The Change (Unbounded) (27 page)

I don’t have to believe anything.
My jaw clenched back the words before they could escape. I searched for something else to say instead. Something logical that might give him a way out of the mess, even if it meant lying to me. Then, as long as I could keep Delia out of my thoughts, my plan might still work. “Someone ordered them killed. Someone from the Emporium.”

Stefan crossed to the desk and lifted the phone, punching in a number. “Tihalt, I’m sorry for the interruption, but I need to ask Keene a question immediately. Would you please send him back to us? Thank you.”

I stood awkwardly, staring alternately at Delia and Stefan. He smiled; she remained expressionless. I kept up the outward pushing sensation in my mind, but I didn’t know if it was working. I wished Ava had been more forthcoming about our gift, or at least had taught me how to protect my mind.

Tihalt’s office must have been close because less than a minute later a knock came on the door. “Come,” Stefan ordered.

Keene stood in the doorway, looking from Stefan to Delia and me. “How can I help?”

“Who was responsible for the attack on Erin’s family?”

Keene’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t speak. Was that because he didn’t want to lie? His mind was dark, and I could read nothing of his thoughts or feelings. I moved toward him. “Please, Keene, tell me who it was.” I was still three feet away from him when I heard a thought as plainly as if it were a word:
Justine.

Just when I thought I knew the extent of Justine’s duplicity, she surprised me again. Aware of Delia’s presence, I fought not to gasp aloud.

Delia walked toward Keene, a slight smile on her aged face. “It was Justine. She and several others acted against Keene’s orders.” Her eyes flicked toward Stefan and then toward me. “I’ve changed my mind, Stefan. It may be a very good thing to bring your daughter here. A very good thing.”

She knows,
I thought, my stomach queasy.

Yes.
Her thought came to my mind, shutting off as I pushed outward again.

“She will need a strong hand to be of value to us,” Delia added aloud. “I will help with that. Until I clear her, keep her confined. There is too much at stake to let her roam.” Without another word, she swept out the door, her gray dress fluttering in her wake.

I watched her vanish with relief. More than any other Unbounded I’d met, she frightened me, especially now that she knew my secret.

Why hadn’t she told Stefan?

“Thank you, Keene.” Stefan said. “You may go.”

Keene looked at me, his mouth parted as though he wanted to speak. Then, as though thinking better of it, he whirled and marched away.

I watched him go, shaken by everything that had happened, but most of all by the information that Justine had ordered the attack on my family.

A touch on my arm, and I turned to face Stefan. “I will take care of this matter, Erin. I promise.”

“Don’t hurt her. Please.” As much as I hated what she’d done, I didn’t want her dead—or worse.

His nostrils flared. “I will do as I see best. You are family, and I will protect you.” He was still touching me, and this time I received images of his strong connection with family, his loyalty to them, and his hope for me. I blinked at the emotions, but when he lifted his hand from my arm, all the images vanished instantly and there was only blackness again.

“For now, let’s trust each other, shall we?” He smiled. “I hope to have a training session with you soon. We’ll get to know each other better.”

Just what I was afraid of. “I’m really new at this.”

“I’m aware of your former occupation. But don’t worry. Even if you aren’t talented at combat, there are other variations of the gift, as you will soon learn.” He paused a moment before adding. “I suppose it really would be too much to hope that you had your other ancestor’s ability. Now that would be extremely useful. Well, no matter, there may be a possibility of enhancing that gene in your children.”

In my children? I felt a shiver of dread.

Crossing the room, Stefan picked up his phone again. “I’ll have you escorted to your suite. I have something for you there. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“Jonny, please come to my office. Erin is ready to see her room.” He’d no sooner hung up the phone than a slightly built Unbounded opened the door. He had blond hair and a ready smile, but he looked a bit young to have Changed.

“Jonny’s your half-brother,” Stefan said. “He’ll take good care of you.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek, a quick gesture that was over before I realized what he intended. “We’ll talk later. Jonny, answer any questions she has. She’s one of us now.”

As the door shut behind us, Jonny gave me a winning smile. “You’re not going to try to run away are you? Because it really wouldn’t do you any good.” With that, he practically disappeared. A blur streaked down the hall and back again. “See? No one can outrun me. I’m even faster than those with the ability for combat. I’d rather have their intuition for fighting, but this variation comes in handy at times.”

For a moment, my mouth hung open at his display, but then I laughed at his infectious nature. He seemed a child in an adult body. “I bet it does.” I matched his step down the hallway—his much slowed step, that is. “So what other abilities are there?”

He shrugged. “Just about anything anyone in the world is good at, but it boils down to about six main talents—science, math, art, combat, healing, and extrasensory. Each has variations. Like math has technology and building and computer skills. Accounting. You know, anything related. One guy here can multiply numbers faster than you can say them. It’s pretty amazing.” We’d reached the elevator, and he jabbed at the button. “Science has a lot of crossover with math and healing, just as combat does with physical arts such as dancing. Some argue they are part of the same skill. They claim there are really only three basic skills—physical, mental, and extrasensory—which contain many variations. Can you believe people actually argue about such things?”

“I guess they have a lot of time on their hands.” People were really talented at dancing? Art? It seemed too much to take in. Yet from the sincerity I sensed in him, I could tell Jonny wasn’t saying anything unusual. I hoped I’d get the chance to see some of the more artsy abilities in action one day.

Jonny grinned, his blue eyes crinkling at the sides as though he’d laughed a great deal in his life. “Yeah, time is something we have a lot of.” Unlike his father—our father—his face was small and had a crunched sort of look, as though his features hadn’t time to fully develop and expand. Yet the way he moved showed all the confidence of an Unbounded.

We stepped inside the elevator. “What about the extrasensory variations?”

“Well, there’s sensing, of course, which has different levels of ability. Different variations, too, like influencing people with pheromones, though some say that’s more a physical ability. Then there’s pre-cognition, telekinesis, teleporting—”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Well, I’ve never personally met anyone who has visions of the future or can lift things with their minds or transport themselves to another location—and I don’t know anyone who actually knows anyone with those abilities, though I’ve heard tales from the old days. Some say those gifts would be a variation of the science or math talents. You know, going through space and time and defying gravity and all that.” He grinned. “But like you say, some people have way too much time on their hands.”

“Can anyone tell someone’s an Unbounded by looking at them?”

“That’s related to sensing.” He looked at me closely. “Why do you ask?”

“One of my ancestors has that ability.”

“I see.”

I felt an unexpected surge of jealousy and hatred from him that threatened to overwhelm me. I put my hand against the elevator shaft to steady myself. I wanted to ask him why he hated me so much, but I didn’t want to give myself away. Besides, he was looking at me with concern now.

“Are you all right?” He seemed solicitous and sincere, so maybe his previous emotions hadn’t been directed toward me but simply stemmed from frustration at his life.

“I’m fine.” To my relief the bell rang and the elevator doors slid open.

“Your quarters are below ground, I’m sorry to say. Near the nurseries.”

“Nurseries?”

“That’s where the offspring of our female Unbounded stay while their mothers are at work or on assignment. Sort of a daycare.”

“So they keep their children with them.”

He shrugged. “Some do and some don’t. It’s up to them. Mostly. Some prefer to adopt them out and wait to see if they’re Unbounded. It really depends. Right now we have more children here than usual because the Triad’s pushing for babies, and with the progress we’ve had recently, more children are Unbounded than before. That makes it easier to keep them. Unfortunately, there are only so many children a woman wants to have, as I’m sure you understand.”

Thinking of my own conception I said, “With all the genetic research I’m surprised they haven’t started a bunch of test tube babies and put the embryos in the general population.”

“Oh, they’ve tried, believe me.” A strange glee emanated from him now. “But eggs from Unbounded women don’t survive unless they are in the original mother. It’s been quite a problem.”

So Keene hadn’t lied—I really was my mother’s child, and unsuspecting women the world over weren’t being tricked into birthing the offspring of female Unbounded.

We emerged from the elevator, passing two more guards, both Unbounded this time. Jonny’s pace quickened as we moved down the corridor. “These are only the babies,” he said, pausing before a large window that reminded me of a hospital nursery. “Older children are in another room, but they’re taken out during the day. Can’t have them cooped up down here all the time.”

Inside the room, women—not Unbounded—were rocking, playing with, or bottle-feeding tiny infants. About ten babies if my count was correct. “What’s their chance of being Unbounded?”

“We’re talking up to fifty percent,” Jonny said. “If we could manipulate the egg, it’d be more like seventy or eighty, but those experiments keep failing.”

Half of these babies wouldn’t be Unbounded, but they’d know the Unbounded secret and be forced to serve the Emporium. They’d be second-class citizens in an organization that looked down upon ordinary mortals. I felt saddened at the thought. No wonder some Unbounded women might choose to have their child adopted at birth rather than subject them to that life.

 If I had a child, I’d want her or him with me.

Even if he or she had to endure prejudice?

Even if I had to watch the child grow old and die before I’d aged another year?

In the corner I saw a dark-haired Unbounded woman I hadn’t noticed before. She sat in a rocking chair, her back mostly toward us as she rocked an infant in her arms. Something in the way she stared down at her child made me pay attention. I sensed love, the deep love of a new mother. She lifted the baby, and I caught a glimpse of unruly dark hair before she resettled the infant on the other side.

She’s nursing,
I thought. I could see the side of the mother’s face now as she watched her baby suckle. Logically, I knew she served the Emporium and their questionable agenda, but for that moment she could have been any loving mother anywhere in the world—an Unbounded mother who desperately hoped her daughter would also be Unbounded.

“Come on,” Jonny said.

I followed him, my thinking changed by what I’d seen. So many victims on both sides of this conflict. “How old are you, anyway, Jonny?”

“A hundred and fifteen.”

That meant if he’d changed at thirty-one, biologically he’d be thirty-three. “Really? You look younger.”

“That’s because I Changed at eighteen.”

I stopped walking. “But I thought—”

“Gene manipulation. They wanted to see if they could force the Change to come earlier. Hard to determine because the gene can’t even be isolated until well into adulthood. But by giving the therapy to a bunch of potential Unbounded, they succeeded in speeding up the process in a few of us. Unfortunately, there are side effects.”

“Side effects?”

His smile was gone. “I’m aging at five times the rate of normal Unbounded. Biologically, I’m twenty-eight. I’ve aged ten years in the past century, when I should have aged only two.”

I felt his anger at being cheated. I supposed living only four hundred years seemed short for someone who’d expected two thousand. “I’m sorry, Jonny.”

He shrugged. “Anything for the Emporium.” There was no sincerity in his words now.

I caught another glimpse of a thought from him, and I knew that at least one of the other potential Unbounded had died from the experience. A girl Jonny had loved. But try as I might, I could sense nothing more.

We started walking again down the wide hallways, which were extremely well lit and at least a full foot taller than normal ceilings. Large paintings of the outdoors lined the whole corridor. Not like your usual claustrophobic underground office building.

“Jonny, how many siblings do we have?”

“Dozens. A hundred. Maybe more.” He shrugged. “I really don’t know. Stefan keeps those of us who are Unbounded or in the organization a little busy for family reunions. Some of the mortals work for us, but most were adopted out as babies and are on the outside living regular lives. They have no idea we exist. We check up on their children, usually around thirty-two, but often not until thirty-five. A lot of our people have been changing close to the outer age limit these days. Unfortunately, there have been far fewer Unbounded from our genetically altered lines than we expected.”

“Wait. Are you saying that if the genetic alteration results in a mortal, the children of that person are usually mortal, too?”

“That’s right. Still, it’s worth it to get more Unbounded up front. So far those who do turn out to be Unbounded seem to be able to pass on the active gene to their children at the same rate as any other Unbounded. Stefan’s been pleased.”

When I’d been with Stefan, I’d felt his strong connection to his family, but I realized now that he wasn’t raising and loving a family so much as he was making creations, bricks to be used to build his empire. I doubted either he or any of his offspring could understand how much I loved my own family. How much I wanted to be with them. How readily I would give my life to save theirs.