No.
“Do you need somewhere special to live?”
No.
“Do you lay eggs?”
No.
Kaden was relieved because he didn’t want to have to deal with a whole lot of little blue blobs.
“Are you dangerous?” Because of course it was going to tell him if it was. But his finger was touched twice.
“Were the others going to…hurt you?”
Yes.
“Do you want to get out of here?”
Yes.
Back up a step. What the hell am I doing?There was no way this little ball was communicating with him at this level because that meant it had a brain. He decided to do another test and touched his fingers as he counted, “One, two, three, four, five. If I add one and four, what do I get?”
A blue finger touched his little finger.
Wow!Or chance?
“Four divided by two is?”
The correct finger was touched.
Oh God!Not chance.
This was intelligence. Life, albeit not as he knew it. Not a dog, cat, rat or bunny being experimented on, but it was a beingthat could think, a being that could feel fear. And none of those animals could communicate like this.
Decision time. Kaden went through every scenario he could think of. Apart from returning it to the same tank without anyone seeing, every other possibility meant he’d be in a lot of trouble if he was caught. He put the blob back in his pocket, but it didn’t slide from his palm.
“You have to let go,” he whispered and his fingers came free.
How did the thing even understand him?Am I dreaming?
Kaden went back to the lab where the blob had come from. There was no way this little blue ball could know, but he was moving around as if he were distressed. Kaden had to put his hand in his pocket so that it didn’t look as though he had something alive in there.
“Stop moving,” he muttered.
Thankfully, the blob settled down. Kaden stayed away from the tanks for a while and looked into several microscopes. When he did wander back to the line of containers, the blobs in the one from which he’d rescuedhisblob were lined up against the glass, but not moving.Staring at me. Oh hell, they don’t even have eyes. Do they? What are they plotting?
Put him back!No one would know and Kaden would be able to breathe again without his chest hurting. He slipped his hand into his pocket but he couldn’t get hold of whatever it was. It just slithered through his fingers like water. How could it know what he was thinking of doing? Unless he could sense he was near the others.
“What’s so fascinating?” Max asked at his back.
Kaden took his hand from his pocket. “Nothing. What do you do with this material when you’ve finished with it?”
“Incinerate it.”
Confirming what Harris had said. “What if…?”
“What if what?”
