Escape (Alliance Book 1) Read Free Page A

running a background check on Charlie, and her doorman, and the occasional flower delivery boy when she had to send flowers to the parents of the kids she couldn't save. That was when you could still send flowers. And when there were doormen, she thought wryly.
    But Charlie was still here, and he checked out alright. A wife of 23 years who died in a car crash, two boys fighting in one god awful place or another. Two lost boys he thinks about all the time but can't touch. Two boys whose faces are frozen in the only not-dusty frame behind the beer kegs. A smiling red-headed chap of about 20 and a somber looking younger kid, standing on some beach next to a cold looking sea or ocean, staring directly into the camera. For some reason she'd always wanted to ask Charlie who took the photo, but never quite got the courage to. Somehow she always knew that it wasn't Charlie. That even in that photograph they were already lost to him.
    She looked down at her doodles. Symmetrical, yet sloppy. She crumpled the napkin and flicked it into the ashtray, watching a small spray of ashes or dust rise quickly and fall back, slowly. She turned away. They needed to find a way of testing the compound on human subjects now. They would need to sell it to the board, of course, but they still had plenty of money for the meds, and the research part of it seemed to be almost over. She'd be willing as a subject, but that would mean her actually having sex, and she had nobody to do it with. They would need a sample of at least a hundred healthy, appropriately aged females, preferably between 20-34, of different races, in case there is an immunity that's genetically based, all willing to go on record about every intimate experience, preferably with multiple partners, or they would have to test the health of every man in the sample as well, which likely won't be feasible.
    Charlie was staring at her, intently. Asking without asking what was bothering her. In an uncharacteristic and likely Gin and Tonic fueled looseness of tongue, she looked him dead in the face and blurted out, "I need to find about one hundred healthy, youngish females willing to have lots of sex on the record for my research," and she broke down laughing. It was the most unlike her thing she'd ever said in this place, or most places outside of her lab, and it was strangely liberating. She was collecting her things when Charlie, rather gravely, responded, "Prostitutes?"
    That's it. Prostitutes. They do the sex thing for money every day. For very little money, nowadays. And birth control is rarely an option, as it costs far too much for the girls and the men don't particularly care if they impregnate a prostitute... This could indeed be the most perfect drink she's ever had at this pub.
    She ran back to the clinic and then to her lab only to find it deserted and the lights off. She looked at her phone: 3:21 a.m. Everyone was asleep, at home, and would remain so until at least 8:00 in the morning, when Jason would come in bearing a thermos of coffee and a pair of nutro-bars. He was always worried she'd forget to eat to the point of starving herself to death, so at the very least, she was guaranteed this bit of tasteless but highly nutritious breakfast, all 940 calories of it.
    She pulled out her cot and folded her winter coat under her head for a pillow. She needed a blanket. She's always needed a blanket, or anything really to pull over her body to be able to sleep, even in the summer. It wasn't a warmth thing, it was a comfort thing, this needing to feel the weight of something covering her. The pillow she could do without, so she unfurled her coat over herself and curled up, arms over her head, and flicked the light switch off. Tomorrow, she would task Jason with finding the human test subjects. Anything that happens after that she didn't yet want to think about.
    For all these years, all she wanted was to find a way of making pregnancy be a choice that required a physician's intervention,