Read Online The Storm That Is Sterling by Lisa Renee Jones - Free Book Online

one of the sex camps.” He shoved away from the table and headed to the back office.
    Becca had no idea what a “sex camp” was, but she was screaming in her head. Nononono! Sterling was not a Zodius. He wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t! Those pictures had to be of Sterling with Adam’s brother Caleb. Her gaze slid around the lab, looking for an escape. She needed to escape. A water glass on her table shattered. Then a slide.
    Milton Wright, the only other non-GTECH scientist out of the six present, rushed to her table and began picking up glass. A thirty-something scientist who worked for the military, he too had been kidnapped and forced to help Adam.
    “That was odd,” he said, tossing shards in the trash. “The glass just shattered. I never saw you touch it.”
    She agreed, remembering the orange juice glass a few hours back shattering in much the same way, but too twisted in knots from Tad’s visit to give it much thought. “What’s a sex camp?”
    He glanced up from what he was doing and then walked to her side and sat down at the table adjoining hers. “Adam’s son, Dorian, is very powerful. Like freaky powerful. They want more like him, which means finding the rare woman who can bond with one of the males and convert to GTECH. It’s like a physical marriage. They have sex. They bond. They have scary offspring like Dorian.”
    Becca felt sick. “How do they know they bond? They just get pregnant or what?”
    “Some strange tattoo marking appears on the woman’s neck right after sex. I hear it hurts, like someone is carving it in their flesh. Then they do a blood exchange, and the woman converts to GTECH.”
    “Blood exchange?” she asked, aghast at such an idea.
    “They slice their palms and press them together. There is a plus side for the female. She becomes a GTECH complete with eternal youth and immunity to all human illness, among other things. Of course, she has a really nasty Zodius soldier hanging around all the time, and if he goes and gets himself killed, say by pissing off Adam—” He held up a hand. “I know that’s hard to believe, but it happens—well, then she goes bye-bye right along with him. One dies, the other dies.”
    She still couldn’t quite get her head around this. “Okay, back up because I feel like I’m living in bizarro world. Are you actually telling me they basically pass women from soldier to soldier until one of them bonds with her, and this mark shows up?”
    “That’s pretty much the sum of it.”
    “That’s barbaric,” she said. “It’s just—” Becca paused as he wiped his forehead. He didn’t look good. Sweat gathered on his upper lip and forehead; the lab jacket clung to his clothes. Becca rolled her stool to his table. “You okay, Milton?”
    He sat back on the lab stool and ran his hands over his thighs. “They didn’t dose me this morning.”
    “What?” Worried, she turned to study him more closely. “Are you sure they didn’t think you’d dosed—”
    “No, Becca,” he said sharply. “They know what they’re doing. And of course, they dosed you. I’ve failed to find the answers they seek. You’re the new kid on the block. They don’t need me anymore. Out with me. In with you.”
    She drew back, shocked at the harshness of his words.
    He scrubbed his jaw. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself. It feels like I’ve swallowed acid, and it’s eating me alive.”
    She softened instantly and touched his hand. It was clammy, yet he shivered as if cold. She cut the other scientists a quick look, contemplating complaining, but the men cast an evil smile, clearly amused at Milton’s suffering.
    A buzzer sounded, and the electronic steel doors, the only entrance or exit to the lab directly in front of their table, slid open. Dressed in green army fatigues, a tall man radiating power entered with two wolves by his side. Becca wanted to throw up. This was Adam Rain, and this man and these pet wolves of his had been in the pictures with