Blood Colony (15 page)

Jessica gazed at Lucas, who shared the one bond with her that even Alex did not. Lucas was as tall as Teferi, almost six-foot-six. Lucas was the big brother Jessica had always wished for, and he had arrived just in time.

“It’s happening tonight,” Jessica told Lucas. “Justin will lose twenty years of memories.”

Lucas shook his head with a forced chuckle. “Then we better hope Alex doesn’t wake up, or she’ll beat us both senseless.”

Jessica wished she could laugh too, but she was closer to crying. She hadn’t cried since waking to realize that her sister was in a kind of coma and her volatile little girl was gone.

“Can we try to appeal it?” Lucas said. “Would Dawit support us?”

“Do we really want to try, Lucas?” she said quietly.

Jessica had never been able to like Justin O’Neal, and she had been trying a long time. He had a weak character, a dishonest nature.
And the Old Testament says Moses was a murderer before he found God—so what’s your point?

Lucas rested his head on his wife’s gently breathing chest. His eyes shimmered. “Listen, Jess, that man and his father held me and this lady at gunpoint. He didn’t do jack shit while a man burned Alex’s face with cigarettes. Almost got me killed. Hell, no, I don’t like him. So would I lose any sleep if they make him forget his own name? Probably not.”

“But…,” Jessica said. She knew there was more.

Lucas glanced at Bea, who was so still that she might have fallen asleep at last. He lowered his voice. “Telepathy? Thought manipulation? They can do things to us we can’t do to them, and they’ve kept it from us. You hid it, too. And Alex. I know you told your sister.”

Lucas’s voice was raw with hurt, and Jessica understood more than she wanted to admit. They needed the Brothers’ support for the mission, but it came with a price.

“I’ve never liked all of their demands, Lucas,” she said. “Alex hated keeping secrets from you.”

Lucas sighed, impatient with her coddling. “So they can jump in and out of our heads at will? A polygraph that never quits, is that it?”

“They wanted open access to the minds of any of us working with them. Especially people who don’t have the blood….” Jessica couldn’t use the word
mortals,
the shorthand Dawit and his Brothers used freely. That word sounded too much like a wall between her and the people she cared about. “They promised not to abuse it.”

Lucas smiled wryly. “Ten to one they’re just pissed off Justin out-smarted them.”

“They’re pissed off because Justin lied, abused his position and stole their blood. That vial he stole was intended for thousands of patients, and now it’s lost to them.” Jessica felt her temper surge. “Alex was right last night: The mission might be in jeopardy because of Justin and Caitlin. Everything. I think we should demonstrate to the Brothers that we’re willing to allow them to protect themselves—really, to protect all of us who have this blood.”

Some days, Jessica didn’t believe the words she heard from her own mouth.
If Alex hears this, she’s going to sit up and slap me.
Was she offering Justin O’Neal as a sacrifice?

“First it’s Justin, next it’s Cal. Or Garrick’s son, Johnny. Or any of us. You know that.”

Jessica couldn’t pretend that most of the Life Brothers felt any warmth for them. It was as if empathy had somehow gotten switched off after hundreds of years. Or were they just too different? “Potentially. Yes.”

“I don’t trust them, Jess.”

“Teka promised me that Justin will still remember most of his life,” she said. “Maybe it’s a just sentence. And if it is, we look petty for putting up a fuss.”

“If we don’t, we look weak.”

“We are weak, Lucas. As long as Fana is gone. Is this the time to provoke them?”

Bea’s voice spoke up suddenly: “Let them tend to their house,” she said. Her mother wasn’t sleeping after all, although her eyes were still closed. She looked like she was squinting into the light from the window. “I feel badly for the man, I do. But you reap what you sow. He knew there were rules. We forgave what he did before, and maybe we shouldn’t have. You two leave it be.” Her voice was tired and sad.

Her mother must have overheard many conversations when they’d thought she hadn’t been paying attention. But then again, her mother’s insight had been surprising Jessica all her life. Bea’s body was fading, but not her mind.

Was acquiescence really the answer? If so, why did it feel so much like cowardice?

Jessica thought she saw Alex’s mouth twitch. Maybe, knowing Alex’s mind, she’d only imagined it. Alex wouldn’t tolerate the Life Brothers’ decision, whether or not it was Justin O’Neal. The cost for protection was too high, Alex said. She must be screaming inside.

“There’s another way,” Jessica said as the answer came to her.

Dinner was delicious, the kinds of foods Justin O’Neal never saw on the menus of the five-star international hotels where he spent too many of his nights on the road. Roast chicken cooked with a Cajun spice rub. Mashed potatoes. Homemade biscuits. Turnip greens flavored with peanut butter. Jessica and Nita had explained that the food was only leftovers, but after two nights in a cell, the dining room at the Big House was paradise.

Justin hadn’t expected to have an appetite, but he piled up a second plate in the room’s stony silence. Even with Teka sitting across the table, the food hadn’t lost its flavor.

The others were eating, too, although without his enthusiasm. Lucas Shepard hadn’t eaten a bite, and Jessica, Cal and Nita weren’t doing much better. None of them looked like they wanted to be here, not even Teka. It was hard to catch anyone’s eyes.

Is this my last meal?
If so, Justin couldn’t complain. If that was peach pie he smelled baking, that would make up for a multitude of sins.

“There’s cobbler in the oven,” Nita said. “Peach. Want some ice cream on that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Justin said. “You just read my mind.”

Lucas and Jessica gave each other a look, mournful and significant. Whatever was about to happen here, Justin hoped it would wait until after dessert.

Justin got his wish. The cobbler
was
the best he had ever tasted. Hands down.

“You have a decision to make, Justin,” Jessica finally said while Nita poured coffee.

Suddenly, all eyes were on him, and Justin suddenly noticed the ticking of an old-fashioned clock from the living room.

“I didn’t think this was for the pleasure of my company,” Justin said, smiling to put Jessica at ease. She might be the only reason he had lived this long.

Jessica nodded, returning his smile, but sadly. “The Life Brothers have passed a sentence on you, but the rest of us might choose to oppose it. If we oppose them, win or lose, tempers will flare. The outcome for you and your family might be worse than the original sentence.”

Do you want door number one or door number two?

“So I need to decide if it’s better to take the sentence,” Justin said.

“Yes.”

“If I do…is the safety of my family guaranteed? Even Caitlin?”

“If you agree to the sentence? Yes,” Jessica said, not hesitating. As she spoke, she stared toward Teka, as if for confirmation. “We wouldn’t harm Caitlin. We would protect her.”

Teka assured both of them with a slow, sober nod.

Finally. His reckoning. Either he was about to die, or he would disappear from the world in a prison cell somewhere. No price was too high for a guarantee that Holly, Casey and Caitlin would be all right, but how could he take their word?

“What’s the sentence?” he said.

“You would forget you know us,” Teka said. “You would forget everything that has happened to you for the past eighteen years. Perhaps twenty.”

They’ll fire me and let me go?
Justin’s armpits prickled with disbelief. Jubilation.

“Of course,” Justin said, tears stinging his eyes. “I would never say a word.”

Jessica leaned forward, shaking her head. “No. You won’t
remember
.”

Six faces stared at him with dead certainty, waiting for him to see the point.

“Some kind of…brain surgery?” Justin said. His stomach ached suddenly, pulled too taut.

“Tell me what you just ate,” Teka said.

Justin stared at the small man, dumbstruck. Was this a joke? Were they playing with him? He could still taste his food in his mouth. He’d had…

Justin’s mind was a blank sheet.

He stared down at his plate. Chicken bones. A pastry for dessert? Was that melted ice cream? He couldn’t remember, although he remembered enjoying the meal.

“I…don’t…”

Lucas stood up, as if he were a defense attorney at a trial. “That’s enough.”

“What’s the point of playing with him?” Nita said.

Justin was suddenly on his feet, too, his eyes locked with Teka’s. He took a step backward, stumbling into a chair. Teka’s eyes weren’t normal. Those eyes were
alive,
and Justin couldn’t look away from him. His heart hammered against his ribs.
What the FUCK?

“You’ve been asked to give up eighteen years of memory,” Teka said. “I want you to understand what you’re being asked. I can do what I have claimed. You will forget.”

Justin wished he hadn’t eaten so much of whatever he’d had, because he felt sick to his stomach. Was this a dream?

“I wouldn’t do it,” Nita said. Her voice quavered.

He heard the others’ angry voices, but they blended in his mind as one. They were trading mundane legal points the way he would at a jury trial. Not a dream. Not a fantasy.
Real.
This was their inner world! Justin’s heart raced.

Eighteen years. What would he lose in eighteen years? He would remember the twins’ birth, but little else of them beyond that. He would have to get to know his daughters again. He would have to get to know himself again.

“You’ll remember all of your childhood,” Teka said.

Justin almost laughed, a glimmer of sanity. “That’s the part I can do without.”

The others chuckled uneasily, but their eyes weren’t laughing.

“How did you do that?” Justin asked Teka. “Scramble my head?”

Teka shrugged. “It’s a skill I’ve refined over time.”

“Tell me who you are.”

“If I tell you more, your sentence is decided.”

Justin forced himself to stop and think. He couldn’t be mesmerized by this man’s dancing eyes and the knowledge brimming there. “What would happen to Holly and my girls?”

“Holly and Casey will live undisturbed. Caitlin must give up her memories, or live here.”

“You mean like…reading and writing? Language? She would lose it all?”

“No. Most of her cognitive learning would be intact, with some gaps. The memories most affected will be experiences. Nothing conscious will connect her to this colony or its people. She’ll remember nowhere she has lived during that time. She will remember no one she has met since she was six or seven, yet she will remember how to compute an algebraic equation she learned as an older girl. In your case, you would remember yourself as a younger man. Your job. Your home. Baby daughters. The contrast will confuse you at first, but you will adjust with time. If we’re satisfied that your wife and daughter pose us no threat—”

“They don’t know anything about the blood. I mean that.”

“We know,” Teka said, with a smile so certain that it chilled Justin.

But of course Teka knew. Teferi had always known everything in his mind, too. Justin had always sensed that, and he’d even joked to Holly about it. But that wasn’t why he had never betrayed this colony’s secrets to Holly and the girls: To explain the blood, he would have had to explain all of it, starting with the people who’d died. Holly thought the colony was a health-conscious family retreat, and he was happy to keep it that way. Caitlin must have found out about the blood from Fana, because he never would have told her.

“Let me at least wait until Caitlin is back. To say good-bye. To see her safe.”

The others’ eyes went to Jessica. Gently, she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Jessica and the rest must have argued for leniency, he realized. He owed them his life, and they didn’t have room for negotiation.

“Promise me she won’t be hurt,” Justin said to the mother of Caitlin’s closest friend.

“Never. Not by us,” Jessica said. She reached across the table and clung to his hand. It was the nicest gesture she had ever made toward him, genuinely warm. As if they had been friends all this time and he hadn’t known it.

Oh, God. He was thinking about it. He had made up his mind. Justin’s heart drilled him; even the idea made him dizzy. Justin sat down again, and the room stopped rocking.

“Are you all right?” Nita said. A glass of ice water appeared in front of him. She raised the glass and helped him drink it.

Justin stared again at the faces around the room. Could he really forget them?

Justin had seen his father shoot Dr. Lucas Shepard in the head point-blank. Had seen Shepard’s brain tissue spray on the wall. Yet here the man was, sitting at the table with a coffee mug in his hand as his advocate, if not a friend.