Page 86 of After the Fall
The cold shower didn’t alleviate the throbbing, so I gripped my shaft and imagined all the mornings I’d get to be inside of my soulmate. Until the end of… her life. Luckily, the somber thought arrived after I shot my load at the tile.
Together, Harper and I had discovered true love. And if I only had it for the next sixty or seventy years of her life, it would be better than not having it at all.
Once dressed, I slipped into the frosty morning. Steam billowed out of the greenhouse door as I stepped inside.
“Good Morning, Wyatt,” Tim shouted from behind a row of plants. I rubbed the leaf of one of them between my fingers.
“Morning, Tim. What time did you get here?” There were already three empty coffee mugs next to a plate covered in crumbs from toast.
“I haven’t left, Boss.” Tim chugged his coffee. “I’ve put together the rest of the samples for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pill bottle, shook it, then handed it to me. The lone pill that was in the pocket of my jacket had been the only one of its kind. I had planned to be Tim’s guinea pig, but Harper had stopped me. Now, we had a supply that we could use for experiments.
“I feel weird about this. Up until now, whenever we’ve had a new experiment, we’ve tested on ourselves. Is it wrong to try this formulation on the hybrids?” I rolled the bottle in my hand, mesmerized by the pills jangling around inside.
“A better question might be whether it’s humane to let them live in the state they’re in.” Tim’s lips drew into a line.
He was right. The hybrids were already an experiment, albeit a failed one. They were neither human, nor one of us. “You’re right as usual, Tim. It would be cruel to leave them as empty creatures.”
“And they’ll work.” Tim shrugged. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Sure, like any new drug, there may be side effects down the road. But as they are, those hybrids might as well be dead.”
I put the bottle in my pocket. “I wish I had your confidence.” It had taken years for us to get the dosage right on the red andwhite moss. I still wondered if there might be side effects in a hundred years. But we’d been taking the moss for at least fifty years without incident, so I knew that I needed to let go and trust Tim.
“I saw it work with my own eyes.” Tim took off his glasses and polished them with the corner of his lab coat.
“How is that possible?” I had just come from the wing where we had the hybrids tied up. They were all accounted for.
“Turn around.” Tim smiled.
The door to the greenhouse slid open, and a man who appeared to be in his fifties or early sixties smiled at me. He had brown hair that was graying at the temples, and an average human build. He looked fit, and his skin was tanned to a golden brown. It didn’t register who he was until his eyes met mine. I knew them well. They were the same as Harper’s.
“Joe?” I whispered.
The man rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “It’s me.”
“You look completely…” My voice trailed off.
“Human?” Joe smiled. “I’m the ideal test subject. After the party last night, I came in here and made Tim give me one of your new pills. It didn’t take long to kick in. My body felt like it was fizzing, kind of like a balloon slowly deflating.”
“You look great.” His eye sockets no longer looked hollowed, and his skin wasn’t wrinkled and covered in scraggly hair. He was smaller, but he still looked fit. Wiry, even.
Joe rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks flushed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve received a compliment. Thank you, Wyatt.” His eyes shimmered and he wrapped his arms around me in a hug.
I patted his back. Like Joe with compliments, I still wasn’t great with affection – with anyone that wasn’t Harper.
Tim handed Joe a bottle with one pill inside. “As promised.”
Joe quickly pocketed the bottle, but I could tell that I had witnessed something I wasn’t supposed to see. I looked between Joe and Tim, scowling. “What’s going on?”
Joe stepped defensively in front of Tim. “I made him do it.”
“Do what?” I crossed my arms.
Tim stepped out from behind Joe. “It’s in the early stages but… I think that I found an antidote that works on humans. Joe confirmed that it worked early this morning.”
Tilting my head, I tried to decipher what the two men were trying to tell me.
Zipping up his jacket, Joe smiled. “I tested a few things this morning. I thought you’d have realized by now… I’d doanythingfor my family. See you later, Wyatt.” Joe shook my hand and walked around me toward the greenhouse doors.
I was too stunned to stop him. The implications of the two new compounds and the impact they could have on our community had started to register in my brain. “Wait. Where are you going?”