by Gini Koch
Once we were back in the Science Center, I was assured that all was reasonably well and Jamie was reportedly in bed asleep. I wasn’t so sure I believed that, but I was starving and we were in the middle of so many situations I wasn’t sure I could keep track, so I decided to earn some more Bad Mommy Points and believe the lie. Either she really was asleep or Jeff was in the same boat, because he didn’t demand to see her, either.
Happily, Pierre had dinner waiting for us, and Mom joined us in the commissary. Everyone but Jerry, Rahmi and Rhee—who’d gone to wait for and help the other flyboys when they and the choppers arrived—was clustered together at one long table, but Mom didn’t sit.
“I won’t keep you from eating,” Mom said, after she’d given me and Jeff her Breath Stopping Bear Hug that was her standard for whenever one of us in the family had had a close brush with death. Since meeting Jeff, I’d had a lot of those hugs from my mother. “And I’m not going to demand all the details right now, either. Just know that you’re going to have press attacking you tomorrow, and please do what Raj wants.”
“What does Raj want?”
Mom’s lips quirked. “To handle this properly. We’re in a family suite with Alfred and Lucinda, and Jamie’s staying with us tonight. So are all the pets. Jamie’s fast asleep, and all her grandparents are gently requesting that the two of you don’t wake her up just to say goodnight.”
“We wouldn’t have done that,” Jeff said, sounding offended.
Mom snorted so I didn’t have to. “Right. Lucinda was quite clear that she expects you to think that the four of us are incapable of watching your child for one night without your supervision. However, I expect you to let your daughter sleep.” The way she said this made it clear that if we wanted to wake our daughter up, it had better only be because Siler had dropped more bombs.
“Pardon us for wanting to see our daughter after close brushes with death,” he grumbled. Under his breath. Jeff knew when he was beaten.
Mom rolled her eyes but didn’t grace this with a reply. “Kitten, you and Jeff eat and get some sleep. I realize it’s not that late, but it’s been a busy day for everyone.”
“Yeah. Speaking of everyone—where’s Amy and Brian and everyone else I’d expect to be at least poking their heads in to see if their spouses, friends, and relations are unscathed?”
“They know you’re unscathed. They also know you’re in Centaurion Division’s version of a Top Brass meeting. As such, everyone’s leaving you alone.”
“Right. These are the same people who have never left us alone in any meeting, ever, if given even half a chance to add in their two cents.”
Christopher coughed. “Like someone else we all know.” He looked at Melanie and Emily. “More than one someone, really.” They shot him the Mother’s Icy Stare.
“That sort of proves my point. ‘Off limits’ usually means ‘hurry up and get in on it’ to our extended team.” Looked at Mom’s expression. “So what else is actually going on?”
She sighed. “Fine. In addition to this being considered an off-limits meeting, all military and Field personnel are on duty in some way. And all non-military personnel are in the library enjoying a party being run by your father. Everyone has already eaten and the assumption is that some of you will go to the party when you’ve finished eating and find your spouses, significant others, and so on, and some of you will go to your rooms.” She looked right at me and Jeff for this last part. Noted that both Chuckie and Buchanan looked like they were trying not to laugh.
Chose not to rise to that particular bait. Mostly because I knew perfectly well Jeff and I weren’t going to hit that party. “I thought Dad was watching Jamie. And does everything that’s gone on today really scream Party Time?”
“Lucinda is on Jamie duty at the moment,” Mom said with a heavy dose of Long Suffering in her tone. “And it’s not a wild party like your grandparents normally throw. This one is more sedate. Pierre approves.”
Jeff relaxed, though. “It’s fine, baby. Your father’s just trying to make the best of the situation we’re in.”
“You mean that my father is hosting the Dulce Kegger. I’m touched to know that he’s looking at all the crap that’s gone on today as the Ultimate Party Excuse.” Had a feeling he was secretly thrilled all the drama was going on because, from the little I’d seen, it was impressing the Mossad folks. “And of course Pierre approves. It keeps people distracted and gives him more things to do perfectly on the first try.”
“More of you could take a lesson from Pierre,” Mom said, sarcasm knob at eleven. “On the other hand, you’re alive, and well, and none of you are scathed. I can ask your father to run in here and have him perform the Birkhat HaGomel blessing if it’ll make you happy, kitten.”
“Well, a little extra thanks for surviving danger wouldn’t go amiss, Mom.”
“I’ll be sure to let your father know.” With that she kissed my cheek, passed a couple of signs to Chuckie and Buchanan, gave Siler—who was handcuffed to Buchanan again to keep the “he’s our prisoner” fiction going—a long once-over, nodded to everyone else, and headed off.
Once Mom was gone we got down to the business of stuffing our faces and making general chitchat. After I’d eaten an entire steak and half of my giant baked potato, finally felt strong enough again to ask a couple relevant questions. “So, did we locate any information on a stolen combine?”
“Yes,” Serene said. “However, I don’t know that it’s going to help us much.”
“Stolen right from a John Deere dealership,” Claudia said.
“Where was it located?”
“Buckeye, Arizona,” Lorraine said. “No idea why they chose that location.”
“It’s part of Pueblo Caliente’s metro area, and it’s rural.” Looked at Chuckie. “Think they were trying to get into Caliente Base by any chance?”
“Maybe. They might have been able to bounce or boost their signal based on proximity. But, as so often seems the case, we don’t have enough information to be able to tell, and we destroyed anything we could have examined.” Chuckie shot Siler a look that said he wasn’t convinced burning down the radio bunker had been a good idea.
Siler picked it up, too. “Unless you wanted to airlift the entire building here, leaving that active was far more dangerous to you all than destroying it.”
Before this devolved into an Alpha Male Bickering Session, I decided to pursue the question Siler had avoided earlier. “So, what did you mean that we didn’t know what we were up against when I asked about your many brothers and sisters out there?”
He sighed. “I mean you’re wasting your time. You’ve gotten the only Yates progeny you’re ever going to have on your side already.”
“Explain that,” Jeff said. “Because our experience says otherwise.” Serene and Mahin nodded. Serene was sitting next to Siler, White was across from him, and Mahin was next to White and Christopher. Had a feeling the girls were kind of hoping for a little Family Reunion Time. Couldn’t blame them, really.
“Does it?” Siler chuckled bitterly.
“Yes, like I said before, based on Mahin and Serene. And also like I said before, maybe if we’d known Ronaldo existed earlier, and had found him when he was younger, things would have been different.”
“Well, you’d have had to start a lot earlier than you did. As in, well before you, personally, even knew aliens were on the planet. Frankly, you’d have pretty much had to start at birth. Ronaldo was taken from his mother by Yates when he was just a baby.”
“Why?” Jeff asked. “To hide that he was born out of wedlock?”
“Hardly. No, he took him because Ronaldo was his ‘first’ son—Mister White was a traitor in his mind and I was already hidden, so Ronaldo was the first one Yates could actually get his hands on.”
“Call me Richard,” White said. “You are my younger brother, after all, Benjamin.” He patted Mahin’s hand and gave Serene his fatherly smile. Yep, the girls were in Family Mode and White knew
it.
Siler shot him a half-smile. “As you wish.”
“Did Yates raise Ronaldo as his son?” Gower asked.
“Not really. Ronaldo didn’t have Richard’s leadership potential, and it was soon apparent that he wasn’t very bright, at least not by A-C standards.”
“Really? There are dumb A-Cs?” Tried to come up with any I’d met. Failed.
Claudia and Lorraine both coughed. “We’ve known a couple,” Lorraine said. Knew what they were referring to—Operation Fugly might have been years ago now, but Jeff and Christopher had certainly had a very “duh” moment about how alcohol could be used as a weapon. So, okay, maybe dumb occasionally, but it was usually more that A-Cs didn’t normally put thing together the way a human would.
“Hilarious,” Jeff replied while Christopher graced them with Patented Glare #4. “But yes, baby, as with any population, we have those that don’t hit the mental standards that the rest of us do.”
“If you say so.” Duh moments or not, the A-C’s versions of dumb were MENSA material for the rest of us, but I’d had the pleasure of tangling with Ronaldo more than once, and I had to admit he’d never struck me as the same league as the A-Cs I spent time with. He was certainly nowhere close to Serene on the smarts scale, and she was his full-blooded younger sister. “So, he tossed Ronaldo off into an obscure part of the world and did what with him?”
“Ensured that the talents he had were at optimum and expanded.”
“To my knowledge, most troubadours don’t really do mind control, do they?”
The A-Cs at the tables shook their heads. “It’s influence, but it’s more of an emotional control than a mental one,” Jeff said. “Under most circumstances, that is.”
“The average troubadour is using tonal inflections, facial expressions, and body language to get someone to do or think what they want them to,” Christopher added.
Managed to refrain from mentioning, yet again, that, despite the disdain given to it by the majority of A-Cs, troubadour talent was actually quite impressive.
“Troubadours use persuasion,” Gower added. “Ronaldo used manipulation.”
“Gladys Gower wasn’t the only person whose mind Ronaldo could enter and affect to the degree he was able to,” Siler went on. “It’s a big reason why he was a very successful businessman. Ronaldo also had an actual flair for business, and Yates encouraged that. He had a good life, really. Probably a lot better before he was activated to start carrying on with the basic experiment, which was to create a superrace of those with the Yates genetics and a few other specially selected genetic samples.”
While I didn’t argue with the superrace theory, especially considering what we’d been through these past few years, I did think about the timing of when I was pretty sure Ronaldo had been activated. Didn’t time out right for Yates to have activated him. At all.
However, Siler seemed to have comprehensive information. Whether we’d get all of it out of him was the question. “So, was Yates always marching under the Purity of the Race Banner? He had a lot going on for such a single-minded goal.”
“So did Hitler,” Siler said. “But it all ends the same way.”
“Can’t argue with the logic.” Had a theory, but I wanted a few more answers first. “Okay, but what about all the others?”
“He kept track, but he never kept contact with any other than Ronaldo. Ronaldo was a good son, at least in the ways our father would see it, and that was, apparently, enough for him.”
“Why not? It seems stupid to avoid all the kiddies if your entire plan is to make them into your own genetically enhanced army.”
“Honestly? I think he found better and more loyal options outside of his genetic pool.”
“You mean like Herbert Gaultier, Antony Marling, and your mother, right?”
“Among others.”
“Yeah. Leventhal Reid had to have been a better ‘son’ to him than even Ronaldo could be.”
“Definitely. Reid was far smarter, for starters.”
“And he was politically connected,” Chuckie said. “So that had to have been advantageous as well.”
Siler nodded. “Yates also had proportionately more daughters than he did sons.”
“That doesn’t seem right.”
“Why not?” Gower asked. “Based on the Yates offspring that are on our side—and counting Aunt Gladys and, if we can safely assume so, Siler here—we have four women and two men.”
Chuckie nodded. “If those numbers are representative of his general genetic drift, it’s easy to believe two thirds of his children are women.”
“But, other than Serene and Mahin, we’ve only seen guys.”
“Expect that to change,” Siler said.
“I’m back to asking why you think we can’t swing these women to our side, then,” Jeff said. “Our track record seems good.”
“And because of that, it’ll never be good again,” Siler said. He looked at Mahin. “You’ve ensured that.”
CHAPTER 48
“EXCUSE ME?” Mahin sounded shocked and horrified. “I haven’t had contact with any of them since they murdered . . .” she glanced at Gower guiltily.
“My brother,” Gower said gently. “And we believe you, Mahin. Don’t worry.”
Siler shrugged. “That wasn’t an accusation of evil activity. However, the reason they’ve spent this year finding, prepping, and brainwashing the others is exactly because of you.” He looked at me. “And you, of course.”
“Mind explaining that? ’Cause I don’t see the ‘of course’ in regards to me.”
“Sweetly naïve. Not your best look. But I’ll explain for the apparently slow ones in the room.” Siler grinned at Claudia and Lorraine, who both laughed. Jeff rolled his eyes and Christopher hit us with Patented Glare #2.
“Yeah, explain for all the slow of wit,” Tim said. “Because I’m with Kitty. Why would she be the reason they don’t flip?”
“I get it,” Chuckie said. “You’re the one who ensured Serene flipped to our side, Kitty. Not Brian—you.”
Serene nodded. “Ultimately, that’s true, Kitty.”
“And you’re the reason Mahin flipped,” Chuckie went on. “You and White for Mahin.”
“I didn’t do any of it,” Christopher said. “Buchanan and Kitty’s father did more.”
“But you were there,” Chuckie said patiently. “For her and Serene. So was Jeff, but you were the one they were doing a different kind of brainwashing on. And Kitty figured that out, too.”
“Ah, Operation Confusion. Good times . . . good times.”
“Other than our getting Jamie, were they?” Jeff asked.
“Everyone’s a critic. So, you’re saying that because we’d stopped three attempts, they felt it was three strikes and they were out?”
Siler nodded. “Essentially. But I’m saying ‘you’ specifically, not ‘all of you’ generally. The assumption—which, after spending time with you, I think is completely accurate—is that there’s at least a fifty percent chance that any of the Yates progeny who interact with you are going to flip to your side. Especially the women.”
Considered this. “You know, I kind of bonded with your mother. Right before she tried to kill me and Adriana arrived to save the day.”
“Not a surprise. Hell, you’ve flipped the top assassins in the world to your side. And if you could make my mother like you, then you have a lot more persuasive power than you realize.”
“We . . . kind of . . . understood each other.”
“Exactly. So, your enemies made the decision to spend this past year bringing in the rest of the Yates progeny and brainwashing them. They’re good at this kind of persuasion, and these people aren’t going to join you now, because you stand in the way of everything they want.”
“Money, power, ruling everyone else?” Reader asked.
“That, and regaining their family glory, seats on the YatesCorp board, and more. They’ve been promised a lot.” Siler shook his head. “If I’d
had all this offered to me when I was young and, more importantly, alone, I’d probably have gone for it, too. They’re very persuasive, and they’re offering something most of these people have never had.”
Looked at Serene and Mahin and it wasn’t hard to guess what was the biggest thing our enemies were offering. “Family.”
Siler nodded. “Yes. You offer it, too, and you all mean it. Which is part of why you’re so dangerous to them.”
“You’re not like them. At all. Neither are Serene and Mahin.”
“I was,” Mahin said quietly.
“I could have been,” Serene added. “If I’d been approached differently, especially since they were drugging me.”
“It was clear that kidnapping wasn’t going to be effective,” Siler said. “It’s why they haven’t tried it since.”
Serene nodded. “Even crazed with the Surcenthumain they’d given me, it wasn’t that hard to tell you were trying to save me.”
“Well, when the drug’s hold ebbed and you were able to hold onto the sanity, yeah. And you’re smart.” A couple of alligators chasing us with intent to snack also had to have helped Serene grasp reality. Wondered if I could find Alliflash and Gigantagator and move them into the Zoo somehow. They’d certainly keep Hacker International on their toes.
“Smart means nothing against good brainwashing techniques,” Siler said.
“Oh, it does,” Chuckie replied. “But I agree—even the strongest can break.”
“Well, we had Serene’s catnip, remember—Brian was on our side.”
She laughed. “True enough. But really, it was all of you who made choosing the right side easy. Not that they ever asked me to join them. As Benjamin said, kidnapped isn’t the same as being recruited.”
“That’s true, however, Serene was also in the A-C community,” White said, shooting Serene another fatherly smile. “Not as tightly in as she is now, but still, within it, with family. Perhaps they would have tried brainwashing her if they’d been successful in their kidnapping attempt.”
