Free Standby (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 2.5) by Nicole Sobon Page A

helped to ease my worries any, either. If anything, working under his thumb had only helped to increase my fears. The truth of the matter was that he was a terrifying man, and he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything.
    I had read the files. I knew that, in the beginning, she was meant to be nothing more than a throwaway experiment; a test to create a satisfactory teenage Program. But she had been more than he had ever dreamed of.
    She was everything he had aspired to create within a Program.
    Emile was his prized possession, and he wasn’t going to let her go. Not without a fight, and certainly not without causalities.
    She was everything to him.
    And I was his ticket to getting her back.
    In McVeigh’s eyes, I was Emile’s one weakness; her only remaining – living – link to the life that he had stolen from her. He knew that she’d want to rescue me. He knew that killing me would destroy her, and that hadn’t mattered to him. All that mattered was that he got what he wanted – that, in the end, she was back inside of Vesta Corp where he felt she belonged.
    I only hoped that she wouldn’t fall for his trap.
    She’s smarter than that , I’d told myself.
    And she was.
    But even I knew that the heart had a tendency to be more convincing than the mind.
    I could hear the computers booting up around me. Their screens flickered on, one by one, in the dimly lit room. I imagined what those before me had felt when they had undergone the transformation – the fear they must’ve felt at the unknown.
    Me? I was calm, collected. Not because I wanted this, but because I had expected this.
    I knew that this would be my outcome.
    I knew it the moment that I took the job at Vesta Corp.
    That didn’t mean that I wasn’t in horrendous pain. With each new tear, I wanted nothing more than to scream; to fight back against the pain. But I’d known better than to show weakness.
    That was what they expected, what they hoped for, and I’d be damned if I was going to give them any bit of satisfaction. They’d already destroyed everything else that I’d held dear. I wouldn’t allow them to destroy me, too. I wouldn’t allow them to toss me onto a hard-drive and lock me away in a storage room.
    Weakness was one’s worst friend in life, and right now? Right now I was still alive.
    You can’t forget , I told myself. You can’t forget who you are.
    “Prepare for injection,” a female voice called out.
    She leaned over me, a large needle within her grasp. Her face was hidden behind a surgical mask. I looked into her eyes, which were a soft shade of green, eager to sense something – anything – but there was nothing.
    Not an ounce of remorse. Not an ounce of sympathy. Nothing. Her eyes lacked any sort of life, any bit of humanity, even though I knew that she was human.
    “No better than the others,” I said, my voice uneven as the needle slipped beneath my skin. “You are no more alive than the Programs that you help to create.”
    My eyelids grew heavy as the cold liquid made its way throughout my body.
    I could hear them talking above me, though I couldn’t make out what was being said. At one point, I could’ve sworn that I’d heard them say Emile’s name, but that also could’ve been my paranoia taking over.
    I lay there, unable to fight back against the White Coats as they ripped through my flesh, rebuilding my insides with inhuman parts, slowly finding myself plunging deeper into darkness.
    And I welcomed it.
    I welcomed it because it was an escape from the pain; a temporary source of relief.
    But I should’ve known better.
    I’d watched as McVeigh and his White Coats performed the same surgery on many other “donors”. I knew what he was capable; of the torture he could unleash upon his victims.
    My mind was so wrapped up with worry for Emile that I hadn’t even thought to expect what came next.
    They lay strapped to two surgical tables, white clothes draped over their pale bodies. Charles McVeigh