The Six: Genesis | A Reverse Harem Novel

Twenty-Seven

Gatlin's miraculous walk ends brutally.

One moment I'm in his arms, desperately kissing him back, and the next, he's falling on me. His blue eyes, electrified by my tech, dim and go black as they roll back into his head. All I can hazard is a frail scream before I drop with him.

With tears rolling down my cheeks, I lift him up and carry him back to the operating room. Iris' voice echoes in my mind and in the lab, but I can't focus for more than a few seconds. Something is wrong... terribly wrong.

His vitals are strong. Heartbeat is normal. There is no evidence of an internal bleed, broken bones, or improperly placed tech.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

Trembling, I heft him onto a stretcher and stumble back toward the monitors. The same mechanical arms from the surgery come to life with a hiss, dropping from the ceiling to surround him. Each breath I take hurts, as if there are shards of glass in my lungs, but I bottle up my wayward emotions to find the cause of his fall.

"Chris... Just hold on.... Please, hold on." I breathe his first name under my breath. He can't die. He can't.

Doubt creeps in, but I can't let it get any further. It wants me to drown, to admit defeat and to curl into a ball on the floor. I've let it win before and it cost more than I ever want to admit.

Gatlin can't wait for me to fall apart and put myself back together. I convinced him to do this. I told him this was the best option and I won't let it be a lie.

Faster and faster, the data on the screens flitter by. Zoning out, I funnel down the rabbit hole, shoveling through a mountain of data to find the chink in the armor. There must be something...

Lower and lower, I drive, ending and shirking off unnecessary programs to extend more of myself. My breathing deepens and my heart rate slows as my eyes squeeze shut. I don't need to see, don't need to smell or taste or touch. What I need lies in thousands of lines of code, strung together on teal and blue lights, firing at a million characters a second.

Like a vortex, the complex sequence of flashing numbers and letters leads me further into the abyss. With no other option, I follow. His genetic code is an unruly, dark sea, churning and quaking as it crashes against my tech and coding.

His genetic code fights for supremacy, refusing to coexist with the new intruder. Gathering everything I have, I mentally wade out to meet it. For years, I spent learning as much as I could about the human body, but genetics is still an unexplored frontier.

If Zhyv or her men were here, I'd have an easier chance to correct this issue. She's the product of a mad geneticist father who ventured to make her better than anyone else on the planet. But she isn't here and I don't know Gatlin's situation or have his permission to tell anyone else what we've found.

In the center of a massive whirlpool containing genetic data, I fall. Like quicksand, I sink into the information like a stone. Iris is right behind me, watching me break down the data with a bird's eye view.

She's quicker than me, more advanced, and at every update, she becomes more friend than computer. Her fingers stretch out and catch me, barely keeping my head from going down. There, in the fray, the answer finds me.

It's smaller than I was expecting, but the red lines draw my attention. Buried deep in Gatlin's genetic code is a weakness. Reaching out, I quarantine it from the rest of his mind and body.

It flips and flops in its new habitat like beta fish in a fish tank. I'll have to study it more, but whatever they built into his genetic code requires a shit ton of energy. Honestly, this discovery explains how the man eats enough for a dozen grown men.