Since neither Franks nor his father knew about the connection between them, he was surprised they had not already intervened. Either to stop him or speak themselves. But no, both men met his eyes with varying degrees of stern rebuke. They were leaving the decision and the explanation up to him. Cowards. He was not the only one who did not want to tell Miranda the truth. He smirked at his father. "Perhaps you should start off the story dad, since I was not exactly there when it started." His sarcasm on the word dad was petty but he just could not help himself.
To his surprise his father did not berate him but turned and looked at Miranda, his old eyes warming when they landed on her. In perhaps the softest voice he had heard his father use since his mother’s passing, he spoke to Mac's wife. "Perhaps we should all sit down and close the door before this goes any further."
Miranda studied all three of them and then calmly sat, her mind, he was frustrated and a little relieved to note, was closed to him. He could force his way in if he really wanted to, but somehow, he did and did not want to know what she was thinking right now.
When they were all settled, Franks behind his desk, his father and Miranda on chairs across from the Major and Mac at Miranda's back, his father began. It was not how he would have started but hey, he was not the one telling this part of the story. His time would come soon enough. When they were in private, and she could yell at him in relative privacy for all the things he had kept from her over the years.
"My father was a brilliant man, but there was something inherently missing in him. Some switch that the rest of us seem to be born with or develop early in life did not come to him. He made some discoveries as a child that were hailed as brilliant, and I am afraid allowances were made for his brilliance. Too many allowances." He looked every one of his seventy-nine years for just a moment, and Mac felt that like a punch to his gut.
Then cool fingers wrapped around his and he looked down to see that Miranda was still looking at her father, but her hand had taken his, because she had sensed he needed it. He hoped it was more than her compassion for any human being she could feel in need, and he fed that hope as he wrapped his hand around hers to keep her right there. The feel of her hand wrapped around his was almost as bitter sweet as kissing her had been. It felt so good it almost hurt.
If she thought he was letting her go again, she was not nearly as smart as he thought she was.
"Needless to say,” his father continued, oblivious to his son’s distractions. Per the usual. “That he went too far, too many times. He was eventually ostracized from all reputable labs and institutions. My mother separated herself and me from him eventually. I'm not sure he noticed. But I know he continued his experiments because I would visit him when I could not get out of it. By then I was in my twenties and already making a name for myself at MIT in genetic research. He did not like that my field of study was different than his, but it did not keep him from using my brain when he could. Mathematics were not his strong suit."
By now his father was so far into his own head, he did not seem to realize there were other people in the room. It was clear that whatever relationship Mac had with his father, it was nowhere as complicated as the one his father had with his grandfather. At least his dad was not a sociopath and a megalomaniac. Most days.
The old man finally came back to the room mentally, his eyes on Miranda. "He wanted to expand the human brain, open up the possibilities of what it could do, what he could do, really." He shook his head at the memories. "I was visiting from MIT the night my father went too far. The chemicals he used were unstable and though I informed him of it, he did not believe his math was off. There was an explosion and my father was killed." He took a deep breath. "But something else happened to me. My father had his faults, but he was truly a brilliant man close to a break through, because that was when whatever he did worked. I was able to see and understand so much more than before, it was both breathtaking and frightening. Most of it was just a flash of insight, slowly fading away, but some of the changes..." His father looked at him over Miranda's shoulder then back to her, when he said the rest. "I was changed on a genetic level. A change that would pass down to my son, though I did not know that at the time." He took her free hand. "A change that would pass on again were my son ever to have his own children."
Mac could almost feel her eyes flash to his in sudden understanding. He nodded his head just once to verify what she was thinking but kept his eyes on his father. There was more she needed to hear. His reasons for not wanting to have a child could wait until they were alone, and everything else was out in the open between them. He had never wanted Miranda to live with the knowledge that he carried, but it was too late. This was happening now, and she was right in the middle of it all, whether he wanted her there or not.
"But during that flash of insight, something else happened," his father went on and he felt Miranda's attention turn away from him again. "I connected to a being who should never have been made aware of our presence. A malevolent dark creature that looked back at me and saw an enemy. He knew what I knew, what my father had known. That the human brain had the potential to be a weapon. A powerful one if we had enough time to master it." The old man looked away from Miranda's concerned eyes. "I felt him set his sights on Earth, whether to conquer or destroy I could not tell you, but it was not peace he was thinking about when the connection was broken between us." He looked in her eyes again. "After that day I made it my life's mission to unlock the true potential of the human mind. Because danger is coming for us, and if we are not ready, we will be destroyed."
There was a long silence before Major Franks spoke. "I understand how this sounds, and we might have ignored the ramblings of a twenty-three-year-old genius whose father had just died in a botched experiment if he had been the only one who felt the connection that night."
Miranda looked at the Major in surprise. He nodded his head. "A handful of people around the world, none of whom were connected in any way, all from different walks of life, all reported the strange phenomenon of connection to a being they understood to be from star systems away. A being that scared them so bad they felt the need to warn everyone that they are coming." He shrugged. "Most ignored them. Some took what they said very seriously."
"And how did the U.S. military get involved?" Miranda asked, speaking with very little inflection, and for the first time since they started.
She did not sound like she was ready to have them all committed, so that was something, Mac decided. Taking what he could get.
Major Franks raised a brow. "From what I came to understand from my superior's in Washington, the United States was involved long before the doctor got his message."
Miranda nodded her head, as if that made perfect sense. "So chances are it was not the first time proof of alien life had been seen by mortal man."
Since it was the same conclusion Mac had come to himself, he was not surprised that she would see it.
"They have been here before," Mac said while his father and Franks were still adjusting to her easy acceptance. He was not so surprised, it was not her lack of belief that had kept him from telling her before, but rather his need to keep her blissfully ignorant of the dangers when there was nothing she could do about it. He had not wanted to give her this burden, but it was not because he did not believe she could carry it. He just had not wanted her to have to.
"I have been following leads for years to find what proof they left behind. Hoping to piece together a picture that would help us in fighting them. If this was not the first time they have been here, how were they defeated before? And why did they come?"
All three of them looked at him in varying degrees of surprise. Though Miranda's was for a different reason than the others.
"What do you mean you've been following leads," his father blustered. "You said you were through with all of this."
"I said I was through with the experiments and the science," he answered mildly enough. "I did not think you had enough time, or that yo
u even should try to fast forward the evolution of the human brain to defeat an enemy that we knew nothing about. And I still say that what you are attempting to do through science should be a natural progression. To genetically alter and change the path of human evolution because of fear of a distant threat, is as bad as creating a nuclear bomb to stop a war. Yes, it was done, but once that progression had been made were we better off in the aftermath?"
"I am not having this argument again," his father seethed. "Now tell me what you meant about following leads. What leads?"
This time Mac turned and gave Major Franks a raised brow. "Do you want to tell him, or should I?"
Franks looked suddenly uncomfortable, but he met the good Doctor’s eyes. "There has been archaeological proof found of alien beings on Earth." Before his father could respond with outrage, the major was going on. "We don't know if it is the same beings that connected with you when you were young, but we do know from what our specialists have been able to piece together, they were hostile, and that each of the times we have been able to find recordings of, they have come, been either worshiped or reviled, and then they left, leaving behind a decimated, sometimes dead civilization in their wake. I do not pretend to understand the whole of it, but the gist is that, with the call your father put out, he rang the dinner bell on Earth again. Making these aliens a real and future threat."
"And you did not tell me of these findings why?" His father was seething. Not that he could blame the man. He had reacted the same way when he discovered what else the program had been up to.
"Your work is in expanding what the human mind is capable of doing. Knowing the archaeological findings of dead civilizations would not help you with that."
"Not to mention," Mac said mildly. "You have connected with the alien before. They are hardly going to trust you with any information outside your sphere." He made finger quotes around the word sphere but kept his sarcasm mild besides that. "You are what they like to call a security risk. Just like me."
His father looked at him then. Homing in on the one statement anyone else might have missed. "What do you mean, just like you?"
Whatever he could say about his gruff old man. He had never been slow on the uptake.
"Oh, did I not mention the alien has been sending signals to my brain for a few years now?" Apparently, his words were the spark Miranda had been talking about. The room practically exploded with emotional upheaval.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Miranda was so invested in the story they were telling, that the implications of what Mac had thrown out into the room took a while for her to process. Not so for his father and the major. In fact, they were making such a ruckus between them that she was able to slide right out of the room, and the only one who noticed was Mac. But then he noticed everything where she was concerned. He always had. She met his eyes just before the door closed between them.
I'll come find you when I am finished here and tell you everything.
She did not bother to answer him. They both knew there was a lot that needed to be said. And she had no clue what all of the answers would mean for their future. But it was the first time in a long time where she acknowledged that they might have one.
She had to warn her heart it was still unlikely, before that hope brimming there became unbearable.
Even if his reasons for doing what he had been doing when they were together, namely taking off and being gone a majority of the time were understandable, saving the world and all that, it was still going to be an issue for her. And his reasons for not sharing with her what he was doing were going to have to be just as understandable before she even considered starting something back up with him.
She did know that Mac considered them back together. She could feel that radiating like a beacon in his thoughts. It was tempting to just forget everything that had gone before and move into that radiance. God. She had missed him.
But just as she had known she could not live with a man who would not give her children and was never there, she could not and would not live with a man who kept himself and his secrets apart from her. So where did that leave them?
***
Mac did not need to ask for directions to find his wife. One thing he had always known, and would always know, was the way back to Miranda. Since the second he had felt the warmth of her presence across a crowded NYU library he had known where she was in the world. She was his true North. She always had been. Now he just had to convince her she always would be. One would think that being able to read the mind of the woman who owned your soul would be enough to ensure success in the relationship, he mused as he passed through yet another security check point on his way to the staff quarters. Before the beefy guard could call a question or anything else, he sent out what Miranda had always called his Jedi mind tricks.
The blank stare would disappear as soon as he did, and the electronics would read a code he gleaned from the mind of the guard. Unless, as in the case of the main lab the guard did not have the code, or it required a fingerprint, or retina scan, or something equally difficult. Then he had to take a minute to hack the system board and use the backdoor he had programmed in as soon as he realized he would have to go in after his wife.
The only thing he could do nothing about was the video surveillance. So, he had to assume that he was being monitored from the security room, and his movements recorded and ignored, no doubt on the major’s orders.
You could have just gotten a key card, Mira teased in his thoughts. Making him smile as he took the elevator unerringly to her floor. And I'm sure if you had asked Major Franks would have told you where to find me.
Where would be the fun in that?
He could feel her sigh in his head. Happy hunting, darling.
He felt that in his cock. Her giving him those familiar teasing words after so many years. Then he immediately felt her consternation at having said it when they were nowhere near the place that statement and his reaction to it always led them. He had no doubt from her confused jumble of thoughts that if he could see her, she would be pink cheeked with embarrassed confusion right now. He was about to find out. He stopped at the door to what he knew would be her apartment and waited.
Are you going to let me in?
I'm not sure, she answered with her usual honesty. I don't seem to be in a good head space to talk to you right now. Any chance you will go away and come back later?
So, you can shore your defenses and think of all the reasons I'm a bad chance to take?
Has anything changed? Really? She sounded wounded. It was the way she had sounded when she gave him all the good reasons they were finished. Then she had walked out of his life leaving a gaping raw wound in him that no amount of time or distance had been able to fill. It was that sound in her voice that had made it impossible for him to rage and fight and force her to take him back. He could not stand to hear her sound so broken and know that he was the cause of it.
This time things were going to go differently.
"Open the door Miranda," he said. Knowing she could feel his resolve through it.
He felt her sigh of defeat in his head before the door opened. "It wasn't locked," was all she said. Her voice mild. She turned and walked away from him. Mac walked inside and closed the door and locked it before he turned to study his wife and the life she had made without him.
The room was big, with nice windows. He knew it had come to her furnished, because no way would she have picked out the ultra-modern decor. Though the sleek lines and low furniture might be more comfortable than it looked, which would not have been hard. It looked coldly tasteful, and professionally done. And his wife did not belong there any more than he did.
He thought about the home they had shared before she left. A loft apartment close to the University. He had rarely been home enough to use the appliances, let alone decorate. He had left the first time after they were newly married, given her carte blanche on the budget and came back to a fully furnished home, full of warmth and comforta
ble sitting areas. A kitchen that always smelled like vanilla, and a bedroom that always smelled of lavender and Miranda.
A scent that had already been fading the first time he returned after she had told him he would do what he had to do, and so would she, but she refused to spend her life always waiting.
A holding pattern she had called it. With Miranda in that house she had made into a home, he had felt like he was returning to heaven every time he got back from one of his research trips. But with her gone? Nothing else had changed. She took nothing but her own clothes and things that she had moved in with, but it still felt again like that empty loft before she changed everything. So, returning home became a kind of hell he could not endure. He had not been back to that house since. He had a housekeeper taking care of things until he could bring himself to sell it.
"You leaving it like this for a reason?"
She looked around the apartment as if she rarely noticed it. Then shrugged her shoulders. "I've been busy."
"Whipping the place into shape?" he asked his eyes finally leaving the room and meeting her calm and wary ones. "Or following my father around and defusing arguments and hurt feelings?"
She narrowed her eyes but answered without malice, and with her usual honesty. "A bit of both actually. At least when your father is not away at his own lab."
"And leaving this one in peace?" he asked dryly.
Again she just looked at him. "Something like that." She licked her lips and looked away from him. He could almost feel her resolution when she raised her chin, looked back at him and met his eyes again. "I thought you kept leaving me because I wasn't enough."
That had him freezing in place. He could feel his anger surging, but he pushed it down when he saw her flinch. "You always knew how I felt about you. I didn't lie to you."
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