by Jade Kerrion
“It’s a very attractive home,” Galahad remarked as Tseng led them up a flight of stairs to the next level.
“A carryover from our colonial days,” Tseng said. “This house is over a century old. Joyce Ong is unusual in that she’s the only Singaporean living in this neighborhood of thirty-three homes. The other houses are owned by Singaporeans but occupied by expatriates, mostly American and European.”
“Why?”
“Singaporeans like cities. I think we’re inherently afraid of the outdoors.” Tseng chuckled. “You don’t have to look too hard to find fruit bats, monitor lizards, cobras, and pythons out here. Besides, many of these homes were occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War, and some Singaporeans believe the houses are haunted.”
“Have you seen a ghost?”
Tseng shrugged. “Not in the past two days.”
The stairs opened into a large landing area, which served as a family room. Tseng pointed at two of the three doors leading from the family room. “Those are unoccupied bedrooms. We’ve turned one into our command base. Joyce is this way.” He knocked on a closed door.
“Come in,” a wavering voice said.
Joyce Ong beamed at them as they entered her bedroom. The Chinese woman sat on a recliner in a pool of sunlight. A thin cap of white hair was smoothed over her head, concealing bald patches. Her wrinkled skin was covered with liver-colored spots, but her huge, toothless grin captured Galahad’s attention immediately. Her smile exuded joy, and her eyes were kindly. “Good morning, Amanda and Tseng.” She looked at Galahad. “And who are you?”
“I’m Galahad.”
“Really?” She squinted at him. “You don’t look like your pictures.”
“I’m in disguise.”
She blinked like a shortsighted owl, and a dazzling smile broke forth. “Good disguise.” She laughed, a happy sound, like that of a carefree child.
Galahad knelt beside her chair, and she reached out, her hand trembling. Her touch was gentle against his cheek. “Amazing. Like real skin.” Her eyes, dark and limpid, searched his face. “Are you here to kill me?”
The flicker of hurt caught him off guard. “No, of course not. I’m here to protect you.”
“Ah, good.” She patted his hand. “Good.” She relaxed into her recliner. Her eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes closed. “I’ll take a short nap here in the sun. Will you have Lena wake me for lunch?”
“Yes, of course,” Tseng said. He ushered Amanda and Galahad out of the room and closed the door behind them. “Like many old people, she takes short naps through the day and night, rather than clock a solid eight hours of sleep at night. She’s fairly nocturnal, a fact that some members of my team find amusing, and others disturbing.”
“Who’s Lena?” Galahad asked.
“Her live-in maid. Lena’s Indonesian, and she’s worked for Joyce for the past eight years. Her rooms are behind the kitchen. She prepares Joyce’s meals and assists with other personal matters. A housecleaning company comes in twice a week; Joyce has used them for years.”
“Does anyone else typically come by?” Amanda asked.
“Gardeners, once a week, also longtime contractors.”
“Lawyers, friends, family?”
“No, Joyce has outlived most of her friends. She has family in Singapore, a grandson and a granddaughter. We’ve asked them both to stay away for the time being.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That there was an on-going A*STAR investigation—”
“A*STAR?” Galahad’s gaze flashed to Tseng’s face.
“Yes,” Tseng said. “Joyce Ong was the past presiding chairwoman of A*STAR.”
Galahad shot Amanda a quick glance. “When did she step down?”
“When she turned eighty, so about twelve years ago.”
Amanda’s brow furrowed. “Eighty? Isn’t that rather old to be working?”
“Joyce is one of the brightest minds of her generation. She led A*STAR for over forty years and is largely credited for guiding Singapore through the early years of the Genetic Revolution.”
Galahad nodded. As a general rule, he did not believe in coincidences. A*STAR was too much of a player to be lightly dismissed. “Amanda, can you let Danyael know?”
Amanda’s blue eyes glittered as she reached out with her telepathic powers. A moment passed and her expression tightened. “He already knows…”
~*~
Fusionopolis Phase 1, a triumvirate of fiberglass and steel, towered over the One-North business park. Its three buildings—Connexis South, Connexis North, and Symbiosis, connected by several aerial walkways—was home to many research and development organizations, including A*STAR and some of its research institutes.
A black car, windows tinted, pulled up at the curb in front of Connexis North. Danyael stepped out of the car and turned to offer Zara a hand. She accepted his hand, but did not place any weight on it as she slid out of the chauffeured vehicle. “Stay close,” she told the driver, an attaché from the U.S. Embassy. “We’ll call when we need you.”
The driver nodded and took off as soon as Zara shut the car door.
She shook the long waves of her dark hair back from her face, and smoothed her black dress. The tank top left her slender and lean muscled arms bare, and the hem on her dress ended mid-thigh, exposing what seemed like an endless length of leg. The dress was the most impractical thing Danyael had ever seen her wear, and she capped it off with three-inch stilettos, not that she needed the extra height. Her tiny handbag would not have held more than a driver’s license, a few credit cards and a lipstick, yet Danyael knew she had a gun and a dagger or two on her person—he just wasn’t certain where.
Compared to her, he felt scruffy in his faded denim jeans and black shirt, but she seemed to pay no attention to what he was wearing. Instead, she slipped her hand through his, immediately drawing envious glances—both male and female—their way.
Sighing, he deflected the attention with his empathic powers. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure we’re noticed. It’s for our own safety. Panicky people do stupid things. I would rather they didn’t panic.”
He frowned. “Are you expecting trouble?”
“I’m not sure. Two days ago, I would have said, no, but after two age-accelerated clones of me tried to kill you, I’m having second thoughts.” She looked at him. “You better be on top of your game today. Did you sleep well last night?”
He met her gaze with equal directness. “You know I did.”
Zara flashed a sleek smile that evoked images of a cat that had consumed the cream and the canary. “Ah, so did I.”
Danyael’s breath caught. The heat of their mating the previous night was second only to the mind-blowing sense of completeness he had felt when she fell asleep in his arms, her long legs sprawled across his. He sensed that she was probing for information—reassurance, perhaps—but she did not need more power over him. He changed the topic deliberately.
“Have you been to the A*STAR offices before?” he asked as they stepped into the elevator.
She shook her head. “No, I never needed to. I provided them data, not physical samples.” The elevator stopped at the twentieth floor, and the doors opened. “Let me see how far I can get us before you use your empathic powers.”
Zara stepped out into the corridor and walked past the glass doors as they slid open for her. The receptionist, a young Indian woman, looked up and offered Zara a polite smile. “Good morning, how may I help you?”
“I’d like to see Suresh Sharma. He is a member, I believe, of the Biomedical Research Council.”
“I am so sorry, miss,” the receptionist said. “Doctor Sharma is no longer with A*STAR. Is there someone else you’d like to talk to instead?” Her gaze flicked up over Zara’s shoulder, and her jaw dropped. “You!” She pushed back from her desk, clumsy in her haste. “You’re—”
“Danyael Sabre.”
The young woman sucked air in heavi
ng gasps. “Oh yes, of course.” She brushed trembling fingers over her hair. “I…I’m so sorry. I thought you were—”
“Galahad?” Danyael shot Zara a glance. Galahad wasn’t universally adored. As many people revered him as the perfect human being as those who damned him as an abomination, but the woman’s reaction had not been adoration or disgust. She had been terrified.
Why?
“Uh…” The receptionist’s gaze flicked back to Zara. “Doctor Sharma left A*STAR a year and a half ago, but if you would like to wait, I’ll see if Professor Sir George Reilly, chairman of the Biomedical Research Council, is available to meet with you.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Please, this way. You can wait in one of our meeting rooms.” Walking quickly, as if to hurry them out of sight, the woman ushered them into a small room, offered them drinks from a mini-fridge, and then scurried out, closing the door behind her.
Zara paced the room, her gaze scanning the walls and ceiling. “Not quite the welcome I was expecting. You didn’t do anything to her, did you?”
“Didn’t have a chance. Her reaction was completely authentic.”
“Interesting. It appears that the news that Galahad is alive and in Singapore might have spread further than Amanda anticipated.” Zara met his gaze and pressed a finger to her lips. With little apparent difficulty despite her short, tight skirt, she climbed onto the table and unscrewed the smoke detector. A smug smile curved her lips as she tugged some wires loose, and pulled a long and narrow tube from the smoke detector.
She tossed it down to him. Danyael turned the metallic tube over in his hand, and stared into a clear lens. Was it a camera?
Zara leapt off the table, landing in a battle crouch, and then straightened. She searched the vase of artificial flowers first, running her slender fingers around the inside of the rim, and pulled out a flat, circular object, no larger than a fingernail. She tapped her ear. A bug.
Her search of the room yielded several other remote surveillance products, all of which she dismantled with professional ease and laid across the table. Danyael concealed a smile. Zara’s actions reminded him of Lucien’s pet, a Rottweiler, who took pride in digging up the perfectly manicured lawn and laying the grubby treasures it had found, like rotting wood, in straight rows outside the patio door.
Zara finally sat on the table and crossed her legs. She dug into her handbag and pulled out a metallic device, no longer or wider than her middle finger, and only fractions of a centimeter thick. “And to be sure…” She pressed a button on the device. “Now, we can talk freely.”
“What was that?”
“A short-range disruptor. It emits a low electromagnetic pulse and fries anything electronic within twenty meters.”
“Then why did you dismantle the camera and the bugs?”
“Practice, Danyael. You can never have too much of it.”
The door opened, and a Caucasian man walked in, flanked by two Chinese men. All three were dressed in business suits. The first man, his lean and ascetic face unrevealing, looked at Danyael. “You say you’re Danyael Sabre. Prove it.”
His two bodyguards reached into their jackets, but Zara beat them to it. She whipped her Glock from its holster strapped to her inner thigh and pulled off two shots before their fingers tightened on their triggers. The two men screamed, their guns tumbling uselessly from their bleeding arms.
The Caucasian man recoiled, cringing, terror etched across his face.
Zara’s violet eyes narrowed into slits. “If you wanted Danyael to prove his identity by healing me, you’re out of luck.”
“It looks like someone’s going to get healed anyway.” Danyael limped forward. It was just as well that Zara had not been aiming to kill; her bullets had ripped through their biceps. The physical wounds he healed easily, his empathic powers absorbing the injury, repairing flesh, and restoring skin. The emotional bruising of their pride, however, he left alone.
Zara kept her weapon trained on the men as Danyael healed the two injured bodyguards. When Danyael stepped back, the two bodyguards offered the man slight nods, and the man dismissed them with a nervous jerk of his head. The bodyguards left, pulling the door shut behind them. The tension seeped out of the man.
“Forgive me. I had to be sure.”
Zara lowered her gun but did not put it away. “Who are you?”
“George Reilly, chairman of the Biomedical Research Council.” He sank into a chair and raked his fingers through his brown hair. “We’ve been on edge ever since we heard that Joyce Ong was going to be Galahad’s next target. You realize, of course, that we’re a research institute. For us, a contaminated petri dish constitutes a major disaster. This—” He waved a hand at Zara’s handgun. “This is entirely beyond our experience.”
“Then your bodyguards…”
“Special Operations Forces, assigned to protect this facility in case Galahad decided to storm it instead. I don’t understand how you got up to our floor without being observed. Apparently, this building and all other A*STAR facilities are under guard.”
Zara glanced at the alpha empath. “Danyael is fairly talented at discouraging interest.”
Reilly nodded. “Yes, of course. I should have known. Why are you here?”
Zara leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “Three years ago, I delivered information to A*STAR. I want to know what you did with it.”
“What kind of information?” he asked.
“Galahad’s genetic code.”
Reilly’s eyes widened. “You’re from the Three Fates, the mercenary agency that specializes in the impossible.”
And the illegal, Danyael added silently.
Zara nodded. “Yes, I own the Three Fates.”
Reilly sagged into a chair across from Zara. “I’m sorry, names of Three Fates agents weren’t part of our permanent record for security reasons, I imagine. We’ve spent the past year trying to disentangle ourselves from the actions of one man.”
Zara frowned. “What do you mean?”
“About a year and a half ago, it came to light that Suresh Sharma was conducting research that had not been approved by the review board or the council, and worse, that he had been doing so for several years.”
“What kind of research?” Danyael asked.
“Biomedical, mostly around genetics and cloning.”
“Age acceleration?”
Reilly pressed his lips into a tight line and nodded. “Including age acceleration. How did you know?”
Danyael shrugged. “Lucky guess.” It was clear that Reilly only knew pieces of the puzzle. “Was Sharma released from his position at A*STAR because of his research?”
“His unauthorized research. The work he was doing was remarkable—in fact, it was amazing—but we are a government agency. We cannot back rogue scientists. His contract with you was another example of unauthorized work—”
Zara tilted her head. “So the contract for Galahad’s genome didn’t come from A*STAR?”
“It’s complicated. It did, and it didn’t. It was paid for with A*STAR funds, but Sharma bypassed the review board yet again. Three years ago, he was the executive director of the Biomedical Research Council, and he signed off on acquisitions and payments, including the one he made to you for Galahad’s genome. So, yes, we paid for it, but never knew we requested it until a year ago when Sharma’s illicit activities came to light.”
“Did A*STAR do anything with Galahad’s genome?” Danyael asked.
Reilly shook his head. “Officially, no. Unofficially, did Sharma do anything with it? I don’t know. We suspect we’ve only discovered a portion of Sharma’s unauthorized research; in fact, I know we’ve barely skimmed the tip of the iceberg. Sharma had deep roots into many research communities around the world, and we think he might have collaborated with others.”
“Where is he now?” Zara asked.
“We don’t know.”
“After everything he had done, you let him walk?”
“Could I have copies of his research reports?” Danyael asked.
Reilly shook his head. “Company policy; I’m afraid I can’t oblige.”
“And if I came back with an official request from the U.S. Embassy?”
Reilly frowned. “What is this about?”
Danyael’s empathic senses reached out, probing. Could he trust Reilly with the truth? “Galahad isn’t the problem. Galahad’s age-accelerated clones are.”
Reilly’s jaw dropped. “No!”
Danyael nodded. “Yes.”
“You’ve seen these clones?”
“Yes, and other age-accelerated clones too.” Danyael saw no need to mention that the clones had been Zara’s. “The clones are aging approximately twenty-five times faster than the average human. I think they’re mentally and emotionally unstable.”
“Of course they would be unstable.” Reilly shot to his feet and paced the small room. “We’ve done enough work on animals to prove it. Sharma thought he had found ways around it…hormone treatments, drugs…” He shook his head. “As far as I could tell though, none of his research bore fruit.”
“I’d like to take a look at his notes.”
Reilly refocused on Danyael. “Dr. Sabre…you’re a doctor, aren’t you? Johns Hopkins, and of course, your father is a hell of a geneticist.”
“My father and I aren’t close, but yes, I did graduate from the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and I have a passing understanding of genetics.”
Reilly released his breath in a heavy sigh. “I’ll have to clear your request with our board of directors. Where can I find you?”
“Contact the U.S. Embassy and ask for Amanda Chandler. She’s the country manager for the National Security Agency,” Danyael said.
