Warrior Reborn (32 page)

He was here, Briet was alive, and he had a completely new respect for Mia and Turen.

Two minutes, maybe twenty later, he glanced over at Briet. Her expression was still peaceful on the pillow beside him. He ran his knuckle against her cheek. “We’ll figure out what he did to the DNA and we’ll fix this. I promise.”

CHAPTER 26

The next morning Jason left Quan on bedside detail with Briet. He joined Ansgar, who was waiting with unprecedented patience in the hallway. The lack of animosity and sarcasm signaled a marked change. One Jason hoped wasn’t indicative of a diabolical turn in his own well-being.

He let the thought go and opted for the direct approach. “So why the company?”

“Grimm mentioned you’re trying to intensify the dimensional view today,” said Ansgar.

“I didn’t get that was any big deal.”

They started walking and Ansgar slid him a glance. “It took Briet a while to get the hang of this process. The first couple of times really drained her. I’m sure Grimm would keep you from the edge—he just doesn’t have her experience.”

Jason frowned. “But neither do you.”

Ansgar nodded once in concession. “I was with her when she started to learn the process. Grimm only saw her after she’d developed control.” He gave an off-handed shrug. “She would want me to be there with you.”

“Do you know what it’s like or did she give you any details?”

“She compared it to a picture of an apple versus the real thing. The slides represent the picture, two dimensions, flat. She has the capability to turn the picture around in her field of vision, see all the sides, and expand it to see all the dimensions.”

“What’s the benefit?”

Ansgar raised a brow. “Starting to get out of my sphere of technical detail here, but my understanding is if you can handle the dimensional view, you can also manipulate the object.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “Dissect it, or change its composition?”

“You would need to ask Grimm that question.”

Surprised, Jason let the conversation drop with the buzz of his phone. Turning partly away from Ansgar, he checked the call. “What’s up, Frank?”

“We need to meet. The scope of the situation you outlined has changed.”

Jason blinked and stared at the marble patterns on the floor. He’d hoped Frank could fetter out some details before Briet woke up. His foster brother worked for a private company. Though Frank had never described his operation in anything but remote references in the myriad letters, it had sounded like high-risk, low-profile security operations. Jason had hoped for some sort of miracle. “I understand if you can’t get the information—”

“No,” Frank cut him off. “I’m solid with your request. There is just a lot of information and you’re going to have to see it for me to explain.”

“How long do you need? I can’t leave her for very long in the state she’s in.” Jason glanced at Ansgar. There was no change in the calm expression.

“I understand,” said Frank. “An hour would be good.”

That long? How much could Frank have uncovered? “We can meet at my place. I’ll need to call you later this morning with a time.”

“Good. I’ll wait on you.”

“Thanks.” Jason slid the phone closed. Ansgar didn’t ask anything but stood waiting for an explanation. Well, time to test the waters of the tribe. “My foster brother’s been tracking down details on the man—men who attacked Briet. If I get Grimm’s okay, I need to meet with him today.”

Not even a flicker of an eye, amazing. Jason resisted the urge to look through the doorway next to him and out the far window. It was possible hell had frozen over since he’d woken up.

“Let me know when you need to go,” Ansgar replied and walked into Briet’s lab.

Jason flicked a quick look to the window anyway, before he followed him.

Grimm had the trays set out on the table. The day before, he’d had Jason work with esoteric samples of pond water. A comfortable sample to establish the focus and the lock, but nothing of high complexity.

Jason was chomping at the bit to get started, wanting to find some answers before Briet returned and pushed herself to the extreme.

He glanced over the samples, all labeled, and lined up as before. He’d asked for the rest of Briet’s samples, Annie’s from before and after her death, as well as samples from the other children. Fortunately, Briet had brought Annie’s samples to the Sanctum’s lab prior to the attack. Grimm had everything he’d requested, organized by timeline.

“Are there still samples of the other women, Maitea and Isabella?” Jason drew in a deep breath at the intense look on Grimm’s face. He was fairly certain he’d gotten the women’s names right. He only had that one dream to go on.

“She’s told you of them?” asked the healer.

“No.”

That won him a frown from Grimm and raised eyebrow from Ansgar, who leaned back against the far wall.

“It was in dreams. She shared information about the women with me in a dream.”

Both men relaxed. He wasn’t quite comfortable with their total acceptance of the unbelievable though. It required a entirely different mindset.

Grimm glanced at the steel doors of the fridge as if considering for a moment. “She has Maitea’s sample here. However, Isa didn’t die from a toxin and while that doesn’t mean he didn’t infect her, there’s nothing here to test.”

“She kept Isa’s sample at the lighthouse,” Ansgar piped up from his position. “I can retrieve it.”

They both waited on his response. But looking at all the slides he had to review today, Jason figured he might not have time. “I’ll work with what we have here, for now.”

Ansgar moved to the table and straddled a chair as Grimm activated the room’s shields.

Giving a shrug of his shoulders, Jason reached for Annie’s slides. “Back light.” The beam of light cut a yellow path beneath the glass top. He looked to Grimm. “How do I work the dimensional aspect?”

“Get to the level you were before, then I’ll talk you through it.”

Positioned over Annie’s most recent sample, Jason let his focus drop. Cells and tissue combined in the sample retrieved before the autopsy. A marked absence of crystals distinguished Annie’s sample from the blood extracted from Briet.

Not right. There should be toxin in the sample, some concrete evidence of Annie’s death, some evidence of Salvatore’s crime.

Jason considered a shift to a lower level, except Annie’s cells only displayed rupture and damage. Most likely, the result of the defibrillator used to try to resuscitate her? He didn’t think so. There was little else to check and he had no reference point to try a new process. He pulled back and looked between the slides.

Using Annie’s older sample, Jason descended to observe the DNA. As Ansgar had said, the image looked rather flat.

“Now what?”

“Focus on the edge of the cell,” said Grimm.

Jason didn’t bother to explain he was in deeper than Grimm had specified. “Then what?”

“Briet described it like gripping the edge with your eyes and refocusing. Very slow, very subtle. Concentrate on the edge and pull back in the smallest increment you can imagine.”

Jason tried a bit more focus, a squint, even ripping out of the focus a little faster. Nothing.

“She said it felt kind of like doing back flips,” Ansgar’s deeper voice vibrated in the air.

A back flip? Jason stared at the DNA strand, focused on the top edge and let his imagination roll the segment.

It moved. The reaction startled him so much he blinked out of focus.

“Steady. Slow and steady.” Grimm’s voice thrummed from a distance, but calmed him. The hand on Jason’s shoulder infused a wave of heat counteracting the shock of cold produced by the quick loss of focus.

“Think I almost had it.” Jason had learned long ago that knowing what to experience was half the battle. He focused again, deeper and steady this time. He counted through the process as Briet had coached him for his breathing. The numbers offered a counter measure and with a patient series of moves, the strand moved one hundred and eighty degrees. The image no longer flat, rounded in shape, defining chiseled curves from the shadows.

Cool shit.

The added black splice of DNA, still partially visible, was recessed beneath the three dimensional image. Patiently, Jason worked the view until the strand stood on end and rotated with the foreign splice clearly visible. At a loss for what to do now, he let it float back into two-dimensional form and locked his focus to return to normal.

Normal in terms of super science. Jason waited a second and blinked. Grimm and Ansgar both stared at him.

“What?”

“Do you realize how long you’ve been working on the sample?” The narrowing of Grimm’s eyes gave Jason a hint the answer wasn’t obvious.

“No clue. Few minutes. Fifteen, twenty?”

“An hour and a half.” Grimm punched the control panel to confirm the time and glanced back at him. “I’m not sure you should do any more today.”

Jason held up a hand to stop the lecture Grimm was about to deliver. “I need to check Briet’s one more time. Let me do that one this new way and then we’ll call it quits for the day.”

Grimm glared at him. “Not as long this time. When I tell you to come out, you need to stop.”

“I hear you.” Jason pushed away Annie’s two slides and stomped down the disappointment at not finding something earth shattering in her samples. With a roll of his shoulders, he took Briet’s post-infection sample again and focused.

He hadn’t delved very deep the last time. Grimm had restricted him to only the cells. Now, he planned to see the composition of the toxin the attackers had injected.

Dropping into focus was easier. Faster, too. He was more proficient with easing in and out of focus, maintaining the levels, and more familiar with his limits as well.

The rhombus crystals formed before his field of vision, no globules, given the toxin had already mutated by this point.

Letting the focus go deeper, he counted. One breath, in for five counts, five more on the exhale. The drop was startling. Briet’s DNA registered. Not quite as he expected, but not altered like Annie’s, possibly as a result of the unique Guardian physiology.

What bothered him was the change in the crystal. The entity was stagnate, but lodged in Briet’s cells, paralyzed in the act of attack. Unable to believe what he was seeing he concentrated on the flip.

“Jason, stop.” Grimm’s voice floated through his mind, buffered as if behind a wall of cotton balls, hazy, fuzzy, and distant.

He could get this. The flip brought the object free of Briet’s cell, turning and spinning the multi-sided form in his view.

“Jason, no. Back out, now.” Ansgar’s voice vibrated like a cymbal through his head.

Just another minute. If he could just separate a portion of the form—. His eyes burned like hot coals and his brain felt ready to explode, but he was so close.

“Jason. Stop.”

A hand gripped his shoulder, while another covered his eyes. The focus short-circuited. A cold chill splashed over his skin as his legs buckled and he crumpled to the floor.

“Jason.” Grimm’s voice echoed from the side of his head before fingers touched along his jaw, temple, and forehead. “What were you thinking?”

He didn’t open his eyes. It still hurt too much, even with them closed. “Almost had it.”

“Almost got it, you mean,” said Ansgar. The odd concern and lack of vehemence in Ansgar’s voice made Jason crack open an eye. Brother and healer were crouched next to him, both frowning.

He remembered being pulled away. When he had ended up sitting against counters under the table was a little fuzzy, but the force fields were down so it had been several minutes.

“They’re not crystals—in Briet’s virus.”

Grimm’s frown deepened, but he reached behind him for a bottle of water and wrapped Jason’s fingers around it.

Jason didn’t move fast enough to satisfy the man and Grimm tipped the end for him to drink. With a long, cool drain on the bottle, he plopped the plastic on the floor beside him, puzzled to see it empty. He drew a breath and wiped his face. Streaks of blood covered his palm as he drew his hand back.

“Your nose,” said Grimm.

A tissue was pressed into his hand and he wadded it beneath his nose. Bright red dotted the white, though not a significant volume of fluid. “That why you stopped me?”

“That, and the fact your whole body was shaking,” said Ansgar.

“It’s computers.”

“You sure he doesn’t have any brain damage?” Ansgar asked Grimm.

The question was a clear indication of a lack of coherence between Jason’s comments and reality.

“The virus. Not crystals. The entire compound composed of tiny—” his brain tried to search for the right word, but words were having trouble forming in his mouth.

“Nanites?” Grimm offered.

“Sort of, though not sure I understand those very well. This is definitely a polymer and mechanics combined. Looks like it had a processor chip.

“What would the power source be?” asked Grimm.

“Electrical current.” Jason looked between the two other men with a weak laugh. “I couldn’t figure out how he could be the only one of you to have more than one power.”

Ansgar stood up, walking to the other end of the lab, his fists clenched as if he planned to create a new door in the wall, the hard way.

Jason didn’t blame him, but he was too exhausted to react much. He closed his eyes. Darkness eased the pain behind his eyes. “He mimicked Briet’s skill with technology. Computers.”

The image of Annie holding up her latest drawing filtered through his thoughts.

“Ansgar, you have access to all of the places Briet has been since she’s been working on the trial?”

The man turned around puzzled, but nodded.

Jason took the second bottle of water Grimm handed him and took a sip. “The little girl who died was having problems adjusting. Briet worked with her using drawings. I’m sure she would still have all the pictures. I need to look at those pictures.”

“An eight-year-old’s pictures?” Ansgar’s comment held no scorn, merely a request for clarification. Jason wondered at the distinction this made for Ansgar, but gave him a nod. “I’ll find them after you’re back with Briet.”