Aiden rolled the back of his head from side to side against the wall.“You can make a joke, but you can’t understand an
exaggeration?”
Haunting Holly flashed another perfect smile and vanished.
The vending machine spit out a tray holding the scrubs, biohazard suit, and sneakers.Reluctantly, Aiden scooped them up and followed the signs to the unit’s locker room.The door slid open automatically, and Aiden’s palms went clammy before stepping through the haze of purple light.In the locker rooms, there was always at least one person in a stage of undress.To the Key, bodies were just that—bodies.
No touching today for a healthy tomorrow.One of the corporation’s favorite phrases.One of their favoritelaws.
There were punishments for touching, swift and just.After all, according to the Key, a touch could spread disease, create another pandemic.Without touching, there should be no desire, no lust, no aching need.Cerberus should have sent those feelings to the grave along with the billions of people the virulent strain had claimed.
The fear of touch and the laws against it for the past fifty years meant that it wasn’t only the Key that regarded bodies as sexless.It was everyone,mosteveryone.And, according to most everyone, all bodies had the same basic needs and, therefore, shared the same locker room.Each MediCenter unit’s locker room was identical.Each had a wall of Key Corp–red lockers withcuff-activatedlocks and automatic doors, squeaky cleanblack-and-white tile floors with benches sprouting like metal hedgerows, twolight-bathstalls bisecting the room, two toilet stalls, and oneold-timeywater-showerstall, although Aiden had never seen one in use.
He shuffled to the closest locker, unlaced and kicked off his boots, and stripped out of histoo-tightchartreuse uniform.He wadded up the pants and top and did a little hop as he tossed them into the nearest refuse receptacle before waving his cuff under the locker’s sensor.It popped open and Aiden stuffed his dirty boots, one on top of the other, into the narrow metal box.
Behind him, the bulbs from the light bath hummed to life.He turned, the hairs on his arms rising as the empty stall illuminated and exhaled cleansing light.A petite,red-hairedwoman had slipped into the stall without a sound.She tilted her chin toward the ceiling.Her waterfall of hair brushed against her naked back, coming alive in the changing light that flowed through each color of the spectrum.
Aiden couldn’t pull his gaze away from the shadows that scooped out homes against her curves as she swayed, or from the light that pooled in the gentle dip in her lowerback.
She gathered her hair, fastened it on top of her head, and turned.
Aiden’s breath knocked against his ribs as he became all too aware of his own bare chest and bare legs, and the thin, white underwear stitching it all together.
She grinned and swiped at the living rainbow spilling down her bare shoulders.“I haven’t seen you before.Are you new to theEnd-of-Life Unit?”
Aiden swallowed.Another fifty years could go by and he’d never get used to theself-consciousnessthat quaked in his stomach.“Um, yeah.”He nodded and tried his best to pretend like this was normal, likehewas normal.“It’s my firstday.”
Light sank into the hollows of her pale collarbones.“I work upstairs in MediCenter marketing, but there’s a problem with our showers.”Another grin.“Which ELU department are you starting in?”
Aiden cleared his throat.“They haven’t assigned meyet.”
Air conditioning threw a cool gust across his bare thighs and he shivered slightly.
She brushed her hands down the slopes of her waist as if each touch would assist the light in cleansing her further.“Oh, you’resupernew.”Her hands crossed over her bare stomach.“Pray you don’t get incineration.That one’s rough,” she said as she slid her hands across the stretch marks running in powerful arcs along her naked hips.“Everything else in the MediCenter is either safe and boring or dangerous and interesting.”
Aiden took a moment before asking, “Which areyou?”
She released her hair and it rained against her bare breasts.“Dangerous and interesting.”
The lights clicked off and she stepped through to the other side of the openstall.
A sudden shock of cold bit at the backs of Aiden’s legs as he dropped onto the bench in front of the lockers and busied himself with stripping thevacuum-sealedplastic from his new uniform.He shook out the folded pants and a small, rectangular card floated to the floor.Aiden picked it up.End-of-LifeUnit—blue scrub setwas printed on one side.He flipped it over:No touching today for a healthy tomorrow.Aiden balled up the words, the warning, in his palm and threw the crumpled card into the open locker.
No rule, regardless of the punishment, could eliminate desire.And Aiden’s desire was a river dammed just beneath his ribs.There were others out there like him, hiding in plain sight, faking emptiness to blend in.If there was only some way he could tell who felt the same...
His lips ticked with a grin as his thoughts wandered to the girl who’d run into the front door and then fled up the stairs.
But there was no use in thinking about her, about the woman in the shower, about desire, about any of it.Those thoughts were difficult to mask and, right now, Aiden needed his disguise firmly inplace.
By the time he finished dressing, thered-hairedwoman was gone.It was for the best.Aiden didn’t need anything else dangerous and interesting in hislife.
IX
Elodie swiped her cuff under the scanner next to theglass-topcontrol panel.The Key’s red logo swirled to life on both the panel and the holographic screen.
To health.To life.To the future.We are theKey.
“Welcome back, Elodie.”
