Page 23 of He Is Jensen: Part One

Jensen’s reply makes me go colder than ice. “Why are we still standing here?”

Tad smirks. “Now you believe me?”

“What do you want?”

“You. And I promise it will be better than the sex camps. You’ll only have me to deal with.” He grins an evil grin, rotates on his heels, and marches to the back office.

Just the words “sex camps” are enough to cut me inside out. With an inner tremble, my gaze slides around the lab, seeking an escape, and to my utter shock, the water glass on my table shatters, my body jerking with the shock.

Milton Wright, the only other non-GTECH scientist out of the six I’ve met since leaving Jensen in the room and the only one working with me at present, rushes to my table and begins anxiously clearing the glass. According to him during awhispered exchange, he’s thirty-two and worked for the military until he was kidnapped and forced to help Julian.

“That was odd,” he murmurs, tossing shards into the trash. “The glass just shattered. I never saw you touch it.”

He’s right, and it’s not the first glass to shatter. There was another earlier, not long after I got here, but before Milton was brought in to help me. “What’s a sex camp?”

His thin lips press together, his energy uncomfortable, as he claims the chair next to me and lowers his voice. “Julian’s son, Dorian, is very powerful. Like freaky powerful.”

“I’ve gathered that, but what does that have to do with sex camps?”

“They want more like him, which means finding the rare woman who can bond with one of the males and convert to GTECH. It’s like a physical marriage. They have sex. They bond. They have scary offspring, like Dorian.”

My hand presses to the table, memories of Jensen’s brief mention of this washing over me. “How do they know they bond? They just get pregnant, or what?”

“Some strange tattoo marking appears on the woman’s neck right after sex. I hear it hurts, like someone is carving it into their flesh. The couple then does a blood exchange, and the woman converts to GTECH.”

“Blood exchange?” I ask, aghast at such an idea. “Like in a vampire novel?”

“Well, I guess.” He laughs nervously. “They don’t bite each other, though. They slice their palms and press them together. There is a plus side for the female. The plus side of all of this is eternal youth and immunity to all human illness, among other things. Of course, the poor woman has a really nasty Zodius soldier hanging around all the time, and if he goes and gets himself killed, say by pissing off Julian, then she goes bye-bye right along with him. One dies, the other dies. Or so they think.It’s not fully known if that’s the case. There are just too few lifebonds. That’s what they call them: lifebond.”

Lord, help me and us all. I think I understand now. Women are being thrown into the camp and used for sex until someone bonds with them. And I officially want to throw up.

“The idea that they breed women I assume they kidnap is just plain barbaric,” I say, pausing as he wipes his forehead with a cloth, and it’s only then that I realize he doesn’t look good. His skin is milky, and sweat pebbles on his upper lip and forehead. His white lab jacket is damp under his arms. “Are you okay, Milton?”

He runs his hands over his thighs. “They didn’t dose me this morning.”

My eyes go wide. “Why? Why would they do that?”

“I’ve failed to find the answers they seek. You’re the new kid on the block. They don’t need me anymore. Out with me. In with you.”

I draw back, shocked at the harshness of his words.

He scrubs his jaw. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself. It feels like I’ve swallowed acid, and it’s eating me alive.”

I soften and touch his hand to console him. It’s clammy, yet he shivers as if cold. A buzzer sounds, and the electronic steel doors, the only entrance or exit to the lab, slide open. Julian walks into the room dressed in Army green fatigues, a wolf on either side of him, power radiating off of him.

Beside him is his son, Dorian, dressed in matching fatigues and looking every bit twelve at six months old. I’d seen him from a distance earlier, but up close, it’s simply incredible. Julian halts at the end of the table and motions to Dorian. “Meet my son, who cured you of your cancer.”

The boy’s gaze fixes on me; the black of his stare so deep, so complete, it feels as if I’m being sucked into a hole. “Thank you,Dorian,” I say softly, hoping the obligation I feel to say the words won’t seem obvious.

“What good news do you have for me, Milton?”

Julian’s question jolts my attention from Dorian to Milton, who looks as if he’s about to choke on his tongue.

I quickly interject, pulling the attention back to me. “Since every ICE user who goes into withdrawal doesn’t die, pre-existing conditions, or some inconsistency in the ICE doses, would be an obvious place to begin looking for cause of death.”

“Read the files, Ms. Walters,” Julian snaps. “There were no pre-existing conditions and no difference in one vial of ICE from the next.”

“That’s impossible.”

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