by Aimee Laine
“What?” Wyatt asked.
“I’ll explain later if he doesn’t,” James said.
That Lily hadn’t fallen flat out of her chair surprised Cael as much as her walking toward Tony had when he’d announced his call to her mother. Lily considered herself to be the weakest of any of the four Mimics in the building, but Cael disagreed.
A deep sigh resonated through the speakers. “I really don’t like talking about that time, Roy. It wasn’t pleasant for me.”
He cocked his head. “So, you do remember those years?”
She shivered to the point the bracelet Chase had given her the year before rattled against the steel table. “How could I forget? Those five years of my life were horrible.” She stood, her chest heaving. “Five years, Roy! Five years of … for all intents and purposes, torture. And you want me to remember that, so you’ll tell me where my niece is?”
“Yes.”
“That’s sick,” Cael said. “Using a memory to wheedle information? I could kill him. I will kill him.” Charley’s hand on Cael’s arm stopped him.
Even from the profile view, Cael watched as a tear slipped down Lily’s cheek. “Why?” The pain that came through with Lily’s single word sent daggers into Cael’s own heart.
“Please, sit, Lily. I don’t mean to make you cry.”
Roy’s politeness ate at Cael.
She lowered to the seat again. “Please, Roy. Please. Tell me where Leigh is.”
“You really don’t remember me? Because I remember you, just as you are, though perhaps with a little more weight.”
“That’s what not eating for days and weeks will do.” She crossed her arms over her chest, a determined scowl across her face even as her body trembled.
“You were the prettiest of the group, Lily.” He leaned forward, clasped his hands together.
Lily scooted back from the table. “This isn’t about me. Please, Roy.”
“I’m going in there. She can’t handle this.” Cael grabbed the handle and yanked open the booth door.
James slammed it shut. “You have to let this play out.”
Charley took Cael’s hand. “We’re all right here. Nothing’s going to happen to her. Let the conversation go on.” She tilted her head, her eyes softening. Charley could always see into Cael, even when he didn’t want her to.
They all went back to their window view, though James blocked the door with his body when Roy withdrew a box from his pocket.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding.” Cael slapped his forehead. “How did he get that in here? Didn’t we check his possessions? Didn’t we search the hotel where he was staying? How—”
“We did check him. He had nothing,” James said.
Roy slid the box to Lily.
Cael smiled when she didn’t reach for it.
“Wh—what is that?” Her voice broke.
“It’s a gift for all you did for me so many years ago. You say this isn’t about you when, in fact, it is. Completely. I’d only hoped I’d had an equal influence on you.”
“But I don’t remember you!” A hiccup broke her words.
“Just open it, please.” Desperation coated Roy’s words. “Please. And then we’ll talk.”
Lily reached for it.
Cael clenched his fist. As Lily opened the box, a mental image of her doing the same with the ring he’d bought played through his mind. The ring he hadn’t yet given to her. Instead, he’d waited as James and Wyatt had suggested.
Her mouth fell open, though the cameras didn’t pick up the content of the box.
“It—it’s beautiful, Roy, but I can’t accept it.”
“It’s just a token.”
“Just a token my ass,” Cael said.
Charley shushed him with a hand to his wrist.
Lily slipped the ring from the box and held it up.
“Same one we saw him buy in Savannah,” Wyatt said.
“Again, Lily. It is a token of gratitude. Most people think I turn a hundred—or over a hundred this year—but I was thirteen with you. My mother sold me, too. We’re kindred spirits.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.
“It’s a lily pearl. I had it specially made for you.”
“That’s my nickname.”
“Yes, you used to say it in your sleep a lot. It seemed to be a comfort. Something that brought a happy memory.”
That’s not going to be a happy memory. Cael would have given her the ring, the life, the everything.
“I can’t accept this, Roy. It’s just not right.”
“Why? It’s a gift from a friend, from a comrade. From me to you.”
“But friends don’t give gifts like this … and … and ….”
“And you’re in love with someone,” he said.
She nodded.
“Cael, I presume?”
Charley let out a deep sigh as a smile broke her scowl.
“Then, why haven’t you blended with him?” Roy asked.
Lily bit her lip as if to block the answer’s departure.
In the booth, James, Wyatt and Charley stared at Cael.
• • •
Lily shuffled her feet and twiddled the ring between her fingers. Didn’t Cael say we don’t have to blend as Mimics? Could Roy not know that, either? Did they torture him, too? The fact he knew so much about her made her fidget—all the more uncomfortable with the ring and its insinuation.
She swallowed hard, clearing her throat in the process.
Roy’s grey-colored eyes focused on her. “Your hesitation makes me think, perhaps, your relationship with Cael is not a permanent arrangement.”
His arrogance had her bristling. “I’m not going to talk about that part of my life.”
“I can offer you more than he can.”
Oh, god. I knew this was more than a friendship ring. Lily slipped the ring back into its velvety slot, closed the box and sent it sliding across the table.
Roy caught it before it fell off the edge.
“I didn’t come here for propositions. I came because you asked to talk with me.”
“And you want information about the girl.”
She pursed her lips, wanting to scream her frustration at him. “Yes. How did you find out about her? Did you set her up? Have you …”
He held up his hands. “Time for the show to end.” He inclined his head toward the mirror.
“You did set her up, didn’t you?” Lily asked, ignoring him. “Did you set me up, too? To get me express-air-mail delivered to California? Was that your idea? Get Lily away from Cael, and she’ll forget all about him?” She drew in a deep breath, though it did little to steady her increasing exasperation. “I did my time, Roy. I gave the government what they sought, then they left me on the side of the road in the middle of the desert, like some Boy Scout test of strength, and said ‘good luck’. No, they didn’t even say that. If you think I can’t outlast you after having lived through that, then you’re … just wrong.”
He didn’t even shrug.
Lily leaned forward, her hands on the table. “Please! Tell me where my niece is. Tell me how to find her. Tell me how you’re involved.”
He tilted toward the mirror, raising his eyebrows in the process.
Realizing she’d get nowhere with him, and that her only shot at more detail would come if they were alone, Lily pivoted to the window. “Please turn everything off.”
The room’s door opened. James stood, hand on handle, and sent Lily a nod. “We’re leaving. “A second later, the interior light to the booth clicked on, revealing an empty space where Lily had expected Charley, Wyatt and Cael to be.
Roy jerked his head toward the cameras.
Red lights dimmed a second later. “All clear. It’s just you and Lily,” James said before he closed the door again.
Roy patted his greasy hair, slicking it back farther as his steel-colored eyes shifted to a deep purple. “Now, where were we?”
Lily’s arms shook. When her legs
took over in an anxiety-ridden gesture, she forced herself still and sat in her chair again.
“Now that we’re alone …” Roy stood.
Lily backed away, constrained by her chair.
He sat on the corner’s edge closest to her. “Do you know why you were in the institution?”
“That’s not why we we’re …”
Roy shook his head. “Ten years before they created the Mimic project, a scientist had a child who ended up being one of us. The kid was immediately shuffled away to Romania, where they already had a long-term Mimic program hidden in the bowels of their orphanages. Remember, the US hadn’t been around that long in the grand scheme of things. Most stuff happened in Europe at the time, but when you and I hit our coming of age time, the US had finally developed its own program.”
“I wasn’t in California until I was thirteen. I lived with …” … my fake mom. Lily’s body continued to betray her with its fidgeting and jerking at random intervals.
Roy repeated his earlier head shake. “Those with a lineage longer than three generations were contacted about sending their children as soon as they thought they saw the signs. So they took the kids, shipped them to Romania to wait, and once they reached thirteen, sent them out to their respective countries. Whomever you lived with before was nothing more than a woman paid to be your guardian until you showed the signs … if you did.”
Roy’s words penetrated Lily’s soul and built a headache at the base of her skull.
“The entire premise of the program was to learn what we could do as Mimics.” He cocked an eyebrow up. “We are quite useful, wouldn’t you say?”
Lily stayed silent, unsure how to respond.
“They gathered samples of hair, fluids …”
Bile rose in Lily’s throat as she remembered being forced to endure blood draws, x-rays and countless other tests. She imagined the more current tests would far outweigh what she went through herself. And if generations of Mimics knew to send away their kids, did my own grandmother take me from my Mom? Lily’s foot twitched as if her thoughts pushed through her entire body in an anxiety-ridden fervor.
“… They saved all of that, and now, with DNA technology, they’re backtracking. You know, Mimics are diluting with each human blend, but the government wants more of us around, so they’ve been searching for the new generations and—”
Lily’s head popped up from her slump “And you’re searching for them? How could you?”
“No, no.” Roy waved his hands in front of her. “I just happened to have heard about this. It’s worse than that. They’re also attempting to re-engineer us. They want our genetics to create a new ‘crop’ of Mimic kids. They’ll take your DNA, for example, and inject it into embryos to fashion the latest and greatest of the newest generation.”
“Wha—” Panic consumed Lily at the thought of Leigh as a test subject—like Lily had been. “Why would they do that?”
He hitched up a single shoulder. “To make us stronger, better, whatever. Take the most useful parts of our genetics and put them in others … if that’s possible. Hell, they said cloning wasn’t possible, and we’ve seen that happen. Who knows what really goes on behind closed doors?”
That’s not how our lives are supposed to work! They can’t do this!
Roy nudged himself closer to Lily’s side, laid a hand on her forearm.
Lily bumped him off, staring at the floor as her stomach gurgled its disgust. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to know that they’re looking for you. Two years ago, I was hired to find “Baby A” as she’s known. When I realized it was you, I put them off. I did it for as long as I could. But now … I can’t any longer.”
“Baby … A?”
Roy chuckled, the first real emotion Lily had seen from him. “Yes, Lily. You. You were known as ‘A’ back then and I was ‘M’.”
She straightened again, a hand to her stomach to stop the lurching.
Roy’s eyes narrowed. “You come from the only line that hasn’t diluted, despite the blending with humans. Look back at your lineage. It skips one to two generations and comes back even stronger.”
“O-okay.” I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean since I only know my niece and no one before me. “What about Leigh?”
“If you’ll recall, they took most of the samples from you and … me. They want more DNA. Since they couldn’t find you, they took the next best thing. And that’s when I knew what I had to do.”
Leigh. “What did you … have to do?”
A smirk took hold of Roy’s lips. “I, too, need to pay back those who did us wrong. It was a total coincidence that I happened to intercept your sister’s frantic search. Took me a while to put it all together, but once I did, I knew if they used her to get to you, they’d figure me out, too. So … I made sure I took control of the situation.”
“You set her up?” The idea alone had tears falling over Lily’s lids. “Why would you do that to me? If you knew what they did to me, to us—”
“No! Lily. I was trying to … help … Angela was it? They did all that … other. The same people from forty years ago … well not the same, but the newer generation.”
Lily nodded, her emotions on a teeter-totter of highs and lows. She didn’t know what to feel or believe or how to get more information.
“I was hoping I could get to you first with all this, but I’ve failed you, Lily.” He hung his head. “And in that, I’m truly sorry.”
Air choked any words she might have shared. If Roy had gone through what Lily had, she understood his pain.
“I can help you … and help her.”
“H-how?”
“I know where your niece is because, remember, they asked me to help. If you help me, you’ll be able to get her out before they begin their current program, and you can stop them all.”
Lily’s body temperature dropped and numbness took hold. “What … program?”
“The next generation of genetically engineered kids needs to come from somewhere, and the best place to go is to the source.”
Oh, god. They want more than Leigh’s DNA.
“They want DNA and … samples from those descended from the original Mimic. That’s you. That’s your niece. But you can stop them. I promise you can if we move fast.”
“Wh-when are they going to … do this? What do I have to do to stop it? What can we do?” She’d team up with him without question if it meant saving Leigh.
Roy’s lips curved. He set the ring box back in front of her. “I’m sorry I had to be so covert about it all, Lily. I’m taking a risk by letting you know what’s going on, but it’s all inside there.” With that he stood. “You’ll want to hide that when Cael comes back in because all the details are there, and, of course, he can’t be involved. If they thought any other Mimics knew …” Roy rubbed his cheeks. “Well … let’s just say we’d never be able to beat them at their own game.” He moved to the far wall, put his hand on the concrete and leaned into it. “This is just between you and me. We’ll save your niece. The two of us will. You understand?”
She gave a slight nod.
“See you soon.” His hand merged with the stone.
Lily gasped. I didn’t know any of us could do that.
His arm disappeared.
His left side.
His right.
Only when his fingertips remained did Lily jump up from her chair. “Cael!”
• • •
Cael stood in the hallway waiting for some sign about how Lily fared. Wyatt, James and Stuart had all had to drag him out, as well as hold him back a number of times while he considered barging in anyway.
When the door flew open and Lily yelled, “Cael!”, he took her in his arms and held her tight, searching the space for the cause of her distress.
He couldn’t find Roy, though.
The room stood empty.
16
Lily tucked the ring into her pocket as Cael launched himself int
o the room, James and Wyatt just behind him with their guns out and cocked.
“Where the hell did he go?” Cael asked.
She pointed to the wall, unable to form the words.
Tears spilled over as Charley slipped inside. She took Lily by the shoulders and navigated her out of the room. “Are you okay?”
Air, words and bile caught in Lily’s throat.
Cael stormed out of the room to where Lily and Charley stood in the hallway. “Where did he go?”
“Through … the wall.” More tears threatened as Lily tried to understand what Roy had told her and what had been done. That he’d been a pawn like her, just as Leigh would be. “I want to go home.” Wracking sobs took hold of Lily’s body, and she let Charley pull her down the hallway, one small step at a time, until they made it to the exit.
If Roy waited for her somewhere, preparing to snatch her up, she didn’t know or care. She only wanted to cry in the privacy of her bedroom with the doors and windows closed until the memories stopped crashing down on her again.
• • •
Cael paced the hallway outside Lily’s bedroom. She’d shut the door, locked it and refused to answer. Charley had begged him to leave Lily alone, to give her time.
Two hours had passed.
During the first, he’d heard the sobs.
During the second, he’d heard nothing but silence.
It tore at his heart that she wouldn’t let him in, that she’d kept him out of whatever Roy had told her. In all their years, she’d either talked to him or let him comfort her, while he let her tears soak his shirt.
“Cael,” Angela stood at the end of the hallway with a steaming mug in her hand.
He nodded to her.
She walked closer, holding out the herbal tea, mint drifting through the space. “This is for you. Charley suggested you drink it.” Dark circles carved recesses under her eyes.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more to tell you yet.” Cael sipped at the drink.
Angela bit at her lip, her head inclining toward Lily’s door. “Is she going to be okay?”
For the first time, ever, he could actually say, “I don’t know.”
“Can I help with anything?”
“You’re welcome to try.” Though I can’t imagine she’ll open up to you.
