Chimera Catalyst: Book One of the Finder Series by Susan Kuchinskas

Author:Susan Kuchinskas [Kuchinskas, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pandamoon Publishing
Published: 2017-09-04T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

I woke with a thick web of dreams clogging my mouth. The Parrot was next to me, stretched out on his side against my thigh. It felt good. Why hadn’t I slept with him before? I reached down and tickled his chest feathers.

“Time to get to work,” I told him.

I changed out his water and put out a dish of tofu and cricket powder for him, and then put my own share in the blender. I injected myself, dropped my meds, and drank the rest of the water from the recycler. I took two quick slugs of breakfast, sat down at the big screen, and pinged Pellissier.

This time I got right through; she’d put me on her white list. She was at a desk, a wall of screens next to her, a bank of windows to her right. Office.

She took one look at my face and said, “You saw.”

“I saw.”

“Do you still want to find Miraluna Rose?”

I still did. Just, not for Thin Man. “I don’t know.”

She leaned into the screen. “Do you think it’s okay?”

“What?”

“Playing with life? Creating beings to be sold as slaves?”

Behind me, I heard the Parrot finishing off the last of his breakfast, making little sounds of satisfaction. Was he really just my slave?

I put Pellissier’s feed up on the large screen, so I could see the nuances of her expressions. Not as good as being meat-to-meat, but good. “That doesn’t bother you when it comes to the clones.”

Rose flushed her chest. She looked anguished. “I didn’t know. I was desperate. I’d have done anything to try to save Cornell. I still would.” She looked away, looking into the past. “I didn’t understand what they’d be like.”

I could see it, see the way it tortured her. She went on. “When they’re selling it to you, they talk about cloning in terms of tissue. The stem cells and platelets they could harvest for him. I didn’t realize.” She trailed off.

I felt bad for making her feel bad. And because I knew it gave me an advantage that I was going to use. “So, then you felt bad about Miraluna Rose, too.”

She leaned back, her fingers toying with a small stone on the work table. “I didn’t even realize what she was at first,” she said. For the leader of a global corporation, there was a lot she seemed not to have realized. “I thought she was just very stylish. Then she asked for my help.”

“Why did she come to you?”

“They’re called ArcoTypes, did you know that? That’s the brand name.”

“There’s a brand? They can’t be selling them. It’s not legal to even make them.” A brand name for synthetic women mixed with wildness. No, it wasn’t right.

“But they are.” She looked straight at me, and I saw the drive and passion that must have made her a good CEO.

“So Miraluna Rose came to you. Was she already planning to run?”

She shifted on her chair, slipping off her sandals and tucking her feet under her. “At first, it was just for understanding.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.