Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (98 page)

I backed off. I wasn’t angry at her anyway, and I hated fighting with her.

“So what’s the plan, T?” Renee asked.

Teresa took a minute to look each of us in the eye with her steady, firm gaze. “The media has been waiting for a statement from us ever since the helicopter crash two days ago,” she said. “I think it’s about time I gave one to them.”

•   •   •

Turned out we didn’t have to go any farther than our own front gate to give that statement. In the ten minutes we spent in the lounge discussing the latest Meta-related disaster, two local news vans appeared in our driveway and set up camp. Channel Four was already airing live footage of Hill House in the deep background during their programming interruption. I probably could have stuck my hand out the lounge window and waved at myself. Instead, after a brief debate, Teresa, Gage, and I headed for the gate to speak to the quailing masses and attempt to assuage some fears about our involvement. Marco took to the sky in his raven form and perched in a nearby tree to watch.

I’d backed Teresa up several times with the press, mostly acting at her wingman (and occasionally providing special wind effects), rather than being an active participant. I didn’t mind the role, and the purple bruises on the left side of my face added some weight to my part today.

The two reporters saw us coming, and they backed away from the gate. Teresa entered the security code, then pulled one side open just far enough for the three of us to step through. I checked out the small assembly of cameramen, tech people, and a few bystanders who’d probably realized we’d be ground zero for interesting events in Los Angeles today and had come to gawk. No one looked particularly dangerous.

No Changelings with guns waiting to take a potshot at one of us. I hoped.

Been there, done that, and Teresa had the scar to prove it.

Gage and I stayed one step behind Teresa and maintained flanking positions while she faced down the pair of local reporters. She didn’t cross her arms or hold them behind her back, just held her posture straight and her head high—the effect was perfect.

“I’ll keep this brief,” she said. “As I’m sure you’ve heard, less than thirty minutes ago a hospital in Hackensack, New Jersey, was attacked by three people who have been identified as possessing Meta-like abilities. I have had no access to the security footage or the evidence collected at the scene, so I cannot speak to the veracity of that identification. The only thing I know is this: neither myself nor my friends and teammates here at Hill House were involved in that event. We have no knowledge of the people behind the attack, nor do I have any speculation on the reason for it. At this time, we have been asked by Warden Hudson and the New Jersey State Police not to participate in the investigation, and we will comply with their request for now.”

Those final two words surprised me. It wasn’t like Teresa to allow things like that to slip out. Dahlia, who worked as a reporter before discovering her Meta powers, had coached her on interviewing and leading questions, so Teresa must have had a plan.

She took a moment to eyeball each reporter. “You each get one question, so make it count. Shannon?”

The curly-haired reporter took a step forward, so she could stay within camera shot. “Shannon Milton, Channel Four. Trance, up until this morning, you and several of your team partners were in New Jersey, working with the Manhattan federal prison warden, as well as the prisoners in Manhattan, including Frederick “Jinx” McTaggert. Based on your interactions with him and knowledge of his past, do you believe that McTaggert was complicit in his own removal from Hackensack UMC this afternoon?”

My angle of Teresa’s profile gave me no hints as to what she thought about Shannon’s careful phrasing.
Complicit
carried several meanings, up to and including our theory that McTaggert would do anything to protect Andrew—even cooperate with murderous young Metas (or Recombinants, since the jury was still out on that one).

Teresa didn’t hesitate in answering the loaded question. “Based on my own conversations with the man, as well as conversations with those who spent far more time with him over the last several days, I do not believe McTaggert orchestrated his own removal from the hospital. He has a young son who was seriously injured in Thursday’s helicopter crash, which is why he was granted an allowance to leave the prison under armed guard. Despite his past, McTaggert has proved to be a loving father, and I do not believe he would do anything to willingly jeopardize his son’s recovery.

“Garner?”

The other reporter, a jittery young man with slicked-back hair, said, “Wally Garner, Channel Seven. Trance, earlier you stated you wouldn’t go against the warden’s instructions not to interfere in the investigation”—he made air quotes with one hand—
“
‘for now.’ Can you please expand upon that qualifier?”

The corner of her mouth perked up—she’d said it on purpose, after all. “Yes, I can. I acknowledge that I have no legal jurisdiction to investigate these crimes at either the state or federal level. My team and I work in conjunction with the authorities, and in order to do so, we must maintain an atmosphere of respect. I respect the decision of Warden Hudson and his superiors to lock us out of the investigation. However”—she took a brief, exceptionally dramatic pause—“these crimes are suspected to be Meta in origin, and it would be difficult to argue against the fact that my team has the most experience and the best abilities to deal with Meta-related crimes. If it becomes necessary to intervene in order to stop the aggressors and save lives, we will intervene.”

“Permission or not?” Garner asked.

“That’s two questions, Mr. Garner. Good day.”

She turned around. Gage and I followed her back through the gate. Halfway to the house, when the driveway curved out of direct eyesight of the gate, Gage slid up next to Teresa and put his hand on the small of her back. She leaned into the touch.

“You did good,” he said.

“No one could tell?” she asked.

I kept pace behind them, unsure if this was a private conversation or not. They weren’t whispering or anything.

“The only reason I knew you were nervous was because I could hear your heart beating out a drum solo.”

She stopped near one of our Sports, and I nearly ran into them both. Teresa rubbed her right hand over her heart, and I got it. She’d been shot and nearly killed two months ago while giving an interview with the press. Doing it again had freaked her out, and I hadn’t even noticed.

Even superheroines get PTSD.

“Our secret?” she asked as she gave me a hopeful smile.

I slung my arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. “I heard nothing, I know nothing.”

“Wise choice.” She planted a quick peck on my cheek.

“Hey now,” Gage said. He gave me a gentle poke in the ribs. “She’s spoken for, pal.”

I laughed. “She’s out of my league, anyway.”

“Good, because I’d hate to have to kick a friend’s ass.”

“You can try.”

“Boys,” Teresa said with a put-upon sigh. We all laughed, and the brief moment of teasing and banter ended with a cell ringing. She grabbed her phone, and I read the display over her shoulder: SIMON.

Finally.

Nineteen

Phantoms

T
eresa didn’t bother going back inside. She put the phone on speaker, and we stood in the driveway while Simon reassured us he was alive, with only a minor concussion to show for his hospital trip.

“We felt the building shake, but no one knew what it was,” he said. All kinds of background noise filtered over from his end. “By the time security alarms went off, someone had already sneaked up and knocked me out. I didn’t get a chance to see or hear anything, and no one will let me back upstairs to read the place.”

“You have an inactive power,” Gage said. “Why would they knock you out cold first?”

“Inactive, as in I can’t use it to physically injure someone, sure. But there’s a chance they didn’t want me looking them in the eye, or even potentially recognize them.”

“How could you have? One of the reporters said the hostiles were wearing masks.”

“Well, obviously I can’t, since I didn’t see anyone.” Simon didn’t get testy often, but the stress of the day was definitely getting to him. “I know what you know. Three of them, late teens or early twenties, but all wearing face masks and exhibiting Meta-like powers.”

“Have you been able to talk to anyone in Manhattan since this happened?” Teresa asked.

“No, all communications have been cut off,” Simon replied. “But I know them, Trance. Some will believe that Freddy set up his own escape, and Thatcher will talk himself blue convincing them he didn’t. It’s going to get ugly.”

“What do you think?”

A brief pause followed, filled with sirens and people shouting in the distance. “I don’t know Freddy well, but he’s a father, too. He wouldn’t risk Andrew’s life.”

“Convincing the authorities about that won’t be easy,” I said. “They’ll want to believe the worst, and the press won’t help our case.”

“They aren’t doing us any favors. And the pardon proceedings are off the table until Freddy and Andrew are found.”

Several nasty epithets rang through my head. The timing of this attack couldn’t have been worse—or, from the perpetrator’s perspective, it couldn’t have been better.

“I’ve already been told I and my team aren’t welcome for the unforeseen future,” Teresa said.

“Sorry about that,” Simon said.

“Not your fault.”

“It feels—hold on a moment.” He must have covered his phone with his hand, because everything got muffled. “Listen, security managed to find a decent shot of one of the hostiles.”

“Send it to Ethan’s phone.”

“On it.”

The image came through fast, and I held up the phone to give us a better look. The capture showed a young man in a skintight black jumpsuit, his body angled toward the camera, looking up and past it. The black mask was just wide enough to cover both eyes and the bridge of his nose, without totally obscuring his facial features. He had golden blond hair and eyes blue enough for the color to sparkle through even from a slight distance, and some sort of mark on the right side of his neck. A mole, maybe, or a small birthmark. In the background of the shot, a prison guard lay facedown in a puddle of blood.

“Hello, suspect number one,” I said.

“Gage?” Teresa asked, and the concern in her voice made me look at the man in question.

Gage’s entire body had gone rigid, his face a horrible pasty white. He looked stuck between throwing up and bursting into tears, and I didn’t know which was worse. “Send that picture to the computer downstairs,” he said in a funny voice, and then took off toward the house.

“What’s going on?” Simon asked.

“I’ll call you back,” Teresa said.

I sent the photo while we chased Gage inside, straight to the computers in the War Room. Teresa and I hung back while he worked. Something in that photo had spooked him, and asking a thousand questions wasn’t going to help him find the answer he was looking for. He scrolled through an archive of Ranger Corps photos—looking for someone familiar.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Renee asked. She stopped when she saw our faces, then glanced past us to Gage.

“We have a photo of one of the hostiles,” Teresa said.

“Okay. And?”

“I’m not sure.” She stepped up behind Gage and put her hands on his shoulders. He leaned into her touch a little, but didn’t stop searching.

My personal computer skills were a bit lackluster, so I gave Renee a brief rundown of our conversation with Simon. By the time I finished, Marco had joined us, and she repeated it all to him. Teresa was crowded over the computer, whispering something to Gage and blocking the monitor.

“So?” I said. “What did you find?”

Teresa stepped aside and Gage slumped back into his chair. Both of their expressions showed complete befuddlement. On the computer monitor were two side-by-side pictures. One was a sharper version of the security image and our suspect. The second was a younger blond teen, with similar blue eyes and facial features, and the same damned birthmark on his neck. The teen wore a solid blue jumpsuit—the kind that all Ranger trainees wore until they were officially part of a Corps Unit.

“Holy fuck,” Renee said.

I figured it out a split second later. The Ranger trainee with the striking resemblance to our slightly older suspect was Jasper McAllister. Gage’s dead brother.

“How is this possible?” Marco asked.

“It’s not,” Gage said in a tone sharp enough to draw blood. “Someone’s fucking with me. I saw his body.”

“It can’t be Jasper,” Teresa said. “He’d be in his thirties by now, and the boy in that security photo is barely pushing twenty.”

“Could it be a Changeling?” Renee asked.

“Possibly.”

“I thought Changelings had to actually touch the person they’re duplicating,” I said.

Renee shrugged. “Different lab, different Changelings.”

“But why age him? Jasper was sixteen when he died.”

“Bring Dr. Kinsey in here,” Gage said.

Marco left the room. While we waited, I studied the two images. Even with the small black mask on the suspect, the resemblance between the two boys was uncanny and unmistakable. The hair, the eyes, even the birthmark. No one spoke while we waited for Marco and Dr. Kinsey to appear, and when they did, Marco shut the War Room door behind them.

“This is my brother Jasper,” Gage said, pointing to the trainee image. “He died about a year before the War ended. He was sixteen.” He pointed to the suspect. “This was taken from security footage of today’s hospital attack.”

Dr. Kinsey leaned forward a bit to study the photos. “The resemblance is uncanny,” he said. “Your suspect is obviously older.”

“Yeah, we got that, too. Is it possible for a Changeling to take on the appearance of a person they’ve never touched?”

“In my experience, no. However, my experience is limited to the hybrid-Changelings, and they are only one small part of the larger Recombinant project. It is theoretically possible that another Recombinant may possess such an ability.”

“What about powers, though?” I asked, thinking of Noah and Aaron. “Changelings can only duplicate a visual image, not the powers.”

Dr. Kinsey nodded. “You’re correct. Unless, of course, the Changeling has joined with the person whose powers they are exhibiting”—in the back of the room, Marco grunted—“but that can’t possibly be the case here.”

“We don’t even know what powers this doppelganger was using,” Teresa said, pointing to the suspect. “That information is being kept extremely guarded, even from us.”

“Jasper’s power was superspeed,” Gage said. “They reported a Meta using superspeed at the hospital. Damn it.”

Kinsey stood up straighter and scratched his chin, a gesture I’d seen him use more than once while pondering something. His eyes went a little distant, unfocused, until I lost patience with his mental meanderings.

“Want to share what you’re thinking, Doc?” I asked.

He gave me a startled look, then frowned. “Those of us in charge of Recombinant projects were handled autonomously by a single person, to whom we reported. We were not supposed to know who the other directors were, or to have any sort of contact with one another unless given specific permission to do so.”

“Plausible deniability?” Teresa said.

“Exactly.”

“But?”

“We didn’t always follow the rules. I met a man once about twenty-five years ago, quite by accident, while visiting my now-ex-wife’s family in Oklahoma City.”

Kinsey had an ex-wife? That was news to me.

“We randomly met at a coffee shop near my hotel and engaged in conversation about our work in genetics. His name was Neal Arroway, and we kept in contact for several years after. Once I took over the hybrid-Changeling project, and he took the lead in a new project in Oklahoma City, we realized we worked for the same people. After that, we ceased all professional and social contact.”

“What was Arroway working on?” Teresa asked.

“Cloning.”

Gage made a sharp, strangled noise. His eyes burned with fury. “Cloning what?” he asked.

“Neal occasionally talked about cloning chimps and gorillas. During our last conversation, roughly twenty years ago, he mentioned that human cloning would soon be a possibility.”

“But why would anyone clone my brother? How would they even get access to his DNA? All of the fallen Rangers were brought back to HQ and cremated.” Gage’s face went slack. “Shit.”

“What?” I asked.

“Someone at MHC must have done it. They’re the only ones who had access.”

“That’s assuming this person is a clone of your brother,” Teresa said. She tapped the suspect’s image. “There could be another, more reasonable, explanation.”

He looked up at her, and they shared something I couldn’t even begin to describe. “What if there isn’t? What if that’s an actual clone of Jasper? Then who were the other hostiles with him?”

My stomach flipped. We had a lot of guesses and circumstantial evidence, and not a single bit of proof that any clones even existed. But if they did—the potential impact was huge and seriously nausea-inducing.

She squeezed his shoulder, and he reached up to clasp her hand. “We don’t know anything yet, Gage, but we’re going to get some answers. I promise.” To Kinsey, she asked, “Do you think Arroway still works in Oklahoma City?”

“It’s possible. As I said—”

“No contact, right.” She turned to face the rest of us, her face set and determined. “Well, maybe we can’t go to New York, but Oklahoma hasn’t banned us yet.”

“Trip?” I asked.

“Trip.”

•   •   •

One of the benefits of having a private jet is the ability to leave the state at a moment’s notice. In a matter of minutes, Teresa, Gage, and I were on our way. Everyone else was staying behind to hold down the fort, and Renee agreed to call Simon in New York and fill him in on our latest discoveries.

We didn’t talk much on the trip. Gage didn’t get mad like most people, with yelling and big gestures and ugly faces. He was a quiet angry person. The quieter he got, the worse it was, so I gave him room and let Teresa handle his simmering temper.

No more information had come out of New York by the time we landed in Oklahoma City, but we had gotten a little more intel on Dr. Neal Arroway. Like the fact that he’d died three months ago of a sudden cardiac arrest, and that the company he worked for was named Springwell Laboratories.

The car rental clerk couldn’t get rid of us fast enough, and then we were on our way into the city. Oklahoma City was one of the few major Southern cities to have seen an actual increase in jobs and standard of living in the fifteen years since the end of the Meta War. The majority of the damage done during the War was in the north, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, which drove a lot of people south (unless they went to Canada, like the L.A. film industry). Large corporations relocated to places like Oklahoma City, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Tallahassee, and workers went with them. It didn’t surprise me that a place like Springwell Laboratories had thrived there.

Its home was on the Meridian West End Corridor, just north of the airport we landed at, situated with dozens of other sprawling corporate headquarters and manufacturing campuses. The building itself was pretty boring—a gray stone exterior with the occasional blacked-out window. It didn’t seem to have the same intense security measures we’d seen at Weatherfield Research and Development (Dr. Kinsey’s former employer), just a guard hut and steel rail across the road into the parking lot.

Teresa leaned out the window so the guard could get a good look at her, then said, “Nice evening, isn’t it?”

The guard gaped at her a moment before replying, “Um, yeah. What can I help you with, Miss? Uh, it’s Trance, right?”

“It is, and I hope you can help me. I’d like to speak with someone who could possibly answer some brief questions about a former employee.”

“I could, um, give you the phone number of our Human Resources Department.”

“An in-person interview would be much more informative. I’m sure you can understand that.”

“I . . .” The poor guard couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. He’d gotten the Saturday-afternoon shift, when the majority of employees weren’t even around. Our chances of speaking to someone important this late in the day, on a weekend, were slim, but this was the only lead we had.

He held up a finger in a wait-a-minute gesture, then picked up a phone. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I’m sure Gage was listening in from the passenger seat. The guard came back a bit later. “Okay,” he said, “go inside and park to the left. Someone will meet you in the main entrance. It’s the blue glass revolving doors.”

“Thank you very much,” Teresa said.

Someone did indeed meet us just inside the Springwell lobby—a tall, hefty man with thinning hair and saggy jowls who looked about as happy to see us as a we were to be there.

“Tobias Schillinger,” he said. “Director of Operations.”

“Mr. Schillinger, pleasure,” Teresa said. “I’m—”

“I know who all of you are, and please forgive my rudeness, but we run on a very tight schedule here, and I have an appointment in less than ten minutes. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about a former employee of yours, a man named Neal Arroway.”