Page 3 of Brax

With Brax out of the pond and dressed once again, they returned to the clinic for another round of tests and examinations.

“Well, young man,” smiled Riley, “I’d say that you’re about as healthy as your brother. You can practice with the team now.”

“Really?” he smiled.

“I never lie to my patients,” said Riley. “You’re good, Brax. We’ll need to check your hormone and testosterone levels on a regular basis to be sure you’re getting the right dosage. When you leave for the Navy, they’ll have to do the same.”

“Maybe by then, G.R.I.P. could invent something that lets me do that myself,” he grimaced.

“You know what?” smiled Gabi. “That’s not a bad idea. But I bet that Suzette could figure that out for you. Then you wouldn’t have to tell anyone about this because you could manage it on your own. You could adjust your medications as necessary, just like a diabetic would.”

“But the military wouldn’t accept a diabetic,” frowned Brax.

“I know, Brax. I didn’t mean to imply you were the same,” she smiled. “You’re good. You’re alive, you’re healthy, and everything will work out.” She walked out of the room with the others, leaving Brax to wait for his medications. Brax looked at his brother and frowned.

“Brax, it’s going to be okay,” said Pax. “You heard her. You’re healthy, you’re normal, and it’s all going to be fine. We’re going to join the Navy and become SEALs just like we planned when we were kids. It’s all going to work out and be just fine.”

“Yeah. It will all work out until a woman doesn’t see balls and realizes I can’t have kids.”

CHAPTER TWO

Stephanie stared at the people around her as they peppered her with questions about complex math and science equations. She knew the answers, but she’d also learned that these people didn’t intend anything good to come from her knowledge.

They thought they were being clever by speaking behind the clipboards. She neglected to tell them that her hearing was exceptional, probably another side effect of their little experiment. The experiment being her.

The other children at the school, all girls, were undergoing the same types of treatments. A barrage of constant testing, quizzing, reading, and computing. It was utterly exhausting.

Some of the girls had been told that their parents dropped them off, making them believe that they were there because of their exceptional minds. Others were told that they were orphans. Many had arrived as infants, barely a few weeks or months old. She knew that wasn’t normal.

Still others arrived by the time they were four or five, some a few years older. Everything seemed wrong about the school. They were all different. Even Stephanie.

She knew that she was different.

They made sure to tell her that she was different. A failed experiment created in a laboratory. She wasn’t a sheep or a dog. She was a human. A cloned human who was supposed to become an exact replica of the individual used to create her but with even greater intellect, emotion, and IQ.

Exact physically but superior intellectually, her laboratory parents believed that they’d succeeded in creating a compliant genius. Compliance was key to their whole experiment working out. If she didn’t readily, agreeably do whatever they asked then the whole thing was going to work out.

Insisting on greater intelligence, they’d injected her with a strange substance repeatedly, constantly pushing information into her tiny brain.

While the other girls were allowed some interaction with one another, she was forced to keep her distance other than for thirty minutes a day at lunch.

Unsure of how to speak to the others, not taught basic social skills, she struggled to connect with any of them. Only a few young women showed any kindness to her at all.

Katelyn, Chelsea, Victoria, and Marilisa always spoke to her, asked her to join them for lunch, and laughed about everything. She wasn’t sure why they laughed about everything, but she determined it was normal, so she joined in.

Eventually, Victoria, Chelsea, and Marilisa disappeared. Taken in the middle of the night, she had no idea where they were taken. Just that they were gone.

But while they were there, they treated her like everyone else. Whether they knew it or not, Stephanie wasn’t real.

Yes, she had a heartbeat, and blood flowed through her veins. She used the bathroom like they did. She ate and expelled food like they did. But she wasn’t a real human, at least not in her own mind.

She understood all too well what these people were doing. She used her exceptional intelligence, the intelligence they shoved at her every moment of the day, insisted it become more and more, to find the information about the school, and she knew that the CIA was running a factory for children, boys and girls, intending to use them for horrible things.

When the agency deemed the entire thing a failure, without warning and without fanfare, they packed up the children, sold them or discarded them, and left the school.

Stephanie saw this as her opportunity to run. She didn’t know where. She didn’t know how she would live in society. She didn’t even know where she was. But she knew that she would no longer be a puppet and prisoner for anyone.

When the guards took her to the van where they were no doubt going to drive her to her demise, she took the opportunity to run. When they were certain that she’d run off, neither wanted to chase her down. In their minds, it wasn’t worth the effort, and they damn sure wouldn’t be rewarded if they found her. She was too much trouble.

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