Regulators, p.13
Regulators, page 13
“Jaycee, come on,” Seb said, clearly impatient as he held the door open.
I stepped through the door rather than ask him if I was going to die from drinking the water. Maybe it hadn’t been intended for drinking, but I didn’t think it had come from that. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have missed that smell if it had been there no matter what sort of state I’d been in.
“That’s a swimming pool.” Seb closed the door behind me once I’d stepped through. “People swim in it.”
“What is . . . swimming?” Garret asked.
I’d heard Seb say the word yesterday, swim, but I hadn’t wanted to bother him. There was and had been so many other things going on and every question asked made me feel like a moron.
“I’ll show you later if you don’t see it where we’re going,” Seb told him.
He began walking away and we all followed after him. I remained behind all the others.
“You can swim?” Paige asked him.
Seb shook his head. “Of course I can.”
“Will you teach us how?” Paige asked.
“Maybe.” He kept shaking his head. “I can’t believe they don’t teach you. We’re taught how.”
“It seemed important to me.”
“It can be.”
Interesting.
Paige slowed her pace to where she was walking between the two boys and then afterward fell into step with me. Shortly after, the two boys slowed their own paces and got behind us. I was only walking for a few steps when I looked over my shoulder. When I saw where their eyes were—at our lower halves—I wrapped my towel around myself and held it there. Paige might’ve had no problem with the looking from everyone, but I was finding I didn’t like it so much. It was different, now that I knew what some of those different parts were for. I was really uncomfortable, in so many ways. I thought this would’ve been bad enough with our uniforms on rather than . . .
Almost nothing. Well, almost nothing and a towel for me.
We walked down a lot of stairs with large rocks rising up on either side of us. At the bottom, there was a very heavy-looking gate. Seb put a hand on a screen and it opened, leading way to another gate. He pulled something from a pocket of the swim trunks—a ring of metal things—and stuck one into a smallish heavy-looking piece of metal on the gate. It opened, he waited for us to walk through, and then he put the metal thing on the other side of the gate, replacing the ring of things in his pocket.
There were just so many things.
I didn’t pay so much attention to how unpleasantly hot my skin felt on my body. The sound was the first thing that had struck me. I’d never heard anything like it. I couldn’t . . .
I couldn’t describe it.
But the water!
It was so blue. It was bluer than the sky above it, with bits of white in parts where the water was moving and crashing. This was like the sunset, I thought. I could just stand and watch it for hours, seeing so many new things in the same thing.
It was only when Paige quietly said, “Come on, Jaycee,” that I realized I’d stopped and the boys had already begun walking off toward it.
I looked around as we carried on about our way, noticing a few people doing random things. A few females just laying around on towels, not doing anything, not even watching the water as far as I could tell. A group of males throwing some sort of object around to each other. There were a few people in the water, just walking around. There were only twenty-two of them in total, all in groups that varied in size or on their own. It all seemed . . .
Accepted.
“Is that what people do?” I whispered to Paige. “Just . . . things?” They were all things that seemed like nothing, but I supposed nothing to one person was something to another. If that wasn’t the case, nothing would be done.
So many things.
She laughed lightly. “Yep.”
After she spoke, I realized I was having difficulty walking in the flip flops. I looked down at the minuscule specks of something white covering my feet and struggled to maintain my composure when I asked, “What is this?”
“Sand.” She laughed again. “It won’t hurt you.” She then took off her flip flops, holding them in her left hand with her towel. “Ugh, I’ve got to get sunscreen on them before they run off. Should’ve done it before leaving, but I don’t think any of us are thinking straight.”
She rushed off ahead of me to where the three of them were standing, putting all their things down on the ground. Sand. They put all their things down on the sand, not the ground. The two boys looked around, noticing the group of males throwing the object. Brent asked a question, but the only word I heard of it was off. Seb nodded and both Brent and Garret removed their shirts, throwing them onto the sand with the towels. Seb’s remained on.
Paige was spraying the sunscreen on Brent’s back by the time I reached them.
“Why is your shirt still on, Seb?” Garret asked. “None of the others are wearing shirts.”
It was true. Not a single male was wearing a shirt, apart from him. I had no idea how any of this was accepted or acceptable.
“Scars draw too much attention,” Seb said. “I’m lucky I can even wear a shirt like this. A lot of us couldn’t.”
That was sad, but . . .
He was doubly lucky. Most couldn’t be seen at all for shirts to be any sort of issue.
Paige grinned. “You could always make up some story about how you just got out of prison.”
I knew what a prison was, at least. It didn’t . . .
It didn’t seem so different from where we’d been, come to think of it. . . .
Seb looked down at her easily and laughed. “I could,” he nodded, “but I’ve only got so many believable cover stories for all of them. I have to make sure they add up. I might change my mind about having it on after the females leave, if they do. Probably not, but possibly.”
“Why?” Garret asked, letting Paige spray his back as well. “Oh, that feels nice, with the sun and all. It’s cold.”
“Because they’re the most likely to look hard enough,” Seb replied.
Interesting.
“Well, I think you look out of place,” Brent said. “You and Jaycee both, with her covering herself up. Nobody else is covering themselves up. I guess being so unclothed is normal.”
“Better to look slightly out of place than stick yourself in a position where you can’t explain something,” Seb told him. “And being so unclothed in front of other people is not normal. It’s only normal in places like this.”
Garret was looking off at the group of females seeming to be doing nothing but laying on towels when he said, “I like places like this.”
“Let me get you, Sebastian,” Paige told him.
“I don’t burn,” he said.
“I don’t care,” she said firmly. “Don’t make me go on about UV rays and all that. I don’t feel like it. I just want to enjoy this. And even if your face doesn’t burn, the rest of you is almost as pale as we are.” She nodded. “You’ll burn.”
He shook his head but extended his arms for her to spray them. “We’re not here for enjoying. We’re here for learning.”
“Yes, but learning can be enjoyable.” Paige moved around him, spraying the sunscreen.
“Just make sure your priorities are straight.”
“Straight as a board.” She said that then laughed a little. “And other things.”
Seb shook his head, but he didn’t say anything more. I really didn’t understand how or why the sunscreen was even necessary. We’d been in the sun yesterday and were fine. The sunglasses? Yes. Not the sunscreen. I would’ve asked, wanted to ask, but even if Paige knew what it felt like to be called stupid . . .
I didn’t want her to think I was.
When Paige finished with him, she moved on to Brent’s front. She seemed to get a little distracted at his abdomen—or his chest, I was unsure of which—and sprayed quite a lot in the same spot. He was smiling down at her. Even Garret’s front seemed to be a distraction to her when she made her way over to him. Seb was not as amused by it as the two boys were. Or . . . whatever they were, if amused wasn’t accurate.
“Let me get you,” she told me when she’d finished with all of them completely, ensuring she got their faces and the tops of their feet as well as the tops of their ears. I stood there until she said, “Jaycee, drop the towel.”
I clenched my jaw and did as she’d told me to. I watched Brent and Garret taking turns looking between her when she was bent over in front of me and me, standing there.
When Seb said, “Garret,” he looked only at Paige after.
The sunscreen really was cold, but it wasn’t unpleasant like the air had been the night before, after the sun had gone away. It was strange that just a little of a different temperature seemed to make all the difference in the world.
“Turn around,” Paige instructed.
I almost didn’t, but turning my back and knowing they were looking was better than watching them look.
When Paige was finished, she extended the bottle. “Who wants to do me?”
Both boys smiled and I grabbed the sunscreen from her hand immediately, before either of them could. I really didn’t like how they were behaving.
Seb said, “Go do something,” to the two of them. I supposed he didn’t like it either.
While I was spraying Paige with it in the same way she’d done with everyone else, I was glancing at Seb out of the corner of my eye. I watched him watching the other two as they walked away, stealing glances over their shoulders and saying unknown things to each other.
I could only guess what those things were. I didn’t want to, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with what Seb had spoken to them alone about. Or lines. I got more than a little confused over why I somehow thought it was all right for me to look at and like lines but have issues with my own lines being looked at. At first, I tried to tell myself that how they were looking and acting over lines was the problem and that I’d behaved better, but . . .
I hadn’t, really. I’d been analyzing and appreciating lines, not mentioning what all I’d said about touching Seb yesterday, but . . .
I hadn’t said anything about touching after realizing about touching, but I had tried to actually touch him, and that was probably worse.
I had no idea why it was bothering me so badly or why I didn’t like it, but it was and I didn’t. Maybe it was all to do with having issue with people thinking about putting their parts in my parts. That seemed like a much larger thing than wanting to touch someone.
I wasn’t sure that was what it was, but I didn’t like it.
Seb watched Brent and Garret go until they were far enough away, and then he turned to us to quietly say, “I made a call while I was upstairs. I can’t tell the two of them until they figure it out themselves, but . . .” He nodded. “They have fucked with our medicine. All of ours.”
Paige said the instant he was done speaking, “I don’t even understand why they would do something to ours, not really.”
I’d just finished getting the tops of her ears and looked up to Seb.
“It’s hard enough, trying to figure it out, but I can’t even begin to fathom why they would do a single thing to yours.” She shook her head. “Not unless it’s what I think it is, but I don’t see how they could’ve known.”
“They couldn’t have,” he said assuredly. “But they were watching yesterday. They have cameras everywhere, the monitors on the coms, microphones. They watched every interaction in the vehicle, and likely those in the gas stations. I suspect someone came in and switched out my pills while we were on the way here.”
“But then we have to get into the question of how they would even have pills prepared for . . . um, people like you, in such a scenario,” Paige said. “Not mentioning that certain things shouldn’t have been registering. At least for us. I wouldn’t think.”
“You know how they are.” He looked away from us and out at the two boys who were laughing about something in the water.
Laughing. So easily.
“I don’t understand why they would do this at all,” I told them. “Clearly both of you have some idea. The only thing I can think of is what you were saying before—that we need to be normal to be normal. And still, one would think it would be harmful for such a change in bodies.”
“It’s not a change,” Paige said assuredly. “All those things are still there. What the pills do is shut off certain receptors in the brain. You can’t notice them. The body isn’t changing. Our brains only trick our bodies into not doing certain things. And though I want to believe your theory and my hoping is correct . . . I truly don’t believe it is.”
“Then what would it be?” My brow furrowed. “What’re the alternatives?”
Paige glanced over her shoulder, ensuring we were extremely far away from everyone else, which we were. “We’re First-Gen Regs.” She barely said it. “What do you think they’re doing?”
I shook my head, not having a clue.
She took my hand in hers to very apologetically say, “They’re expanding their experiment.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“Gens can’t make Gens.” Seb was also whispering. “Gens can only be made. A few of every age of Gens leaves for a little while and then the males return, but the females don’t. They have to keep trying.” He clenched his jaw and looked over our heads.
“They’re . . .” I trailed off, shaking my head because I surely couldn’t be taking this correctly.
“Seeing what happens when we reproduce,” Paige whispered.
I couldn’t respond to that at all, not at all.
She looked up at Seb, trying very hard not to panic. Information. I had to gather it. “Did they admit as much?”
He shook his head. “All they said was . . . ‘The mission is still the same. Deal with all other things as they come, but don’t concern yourself with them.’ Killing two birds with one stone.”
“What did they say about the medicine?” she asked him.
“They’re weaning off the receptors to prevent everyone from being overloaded at once,” he replied. “It’s only going to get worse from here, gradually.”
Oh no. This wasn’t it? How could this not be it?
“Seb . . .” Paige said warily. “Why did they change yours?”
He smiled, still looking above our heads, and he laughed once. “They never realize we can hear them, you know.” He shook his head, then the smile dropped and he took in a deep breath. “I heard one of them in the background. I can just see them looking at their damn screens.”
I didn’t know how I managed to get any sound out of my mouth, but I heard myself ask, “What did they say?”
Seb looked down and met my gaze to say, “‘A Gen and a Reg. I can’t believe we never thought of it. It just might work. Can you just imagine if it works?’” He forced a very uncomfortable smile at me. “Needless to say, the call got disconnected shortly after for what I said.”
“They can’t—” I shook my head. “They can’t expect us to just . . . reproduce.”
“We’re going to go somewhere later,” Seb said. “All of us. I’m going to take you somewhere that you can see what hormones do. And given that none of us have spent nearly half our lives learning how to control them like most people our ages have . . . we’re going to be in a very bad situation here shortly. Wouldn’t you agree, Paige?”
“Yes,” she barely said.
He looked off to the two boys, who were still having what seemed to be the grandest time in the entire world. “I’m going to have to find a way to ensure they keep their dicks in their pants until they know how to use them. I have a feeling that’s all I’ll be able to do with any of this—stopping them for a little while.”
“Their what?” I whispered to Paige.
“Penises,” she whispered back to me.
Seb only seemed to remember we were there just then and looked down to say, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in front of you.”
“It’s all right.” I was uncomfortable, but what he’d said hadn’t been half as bad as most the things I’d heard the night before. I just couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Is there a certain way to use them?”
I’d expected Paige to laugh at me, but she was staring up at Seb curiously.
He looked down at me, then to her, back to me, and then sighed. “Yes. Yes, there is.”
“Do you—”
He interrupted Paige with, “Yes.”
“But . . . how?” Her mouth was partially hanging open.
It took looking at hers to realize that mine was as well. I promptly shut it.
“I don’t like doors.” He said that to me then looked at Paige to add, “I’m not explaining it to you past that. Jaycee will understand what I mean. I’m going to go make sure the two of them don’t drown. That’s why swimming should be taught. They’re acting like idiots.” He paused before leaving. “I think I understand now, why they don’t explain that sort of thing to you.”
I watched him leave, seeing Paige moving things in my peripherals. I only moved when she took my arm and began almost pulling me onto the sand. She gestured to the group of females, some of which were still seemingly paying no attention to anything, and some of which were looking at all the males on the beach.
Paige laid down on her stomach. I followed suit because a lot of the females were laying in the same way, doing their watching.
“What did he mean?” she whispered.
“He meant that he doesn’t like other people telling him what he can and can’t do,” I answered. “That’s why I hate doors there.” It seemed I hated doors everywhere, for whatever reasons.
“I think he’s right,” she said quietly, “about why they don’t explain it to most of us.”
I glanced over at her when her heart sped up in my ear a little, watching her look at Seb’s back where he was almost to the other two boys.
I didn’t know why, but the words, “Stop it,” came out of my mouth.
And I also didn’t know why her face turned red and she looked away and said, “Sorry,” like she’d done something wrong.
