Sometimes he thought about inviting Savannah to his suite, which had the best view of the mountains of any building on campus. But that wouldn’t look right. His rank and connections meant that he was basically immune to Title IX claims—as long as he didn’t do anything completely reprehensible—but it wouldn’t look right for him to sleep with a staff member. Looks were important. So he would have to be satisfied with Morgan.
“Have a good day,” he said, and walked past the desk.
Brushed steel doors slid closed with a sigh, and the elevator descended one floor to the first sub-level. When the doors slid open, he stepped out into Station 1, a brightly lit room with television monitors on one wall and a nurse’s desk that wrapped around the center of the room. He scanned his handprint on the plate on the wall next to the elevator to check in. Three nurses, one for each Anomaly, had been chatting at the desk when he entered, but they stopped their conversation short when the elevator doors opened.
“Morning,” said Carver, the big nurse who was in charge of Francis. “Good weekend?”
“Too long,” said Bowen. He crossed the room toward the monitors to check on the Anomalies. “I spent the whole time irritating my wife and wandering around my house hoping to find a drink I’d stashed somewhere.”
The nurses laughed politely. They always laughed when he said things like that because they were good employees.
Bowen glanced at Francis’s primary monitor. He lay on his bed reading a comic book. Bowen didn’t understand how a grown man could enjoy comics. But then, Francis wasn’t a normal grown man, was he?
“Why can’t they all act like Francis?” asked Bowen to the room at large.
“No kidding,” said a nurse named Victoria.
Bowen turned to another monitor. Celina, who wore nothing except her underwear and a sports bra, was doing decline pushups with her feet on the floor and her hands planted on the rail of her bed. She had been asking for a chin-up bar, and Bowen had told her that she could have one if she behaved. For several weeks she had behaved. But one morning her nurse, Peter, had gone down to take her vitals, and she had made him masturbate just outside the glass wall of her cell while she watched. The monitoring nurse upstairs didn’t realize what was happening at first because Peter’s back was turned toward the hallway camera.
“Why doesn’t she have her clothes on?” said Bowen, not looking away from the monitor.
“Dr. Simmons said that it wasn’t worth fighting with her or putting her to sleep,” said Victoria. “Do you want me to dress her?”
Bowen let his eyes linger on Celina for a moment. He imagined running his fingers through her short hair while she kissed down his chest and past his navel.
“Give her a little while,” Bowen said after a moment.
“Yessir,” said the nurse.
A door across the room from the elevator opened, and Simmons walked through. A tall woman with a severe face and thick, strong limbs, Simmons intimidated with a glance. Today, though, she looked... bothered? Her eyes seemed wearier than usual.
“Rough weekend?” Bowen said.
Simmons crossed the room and glanced into the monitors. “Nothing unusual. Celina tried her damnedest to get some head from Peter. Francis and Theresa had a quiet weekend. I think we might consider giving those two some outside time.”
“We can talk about it,” he said. “Nothing interesting in the EEGs, huh?”
“Nothing at all.”
Bowen sighed. It had been years, and they were still no closer to understanding the source of the Anomalies’ powers than they were in the beginning. They had discovered a lot through experimentation. Celina’s range wasn’t as wide as Francis’s. Thank God. Theresa seemed only able to read minds and not to control a person’s actions or put thoughts into their head. Alcohol, marijuana, and other inhibitors affected their ability to use their abilities. But nothing biological or neurological about these people explained why they could do what they could do. Yes, they knew which sets of genes had to be present—all the artificial uteri in the world would be pointless if they couldn’t at least filter that out—but that discovery had been made long before Bowen’s time, back at the beginning of SRP. But what was it about that particular combination of genes that resulted in telepathy? No one had a damn clue, even now, after all these years. That was another reason he regretted that he was scheduled to die next year. Whoever finally figured out what made the Anomalies tick, it probably wouldn’t be him.
Bowen sighed.
“Suppose it’s time to call a priest?” he said. “An exorcist? A witch doctor?”
Simmons laughed but cut him off with a wave. “We’ve got other things to worry about at the moment. Jones-McMartin and whatshisface are here. They’re over in the gymnasium with their people. They want us to go ahead with the maze experiment. Today.”
“They’re here? Now?” said Bowen, annoyed. Senator Nancy Jones-McMartin had been a pain in his ass for months, and General Tolbert was a pompous, self-important dick from head to toe. Why hadn’t Savannah told him they were here? “I’ve told them that they shouldn’t come here. It’s too dangerous.”
Simmons snorted. “You know how General Walrus thinks.” She screwed up her face and imitated General Tolbert’s gravelly voice. “I’ve fought in three desert conflicts. I lived without food and water for five weeks. I’ve chopped the peckers off of seven warlords and force-fed them those wrinkled sausages! No little girls or weirdo boys are going to make a sissy out of me. I’m the general who’s going to put a noo-cue-ler warhead up Kim Jong Sung’s ass!”
Bowen laughed. Simmons wasn’t attractive. She was too big-boned, too masculine for Bowen’s taste. But he liked working with her just the same. As much as he liked surrounding himself with beautiful women, the combination of Simmons’s unattractiveness with her sense of humor made her easier to work with than a lot of people.
Simmons smiled. “He’d be down in Celina’s cell right now if we’d let him. Girl, show this old soldier what you can do! And none of that sissy shit!”
“And then she’d have him trying his best to give himself a blow job. Too bad his gut would get in the way.”
Simmons laughed at this.
“Anyway, the building isn’t ready,” said Bowen.
Simmons stood up straighter and put on a self-satisfied face. “Actually, it is. They sent a courier the day you left for your long weekend to let us know they wanted to do the test today. I put a rush on the construction. They just finished up this morning.”
Bowen sighed. So much for an easy first day back.
“Why the rush?” said Bowen. “We already know what the test is going to tell us.” At least, they knew what it would tell them about Celina. Bowen wasn’t sure how Francis or Theresa would perform.
Simmons sighed. “It sounds to me like they’re pushing through that Eris idea.”
Bowen’s stomach turned a little. He was all in for studying the Anomalies, trying to find the source of their abilities, looking for ways to apply their telepathy. But the Eris project scared him.