by Gini Koch
“Long story. Look, I wasn’t kidding, we’re at our usual crisis. I need you helping us, because I think we’re going to hear a lot of French, and no one’s fluent other than you.”
“You’re kidding. You want to bring her along?” Jeff sounded incredulous.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Keeping in mind that you, and our baby, are not going anywhere.”
“Sure we are. We’re going to go visit Uncle Christopher while you guys act like the cavalry and go help Tim.”
“Help Tim do what?” Jeff sounded confused and frustrated. I had to remind myself that I’d been the one who’d spent the years with the Conspiracy King. “And I hate it when you think about him like that.”
“Chuckie’s the best at what he does, Jeff. Just like you.”
“I can’t believe Chuck asked you to marry him and you might have considered it for, like, a second.” Amy sounded repulsed.
Jeff gave her a very friendly look. “I like how she thinks.”
“Uh-huh. Ames? He’s freaking brilliant, okay?” And he hadn’t been awkward for over a decade and had been pretty darned handsome for that long, too. He’d also been damned good in bed, but I wasn’t going to mention that aloud.
“I hate it when you think about him like that.” Jeff was on “rabid dog” again.
I looked at him. “Who did I marry? Why did I marry him? Discuss.”
“Fine, fine.” It wasn’t, but at least we weren’t going to have our domestic dispute in front of the whole transient floor. Sylvia and Clarence fought about Jeff and Christopher, Jeff and I fought about Chuckie. Some things seemed universal between spouses.
“Anyway, here’s what I hope Tim’s in good enough shape to tell us. He heard Sylvia and Clarence fighting. Heard that drug name mentioned. It didn’t register. Did his thing in our room, went to my house. The gate in my parents’ house lets you out in their guest bathroom, ’cause, you know, why mess with the theme?”
“There are pictures of Paris in that bathroom,” Kevin said. “I’ve seen them. Eiffel Tower shot is the first thing you see when you exit the gate.”
“Yep. I’m guessing that the word clicked for him then. He’s been to the house; he knows where my room and my music are. Trotted in there. I’ll lay money he looked at my bookshelf, which happens to have a French/English dictionary sitting on it. Took a look, said, ‘crap,’ and put Operation Solo in action.”
“I’m still not clear on why he’s not in Florida.” Jeff ran his hand through his hair. “It would have made more sense to get there and advise us.”
“Variety of possibilities. I’m going with the fact that he’s hoping to stop whatever else is going on—because, trust me, there’s always more than one thing going on, don’t forget—before it gets more out of hand. I stress again, he’s not alone. He’s with four other agents. He said they weren’t hurt, at least, not when he’d called.” I chose to ignore the fact that the last thing we’d heard from Tim’s call was the sound of screeching tires.
Jeff took a deep breath. “Okay. James, call Paul, and let’s get moving.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me aside. “I’m serious, baby. I want you staying here, where it’s safe. I don’t want you leaving Jamie; I don’t want you, either of you, in danger. We’ll talk about your door destruction and prisoner interrogations later. At least you weren’t holding our baby while you did them.”
“I’m not a total idiot, Jeff. Besides, she’s in the sack, safe in Emily’s arms, fast asleep.”
“I can’t believe she didn’t wake up.”
I leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Her daddy was here to take care of her and her mommy. No reasons to worry.”
He kissed me back, full on the mouth, and I relaxed and enjoyed it. “Promise me.”
“Jeff, I’m not going to do anything to endanger myself or Jamie. I promise.”
He didn’t look as though he believed me at all. “Okay. What are you doing with Christopher?”
“I’m going to see if he can tell me anything else. I can’t believe he’d take anything from Clarence. He can’t stand your brothers-in-law, possibly more than you can’t. So there’s some intermediary somewhere, maybe more than one. We have to find out how widespread this is—were they just testing on Christopher, or do we have more A-Cs out there slowly turning into mutants?”
Paul and Michael Gower arrived. Michael was a younger version of his older brother—big, black, built, bald, and totally gorgeous. He was also The Player of the A-C community. If there was a single woman around, human or A-C, Michael was batting with intent to score. “We’re leaving lockdown?” Michael sounded relieved.
“Yeah, rub it in. It’s a big place, but the term ‘stir crazy’ is starting to apply.”
“New mothers are supposed to stay in bed.” Gower looked more closely at me. “Uh . . . Kitty?”
Michael was staring at me. “Wow. You look fabulous as always, Kitty.” He didn’t let the married gals feel unappreciated, either. Sometimes it was too much, but I’d gotten used to him now, and he didn’t really faze me.
“Thanks.”
“We’ll explain on the way,” Reader said, voice crisp and no-nonsense. He looked at Melanie and Emily. “Ride herd on her. Trust me when I say she’s crafty.” Melanie laughed while Emily gave Jamie back to me and helped me hook the Snugli back on.
“Love you, too, James.”
Got the cover-boy grin. “Yeah, don’t tell Jeff why you named the baby after me.”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Hilarious. Amy, you up for this?”
She nodded. “Am I dressed okay?” She was in jeans, sneakers, and a sweater.
“Yeah, take a jacket, but otherwise, why not?”
“Think you look great,” Michael said. He hypersped next to her. “I’ll just make sure nothing happens to you.”
“We’re going to an Embassy, right?” Amy seemed flustered by Michael, but I couldn’t tell if she was interested or annoyed or both. “That’s where your diplomats are locked down.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”
Amy rolled her eyes. “Those people were fighting for hours. I think I know everything about Jeff’s family now. Poor Christopher—his mother’s dead, no wonder he turned to drugs.” Amy’s mother had died during sophomore year of college. Her father had remarried, and supposedly she liked her stepmother. But she never came back to the States for holidays.
Jeff and I exchanged a look. “You explain it to her.”
He sighed. “I’m hoping to be too busy.”
“I’ll handle it.” Reader kissed my cheek. “Be good.”
Michael took Amy’s hand, and I felt myself relax. It was stupid, but I didn’t want Jeff holding another woman’s hand if he could help it.
Jeff grinned at me. “I like it when you actually worry about something that’s so out of the realm of possibility.” He stroked Jamie’s head and gave her a kiss, managing to nuzzle the torpedoes at the same time. Then he kissed me again. “Stay safe, baby. I almost lost you this week. I can’t face that again.” He grabbed Kevin, Gower grabbed Reader, and the six of them disappeared.
I reached into my purse and pulled out the Poofs. Interestingly, I had four, not two. I recognized my additional Poofs as Toby and Gatita, Christopher’s and Reader’s, respectively. Figured Toby had been sent to me when Christopher went into isolation, and Reader had told Gatita to take care of me. Extra Poofs were not a problem.
“Harlie?” The head Poof purred at me. “I want you to follow Jeff and protect him, and James, Paul, Kevin, and Michael. Amy, too, if she’s being good. Help them get Tim back safely, okay?” Harlie mewled. “Is Fuzzball with Michael?” Got another mewl. “Great. You make sure you two work together, okay?” Mewl, purr, rub, Harlie was gone.
Took a deep breath. Turned around and looked at Melanie and Emily. “Now that the menfolk are gone, while we go down to check in with Christopher, tell me what’s really going on with me and Jamie.”
CHAP
TER 36
MELANIE NODDED. “NOT HERE.” We all headed off for the elevators. Got inside, Melanie hit the button for the medical level that held the isolation chambers. “I’m worried about the strain on your heart.”
“Yeah, I figured there would be a downside.”
Emily shook her head. “But, so far, there’s not. I watched you the entire time. If you had a problem with the physical exertion you just did, it doesn’t show.” She took my wrist and checked my pulse. “Normal.”
I ran a private body check. “Yep. I feel fine. Better than fine, honestly.” Thought about it. “Does Jamie have two hearts?” I thought I felt a tiny version of Jeff’s heartbeat next to me, but I’d never held an A-C baby before I got one of my own.
“Yes, she’s perfectly normal internally for an A-C and externally for a human.” Melanie sounded like she wasn’t telling me everything.
“But?” They looked at each other, but not at me. I hit the Stop Elevator button. “Really, there’s so obviously a ‘but’ that’s hanging on the air here.”
“Her brain activity is extremely advanced.” Emily sighed. “Several years advanced, not just months.”
Considered this. “Well, first off, she’s a hybrid, and from what we can tell, that means expanded A-C talents. And whatever the Surcenthumain did to Jeff affected both her and me. Plus, Chuckie feels both Jeff and Christopher were already pretty much mutations. So it’s not a surprise. My concern, though—is it dangerous for her?”
“I don’t think so.” Melanie didn’t look or sound like she was lying. “We’re monitoring her development closely, though. But, you may have to deal with her in solitary.”
“I’m sort of surprised Jeff hasn’t had to take her in there already,” Emily added. “Alfred and Lucinda had to put him into solitary almost immediately after he was born.”
Any time I thought about what Jeff’s childhood had been like, my heart wanted to break. But he was a great adult and didn’t seem to carry too many scars from his youth. Oh, sure, the strained relationship with his family and trauma over losing Christopher’s mother, Terry, when the boys were ten were the biggies. But he didn’t seem damaged otherwise.
“Tito is doing tests and research, quite a bit of both,” Melanie went on. “Much of it related to genetic mutations. We’re assisting him. We just don’t have any conclusive evidence yet.”
“Or much to compare to,” Emily added. “Human mutations are much slower than anything you and Jamie have gone through. Even A-Cs mutate at a slower rate than what’s happened with you.”
“Have her talents manifested?” Melanie asked. “We want to compare her talent manifestations to the other hybrids’ as well as to Jeff and our standard talented people.”
“Sort of, but Jeff implanted blocks, so that’s keeping her talents in check right now. When Christopher’s better, he’ll implant some, too.”
Melanie raised her eyebrow. “That’s news.”
Whoops. Forgot, they hadn’t told anyone they’d done this with all of their nieces and nephews. All of Alpha and Airborne knew, but I guessed the girls hadn’t shared with their mothers, which meant they were doing a lot better with that whole “top secret” thing than I was. Shocker. “Erm . . .”
Emily laughed. “How’d they figure out how to do that?”
I knew Jeff didn’t want me telling anyone about the glowing cube Terry had given him, and Melanie and Emily were unlikely to have been the ones who took it way back when, so bringing it up wouldn’t help solve that mystery, either.
“Not sure. I know they had to implant blocks in all of Jeff’s sisters’ kids. I don’t think they’ve done it for anyone else. I think they were afraid to.” I also wasn’t sure if they could only implant into those with a close DNA strain or not. All the A-Cs were related to each other somewhere back there, so that might be a moot point. But it was a point I’d have to discuss with Jeff.
Melanie nodded. “The older generation is very resistant to doing anything we haven’t done for centuries. As Clarence exemplified.” Wow, Melanie had a sarcasm knob, too. Knew I loved her.
Emily sighed. “I can’t believe Clarence willingly helped turn Christopher into an addict. I mean, that’s carrying pathetic jealousy a bit too far. Not that he hasn’t always been a world-class jerk.”
“All of Jeff’s brothers-in-law seem to hate him and Christopher.”
“Jonathan isn’t so bad.” Melanie sighed. “No one’s as bad as Clarence.”
Emily snorted. “That’s like saying a regular superbeing is better than an in-control one. Jonathan’s okay, but that’s about all I’ll say.” Loved Emily, too. My favorite mothers after my own and Chuckie’s.
“Did Ericka Gower have any kind of reaction to carrying her kids?”
Melanie shook her head. “None. She’s still fully human. It’s got to be the drug, Kitty. We’ve been monitoring the rest of the babies coming; only Serene’s seems . . . different.”
“Different?”
“More like you and Jamie,” Emily answered. “Not like Claudia’s, Lorraine’s, or Doreen’s babies. Nor any of the others’ who are pregnant.” She sighed. “And now Christopher’s altered himself.”
“Which means any girl he marries is going to be affected, just like me, right?”
“We don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. One test case isn’t enough to base concrete assumptions.” Melanie was a scientist first, I had to remind myself. All the Dazzlers were, really.
“What about the addiction factor with him?”
They both shook their heads. “Again, we don’t have enough experience with this,” Emily said. “We’re looking into it, of course, but unwitting addiction is different from willing. Serene wanted to get the drug out of her system.”
“Are you saying Christopher doesn’t?”
“No,” Melanie said quickly. “But from what I’ve read up on human addictions, he’s acting more the way a human addict would than Serene did, in terms of cleaning up, I mean. If we had more help, we’d probably be making faster headway.”
“Why don’t we get more help on this, then?”
“Tito doesn’t want too many people working on this project,” Emily explained. “I can’t blame him. Right now, it’s just the three of us, and I think it needs to stay that way. This information in the wrong hands could be incredibly dangerous. Fortunately, we have a large team working on understanding and countering the drug itself, so we have that knowledge. But as for having them work on this with us?” She shrugged. “We’re talking about the Heads of Field and Imageering and their families. Discoveries about Jamie’s development, your mutation, the outcome of Christopher’s addiction—all that information needs to remain highly classified, for your protection if nothing else.”
“Can’t argue with the logic.”
“No, but that means that while the three of us are good, we’re not going to get the answers as quickly as if we could assign a whole team.” Melanie shook her head. “I just hope we figure it all out before anything terrible happens.”
CHAPTER 37
“UM, EXCUSE ME? I THOUGHT you said no bad was happening? When did the situation status change?”
Melanie managed a chuckle. “It hasn’t. We’re trained to look for all possibilities.”
“And the possibility of things going badly always exists,” Emily added. “Right now, though, everything seems fine, and we have a lot of other issues going on.”
“Can’t argue with the logic or the accurate summation of our business as usual.” I hit the Stop Elevator button again and we continued on. A thought occurred. “What’s your estimate of my being able to drive or fly now?”
Melanie shrugged. “No idea. We’ll find out whenever you next try to drive or fly.”
“Can’t wait.” I made the decision that I’d try driving first, and it wouldn’t be in my car. I loved my IS300, and I didn’t want to discover I was now too freaky-fast to handle human machinery by dropping the transmission. Lexus repairs weren’t cheap.
We got out of the elevator and headed for the isolation area. It was big—it housed well over a hundred isolation chambers—because we had a lot of empaths, and they all needed to use these chambers to regenerate. None as often as Jeff, though. I couldn’t help it; every time I was in this area I worried about him. Possibly because it was the creepiest place in any A-C facility—like being in a cross between Frankenstein’s lab and a haunted Egyptian tomb, with a lot of extra tubes and needles added in just for fun.
It occurred to me that Jeff had run off on a mission and no one had adrenaline with them. What if he needed it and no one was there to stab the adrenaline harpoon? All our medical people were here, I was here, and Jeff was out there, surrounded by hostiles.
Jamie woke up crying. I took her out of the sack with Emily’s help and cuddled her. Diaper seemed fine, no interest in a torpedo, which made sense because they weren’t fully inflated yet. Figured I’d stressed her out worrying about Jeff. Did my best to calm down while doing the Mommy Dance and wondering if either ACE or the blocks were doing a damn thing.
We reached the chamber where Christopher was. I was surprised to see Naomi and Abigail Gower there. They had the same ebony skin as their mother and older brothers, but now that I knew their father, I could see Stanley in them. Naomi saw us and grinned. I could see a trace of Jeff in her smile—genetics always impressed me. They were typical Dazzler gorgeous and also typical Dazzler nice.
“Glad you’re here, Kitty. I think Christopher needs someone to talk to.” Naomi reached for the baby. “And I’ll take your little Jamie-Kat.” I handed her over, and Naomi cuddled her. “Precious girl,” Naomi cooed.
“Awww, she loves her Auntie Naomi,” Abigail said with a giggle. “And her Mommy, too. And her Aunties Melanie and Emily and Abigail.” She winked at me. “I can feel it. She’s a happy baby.”
There were gases naturally in Earth’s air that could be manipulated to cause humans to “see” or “remember” events differently. The male A-C agents, including Jeff and Christopher, had implants in their brains that allowed them to manipulate the gases to prevent panic when superbeings formed, or for other crowd control and safety measures. Abigail was able to manipulate these gases without outside assistance. She was also a sort of reverse-empath; unlike Jeff, who picked up what someone was feeling and why, Abigail’s emotions were affected by the people around her. If you were angry, it made her angry, and so forth.
