Twenty
Identity
The ride home was spent hovering over the jet’s computer terminal, conferencing with the War Room. Marco was busy on his end pulling up Corps photos, searching for any pictures of my mother in her early twenties. I sat like a lump in my chair, opposite Gage, finally able to empathize with his shock and fury over this violation of our lives and the memories of our loved ones.
My last memories of my mother were of a bloated, dying woman who had lived a full life, and then left me alone with a terrible secret. I had some residual anger, but I still loved her. I didn’t want someone else running around with her face—quite possibly with her DNA, too.
We’d made a few calls before leaving Oklahoma. Dr. Arroway’s home in Nichols Hill had been sold at auction last month, along with the contents. He had no immediate family and no friends outside work willing to talk to us. The money from his possessions had gone to various charities in Oklahoma City. And even though Dr. Schillinger said our trip was a waste of time, it had proved to be anything but.
“I believe I found a suitable photograph,” Marco said. “One moment.”
I launched out of my chair and stood behind Teresa, who hadn’t moved from the terminal since takeoff. The screen flickered, then switched over to an image of three young Rangers in uniform, posing as if for a publicity shot. The caption at the bottom read “Sledgehammer, Fathom, Anvil: Denver’s Newest Heroes.”
Sledgehammer was Anthony Hill, our late friend William’s father. He and Anvil had been partners for many years as young Rangers, because their powers complemented each other’s. Anvil’s skin could turn hard as iron, while Sledgehammer could, well, hit things really, really hard. And standing between the two men was my mother, Patricia Swift. The image closed in on her face.
Patricia Swift. Tricia Rice. Identical.
A whole lot of cuss words tumbled out of my mouth, one after another.
“Lo me siento, hermano.” The photo went away, and then Marco was back, his own face a mask of bitter fury. “They had no right.”
“This is insane,” I said. It didn’t make sense, not even a little bit. How could someone clone my mother? The fact that I was talking to her less than an hour ago made the entire thing too surreal to comprehend. Like it had happened to someone else.
“What the woman said to you about black ice was no accident,” Marco continued. “I believe it was a clue.”
“Why?”
“Black Ice was the code name for Janice Murphy, Janel’s mother.”
Janel Murphy had been one of our fellow Central Park survivors, one of the few to make it to HQ alive after our powers returned in January. She didn’t stay alive long, though. Specter possessed her, used her to torture Marco, and forced Teresa to kill Janel to save the rest of us (although I still got a ceiling dropped on me for my trouble). Considering her mother’s code name, Janel’s ice-manipulating abilities had apparently been inherited directly. Much like William had inherited his father’s incredible strength.
“You think Black Ice was cloned, too?” Teresa asked.
“Perhaps,” Marco replied.
“But why give us such an obvious clue?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Teresa said. “Maybe whoever’s in charge is leading us somewhere. Letting us see the Jasper clone’s face at the hospital doesn’t feel like an accident, and neither does running into Tricia Rice in Oklahoma.”
“They want us to figure out who they are?”
“It’s possible. Marco, when did Black Ice die?”
“Eighteen years ago,” Marco replied. “She was killed during a battle in Salt Lake City.”
“Two years before Fathom and Jasper died.”
“So the DNA was obtained by someone who worked at HQ or for MHC during the War,” Gage said. “We need to know who those people are.”
“That search is in progress,” Marco said. “I am also searching for more detailed personal information for Tricia Rice. She has a birth certificate and Social Security number, as well as a Bachelor of Science from Oklahoma State. However, documents can be forged.”
“Keep on it,” Teresa said.
“Por supuesto.”
“See you in about an hour.”
Switching off the terminal seemed to lessen the impact of our latest round of information. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I returned to my seat, less weirded out now that my mother’s photograph was no longer in plain sight. In the back of my mind, I knew untold horrors were still waiting to be uncovered. Horrors developed and bred at Springwell Lab and overseen by the late Dr. Arroway.
Weatherfield and Springwell hadn’t been the only labs developing Recombinants over the last three decades. They were just the only two we knew about. Weatherfield was supposedly developing the hybrid-Changelings as possible replacements for Metas. Had Springwell taken it a step further and decided simply to bring Metas back from the dead?
And why?
I didn’t really want to know the answer to that question, but Springwell had violated my mother’s memory by cloning her. I’d see that damned place torn to the ground inch by inch, even if I had to create a tornado to destroy it.
• • •
The best thing about the empty pool in our backyard was that it made a nice, deep hole in which to hide out and create whirlwinds. The old painted tiles were cracked and worn, and a few were pulled into the air I moved in a tight circle. I’d retreated there about an hour ago, needing some space and some time to work out my excess frustration. Sitting in the middle of the deep end, legs crossed and hands in my lap, I watched the dirty, tile-dotted air spin and roar in the small cyclone in front of me.
Unsurprisingly, Marco had found out that Tricia Rice’s identity was stolen. He’d been able to track down a death certificate for her Social Security number, purged from the system seven years ago. The age of the real Tricia Rice would put her at twenty-one, which matched the woman’s appearance. Using that as a lead, Marco had plunged into searching for other purged death certificates from the same time frame. Just in case the other clones had personal lives and day jobs, too.
I hadn’t been able to stay in the house. Too many concerned and sympathetic looks, especially from Dahlia, who’d tried to talk to me about McTaggert. I don’t know who told her, but I’d put my money on Renee. And as much as I’d wanted to talk to Aaron back in Oklahoma, now that I was home and able to, I just wanted to be alone.
So I was sitting at the bottom of a pool making a baby tornado, amusing myself with notions of dropping a few right on top of Springwell. Maybe even on Weatherfield, while I was at it, since they were still in business here in L.A. and just a few miles away in Studio City.
I kept up the whirlwind until exhaustion forced me to drop it. Dust and tile chips settled to the ground in a gray and white circle, and the sudden silence seemed incredibly loud.
“I was wondering how long you’d keep that up.”
Aaron’s voice next to me startled me into yelping. I scrambled to my feet and turned, heart pounding. He sat on the edge of the pool near the five-foot mark, legs dangling over the side.
“How long have you been watching me?” I asked.
“Dunno, a while. You looked like you needed to get that out of your system.”
I shrugged. “Some people run, some people punch heavy bags.”
“You make cyclones.”
“What do you want, Aaron?”
His eyebrows jumped. “Do you want me to leave?”
Yes. No. “Whatever.” I wandered to the opposite side of the pool and sat down with my back to the wall.
Not deterred by my bad attitude, Aaron jumped into the pool and came down the slope into the deep end. He sat next to me, close enough for me to feel his heat without our actually touching. “I won’t ask how you are, because you’re obviously not okay,” he said.
Sarcasm eluded me—I was so damned tired of my defensive walls, and Aaron didn’t deserve to slam into them—so I settled on honesty. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“Because you saw your mother today?”
“She wasn’t my mother.” I exhaled a hard, shaky breath. “But she looked just like her, probably has her DNA. Someone made her in a test tube, for f*ck’s sake. She isn’t real.”
Aaron’s entire body flinched. Shit. I’d put my whole foot in my mouth with that one. “You’re mad, and I get that,” he said. “Springwell had no right to do what they did, to clone your loved ones. But they’re still real people, maybe with no idea where their DNA came from.”
“Is that some sort of ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ speech?”
“Something like that.”
“They kidnapped my father and brother.”
“I know. And I know how that feels, that need to find them and punish the people who took them.” He did know. He’d gone through something very similar with Jimmy and Dr. Kinsey. “The big question, though, is why. Why did Springwell create the clones? And why did they take Freddy and Andrew?”
“They probably made the clones for the same reason they made the Changelings. Controllable soldiers with Meta-like powers. Only they don’t seem to be doing a great job controlling them.”
Aaron frowned. “The clones who attacked in New Jersey were probably following someone’s orders.”
I angled my head sideways and offered a tentative smile. “I meant you. You and your brothers busted out of Weatherfield.”
“To be fair, we were about to be terminated. Otherwise, we might never have left that lab. Or we may have left when they sent us to rob a bank, or kidnap a Meta and his son.”
“I’m glad that didn’t happen.”
He leaned closer until our shoulders and arms touched, and my skin prickled with awareness. I didn’t understand why I reacted like that to something as simple as physical contact, but I liked it. It made me feel less alone and even more grateful that Aaron and I hadn’t ended up as enemies. That maybe we could be more than friends.
“A lot’s changed in twenty-four hours,” he said.
“Story of my life.”
“I’d like to hear more about that sometime.”
“You know the important broad strokes.”
“Yeah, but it’s the details that make the person.”
“I hate strawberry ice cream.”
He laughed. “Okay, I will keep that in mind if you ever have your tonsils out.”
“Do you ever think about your mother?” I asked, the question popping out of my mouth before I realized it was even in my head.
Aaron sobered up quickly. “Which mother?”
“Not Mrs. Scott, not Aaron’s mother. King’s mother.”
Back during the initial Changeling experiments, Dr. Kinsey had donated his semen to the project, which made him (kind of) genetically related to Noah and Aaron. The egg donor had been anonymous for a long time, until we discovered it was actually the late Detective Liza Forney. She’d needed the money. Years later, she was killed by one of her own daughters.
“Honestly?” Aaron said. “No. She’s a name on paper to me. While I do recall the mothers of some of the lives who are a part of me, the mother I most remember is Trudy Scott. She was a great mom. And I don’t think we ever stop missing our parents.”
“I just wish I could go back to before I saw Tricia Rice.”
“We can’t change the past, Ethan.”
“I know that!” I blew hard through clenched teeth, desperate to control my anger. He didn’t deserve it; though he seemed to weather it well. “I keep wondering who else did they clone, you know? Gage’s brother, my mother, possibly even Janel’s mother. Who else is out there?”
“Something tells me we won’t have to wonder for long.”
“That’s what scares me the most.”
“What’s that?”
“Going up against people who look like our loved ones and not being able to do what’s right.”
“Fight them, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
Aaron shifted around to face me and took my hands. Squeezed them hard. I looked him in the eye, nervous about what I’d see, and saw only determination and confidence. And something else behind that, warmer and intense. “You were trained to be a Ranger, Ethan. To put the needs of others first. You’ll do what needs to be done.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I liked knowing someone believed in me. That Aaron believed in me. Despite the fact that anyone taking a late-night stroll through the backyard could see us, I took a chance and kissed him. He didn’t hesitate to kiss me back. There was no uncertainty between us now. Not at the bottom of the pool, or a few minutes later, when we tumbled into my bedroom. Not when the first cracks of sunrise woke us up, tangled together naked in my bed, exhausted but also somehow newly energized. Not when I nearly got us both going again because I just didn’t want to stop kissing him.
Aaron slipped out of bed and got dressed so he could return to his room before the rest of the house stirred. I didn’t ask him, and I liked that I didn’t have to. If this thing between us was real, we wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to hide it at all. I just didn’t know how to say it to him—or to my friends.
I waited a few minutes, content to remember the details of our first real night together, until my bladder told me to haul ass out of bed. I put on my robe and padded down the hall to the community bathroom. I pushed the door open and jumped back, startled to see Renee there so early in the morning.
She stood at the row of sinks wearing a gray sports bra and boy shorts. She was staring at herself in the mirror. The scars on her arms and chest stood out like bleach stains on a blue shirt. She lifted both arms straight out from her sides. Her left arm extended at the wrist as she used her Flex powers, stretching out to nearly four feet. Her right arm, which was covered in burn scars from shoulder to palm, did nothing. She retracted her left hand with a frustrated grunt.
“Couldn’t sleep, either?” she asked.
“Something like that,” I said and came fully inside the bathroom. The door swung shut with a whoosh of air that tickled the backs of my legs.
“F*cking burns.”
“They don’t still hurt, do they?” I stood next to her in front of the sink and met her eyes in the mirror. They were wet, shiny, ready to drop tears at any moment.
“Only when I try to be effective and use my powers.” She held up her right hand. “Can’t do anything with this one anymore. I can feel it, though, you know? The bone wanting to stretch and bend, but my skin won’t f*cking let it.”
My heart hurt for her. She loved her Flex powers, which allowed her to twist and stretch into impossible lengths and shapes. I couldn’t imagine feeling the potential of your power inside you and not being able to use it.
“My torso’s the same way,” she said, touching her marred abdomen. “I can still bend over backwards, but not stretch out, not like I used to. The only thing that hasn’t been affected are my legs, but what good have they ever done?”
Consoling words failed me. In a horrible way, she was right. She most often used her arms and torso when she stretched for any reason other than interior home repairs. She’d been terribly wounded by the Changeling Queen, and nothing I could say would ever make it better. Or change what had happened to her.
“I’ve been so damned useless during this whole thing,” she said when I didn’t respond. “I can’t do the kind of computer magic that Marco does. I don’t have active powers like you or T, and I can’t read people like Gage. Hell, even Aaron got to go to New York with you. What did I do? I stayed here with Double Trouble and babysat the twins, and even then Marco and Teresa did most of the training.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. I’d never seen Renee Duvall cry before, not since we were kids. The strong, adult woman who’d helped us fight Specter, who’d survived the heartache of William Hill’s death, who’d fiercely fought against Queen that day on the highway—she might be wounded, but she was far from useless.
“Hey.” I tugged her elbow and turned her away from the mirror, around to face me. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms over her ample chest.
I wiped a tear off her cheek with the pad of my thumb. “I see a beautiful, fiercely loyal woman who would do anything for her friends. I see someone who’s been hurt, and who just needs time to get back on her feet again. I don’t see your scars, Renee, I see you.”
Her face crumpled. I folded her into my arms, which was a slight challenge because she’s taller than me. She pressed her nose into my neck and cried silently for a while, and I held her tight. Held her after she’d quieted, until she pulled away and wandered to one of the toilet stalls to blow her nose. When she came back to the sinks, she gave me a curious look.
“What?” I asked.
“This is going to sound bizarre and maybe a little personal, but I’ve worked in Vegas—in a lot of different kinds of places in Vegas. . . . So I know things.”
Uh-oh. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, you smell kind of like a strip club, only minus the smoke and alcohol.” I stared blankly at her until she added, “You smell like sex, E. Did you get laid last night?”
My blank stare melted into panicked shock, with a side of revulsion. Did I really smell like sex? Good God.
Renee frowned. “There are three women in this house, two of whom are taken and the third of whom is me, so who—oh, hell. You didn’t bang the twin, did you?”
“No!” Jesus, Kate was practically a kid, and I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “Self-servicing?”
“Can you let it go, please?”
Proving he was the master of impeccable timing, Aaron chose that moment to walk into the bathroom clad in boxers and a wifebeater tank that showed off his toned arms and shoulders. Including one shoulder that sported an unfortunate mouth-shaped mark that was starting to bruise. My heart stopped, and not just because of the lusty look he gave me before he noticed Renee.
“Morning,” he said to her with a cheerful smile.
“Hi,” she said.
I felt her eyeballs burning into the back of my head, but I did not turn around. I couldn’t risk seeing her face, was too afraid of what I’d see. Surprise, for sure, but what else? Understanding? Disgust? The latter I could not handle, not today.
“Okay, well, later,” she said. She brushed past me and out the door.
Aaron watched it close, then gave me a curious look. “Is she okay?”
“She will be.” I hoped.
“Are you okay?”
I sighed. “Time will tell.”
Without explaining, I headed for the showers. Thankfully, Aaron didn’t follow me in. While I scrubbed down, I silently berated myself for not speaking up before Renee left. She wasn’t very good at keeping secrets, and she’d probably go straight to Teresa to try to make sense of her suspicions (Teresa was an excellent sounding board). I’d just outed myself with one hug, and I didn’t know how I felt about it.
I made it back to my room without running into anyone—one of the benefits of such a huge house with so few residents—and was tying my sneakers when an alert and Teresa’s voice came over the intercom system.
“War Room, guys. Now.”
Pulse racing with anticipation, I fled my room and took the stairs down two at a time. We converged on the War Room like a single entity, taking seats at the long conference table without the usual chatter. Renee had already claimed a chair at the far end nearest Teresa and Gage, and she didn’t look at me when I entered. I sat down in an empty seat next to Aaron (hidden behind Scott’s mask), without really thinking about it. Dahlia and Dr. Kinsey were also there, as well as a new guest—Agent Rita McNally. Even the Lowry twins were there, sitting together silently.
At the head of the table, Marco cracked a yawn and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted and had probably been working through the night.
“With a little help from Rita,” Teresa said, “we’ve been able to narrow down our list of MHC employees who had access to our loved ones’ remains and could have procured their DNA.” She pointed to a wall monitor behind my head, and I twisted around. Five names popped up on the screen. Two were nauseatingly familiar.
“These former employees are all still alive, and only one still works for ATF,” McNally added. “I’m certain you can guess which one most definitely does not.”
I glared at the name on the bottom of the list, recalling the last time I’d seen the man face-to-face. He’d been my mother’s attending physician when she died. Now he was working hard to see all Metas rounded up and eradicated.
Governor Martin Winstead.
“Winstead ceased working for ATF two months after the end of the War,” McNally continued. “He used his experiences with the Rangers and his anti-Meta stance to win and keep his position as governor of Texas. There are rumors he’s also closely tied to Sarah Renolly, the fourth person on our list.”
“Renolly’s the surgeon general,” Dr. Kinsey said.
“Yes, she is.”
“There have always been rumors that the government had a hand in Recombinant research, that they wanted their own army in case the”—air quotes—“ ‘Meta threat’ ever returned. This is practically the proof we need.”
“What about the other names on the list?” Gage asked.
“They all worked in the Medical Center as technicians,” McNally replied. “They aren’t doctors or researchers, so, while they had access, they had less motive.”
“Except money.”
“We checked their records for the last twenty years. Nothing unusual stood out, no large deposits or holdings that we could find.”
“What about Winstead and Renolly?”
She hesitated. “I’ve dug as far as public records allow, but I’m hesitant to go too deeply. The information we need is probably tagged, and we could open an even deadlier hornet’s nest if we look in the wrong place.”
“You helped us immensely already,” Teresa said. “Thank you.”
“You know I’ll help in any way that I can.”
“But why try cloning dead Metas?” Dahlia asked. “We know they can create Recombinants and give them powers, so why double up?”
“Likely in case one procedure fails,” Dr. Kinsey said. “When the hybrid-Changelings were first conceived, we had no way of being certain they’d be born with the powers they had. Even their Changeling abilities continued to surprise us as they grew older.”
“They were hedging their bets on the best method of creating supersoldiers,” I said.
“Precisely. Their cloning methods have proven to be exceptionally frightening.”
“How’s that?”
“You described Tricia Rice as looking to be in her early twenties, and yet your mother only died sixteen years ago. It’s likely they found a method to speed up the aging process in their clones.”
“Or our timeline guess is way off,” Aaron said. “Isn’t it also possible the DNA was obtained before their deaths? At any time during their tenure at the Rangers HQ?”
I hadn’t really considered that, and judging by the looks on several faces, I wasn’t the only one. We’d all assumed that because the clones were of dead loved ones, the DNA was stolen postmortem. What if we were wrong?
“That would certainly put us back to the beginning in terms of suspects,” Teresa said. “Until we find a way to get more answers, all of this is circumspect and guesswork. The largest question we still haven’t answered is, why use these clones to kidnap McTaggert and his son?”
“Public panic, more support for Winstead, less sympathy toward the Metas like Mark Sanderson who are being murdered,” I said, ticking the items off on my fingers. “Making it look like McTaggert orchestrated his own jail break is the perfect way to remove any sympathy the Warren gained after the copter crash.”
“Which keeps Winstead high up on our suspect list,” Aaron said.
McNally’s phone rang. She glanced at the display and her eyebrows rose. She held up a single finger, silently excusing herself, then walked to the corner of the room to answer it. “Agent McNally.” After a moment, she turned to face us, her expression one of perfect confusion. “No, sir, I’m certain they aren’t.”
Gage blanched. He was obviously listening into the conversation, but didn’t relay anything to us.
“Because I’m looking at each of them right now,” McNally said, probably in response to a question, and I was suddenly very, very jealous of Gage’s superhearing. “Of course, sir. We’ll be there as soon as possible.” She slipped her phone back into the pocket of her suit jacket. “We have a new problem.”
“Which is what?” Teresa asked.
“A passerby reported seeing movement through the front gate of Ranger HQ. And we’ve just received information that power has been turned on at the Base. Someone’s there.”