Project Alpha

Chapter 24

My brain was a tangled ball of string. I led Archer down the meandering path of my Meta experience so far, but a trippy butterfly, warring aptitudes and general feeling of angst didn't uncover much.

"I'm pretty sure we were the only ones who saw something in the simulation. Everyone else left as soon as they were done, and no one reacted like you did." Archer swept a hand through his thick hair.

"Thanks for the reminder." I cringed as embarrassment's long fingers tickled my stomach again.

"Hey. I didn't mean it like that." His eyes lit up crystal-blue in a patch of sunlight that leaked through the curtains onto his face. "Besides, you ran through the simulation faster than me. A hundred bucks says I'd have been on the floor as soon as I'd finished the wolf puzzle. Look at me — I'm huge! I would have taken the whole table down with me." Making a gruesome face, he flung his arms out to mimic a clumsy fall.

My lips curled into a smile. "Good point." I felt my shoulders relax a little. It was nice of him to try and make me feel better. "So, do you think this means you're like me? Maybe your aptitudes are sorting each other out and you'll end up in Cognition instead of Kin?"

Kin. Huh. It was kind of neat to notice the school's lingo start falling off my tongue.

Closing his eyes for a second, Archer sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. On the one hand, it'd be nice to have a surprise — I've trained for years to stream Kin. On the other hand, I've trained for years to stream Kin. What a colossal waste of time if it turns out I've been Cognition all along. Plus, my dad will freak. So, there's that."

"Why does your dad care so much about Kinesthesia anyway? I mean, I get it, he wants another soldier in the family, but Cognition's cool, too. What's his deal?" As usual, my mouth worked faster than my brain. Maybe Archer's dad was none of my business. "Sorry — I guess that was a bit nosey of me."

"It's ok. I'm the one who mentioned him." He gave me a half-smile and shifted in his chair. "Do you know why your parents got involved with this place? The original project, I mean."

Grabbing a pillow from my bed, I hugged it close and leaned back against the headboard. "Yeah. My dad was one of the project's founders. Mom lost like seven pregnancies before they joined the program themselves. As I said before, I didn't know about any of this until my symptoms made it impossible to hide. It's an understatement to say I was pissed to throw our old life away and come to Mendel."

"So, knowing what you know now, do you wish they'd told you earlier?" Archer's eyes caught mine and I looked down at my hands.

"I mean, a compromise would have been nice. I felt like they lied to me by keeping things secret, you know? They thought they were giving me a normal childhood, which I guess I can appreciate. I didn't have the pressures you've mentioned, so I suppose I should be thankful. But a little information would have gone a long way." I shrugged. "Not much we can do about it now."

"No, there's not. Funny, huh? We can't change the past, but that doesn't stop us from struggling with it anyway."

Good point. It sounded like he'd thought about this before. Or maybe he'd just had longer to wrestle with our not-so-immaculate conception.

Pushing himself up from the desk chair, Archer walked back over to my shelf and picked up the picture of my parents and me again.

"I get why you were upset they kept secrets from you, Marin. But it sounds like their intentions were good. And you look pretty happy here, for what it's worth."

I watched his powerful shoulders rise softly as he took a slow breath.

"My brother's the reason I'm here." For a minute he looked almost vulnerable, despite his size.