He led her to side-by-side screens. Each held what she recognized as DNA sequencing, along with numbers that made no sense to her. “This is what you sent a couple weeks ago, your full genetic analysis from the military,” he said, pointing to one. “And here’s the one I just ran on you now. They’re not the same.” He glanced over at her when she made no response. “You’re not surprised.”
“I am…,” she said slowly. “Well, I don’t know. Obviously I wouldn’t have had you do it if I didn’t think there was something weird about it, but I didn’t really know what to expect. Maybe the military sent you someone else’s records.”
“I’d believe that if the results they sent were completely different from these. But theirs is almost like this one. When you compare theirs to the real thing, it’s obvious theirs has been altered. It’s been altered in a way to make it look more…real.”
“What else would it be?” she asked.
“It would look like this.” He tapped the screen on the right. “You’ve got a genetic makeup exactly like the patrician victims. Indescribably perfect. Beautifully crafted genes. Someone did a very good job of putting believable flaws into the one the military has. I never would’ve guessed it was fake if I didn’t have obvious proof here that this is you.”
He almost sounded embarrassed at his oversight, but she supposed a technical genius would consider this a big failing. As for her, she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen or still the racing of her heart.
“The last crazy piece,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “This makes it official.”
“After everything that’s happened, ‘crazy’ is kind of becoming the status quo. I mean, you’re a designer baby created through either breakthrough genetic manipulation or the intervention of a goddess. And after what I saw that night…” No more swagger from Leo. “Well, I don’t know what I believe. I’m still on the side of science, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t unnerved that you and Justin haven’t been nearly as shocked by this stuff as you should be. That kind of freaks me out.”
“Speaking from the side of science, can you think of a reason for why the military would have altered genetic information on me?” she asked.
Leo lost his philosophical air and turned wry. “I learned a long time ago that there’s nothing the military won’t do. They have secrets within secrets….” He hesitated. “Especially with pr?torians.”
She held his gaze. “You really do know a lot about pr?torians.”
“I’m not up-to-date on them anymore.” He gave her a smile they both knew was faked. “I’m just a guy who works on birth control.”
After they finished up, she declined his offer to stay the night. Neither would’ve enjoyed it. There was a late train going back to Vancouver, and sleep didn’t matter to her. It did matter for a phone call she wanted to make, and the night passed slowly as she waited for the world to wake up. She tried reading and watching movies, but her mind couldn’t focus on any of it. At last, morning approached, and she decided it was a reasonable enough hour in New Stockholm to call her mother.
Astrid Koskinen answered, groomed to her usual state of perfection. Mae hadn’t woken her up, which hopefully meant she’d be in a cooperative mood.
“Maj, what a surprise. We’ve had more contact this month than we have in a year. I’m surprised you can take time from your fame and glory to check in on your family. Everyone’s talking about the little scene you made during your visit.”
Only her mother could call shooting someone in public a “little scene.” Mae wasn’t surprised the locals had discovered she was the pr?torian involved. It was enough to have just stayed out of the national media.
“You lied to me,” Mae said. “You told me you just made a genetic deal, that there wasn’t any connection to a religion. But that’s not true. I remember! I was in her temple. You took me. My story matches a dozen others. We were all given those crow pendants. How could you do that? How could you pay that kind of price for a perfect baby?”
Her mother’s lack of shock was answer enough. “There you go again with using ‘perfect’ all the time. You certainly have a high opinion of yourself.”
“Someone else died for me. You bound me to a death goddess. You wiped out the family’s finances.”
“No,” spat her mother. “You wiped them out when you chose duty to a uniform over duty to us. We’re one of the few families with more Finnish in our blood than Swedish. Do you know how rare that is?”
“Duty to you? You had a loan you couldn’t repay. You gambled that you could sell me off for a profit, and your plan failed.”