Omega by Lizzy Ford Page B

I
replied.
    He waited for the door to close behind the
other guards before motioning for his assistant to open one of the
doors leading into the interior. We walked into the building, and I
peered into the offices we passed.
    They were empty and appeared to have been
for quite some time. The cameras in the hallways all pointed at the
floor or the wall behind them rather than in the direction they
should. Dosy’s claim about this place being a set up for …
something began to make more sense.
    “ Name,” the man in the
suit said to me crisply.
    “ Holly.”
    “ A pleasure, Holly. We’re
going to do some paperwork and then send you in for a medical exam.
We’ve had quite a few frauds lately, so I’m sure you’ll understand
the precautions we must take. There’s a great deal of wealth
involved.”
    “ Wealth?” I
echoed.
    He stepped into an office and motioned me to
sit in front of a desk. “The Oracle of Delphi’s fortune has been
growing for ten thousand years. It’s the number one reason for
fraud. People have been after her money for years.”
    “ So she’s rich.” I
frowned, not understanding the divide between what the priests told
me and this. “And the downside …”
    “ Downside?” He gave me an
odd look. “What downside is there to being one of the wealthiest
people on the planet, handed power on a platter and having the
honor of communicating directly with the gods daily?”
    “ I guess there is none.”
Something wasn’t right about this. If what he said was true, why
did Niko say every potential Oracle who came here did so
unwillingly? The priests had only said the Oracle was tortured.
They never mentioned wealth or anything else. I knew they favored
the Old Ways and found myself wishing once more they’d taken the
time to tell me something more than they had. Like, the full truth.
Did they fear I’d be swayed to ignore the Old Ways by
money?
    The guard took off my handcuffs and the
assistant scanned my arm. “Holly Rodriquez,” he said, reading the
screen. “According to this, you’re thirty eight and wanted for
murder in two states.”
    All four of them stared at me.
    “ About that …” I cleared
my throat.
    Note to self: tell Niko
never to use Marty again. Then again, this
was probably karma after Niko stole money from his criminal
friends.
    “ It hasn’t been
reprogrammed,” the assistant continued. “Which means …”
    “ You either killed Holly
Rodriquez or bought a biotag on the black market,” Spectacles
finished.
    “ I didn’t kill anyone,” I
said quickly.
    “ There are no traces of
her old biotag being removed. How did you come to have no biotag?”
the assistant asked.
    “ I’m not even sure what a
– ow!” I snapped and yanked my arm back. A tiny, sharp prick of
pain throbbed on my forearm in the spot where he had removed the
chip.
    “ DNA sample,” Spectacles
directed the medic. “There’s more than one way to uncover your
identity.”
    “ I’d like to know that,
too,” I told him.
    They gave me the same look Niko did pretty
much every time I spoke.
    I was escorted down the
corridor, past more empty offices, to a small medical lab, past a
hallway with Prisoners 0-24 listed on the wall, and motioned to a chair in
the doctor’s office. Realizing I had lost track of my count, I
started at fifty and watched the doctor prep a needle. He wrapped
rubber around my arm and then tapped the bluish vein inside my
elbow.
    “ You’re very calm,” he
said with a glance at me.
    “ I’ve had my blood drawn
before,” I replied.
    “ No, I mean with all
this.” He motioned to the guard at the door and the assistant of
Spectacles, who was typing into his iPad.
    The insertion of the needle stung, and I
watched the plastic vial fill with blood.
    “ I guess I don’t
understand what the big deal is,” I replied truthfully.
    His eyes lingered on my features, as if he
didn’t believe me. It was hard for me to be deceptive about
something I knew nothing