3 The New Doll

The judicial body had ruled her mother's death an accident, so they'd only earned death benefits for her father. That money was spent within a year and the only place to live that they could afford had been in the hovels.

Cythia finally broke the brooding silence. "You look nice."

Leda murmured her thanks, even as the hollow impression grew in her chest. She was wearing a knee-length dress with thin straps, made of a soft cotton. Natural fibers were a rare commodity in the hovels as were any clothing items that were not government-issued uniforms. The robe was left over from the days when they could still afford minor luxuries. It had belonged to her mother.

"Are you sure they're requiring you to wear something this simple?"

Comprehending that her sister criticized more out of concern than anything else, Leda tamped down on a flash of annoyance. "They didn't say, but it's this or my work suit."

"If you say so."

For about the hundredth time, the idea of just taking the money and

running crossed her mind. The Whoremonger had been a man of his word. Two thousand dollars had registered in her account before she'd even reached the lower levels from his office. It was enough money to start a new life somewhere else if she went on her own. There had to be a place she could hide where even The Whoremonger's cold gaze couldn't reach. And if not, she could always try disappearing into the Forbidden Zone. Nobody ever came back from there, but maybe she was strong enough to withstand the condition.

Of course, that would make her a liar and a cheat. And she wasn't interested

in being either of those things. And her family wanted her here, not torn to pieces in the Forbidden Zone.

The clock above their ancient stove glowed the time in blood red. It was practically the only bit of light in the gathering darkness of their apartment. Silence weighed down on her, heavy like a cloak. Her family surrounded her, and yet she was completely alone.

"Here."

Leda stunned and stared up at her sister, who had been watching her silently. She took the little packet and unrolled it with trembling fingers. Four mismatched tablets of different colors and sizes rolled onto her palm.

"You'll need an additional dose," Cythia mumbled, voice deceptively casual.

"The last thing you want is to slip your scent around a bunch of Alphas."

"Will this be enough?"

"Fuck an Alpha and I guess you'll see," Cythia snapped, the anger betraying her anxiety. "This is your stupid plan, not mine. I pray you don't fall into estrous the moment that you're mounted, but it's not like I can look up the proper dose for black market alterants on the CommNet. Really, Leda."

Dropping her head so her sister wouldn't see her scowl, Leda gulped the pills, not bothering with the lukewarm glass of water sitting next to her on the windowsill. "Thanks for the assistance, sis."

"That's a week's wages you just swallowed down. They had better work."

Scent suppressants, hormone inhibitors, whatever cocktail of chemical alterants that they could get their hands on — Leda took her pills dutifully every day. The payment of the black market meds was part of what kept them in the slums, and Leda sometimes went without meals to supplement the costs.

It was a punishable offense for citizens of Aquila to conceal their biological alignment. Offenders would be hauled off to Central Command for sentencing to incredible fates. If they caught her, all of them could end up serving a life term in the works camps. The bright lights of an approaching skycar lit up the window. Trembling, Leda adjusted the short hem of her dress and stood.

"Time to go."

Her sister's muttered words felt final somehow as if she were leaving for a lifetime rather than just for the night. She tried to rationalize away the fear. There wasn't a fate worse than death awaiting her, no public flagellation or firing squad. She only had to endure one night with a stranger in exchange for Two thousand dollars.

But that didn't stop the sense that something horrible awaited her.

Leda had acquired her history lessons in school as well as anyone else, but that didn't mean all the questions about her world had been resolved. Details of the thousand-year war that had destroyed humanity had been discussed to exhaustion. Those who survived had been forever changed by

the biological and viral agents that were used without approval by all sides as the world dissolved in war. But huge gaps existed in the fossil record, so it was impossible to know how far they had come from their ancestors.

She had wanted to explore history at the College, perhaps become an academic or a researcher and unearth the secrets that hadn't withstood the great wars of the past. According to the archive records, the people of Earth past had used nuclear energy not to power their world but to destroy it. That

destruction had forced civilization into the sky patterns and off of the large swathes of the planet too injured by fallout and radiation to be habitable.

The wealthy ones kept themselves sequestered in the highest levels, also called the Aquila. The air was purest there with a cleared view of the red-hazed atmosphere faced by smoky clouds like gusts from a water pipe.

There had not ever been Alphas or Omegas for that matter. She had heard stories of humans who escaped the planet in massive Airships before the worst of the destruction. Some said that they were still out there, whole civilizations that flourished in the stars without the sickness and ravage that existed down below. The space fleet had never discovered any evidence of their existence. Just another story to tell around the fire at night to soothe those naive enough to hope for something better.

Leda often wondered what it must have been like to have the freedom to choose your fate, to not be so trapped by a trick of birth. Alphas ruled the Aquila, for justifications that went beyond just their physical size and strength. The ability to oversee was written into their biology. By contrast, Betas and Omegas had no power to challenge them whether or not they desired to. One primal howl and the lesser dynamics would be decreased to a quivering mass on their knees.

But Omegas had it worst of all. They were thought to have an innate need for subservience, one that was very hard to overcome. Even with the chemical restraints that inhibit hormone response, the urge was impossible to ignore.

Most Omegas, of the few that existed, agreed to their biology. The fortunate ones were bonded to powerful Alphas, mated and bred then kept as pets in the gilded cells of the sky levels. Others used chemical cocktails formulated in black market labs to prevent the natural response to an Alpha and prevent a heat cycle.