Cheating Time (7 page)

Jayden's jaw clenched and his teeth ground.
Whatever relief he'd felt over seeing me earlier had vanished. His
voice might not have been as loud as mine, but it was one that
commanded attention.

"I don't need to explain myself to you. Your
father trusts me. That. Is. All. That. Matters," he said, and his
last individually uttered words were deadly serious.

I glanced to the side. Toward the direction
of the barn. My eyes slitted tighter. "How often have you and Dad
been talking?"

Based on the glare he was sending my way,
his temper matched mine degree for degree.

"I don't have time for you or your
petulance. Your parents are making sacrifices you'll never
understand. I'm here because your father asked me to come. Now let
me do what he's requested and get you to safety." Jayden closed his
eyes, reminding me of someone counting to ten.
Someone trying to control his anger.
Then he blew
out an exasperated breath. "We believe there are Surrogates on
their way here. Before they arrive, I need to get you to the barn.
There, your parents will tell you everything they want you to know.
It's their place to do that. Not mine."

Without another word, I turned, running as
fast as I could toward where I knew my parents were. This time,
Jayden had to work just a little harder to keep up with me.
Secretly, that fact pleased me.

Running with Jayden reminded me why
Surrogates Soldiers like Jayden were born and bred to be our
protectors. Jayden was as fast and graceful—
and deadly
—as a cheetah.

The difference between Jayden and every
other soldier I'd ever met was he was the worst kind of pain in my
ass.

And he didn't miss me at
all.

He pushed, taunted, demeaned, demoralized,
and belittled me. Basically, he did whatever it took to manipulate
me into following his orders and pushing myself to be more than I
thought I could ever be and to do more than I thought I could ever
do.

Everything, that is, but
ask sweetly.

For the longest time, I'd resented him and
the way he'd tested me nonstop, but I'd never blamed him. He was a
Soldier first and foremost. Like all Surrogates he'd been created
from the sperm of a man who'd been labeled as superior and the egg
of an equally dominant woman.

No one knew exactly who appointed Surrogate
Creators, the government officials charged with selecting people
perfect enough to parent the flawless Surrogate Soldiers who were
bred—through in vitro fertilization and surrogate mothers—to
protect Aspect Nation. We only knew that such people existed
because there were thousands of young soldiers roaming the nation,
meaning someone had been orchestrating their conception.

Creators had proven time and time again that
they'd known what they were doing. I'd never met a Surrogate who'd
been anything less than inconceivably beautiful and inhumanly
strong, fast, and calculating.

There were theorist who believed President
Barone himself made every last selection and others who'd suggested
he and he alone had fathered every Surrogate Soldier ever created.
Something about the idea of him fathering tens of thousands of
soldiers sickened me just a little. I'd hoped on more than one
occasion that particular theory was fabricated out of pure
lies.

For Jayden's sake, I hope
it isn't true.

Somehow our Surrogate Soldiers', our
Watchers', rumored parentage only made them more alluring to the
millions of teenage Aspect girls who appreciated their godlike
qualities and had secretly nicknamed them our
Beautiful Watchers.

In much the way Surrogates had gotten their
unofficial names, anyone who was not a Watcher was a Procreate,
someone born through a natural union between a man and a woman. I
was a Procreate. For us, there was no in vitro fertilization or
surrogate mothers. We knew who our parents were, and unless they
died, our parents lived with and raised us.

Stopping my train of thoughts was the sense
of déjà vu I felt while running through the field with Jayden. I
was reminded of Jayden when he was sixteen years old and my
father's charge. He'd spent weekdays at Gran's estate, training me
in the art of self-defense and self-preservation.

As if preparing for the Armageddon, he and
Dad had insisted we all spend weekends camping, hiking, target
practicing, and hand-to-hand battling. Jayden, my eternal torturer,
had enjoyed our weekends more than anyone in their right mind would
have. I, on the other hand, had hated them with a passion.

As if Jayden were reading my mind, he said,
"I think I missed our camping weekends the most, princess. I mean…
I haven't met the first person since you left who could complain
for an entire forty-eight hours about the lack of electricity or
their discomfort at being forced to sleep on the ground."

"I hated every last second of them. You know
that. Right?" I hissed.

He snickered. "Every second? I seemed to
recall a time when you were pretty eager for the weekends to
come."

Dammit!

I cringed, knowing exactly what he was
referring to. There had been a brief moment in time right after
we'd begun the weekend trainings when I'd developed a humungous
crush on the ass next to me. Looking over and seeing the
shit-eating grin on his face as he ran beside me, I knew he was
referring to my infatuation, and I was embarrassed at just how
obvious I'd been.

"If you're referring to the time you hit me
so hard that I was knocked unconscious and, in my head-injured
daze, told you I loved you, I can assure you those few seconds are
among the ones I hated the worst. In my hallucinatory fog, I
thought you were Leaf Luke. I was proclaiming my love to the
teenage heartthrob that every girl my age adored, not you. I didn't
love you then, I don't love you now, and I'll never love you. That
much I can assure you," I claimed defensively.

Again, Jayden laughed quietly, and
everything about it reminded me why I traded my schoolgirl crush
for mortal enemy hate. Much like he was doing now, he'd mocked me
about my awkward confession of love since that day. It wouldn't
have been so bad if he'd not made fun of me in front of anyone and
everyone, but he had.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me
had come one day after school. He'd been ordered by Dad to take me
for ice cream while he'd finished a meeting with President
Barone.

While we were at the Cold Creamery Parlor,
Xyla, a beautiful cheerleader from school who was Jayden's age,
began flirting with Jayden. Somewhere in the middle of their
back-and-forth banter and while Xyla had been getting someone else
their ice cream, Jayden'd mumbled to me, "Why can't
she
proclaim her undying love for me?"

He'd been mocking me for months.
Theoretically, that's exactly what he'd been doing that day, but
the way he said
she
had been my
undoing.
Why can't
she
proclaim her undying love for me?
He'd looked toward her with the kind of reverence I'd wanted him to
have only for me…
That he'd never
had
for me. That he'd never
have
for me.

Swallowing back a golf ball-sized lump, I'd
sat back and watched their flirting get bolder and the tension
between them grow more palpable. Then it happened. The green-eyed
monster that apparently lived deep inside me, one I'd never met
before, had reared her ugly head with a vengeance.

Believe you me… she was
ugly.

The way Jayden had taunted me for years had
always been good-natured. That had not been the case for me. At
least, it hadn't been on that day. It had been with a mean-spirited
jealousy that I'd set out to embarrass him.

Loud enough for Xyla to hear, I said to
Jayden, "Mom told me Surrogates are bred to be sterile? Is it true
you can never have children?"

The Aspect Nation was population controlled.
One child per couple. That meant every girl I'd ever
known—
everyone but me
—had planned
to have the one child allotted to her and none would spend their
time with someone who would never be able to help her fulfill her
white-picket fence, husband, and child fantasies.

With my question, Xyla's face had flushed as
red as Jayden's—hers with embarrassment and his with rage—right
before she cleared her throat, excused herself, and ducked into the
back of the parlor. The ice cream that had been chocolatey
delicious before I'd poked my nose in their business might as well
have instantaneously been infested with maggots. I couldn't eat
another bite.

I'd accomplished my goal of stopping
Jayden's and Xyla's flirting, but I'd never felt lower in my life
because I used something that had been shared with me as part of my
research training, something very few people talked about, and I'd
done that in order to keep Xyla away from Jayden.
My Jayden.

If Jayden's glare could have killed, I'd be
dead today. I'll never forget the way he snatched me up by the arm,
dragged me out of the ice cream parlor, shoved me into the back of
Dad's limousine, and left me in there alone to wait for Dad's
meeting to be over. To this very day, I have no idea where he went
or how he'd gotten back to our house.

Immediately, I'd wanted to apologize, but I
hadn't been able to. I'd been humiliated by what I'd done and had
been worried he would tell Mom. I'd convinced myself that if she'd
known what I'd done, she never would have told me anything
important again. If that had happened, my research training
would've come to an abrupt halt and my chances of achieving the
great things she and Gran had achieved would have been lost
forever.

That I knew.

Alone and ashamed, I'd bitten back the tears
of hurt and disgrace and sprawled out on the seat. Dad's meeting
had gone on for hours. After it'd turned dark, I'd fallen asleep
and hadn't awakened until Dad had pulled me from the back of the
car and carried me up to my room.

I'd been groggy, but I could still remember
asking Dad, "Where's Jayden?"

"He had to meet someone, Carlie. He won't be
back for a few weeks," he'd hummed, almost as if he were singing a
lullaby.

Dad hadn't been angry or disappointed in me,
and I'd known by his tone that Jayden hadn't ratted me out. That
fact had only made me feel more guilty. He'd always been a better
person than me.
Always
.

Suddenly, my eyes had opened wide.
Hysterical, I'd squirmed so much that Dad had to put me down.

"What's wrong, Carlie?"

"I-I need to get a message to Jayden. Does
he have his phone with him?" I'd asked hysterically.

Dad had shaken his head and turned into the
general in charge of our nation's defense, one I'd always been
afraid of.

"He's on a mission,
Carles Anise Enoche
. He doesn't have time for your
schoolgirl crush. He's been entertaining you at my request, and
that's not a problem under normal circumstances. Right now, he's
doing something that could get him killed. He can't be distracted
or disturbed."

Dad had used my full name, and he only ever
did that when he'd had his fill of me. His frustration told me that
his very long meeting with President Barone had not been a good one
and that President Barone—
not
Dad
—had sent Jayden on a mission, one Dad thought to be
too dangerous for our young Surrogate.

In the past, I'd overhead Dad venting to Mom
about the danger President Barone had always been too willing to
put Jayden in. There had been no doubt in my mind that if I'd stood
vigil near their bedroom door and eavesdropped on their
conversations that night or the next morning, I'd have learned that
Jayden being in danger was the source of Dad's anger and
frustration.

Embarrassed by what I'd done and hurt to
find out that Dad had been making Jayden entertain me, I jerked my
arms out of Dad's grip, turned away from him, and ran to my
room.

Dad had known something was wrong and
knocked on my door every few minutes for hours, asking to come in.
I'd refused. Instead, I'd crawled in my closet and waited for my
safe room door to open for the night.

The safe room had been something Gran had
built for me when I was a baby because he'd been convinced there'd
come a day when people would try to kidnap me, using me and the
technology embedded within my heart against him and Mom and
demanding information about their inventions or their research.

If only he hadn't been
right.