by Jade Kerrion
“I’m sorry,” Danyael murmured. He withdrew his hand slowly. A dull ache pulsed in his chest. Joyce’s words echoed through his mind. You wrestle so much with death and mortality that you no longer understand, if you ever did, the lure of immortality.
He did understand the lure of immortality, but he had never craved it. He wouldn’t have known what to do with it anyway. Life was difficult enough that he had no desire to extend it beyond a normal lifespan.
Danyael worked methodically down each row, easing each clone into death. When he finally closed the cover of the last chamber, he had set Gage’s work back by at least a year. With a final glance over his shoulder, Danyael closed the door on the incubation room that he had turned into a graveyard.
He limped through the laboratory with its vast freezer and the deteriorating vials of blastocysts. His hand on the doorknob, he eased the door open but froze at the sound of quick footsteps. He pressed back against the partially open door and glanced out through the narrow slit. A technician in surgical scrubs dashed past. Alarm spiked through Danyael. He had to stop Galahad’s surgery.
He looked out, tracing the man’s progress to a door on the other side of the central shaft. The fastest way, of course, would have been to cross the shaft on the intersecting walkway, but he did not dare, not with his crippled leg. Instead, he slipped out of the laboratory and followed the external corridor around the shaft. He paused only long enough to cast a quick glance through the window. Gage stood over an operating table, micro-surgical equipment positioned over Galahad’s body.
Danyael pushed into the room. “No, stop!”
Gage looked up, his eyes flaring with alarm. He jerked his head.
Strong hands seized Danyael’s arms and pulled him away from the surgical table.
Danyael tried to break free, but the two clones were stronger. Damn it. He had not seen them in his hurried scan of the room.
Gage relaxed. Still, distress furrowed his brow. “You must have overpowered the two clones who brought you dinner, but how?” He glanced out of the window at the central shaft and its intersecting network of steel wire frame walkways. “And how did you handle all those bridges and stairs? I specifically had the rails removed to thwart any escape attempt on your part.”
“You have me all figured out, don’t you?”
Gage shrugged. “I think so, and then you prove me wrong. It is a shame your father didn’t include more of you in Galahad’s genetic code. We could have been a great deal more than perfect if he had.”
Danyael spared a quick glance over Gage’s shoulder. Galahad was not moving, but the monitors confirmed that he was alive. He had to get to Galahad; he had to reset the bio-tracker. His gaze flashed back to Gage. “You don’t understand perfection.”
“Don’t I? Look at everything I’ve accomplished—”
“What have you accomplished—accelerating life, altering will, playing God? Is that what you intended?” Danyael shook his head. The disgust he felt tasted bitter on his tongue. He honed the emotion and threw it into his words. “Perfection is tied to purpose. Without purpose, perfection is an empty word. What are you perfect for, Gage? What were you designed to do?”
Gage stared at him, speechless. The color drained from his face. He stammered. “I…you…what were you designed—?”
“I don’t know,” Danyael said. “But I’ve never pretended to be perfect. No one is, not even Galahad.”
On the surgical table, Galahad stirred. He turned his head and stared at Danyael through wide, dilated eyes. His upper lip curled. “You’ve always hated me.” He slurred his words.
“No.” Danyael surged forward but was pulled back. “Let me reset the bio-tracker, please.”
Gage chuckled. “There is no need to reset it.” With a pair of tweezers, he plucked up a four-clawed device from a blood-streaked petri dish. The device was only a few millimeters wide, its innocuous appearance belying its deadly function—a cardiac bio-tracker. “You don’t control Galahad anymore.”
Galahad pushed up on one elbow. The tiny cut the micro-surgical instruments had made on his chest was scarcely visible. He glanced at the bio-tracker in Gage’s hand and then looked up at Danyael. “I’m finally free of you.”
Danyael reeled from Galahad’s hate, the blazing emotion cutting through his defenses. “I…” His voice caught. He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled through the burning pain.
Gage’s emotional spectrum wavered, the disruption subtle but obvious to an alpha empath.
Danyael glanced at the older man. His eyes narrowed as he tried to discern the muted flicker of Gage’s emotions behind the blinding glare of Galahad’s hate. His empathic senses reached out, probing for the truth. It hit him, driving the air out of his lungs. His mouth dropped open. His stunned gaze locked on Gage’s face. “You’re lying…”
Gage’s emotions quivered.
“You’re lying!” Danyael lunged forward but could not break free from the two clones. He strained, his muscles bunching. “What did you do?”
Galahad cut in. “He did what I asked.” He swung his feet over the side of the operating table and stood. He swayed and gripped the table, his knuckles white. His face was pale. “He removed the bio-tracker.”
Danyael shook his head. “No, Galahad, he—”
Galahad gestured at the bio-tracker that Gage had tossed back into the petri dish. “There’s the evidence.”
The alpha empath ground his teeth. Hang the evidence. The evidence could lie. Five paternity tests had apparently insisted that he, and not Galahad, was Laura’s father. According to the “evidence,” Galahad’s corpse was lying in a morgue in Washington, D.C., his throat ripped out by the abomination. Danyael did not have the facts, but he had to trust his empathic senses; the emotions did not, could not, lie. “Galahad—”
“There’s something you don’t understand, Danyael.” Galahad picked up two scalpels from the tray next to the operating table and handed one to Gage. “It doesn’t matter what you say, what you think, or what you feel. Circumstances have made trust inevitable between Gage and me.”
A stricken whisper tore from Danyael’s lips. “No…” Galahad was the world’s best hope of salvation from the unhinged and unfettered ambition of his clones. Danyael closed his eyes against the despair clawing through him and braced against the sly lick of doubt. Was Joyce right? Was the world better off without Galahad?
Perhaps.
But Galahad’s genetic code was already out there, a Pandora’s box opened. Age-acceleration techniques wobbled on unsteady feet, but the technology was available to any ambitious scientist or psychotic clone. I can stop Gage and Galahad this time, but what happens the next time…and the next?
Galahad tipped up Danyael’s chin and smiled into his face. Malice glittered; its sharp shards deadlier than the steady blaze of hate emanating from Galahad. “Of all the men in this room who share the same face, you are the only one who is unique. You have no idea how precious, how rare that is. The power you wield…no one else has it, and yet, you refuse to use it.” Galahad snorted. “You could be so much more, Danyael. You have wasted your life.”
Danyael’s voice trembled. “Galahad—”
“You think I don’t know what you have in mind? You want me to stop Gage. But more than that, you want me to be a buffer against the chaos of a society gone mad. You want me to be a core of…of permanence in a fickle world.” He smiled again, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t pin your hopes on me, Danyael. I won’t fulfill your dreams, at least not in the way you imagine. I won’t be controlled, not by you, or by anyone else.” He glanced at the older version of himself. “Gage has shown me what’s possible. All you’ve shown me is weakness.” He tossed the scalpel into the air, catching it easily, and turned to Gage. With matching smiles and acknowledging nods, they stabbed the scalpel into each other’s stomach.
The physical pain that flowed through the empathic link and drove Danyael to his knees was nothing compared to the shattering anguish of
knowing that he had lost Galahad. Fingers clenched into his hair and yanked his head up. He stared at Galahad through pain-glazed eyes.
Galahad chuckled. His grip on Danyael’s hair tightened. “It’s ironic, but you are the reason Gage and I can trust each other. Our lives were bound to yours; we both needed you, but I don’t anymore, and in a short while, Gage won’t either. I will bring Zara here, and I know you will heal him when I’ve got a blade pressed against her pretty throat. I suggest you start figuring out how—”
Danyael forced the words out, a croak of pain. “He’s…lying to you.”
Galahad shook his head. “The only lie here is the one you’ve been telling yourself, that you see something of you in me. You’re wrong, Danyael. I am not weak like you. Perfection is my birthright, and I will claim it in the way I see fit.” He released his grip on Danyael’s hair and partially turned away.
Despair clawed through Danyael. Deadweight, it latched on to him, dragging him down. He slumped on his knees, though the clones still kept his arms pinned behind his back.
Galahad’s fury flashed a split-second warning before his backhanded blow caught Danyael full across his face, whipping it to the side. Danyael swallowed the gasp of pain, though his body shuddered from the impact and the shock that followed. When Galahad had tried to kill him once before, it had been in the madness of anger, of loss. Physical brutality against a restrained enemy though pointed at cruelty, something Danyael found far harder to forgive than temporary insanity.
Is Galahad fit to live?
The answer “No” quivered at the tip of his tongue.
But why couldn’t he actually say it? Why couldn’t he sign off on Galahad’s death sentence? Was he weak, as Galahad had accused him of being, a fool blinded by his faith in the inherent goodness of human nature?
But Galahad’s not human, is he? He was raised a lab animal—
Galahad nodded his head at the door. “Take him back to the cell, and make sure he’s cuffed to the bed. No, leave his crutch,” he ordered when one of the clones reached for it. His gaze locked on Danyael’s. “You’ll have no need for it, not anymore, and if you try to escape again, I will break your other leg.”
Galahad’s emotions flickered, a subtle glimpse of an undercurrent beneath the steady flare of hate. Danyael’s eyes widened. The clones dragged him away, but he threw a glance back over his shoulder, searching Galahad’s face, all the while damning empathy for its lack of precision and accuracy. Galahad’s lying too…but what was the lie, and to whom? To Gage or to me?
~*~
Galahad kept his face impassive when Danyael, reeling from pain, was hauled away. His head still spun from the effects of anesthesia, but four simple words had jolted him out of his drugged haze.
He’s lying to you.
A more cynical man might have imagined that Danyael was a drowning man grasping at straws, trying, in his final moments, to drive a wedge between Galahad and Gage, but as Galahad knew well, the alpha empath could sense lies. Shock and horror had etched on Danyael’s face when the alpha empath looked at Gage. Danyael’s claim that Gage was lying was not an act of self-defense, Galahad was certain of that much. Gage had lied, but about what?
Galahad pressed a hand against his chest and took comfort in the steady heartbeat. His gaze fell upon the small metallic device in the petri dish. The bio-tracker was out, was it not? What else could Gage possibly lie about?
He did not know, but he had to find out.
Gage’s gaze followed Danyael from the room. “What a fool. We could accomplish so much more if only he would aid us willingly.”
“Danyael?”
Gage chuckled. “Your hate blinds you. Danyael is one of the most powerful alpha empaths in the world, and his loyalty to his friends is unmatched.” He exhaled, the sound a sigh. “I suspect you will not understand what it truly means to be powerful until Danyael, for no reason other than friendship, puts his life on the line to save yours.” Gage smiled then, his eyes dreamy, lost in thought. “Imagine what you could do with an alpha empath that you can command with little more than a smile and a promise of kindness.”
Galahad snorted. “Danyael breaks under kindness, but he is not a tame pet as anyone who has ever tried to control Danyael, including Alex Saunders and General Howard, has found out, to their detriment.”
“Perhaps,” Gage conceded. He looked at Galahad. “Will you retrieve Zara now?”
Galahad relaxed against the operating table. “I’m going to rest for a few hours until my body shakes off the effects of the anesthesia.”
“But—” The soft edge of dismay trailed into silence.
Galahad’s gaze darted to Gage’s face, searching it for the lie.
Gage’s eyes twitched, a reflexive motion.
Galahad straightened. “Is there a problem?” He raised his chin, challenging Gage to respond.
Gage glanced at his clones and returned his gaze to Galahad. His eyes narrowed, and a sly look crept over his face. “No, there isn’t.” He turned and walked out of the room. His clones followed.
Galahad released his breath, his shoulders sagging on a silent sigh as the door closed behind them. His gaze drifted back to the bio-tracker in the petri dish. Where is the lie? Danyael…Gage. Who do I trust?
I have to take control of the situation, but how?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf café was not typically considered a prime spot for people watching, but that morning, three attractive women sipped ice-blended coffee at a patio table, apparently indifferent to the attention they were drawing from passersby, especially men.
The café stood several feet from the escalators that led down to the City Hall Mass Rapid Transit interchange underneath the block-length mega office and hotel complex, Raffles City. The café’s location made it prime hunting ground for three women trying to do the impossible—track down Danyael Sabre.
Zara’s violet eyes flicked between Chloe and Amanda. “How much longer is it going to take?”
Chloe scowled at Zara. “It takes time. This isn’t magic, you know.” She tilted the angle of her computer tablet so that the attached camera could capture more photographs of passersby. “No hits so far. Either Singaporeans are scrupulously clean, or the dirt on them is buried deep.”
“Maybe you should expand the parameters for your facial recognition search.”
Chloe ground her teeth. “I know what I’m doing, Zara.”
Zara suppressed a growl. “Amanda?”
“Will you shut up?” Amanda demanded. “Your nagging isn’t helping. Why don’t you make yourself useful?”
But that was what Zara had been struggling to do for the past twenty hours. While Chloe ran photographs of faces through the Next Generation Identification surveillance program to identify interesting leads, Amanda scanned minds with the same intent. Both Chloe and Amanda were in their element, but those activities left Zara with nothing to do.
The only thing worse than inactivity was the feeling of helplessness.
Amanda rolled her eyes and snorted. “Why don’t you show some leg, Zara?”
“What?”
“It’ll distract all of the men and most of the women. It’ll give me a chance to ease past any psychic shields to scan their minds.”
Zara smirked before arranging her generous lips into a sultry scowl. She tugged down the sunglasses perched on her head and slouched lower in her chair, her legs extended out in front of her. Her white skirt hitched up her thigh.
Deliberately insouciant, she examined her perfect manicure and sipped her drink. She counted every drop of condensation on the slick glass surface, watching as small beads of waters trickled down the glass to combine into larger beads.
Her fingers tapped an impatient rhythm on the table. Surely, there was something else she could do. What else had she missed? Were there more clues in Sharma’s lab, or was it a tomb of rock and stone, the final resting place of her clones?
Good riddance.
It was hard to be as dispassionate when she recalled the faces of the younger clones—toddlers scarcely older than Laura. If they had been given a chance to grow up normally, would they have been different from her?
Less of a bitch?
Probably. Hadn’t Sharma said that Danyael’s deadly empathic powers derived from his memories? How much of her own motivations had derived from her childhood?
A muscle twitched in her cheek and her grip tightened on the glass.
Once, she had been a twelve-year-old child, innocently dancing in the courtyard of her Lebanese home. The warmth of the sun kissed her bare arms, and her laughter rose above the lively melody of the qanun and rebab, traditional Lebanese stringed instruments.
She paused in her dance and looked up at the sound of booted feet approaching her home. Shadows fell across the entrance of the courtyard. For a moment, she stared up into the sun-darkened faces of men wearing the colors of one of Lebanon’s many warring factions. The scream caught in her throat. She spun around and dashed toward her house but strong arms seized her and clamped over her mouth.
She fought, but they were many and they were stronger. They tore off her clothes. She got off only one scream when one of the men stepped back to loosen the belt around his waist.
That one scream had been enough.
Her mother, her violet eyes flashing, had stepped out of the house, an AK-47 braced against her shoulder. Unflinching, Valeria Itani, the daughter of Venezuelan freedom fighters who had grown up playing with assault rifles, mowed down the men attacking her only daughter.
The rapid rattle of gunfire fell abruptly silent. Her heart pounding in her chest, Zara pushed up. Her home, her sanctuary, was as bloodied as the rest of Beirut. Unmoving bodies sprawled around her. Her mother slumped against the doorframe of their house, crimson blooming across her white blouse. Blood leaked from her mouth, but she stared with defiance at the man, the sole survivor of the militia group, as he stalked toward her.