After an inspection at the security gate to make sure he didn’t have any electronic devices, Bowen’s car dropped him off at the Institute’s central building, the Bagley Administration Center, which stood on top of a grassy mound in the middle of the campus. Standing on the sidewalk, Bowen breathed in the smell. Pine trees. Clean, mountain air. The Appalachians rose on all sides of the Institute. Just like Bowen liked things. Isolated.
“Park,” he told the car before shutting the door, and the electric engine faintly hummed as the self-driver rolled away. He stood watching the car as it disappeared around the other side of the Bagley Center. It was a brand new car. Last month, his old car had nearly totaled itself and his wife’s Cadillac because of a software bug that had made the car back repeatedly into the wrong garage space. Kelly had been furious. She thought the accident had been Bowen’s fault. But her mood had improved when the government replaced her Caddy with a BMW.
Even though he didn’t like some of the things that they had to do, Bowen believed in the work of the Institute. Of course, he didn’t try to sell himself any lame excuses about the needs of the many and the needs of the few. He didn’t entertain any illusions. The Institute trampled on the rights and lives of the Anomalies. But it had to be that way. It wasn’t as if they had ADHD or a spectrum disorder. Or even something like schizophrenia. Even if they never actively threatened others, the Anomalies were a danger to everyone. Rights weren’t absolute. Two of the Anomalies—Celina and Francis—had destroyed lives before they came to the Institute. When you could do what they could do... well, it just couldn’t be helped, could it?
Celina, especially, had used her ability to do some nasty things. When she was seventeen, she had made a teenage boy named Nathan run away with her. She took Nathan to an abandoned house in the woods and forced him to have sex with her repeatedly. When Bowen saw the video of her confession and listened to her describe in detail what she had made Nathan do with her, it had made his cock stiffen.
God, Bowen thought with longing. What it must’ve been like to be the boy...
But Celina could only have mental control over Nathan while she was awake, so she only managed to hold onto him for three days before she couldn’t put off sleep any longer. The boy escaped finally. But Celina had done irreparable damage to his mind, and DHS had to euthanize him.
Celina had been sexually abused by one of her stepfathers for most of her life, so nobody blamed her for her behavior. Not really. But that didn’t mean she could be allowed to just go free. And despite what her stepfather had done to her, he didn’t think Celina was a mere victim. It made Bowen’s skin tingle and his groin stir to think of just how in control Celina was. That was what made her so dangerous.
When he had first seen Celina, she’d been sedated and restrained to a gurney. She’d worn only a hospital gown, and Bowen had been struck by how lovely her legs were—long and well muscled, but still soft and shapely enough to be feminine. She had short hair that accentuated the beautiful features of her face: full lips that would never need lipstick, a Mediterranean nose, and a smooth jawline. Bowen had wanted to touch her face. To brush his fingers across her smooth lips. To slide his hand up her leg to the inner thigh. He might have done it if Dr. Simmons hadn’t joined him at just the right time.
Unlike Celina, Francis had never done anything dramatic. Or outright wrong, exactly. But when the Institute had located him, his mother had been on the brink of psychosis. She had lived for years with a son who could read her every thought. And since she had deliberately violated the Susan Wade Act, she lived in constant fear of being found out by DHR agents. In the end, she had been happy to hand Francis over to the Institute for treatment and research. Happy not to go to jail. Happy to sign a legal agreement stating that her son was dead. Happy to sign an agreement never to discuss her dead son’s abnormality. Happy to receive monthly payments of $13,876 (tax free) for her loss. Happy to have a hysterectomy so she couldn’t break the law again. All things considered, it was a nice reward for someone who had committed a felony.
Theresa, though. She wasn’t like the other two. She’d had a stable family life with parents who had managed somehow to cope with her abnormality. But when she was just thirteen, they had a car accident during a rain storm. Theresa had survived it without a scratch, but her parents were both killed. Paramedics found the girl weeping over their bodies, repeating the same words over and over.
“I couldn’t save them.”
Soon they discovered that the girl shouldn’t exist. Her parents had no registered children. In fact, they had been rejected fifteen years earlier for a child application because of their low income. So the paramedics contacted the Department of Human Reproduction. Several channels of communication later, Bowen received a call about a teenage girl in an “abnormal mental state” who had been “born outside of the legal norm.” Now Theresa was almost eighteen and lived in her own suite of rooms deep under the Constance Hamilton Center for Genetic Psychiatric Research. On the other side of the Institute from Francis and Celina.
Theresa had grown into an attractive young woman, too, but in a different way than Celina. Her big green eyes looked at everyone she met with an unearthly sincerity, and she kept her sandy blonde hair braided to one side, letting it hang down over her shoulder onto her chest. There was an innocence about Theresa that you wanted to protect. Not to say that Bowen wouldn’t screw her if he had the chance, but Theresa wasn’t like Celina. Bowen wanted to make Celina scream in pleasure. But what he wanted from Theresa was to see her lying on her side next to him in the dark, her green eyes wide, her girlish braid curling over the soft flesh of her neck. He wanted her to whisper in his ear, It’s okay. You can have me.
That was why he hadn’t been to personally see Theresa in weeks. With Celina, it didn’t matter that she knew that Bowen wanted her. In an odd way, that seemed to make them more comfortable with each other. But he wouldn’t be able to help feeling shame if Theresa knew the thoughts he had about her. Bowen wasn’t accustomed to feeling shame about anything.
He climbed the stone steps and passed through the double doors into the administration building.
“Good morning, Dr. Bowen,” said the blonde desk assistant.
“Morning, Savannah,” said Bowen, stopping at the reception desk. He rested his arm on the counter in front of the desk and smiled down at the woman. “You look nice today.”
Savannah smiled. “I hope you had a good weekend.”
Bowen exaggerated a sigh. “I tried, but I spent the whole time thinking about being back right here.”
He let that linger for a second, hoping that she’d understand the insinuation. She only looked at him patiently.
“Please let Dr. Simmons know I’m here,” he said finally.
“Sure thing,” Savannah said. Bowen waited for her to look at her computer screen and type something on the keyboard before he glanced down at the soft skin barely visible between the folds of her blouse where the top two buttons were left undone. Savannah dressed more modestly than the other administrative assistants, but to Bowen that made her more attractive. His behavior toward her sometimes bordered on the unprofessional, but he didn’t mind that Savannah always looked right into his eyes when he spoke to her. Or that she smelled like a hint of lavender. Or that when she handed him something, she sometimes let her fingers just barely brush his as she pulled her hand away.