The Arrival by CM Doporto Page B

with that.” I nodded,
reassuring him that I was on board with the plan. “Do I inject myself daily?” I
gently shook the vials between my fingers. “How much?”
    He paused for a moment and took the
bottles from my grasp. “I do not know, because I did not have time to test it.”
    “What?” I reminded myself why I had to
act.
    Mays are leaders. We never show
weakness.
    Surely he didn’t expect me to be the
guinea pig.
    My stomach seized and twisted. “Then how
can I be sure that I won’t have really bad side effects, or if I have taken
enough for it to work?”
    “You will not know until you take one
dose.”  He rubbed his chin.  “I recommend you start with one cc.”
    “Then what?”
    Tears welled in his somber stare, and in
that instant I was truly afraid. Since the nine months I had been at Nidus, I had
never seen an Eslite so emotional. Other than Dimas’ occasional angry outbursts,
the other Eslites kept a cool and collective demeanor.
    “You will need to wait twenty-four hours,
and then use the tracking device to see if it can trace you. Hopefully you will
not bleed out.”
    “What?” I flinched. “I could bleed out?”
    “There is a small possibility. If you
do, you will need to seek medical attention immediately.”  Dr. Ridus compressed
his lips. “Otherwise, you could die.”
    “I could die?”  My jaw dropped. Now I
understood why he thought I might not want to go through with it.
    “I feel confident it is safe to start
with a low dosage. However, I am not sure if it will be enough to kill all the
nanobots.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index
finger.
    The plan I thought was crazy now sounded
completely insane. Dr. Ridus had no idea if the serum would even work. Hell, it
might even kill me. Was it really worth the risk? If Kate heard all of that,
she would back out--no question about it. I had to think about what to tell
her.
    “So, let me guess. I’ll have to wait
twelve hours before I give myself another dose, which doubles my risk of
bleeding out as well.”
    He resituated his glasses on his nose.
“That is correct.”
    “Let’s say it doesn’t kill me, I use the
tracker, and it picks up my signal. It will send a message to the mainframe,
and Cyrus will be informed of the missing device and know that I have it. Dimas
would order I return immediately.” I reviewed the data transmission process from
the tracking devices to the computer system. They knew which devices sent what
signals.
    If only there was a way to disable the
identification signal from the equipment.
     “That is a risk you will have to take.”
Dr. Ridus gave me a sympathetic smile.
    The real question he failed to ask: Was
I willing to take it?
    I looked at Gaby. She chewed on her
fingernail and then stopped when she caught my gaze. She lifted her chin and
said, “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
    “What about Kate? How much should she
take?”
    “The same thing applies to her,” Dr.
Ridus said with a solemn expression.
    I nodded and closed my eyes momentarily,
while I measured the risk carefully. I could die taking the serum. I could die
from complications from the genetic modification. I could die at the hands of
Dimas. I could die from a hovercraft crash. I could even die on the way home in
a car wreck. Either way, I could die.
    But what if I didn’t die? What if I
lived, saved every girl at Nidus, and spared every girl that would eventually
have to face testing? What if I actually saved the human race?
    Freedom.
    Was it worth dying for?
    Hell, yeah.
    Pushing all negative thoughts aside, I
held out my hand. “Give me the vials.”
    θ

Chapter
8
     
    “You ready, Kate?” I asked, as I entered
her room.
    “Hey.”  She heaved a sigh, and her
shoulders relaxed. “I started to get worried.” She pushed me into the bathroom.
“So, what happened?”
    “No time, Kate.”  Despite my urge to
give a quick play-by-play of the scenes from the Tech