Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 (21 page)

The man had nerves of steel.

The doc smiled at her in greeting. “Ryan called a bit ago, let me know what happened.”

“The Rear Admiral told me about the gene therapy.” She dismissed the dark tendril and politely asked the Gate to close behind her. It did, with a soft whispered promise to keep her hidden from Teagh, or anyone else that might be looking.

She stood before the doctor, naked as the day she was born, and debated killing him. Tampering with her she could forgive. But Robbie?

“Start talking, Doc. What, exactly did you do to me? To Robert?” She’d believed the doc was her friend. She’d trusted him with her life, allowed him to sedate her, to know a few of her secrets. Trust. She had trusted the old man. And in return, he’d turned her power into something dark, wild, and out of control.

The doc’s meddling had nearly killed her. Would have killed her, if not for Teagh and the Timewalker’s Mark.

Trust? Screw trust. Maybe, after this, she would finally learn.

“Katherine, please, sit. Let me bring you some tea, some clothes, and then we’ll talk. You look terrible.” To his credit, he didn’t deny anything. The slump of his shoulders and the guilt in his eyes appeased her for the moment. He set his book aside and waved his hand toward the chair opposite his desk. She’d spent many a contented hour curled up in that very chair reading historical romance novels. Dukes and duels. Ball gowns and carriage rides. It always seemed so gallant, and noble, and pure. So not real life.

“All right.” She agreed mostly because she didn’t want to have this conversation wearing a bath towel.

Ten minutes later she sat curled up in the chair in comfy sweatpants, a mug of warm tea in one hand and a turkey sandwich in the other. She was starved. It wasn’t until she smelled the bread that she realized how long it had been since she’d eaten. Nearly twenty-four hours. No wonder she’d felt hollowed out on the inside.

“Better?” When she shivered, Doc Hansen flipped on the gas fireplace imbedded between two bookshelves. It was eighty-five degrees outside, but the Doc had his air conditioner cranked up, and she was cold. At least the tea was hot and the sandwich was delicious.

“Yes.” She polished off the sandwich and wrapped both palms around the giant mug. “Now tell me what you did to me.” She took a deep breath. Let it out. “And tell me why.”

The doctor took off his glasses and settled back into his giant leather chair. His sigh was deep, and heartfelt. “Let me start at the beginning.”

“Please.”

“I was recruited into the project almost from day one, several years before we found you.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and first finger. It appeared to her that he wanted to rub away the weight of his decisions as easily as he would rub away the red indentations left by his glasses.

“I know that. Next.” She had no patience left. She was too tired and angry to play nice.

“There was a man, a very wealthy, very powerful man, who had the President’s ear and talked him into creating the Casper Project. He’s a corporate god, rich as Midas, and he’s probably responsible for at least half of our new weapon developments and technological leaps of the last twenty years.”

Katherine tapped her foot. “Rich corporate guy. Political and military connections. Got it.”

“He’s not human.” That got her attention. The doctor steepled his hands below his chin and continued. “I knew the moment I met him. I’d already been hearing rumors for years, and he moved too fast. His skin was too perfect. No wrinkles. No scars. He was just…off.

“They brought him in to the med lab where I was working about a week after the incident in Chicago. He insisted on delivering the syringes to me himself. He was charming and polite as he explained to me what the treatment was supposed to do. Make you stronger. Make your power easier to control. Give you command of the metaphysical so you could control the Gates between worlds and protect us all.”

“How many syringes? How many people did you do this to?”

“Seven.” The doctor’s sigh was pained, and his shoulders sagged. “You and Robert were the only two to survive the first twenty-four hours. He was the youngest candidate. You were sedated. I don’t know if that made a difference, or if you were just the lucky ones.”

“Lucky? I can’t believe this.” She’d been set up by an alien who wanted control of the Gate? Was that all anyone wanted? To control her? To use her?

No. Not her boys. Not her mother. Not the descendants. There were still good people in the world, just not enough of them.

“The Rear Admiral was with him, the Secretary of the Navy, and a handful of the proverbial men in black. I don’t know who they were. DOD or CIA. None of them questioned him. None of them asked for my opinion. They’d already made the decision. I wasn’t given a choice. In the end, I decided it was better to keep an eye on you myself.”

“Come on, Doc.” She closed her eyes and hit the back of the tall leather chair with her head, trying to pound an ounce of understanding through her skull. She knew how the system worked. The doctor was right. With that cast of characters in the room, he would’ve had one hell of a time saying no. “No” would have gotten him early retirement in the form of a headstone and six feet of dirt over his casket…and they just would’ve found someone else to do it. He was right about that. “Why me?” This was the question she desperately wanted answered.

“I was told that he believed your family’s D.N.A would be a particularly favorable host for the infection.”

“Infection?” Katherine stopped beating her head and leaned forward. “Infection?”

“Yes, dear.” The doc tilted his head and smiled a sad smile. “The new D.N.A. had to be delivered into your system by a viral host. There’s no cure. The longer you’re infected, the greater number of your host cells will become infected. For a while longer you’ll continue to get stronger and more powerful as the foreign genetic code grafts to yours in more and more infected host cells.”

“And then what? What do mean when you say ‘for a while’?”

The doctor rose from his seat to stand in front of the blue flames dancing and humming in the gas fireplace. He wouldn’t look at her. Not good.

“Doc?”

“I don’t know, Katherine.” He turned to face her, one hand on the mantle and one hidden in the pocket of his dress slacks. “I don’t know.”

“Where did they get this magical D.N.A.? From him? From someone else? From an alien? A freaking bear? What?”

“It’s not from an animal, dear. They wanted you to have superpowers, not growl at them and scratch trees.”

“Very funny. An alien, then?” Katherine’s head spun. “From the delivery boy?” She had Timewalker blood. Was the new D.N.A. Itaran, like Raiden or Teagh? Or Triscani? “What did he look like? You said you knew right away he wasn’t human? Was his skin like stone, like obsidian or onyx?”

“No. He was abnormally good looking.” Katherine gritted her teeth. Abnormally good looking? Definitely Itaran.

The doctor shook his head. “No. He wasn’t the donor. He specifically said the sample came from someone else.”

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God
. It had to be Triscani. She was transforming into one of them. It would explain why they were the only other creatures she had encountered on the other side of the Gate. Why her back refused to let go of its wounds. Why the Gate wanted to keep her. Why the darkness in Teagh’s soul sang to her instead of repulsed her like it should. “The Rear Admiral told me that they were very specifically promised that I would be able to travel through the dark Gates and control them.”

“Yes. That is what the Rear Admiral told me in private, once your abilities began to manifest. At the initial meeting, I was told that I didn’t need to know what it would do to any of you.”

“And you gave me a virus? An alien virus?”

“No. The retro-virus was modified to be an effective delivery vector, but it’s native to Earth. The D.N.A. was alien.”

“English, Doc. Please.”

“Sorry. The virus is not alien. The D.N.A. it carried was.”

“And there’s no cure?”

“No. I’m afraid not.”

“Then what? What does that mean? I’m going to die? Robbie’s going to die?”

“I honestly don’t know. You two are the first survivors. The baseline tests. You might die. Or your bodies’ immune systems might adapt and create new white blood cells to eradicate the infection.”

“Baseline tests?” She was going to be sick.

“Yes. I’m afraid so. If you survive, they intend to build an army of comic book heroes with superpowers like yours.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Not at all, dear. Not at all.”

Katherine talked to the doctor for another hour, gathering intel. Names. Dates. Trying to figure out how much the Rear Admiral knew about the descendant network? How had they found Robbie? Were her people safe? Her mother?

The doctor didn’t know much more, and she believed him. Despite everything, she believed that every single word out of his mouth tonight was the absolute truth. He’d crossed the line now, like she had months ago, like her team and the Rear Admiral had when they’d been lost in the dark. There was no going back. No space for lies between people who lived with the truth.

If only Teagh had told her some of this. He had to have known what was going on. He had to have known that the Casper Project had altered her to try to control the Gates. He stood right in front of her and told the Rear Admiral that he’d been watching their activity for months.

The man could have done her a favor and at least given her a head’s up.

But no. A traitor wouldn’t do that, would he? The Gate and the dark were in his domain. The dark was his to patrol. The Itarans? His people. The Lost King, Ajax? His. And there was absolutely no way in hell Ajax had been imprisoned in the dark for centuries, right under Teagh’s nose, without Teagh being aware of it.

No. Freaking. Way.

Which brought her full circle. He had to know Ajax was there. Which meant that he was, in fact, the traitor Ajax named him.

Sure, the last Triscani attacking her in the dark had run from him like a scared rabbit. But not before it mentioned a “master” that wanted her. Was this “master” the D.N.A. donor? Or just one more bastard who wanted to control her? Was the whole thing staged as a test of her new genetic inheritance? To make her trust Teagh? Was this why he seemed to be so upset that the Gate no longer answered solely to him? Was the D.N.A. from Teagh? Was that why she could control the Gate now?

And her new Timewalker Mark? Did Teagh wear it now because it was part of some romantic, grand destiny? Or because she was carrying around his little D.N.A. bunnies in all of her infected host cells and like simply recognized like?

What the hell was this? A cruel cosmic joke? A wrench in someone’s grand plan? A traitor’s last, best laugh, before the D.N.A. flooding her system turned her into one of those terrifying Triscani bastards? Did the Triscani have females? She’d never seen one, but how could she even tell? No. That was stupid. They existed, therefore they had to have been born. Somehow. They were alive, kind of. So, they had to have a mother. Right?

Gah! She was talking herself in circles. Teagh was a traitor. She had to find Ajax. She might die, or she might not. Nothing she could do either way. She had alien D.N.A. screwing with her system and a bad attitude about it.

Done. Summary complete.

If Katherine could control the Gate and walk in the dark, she could find and free Ajax. Then Teagh’s deception would be revealed to the rest of the Itarans. She’d have to trust and hope that Raiden and his people could take care of everything after that.

Raiden said the Lost King was the key to humanity’s survival. That he had to be found, and freed.

That had to be her top priority now. She didn’t have time for her heart to break into pieces. For once, her brain told her heart to shut the hell up, and it listened.

She said good night to the doc and went upstairs to her designated guest bedroom and slept like the dead for all of three hours.

It wasn’t yet dawn when she woke, and the Gate was waiting for her, hovering like a protective parent, eager to hold her hand and take her to the other side.

First she needed food and a hot shower. She wandered down to the kitchen and was pleasantly surprised to find a plate of lasagna and French bread wrapped in plastic in the fridge. The Doc had written her name on a sticky note and left it for her for lunch.

Lasagna for breakfast sounded better.

As her meal spun in circles in the microwave, she considered her options. The Gate had successfully hidden her from Teagh for hours. That solved one problem. But she was getting weak and shaky, the Triscani claw marks across her back burned like acid, and the pain was spreading. How long did she have? Mari couldn’t get rid of it. No human medication was going to help. And what would happen to her once it spread to cover her entire torso? Was it poisonous? Or just painful?

She had no one to ask.

She didn’t dare contact Teagh or any of the Timewalkers. She was quite sure he’d be watching all of them. She couldn’t go to her team at the Casper Project either. They’d lied to cover her ass, and assuming they’d been taken back into the fold, as the doctor had promised her last night, she needed to stay away for a while and let them blend back in to the system.