Lucas sighed. “I mean that the scientists at the Mare House f**ked up. Subspecies 29 produced several unusually smart children. A sudden explosion of kids with genius-level intelligence was rare and odd, so the idiots thought it would be a good idea to study them further. They extracted these children and raised them within Mare with the full knowledge of their history. Well, the kids grew up and decided they didn’t want to go gently into that good night while some other breed of human took over.
“There was a quiet coup. By the time it was discovered, Strain 29 and their captive personnel had genetically corrected their shortcomings. Now they had no trouble with heat and they bred like rabbits. They decided that they were more viable than Strain 61. They, not humans, were ile. A mistake was made and they decided it had to be corrected. They were ordained to take over the Earth.”
Now it made sense. “They became the Ordinators?”
“Yes.”
“So this is it? They’ve been trying to kill us off for thousands of years?”
“More or less. They went to war, using the colonists’ original technology. The other cities opposed them, but they were weak by that point and in the process of dissolving themselves, so they plucked people from different strains with combat potential. The Ordinators were broken and would’ve been wiped out, except they acquired Rippers and began hopping through dimensional fragments. Eventually, so did we.
“Strain 61, the ile humans, was reproducing too quickly, and their numbers grew too numerous. They saw us and started forming religions and folklore. We had to disappear.”
“So this is how it is,” Karina said.
He nodded. “People like me have been keeping the Ordinators at bay for over thirty thousand years. Occasionally they break through with a new weapon. Sometimes it’s a virus that kills the food supply. Sometimes it’s bubonic plague. Sometimes they find a way to fiddle with the climate. The problem is that the Ordinators breed faster than us, they’re better organized, and their job is easier: it’s much simpler to destroy something than to protect it.
“There were thirteen Houses, one for each landing site. They have one House, the House of Mare. There are probably between one and two hundred thousand of them. We are the soldiers of the remaining twelve Houses. There are maybe fifty thousand of us. We crossbreed and have children with weird powers instead of dying out the way we should. This is the planet where everything went wrong. As humanity moves closer and closer to interstellar space flight, the Ordinators are getting desperate, because once we reconnect with the root civilization, it’s all over for them. They abandoned the original mandate and they will be exterminated. They’re attacking with everything they’ve got and we’re losing the fight.”
She stared at him. “And where do I fit in?”
He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “You know why my people died out?”
“Because their own venom poisoned them?” Karina said.
“That. But also because the colonists had done some projections. It was decided that if we were allowed to exist, we would destroy the other subspecies and then die out before reaching the level of medical sophistication necessary to fix our defect. They poisoned us, wiped out the entire species almost completely. They were right—even now the synthetic substitutes are just a Band-Aid. See, if we could’ve overcome this handicap, they would’ve let us murder everyone else, but the problem is that only one very specific subspecies produces the hormones we need. The Base Strain. The donors. The ones who gave rise to all of us.”
She jerked her hand back. “You mean I am a descendant of the original colonists?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is. Your type has a remarkably stable genome.”
“But my parents were normal people!”
“They may not have known who they were. Maybe only one of them was a donor. A donor and Subspecies 61 will produce donor offspring.”
“But what about this?” She held out her arms, speckled with brilliant red. “Explain this!”
Lucas sat up. “When I fed on you, the mutation agent entered your bloodstream. In normal humans the mutation agent has grown weak over the generations. But I am carrying a near-full dose and I gave it to you during the feeding. You are changing.”
“Into what?!”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s in your DNA besides the donor genes. The mutation agent is an inhibitor. It will release the brakes within your body, short-circuiting your DNA repair, and let you develop into something that’s already there in your genotype, acquired over the centuries of crossbreeding with different human subspecies but suppressed. You could become Subspecies 61, but I doubt it. Chances are, it will be one of our subspecies instead.”
They had taken her freedom, her home, and her dignity, and now they were taking away her body. “No! No, I am not doing it! I won’t! You hear me?” Karina surged to her feet. She managed two steps. Pain shot up through her bones. She cried out. The world went red and she crashed onto the floor.
It hurt. It hurt more than any pain she could remember. At first she begged, then she prayed, then she screamed and whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut, opening them again, glimpsing Lucas’s face against the harsh light of the vault, and then sinking into more pain. If only she could pass out completely and be done with it, but no, every time she tried, he shook her back, into the place of hurt.
“Come on, stay with me. Stay awake. Snap out of it.”
“Let me be,” she snarled.
“You pass out, you die. Come on. Stay with me.”
“I hate you! You did this to me!”
“That’s right,” Lucas snarled right back. “Hate me. Fight with me. Stay awake. You die, Emily will be alone. You don’t want to leave your daughter with an a**hole like me.”
She just wanted the torture to stop.
Another bout of agony rocked her. When it was over, she was so tired, she could barely breathe.
“The other woman . . .” Karina whispered. Forcing the words out felt like trying to swallow glass. “Did she have to do this?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kidnap her, too?”
“No.” Lucas gathered her closer, holding her against him. “She was one of us. Her family were donors of Daryon.”
“Did she hurt, too?”
“Yes.”
Lucas’s eyes were so dark, they seemed almost brown.
“Tell me about her.” She wasn’t sure why she wanted to know, but she did.
“She was very smart. And she looked beautiful. Very graceful, fragile, elegant.”
“Not like me, then?” Nobody would call her fragile. Or elegant, for that matter.
“Nothing like you,” he told her quietly.
The agony burned through her in a crippling spasm. “Why does it sound like a compliment?”
“Because she only looked beautiful. In our world nobody has the luxury of doing nothing,” he said. “Everyone has a function. I protect. Someone else oversees mining. Someone else oversees stocks and finances. Galatea’s family had only one function: to provide Base Strain to the House. For that they were sheltered, fed, and protected. Galatea never worked a day in her life.”
“Must be nice,” Karina whispered.
“She didn’t think so. She wanted the mutating agent.”
“She wanted this? Why?”
“Power,” Lucas said. “She thought she would become something much more prized than a donor and she would be free of me. Her father was my first donor. She wasn’t supposed to become one, but he died, and she had to take his place. She thought I was an animal. She was convinced that once I fed, she would become a Ripper and could use it as leverage to be free of me.”
“What did she become?”
“An Electric. She senses electric currents. It’s not an uncommon subspecies. A lot of technicians come from it.”
“Uh-oh,” Karina managed. Her lips were so dry, but there was no water. “Let me guess: it was your fault, right?”
He nodded. “It was everyone’s fault. She used to scream and throw fits, and then she wanted to f**k and she wanted me to beg for it. I was young and stupid. She was older, smarter, and beautiful.”
Karina raised her hand and touched his haggard face. “You loved her.”
“Yes. And I was so dumb, I thought it was enough. That’s why I let it go that far. She once told me that we, the House, had stolen her life. She wanted to stroll the streets of London, visit the Tate Modern, go to concerts in Royal Albert Hall. I offered to take her. She told me that it wouldn’t be the same. My presence would poison London for her.”
“She sounds charming,” Karina managed.
“I am what I am,” Lucas said. “No illusions. Life with me is hard, but she made a personal hell for me and her. I wasn’t the one who started sex, but I finished it. I dealt with it for four years and when I turned twenty-two, I decided I was done. I went on synthetics and told Arthur to find her a different place. He transferred her to a technical work crew. She tried to stab me with a knife when she found out. Galatea was never fond of getting her hands dirty. Three months later, during an attack, she disappeared. The next time Henry sensed her presence, we ran into the Ordinators.”
“She betrayed you.”
“Yes, she did.” Lucas shifted her carefully. “And now you know the whole story.”
“Do you miss her?” she asked.
He peered at her face. “How did you know?”
“I miss my husband,” she whispered. “I don’t blame you, you know.”
“For what?”
“For any of it. For the motel, for the feeding, for this.” Karina tried to swallow the pain away, but it remained. She wouldn’t make it. She could feel death crouching just a few feet away. “Lucas, you’re not a bad person. You have no idea how scary you are, but you’re kind and patient. If things were different . . . It has to start right . . . And we just can’t, because I would never be more than a slave and you would always own me. Please take care of Emily for me. Don’t let anyone hurt her. She’s a great kid.”