Mimics of Rune 02- Surrender (37 page)

Cael forced himself not to jerk back. “I thought you were testing her abilities when pregnant.”

“No. I wasn’t. Her records showed her as pregnant, but I didn’t think she was, and the test results confirmed that.” She pressed into Lily’s stomach.

Just as when Cael had touched her, she moaned.

No sooner did Herri release her hands than Lily’s entire body seized.

30

Cael jumped toward Lily as Herri rolled her onto her side.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

One of Herri’s hands cupped the back of Lily’s neck. “If my guess is right, the procedure they put her through is having a few side effects.”

Cael had a desperate need to take Lily’s torture as his own, to save her from any pain. He ran his hands over her arms, touching and wishing she would wake and tell him how to fix it for her.

Her head lolled to the side, and a stream of liquid escaped her mouth just before her body convulsed again.

“Get me a bulb syringe from the second drawer,” Herri said.

Cael jumped to the cabinets, searching the second of each line until he found what he thought she’d asked for. “Should we call for more help?”

Lily groaned, rolling farther to her side on the bed.

Herri shook her head as she inserted the tube between Lily’s lips and began draining fluid.

Moans broke from Lily with a cough.

Cael leaned over Lily as Herri continued her work. “Lil? Can you hear me?”

Gurgles erupted from within her.

Herri touched Lily’s forehead with the back of her hand. “Get her to the bath.”

No sooner had Herri said it, Lily’s back arched into a rigid arc.

“Now! Pick her up and bring her.” Herri scrambled around the bed, racing to the room.

Water spurted from the faucet as Cael lifted a limp again Lily. Her entire body radiated heat.

“Set her in here and go get me ice. Everything that’s in the fridge.” She took hold of Lily’s hair, pulling it into a tail at the nape of her neck. “It’s okay. We’re right here.” Herri shot a glare in Cael’s direction. “Go.”

He spun away, and as he raced into the kitchen, almost bumping into James going the same direction, the suite door opened again.

Simone walked in. Her hands covered her mouth as James yanked the bucket of ice from the fridge and tossed it to Cael.

No sooner had he let go than James grabbed Simone and covered her mouth with his hand. “Lily’s going to be okay. Really. I’ll deal with this one.”

Cael left James, re-entered the bathroom and dumped the entire ice bucket into the tub. Lily’s already pale skin went even more translucent, her lips changing from light pink to almost blue.

The effect reminded Cael of his first transition from just-another-human boy to Mimic. A pang hit him in the chest. He’d had his mom to take care of him. Lily’d had nobody. She’d endured whatever her body forced on her either alone or in the company of people who only came to observe, not comfort.

At a motion to his left, Cael turned.

“Everything okay?” James asked.

Herri’s head whipped around from James to Cael and back.

“He’s one of my team. Where’s … the girl?” Cael asked.

“She called in her update and is now tied up in the other room. How’s Lily doing?” James asked.

Cael bobbed his head toward the shivering Lily. “She’s sick.”

“Sick like she ate something sick or sick like—”

“The latter. What Ro—Randall did to her is torturing her from the inside out.”
Or that’s what it looks like.

James’s hand landed on Cael’s shoulder. “Be happy, then, that she’s asleep and won’t remember a bit of it. That’s the best thing she could get out of it all.”

Cael would agree except he wanted it not to have happened in the first place.

“Will one of you get me a thermometer strip? Top drawer over there?” Herri pointed to the tall white bathroom cabinet.

James slipped inside and scrounged through until he returned with one.

Herri slipped the device against Lily’s forehead. The red line moved straight to one hundred. “Good. I’m just going to keep her in here a while longer, though.”

Cael knelt at Herri’s side. “Please … tell me what’s wrong with her.”

• • •

Herri’s eyes darkened in a way Cael had seen in many humans. The seriousness in them tugged at him. “Mimics work like humans in many, many ways, but not all ways. I’ve tested dozens of your kind over the last couple decades. I’ve worked with kids and with adults. I’ve studied their secondary DNA strands and their human ones. Lily and one other are the first I’ve ever tested that have the
full
second strand. So, I can’t be sure on every little aspect.” She heaved a breath. “When you all blend, you do so with someone who shares a birthday. That puts your bodies in a sort of symbiotic harmony and allows the second strand to blend with the first.”

Cael had never cared enough to understand the actual genetics, just knew that rules existed.

“In order to be admitted to this facility, you have to prove your nature. I had her DNA.”

“From where?” James asked.

Herri shook her head and shrugged.

Roy.
Cael shot a look at James.

“Well, I looked at her DNA again this afternoon to make sure what I thought I’d seen still showed. And it did.”

“What did?”

As the thermometer strip dropped below ninety-nine, Herri rose. “Help me get her back to the bed, please.”

Cael slid his arms into the cool water and lifted a dripping Lily out. He marched with her in his arms and sat on the bed, still cradling her. “Can I … just …”

Herri gave him a slow nod. “Sure, sure,” she said, wiping her hands dry. “I focused on the two strands the first time, and how brilliant it was to see a fully formed second. But, at the same time, the strands lie scarily close to each other. In a normal Mimic, those strands are far apart, millimeters, but in genetics, that’s enough. I thought Lily had already blended somehow, though that didn’t fit exactly either, because in a blend, the strands overlay one right on top of the other. That’s how close hers are together, though. That’s why it was so surprising to me to find she could still perform
any
actions as a Mimic.”

“What the hell are you talking about? She blended with someone?” James’s fury reflected Cael’s.

After all the years that passed, he’d lost his chance and didn’t even know it. “Wait … if she did blend, how can she—”

Herri held up a hand. “The less diluted the line, the more capabilities the Mimic has.”

“But Lily—”

“Yes, yes, but Lily.” She chuckled. “She thinks she has almost no abilities, when in fact, she still
has
her abilities. Some of them, at least.”

“But if the lines are still separate … ?” Cael couldn’t wrap his head around it. From everything he understood, once a blend happened, there could be no return.

James’s watch signaled a check-in time for Roy. “Let me just take care of some administrative services.” His smile broadened. “You two keep going, just be quiet.”

Herri pulled her stethoscope out again and placed it against Lily’s chest. At the same time, she took Lily’s wrist in her hand. “I think she started and
stopped
the blend process at some time in her past.” Herri made the same head movements, ticking time along with whatever she listened to. “How she discontinued the action or backed out of it, I don’t know. That’s the uniqueness of having no dilution of her Mimic genes. She has abilities none of us can even imagine.”

Which is true of Roy, too.
“That might explain why she doesn’t have the ability she thinks she should,” Cael said. “What if, during her time—uh—back then … she was forced …”

Herri’s eyes grew wide. “Was she part of the MIME program?”

“I didn’t know it had a name.”

“Oh, dammit. Now I get it.” Herri slapped her palm with her forehead. “No wonder she fainted at the sight of a needle. And she volunteered for whatever this?” Herri waved her hand over Lily’s stomach.

Cael nodded.

Herri closed her eyes and ran a hand over Lily’s head. “Talk about a tough one. That program was disbanded twenty-five years ago.”

“Only that recently?” Cael’s hold on Lily grew tighter.

“Yes. Matthew restarted it ten years ago with explicit directives—as I’ve mentioned. We have a clear purpose.”

And Roy has marred an otherwise bright spot.

“It’s very likely she was forced to blend as an experiment. But again, how she refrained … I don’t know. Rumor has it they were injecting Mimics with other Mimic DNA or what they knew of it years ago. Rudimentary science at best, let me tell you.”

And that’s exactly what Roy is doing and probably has it all figure out.
Cael squeezed Lily against himself. “What if they were doing that again? Would it work?”

Herri’s frown suggested otherwise. “That kind of testing was ceased because of the dangers and side effects and …” She turned to Lily and back. “Just like now. Matt’s program made sure all testing was subject to individual approval and acknowledgement, age constraints and personal future goals.
I
made sure of that. We do our work because your kind want us to, not because we’re forcing anyone.” The more Herri talked, the more emotion clouded her tone.

“What if that’s what they did to Lily? The DNA stuff. And the side effect is her lack of ability. What does that mean for her going forward?”

“For her final change to be fully realized, I’ll guess she only has to finish the process. But I don’t think anyone can ever know, exactly, until it’s over.”

“What about her temp?”

Herri shook her head. “Again, we just don’t know what it will have done.” She rose from her spot on the bed. “In sleep, we heal. Let her rest. Wait and see.”

“We’re taking her home tonight,” Cael said.

Herri smiled. “I don’t blame you. She never should have signed up for this. She’s already been through too much.”

“We’re taking Leigh, too,” Cael said.

If the doctor’s eyes could have gotten wider, Cael expected they would have. “But you can’t—”

“She’s Lily’s niece. She wasn’t signed up for this legitimately, and neither was Lily. The first was a ruse to get Lily down here.”

The head-into-hand drop and further shake came as Herri said, “We’ve got to look back at this program, and the gating we have in place for privacy and security.” She popped back up. “Everything we’ve done has been to try and accommodate, to help and be secure. A breach like this isn’t going to buy us any friends and will make quite a few enemies.”

“Look for the money. I think that’s where the issues start,” Cael said.

Herri let out a long sigh. “It shouldn’t surprise me. We’re funded by several governments around the world. I thought—I thought Matthew had that part under control.” She held out a hand. “I’m so sorry. Thank you … for telling me. I’m going to …” That same hand waved as if to say ‘do something I haven’t figured out yet’. “I think I need to go.”

“What about Lily?” Cael stood, too, laid Lily on the bed and motioned for Herri to continue on through the living room where James waited.

“There’s nothing more I can do. Just keep her core body temperature below one hundred two.”

As they reached the door, Cael said, “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure, but I gotta tell you … I’m feeling very unsure of myself and my role anymore.”

“No more than the rest of us. Um … if she blended before, she’d only be symbiotic with that one person, right?”
Just like any Mimic. So, not Roy but not me, either.

“Honestly? I have no idea. But as you know, there’s only one way to know for sure. If she alters her form tomorrow, you’ll know whatever he did didn’t work. If she holds her shape over the midnight hour the day after, and remembers you, you’re golden.”

• • •

Cael went back to Lily after Herri left. He gathered her in his arms and held her, wishing for a solution that didn’t involve needles, blood or anything related to their kind. For the first time in his life, he wished Lily could be human so she couldn’t ever be used like she had been. Ever again.

The swish of the front door followed with Maggie’s call out of, “Just me!” She stood in the middle of the door frame. “How’s she doing?”

“Worse, but we might have gotten some answers.”

“And I take it, by those granite lines in your forehead, they weren’t good?”

Cael kissed Lily’s crown and moved away. He tilted his head toward the interior room but kept Lily’s door open to keep watch on her.

“The boat’s ready. But so is Roy’s plane. You’re going to have to take the long way around to avoid him.” She pointed toward the ocean.

“What about Leigh?”

“She’s not important right now. Roy plans to leave … like
now
.” She gripped his bicep. “You have to go. You really do. Take her. Carry her. Stay on the beach if you have to, but get Lily out of here.”

“She wouldn’t want me to leave Leigh. That was her entire purpose.”

“I know. Look—”

Jackie walked in as the three of them stood together, Cael as Kevin, James as an unsecured Cael and Maggie as herself. Three people who shouldn’t have been standing together chatting like old friends in Lily’s room. Jackie’s brow creased. Her eyes narrowed. Cael’s heartbeat sped up as she seemed to take in the scene, her eyes darting right and left. Her hand clenched and released.

What’s taking her so long to decide something’s wrong?

“Simone’s not in her room or at her station at the lab. Have you seen her?” She directed her question to Cael, her expression unchanged and wary.

He shrugged, trying to keep a light, nothing-is-wrong-here feel. “No, and I’m not her babysitter.”

Jackie leaned around Cael as if to check that Lily still lay on the bed. “Randall wants sleepy-girl on the plane in fifteen. You’re in charge of getting her there.” She angled one finger Cael’s way. “Got that?”

“I got it.”

She spun around and left.

“She knows,” James said.

“She does,” Maggie said. “That means you gotta go right now. Now, now, now!” She spun Cael around and pushed him toward Lily. “James, finish your change into Kevin and—”