Invaded (29 page)

We’re taking precautions
, Alona assured her.
Nothing more than that. There’s no need to panic.

But Alona’s fear betrayed her. Cara felt the knot in the woman’s chest as if it were
her own. It was Cara’s concern for the future of L’eihr that had her sharing her
suspicions of Jaxen and Aisly, specifically her fear that the pair might belong to
an outside race.

The subject caught Alona off guard, and she surprised Cara by quickly scrambling to
block her thoughts. Not quickly enough, though. In the nanosecond she’d left her mind
open, Cara saw an
image—a memory—in which younger versions of Jaxen and Aisly blinked up at Alona with
blue eyes. Vivid blue eyes. Before Cara had time to grasp the significance behind
that juicy tidbit,
Alona opened her mouth to chastise her.

“I assure you the pair is very much L’eihr. And members of The Way, which, if you’ve
forgotten, you have vowed to obey in all matters.”

Cara blushed more deeply at the reproach. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do not tell anyone what you know of the Aribol,” Alona ordered. “And instruct Aelyx
to do the same.”

“I will.”

“And don’t worry.” Alona’s gaze seemed to warm by a few degrees. “I have no intention
of deploying you to the front lines of battle, should that day ever
come.”

Cara offered a hesitant smile. “Good, because I’d shoot the wrong person.”

“The
iphal
makes friendly fire virtually impossible.”

“Trust me, I’d find a way,” Cara said flatly. “But allow me to change the subject.
The colony development panel needs your input.” She explained the impasse
they’d reached regarding the occupation program. “I’d like to allow colonists some
freedom in choosing their jobs.”

“No.”

The instantaneous response was surprising, and pure instinct had Cara drawing a breath
to argue her case.

“Do you require further assistance?” Alona asked, cutting her off.

Cara got the impression she should shut up, so she shook her head.

“Then you may depart at your leisure.”

The defeat brought Cara down a few notches, leaving her more conflicted than ever
about colony life. Just when she’d begun to feel the slightest bit of optimism,
Alona’s snap judgment had made her doubt the future. It was like emotional whiplash,
and Cara didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up.

But she put the defeat behind her and paid a visit to her favorite academic scholar.
Cara had a theory about the Wonder Siblings’ blue eyes, and she needed it confirmed.
If nothing else,
she would leave here knowing the truth about Jaxen and Aisly.

“During the exchange,” Cara said to Larish while relaxing into her plush seat, “Aelyx
told me the Elders had gone too far with organized breeding, so they backtracked and
began
cloning from the archives.” When Larish nodded in confirmation, she continued. “But
why didn’t they go
way
back and clone the ancients? Then they wouldn’t need
human DNA to diversify the gene pool.”

“That’s a good question.” Larish sipped the steaming
h’ali
Cara had brought to butter him up and loosen his tongue. “Genetic material loses
its integrity
after about two thousand years, even under the ideal storage conditions of the archives.
It’s possible to clone from older samples, but not without manipulating the genetic
code.”

“Manipulating it?” she echoed. “How?”

Larish set down his mug and tapped the data table that stood between them. An illustration
appeared of the double helix structure. He used an index finger to swipe at the chains,
forming cracks
and breaks in the DNA. “This is what time does to an archived sample in perfect, sub-frozen
storage.” With the side of his fist, he took it further, scrubbing out entire rungs
of the
helix ladder. “And this is what you’d face if you wanted to clone the ancients—assuming
you could find their remains.”

“But it could be done?” Cara asked.

“In theory. We could use artificial material to fill in the missing links. But it
wouldn’t be a true clone. Odds are, the replicates would be…” He searched for the
right
word, then settled on the very definition of Jaxen and Aisly. “
Different
from the original.”

Cara parted her lips in mock fascination, trying to appear innocent. “Different how?
Like, could scientists give the replicates special powers and stuff?”

Mind control, for example.

Larish’s countenance brightened and a sly grin curved his mouth. He leaned in, lowering
his voice as if to share a secret. “Many years ago, a rumor was circulating that The
Way had
commissioned just such a project.”

Cara mirrored his position, resting both elbows on her knees and summoning her most
trustworthy face. “Really?”

He flashed a palm. “Just hearsay, you understand.”

“Of course.” She gave a solemn nod, silently willing him to spill it.

“Remember the remains taken from the colony?”

“The bodies of the pregnant queen and her consort?”

Larish nodded. “Supposedly, the true reason The Way exhumed the remains was because
they’d exhausted their supply of ancient DNA. They transported the bodies here, to
the
capital’s genetics laboratory. According to rumor, the lead geneticists were instructed
to clone the pair and heighten the replicates’ abilities with alien DNA.”

“Aliens?” Cara asked. “Like the Aribol?”

“Maybe. It could have been any species. The Way had uncovered alien genetic material
on a primitive blood-crusted weapon, and scientists salvaged just enough usable DNA
to fill in the
missing genetic code from the ancients.”

“How long ago was this?” she asked.

Larish darted a quick gaze at the ceiling to crunch the numbers. “About twenty years
ago, if I’m not mistaken.” Shaking his head, he corrected, “No. I’d just
relocated to the new barracks, so it would have been twenty-two years ago.”

Which would make the first alien hybrid twenty-one, like Jaxen. Aelyx was right when
he’d said the oldest clones were barely twenty. Jaxen wasn’t a true clone. The geneticists
must
have used him as a guinea pig before they created Aisly.

“What about the fetus?” Cara asked. “Do you think they tried to clone it?”

Larish waved a dismissive hand. “If they did, I can’t imagine they were successful.
The embryonic tissue would have decayed beyond use.”

If that were the case, then Aisly wasn’t Jaxen’s sister. In another life, thousands
of years ago, she’d been his queen and the mother of his unborn child. They were probably
l’ihans
now. Cara recalled the day she’d sat beside Jaxen in his room. When she’d asked about
his partner, he had said the girl was his perfect match. It had to be
Aisly.

But wait.

What if there were more of these Super Ancients running around? On L’eihr, they’d
never stand out if they used cosmetic drops, and on Earth, they’d blend into the blue-eyed
population with no more than a trendy haircut and a change of clothes.

“Do you know how many hybrids the labs tried to create?” Cara chilled at the idea
of a whole generation of mindbenders loosed upon the galaxy.

“I have no idea.” Larish retrieved his mug and took a leisurely sip. “Assuming the
project existed, it would’ve been kept highly classified, which means the lead
geneticists would have lived sequestered from the general populace.”

Cara started to ask why, but then the answer came. “Ah. So the scientists didn’t accidentally
leak information through Silent Speech.”

“Exactly.” Larish gave her that proud-teacher smile. “You’re very intelligent,
Cah
-ra.”

She waited for him to add the disclaimer
for a human
, but he never did. Her heart swelled with pride. “That means a lot coming from you.”

She decided that Larish was pretty awesome—for anyone, not just a L’eihr.

Cara waited for her post to upload to the satellite before shutting down her laptop
and tucking it inside her shoulder bag. With her blog updated, she stood and scanned
the
bustling terminal to gauge how much time she had before boarding.

The luggage carts had vanished since she’d sat down to type her post, along with the
dozen or so crates bearing the nanotechnology to neutralize Earth’s prolific algae
blooms—a
long-awaited
Happy Alliance Day!
gift to mankind. Crew members worked in near-perfect unison to fit passengers with
travel bands and haul supplies through the tunnel leading to the cargo
hold.

When the metal-grated ramp descended from the boarding corridor, Cara knew it wouldn’t
be much longer before her travel band started buzzing. The crew was probably waiting
for The
Way’s private shuttle to arrive. The head Elders always boarded first, kind of like
business-class-elite passengers back home.

That was fine by Cara. Let them go ahead of her. She was in no hurry to entomb herself
inside a hotel-size tin can and hurtle through invisible wormholes. Light speed made
Cara toss her
cookies—or
l’arun
, as it were.

A flicker of sunlight from the nearest spaceport window caught Cara’s eye, and she
strode toward the thick glass pane for one last look at L’eihr. How had three months
flown by so
quickly? She still remembered the thrill she’d felt when shuttling down, the wonderment
of glimpsing this alien world for the first time. She’d been so desperate to capture
more of the
landscape’s beauty that she hadn’t blinked. It was stunning now, even from a distance—the
planet a muted cornflower blue with swirls of caramel and cream.

But the exchange had taught her that beauty wasn’t enough. Cara hadn’t told anyone,
but she was 99 percent sure she wasn’t coming back.

Contrary to what she’d once posted on the blog, her
important work
for the colony was anything but. In truth, Cara had quit trying to make the development
panel see reason. The
past two weeks had been a constant battle, and when the council refused to budge on
the colonist requirements—lest humans “taint L’eihr progeny with inferior genetic
material”—she’d issued a silent retreat. Mentally, she was tired: of fighting to preserve
her basic human rights, of dodging leaders she’d sworn to obey, of hostile
strangers framing her for capital offenses, of pretending it would get better with
time.

Cara felt the pull of home like an irresistible force of gravity leading her back
to where she belonged. She wanted to be a normal teenager again, to go to college
and spend her nights reading
and studying and watching
Doctor Who
reruns. She wanted to eat pizza and wear jeans and openly disagree with her leaders
without facing an electric lash.

For the last several months, she’d carried a tremendous burden, slinging the fate
of Earth across her back like Atlas—something no seventeen-year-old should have to
do. Wasn’t
she entitled to a break?

She thought so.

But an invisible weight crushed her chest as she stared out the port window. A life
on Earth meant a future without Aelyx, something she couldn’t imagine without tears
rushing her vision.
Stars blurred into a wet glow, and when she blotted her eyes, a distant smudge of
brilliance came into view—the angel nebula, tentacles of pink and violet stretched
in triumph over the
darkness.

Aelyx’s words rang in her head, so full of hope that it tightened the pressure around
her lungs.
Every time you see it, I want you to think of me. Soon we’ll stand together and
watch the L’eihr sky from our colony.
Moisture welled again in Cara’s eyes. Even if she were able to visit him, the life
they had envisioned was gone, and the pain of that loss
threatened to double her over.

Why couldn’t he stay on Earth for her? Didn’t he love her enough?