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“And if they did give us a straight answer, they’d be killed,” I added glumly.
“Exactly.”
“Whatdoyou know about the other compounds? I’ve only been to three.”
“Well, as you may or may not know, there aren’t reallystatesanymore. What was once the fifty states of the United States of America has now been divided up into eighteen sectors. Where we are—or were—was Sector Nine or the North Sector. Each sector has a compound. And most compounds have a breeding program. They breed Kappas, Sigmas, Thetas, Lambdas, Verians—like Rix, Zane and me—who they then raise to be super soldiers because we can withstand the serum—and then, of course, purebloods, or Amlins, who can’t withstand the serum and can only take blood purely and recreationally for a temporary high.”
I nodded. “I know about Amlins and Verians, yes.”
“Right, so Verians can take serum from any source and experience their enhancements, but when Amlins do it, their high is the same no matter who their source was. Whether they take serum or an organic dose of pure blood, the high is the same. It doesn’t last, and each fix just increases their addiction.”
“When you run out of serum, then—”
“We’ll be no more than Amlins, essentially.”
“Does that bother you?” They seemed to rely a lot on their enhancements, so how would they behave when they no longer had them? How much of who each of them was, was because of the serum, and how much was just their personality? Would I recognize them afterward?
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” he said, though tension seemed to sing through every syllable as he spoke. “I’m nervous. Scared. Curious. Maybe even a little excited to meet therealme, since I’ve been on a serum since before I can remember otherwise.” As much as he was talking about his feelings and his fears, I could tell that this didn’t come easy to Jorik. So I took this new grain of information about him and stowed it away in a safe place inside my heart, then decided I needed to change the subject.
“How many super soldiers are at each compound?”
The tension in his body began to disappear, and I smiled inwardly. “Roughly twenty or thirty, but those are ‘grunts,’ and they don’t get full doses of serum. They’re usually kept as domestic or compound security. That was probably who was sent in the chopper and who you and Zane killed. There might have been a couple of super soldiers, too. But mostly just grunts, since they’re easier to spare. However, each compound has four elite super soldiers who are their special operative team and get the highest, most concentrated dose of the serum.”
“That was you guys?”
“Yep. Though they never added a fourth after we lost Chance. Most elite teams are raised together from childhood to create that unbreakable bond.” He squeezed my fingers. “I’m glad they didn’t give us a fourth.” His exhale made his body slump deeper into the bubbles. “Since Kappas are rare, there is usually only one or two Hellcats per compound. Child trainee Hellcats don’t count. Did you ever train one or train under another Hellcat?”
I shook my head. “No. At least I don’t remember training under anyone. And Moord said because I didn’t display thepsychogene, he didn’t want me trying to teach empathy to any younger Hellcats or … Hellkittens?”
Jorik’s chuckle was deep and raspy, and it made my body tremble in a delicious and warm kind of way.
“Rumor is there is a special Hellcat compound somewhere in the desert of New Mexico where like fifty of them train and live. It’s where the assassins stay until they’re sent on assignment or assigned to a new compound to be the ‘resident Hellcat.’ But nobody has ever been able to confirm that theory for me.”
I shuddered. “Fifty psychopaths all living together. Can you imagine?”
“Nope. I’m sure murder happens more often than we think. Somebody snores too loudly or doesn’t pass the salt fast enough andwham!Off with her head. And nobody bats an eye because they’re all batshit crazy. They just step over the body until a Theta slave comes and mops up the blood.”
I hung my head, shook it and closed my eyes. “What kind of world do we live in, Jorik?”
“A fucked-up one.”
“And does anybody live … anormallife?” I laughed at how ridiculous that sounded. I didn’t even know whatnormalwas. Did normal even exist?
“Yeah,” he replied, his tone holding an upward inflection at the end. “Amlins and Verians—with money and power. Amlins in servitude … sort of. Each sector has a governing body. A man—of course, Verian most likely—since our population is still fifteen men for every woman. And he answers to the president, but he presides over his sector how he sees fit. He’s rich and powerful, has an Amlin or maybe Theta wife. Maybe even a Sigma if he’s lucky. They might have children that are his blood—borne, of course, by a Lambda. And the power will trickle down from there. Amlin, Sigmas and Thetas are the working class—and by working class, I mean, they work. Doctors, scientists, farmers, mechanics, they all work.”
“But how do theylearnhow to do these things? I mean, we had tutors, right?”
“There are schools. Kids go to school. And then they’re factioned off at twelve based on an aptitude test and sent to a school that trains them specifically for the role they were assigned. Science, agriculture, engineering, servitude, textile, military, and a few others I can’t remember. From there, they specialize further when they reach eighteen.”
“So evenfree, they’re not really free?” Even though I phrased it like a question, it wasn’t really a question. Because we both knew the answer. Nobody but the most powerful was truly free. And even then, nobody but the most powerful andmalewas actually free.
“Nobody is free,” he mused. “Nobody but people like Moord, Unte and President Weyser.”
“Moord and Unte are dead.”
“So now it’s just Weyser, his family, and all other sector leaders that we need to take out. Abolish this … assigned life. I shouldn’t have to fight just because my body accepted the serum. And if my body hadn’t … what would I have become? What would I have been assigned to be? Would I have liked it? Or would I want to slit my wrists every fucking day because I hated my job, because a computer algorithm said I would be decent at it; it became my life.”
Sadness and a deflating sense of hopelessness settled like a boulder in my chest. “I don’t know.”
