by Jade Kerrion
Anderson shot him an alarmed look and then sent out a telepathic command. Up ahead, the soldiers on either side of Reyes pulled the old man away from Thomas and stepped in front of him, machine guns held at ready. All around, soldiers drew their weapons.
“What’s going on here?” Reyes demanded.
Danyael limped forward slowly to stand next to Reyes. He pushed the hood back. “Zara.”
The woman accompanying Thomas sauntered forward, apparently indifferent to the weapons aimed at her. “Danyael. What an unexpected pleasure to see you again.” Her voice was low, a seductive purr.
His breath caught. Under the pale light of the moon, Zara Itani was more beautiful than the memory that haunted his dreams each night. With effort, he tore his gaze away from her to look at her companion who stood back, shrouded in darkness. “Galahad.”
Alarm flared through the members of the Mutant Assault Group. He sensed it in spite of their psychic shields. Orders from their team leaders must have flashed through their telepathic channels. The soldiers sprang forward, forcing Galahad and Zara to their knees and pulling their hands behind their heads. Electric cuffs locked around their wrists.
Danyael intervened. “No, don’t turn them on.”
“But, sir, we have standing orders from the general to keep them away from you.”
Had the general expected him to run back into the arms of the friends who had betrayed him? What kind of fool did the general take him for? “It’s too late for that now.” Danyael looked at Reyes and then at Thomas. “You came to talk, so talk.”
Thomas smirked. “So you are the guy we were sent in to save. You were in really bad shape when we found you. You’re looking a great deal better.” His gaze shuttled between Galahad and Danyael. “You really do look alike. I was confused when he showed up this afternoon, looking for me, insisting that I was his template.”
“What?”
“It’s impossible, of course. I’m only twenty-four; he’s older than I am.” Thomas looked at Reyes. “Dad, do you know what he’s talking about?”
Pained guilt poured out of Reyes. “I…”
Danyael looked at Thomas and then back at Reyes. There was only one explanation for Thomas’s empathic echo. “Reyes, he’s not really your son, is he?” Danyael asked softly.
Reyes lowered his gaze. He was silent for a long time before he finally said, “No, he’s not.”
Shock ricocheted through the crowd. Fingers tensed on triggers.
Danyael’s eyes narrowed. His empathic powers uncoiled, unfurling like a banner. It wafted, subtle as an evening breeze. Shock subsided into muted surprise, tightly but unnoticeably checked by the power of an alpha empath.
Thomas’s brown eyes appeared almost black in the dim glow of the moon. They were wide and, in Danyael’s world-weary opinion, painfully innocent. “I’m not?” Thomas took a few steps forward, but was held at bay by soldiers with assault rifles. “Whose son am I then?”
Reyes laughed, low and bitter. “My father’s, I guess.”
Thomas’s jaw dropped. “I’m what?” He shook his head, denial scalding him in spite of Danyael’s efforts to moderate his anguish. “No, no, this can’t be.”
Reyes sank down on a fallen log. He interlaced his fingers around his knees and stared at the ground. “Thomas…the real Thomas died almost thirty years ago. He was only six. He’d fallen sick—something in his lungs, maybe pneumonia or bronchitis, no one knew. We rushed him to the hospital, but the doctors wouldn’t help him. We didn’t have insurance, and the doctors wouldn’t extend charity care to an in vitro.” Reyes’s eyes were bleak, dark with the despair of memories. “So…so he died. He was beautiful. To us, he was perfect, except no one else saw him the same way. Sarah faded away after that. We’d both wanted a child, and she couldn’t conceive or carry a child to term, so we went the in-vitro route, not knowing that we had damned our precious baby. I think she blamed herself for his death. She committed suicide on the day that would have been Thomas’s eighth birthday.”
Reyes rocked slowly. He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “The need for family is the most awful need. It never goes away. It just eats you up from the inside. After I lost Sarah and Thomas, I went to geneticists, asking if they could clone Thomas. They would have had to exhume his body to retrieve his DNA.” Reyes shook his head. “I couldn’t do it. I wanted to remember him as he was the day we put him in the ground, so one of them offered me a clone of myself to raise as my son.”
“Let me guess,” Galahad spoke up in his clear tenor. “Professor Roland Rakehell, from Pioneer Laboratories.”
Reyes looked up at Galahad. Danyael saw something hard and cold glitter behind the sheen of tears. “Yes.”
Thomas’s voice was a whisper. “I’m not your son? I’m just a clone?” Rage flashed through him. “I’m just a clone?” Teeth bared, he threw himself at Reyes, but soldiers pushed him back, shoving him to the ground.
One of the soldiers raised the butt of his gun, but Danyael caught his hand before it smashed into Thomas’s face. “Stop. Can’t you see he’s in pain?” He ignored the murmured warnings of the soldiers and limped up to Thomas, extending his hand down to the clone. The mad gleam in Thomas’s eyes corroborated Danyael’s assessment of the clone’s roiling emotional state. Danyael’s jaw tensed as he braced himself to pull out Thomas’s pain.
Thomas looked up at Danyael, and his face twisted. He slapped Danyael’s hand away before scrambling to his feet. His hate-filled glare locked on Reyes. “So that’s the way it is. That’s why you’ve been ignoring me for the past six months, ever since I freed this mutant from prison.” He stalked the breadth of the clearing like a caged predator. “You’ve found your son again. You’ve found someone to take the place of the beautiful, perfect creature who died too young.”
Reyes looked up, alarmed. “Thomas, it’s not—”
“I am your son! What the hell did you take me for? Just a tool, an extension of you that you sent to do all the things you didn’t want to do or couldn’t do any more?” Thomas took several steps back until he was once again surrounded by Sakti. “How would you like to see your perfect, beautiful son die all over again?” He threw the order over his shoulder. “Kill him.”
Men exploded into motion, but not a single bullet was fired.
“Don’t even think about it,” a voice said from behind Thomas.
The soldiers of the Mutant Assault Group grinned broadly as Sakti turned on itself. At least half the members of Sakti held guns to the temples of their supposed comrades.
Thomas’s eyes bulged. “What…Peter?”
“We’re only on loan to you, Thomas. The general will be furious if we let you kill Danyael Sabre on our watch.” Peter Dieter stepped forward. “Disarm them,” he instructed his team of allegedly deceased members of the assault group. He inclined his head to Laird Keppler and Jarrett Hagan, the leaders of teams six and seven. “It’s good to see you guys again. Keep Danyael protected, will you, while I handle these terrorists?”
“Of course.”
Peter and his team herded the mutinous members of Sakti into their vehicles. Thomas was physically hauled to the SUV and tossed gracelessly into the back seat. “You’ll keep driving if you know what’s good for you,” Peter warned Thomas. “Effective immediately, I’m pulling my team out of Sakti. Don’t be surprised to find several dozen defections by the time you get back to your little hole in the ground.” He jerked his head. “Now, get going before I change my mind about not killing all of you.”
The vehicles pulled away in a spray of gravel. Peter glanced at two of his team members. “Track them. Thomas’s unreliable. I don’t want to be caught off-guard if he turns around.” He grinned at Laird. “Can we bum a ride back to the base with you?”
“It’ll be tight, but we’ll find a way to manage.” Laird nudged his chin at Galahad and Zara. “What do we do with these two?”
“Release them,” Danyael said.
“No, we can’t,” Peter i
nsisted. “They know about the connection between Sakti and the assault group.”
Danyael chuckled, low and bitter. “They’re both very good at keeping secrets.”
“We’ll take them back to the base. The general can decide what to do with them.”
Galahad spoke up, his voice calm, his demeanor unafraid. He looked at Reyes. “I would like a chance to speak to you.”
Reyes pushed slowly to his feet. He stared at Galahad for a long, silent moment and then glanced over at Danyael. “I think he’s right. We need to talk.”
~*~
Back at the Mutant Assault Group headquarters, Danyael leaned against the wall, listening as the team leaders debriefed the general. Danyael’s mind wandered, piecing together fragments of his memories of Zara and comparing them to the woman of flesh and blood who had stood before him hours earlier. His memories, however much they tormented him, failed to do justice to the living, breathing woman. The drugs forced into his veins while he had been at ADX must have dulled the potency of his memories. In hindsight, it was a blessing.
“Danyael, do you have anything else to add?”
General Howard’s voice, unusually sharp, tore him away from his abstraction. He looked up and met the general’s gaze. “No, sir.”
“You saw Thomas. What is your assessment of him?”
“He’s dangerous, much more so than you think.”
Peter Dieter shook his head. “I spent months with him. He’s a coward. He has to be goaded into action, and even then, he’s obsessively focused on the human cost.”
Danyael’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “It’s not cowardice to count the human cost. Your general does; it’s his primary motivation for the super soldier program.” He pushed away from the wall and hobbled forward. “To understand Thomas, you need to look to Reyes. No one else could have built Elysium into a thriving derivative haven the way Reyes did. Thomas’s early ineffectiveness was due to lack of resources and opportunity. Now he has resources and motive. If he’s as compelling as Reyes is, then he will have no trouble getting Sakti to follow him, even without your team providing structure and leadership.”
The general leaned back in his chair. “You think he’s going to do something drastic?”
“He’s hurt and he’s not thinking straight. If I touched him, I could have—”
“Absorbed his emotions? You need to stop doing that, Danyael. It makes no sense for you to wreck yourself emotionally just so that others don’t have to work through their own issues.”
“Sometimes there isn’t time to work through issues. This might be one of those times.”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on the situation, then. Perhaps Reyes can try to reach out to Thomas in a day or two and reopen the lines of communication.”
Danyael shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why were your men still with Sakti? You said that your sole purpose of working with them was to get me out of ADX.”
“It was, but we turned Sakti from a joke into a meaningful threat. I can’t, in good conscience, cut Sakti loose now. As long as my men are the ones really running the show, the threat of Sakti can be managed and mitigated. But now…”
Peter flushed and dropped his gaze to the ground. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“We’ll deal with Sakti later. Now, what do we do with Galahad and Zara Itani?”
“Release them,” Danyael said. “They’re no threat to you, and they won’t be, unless you make them a threat.”
“They know about our relationship with Sakti.”
Danyael chuckled without humor. “Zara and Galahad can be bargained with, and they are good at keeping secrets. Both of them know what happened to me during the forty-eight hours ripped out of my memories. Neither has told me anything.”
“Danyael, I realize you want to protect them. They are your friends and—”
“They betrayed me, both of them.” Danyael gritted his teeth. “I can’t easily change how I feel about Zara, but I have no illusions as to what she feels for me.”
The general remained briefly silent. “We’ll let them cool their heels for a day or two. I want to talk to them, and then I’ll decide.”
“Fine, but no electric collars.”
The general arched a brow. “Danyael, it’s a standard form of restraint—”
“Handcuffs are restraints. An electric collar doesn’t restrain anything. It’s an instrument of torture. I’m removing them.”
The general’s cool blue eyes narrowed, and then a slow smile, devoid of humor, spread across his face. “Of course, as you see fit. I want your assessment of their threat level within the hour, Danyael.”
He nodded. Without another word, Danyael limped out of the general’s office and down the brightly lit corridors to the adjacent building. He took the elevator to the highest floor, where the detention cells were located. He stopped briefly at the guard desk to pick up pillows and blankets and then continued down the corridor toward Zara’s cell.
Danyael paused outside the door, schooling his expression into impassiveness, while his heart and mind churned in turmoil. Who was he trying to fool? More importantly, why did he even bother? His jaw tense, he held his key card to the security panel. The red light on the panel flashed to green and the steel door slid open.
The light in the room was dim, a pale orange glow. Zara sat on the edge of the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. Shadows obscured most of her features, but she looked up when he entered. She said nothing. She watched as he set the pillows and blanket down on the bed before hobbling up to her. Her emotions wavered tantalizingly in and out of focus, as subtle as smoke and as impossible to grasp.
He cut off the sharp ache driven by the need to know if she still cared for him. Her emotions are no longer my problem. Careful not to touch her skin, he brushed her dark hair aside and deactivated the lock on the electric collar. He tugged it away from her neck and tossed it down on the bed. Surprise rippled through her. “I don’t like seeing collars on people,” he said quietly in response to the question he suspected lay behind her emotion. “Are you all right?”
“No one has turned it on, if that’s what you’re asking.” She glanced at the pillows. “Thanks for the creature comforts. The assault group hasn’t been particularly hospitable.”
“It was, to me.” Danyael turned away and limped back to the door, his single crutch tapping rhythmically on the white tiles.
“Is that it?” Zara pushed to her feet. “We haven’t seen each other in a year and a half. You come in here, bring bedding, and then just walk away?”
What did she want from him? Danyael turned to face her. He endured her close scrutiny, but could not bring himself to meet her violet gaze. He did not need eyes to perceive her emotional spectrum. Zara shimmered, iridescent, a complex blend of fire and ice, light and dark, swirling into art, both subtle and bold. He could make little sense of her actual emotions, but nevertheless, he smiled, appreciating beauty when he saw it. She was as breathtaking as he had remembered.
“You look great,” she said finally.
Right. His averted gaze fell on his left leg. Beneath the denim, his leg was swathed in bandages and athletic tape, and beneath the layers of bandages and tape, his leg was a mass of scar tissue, torn flesh, and ruined muscles.
“I mean it.” Zara caught him by the chin and gently turned his face back to her. “I’ve never seen you look healthier, never seen you stronger.” An appreciative smile toyed on her lips as she glided her hand up his biceps and down his chest. Her touch seemed to burn right through him. “You’ve gained weight, all of it muscle, since I last saw you at Elysium—”
He looked up, meeting her eyes. “I thought I sensed you. What were you doing there?”
“Looking for you.”
“Why?” Bitterness edged Danyael’s voice. “Do you still work for the council?”
She shrugged gracefully. “We work together, when it suits me. Occasionally, our goals align.”
He took a single ste
p back, breaking the physical contact. “What did the council promise you this time for bringing me in? Galahad’s hand in marriage?”
Anger flashed though Zara a split second before she shoved her palms against his chest, sending him stumbling back. “That’s insulting and unworthy of you.”
The wall behind him broke his fall. Fumbling with his crutch, he straightened slowly. “Was his freedom worth my life sentence in ADX?”
Zara tossed her head, the waves of her long dark hair swaying. She glowered at him. “If you have to ask…”
Anger, fed by the wrenching ache of betrayal, coursed through him. “I am asking.”
She said nothing, merely raised her chin and stared at him, a mocking, amused gleam in her eyes.
Danyael swallowed hard, forcing his emotions down until he thought he could keep his voice steady, controlled. “The next time you make a deal with the council that involves me, do me a favor—just agree to kill me.”
“Why would I? Dead people can’t pay child support.”
He had turned away, but her answer froze him in his tracks. His heart stuttered. The chill he felt had nothing to do with the cold air blasting through the vents in the ceiling. Slowly he pivoted to face her. “What did you say?”
“Child support. It’s what you pay when you become a father.”
He shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”
“I had the tests done at five different labs. All came back with the same answer. You are her father.”
“Zara, we never—”
She pushed him back against the wall. Her eyes narrowed, the glitter predatory. “You seduced me, or did you forget?”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. I know I was disoriented from the drugs that the assault group used to knock me out. I even know that I came on to you, but it doesn’t make our sex consensual. I thought you were Galahad, and you knew it.”
“We didn’t have sex.”
“Oh?” She tilted her head, the gesture challenging. “Was it an immaculate conception? If Laura is Jesus take two, someone needs to send her a memo, because the only thing that’s holy about her is terror. She looks just like you.”
