by R. D. Brady
Chris looked relieved. “No problem. I’ll make the request.”
Maeve watched him leave, knowing John would say no and hoping just asking to see them didn’t send up any red flags.
Chapter Nineteen
A few hours later, Maeve looked up, her eyebrows raising with concern as Colonel John Forrester strode into her lab. Presentation, tests she didn’t order, Alvie’s attempt to get her to look at old files, and now her Uncle John visiting her in the lab—no, things were definitely not okay. But she smiled as he opened up his arms. She walked over into them. “Hi, Uncle John.”
John looked down at her, his blue-gray eyes twinkling in the corners. “My favorite scientist.”
She laughed, because she knew it was true and because she was pretty sure very few other scientists or people on the base saw this side of him. “My favorite commander.”
“So, I hear you’ve been asking about Alvie’s background.”
Maeve nodded. She studied John, trying to discern how he had taken the request. She did love him. He’d been a surrogate father to her, but he didn’t get to be commander by being a nice guy. “Yes. Alvie’s going through some developmental changes and I thought there might be something similar in his past.”
“Why now?”
Maeve gestured to Alvie’s room. “Something’s going on with him and I’m trying to find an answer.”
John frowned and walked over to the glass. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure. His neurotransmitter levels are low. I think he’s depressed. And I was hoping there might be something in the old notes that would help with that.”
“What specifically are you looking for?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. I’ve been through all my notes and the history I can access. But I still haven’t seen anything from that first year. I don’t even know how Alvie was created. I’m hoping there’s something in those early files that might address the serotonin levels.”
John studied her for a moment before shaking his head. “There’s nothing in those early files that could relate.”
“But—”
“Dr. Leander, there’s nothing in the files.”
Maeve stepped back. Dr. Leander? “Okay.”
“Listen, Maeve, things are changing, and it’s best not to rock the boat right now.”
“Changing? How?”
“Some projects from NASIC have been moved into a new department.”
Maeve’s mouth fell open. “What does that mean?”
“It could be nothing. But whatever is happening with Alvie, figure it out without going beyond your clearance.” He hesitated. “What kind of incidents is he having?”
“Nothing too bad. Just staring off into space.”
“You need to find an answer, because the guy heading the new division, he’s not someone you want to look too closely at your relationship with Alvie.”
“Then let me look at the old files.”
“No,” John barked, and then his voice softened. “Maeve, everyone’s going to be under the microscope now, including me. I can’t let you into those files. Don’t ask again. Now I need to head to a meeting, but I was hoping we could get breakfast sometime soon.”
Maeve shoved her hurt aside, trying to smile. “That would be great. Do you want to say hi?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m in a rush. But give him a hug for me, all right?”
“Sure.” Maeve frowned. “What’s going on? You’re worried.”
“What? No, honey. It’s nothing. Just the usual stress.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sure. Don’t worry about me.” He paused. “But I need you to keep your head down. Don’t make any waves.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Versus my usual attention-seeking ways?”
He gave a small laugh. “I know, I know. Just humor an old man.”
“Now I know something’s wrong if you’re calling yourself old. Is it this new agency?”
He watched her for a moment. “Just be careful, okay?”
She leaned in and hugged him. “Always.”
“All right, well, I need to get going. Miles to go and all that.”
Maeve knew stopping in was not easy for him. His days were usually pretty packed. “Well, thanks, for stopping by. And you’re sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. Just look after yourself and Alvie.”
“I will. I always have.”
“Yes, you have,” he said lightly. “All right, I’m already late. And don’t forget, breakfast next week.”
She hugged him again. “It’s a date.”
He hugged her back, resting his head on hers for a moment. And then the moment went on too long. She frowned and opened her mouth to ask him again if everything was all right but he headed for the door and stepped out.
Maeve waited for a few moments, watching the door. Something was going on. Something had him worried. But she couldn’t concern herself with that right now.
She pulled the security card she had pinched from his pocket. “I just hope you won’t be too mad.”
Chapter Twenty
Maeve sat at a booth in the back of Wings Lounge. She had headed straight there after Greta arrived, telling herself she was hungry and not that she was staying on base to sneak into the archives building. Now her eggs sat in front of her, slowly cooling to room temperature. Her hand slipped into the pocket of her coat, fingering the card she had taken from John.
I can’t believe I did that, she thought for the millionth time. But now that she had, she wasn’t sure what she planned. True, John’s card would get her into different parts of the base, but they all had cameras and human security. Someone would notice she wasn’t the commander. Besides, what was the likelihood they kept paper records on Alvie? The archive had to be digitized by now, which meant she needed a password.
She had nabbed the card and now she had nowhere to use it. And if she used it, she would end her career. Meaning Alvie would be on his own. But if she didn’t try, Alvie would continue to suffer without any way for her to help him. And with this new agency in charge, who knew what they would think about his incidents? Because she knew it was only a matter of time before someone uncovered them. It was pure dumb luck that no one had so far.
She had never officially asked where Alvie had come from. It might seem crazy to some that she hadn’t questioned his origins. But the fact was, Maeve had grown up in a military installation. She knew questions were not taken lightly and were often seen as dissent. So any questions she raised had to directly pertain to her interactions with Alvie. And how he came to be did not fit within that area.
So even asking John for the records had gone against everything that had been ingrained into her since she was a child. She could still picture the look of fear on her mother’s face, the harshness in her tone when she warned Maeve to never ask about Alvie’s history. Her mother had warned her that they would lose him if she asked those types of questions. It had had such an impact on her that she had squashed down her curiosity and never breathed a word of it to anyone. But it didn’t stop her from thinking.
Although her mother had never said it out loud, Maeve had gotten the impression that her mother had known him from birth. In Maeve’s mind that left only two options: Alvie was found at a crash site right after he was born or Alvie’s mother, assuming he had one, was caught just before he was born.
In the dark recesses of her mind, she wondered if he had somehow been created, but she couldn’t imagine her mother being a part of something like that. And besides, Alvie was at least ten years older than the technology needed to create him in a lab. The first test tube baby was created in 1978, but that required having both a male and female subject, harvesting a viable egg, and fertilizing it outside the body before implanting it back in. Even with the improvements made in the past few decades, only 36% of IVF treatments result in a successful pregnancy. Thirty years ago, that percentage would have
been much lower, and that was before taking into account the alien biology.
The most realistic option was that he was somehow stranded here as an infant. But there must be something in those early records that could give her a clue as to what he was going through now. A genetic profile must have been run on him at some point. And she knew in her heart that that profile and his early history could help her explain what was going on with Alvie.
Maeve gripped her coffee mug. What the hell am I going to do?
A shadow fell across her table and she looked up. Chris stood there, glaring down at her. “I need to speak with you.”
“Okay. Take a seat.”
“Not here.” He threw a twenty down on the table and reached for her arm.
Maeve shrugged him off. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing? What the hell are you doing, Maeve?” Chris hissed and then took a deep breath. “Let’s go, because I don’t think you want to have this conversation here.” Chris headed for the back door without a word.
Maeve frowned but followed him. He can’t know. There’s no way he can know.
Chris held the door open for her, which led to a small alley behind the restaurant. As soon as she slipped through, he closed the door behind her. Arms crossed, he glared down at her. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” she asked, forcing herself to not reach into her pocket.
“The commander’s office called to say his ID had gone missing. He last used it at your lab.”
“I don’t know.”
Chris ran a hand through his hair, looking like he wanted to yank it out. “Maeve, I cannot help you if you don’t tell me the truth. If you get caught with it, you will lose your position. You will lose Alvie. Let me help you.”
“I asked you for help.” She spit out, her anger rising. “You said no.”
“Damn it, Maeve, this is the military. There are things I can’t do. And there are things you can’t do. That’s just the way it is. You have to accept it.”
“Accept it? I have been accepting it my whole life! My whole life. But now Alvie’s in danger. Something is wrong. And no one will let me look at his records to see his history. Something in there could help.”
“Apparently someone thinks those records won’t help.”
Maeve let out a bitter laugh. “And they know better? Because there is no one on this planet who knows Alvie better than me. And I can tell you without a single doubt in my mind, something is seriously wrong.”
“Look, I get that you take your job seriously, but—”
Tears crested in Maeve’s eyes and she willed them back. “No, you don’t understand. Alvie’s not a job. He’s family.”
Chris frowned. “Family?”
Maeve nodded. “Family,” she said firmly. Pictures from her childhood swam through her mind.
“But you’ve only worked on the project for three years.”
“No, I’ve known him much longer than that.”
He frowned. “How long?”
“Twenty-three years.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-Three Years Ago
Five-year-old Maeve clasped her mom’s hand as they stepped out of the elevator into the long white corridor. Doors lined it, though none opened or had any windows.
Two soldiers with guns stood on either side of the elevator door. They nodded at her mother but they didn’t smile. Maeve moved a little closer to her mom.
The air conditioning kicked on and Maeve jumped.
Her mom looked down and smiled, patting Maeve’s hand. “It’s all right—just the air conditioning. Do you remember what I told you?”
Maeve nodded. “That he looks different, but inside he’s like me.”
Alice nodded. “Yes.” She stopped at the last door on the right. She paused and then knelt down so she could look Maeve in the eye. “I would never let anything hurt you, you know that, right?”
Maeve nodded.
“And there’s nothing to be scared of. Do you believe that?”
Maeve looked at her mom. It had always been the two of them, plus her grandma, who made her breakfast while her mom was at work. Maeve had asked her mom why she worked nights instead of during the day. Alice had hugged her and said her job was different than most people’s and she could only do it at night.
For a while, Maeve had thought her mom might be a superhero who flew around the world saving people under the cloak of darkness. She’d told her mom that once, but she’d only laughed. “No, I work for the government.” Then she’d paused. “But I suppose I might be helping save the world one day.”
Now Maeve was finally going to see where her mom worked. What kept her away and what had been upsetting her lately.
“I believe that.” Maeve looked into her mom’s blue eyes, the same color as her grandma’s. “Do you?”
Her mom ran a hand through Maeve’s hair. “You are such a smart girl. That is going to take you places someday.” She stood up. “Okay, let’s go.” Her mother punched a series of numbers into the keypad to the right of the door. A buzzer sounded, and then the door popped open.
Maeve followed her mother in, clutching her Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. There was a wall of computers straight ahead, and to her left was a long glass wall that ran the length of the room. And two people stood in front of the wall, one of whom she knew. She smiled and ran over to him, wrapping her arms around his legs. “Uncle John.”
John reached down and pulled her up, tossing her a little bit in the air before hugging her. “Hey there, snug bug.”
Maeve leaned back to look in his face. “How come you’re here?”
“I told your mom I wanted to be here for this.” He smiled, but Maeve knew it was his worried smile. She looked at her mother, who was avoiding her uncle’s eyes.
A woman stood up from the computers. “So this must be Maeve.”
John lowered Maeve to the ground as her mother spoke. “Maeve, this is Greta. We work together. Can you say hi?”
“Hi,” Maeve said, clutching her dolls and taking a step behind her uncle. She looked into the dark glass in front of her. What was in there? And why was it so dark?
Alice led Maeve to the wall. “Stay right here for a minute, okay?”
Her mom walked to the wall of computers and few seconds later a dim light appeared behind the glass. A small bed lay against the far wall and a figure moved underneath a blue blanket.
Maeve looked back at her uncle, who nodded at her encouragingly, but she also noticed the bulge on his waist. He had a gun. Why did Uncle John have a gun?
“How is he today?” her mom asked.
“Good. Quiet,” Greta said.
Her mother let out a breath. “Okay. Let’s see how this goes.”
Her mom stepped to a door in the wall and nodded at Greta. The light above the door glowed green. Her mom smiled at Maeve before walking into the other room.
Maeve pressed her hands against the glass, trying to get a better look. Her mother reached down to the bed and picked up the person in it, wrapping them in a blanket. The person was small, not much bigger than a baby. But why would they put a baby in a bed?
Her mom walked toward her, the smile still on her face. She knelt down at the opposite side of the glass and turned the bundle in her arms for Maeve to see. The being had big eyes that were closed and was a pale gray. For a minute, Maeve thought it was a doll, but then the eyes opened.
“Maeve, this is Alvie,” her mom said.
Maeve stared at Alvie, her heart pounding, but it wasn’t out of fear. Alvie stared back at her. Then slowly, he reached a small four-fingered hand out from underneath the blanket and pressed it against the glass.
Maeve pressed her hand to his from the other side. “Hi, Alvie,” she whispered softly.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chris stared at Maeve, unable to believe what she had just told him. At the same time, it explained a great deal about their relationship. “You really met him when you were a kid?
”
Maeve nodded. “Yes, but it was more than that. I spent almost every day with him. For the first year, we played through the glass together. After that though, everyone knew we weren’t a threat to each other. So we played together.”
Chris was dumbfounded. How had the military allowed it? “How—I mean, if you had told someone—”
“I went to school on the base. I had a perpetual shadow. Any time it looked like I was going to spill the beans I would have been whisked away. But I was never tempted.”
“How’s that possible?”
“Because very early on, it was made clear to me that if I told anyone about Alvie, I would never see him again and neither would my mother. And even as a kid, I understood that. And I couldn’t risk him being taken away from us.”
“That was a lot of pressure to be on a little kid.”
“I suppose it was. But I understood that I was Alvie’s only chance at a normal life. Without me or my mom, he was on his own. We were his family, the only ones that truly cared about him.”
Chris watched her for a moment. “Why would they take the risk?”
“You have to understand—my mom loved Alvie like he was hers. And he wasn’t doing well. He’d become withdrawn. There was talk about terminating him. And she knew him better than anyone. She knew he was lonely. She knew there was no risk to me. My mom figured there was nothing to lose—if Alvie didn’t get better, she’d lose him. She thought he might be lonely and need someone his age to play with. He was a child surrounded by adults. And to the military, she was the expert. They listened to her.”
Chris couldn’t miss the bitterness in her voice. “I guess it worked.”
Maeve nodded, a smile playing across her face. “He became my brother, my best friend. I eventually made other friends, but Alvie was always the first. My schedule was even switched so I went to school at night.”
“But didn’t you resent that after a while?”
“When I was a teenager, I had a bit of a rebellious stage. But for the most part, I was okay with it. Me, Alvie, my mom—we became this family unit. Dinner together every day, holidays. I’d flop on his bed and tell him my plans for the future.”
