Honor System (The System Series Book 4)

by Andrea Ring

  She’s cowering in the corner of her crib, blood streaming from her nose.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  We clean Em up. She’s frightened but manages to heal her bloody nose by herself. Tessa refuses to leave her side, so I get the two of them settled on the couch under a blanket with a movie. Since I’m expected to check on Calyx, I take Free with me, drop him off with Jack, and head over to Kate and Kenneth’s house.

  Thankfully, there’s not a hint of the press in sight.

  Mateo answers the door.

  “Hey, bro,” he says, shaking my hand. “Looks like you’re walking steady again.”

  “I’m back,” I say with a grin, “thanks in part to you.”

  “Nah,” he says, waving his hand. “But I’m glad to see it. You’re here to see Mr. Calyx, or should I wake Dr. Mullen and Mrs. Dr. Mullen?”

  “Don’t wake them. They did me a huge favor. I’m just checking on Calyx. How is he?”

  Mateo leads me to a spare bedroom. “He’s great. I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”

  I thank Mateo and knock softly on the door. “Come in,” says a female voice.

  Nicole is sitting beside the bed, a magazine in her hand. She smiles and rises when she sees me.

  “Thomas!” She gives me a gentle hug. “Thank you so much for bringing Chris back.”

  “I’m happy I could help,” I say, turning to the bed. “How’s the patient?”

  “Ready to put on my dancing shoes,” Chris says with a smile.

  I pull up another chair to the bedside and sit. “How are you feeling? Really.”

  “I don’t even feel bruised. Not even a headache. I’d say it was the meds, but I’m not on any meds.”

  “None?” I say. “And you don’t even feel achy?”

  “Nope.” Chris shakes his head. “You’ve worked a miracle here. I’ve been brainstorming all night about how to bring this to the masses.”

  “It’s always about work,” Nicole says. “And money.”

  “This isn’t about money,” he says. “For once in my life, this has nothing to do with money. This is a mission, Nikki. We can help so many people.”

  “How the heck did you grow his foot?” she asks. “I swear it wasn’t there when you left.”

  “I kind of…set the body to grow it later,” I say on the fly. “I didn’t think it would happen that quickly.”

  “It’s like those little pills you drop in water,” Chris says. “Wait an hour, and the pill grows into a plastic lizard.”

  “No, it’s like a seed,” Nicole says. “You plant it, and it grows.”

  They look at me. “Something like that. We’ll get into all that at the lab. I have a research list a mile long. Right now, I just want to make sure you’re okay. How’s the memory?”

  “Fine, as far as I can tell,” he says. “Should I be worried?”

  “Well, you had some brain damage,” I say. “A sliver of brick actually went through your temple. I fixed what I could in the time I had, but you never know. You might find something’s missing, an ability to do a routine task, or maybe a memory…who knows. But if something like that comes up, let me know. We can fix it.”

  “How can you give him back memories if they’re lost?” Nicole asks.

  “There’s a blueprint of the brain in the brain. It’s complicated, but I can recreate old connections if I need to. I haven’t been able to play with it too much, but the work I’ve done so far has been positive.”

  Chris leans back on his pillow and stares at the ceiling. “I can’t believe this happened. I mean, meeting you. I can’t believe you even exist in the world.”

  I duck my head, and he sits up.

  “Nicole and I have discussed it. We’re all in, Thomas. I’m going to sell off my space company, sell off the cars, and focus on medicine.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s great, but really, I don’t think you have to do that. Those things are important, too.”

  “Someone else can do them,” he says. “The space thing is a money pit, anyway. It’ll pay off eventually, but that money could be going to you. I could die at any moment—that’s what really hit me. I’m lucky I’m alive. And I want to give that same luck to as many people as I can.”

  Nicole turns adoring eyes on her husband. She leans over and squeezes his hand, and he smiles back at her.

  “And I want a family. I want someone to leave all this to. And I don’t want,” and he pauses to clear his throat, “I don’t want to die without having someone call me Dad.” He blinks misty eyes.

  I smile. “Being a father is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, besides earning the love of my wife,” I say. “I highly recommend it.”

  Nicole laughs. “How old are you? I can’t believe you’re married.”

  “Seventeen,” I say as they both gape at me. “We’ve been a couple since we were six. I started making good money, and Tessa, my wife, she had Huntington’s Disease, and I had to find a way to cure it. Once she was healthy, we thought, what are we waiting for? Then we adopted two babies who needed a home. Tessa, she’s just amazing. An amazing wife and mother. I’m a blessed man.”

  “What a story!” Nicole says. “You should write a book!”

  “No, it should be a movie,” Chris says. “I’m putting that in my mental file.”

  I just shake my head.

  “So how long do I have to be here?” he asks. “I’m already getting restless.”

  “Would you mind if I hooked up to you to do a check? I don’t have to, but I’d like to make sure everything’s okay, no blood clots, or viruses, or anything funny going on.”

  Chris holds out his hand. “Is this right? You’ll hook up through my hand?”

  I nod and fish my knife, one I borrowed from Dad, out of my pocket. “Same procedure we went through at Planarian. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”

  I cut us both, clasp his hand, and hook in.

  Everything seems fine. I look over his new foot. The connections are flawless. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had it from birth.

  I examine a few of the cells and the DNA in them. They’re Chris’s, but with something extra.

  Uh oh.

  I zoom in on a random blood cell. It has the same something extra.

  I go back to the brain. Extra, extra, extra. Shit!

  “What’s wrong?” Nicole asks, and I force my frown into a smile.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Sorry, I was just concentrating. One more minute.”

  There’s nothing left for me to examine. Chris is healed.

  But he’s also a Dweller.

  What do I tell him? I have to tell him, right?

  I back out and heal us both.

  “Tip top,” I say. “Looks like your good.”

  Chris eyes me. “That didn’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  I let out a slow breath. “There’s something else. Nothing’s wrong with you, so don’t be alarmed, but there is something else to tell you.”

  “What?” Nicole says, on the edge of her seat.

  “I have to ask both of you first to keep this confidential. I shouldn’t even be telling you, but now you’re involved, and you’re going to be involved at the lab, and you’re going to know exactly what my abilities are, so I’m trying to be upfront, even though this knowledge I’m about to share has very personal consequences for me and my family.”

  “I agree,” Chris says. “Nik?”

  “Yes, of course. Thomas, you’ve saved us. I wouldn’t hurt you or your family.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I say. “See, my kids, the ones I adopted…they’re Dwellers, too. One of them was a baby grown in Morula’s lab. The other is technically my wife’s niece, and she was in an accident, she was dropped on her head, and a Dweller saved her. My point is, they’re both Dwellers, and they have abilities far beyond anything I can do.”

  Chris and Nicole stare at me.

  “I have to hook up to somebody to heal them. You’ve se
en that. And I don’t really have the ability to plant a foot seed in your leg and get it to grow. My daughter…when she found out I was going to heal you, she wanted to help. The last time I healed someone, I was in a coma for three months with the toll it took on me, and she didn’t want that to happen again…so she healed you. From her bedroom. She can literally heal anyone from afar.”

  They still stare.

  “And it appears…this is the first time we’ve seen her do this, so I don’t know how much control she has, or if what’s she’s done is completely deliberate, but…she made you a Dweller, too.”

  “What does that mean?” he asks.

  “It means, at the very least, that you have total control over your own body. I don’t know if you’ll be able to hook up to someone, or heal from afar, or if you can see souls like Jack does. Those are some of the extra abilities unique to certain Dwellers. But we all have that control over our autonomic nervous systems.”

  “What?” Chris shouts. He breaks out in an enormous grin. “No way! Are you serious? I can do what you do?”

  “Some of what I do. Maybe more. We won’t know until you start exploring.”

  “Woo!” he yells. “Fucking brilliant! This is fantastic!”

  “Slow down,” I say. “Obviously, there’s good and bad. If you have an ability like Jack’s, to see people’s deaths, that’s gonna be rough. And our abilities take a toll on us. Nothing’s free.”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “I’ll take the bad with the good. I’ll be able to help with the research.”

  “You will,” I say.

  “Oh, wow,” he says, settling down. “So your daughter grew my foot and made me a Dweller. I need to thank her.”

  I laugh. “Someday. She’s very young.”

  “How young?”

  “Eight months old.”

  “And you let her heal someone?” Nicole asks.

  “I didn’t know she did it, that she could even do it,” I say. “And I can’t stop it. I have absolutely no control over her mental abilities at all.”

  “What if Chris and I have a baby?” she asks. “Will the baby be a Dweller?”

  Oh no.

  Male Dwellers cannot have kids. My dad was the first and only. We still don’t know if I can have children.

  “I don’t know,” I say honestly.

  ***

  I find Mateo in the kitchen reading a book.

  “Thanks for taking care of him,” I say. “Chris and Nicole said you’ve been fabulous.”

  Mateo grins. “It’s my job. Never thought I’d be working for someone like Christopher Calyx, though. Or you. I hope you keep me in mind, Thomas.”

  I shake his hand. “I’m hoping things move pretty fast for us once we get the building fixed, so I’ll definitely be in touch. Have Kenneth give me a call when he wakes up.”

  And I clap him on the shoulder and head for home.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I call my sister for an impromptu meeting. I pick Tessa and Em up, and we head over to Tyrion and Jack’s. Dad agrees to meet us there to watch the kids.

  We have a lot to talk about, and we can’t do it where the kids will hear us.

  Jack answers the door looking sheepish. Tessa glares.

  “Are you still mad at me?” Jack asks.

  “Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?”

  I glance beyond Jack to the living room. The boys are all there, and they’ve all paused, like a video on freeze frame. They’re obviously listening to the exchange.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack says, and the boys all grin. “I didn’t mean it. You’re a great mom, Tessa, and you’re my best friend. Can you forgive me?”

  Tessa smiles, and they fall on each other, hugging tight. I let out a breath.

  Tyrion pats Dad on the back and walks toward us. “Let us go. I give your father two hours, tops, before he goes crazy.”

  “I’ve commanded armies,” Dad says. “You think I’d get a little credit.”

  “We will see if you still have that confidence when we return,” Tyrion says with a grin.

  We head to the local coffee shop and take a table on the empty patio.

  “Start at the beginning,” Tyrion says. “What prompted this emergency meeting?”

  We tell them about Em and the foot, about Free and his experiment gone wrong, then about Em’s response to me being hurt. Jack tries to interrupt multiple times, but Tyrion places a hand on her arm and squeezes each time she takes a breath. When I finish, Jack turns to Tyrion. “Can I speak now, master?”

  He nods, and she rolls her eyes.

  “Em actually grew him a new foot, without touching him or seeing him or anything?”

  “Yep,” Tessa says. “She also healed Thomas’s face the day of the explosion.”

  “What about side effects?” Tyrion asks. “Were there any negative effects from the healing?”

  “None that we could see,” I say. “She didn’t get tired or thirsty or hungry. Nothing. There must be some effect, but it wasn’t visible.”

  “She also said she could make me a Dweller in just a few minutes,” Tessa says. “She asked me if I wanted her to.”

  “What did you say?” Jack asks.

  “I was too stunned to say anything,” Tessa says.

  “So here are the issues,” I say, not wanting to get sidetracked into a discussion about Tessa becoming a Dweller. “First, she has this amazing ability. Second, Free has the opposite ability, to undo, or to harm, rather than to heal. At least, that’s my belief. I don’t think he can heal at all. If he could, he would have.”

  “I don’t think you can say that,” Tessa says. “He’s just a baby. He doesn’t know what he’s capable of, or how to use what he does have.”

  I shake my head. “We need to give him more credit. He has remarkable control, even for his age and experience level. This is a different ability. But again, it doesn’t matter right now. They both have abilities we’ve never seen. We need to protect them. And the bigger issue is this foot. The press is on it. We can probably explain it away, but we’re going to be scrutinized. With all my patents, and with Olivia Brooks, and now Calyx involved, I can’t believe we haven’t been outed already. We need to figure out how to deal with it.”

  “I don’t care about the press,” Tessa says. “We just refuse to comment. I want to figure out how to keep Em healthy. She’s one step away from a stroke.”

  Tyrion nods his head. “I do not believe we should dismiss the press as only a nuisance, but I believe Tessa is correct. Em is the priority here. You said she was not reading your mind when this happened?”

  “She was the first time,” I say, “with the seizure, but this morning, she swears she wasn’t. She could hear what we were doing, but she wasn’t alarmed because she thought Free would be healing me. She says she just felt my pain.”

  “You and I are both empaths,” Tyrion says to me. “But my ability is limited to those in my immediate vicinity, or those I am very strongly connected to, which, at the moment, is just Jack and our boys. What is the strength of your ability?”

  “The same,” I say. “Tessa and Free and Em and Dr. Rumson. My dad and Erica, too. But I didn’t even feel it when Em had her seizure.”

  “But you were just in an explosion,” Tyrion posits. “Not the optimal conditions for feeling what others are feeling.”

  “True.”

  “So how do you experience this pain?” he asks.

  “Headaches, mostly. But this morning, I just got a bad feeling. Something just felt…urgent.”

  “I do not experience the pain of others, as such,” he says. “I feel other emotions. So if someone I am close to is in pain, I get a wave of scared energy, or nervous energy, or worried energy. The wave wiggles itself into my brain, and I get a clear picture of the person experiencing the emotion. It sounds like Em’s ability is closer to yours, in that it is more physical.”

  “But how can we stop it?” Tessa asks impatiently.

  “First,
we identify the cause,” Tyrion says.

  “Thomas’s pain is the cause,” she says. “If he’d stop putting himself in harm’s way, maybe Em wouldn’t have to go through this.”

  I turn to her. “You’re blaming me?”

  “No, but keeping you safe would be a start.”

  “But not a finish,” Tyrion says. “We need to teach her to block the incoming stimuli. And if she cannot do this, we need to take more direct measures.”

  “What does that mean?” Tessa asks.

  “She needs to be in the lab. We need scans. Thomas needs to hook up to her and see if he can figure this out, and maybe block it himself.”

  “No,” Tessa says, shaking her head. “No experiments. She can’t be a specimen.”

  I take Tessa’s hand. “Think of it this way. Em’s sick, Tessa. She needs a doctor. What if she had cancer? Would you refuse to get her treatment?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  Tessa bows her head. “Only if I’m there, every step of the way. I have to advocate for her, Thomas. I might not know as much medical stuff as you, but I know her. I need to be there.”

  I squeeze her hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  ***

  “So we get Em in the lab pronto,” Jack says. “If Planarian’s not going to be ready for a while, why don’t you take her to the Attic?”

  I turn to Tessa. “We could. Actually, we probably should. They have more equipment, more staff…and Dad’s more familiar with the lab and people there. Things might go faster.”

  Tessa smooshes her mouth to the side. “What do we do? Move down there until we fix her? Or do I stay home with Free while you move with Em? Or do we just drive down every day?”

  “Maybe we should all go,” I say. “At least we’ll be together. But we can figure that out tonight. I need to talk to Dad and see what he thinks, and we should run it by Sean.”

  “I am hoping that Planarian is ready sooner rather than later,” Tyrion says. “I would like to be involved in Em’s case, as it may have bearing on the boys as well. Perhaps we can get Christopher Calyx to throw some money at us and get the building ready.”