6 Forever Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  I quirked him a glance.

  “Children where?”

  “Nap time.” He lifted his finger to his lips and beamed at me, and I exchanged a startled look with Nigel. Fortunately, the Brit looked as confused as I felt. We followed Father Jerome down another hallway amid heavily paneled walls redolent with rich wood polish and boasting priceless antiques, artwork, and books. Eventually, the priest came to a door set into the paneling, almost flush with the shelving around it. He opened it—only to reveal another, sturdier door behind the first.

  This second barrier was solid steel and featured a large digital keypad, I assumed for a locking mechanism. Father Jerome entered the code and pressed his hand on the pad, and the door opened with an airlock-perfect whoosh.

  “Um, Father…”

  “We didn’t know what to do with these little ones when they first presented themselves,” Father Jerome murmured, gesturing us up the sterile hallway. Here, deep into the château, the space had been transformed into a hospital ward, completely incongruous with the Old World grace we’d left behind. I braced myself for what the priest had assembled that required such secrecy. “They were…unique opportunities for us to extend our care to the most vulnerable of Connecteds.”

  “All children are vulnerable,” I countered, the automatic response covering up my growing panic. We passed through another doorway. This second hallway was muted to shadows. Its only light was provided by a long horizontal window on the left wall up ahead, clearly some sort of observation panel.

  I grimaced, forcing myself to keep pace with the priest and Nigel. I’d seen children harmed in unspeakable ways, and every time, it tore away a new piece of my soul. But if Father Jerome could face this challenge with such a beatific smile on his face for the benefit of the children, I could too.

  “All children are vulnerable, yes,” the old priest sighed. “But some need a bit more specialized care than others.”

  A door became visible beyond the window, and from it stepped a woman in a nurse’s outfit, silhouetted in the soft light streaming from the door and window panel. Father Jerome smiled broadly as she waved and gave him the thumbs-up signal.

  “We still must be quiet—they’re quite sensitive to movement or sound—pretty much anything you might imagine. But step up here, now.”

  He led us farther along, my hands clenching and unclenching to the count of one, two, three…

  We finally reached the long window.

  I froze.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  I stared, dumfounded at two tidy rows…of bassinets. Occupied bassinets. With babies in them.

  “These are…Connecteds?” I asked in a strangled voice. “You can tell so young?”

  “We can.” Father Jerome nodded, still looking entirely too pleased with himself. “They’re the children of Connecteds who were pregnant at the time of taking certain technoceuticals—their mothers were liberated by you this past year, Sara. Most of them didn’t know they were pregnant. They were so malnourished that we didn’t know either at first. Some lost their babies to miscarriages, but these—” He sighed. “These we were able to save.”

  I couldn’t help the revulsion curling my lip. “The girls were raped?”

  The dark practitioners generally did not assault their victims, one of the few silver linings to the ghastly technoceutical trade. Traumatized Connecteds carried their pain in every cell of their bodies, essentially damaging the merchandise. It was in everyone’s best interests to keep the donors healthy and whole until they were sacrificed to the trade.

  The threat of sullied donor tissue apparently hadn’t been enough of a deterrent here, and that fresh horror made my stomach pitch.

  “No, no.” Father Jerome shook his head. “Based on our best medical research, it appears they were impregnated by artificial insemination, but even that…we just don’t know. There was no evidence of any trauma to the girls’ bodies, none. And they have no memory of any such assault or procedure.”

  I scowled at him. “Women can’t spontaneously reproduce, Father Jerome.”

  “I’d assumed not either. Until Chantal.” He gestured to us to follow him again. We moved down the hallway to another corridor that angled right, this one carpeted. At its end was another viewing panel set into the wall, but this one had curtains on it. One set was drawn back to reveal a young woman in her late teens, asleep on a hospital bed. She was ethereally beautiful—her dark black hair and pale features giving her an almost elven appearance, helped along further by her white gown and thick white comforter.

  “Chantal was taken from her family in Marseilles four weeks ago. We were lucky—and near enough to be able to move quickly once we were alerted to her abduction. We ambushed the dark practitioners who had taken her within the day, freeing her and bringing her to safety. When we performed a routine medical exam, we discovered she was six weeks pregnant.”

  I looked at him, horrified. “Six weeks! And she was abducted—”

  “The only thing her captors had time to do, Chantal advised, was give her one shot. One. In her lower back. Then they bundled her into a car—a car which we stopped approximately two hours later. The men were arrested for child abduction and are now going through the court system as if this were a routine kidnapping. Chantal was returned to her family, and all was well—until the medical exam results came back the following day. At that point, her parents released her into my care.”

  “You’re telling me a shot made her pregnant.” I stared at him. “That’s insane.”

  “Not only pregnant. Pregnant with a Connected baby who’s already charting at a size and development level far in excess of a typical fetus. In the month she’s been with us, the baby Chantal carries has progressed to approximately twenty weeks. And if the infant follows the pattern of these other children in our care here, he or she will have psychic abilities that manifest at birth, not at puberty.”

  “Birth,” I murmured, and Father Jerome nodded.

  “Knowing which children in the community are higher-level Connected has been our biggest challenge in protecting them. With typical children, their abilities manifest at puberty, if they manifest at all. Their parents are caught off guard, word gets out—and all too often, these children fall prey to dark practitioners. But Connecteds that you can plan for, teach…protect? Because you know at birth they are special? It truly could be the future of humanity—the next step in our evolution. All from a shot.”

  “But how—” I shook my head, too overwhelmed to process what I was seeing. “How can we possibly know who’s received that shot and what’s in it?”

  “We do have some indication. The genetic testing of the children in the bassinets and Chantal’s own embryonic fluid shows a new positive strand has been appended to these Connecteds’ base DNA, one with very distinctive features.” He beamed. “Looked at with a fine enough scope, you can detect a unique—yet quite familiar design—a particular rendering of sacred geometry that’s been replicated in art and jewelry, in fact, since the dawn of antiquity. One I suspect you’ve seen quite frequently in the artifacts you’ve recovered, Sara. They call it the Flower of Life.”

  I stared at him. “You’re kidding me.”

  His smile only deepened. “Come, I’ll show you.”

  Numbly, I turned to follow Father Jerome up the long hallway. He was right, I had seen the symbol of the Flower of Life recently, but not where he thought I had. It had been stamped onto one of three seals I’d been asked to retrieve from the silver mines of Granite, Montana.

  Seals that had been carefully set into place…by the Arcana Council.

  Chapter Five

  Father Jerome ushered us into another room, slightly less sterile but bristling with electronics. He called up a large screen with cross-sections of DNA double helixes, and pointed out the fragment where the strands diverged. The highlighted segment depicted the familiar Flower of Life pattern.

  “This section of DNA is considered non-coding,” the pri
est said, waving his hand at the image. “I don’t pretend to understand it, but in decades past, scientists have referred to this as junk DNA. However, in these children—born of young women who had been administered certain technoceuticals—this non-coding genetic material appears to have a certain additional set of information that we can only begin to speculate on.”

  “Information like how to levitate?” I asked, recalling Roland’s laundry list of psychic abilities.

  “Possibly.” Father Jerome turned to me. “Think of the ramifications. Imagine if tomorrow’s generation can access their psychic abilities earlier, more profoundly. Imagine if today’s average Connected can produce tomorrow’s savant.”

  I grimaced, imagining Armaeus’s face when he learned that little tidbit of possibility. The Arcana Council were all about the balance of magic. An artificially produced baby boom of amped-up Connecteds would not make them happy. And I didn’t even want to think about how government agencies would use those kids, the labs they would be—already were—keeping them in.

  I’d seen X-Men. I knew how this movie ended.

  “Those savants, as you call them, will be born with targets on their backs,” I said. “Who’s creating these drugs?”

  “We don’t know.” The priest shook his head. “I’d no idea that technoceutical advancements had moved so far, so quickly. And yes, I agree—I’m not sure they should. The danger is so great. The risk far outweighs any potential rewards. But there is still such potential…”

  Nigel stepped closer to the screen, scanning its swirling patterns. “Risks for what? What you’re explaining sounds like the development of a master race.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. It’s eugenics. And that is the true danger we’re looking at here.” Father Jerome called up another screen—a view of the babies sleeping in their bassinets. “Every one of these infants has already manifested some sort of psychic event, whether it was lifting objects, changing weather, whatever.”

  I stared at him. “Changing weather?”

  “Further, there are twelve children in that room.” Father Jerome swung around toward me. “Only nine of them were born of females with any significant Connected ability.”

  Shocked, I took a step back. “What are you talking about? Connected ability is genetic.”

  “It is.” The priest nodded. “Children born of God, in God, unaltered by their surroundings. They came into this life pure and perfect, and who they are is simply who they are. Or so we have thought throughout history. There were those who were magic, and those who were not.”

  “As divisive as skin color or bone structure,” Nigel murmured.

  “Up until now, yes.” Father Jerome gestured at the monitor. “But what this is showing us is that the genetic capabilities of magic have been grossly underestimated. This suggests that all of us, innately, have psychic ability within us, it’s merely lying dormant. Ergo, with the addition of a technoceutical, a non-overtly Connected parent can produce a child with transcendent psychic abilities. Think about that.”

  I did, and horror riffled through me. “There’s so much opportunity for abuse.”

  “Too much,” Nigel said flatly. His voice was uncharacteristically harsh, and for once, I agreed with him. He skewered Father Jerome with a look. “I assume you agree? You’re a Catholic priest. Isn’t tampering with God’s creation in this way anathema to you? Altering the intentions of God with the hubris of man and our manufactured substances?”

  Jerome sighed. “You’re absolutely right, of course. And yet, I’ve spent a great deal of time ministering to the needs of such humans who are thought to be the dregs of society. Freaks. Aberrations. The castoffs of the Almighty. I’ve also witnessed the miracles they can perform. The beauty of their minds. The power of their intellect. There is a small part of me that wishes that humans would not revert to their base common denominator in the face of such a discovery as this. That we would use it to bring our peoples together, to elevate us all so that we might work for a common good.”

  Nigel’s voice remained cutting. “What you may wish and what is reality are two very different things, Father Jerome.”

  The priest turned on him, more animated now. “You think God minded when we developed the polio vaccine? Or cured certain forms of cancer? You think God minded when we learned the value of brushing our teeth and washing our hands to rid our bodies of dangerous bacteria? Who is to say…” Father Jerome broke off, still not convinced of his own argument, I could tell—but not wanting to reject such technology out of hand either.

  I had fewer quibbles. “This isn’t brushing someone’s teeth,” I said. “This is changing their molecular makeup. This is genetically engineering our children. That’s not healthy—or right. That’s dangerous.” I grimaced as I thought of Gamon. “In the wrong hands, it could cause so much more harm than good.”

  “I know, Sara, I know.” Father Jerome clasped his hands and bowed over them briefly. His lips moved in a brief, silent prayer.

  “Even getting the children here—safely—is a win, though,” I said, more gently this time. I glanced around the room. “Whose house is this anyway? As much as I’ve tried, I couldn’t have sent you enough to afford this place.”

  “Mercault’s,” Nigel said. Both the priest and I turned to look at him, but I was the only one evincing surprise. “I recognized the address when you sent it to me. It’s not on any deed of his, there’s no record of his connection to it. In truth the stated owner of the house hasn’t existed for about five hundred years. It’s essentially invisible. I don’t even think Mercault’s closest confidantes are aware of it.”

  “Uh-huh. And how did you get here?” I asked Father Jerome.

  The priest lifted placating hands. “Mercault had offered it to me some time ago, but it was too distant from Paris to be a convenient safe house. However, with these new children and the home’s unique features… I called, and he said to use it at once. I haven’t seen him personally since then.”

  “Is it bugged?” I asked Nigel, but to my surprise, he shrugged.

  “Mercault has lagged behind in his surveillance. He prefers to focus on building his businesses more than protecting them. But I can do a sweep.” He eyed me. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that we need time to truly delve into all of Soo’s operations, particularly what she was or wasn’t doing with the technoceutical markets. I’m thinking that if this place is that far off the radar, then Armaeus and the Council may not be aware it exists yet. It’s also not in their backyard, unlike Soo’s Las Vegas mansion, which I have to assume is bugged to the gills.”

  Nigel nodded as I turned to him.

  “How quickly and quietly can you redirect all of Soo’s electronics and files to here, instead of to Las Vegas? Is it too late?”

  “No,” he said. “But Jiao Peng and Ma-Singh will need to be informed.”

  “Eventually,” I said. “Not right away, though. There’s no way of knowing if the Council has tapped their phone lines as well. And with this new attention from Interpol, the more we can accomplish behind closed doors, the better.”

  Father Jerome turned his curious gaze to me. “What is it you expect to find in Annika’s computer logs?”

  “I have no idea. But maybe something that explains why there’s a girl down the hall who’s pregnant for no reason, and why babies with no strong Connected parentage are starting to levitate. There has to be something in Soo’s files—she was more hooked into the technoceutical community than even Mercault, at least in some fashion. He bought and sold product, but Soo…” I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll get started on this now,” Nigel said. He pulled out his phone and turned away. “I have to head outside to get a signal, but I should have the materials here by nightfall.”

  As we waited for that to happen, I spent my time getting increasingly keyed up. Father Jerome, sensing my anxiety, did his best to overload me with facts and figures and case files of the Connected
children he’d assisted over the past twelve months. His numbers didn’t help—if anything, they were more alarming than reassuring.

  “Your census is up thirty percent this year?” I stared at him across the table. We were sitting outside on the wide cobblestoned back patio that extended across the entire length of the château in a rich stair-stepping sweep of granite. Long rows of cultivated flowers rustled in the breeze. Mercault might not use this château often, but he definitely kept it in fighting trim.

  I refocused on Father Jerome. “And that’s after fifteen percent growth last year? Why the increase? Did you expand your range?”

  “Not at all,” Father Jerome said. “But there’s always an ebb and flow of children, Sara. You know that.”

  “But thirty percent?” I shook my head. “Gamon couldn’t possibly have—”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence.

  The priest’s shirt pocket clattered with sudden discordant beeps, and he bolted out of his chair, pulling his phone free.

  I jumped up as well, keeping pace as Father Jerome turned and strode for the door. “What?” I demanded “What happened?”

  “Medical alert. One of the children.” He jammed the phone to his ear, picking up the pace until we were almost running, while he spoke on the phone in a fast-moving stream of French. We passed the kitchen, and Nigel was there, falling into step beside me as we rushed down the hallway.

  “What is it?” Nigel asked.

  “One of the kids just—I don’t know. Something bad.”

  We reached the special doorway seconds later and Father Jerome keyed us through, but he provided no explanation until we shot past the baby room and headed into the area where Chantal was held.

  “Stay here,” he barked as he reached her window. “Estelle will—”

  “Pére Jerome!” A nurse emerged from the door, and I blinked as I checked my pace, startled to see the woman fully robed, masked, and gloved. “Rapidement!”

  Another tech pushed by her and the priest angled to the left, through another door. I peered in long enough to identify a sink and bench inside the small room. Father Jerome immediately began scrubbing his hands as the tech prepared his robes.