“Riley!” I scream as I lunge at her, pinning her to the metal door. Grabbing her shoulder, I pull her against me and tuck her head to my chest. I wrap her in my arms, shielding her with my body as the shots ring out.
When the first bullet penetrates me, I close my eyes and concentrate on the sensation as time slows to a crawl. I feel the tip pierce my skin at my lower back, and I shift slightly. I force the muscle to flex as the bullet enters, tightening around the projectile and holding it fast. As I capture the first bullet with my body, the second enters my shoulder.
I raise my shoulder just enough for the bullet to go over Riley and into the wall. The next one hits, and I catch it with my thigh.
Again and again, I take every hit, manipulating my body to hold the bullets and prevent them from going all the way through and hitting the woman I hold close to me. She’s screaming my name over and over as I’m hit, and my body quivers with the impact, but I can’t listen to her. It’s taking everything I have just to keep her from harm.
I can’t even tell how long they continue to shoot.
The shots stop. I have no idea if they’re all reloading at once or if they figure we must be dead by now, but I embrace the opportunity. I pull my arm back and slam my hand into the handle of the metal door. The latch breaks with the impact, and I shove Riley through the opening.
“Go!” I scream at her.
Riley turns and stumbles forward. As I start to move, the pain in my body doubles me over, but my implants immediately begin to compensate. The pain is muted, my thoughts focused on making the damaged muscles in my body act.
Running footsteps behind us start to get closer. There are three in front—the specimen team. Riley has no chance of outrunning them. Given my injuries, I’m not sure I can, either.
I have to. I have to save Riley.
“Keep going!” I yell as I shove her head of me.
I’m starting to slow down as I become increasingly aware of the damage to my body. The implants can’t seem to compensate for the pain any longer. Seventeen bullets have hit, four going through me and the rest captured inside. I fight through the pain in my legs to force myself forward.
I can see the exit just ahead of us. Once through it, I can get her into the forest and find cover long enough to determine the best strategy to get out of Mills territory and back to the farm. The trees are only a few feet away from the house, and the bog directly behind that.
If I bar the door behind us, stay and keep it closed, Riley has a chance to get away.
I know she isn’t going to like it. I can already hear her protests in my imagination, but I won’t allow for any argument. She has to run, with or without me. It may be the only way to save her.
I have to save Riley.
I’m right behind her. I can feel the heat of her back on my chest, and I remember how she curled up against me last night after I made love to her. She’d sighed softly as she drifted into sleep, and I’d just lain there, watching her.
I can’t let that be our last night together.
I reach my arm over her shoulder, ready to hit the door with full force and get through it as quickly as possible, but just before we reach it, the door flies open. There are a dozen Mills soldiers and three specimens I don’t know but recognize immediately as my kind.
Grabbing Riley by the waist, I start to turn, but the specimens and soldiers from behind us close in. My mind flies through every available avenue—calculating nearly four hundred possible courses of action in a half-second—and finds no means of escape.
Two of the specimens grab hold of my arms, but I don’t release Riley. The other specimen grabs a hold of her shoulders, pulling as hard as I am to keep control of her. Riley’s mouth opens in a silent scream. I’m crushing her diaphragm with my grip. If I keep my hold on her, she’ll be torn apart.
I loosen my grip, allowing her to be ripped from my arms.
“No!” Riley screams. She thrashes in the specimen’s arms, kicking and yelling. “Let me go! Leave him alone!”
“Riley!” I scream and fight against the arms that hold me, but I can’t break the grip they have on me. I’m forced to my knees as one of the specimens grabs my head and holds it to my left shoulder. The implanted chip is pried roughly from my neck, and I feel blood dripping from the wound.
I can only struggle fruitlessly as I stare at Riley. She keeps fighting against her captor, but she has no chance. As she’s dragged backward, Dr. Helen McCall walks through the door with a self-satisfied grin.
“You bitch! Riley screams in the other doctor’s face and kicks out at her, but Dr. McCall only tilts her head and smiles.
“You knew it would end this way,” Dr. McCall says. “You never had a chance.”
“You can’t do this!” Riley screams at her. “You fucking bitch! Leave him alone! Leave him alone!”
“You’re a traitor,” Dr. McCall tells her. “Lucky for you, we have a solution that will benefit everyone, and you’ll be able to return to your work.”
“No!” I scream as I struggle. “I made her go with me! I abducted her and forced her to go! It was all me!”
“No one believes that.” Dr. McCall tilts her head and raises her eyebrow at me.
“I will never work for Mills again!” Riley screams at her. “You can’t force me to do that! I’d die first!”
Dr. McCall laughs.
“You will do exactly as you will be programmed to do.” She steps up to Riley as the specimen holds her arms to her sides. She leans close and sneers. “This time, we’re going to do things my way. Take her away!”
She gestures toward the door, and the specimen hauls Riley through it. I scream her name again and again as she is dragged from my sight. I can hear the whirring of helicopter blades outside. The sound increases as the machine takes off into the sky, Riley held captive aboard the craft.
She’s gone.
I can’t breathe right. I can barely bring myself to move at all. She’s gone, and the very idea of existing without her is moot. It’s pointless and without meaning. I look at my hands as they’re bound in front of me and try to figure out what I should have done with them to keep this from happening.
I failed. I failed. I failed.
I continue to stare at the door as a gurney is brought next to me and I’m lifted into the air and deposited in the center of it. Hands hold me down as straps circle my body, restraining me on the rolling table. I look around me at the faces of those who have defeated me, and I don’t even want to exact revenge. All the tactical information in my head tells me there is no chance. No matter what I do to them now, she’ll still be gone.
“Put him down.” Dr. McCall sneers every word as she glares down at me, gloating.
I feel a sharp stabbing sensation on the right side of my head as a hundred metal probes are shoved into the skin of my neck and behind my right ear. I try to pull away from the pain, but someone’s strapped my head in place.
I can’t let this happen.
“Riley!” I scream again. I twist my arm, hear the tear of muscle under my skin, but manage to free myself from the restraint. I grab at Dr. McCall, catching her by the lapels of her lab coat, and turn the fabric in my fingers until she’s gasping and choking for air.
Someone is pounding my chest while someone else hits my face over and over again. Dr. McCall’s face turns red then blue. There’s a knee on my shoulder, and a hand pushes against the device they put on my neck and head right before a pulse of electricity runs through me.
My hand shakes. I lose my grip, and hear Dr. McCall gasp before she drops to her knees, clawing at her throat. Another jolt goes through me, and everything in my head starts to merge together.
Inside myself, I begin to fall.
It’s a long drop. Images of my life fly past me. I see my parents sitting in the sun on our front porch—Dad is smiling, and Mom is holding my baby sister. I see my sister skipping home from school as I tend the dry fields. I see Riley’s face when I first wake up in the
lab. I see her beautiful smile as I lay her down on a soft mattress and press my lips to hers…
My eyes fill with a bright white light and then nothing but darkness.
Epilogue
I wake in a stark, white room.
“Caucasian male, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters, weighing eighty-nine kilograms…”
I turn my head toward the sound of the voice, but I can’t see much from where I am. I shift my shoulders, trying to sit up, but I’m strapped to the bed. I can’t move my arms or my legs. My heart begins to pound in my chest as adrenaline surges through my system.
I fight against the restraints, but they seem to hold me down everywhere—arms, legs, shoulders, and torso. I can’t get enough leverage against any one strap to free myself, and panic rises.
This is wrong. This is dangerous. Move. Get out. Escape.
“Relax.” A woman appears beside me, brushing her fingers over the inside of my arm.
Calm covers me like the waters of a warm bath, soaking into my skin from the point where she’s touched me. I drop my shoulders back to the mattress as I look into her soft green-brown eyes. My heart slows, and my breathing returns to normal.
“Where am I?” I ask. I try to look around the room from my vantage point on my back, but all I can see are tables and carts full of medical equipment. “I don’t remember how I got here.”
“It’s all right,” she says softly. “You’re safe.”
I twist my hand around so it’s palm up, trying to grasp something to hold onto, but there’s nothing there until I feel her hand in mine. I thread my fingers through hers and hold on tightly.
“Not too hard now.” Her quiet voice calms me, and I loosen my grip.
I look her over. She’s tall, athletically built, and dressed in a white lab coat with a medical insignia on the left breast. Her light brown hair is coiled around the back of her head in a simple bun, though there are a few stray wisps around her ears and neck. There’s a tiny white scar behind her right ear, just barely visible under her hair.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“That scar on your head.”
“Oh, that.” She touches the spot with her fingertips. “It’s just a childhood injury. I fell out of a tree and conked my head pretty hard. I don’t remember it very clearly.”
I think about her being young, hurt, and afraid. An overwhelming desire to wrap her up in my arms and keep her safe permeates my skin, my muscles, my very being. I stare at her as she takes my vital signs and taps them into a tablet computer.
Her skin looks soft, and I want to raise my hand to stroke the side of her face, but I can’t move. I want to kiss the scar on her head and promise her no more harm will ever come to her.
“I’m sorry you were hurt.”
“It’s all right,” she says, chuckling softly. “Like I said, I barely remember it.”
“I don’t remember anything,” I tell her. “Nothing at all. I don’t know who I am.”
“It’s all right. That’s normal.”
“It is?” I don’t understand how that can possibly be normal under any circumstances. “Normal for what?”
“Considering what you’ve been through.”
“Was I in an accident?” A brief flash in my brain brings forth a series of loud bangs and the scent of something burning. “Was I attacked?”
“No.” She shakes her head and runs her fingers over my arm again. “Nothing like that.”
“What, then?”
“You’re a volunteer for a special project.” She gives me a huge, breathtaking smile that goes straight to my dick. “There are only a few of you who were able to withstand the process, but you’re doing just fine. I’m really happy with your results.”
The throbbing of my cock is distracting, and it takes me a second to comprehend her words.
“Results?”
“I’m sorry,” she says with a shake of her head. “Let me start a little slower.”
She pulls a rolling chair to the side of the bed, sits and leans close to me.
“We live in dangerous times,” she says. “A war that has been fought for decades isn’t going well for our side. You’re a soldier in that war. You volunteered to be a part of a project—a project that has made you faster and stronger than anyone else.”
I consider her words. Something about them fits into my head; round peg, round hole.
“What’s my name?” I ask.
“You are designated number seventy-two of eighty-nine. I thought I’d call you Sten for short. Seven, two, eight, nine—S-T-E-N. Sten. Get it?”
I nod, but I can’t say that I understand it. It feels oddly familiar to me though I have no idea why that would be. Like the idea of being a soldier, the name just seems to fit.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“My name is Doctor Riley Grace,” the beautiful woman says. “You can call me Riley.”
“Riley.” I like her name. I can practically feel the syllables vibrating through my skin. I like how it sounds in my ear and the way it feels on my tongue.
I’d like to feel her on my tongue.
“Relax now,” Riley says. “I’m going to give you an injection.”
I focus on her face as she prepares a hypodermic needle and presses it to the inside of my arm. As she presses down on the plunger, I feel a surge radiating from the injection site through the rest of my body like a low-level electrical pulse.
My body stiffens at the sensation, and Riley discards the needle and strokes the inside of my left arm until I calm. She keeps her hand against my skin, rubbing gently, but the calm in my body doesn’t reflect the turmoil in my head.
I have no memories of my past, yet everything around me feels familiar. The lab, the equipment around me—even the sharp sting as the needle punctures my skin seems like a reoccurring condition. It’s not a comforting feeling but familiar all the same.
This isn’t right. None of this is right.
There’s something important in the back of my head. It’s a tiny, annoying prick of sensation that I can’t quite comprehend. It’s definitely there, like an itch I can’t reach, but I can’t retrieve it.
I need to remember something.
Something important.
But I don’t know what it is.
~The End~
Author’s Notes
It’s a brand new year, and this is my first novel for 2016. I started writing specimen early last year, but I wasn’t sure exactly where it was going. I put it off to the side while I worked on other projects and finally came back to it. I’m really excited about this one, and I hope you all enjoyed it!
My team had a lot to say about whether or not this story ends with a Happily Ever After. I say it’s subjective. Galen and Riley are together. They are, and will always be, in love. They exist in a constant and potentially never-ending cycle of rediscovering one another. In that way, their love is always fresh and new.
I know the questions that are on your mind—is this it? Does Galen ever regain his memories permanently? Have they entered an endless loop for remembering and forgetting? Do they ever truly escape their situation? That’s for you to decide! Will there be more of Galen and Riley? My standard answer for this type of question is “maybe,” and that’s all I have for you now.
I have a lot planned for this year, and I hope you all will join me for it!
With love and devotion to all my readers,
Shay Savage
More Books by Shay Savage
Surviving the Storm Series:
Surviving Raine
Bastian’s Storm
Evan Arden Series:
Otherwise Alone
Otherwise Occupied
Uncockblockable (a Nick Wolfe story)
Otherwise Unharmed
Isolated
Irrevocable
Stand Alone Works:
Transcendence
Offside
Worth
&n
bsp; Alarm
Commodity
Kandace and the Beast
Novella Collection:
Savaged
Caged Trilogy:
Takedown Teague
Trapped
Released
About the Author
Shay Savage lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her family and a variety of household pets. She is an accomplished public speaker and holds the rank of Distinguished Toastmaster from Toastmasters International. When not writing, she enjoys spending her weekends off-roading in her bright yellow jeep, watching science fiction movies, masquerading as a zombie, and participating as a HUGE Star Wars fan and member of the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers. When the geek fun runs out, she also loves soccer in any and all forms - especially the Columbus Crew, Arsenal, and Bayern Munich. Savage holds a degree in psychology, and she brings a lot of that knowledge into the characters within her stories.
Website - http://www.shaysavage.com/
Webstore - http://www.shaysavage.com/#!merchandise/cw7q
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShaySavage7289
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5160667.Shay_Savage
Twitter - @savage7289
Blog - http://shaysavage.blogspot.com/
Shay Savage, Specimen
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