My mother’s jaw hardened, but then her cheeks relaxed again, and her voice came out as softly as before. “I’m the kind of mother who gave up her daughter in order to protect her,” she said.
I narrowed my eyes. “To protect me? Right,” I scoffed. “And just how did disappearing from my life protect me?”
She turned a bracelet round and round on her wrist. “I’ve been working with Sandra for the past twelve years. In doing so, I made sure she didn’t find you.”
An audible gasp escaped my lips. Surely I had heard her wrong. “You’ve been working with Sandra? Doing what?”
“I’ve been pretending to be pissed that your father ran off with you and hid you from me. I agreed to work with Sandra to find you and your father for her. I made her believe that my anger ran so deep that I would do anything. I also convinced her that what she was doing to further science was important and necessary work. Because I’m an electrophysiologist and a neurolinguist, I was helpful to her. I study the way—”
I held up a hand. “I know what the words mean.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it with a smile. “Of course you do. I’m sorry. You have grown into a beautiful and intelligent woman, Lexi.” Her hands fidgeted with the draped material of her sweater.
“That doesn’t explain how you protected me.”
“I continuously threw Sandra off her search for you, Lexi. In addition to giving my medical and electrophysiology knowledge to Sandra’s cause, I worked tirelessly to create evidence that you were in places that you weren’t. That you were in Europe and Asia with your dad, or with nannies and bodyguards he’d hired. And every time we seemed to get close to either of you, you would be gone—or at least that’s what I led Sandra to believe. Your father would sometimes even make sure he was spotted by IIA in these places to make the whole thing believable.”
I swallowed hard. If what my mother was saying was true, she’d given up her life for me.
“Where does Maya fit into all of this?” Jack asked, still standing in such a way that made it clear he would never allow this woman to touch me. “She claimed to be Lexi’s sister.”
“Ah, yes. Maya.” She looked at me. “Maya and the other beta clones were created at the same time you were.”
“We’re the alpha clones?” Jack asked.
Alyson nodded. “I didn’t know about her for a long time, of course. We didn’t know a lot of what Sandra had done until well after you were born. She set everything into motion, implanting the two of you and the other original clones into surrogates. I had no idea that you weren’t my biological daughter from my own eggs until Sandra found us again.” Her lips tugged downward and lines formed across her forehead, her sadness apparent.
“That doesn’t explain why Maya claimed to be my sister.”
“I don’t know why she said that. Maya was just another way for Sandra to play with life, to clone her own DNA.”
“That’s what Sandra does,” I said. “She uses people and things to manipulate everyone around her.”
“You know Sandra well.” My mother smiled. She really was beautiful. Her hair hung in loose, blond waves that ended at her shoulders and framed her face. She wore minimal makeup, just enough to highlight her high cheekbones and her cat-like eyes. “I want to tell you everything, but I’m sure you and your friends are hungry. I have a lasagna I can put into the oven.” She turned slightly and gestured toward what I assumed must be the kitchen.
I nodded. “We’ll graciously accept.” My mother turned and walked toward the kitchen.
Jack raised a brow. We will?
“We’ll be right there,” I said to my mother. When she was gone and presumably out of earshot, I said to Jack, “You don’t think we should stay and hear what she has to say?”
“I do. I was just surprised to hear you say we should. You’re the one who stormed off the first time you saw her.”
“My mother may well know more about Sandra’s operation than anyone else. Maybe she can tell us where this new laboratory is.”
“So we can do what?” he countered. “Let’s say we find out where this lab is. Then what?”
“We destroy it.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
“I’m working on it.”
“You’re working on it.” Jack squinted at me. “I’m not going to like your plan, am I?”
I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Of course you will.”
I started to head toward the kitchen, but Jack grabbed my elbow and stopped me. Bringing me back, he leaned in and brushed his lips across mine. I closed my eyes and savored the warmth of his touch. When I opened my eyes, his face was close. He smiled. “You seem… I don’t know… less affected by all this than I expected you would.”
“Maybe I’m getting good at life on the run. And investigating the mysteries of our creation.”
“I’m still ready to live permanently on the run. Just say the word.”
Chapter Fourteen
The delicious smells of garlic and basil had brought everyone to the kitchen, and we’d all squeezed in around a large farm table. I played with the salad on my plate, and hardly touched my lasagna. Jonas mopped up every last bit of tomato sauce and cheese with his garlic bread.
Briana’s nose scrunched up in disgust as she watched him. “You’re disgusting, you know that?”
“I am not. I was starving. We hardly ate on our little camping trip.”
I snickered. For the past forty-eight hours I’d watched how Jonas and Bree had grown closer, more so than they ever had in the past few weeks. He still made eye contact with me from time to time, but the look in his eye when he did was changing. It was less… intense. Our relationship had always been confusing. It had been difficult to decide how much of what he felt for me stemmed from the tracker Sandra had placed at the base of his brain, and how much was real.
Jonas wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin, then folded it neatly beside his plate. He looked up at me. My feelings are only changing because you’re in love with my best friend.
I straightened. Dammit, Jonas, stay out of my head.
I can’t help it. It’s a lovely place to be. He smiled, then reached for his water glass. You’re the one who left it open to me that time.
Alyson stood and began clearing things from the table. She hadn’t spoken much while everyone ate. I had a gazillion questions for her, but I wanted everyone to eat first. She stopped by my chair. “Did you not like the lasagna?”
“I’m sure it was fine.” I pushed away from the table and gathered up my dishes. “Just not hungry.” I didn’t have to look at Jack to know he was following me with his eyes as I walked to the sink.
“I’d be happy to eat your portion,” Jonas announced.
I glared at Jonas. Nothing seemed to bother him for long. Or perhaps he was just better able to hide it than I was.
After the dishes were cleared, at Alyson’s instructions, we all moved toward the living room. I stopped just inside the room and leaned against the doorjamb. Georgia and Fred squeezed into a large chair-and-a-half, and Kyle spread out on a pillow on the floor, the soft glow from the fireplace lighting their faces. Jonas motioned for Briana to join him on the sofa, and Jack stood with his back to the fire, his hands stuffed into his front pockets. Alyson picked up a remote control and began pushing buttons. From the ceiling on the wall adjacent to the fireplace, some sort of long, skinny compartment opened, and a white screen lowered.
“Are we watching a movie?” Fred asked.
Kyle threw a small pillow at Fred’s head.
When the screen was in place, Alyson opened up a laptop on a desk on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace. A ray of light shone on the big screen. I followed the line to a small projector coming out of the ceiling on the other side of the room. White in color, it was nicely camouflaged into the decor.
“Jack, will you get the light, please?” Alyson asked, pointing to a switch on the wall.
I
looked from the blank screen, to my mother, and back to the screen, not knowing what to expect. She pushed a pair of glasses up on her nose, then typed away on the computer.
After Jack dimmed the light, he returned to the fireplace. The silence in the room was deafening. What was my mother about to show us? Could I actually trust her to help us take down Sandra?
I almost laughed hysterically just considering the magnitude of that thought—the idea that I had any idea how to take down a division of the IIA, a powerful government organization that had protected Sandra and her secret medical experiments all these years.
Alyson continued to type as a large map popped up on the screen. “Seth called to tell me you were coming.” That explained why she didn’t seem surprised to see us, and how she knew to have enough dinner ready to feed a small army of clones. “He said you’d been asking where Sandra could possibly have located the lab in the video she sent you.”
“Did you watch the video?” I asked. “Did you know she was growing human clones outside of a human body?”
She typed for a few more seconds, then stood, grabbed a small item off the desk, and walked toward me. Several inches taller than me, she faced me, demanding that I look at her.
“I knew as far back as my early twenties that Sandra Whitmeyer was capable of doing anything she wanted. She used and hurt everyone around her to further the medical research that she finds more important than human life. I knew she was capable of cloning a human outside of a surrogate, but I had no idea she had begun cloning en masse like this.”
“Is it about money?”
Alyson leaned against a wall beside me and stared at the blank screen. “For some, medical research is about money…”
I thought of Cathy and Roger. They wouldn’t hesitate to hang a sign saying “The Doctor Is In” if we agreed to cure the many things we were cloned to do. And they would pocket every bit of the profit in doing so, without giving a second thought to how sick the supernatural powers made us. The consequences of Georgia’s power might even kill her.
“For others, like your father, it’s about advancing medicine and saving human life.” She closed her eyes briefly. Was she taking a moment to remember Dad? “Cloning human DNA all those years ago was about studying how certain cells worked together, and how manipulating certain genes—or let’s say removing a mutated gene—might affect the viability of an embryo to survive.”
“And Sandra?” I asked, though Sandra’s motivations were evident.
“For Sandra, it’s about prestige and influence. Power. It’s about winning the race to gain knowledge no one else in the world has. To do something no one else in the world is even capable of. It’s ironic, really.” She laughed a little under her breath. “Sandra set out to prove she could help further medicine by studying the genetics of intelligent people. By cloning already proven geniuses, and enhancing their DNA, she thought she would be the most powerful person on the planet.”
“So she made a bunch of brilliant freaks?”
She tilted her head. “You really believe that?”
I looked away, squeezing my eyes tightly.
My mother placed a gentle hand on my arm. I reopened my eyes. “Lexi, you are beautiful, and intelligent, and strong-minded. It doesn’t matter how your life was created, or how messed up your childhood seemed as you were living it…” She paused a moment, and I searched her eyes. I craved whatever it was she would say next. “I’m sorry for how my leaving affected you. I swear I only did what I thought would keep you safe. And I made sure you were surrounded by love. You felt loved, didn’t you?”
I immediately thought of Gram. “Yes. Gram loved me like I was her own daughter.”
“That she did.”
I suddenly realized that everyone was staring at us. “What do we do? I want to destroy Sandra’s operation. She can’t continue to hurt people.” And I wanted to make her pay for the people she’d killed.
“If that’s what you want to do, then we will.” She drew her hand away, then approached the screen, which was now showing a map of North America.
Just like that? This mother that had deserted me as a small child was going to help me take out Sandra Whitmeyer and her government operation? How could she be so calm about it?
Alyson held what appeared to be one of those remote controls I’d seen my teachers use for PowerPoint presentations. She clicked a button and began pointing with a red laser. “Right here,” she said as she pointed to a spot over the northwestern part of the United States, “is where Sandra first started studying DNA, along with Peter, John, Seth, myself, and several others, including some of your parents.” She pointed to the others in the room. They looked on in surprise. “This is also the location of the lab where all of your embryos were created.”
I spoke up. “This was the location of the large lab explosion. And then you all scattered and Sandra disappeared.”
“That’s right.”
Briana leaned forward. “Washington? Why there?”
“The University of Washington in Seattle, to be exact. I’m not sure why Washington in particular.” Alyson turned back to the map and pointed to another part of the United States: Texas. “When I found Sandra again several years later, she had an entire research facility here in Austin, on the University of Texas’s campus.”
I moved closer, tilting my head and studying the locations she was pointing to.
“We stayed there for seven years. And then one day the alarms sounded, and we packed up and moved.”
“Where did you go this time?” I asked, searching for common links.
“Raleigh, North Carolina. Home to North Carolina State University.” The red laser dot darted west. “Then Auburn University in Alabama.”
“So, are we trying to decide what these universities have in common?” Kyle asked.
Any ideas? I mindspoke to Jack and Jonas.
They both shook their heads without taking their eyes off of the map. Jonas had a hand on Briana’s shoulder, his fingers massaging a tension spot. Jack clasped his hands behind his neck. Both were staring intently at the map.
“They’re all major research universities,” Jack finally said.
“As is the University of Kentucky,” I added. “Which could mean she’s moved to another university town.”
“It could mean that.” Alyson tapped the laser pointer to her chin. “But I don’t think so.”
I studied her for a few seconds. “What did you do for Sandra? Besides throw her off her search for me.”
“Why do you ask?” Alyson turned so that I couldn’t see her face.
“You said she found the fact that you were a neurolinguist and an electrophysiologist useful. In what way?”
Alyson’s hands twisted and turned the remote control for a few beats as if she was considering how to answer, then she returned to her computer. She typed a few keystrokes before the map was replaced with a new picture: a blown-up diagram of a tracker.
Jonas sat up straighter, dropping his hand from where it had massaged Briana’s shoulder.
“That’s one of the trackers.” I moved closer. “It’s one of the newer ones, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“It’s not like the trackers we removed from Addison or Jonas. It’s more like the one Sandra almost put in me.”
“That’s right.” My mother twirled her glasses in her hand. “This is what I designed for Sandra. And it’s the type of tracker Maya has. It doesn’t just communicate via the cell towers, the way the old ones did, but can also use satellite signals.”
“This one doesn’t have the same prongs that the old ones had.” Georgia cocked her head, studying the picture.
“Oh, they’re there.” Alyson kept typing. The diagram spun around to a different angle, one that revealed a close-up of wires very much like the ones on the older model of trackers, except that these wires were as thin as a strand of hair. “These thinner wires ground the tracker at the base of the skull, wrappi
ng around bone or muscle or whatever they can grasp hold of. You cannot remove these trackers once they’re implanted. At least, not without killing the subject.”
“You designed these?” I swallowed hard. I was giving her a chance to prove she was someone that should be in my life, yet here she was telling us how she’d helped Sandra with her evil plan to use and abuse every human clone within her reach.
Alyson lowered her gaze. “I didn’t have a choice. My only objective at the time I created this tracker was to keep Sandra from discovering Wellington Boarding School… and you.”
Dad had never made me feel like I was in hiding, although he’d always instructed me that I should keep a certain level of privacy. That changed when he returned to Lexington to give that speech. He knew, then, that someone was close to discovering Wellington.
“So this was meant to distract Sandra?” I asked.
“It’s difficult to distract someone as intelligent as Sandra, but yes, I was attempting to appease her in hopes that she would realize she didn’t need the clones that weren’t already under her control.”
I went back to studying the ultra-thin wires of the tracker. “So even if we wanted to, we couldn’t remove Maya’s tracker?” I had wondered if during one of Maya’s escapades to torture me, we might catch her, remove her tracker, and study it. I had hoped we could extract information from the tracker about the whereabouts of the new lab.
“No, but we could still tap into Maya’s tracker for information.”
I faced my mother. “You think she would know where this lab is?”
“I’m positive she knows, but you’ll never get her to admit it. These trackers will shut her down if she even appears to be giving you information that Sandra doesn’t want you to know.”
“You mean Sandra would kill her,” I said, and Alyson nodded. How could I be responsible for another death at the hands of Sandra Whitmeyer? “You created one of these for me.” It was now in the side pocket of my backpack.
Mindsurge (Mindspeak Book 3) Page 13