QUEENS
Laura’s heart went out to the surviving nadaný as she watched them take their seats in a circle. Even Tanisha, fresh from the hospital with her bandaged stump, had shown up for the impromptu memorial service for Iggy and Ellis. Those who wanted to speak had said their piece, offering what memories they had and their wishes that things had turned out differently. Ruthie broke down about Iggy too many times to finish.
Then it came time for Luis to confirm what Laura had feared when Marie could detect no nadaný anywhere, and what all the nadaný already knew. Laura, Rick, and Stahlman stood to the side while he moved to the center, his ever-present iPad clutched against his chest, and turned in a slow circle as he spoke.
“I’ve checked and double-checked all of you and there’s no doubt: Your zeta waves are gone.”
Annie sobbed openly. She was taking it the hardest. Iggy had been her first friend among the nadaný, and now this: Invisibility had been part of her everyday life for years—a way of life for her.
“How’d this happen?” Leo said. Normally he’d be floating a few inches above his chair, just because he could. Now his butt was parked like everyone else’s. “You go to bed special and you wake up ordinary.”
“Yeah,” Ruthie said. “Freaks one day, dweebs the next.”
Laura was struck by the two contrasting self-images. Leo had been working hard to develop his talent, while Ruthie, in many ways, had wanted to hide from it.
“I think I can help there,” Rick said from outside the circle. “But it’s a long story.”
The nadaný were unanimous about wanting to hear it, so Rick stepped into the middle and pulled a sheet of paper from his back pocket.
“Need my notes,” he said. “I’m starting at Genesis.”
Laura, Rick, Stahlman, and Maureen had spent hours last night piecing Maureen’s recollections together with the information from the CIA thumb drive to collate a coherent timeline.
So Rick started not with Genesis but with World War II, the Kohnstein, and the Lange-Tür theories, moved through the construction of the bunker in 1947, the arrival of the Anomaly in 1957, the discovery of melis in 1984, and the opening of the Modern Motherhood Clinics in the 1990s.
“Okay, that’s how we became nadaný,” Cyrus said. “But now we’re not. What happened?”
“That’s where the guesswork comes in,” Rick said. “We’ve talked to all of you and not one of you remembers being able to use their gift after dawn yesterday. The Anomaly disappeared just before dawn yesterday. Coincidence? We don’t think so. We think the Anomaly’s presence on Earth or in this dimension or whatever the case may be—we’ll probably never know where it came from or where it went—somehow fueled your gifts. When some of you were brought into proximity with it, your gifts were amplified. And when it left, your gifts powered down.”
“ ‘Powered down’?” Cyrus said, balling a piece of paper in his fist, then opening to show how it remained in his palm. “It’s gone!”
“Now, we don’t know that,” Luis said. He’d backed away but now moved again to the center, which Rick seemed all too happy to yield. “It might just be dormant.”
“Bullshit!” Leo said.
Luis shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. You can get mad and walk away, but that won’t get you an answer.”
“What will get us answers?”
“Stay and work with Luis,” Stahlman said, moving into the circle. “I’m offering the same terms and accommodations as before. Who knows? Doctor Montero might be able to discover something. And if he can’t, if it should turn out to be a total waste of time, at least you’ll be well compensated for that time.”
When everyone started talking at once, Rick took Laura’s arm and led her back to Stahlman’s office, where Maureen waited. Not knowing how the others would react, she’d elected to audit the meeting out of sight.
“That went pretty well,” she said.
Laura didn’t know how to feel about Maureen. So many conflicts. Although nothing like Laura’s mother, Maureen was the same age. Her graying, maternal look made it hard for Laura to believe what she’d done. And she couldn’t help but hate what she’d done—experimenting with unborn children would remain forever unforgiveable in Laura’s book. But then, one on one, she’d found the woman smart, sincere, and … likable. Not without a moral compass, either. How had she gone wrong?
Laura faced her. “You’re the biologist. You think there’s any chance they can get their gifts back?”
“Truth?” Maureen hesitated, then shook her head. “No. Or at least I doubt it very much. Melis had a definite impact on their genes—changes we might be able to identify. But identifying them won’t be enough, I’m afraid. The Anomaly’s presence or influence seemed to be necessary to activate them.”
“Maybe that influence can be duplicated or mimicked,” Rick said.
She smiled. “That’s just what I’m hoping to do.”
“You?” Laura said.
“Mister Stahlman has asked me to help, not just with the nadaný but with other potential manifestations of melis.”
That jolted Laura. “ ‘Potential’? You don’t mean …?”
“Who, me? No way. I did what I did and you know what I did, and that was it. I wish I hadn’t, but it’s done and I can’t go back. I can be useful going forward, though.”
“I’ve wanted to ask you that,” Laura said. “How did you come to do what you did?”
Maureen leaned back against Stahlman’s desk. “I wish I knew. All I can say is I got lost in the project. I started out doing pure research—learning its properties and such. I was never supposed to get involved in testing it on animals except for toxicity.”
“But you went beyond that.” Way beyond.
“Not because I wanted to.”
“They forced you?” Rick said.
“Yes. At first. Then I got into it. Melis was my baby—I named it, after all. And then, after the Pentagon allowed me to see where it came from, I … I don’t know. It was like I’d been admitted to a cult—a select group who knew this strange and wonderful and terrible secret. I never thought it could happen to me, but you can become so immersed in something, in a subculture—and as much as I didn’t like Greve, he and I and the others at Lange-Tür formed our own private echo chamber where melis ruled. After a while, all that mattered was finding out what it could do—or what we could make it do.” She shook her head. “Total loss of perspective.”
Rick said, “So if you only did the clinics, what other ‘manifestations’ could be out there?”
A shrug. “Who knows? I wasn’t the only researcher handed a supply of melis. It went to other places.”
Laura felt her stomach turn. “Really? Like where?”
“I don’t know. I asked Greve many times but he never gave me a straight answer. He used to love to tell me how far it was above my clearance. But he’d drop hints, you know, like you can be sure some melis has been doled out to places like Plum Island and the animal research center in Nebraska. Things like that.”
Bad enough about animals, but … “What about people?”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“That’s awful!”
Maureen seemed to take offense. “I’m sure the researchers don’t think so. I thought I might be increasing kids’ intelligence. I’m not justifying the means, but the end was noble. Back in the day I overheard talk at the bunker about using melis to make stem-cell therapies more effective. Who knows where that could lead?”
Rick had a sour expression. “Knowing where it came from, I’m saying it can’t lead anywhere good.”
Maureen sighed. “After the other night, I tend to agree with you. But Mister Stahlman wants to see if I can come up with a marker to identify people who’ve been exposed to melis.”
“And then what?” Rick said.
“And then see what’s different about them.”
“Without a finder like Marie,” Laura said, “that sounds like a tall order—like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“Maybe not. According to Greve, DoD has spread a lot of melis around.”
Rick didn’t look too happy about that. “Really? How much we talking about?”
Maureen gave another shrug. “He said stem-cell applications look very promising. But even big pharma companies like Merck and Schelling and Pfizer have been given supplies to experiment with for new drug development. Never told the origin, of course. DoD has a whole vat of it. Plenty to go around.”
Laura stared at Rick. “Oh, my.”
SHIRLEY
Did it get any better than this?
Rick slouched on the couch next to Marissa and pretended to be engrossed in the Mets game against the Braves, their rival for a playoff spot, while Laura puttered around in the kitchen. They’d feasted on filet mignon—marinated by Laura, grilled by Rick—and Champagne.
Hanging out with the two best people in the world. He’d never dreamed he’d know this kind of bliss, and he was still pretty sure he didn’t deserve it.
And then the Braves’ left fielder hit a single that drove in the man on second, giving them the lead.
Marissa shook both fists at the screen. “I hate the Braves!”
“Don’t hate, honey,” Laura said from the kitchen.
In a low voice, Rick said, “Say you have great antipathy for the Braves.”
“What’s ‘antifathy’?”
“Antipathy. Means strong dislike.” Or something like that. “Tell your mother.”
“Hey, Mom. I have great antipathy for the Braves.”
“That’s nice. Wait—what?”
Marissa chortled. Did nine-year-olds chortle? This was the only little girl he knew so—
And then Marissa grabbed his hand—well, mostly his thumb—and squeezed.
“I’m glad you’re back, Rick. You make me smile inside.”
He didn’t respond. Couldn’t. His throat had locked.
It came to him then that if the two best people in the world thought he was okay, how bad could he be?
When Marissa wasn’t looking he ran the cuff of his shirt across his damp eyes.
Damn allergies.