The Silver Strand Legacy, page 13
part #1 of Eritis Trilogy Series
Without anyone noticing, Ashrem had gone to the fireplace and had picked up a fire iron resting against the wall. It was an older type model, a heavy metallic rod.
The mercenaries immediately drew their weapons and took aim.
Professor Fournier was as surprised as they were. “What are you doing, son?”
Ashrem turned to the professor. “If they can’t believe what you’ve told them up until now, how do you think they’ll react to what you’re about to say next?”
Fournier’s gaze ran over the mercenaries’ faces. “Ah, yes. I see your point.”
“Ash is right,” said Arianne. “It’s faster to just show them.” She turned to Kincade. “It’s all right. You can put down your guns. He means you no harm.”
The guns stayed up.
“I don’t know what it is you want to show us,” said Kincade, the barrel of his gun still locked in on the threat, “but why don’t you start by putting down what you’ve got there, and we can talk about it?”
Arianne walked over to Ashrem and took the fire iron away from him. Then she held the bar in front of her, with one hand at each end.
She remained like this for a moment, like a magician allowing her audience time to prepare for a trick.
Then, tightening her grip and contracting the muscles in her arms, the young woman folded the metal bar in a steady, continuous motion.
Kincade’s jaw dropped. It was one thing to hear words like genetic engineering and DNA manipulation, but quite another to witness the result in such an abrupt fashion.
From the very beginning, the mercenary leader had tried to remain open to the possibility Professor Fournier had been telling them the truth. All this talk about a secret scientific experiment sounded pretty far out there, but why not? The image of Mitsuki snapping her handcuffs certainly lent credence to the professor’s claims. But what Arianne had just done breached the boundaries of what could reasonably be considered possible. She had bent an inch-thick steel bar into a near-perfect U-shape, and she had done it with moderate effort.
Kincade was having a tough time accepting what his eyes had just shown him. And his companions weren’t faring any better. They all stared at Arianne with bulging eyeballs and gaping mouths. How could this slender, gentle woman be so freakishly strong?
Then, one after the other, the mercenaries’ expressions began to change. Their initial shock gradually gave way to rising doubts. Surely this was a trick.
Rock walked up to Arianne and snatched the fire iron from her. “Let me see this thing.” He inspected the object from every angle and tried to imitate her. Summoning every ounce of strength in his powerful muscles, the colossus attempted to restore the shape of the bent rod. He succeeded only in moving the tips a few inches. “Dammit!” he said, breathing heavily.
“Are you kidding me?” Sonar exclaimed. “That thing’s real?”
Kincade took the bar from Rock and checked it for himself. Then it was Doc’s turn. Even Da Costa looked more than a little rattled.
The bent metal bar was passed around until it landed back into Ashrem’s hands. Just like Arianne had done earlier, he held the bar with both arms stretched out in front of him and returned it to its original shape.
This time the mercenaries could not deny the reality as it appeared before them.
Rock rubbed his hand over his shaved head. “Damn! I can’t believe it!”
“Tell me about it,” said Doc, equally stunned.
Suddenly the giant’s expression changed. He snatched the bar from Ashrem and presented it to Lucielle. “Here you go.”
The little girl looked up at him, confused.
What’s he doing now? Kincade wondered.
“Your turn,” Rock said, his eyes filled with eager anticipation. He was like a child waiting to see a repeat of the routine by some talented stage performer.
Lucielle tilted her head. “My turn?” But when at last she understood his meaning, she frowned at him, annoyed by the absurdity of his request. “Do I look like I can bend this thing?”
Rock looked disappointed. “Oh, you can’t?”
Doc placed his hand over his eyes and whispered to himself, “This guy’s unbelievable.”
“Lucielle is different from the rest of us,” Arianne declared.
“The rest?” Kincade noted. “Then all of you in the pictures are … genetically modified?” Even as he asked the question, he could not get over how crazy it sounded.
Arianne hesitated. “Hmm … yes, but … not in the way you think.”
Her answer confused him further—if that was possible. “Meaning what?”
Fournier raised his index finger, like a teacher addressing his student. “If you recall, young man, I told you we were never able to successfully duplicate Professor Engel’s experiment, which resulted in only four babies.”
“What about you guys?” Kincade asked Arianne.
She took a long and slow breath, as if to brace herself for his reaction. “We’re clones!”
“Ridiculous!” the woman on the screen shouted in a strident voice.
Jenkins winced due to the discomfort in his eardrums. “It’s the logical conclusion,” he replied.
“I must say, I too am skeptical, Mr. Jenkins.” Leicester was seated at his desk, facing Jenkins and Carson.
“Why would they take the girl?” Schaffer asked over the screen.
“I never said they took her, Mr. Schaffer. I think she chose to go with them.”
“Ridiculous!” Renard said again. “I want to see the security footage.”
“There isn’t any,” Jenkins replied. “The security cameras were disabled. All except for one or two in the outer perimeter.”
“Meaning we don’t know what happened?”
“We know for a fact the girl made it to the safe room,” said Jenkins. “But for some reason, she decided to come out.”
“Maybe they forced her out,” Renard argued.
“I don’t think so. Even if they found the safe room, they had no way of breaching it, not in that time frame. The girl had to have opened it herself. Besides, as I told Mr. Leicester, there was no sign of forced entry.”
“What about the other two?” said Leicester. “Are you certain they didn’t take her?”
“Darius and Mitsuki? No. One of the functioning cameras briefly caught them leaving the premises. It was just the two of them.”
“Regardless,” Schaffer said, “this new development changes everything.”
“Indeed,” Leicester nodded. “With the analyst gone, prudence is a luxury we can no longer afford. If we’re exposed, so be it. We’ll worry about that later. The important thing right now is to contain the situation before it spins further out of our control. Mr. Jenkins, you are now in charge of reacquiring the assets. Do what you must to find them.”
Jenkins clenched his teeth to snuff out a smile of satisfaction. At last, he could act without having one hand tied behind his back. Leicester had come to his senses and put him in charge—as he should have done from the start. He exchanged a quick glance with Carson.
“It’s fine with me,” said Renard, “but how are we supposed to track the fugitives without the analyst? She was our best chance of finding them.”
No one said a word. In two sentences, the French diplomat had laid out the conundrum they faced.
After a brief silence, Leicester pivoted in his chair and faced the screen. “Karl, have your people uncovered anything new regarding Karpov?”
“Perhaps,” said the German. “We may have a lead on the recording. We think Karpov kept it close, somewhere within the city.”
Renard was lost. “What recording?”
Leicester gave her a prolonged stare. It dawned on him that all discussions they had had about the recording had been with her predecessor, Charles Dumas, and never with her. “Apologies, my dear,” he said. He then glanced at Carson and decided it was a good idea to clue him in as well. “Before he disappeared, Professor Karpov made a digital recording of his last telephone conversation with Adam.”
Renard’s glasses jumped on her nose. “He did what?”
“What’s on this recording?” Carson asked.
Leicester opened his hands. “We’re not sure.”
“But there’s good chance it contains a clue to the location of Adam’s data card,” Karl added.
Renard straightened up in her chair at the mention of the hidden memory card.
“It’s probably what Damien was after,” said Leicester. “It’s imperative we find the card before he does. Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Carson will go to Berlin at once. I think we can all agree this must be given top priority. The card might even lead our runaways back to us.”
Renard did not hesitate. “Of course.”
Schaffer grunted his approval.
“Good,” said Leicester. “I believe that’s all for now, Nathalie, Karl.” He ended the video call with his two counterparts and spun around to face the room. “Gentlemen, you must recover the recording, by any means necessary.”
“Understood,” said Jenkins.
“Let me know when you arrive in Berlin.”
The two men nodded and started on their way out. But as they were leaving, Leicester noticed a hesitation in Carson.
“What is it, Mr. Carson?” the Briton asked.
“It’s nothing, sir. I was just wondering what Kincade and his men could want with the analyst.”
“I’m afraid if Mr. Jenkins’ assessment is correct, the real question is: what does she want with them?”
Chapter 16 – The Boy
A heavy silence had descended on Professor Jerome Fournier’s home. A silence interrupted only by the clock hanging on the wall adjacent to the kitchen. The regular ticking of its needle echoed inside the living room as it inflexibly marked the passing of each second.
Five. Ten. Fifteen.
Over the past few hours, Kincade had been forced to re-examine his views on what he ought to consider possible. He had come to accept certain realities that, only a day before, he would have dismissed without a second thought. But of all the strange deeds he had witnessed, and of all the improbable claims he had heard, this one was by far the most preposterous. Always try to keep an open mind? Of course. Don’t hesitate to question everything? Sure. But where do you draw the line? At what point do you put your foot down and say,
“This is insane!” Kincade exclaimed. “Did you say clones?”
Fournier nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.”
Doc thought it necessary to clarify the term and avoid all possible misunderstandings. “Clones? As in … human … clones.”
“Correct.”
Sonar gave Ashrem a playful smile. “You guys are messing with us, right?”
Arianne stepped forward. “I understand it’s difficult to believe but—”
“Difficult to believe? Hahaha” Rock laughed a forced laugh as he stepped inside the room. The inexplicable events and bizarre revelations had taken their toll. It was like he had been on a roller-coaster ride for the past few hours and was now desperate to get off. “Difficult? I don’t know what you mean, honestly.” His tone was both nervous and sarcastic. “There’s nothing difficult here at all. In fact, when I saw you, it’s the first thing I said to myself. I thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute! She looks like a clone.’”
“All right, you’ve made your point,” Kincade said, himself shaken. “Take it easy.”
But the giant showed no signs of calming down. “Come on, Nate! Tell me you’re not buying this nonsense. I’m no scientist, but even I know there’s no such thing as human clones. I don’t care if they can bench-press a damned truck. There’s no way those two are clones.”
“Me too!” Lucielle’s arm shot straight up in the air like a waffle popping out of a toaster. She had reacted instinctively, not wanting to be left out.
Rock stopped and stared at her. At first, he looked like he was going to say something. But he didn’t. He went back to the doorway, folded his arms, and leaned against the frame. He had had enough and had decided he no longer cared.
The professor gently pushed Lucielle’s arm back down. He wondered if it had been a mistake to reveal the truth about Arianne and the others so soon, without giving the mercenaries time to process everything else first. Having known the clones since birth, he had long stopped mulling over how they had come into existence. To him, they were children … special children, yes, but children all the same. And he couldn’t have cared more for them if they had been his own. However, he realized it was not the kind of news a person could be expected to simply take in stride. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I imagine it must be quite a shock.”
Kincade looked Arianne straight in the eye. “You people are actually serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry,” said Fournier, “It’ll make sense once I’ve told you the rest of the story.” The old man resumed his tale. “With the experiment at a standstill, it was decided the four children would be taken back to the US for further observation. But there was one problem. Professor Engel still wouldn’t go. And since he was the only one who stood a chance of figuring out what had happened, they offered him a compromise. Dr. Brainsworth would take three children back to the US and leave one with Professor Engel.”
Fournier paused once again to examine his audience. This time, the faces staring back at him looked very different than before. There were no more skeptical frowns, no more dubious twitches, and no exchanges of furtive glances. The mercenaries no longer looked at him as they would a mad scientist who had sniffed too many fumes from the test tubes in his lab. Pleased with this change in attitude, Fournier continued.
“Professor Engel asked permission to select which child would remain with him in London. There was no particular reason to deny him, and his assistance was of vital importance to the project, so the higher-ups agreed. There was, however, some reluctance on Dr. Brainsworth’s part when she heard of Professor Engel’s choice. She tried to convince him to choose a different child, but he remained adamant. No one knows whether the professor’s decision was based on a whim, or whether he knew exactly what he was doing, but his mind was made up.”
“Why did Brainsworth object?” Kincade asked.
“The reason was simple. The child chosen by Engel had a strange, distinctive feature: he was born with silver-gray hair. It wasn’t that Brainsworth believed the child’s hair color held any scientific significance, but none of us had ever seen anything like it before. She—” Fournier stopped when he noticed his audience wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. From the moment he had mentioned the child’s abnormal hair color, the mercenaries’ gazes had all converged on Lucielle. She had silver hair too, just like he had described.
Finding herself the focus of so many persistent stares, Lucielle started to feel uneasy. “Yes,” she said in a belligerent tone. “It’s the same as mine, Okay?”
During the course of her young life, Lucielle had not met a lot of people. Unlike the other clones, she had been taken out of the facility at a very young age. But the truth about her identity had remained a closely guarded secret. In order to keep her existence hidden, she had been moved from place to place, forbidden from ever going outside, or from making contact with anyone other than her assigned caretakers and a select group of individuals, like Leicester and his assistant.
This isolation had not been easy, especially for a girl her age. And yet, there was something even worse than the constant feeling of loneliness. Something she’d first noticed when she was still living at the compound. Something that had followed her on the outside. It was the stares. Everywhere she went, people would stare at her like she was some kind of rare exotic animal. They would stare because of how she looked. And for those informed few, because of what she was.
Arianne knew how unnerving it was for Lucielle to be scrutinized in such a manner. “Please don’t look at her like that,” she told the group.
“Like what?” Sonar asked.
“Like I’m a freak,” the young girl threw at him.
“Ah! You think you’re a freak?” Sonar jabbed his thumb at Rock. “Trust me, this guy’s the biggest freak of all.”
“Hey!” the giant protested.
“What? You know it’s true,” Sonar continued. “What kind of name is Rock, anyway?”
“Like you can talk, Sonar. They got your name all wrong if you ask me. They should have called you Radio instead. Your mouth is a lot busier than your ears.”
Lucielle giggled, amused by the pair’s mutual banter.
Doc moved between his comrades. “If you two comics are done with your routine, maybe we can get back to the more serious discussion.”
Kincade noticed a faint smile cross Ariane’s lips as she stared at Rock and Sonar. “What is it?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Should I continue?” Fournier asked.
“Sure,” said Doc.
“Dr. Brainsworth returned to America with three children, while Adam stayed in London with Professor Engel.”
“Adam?” Doc noted.
“The boy, his name was Adam. Adam Cross.” Professor Fournier glanced at Lucielle as he said the name. “During the first few years, everything was fine. The teams based in Virginia and in London worked well together despite the distance. They exchanged their findings on a regular basis and continued to evaluate the subjects’ development. Everyone was pleased, but none more than the brass in the US and UK militaries. The physical aptitudes exhibited by the children defied belief, and those aptitudes continued to improve as they grew older. In light of those exceptional results, a decision was made to restart the project.”
“Why am I not surprised?” said Sonar.
The old man ignored the comment. “Only this time, it would be run in the US, at the Virginia facility. Dr. Brainsworth agreed, on the condition they first find a way to guarantee the survival of the surrogate mothers. She knew the problem would be a difficult one to solve but, with Professor Engel’s help, she felt confident they would come up with a solution. The greater challenge would be to convince Engel to make the trip across the Atlantic. She knew her best bet was to meet with him in person, so she went back to London. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a wasted trip. None of her assurances, promises, or concessions made a bit of difference. Professor Engel had no intention of going with her. She had expected some resistance, but she was surprised by his utter unwillingness to even entertain the idea.”
