Control Read Online Free PDF

before long.
    “It’ll be over soon,” I say, trying to be soothing but failing spectacularly. There’s nothing soothing about this room. Dyl won’t stop staring at the antique-grade blood testing equipment on the rickety table before us, as if the needles will jump up to stab her eyeballs if she looks away for a millisecond.
    Micah opens the door and we both flinch.
    “Hey,” he says, smiling at us.
    We don’t smile back.
    “Glad the clothes fit,” he says. Dyl’s wearing a sky-blue, flowing skirt and a feminine, snug white tee that clearly shows he picked the right-size bra. I’m in my usual troll-wear of baggy, dark clothes, so he really did get it right. I try not to be freaked that Micah knows my bra size too, which exists in the micro-XS end of the spectrum.
    “Okay, just some questions.” He sits astride a chair and pulls out a data tablet. “So Dyl. Any health problems?”
    She brightens. “No.”
    “No illnesses recently? Strange symptoms?”
    “Nope.”
    Micah gives her a smile and Dyl returns the favor. Like a prize racehorse, she’s even showing teeth in perfect, pearly order. She’s passing with flying colors. He studies the electronic tablet. The answers glow, automatically, from her verbal answers. “Your periods are regular?”
    At this, she blushes. Not exactly first-date-type conversation material.
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. Now, Zelia. How about you?”
    Oh god. Yes, yes, and I’m a mess. Gah.
    “Which question?” I squint at him.
    “Any health problems?”
    I tell him about my breathing. I should have died as an infant. If Dad hadn’t been a doctor, it might not have been picked up. I could have died within a day of being born. Micah pushes out his lower lip, impressed with my flaw.
    “And otherwise your health is . . . ?”
    “Fine, fine.” I’m starting to get nervous, because what if a nice family rejects both of us because of my imperfections?
    “And your periods?”
    Damn. “I, uh, haven’t gotten my period yet.”
    “This month?” he asks helpfully.
    “No, I mean not ever.”
    Micah looks truly confused now. He looks down at his tablet, and back at us again.
    I shrink into my chair, but there is nowhere to hide from the fact that I am the unequivocal runt of the family.
    “Did you ever get tested to find out why?”
    “Yeah. They told me that my eggs and ovaries are . . .” God. Don’t make me say it out loud.
    “They’re what?”
    I can’t look him in the eye. “They’re undeveloped. I have some minor hormone deficiencies . . . no big deal, really.” I mumble so incomprehensibly that Micah has to ask me to repeat myself. My face boils with embarrassment. “I’m deficient, okay?” I snap.
    Micah nods at me, the eggless monstrosity who might die at a moment’s notice. Finally, he stands up and smiles, hiding his thoughts from us.
    “Okay. I’ll send the tech in for your labs. It will only take a little while.”
    “What about a bot?” Dyl fairly squeaks out her plea.
    “Or breath-chem tests?” I add. Dyl nods eagerly at my suggestion.
    “Oh, that. Well, New Horizons can’t afford breath-chems. And our lab bot has been down for a while. We’re going old-fashioned today.” He scoots out the door pretty fast, as if he anticipates our coming protest.
    The next fifteen minutes are a comedy for me and torture for Dyl. The lab tech looks about a hundred years old, with an IQ of a moss-covered pebble. He jabs us with needles, once, twice, and finally gets the blood flowing into the collection capsules, all the while marking down stuff on the e-tablet, which he drops twice because his gnarled hands are so clumsy. By the time he’s done, Dyl is a stunning shade of greenish white, and I’ve got my arm around her.
    “The bruises will fade,” I tell her. Dyl shivers under my arm, until I realize she’s not cold, and she’s not crying.
    “It’s not that. I have a bad feeling, Zel.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Look,