I grimaced. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Funny how there’s not many cases known, but they do happen out in the noob world.” He spread his arms wide. “Hybrids—my theory at least, and it makes sense if you think about. Most hybrids do the self-destruction thing in the facilities, but a few do outside. That’s why the occurrence is rare to humans.”
“My friend was wearing a bracelet—”
“Tiffany’s?” he asked and smirked.
“No.” She smiled tightly. “It was just like the one you’re wearing.”
Surprise crawled over his face, and it was the first time I’d seen the little punk caught off guard by anything. “Not good.”
“Why is that not good?” I demanded.
Luc glanced up at the ceiling and then shrugged. “Oh, what the hell. You’ll owe me, hope you realize. But what you see here?” Luc tapped his finger off the stone in the cuff around his wrist. “It’s a black opal—so rare that only a few mines can even unearth these babies. And it’s only these kinds.”
“The ones that look like they have fire in them?” Kat stretched to get a better look. “Where are they mined?”
“Australia, usually. There’s something in the composition of a black opal that’s like a power booster. You know, like Mario gets when he hits a mushroom. Imagine that sound. That’s what a black opal does.”
Now this was interesting, Mario sounds aside. “What kind of composition?”
Luc unhooked the bracelet and held it up in the dim light. “Opals have this remarkable ability to refract and reflect specific wavelengths of light.”
Holy shit.
“No way,” I breathed.
“Yes.” Luc smiled at the stone. “I don’t know who discovered it. Someone in Daedalus I’m sure. Once they figured out what it could do, they kept it away from the Luxen and ones like us.”
“Why?” Kat glanced between us, her brow furrowing. “What? I don’t have a degree in alien mineralogy. Geez.”
I patted her thigh. “It’s okay. Refracting and reflecting wavelengths of lights affects us, like the obsidian affects Arum and onyx affects us.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
Luc tilted his chin up. “Refracting light changes the direction and speed. Our friendly neighborhood aliens are made of light—well, made of more than that, but let me explain it this way: Let’s say their DNA is light. And let’s say that once a human is mutated, their DNA is now encased in wavelengths of light.”
She nodded. “And onyx disrupts those wave lengths of light, right? Kind of makes them bounce around and go crazy.”
“Opal’s ability to refract allows a Luxen or a hybrid to be more powerful—it enhances our ability to refract light,” Luc explained.
“And the reflection part—wow.” I grinned. Kat still looked unimpressed. I nudged her with my elbow. “We flicker or fade sometimes because we move fast. And sometimes you see us just fade in and out—it’s just reflection. Something all of us have to work at to control when we’re younger.”
“And it’s hard when you’re excited or upset?” Kat asked.
I nodded. “Among other things, but to control reflection?” I looked at Luc. “Are you saying you can do what I think you can?”
Laughing, Luc hooked the bracelet around his wrist and sat back, dropping his legs on the desk again. “Hybrids are good. We can move faster than humans, but with the obesity rates nowadays, turtles can move faster than most humans. Sometimes we’re even stronger than the average Luxen when it comes to the Source—it’s the mixture of human and alien DNA that can create something powerful, but that’s not standard.” He smiled, clearly enjoying himself. “But give a Luxen one of these, and they can completely reflect light.”
Kat’s lips parted. “You mean…like invisible?”
“So cool,” I said, wanting one of those stones like yesterday. “We can change the way we look, but become invisible? Yeah, that’s new.”
“Can we be invisible?”
“No. Our human DNA gets in the way of that, but it makes us just as powerful as the strongest Luxen and then some.” Luc shifted in his seat. “So you can imagine that they wouldn’t want any of us having these…especially one that hasn’t been proven to be stable, unless…”
Kat shuddered. “Unless what?”
The smile slipped from his face. “Unless they didn’t care what kind of damage the hybrid caused. Maybe your friend was a test run for a bigger incident.”
“What?” I tensed. “You think they did this on person? Hooked up an unstable hybrid and sent her out into the wild to see what happens?”
“Paris thinks I’m a conspiracy theorist with a hint of schizophrenic paranoia.” He shrugged. “But you can’t tell me that Daedalus doesn’t have a master plan up their sleeves. I wouldn’t put a single thing past them.”