Warrior Reborn (39 page)

“But he would probably shut you down if he disagreed with you.”

“He’s always listened to my side of an issue.” She rolled her lips. “I tend to be the more stubborn one.”

He raised a brow. “Letting go of control is frightening but you’ve done it with your work. You are both in lock-step in your professional interactions.”

She took a deep breath as the questions came back to a safer plane. “Yes, though we both want to fix this problem.”

“Certainly. And then? Have you asked him what he wants to do? Shared with him your hopes? My point about failure is about expectations, not actually failing. If you don’t ask and don’t reveal yourself, you have no way to meet in the middle.”

There’s no middle for having children. You either have them or you don’t
, she thought miserably. Yet, this conversation was sounding an awful lot like the one she’d had with Jason months ago when he’d made her promise to come to him first whenever she was upset. A promise to give him first crack at her issues.

“Has it ever occurred to you that you might both want the same things? You’ll never know if you aren’t honest with him about what you want.”

“You’re as bad as Ansgar.” Her gaze shifted back to her plasma screen as she tried to digest, tried to frame a wall against what Grimm might see in her reactions.

“Not even. Though I do care about both of you. You’ve both been through a great deal, been exposed to emotional trials. Those events change people. What’s the worst that can happen? Would you tell him you’d flat out refuse something he told you he desperately wanted?”

She whipped her gaze back to his. “Of course not.”

Did Jason have needs he was afraid to tell her? The consideration staggered her. A measure of guilt and shame rippled through her at the thought that she’d been so preoccupied with their progress and her own wishes that she might have neglected his desires.

“You certain?” prodded Grimm. “Would you give up the life you now have for him?”

Her mouth opened, but she paused. Several months ago, she would have vehemently refused a change. Now the idea of life without Jason was unthinkable. “I would consider any request he made.” At Grimm’s questioning look, she continued. “But I also know he’d never ask me to do something he thought would make me truly unhappy.”

He nodded. “Would you ask for anything you thought would make him unhappy? Really unhappy, something that would ultimately make him miserable? Not just what he thinks would be a bad idea, like having a child. It can be a fine line, Briet.”

She swallowed hard. Jason was compassionate, protective, and patient, even at the worst of times. Despite his fears, he would be an incredible, loving father. She knew it with a deep certainty. She wouldn’t force children on him. But could she ask for them, even knowing his reluctance? Yes, she could ask, knowing that he would be better getting past his fears and experiencing the gift of his own children, even if the request caused an initial ripple in their relationship. Jason had given her his strength over the last several weeks, unselfishly and without hesitation. He deserved nothing less from her.

With an internal muster of strength, she made her resolution. Grimm was right. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It wasn’t as if Jason would shut her down. She had more than enough strength to bolster him through having a child if he agreed to take the chance. She would give everything she had to see him happy and free of his past.

Resolute, she looked up at Grimm, her sly mentor and friend. He was more meddling than Ansgar. He’d seen through the fog she’d built around herself and she loved him for it.

“I’m glad you’re thinking about it, Briet. Sometimes you have to push the people you love toward what they need, not what they think they want. It’s part of doing what’s best for them. If they’re lucky, they end up with both.”

CHAPTER 31

The
fold
back to the Sanctum’s council room was uneventful. A slight press of fatigue hung on Jason’s shoulders, but a huge sense of weightlessness permeated his body. Frank’s words shadowed him. Something in the lecture had jarred free the rage, hate and violence or maybe it was a culmination of events. Either way, the feeling was a welcome relief. The empty spaces of his emotions filled in immediately with hope and the promise of a future, but mostly the need to see Briet and absorb her warmth.

Tsu had departed with Frank for the Callao port. They’d succeed in their reconnaissance. The only question was how long they would have to wait to take out the manufacturing plant. Everything depended on the final plan.

Jason hadn’t seen Kamau since he’d left with Taylor. Sera, his black leopard, napped, stretched like a huge rug on the other side of the conference table. A more contented purr rumbled in the air than previously at the warehouse.

Turen and Ansgar had waited a fair distance away after Frank’s lecture. They’d both heard his argument. He’d bet money on it. But he didn’t need a bet to know they would never mention the conversation.

“Thank you for the backup and for dealing with Taylor’s hired muscle.” The team had handled the six other men while Jason had pursued Taylor. He was certain the men weren’t dead, though he wasn’t going to ask about their fate. He moved to take the huge cooler Turen held. Ansgar got there first, adding it to his load.

“Don’t thank us. This is what we do. I think.” Turen laughed. “It’s been a while for our people since we’ve worked on issues other people can’t see coming, much less fix. Feels very right.” He clapped a hand on Jason’s shoulder and left.

Ansgar gestured to the door with his head. “I’ll help you take these to the lab.”

Frank’s people had delivered the three large coolers of samples, all fresh from the last forty-eight hours. The collections covered each trial initiated by the umbrella organization. Processing and testing was going to be a bitch.

“You didn’t have the toxin in that last syringe, did you?” asked Ansgar.

Jason glanced over. “Don’t think I could have killed him?”

“That’s not what I meant. I figured he had it coming. Just kind of have you pegged as the super cautious type. Wouldn’t risk the toxin getting out and hurting somebody else. That kind of thing.”

“Good thing Taylor wasn’t as intuitive.” Not that he’d considered Ansgar very intuitive when he’d first met him. He’d been wrong in that judgment.

“What was in the last syringe?”

“Wasp venom.” Jason kept his expression clear. The last thing he needed was Ansgar to know Frank had a medical dossier on Taylor, among other things. Frank tracked down a wealth of information about Briet’s attacker. Taylor would have killed his grandmother for the right price. He probably had, given the mercenary hits credited to his resume. Jason had no moral dilemma with killing Taylor and he’d tailored his syringes for maximum impact.

Ansgar stopped in the middle of the hallway, arms laden with coolers and stared at him. “You were going to threaten him with a bee sting?”

“Wasp venom.” Jason narrowed his eyes. “His heart would race and his skin puff like a balloon. Tongue, too. Breathing would be damn near impossible. Oh, and his eyes would have swollen shut.”

Ansgar’s eyes widened through the whole accounting. “You’re one scary son of a bitch. I won’t even ask what was in the other syringes. Good thing you’re mated to my sister and are on our side.”

“Very good.” Jason smiled and turned around toward the lab.

“Did you bring an antidote?”

“No.”

“Good man.”

Jason hefted his cooler under one arm and palmed the plasma reader outside the lab. The door slid open. Grimm glanced up from his position squatting on the floor.

“If you would both stay clear of this corner.” He gestured his arm in a wide arc.

Jason exchanged a look with Ansgar, but put the cooler down at the extreme edge of Grimm’s perimeter and waited.

Stepping back from a slide sample he’d placed on the floor, Grimm pressed a panel beside the steel refrigerator doors. A wide screen illuminated on the wall, several sections delineating statistical detail. He pressed one quadrant and a circle of red, three feet in diameter glowed on the floor in the corner, circling the sample.

Grimm made another selection on the panel. The red light rose, separated into beams, and then twisted in candy cane fashion, spiraling to the ceiling. Reponses indicated in numbers, charts and colors on the panel. The red beams turned to pale purple, cut in horizontal and diagonal sections across the tube of red light, descended, and then disappeared.

Theatrics over, the slide still existed on the floor, seemingly intact.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What is that thing?” asked Jason.

Without responding, Grimm’s brows flickered up and looked at Ansgar. “I need a guinea pig.”

“Damn, I thought I was done with this when you and Briet finished medical school.” When the brow remained raised, Ansgar crossed his arms and huffed. “Fine. Probably the only way I’ll get out of here and get some sleep.”

The slide sample removed from the floor and safely disintegrated, Grimm returned to the panel and gestured Jason to move aside.

“It’s not going to turn me into a turtle or something, is it?” Ansgar asked with a sneer.

“I wish.” Grimm tapped the bottom quadrant. The red lights reactivated. “Turtles are very low maintenance.”

Ansgar took a deep breath but remained still, his arms at his sides, hands relaxed, his gaze focused on the table beyond them as if he did this every day. The red bars rose, circled, and descended. No purple, no diagonal slices.

“All done. Thank you.”

“Whatever,” Ansgar replied with a shake of his head.

Jason only saw the tail end of Ansgar’s long blond braid as he whipped out the door.

“And?”

“I’ve been working on this for some time. Until Briet’s samples, I didn’t have anything substantial as a test medium.”

Jason frowned. “Then, what did you build this for?”

Grimm decommissioned the statistical panel. Opening the coolers, he shifted them before the first large steel door. He started transferring the contents, noting on a ledger in the door a subheading for origination and security level for each sample. “As children here at the Sanctum, we were isolated from the virus that killed our parents. Someday, I would like to believe that one of our own, one who might have survived, or one of our descendents, will make their way back.”

He turned to look Jason straight in the face with a tired, serious expression. “We’ll welcome them home, but we need a way to scan for infection.” He turned back to load more samples and register them. “We need to find a cure.”

Jason shoved the last cooler aside as Grimm closed the door and activated another screen on the door’s face to lock the contents and activate a shield. Computers or not, these people had incredible technology. “Will they know how to get here?”

“This is our origin. For some, there will be a shared memory. Rare, though a possibility. Many, like Kaax, search for descendents of their sibling. Since we’re back in the human population, there’s always the risk the virus is out there, lying dormant.”

A sharp twinge worked its way into Jason’s chest and he tried to shrug it off. The concept of a race of people who’d only just found their way back to normalcy only to encounter annihilation was devastating. He’d thought Salvatore’s experiments threatening, but this danger had existed before his psychological imbalance. A threat, which still lingered.

“Briet indicated over fifty children were here. How many constituted the entire population?” How many were left behind? The question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“We comprise about one tenth of our previous population. We believe all the parents, grandparents, and older siblings perished. Many families weren’t contacted in time to deliver children to Eden.”

“The grounds shielded the ones here?”

“We all reached the age of maturity without incident. I’ve run tests through the years to search for a reoccurrence. So far, we’ve been lucky. There is always the possibility the infection was a one-time event. We can’t know for certain.”

“How long have you been working on this?”

Grimm winced. “It was harder to hide my work after the women had to go into cryo, but about sixty years. At least on this piece of equipment, I keep adding functionality. I’ve finally regulated the scan for safety across body types.” Grimm slapped the lid closed on the last cooler.

“You talking gender, or what?”

Grimm glanced back. “From Ansgar to Mia to Marcus.”

Marcus. Turen and Mia’s son wasn’t even a year old. Jason blinked and turned away. “But the virus didn’t affect the children.”

“It doesn’t mean they don’t carry it anyway. I’m designing for the worst case. My objective is to eradicate this threat at any level.”

“I gather you don’t have samples of the original virus.”

Grimm pursed his lips, shook his head, and then shrugged. “Remember, we were children. Bodies of those who perished would have been destroyed to limit infection. There are plenty of detailed entries in the Archives. Descriptions. Symptoms. Hypotheses.” He seemed to read Jason’s confusion at the Archive reference. “Only the women have access to the Archives. Briet can show you some of the entries. Mia can also mine the information for specific data, if you have an interest.”

Jason glanced back at the unassuming circle on the floor and the darkened panel. The procedure performed some function on the sample. “What does the system do if a person is infected?”

“I have you and Briet to thank for that. Given the results of your exhaustive plan and testing, the process will register the infection level and try eradication by electronic frequency. Failing that, it will initiate sound waves.” He shrugged. “If that fails, we go with a standard protocol of isolation and treatment of symptoms until we develop a cure.”

Jason puzzled over the newest details of the Guardians’ past. A lingering threat for each one of them, not a comforting thought. Yet human beings suffered from a long list of diseases and threats. Perhaps dealing with just one might be easier. “She’s verified the sound waves will work?”