by Bianca D'Arc
Ronin decided to offer the skin patches to the Alvian Brethren without wings first. The winged Zxerah were under constant monitoring by the top geneticist, Mara Prime, so it would be hard to hide the alterations the drug would make in large numbers of those men. Still, Ronin wanted them to have the chance.
But there were only so many skin patches in this first batch. He offered them to the Zxerah who weren’t under constant genetic scrutiny—those without the experimental wings who served in support functions. Many chose to try the treatment and the human adoptees into the clan volunteered to help their Alvian Brethren cope as emotions began to surface. With such a strong support system in place, Ronin had high hopes for the outcome.
Eve, a human member of the Zxerah clan who had a very strong gift of foresight, visited Ronin the night the skin patches were delivered. It wasn’t uncommon for Eve to seek him out when she’d had a particularly powerful vision, but it also wasn’t something that happened every day. Ronin made time to see her, having learned early on that her counsel and guidance were valuable.
“Change has arrived, I see.” Eve nodded to the unremarkable brown leather bag that sat on Ronin’s desk.
“Possibly.” Ronin offered her refreshment as she took a seat, but she declined. He’d learned it was best to let Eve talk while he listened.
“Oh, most definitely.” She smiled at him. “This is just the beginning. As more of your people take the treatment and gain emotion, the status quo will be drastically altered. Change will be inevitable from the moment you offer the drug to your people.”
Ronin hadn’t told anyone what was in the bag—not even the operative who’d been sent to pick it up from Bill. Eve had foreseen it, truly.
“What else have you seen?”
“A quiet clerk in a windowless office.” Eve’s eyes clouded as she talked of her vision. “She needs one of those. Desperately. And she doesn’t even know it. She’s going on a journey. A quest. To a very cold place with two very hot men.” Eve’s mouth curled in a smile. “She needs to be able to interact with them. She needs to feel. You have to give her that option. She’ll think about it for a day or two, but she’ll take the chance. She doesn’t even know how brave she really is yet, but she’ll find out.” Eve refocused on him as her vision cleared. “You have to give a couple of those to Roshin.”
“Are you certain?” The thought would never have occurred to him, but in a way, it made sense.
Eve rose to her feet. “Absolutely. She needs them. As soon as possible.”
Ronin Prime made a trip to the city the next day. Those who were tasked with watching his movements and reporting back to the Council were allowed to observe him in his travels, even if they had no idea why he was really going to the city.
Ostensibly, he was going to meet with the High Council. In truth, the more important meeting was a private one with a very special person none would ever suspect. A clerk, Roshin 72 had been assigned to the private staff of the newest Council member, Markus Prime.
Councilor Markus represented those in the clerical trades and had been selected to replace the disgraced Troyan, who had ordered the assassination attempt on Chief Engineer Davin’s life. When his involvement was revealed, Troyan had been ousted from the Council and a replacement had been chosen in short order.
Markus wasn’t as politically savvy as Troyan had been. He was also considerably younger. In fact, he was the youngest member of the Council and had most likely been chosen because he was perceived as no threat to the other members of the Council. He went along with most of their plans with little or no argument, deferring to the older, more experienced members at nearly every turn. Just as they wanted.
Markus had been assigned a staff to help keep his office in order. He’d chosen several people he’d worked with before and several others were assigned based on their areas of expertise. Roshin 72 was one of the latter.
In fact, she had been carefully positioned for just such an opportunity by Ronin himself. Though raised almost entirely outside the confines of the Alvian city infrastructure and trained to excel in her work as a legal clerk, Roshin was secretly a member of the Zxerah Brotherhood. She wasn’t much of a fighter and had never been trained as an operative—even the highly secretive Zxerah needed clerks—but she had been assigned to a role that made her very valuable indeed.
They met in secret, which was not easy to accomplish in a city filled with possible watchers, but Ronin had people everywhere. He let it be known he needed a few minutes off the grid and his operatives at all levels of Alvian society sprang into action to help divert attention away from him for a short while.
“We must talk quickly. I will be missed.” Ronin ducked into Roshin’s private apartment where she’d been waiting for him. “It’s good to see you again, little one.”
“Good to see you too, Patriarch.” Roshin ushered him inside and invited him to sit with a gesture even as she made her report. “Markus is easily led by the rest of the Council, as you suspected. Gildereth is the one who speaks most to Markus when persuasion is needed. He holds more influence over the Council than I had expected. For a soldier, he wields a lot of power over his supposed superiors.”
“I long suspected that was the case,” Ronin agreed. “What of Orin? Does he truly rule the Council or is he just a figurehead?”
“As best I can tell, he exerts his leadership sparingly. Unless the topic under discussion is one of interest to him or his constituents in the medical community, he is content to let the others have their way.”
“I bring a warning to you from Eve, our seer.”
“A warning?” Like most Alvians, Roshin didn’t display true emotion, merely a vague sort of interest in words that would have inspired real fear in any of Ronin’s human clan members.
“You will be traveling in the near future on a great quest of some sort.”
“What must I do?”
“When the opportunity arises to go on this quest, do not argue. Accept that it is your fate. You are needed on the journey.”
She looked skeptical but nodded. “Yes, Patriarch.”
“There’s one more thing.” Ronin reached into an inner pocket of his robe and palmed the precious skin patches he’d brought with him. “This is a dose of an experimental drug that will alter your DNA on a molecular level. It is your choice to take it or not, but Eve insisted you be given the choice.”
She took the skin patch with mild interest. “Is this what Mara 12 has given her group of test subjects?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I have been included in some of the Council meetings regarding that project as part of Councilor Markus’s staff. The drug appears to be working quite well and the subjects are progressing better than anyone had expected.”
Ronin was pleased she seemed to have such an intimate acquaintance with the concept. He just hoped her knowledge would lead her to make the right decision.
“Eve foresaw that you would need this treatment in order to accomplish your mission. You and another must take the treatment, but it was unclear in her vision who the other was. I suspect the identity of that person will become clear in time.”
“I have never understood her ability of foresight, nor trusted it completely, but I will give your words and wishes due consideration, Patriarch.”
“That is all I ask, child.” Ronin stood and headed for the door. “Believe that you are the right person in the right place at the right time, little Rose.” He used the name he’d given her when she was much younger and he’d first discovered the Earth flower whose name sounded so similar to hers.
“I hope you are right, Patriarch.”
“I’ve come for what’s mine, Mother.” Harry faced down the woman who had birthed him but never been up to the emotional task of nurturing a child.
Mara 12 shot to her feet. She was a tall woman, but Harry stood head and shoulders above her now, fully adult. In the intervening years since the Alvians had bombarded the Earth with their crystal seeds, ch
anging it forever, the planet had healed and regenerated into something new. The few humans who’d survived the initial attack only to be penned up for study by the emotionless Alvian scientists had suffered badly, but were now on the road to recognition as sentient beings worthy of respect.
Harry’s father, Justin O’Hara, along with Caleb, Mick, and their wife Jane, had been at the forefront of the battle. Harry’s half-sister and her mates, Davin and Rick, were doing their part as well, as were the Alvians who’d taken the emotion-restoring gene therapy. Now it was Harry’s turn. His time had finally come.
All along, his precognitive gift had told him he had a bigger role to play. It was difficult to see—and especially to interpret—visions about his own future, but Harry had always known he’d been born for a higher purpose. The one and only half-Alvian, half-human hybrid currently in existence, Harry’s psychic gifts were stronger than any of his human half-siblings.
Now it was his turn to play a part in securing humanity’s future and changing the Alvian race forever. Whether they liked it or not.
“You have no right to demand anything of me, Hara. I am your progenitor. It is my role to demand compliance of you. Not the other way around.” Mara’s tone was calm as ever, her words measured as her eyes dissected his actions. She was so damned unemotional, it was difficult to be around her, but Harry had learned how to deal with his mother over the years. Now, however, all bets were off. He was through being the compliant little lab rat for his scientist mother. His time had come.
She’d dodged his requests to see her all week and avoided him at every opportunity. She had to know something was up when her son requested an appointment to see her. He never did. It was usually the other way around. His patience was at an end and he’d cornered her in her own lair—her office. She couldn’t refuse to see him if he didn’t ask.
“I have every right to demand the return of an artifact handed down through my paternal line, given to you for safekeeping while I was a child. I am adult now by every measure of reckoning—human and Alvian—and I expect the return of the property left for me.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for!” Finally, a spark of emotion, faint as it was, but it was something. It made Harry hope that not all was lost for his mother. She might yet be saved.
“I know full well what was left by the first Hara to my ancestor generations ago. The seed of Home Crystal was his mark of power and now it is mine. I am Hara reborn and I will take my rightful place in Alvian society. I’m through being studied.”
“That is not for you to decide.”
“On the contrary.” Harry placed a data crystal on the desk between them—his trump card. “According to Alvian law, I am well within my rights.”
“You are not Alvian.”
“Perhaps not completely, but if you’ll read the second document I’ve loaded onto that crystal, you’ll be reminded that according to ancient Alvian law, citizenship rights are conferred by DNA. My DNA is over sixty-eight percent Alvian between the Mara and Hara strains. Your own studies—which you probably know by heart—confirmed long ago that more than eighty-nine percent of my Alvian DNA is Hara. Not Mara, though you are closer to me in relationship than my long-gone ancestor. The Hara DNA is stronger than your Mara line. It also takes precedence in the new hierarchy of Alvian government since the genetic breeding program went into effect five generations ago. By both the ancient laws and newer ones, my genetics make me superior to you in every way. By rights, I am Hara Prime, as the only Hara on-planet with more than fifty percent Hara DNA, though my father and uncles come damned close. Hara bred true in all of them, though they are many generations separated from him. You know all this, so do not pretend surprise with me, Mother. I’ve come for the crystal that is rightfully mine, given into your custody by Justin O’Hara, rightful owner and direct descendant of the last Hara Prime to set foot on this planet.”
Mara sat down, placing her hands on the desk. “You’ve planned this well. It seems the Mara influence isn’t as weak as you believe. According to historical records, Hara was usually one to rush in where fools fear to tread. Instead, you have presented a logical argument with data to support your claims.”
Harry perched on the arm of the visitor’s chair with the desk between himself and his mother. She still made no move to retrieve the crystal that he well knew she kept on her person at all times. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, flashing her a smile he seldom let her see.
“Of my Alvian genetics, there’s still eleven percent of you in me, Mother. Perhaps the steadying Mara traits temper some of my more rash Hara tendencies. Or perhaps—” he stood again and walked right up to the desk and leaned over her, “—my human side is what makes it all work. You’ve been so busy studying the Alvian part of me, you’ve neglected to credit the influence of the human part. You’ve neglected my psychic abilities almost completely, and the way the human DNA has filled in the weaknesses inherent in the Alvian strains. There is a reason only Breeds survived the cataclysm. By rights, no domesticated creature should have been able to survive the crystal seeding of this planet in any quantity, much less flourished as the humans have since the planet stabilized. It’s my belief the blending of Alvian and human genetics makes both races stronger.”
“I have looked into these claims early on in my studies but found them unsubstantiated.”
“What of the test subjects who’ve taken the gene-altering substance you cooked up? What of the Alvians now blessed with emotion? Haven’t their successes made you curious?”
“That study is inconclusive.”
“Oh, I think it’s more that you refuse to see the truth right before your eyes. The data is there. It’s irrefutable, if you know how to interpret it.” He considered her as he walked around the desk, stalking her. “Or perhaps you are unable to comprehend the meaning of your observations. Perhaps it takes emotion to truly understand what you’re looking at here, Mother. Tell me, did you ever think to try the gene-altering therapy yourself? I believe you’d learn more than you ever dared imagine.”
“It is unwise for the researcher to also be the experimental subject. There is the risk that any observations would not be objective.”
“But maybe objectivity is the problem. Maybe you need to be a little more subjective. A little more personally involved. How can you accurately record the impact of renewed emotion when you do not understand emotion at all yourself?”
“A good point I have wrestled with, Hara.” She nodded in acknowledgment of his logic.
He stood before her. “I know.”
Mara’s eyes widened as he knelt before her. “How do you know? Have you been accessing my personal logs? There’s no way—”
“Relax, Mother. I’m psychic, remember? This is one of the things I have foreseen most strongly. You must become one with your experiment before you will truly understand the impact of emotion on the Alvian people and the impact your people—and your experiments—have had on humanity. I wait for the day you can return the love I have for you as my mother.” He silenced her with one finger across her lips when she would have objected. “Yes, I do love you, Mother, though you’ve never given me much reason to do so. Still, it’s some kind of biological imperative that cannot be denied. I love you and I pity you at the same time, because you just don’t know what you’re missing without feeling the things I feel. You will never understand the things you seek to analyze until you embrace the emotions your predecessors denied your race.” Harry sat back, lowering his hand.
“You know this for a fact? You’ve foreseen it?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Harry nodded. “As surely as any vision I’ve ever received, and it only backs up what Uncle Caleb has been seeing for many years. The salvation of the Alvian race rests with humanity, but if you are too blind to see it, both races will fail utterly and all civilization on this planet will die.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.” Harry looped one finger under the c
ollar of her tunic, under her ear, seeking the chain he knew lay just beneath. “Which is why I need this.”
Inch by inch, the silver chain slipped out from under the high collar to finally reveal a glittering, inch-long crystal. It was pointed on both ends, bowing out in the center with fine cuts along its faceted face. Set in precious white metal that gleamed though the piece was centuries old, the glimmering crystal held a brightness that was nearly blinding and altogether mesmerizing.
Refracted light bounced over the walls of the room, brightening it with a happy light. The crystal Hummed as Harry’s fingers brushed it, sounding a delightful, chiming tone. Harry smiled, and he could see even Mara was enchanted by the sound. The crystal had never responded to her that way. Only to him—even as a baby.
“The crystal recognizes me, Mother. It is mine to command. Mine to control. Mine to partner with as we move forward on this new planet. My home planet. Only I can bridge the gap between Alvia and Earth. Even you must realize this.”
Mara unclipped the chain and allowed the pendant to fall into his hands as she stood and put space between them. “I fear it.”
“Fear?” Harry pocketed the crystal and considered his mother. “I know you don’t truly comprehend the concept. You would not have conducted yourself the way you have with my O’Hara relatives and the rest of humanity if you really understood fear. You have no clue what you’ve done to them—or to the many you’ve imprisoned in the pens beneath the city.”
“Why do you say such things to me now? You’ve never said anything before in all these years.”
“The time wasn’t right.” He shrugged. “Now it is. Now is your moment of decision. Take the gene therapy and unlock the mysteries that have plagued you these many years. Don’t take it and continue in ignorance. I know Maras are innately curious. Let that curiosity guide you now. It’s the right thing to do—for yourself, for science, for the Alvian race, for humanity and for the future the two races can share here on this planet.”
