“All right,” Meg shrugged. “You first.”
“Right round the time you were born, I was living in Southern California finishing my residency at a psychiatric ward. One of my old fraternity brothers from my time at Oxford happened to get a job in the area. We went out for drinks and the topic of what he was working on came up. He said he was working on a secret project that was showing promise.” Arkdone moved with grace and athleticism toward the lounge across from where Meg stood still absorbing his story.
“After a few more drinks, I got it out of him that he was consulting a lead doctor on the cutting edge of experimentation at his laboratory, the Institute for Neurobiological Studies. My friend was just an ER resident at the time so he didn’t have much spare time to help at the Institute, but he did have access to this breakthrough serum of which they had just concluded some successful human trials.” Arkdone crossed his legs so the ankle of one leg rested on the knee of the other before he continued.
“My inebriated friend had a very loose tongue that night at the club. I wanted to know more, so I played on his ego. I tricked him into proving his access to such a discovery. I drove us to the Institute and stayed in the car while he ran inside to get the proof.” Arkdone shook his head and smiled at the memory.
“When he came back out he had a small black case with him. In the case was a vial labeled with a simple infinite symbol and a series of numbers. ‘How is this proof’?” I asked him.
“‘What do you want me to do to prove it? Inject you?’ and he laughed at his idea until we got back to my small flat. I was going to have him sleep it off on my sofa since he’d passed out anyway. Once I got him situated, I found myself staring at the vial and thinking.”
“You injected yourself?” Meg asked, completely engrossed in his story.
“That I did. Best impulsive decision I’ve ever made. ‘Course at the time, I thought I’d just killed myself with the agony I felt for several days. My buddy took care of me and swore me to secrecy. You know, he still works at that same ER in Upland, California, after all these years.” Arkdone shook his head, lost in his thoughts for a moment before adding, “You wouldn’t remember this, Meg, but you’ve met him and he knows Margo, too. He was the doctor who worked on all of you after the explosion at the Institute a year ago.”
Meg shook her head. “You’re right, I don’t remember.”
Arkdone shrugged. “No matter, really. He’s my fraternity brother, but if he weren’t, I probably wouldn’t have remembered him either.”
“So you chose to become a metahuman?”
“Yes.”
Meg nodded slowly, thinking.
“My turn,” the Senator said with a wide grin.
“Go ahead,” Meg lifted her chin as though readying herself for a punch to the jaw and not a question.
Chapter 59 Flawed Gifts
“He’s right. I can’t stop wondering why he didn’t tell us sooner,” Alik held his pounding head. The vein in his forehead was standing out prominently making him look as angry as he felt.
“Maybe it took him this long to cook up that lame-ass story,” Cole’s head hung in his hands.
“Where did he go, do you think?” Farrow was staring out the window at the predawn sky. Though everyone was exhausted, again they were too wired to sleep. The metahumans had stayed up all night talking.
Theo had taken one very angry and hurt Margo to bed an hour before. Danny and Maze hadn’t made a peep since they first crashed in Danny’s toddler bed.
“He’s been spending a lot of time at the lab up at the teaching hospital.” Sloan stood and stretched the litheness back into her body.
“What’s he doing up there?” Creed asked the room.
“He hasn’t said. The guy hasn’t been the most forthcoming with information all these months.” Cole pursed his lips together thinking back over the past months replaying some moments and feeling guilty about others. “Maybe I should have reached out to him more, but he was so distant since we got here.”
“Don’t do that to yourself, Cole Andrews.” Sloan scowled as though she had been thinking the same thing of herself. “We both tried to include him, but he just pulled further and further away from everyone.” She sighed deeply and slumped back into her same spot on the sofa.
“Has he really been like this the entire time?”
“Yeah, he has,” Cole raised his brows at Alik. Sloan nodded in agreement. “It took a while for him to heal up after the burns, but even after he did, his personality never bounced back. It’s like the fire burned the goodness right out of his heart.”
“It just never occurred to me that we could come out of the evolution changed for the worse,” Alik frowned. “I mean, Meg was really sick when she was going through her evolution and she came out okay.”
“We don’t know that,” Creed said.