The Gender Game 2 by Bella Forrest (audio ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“If I had just planned everything better, you would be safe in Patrus. You wouldn’t have had to go through this nightmare. But I promise you, baby brother, I am going to get you out of here, and I will never let anything bad happen to you ever again.”

I watched him for a long time, looking for any trace of movement. He remained perfectly still, his eyes focused on a spot somewhere behind me, his chest rising and falling in deep even breaths.

My lower jaw convulsed as my guilt mounted. Eventually, I began to sob in earnest, burying my face in my hands.

“Please,” I begged him, wanting him just to look at me. To show me somewhere, deep inside, he was still there.

I didn’t know how long I sat there crying, when I felt something touch my hand.

Lifting my head, I gazed into my brother’s eyes.

His eyes were cloudy and confused. “Violet,” he whispered, his voice raw and deep.

I threw my arms around him and held him tightly. He was stiff under my arms, tension radiating out from him. I didn’t care—I hugged him anyway. I never wanted to let him go.

I heard Ms. Dale cough and I turned my gaze toward her. She was looking through the door opening at us. “I’ll… I’ll go back up to Mr. Croft,” she said quietly.

Wordlessly, I nodded, tears still streaming from my eyes. She hesitated for another moment. “I’m glad you found your brother,” she added, as she turned to leave.

I was too, but I was also worried for him—whatever had been done to him while he was here… he would carry the scars forever. I cried harder, trying to feel strong for him, but feeling helpless myself.

35

Viggo

I sat back in the chair, my mind trying to process everything I had read on Mr. Jenks’ computer. Ms. Dale strode in and sat in the chair. I looked at her inquisitively.

“She’s fine. She’s comforting her brother.”

A dark thread of suspicion cut through my thoughts, but as I studied her face, I saw sincerity behind that carefully constructed mask. She also looked tired—like whatever she had seen had an effect on her. I resisted taking a jab at her, it would be counter-productive, and I had too much on my plate.

“How much of this were you aware of?” I asked, indicating the computer.

She said nothing, just stared at me with that blank face. I sighed, and folded my hands on the desk. “You’ve realized that you can’t really hide anything from me, right?”

Shrugging with one shoulder, the corners of her mouth quirked up. “That remains to be seen,” she replied arrogantly.

I felt a dull throb in my skull—a reminder of my concussion—and I shook my head at her. “You are something else, lady.”

“How do you mean?”

I leaned back into the chair, it squeaked under my weight but held fast. “I mean that you are going to pick a side very soon.”

“I have a side,” she replied curtly.

“Matrus? The people who want you to catch an innocent woman as a public relations prop?”

Her mouth pinched and she looked away. It was progress. Minimal, but progress none-the-less.

I leaned forward, pinching the bridge of my nose to try and relieve the growing headache. I was starting to feel tired, a sign that the adrenaline patch was beginning to wear off. I still hadn’t done anything to patch my wounds—I had been too curious to stop reading for long enough.

Turning back to the computer screen, I re-read a few of the conversations between Queen Rina and Mr. Jenks.

It seemed that the two of them had been conspiring on this project for the better part of thirty years. I couldn’t understand the science aspects of it—they were far too technical for a layman like myself—but luckily for me, neither could Queen Rina.

Mr. Jenks had diluted the science enough that I could understand his and the queen’s ultimate goal. Apparently, they had stumbled on to a way of enhancing humans. I had gathered that Mr. Jenks had been studying the insemination program, focusing on the unborn embryo.

I didn’t understand his theory, but he believed that exposing the unborn child at a certain stage of development with radiation or chemicals would trigger a mutation. And for some reason, Queen Rina had allowed him to experiment on her own unborn children.

It had apparently been a success, but it was limited, and there were some larger problems that developed in association with the experiments. Yet the queen’s children had survived and were considered enhanced. There weren’t many specific details about her offspring beyond that, but Mr. Jenks’ research carried on.

In studying the princesses’ genetic code, he had found the areas which triggered these physical enhancements. Strength, speed, intelligence, agility… he had unlocked the key to advancing the human race. The next evolutionary step forward.

But it was an artificially forced evolution, and with that came consequences. In this case, psychological ones. He found that the children born often manifested intense psychological issues.

It put a stop to his in vitro experimentation, but he didn’t stop. He believed that there was a way he could awaken these mutations on fully formed humans and, given enough time and study, he could create a single human with all the enhanced abilities he had catalogued.

The queen had funded him, helping him create a laboratory and giving him test subjects in the form of the boys deemed too aggressive for Matrian society.

He had limited success in waking the dormant genes in the boys, using pills. Yet the same psychological issues persisted in each individual. It varied, from hyper-phobia to bipolar manifestations. There were even several cases of schizophrenia.

Mr. Jenks didn’t let that stop him. He’d pressed forward with his research, determined to create the ultimate enhanced human.

And he eventually thought he had. I stared at the picture of the egg, its shell open, the small embryo resting inside. It seemed that Queen Rina had been scheduled for implantation (by some specialized process I didn’t understand), but had it