Progenitor

by Cassandra Chandler

  If Brock hadn’t decked Porter, he wouldn’t have lost his focus enough for his hand to slip through the stasis pod’s forcefield. If they hadn’t been searching for a way to save Brock, they wouldn’t have kept the parasite around in the first place.

  If he hadn’t been born, Tessa could have been raised by their parents. She could have had a normal family. She’d still be human.

  “You don’t know that.”

  Brock jerked at DP’s sudden voice in his head. He’d thought he had his shields up.

  “Your mother was a hunter,” Zachary projected into Brock’s mind. “Hunters don’t just walk away from the fight.”

  “Tessa might have never even been born if you hadn’t brought her parents together,” Bradley added.

  Damn. So, everyone was listening in.

  “Don’t you have anything to add, Malcolm?” Brock thought.

  “We have less than thirty-six hours to fix this.”

  “You’re all rays of fucking sunshine,” Brock projected.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tessa said, bringing his attention back to the room. “This is my fault.”

  “No,” Brock said.

  “It is.” She glanced at Marcus, who nodded at her. “But I think I have a way to make things better. To keep me from distracting anyone from helping you.”

  “Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like this?” Brock said.

  “I’m dangerous,” she said. “I can’t control myself with this voice in my head. It’s too strong. It sent me to the lab, and once I was there, it kept telling me to kill everyone. It even wanted me to kill Marcus—not just attack him. I hurt Meg again, and I promised—” Tessa’s voice cut off. She shook her head sharply.

  “I promised I wouldn’t hurt her again,” Tessa said. “I’m not going to hurt anyone again.”

  Brock understood where Tessa was coming from, but was afraid of where she was going with this. “We can trick out a cell for you in the pit.”

  She shook her head. “I tore through one of the cell walls. Vaughn doesn’t know how I managed it.”

  “We can deactivate your cybernetics,” Brock said.

  “The nanites have evolved.” She lifted her arm, flexing her metal fingers. “Their programming was supposed to help them integrate with me fully, giving me absolute control and allowing me to change form completely. They’re part of me now and can’t be shut down unless I am.”

  “I already hate this idea, whatever it is,” Brock said.

  She ignored him and ploughed on. “Put Marcus and I in the stasis chambers Vaughn prepared for Dexter and Porter.”

  “Absolutely not,” Brock said.

  “Why?” She took a step forward, and this time Dexter and Porter didn’t move to intervene. They kept still, though their swords remained unsheathed.

  “Vaughn and Dad need someone to test the chambers,” she said. “Marcus and I regenerate. You can try them out on us with minimum risk.”

  “This is bullshit.” Brock turned to their dad. “Tell her.”

  Dad was silent, but Brock could tell from the look in Dad’s eyes that he didn’t have an ally there.

  “Oh my God,” Brock said. “You’re okay with this.”

  Dad shook his head. “I’m not okay with losing my daughter or my sons. Vaughn and I have gone over everything, with Porter’s help. We think it’s safe enough to try.”

  “‘Safe enough’?” Brock said. “Come on, Dad.”

  “It’s her choice,” Dad said. “And she’s made it. She just wanted to have a chance to tell you herself.”

  “What about Meg?” Brock asked.

  Tessa shook her head. “We already talked to her. She didn’t like it, but she understood.”

  “How can she understand? You’re risking your life.” Brock knew he was grasping at straws, but he had to try to stop them from moving forward with this colossally stupid plan.

  “Yes, the colossally stupid plan agreed upon by several of the most powerful minds on the planet,” Bradley projected.

  “Your modesty is inspiring,” Brock thought back.

  “We weren’t just thinking of us,” Bradley thought. “Vaughn is a single entity, yet he can keep up with us. All of us. We need to do more investigating into what a curator is.”

  “And to do that, we need to survive,” Brock projected. “All of us.”

  “Not all. Just you.” Dexter glanced over at him.

  “What the hell kind of plan were you discussing when I woke up?” Brock thought.

  Their silence unnerved him.

  They would do anything for him. Time and again, they’d shown just how much they were willing to do for him, what they were willing to sacrifice. If they thought his life was at stake…

  “Tessa and Marcus can have our stasis pods,” Porter said. “It will be good to test them out before putting Brock in one, anyway.”

  “But then they won’t be available for you,” Brock said. “When I split, if something goes wrong, we won’t have an option for saving you.”

  Dad stepped closer and rested his hand on Brock’s shoulder. “I know exactly when you were born. We’ll pull Tessa and Marcus out a couple of hours before that moment. Run tests, make sure everything’s all right. Then Dexter and Porter can go in, along with you.”

  “But that will leave you and Vaughn alone with…” Brock couldn’t finish his sentence.

  Tessa was right about not being able to control herself. She’d tried to kill Vaughn at least a dozen times. At this point, Brock wasn’t even sure if Dad was safe with her.

  Porter didn’t seem concerned. “Meg will be here as well.”

  “And suddenly you trust her,” Brock said.

  “We’re out of options.” Dexter sheathed his sword as he spoke. “And nearly out of time.”

  Tessa and Marcus stepped through the open doorway out into the hall. Brock’s throat was too tight to say anything. Not even goodbye.

  “It’s gonna be okay, son.” After a final squeeze, Dad let go of Brock’s shoulder and followed them, along with Porter.

  The door slid shut, leaving Brock alone with Dexter. As alone as he ever was when the replicants were involved.

  “We plan to head upstairs when this is done,” Dexter said. “You can borrow us to spend more time with Meg if you’d like.”

  None of the replicants had made an offer like that in years. They were too concerned about how it would effect Brock since Malcolm had...emerged. Adding in how opposed they’d been to Brock spending any time with Meg, and he was more than a little suspicious.

  “Suddenly, you’re okay with that?” Brock said.

  Dexter shrugged. “Death changes a person.”

  Brock wasn’t buying it. “What are you planning? I want to know.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Cut the crap, Dexter.” Brock closed his eyes, pushing his consciousness out along all the tendrils that connected him with the replicants.

  He felt Porter in the lab close by, consulting with Vaughn over the communicators in their watches as they made final checks on the stasis pods. Brock definitely wouldn’t be trying to force anything while Porter was working on something so important.

  But this was important, too. Brock needed to know what they had planned, and to tell them that DP wasn’t the only one who had changed from that latest death.

  Lee was in his ops center with Rose, their IT person. She was sitting in front of a wall of monitors that looked almost exactly like Vaughn’s. Whatever Lee had just said must have been hilarious, based on the way she was laughing. He made up an excuse about needing to check on something in the lab, and headed Brad’s way.

  Zach was poring over screens of data in his bedroom while Carey led a sparring session at the Europa base. Carey handed the training session over to Damien, one of the senior Guards in the Blades’ hierarchy, then headed to a nearby room where he could have some privacy.

  Mal and Colm were making adjustments to their stasis pods in one of the man
y safehouses Vaughn had set up for the Blades around the globe. This one was probably in France, based on Brock’s view of the Eiffel Tower when he’d connected with them all earlier.

  There were no windows for an amazing view here, though. It was probably the hidden panic room.

  How could he have let himself get so out of touch with them all that he wasn’t even sure what country Malcolm was in?

  The replicants who were alone blanked out, staring at nothing while they made their minds available. The only one who remained active was Porter. Tessa and Marcus were in the pods already.

  Brock felt a rush as his mind linked up with his replicants, thoughts entwining and mental energy merging together. The solution for the issue Malcolm was having with his stasis pod suddenly became obvious. Zachary recognized a pattern in the fighting technique they’d been teaching that could actually be detrimental when facing groups of subterranean dwellers. Almost as soon as he noticed the problem, a new set of exercises coalesced in his mind that would resolve the issue.

  Bradley realized that Rose had been flirting with him.

  “Holy shit,” he thought.

  Brock tried to make his thought light and teasing. “Now you have something to live for.”

  The response was a wave of darkness. Flat despair. He hadn’t known his replicants could feel something like that.

  “I need to know,” he projected. “What is going on?”

  The darkness continued, but images flickered across their awarenesses. They were trying to not think about whatever it was they had planned.

  Brock didn’t want to do this, but he had to know. He pushed, breaking through their shields so that he could see what it was they were thinking. Years of practice made it relatively easy. That and the fact that his brain was their central hub.

  Brock saw Mal and Colm facing one another, drawn swords touching each others’ chests right above their hearts. He flinched as they stepped forward, shoving the blades between their ribs, piercing their hearts. They fell against each other, propping each other up until both of their bodies were consumed by the blue light that claimed all dwellers after death.

  The gruesome vignette was quickly followed by Zach and Carey slashing each other’s throats, then Brad and Lee entering their stasis chambers and triggering a sequence that would fill the tanks with nitrogen, suffocating them.

  “What the hell?” Brock projected.

  “It was Malcolm’s idea,” Bradley thought. “But we’re all on board with it.”

  “How could this possibly help anything?” Brock hadn’t meant to share the thought, but connected as they were, it went through anyway.

  Malcolm was the one to respond. “Reduce the load. You were okay when it was just you and DP. Adding Bradley started your descent. Each of us emerging has accelerated your body’s deterioration.”

  “So, you’re going to kill yourselves?” Brock thought.

  “You’ve been convinced we’re all going to die anyway,” Zachary responded. “If we determine that this is the only way to restore you—to save you—we’ll gladly do it. You’re our progenitor.”

  They would. Brock knew it. Everything they’d ever done, they’d done for him. Because he asked them, ordered them, or forced them.

  “Stop calling me that,” he thought.

  He felt their confusion.

  “No more borrowing,” he said. “No more orders or mindblasts. I’ve been through so many splits with you all, so many deaths. I know the hell, the fear, the pain of it. DP was killed because I was trying to force him to do what I wanted. He had to go through that alone.”

  Brock hadn’t even been conscious to tell them it’d be okay.

  The silence in their minds was deafening. It was like they were all holding their breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Brock thought. “I’m sorry I’ve been treating you all like tools and soldiers when I should have been treating you like brothers.”

  Finally, Bradley responded. “If this is you trying to convince us to throw out our plan, we hate to tell you, but it’s kind of having the opposite effect.”

  Brock laughed, and could feel a sense of lightness echoed back to him. It was a momentary respite before letting them know where he stood.

  “We’re going to find a way out of this,” he thought. “All of us...or none of us.”

  Chapter Ten

  “And that is why I will be making you at least a dozen different types of eggs as soon as things settle down.” Vaughn smiled over at Meg as they sat on the couch in his living space.

  She couldn’t call the room a bedroom, even though a fair portion of it was taken up with a large bed. The bed made her nervous at first, but Vaughn had steered her straight to the comfy gray couch where they’d sat for the last two hours watching one of his favorite romantic comedies.

  The room also had a kitchenette, complete with mini-fridge and a tiny stove and oven, and the nicest bathroom Meg had ever seen. She supposed the other door leading off the main room was a closet.

  The ceilings were lower than in the rest of the house, and the space was small, but not claustrophobic. All the dark wood paneling might be helping with that. The natural materials soothed her.

  Vaughn had one arm wrapped around her shoulders—where it had been for the entire movie. When they’d first sat down, his entire body had been trembling, but he seemed to have calmed down now.

  “You don’t have to make me that many different types of eggs,” Meg said.

  “I see. So, you already know which one you prefer?”

  She preferred steak, but she’d never tell anyone that.

  “Scrambled are fine,” she said.

  Vaughn shook his head. “‘Fine’ isn’t good enough.”

  “Hold on. Do you just want to reenact that scene from the movie?”

  “Maybe a little bit.” He laughed, then picked up her hand that was resting between them. “But that’s not the only reason.”

  He stared at her, not making direct eye contact, that light smile on his lips. There was only a trace of stubble on his etched jaw, even though he couldn’t have shaved for hours. His eyes were bright blue, like a robin’s egg, but more vibrant. The color didn’t seem entirely natural. Maybe he was wearing colored contacts.

  Being able to look at him was wonderful. If she’d stared at another member of her pack like this, they would have seen it as a claim to dominance and attacked her. Sitting next to Vaughn, she felt safer than she’d ever felt before—except when Brock was holding her.

  She suddenly realized that Vaughn was stroking her arm with the hand draped across her shoulders.

  “Vaughn.”

  “Meg.” He said her name with the same inflection, even mirroring her expression.

  She laughed, and felt more of her own tension ease away.

  “We have confirmed that we know each other’s names. Actually, is Meg short for Megan?” Vaughn asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. I sort of remember an orphanage from when I was really young, but not what they called me. The pack probably used Meg because—”

  “Please don’t tell me it’s short for ‘omega’.”

  She looked away, feeling his body tense next to hers. He gripped her shoulder more firmly and his hand tightened around hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “When I think about your past, I get angry. But not at you—at them. At everybody who wasn’t there for you or mistreated you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “And it’s okay for it to…not be okay.”

  He laughed, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to join him this time. Then he leaned closer and kissed the side of her head.

  It was a light kiss, but it still made her stomach knot. Was he expecting more?

  She wasn’t sure what to say. Telling him she was here to spy on Brock and destroy the Blades, and that getting involved with someone else would hamper that plan didn’t seem like a good idea. Especially si
nce she wasn’t even sure she could go through with it.

  She didn’t want to hurt the Blades anymore. Not even Dexter.

  What she wanted didn’t matter. Roy was there, watching her, listening to everything going on around her. If she didn’t make her way back to Brock, Roy would punish her.

  For a moment, she wondered if defying Roy would be worth it.

  The worst part of it all was that she wanted to be with Brock. Even if it meant cozying up to him while he was in Dexter’s body. She’d never wanted to be close to someone the way she wanted to be close to Brock. The idea of meeting him in his real body sent a shiver through her. But that would put him in too much danger, as long as the collar was around her neck.

  “This is really nice,” she said, “And I like you a lot. But Brock and I…”

  Vaughn was silent for a moment, as if he was waiting for her to finish her thought. When she didn’t continue, he said, “You must have been really into the movie. Otherwise, you would have noticed that.”

  He let go of her hand and pointed at the little table next to the couch. A beautiful lamp cast soft light into the room. Its base was made of intricately sculpted bronze metal. There was a frame beneath it at an angle that made the glare from the glass obscure the picture. She reached over and picked it up so she could see better.

  An image of Vaughn smiled out at her, his hands gripping the arms of a man with short reddish hair and hazel-green eyes who was standing behind him. The man had his arms wrapped around Vaughn’s shoulders, holding him tight with their heads pressed together. They both looked so happy.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “That is Tony. We met in college.”

  “Oh.” She studied the way they held each other in the picture, the way Tony stared at Vaughn. “Oh…”

  “Yeah,” Vaughn said. “You don’t need to worry about me putting the moves on you. Or Brock, for that matter. Him being my boss and all. It’s too cliché.”

  Meg laughed, her tension easing again.

  Vaughn looked back at the picture. “Once upon a time, I thought Tony was going to be the great love of my life. We were together for years. His mom had an issue with her hearing, and I even learned ASL to show him how serious I was about us.”