Chapter Twenty-Six #2
He shrugged almost distractedly, his thoughts back in the past. “No other mammal apart from large predators would work. And all cats—lions, cheetahs, leopards etc—only have a lifespan of early twenties in captivity which wouldn’t be long enough.
Sure, you could’ve been given another animal once Whisper passed on, but the emotional devastation of losing him might very well have triggered an ascension that would kill you. ”
“So you were working with the very man who trapped and harvested me all this time?” Lucien spat.
“Excuse me?” Frank’s eyebrows disappeared into his hair. “He...he was harvesting you?”
“Oh, please. Don’t act like you didn’t know when you’ve just clearly proved you know everything.”
Genuine horror filled Frank’s weathered face.
“That can’t be. He was supposed to be your guardian once your parents passed away.
He said he loved you like a son. That was why you were enlisted in the program to begin with—to heal your heart defect and keep you alive.
When he learned that the R gene was breaking you, he said he’d do anything to take away your pain. ”
“He was a liar,” Lucien hissed. “A manipulative bastard who wore a thousand faces to get what he wanted. I was imprisoned for twenty years. I was kept weak and hurting. They inserted a vitalsync core to—”
“Vitalsync core?” Frank cut in. “What’s that?”
“This.” Lucien wrenched his shirt aside, revealing the warped piece of metal that vanished each time we slipped into the dreamscape and reappeared each time we woke. “This poisoned me every fucking moment of every fucking day.”
“But...” Frank glanced between us. “If you were imprisoned, then...how did you meet? How on earth did you find each other after all this—?”
“I’ve tried telling you there are forces in this world that you just don’t mess with, Frank,” Dillon muttered where he waited in the lift. “Yet you didn’t believe me.”
Frank whirled on Dillon. “I’m not in the mood for your metaphysical theories, Brooks. I don’t care how many times we’ve argued about those forces, life follows certain rules.”
“And that rule was fate.” Dillon smirked and cocked his chin at me. “From the very moment that little flight risk started travelling the world, she seemed to be chasing something. I thought she was looking for inner peace, but...she was searching for something else—even if she didn’t know it.”
My heart skipped. He sounded so confident, so sure.
“She couldn’t stay still in one place for long,” Dillon continued as if he’d waited until this moment to spill everything he’d been thinking. “She hopped between continents almost weekly as if hunting for the one thing that stood any chance of keeping her alive when her pendant stopped working.”
“Your necklace!” Frank spun back to face me. “What about your necklace?” His gaze locked on my throat, his face going white. “Where is it, Rook? What have you done?”
“Don’t worry.” Dillon shrugged. “She doesn’t need it anymore, and you and I are going to talk about that. If you knew how badly it was hurting her, I have a score to settle, but for now...I reckon she travelled like a maniac because...she was searching for him.”
Arching his chin in Lucien’s direction, he added, “You can’t tell me it wasn’t fate that led her to him, despite all the odds. And you can’t convince me that something bigger than us isn’t in charge, even if your precious science can’t prove it.”
Heavy silence fell as Frank sucked in a breath, looking between Lucien and me.
Sickness clenched my stomach as Lucien took my hand and squeezed. Whisper crowded closer, sensing the tension but not knowing how to protect us.
The stress and secrets, the sickness and dying—it all pressed painfully on my heart.
I tripped against Lucien.
“Rook?” He clutched me close. “You alright?”
My ears rang and my pulse thundered and the softest snap echoed in my mind. A rush of memories—all blocked off and buried after the trauma of watching my parents dissolve—swarmed me.
I remembered a file.
A file that’d fallen out of my father’s safe when he’d grabbed his passport for a quick business trip. He’d shot into the shower—late for his flight—and I’d hidden under his desk trying to understand the sheets and sheets of DNA gibberish.
It made no sense...until now.
Goosebumps shot down my arm as the gift inside me tripped through time and peered through my childhood eyes.
I saw everything as if it was real right now.
My father’s study, the sound of the shower running, the paperwork in my trembling smaller hands.
I read it as if it was there in front of me.
Subject L-Ashfall (male, 21 days old, presented with terminal hypoplastic left heart syndrome) was administered the inaugural intravenous dose of the R gene.
Subject entered acute yang crisis: core temperature spiked, spontaneous dermal ignition occurred, and cardiac arrest was noted.
Standard cooling and frequency protocols failed.
At 09:17, in the midst of the subject’s disintegration, a single cryovial containing a recently injected R gene egg from Dr. Snowden was carried toward the cryofreeze.
A micro-kinetic event occurred. The test tube fell into the crib of L-Ashfall and upon physical contact, the subject’s body temperature normalised.
Cardiac function healed. Retrospective analysis confirms this was the first documented instance of spontaneous yin-yang polarity bonding.
We suspect, based on regular DNA analysis, that the two subjects have remained quantum-entangled at a cellular level ever since.
Time unfolded, kicking me out of the past and firmly back into the present.
I sucked in a sharp breath, disoriented and dizzy, the words burning into my eyes as if they’d been typed onto my brain.
There was no physical way I would’ve ever remembered something like that. I could still feel the paper in my fingers. Still hear the water running—
“Rook?” Lucien cupped my cheeks. “Speak to me. What’s wrong? What happened?”
Swallowing hard, I drowned in him.
Dillon was right. He was right about everything.
Not just about forces or fate but what he’d said about my parents.
I had been special. I’d been so special I hadn’t even been conceived in the normal way.
My conception came in a test tube. They’d injected me with their experiment before I’d even taken my first breath.
Before my heart had even formed. Before I was even alive.
Another rupture inside me, this time in my soul.
Coughing up a small thimble of blood, I swallowed it down with a grimace.
Rook... Lucien’s panic blared through me. What’s going on?
Tugging his hands off my face, I squeezed his fingers. I’m okay. Truly.
He frowned, not believing me.
Let me go. I’m alright.
Gritting his teeth, he reluctantly obeyed but stayed close as I locked eyes with Frank. Those kind, piercing blue eyes that must’ve always known and never told me.
“You’ve known all along, haven’t you?” My voice cracked. “That’s how we’re connected. Lucien and I. We’ve been connected my entire life. Before my life actually.” My chin rose with defiance for the truth. “We met seven years before I was even born.”
“What?” Lucien gaped. “How is that even possible?”
Frank’s eyes popped wide. “How...how could you possibly know that?”
“I saw it in a file. I didn’t understand it back then, but I just reread it.”
“You just...reread it?” Frank frowned. “What does that mean? How?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I waved away the fact that I’d manipulated time again. Instead of splicing the future, I’d stepped into the past, and the less he knew about that the better. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
“You saw the file on you and Lucien?” He tripped forward with urgency. “When? Where? That file was burned. No one outside your parents ever saw the original copy. I’ve searched for years—”
“Don’t come near her.” Lucien stepped in front of me, shielding me as my insides ached with agony.
The betrayal. The loss. The pain of being used by my own parents kept building, building.
My parents had used me—not because they’d wanted a daughter but because they wanted to know if their DNA could survive the Requiem. They’d sacrificed me before I even knew I existed.