Alien Collective (11 page)

M
ADELEINE CARTWRIGHT
had been the brains behind a lot of the Legacy Bad Guy Plans. She’d also infiltrated herself right into the heart of the Pentagon, and had been part of what I’d called the Cabal of Evil. And she’d tried to kill me during Operation Assassination.

Adriana had killed her first, but it had been a very close call.

While she and I had discussed her niece and nephew, and what her brother-in-law had ultimately done with them, with her blessing, Cartwright had never indicated that she had children of her own.

Of course, I hadn’t asked. I’d been too busy learning that Marling’s children were actually Leslie Manning and Bryce Taylor. Marling did great work—he’d taken his dead children’s DNA and turned them into androids so real that they gave off emotional signals Jeff could pick up. If we hadn’t had to break them down to their metal and wires in order to stop them from killing most of the politicians in Washington, D.C., we wouldn’t have believed they were anything more or less than human.

I knew Cartwright been one of Yates’ lovers. But it had never occurred to me that she might have had a child by him. Possibly because she was older than my mother.

Something didn’t compute, though. Because this guy didn’t look like he was in his forties. “You’re too young.” Hey, it was better than saying that Jeff, Christopher, and I had combined to kill this guy’s father and that Adriana and I had basically killed his mother. And it was also true.

“I know.” Siler, as I supposed I should think of him now, said. “And before you confess to the fact that you killed my parents, I’m not here to avenge them. They did . . . something to me. I don’t age like other people do.”

“Tito, can you wave your wand and see if he’s an android?”

Tito shot me a “really?” look, but he pulled out the Organic Validation Sensor, or OVS, that he carried with him. Tito and some of our people at the Dulce Science Center had created it as a way to non-intrusively determine if someone was a human or an android.

I’d been told that, other than newborns, who show as a hundred percent organic, no one is fully organic. Fillings, body art, a pin in your leg, and so on, all create an inorganic signature. There was a tipping point, of course—barring an artificial limb, you wanted to be 85% organic or more to be considered a non-android.

That we’d had to create such an item was a testament to both Marling’s skills and his range—during Operation Destruction we’d managed to find and activate hundreds of androids to fight for us. But Chuckie still felt there were hundreds, maybe thousands, more that we hadn’t found.

The OVS looked like the wands the TSA people used at airports to do the less unpleasant body frisks, only with a lot more blinking lights. The lights on Tito’s OVS weren’t blinking in a bad manner.

“He’s human,” Tito said. “But the OVS won’t show something done at a genetic or molecular level if it’s something organic, versus man-made.”

“I don’t know that I’m more or less human, or alien, than any of you,” Siler said. He looked very pale and sounded weaker than he had yet.

“Tito, if you’re done, move away from him,” Jeff said. “Just in case.”

Tito did as requested and came over next to me. “He’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get him to an infirmary or hospital, sooner as opposed to later.”

“Thanks for caring, Doc.” Siler managed a chuckle. “Not going to hurt the guy who just patched me up. Your man’s right, though,” he jerked his head at Buchanan. “I’m not here to be your friend.”

“No, you came to kill us,” Christopher snarled.

Siler shrugged. “Sort of.” He seemed relaxed; far more relaxed than the situation warranted, considering he had four men, a woman who’d already shot him, and a dog all ready to attack if he moved wrong.

Thinking about Adriana meant Olga was top of mind for me. What would Olga say, right now? What is the right question? I had a feeling I hadn’t asked Siler the right questions yet. What would Mom say? To trust my gut. And my gut said that something was wrong with this picture. Which was typical for us.

Buchanan had been assigned to me during Operation Assassination, but Adriana had shot Cartwright and been the one to save me, because she’d been able to be where Buchanan couldn’t. They hadn’t been coordinated at that time, it had just worked out. But she and Buchanan had coordinated today to get us all away from the protest safely. Because alliances were made, or broken, all the time.

“Wait a second. Who the hell are you actually working for? Or with?”

Siler looked right at me. “Who do you think?” He asked this nicely, but it was a challenge. And he wasn’t acting like he had when he and I had been alone. He’d been acting before, that was clear. He’d reacted in the way I’d expected him to earlier, given me canned answers in that sense, probably to test me out for whatever I knew or to see what I’d guess or how I’d reason. I mean, why should only Mom and Olga be on that bandwagon?

But this was him right now. Barring him having troubadour talent, it was unlikely that he was good enough to fake both being a hapless lackey and Mr. Smooth all within the same few minutes. Pain had a tendency to wipe out the ability to pretend to be someone else, and blood loss undoubtedly had added to it all, but more than pain and such, we were finally asking the right questions.

“Answer her,” Jeff growled.

“No.” I lowered my Glock. “How is it that we were infiltrated by a guy who can, for all intents and purposes, go invisible, and yet the Poofs and Peregrines didn’t do squat until I called for them and Prince basically told them to get their butts in gear?”

“Because he didn’t register as a threat,” Buchanan replied. “But the bombs were real, and the gas deadly. And it was released in your Embassy.”

“And yet we were warned and able to evacuate the Embassy, everyone was gathered up and taken to safety, we didn’t lose anyone . . .” Examined Siler a little more closely. He still seemed far too calm for this situation.

Mahin hadn’t been calm when she’d been in a similar situation. Because she was still new to the whole Terrorist In Training Game when we’d met her, and she was also a good person. In fact, I’d been around a lot of long-term bad people who hadn’t seemed calm when they were shot and/or held captive. And I’d been around some, good or bad, who had been calm, cool and collected in the same situation.

“Three plans.”

“What?” This was from all the men, in unison, other than Siler.

“There’s always more going on, and Olga point blank told me she thought that we had the usual two, three, or four actions going on at the same time. Triggered by your climb up the political ladder, Jeff.”

“I’m so proud.” He didn’t sound proud. He sounded suspicious. “What’s going on?”

“Well, while I realize that Siler here would be a great addition to the Ronnie’s Kids Team, if he’s as old as I think he’d have to be to actually be Madeleine Cartwright’s illegitimate and hidden son, he’s been around longer than the first Apprentice. And that means there’s a good chance he’s been doing something to fill the time. And I can think of a great job for someone who can ‘blend.’ It’s pretty much what he did today, only really ineffectively. But I think that was on purpose.”

“Want to share for the rest of us,” Christopher snarked, “or are we just going to have to try to decipher the Kittyisms?”

“No, I’ll make it easy for you. I think Mister Siler here has been making a nice living as an assassin.”

“Only sometimes,” Siler said with a small smile. “Just like all of you assassinate or kill people sometimes, the dangerous ones who need to be put down for the safety of the world. Like my parents.”

“Your parents weren’t assassinated,” Buchanan said.

“Oh, call it whatever term makes you happy. There are stories, but I’m sure most of the people all of you have killed were in self-defense in some way. I know for a fact that my mother was going to kill you, so if you’re here and she’s not, it’s not because she had a change of heart.”

“True enough. You seem very, oh, casual about all this. Are you like a living bomb or something and you’re just waiting to detonate?”

He grinned. “No. And I know you,” he looked at Buchanan, “are the real killer in the group. They need you. My people need me.”

“How do you know all you think you know?” Buchanan asked. He, like Siler, seemed amazingly relaxed and calm. In fact, if I wanted to make comparisons, they were a lot alike, at least in terms of how they handled intense pressure situations.

“Oh, crap. France. Meaning Europe. You’re with Interpol, or MI-Six or something like that, aren’t you? In their James Bond Division? Or are you part of the Assassination League and you’re just helping out in some really ineffective way? Or both?”

Siler jerked, just a little. He tried to hide it, but I knew it had been real and I wasn’t the only one who’d caught it.

“That’s it, baby,” Jeff said. “Good job.”

“Always glad to toss out random crap and have it work. So, which job is our new pal here doing?”

“It’s not one or the other . . . it’s both. He’s working with your ‘uncles,’ but he’s also infiltrating the terrorist networks targeting us and . . . more besides.”

“How are you getting that?” Siler growled.

“Why do you think they gave you an emotional blocker, scrambler, overlay or whatever the hell it was?” I asked him. “I mean, surely you’ve done your research on us.”

Siler nodded. “They didn’t exaggerate about you, any of you, did they?”

“Oh, they tend to like to sell us really short, but we don’t take it badly, usually because that way we get to stay alive.”

“Let’s have some proof that we should leave you alive,” Buchanan said to Siler. “Because right now, Missus Chief, I’m on the side of kill him and let God and the governments sort it out.”

“I
CAN’T GIVE YOU ANY PROOF
you’d believe,” Siler said, sounding unperturbed. “At least not here.”

“Tell us what you were doing,” Christopher said. “Because I’m with Buchanan—regardless of what Jeff got from you, I think you’re our enemy and we should get rid of you before the next attack hits.”

Something Cartwright and I had talked about before we’d killed her nudged. “I don’t think we can kill him. His cousins were essentially killed by their father, as was their mother, in early experiments with the supersoldier drug. Their all dying is probably why Marling focused more on androids and left the superdrugs to Gaultier. My bet, though, is that the reason Siler here isn’t out to avenge his parents’ deaths is that he knows he was an even earlier experiment. Clearly successful.”

Siler gave me a closed-mouth smile. “Despite the fact that since you’ve joined up you’ve foiled almost every major offensive sent against your people, most of your enemies still want to consider you merely stupid and lucky.”

“Your mother actually didn’t. We kind of . . . got along. In a sense, anyway.”

“That’s nice. Would that have stopped her from murdering you if she’d been able?”

“No. Not at all, honestly. If I’d promised to go away and not try to save people she might have. But I couldn’t do that.”

He nodded. “Because you’re not like her. She was driven,” he spat out. “They were all driven. No one really matters to them, not as a person, an individual. Everyone and everything’s a means to an end.”

“Mostly. Your uncle loved his wife, I do know that. And he loved his parrot.”

“Lucky parrot. Maybe if my cousins had had feathers they’d still be alive.” Siler’s sarcasm knob, like everyone else’s around me, went to eleven. He looked at Christopher. “I’m not telling you who I’m affiliated with. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Kitty might,” Christopher said. “Jeff might, too. I won’t.”

“Up to you. And not my problem.” The color was coming back to his cheeks. “I was a successful experiment, yes. But I think it’s because of who my father was, and I’m certain that the reason Gaultier went on to create Surcenthumain was because I didn’t die and my aunt and cousins did. Gaultier made the connection to my father.”

“Oh. Wow. You’re our Patient Zero, aren’t you?”

“Patient what?” Jeff asked.

“Patient Zero is a genetics term for the first person identified with a communicable disease, or for the first genetic anomaly in a family. It’s also used for computer viruses and even ideas.” Everyone stared at me. “What?”

“As always,” Christopher replied, “it’s just strange hearing anything rationally scientific coming out of your mouth.”

“See?” I said to Siler. “My friends think I’m an idiot, too.”

He chuckled and stood up, slowly. “Not all of them, I’m sure.” He looked at Buchanan. “So, what’s your next move?”

“Funny,” Buchanan said, with no humor in his tone, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“He looks better,” Tito said. “But I’d still like to get him to an infirmary, if not a hospital.”

“Captain America rarely needs medical attention. Though we’ve already assigned that name to someone else.” And I wasn’t willing to give up Reader’s superhero name to Siler any time soon. “Besides, I’d say what with all that disappearing, he’s more like Nightcrawler.”

“So glad you’ve assigned him a bizarre nickname,” Christopher said. Opened my mouth to explain. He put up his hand. “I don’t care which comic-book character it is or why you assigned it to this guy. Because I truly don’t care and I’m with Buchanan—we need to figure out what to do with him. Now.”

“I think we need to figure out what else is coming,” Jeff said.

“I can’t tell you,” Siler replied.

Jeff nudged me. Took the hint. “So, are more places being set up to have poisoned gas released? And if so, why? Who’s going to be assassinated? Were you going to reveal yourself to us or did we just get lucky? Where are the other Ronnie’s Kids?”

Jeff grunted. “Keep going,” he said quietly.

“Fine by me. So, Nightcrawler, you seemed really well prepped to act like you’re part of the New Terrorist Mutant Network. So,
are
you a part of it? And, if you are, are you trying to bring it down, join and take over, or just along for the family reunion portions?”

“I’d like to know how he’s been hidden from all of us for all this time,” Christopher said. “Because we understand how the others were hidden—they only knew that they were different from other people before they were approached. They didn’t know why. But he’s too aware of what he is to have stayed in hiding all this time.”

“I want to know why you faked me out earlier, too, by the way. That seemed like a lot of work for basically nothing and no reason. Unless you really wanted to off yourself and take me and Prince, and only me and Prince, with you.”

“I could just kill him and we call it good,” Buchanan offered.

“I really like that plan,” Christopher said. “Right now, that’s my favorite plan.”

“Why did you have me patch him up if we’re just going to kill him?” Tito asked. “I do have things to do, you know.”

“I want to know if he’s working with the Dingo, if he’s working with the League of Assassins, if he’s working with Interpol or similar, if he’s working with the Mastermind and the Apprentice, if he’s made a real or fake love connection with Ronnie’s Kids, and if, by chance, he can point us in the direction of said siblings.”

Siler sighed. “I get it. You’re all just going to talk at, around, and about me until I give in or die from boredom.”

“No,” Jeff said. “They’re going to talk at, around, and about you while you have emotional reactions to what they say that I’m interpreting. And I know you know this, because I can feel you trying to control
what
you’re feeling so you can fool me. Here’s a tip—you can’t possibly fool me. You’re good, but nowhere near good enough.”

“You’ve been fooled before,” Siler pointed out.

“True enough.”

“How do you know that?” Christopher asked.

Siler rolled his eyes. “I have sources. Lots of them.”

“Fine,” Jeff said amiably. “But your sources should have told you that I was fooled by people who’d spent their lifetimes learning how to lie to empaths.”

“Or by those using the various devices,” I added.

“Thanks for the support, baby. The only empaths are within my community. And you’re not a part of that community, which was one of Christopher’s points. So it’s pretty hard to practice lying to an empath when you’ve never spent any time with one. You’re good, I’m sure you’ll learn how. But not today.”

“So, what my awesome husband is saying is that we can continue to talk at, about, and around you—and speaking for myself I can do this all day, nonstop—or you can start sharing information we want to know, and need to know.”

“She can talk nonstop for days,” Christopher said. “Trust me. Do yourself, and the rest of us, a favor.”

“I heard that.”

“Fine,” Siler said, sounding exasperated. “We’re on a schedule, so I’ll give you some help.”

“What ‘we,’ Kemosabe? The we that is all of us in this room, the we that is you and your many employers, the we that is you and your many illegitimate siblings, or the we that is some other kind of we?”

“More governments than just the United States’ have been aware that aliens were on Earth for decades,” Siler said, ignoring my questions yet again. “I wasn’t hidden
by
my parents and their friends—I was hidden
from
them.”

“By whom?” Tito asked.

Siler sighed. “By my uncle.”

“Antony Marling hid you from his cronies? Pull the other one, it has bells on.”

This earned me a dirty look. “No, not him. My mother’s brother, Hubert Siler.”