Emergence (The Primogenitor Chronicles Book 1) (32 page)

“Why doesn’t it?”

Jays sat on a second stool then reached over to rummage around in a drawer and pulled out the pressure cuff he needed. “Ian told me that they had tried that at the start, but more often than not the fledge died. His theory is that when you are in the coma, your body is completely focused on the work it’s doing. It uses up all stored energy and water, but the distraction of trying to take in extra is more than your bodies can handle.”

He adjusted the cuff and took Chris’s blood pressure. “That’s also why we don’t tell the fledglings about the coma. Historically, the knowledge has caused worry that has detrimentally interfered. And worrying about whether or not you will wake up has prevented some from eating and drinking enough. So it’s just best all around if it isn’t common knowledge.”

He popped a thermometer into Chris’s mouth, and while waiting, he got the blood draw equipment ready. After the beep, he recorded the reading in the Hunter’s chart, then quickly took his weekly blood samples. “Ok, Chris, you know the drill. Anything to report?”

“Nope. Sight, hearing, smell are the same as always.”

“Good. Go get on the scale.” He scribbled on the chart, then recorded the weight Chris called over to him. “I went over your phys-ex chart and you seem to have lost some points in agility.”

Chris sat back down and looked at his paper work with a frown.

“Sorry, dude. You know what that means.”

“Come on, Jays…”

“No exceptions. Even Nick has had to deal with this one, and he gets out more than the rest of you for free flights.”

“You know what’s going to happen?” he growled.

Jays tried to suppress the grin, but he could tell he wasn’t completely successful from the look on Chris’s face. “I’m sure you’re up for putting anyone in their place who teases you. Now, over to the wall. We need to see how much muscle we’re looking at before I can see what sort of strengthening exercises you need.”

With poor grace, Chris stomped over to the other side of the Hub and placed his hands on the wall, extending his wings. Starting at the rotator joint between his shoulder blades, Jays worked over the muscles in the right wing. He garnered a grunt of pain with how deep he probed, then he started following the rope muscle that spiraled down the pinion strut, testing for weak sections. The rope muscle was probably the most important muscle in the wing anatomy. It twisted the length of the front leading strut and enabled the person to extend and retract their wings and to trim them during flight. It was closely tied to the heavy flight muscle attached to the rotator joint, which allowed for the lifting of their body weight.

After examining those two major muscle groups, he moved on to test the flexibility of the secondary struts and fan muscles, then the anchor strut. If the anchor strut attachment had weakened, then that could certainly be a cause of loss of agility as the rest of his flight muscles tried to compensate for a weak foundation.

He wrote down his observations then repeated the procedure on Chris’s left wing.

“All right, lower them and rest for a few minutes.”

Christoff furled his wings and turned around. “Well?”

Jays finished writing before looking up into Chris’s irritated face. “You haven’t been doing all of your exercises, have you?”

“Damn it, Jays. You know how much I’ve been covering for Nick.”

“And how’s that an excuse to not spend ten to fifteen minutes doing them? Your anchor is weak and you’re already starting to develop strain spots in the rope muscle.”

“I don’t feel it when I fly.”

“You might not feel it yet, but it’s showing in your numbers. None of you get enough flight time to allow you to skimp on the exercises, Chris, and you know it.”

Irritated at his behavior, Jays stalked over to the cabinet that held the resistance bands for the strength gauge. Yanking the size he needed off the hook, he returned to Chris. He pressed the button to turn on the machine built into the wall, then lowered the cables and threaded them through the appropriate height hook for Chris’s size.

With a sigh, Chris turned his back to the wall and extended his wings again before reaching up to take the bar that hung bolted to the ceiling in his hands.

After clipping the bands to the cables, he snugged the slip loop at the other end of the resistance band onto the digit at the base of Chris’s anchor struts, then he typed on the keypad on the wall next to the power button. “Ok, feet off the floor. I want a steady extended pull.”

He watched the numbers scroll by and made sure they were feeding over to the computer properly. It didn’t take long before Jays could detect a tremor of overexertion from the weakened muscle set. “Relax.”

Chris set his feet back to the floor and let his wings slump. Isolating the muscle like that really let the Hunter know how much he’d fucked up. He sighed and closed his eyes.

“Right. Let’s check the rest of the struts. I won’t be able to tell you how bad it is until tomorrow after I’ve gone over the numbers. But I expect you’re up for more than just exercises. You’ll likely have to spend time with the weights.”

“Damn it.”

Jays tsked at him and moved the band up to the next digit so they could repeat the test. The doors to the Hub opened and he glanced over.

“It’s confirmed, Jays. I know what they are.” Ian hustled inside and set his paper work down on the desk before joining them at the wall. He looked Christoff up and down, then turned to meet Jays’s eyes and raised an eyebrow. “So how much are we looking at? I saw his phys-ex report too.”

“Feet up, Chris.” And Jays turned the machine on again. Chris pulled using only his wing muscles and held the resistance. Sweat started to bead his forehead. “Enough that he’s going to need to use the weights it looks like. Ok, Chris, relax.”

He moved up to the next digit and started again. Ian stepped over to look at the numbers scrolling by. “Yep. Boyo, you need to pay more attention. Especially now. I need everyone in top shape.”

“What do you mean?” Chris asked, panting.

“Release,” Jays said.

He continued to test each of Chris’s struts while Ian paced over to the desk and leaned against it, looking at them. “Jessica’s arrival has set certain things into motion. I highly doubt that Nick’s decision to stop taking his pills isn’t connected somehow. He wouldn’t have any clue that he was being influenced, either.”

“So I take it you just finished running the tests we took on Nick and Kieran the other day?” Jays asked.

“Yes. And I’m really glad we didn’t chance sending them out to the lab. All three have active VNO organs at the base of their sinuses processing pheromones. What I don’t know is if all the others have them too, since that hasn’t ever been something we’ve tested previously. The VNO are either atrophied or nonexistent in humans. Anyway, the pertinent piece of information is that Nick is now producing reproductive hormones in his own right and Kieran has traces that I almost missed.”

“What?” Chris dropped to the floor in the middle of an active phase, his wings sagging.

Jays slammed the stop button. “Chris.”

“Sorry, Jays,” he mumbled and reached up to take the bar again.

Ian grinned at him, and he shook his head at the old man, then started the test phase once more. Obviously, he’d really enjoyed dropping that bombshell. He tossed over his shoulder, “So we
are
looking at a new caste?”

“Yes. At least for Nick and Jessica. I don’t think Kieran is, but we’ll have to start checking the others to see. But I’m almost positive that we are looking at a new caste of Breeders. And it really makes sense; look at how everyone treats Nick. Yes, he’s Alpha, but he’s different. Not like the other Alphas that I’ve known. And that’s how rank
and
caste work together.”

Jays finished testing Chris’s last wing strut then closed down the machine. Chris stretched and gave his abused wings a vigorous flap before folding them at rest on his back. After he put the equipment away, he joined the other two at the desks in the island.

“Nick has always been different, you know that, Chris,” Ian said. “That’s why I hid his change records to protect him. This helps explain so much from that time. What do you recall? How old were you? I don’t remember. Eleven? Twelve?”

“Thirteen, actually.” Chris hooked a stool with his foot and pulled it out to sit on.

Jays sank into a chair next to Ian and propped his feet up on the desk. “That was before the Hub here was active, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Actually it’s because of Nick that we now have this set up. Nick’s reactions to the change were much like Jessica’s have been; completely out of control, aggressive, irrational, and extreme. They almost seem to be opposite from a normal fledglings change, but in reality, they are just at the far end of the spectrum. Their reactions take longer to down them and hit harder. A perfect example is how Jessica didn’t pass out at the normal time for a second stage fledge, yet the amnesia wiped her out. So it’s a safe bet that you can gauge either of their current responses to something in that light. Think about how an average fledge would react and swing it to one end of the spectrum or the other.”

“Wait.” Chris held up his hand. “Gauge
either
of their responses? You were comparing their isolation experiences, not…”

He trailed off when Ian shook his head. Jays watched the surprise and disbelief in the Hunter’s reaction to the shoe Ian was dropping.

“Your assumption that the drugs just suppressed an active talent that Nick had already developed was incorrect. The pills are actually an arresting inhibitor. They halt the last stage of development after the coma. Stage four. That won’t affect the Hunters much, there’s very little mental development left for them. But anyone who’s a Seer or a Caster will have a significant impact when they are taken off of the drugs. So Nick is actually completing his change now. Not just coming off the drugs and learning how to cope with hidden abilities. Those abilities are, in reality, developing now.”

“Why?” Chris whispered.

“Why else? How would you be controlled if you could do these fantastical things with your mind? They couldn’t allow it.”

“You did this…to us…”

Ian gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You think I had a choice, Christoff?”

“Obviously you do. Since you’re choosing to tell me this now. After all these years?”

“The situation has changed. Now you need to know.”

Jays dropped his feet to the floor with a thud. “Worry about it later, Chris. Let’s deal with the situation first. What about the rest, Ian? You’re sure about them being Breeders?”

“As sure as I can be until I get a sperm sample and see if she still produces viable eggs; but why else have the active pheromones? The hope this brings leaves me giddy. I’ve lived in despair for years about the death of our species. The change is loose, and so far there’s been no hope of stopping it. And I doubt the current live Valkyries would go for the extreme measures some would wish to go to in order to eradicate it. So given enough time, the number of people growing wings is going to overtake the grounded population. It’s a death sentence if there’s no hope of renewal.”

“So what does all this mean?” Chris asked.

Jays pushed his chair back and swiveled to run a quick check over the room monitors while he listened to Ian.

“When Nick started the second stage, none of us thought much about it. Ten years of experience helping fledglings through the metamorphosis had made it pretty routine. But only hours into his change had us scrambling. A rabid feral wolf would have been easier to care for. The change completely overwhelmed him. He injured a number of people, flat out refused to cooperate or care for himself. Unhappily, I had to order Xanthar repeatedly. Just to get him to eat or sleep. And the test results I got back were almost more surreal than his behavior. There were moments when I was sure we’d lose him. I couldn’t accept that.”

Jays glanced away from the monitors to Ian’s faraway look then to Christoff’s grim face before turning back to the readings he needed to record.

Behind him, Ian cleared his throat then continued. “But one incident that happened, that has always bugged me, just got explained, I believe. Nick had had a particularly bad day. He’d been shot with Xanthar multiple times, and I was afraid of the drug reaction he might have if I tranked him. This is why we now have the Hub and cameras. He went through the observation window of his room. Even with the tempering, he still managed to slash himself up. The oddity about the situation was that he didn’t try and escape. He’d made several escape attempts previously, but this time he damaged the exit door of the observation room so we couldn’t get in right away. The screams through the door sounded like a wild animal was tearing the people apart. We finally got the door open. It took six darts to drop him, but the worst had been done. Blood dripped down the wall like condensation in several spots. Of the four people in there, two were severely injured, one dead, and the other…

“Well, he had attacked Jillian in a completely different way. I remember watching him crouched over her, like he wanted to defend her from us, as the darts finally took him down. The horror in his eyes because of what his instincts had pushed him to do…. Because of the Xanthar, he hadn’t had any control over it.”