Augment: Breeding Pair

"Unh-huh," I answered with disinterest, giving them another suspicious once-over. "They sure don't look clearly marked to me," I pointed out with a shake of my head. "And like hell you stole them out of some guy's desk. These motherfuckers are huge. Your dad would be in deep shit if Mr. 'Big Pharma' notices a couple'a sample pills this size went missing from his desk drawer after your visit."

Monica pulled her hand back, peeved at the obvious logic she was trying to overlook. That wasn't my fault! "Do I look that stupid? There were like twenty of them all bunched together, there's no way he'll notice one or two missing out of the middle," she rebuffed, though whether it was for her sake or mine stood the running joke. "Look, do you want to be plain Jane forever? Intelligence. Heighteners. Grade-A brain-enhancing nanobots are swimming around in these capsules, and you're treating me like I'm too dumb to know what I stole. Come on."

I refrained from snipping, oh, if only their effects were retroactive for you, just like I refrained from pointing out that my name was Janice, not Jane. Monica had a point, though. She was a petty thief, but not without cause; her slippery fingers usually brought home drugs and other good shit we'd just sit back and laugh about after taking. Last week it was ecstasy, and previous weeks included the occasional acid hit, a few brands of viagra (just for fun), and tons of weed, all things studious college kids shouldn't be carrying around in their pockets or backpacks with Monica around. All of these things had been locally sourced, and Monica knew they hadn't been cut with something lethal; same went for the two pills in her hand, but they were more hardcore than Monica's usual share.

"So if you know so much about them, do you know why are they marked differently?" I decided to throw out there for Monica's discontent. "If they're the same brand and together in the same bag, why is it not one kind of intelligence enhancer?

"Beats me. Maybe one's for memory retention and the other is for kicking critical thought into overdrive," Monica shrugged, offering the pills again for my perusal; it was hard to believe that I was seeing millions of nanobots swimming around inside them, hard to believe I was seeing nanobots at all - that kind of technology was the wave of news for the past few months, but way, way above Monica's five-finger discount wealth class. "Pick your favorite color and let's pop."

I scoffed. "No way, Monica. We've got class in five minutes, remember?"

Monica looked at me as if I should've taken an intelligence heightener already. "Why do you think I brought these up now? You don't want to test how well brain pills help you *learn*?" Right. Monica probably didn't need one of these things with her thought processes on the ball, but I sure did. "Now hurry up. Class in five minutes, and we're out here hiding behind the building."

I plucked the blue-banded horse medicine from Monica's hand and brought it close to my face, inspecting the patterns weaving themselves through the grey goo again for laughs. "My favorite color," I smirked, tipping my head back and dropping the capsule right into my mouth. Once it touched saliva, it slipped easily down my throat like it wasn't humongous. Must've been all that practice taking meds without water.

Monica's pill disappeared about the sa

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