the waters first, quite literally. I set the bins down, one at a time, behind the trunk of a tree so that they would remain in place, and I stripped out of my clothes. Then, taking a deep breath, I stooped and dropped from the edge, flexing my knees instinctively in anticipation of a possible impact just beneath the surface. I struck the water and went under, letting myself plunge downward as far as possible. After a moment, when I was sure that my descent had stopped, I kicked for the surface, coming up out of the water a few yards downstream from where I had come in. I swam for the other side, feeling for the bottom as I went, but my feet did not touch solid ground until I was about ten feet from the opposite bank. It was a steep slope.

I swam in a bit more and stood where the water came to just below my waist. The current tugged at my legs, but not very strongly. I waded upstream about fifty yards and tested the depth again, but the water was still deeper than I could touch for most of its width. Swimming with the current in the other direction for the same distance yielded the same results. I felt like I was wasting my time, so I swam back towards the bank where I had first entered the water and used the roots and branches of a tree overhanging the water to climb back out.

I found the food bins still sitting where I had left them. I shook the water from my body as well as I could before donning my clothing. My first thought was to head toward the highway, which had to have a bridge across the river, but I could still hear the police and National Guard calling out orders to the motorists in that direction, which meant that the checkpoint was either on or very close to the bridge. My only other option was to head upstream and hope for another way across.

How long would Norm wait for me? I wondered. I had thought by now that I would have already arrived at the point that I told him to meet me, and I still had two miles to go, plus whatever distance I had to walk upstream. Sighing in frustration, I carefully re-shouldered the bins and made the climb of about twenty feet, back to the top of the slope.

I hiked along the top of the bank for perhaps half a mile, with the depth of the ravine decreasing until I was walking along a bank just a few feet above the surface of the water. I again tested the water and once more found that it became too deep to reach the bottom just a few feet out from the edge. I picked up the pace, my mind already working through contingency plans if this trek took much longer and I missed meeting up with Norm. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of options. I knew the number to his cell phone, but this area was very rural, and further depopulated by the Rot. I would probably need to go into town to find a phone. 

The river curved south and doubled back on itself before turning west again. It was another mile-and-a-half onward when I came to a two-lane highway and a bridge. The sign next to the road read "Tualatin River", and I committed that name to memory. I suddenly wished that I had taken time to learn more of Oregon's geography before taking this trip.

I approached the edge of the bridge warily, turning my head to look north and south. Everything was quiet except for a faint sigh of wind. I stepped over the metal guardrail and began to cross at a brisk trot. The bridge was long and narrow, with concrete railing and no indication of a sidewalk or shoulder. I was more than halfway across when I heard the grumble of an engine up ahead and headlights winked on from a car that was parked at an angle, partly down in the ditch on the right side.

I stuffed down a wave of panic and forced myself to calmly observe. I immediately spotted and recognized the light rack on the car's top. 

"Damn," I breathed. Someone had been sent to watch this bridge, in case anyone diverted here from the highway. They were probably on the lookout for cars, but a lone woman walking at night would be just as suspicious.

The car swerved onto the road and came towards me, not fast enough to be threatening, but quick enough that I knew I couldn't make it to either end of the bridge before it caught up to me.

I kept my eyes forward and continued walking as the car pulled up to the edge of the bridge, cutting left before stopping so that it sat diagonally, blocking both lanes. "Yamhill Sheriff" was printed across the side of the vehicle. The passenger side opened and a bald, bearded man in khaki shirt and slacks stepped out. "Evening, ma'am," he said. "Can I ask where you're headed? Would you like a ride?"

"No, I'm fine," I said. "I'm not going far."

"Those look heavy," he said. "Why don't you just come along with us?"

It was then that the door on the driver side opened, and the driver stepped out. Similarly attired, he looked younger than the other man, with crew-cut black hair. I sensed excitement from him, but where the other man was wary, he was calmly self-assure. He felt very wrong to me.

"So, what's in those bins?" he asked, coming around to the front of the car to confront me.

"Am I under arrest?" I asked.

He waggled a finger at me. "Not unless you've done something illegal." But his tone suggested otherwise. "Now, I asked you a question, girl. What is in those bins?"

I knew, then, that there was no way I was going to bluff my way out of this. I spun and made a run for it, hoping that I could reach the end of the bridge and disappear into the trees before they could get back in the car and catch up to me. I had run half a dozen steps when I felt a hard punch to my leg, at almost the same instant that I heard the crack of the shot. I stumbled, and the weight of the food bins pitched me forward.

I shook my head slowly in the dark. There was nothing after that, not until waking up here. Maybe if I had turned and ran as soon as I saw the headlights, I could have gotten away in the forest and found another way around.

I didn't have time for regret, though. I began to crawl, favoring my injured leg, until my probing fingers found the edge of a wooden crate. I felt for the top and found it. I got my good leg under me and stood, then groaned as my head began to throb anew. I was likely suffering the aftereffects of a moderate concussion.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than my stomach heaved and I doubled over, spitting bile onto the floor. My stomach heaved a few more times, but there was nothing else to bring up. I wiped my mouth and grimaced at the thick, sticky fluid on my hand. My throat felt raw and I had nothing to drink to clear it. I leaned against the crate to rest until my head stopped spinning and my stomach was no longer trying to climb up my throat.

I felt my way along the edge of the crate, found a corner, then followed that edge to a wall. I felt the rough edges of bricks and the prickle of mortar between them. Creeping along a few inches at a time, I began to explore my prison blindly. More crates lined both side walls. I managed to pry the lid off of one of them, but whatever they had contained had long ago decayed to moldy dust.

My stomach rumbled, despite having been sick only a little while ago, and I tried in vain to coax some moisture into my mouth. I was just as susceptible to dehydration as any normal human, and I guessed that I had missed most of a day while I had been unconscious.

I sat down again where I had first awoken, which, on further examination, seemed to be a large sheet of canvas. I didn't have anything to use for gauze, but I tore some strips from the sheet and used them to wind around the wound to make a kind of bandage. It had really been more of a grazing shot, cutting through the meat just below my knee, but I couldn't put much weight on it without the pain threatening to flare past my block. That done, I settled back onto the floor and fell asleep at once.

~Norm~

The drive north was uneventful, and in less than two hours, I found myself back in the little town of Newberg. I took Roy Rogers Road again, since it was the closest major road to the 99 that ran north-south, and kept glancing at the latitude indicator on the GPS as I drove. When I reached the bridge, marking the northwest corner of the triangular search area, I pulled over into the first driveway that I found.

I got out with a first aid kit, compass, and canteen and backtracked to the spot that the GPS had indicated. I called Tilly's name as I searched around and under the bridge, but as before, there was no sign of her. I decided to start by cutting a path straight down the middle of the triangle on my hand-drawn map, assuming that she had figured out and gone for the shortest route possible to the highway.

It rarely got truly hot in this part of the country, but we were nearing the end of spring, and the terrain had just enough rises and dips to get my blood pumping and raise my temperature. Also, I was constantly pushing through thickets and ducking under branches, which not only made the going tougher, but snagged my clothing and left welts and scratches on my exposed skin.

At first, I was glad when I came to a huge clearing of dusty ground, and I stepped over a fallen rail of what used to be a sturdy fence to enter an expanse of dirt with a house in the distance. Movement caught my eye, though, and I crouched to make my profile smaller. A man had just exited the house and looked in my direction. I didn't think he saw me, because he rounded the corner of the garage and swung the door out and upward. He disappeared into the shadowed interior and drove out in a large pickup truck a moment later. I watched as he headed west towards the road and waited until he reached the edge of the property and passed out of sight.

I knew that I didn't want to go anywhere near that house. People in rural areas like this could be protective of their land. Though it took me a good half mile out of my way, I went south around the edge of the property before cutting west again, following the southern edge of the fence for what must have been close to a mile. It had been a good-sized ranch, at one time probably, home to a few hundred cows or horses. The fence ended and the terrain got a bit better after that, and I came upon highway 99 shortly before noon.

Nock had suggested that Tilly might have left some message or sign of her passage, so I went looking about a mile in either direction along the highway. I went northeast first, then backtracked and headed southwest. It was about two in the afternoon by the time I decided to stop, and there had been no sign of her along the highway. I turned west and headed back into the trees and the brush. 

I spent the rest of the day hiking back and forth across the triangle between the river, the highway and the road, making a total of four crossings of the area. I stayed off the ranch, but that left plenty of area to cover. The sun slipped behind the coastal mountains, forcing me to hurry back to the truck before it became too dark to navigate safely. I climbed into the cab and tore open one of the packages that Nissi had labeled "Sunday, dinner", too hungry and too distracted to even notice what it was other than that it contained rice. I had skipped lunch completely, but decided to save that one in case I needed it later.

My feet ached, and now that I had stopped moving, so did the muscles in my calves and thighs. My face, neck and arms continued to feel too warm, even hours after the sun had gone down. My skin began to sting as well. I should have stopped in town to get a hat and sunblock, but I had been in such a hurry to get up here and get started looking, that I hadn't stopped to think.

I had one small consolation. In the days before the Rot, traveling through this kind of terrain would have had my clothes covered in burs and mosquito bites on every inch of exposed skin. Most of the weeds were gone, and without abundant wildlife to feed on, the mosquitos had disappeared as well. Even so, I had plenty of scratches from the trees and bushes that I had to push through.

Rummaging through the things that Nissi had packed, I found a blanket and a small pillow. I stretched out as much as I could on the truck's bench seat and settled in for the night.

I woke before dawn, feeling terrible. My skin no longer felt hot, but it was painful and raw, so I started up the truck and drove into town. The only thing open at five in the morning was Walgreens, but it had what I needed. I picked up some aloe, sunblock, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. I also picked up five notebooks for Nissi. I hesitated for a moment over a large pad of graph paper before snatching it up. I kept my eyes down and the cashier, obviously bored and barely awake, didn't look at me as he rung me up.

I slathered the pungent, sticky aloe on my face, neck and arms. It left my skin feeling tight, but eased the discomfort somewhat. I drove back out to where I had parked the previous day near the bridge. Sheathed in my new protective gear, including a thick coating of sunblock, I made a quick meal of "Monday, breakfast" before starting out.

I had already decided to try a different route, following the southern bank of the river toward the highway. This took me well away from the farmhouse that I had encountered the previous day. I decided to descend the bank and have a look around by the water. Not for the first time, I wished that I knew how to read and follow tracks. I tried looking for footprints in the mud, but either I couldn't find any, or I had no idea what I was looking for. I followed the river east until it passed under a bridge at the highway. I turned and headed west again, starting on another crisscross of my search area. This time, I paced myself and re-applied the sunblock every few hours. My skin was already starting to peel in places.

I crossed east and west again, trying to guess at about a hundred yards' distance from my last crossing. On the last trek to the west, I found myself butting up against the ranch fence again. I was hungry and tired, so I decided to take a break. The sun had passed its zenith when I got back to the truck and I tore into "Monday, lunch" and refilled my canteen from one of three large bottles of tepid water on the floor of the passenger side.

As I sat, chewing the last of the cold meal of canned spinach and rice, I thought about what I had learned so far. In a day-and-a-half, I had covered a fair bit of ground and saw nothing to suggest that Tilly had passed this way at all. I had assumed that she would have gone around the ranch, just as I did, but maybe not. She had already been delayed by that time, and she might not have realized that house was occupied, or she might have trusted in the dark to conceal her passing. Certainly the terrain there was easier. That meant that she might have been accosted by the people living there.

That thought wrenched at me, first for the possibility that she could already be dead, and secondly that I had been wasting my time searching elsewhere when it should have been obvious to me what had happened. More than forty-eight hours had passed since she had failed to appear at the highway. She could have been handed over to the police while I had been off searching everywhere else. 

I hurriedly folded up the foil wrapper and bagged it with the rest. The stuff could be washed and re-used, and we didn't have much to waste. I snatched up my canteen and the first-aid kit, not bothering to reapply the sunblock this time. I pushed through the trees and bushes at the edge of the road, heading for the north edge of the ranch. When I reached the clearing, I followed the fence and the open ground along it, hoping for some sign that Tilly had come this way.

I watched the house as I went for any signs of habitation. It was purely by chance that I happened to look down and see a footprint clearly in a patch of sandy soil some distance from me. I clambered over the fence and hurried to the spot. It looked to be the right size, but I didn't know what the tread pattern on Tilly's shoe looked like. I looked back but couldn't make out any definite track in the alternately sandy and rocky soil.




Double Helix Ch. 11



Still, I followed the direction that the footprint pointed in, toward a large barn well away from the house. I stopped some distance from the door, trying to decide whether to approach or go around. I frowned in puzzlement at the row of metal tanks lined up outside, each one printed with a bright green square and the words "Anhydrous Ammonia".

I had just made up my mind to move closer when a woman's shout startled me. "Hold it right there, buddy. Put your hands behind your head and turn around real slow."

She had apparently been shadowing me in the cover of the trees, because she stood just inside the fence, off to my left. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt with "Oregon Institute of Technology" in faded block letters. She held a rifle up to her shoulder, sighted on my chest. I guessed her to be in her forties or early fifties, from her hair that was going gray at the temples and the wrinkle lines around her eyes and lips.

My Colt was at the back of my hip, as always, but she had two distinct advantages over me. One was that I simply wasn't that fast. She could shoot me dead before my gun ever cleared the holster. The second was that she was about thirty yards away. At that distance, armed with a pistol, I was just as likely to miss as not unless I took the time to get my stance and aim. Unless she were a complete amateur, there was a good chance that she wouldn't miss, not with a rifle. I belatedly added a third reason, which was that I wasn't altogether sure I was capable of killing a person again.

The woman kept the rifle pointed unerringly at my chest as she spoke. "My husband saw you on the edge of our land yesterday, and told me to keep an eye out. I saw you pass by the north fence a bit ago and figured I'd see if you came back. Now, you want to tell me what you're doing on our land?"

"I, uh . . ." I started, trying to work out a convincing lie.

"Right, I didn't think so. You law enforcement or just stupid?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I'm no cop."

"Bullshit," she said. "I saw a county sheriff car parked out by the bridge two nights ago."

My heart leaped right into my throat and I forgot to be careful. "Out by the bridge, you say?"

"Yeah, why?" she said, suspiciously. "You a snitch for them?"

"A what?"

She scoffed. "An informer. Just tell me why you're here. What do you want with us?"

"No, I—look, this is a mistake. I'm not here to bother you." She seemed awfully concerned about law enforcement, which worried me. "I'm just looking for something."

"Right," she said. "Sure. Boy, you really are stupid, aren't you? God dammit. You keep those hands up and start walking towards the house. And don't think for a second I won't shoot you if you try to run."

I heard her move in behind me as I began walking, and she closed the distance until she was just a few steps back. "Is that your truck parked out by the road?" she asked.

I didn't see the point in lying. "Yes, that's mine. There's nothing in it but a little food and water."

"Well, we'll see about that. Who else is with you?"

"No one."

"And who knows you're out here?"

"Nobody else."

"Well that would be something, wouldn't it? Coming out here alone with no one to know something's wrong if you don't come back. I don't really think you are that stupid."

We walked in silence across the empty expanse of dirt, the air rippling as the sun baked it. I stopped when I reached the front door of the house.

"Go on, open it," she said. "Do it slow."

The door was unlocked and it creaked a bit as it opened inward. "Go on in," she said.

The house had the rustic, unfinished look of a cabin, but was spacious and appointed with modern conveniences like automation sensors for the lights. It smelled of pine and lemon cleaners.

"You got any guns on you?" the woman asked.

I shook my head. "No."

"Okay, then. Turn around and grab your shirt at the sides. Lift it slowly upward."

I knew she had me. I did as she asked, exposing my concealed holster.

She clucked her tongue. "Naughty boy. Now reach back and pinch the grip in your thumb and forefinger. Squat and set it carefully on the floor, then lift up your pant legs one at a time. Grab them up by the knee."

I did as she said, my face burning at the humiliation of having her see right through me.

"That's good," she said, when she saw that I didn't have an ankle holster. "Now go sit on the sofa."

I did as she commanded, hearing the clatter of metal across wood as she picked up my gun.

"Mom!" I heard a voice call from elsewhere in the house, followed by the sound of running feet.

The woman's gaze flicked to a spot above my left shoulder and I turned my head to look. It was a boy, maybe eight or nine, and he looked right at me with wide, fearful eyes.

"Go play in your room," she told the boy. "You lock the door and keep it locked until I come get you, okay?"

The boy nodded, his gaze still locked on me. His voice shook when he spoke. "S-sure, mom." He quickly disappeared back down the hall.

"Lordy, what a day," the woman muttered, sighing. She took the chair opposite from the sofa and lay the rifle over her knees.

"Cute kid," I remarked.

She barked a laugh. "Oh, don't even try to be ingratiating. That won't work with me."

I shrugged. "So, what are you going to do with me?"

"That remains to be seen. My husband should be back any time. Then we'll decide."

"Look," I said, leaning forward, "I don't know what it is you're trying to hide, and I don't care. I'm not here because of you."

"Why, then?"

"I can't . . ." I sighed. "I can't tell you that."

She shrugged. "Well, that kind of puts a damper on this whole trust-building exercise, doesn't it? Besides, even if you're telling the truth, if I let you go now, you'll just turn me into the police for assault."

"I won't go to the police," I said. "Trust me, they're the last people I would ever speak to."

She looked at me sharply. "What's that supposed to mean? Are you trying to tell me you're a criminal?"

I almost told her about the cop I had shot in Seattle, but a warning jolt of fear stopped me. Telling her that could have an unpredictable outcome. Knowing that I had murdered someone might make it that much easier for her to decide to kill me. And even if she didn't, I wasn't prepared to reveal that I was sheltering with genemods.

"I just don't like cops," I said. Well, that was true enough, especially after what had happened in Seattle.

"Well, I'm afraid that's just not good enough. You'd tell me anything if you thought it would get me to turn you loose."

I couldn't really argue with that. I leaned back into the sofa's cushions, enjoying the cool air on my sunburned skin. "You have electricity," I said, waving vaguely around in acknowledgement of the air-conditioning.

"Yeah. Solar panels, and batteries in the garage. There's a rainwater collection system that we supplement with a well. We're totally off the grid."

"Must be nice," I said dryly.

"'Nice' has nothing to do with it. This is just the way things are. At least until you showed up."

"So I take it I'm the first person you've had to point a gun at in a while?" I was coming down off my initial fear and found myself getting angry at the situation in spite of the danger I knew I was still in.

She scowled. "You talk too much. What's your name?"

"You must really think I am stupid," I said. "Why would I tell you that?"

She picked up the gun and held it casually. "It's actually not important. I'd just like to call you something other than 'you'."

"Mark," I said, using my old alias. "Call me Mark. So, does that mean you'll tell me your name?"

She smirked. "Well, 'you' will suit me just fine, thank you." She glanced at the clock and nodded to herself almost imperceptibly. Sighing, she opened a drawer on the end table next to her and pulled out a pencil and book of crossword puzzles. I had a fleeting impulse to leap up and charge her, but if she was at all quick with that gun, I would never make it in time.

Twenty minutes or so of silence went by and I heard the rumble of an engine outside. A minute later, the front door opened and a man walked in. He made a little stumble-step on seeing me, but regained his composure and made his way to the woman's side. He was tall, with dark but graying hair and eyes that were a brilliant light blue. 

"Is this him?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Found him wandering around up near the north fence. He claims he's not a cop, and I believe him, but he won't say why he's here. Mark is his name, or so he says."

"I told you," I said. "I don't know anything about you. I didn't realize anyone lives here."

"Quiet," the man said, lifting a hand without looking at me. "Did he try anything? Pull that gun on you?"

She patted my Colt, sitting on the end table next to her. "No, he gave it up quietly. Don't think he has a death wish."

"Good work," he said, and stroked the side of her face with the back of his fingers. 

He turned to me. "Take your pants off," he said, "and toss them on the floor."

"What?" I asked, shocked and confused by the order.

"Just do it," he said, in a calm but determined voice.

"Keep your hands where I can see them," the woman warned, holding the rifle at the ready.

I complied, unnerved at the strangeness of it more than anything. The reason quickly became clear as the man picked my pants up and rifled through the pockets, coming out with my phone, wallet, and truck keys. "These are for the truck parked out at the road," he said, not in the tone of a question. He picked through my wallet and came out with my fake Washington driver's license. "It says his name is 'Mark Winston' and it has a Seattle address." He turned it over a few times. "If it's fake, it's good work. What are you doing in northwest Oregon, Mark?"

I shrugged and he snorted. "Right." He switched on my phone. "What's the code?"

I knew that there wasn't much to see there, so I gave it to him. He punched a few buttons. "Only one number dialed," he said, "Portland area code and days ago. Probably a new phone or a burner." He turned it off and slipped it into his pocket, then tossed me my pants back. "So you didn't try to contact anyone on arriving here." He pursed his lips. "Now that is odd. I almost think you might be telling the truth about not knowing about us."

"So what do we do with him?" the woman asked.

The man sighed loudly and shook his head. "There are no good options here. Let him go free and he'll go to the police. Kill him, and someone's probably going to wonder what happened to him eventually. No, we need some time to think. Let's put him in the guest bedroom." He gestured. "This way."

The guest bedroom had a full-size bed flanked by windows. Surely they weren't going to lock me in here? Then I heard the distinctive sound of duct tape being peeled off of a roll and turned sharply. The man gestured with the hand holding the end of the tape. "Have a seat there," he said.

The only chair in the room was an oak antique. A dozen different thoughts went through my head as I sat. Fantasies of disabling this man and somehow overpowering his wife and taking her gun, but I knew that they wouldn't work. Instead, I sat obediently and put my hands on the chair arms as instructed. He taped my feet to the chair, then my hands, finishing by running the tape several times around my chest and the back of the chair, then over my thighs and under the seat. He made sure it was all secure and left the room for a moment, coming back with a small camera that he placed on a dresser, facing me, and plugged it into a wall.

"Behave yourself," he said. "I'll be watching."

I spent the first half hour or so alternating between struggling and cursing. I spent the next one thinking, and actually figured out a few things. For example, I was now pretty certain that Tilly had not come this way. My showing up on their land had spooked the couple, and it seemed like, with all of the questions they had asked, they might have mentioned that a young woman had come through before me.

Presently, the door opened and the man entered. "We've decided not to shoot you yet," he said and gave me a wry grin. "That should make you happy."

"Oh, that's great news," I said. "Now I can live out my dream of being taped to a chair while awaiting execution."

He shook his head and sighed. "Listen, we're not bad people. If you hadn't wandered onto our property, we would have left you alone. The problem is, you can't seem to give me a straight answer about why you're here, and that's a real problem for us."

"You know," I said, in a tone that made him quirk an eyebrow at me. "I've been doing some thinking. Now, I didn't get a look at the rest of the house, but I didn't see a greenhouse out here, and I'm pretty sure that the three of you aren't getting your food from FEMA."

"Get to the point, Mark," he deadpanned.

"Drugs," I said, and allowed myself a smirk when his eyes narrowed. "I noticed some compressed gas tanks out by the barn. Then I remembered that anhydrous ammonia is used in meth production. That's also why your wife waited until I moved toward the barn before showing herself."

"You . . . just figured that out, then?" he asked.

It was as good as an admission of guilt. "Do you know what that stuff does to people?" I seethed, despite my powerlessness.

"Euphoria," he said dryly, "increased attention, respiration, heartbeat. Hallucinations, mood disturbances, hair loss, skin problems, tooth decay, memory loss, paranoia, psychosis. You think I don't know all that?"

"And what about your little boy?" I asked. "Does he know what you're doing in the barn? Do you ever wonder about what all those chemicals might be doing to him? Does it ever bother you to know you're pois—"

He cut me off with an open-handed slap, hard enough to make the side of my face go numb. I tasted blood where I had bitten my tongue. "Why don't you get off your moral high horse?" he said, shaking his hand from the blow. "You don't know anything about what we've had to go through to survive. And if we weren't supplying the market, someone else would."

"Maybe," I said, working my jaw against the hot sting now working its way across my skin. "Or maybe if all of you lowlifes grew a conscience, there wouldn't be a market."

"The world's gone to shit," he said. "It's a seller's market and our product helps people forget that for a while. Why do you care so much, anyway?"

I hesitated, but only for a moment. "My sister."

He nodded silently for a moment. "Yeah. I could see that." He knelt in front of me. "Is that what this is about? Did she OD on meth and you want revenge or something?"

"She's not dead," I said. My anger was fading, and I felt suddenly tired. "And no, that's not why I'm here." I decided to take a gamble. "Okay, forget about my sister. I was looking for someone else. A friend. She disappeared near here."

"And you thought you would find this person in our barn?"

I shrugged. "I've been searching for two days. It seemed as good a place to look as any other."

He regarded me with narrowed eyes. "That actually makes more sense than anything else you've said. So what happened? Who is this person?"

I wondered if these two were really as reasonable as they seemed to be, despite what they did in their barn. I thought of the others waiting back at the farm and how vulnerable they were without me there. "She's just a friend."

The man knelt in front of me. "You said you don't like cops. I think you're on the run. You're criminals. Aren't you?"

"Not drug dealers like you," I said, but I had little fight left to put behind the comment. I was a criminal, and not only because I had protected people from those in power who would persecute them.

"No, not at all like us," he said. He stood and brushed his hands together. "Supper will be ready in a few hours. We'll see if you have any more to tell us then."



Double Helix Ch. 12



~Tilly~

I felt better after my rest. My head was clear, and the wound in my leg was knitting itself together as fast as my body could manage. I would have felt even better if it hadn't been two days since I had drank or eaten anything. To pass the time, I pried open another of the crates, and found more of the moldy residue. Probing at the mass blindly with my fingers I found a bit of thin, papery substance that crinkled between my fingers. I brought it to my nose. Though weak and smothered by rot and mold, I still recognized the scent of onion. 

"Great," I said to myself, "that's really helpful."

Someone had apparently been hoarding food down here, but the amount of decay indicated that it had been a few years at least.

I sat down with the lid I had pried from the crate and, bracing it with one hand, began carefully loosening individual strips of wood. When I was done, I had eight pieces of wood, each about three feet long, an inch thick and four inches wide, with two nails still attached at each end. I fumbled around in the dark until I found a piece of brick. Returning to my workspace, I placed one piece of wood at the end of another, so that the nails faced in on both pieces, and pounded one piece down onto the other on the concrete floor. 

When I was done, the two pieces had become a six-foot strip of wood. I stood and pushed it hand over hand toward the ceiling. It touched about where it expected it to, at about four-and-a-half feet above my head. That made it a ten-foot ceiling, which fit with what the acoustics had already told me. I began to tap at the ceiling with the stick. The sound it made was a dull rap, so I kept moving it, walking slowly and sweeping back and forth, tapping at about six-inch intervals.

The change in the timbre when I found the hatch was obvious and distinctive. I struck it again to be sure, and was again rewarded with a resonant sound. I alternately struck and probed at the spot, resolving it to a two-foot square with no latches or hinges on this side that I could detect.

I checked the rest of the ceiling, just to be sure, but found nothing similar. Likewise, the floor was solid concrete and the walls were made of brick, and other than some wear, gave no sign of a break. I did find the ventilation source, in the form of two PVC pipes three inches in diameter at either end of the room near floor level. Peering into one, I could see very faint light filtering into a bend a few feet back.

I was bent over there, craning to look, when I heard rhythmic footsteps, a pair of them, echoing down the pipe. "You sure this shit'll work on her?" a muffled voice said. It sounded like the older of the two cops that had stopped me.

"Yeah, it'll work. I checked." I was pretty sure that the other voice was the younger deputy that had been driving. "Look, I'll hit her with a double dose to be sure. You got our buyer set up?"

"Yeah. He wanted to know what model she is. I told her I got no fucking clue, but she's got the markers. I got an address in Portland and we have three hours to be there."

"Alright. Go give it to her and make sure she drinks it all."

I scooted away from the wall and returned to the place where I had first awoken. I was just in time, as I heard a thump from above, followed by a scrape of wood and metal. A moment later, light spilled down from above and a face hovered in the trap door. Through my half-lidded eyes, I could see that there were actually two doors, one about two feet above the other, with a short, enclosed passage between.

"Hey, down there, wake up," the deputy said.

I pretended to be groggy and blinked up at him. "Wh-where am I?" I asked.

He ignored my question and dangled a bottle of water over me. "Hey, you must be thirsty."

I nodded and he tossed the water bottle in my direction. I fumbled at catching it, feigning weakness and disorientation. I closed a hand around the lid, noting that it had already been opened. I brought it to my lips and tilted it back, pretending to take a long swig, but only letting a few drops get past my lips. I identified the drug when it touched my tongue, Rohypnol, tasteless and odorless to a non-modified human. Keeping my grin to myself, I took a quick breath and began gulping the tainted water down.

"Good girl," the man above me said.

I looked up at him. "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Why are you keeping me here?"

He shrugged. "Nothing personal. You're a genemod and we're law enforcement. You can't be allowed to roam free."

I laughed at that. "You expect me to believe that what you're doing to me is above board? If you were going to take me in, why stick me in a cellar for two days?"

The man sighed. "Like I said, nothing personal. Look, if we bring you into the sheriff's station, they hand you over to the feds and we get to do a bunch of paperwork. But you know what the reward for a private citizen apprehending a genemod is now?"

I shook my head slowly.

"It's a hundred thousand dollars. You can't fault me and my partner for wanting a cut of that. Best of all, no paperwork."

"Hey, what the fuck are you doing?" the younger deputy growled from somewhere nearby. The trap door abruptly flipped shut and latched as he released it. I heard more muffled conversation as the pair moved off. 

I waited in the dark, curled up on my side on the canvas, eyes closed, going over in my mind what was about to happen. Twenty minutes later, the trap door opened once more. I cracked my eyelids just enough to see the younger man looking down at me, waving a flashlight over my prone body. Some clattering from above and a ladder was lowered through the opening. After it touched the ground, he climbed down, the other deputy just behind.

"Alright," the first deputy said. "Help me get her into a fireman's carry. I just need you to hold the ladder steady until I get her out."

I waited until the two men were reaching for me before I whipped out the piece of wood I had hidden beneath the canvas and swung it with all my strength. I hit the bald deputy on the side of the knee. The joint gave a sickening pop and he crumpled with a scream. The other deputy went for his gun, but in his panic, he fumbled at the catch of the retaining holster. I brought the piece of wood down on his hand hard enough to splinter wood and bone. He stumbled back with a cry and my attention snapped back to the older man, on his back now and pulling his own weapon free.

I dropped and rolled to one side as a pair of shots rang out, deafening in the tiny space. I came up next to a pair of stacked crates and heaved at them. They toppled, and the man grunted in pain as the top one landed on him. I knew that it wasn't really heavy enough to hold him there, so I went for the ladder. The younger deputy made a move toward me, lifting his good arm for a tackle. I looked up, bent my knees and braced myself for what was about to come. I leaped straight upward. The pain of knitting flesh ripped violently open was excruciating, flooding past my pain block and forcing a cry from me. I came down opposite the ladder and my wounded leg crumpled, nearly sending me toppling back down into the dark.

Perched on my hands and knees, and through the haze of pain, I had just enough presence of mind to grab hold of one of the rungs of the ladder and wrench it upward. There was a momentary resistance and then a cry of surprise as I ripped it free of someone's grip. The top of the ladder buried itself in the ceiling and stuck there, hanging just below the level of the trap door.

I rolled away from the edge and lay for a moment to catch my breath. I was on a hardwood floor of what appeared to be a bedroom. Light spilled in through dingy curtains. Mold dotted the walls and cobwebs lurked in the corners and crisscrossed the ceiling. A heavy layer of dust covered the floor except where boots had recently disturbed it. It looked like this place had been vacant for some time.

Shouting from the deputies in the room below spurred me into movement. I knew that there was little chance of a bullet penetrating the wood and dirt to reach me, and it seemed that they were too smart to try, but with the trap doors open, all they needed to do was stack a few of the crates to climb out. I checked my wound and found fresh blood staining my makeshift bandage, but it didn't look as bad as it felt. I dragged myself to a wall and got shakily to my feet. Pain shot up my leg when I tried putting real weight on it, but I was able to limp along at a brisk enough pace. Taking a peek first, to be sure I was alone, I moved on into a hallway, past a laundry closet towards what looked like an outside door.

The door opened into a garage, and daylight streamed in through the large, open door, silhouetting a rather large, black pickup truck. There were no sheriff markings on it and no light bar, so I knew that it was a civilian vehicle. Hopping over to it, I peered into the bed and gave a shout of triumph. There, as if in answer to my wish, were both of the food bins. 

I knew that I couldn't transport the bins on foot, so I opened the cab of the truck and studied the steering column and ignition. It took me a few moments to decipher what I had to do, and after a quick search I found all of the tools I needed in the garage and inside the truck. I also found a twelve-gauge shotgun behind the seat of the truck, but I left it alone. I popped the hood and used one side of a pair of jumper cables to bridge the positive terminal to the coil. Next, I probed around with a screwdriver at the steering column until I popped the locking pin and exposed the solenoid. I used the screwdriver to short the ignition to the positive post, and the Ford's engine cranked to life.

I jerked hard at the wheel and the steering lock broke with a "ping". I had never driven a car before, just like I had never hotwired one, but I knew enough about electrical circuits and components to manage the latter, and thought I could puzzle out the former. I found the pedals, the gearshift, and the various minor controls, touching each to prime my muscle memory. Though the ritual took only seconds, my heart was hammering in my chest as I imagined the two deputies bursting through the door, catching me in the act of stealing their car.

I threw the truck into reverse and backed out of the garage, testing the responsiveness of the steering, brakes and accelerator as I made my way down the long driveway. As I turned onto the dusty road at the end of the drive, I looked back one more time at the house, with its peeling paint and partly collapsed front porch, and a wave of relief washed through me.

I drove south, figuring that it was unlikely the men had taken me far from where they had picked me up. Sure enough, a few miles on, I came across the very bridge where they had caught me. I now knew approximately where I was, and it would be a simple matter to navigate the highways south to Corvallis. I could be back home in under two hours. 

Even as I thought this, I spotted Norm's truck by the roadside. I did not recognize the man who came around from the back to the driver's side and climbed into the cab. I kept my speed steady and moved on past, but pulled over to the roadside before getting completely out of sight. Craning my neck to look through the back window of the cab, I saw the truck turn off the road and onto a driveway.

I hesitated a moment, unsure of the implications of what I had just seen. The deputies that had picked me up might be out looking for me by now, and the farther away I got from here, the safer I would be. But there was no way that Norm would have willingly abandoned the truck. Something had happened to him, and the truck was my only lead at that moment.

I put the pickup in gear and spun the wheel, bouncing into and back out of the shallow ditch on the opposite side of the road before roaring back the way I had come.

~Norm~

I looked up sharply at the tap on the glass. What I saw couldn't be real. "Tilly?" I mouthed.

She nodded and produced a long screwdriver. Pushing it upward between the panes and through the weather stripping, she began to work at the latch.

The male half of my two captors burst into the room, the door banging loudly and rebounding. Tilly's eyes went wide when she saw him, but she continued working at the latch. The man moved towards her, reaching behind his back as he did.

"Go, Tilly! Run!" I shouted.

"Fuck!" the man spat, and pulled his gun, but Tilly had already vanished. He hurried to the window and peered out, craning to left and right, and banged a fist on the sill in frustration.

"What is it?" the woman asked from the doorway.

"A woman," he said. "She was trying to get to him. Was that your friend?" He directed that question at me.

"That's her," I said. "See? I was telling the truth."

"Get your gun," he said to his wife. "We'll circle the house. She may have run off, but she might be lurking nearby for another chance at him."

"Don't shoot her," I said, sounding calmer than I felt. "Please, don't shoot her."

The man spared me only a glance as he swept from the room and down the hall.

As soon as they were out of sight, I began struggling against the layers of tape holding me down. I grunted and growled my frustration, but other than a bit of stretching, the tape once more showed no signs of weakening.

"Why are you taped to that chair?" a voice asked.

I looked over towards the door at a young girl, maybe ten years old, with mild Asian features and long black hair.

"He's our prisoner, dork," another voice said and a face peered over her shoulder. I expected to see the boy that I had seen earlier, but this one was taller, with light brown skin, but gray eyes and a nose that was almost Romanesque. "I heard mom and dad talking about him."

The girl gave a grunt of annoyance as the boy pushed roughly past her into the room. "Hey! I'm telling dad!"

"So what, dad's busy," the boy said.

"Guys?" This was the boy I had seen earlier, peering cautiously through the door. "Mom said to stay away from that guy."

"We are," the girl said.

"Yeah, we're way over here by the door," the dark-skinned boy said.

While they talked, I had resumed my struggle to get free of the duct tape.

"Hey!" the girl said, "I think he's trying to get away!"

"You shouldn't be in here," I admonished the children.

"Yeah, guys, let's go," the boy in the hall said.

"I don't think we should leave him," the dark-skinned boy said. "Not if that's what he wants."

"Mom and dad will be back soon," the girl said.

"Where did they go?" the boy in the hall said.

"Dad said we have another trespasser," the older boy said. "They went to track her down."

"Are they going to kill her?" the girl said, eyes going wide.

"I don't know. Dad was really mad. You remember what he told us, right? What they'll do to us if anyone finds us?" The boy in the hall gulped audibly and the girl shuddered. "So they'll do whatever they gotta do, okay?"

"You're genemods," I said with sudden recognition. All three directed terrified looks my way. "But no, you can't be," I amended quickly, "not unless you're all Peter and Wendy models." The very youngest genemods were around twenty-one, from when the ban on human genemodding went into effect.

And then it clicked into place. The boy's odd mixture of skin color and facial features, the girl's obviously mixed Asian and European ancestry, all three of them with barely a blemish, but just enough imperfection to make them look human. "You're halfs, aren't you? Half genemod?"

Their nervous silence was answer enough. "Look," I said, "this is all a big mistake. My friend, the one your parents are out looking for, she's a full genemod. I'm trying to protect her. I lost her and was out here looking for her, but she found me. I love her, and . . . ." My throat tried to close around the words as a swell of emotion overcame me. "I love her just like your parents love you. It would kill me if something happened to her. I understand why your parents think they need to protect you from me, but I'm not a threat. In fact, I've spent the last few years of my life trying to protect genemods."

"You're with the agency?" The girl said. 

"I used to work for them, yes," I admitted.

Nodding to herself, she moved suddenly to open a dresser drawer. After a moment of rifling the contents, she pulled out a pair of scissors and came toward me. I flinched when she got near, but she bent to begin cutting through the tape.

"No!" the younger boy said in a forceful whisper. "Abigail, you can't."

"Abby," the other boy said in a tone of warning. "Let's wait for mom and dad."

"I know what I'm doing," she said, and in another moment, my arm was free. "I think he's telling the truth, about all of it."

I held out my hand and she gave me the scissors. I made short work of the remaining loops of tape and stood. "Here," I said. I held out the scissors.

The older boy snatched them and clutched them tightly. "My bio mother was a Standard Upgrade," he said. "I'm faster than you, and probably stronger. If you try anything, if you try to hurt us or our parents, I'll kill you."

"I know you would," I said, "and I won't. Let's go find your parents."

~Tilly~

I had drove past the house again and turned into an empty field near the bridge. The big truck bounced easily over the hard-packed dirt, and I circled behind a copse of trees before parking and cutting the ignition. I tucked the screwdriver I had used to start the truck into my back pocket, since it was the closest thing I had to a weapon. My leg ached, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. I limped carefully through the field, crossed the road, and made my way along the tree line at the edge of the river. I waited to break from the trees until I was well back from the house, using the barn to block line of sight to the house as I carefully climbed over the fence.

I stalked cautiously up to the back of the barn and circled toward the far side. I passed a row of stainless steel tanks outside the barn and paused at a small service door. It was padlocked, so I continued on, rounded the back of the barn and came to the front corner. There were a few windows at the back of the house, but as I had hoped, the curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun. I rushed forward across the empty space between house and barn as fast as my limp would allow.

I reached the corner of the house and moved past, heading for Norm's truck, but something at the corner of my eye made me pause and move in for a closer look. What I saw made my heart lurch in surprise. Norm sat alone in a bedroom, sitting stiffly upright in a chair. No, strapped to the chair, held with strips of shiny silver tape. I tapped lightly in the glass to get his attention, and though his face lit up with recognition, and his lips formed my name without actually speaking, so I knew he must be watched. I quickly surveyed the window, found the locking mechanism at the top of the bottom pane, and pulled out the screwdriver to pry the latch.

I saw the man enter the room a moment later, but kept at prying the lock until I heard Norm's warning shout. I ducked under the sill and lurched sideways, away from the window and toward the back of the house. I heard the man's curse and waited just around the corner as he conversed with Norm and someone else. I got moving again when I heard them leave the room.

The barn was an obvious hiding spot, so instead I headed for Norm's truck. There wasn't time to hotwire it, and I didn't intend to leave without Norm, but the back door was not locked. I unlatched it and slipped inside, rolling it carefully and quietly back down behind me, but not letting it latch. The inside of the truck was dark except around the edges of the door, but my eyes shifted foveae instantly, rendering the interior in clear grayscale. It was hot, but not stiflingly so, and I sat with my back against the wall, waiting.




Double Helix Ch. 12



After a minute, I heard footsteps crunching over gravel. They came closer and I instinctively held my breath, but then they moved away, heading in the direction of the barn. A few minutes went by, and I was just thinking that it was time to lift the door for a peek, when I heard voices approaching.

"Should we split up?" a girl's voice said.

"No, stay together," a boy answered. "Let's check the barn first."

"Abigail. Kevin." With a start, I recognized Norm's voice. "Maybe you should stay at the house."

I slowly raised the door and met the gaze of an Asian girl who had apparently whirled at the sound, despite my care to suppress it. "Hey!" she said, pulling at the sleeve of the boy next to her.

"That's her," the boy said when he saw me. He made to push the other two kids behind him and brandished a pair of scissors in his fist.

Norm, though, didn't hesitate. With a choking cry, he ran forward, shoved the door upward and threw his arms around me. Waves of relief, regret, and happiness poured from him, battering at my senses. "I thought you were gone," he croaked. "I thought I'd lost you."

"It's okay, I'm here," I said, my own voice choked by the turbulent mix of emotions, my own and his. I clung to him, letting go of the fear and pain of the last few days. He shuddered and sobbed into my shoulder until the outflow of feelings began to ebb. 

"How did you find me?" Norm asked, still holding me.

"I saw your truck. Then I saw that guy at the house drive it onto this property."

No sooner did I answer that question than he fired off the next. "What happened to you? I couldn't find you." His fingers traced the raised scab on my head, prompting him to pull back to examine me more closely. I heard his pained intake of breath as he found the blood-soaked bandage. "You're hurt."

"I was shot," I said, "but not bad. It's a long story and it can wait. What can we do?"

"We need to go," Norm said. "Ryan, do you know where your dad would have put my stuff? My wallet and keys?"

"Yeah, I think so," the older boy said, and hurried off.

"I have the food," I said. "It's in a truck in a field across the road."

"That's good," Norm said. "Very good."

"So, um, you're a full genemod?" the boy Kevin asked shyly. "What model?"

"My model is unique," I said, and held out a hand. "My name is Tilly."

He took my hand gingerly and gave it a little shake. "I'm a half," he said. "My dad was a G, kind of. It wasn't really a full model back then. They were still working on getting it just right."

"You must be very smart, then," I said.

He blushed and lowered his eyes. "Yeah, kind of. My bio-dad had an IQ over 200, but he also had Asperger's. Mom thinks I don't have it, though. Asperger's that is."

The girl, Abigail, spoke up. "Well, my mother was a Standard Upgrade and my father was Eidetic with sense upgrades."

"Oh, a half and half, then," Norm said, smiling at his joke. "How did all of you get here?"

"Mom ran a daycare," Stacey said. "When the Ban started, Kevin here was still a baby. I was almost two and Ryan was two-and-a-half. No one was quite sure what the legal status of kids like us was going to be, and our bio parents never showed up to get us. Mom and dad kept us safe, though, just in case. When the executive order came down that halves were to be reverted just like full mods, mom and dad went on the run to hide us. They found this house about five years ago, and we've been here since."

Stacey and I heard footsteps before the others did, coming around the front of the truck and down one side. I guessed that it was Ryan returning, but Stacey's expression told me differently. "What's wrong?" I said.

Her voice was a strangled whisper. "It's mom."

Sure enough, the figure that stepped out around the side of the truck was a woman, and she leveled a rifle at Norm, then swung it over at me, then quickly back over to Norm. "Kids, what the hell is this?"

Stacey stepped towards her, holding her arms outstretched to either side. "Ryan and I let him go," she said. "Mom, he's not dangerous. And his girlfriend is a mod, like our parents."

The word "girlfriend" sent a thrill of joy running up my spine, despite the danger we were in. Had Norm really told them that? "I am a genemod," I said. "Your children told me all that you've done to protect them. I can understand why you're hesitant to trust us."

"Bullshit," the woman said. She raised her voice to a yell, "Sam! I need you here!"

"Mom, will you just listen?" the girl said. She moved toward her mother, further blocking her line of fire to me and Norm.

The woman stepped back a few paces. "Abby, baby," she said. "Get out of my way. You don't know these people. You don't know what they'll do."

"Listen, mom! I know she's a genemod. I can smell her. She's way too clean for a human."

I had picked up on another pair of running feet as this exchange went on, and it was about then that the man I had seen in the window appeared, out of breath, from around the back of the house. "Oh shi-, uh, crap," he said stopping himself when he saw the children. He held a pistol pointed down and to one side as he approached. "You found her. But what's he doing out?"

"Would you tell your kids to get back in the house?" the woman said. "They don't need to see any of this."

"No," Abigail said. "I think we do. If you're going to kill them, you can do it right here, right now. You think we're that naïve? You think I don't know what you'll do when we're gone?"

The woman suddenly looked like she was going to be sick to her stomach, but she took a breath to steady herself. "We're just gonna do what we have to," she said. "To protect you."

"We have no choice, Abby," the man said. "If we let them go and they go to the police, and that's it. All three of you will go away for reversion and we'll go to jail."

"I can give you one good reason that won't happen," Norm said. He reached up slowly and removed the hat from his head. "Have you two been watching the news? Do you remember an incident that happened in Seattle about six weeks back? I didn't have a beard back then, but the police sketches were pretty accurate."

The woman appeared confused, but the man's eyes widened in recognition. "Ah, shit, that is him," he said, evidently forgetting to censor himself in front of the children. "Alice, it's the man they're looking for that killed a cop."

She nodded slowly. "Maybe. Been a while since I saw those sketches. That was an agency safe house raid that went bad, wasn't it? You're telling me that was you?"

"We were both there," I offered. "If Norm hadn't acted as quick as he had, five other genemods besides me would have been caught or killed. We're not your enemies."

"You say you're a genemod," the man said. "Prove it. Alice, back up and give her room. You too, Abby. If she makes a move on us, we'll both drop her, understand?"

I slipped down from my perch at the back of the truck. Thinking for a moment, I bent to retrieve a small rock from the driveway. "How far away would you say the barn is?" I asked.

"Sixty yards, give or take," the man said, without taking his eyes off me.

"There's a knot about two feet from the peak of the roof, half an inch across. Can you see it, kids?"

"I see it," Abigail said. Kevin squinted and shook his head.

I hefted the rock, quickly estimating its mass, and let my mind work the equations for force, velocity, and air resistance. With a glance at the man and woman to make sure they were both watching me, I wound back and threw. The rock flew exactly where I had intended it to, its smooth arc perturbed only slightly by its irregular shape.

"She hit it!" Abigail exclaimed. "She got it dead on!"

"Do you need me to do it again?" I asked. "Or you want to give me a math problem?

The woman squinted at me. "What's 4-2-9-3-6-8-4-3 times 8-2-0-5-3-5-6?"

I paused for a half second to double-check before answering. "Three hundred fifty-two trillion, three-hundred twelve billion, eighty-two million, three-hundred thirty-one thousand, one-hundred eight."

"That's right, mom," Kevin said. "She got it."

"Alice?" the man said.

Slowly, the rifle came down and the woman let out a long breath. "Alright. I think we both believe you. I just wish someone had said something sooner. We could have avoided a whole lot of misunderstanding."

"We don't know who to trust," Norm said. "Just like you."

"Too true," the woman said. "You know my name by now. And my husband back there is Sam."

"Call me Norm," Norm told her. "But I do go by Mark when I'm away from home."

Sam cleared his throat. "So you two are in another safe house now?"

"No. It's a long story, but we're on our own now."

"You and the others?"

Norm nodded. "All of us."

"We have no one," Alice said. "The agency doesn't even try to place halfs, but we wouldn't want them to anyway. These are our kids now. And there's nothing me and Sam won't do for them."

Ryan came running from the house as she spoke and came to a dead stop, staring at his mother. It took him a moment to realize that we weren't in a standoff, and he relaxed. "Here," he said, "I brought your things." He handed Norm his wallet and keys, then, with a glance at his parents, brought out Norm's gun from where he had stuffed it into his belt, but hesitated at handing it over.

"Go on," Sam said. "It's his. Let him have it back."

"Thank you," Norm said, as he took the gun.

"Lordy," Alice sighed. "I really did want to believe that you folks were good people, but we've had to learn to be real careful. You two are probably eager to get back home, but I'd like you to stay for dinner." She glanced at each of us appraisingly. "You make a cute couple, by the way."

"Thank you," I said, before Norm could object. I know that it was silly, and maybe even a little petty, but I wanted to bask in the idea of it, if I couldn't have the reality.

"You really should stay for dinner," Sam said. "It's the least we can do for all of the trouble we put you through.

"I need to get our other vehicle first," I said. "But do you think I could get some water?"

I resisted the urge to gulp down the water from the bottle that Abigail brought me, and Norm and I went to get the pickup from across the road. On the way, I explained what had happened after I had gotten out of the truck two nights before.

"Wait," Norm interrupted. "You tasted Rohypnol in the water and went ahead and drank it anyway? Isn't that related to the alprazolam we gave you?"

I shrugged. "Some benzodiazepines work just fine on me, and Rohypnol is one of the few drugs that's reliably effective on genemods. But it has a nasty history as a rape drug. My mom was able to engineer protection against it, so she blocked the effects in my system."

"What would you have done if it was another drug that you are susceptible to?"

I smiled and shrugged. "Well, I guess I wouldn't have drank that water."

"You would have figured something out," Norm said. His tone turned suddenly grim. "Hell, you would have been better off if I had left you to your own devices and waited back at the farm. A lot of good I did, getting captured by two nice old drug dealers." 

I sensed the guilt and shame pouring off him. "It's not your fault."

He sighed. "I should never have brought you with me. I put you in danger."

"And what would have happened if you had gotten to that checkpoint alone with all that food? There are others relying on us. What good would it do if everyone back at the farm starved?"

He nodded slowly. "You're right. The important thing is to learn from this. We have to be safer. We have to be smarter."

"We will," I promised him. "We've been laying the groundwork for that already."

"So you pretended to fall asleep," he prompted. "What happened next?"

I finished my story just as we arrived at the truck. We climbed into the bed at Norm's suggestion and dug through the bins to make sure that none of the food was missing. It looked like someone had picked through it, but nothing had been removed as far as we could tell.

"Can you start it up again?" Norm asked. "We can use it to get the bins over to our truck and then ditch it somewhere along the road."

I had been thinking about this. "Why not keep it? Those deputies probably already got out of that basement, but that house is a good five miles from anything inhabited, and they'll have to think hard about who they call and why. They'll want to get their stories straight. If they decide to report the truck stolen, we'll probably be long gone. Besides," I grinned, "I kind of like it."

Norm smiled back at me. "I never took you for a pickup girl."

"You got a problem with that, darlin'?" I said, in a passable impression of a southern girl.

He laughed. "You can keep the truck. I'm just happy you made it out of there."

"Me too," I said. "And I'm glad I found you. I know you too well. I knew you would be out here looking for me long after you should have gone back home. When I saw your truck, I knew that I had to find you and let you know I was alright."

A momentary shadow of guilt and doubt crossed his face, but he reached out a hand and squeezed my arm in a gesture of gratitude at my words. I put a hand over his, and the touch was electric. Heat pulsed between us, my own desire echoing back from him. Before I realized what I was doing, I leaned in, stretched up on my toes and pressed my lips to his. He went rigid for an instant, but then sighed a breath into my mouth, and it felt as though weeks of tension, of denial and self-doubt left with it. His arms went around me and pulled me closer.

I felt bliss, enfolded in his arms, my lips tingling and my head spinning, but my body and my soul cried out for more. I reached a hand between our bodies and found him hard through his pants. I cupped my hands around his erection and slowly stroked my fingers over it. "Oh, God, Tilly," he whispered against my lips. "What are you doing to me?"

"I want this," I said, and squeezed him for emphasis. He bent to kiss the nape of my neck. My skin, flushed hot with desire, prickled at the touch and my breath came in soft pants. My fingers found his belt and fumbled with the clasp. In moments, I had them unfastened and reached inside to close around warm flesh.

Norm moaned and stumbled back slightly, breaking our long kiss. I opened my eyes and drank in the look of longing and fierce passion he gave me. His desire fueled my own, so that when he placed his hand on my breast, my nipples were already firm nubs. His touch sent jolts of pleasure sizzling into the warm, wet core of my sex.

I stepped back and lifted my hands in the air so that he could pull my shirt up over my head. The bra came off next and then he was kissing me again, first my lips, then down my neck, then on my bare breasts. I shuddered as he took a nipple into his mouth, kneading it gently with lips and tongue. My knees went weak and I gave a long, lilting moan of ecstasy. An ache was growing deep inside me, a hunger and a void that could only be filled by him. "I want you in me," I said. "I need you. Please."

Norm paused, casting about, and I sensed his hesitation. We were still standing in the bed of the truck. "Right here," I said. "I don't care, I just need you right now."

I sat down in the truck bed, kicked off my shoes and lifted my hips to wriggle out of my pants. Norm wasted no more time once he saw what I was doing, doffing his own shoes and pants in an instant. As I settled down, the hard corrugated metal of the trucks bed cupped the cheeks of my bottom obscenely and pressed uncomfortably into my back.

Norm knelt over me, looking down at my body with naked lust. He started to pick at the buttons on his shirt, but I could not wait for him any longer. I scissored my legs behind him and pulled him down to lie against me. I felt his taut member warm against my thigh as he caught himself on his hands to either side of my head. I felt from him one last shred of doubt as he held himself above me. Breathless and aching, I reached between our bodies, found his erection, and guided it to me as I pressed against his back with my heels. I felt the warmth and pressure of imminent penetration against the lips of my sex, slick with my flowing juices. He groaned, then, and relented, pressing his body against mine.

Agonizing pleasure ignited between my legs as he began to slip inside me. I felt a gentle stretching, but no pain, as my body accommodated him. Slowly, the ache within me began to subside as he moved to fill the space within me. "Oh, Norm, yes," I whispered. The moment his body came to rest against me, his pelvis pressed warmly against mine, I came.

For a long moment, my senses were blinded by pleasure. As I came back to myself, I realized that Norm lay still above me. "Are you okay?" he asked.

I almost laughed at the absurdity of the question. But then his hand brushed at my cheek and came away wet from where a tear had streaked my face. "I'm fine," I said, and now I did laugh. "That was amazing. This feels amazing. I want more."

He began to move slowly, almost dubiously, rocking against me. My body responded in a slow burn of decadent bliss. The pleasant tingling of my first orgasm still lingered, and this new pleasure began to layer over it. Gradually, and with prompting from me in my own body movements, his rhythm grew faster, and his strokes longer.

My mind soared, lofted by a welling of pleasure that flowed out from where our bodies joined, and which seeped into every nerve in my body. Even the hard metal at my back faded from my conscious mind, leaving only the pleasure. I heard my own voice rising and falling at each stroke of our bodies, a thing beyond my control. Fire raced through my body. Images flashed in my mind.

My second orgasm broke over me like a wave, racing upwards from the soles of my feet, exploding through my body and bathing my mind. It seemed to go on and on, far longer than any that I had managed to tease from my body on my own, and when it subsided, it left slowly, seeming to seep away with little aftershocks.

"Tilly," Norm said, his voice seeming far away. "Tilly, honey, are you with me?"

"Mmm?" I replied. It felt like I was coming out of a deep sleep. I could feel him still inside me, still hard.

"That was pretty intense. Is it always like that for you?"

I closed my eyes and shook my head, then moaned as another wave of pleasure rolled through my body. When I could speak, I said, "No, never like that. But I've never really had sex before. Just, you know. By myself." We both knew that my statement technically wasn't true, but he certainly wasn't going to argue the point.

"Are you done, then?"

Eyes still closed, I gave him a crooked smile. "Not unless you are."

He slowly withdrew from my body and thrust suddenly back in to the hilt with some force. I cried out as the stroke spiked my pleasure. My body sang with satisfaction at the abrupt, almost savage act of domination. It felt inexplicably right, as if some part of me had been waiting my whole life to be taken in this way.

Norm, though, wasn't so sure. "Tilly, I'm sorry, I . . . I didn't hurt you, did I?" 

"No, no," I breathed. "The opposite. Please don't stop." I didn't want it to ever stop. I had been hoping for this moment for weeks. When Norm had rejected me once again, on our ride out of Portland, I had begun to believe that it would never arrive. Norm's movement became a cadence and I clutched at him as I writhed and moaned. When I could speak, I told him how good it felt, how much I had wanted him, and urging him on, harder, deeper. When I could not speak, it was because the pleasure had overwhelmed me, and I had lost all control.

I felt the approach of his orgasm as clear as my own. My senses were filled with him, the vision of his face, the sounds of his breath and whispered words, the feel of his pulse and his heat on top of and inside me, and the scent of him enveloping me. I read him so completely that it felt as though, with just a bit of a strain, I might actually touch his thoughts.




Double Helix Ch. 12



The buildup was greater than the last time. My muscles would go rigid as the pleasure peaked, relax for an instant, and go rigid again. It felt as though my body were fighting itself, bearing down each time against release. Had I not been out of my mind with ecstasy, I might have actually been concerned that something was wrong with me. And then I had a flash of clarity, somewhere deep within my mind where conscious thought still held sway, what was happening, what my body was doing, and why.

"I'm going to come soon," Norm said hoarsely. His eyes were glazed over as he looked down at me, and sweat soaked the hair above his forehead. I think I managed a nod, but my body was shaking and twitching so badly that I couldn't tell. He grunted loudly as he slammed into me, once, twice, three times. At the last stroke, he sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and groaned. I felt his pleasure rise and he pulsed inside me, the moment that my body had been waiting for. Like a dam suddenly bursting, I came.

My vision went dark and a wavering shriek filled my ears. My hands clenched to fists and shook as the pleasure filled me, more than I could take, and still it came on, still it increased, until I was sure I would lose my mind. I realized that the voice crying out belonged to me, but it felt like nothing I could do would stop it. The sound finally faded away and I managed to clench my teeth as the pleasure surged again, forcing the breath from my lungs. There seemed to be no end to it, and I was only dimly aware of Norm moving off of me as I flexed and relaxed, my mind and body struggling to process what was happening to me.

I remember a few moments where I seemed to fade out completely, suddenly coming to with my head lying in a different position than before. I felt a touch on my arm, and managed to open my eyes long enough to see Norm lying down next to me. His hands cradled my head, and I wanted to tell him something sweet and loving for that gesture, but I still couldn't find my voice.

The tempest that had claimed me finally began to subside and I relaxed, utterly spent. I sighed, but immediately choked out a grunt as yet another wave gripped me, throwing me back into helpless ecstasy for several seconds. After it passed, I waited, but all I felt was calm warmth and happiness suffusing me. I opened my eyes, turned my head and looked to see Norm's somewhat anxious expression. "Wow," I said, and my voice came out a rasp.

"Eleven minutes," Norm said. "Almost twelve. And that's only after I thought to check the time on my watch. That was probably a minute or two after you started."

I stared at him in disbelief. "You timed it?"

"Scientific curiosity. Was that your Donna genes at work?"

"I don't really know," I said truthfully. I knew that heightened sexual pleasure was one facet of the hedonic model, but what I had experienced went beyond what I knew about it. "You noticed how we had our orgasms together?"

"How could I miss it?" Norm said playfully.

"I think that was part of it. I could feel that you were building up to your own orgasm, so my body held off, waited until you came so that I would feel yours at the same time as my own. I'm not sure whether I did that consciously, or if it's something in my design, but that's why it was so strong."

"Yeah, I think you passed out a few times, just went completely limp, and then after a few seconds you would moan and start to thrash again. I said your name a dozen times at least, but you didn't seem to hear me, so I stopped trying." He brushed the hair back from my forehead. "How do you feel?"

"Like I can fly," I said, and stretched a hand up toward a white, puffy cloud before letting it fall languidly across my naked body.

We lay together in silence for a few seconds before I spoke again. "On my second birthday, my mother threw me a party and invited all of her close family and a dozen of her colleagues. This was back when Newt Gingrich was in office. Everyone knew he wouldn't make a second term, and most thought that the incoming Democrat, whoever it was, would lift the ban on human genemodding."

I sighed at that. Clinton, during his 1996 election campaign, had promised to work to loosen the restrictions imposed by that particular executive order, but after taking office, he had changed his tune, claiming that caution was called for. The sex scandal that had followed less than a year after his election had caused his own party to abandon him, and human genemodding hadn't even come up during Bill Bradley's campaign, or after his election.

"Anyway, I had developed enough by then to undergo some tests of my pseudo-empathic ability, and had performed better than most had expected. So I was surrounded by friends and family who were delighted by my precocious innocence and perceptiveness, and by genetic engineers and biologists with wild dreams about how mods like me were going to change the world. So everyone was laughing, happy, and optimistic, and I felt all of that. That's kind of like how I feel now."

"Huh," he said. "So I'm just as good as a whole room full of smiling, happy people. Not bad."

"Modest, too."

"I learned long ago that modesty in the bedroom doesn't work out so well. Speaking of beds, you know what I think?"

I turned to him. "What?"

"I think that this truck bed is quite possibly the most uncomfortable place that I have ever had the displeasure of lying down in."

I cracked a smile. "Yes, I think my back is probably bruised in a few places, but it was worth it."

That one phrase seemed to break his good mood. Norm got up and tossed me my clothes, then he turned from me and began to put on his own without speaking. I stood and shook the dust from my underwear before putting them on. Norm was fastidiously buttoning his shirt, pretending to stare at something in the distance.

I frowned at him, my own good feelings starting to fade in the face of his guilt and fear. I knew this behavior. "Why don't you just tell her?"

"You know why I can't. It would destroy what she and I have."

"How do you know that?"

Norm made a disgusted noise. "Tilly, do you not understand jealousy?"

I felt the strength of his convictions on that point, but they had never made sense to me. "Not really, no."

He stared at me, incredulous, but then I sensed understanding. Finally, with a little shake of his head, he said. "Well, it can be a very ugly thing, and I don't want any of us to experience it firsthand. We should get back. Alice and Sam will start to wonder where we've gone."

I started up the pickup again and we drove to the ranch house. I suggested quick showers, and Alice offered to wash our clothes, so we spent an hour in the living room dressed in a pair of the couple's bathrobes. Norm had warned me not to reveal where we lived and not to talk about our housemates, which seemed a reasonable precaution in spite of the honest intentions I read from them. Once our clothes were ready, we said our goodbyes to the couple and their adopted children, and Norm got into his truck.

We had agreed that I would drive the Ford out in front so that he could keep an eye on me.

The trip south was uneventful. I used some of the time to ponder Norm's question. Why did jealousy seem to represent such a blind spot for me? Part of it, I thought, was that jealousy wasn't an emotion so much as a cause-and-effect relationship of various emotions, fear being one of them, but also pride. I understood, intellectually, that many people got upset when they feared the loss of another's love and attention, but trying to empathize with that seemed impossible. I wondered if that blind spot was something engineered into my psychology.

We got in just after dark. I had just enough time to step out of the Ford before Wendy collided with me, wrapping me in a hug. I stooped to pull her tight against me for a moment before she broke away to tackle Norm.

Nissi was next. I saw a shimmer of wetness in her eyes as she approached and embraced me. "Tilly, we were so worried," she said. "I'm glad you're safe."

She then went to Norm and kissed him long and passionately. I watched them, feeling a swell of happiness with them and for them. Norm was right. It was like a blind person trying to understand color. It wasn't in me to want to feel possessiveness for another person.

Stan interrupted my stare by taking my hand and squeezing it. "We were worried about you, girl. Looks like you guys had a rough time."

"We did," I agreed. "And we'll tell everyone what happened once we're inside."

Once he stepped back, Stansy surprised me by pulling me into a fierce hug and sobbing over my shoulder. "Don't you ever make us worry like that again," she said. "We almost lost you once before, you know."

"I know," I said quietly. "And that's behind me now."

Stansy reluctantly disengaged, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, and I got one final hug from Nock. "You'd better have one hell of a good story to tell," he said. "When Norm left to go back north and find you, I really thought we'd never see either of you again."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Nissi said in a warning tone.

"No," Norm said, patting her on the shoulder, "he's right. Things very nearly went badly for both of us. It's dangerous out there, Nissi. You know that."

Nissi nodded, but I felt irritation still prickling her and something like smugness from Nock. Norm, too, was angry with Nock, but he was careful to conceal it from all but me. I had never really understood the dislike that existed between the three of them. The others accepted it, but I knew that they could not sense the same undercurrents I felt. Nock confused me most of all. He seemed to delight in goading Nissi into confrontations, but I could also feel his pangs of wanting when he saw her with Norm.

"Nice truck, by the way." Wendy said, breaking the tension. "And is that our food in the back? None of us have eaten today."

"Sure, you can eat right now if you want to carry it inside," Norm said.

Wendy climbed into the bed and grabbed a handle of one of the bins. She pulled, grunting dramatically, and the bin stayed right where it was. "Norm, you shit!" she yelled, laughing.

Norm laughed with her. "Sorry, I couldn't resist. I can barely move them myself. Tilly carried them a few miles, but I think she could use a rest."

"On it," Stansy said. She put a hand on the side rail and leapt smoothly into the truck bed. With barely a visible effort, she lifted a bin and passed it down to Nock, following up the second with Stan.

"Feels like a lot of calories in here," Stan remarked.

"Enough to get us through the month," I said. "We have other arrangements after that, assuming Catalina and that bank in the Caribbean come through."

"Right," Norm said, "I forgot to mention that before. Tilly negotiated a deal for a food delivery at the end of the month. We just need to get the money before then."

Norm and I related our story as Stansy prepared a hot meal. I hadn't gotten a chance to hear Norm's side of things until now.

"We should invite them to come live here," Wendy said, after Norm had described the halfs that the couple had adopted.

Norm's sudden irritation came on with a flash of heat on his neck. "Wendy, it's not as if we have a lot of room here," he snapped, "and we don't know how far we can trust them." 

"It was only a thought," Wendy said calmly, with none of the petulance that her young appearance would have implied.

The meal, put together by Stan, was the best one that anyone had made at the farm house for weeks, made even better by a mug of the precious coffee. It was really a second dinner for Norm and me, but he hadn't eaten well the last few days and I had not eaten at all. Nonna went to bed early after finishing the meal, muttering to herself in Russian. Norm and Nissi disappeared about an hour later, followed by Wendy.

Stansy and Stan remained, taking seats on the couch so that he could fill me in on what had happened with the VPN. He went to the other room and came back with a sheaf of papers that turned out to be logs. Apparently, SamIAm had continued to test the network's security at regular interval without alerting anyone. Stan had caught him a few times, but other times, he had received a message from the hacker well after the fact. "I need you to look things over," he said. "I've patched up quite a bit of code, but I may have introduced some new bugs. You can wait until tomorrow, of course."

"I need to get better at security so I can help you more," I said. "You've been dividing the work, but I think we'll work better together if each of us understands what the other is trying to do."

"I think I'd like that," he said. "It would be one thing if he was smug, but he's just so damned matter-of-fact about it, like he's expecting to find holes and isn't surprised or delighted when he does." He uncapped a pen and made a mark on the paper he was holding. "And sometimes that cheeky bastard doesn't even bother to tell me when he penetrates it. He got root access to the file system again right here."

"Alright, you two," Stansy said, "you can talk about this some more in the morning. Can't you see she's exhausted?"

Stan looked up from the paper he had marked and over at me in surprise. "Oh, right. Of course." He got up and patted my arm before following close behind Stansy to their room.

"Well, good night, then," Nock said. He stood up and stretched.

"Wait," I said. "There's something I wanted to ask you."

"Me?" he said, his eyes narrowing.

"Yes, you." I wasn't sure how he would react, so I took a deep breath before plunging ahead. "Are you jealous of Norm?"

The jolt of surprise and anger was there and gone in an instant. He cracked a smile, and then laughed. "Me? Jealous of old Normative Norm? He's a good guy. What do I have to be jealous about?"

"I was at Sasha's house the longest," I reminded him. "And my hearing is just as good as yours. I was there the night you told Nissi how you were starting to feel close to her, and how it had made you wonder if it was time to stop pining after your lost fiancé."

The bitterness was like a foul cloud that surrounded him. "Yeah, I remember. It was a month after she first got there. She had propositioned me once already, but I turned her down."

"But then you told her you had changed your mind."

"Right. But she just smiled and let me down in the sweetest way you could imagine. She told me that I had come this far, and that I shouldn't give up hope. She told me that I should wait until after the agency shipped us out, and then I might have a chance to find out where Esther was, what had happened to her. She said that I needed to know if that relationship was doomed before moving on to a new one."

"It seems like you didn't take that response very well," I said.

"I am a practical man, Tilly," he said. "My Esther was the joy in my life for two years, but that was over seven years ago. No woman had stirred me in that way, in all that time, until I met Nissi. She rejected me, and it hurt far more than I thought it would."

I nodded. "I see."

He started for the den and the computer, but stopped and turned back to face me. "And since you decided to drag my love life out in the open, you should realize that I know what you and Norm did in the truck on our way down here."

"Norm already told me," I said.

"So you and he, have you had sex since then?"

"No," I said evenly. The lie made me feel a bit queasy, but I said it anyway. Nock had finally helped me to understand. I never wanted to see in Nissi what he had just shown me. 

"Nock?" I said, before he started away again. He lifted a questioning eyebrow at me. "I don't think Nissi meant to hurt you. You and she got along just fine back in those days. Things might have been different if you had just talked to her, if you had explained it the way you just told me."

He gave me a wry smile. "Too late for that, isn't it? She hates my guts now, and most of the time I can't stand to be around her either. It's actually a good thing we never got together. We were a bad fit."

"Then why can't you let her go?"

Nock flashed me his teeth and chuckled. "You know what? Fuck you. Go stick her claws in someone else's brain. I'm done talking to you."

I watched him go, feeling the pull of my nature urging me to follow him, to help him, but knowing that there was nothing I could do to help. With a shake of my head, I turned and headed for bed.