“You’re lucky.” The nurse released the tourniquet, easing blood flow so the tube attached to a syringe in the crook of Nick’s elbow filled with thick wet red. She disconnected the tube and pushed another in place to collect a second sample for the labs. “As little as a few years ago, testing might have required a bite.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“I suppose so.” After scanning the labels on each vial with a barcode reader attached to the medical bay’s laptop, the nurse pocketed the test tubes and then fetched a cotton ball. She applied pressure as she withdrew the needle from him. “Bend your arm to hold this in place while I get your bandage, please.”
“I’m tribe.” Nick winged an eyebrow high. “I don’t need a bandage.”
Her stern smile brooked no argument. “Standard procedure.”
According to reports since the rebellion, he was the fourth Nika Aeronai Cresentine Marisek to come forward. Eleven women had claimed to be one of Nick’s sisters, too, and at least one of those had been fully human—not tribe. For all he knew, the same high-security clinic in the borderlands had been used to disprove each of those pretenders with genetic tests. The lack of tribal blood providing a hedge infection for the human posing as Catterin would’ve been troublesome, he guessed. Nick grudgingly bent his arm. “We’re done, right?” he asked. The nurse bent over him with the bandage and she removed the cotton ball, unblemished by blood from the already healed prick of the needle. He resisted the urge to smirk.
The nurse affixed the bandage anyway. “Interviews next.”
He wrinkled his nose. Like his DNA wouldn’t provide enough evidence of who he was? Bureaucrats in the Council had insisted, though. Careful of his hospital gown gaping, he hopped from the gurney upon which he’d sat while the labs had been drawn and automatically reached to secure the locket around his neck that he’d refused to give up when he’d arrived at the clinic. Grimacing, he settled into a waiting wheelchair. Another nurse rolled him down the hallway to his next stop in the clinic’s labyrinth of rooms, offices, and test areas.
Peter Loring, the lead attorney for the law firm he’d selected to represent him, joined them as they wheeled past the lab waiting room. “I negotiated an hour for each interviewer. You’ll speak to four, starting with Elder Benjic and another this morning. We’ll break for lunch before continuing with the last two in the afternoon. Preliminary DNA results should be ready during the interviews, probably after the break because we pushed for priority processing.”
Nick exhaled a slow, calming breath. Peter had reviewed the itinerary with him a thousand times so Nick knew what to expect and the lawyer had negotiated whatever he could, trading media silence from Nick for various perks to make the ordeal more bearable—such as Lydia and Rolan uniting with their entourage at the security checkpoint.
“Okay?” Lyd glared at the nurse pushing Nick’s wheelchair.
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t know why we couldn’t accompany you to the blood draw.” Rolan fidgeted, glowering at the nurse. “They might have poisoned you.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Distracted, Peter tapped on the screen of his smartphone. “Other patients who deserve privacy are in the lab area.”
“Besides, they think I’m a fake.” Nick tried for a smile, heartened when the slight curve of his lips didn’t wobble. “Why squander poison on someone they expect to genetically prove isn’t a Marisek within a few hours?”
“Poisons are cheap, hardly a waste at all.” His adopted brother harrumphed and raised two fingers, which he pointed at his eyeballs and then pointed the two digits at Nick. “You don’t leave my sight from now on.”
Lydia nodded her assent. “Nor mine.”
A glad spark lit Nick at their concern—the family he’d chosen would always have his back.
“You’ll be quiet during the interviews or I’ll drag both of you from the conference room myself,” his lawyer groused. “At least your mother agreed to stay home.”
Mom had been supportive but also curiously reserved as Nick had directed the law firm to proceed with reclaiming his identity. She’d cursed the blood-sucking lawyers for demanding a third of the Wallach trust as their payment as soon as the case ended, despite the extensive man hours and legal fees proving he was Nika Marisek would accrue in the meantime. She listened to Nick’s frustrations with the system and shared her worries for what would happen once his blood confirmed who he was. She wouldn’t, however, participate in any of it. Mom had forced Peter to come to the house to obtain her testimony on the circumstances in which Nick and Rolan had been adopted because his mom refused to go to the firm’s offices.
“Your dad and I met at the end of the war, after we’d slipped away from our respective labor camps and started the march through the mountains back home. I’d already found Rolan and he had you.” Mom had shrugged. “I can repeat what your dad told me and testify you were still healing, a strong indicator of how severe your injuries were when he claimed you as his son, but I didn’t witness the executions, his escape, and your rescue…none of it. You were such a quiet boy, sad and scared. I could barely coax you to speak about ordinary things, forget about what had happened to you.” She sighed. “I’ll be your port in the storm. You’ll need one. But I had enough of the tribes when they gathered us into camps to provide slave labor for their ‘master race’ during the war.”