Page 37 of The Program

‘I can do some of the things she can do, but not all,’ she began, then she met my eyes with a question in hers. I thought it over one last time having considered telling them a little more about our past, but ultimately gave her a tiny nod as my permission to continue. She released Dave Junior who ran right for me, inspecting my hands with an innocent curiosity only a youngling could achieve when he realised they were perfectly fine.

‘We’d been partnered the same way as the rest of you. We grew up undergoing the same experiments, but we were separated a few solars ago. We tried to escape and while Artemis got out, I got caught. She was eventually caught later on and we were reunited, but they’d put me in the breeding program and tinkered with my nanites while hers had been left alone for the two solars she was free.’

All of them frowned at her response, the confusion clear behind their eyes. It only succeeded in making me more confused as well.

‘You escaped once before?’ Christine’s friend asked, her eyes bright as she took in the new information. ‘How?’

I shook my head and scratched Junior’s when he nudged at me for attention. The brunette’s focus was in the wrong place. ‘That’s not important.’

Libby jumped back in to elaborate. ‘It’s what happened as a result of her time away that’s important.’

Christine’s frown was oddly identical to her friend’s, and the effect was unnerving. ‘What do you mean?’

I explained how my nanites went rogue after being left alone for so long.

They remained silent, processing what I’d just admitted and its implications. After what seemed like a lifetime Francesca was the one to speak up again.

‘Spell it out for us, Artemis. What does that mean?’

‘It means they couldn’t conduct the same experiments on me as Libby anymore. They had to find a way around it.’ I showed them the tattoos. ‘They turned their experiments into nanites that they then tattooed into my skin. I don’t know if they’ve reacted to my previous nanites or what, but I have new abilities that Libby doesn’t possess because of it.’

‘Can you melt things, too?’ Francesca asked Libby, looking like the answer would determine some sort of outcome I wasn’t privy to.

‘Yes,’ she admitted warily, watching the redhead’s reaction closely. ‘The shields and her healing rates are entirely unique to her, I don't have any of the tattoos, but I can do everything else she can do.’

Francesca’s expression was shut down and unreadable, which only seemed to rachet up the tension in Libby’s shoulders.

The entire interaction was making everyone nervous, and the brunette woman finally stepped forward and cleared her throat. ‘The Program altered our DNA. We don’t know much, but from what we’ve been able to gather they isolated certain genetic markers within each of us individually and tampered with it. Either to enhance something they’d deemed useful or remove something they deemed useless or harmful. As such, we have heightened senses and an increased ability to heal. They were also able to identify and isolate certain evolutionary traits and bring them back.’

Both girls pulled their long hair away from their necks to reveal a matching set of lines bisecting their throats on either side.

‘These are gills, which give us the ability to breathe under water,’ Christine stated, though the shock factor had already seemed to wear off from my own admissions. Apparently, at this point there wasn’t much that The Program had done that could shock us.

Francesca surprised us then by stepping forward, her previously locked-down expression now scrunched into a fearful trepidation. After closing hereyes and taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly as her gaze caught on Libby first where it lingered, then the rest of us. When she started to strip out of her clothes, Libby looked like she was about to protest but was holding herself back. I came to stand beside her and intertwined our hands as a show of silent support for whatever emotional turmoil was eating at her.

When Francesca was stark naked, her reasons for exposing herself were evident. Shiny yellow scales rippled across her skin in large patches, some of which were bisected with a darker brown pattern. She blinked her eyes and her pupils, previously round, narrowed into vertical slits. Then she opened her mouth and flicked out her tongue. Her long, thin, forkedtongue.

‘Marcie and I were a part of their animal grafting experiments. They spliced our DNA and merged it with an animal’s. So, I’m part snake. Marcie’s part chameleon. We have certain non-physical attributes of those animals as well.’

‘Like what?’ asked Libby, her voice calm and steady despite the tautness in her muscles.

‘Like I have the ability to see UV light when I slit my pupils.’

‘And Marcella?’

‘Marcie doesn’t look like she has any physical differences normally, but her eyes function independently and she can shift the colour of her skin and hair to blend in with her surroundings.’

‘Okay, that’s kind of awesome,’ said Libby, the excitement clear in her tone. Her comment caused an amused reaction from the rest of us and effectively cut through the tension.

‘I bet Karmella was also fused with an animal. She certainly hisses like a cat,’ one woman joked.

‘She’s part lioness,’ Francesca admitted with a sheepish smile. ‘We were raised in the same facility.’

‘You were allowed to interact with each other?’ I asked, surprised to find that something else had in fact taken me off guard.

‘Sure,’ she said, her brows furrowed. ‘We had communal areas, like the cafeteria and the entertainment rooms.’

‘Cafeteria and entertainment rooms,’Libby muttered under her breath, her tone blatantly envious.

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