“Keep them in stasis,” I say, despising my own words. “Gather samples from all ten of us and implant the fertilized cells into all of their wombs. Keep any extra samples frozen for future use in case these don’t take. This is the only hope for our future at this time.”
My morts all wear the same tortured expressions that I’m sure I do.
We want them.
We want them awake and we want to mate with them. Need to mate with them. Not only as a biological imperative to ensure our survival, but to remind us of what it means to live instead of merely survive.
But sacrifice is in our blood. It’s all we’ve done our entire lives. The sacrifice will end with us, though. These implanted cells will grow into mortlings. Mortlings will grow into doctors and leaders and fighters. Families will be bred from our sacrifices. One solar soon, this facility will bustle with life and activity. Our sacrifices will be worth it.
At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.
“I’ll be in the command center,” I mutter before excusing myself.
An addictive dose of ultraviolet rays is much needed because I’d do just about anything to bring a little light to my nearly pitch-black future.
Sacrifice.
It must be done.
2
Aria
I’m drowning.
Waves of pain suck me under, pulling at my limbs, making them heavy and hard to operate. An invisible weight crushes my chest and I fight to draw oxygen into my protesting lungs. Too much. I did too much flora the night before. A newer drug to the market that’s more accepted among high society. No needles or smoking for the rich and famous. Just a quick inhalation of the expensive mist and you’re lost to it. Its seductive call sings to me, tempting me to go back under and escape.
That’s why I became an actress in the first place. I wanted to go somewhere else, be someone else. I had the body, the face, the talent. The money was a factor, but it was only the vehicle that gave me access to my true goal: escape. Getting out of the slums, out of my life. Fame and fortune bought me a way out, but it never truly brought me happiness like I’d imagined.
Too late, I’d realized I’d been seduced by the very glitz and glamour I’d been groomed to emulate. There was no escape, there was only another cage—albeit a gilded one.
The rolling tide of drugs both soothes and torments. I alternate between the highest I’ve ever been and the most pain I’ve ever experienced. The latter slams into my body like an unforgiving tide, over and over, never ending. I try, uselessly, to open my eyes, to press the buttons on the controls to deliver another dose to end the pain, or rip out the needle supplying it, but I can do neither. The very thing that has given me my only release is now my greatest torment.
Minutes, hours, days, I can’t even tell how much time passes before I’m able to move my hands—and then it’s only to open and close my fingers. I can’t move my arms from my sides. By sheer force of will, I crack my eyelids open and wince at the too-bright room surrounding me.
I try not to panic. It isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in a strange home after a long night of dancing and drinking and it won’t be the last. But I’d never taken it so far that I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there. That I couldn’t even move the next morning.
You’ve done it this time, Aria.
But it’s the next wave of pain that brings me fully awake, driving away the last remnants of stupor and spawning the first flash of fear. Cramps steal across my stomach and drive downward. My body trying to purge itself. I’ve been hungover before, but nothing like this. Nothing that makes me feel like I’m dying.
Another scream rips from my throat and draws the attention of the guard on the other side of the door. Only I must still be dreaming, because the man who comes through looks like something from a nightmare, all eerie white skin and misshapen bones on his forehead. He towers by my bedside in a strange suit, with flowing black hair and hard, black eyes that glare at me from underneath a heavy brow. Fangs. He has fangs. Definitely not human. A monster.
This is a nightmare.
Not real.
The image of him swims as the pain intensifies. My mouth waters and I can feel bile rise in the back of my throat. Panic assails me when I try to wrench my hands up to cover my mouth but they’re restrained.
Restrained, in pain, at the mercy of a monster in a room I don’t recognize. How could this morning get any worse?
Then the door opens, and nine more giants in varying degrees of terrifying step into the room.