Right of Capture: Roan and Judge Gorey Series, #1

By Isadora Deese

Practically overnight, shape-shifting creatures and deadly portals have appeared, made possible by an otherworldly energy that exists not buried in deep pockets underground, but deep inside two children, Roan and Judge Gorey.

It's a real shame they don't get along.

To Judge, his sister is a selfish hack who deserves some payback. Roan thinks Judge is nothing more than a mistake that needs erasing. The rest of the world is caught in the crossfire.

Dimond Industries claims a cure to their condition, but at what price? Possession requires containment, and the answer to the mysterious origin of the Gorey children must be found—or constructed. Are the children a product of Nature, or a side effect of experiment?

Will Roan and Judge destroy the world before being given the chance to save it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pelekinesis
• Release date: Oct 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781938349461

Isadora Deese

A native of Kentucky, Isadora Deese is a graduate of Indiana University and Boston University Master’s Playwriting Program. Her writing explores the evolving connections between technology, art, and nature that are shaping our near future. Isadora helped coordinate some of the first iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competitions at MIT. She co-wrote Adventures in Synthetic Biology with Drew Endy and the Synthetic Biology Working Group, illustrated by Chuck Wadey, which in 2005, was the first comic to be on the cover of Nature. She is married to writer and historian R.S. Deese. They live in the Boston area with their three sons and two cats.

Book preview

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Part Roan_0001

The fence was cold and damp and familiar. Roan curled her fingers around the chain link like it was her security blanket against the world. She was home. But she wasn’t safe.

Just shy of fourteen, Roan Gorey knew enough about biosecurity measures to be an honorary microbe—the nasty kind that’s kept behind airlocked doors. Two years locked up like a deadly contagion in a secret underground silo and a girl learns a thing or two about how to escape against all odds. Staying escaped is another matter. Each stab at freedom came with the harsh reality that she had nowhere to go. After all, Dimond—the billionaire with Batman delusions who built her cage—hadn’t taken her by force. Her parents had sent her away.

They were afraid of her.

Most people are, once they see the monsters she makes.

It was weird, being home. Mega understatement. Thoughts of home, her mom and dad, her life before—that’s what gave focus to Roan’s days and nights at the silo. But now that she was back, she didn’t know how to feel. Or even if she could feel. Dear old Mom and Dad had the nerve to look relieved when Dimond brought her back to their doorstep—like they hadn’t signed the paperwork that disappeared her in the first place. Other troubled kids got sent to counseling, maybe juvie hall, but Roan’s first stop was a high-tech dungeon in the basement of an old missile silo 3,000 miles away. Go figure.

Gripping that cold chain link fence gave her a strange sense of calm. Maybe she’d never feel normal without being fenced in. She took a long drag of the musty forest air into her lungs, and just for a moment she forgot how long she’d been away. The smell of muck and decay drew her in, and her thoughts instantly became more focused. The longed-for reunion with her parents had muddled things, and she couldn’t afford to be on the fence today, even if that’s the only place she felt comfortable.

It was late summer, back-to-school season. Cooler than usual, but the morning fog would likely burn off. She was grateful for her jacket. She might not have worn it if it had been warmer, and she’d need it if her escape plan worked. The jeans and white button down provided by her keeper would hardly keep out the cold of a New England night. Not knowing where she would sleep tonight gave her a thrill. Who was she kidding? Being outside was giving her a thrill. Cave dwelling was so last Ice Age.

This time of year used to make her think of beginnings, but beginnings and endings had taken on a whole new meaning for Roan. Her parents both worked at a university, so in her house the new year began not in January, but September. New students for them. New teachers for her. Start of the countdown to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Roan could sense the clock ticking down all right, but not to trick-or-treats and presents under the tree. Something wicked this way comes—or as it turned out—was already here, just below the surface.

She took one look around and summed up her options. Dimond was in the house sparring with parental units. Cross was in the backyard with eyes on her. Nuñez was hidden in the trees, ready to report. Nathan Hale, their nearest neighbor, may be home, or he may have decided to sit this one out. He’d be no help to her either way. The other two—Pirret and Wykowski—would be on the other side of the lot, blocking access to Swift River Road. She’d have to get past the meanest of them that way. But that’s not what would get her caught.

Roan pressed her fingertips to her temple, scratching at the recent injection site. It was cruel to dangle a chance for escape like this and build the fail into her own biology, but that was Dimond all over.

What was he up to? Why a visit home now? She’d been allowed no contact with her parents since that horrible day two years ago when they’d sent her away, and now here she was, back home for hugs and kisses under the pretense that Dimond’s people had finally determined that whatever had gone haywire with Roan’s DNA wasn’t catching. Today’s visit was hyped as the first step toward her return.

Roan knew better. Dimond’s people had confirmed she wasn’t contagious within the first few weeks of her stay at the silo. Why else would they have ditched those crazy hazmat suits? And as for returning home to stay, Roan knew that Dimond would never allow that. There had to be more to the timing of this visit, and it couldn’t be good.

She glanced over her shoulder at Cross. He wasn’t the usual guy assigned to her detail. The usual guy wasn’t around anymore. Roan told herself not to think about that. Not now. Instead she replayed the awkward family reunion that had just taken place. She slowed it down, frame by frame, to try to take it all in, feeling as numb and dazed as that time she found herself in a muddy ditch after flying headlong over handlebars. She’d swerved her bike to miss a frog that day, but today there was no way to avoid inflicting pain. In fact, she felt pretty entitled to dish some out.

Cross and Dimond had flanked her on the walk from car to doorstep, making her feel like she was about to be presented to her parents for causing some neighborhood mischief. She’d been returned to the doorstep like that before, most frequently by their neighbors the Hales—usually for nothing more serious than rolling their house with t.p. or playing with fireworks in their backyard or taking their landscaper’s John Deere mower for a joyride.

Her parents had been waiting for them of course, so they opened the door even before Roan’s feet hit the Welcome mat. Her mom pulled her into such a hug that Roan almost forgave her. Almost. Her dad’s arm wrapped around her mom’s as if to shield the reunion from anyone who might try to stop it. Like Cross.

Cross wore a preppy black sweater and khakis that were meant to distract from the military lean and mean underneath, but her father sized him up for what he was the second he saw him.

You can leave your guard dog outside, he’d ordered Dimond.

Dimond had the gall to look offended. Cross just stood there like a statue, a standard look on his face like he had a bad taste in his mouth.

Mr. Cross is a registered nurse, Dimond had replied. As promised, medical personnel only today.

A registered thug, maybe, countered her mom, still hugging Roan to within an inch of her life. He stays outside.

Her parents had pulled her inside like they were taking a hostage, unwilling to let even an inch of space separate them from her. Don’t forget, Roan reminded herself, trying not to melt into the embrace. They signed those papers. They sent you away. It was an awkward way to walk, as if they were one creature with six legs. Her dad’s broad shoulders couldn’t clear the pictures on the wall of the narrow hallway, and when he knocked loose her 3rd-grade school portrait, it was Dimond who caught it.

Dimond took a moment to examine the snapshot of her silly toothless grin before returning it to the wall. He punctuated the act with a compliment that couldn’t have sounded more forced, Cute.

Once in the kitchen, Roan broke free of her parents and settled a comfortable distance away, behind the butcher block island. They looked hurt. Roan almost laughed in their faces. Have your own parents banish you to a bunker where a bunch of strangers call you a pollutant behind your back, and then we can compare hurt feelings.

You’ve grown so much, her mother had said, reaching a hand out to brush Roan’s bangs from her eyes. They’ve stolen so much time.

That’s when Roan realized why her mother seemed smaller. The last embrace between them had put Roan’s chin at her mother’s shoulder. The years had reversed the ratio.

I can’t remember the last time I traveled so light, Dimond interrupted the moment. No one paid him any attention, but he continued anyway, I’m usually surrounded by people who wait on my every whim, so standing here in your home without so much as an offer of a glass of tap water is… refreshing.

Roan, honey, her mom said in a tone she hadn’t used since Roan was three, why don’t you go play outside for a while?

Roan poured as much contempt as she could manage into her response. Play outside?

"We just need some time alone with Dr. Dimond, sweety, her dad said, and then he tried unsuccessfully to smile. There’s bound to be some language we’d rather you not hear."

That’s fucking rich, Roan scoffed, and her dad looked like she’d just kicked him in the gut. She moved to the back door, but not because they asked her to. She needed some air or she was going to start screaming. Try not to sign me over to any other goddamn psychopaths while I’m out here. Please, do me that favor.

There were so many tears in her mother’s eyes, Roan didn’t know how she could see. She slammed the door behind her to let them know exactly how much she cared.

Once outside, she took a slide down the backyard play set they’d installed the last summer she’d been home, but she only did it to be ironic. On landing, she’d thrown a hand in the air to acknowledge Cross’s presence—less of a hello than a quick wave to say I know you’re watching every move I make, dickweed.

And now, the volume of the exchange in the kitchen was loud enough to reach her ears even at the fence. She could have pieced together the conversation if she wanted to, but what was the point? Everything Dimond would say to them would be a lie, and nothing her parents said back would change anything. They could never get back the last two years. The little girl they remembered was gone forever. They just didn’t know it yet.

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Part Dimond_0001

It had been a calculated risk, bringing Roan home. Dimond knew she’d try to escape. It was crucial to his plan that she did. He’d taken steps to ensure she wouldn’t get far.

Getting Roan’s parents off his back was the priority today. They had threatened to go to the media, an act specifically forbidden by the contract they signed. There was nothing Bradley Dimond detested more than people who dishonored a contract, especially one he planned to break first. Media coverage of his discovery was essential in the end, but it had to be according to his timeline. He had to control the beginning of the story in order to guide it to its inevitable end. Any disruption to the timeline caused a butterfly effect of problems, and Dimond had enough problems as it was—chief among them two of the most extraordinary human specimens ever to exist, and the chaos that came with them.

In a moment of fear and desperation, the Goreys had signed their children over to a complete stranger, who was not who he said he was. Dimond wasn’t even a doctor. Not the medical kind, anyway. Clearly the Goreys had never owned anything valuable, or they would have taken the time to read the fine print.

Dimond’s money and power had made it possible to keep the world-changing children hidden from the world they were busy changing. He lived in a modern-day castle built on top of a Cold War facility just north of Los Angeles—high-tech bunkers came standard. Hiding the children from their parents was secondary, and much simpler. Parental visitation was blocked based on the trumped-up contagion factor. Ignoring their constant requests for contact was as easy as avoiding his own mother’s invitations to dinner—he just had to know when not to answer the phone.

He tried to placate the Goreys with fabricated progress reports and carefully planned delay tactics, but Dimond could sense that the illusion of himself as billionaire benefactor was fading fast.

The day they came knocking on his Ventura Hills front door—well, on the gate hundreds of feet outside his front door—demanding answers and threatening to go the media, Dimond had considered his alternatives. At first glance Paul and Sophia Gorey might seem as dispensable as any middle class couple, but Dimond prided himself on seeing the potential value in even the most commonplace of things. Scratch the surface, you might find something very useful underneath. What the Goreys revealed to him that day was their complete and utter devotion to their children. This was of no value to him in and of itself. Obviously. What proved valuable was the vulnerability that came with it. So completely focused on their battle with Dimond over custody, the Goreys left their flank wide open for a counter attack. That opened up a lot of possibilities, possibilities that until their unexpected visit, he hadn’t fully considered.

Because Dimond knew this would be his last interaction with the Gorey parents, he sat quietly in their sad little kitchen and let their open hostility wash over him. He owed them the opportunity to vent their regret and resentment, and he found their obviously rehearsed insults amusing. He did feel for them to a certain extent—their frustration with the situation was clear—but what he mostly felt toward the Gorey parents was irritation. They were blind. All they cared for was the return of their children to this once happy home. Happiness. Dimond shuddered. When did happiness ever change the world?

Dimond glanced around at the drab, cluttered home while still pretending to listen dutifully to the litany of abuse coming from Roan’s parents. This is where it all began. This genuine dump is where the laws of physics broke down in a tiny and profound way. Not since the beginning of the universe had such a violation occurred, and this time the breach happened within the subatomic structure of the DNA of two siblings. They were twins, but it was hard to think of them that way. Even fraternal twins are the same age by definition, yet twelve years separated Roan and her brother.

The usual definitions fail to explain Roan and Judge. His employees even felt uncomfortable referring to them as children. Pollutant wasn’t exactly fair or accurate, but he understood. People need to classify what is new and different, and the first impulse is often wrong. When Columbus landed on the Caribbean islands, he called the indigenous people there Indians, and that stuck like glue. Honestly, Dimond didn’t care what people called Roan and Judge. He knew what they were.

Dimond found himself staring at dismal yellow wallpaper with little ducks walking in a row behind their mother. Suddenly, he felt like a tourist, a voyeur in a living museum. This kitchen is where the soon-to-be infamous Roan and Judge started out as spoon-fed blobs in high chairs, cooed at and wiped down… and completely and totally underestimated. Roan and Judge somehow survived the impossible anomaly built into each and every cell of their beings, only to be born here, where their parents just wanted them to be happy.

Thank the stars I came along when I did, muttered Dimond unintentionally.

Roan’s mother was too wrapped up in her own speech to notice. Roan is home now, and that’s where she’ll stay, Sophia Gorey stated flatly, as if that were the final word.

The tirade of righteousness seemed to have run its course, so Dimond decided to fill the following silence with a bit of harsh truth.

Roan was never really at home here, Mrs. Gorey. You know that.

You know nothing about our family, Paul Gorey said, voice raised.

"You don’t have a family, Paul, Dimond corrected. You have very expensive liabilities. You should thank me for taking them off your hands."

Paul Gorey lurched forward no doubt to strangle him, and Dimond jumped out of his chair. He was suddenly keenly aware that Cross was outside, too far away to be of help. Dimond’s college boxing days would serve him well if Paul kept coming at him, but he’d really rather not have to punch anyone today. That’s what he paid Cross for.

Sophia Gorey held her husband back. Her voice was soft, but strong when she reminded, He’s baiting us, just like we knew he would. We need to get Judge back, too.

Dimond knew her comments weren’t meant for him, but he responded regardless.

Judge is actually the real reason we came here today. I’m sorry to report this—it’s a bit embarrassing. You see, the thing is, he’s run away.

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Part Roan_0002

Roan’s neck still felt damp from her mother’s tears, so she wiped them off. She knew she should have made a break for it by now, but she was home. The impulse to stay was strong.

Beyond the fence the view hadn’t changed. King Philip’s Estates was frozen in time—a lousy point in time. Her parents had fought every stage of Nathan Hale’s development, and at every stage, they’d lost. Late at night, after putting Roan to bed, after papers were graded and lectures prepared, her parents would drink coffee in the kitchen and work on strategies to save Comet Pond from Nathan Hale’s vision of its future. Roan would often sneak out of bed and sit at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a blanket and the warmth of their righteous voices. There she inherited a keen frustration with The System and picked up some uncommon knowledge for a nine-year-old. EPA classifications. Protected wetlands. Boundary lines. Encroachment.

She wondered if her parents worked just as long into the nights to save her.

Whatever, she said to herself. They couldn’t protect Comet Pond, and they didn’t protect her. That’s all that mattered.

Roan had always found it strange that both the pond and project were named for the same man. Chief Metacomet to the Wampanoag. King Philip to the English. The war he led against colonial farmers hundreds of years ago was named for him, too, but not because he won. Far from it. The settlers put his head on a pike outside Plymouth—yep, first Thanksgiving Plymouth—and left it there to rot. Ick. Her father said Metacomet miscalculated the willingness of the Mohawk to back him up. Neighbors can be like that, especially when someone comes around with a better offer.

Her dad’s people were descendants of those same colonial farmers who fought the Wampanoag, and their house was built on land passed down for generations. It was one of the last 19th-century farmhouses still standing in Barre. A brass plaque near the front door said so. Roan hazarded a look back at the house, feeling its strong gravitational pull even though she knew she should already be running. Peeling paint and broken shutters. Flower beds overgrown by weeds. The house had always looked old, but it had never looked this run down. It creaked and groaned whenever the weather turned, or whenever a bird landed on the roof, or whenever it wanted to sound a general complaint. She’d missed those sad sounds of old wood, once her living quarters were made of nothing but silent stone and metal.

Her eyes drifted to the wilderness that was once her backyard. The woods and pastures nearby were pockmarked by cellar holes, where long-lost neighbors once stored perishables. The wild thorn bushes and tall grass of Harvard Forest had grown thick enough over the centuries to hide the colonial ruins completely from view. One careless step, and you were done for.

For years their only real neighbors were the frogs and turtles that made their home in Comet Pond. Less of a pond than a swamp, really. But then the Hales bought the abandoned farmhouse across the pond, tore it down, and built on its foundation what her parents called a McMansion. At first she didn’t understand why they hated the house so much. Roan liked how new everything was inside, and how it felt just as warm by the windows as by the fireplace, even in a blizzard. But it wasn’t long before Nathan Hale made his intentions for Comet Pond clear, and the lines were drawn—not in the sand. In the boggy goo. The feud had begun, and the Hales’ new house seemed more like the flagship of an invading fleet.

The invasion promised its imminent arrival on billboards around town. One appeared one day nailed to a tree directly across from their driveway on Comet Pond Circle. Her father tore it into pieces small enough for the recycling bin, but another appeared the next day on the same tree. There’s something acutely depressing about living across from a Coming Soon sign.

"King Philip would scalp the lot of them," Roan’s mother would say dreamily every time they drove past one of the signs.

Wouldn’t he scalp us, too? Roan once asked.

Probably, her mother had conceded, but I like to think he wouldn’t enjoy it as much.

Massive hydraulic pumps were brought in to drain the shallow pond, and for weeks Roan could hear the sick slurping noise even in her sleep. Some time later the land was dry enough to dig basements, and Hale used the earth removed to build a levee meant to protect his development from flooding. The basements didn’t stay dry for long. Comet Pond wreaked its revenge, one patch of mold at a time, and the development slowed to a crawl.

Who’s going to buy a million dollar mansion with a leaky basement? her father had gloated.

The King’s basements were finished, but no mansions were built to cover them. The construction team boarded up the open holes, leaving a barren landscape of patch-worked plywood where once there was a soggy mass of green life. At least the cellar holes left behind by the colonial farmhouses were being reclaimed by the forest, one decade at a time. The basements of King Philip’s Estates sat and stewed.

And Roan had made them hers.

The opportunity to disobey her parents and possibly sustain serious injury weren’t the only attractions. The underground no-man’s-land was the only place Roan could play with her best friend, Walter Hale. Her parents had declared Hale’s only son as off limits as the construction site—and Hale had likewise proclaimed the Gorey property forbidden territory—forever sealing the friendship with the stamp of parental disapproval.

The plots had been built practically on top of each other and plumbing tunnels had not been filled when the site was abandoned, so it only took a few weeks of digging to open up short passageways between all the basements. Roan and Walt created another world in that hollowed-out development, existing as some kind of human-mole hybrids for as many hours as they could manage. The basements of King Philip’s Estates were part private clubhouse, part action movie set. It brought a smile to her face remembering how much goofy fun they’d had together, but that smile quickly faded when she recalled how everything had changed so abruptly.

She was sent away to live in a different kind of underground structure—one built entirely to keep her in.

Morning mist hung stubbornly in the air and gave the empty land beyond the fence a ghostly appeal. Comet Pond was suspended between two worlds, and Roan was cemented to the chain link that marked its confused boundaries. She needed to run. Now. But she couldn’t let go.

A ghost of a man took form out of the fog. No, not a ghost, because he was careful where he put his feet and why would a ghost be careful about anything? And not a man, either. At least not quite, but closer than when she’d left him. She hadn’t expected—not in her wildest dreams—that he would be here today. She felt sure that Dimond would have warned Hale of her return and that Walt would be kept away. But there he was, walking toward her. Taller, broader in the shoulder, carrying himself with a swagger that hadn’t been there before, but it was him.

She was up and over the fence before Cross had time to report her actions into his earpiece.

Roan dropped to her feet unsteadily, less agile than she once was. Not many opportunities for exercise at the silo, but that’s not why her heart was racing now. The closer she got to Walt, the more he looked like the boy she remembered. She’d grown several inches in the two years they’d been apart, but he’d grown several more. A layer of muddy sand hid the plywood over the unfinished basements, and the rotten wood gave a creak under her light steps—a reminder that the ground she walked was not solid.

Walt’s shoulders fell into their habitual hunch when they met, and he jammed his fists in his pockets. He seemed nervous, but the smile on his face put her at ease like it always did. Cross clambered loudly over the fence behind her, but Roan didn’t bother to look. She knew Walt had her back. It felt good to have someone watch her back again.

You cut your hair, Walt said.

"They cut my hair," she corrected, and self-consciously ran her fingers through her short wispy hair that flipped only at her neck now.

It looks good, he said quickly, and his shoulders hunched another inch.

I didn’t think you’d be here, she said. "I didn’t think your dad would let you be here."

He thinks I’m at Gramps.

They shared a small smile and in that moment the last two years apart shrunk to mere seconds. Walt apparently felt the need to use those seconds to sum up everything she’d missed.

My parents split. My dad’s a Senator now, did you know that? He spends most of his time in D.C. I don’t even know where my mom and sister are. That’s how mad she is at him.

I’m sorry to hear that, Roan said. She meant it, but it came out sounding flat.

I know it doesn’t compare to what you’ve been through, he said quickly.

Who’s comparing? she said, and she tried to smile.

Your parents have been super nice to me, Walt continued. He was so nervous he wasn’t breathing right. I thought they might blame me because of what happened at the fair, but they don’t. They never stopped trying to get you back.

Too bad Dimond has a no return policy, Roan said.

They must’ve done something right, Walt said. You’re here now.

Roan struggled to nod in agreement. A sudden crash and a surprised cry behind them. A gaping hole where Cross had been stalking up behind her.

Gee, I hope he’s ok, Roan said unconvincingly. She couldn’t stop a small smile from forming. Dimond wasn’t the only one who could spring a trap.

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Part Dimond_0002

What do you mean he’s run away? Paul stammered. He’s only two years old.

That’s debatable, said Dimond.

I know when my son was born, Sophia glowered.

Judge’s birth date and the age of his body don’t seem to coincide at all, actually, Dimond said, and he placed his nine fingertips flat on the table like a dealer at a poker table. "But you already know that, too. Why don’t you stop pretending that Roan and Judge need rescue? They have all the power in this equation. Not me. Not you."

So you’ve lost our son, Paul stated.

No, he ran away, Dimond repeated, irritated at Paul for not listening the first time.

Where was he last seen? This is insane. We should be looking for him right now…

There’s no need for that. We know where he’s headed.

Where? Paul asked.

Here, of course.

Paul and Sophia Gorey reached for each other’s hands, a hopeful look in their eyes.

Predictable dopes, Dimond thought, as he massaged the nub of