Siegbert and Marcel grew up surrounded by the preposterous. Their mother might come down to breakfast with feathers cascading down her back instead of hair. Their father was usually surrounded by a choir of chirping dragonflies and had been known to vault down the side of the building rather than using the stairs. The family dog, a West Highland white terrier named Chloe, did not age. Visiting cousins would excuse themselves to the bathroom to shed their skins and reemerge as members of a different race.
The boys themselves did not receive any enhancements. Like ballet dancers who had to wait for the bones in their feet to ossify before they could go up en pointe, they were kept completely and perfectly human. However, they often observed their parents’ projects and might be called upon to put a finger on some sutures, drip compounds into a subject’s eyes, or reach their little hands into an incision and tweak something that Mama could not reach. When they were twelve, their understanding of anatomy and medicine would have placed them in the highest echelons of normal surgeons. That, plus the fact that they were direct descendants of Graaf Ernst, meant there was no question that they would become members of the Broederschap.
Except that Marcel questioned it.
He was well advanced in his apprenticeship as a Grafter when he made the decision. Under Marcel’s care, a somewhat startled dog had given birth to kittens, and he’d had several useful organs added to his system. However, two weeks after his nineteenth birthday, Marcel canceled his appointments and retired to his bedroom, where he spent several days meticulously removing all the alterations that had been made to his body. He emerged several pounds lighter, sporting his original cheekbones and teeth, and calmly announced to his startled parents that he was enlisting in the French army.
*
“Why?” asked Felicity.
“I was dissatisfied with the direction my life was taking,” said Marcel easily. “I did not care for the person I was at that point. I judged that a drastic change was needed.”
*
Marcel’s parents were distraught at this rejection, and the Broederschap was shocked, but in the high ranks there was no tremendous concern. Marcel had made it clear that he was not severing connections with his family, that he held no resentment toward them for their lifestyle, and that he had no intention of revealing any secrets or using their knowledge for his own gain. No one doubted his character or, more important, his discretion, and so they wished him the best of luck as he began his career as a private in the VIIe Armée.
Marcel did well in the army, rising at a respectable clip and acquitting himself with valor on every occasion where it was appropriate. Though his appearances at family functions were always welcome, and he and Siegbert corresponded on a regular basis, relations with his parents remained painful and awkward, even after he married his second cousin Claudette, who was a Grafter. Siegbert, meanwhile, had married a sensible lady named Aimée who was not a Grafter but who had figured out her new family’s capabilities through the simple strategy of observing them and being willing to accept that the impossible might not be.
Marcel’s letters to Siegbert grew more and more concerned as the political situation in Germany became increasingly turbulent. Marcel urged his brother to pass his disquietude on to the heads of the brotherhood. The disquietude was duly communicated, but if any action was taken, it was not apparent to Siegbert.
In 1939, Marcel was posted to the northern front under Giraud. He saw serious battle against the Germans and was promoted to lieutenant. When Giraud’s army was crushed in Belgium in May 1940, an injured Marcel could not face the prospect of evacuation to Britain — his Grafter upbringing and the terrifying stories of the Checquy prevented him from even entertaining the possibility. Instead, he deserted and took refuge with family members in Antwerp. He reluctantly permitted them to repair his damaged leg on the firm understanding that it would be restored to standard leg specifications with no convenient weaponry or storage pouches added.
At that point, the leaders of the Broederschap, Graafs Ernst and Gerd, arrived, word of Marcel’s situation having been passed along the family grapevine. They sat down with their descendant and, after some cursory inquiries after one another’s health, the talk turned to current events. Thus, over tea and pfeffernüsse, Marcel learned that the Grafters were in a state of crisis.
It seemed that while the members of the Broederschap were more than willing to eschew earthly affairs, earthly affairs were unwilling to render them the same courtesy. This did not astound Marcel, but most of the Grafters were completely taken aback. The graafs and the elder members had lived through a number of conflicts, including the Kettle War, the Napoleonic Wars, la Guerra de los Agraviados, l’Insurrection Royaliste dans l’Ouest de la France, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Austrian Civil War, but none of them had proven to be terribly disruptive. Even the Great War had not really done much more than mildly inconvenience them. As a result, while some preparations had been made, they had anticipated that this squabble, like so many others, would wash on by.
Instead, the weight of modern war had descended upon the brotherhood just as it had on all the normal people in Europe, bringing with it all the attendant problems: supply shortages, armed conflict, general chaos. Lines of communication between the chapter houses were constantly disrupted. No contact could be made with the Grafter relatives in Germany, and it was feared that they had been arrested or killed. There had already been casualties among them — an errant bomb blast had consumed an important laboratory with a group of apprentices inside; soldiers had gunned down a two-hundred-year-old master crafter of lungs. Most dire of all to Marcel, Paris had fallen to the invaders, and they had received no word from the Grafters who lived there.
Paris, home to Claudette, Siegbert, and Aimée (who, last anyone heard, had been pregnant with their first child), as well as Marcel’s parents.
In Marcel, the graafs saw a man who was fully engaged in the world. A man who knew the brotherhood, who was bound to them, and who could be trusted. They asked for his help and struck an agreement. Two Chimera soldiers, equipped with some of the most deadly weaponry in their arsenal, would accompany Marcel to Paris. They would ascertain the status of the seventeen Grafters known to reside there, including Arjan, Hendrika, Claudette, and Siegbert. The graafs’ greatest priority was to prevent any Broederschap technology from falling into the hands of the Nazis. Marcel’s greatest priority was to get his family somewhere safe.
If the Parisian Grafters were dead, their corpses were to be incinerated and every trace of their work removed or destroyed. If they had been imprisoned, they were to be rescued or, failing that, rendered useless to the enemy through any means necessary. If they were alive and free, Marcel and his team would bring them to Belgium, which, though occupied, was where the Grafters were consolidating themselves. Then, provided he survived, Marcel would take the security of the Grafters in hand and bring them through the war, however long it lasted.