by A. L. Knorr
"I'm sorry, Petra," he said into my hair. "I'm so, so sorry. For so much."
"Jesse, you're scaring me." My voice trembled. I wanted to push him away and pull him close at the same time.
He made the decision for me, holding me so tight I couldn't help but hug him back. My heart was skittering around like a fawn on ice, and my whole body felt shot through with adrenalin. I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent, tuned in to his frequency.
Desperate to understand, I slid the gate between my mind and his open, probing his thoughts. Immediately, the back of my head began to ache but worse, there was nothing. Nothing but cold and black, like a thick chunk of metal was barring the way. I closed my mind and breathed as the headache eased away.
Why could I not read his thoughts? It was just like trying to read Hiroki's had been. My pulse jumped again. My mind screamed, what is going on?
Jesse pulled back and put warm hands on either side of my face. "I'm sorry."
His hazel eyes searched mine. I could feel the heat of his body leaching through my damp clothing.
"Would you stop saying that–"
He silenced my words with a kiss.
Suddenly, we were back in that tent in Libya, making out like we'd been starved for one another. His hands worked at my coat, opening it, pushing it off my shoulders and down my arms as he kissed me hungrily. My coat dropped to the floor, taking my wet gloves with it. My hands threaded through his hair as he pressed me back against the wall.
So, not so much awkwardness then. My whole body ignited as he kissed me.
His fingers raked into my hair and squeezed. My scalp pulled pleasantly and my breath hitched. My body came alive in a way it hadn't since he'd kissed me the first time, as The Ghibli had wailed and screamed around us, throwing sand up against our tent. There had been as much passion and fury going on inside the tent during that desert storm as there was now in the foyer of this strange house.
My mind was whirling, my body was a raging torrent, and there beneath it all was Jesse and his rhythms, surging against me. His heartbeat, and a different kind of pulse, his energy signature, woke me up inside and sent my own vibrations humming. Last time we had done this, I was terrified at what matching our rhythms might do to him, but this time, there was no fear. All these months later I had a better understanding of how I worked; I was in control. I had no desire to hurt Jesse, so I wouldn't. I kissed him and my thoughts and fears flew apart like shattered glass.
He began to chuckle against my mouth.
"What?" I asked between kisses, "is so funny?"
"I just-" He pulled back, taking a breath. "I thought maybe it would be awkward between us." He bent his face to my neck and kissed me there. "I'm so glad I was wrong."
"Me too." My eyes drifted shut with pleasure. I thought I would melt into a puddle, right then and there. "But Jesse," I said hoarsely, "you need to start talking."
His head came up. "Yeah." He kissed me again, but it was a finisher, not a starter. He took my hand. "I do. Come upstairs."
"Wait." I bent and untied my wet boots and toed them off. "Whose house is this?"
I followed him up the stairs.
"I rented it."
I blinked in surprise. "Rented? How long have you been here?"
"Four days. I've been trying to reach you since I got here. I couldn't go to your apartment because it’s often under surveillance, and I'm-" He stopped and gave a chuckle. "Well, I've gone rogue. If TNC finds me, they'll…well, it won't be good."
"Rogue?"
As we crested the stairs to the second floor, my jaw dropped as I looked around.
Four computers were haphazardly set up across a makeshift desk. File folders and documents spread across the floor in semi-organized disarray. A folder lay open on the desk. In it was a photograph, only partially in view, but I would recognize the face on it anywhere.
My heart skidded to a halt before resuming an erratic rhythm.
I went to the desk and picked up the printed photo, devouring the face of the man in the image with my eyes. Jesse's handwriting had scrawled the name Tareq Ghoga across the bottom of the photo. The image was in black and white but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that those eyes were silver and that skin was a dark creamy tan, just like mine.
It was the man from my dreams. But this image was real, taken by a camera. It brought him to sudden, primal life. He was not just a product of my imagination anymore.
"Where did you get this?" My voice was shaking worse now.
"I'll tell you everything, Petra. Just promise me, promise me you're not going to lose it on me." Jesse's voice had a thin thread of fear twisting through it.
I barely registered his request. "Who is this?"
My eyes met Jesse's and I was vaguely aware of the sensation of falling, even though I hadn't moved. The floor seemed to be tilting, the walls closing in. Jesse sounded so far away. Though I knew the answer already, his words still rocked my heart like it was a toy boat on an angry ocean.
"He's your father."
Petra
"Tareq." The word clipped off my tongue, sharp and strong. No one in my whole life, not my therapists, not the foster care workers over the years, not any law enforcement people who had come into contact with me through my case had been able to provide the name of my father, let alone a photo of him. He had been a black hole, until now.
I tore my eyes from the image of my father and looked up at the young man who'd given me my first real link to my past.
"Where did you get this?" My lips felt numb and the muscles running up and down along my spine were quivering.
"There is so much to tell you, Petra." Jesse raked a hand through his hair, looking at the mess of papers and technology around us. His eyes found mine and they were full of sorrow. "And you're not going to like any of it."
"Start talking." My voice sounded calm and I was grateful for that. Inside, I was a storm. I knelt on the carpet in front of the documents but I didn't touch any of them, almost afraid of what I'd discover if I opened another one. "I'm listening."
"Your father, Tareq Gogha, was an Euroklydon who worked for TNC. As far as I can make out, they picked him up in Libya, his native country, and contracted him on the spot. I haven't yet found the original contract but I'm confident it was for an insane amount of money and it was either a lifetime deal or spanned decades. I don't know whether he signed it under duress or not." Jesse's shoulders lifted. "Either way, he worked for them and came to regret it."
Jesse picked up another folder and opened it, taking another photograph and handing it to me. "This is your mom."
I took the photo and stared at the woman central to the image. She was unaware she was being photographed. She had one long-fingered hand reaching toward the handle of a car door as she looked over her shoulder and smiled at someone who was not in the photograph. She wore a long skirt and a wrap sweater around her curvy frame. Her long dark hair was in a bun at the nape of her neck, but wisps of it had escaped and were blowing fetchingly around her face. She was beautiful; with high cheekbones, smooth skin, straight white teeth, and a high brow. Big gold disc earrings swung beside her jaw and the one hand that was visible was encrusted with rings. She looked well cared for.
"Her name was Tala Kara, Tala Gogha after she married your father." Jesse plucked a swath of papers from another folder. On the pages were mostly text and some had been blacked out with a marker. "I've been digging through TNC documents for months and have pieced together a rough story. I think your father violated his contract when he married your mom. I can't say for sure, because I haven't found the contract. TNC's files are multi-layered, well encrypted, and organized in a confusing way."
"Then why do you think the marriage violated the contract?"
"Because after he got married, TNC's behavior changed toward him. They put more surveillance on him, on his personal life, even. Whatever was going on inside your parents’ marriage, TNC felt it was relevant to them and spent a lot of money to make sure they knew a
lot about your mom's health."
"My mom's…health?"
"More specifically, whether or not she'd become pregnant."
"Oh." Ice felt like it was coating my stomach. Why had I ever trusted this corporation? And now, I was under contract to them too. Thankfully, I'd only signed for a year, but looking at my parents’ images, a year was still a year too long. "And they cared about whether she became pregnant because…"
"Read this and see for yourself." Jesse handed me a single sheet.
I took it and scanned it, understanding in a few seconds that it was a report written by either a researcher or a doctor to a corporate authority. It had been stamped CLASSIFIED & PRIVATE. It looked like a copy of a copy of a copy. There was a phrase circled in red that drew my eye.
Our discovery confirms that there can only ever be a single Euroklydon alive at any given time. The power is genetic and may or may not pass to a child from either parent. Our attempts to create two living Euroklydon have failed repeatedly [see article 137-B]. Upon conception, should the fetus have acquired the gene, the parent immediately loses 98% supernatural capacity. The remaining 2% is limited to low-grade telepathy and may or may not include some low-grade telekinesis as well. Their usefulness to the corporation being greatly diminished, we recommend contractual obligations include a commitment to refrain from conceiving a child until such time as the corporation allows, perhaps when the asset has passed prime. We recommend continued research into sperm and oocyte cryopreservation; until which time it is successful, this is our recommendation to the board.
The words burned into my skull as I read them silently three times over. I noticed a number code in the top right-hand corner which included the number 1956. "Is this the year this document was created?" I asked, Jesse, my voice hoarse. "1956?"
"Yes. Thirty years before the first successful pregnancy done with a frozen egg."
I had so many questions about this paragraph alone that I didn't know what to ask first.
"But I wasn't conceived this way…" I stumbled over the words. I had always been told I'd been born to an eclamptic mother in the Saltford hospital. But at this point, with everything Jesse was showing me, I didn't know what to believe anymore.
"No." Jesse shook his head. "That's why I think TNC became upset with your father, because he didn't wait for their permission. This document is the only thing I've found that suggests the agreement to wait before conceiving a child might have been part of his contract. If it was, and he signed it willingly, he also broke it willingly. Your mom and he decided to have a baby in spite of TNC." He canted his head. "Or she became pregnant by accident. It's impossible to know for certain.”
I let out a breath. "Why would he sign such a contract in the first place?"
Jesse shrugged. "We don't know how old he was when he signed, or what his state was. He might have been poor, desperate, very young. He might have thought he didn't want kids anyway and then later on, changed his mind. TNC would pay an Euroklydon at the very highest scale. It's tough for anyone to turn that kind of wealth down, let alone someone who might have grown up impoverished."
"Did he grow up impoverished?"
"I don't know that either, I'm afraid. It's just little old me doing all this digging. I haven't had time to delve into his past before TNC. I've come to you with everything I've found, because you're running out of time."
"Time? Does this have to do with Project Expansion?"
Jesse nodded. "It does, but there's more before we get to that."
"Low-grade telepathy and telekinesis," I read out loud from the pages I still held.
Jesse nodded. "That's what you had before the cave in Libya, right?"
"I never told anyone that, only my therapist."
"Yes, Noel Pierce." Jesse's mouth formed a flat line. "They got to him, too. The moment he became your therapist, they paid him a little visit. He resisted, but they got him eventually. They intimidated him into being their eyes on you while you grew up."
"He resisted," I echoed. My eyes shuttered closed as the day I revealed myself to him in his office, the day I'd seen a memory of someone beating him with the butt of a gun.
Jesse nodded. “Yeah.”
"They had him ratting on me all the years he was my therapist." Cold sorrow filled my empty spaces like ice-water. "He died only a few days ago."
My throat closed up and I looked at Jesse, a question in my eyes that couldn't quite make it to my lips. I took a breath.
"Tell me he actually died of an aneurysm,” I said. “Please. Please, tell me that's really how he died."
Jesse shook his head and his shoulders slumped. "We're dealing with a hydra here." He shifted to sit beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "But you're not alone. We're going to do something about this. You and me."
"What did they do to him?"
"Petra, don't do this to yourself."
"What did they do, Jesse?" I spoke around clenched teeth.
"They knew his family history. Genetically, Noel might have eventually died of an aneurysm anyway. His grandfather did, one of his uncles did, as did his great grandmother. They just gave nature a little push." Jesse swallowed so hard I could hear it. "Then they bribed the coroner. Path of least resistance. Noel wasn't of any use to them anymore. I'm so sorry, Petra. I know how much you cared for him."
Jesse put a hand on mine. Hot tears blocked out my vision. They poured over my cheeks as I squeezed my eyes shut. I rubbed my sleeve across my nose, which had begun to run.
Jesse fished in a pocket and handed me a crumpled tissue. "Sorry, I'll get you a fresh one."
He got up and disappeared through a door. I heard the click of a light-switch which also turned on a fan, the rustling of plastic, and he returned with a travel-pack of tissues.
I took it and fished one out to clean myself up with. Oh, Noel, I thought. Murdered because of association with me.
Who else had TNC interfered with because of me, or my father?
"So, my mother became pregnant," I said, crumpling the tissue and tossing it in the small wastebasket under the desk. "Then what?"
Jesse leaned back and pulled his legs into a cross-legged position. "They put your parents under house-arrest. Every move they made was monitored. Your mother's pregnancy was monitored, probably closer than any pregnancy had been monitored before. Even royalty doesn't have check-ups like your mother did. Poor Tala was very stressed, as you can imagine, and TNC found itself with the very tricky objective of helping your mother to have a safe and successful pregnancy, while keeping her and your father under lock and key.”
“All that monitoring, and they couldn’t prevent her eclampsia?”
Jesse let out a sigh. “They probably did know and chose not to do anything about it. Knowing TNC, they might not have minded if your mother died after you were born anyway.” He made a disgusted face. “It might have even crossed their mind to allow you to die, too, just to see if the powers returned to your father.”
“That would have been a huge risk,” I said.
Jesse nodded. “And they did decide to keep you alive, so I guess they thought so, too. You were conceived in Jordan, where your father had been doing a job. TNC moved your parents to Saltford because they had a well-equipped facility nearby, and because it was easy to bring them both into the country. What they were planning to do with your folks after you were born is anyone's guess, but"—Jesse scratched his jaw and the rasp of his stubble made me notice that he hadn't shaved in quite a while—"TNC is very good at appearing to be altruistic while having devious goals. If I were your father, I would have done what he did, too."
"Let me guess," I interjected, bitterly. "They tried to escape?"
Jesse nodded. "Your father caused a diversion so that the guards watching them were drawn away from the house. Then your mother snuck out while security was diminished. They'd planned to rendezvous at a point, I'm sure." He inhaled. "I'm sure they didn't think TNC would take it as far as they did."
"They killed my father?" They'd killed Noel, what would stop them from killing Tareq once he was useless? Jesse's answer was still like a bowling ball to the gut.
"Yes. When they found out what your father had done, they shot him. Your mother—"
"Was picked up by strangers and taken to the hospital." This was where the story that I knew picked up, and seemed to fit.
"Yes, where TNC found her," Jesse said. "Since they knew where you were, and you were just an infant, not to mention an orphan, they decided the best thing to do would be to let child services put you into a foster home where they could stay out of your life but keep an eye on you."
"Okay, but then what? I grew up, but I wasn't an Euroklydon until after what happened in Libya. They were waiting for me to go to Libya? That might never have happened."
"But it did happen." Jesse looked at me, his eyes reticent and regretful.
"Are you saying I was bound to come into my powers at some point regardless? Even if I hadn't gone to Libya and fallen into that cave?"
"No, I'm saying they knew that going to Libya was what it would take for you to inherit your abilities. They orchestrated Libya."
I let out a disbelieving laugh. "They couldn't be that good. They might have money and technology, but they don't know the future. They might have known that I love archaeology and would want to go on a North African excavation, but they couldn't possibly know that a dig would come up in Libya. It's more than unlikely, it’s preposterous."
Jesse’s eyes were full of pity, and I felt a surge of anger at his expression.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?" Then it clicked. My eyes widened in horror. My voice croaked as I said, "No."
"I'm so sorry." Jesse's eyes were on the floor, his head bent like he couldn't bear to look at me.
"Tell me it's not true, Jesse."
Tears pricked my eyes and I covered my face with my hands. But the evidence was there. The whole thing had been faked, the entire dig. I could hardly process it. That day in the classroom when I'd read Ibby's mind and she was wondering why they were doing what they were doing to a nice girl like me. It hadn't made any sense given what I’d thought was going on, but it made sense now.
