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Chapter Two
Olivia
Two days down, 728 to go. I look around this rickety shop, everything blanketed in a fifty-year-old coating of dust. My grandparents used to watch the show that was filmed here. I remember stories of everyone gathering around the TV every Sunday night to watch America’s favorite Old West family perform good deeds and help other people out of jams.
The world has changed a lot since then.
Like the show I was on.Fashion Frenemies.
The name said it all. As a budding fashion designer, I earned my spot on the show and was doing well, having won several challenges. One challenge, my last, changed everything.
Merrick and I were paired together, which was fine with me. Out of all the contestants, I got along best with him—or so I thought. When all was said and done and it was time to judge our collaboration, he took all the credit for what the judges loved and blamed me for the mistakes.
During his confessional, he accused me of trying to steal an idea from another team. After I got booted from the show and watched the episode, I must admit, he was very believable.
That was terrible, but what made things even worse was when #OliviaSucks, #OliviaCheats, #OhNoOlivia, and #WeJustDon’tLikeYouOlivia trended, I couldn’t go to the grocery store without people verbally assaulting me. I quit looking at my social media, but that didn’t stop people from finding my email address and bombarding me with hate mail.
When my sister mentioned the ad for this job, it sounded perfect. All I had to do was sign a foot-tall stack of nondisclosure agreements and I’d be whisked away to a safe location for two years.
“Think of it as a time to decompress, reinvent yourself, and make enough money to bankroll your own design house,” my sister had happily suggested.
The people in charge were tightlipped about the project. All I knew when I arrived was that it was run by the military, I would be prohibited from any communication with the outside world for the two-year term of the contract, I’d be perfectly safe, and I would leave the project with a nice sum of money in my pocket.
It seemed like the answer to my prayers. Especially the no-communication-with-the-outside-world part.
It seemed great, that is, until we arrived at this remote outpost, gathered in the spacious wooden Town Hall, signed the aforementioned stack of NDAs, and were introduced to the… males.
When I saw the menagerie of animal-men, I was so terrified I practically peed my pants. If it hadn’t been too late, I would have turned around and gotten back on the bus that brought us here. But that ship had sailed. I’d signed away the next two years of my life.
They want the males to have skills, to be able to have a job they like. That’s where we women come in. We’re giving them training and experience to help them decide what might fulfill them.
The Colonel in charge tasked me with designing this space to make an upscale retail store. Once the existence of the splicers is announced, they expect people from all over the world to arrive, gawk at the hybrids, and spend their money.
I can’t quite wrap my head around why a male who has elephant or naga DNA might want to sell clothes in a fashion store, but it’s not my place to ask.
My job is to keep my head down, not get eaten by one of these guys—why do they all have terrifying fangs—and live through the next 728 days.
It’s my hope that by the time the world finds out about the hybrids, it will have forgotten about #LyingCheatingStealingOlivia and moved on to vilify other people. Sadly, from what it sounds like, the hate might all be directed at the males I’m here to interact with.
Because it’s a ghost town out there—literally—movement out on the wooden sidewalk catches my eye through the enormous plate glass window.
Dear God, although I knew they assigned me to mentor the tiger-guy, it still terrifies me to know we’ll be working together within the confines of this shop.
I’ve tried, honestly I have. I try not to think of these guys as monsters or mutants or even what they call themselves—splicers. It’s not their fault they were designed in test tubes and trained to be soldiers.
Not even soldiers. I heard a few of the military guys talking on their way from our facility to their barracks. I was catching a breath of air but couldn’t help overhearing. These males were raised to do one thing. Kill.
Even though the military reassures us we’re safe, I have to wonder if that’s true. The first night they were introduced to us, their bestial natures were prominently on display. I get it. It was the first time they saw or even smelled a female, much less twenty of us.
I shouldn’t worry too much. There are cameras in all four corners of the ceiling. We won’t be alone in here. Originally, the soldiers were going to stay in the store with us at all times. Perhaps it was false bravado, but I asked them not to. I think it will make memorenervous, not less.
I try not to stare, but I watch my mentee out of the corner of my eye. The first thing I notice, I mean how can I ignore them, are those fangs. Three inches if they’re an inch. Terrifying. And why are they so prominent?Myteeth aren’t showing right now. Is this some kind of dominance display? Does hewantme to fear him?
And what’s with the way he’s walking? Is this something peculiar to him because he’s so full of animal DNA he doesn’t quite walk like a human? Wait a minute, is he… dancing?
He stops outside my door and tucks his Hawaiian shirt into his khaki shorts. I’m still not sure why we’re all forced to wear that, like a uniform. Someone said it was to make the males look less threatening. Fat chance. The juxtaposition of this Old West ghost town and the Hawaiian shirts just makes things more surreal, as if naga-guys, and wolf-guys, and tiger-guys weren’t weird enough.
He opens the door, which rings the old-fashioned bell, and enters gyrating his hips and belting out the words to what he must be listening to through his earbuds, “Don’t it feel good!”
