Chapter 20

I don’t know if I’ve gone crazy, but the sudden and uncontrollable way I’m laughing makes me wonder.

I have to make a concerted effort to hold on to my gun, because this laughter is too much, and my hands want to fly to my stomach to contain the wild attack.

Luke stares at me dumbfounded. He looks to Tauro who also seems to be wondering about my sanity. Mega Simba raises his head for a moment and lets out a bored yawn when he realizes the situation hasn’t changed one bit since he went to sleep.

“That is priceless,” I say between ill-contained chuckles. “I am supposed to be your mate?!”

Luke’s clear blue eyes darken. A muscle in his jaw jumps. He thinks I’m having a laugh at his expense. And maybe I am, but it’s not just him. It’s the entire situation. It’s ridiculous. Who in their right mind thought up this absurdity?

“I’m sorry, Luke, but really, I’m supposed to be your mate? How did we go from being brother and sister to this? I mean, who the hell thought of this? Because surely, this entire experiment is a hopeless failure.”

Tauro sighs and exchanges a knowing look with Mega Simba, as if they totally agree with what I’m saying. I scowl at them.

Luke gives me a tired answer, which makes me think he was expecting my question. “My parents had their reasons for doing what they did. I didn’t always agree with them, but I tried to understand.”

“And did you? Understand, I mean.”

As ridiculous as this sounds and as hard as I’m laughing, the idea of being Luke’s mate slowly burrows into my brain, an insidious worm that makes itself comfortable, even as I try to keep it away.

“It all made sense when it began. You see, my mother, Zara, tried to get pregnant from an early age, but her host was somehow defective. She couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term, so by the time Dunn was ready to test his theory, my mother already knew they’d need a surrogate mother.

“Several viable candidates were chosen. Given that two genetically unrelated embryos were needed for the experiment, their partners were also carefully selected. In the end, eight couples made the list. Two embryos were implanted in each woman. One male, one female, each carrying one half of Zara or Tom. He did it this way because he expected the pair to adapt to each other’s presence, hopefully erasing the bothersome rank messages.” He gestures toward his head. “He was wrong about that, of course. I suppressed mine at an early age, though. We expected you to do the same, but …”

The worm burrows deeper and deeper. My stomach twists with the possibilities the little pest slowly unleashes inside my head.

“From that experiment, only four of the women carried to term. One of them gave birth to one child only who died within hours, the second embryo never developed. The second woman gave birth to stillborn twins. The third gave birth to a boy and a genetically … inviable girl. The fourth gave birth to a perfect set.”

Luke’s words echo inside my head.

Stillborn.

Inviable.

Perfect.

The worm feeds on the words and gets fatter and fatter.

“In simple terms, Dunn spliced Eklyptor DNA into those human embryos. And from all his attempts, only you and I were a success.”

My breathing speeds up. To stop myself from hyperventilating, I take one long inhale and let it out slowly through my mouth. I will not freak out. I made myself a promise. Luke will not see me fall apart again. Never mind the fact that I’m more of a monster than I thought. Never mind that I’m not only infected, but my DNA is actually spliced with that of a monster.

I’m not human at all.

I’m a new species.

“When we were born,” Luke continued, “our faction was under attack. A French group, now part of IgNiTe, had followed my parents from Paris, where my father was from. He wanted to leave us with Karen, thought it would be safer if no one knew we existed. But my mother wouldn’t have it. She wanted us by her side. Dunn was supposed to take the two of us away, but Karen and Brian kept you in their room, while I was in NICU, so he could only take me.

“After that, there were police around the hospital and, once you were sent home, your father wouldn’t let you out of his sight. Zara still wanted you with us, but my father’s sudden death made her reconsider, and she decided to let you be. To let Karen and Brian raise you. It wasn’t easy for her. You were her daughter while I was Tom’s.”

“Spare me,” I say as my teeth grind in fury. “Zara’s sensibilities mean nothing to me. I’m not her daughter. I have no mother. Never did. Don’t forget that.”

Luke nods and concedes.

“She wanted us to grow up knowing each other. That’s why she enrolled me in your school since the beginning. But I didn’t know. Not until I turned fourteen. That’s when they told me. I mean, I knew what I was. They never hid that from me. I just didn’t know about you, about our connection.

“You might remember I stopped talking to you for a while when we were in eighth grade.”

I shake my head, even though I do remember. Because shortly after he stopped talking to me, he also started asking me out.

“Then I asked you out.” He shakes his head. “You probably thought I was crazy.”

Crazy? No, all I remember is my stomach churning at the thought of going out with Luke Smith. Something inside of me rebelled at the idea of getting romantically involved with him. When he made me believe he was my brother, I thought I’d figured out why the idea of being his girlfriend gave me the creeps. Now, it seems, there are other, far more twisted reasons for my revulsion.

“Zara couldn’t understand why you rejected me. She thought you should be attracted to me, should feel the connection between us, the way I did. She kept insisting I ask you out, and I did, but I could only take so many nos. After that, I resented you, though I kept telling Zara I was doing my best to win you over. I was angry and felt …” he looks skyward, licks his lips, “… used. For a while, I decided that Hailstone’s plans for us weren’t my own. I mean, that’s quite a thing to unload on a couple of kids: the furthering of a new species. I hit quite a rebellious streak, for a time.”

“Aw, you poor thing. But it seems you’ve had a change of heart, hmm? I bet mommy was proud.”

“A lot has happened since then,” Luke says angrily, his blue eyes flashing with rancor.

“Not on this side of the world. It’s still all just a bunch of nos over here.”

“Maybe when you stop and think about the situation, you’ll change your—”

“Fat chance!”

Luke ignores me and keeps going. “Your mind. This world is not as it used to be and nos aren’t what’ll help you survive.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No.” Luke shakes his head. “It’s not a threat, just reality. You have little chance of survival out there, Marci. You need our protection.”

“I’m doing swell on my own, thank you.”

And there’s no way in hell I’ll make babies with you, you sick bastard!

Just then it hits me, if I’m a different species wouldn’t all the DNA tests Kristen ran on me have shown that? My mind reels, trying to remember the different analyses she’s performed on me since I joined IgNiTe. If she’d found something wrong, she would have mentioned it, right? Right?!

They’ve kept so many secrets from me lately that I have to wonder. Would they share such findings with me? Or would they save the information to themselves?

“Things could be better for you,” Luke says.

“They were better, and your kind screwed that up.”

“Zara, Elliot and all The Takeover leaders belong to a different generation. Eklyptors have craved for this for a very long time, longer than you and I can understand. They have struggled to survive, to take a foothold. They rose from nothing and built their numbers at an excruciating pace, while humans reproduced faster than rabbits.”

His comment angers me, but it’s hard to argue with our reproduction rate, so I take a different approach. “And you think that gives you the right to do this?”

“It’s not about having the right to do anything. It’s about being able to do it. Humans know that very well. So they want to make shark fin soup … then why not catch a bunch of sharks, cut their fins and throw them back into the ocean to die? So they can sell ivory for a huge profit … why not hunt elephants to near extinction? So they can pollute and destroy the planet … why not dump chemicals into rivers and kill the rain forest? So they can cage specimens of every species for their own amusement … why not open a zoo or a circus and charge for admission? I could go on all night, and you know it.”

How can I argue with any of this? How can I say “it wasn’t me, I didn’t do any of those things”? It was our responsibility to stop it, and we didn’t.

Luke takes a step closer. “So we can take residence in human brains and make better use of their bodies … then why not take them over? Why not cage them and save them from their self-destructive behavior?”

“All right, I don’t need a biology lesson. Survival of the fittest and all, I get it. Just don’t count us out so easily. We’re not going down without a fight. There are people with their own brains working to find a solution, and they will. It’s just a matter of time.”

“You are not one of them, Marci.” Luke’s mouth stretches with an almost imperceptible smile of satisfaction. “That is where you go wrong. And we’re not Eklyptors either. We are the best of both species. We can create a new world, a better world. I can alter my DNA to get rid of disease. Did you know that? We could have new generations with no cancer, no genetic inequalities of any kind. No more blind or deaf people. Everyone could develop whatever skills they want, anything that makes them happy. They could look however they wanted. Just imagine that for a moment.”

“It sounds mighty boring.”

Luke gives me a court laugh. “Is that the best you can do? Boring? All that means is you don’t have an argument against the eradication of disease and the utopia of equality. And who would? Aren’t those the things the most altruistic humans have been trying to achieve for a long time?”

“Fine, whatever. Go and try to build your new world, but leave me out of it. I’m not like you. I am human.”

“There’s no denying it. Something is different, but you are definitely not human.”

“Bullshit!”

“Dunn conducted several in-utero tests, Marci. Our DNAs are unique.”

“No. That’s a lie.”

James would have told me.

James would have told me.

Luke’s eyes fill with sympathy as if I’m a child and he’s just stolen my lollipop. “I’m sorry you have to learn things this way, but if you give it time, I know you’ll come to terms with it.”

“You say you don’t want me to change because you like me as I am. Well, let me tell you something, you don’t know me at all. I would never come to terms with this. It’s unnatural, wrong. One twisted man made this happened. He played god and went and messed with something he had no business messing with. I will not be part of this. You and whoever else Dunn managed to GMO can go give your boring utopia a try. You can count me out.”

Luke’s face tightens ever so slightly. I watch him closely, trying to figure out what the subtle expression means. His face is so smooth it’s hard to tell. Is he hiding something? Did some part of what I said hit a sore spot?

Something dawns on me. “There aren’t any others.” I intended it to be a question, but it comes out flat. He made it sound as if there were more experiments after the one that created us, but they must not have worked. We’re the only ones!

Luke’s silence serves as my answer.

I laugh. “So you’re basing this whole scheme on two people. One of them being me? You have got to be kidding me!”

He doesn’t look amused in the least.

“Talk about poor planning.”

“It’s not a simple matter. Dunn kept trying up until the day he died, but it appears we were an accident. Not much different from humans or any other species that has ever been,” he says this with a hint of pride in his voice.

“Not different from Frankenstein either,” I say.

“Or you might compare us to Adam and Eve, if you’re into fiction,” he says.

“You’re insane.”

“For wanting a better world than what Eklyptors can create? We are better than them. Better than humans.”

“No, for believing this scheme will work. It won’t.” My face flushes with the effort of containing my emotions.

“Is it that bad, Marci?”

“Bad and impossible. I will never be part of this.”

“You will see the good in it. You just need time to think about it.”

His arrogance makes him blind.

My hand clenches around the gun. The tips of my fingers relish the handle’s pitted surface. I could shoot him between the eyes and his precious dream would disappear. It would all be gone in the blink of an eye.

His little science experiment would never go anywhere without him or … without me.

I lift the gun to my temple. “I’d rather die.”