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BLURB:
Michelle was born into the Institute’s eugenics program,
where doctors breed people like livestock. One powerful man decides which
children grow up, and which disappear. Culls are dumped in the slum outside
Institute walls, and those kids never come back. Michelle has survived every
purge, and she’s about to win a luxurious life as a breeder. When her brother
and her boyfriend are both mysteriously culled, despite their high scores, she
goes over the wall to find them. Alone in the ghetto, she’s in trouble until
handsome, streetwise Dillon stakes a claim to her. She’s mortified because the
Enhanced see Norms as little more than animals. But the doctor is using the
missing boys in a twisted experiment, and she needs Dillon’s help to stop him.
Michelle must rescue the boys, but a plague is spreading, the doctor is after
her, and Dillon isn’t thrilled to help her find her lost boyfriend.
BIO:
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Courtney Farrell was once a molecular biologist, but her
habit of daydreaming destroyed far too many experiments. As it turned out,
writing down the movies behind her eyes was a lot more fun than lab work.
Courtney is the author of fourteen nonfiction books for young people, mostly on
social and environmental topics. She lives with her family on a Colorado ranch
where they support a barn full of freeloading animals, including a fat draft
horse and a bunch of crazy chickens. Enhanced
is her first novel.
ONLINE LINKS:
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Amazon
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B & N
Excerpt/Other:
Enhanced
Chapter 1
Chapter
1: Michelle
Noncompliance
The door slammed open and a team of white-coated
technicians filed grimly into the classroom. Michelle Atherton automatically relaxed
her face into the expressionless mask Enhanced offspring used to greet any bad
news, but under her desk, her fingers gripped each other hard enough to hurt.
The techs lined up against the wall, arms folded and jaws set in identical hard
lines. They stared over her head, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
Doctor Williams came in last, rolling a gurney outfitted with sturdy nylon
straps. He parked it behind the last row of chairs, and teenagers twisted in
their seats to stare. Pressure rose in Michelle’s throat like a scream, but she
didn’t dare make a sound.
Williams dismissed Professor Cole with a perfunctory
twitch of his jowly chin. In agonizingly slow motion, the old teacher set the
stack of standardized tests down on her desk and walked stiffly from the room.
Williams closed the door after her. The click of the latch made Michelle
flinch.
“Seth Atherton,”
Doctor Williams said.
Blood rushed from Michelle’s head.
Michelle’s
seventeen-year-old brother stood up. “Sir?”
“You have been selected for a…procedure.”
Williams motioned Seth to the gurney. “Come with us.”
“What procedure?”
Seth’s voice sounded calm and polite, as always, but everyone knew what he was
thinking. People selected for procedures didn’t always come back.
Williams didn’t
answer–not that anyone expected him to. At the doctor’s gesture, a couple of
male technicians stepped up and locked eyes with the rangy dark-haired boy. The
bigger one, a swarthy young man with thighs like tree trunks, pointed
Michelle’s brother toward the gurney. Seth stood his ground.
He turned to Doctor Williams. “I’ll cooperate, sir. You
don’t need the stretcher, I can walk.”
Technicians drifted from the wall like wraiths, slowly
surrounding him. Michelle’s head felt like it floated a little way above her
body, as if somehow it wasn’t quite connected. Objects in the room had bright
edges, and the coats of the technicians gleamed in brilliant, painful white.
Her brother’s strong hand gripped her shoulder, but she didn’t remember getting
out of her chair. He pulled her close and leaned down to whisper.
“Michelle.” Seth’s eyes were so dilated that they almost
looked black. Narrow rings of indigo surrounded the reflective pools of
darkness. “Don’t do this. You have a chance to grow up here, become a breeder.
I…I just can’t watch you walk out the gate alone.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, and slowly nodded.
Seth inclined his head in that unconsciously noble way of his, and the
technicians fell back, making room. His fingers gripped Michelle’s arm. Pain dimly
penetrated her nightmare, so she let her brother walk her a couple of steps and
press her back down in her chair.
“Stay here,
Michelle. I’ll be fine.”
Michelle blinked hard at the tears that threatened to
shame them both. “Sure. You’ll…be fine.”
Seth nodded once and turned away. He strode to the
gurney, climbed aboard and stretched out on his back. With sharp metallic
clicks, technicians ratcheted down the straps.
They rolled him away.
The teens sat for a moment in stunned silence before the
whispering began. “I can’t believe they’re culling him!” Sylvia blurted.
“That’s not how it’s done,” Jeanette said disdainfully.
“They didn’t line us up at the gate, and besides, with his scores, that’s not
going to happen.”
“Maybe they don’t
like his attitude,” said Seth’s best friend Brian. “The way he plays the
system.”
Michelle glanced sharply at the big blond-haired senior.
“You mean the way you both—”
The door opened again and the technicians came back in
with a second wheeled stretcher.
Carissa’s face blanched as the technicians marched
toward her. “It’s me, I knew it.”
The tawny-haired girl stumbled out of her chair and
squeezed behind Brian’s broad back, like that could save her. He murmured to
her softly and reached up to cover her hand with his.
“Brian Halstead,” the swarthy tech said, flexing his
thick shoulders in an unspoken challenge. Carissa’s breath caught audibly in
her throat.
Brian stood up slowly, with the oiled grace of a
predator. “Yes, sir.”
He emphasized the word a little and the tech’s eyes
narrowed. Nobody called technicians sir. A
little smirk played along the corners of Brian’s mouth. He took a step or two
toward the gurney, but hesitated by Michelle’s chair until she looked up.
“For Seth,” Brian
whispered, giving her a wicked little smile.
Michelle sat up straight and scanned the white-coats.
Doctor Williams had gone, leaving a bunch of low ranking techs to deal with
Brian alone. Big mistake. What’s he going
to do?
As Brian sauntered down the aisle, people in the back of
the classroom scooted out of their chairs and clustered in front by Professor
Cole’s desk. That should have alerted the technicians, but it didn’t.
“Clearly, there’s a reason that they’re only
technicians,” Jeanette Morley said, right out loud, and her girlfriends
giggled.
“Get on the stretcher,” the burly technician growled at
Brian.
Brian grinned. “Thanks, but I’m not interested in
participating.”
“It’s not optional.”
“That’s not the
way I see it.” Brian cocked his head and waited until the tech made the mistake
of grabbing his arm.
“I turned eighteen last fall,” Brian said, and the guy
let go fast. It was too late.
With both hands, Brian lifted the stretcher off its
wheels and slammed its edge into the man’s stomach. The swarthy one went down,
along with another white-coat with the bad luck to be standing next to him.
Techs swarmed the big blond-haired teenager, trying to overcome him by sheer
numbers. Michelle cheered along with the rest of the class when Brian made a
hole in the drywall with some guy’s head, but a petite female nurse snuck up
behind him with a syringe.
“Look out, behind you!” screamed Carissa.
Brian slumped horribly to the floor, and four
white-coated men lifted his body onto the stretcher. They rolled him away while
Michelle wrapped her arms around herself and shook. After the last technician
filed out, Doctor Williams stuck his head in, surveyed the damaged wall with a
slightly sick expression, and then closed the door like a dog owner making sure
his pets didn’t get out.
Jeanette laughed until her face turned pink. “Did you
see how Brian set that up? The Conclave can’t touch him for that!”
“What!” Michelle snapped.
“Don’t you get anything, Michelle?” Jeanette rolled her
eyes. “Brian’s eighteen. Technically that makes him an adult, whether he’s
finished high school or not. With the
scores he gets, he outranks every technician at the Institute. He doesn’t have
to follow their orders.”
“So when he wakes
up from whatever sick experiment they’re doing on him, they can’t punish him
any worse. Sure, that’s just hysterical, Jeanette. I’m glad you enjoyed it so
much.” Michelle abruptly fell silent when the door opened once again.
This time, when they came, they came for her.
***
Michelle trembled on the exam table in the Genetics
Clinic. A puncture wound in her leg slowly dripped blood onto the polished
floor, but she ignored it. Technicians
were testing the biopsied muscle segment, and Norms existed to clean up the
mess. A child sobbed softly on the other side of the wall.
Don’t
go. Doctor Salomon could walk in any second, Michelle told herself,
crumpling her disposable hospital shift in sweaty hands. But he
won’t, another part of her mind whispered, the buried part that knew
exactly what Salomon was doing in the room next door. He’s not finished with her yet. Michelle fidgeted on the
paper-covered bench, trying to repress the thought. She smoothed away the
telltale wrinkles in the horrible white paper poncho, but they’d be able to
tell. They could always tell.
Michelle tucked her chin and wrapped her arms
across her flat stomach, as though she could hide under her veil of long dark
hair. The antiseptic scent of the clinic always twisted her guts into a knot.
Suddenly she pushed off the table, landing barefoot on the freezing cold tiles.
Crimson droplets of blood marked her passage toward the door, but the bleeding
quickly stopped. In another hour the wound would be completely healed. She
hesitated, calculating the odds. Can I go
find Seth and get back before Salomon does? Not likely. But if I don’t, I’ll go crazy.
Michelle eyed the closed door, considering escape.
But escape was only for the losers who got culled. Brian claimed that would be
a relief, but he tried as hard as anyone to avoid it. No one knew what happened
to the culls after they were dumped in the slum. They probably live out there like kings, ruling over the Norms. Even a
cull could outcompete them.
In a savage motion Michelle tore off her paper
shift and let the fragments drift to the floor. Glaring surgical light
reflected off her sleek muscles, golden skin, and the flawless features of her
face. She snatched up her clothes as fast as she could. A child’s shrill scream paralyzed her with one leg in her pants.
Doctor Salomon’s voice rumbled through the wall,
taking that quietly insistent tone he used with little girls. “Be quiet,
Jennifer, or I’ll bring one of your sisters in here instead. Is that what you
want?”
Michelle took a ragged gasp as everything she’d
tried so hard to forget flooded to the surface. She yanked on her clothes and
skidded across the floor in her socks. The door had been locked from outside.
She rattled the doorknob frantically, but no one came. The child next door got
louder, and something in there crashed to the floor. The little girl’s
hysterical pleading shifted into a high-pitched scream. A man bellowed,
followed by the unmistakable sound of someone being slapped hard with an open
hand.
“Help, help!” Michelle pounded on the door and
twisted the doorknob so hard that the metal itself sheared and broke off in her
hand.
She half expected to hear nurses’ running feet, but
no one came. Without thinking, she kicked the door open, bolted into the hall
and slammed a shoulder into the closed door of the next room. It unexpectedly
flew open, and Michelle tripped over an overturned chair just inside. She
crashed to the floor and whipped her head around, but the doctor was already
gone. A red-haired girl about nine years old peered over the edge of the exam
table. A sore pink handprint stood up across the child’s face. Blood speckled
the front of her little paper poncho.
Michelle scrambled to her feet, feeling stupid. She
reached gently for the child, who flinched away. “Jennie? Sara? Which one are you? Um, sorry,”
Michelle trailed off, embarrassed. Everyone else seemed to be able to tell the
triplets apart.
“I’m Jennie.”
“Easy,
Jennie. I won’t hurt you. You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not my
blood,” the little redhead said, her blue eyes flashing defiantly. “I bit him.”
Michelle couldn’t help laughing, but she stifled
the sound behind her hands. Around here, anyone could be listening. “Good. He
had it coming, I’m sure.”
The child slid off the table, clutching her paper
shift tightly to her chest with both tiny fists. “He told me he had to check and
see if I had cancer, you know, inside.”
“Oh,
that’s--” Michelle cut herself off before
blurting, “just what he used to tell me.”
Instead she said, “That’s not true. The Enhanced can’t get cancer, sweetie.
That flaw got bred out generations ago.”
Jennie bit her lip, trying not to cry. “He lied.”
Michelle squatted down to get on eye level with the
little girl. “Yeah, he did. So tell your mom right away.”
“They showed her the gate when I was a baby.” An
angry tear escaped down Jennie’s cheek, but she flushed and quickly wiped it
away. Michelle politely pretended not to notice.
The little redhead crept in to whisper. “You
shouldn’t try to help me. You know what he’ll do.”
Michelle went cold, imagining the consequences. “I
know, but I heard you scream, and…”
Jennie surprised her by giving her a hug. “Don’t be
stupid, Michelle. It’s bad here, but it’s worse Outside.”
Michelle walked down the hall alone, feeling like a
prisoner about to face the firing squad. A couple of young male technicians
chatted outside the surgical suite. They’d know she had no business in there,
and with her genetically enhanced IQ, getting lost wasn’t an excuse. She smiled
a little, trying not to look guilty as her heart pounded. Their eyes roamed
over her body, but they stepped aside to let her pass. Michelle was an
Atherton, after all, the daughter of not only one, but two members of the
Conclave. That made her royalty here. At least until my first citation for
noncompliance.
Michelle glanced over her shoulder at the men,
pretending to check them out. They winked and leered, and laughed when she
blushed. She bent her head over her papers as though double-checking a room
number and pushed through the double doors. She held her breath, expecting them
to stop her. They didn’t. Michelle
slowed her stride at the receptionist’s desk, hoping Seth’s mysterious
procedure would be listed on the computer there. A young female receptionist
sat behind the clear plastic counter. The brunette’s short legs and pudgy body
gave her away as an Augment, a Norm enhanced only enough to qualify her for a
job. Augments instinctively obeyed orders from Enhanced adults, but not from
the kids. Am I old enough? Will she tell
me?
Salomon’s petulant voice came from an office
opposite the receptionist’s desk, making Michelle forget all about the little
brunette. “You’re worthless, Williams! I can’t leave you alone for a minute.
That’s why you’re still a technician, so stop asking.”
The door opened and Michelle ducked around a
corner, but caved in to the temptation to peek. Doctor Salomon emerged, trailed
by Doctor Williams, the eternal technician. The unfortunate man took shallow
breaths, sucking in his tubby stomach, but it still made him look like a Norm.
The small white-haired director poked a bandaged
finger at Williams’ face. “All you had
to do was remain in the room, but apparently that was too complicated for you.
Those damages are coming out of your paycheck. Now I’m late for surgery, and you’re
assisting.”
“Thank you for the opportunity, sir,” the balding
technician said. His eyes remained downcast, but a note of hope crept into his
voice.
Salomon’s overpowering cologne drifted around the
corner and stung Michelle’s throat. It smelled like pain. She pushed off the
wall and hurried away. Ahead, a line of Enhanced offspring waited for Augment
security guards to inspect their documents. She abruptly changed direction and
rushed down another corridor, fighting down panic. Sweat began to soak through
her blouse, and her breath came in rapid gasps. Orderlies scooted out of her
way, and one of them flicked his wrist, activating his implanted cell chip. Is he calling security? Michelle fought
against the wave of irrational terror, but had no hope. She dodged a couple of
white-uniformed nurses and gave in to the impulse to run.
Anxiety disorders sometimes manifested in kids
selected for extremely high IQs, and doctors doggedly rooted out the flaw. Most
of the other carriers had already been selected for procedures. Speaking their
names was forbidden, so it felt safer to forget them. Michelle brought their
faces to mind in a desperate bid for self-control. The little brown-haired girl
who used to cry on the high ropes course–that one never made it past fifth
grade. The freckle-faced seventh-grade boy who got eliminated when he refused a
two-on-one sparring match in karate class. The images of the lost slowed her
headlong rush, but not quickly enough.
A group of students crowded the hall around the corner.
Michelle careened sideways, slammed a hand loudly against the wall, and plowed
right into Jeanette Morley, of all people. Beauty wasn't the goal at the
Institute, but Jeanette sure acted like it was. The team that designed her
pulled out all the stops, giving her a slender, sculpted body, large breasts,
and blonde hair that cascaded down her back. Looks weren’t supposed to count
here, but they did, especially when it came to influencing people.
The blonde shoved Michelle away and then started
ripping her a new spleen. “Yeah, instead of arriving on time, go ahead and run
us all over, you cull. God, Michelle, you’re so…Normal. No wonder you have no friends.”
“I’m her
friend,” Carissa said softly, stepping between Jeanette and Michelle with a
visible effort.
“Thanks, Carissa,” Michelle told the mousy girl,
trying to be kind. “I’m your friend too.”
“Low-ranks
and recruits.” Jeanette gave Carissa a critical once-over and rolled her eyes.
“Like they count. I guess, if that’s the best you can do.”
Jeanette’s younger brother Todd wove through the
crowd, slipping easily between the muscular boys. On him, the genes that gave
Jeanette her delicate beauty just looked scrawny. “Hey, Michelle. Worried you’d
be late?”
“Um, yeah.” Michelle peeled a sweaty curl off her
forehead and looked back down the hall. No one followed, and she felt like an
idiot for losing control.
Todd took her by the elbow and guided her to the
wall. His touch calmed her pounding heart. “This test isn’t for freshmen,” he
murmured, almost inaudibly, but she heard him through her bones. “What are you
doing here?”
She didn’t answer. His eyes searched hers as he
lightly lifted the truth from her mind. “Oh. Living dangerously.”
“Get out of my head, witch!” Michelle snapped, way
too loud, but Todd only laughed in that wheezing nerdy way of his.
He put his mouth to her ear and whispered. “They’re
in outpatient surgery, room seven.”
“Thanks! I’ve got to go, I’m not supposed to…”
Michelle faltered and fell silent.
“Obviously,” Todd smirked. “Get going before the
wrong people notice.” He shot a fast glance at his sister, who clustered with
her followers.
Michelle turned away and stepped on someone’s foot.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and then saw who she’d crunched. A green-uniformed
Norm hurriedly pulled his laundry cart out of her way. Sniggers broke out among
the teens and Michelle blushed. One didn’t speak to Norms, except to give
instructions. Apologizing to them was unheard of. They were little more than
animals, and they wouldn’t understand.
“My fault,
Miss,” the small black-haired Norm mumbled, eyes respectfully downcast. A
muscle on the young man’s jaw clenched and released, and he cast a glance of
veiled hatred toward the smirking crowd of kids. Michelle wouldn’t have thought
a Norm would know when he was being laughed at, but this one obviously did. A
flush of anger rose to her cheeks, but her glare didn’t stop her classmates’
giggles. Suddenly she hated them too.
“It wasn’t your fault!” Michelle blurted, startling
the pimple-faced boy into meeting her eyes for a second. “I ran into you.”
The entire hallway fell silent as the Normal
teenager flushed under the scrutiny of dozens of impossibly beautiful Enhanced.
Michelle shrugged apologetically, and the worker surprised her with a wry grin.
Mentally kicking herself for attracting attention, she slipped around a corner
and walked away.
***
One advantage of breaking rules when no one else
did was that authorities never expected it. In the outpatient surgery wing,
nurses and orderlies bustled everywhere, but no one noticed one girl standing
against the wall. Michelle peeked through the tiny window in the door of room
seven. Her brother sat rigidly on an exam table. Seth’s handsome face remained
impassive, but he kept running a hand through his hair, making it stand on end.
He stopped when Salomon walked in. Williams followed, carrying a tray shrouded
under a blue surgical cloth. Instead of asking, the chubby technician just put
a hand on Seth’s chest and shoved him down on the table. Two thick nylon straps
pinned the boy on his back. Salomon chose a gleaming silver scalpel from his
tray.
Seth averted his eyes from the scalpel and spotted
his sister standing in the doorway. A flicker of fear crossed his face, quickly
masked. The doctor bent over the boy’s arm and made a quick incision without
bothering to numb it first. Seth’s night-blue eyes glazed with pain, but he
didn’t even twitch when the doctor pulled the edges of the incision wide and
used a couple of stainless-steel clamps to hold it open. Michelle couldn’t look
at the blood dripping down her brother’s arm, and focused on his dark eyes
instead. They looked strange to her, too old for his young face.
When Salomon turned away to open an incubator, Seth
mouthed something at her. It took Michelle a moment to make out her brother’s
words. “Go! Before you get one too!”
“One
what?” she mouthed back, just as Salomon returned to
Seth’s side. The petite gray-haired man now wore a surgical mask, and he
cradled something carefully in his gloved hands. He glanced up and Michelle
recoiled just in time, jerking back around the corner. That did it. A
suspicious middle-aged nurse strode toward her, elbowing aside some low-ranking
aids and a Normal janitor. Clutching her fake documents to her chest, Michelle
fled.
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