No Good Deed

Destiny Saga, Part V

T. Starnes

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

About The Author

Other Books By Travis Starnes

This is a work of fiction.  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No Good Deed

Destiny Saga, Part V

Copyright © 2017 by T. Starnes

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-9968668-7-3

099686687X

Signup to get free previews of upcoming books before they’re released or get chapters as they are written by becoming patron.  More information for both can be found at:

http://tstarnes.com/

Chapter 1

The world slowed down in the now predictable fashion, as Levi’s elbow sailed past my head. The smell of the old sweat that permeated the dojo filled my nostrils. Beads of my own sweat poured down my face and soaked my shirt as I added to that stench. Levi liked to say it was the smell of hard work and dedication. We were pushing ourselves hard, trying to get the most out of our workout.

Ever since his change almost a month ago, he’d been working incredibly hard to work his new abilities to their farthest. Except me and the girls, who had what I was thinking of as the full transformation, he was the most advanced physically. From what we could tell, he was nearly as strong as I was and almost as fast. With the family back together, work starting to really pick up, school and Evolve keeping me hustling, along with the threat of the Syndicate hanging in limbo ready to raise its ugly head at any moment, I just hadn’t had time to work out to the extent I wanted to.

Even my training sessions with Levi were down to once a week. A fact that he had taken every opportunity to point out.

I had been enjoying the genetic advantage I had over everyone, and Levi was punishing me for my hubris. He wasn’t holding back as much as he once did. Thankfully, he didn’t make lethal choices that I was certain he was capable of, though he did use his vast experience to push me to my max. He’d made it clear if he wasn’t getting quantity then he’d have to settle for doing quality training with me.

Those thoughts darted through my head as I blocked a rapid fire set of punches and just barely managed to dodge a sneaky knee he threw in at the last moment, and the ankle hook he’d tried after that. I was still standing, but once again was on a continual retreat, not able to shift to the offensive.

I wasn’t upset by his more aggressive training style. To the contrary, I was actually kind of happy about it. He was right, I wasn’t getting enough physical activity, and it felt good to push myself. Plus, Levi was the only one I could take nearly all the limitations I normally put on myself off and really go full out.

Just as I thought that, a leg sweep caught me in the back of the knees and I crashed to the ground, bouncing the back of my skull off a mat.

“Holy crap,” I said, looking up at his smiling face leaning over me.

“You’ve gotten sloppy. You’re relying on your unique abilities too much.”

“Message received.”

“Good,” Levi said, reaching down and helping me up. “Let's do that at half speed. I want to show you what you did wrong.”

Levi backed away from me, moving to the side of the mat closest to the door of the gym. He was preparing to show me what I had done when the chime on the door sounded. He turned, and we both looked to see who was coming in, since this training session was after his regular hours, to allow us to not hold back.

The pair of doors were thrown open with a man coming through each one, each with an automatic pistol raised and pointed in our direction. I instantly recognized them, it would have been impossible for me not to considering the beating I received at their hands. Although they were not in uniform, these were the two officers who had separated me when Zoe, Emily, Tina and I were being taken away by CPS earlier in the year. They had been arrested when Jawarski had found me in that warehouse. But, as with the other prisoners tied in with The Syndicate before them, both men had disappeared out of jail without a trace.

I started to move as soon as I saw them, but I was across the room, and both men were already moving into shooting stances. Levi moved fast, nearly as fast as I could. Before either man was through the doorway, Levi moved into them, grabbing the wrist of the gunman on the right. He continued moving, putting his shoulder into that upper arm, while beginning a turn, taking the man’s arm with it. As he connected with the man’s arm, the guy on the left fired; but Levi was moving fast inside the gunman, not giving them enough time to re-adjust their aim. The bullet traveled harmlessly over Levi’s shoulder and several feet away from me as I charged towards them.

Levi continued his turn, holding the gunman's upper arm in place while pulling the man’s wrist with him into the turn, until with a crack the Elbow bent at a very wrong angle, out away from the body instead of towards it. The gunman howled in pain.

Levi continued his motion of turning, and kicked off the ground, rolling himself up on the slowly falling gunman with the broken arm, using the man like a Pommel Horse to get leverage as he wrapped his legs around the center of the left gunman.

I was still several feet away, and as I dropped into The Flow as we had practiced, I could see each move Levi was making, but I was still not moving fast enough to get to them in time. Levi’s push upwards continued with a semi twisting motion. Now, with his legs wrapped around the left assailant, he twisted himself off his makeshift fulcrum, who was at this point collapsing as he was reaching for his ruined right arm. Levi began falling, his body weight pulling the left-hand gunman down with him, his force was significantly increased by the added mass of his post-change muscles helping wrench the man off the floor.

Levi fell onto his shoulder, with the man projecting out over him and rolled, causing the man to arch toward the ground head first as Levi continued the roll, pulling the man underneath himself. I had a clear view as the gunman was brought head first into the mat. With the V created by his head and shoulders being connected along with his body weight pressing in on it, his head lolled to one side as he fell.

As Levi unwrapped his legs from around the man and launched himself up against the man’s chest, he pushed him harder into the mat, causing his head to bend much further to the right than it was designed to do, snapping the man's neck with a sickening crunch.

By the time I got to Levi, which took just seconds from start to finish, he was standing up from his kneeling position on top of the clearly dead man at his feet, with the other gunman swearing, tears pouring from his eyes, holding his ruined arm.

Since the beginning of last year, I had been in several fights. Some deadly serious. Nothing I had done to that point came close to what Levi had just pulled off.

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“Call the police,” he said, going forward to kick the guns out of reach of both men but otherwise leaving both as they lay.

I headed into Levi’s office without a look back at the carnage at his feet. I followed his instructions and called 911 to report the assault, death, and injury. I let the operator know that no one was in immediate danger, but an ambulance was needed for at least one of the men, and I believed the other attacker was dead.

The operator wanted me to stay on the line, but I said I couldn’t and hung up. Next, I called Jawarski on the cell phone we had given her recently and told her what happened, making sure to mention who our attackers were, and that I had already called 911. She was on duty, but said she was in the area and would make sure she was on the call. My next call was to Jonathan. I knew this could go sideways for Levi, and wanted to ensure he was as protected as possible.

Thankfully, things went better than I expected. Jawarski was the first one through the door. Once she made sure it was ok, she removed and secured both guns and then radioed in for both an ambulance and the Coroner.

She was separating Levi and me when a second officer came in, and she had to give him a rundown. She was being very official with everything but didn’t seem overly worried. Jonathan showed up a few minutes later, followed by Detective Casper a few moments after that.

I decided my best course of action was to stay out of it. It did occur to me that I probably should have called Mom or the girls and let them know what had happened and that they were going to be pissed when they found out, and realized I hadn’t called. But there were enough people here, already. The last thing we needed was more confusion. I trusted Jawarski and Jonathan to handle it.

Eventually, the detective finished with Levi and came over to me.

“Kid, how come you’re always in trouble?”

I just shrugged.

“Ok, tell me what happened.”

“I was training with Levi, when the doors were thrown open. Those two came in with guns in their hands. I was half way across the room. Levi immediately saw the danger and charged at them. One man fired but missed, and Levi kept the other guy from shooting. It happened so fast I had barely moved when it was all over.”

“Do you know these two?”

“Yes, and you do, too. We both know they are former cops, both of whom were arrested when they kidnapped me and beat me a couple of months ago. And we both know that they disappeared from jail without a trace.”

“I’m going to put that down as a yes.”

“Seriously, are you guys going to accidentally let him go, again?”

“Look, Caspian, I know you’re pissed. I would be, too. But this is different. I mean, one of them is dead, for starters; and the other isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. I’ve never seen a break as nasty as that. Trust me, we’ll hold on to him this time.”

“I hope so.”

“So did you have any clue they were coming here? Was there any warning?”

“No. I thought we would never see them again, honestly.”

“Alright. I promised your lawyer I wouldn’t hold you long, but we’re going to have to take your friend to the station for more questioning.”

“It was self-defense!”

“I know. Everything should be okay, but we gotta follow procedure, ok?”

“What choice do I have,” I said and walked over to Jonathan.

“I want you to stay with Levi the whole time. Never leave his side.”

“Caspian, I need to make sure you get home safe.”

“I’m a big boy, Jonathan. I have my car. I can get home, no problem. Levi put his life on the line for me, tonight. We protect him! Is that clear?”

“Sure, I got it. Don’t worry. Please call me when you’re home safely.”

“Ok,” I agreed, although I was still not happy about being sent away.

Jonathan was right. As soon as I walked in the door, Mom and the girls were all over me, speaking at once.

“Whoa, whoa! Hold up! One at a time,” I said as they barraged me with questions.

“Girls, let’s give him some space so he can tell us what happened.”

“What did happen?” Zoe asked. “Jonathan called Mom and said you were attacked!”

I set my gym bag down by the stairs and found a seat in the living room, so we could all be comfortable. I got that they were concerned, so I didn’t begrudge them the twenty questions.

“Ok, so yes. I was attacked while working out with Levi. Two guys came charging in with guns. Before you freak out too much, I was perfectly fine. Hell, I barely took one step before it was all over. You should have seen Levi. It was ... pretty damned impressive.”

“I’m glad he was there to help,” Mom said, “But this is becoming a serious problem.”

“It's no big deal. I’ve only been attacked like that, what ... two or three times?”

“I would say two or three times is enough to consider it a ‘serious problem,' but let's not forget all the other times people have threatened you or attacked you. I’m in a mind to just keep you locked in this house forever.”

“That’s not ...”

“However,” she said, ignoring me, “I won’t do that. But this is not the last time we are having this discussion. We are going to have to make some changes around here. It’s not just you who's in danger, Cas. What about the girls, or Tina and Judy? We all live here together, and we’re all at risk.”

“I see your point.”

“Good boy. Now, who were these guys.”

“Actually, we know them. It’s the two cops who abducted me when CPS came to take us away. I guess we know what happened to them after they disappeared from police custody.”

“Will Levi be ok?” Vicki asked.

“I think so. He hurt one of the guys badly, and killed the other one, but this is a pretty clear case of self-defense. I mean, the guys came in pointing guns. Jawarski and Jonathan are both there, getting it sorted out. I’m still a little concerned, considering how many other things over the last year haven’t gone the way we thought they would, but...”

“Let's leave it in Jonathan’s hands for now,” Mom said. “We need to give it some time before we get worked up. Ok, it’s late, everyone needs to head to bed.”

Thankfully, she was right, waiting for Jonathan was the right call. Levi spent the better part of the next day at the police station answering questions. Once all the I’s were dotted and the T’s crossed, they let Levi go.

There was the hint of ‘if things change we can still file charges’ but Jawarski said that’s always true, and it’s a cop's way of saying ‘you better not be lying to us.’ Neither she nor Jonathan and Levi were worried, so I let it pass. While it was my usual style to obsess and fret over it, Thanksgiving was a few days away, and Charlie, Sandy, and Eddy were showing up. There was too much to do, to worry about what might happen or could have happened.

That’s growth ... right?

* * * * *

Thanksgiving came along with no more major crisis, other than plenty of activity. Tuesday Charlie and his gang showed up, and we started to have to seriously bunk up to make room for them. Vickie’s mom moved in with Mom for a few days, to let the three of them use her room.

Wednesday, Megan showed up. Though thankfully she was sleeping at her parent's house, she made it clear she was going to their Thanksgiving meal and ours. It’s probably a good thing she now had a souped-up metabolism to deal with all the food she was planning on eating in one day.

To accommodate her, plus the older married people we had invited like Jonathan and Ted, we made our Thanksgiving meal a dinner. Most of our other friends from the lunch group were coming, along with a lot of the people from work. I tried to convince Mom that we should cater the meal, considering we would have almost a hundred people planning on eating with us; but she wouldn’t hear of it. She did allow one concession, and turned the meal into semi-potluck style. She would deal with the turkeys and a few other things, and let our guests handle the side dishes.

We also had to move the party into our back yard, where we set up multiple long tables and a large tent where everyone would eat.

By Thursday morning, she and Vicki’s mom had shanghaied all the girls ... Tina and Judy, and even Charlie and Sandy ... to be helpers. I had rented a couple of portable ovens so they could cook multiple turkeys, and Mom turned the garage into a makeshift kitchen.

Watching her work, keeping everyone moving and getting things done, was a thing of beauty.

I walked up to lean on a wall next to Eddie, one of the trio we met over spring break, and asked, “So how are things going for you guys in Huntsville?”

“Good, I guess. It’s a lot crazier that I’d thought it'd be. The classes are good, though.”

“Good. I’m glad you guys made it down here.”

“Well, my parents were a little pissed that I wouldn’t see them until tomorrow, but Charlie and Sandy really wanted to come. They’ve talked a lot about you since ... after ... you know.”

“I hope not too much,” I said.

While it seemed unlikely any danger would have followed us home from the little adventure in Mexico, we had enough problems on our plate with the Syndicate. I didn’t want to add to that if I could help it. Plus, it was best if no one took too close of a look at exactly what happened down there.

“No man. No way. We didn’t tell anyone anything, I promise.”

“Thanks,”

“Sure. I mean, I get it. They told me what happened with those guys. Well, some of it. Dude, it’s just ... But I get it. But that isn’t what they’ve been talking about. Charlie and Sandy, but really Sandy, are all over the stuff you spoke to us about after. About what you guys are doing and the offer to help us make a difference.”

“Good. I meant it, and the offer still stands.”

“That’s great. We went to a couple of meetings of groups on campus and, it’s like you said this summer. They all mean well and everything, but, they don’t really have a plan, you know? It’s like, all talk but no one’s saying ‘We’re going to do this, then that, then this.'”

“That’s what I said to Sandy, this summer. You need to have the tools to actually get stuff done. You three sit down with Zoe, Vicki, and Tami and get their read on what we’re doing. Talk to them about the program we’re working on to feed the people who are struggling to get food on the table or at least make low-cost food available. And I think you’ll be interested in the first New Life center we’re talking about opening.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Good, and we can all talk after that about how we can put something into place, up where you guys are,” I told him, heading for the front door where people were starting to arrive.

The place quickly became a madhouse, with more than a dozen teenagers outside talking and laughing, and most of the adults from work, plus our friend's grouping inside, while the final touches were being put on the meal.

What surprised me the most was when Carter came in carrying a casserole dish. When he handed it to me, he must have seen the look on my face.

“What?” he asked when I took the dish from him.

“I just wasn’t expecting you to bring anything. Or maybe, like a bag of chips or something.”

“What, you think I can’t cook? My fridge isn’t just salsa and beer! I’m not some dime novel cop knock-off.”

“I mean, you kinda are,” I said, laughing.

“Smart-ass. I manage to feed myself just fine. Now tell me where the beer is.”

I started to laugh but stopped when he gave me a look making it clear he wasn’t playing off his earlier statement. I pointed him toward the kitchen, where Mom had stocked some more adult beverages for the guests who were over-age. And where she’d talked to each teenager who’d shown up and made it clear none of it was for them.

I wasn’t worried about that though. Our friends were a good lot, and none were the type to cause trouble.

Finally, all the food was laid out on the tables outside, and everyone made their way to their seats. I was just sitting down and filling my glass when Mom kicked me under the table and signaled I was supposed to say something.

Considering I was the primary connection of a lot of the people here that made sense. Although I wasn’t crazy about public speaking, she was right, it was my place to say something.

“Excuse me, everyone,” I said, standing up and doing the glass clinking maneuver I’d seen in movies.

“I want to thank everyone for coming. I know you all have families and everything, and I’m glad they let you all break away and spend tonight with us. I just want to say, how thankful I am for each and every one of you. It’s been a crazy year since last Thanksgiving. Each of you has had a hand in making sure that craziness didn’t turn into something terrible. We made it through all the turmoil, all the obstacles, and are standing today stronger than we were, one year ago. I really believe the next year will be even better if we keep working as a team. We’re a family. If we remember this, there’s nothing that can stop us. Ok, enough of my nonsense. Dig in!”

There was a cheer at that and the sound of dozens of people serving themselves food filled the air. The dinner was fabulous. The food was great. Surprisingly, one of the best things there was the dish Carter brought.

Seriously, who knew?

We ate for hours, and then just milled around talking for more hours, after that. I was happy to see Charlie, Sandy, and Eddie huddled with the girls at one point, and I made a mental note to talk to them and see what the plan was. Not that I was worried. The girls were running that part more than I was, and they had a handle on it.

The party overall ended as a smashing success, and I was in a terrific mood, even volunteering to take out the trash for Mom, who was equally as surprised. We had ordered up some additional trash cans that would be picked up the next day, predicting the volume of garbage. We'd put them around one side of the house to keep them from being an eyesore.

As I was shoving these bags into the cans, trying to smash them down enough to make room for the rest, I heard heavy footsteps coming around the side of the house towards me. People walking up behind me wasn’t my favorite thing, considering everything that had happened over the previous year. I was pretty happy to find it was only Josh coming around the house until I saw the look in his eyes.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, nostrils flaring.

“What’s up?” I replied, trying to keep things friendly and hoping I could suppress some of the hostility I felt coming off him.

“It’s been a year. I’ve stayed out of your hair the end of last year and the beginning of this year  and all summer. But enough is enough. I’m not an idiot you know. I know you think I am, but I’m not.”

“Whoa. Josh, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I don’t think you’re an idiot. I swear.”

“Then why are you treating me like I am? I know you’ve done whatever it is you do to give your special abilities or whatever to Emily now, too. And yeah, I know you said you had to sleep with them to give them powers or whatever, but, looking at the people at this party, I bet there are a couple of others who you’ve given powers to, too. I hear them talking when they don’t think I’m listening. And you can see it in their eyes when they look at you. All of em.”

I thought as quickly as I could. Yes, I had lied to him and told him it required intimate contact to change someone, which, while not a lie, wasn’t the truth either. I’d hoped that would’ve been enough to throw him off the scent, and it really seemed like it had worked, too. The last thing I wanted to do was to let him know it was possible to change him, not with how increasingly irrational he’d gotten over the previous year.

“Josh, look, I promise I haven’t changed anyone other than the girls. Did Emily get changed? Yes. But I told you what’s required for that. It’s not something I can do for everyone, or would do. I promise.”

He balled his meaty hands up in fists and edged towards me. I knew I could take Josh if it came to that, but I really didn’t want it to. Not only did I still want to call Josh my friend, but that kind of thing would also cause an instant rift with the rest of our group.

“Cas, you lying sack of ...”

Thankfully, Amber’s voice from around the house calling him, made Josh stop for a moment.

“We’re not through. I know you’re holding out on me. Don’t think this is over,” he said and stormed off.

I let out a puff of air, as I released the tension that had been building in my chest and leaned against the wall. I wanted to give him time to cool down and hopefully head home before I headed back into the house. From where I was, I could see the street pretty well and once I saw his car driving away, Amber in the passenger seat, I made my way back into the house.

“Hey,” Zoe said, grabbing my arm as I walked through the house to help pick up. “A bunch of people want to drive down to Galveston early tomorrow and spend the day at the Beach, since we’re all off school and work and everything.”

“Sure,” I said halfheartedly, my mind still on the confrontation with Josh.

“I know it will be cold, but come on, we’ll have fun,” she pleaded, pressing her body against me to help motivate me.

“Yeah, it will be. Count me in,” I said in the cheeriest voice I could muster.

“Great. Let me tell everyone,” she said and bounded off.

I, however, couldn’t shake my thoughts about Josh. Things were going to get worse there, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Chapter 2

By the next morning I’d shaken most my concern over Josh’s threat. He was going to do what he was going to do, and I still felt deep inside he was a good person. He just needed to get over this desire to find the easy path to what he wanted and jealousy over what other people had.

Megan stopped by with her van, bringing back memories of the previous year and the early days of my relationship with Zoe, which also helped bring me out of my funk. Even with her suburban, we were still packed pretty tightly, since our entire family, or rather extended family, plus Charlie and his crew, all piled in. Mom and Vicki’s mom played Paper, Rock, Scissors for who got to ride up front and who had to ride in the back with us. I was ninety percent sure they did that as a joke, but Mom did seem awfully happy when she won.

It took us almost two hours to get to the beach. The water was cold, as predicted, and other than sticking a toe in, we generally didn’t get wet. But the sun was out, and it was still comfortable enough to lie out on the beach, run around, and just goof off for a day. It was a weird glance into what a typical teenager's life was like. I was actually a little jealous of the hypothetical ‘average’ teenager, although I wouldn’t give up what my life was for anything since that would have meant giving up my family. Still, we had a great time.

One significant benefit of a beach trip was seeing the girls in their Bikini’s. Considering how often I got to see them outside of their clothes, you would think that wouldn’t be a big deal, but there is something about having the good bits hidden just out of sight that makes everything seem sexier. Plus, Sandy didn’t look half bad either. Charlie was a lucky guy.

The day passed fast, and it was probably the most fun I’d had since our summer cruise. Or at least, parts of our summer cruise.

Mom allowed Vicki’s mother to ride up front. We kids had a blast on the way back, playing stupid car games and just enjoying each other’s presence. Which is why I had a massive mental whiplash when Megan called out from the front seat.

“What the hell?” she said, pulling to a hard stop in front of the house.

“Oh, no!” Vicki’s mom said with a gasp.

I leaned over and looked through the front window. From where I was sitting, I could see the front door swinging open, and parts of the door frame hanging loose as if the door had been kicked in.

“Mom, call Carter and Jawarski,” I said starting to push through to get out the side door of the suburban.

“You’re going in there over my dead body,” she said, grabbing my arm. “You will wait right here until help arrives.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I’m well aware of that, but being able to protect yourself is not the same as walking into a situation when you don’t need to. We’re safe here. We can drive away if we need to. There is no reason to rush into the house, now. We wait. Do you hear me?”

I slouched down in my seat and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

It wasn’t often she pulled the 'mom card' on me, but when she did, it was hard not to listen. So we sat and waited just staring at the broken-in front door. After about ten minutes Jawarski pulled up in her personal car, meaning it was probably her day off.

Hopping out, I went to her and said, “Finally. Let’s go check the house.”

“How about you sit your ass on the curb while I check out the house. How about that?”

Not waiting for an answer she turned and walked towards the house, with her hand on the butt of the gun she kept in a holster at her back, but not pulled out. Once again, I was forced to sit and wait while I would rather be doing something.

“House is clear,” she said coming back out of the house a few minutes later. “Trashed, but there isn’t anyone in here, and I didn’t see anything that looked dangerous.”

“Ohh, thank God,” Mom said, hugging Jawarski.

It was weird seeing her hug Mom back, considering the reaction I always got from her. Of course, I knew why that was, and that it wasn’t her fault, but it still felt out of place from my experiences with the woman.

“I’m going to call this in. You need to all wait outside until patrol cars get here and can make a report, just in case.”

“Great, more waiting,” I groused.

“Deal with it,” she snapped at me and headed to her car.

As she was calling it in, I saw Carter pulling up.

“Huh,” was all he said when he got out and looked at the broken door.

“Huh? That’s all you’ve got?” I asked, a little angry. “I thought we had a top notch security system put in, and yet no police? No call from the cops? What the hell, Carter?”

“Don’t get your pants in a twist, kid. Nothing, no matter how good, is foolproof. Once we take a look, we’ll be able to see what they did, and figure out a way to keep it from happening in the future. I’m assuming Beth has already called it in?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She told us to wait out here until they showed up and took a report.”

“Not a bad idea. After they do their thing, I’ll take a look at the security system, and try and figure out what happened.”

He slapped me on the back and headed over to talk to Jawarski, who was still sitting in her car. I sat on the curb and fumed. Sure, probably a little childish, but I hated having to wait on other people.

The girls just ignored my funk, which was probably for the best. They knew I’d get over it once we were allowed in the house and got everything straightened out, and given my track record during the situation with Emily earlier in the year, they probably assumed that if they tried to cheer me up, I’d end up being a jerk. Which was probably true.

Mom did come by and pat me on the shoulder once when switching from talking to Jawarski and Carter to going to speak with the girls; but otherwise, she avoided me, too.

After a little while, a patrol car pulled up, and a cop I didn’t recognize got out and talked to Jawarski. As they talked she got more and more animated, looking particularly annoyed near the end, throwing up her hands and yelling, “Fine, do what you want.”

Stomping over to me she folded her arms and said, “Are you going to sit here sulking, or are you ready to go in?”

“What happened,” I asked, hopping to my feet and ignoring her taunt.

“He said he wasn’t even going to bother checking out the house. That he’d file a report, and you guys could submit a record of any missing items at the police station ‘at your convenience, ’ but otherwise there wasn’t anything he could do.”

“And that’s not what he’s supposed to do?”

“I mean, technically I guess, yeah. He could wait until you file and then keep it on record for a detective to investigate ‘at a future date,' but its sloppy police work. He should walk the scene, talk to you guys, and file a report on his own. I guess it could be that he’s relatively new and only knows to go exactly by the book, but his training officer should have taught him better.”

“So we can go in?” I asked impatiently.

“That’s literally the only thing you heard me say, isn’t it?”

“No, I heard the rest. He’s doing a shitty job and hiding behind the regs. Got it. But honestly, besides you and one detective, I haven’t been overly wowed by the police department. In fact, they’ve kinda screwed me over a few times.”

Since she was one of the people who tried to screw me over, that was a bit of a cheap shot, especially considering it hadn’t really been her fault. But I was still annoyed, and felt like being an asshole.

“Whatever,” she said.

I went into the house with mom and the girls and was stunned. Trashed wasn’t even good enough to describe what had been done to our home. Everything that could be opened was. Everything that could be emptied was.

All the food had been dumped out of the fridge. Hell, there was even a big pool of water where they had poured all the ice from the ice maker onto the ground. As we wandered through the house, it was more of the same. Drawers emptied, pillows and chairs slashed open, and the stuffing pulled out, boxes and containers smashed. They even cut open the spines of every book they could find.

“Why would they do this?” Mom said almost in tears.

“Someone was looking for something,” Jawarski said.

She had been quiet once we entered the house, just following us around.

“You think? This looks like straight up vandalism to me,” Vicki said.

“I don’t think so. Nothing looks broken for the sake of being broken. Sure they smashed a lot of stuff, but it was all things that could, theoretically at least, be hiding something. Like, that vase is smashed, yes. But those little class figures you had on the mantle? Not even touched. And, they’re so noticeable and clearly fragile, I couldn’t imagine someone here for just vandalism to have ignored them.”

Looking at it from her point of view, I could see what she meant. If you paid attention, it became apparent the destruction was not random. What I couldn’t figure out was, what they were looking for?

It couldn’t be industrial espionage. We had all of our sensitive documents at the office kept in a secure safe. I guess they might not have known that. If this was the Syndicate, however, they should have known about it. We knew they were behind the attempted theft last year, and they were aware we put in a secure area for storing stuff.

Plus, they had torn apart Mom’s throw pillows. I couldn’t imagine they thought I was hiding bulky patent documents inside her throw pillows. Which left me perplexed, because nothing I could come up with made sense.

“I have no idea what they could be looking for.”

“Think on it. While you’re it, I’m going to look at the security system with Carter.”

I watched her back as she walked away, thinking. There had been something in my head the other night after the whole Levi thing, and now with this, I was more firm in my thoughts than ever before.

Checking the house phone and happy to see it at least still worked, I called Levi and asked him to come over to discuss something important. I paced around the house while I waited, although I did pitch in some, picking up the debris left over from our possessions.

The girls were distraught, but I pointed out that we had the money to replace all the stuff that had been broken, which mollified them a bit. It, however, would be some time before we actually got back to living like normal. The furniture in most of the rooms was slashed open and unusable. Since all the beds were destroyed, we decided that when we were done for the night, we would have to go to a hotel until we could replace the bedding.

Jonathan had come, getting information to file a claim with our homeowner's insurance for the damage to the house and whatever inside was covered. Jonathan only stayed a few minutes before heading back to the office to get the paperwork he needed to file the claim. While seeing him out, I noticed Levi’s car out front and started wandering the house looking for him. Eventually, I found him out back, talking to Carter and Jawarski.

“Glad you made it,” I said, walking up to the trio.

The reception was a bit unnerving. From Levi, I got a big handshake and a smile. Carter, even though he had gone through the change thanks to Vicki’s instance of protecting me from my own morals, hadn’t particularly warmed up to me, although he wasn’t rude, either, going with a simple head nod. Jawarski pursed her lips and glared at me, although considering how much I’d been around her and what happened to Margaret the longer I was exposed, I guess this could be considered positive. Still, to get the gamut of receptions from one group was a little strange.

“I had a thought. Levi, I know you love your dojo and teaching, but have you ever considered returning to your old profession, or at least, your old profession adjacent?”

“I’ve thought about it. I do miss it sometimes. What do you mean by adjacent.”

“Well, I know Carter enjoys his work, but at this point, I think we are his only client.”

A nod from Carter confirmed this.

“Let me just throw this out for you guys to think about. Carter, so far you’ve focused mostly on finding people or providing personal security. And, if rumors are to be believed, Levi has some experience in the more military end of security, right? My thought was this. I’d like to start a security division and have you two run it.”

“I don’t know ...” Levi started.

“Wait a minute, I’m not giving ...” Carter said simultaneously.

I held up a hand, interrupting their protests, and said, “I just want you to think about it. Carter, right now your entire focus is on security or projects for the company and me. I know you don’t want to give up running your own business, but I’ve gotten to know you a little. I know you don’t like the business end of things. However, you’d have a lot more resources to work with.”

“And Levi, I’m not talking about military security, not really. I’m not proposing we open ourselves as a defense contractor. But we’re starting projects overseas, and some of the areas we are going to expand into are not safe. We will need a security apparatus in place to protect our employees and investment. And you know me, you know how I work. My goal is to make the world a better place. I don’t plan on doing that by burning down villages so I can put in an oil well. But I’m enough of a realist to know that there are bad people in this world.”

I took a breath and continued my pitch.

“I just want you two to think about it. I believe that it’s something we could use. I also think we could make money out of it if we tried, and that would help fund some of the more humanitarian projects we want to do.”

“If they do it, I want in,” Jawarski said.

“Really? But what about the police force?” I asked, surprised.

“I’m done with them, either way. There’s just too much corruption. It isn’t the place I thought I was working for. I was just telling Levi that the guy who he injured the other day has disappeared from the hospital. This is what, the fourth time that’s happened. No, I’m done.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I know the job meant a lot to you.”

She just shrugged and said, “It is what it is. Plus, it fits into something I was talking to Angela about. She had asked me how to go about getting some type of personal security for you. I was going to talk to her after I resigned and let her know I was available to do it, but if you start this thing, I could do the same thing as part of the organization, and it would let me have a support structure for protecting you instead of doing it on my own.”

Images of going everywhere followed by Jawarski popped into my head, followed by images of being regularly told I was an asshole by someone who hated me on a cellular level.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t know, sounds like a decent idea to me,” Carter said.

“I could see it. She has training, understands law enforcement. It wouldn’t take much to teach the basics of principal protection,” Levi added.

“Just ... let's slow down for a second. I think I’ve shown I’m perfectly able to protect myself.”

“You have, but it takes just one screw up to destroy everything you’re doing,” Jawarski pointed out. “Plus, they aren’t going to just keep sending one and two guys after you. Eventually, they will figure out they need overwhelming force. Then where’ll you be?”

“But you hate me!”

“True, but I also see the importance of keeping you alive and healthy. Think how much more effective I’ll be keeping my eyes off you and on potential dangers, than someone you’ve brainwashed.”

“It’s not...”

“Whatever,” she said, hand-waving my objection away. “Besides, this was originally your mom’s idea, and I think we both know she’d think I was an excellent choice.”

Sadly, I knew she was right.

“Fine, I’ll talk to Mom and we’ll see.”

“I also want part ownership of this security thing with Levi and Carter.”

“Fine,” I said, getting tired of losing battles. “You three talk over what you need. Sit down with Jonathan and get his input, and then let's figure out a plan. What about the alarm?”

“The people who circumvented it were pros, no doubt about it. That’s the problem with electronic security. Nothing is one-hundred percent. Now that I’m hearing about Beth being personal security for you, I’m gonna say that’s the way to go.”

“Does anyone have doubts as to who’s behind this?”

All three shook their heads. I figured as much. There was really only one obvious answer for who was after us.

“Any idea what they were looking for?”

“None,” Carter said.

“Well, you three figure out the new security company. I want to beef up our security here, at the office and the new facilities. I don’t think this will be the last time something happens.”

As I walked away from them, the three huddled up and started making plans. I’m not sure why the idea hadn’t occurred to me sooner, but it made total sense. I could even see the benefit of Jawarski being on board, even though I didn’t need a babysitter and would have to deal with her attitude toward me.

We eventually got the house back together and did a temporary fix on the front door until Mom could get someone out to replace it the next day while we were at school.

At lunch the next day, the break-in was the big subject of conversation. None of us mentioned the Syndicate, since that wasn’t something we wanted to talk about with people outside of the immediate family, and we all played it off as just random crime. Although the girls were still plenty freaked out as it had taken them forever to get to sleep the night before, and all day it was all they wanted to talk about.

Knowing Carter was there and he’d assigned a few of his guys to watch the house until we figured out a permanent solution was enough for me. But then, except for Vicki, most of them had put the Syndicate out of their minds until this happened. I knew they were going to come for us, and had been expecting something, if not precisely this.

There was one bright spot near the end of lunch.

“Guess what?” Sarah signed near the end of the lunch period.

“What?”

“I’ve switched my art class over to drama.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s a play in a few months. I’m going to try out.”

I didn’t reply back for a minute. We were a progressive enough school I guess, or at least, progressive for east Texas, but I couldn’t see how that was going to work. Not that I doubted her of course. I was just having trouble picturing it.

Zoe tapped Sarah on the arm and said, “I think it’s great.”

“Yeah?” she asked, looking hopeful.

“Yeah,” I added, kicking myself for not speaking up fast enough, “It’s great. I can’t wait to see you in the play. What play is it?”

“Guys and Dolls,” she said.

“I’ve heard of it, but haven’t ever seen it.”

“You’ve never seen anything,” Zoe added.

Sarah laughed at me and said, “Well, then he’s just going to have to start off on a high note. You’re going to be in for a letdown if you ever go see Broadway, after, though. Sorry.”

The people at the table who could sign, which was more since Sarah joined us late last year, thanks to Zoe and Vicki teaching a lot of them, laughed. The bell rang, and we all headed to class, although I made sure to give Sarah a hug on the way out, so she knew I was in her corner.

That afternoon I said goodbye to the girls and noticed two more of Carters guys, one who was sitting watching the girls practice, and one who was definitely tailing me. I hoped that was a compromise Mom had come to, but that seemed unlikely. I had mentioned my displeasure over the idea of being stuck with Jawarski all the time, but she waved that off as unimportant.

I pushed it to the back of my mind, since there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it at the moment, and headed for the office. We had given everyone a five day weekend for the holiday, but it was time to get back to work. We had a lot of stuff up in the air and today was the day to sit down with the management team and figure out where everything was.

As usual, I was the last one to show up for the meeting.

“Sorry, I’m late.”

“We’ve grown accustomed to it,” Ted said with a smile.

“Have you guys started yet?”

“We were about to start. You’re not that late.”

“Great,” I said, opening up the notebook I used for work. “So, who’s first?”

“Let Ronald go first. He flew in about an hour ago, and I’m sure he’s beat.”

I looked over at Ronald. He did look pretty ragged with bags under his eyes.

“Sounds good to me. How’s it going down there?”

He stood up and headed over to the front of the table.

“So far, things are going well. We’ve broken ground on the site, and the foundations have been completely laid. Actually, we are ahead of schedule at this point. The people are damned hard workers, and we’re actually having trouble getting them to knock off for the day.”

“That might have something to do with being the only company for fifty miles to pay overtime,” Charles Green, our CFO said. “I know you’re making good time, but you need to start getting shifts to shut down closer to on time. You are going to bust through the construction budget if you keep going at this rate.”

‘Yeah. That’s my fault really. They are asking for the work, and we’re moving so quickly it's hard to not get excited myself. I’ll pull back some.”

“Good. You’re not that bad yet. We accounted for some construction overruns, but once people get a taste of overtime it’s hard to get them to stop.”

“I get it. I’ll make sure we get it under control.”

“Since I've already started,” Charles continued, “you're spending a whole lot on medical supplies, and I saw you put in to have some more nurse practitioners hired and flown out.”

“That has become an issue. While this isn’t one of the more extreme locations in the world, many of the people are poor, and we’re giving free healthcare to our workers as part of the original deal. Within the first week, employees started bringing in their family members for medical care. A week after that, their extended family started showing up. Probably half of them are children. I can’t, in good conscience, turn them away.”

“I get that, but ...”

“Charles?” I said, breaking in, “I agree with Ron. Part of the way I sold Mr. Tagobe on our deal, which is not a cheap project for his country, was that we would be offering social services to the people working for us. I know by the letter of the agreement, we could cut it off at just employees, but that’s not how I want to run this company. If we need to increase the budget for medical, then we do it. Work it out with Ted.”

Charles frowned. In his heart, he was still a money guy and the idea of doing things for humane reasons, and not just to make a profit, was still a bit foreign to him.

“We’ll get it straightened out,” Ted said, patting Charles’s arm.

“Ok, what else Ronald?”

“That’s about it. We are making good time, though that’s going to slow down a bit. Even if we went back to our original work schedule only, we would still end ahead of schedule at this point. I think the plant will be online shortly after Christmas.”

“That fast?” I asked.

“Most likely. I expect the interior of the buildings to be going up by the time I get back day after tomorrow. I was going to talk to Ted about shipping out the large machinery that has to be manufactured here sooner rather than later.”

“Get with me after, and we’ll see what we can do.”

“After that, go get some sleep,” I said. “You look like hell.”

“I’ll do that. I gotta say, though, it’s a blast being out there. I can’t believe I’m being paid to have something I created get built,” Ronald said, then paused and looked at Charles before adding, “That’s not to say I want to do it for free.”

Charles laughed good-naturedly at the ribbing.

“Ok, what’s next?”

“I met with MilTech just before the holiday, and we sorted out all the final details for the license of the desalination system in their new warship designs, and got the sign off from the Navy. I have to say, Colonel Ron was a lifesaver on that. The man’s worked here for two weeks, and he’s already proving how valuable he is. We have agreed to let them manufacture the actual system, and pay licensing to us, rather than manufacturing ourselves. Their integrated nature just doesn’t make sense doing it ourselves.”

“That doesn’t worry you?” I asked.

“I think we’re okay,” Jonathan said. “Once the tech is out there, someone’s going to reverse engineer it anyway, so it's not like we can keep it secret forever. We have multiple patents, some of which have actually been issued, and our contract with MilTech has a clause that if we find they are the source of a leak of confidential information, there’s a substantial penalty.”

“If you're sure,” I said. “It just makes me nervous.”

“It’s pretty standard, Cas,” Marcus said. “When you license the tech, it’s nearly impossible to keep it secret. Hell, all someone has to do is read our patent filings, and they will get the broad strokes of it. This is why we file for patents.”

“Ok. So we are saying the first payment on the license is, what, next week?”

“Yep. Two point three mil,” Charles said, sounding more upbeat.

“Well, that's good news. We need the cash for some of the other stuff.”

“No kidding,” Charles said in a flat tone.

“You gotta spend money to make money Charles. Ok, I guess Douglas. You told Ted you had something?”

“Oh, yeah,” Douglas said, getting up and moving here and there around the table, not standing still. “It’s going great. We’ve solved the bottleneck problem that was keeping the photo...”

“Douglas,” I said, trying to stop him before he got really going. “Just give us the big strokes. How is the new battery coming along? You told me you think you could double the storage capacity.”

“Yes. Our tests so far look good. We should have a prototype ready just before Christmas.”

“Are you seeing the results you talked about?”

“I am. Like I said, we’ve doubled the storage capacity of similar large reserve systems, and I think we can double it again before the prototype is actually ready.”

“That’s impressive.”

“Yeah, it's great. See, what we did...”

“How about the solar panels?”

“That’s going well. We’ve successfully managed to make a hybrid silicon and gallium arsenide panel that shouldn’t degrade as fast as the pure silicon ones currently in use. NASA had a lot of trouble with those in a vacuum. If the numbers hold as we scale up, they should end up being twice as efficient as the ones currently in use.”

“Should we work with MilTech on this too? Contract them to front the project to NASA?” Ted asked

“Not a bad idea. They have the experience to get the contracts,” Jonathan added.

“Talk to them. We don’t have patents yet, so let's not give too much away,” I said.

“I’ll do my best,” Jonathan said.

“Well, that sounds ...”

There had been a sound building over the last few minutes, and it had gotten to a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore.

“What the hell?” Marcus said, looking out the window.

I got up and walked around the table to join him. Outside were a couple of dozen people holding placards and yelling at the building.

In the center of the group was a man I recognized ... the Preacher.

Chapter 3

I stormed out of the offices and headed out to the sidewalk in front of our building. I’d had enough of this preacher, and I was ready to tackle him there on that sidewalk and beat the shit out of him. Which is why it’s a good thing that as I came out the front door of the offices I was body checked by Jawarski.

Planting her palms on my chest, she pushed me with each step, almost knocking me on my ass, back into the reception area.

“What the hell?”

“Get a grip. What do you think’s going to happen if you rush out there and do what I think you’re planning on doing?”

“Get a shit ton of satisfaction,” I said, starting to go around her, only to get another palm slapped into my sternum.

“And then you’ll go to jail. And after that, the Preacher’s going to get a big ass payday, when he sues the hell out of you. You’re supposed to be some kind of genius. Think this through!”

It pissed me off that she was right. As soon as I stopped my headlong charge, my brain had caught up, and I knew it was a bad idea before I made it to the lobby, but by that point, I had built up a head of steam. It was a good thing she was there to stop me and give me a second to think about what I was doing.

Which gave me another thought.

“What are you doing here?”

Last I’d seen of her she was working her final days on the force and figuring out how to start a security business with Levi and Carter.

“They’re at your house, too. Angel called and wanted me to get to you, to keep you from doing something stupid.”

“It’s a good thing you got here then, I guess.”

“Well, enjoy it, now. Pretty soon you’re going to be paying me a shit load of money to keep you from doing stupid shit. Of course, with you, I’ll be earning that money.”

I gave her a fake smile and started to walk past her again, only to get slapped in the chest a third time.

“I can do this all day,” she said.

“Fine, fine,” I said with a sigh and turned to Ted. “Can we call the meeting for the day? I’m going to head out of here before I end up doing something Jawarski here makes me regret.”

“Sure, Cas, we’ll see you later,” he said with a sympathetic pat on my shoulder.

Thankfully, the parking lot was on the other side of the building from where the preacher and his flock were protesting, so I could ignore him. Back at home, the protesters were all gone by the time I arrived.

“Jawarski said there were protesters here,” I said to Mom when I walked in the door, trailed by the ex-cop.

“They were. We called the police. There isn’t much public property here unless you stand in the street, which is also against the law. We were able to have the cops run them off. I take it they were at his office, too?”

She directed the last sentence at Jawarski.

“Yeah. He was charging out the door to go after them when I showed up and kept him from doing something stupid.”

“Thank you, Beth,” Mom said, giving her a hug.

“Just doing my job. Or at least getting a jump start on doing it.”

I begged off and headed upstairs to get my homework done, and call it an early night. Tami was pretty upset about the preacher popping up again, so the girls comforted her and gave me some space, which was all right by me.

My only real problem was I couldn’t figure out what to do about the man. Jawarski was right. What he really wanted was for me to over-react and do something stupid so he could come after me. So far, he hadn’t done anything outright illegal; at least, not that I could prove. The previous brides were, of course, illegal; but with the parents keeping quiet, there wasn’t much I could do.

Then, the Syndicate had shown they were ready to pounce on anything we did to get rid of us. After the CPS scare, the idea of doing something extralegal to deal with the preacher seemed like a bad idea. Everywhere I’d turned over the last year, I kept stumbling over people who worked for them. The last thing I needed to do was help them find a way to hurt us.

It was still a rough night, and neither Tami nor I got much sleep, something that didn’t go unnoticed by our friends.

“You two look like hell,” Rachel pointed out at lunch, as I slowly ate my food, not talking to the rest of the gang.

Tami hadn’t even gone that far. She skipped getting lunch altogether, and just put her head on the table.

“It was a shitty day,” I said grumpily.

“It was that preacher who was after Tami’s sister,” Vicki told them. “He showed up at our house and at Cas’s work, protesting with some awful signs.”

“They can do that?" Rachel’s boyfriend Jacob asked from down the table.

“Well, not around the house. It’s all private property there, except the street; but you can’t block the street, so the police ran them off. There’s nothing they could do about the people at Cas’s office.”

“That’s who those guys are. I go by there on the way to work, and I saw some people with signs and stuff gathering out front. I was going to ask what was going on.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I talked to our lawyer. Apparently, as long as they don’t stop people from coming into our building, don’t attack anyone, and stay out of the street and on public property, there is nothing we can do.”

“That sucks,” Amanda said, patting my arm.

“I’m dreading going to work,” I said and then looked to make sure Tami was actually asleep. “She’s a wreck, though. I don’t think she slept all night. Every time that guy's name comes up, it just destroys her a little bit more. I swear to God, I am going to lose it and go kick the shit out of him.”

“CAAAaaasss!,” Zoe said in a warning tone.

“I know, I know. I'll keep away from him. Still, it pisses me off.”

I went back to eating and being grumpy, while everyone else commiserated, listing all the possibilities, and some fairly impossible, failings the preacher might have; along with a wish list of things that should happen to him.

I’m not going to lie, it felt good hearing them run the man down. It was nice to have friends at my back.

Or, at least most of them. Josh was surprisingly quiet, which also pissed me off.

I skipped going to work that afternoon. Ted understood but reminded me we had an important meeting the next afternoon which I couldn’t miss. I watched the girls practice, except for Tami. She begged off, claiming health issues. She spent the practice stretched out on the bleachers, asleep, with her head in my lap and her feet on Vicki’s lap.

When Zoe finished, we all headed home. The nap had done Tami some good, and she was looking halfway human again, but I was dragging and wanted to head straight upstairs and fall into bed.

That, however, turned out not to be an option. Walking in the door, we found Jawarski and Mom sitting in the living room, apparently waiting for us.

“Sit down, kids,” Mom said as we came into the room. “We have something we need to talk about.”

“Is everything ok?” I asked as I squeezed in between Zoe and Vicki.

“After the break-in, I told you something was going to have to change. I know Beth mentioned my request, and she has agreed. As of today, she will be responsible for personal security for you specifically Cas, but as well as the rest of us. I know you don’t want this and think you can take care of yourself, but I will not be changing my decision. You are still a child. A remarkable one, to be sure; but you have the feeling of invincibility that all young men have, and you have genuine enemies out there.”

“I get it. Pretty much everyone seems to think I need a bodyguard, but me. But can I ask a few questions?”

“Sure,” Mom said while Jawarski rolled her eyes.

“How are we doing this? I thought you were going to go in with Carter and Levi?”

“I am. We talked, and I made it clear that this was a priority. Jonathan set up a subsidiary, well the framework of it. The paperwork hasn’t gone through, but I can operate through that. You are paying up front for my services, and that will fund what I’m doing until you guys figure out how to pay for everything.”

“So I’m paying for a bodyguard I don’t want?”

“Cas!” Mom said, giving me her most stern look.

“Sorry. What about your job at the department. I thought you were going to put in notice?”

“I did. In their infinite wisdom, the department decided they didn’t want a short-term officer who wasn’t headed to retirement on the payroll. I think it’s more that I’ve ended up being peripherally involved in a lot of the screwed up things that have happened there over the last year, and because I started making inquiries about some of those I, or rather my connection to you, finally got noticed.”

“So they just fired you?”

“Allowed me to quit quietly, is more like it. I haven’t accrued any pension, but they offered to pay me for the rest of the time I would have worked and pay out my accrued vacation. I was at the point where I couldn’t stand walking into that building anymore, so I took the money and ran.”

“So how’s this going to work? I can’t imagine you following me to and from school.”

“For now, we’ll assume you’re safe at school. I’ll drive you to and from school, including stops at the office, and to any other appointments you have. I’m working with Carter to find a better security system for the house, and he’s going to have one of his guys sit on your house at night and on weekends when I need a break from listening to your yammering. Although if you have something notable on weekends, I’ll be on hand. I want you to inform me of anything notable that happens, security wise: someone weird following you, or hanging around the cars, or the house seeming like it's been broken into or tampered with, or even if things just feel weird. Angela has already promised to keep me up to speed, but you need to do it, too. This goes for you girls, also.”

They were all nodding, which wasn’t surprising since they’d all been in agreement with the idea of me having a bodyguard for a while. I, however, remained unhappy.

“So, I’m going to have you with me everywhere I go?”

“Pretty much. Most of the time, I’ll just hang in the background, and stay out of your way. I’ll only make my presence known if I’m needed. The exception is, I am always the first through any door you walk through. Do you understand?”

I didn’t answer right away, and Mom spoke up, “This is non-negotiable, Cas. I love your goal of trying to make the world a better place, and everything you want to do. It makes my heart so happy, I can’t even explain it. But, if you don’t agree to this, it all comes to a stop right now. You quit your job, become a regular student, and spend every day till your eighteenth birthday on lock down when not in school. I’m not joking!”

“Fine,” I said.

“This doesn’t mean I’m going to carry your bags or open your doors or anything stupid like that,” Jawarski added.

“I had no doubt,” I said, refraining from frowning.

“There’s one other thing, and this affects everyone. You guys need to move.”

“Move?” I asked, looking at where we were sitting, not sure what she was talking about.

“Houses, genius. You need to move to a new house.”

“We just moved,” Zoe said. “Why do we need to move again?”

“Because this house is impossible to secure, and you can afford it. You’re in a neighborhood. You have houses on both sides and right behind you. There is no perimeter, and with all the people living around you, surveillance becomes next to impossible to stop. You have serious people with serious resources behind them. You need to live somewhere secure, preferably with a large wall and gate to control access.”

“Are you kidding me,” I said.

“I’m not. This is not the last time you’re going to get broken into. The house is just too vulnerable. Then think how much danger you put the families around you in. If they decided to stop beating around the bush and come at you hard, the collateral damage here is going to be huge. Also, there are too many of you living in this house. It’s ridiculous.”

She wasn’t wrong. The house seemed huge when we bought it last year, but then we added Judy, and Vicki and her mother. Now Judy and Tina shared a room, all the girls had moved into the master bedroom permanently so Tami could give up her room to them, and Zoe gave up her room to Vicki’s Mom. It was a problem I had noticed before. I just wasn’t thrilled with Jawarski being the one to point it out.

“Mom?” I said, throwing the question to her.

“We'll have to think about that. We just finished moving in here. I really don’t want to have to pick up and move again.”

“Well, think fast,” Jawarski said. “Ideally, you’d build a place, preferably out towards that new property you bought. It would be away from populated areas, and you’d be able to build it to be secure. I’ve already started talking to Levi and Carter about what you’d need.”

“So we’d have to leave all our friends? What would we do about school?” I said in a rush.

When she talked about moving, it didn’t occur to me that she meant something so extreme.

“Honestly, those aren’t my problem. I’m sure you could all figure out something. I’m just telling you this isn’t some school bullies or even industrial espionage any more. These are dangerous criminals, with truly scary connections! They have managed to pull off stuff I wouldn’t have thought possible. If you want to keep your family safe, this is something you should do.”

“Beth, let’s table that for now, ” Mom said. “Let's start with you getting this house secure, and providing security for Caspian. Then we’ll think about moving. It’s a big step.”

“Well, don’t think too long. Building is still your best bet, but that takes time, also. If it were me, I’d want you out of this house this year.”

With that, we broke up the family meeting. Between the shitty night over the preacher yesterday, and having to deal with Jawarski every single day for who knew how long, I continued to be in a pissy mood, and just went straight to bed. Tami joined me and was out almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. I wasn’t far behind her.

I was still pissed off the next morning. I was ignoring Jawarski as she dropped me off, in my own car, at the school. I got some confused looks from some of the people who knew me, and wondered why some random adult was driving my car. I skipped lunch altogether; telling the girls I had to catch up on some school work, and then hiding in the library until the next period.

To cap it all off, I had to go to work today, and that meant dealing with more protesters. I knew that Jawarski would try to stop me, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it without punching one of them.

Thankfully, I had a stop to make before the office, so I could put off dealing with the protesters for a few minutes more. I, however, wasn’t sure I wanted Jawarski with me for what I needed to do.

When she picked me up from school, I asked her to let me drive, because I had a stop to make. Pulling up to a beautiful house in the ‘good’ section of town, I parked and turned to my new shadow.

“I need you to wait here while I go in,” I said, trying to sound authoritative.

“Like hell.”

“Look, this isn’t going to be dangerous. I just need to go and talk to someone real quick. I’ll be in and out.”

“Cas, do you think I’m an idiot. I was a non-com in the Marines. I had numskulls straight outta boot try to pass every lame ass line and pull every lame ass trick they could think of. If this were a nothing type of meeting, you wouldn’t ask me to stay in the car. This is a meeting you don’t want me present for, meaning it’s potentially dangerous. So, you better have a damn good, non-lame ass reason for me staying in the car.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. There was literally no way she was going to let me out of the car without telling her what I was doing, and no way she’d let me out by myself once she knew what I was doing.

“This is Judge Davis’s house.”

“The judge from the CPS hearing?” she said in surprise. “What the hell are we doing at his house.”

“Since we changed him and got the verdict reversed, we haven’t really had any contact with him. But now that these guys have come into our home, we need more information on them. He is as close to an expert as we’re going to find.”

“Fine, let's go.”

Since that was about as close to approval as I was going to get from Jawarski, I got out of the car and headed up the walkway.

Davis himself answered the door this time instead of his wife, and he looked genuinely shocked to see me.

“What are you doing here,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me into the house, with Jawarski trailing behind. “If they see you come in here, I’m a dead man.”

“True, but they don’t have any reason to be watching you, do they?”

“Still,” he said, peeking out the window curtains looking at the street. “What do you want?”

“I need a name. Someone in the Syndicate that can get us more info on them than you have.”

“How would I ...”

“Think. You have to have met a few of them. You have no idea who any of them are?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it. I’ll be back tomorrow to get the name. And the next day. And the next.”

“You can’t ...”

“Judge. I want you to work with us. This is for your own good, too. The longer the Syndicate is around, the more danger you’re in. Think about it.”

I turned and walked out the door, followed by Jawarski.

Once we were in the car, she turned and said, “That was a lot more confrontational than you’ve ever been before.”

“I’m in a bad mood, so I used what I had.”

“I don’t disapprove. You’re right, you guys have been screwing with really dangerous people, and you’re wandering around totally blind. Glad you finally got some balls on you and manned up.”

I grunted at her and pulled away, steeling myself to deal with the protesters out front and the guff I was going to keep getting from next to me.

Sure enough, as we pulled up, we passed a group of them out front, yelling some of the most hateful bile I’d ever heard.

As I parked and started to get out, Jawarski thrust her arm out and pushed me back in my seat.

“You are going to ignore them. You don’t even need to go by them. Just go in the back entrance, and pretend they aren’t there. If I even think you are going to head out to the lobby, I will take you down to the ground. Clear?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled and started to get out again, only to be roughly forced back into the seat.

Jawarski arched an eyebrow in a mute question.

“Yeah, I get it. Don’t talk to the protesters, don’t look at the protesters.”

“And stop bitching about them while you’re at it. It’s getting old,” she said, letting go of my chest and getting out of the car.

I rolled my eyes and followed after her, wondering what I’d done to the universe to deserve all this bullshit.

Once inside the building, I tried to push my irritation at the protesters, Jawarski, and pretty much everything else down and get my game face on. Once in my office Charles and Jonathan came to see me.

“So, I had to be here for something today?”

“Yep. We need you to sign off on these final docs from MilTech, and the deal is done.”

“You said everything was set to go, right?” I asked Jonathan.

“Yes. We’ve dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s.”

“Well, then,” I said, signing my name to the contract.

Technically, I didn’t have to sign. Being a Minor, Jonathan was my proxy for everything. However, he and Ted had both put their foot down on the subject early on. They were determined for me to actually be the CEO, which meant I had to sign off on everything.

“What’s got you in such a good mood?” I asked Charles.

“This does. I know I was busting Ronald’s chops the other day about expenditures, but his system allowed us to close this deal, and since they are doing all the actual production, it’s just pure money rolling in.”

“So we’re doing pretty well, then?” I asked.

I made it a priority to stay on top of what was going on around the office, but even a full-time CEO has to go to his money guy to find out how the company's really doing. There is a point where you can’t just look at a spreadsheet and know how much money you were making. We’d already crossed that point.

“We’re doing excellently. Some smaller stuff is still coming out of the machining section of the company, and it's all in the black. It's actually enough to cover a fair amount of our daily expenses. But this ... this is going to be a big money maker for us. The monthly payments are sufficient to cover everything Ronald is doing out there, even if we weren’t to get a cent from their government, and still show a healthy profit. I’m hearing your Mother and Alex are in the works to start FDA trials for a new cancer therapy. I don’t have any idea how long that will take, but we’ve already gotten inquiries from some of the big pharma companies about it.”

I was pretty happy with everything Charles was saying until that. I hadn’t been to their lab in some time, and no one had mentioned anything to me about an experimental therapy they were working on. In fact, I knew of only one thing they were working on, and that’s what concerned me. I made a mental note to get over there tomorrow and talk to the two of them.

“Good. And once Douglas is ready to go to prototype, we can speak to them about getting us into NASA, too?”

“Yep. All in all, this is a good year. Even if nothing else happens, as long as our expenses hold, we should clear just shy of three hundred million, before taxes of course.”

“Excellent.”

“Although, it doesn't look like our expenses will hold precisely where they are. I got a call from Zoe just before Thanksgiving. Evidently she’s looking for some additional funding for the charity you have them running. Something about building a center of some kind.”

“I hadn’t realized she was that far along; but yes, we do have plans for that. I’ll get her in here next week, and we’ll sit down and work it out.”

“Ok. I know we talked about some serious outlays for the charity work you wanted to do, but the numbers she was throwing around were pretty serious.”

“I know, but it’s important.”

“You’re the boss.”

“You should try passing that around, because sometimes ...”

I let the thought trail off as I let a little of my grumpy attitude seep through, but Charles was in such a good mood he didn’t seem to notice.

“But like I said, that was if nothing else happened. We are looking at one or two other projects coming to fruition after Christmas, and by that point, Ronald’s plant should be up and running, and money should start coming in from there too. We’re looking pretty good.”

“Well. That’s great. We'll sit down next week with Zoe and get that figured out.”

“Sounds good.”

“Hey, Cas,” Jonathan, who had wandered over to the window of my office, called. “You should come see this.”

I got up and went over to the window, wondering what the preacher had done now, and stopped in my tracks. Standing in front of the protesters was a new group of people, what looked to be a much larger group, maybe sixty in total. They were all carrying signs too, but signs carried messages of support for the company or general ‘togetherness’ with a few scattered in that pointed out some of the preacher’s failings.

I particularly liked “Elementary schools are NOT dating services” and “Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid.”

They were chanting and yelling back at the protesters, outnumbering them easily two to one, and formed a wall between the offices and the protesters. Someone even set down a large, portable radio and cranked up the rock music.

What’s more, although I couldn’t see everyone from the angle we were at, those I could see I recognized. It was mostly kids from school and some of the teachers, with a few people from around town I knew thrown in.

The cult protesters had already started thinning out a little after the first day. As I watched, many of those who remained started trickling away, those that didn’t looked really pissed, as they stood there and watched the counter-protesters start an impromptu party, with many of the kids dancing to the music coming from the radio.

I turned and started heading out of my office to go join them, and was intercepted by the perpetual buzz-kill, Jawarski.

“No,” she said, standing, so she blocked the hall.

“Come on, I’m not mad any more. I’m not going to attack anyone. I just want to say hi to my friends and tell them all how much it means to me.”

“I get it, but still no. The few protesters that are left are extra pissed right now. All they need is you showing up and throwing a match on that powder keg. You don’t need to be anywhere near them. You can talk to your friends tomorrow. The woman who works at the front desk ...”

“Mary Ann,” I supplied.

“... Marry Ann went out to tell them how much you appreciate their support, and explained why it wasn’t a good idea for you to come out. You're covered. In fact, I’d like to get you out of here now, just in case. Those protesters are fuming hot, and are looking to do something stupid.”

“Fine,” I said.

I wasn’t going to let her rain on how good I was feeling, so I let her lead me out of the rear exit of the building to my car.

I was having one of those days where you find out just how much your friends are behind you. I made a mental note to tell each and every one of them what it meant to me the next day.

Chapter 4

I could barely contain myself until lunch, and I actually managed to get called out in class for staring off into space. When I got into the cafeteria at lunch, I marched to the table we all shared and grabbed a stunned Rachel from behind, lifting her off the ground.

“Gah!” she squeaked out in surprise before seeing who grabbed her. “What the hell, Caspian?”

“I heard you were the one who organized that counter protest, yesterday,” I said.

I put her back on the ground, spun her around, and lifted her off the ground again, this time in a hug.

“Yeah, yeah, the secret’s out. I’m officially your biggest fan,” she said, her voice dry with sarcasm. “Now put me down, you dumb ox.”

I laughed and set her down, “Josh is the ox. Think of me more like an underfed Longhorn instead.”

I was in a good mood and hoped to bring Josh around after our confrontation the other day, but all I got was a sneer instead.

“Seriously,” I said, turning my attention back to Rachel. “You have no idea how much that meant to me.”

“You’re welcome, but it wasn’t just me. I mentioned it to a few people who thought it was a good idea and the thing kind of took on a mind of its own. Plus, it was fun, that preacher’s an asshole.”

She patted me on the shoulder and waved me off to my seat with a smile. I gave her a smile and headed around the table, grinning the whole way, practically radiating my good mood.

Josh, of course, found a way to bring that to a screeching halt!

“God Dammit!” he yelled, picking up his tray and slamming it down on the table again, the sound of it slapping into the table sounding almost like a gunshot.

His tray had still been partially full, and food went splattering all across the table. Two square slices of what the cafeteria called pizza but was more reminiscent of cardboard were launched over his head, landing on the table behind us.

The people at that table started to stand up, pissed at being nailed with the greasy squares until they saw Josh standing up angrily. Just by his sheer size, Josh is pretty intimidating. A pissed off Josh was not someone people wanted to mess with.

He left his tray where it was and stomped away from the table and out one of the side doors of the cafeteria.

“Sorry,” Amanda mouthed before collecting both their trays and dropping them off at the dish area before jogging out the door to catch up with him.

“What the hell?” I said.

I knew Josh was pissed at me for not giving in to his demands, but this was 'next level.' If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was a genetic negative, given the steadily escalating anger he had towards me.

Except, this was relatively recent, and we had spent almost a year together, much of it in close contact while we were on the football team, together. All the experience we'd had to this point with genetic negatives said he would have shown signs of it before now.

“He got kicked off the football team, today,” Jacob said.

“What?” Tami asked.

She had been in the same funk as me, and clearly was as behind as I was.

“Just before Thanksgiving they did a 'random' drug screening, but it was for the whole team. Josh’s test came back positive for anabolic steroids. Coach told him he was off the team, this morning.”

“Wow,” was all I could say as thoughts bounced around my head.

One thought was being both angry and relieved at the same time. I was pissed because I thought we had dealt with this last year, when he got busted for cheating. He seemed to understand taking short cuts like that only ended up coming back and biting him in the ass, and yet, here we were, doing it all over again. Josh should have known better. He knew UIL rules required all student-athletes to submit to random drug screenings for a school's program to remain eligible.

I just didn’t get it. Josh was a good guy and at least seemed like he wanted to do the right thing, and then he goes and does something stupid like this.

The relieved part of my thought process was that I hoped this would explain Josh’s attitude over the last several months. Steroids were known for causing short tempers and irrational explosions of anger, which seemed to be a pretty apt description of how he’d been behaving to me. It also made a lot more sense, given the history between the two of us, than him being a genetic negative who somehow avoided any adverse effects for almost a year.

The last thing that occurred to me was that the girls also had to get tested, since cheerleading was also a school organized sport. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but there was a chance the biological changes in the girls might show up in a drug test. I wasn’t sure about that, but it was something else I needed to discuss with Alex when I went by her lab.

“...nd he just flipped out, knocked over the table in the training room and stormed out,” Jacob was saying.

I had gotten lost in my thoughts and hadn’t heard a word he said before that.

“So can he try out again, if he gets clean?”

“Nope. UIL rules make it a one strike deal. He’s done, and next year was when scouts would have started looking at him.”

“There goes his NFL dream,” Rachel said, sounding a bit sad.

“He did it to himself,” Jacob said, sounding much less sympathetic. “They made what happens if you're caught, very clear. He knew the risks. Hell, he got lucky last year when he skated on the cheating thing. That should have been a wake-up call.”

No kidding, I thought. But I also knew I had to go talk to him and see if I could convince him to shape up or at least get a plan on what to do next. Although, I might let that wait for a day or two, until he cooled down.

The conversation turned away from Josh, since his outburst had already made everyone uncomfortable; but it was evident that the entire group was worried about him, leaving a cloud to hang over all of us.

I tried to change the subject.

Turning to Zoe, I said, “Ohh, I don’t remember if I told you, but I have to go down to the facility outside of Houston this weekend.”

“Really? Great!” she said, sounding weirdly excited.

“It’s great I’m going to Houston?”

“Yeah, we want to go with you!”

“Why?”

“Because,” Vicki said, breaking in, “There’s a building there we’ve been looking at for the first center.”

“Center?” I asked.

It was as if they’d had a conversation that I’d slept through. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about.

“We’ve been working on this idea. We want to open an Evolve Center. It will be a place we can distribute the low-cost food we’ve been getting easier, offer some job assistance programs like training or whatever, and hopefully open a small clinic.”

“I thought you worked through some charities already for the food thing?”

“We do,” Tami added, “But we also want to connect more directly with the people we’re helping so...” she paused, trying to figure out the right way to say what she had started to say.

I knew what she was getting at though. One of their goals with the charity was to start building long-term goodwill for the inevitable day when word about us got out. However, there was no way of saying that without having to explain more than we wanted to.

“Okay, I get it. No problem. You can come along, but we’ll probably have to go in two cars. I doubt Jawarski’s going to let me out on my own, and Megan has her van up at college.”

“No problem. We’ll have the fun car,” Zoe said with a devilish smile.

“I’d like to go with you if I can,” Rachel said.

“Really?” I asked.

She hadn’t shown a huge amount of interest so far in the stuff the girls had been working on, so I was surprised.

“I’m not all about partying,” she said, and then noticed everyone else’s face. “Well, not all the time. I want to do stuff, too.”

“Sure, you can come with us. We can party in my car on the way there. Two birds, one stone,” Zoe said.

“Awesome.”

“Well, I gotta get to class,” I said, as the lunch hour started to draw to a close.

I couldn’t help throwing a look out the direction Josh had gone before I left, however.

That afternoon Jawarski picked me up and took me off towards Mom and Alex’s lab. She wasn’t thrilled to hear about having to go with me to Houston over the weekend. I had no idea what Jawarski did in her free time, but apparently, she had ‘things to do.' I offered to go by myself, just trying to be helpful of course, but she decided I had some ulterior motive and wouldn’t hear of it.

Which meant several hours in a car with a woman who hated me. That should be fun.

Mom and Alex were both in the lab when I arrived. I hadn’t told them I was coming since I hadn’t decided on it until I was already at school, and they came out of separate areas of the lab when I asked the office manager to let them know I was there.

“Is everything alright,” Mom asked as she hurried out of her office.

“Everything’s fine. Do I have to have a reason to come visit you?”

“No, but you always have before.”

“Well, I guess let’s keep the trend going. Is Alex...” I started to say and stopped as she came out of the secure lab and walked down the hallway towards us.

“Never mind,” I said, continuing. “Let's go back to your office and talk.”

“Is something wrong?” Alex asked.

“Seriously, I don’t only visit during emergencies. I just had a few things I wanted to run by you guys, and I heard something at the last status update with Charles I wanted to find out more about.”

“Ohh, okay,” Alex said as we headed down the hall to Mom’s office. “I guess I just thought, since every other time you’ve come by ...”

“Mom already beat you to giving me grief on that,” I said with a smile.

I shut the door behind them and sat in one of the two chairs in front of Mom’s desk. Her office was actually pretty tiny. They had opted for making the offices small to have more lab space.

“So, I guess first I have a question. Cheerleading is part of the University Interscholastic League which regulates all student athletic programs. As part of that, they require random drug screenings of student athletes. Would anything about our unusual nature show up in that kind of test?”

“If it was just a urine sample,” Alex said after a moment of thought, “then no. A blood sample would definitely show up as unusual to anyone who looked at it for more than a second under a microscope but, at least the one time I looked at a urine sample of yours, there was nothing out of the ordinary. I assume that is the same for everyone else. I guess I could collect a few samples and check them out, but I doubt they’d show up and you don’t.”

“No, I think we’re okay on that. Also, I’m not sure anyone would be overly thrilled to have to come in and pee in a cup for you unless they really have to. But a blood sample would be bad.”

“Usually. However, a lot of the places that do these kind of tests run them through automated programs, with a computer looking for specific markers. While the computer would detect the differences, unless it was specially programmed to inform the testers of them, it wouldn’t let anyone know. However, it’s still best to try and avoid blood tests if at all possible.”

“Got it. Question number two. I met with Charles, and he mentioned you two were working on a new cancer therapy and were nearing FDA trials. Now, I know you two are good. Better than good in fact, since you’ve both gone through the change. But hundreds, probably thousands of brilliant and dedicated scientists have been working on the cancer problem for decades, most without any luck. I can only think of one way you two managed to develop a ‘promising new therapy’ so quickly.”

“Yes,” Mom said, answering the question I was building to but hadn’t asked yet. “We are using your blood in the therapy. Or, at least some of your plasma.”

“That seems incredibly risky,” I said. “Going to FDA trials means a regimented testing program. It means the FDA looking over your therapy for possible side effects. Isn’t there a strong chance they’ll figure out what’s actually going on.”

“We’ve gone through this a hundred ways, and we think we’re going to be okay. Is there a good chance the FDA will notice our therapy takes over and changes the blood of those who receive the treatments? There’s a good chance. Will they figure out that the procedure also eliminates the effects of other chemicals and diseases? Maybe, although that's a lot less likely. They will be looking at specific control groups for things going wrong, not random things going right that they aren’t checking for. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to question their healthy control group remaining healthy.”

“But you said it yourself, they’ll notice the effect on the patient’s blood, and maybe even the other effects.”

“I did. But people look for the answers they expect. As long as that fits, they stop looking. We are going to explain a process that works. They will see it working and assume the genetic workup we do and the process we use in creating the medicine will be what’s doing the job. They will not make the leap that we are actually regularly siphoning off plasma and blood from my teenage son, who happens to be the next step in human evolution, and using that to create our therapy.”

“Okay, when you put it like that, it sounds absurd.”

“Exactly. We have a fairly detailed description of our work-up to show the regulators. We’ve put together a combination of drugs, genetically modified them, then put them through a process to ‘activate’ the formula. All of which, if done in another lab, will fail to create a miracle cancer cure, but will create something entirely benign that won’t hurt anyone given the knockoff.”

“I don’t know. It sounds good, but I’m still concerned.”

“I know. And honestly, it is deadly. But, think of the people we can save. Children spending their first few years of life subjected to excruciating chemo or radiation therapies, and then many of them dying even after that. Families losing their mother or father, with kids having to grow up knowing that kind of loss. A child shouldn’t have to grow up knowing what that kind of pain feels like.”

I could see the pain in her eyes. I’d forgotten her husband, Zoe’s father. How his loss impacted the family. She had always seemed so in control and confident at all times, I sometimes forgot she had things in her past that still caused her pain.

Plus, she was right. If I wanted to improve the world and humanity, where better to start than saving children? Not that I still didn’t have concerns.

“You’re right,” I said softly. “You two are just fulfilling what I’ve been saying all along I wanted. Still, what do we do about people becoming loyal to me without their permission?”

“It doesn't matter,” Alex said and held up a hand in protest. “So far, everyone you’ve changed has known you or known of you, and therefore has had a reaction. But people who don’t know you won’t notice the difference. And if they do meet you, they’ll feel an innate need to trust and support you. They won’t ever know the difference. And even if we explained it all to them, step by step, do you think any of them would choose excruciating death for them or their child, to avoid that?”

“No.”

“Exactly. Cas, this is going to work.”

“But, you can only pull out so much blood or plasma from me at a time. Sure, I come by every week for you to take a draw, but how many doses can you make of your therapy. Unless you’ve figured out a way to synthesize it?”

“No, we haven’t,” Mom said. “Sadly, the therapy will be limited. I expect we will be able to do no more than, say, a couple of thousand doses a year. We could do more if we didn’t keep researching your genetics, or if we didn’t need to make those capsules. We all agree however that both of those are still a necessity. The good news is, while we’ve made the treatment a 5-week therapy mostly to keep it from seeming like a miracle drug, we only need a minuscule amount of plasma from you for that last dose.”

“We’ve tried our blood and we've done some tests with blood from Zoe and Vicki,” Alex added. “But while we all possess some of the effects of your system, our blood does not seem to have the ability to take over a host’s system and change them.”

“It seems you’ve thought of everything. I’m still concerned though.”

“We are too, Cas,” Mom said, putting her hand on mine. “But we think this is worth doing, despite the risk.”

“I guess I’m sold. How about you two knock off for the night and let's go get dinner?”

I didn’t manage to get together with Josh the rest of the week. He didn’t come to school, and neither did Amanda. Considering his attitude when I saw him last and its apparent direction at me and the girls, I decided it was probably best if I didn’t call him until I was sure he’d cooled down.

Saturday we piled into two cars, the fun car with the girls and Rachel, and me and my shadow in the other and headed down to Houston.

I don’t think Jawarski or I said more than two words to each other the entire trip. As we got closer to the new facilities, the girls turned off at another exit and headed to wherever the spot they were taking a look at was located while Jawarski and I continued on.

I was happy to see the gate guards doing their thing when we pulled up. Considering what happened the first time I’d visited the area - interrupting a couple of the Syndicate's men shaking down the only business owner who wouldn’t sell to them - it was nice to know we had a little more security on hand now.

Most of the buildings at the new facility were production focused, but we’d kept one of the buildings for offices, both for the use of management and support staff and because I had this suspicion that one day we might end up moving all our offices here. Jawarski’s recent pushing for the family to get out of town to somewhere more secure just reinforced my suspicion.

After being waved through the gates, I pulled through the now much more organized streets between the fifteen buildings that stretched around the facility. All other entrances to the area had been closed, and walls were starting to go around the entire area, part of the plan we’d started earlier in the year to secure all the buildings.

While most of the buildings were only two stories, and much wider than they were tall, there was one building that was four stories tall with windows around its sides that stood out like a control tower among the shorter buildings. This was the building I parked in front of.

Looking up, it occurred to me that, if we ever did move all our offices out here, we’d have to add to the building. I wasn’t even sure it was possible to make an already standing building taller, or if we’d have to tear it down and put up a new one. That was, of course, a thought for another day. I filed it in the back of my mind with the hundred or so other things that I needed to remember for the future.

I didn’t actually have an office in this building. After saying hello to the office manager we’d hired I passed a room full of cubicles. This would be for the various shift managers at the different facilities, most of which were still unused since we had only used a portion of the capacity we’d set up so far. Down from the cubicle room, I found the main conference room on the first floor, with Jonathan and Arnold already sitting inside.

I’d offered Jonathan a ride, but he’d decided to take his wife to Houston to see a ballet or something, and had spent the night in town, making his commute much easier this morning. I did briefly wonder what his wife was doing while he was here, but I’m sure they’d figured that out.

“Gentleman,” I said, setting my work backpack down.

“Right on time,” Jonathan said. “I know it's a weekend, and Arnold is probably looking forward to taking it easy for the rest of the day, so let's get this all cleared up and enjoy the rest of the weekend.”

“You know I’m headed to see some kind of property after this, right?” I asked.

“Yeah. Zoe cornered me earlier this week about it. She’s got everything we need if you sign off on the site, and I’ll have the necessary documents faxed to the property manager Monday morning to get the purchase started.”

“Wait! Really? I thought this was just a ‘what do you feel about this’ kind of trip. I didn’t realize they were to the point of actually buying the property and setting everything up.”

“Ohh, they’re much farther ahead than that. I’ve assigned one of the newer associates we hired when we expanded the legal department to ride herd on them, and help out with everything. But when you told them this was their project, and they were to make the decisions, they took you seriously. The only reason we haven’t already bought the property is because they were nervous pulling the trigger without at least discussing it with you.”

“I guess I can’t complain about them doing what I asked them to do. I was just surprised.”

“You’re buying another facility?” Arnold asked, surprised.

“Not really. Last year we started a charitable foundation. So far it hasn't done much, but we’ve been working towards finding a way to help people who are having trouble making ends meet with low-cost food, job training, help finding work, that kind of thing.”

“That’s interesting. Good on you.”

“Thanks. But let's get down to what we actually came to do. You’ve looked over everything Jonathan sent over?”

“Yes. It’s pretty generous. I’m surprised you’re letting me basically run my business as I always have, except for being available to help the other parts of the company with transportation. It’s like nothing has changed and you’re giving me a pretty nice check on top of that.”

“We do get some stuff out of it. We get transportation at cost, which is big for us. We’ve already got one overseas project that cost us a pretty penny shipping the materials out there. We have more projects in the planning stage for that same item. Had you been on board last year, that project would already be close to getting into the black. That’s how much it would have saved us. Plus, we do get a cut of your profits,” I said with a diffident shrug.

“Not a huge one, and the guarantee of earnings for months when things go wrong really offset that. I had my lawyer look it over, and he thinks you guys are crazy.”

“Maybe we are. But, we also have a lot of loyal employees.”

“I can imagine.”

“So, I take it all of that means you’re happy and ready to sign,” I asked.

I knew that he was since Jonathan wouldn’t have set this meeting up otherwise, but I’ve learned that people like to talk a bit before making a big move, even if it’s just to summarize what they’re about to do.

“Yep. Let’s do this.”

The paperwork took hardly any time at all, which was usually the case. A few more minutes of small talk, and I left him in Jonathan’s capable hands. I headed back out to the car, where I found Jawarski asleep in the passenger seat.

Considering all the cameras and the gate guards checking all the vehicles, this was a relatively secure area, so I guess she felt okay letting her guard down a bit. Although I suppose she never let it down that much because, she cracked one eye to look at me when I got to the car window before I even touched the doors, and then promptly shut it again.

I followed the directions the girls had given me, finding myself on the outskirts of Houston, in an area that honestly looked a little rough, and very poor. That was expected, of course, considering what the goals of a center like this would be. What surprised me is what I found. What I was expecting was maybe a small building or an open lot. What I found was an abandoned mega store, the parking lot empty with randomly placed ‘return your cart here’ spots. I saw Zoe’s car out front next to a car I didn't recognize. Lights were on inside the building, so I knew I was in the right place.

As I parked and got out of the car, Jawarski also got out, and went around to the back, planting herself on the rear bumper.

“You’re going to stay out here?” I asked.

I’d assumed she’d keep shadowing me.

“Have you seen this area? I’m afraid if we all go inside, we won’t have a way home when we’re done. No, I’ll stay and guard the cars.”

I shrugged and headed inside the building through surprisingly still working sliding glass doors. What I found when I got inside, was a giant empty cavern, with a set of swinging doors at the back and along one side.

“Hello,” I called out into the empty space.

A few moments later Zoe, followed by the rest of the troupe including a man in a suit I didn’t recognize, poured out of one of the swinging set of doors in the back.

“Cas!” she called out. “What do you think?”

She held her arms out and spun, indicating the large open space.

“It’s a bit ... gigantic, isn’t it?” I asked as I walked over to them so I could stop shouting.

“It’s perfect.”

“I was expecting, something a different. I thought you were talking about building something?”

“That’s what we had originally thought, but Fred here suggested we snap up an abandoned grocery store or something similar, since it would fit our needs. There's enough of them, especially in the areas we're interested in, to make it a buyers’ market.”

“I’m afraid how much something like this would cost.”

“Just over two million for the entire site, which is huge. The building itself is a hundred thousand square feet.”

“Two million?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes. I admit we could do with a lot less, but this kills a lot of birds with one stone. We can store and distribute food, which we wouldn't be able to do in a smaller venue, we can have a shelter for women and children (which there aren’t enough of), and we would still have enough room to set up classrooms for retraining, and for the medical clinic. All that takes space, and we would probably only be able to do two of them in a smaller area.”

“Plus,” Vicki added, “It helps the neighborhood.”

“Because there’d be all these services?”

“No. You’d be surprised how much a giant empty store like this hurts a community. It lowers property values all around, and is a magnet for a lot of crime. There was a study last year where they looked at hundreds of communities. They found that when an empty mega store like this disappeared, either by being sold or just being torn down, crime dropped over the next year by between five and ten percent.”

“Two million is a pretty big number, though. It’s more than half the money we’ve put into Evolve so far. You won't have many options for hiring staff to man it; or for buying supplies, including the food you're talking about distributing. And that doesn’t even count the cost of building a clinic, hiring medical staff, or the cost of just refurbishing this place, so it’s up to code for everything you’re talking about.”

“It’s not as bad as you think,” the man, who I assumed was the 'Fred' Zoe had mentioned, said. “They put together some impressive presentations, and we’ve been shopping the idea around to various charitable foundations and philanthropists to help fund this project, explaining that this center will be a pilot program for what we hope will be able to go nationwide. So far, across all the groups willing to contribute, we’ve found enough matching money to cover half the cost of the building and the renovation costs.”

“Really?” I said, my eyebrows raising unconsciously in surprise.

“Yep,” Zoe said, beaming. “Really!”

“And you think it’s doable?” I asked Fred.

“I do. They’ve just given you the top sheet overview of what we’ve worked out. If you want to sit down, I can go through the entire plan, step by step.”

“I have to say I'm just amazed. I knew you guys had made this a priority, but I hadn’t imagined you’d gone this far. Let’s look at those numbers! If everything looks right, and Jonathan said he thought it did, then who am I to stand in the way of your plans?”

Chapter 5

We returned late Saturday night from our outing to Houston. Rachel offered to ride with Jawarski, so I could ride with the girls on the way back. She said she was curious as to what being a cop was like, and wanted to ask Jawarski questions on the way back; but I was pretty sure one of the girls convinced her to switch, so I could ride back with them. Which suited me fine.

The harder part was convincing Jawarski that it was ok for me to ride back with them. Eventually, it was Rachel who won Jawarski over. She really did seem enthusiastic about getting to ride with my shadow, so maybe it wasn’t a sham after all. We had to promise to stay right with Jawarski the whole time, and not lose her, which we agreed to …  although at that point, I would have agreed to just about anything to be able to ride home with the girls.

Zoe drove and I rode next to her, with Tami and Vicki in the back. We chatted about all kinds of things, but the lion's share was taken by the three of them excitedly filling me in on their plans for New Life. They hadn’t been hiding anything, but even I had to admit my attention had been pulled in so many directions over the last five months - what with all the stuff the company was up to, and the whole business with the CPS - that they hadn’t wanted to bother me until they were further along.

They had taken my idea of making local locations for things like food distribution and clinics and had run with it. Beyond planting the idea, I hadn’t been overly specific, and I don’t think they understood I had imagined separate, much smaller facilities, and not some massive branded center. But Zoe had a point that if one of the goals of New Life was to foster goodwill among the general populace as a bulwark against the day the truth of us came out. When that finally happened, this type of branding would be invaluable.

Tami was breaking down some of the thing's she’d been working out in Houston, over the food distribution, when Zoe spoke up.

“Uh-oh,” she said, looking in the mirror behind her.

I twisted in my seat to try and see what she was looking for and said, “What?”

I couldn’t see anything behind us, which I hadn’t been thinking about, but she realized there was a problem.

“I lost Rachel and Beth,” she said, continuing to look behind her.

I twisted around again and, sure enough, there were still no cars following us.

“She’s going to be so pissed at me when they catch up,” I said as we turned off into our neighborhood.

“I’m the one driving,” Zoe pointed out.

“I know, but she likes you guys. Hell, she likes pretty much everyone but me. She’ll definitely pin the blame on this squarely on me.”

“That’s not her fault though,” Tami pointed out from the back seat.

I made a grimace as we pulled into the driveway.

“I know, and I’ll just take my ass chewing like a good boy, but knowing why it’s happening doesn’t make me like it anymore.”

I slid out of the car and let Vicki out while Zoe did the same on her side.

“Think of all the benefits you get from your ... ‘condition’ though,” Zoe said, grabbing my hand to console me.

“I guess those almost ...” I started to say, and then stopped at a rustling coming from the side of my house.

I pulled Zoe around behind me, blocking her body with my own while I tried to see through the inky darkness on that side of the house. I was shocked to see the preacher burst past the shrubs next to the house and come storming towards us.

“What the hell?”

“Hell is right,” he said, stopping right in front of me, finger shaking in my face. “That is where you come from, devil spawn. I know what you are doing in this house of sin, corrupting the minds of these girls.”

“As opposed to convincing their parents to allow you to rape them you wrinkly old...” Tami yelled out from my left shoulder and then stopped in surprise as the preacher lurched for her.

My reaction was automatic. I pressed out with both hands square on his chest and pushed with every ounce of force I could muster. All my previous fights had been controlled, precise, thanks to Levi’s training. This was the first time I had acted out with raw force against someone since the change, and the effect shocked me.

The preacher lifted off his feet and sailed in a fifteen-foot arc through the air before landing with a rough thump, skidding across the grass. I surged forward, ready to do what I should have from the beginning, and damn the consequences when a pair of hands grabbed me from behind in a vice-like grip.

“Back off, Caspian,” Jawarski’s voice sounded from over my shoulder.

I didn’t know when she got there, but that was enough to get me to pull back. She released me and stormed over to the preacher.

“I’m going to sue,” he yelled as he got up.

“The hell you will,” Jawarski said. “I saw everything. You were attacking a minor, and he stepped in to defend her. We, however, will be filing for assault in the morning. If you try anything else, I won't stop him from making jail a moot point.”

The preacher grumbled but backed away from Jawarski’s fiery grip. He made a few more choice comments, comparing me with the Devil and then ran to a car parked a few houses down.

“Thanks,” I said as Jawarski walked back. “Do you think an assault charge would stick? He didn’t even lay a hand on her.”

“I told you to ride with me,” she said angrily, not answering my question. “Go get in the house before you get into any more fights.”

I saw the tail lights brighten as the preacher's car turned on and watched him drive away before turning and heading into the house.

Mom was waiting by the front window when we came inside. I went to dump my back pack in my room while Mom got the rundown on what had just happened from Jawarski, and was contemplating just going to bed when she yelled for me to come back downstairs.

“This is the last straw, Cas. I agree with Beth, we need to move somewhere more secure. Between that guy and the Syndicate, not even having your own bodyguard is working.”

“He wouldn’t have been able to lay a finger on Tami. We were never in danger.”

“What if he’d had a gun, and decided it was worth jail time to kill you? You’re able to heal fast, but we’ve already clearly seen that you aren’t invincible. What if he’d decided to shoot Tami instead? What if Beth hadn’t stopped you from beating him to death? No, I just can’t take this anymore.”

I opened my mouth to protest again and stopped when Zoe put a hand on my elbow. When I looked at her, she gave a slight shake of her head.

“Ok, fine,” I said, defeat in my voice. “We can look for a place to build this compound Jawarski wants. We’re going to have to figure out what to do about school and everything, though.”

“We have a little time for that,” Mom said. “I’ll go down next week and talk to the principal. We'll find out what our options are. It takes probably until the end of the school year to build what Beth is talking about, so we have time to figure it out.”

“Ok. You win. I agree. I’m going to bed.”

Mom looked at me with an expression of sympathy as I walked upstairs. It wasn’t that I had anything specific against moving somewhere, even out of town. I’d miss the friends we’d made, of course. But we would be within driving distance so they would have the chance to come visit. Mom had custody of me, Tina, Tami and Judy in addition to Zoe, so we’d all remain together. And it was a safe bet Vicki and her mom would end up moving with us. Her mom wasn’t working yet, although we’d talked about finding a place for her in the company; but it felt like we were being run out of town, and that didn’t sit well with me. Not even a little bit.

I got up fairly early the next morning but wasn’t allowed to go for a run. Jawarski had one of Carter’s guys sitting in the living room drinking a cup of coffee so she could get some sleep, and he definitely didn't seem like the running type. And it was pretty clear Mom wasn’t going to let me go out and run by myself.

I was a little disappointed. I’d grown to enjoy the runs after something like last night happened, so I could clear my head and think. I found the morning runs a great way to reflect. But I understood her point.

I sat down at Zoe’s computer and logged into my email account, just killing time while I waited for everyone else to get up and our day to get started. I was surprised to see an email from a sender that I didn’t recognize. The subject just said ‘Here’s what you asked for’ and the email contained the name and an address.

Damion Sanford.

That had to be the judge coming through with the name of a low-level member of the syndicate that I asked for. I went to the house phone and dialed Jawarski.

“Ya,” came a sleepy voice when she answered.

“Hey, It’s Cas, I got …"

“What the hell do you want?”

“The judge came through with the name of a guy. We need to talk about how to change him and get him on our side.”

“Fine. Great. I’ll be there in a few hours.”

The connection broke suddenly. She may have said it was great, but her voice sounded more like ‘I don’t care.' I would say it’s probably because Jawarski isn’t a morning person, but it just as well might have been her hatred for me.

Either way, after last night, I didn’t want to go out gallivanting on my own after this guy just to suffer the wrath of both Jawarski and Mom, who would almost certainly back up the ex-cop. Better to cool my heels and let them do the planning, and save the battles for when something important came up.

True to her word, Jawarski showed in just under an hour. I was sitting with Mom when she let herself in. Considering she was now responsible for the entire family’s safety, she didn’t really need to go around knocking anymore.

“Shut up and let me talk to Angela about this,” she said to me as I started to stand up and greet her. “So Angela, has Cas told you his latest reckless idea?”

“We were just discussing it. In this case, I’m going to have to side with Caspian. We do need to get a better handle on who’s messing with us, and this seems like the only valid option. I’m fine with it as long as he’s not involved in any personal way.”

“I’m going to have to be involved once he’s changed,” I protested.

“Yes, fine, although not by yourself. But everything else needs to be done by someone else.”

“I was thinking about that,” Jawarski interjected. “The deal last time of using one of his friends was extremely risky. Between Carter and me, we can work out a way to get him infected. He knows what's going on, now; so between the two of us, we’ll be able to make this work.”

“That works for me,” Mom said happily. “Although you please be careful too.”

“I also need you guys to look into this guy's life. Once he’s changed, I’ll need an in. There has to be something about his life that isn’t shit. I’ll need some kind of leverage on him. Some reason to convince him to do the right thing.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jawarski said, giving mom a slight smile before shooting a glare at me and heading back out, presumably to talk to Carter.

Now, of course, we were left with the waiting. Surprisingly, everything then turned back to normal for a few days; or at least, as normal as anything gets. No more visits by the preacher, and his protesters had dwindled to the point where they no longer even bothered showing up.

Of course, Josh had to go and screw the two-day peaceful streak up.

I was standing at my car talking to Zoe before she had to go to practice and I had to go to the office when I saw Josh making a beeline for me, Amanda in tow.

“Shit,” I said under my breath, causing Zoe to turn and see them coming towards us.

“What does he want?”

“Probably to follow up on the threats, he made at Thanksgiving.”

“What threats?” Zoe said, alarmed.

There was, however, no time to actually answer her, as he had made his way to us by then.

“I promised we would finish our conversation,” he said menacingly.

“Josh!” Amanda warned, catching up to them finally.

“No. You know what he’s doing. It’s bullshit. If I had even half of what he gave Zoe here, I’d be all-state this year.”

“I’ve told you, Josh, there’s no way...”

“That’s bullshit, and we both know it. Did you forget Ted’s my uncle? Who got you that job in the first place? I’ve seen him. He’s healthier than he’s ever been. You know he was on his way to needing a bypass, and now he’s totally clear? Mom says it’s a miracle. Are you trying to tell me you slept with Uncle Ted?”

To be honest, I’d completely forgotten that Josh was related to Ted. Most of the people that had been changed other than the girls didn’t intersect with school, so I never thought about other connection points.

“He’s lost a lot of the pressure he was under, since I bought out most of his company last year. Do you know how hard he worked before, and how much stress he was under? He’s just able to lead a healthier life now.”

“You have to be kidding me! Do you think I would ever believe that? Working less doesn’t fix a heart that’s already damaged.”

“Look, Josh, I don’t know what to tell you.”

He started making a move towards me until Amanda tugged him on the back of the arm. Which was probably good for him, since Jawarski, who up to this point had been seemingly uninterested, leaning against the car waiting for me to get in, pushed herself off and started to move to intercept him.

Josh was as strong as an ox, but I somehow doubted he was ready to tangle with the former Marine.

“Josh, teachers are watching. You’re already on your last warning. Come on.”

He growled and turned to glare at Amanda before stomping off. She gave Zoe a look and headed after him.

“Maybe you should just take him. It will give you enough control to be able and get him to fix his life.”

“No it won’t,” I said.

“Why? It worked with the Judge.”

“The Judge already wanted out of what he was doing. It was eating him up inside, and he felt trapped. I was just able to offer him a lifeline. Zoe, you’ve seen how everyone’s reacted who’s been changed. It’s not mind control. I can’t just go tell someone who's been changed ‘go do this ’, and they listen like a robot. It just engenders an incredible bond of trust and loyalty between me and the person. I have to find a way to use that and convince them.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And, what Josh has, deep down, is a desire to find a shortcut. He’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong; but he just wants the easiest path to anything. Cheating in classes, steroids, his wanting to be changed. It’s all from the same problem. He doesn’t want to do the work. Josh already trusted me the first time I told him no. He’s only lost that as I’ve refused to give him what he wants. A hardwired trust isn’t going to make that attitude go away.”

“I guess.”

“I’m right, Zoe. Imagine him smarter, stronger, faster and still the drive to cheat his way to get what he wants. It’d be a disaster.”

“Ok. You’re right. I’m sorry I pushed you.”

“It’s ok, I get it. Amanda's been your friend for a long time, and Josh was your friend before you met me. You don’t like seeing him pull away from us, and take Amanda with him. I totally get it. But we have to think long-term.”

She nodded, kissed me on the cheek and headed off towards practice. I watched Josh disappear back into the school and worried what Josh would do long term. Shaking my head I got in the car, followed by Jawarski, who was also looking towards the school.

“He’s going to be a problem,” she said.

“I know.”

“Ok. Also, I got word from Carter just before you came out. They were successful in infecting the syndicate guy, so now we just have to wait a day or so for it to take effect, assuming it doesn’t drive him crazy.”

“Any word from Carter on finding me some leverage to use on him?”

“Not yet.”

And the conversation ended there. Mom had started an antibody treatment on Jawarski, to try and mitigate the effects of being near me, but so far her chilly nature hadn’t changed. Unless she had something specific she needed to talk to me about, she tended to ignore me.

The next evening after I got home from work, I found Carter sitting with Mom.

“Is everything alright?”

It was a question we seemed to ask too often.

“Yeah. I’m here about the Syndicate guy. He’s showing all the signs of the change taking place, and we think we have the leverage you were looking for.”

“Good,” I said. While the percentage of negatives we’d found so far hadn’t been that large, I was still worried we’d go to change someone who’d never been around me, and it ends up killing them or driving them insane like poor Margaret. “What’s the leverage.”

“His mom. She’s the born-again ultra-religious type living in Tennessee. From the phone call, we listened to last night, he calls her once a week like clockwork, even when he’s busy emptying his stomach right before and after. She did not mince her displeasure in his criminal ways, and it seemed like it was a regular topic between the two of them.”

“And how did he respond?”

“He seemed to be genuinely bothered by it, but it’s hard to tell over a tap without seeing body language. If I had to guess, he’s a little bit of a momma’s boy who doesn’t like upsetting her, but this is all he knows. I would guess he also has similar beliefs to hers and is having trouble reconciling the two. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

“Ok, that should be enough. After school tomorrow, I want to sit down with him as soon as he’s somewhere I can do it and not raise too many eyebrows. Not his apartment.”

“Yeah. I’ll keep an eye out, and call you or Beth as soon as he’s at a good spot.”

“I think this is a bad idea,” Jawarski said, and the look on Mom’s face said she agreed.

“I’ll have you with me, and Carter there, plus a few of his guys. Hell, ask Levi to tag along if it will make you feel more comfortable. We’ll brace him somewhere away from other people, and after he’s gone through the change. Everything we’ve seen says that will make it really unlikely for him to try something against me. The risk is low, and I think it’s worth it. We need this information.”

“I just wish you’d let someone else talk to him.”

“That won’t work, and you know it. He has never been exposed to me directly. He wouldn’t know me well enough to attach his new found loyalty to me, just by my name alone. No. For this to work, it has to be me, and it has to be in person.”

She didn’t say anything else, but it was clear she wasn’t convinced. She might understand the reasoning intellectually, but putting someone you’re protecting in direct contact like that, has to run against all the rules for protecting them.

The call came the next day well after school while I was in the office. When Jawarski and I arrived where Carter indicated, we found him parked on a side street behind an older model sedan.

“He’s down the block at the barbershop. One of my guys is across the street with eyes on him. That’s his car right in front of us.”

“A barbershop doesn’t really seem isolated,” I pointed out.

“No, but he has to come back to his car. No one’s around, it seems like a random stop, not some kind of appointment or anything related to his work with the Syndicate. Seems as isolated as we’re going to get. I figure we wait until he gets in his car, then you two go get in. I’ve fixed it so his back doors won’t lock while we waited.”

“That’s handy,” I noted.

Carter just shrugged, continuing to watch down the street.

“I’m going with you,” Jawarski said, as a command rather than a question.

“Sure.”

We sat and waited. He must have just started getting his hair cut when we showed up because it was a full fifteen minutes before he returned to his car. As soon as he got in, Jawarski and I were out and headed to his vehicle. He had just gotten the car started when I pulled open the rear passenger door and slid into the seat, Jawarski doing the same thing on the driver’s side.

“What the hell!” he said, reaching into his coat, presumably for a gun.

Jawarski’s eyes bored into him, her gun already coming out.

“Hold it,” I said, in an as commanding voice as I could manage.

To his surprise, he stopped reaching into his suit jacket and turned to look at me.

“My name’s Caspian Grey. I don’t know if you’ve heard of me from your employers yet, but I do know you're not planning on pulling out that gun.”

His hand slowly pulled out of his suit jacket, empty.

“What do you want?”

He sounded somewhat hostile, which was understandable considering how we approached him, but at least he wasn't physically hostile.

“I just want to talk to you for a minute. I’m worried about you Damion.”

“What do you know about me?”

“I know your mother's worried about you; about your soul. You should listen to your mother, Damion.”

“Have you been bothering her?”

I gave him a smile, trying to speak to him calmly like you would a scared puppy you didn’t want to spook.

“No, I’ve never spoken to your mother; but she’s right, you know, there is only one way this lifestyle you’ve chosen ends. Tell me, do you know anyone in the Syndicate who’s retired into old age?”

“How do you...”

“And that’s just your body. I know you went with your mother to church as a child. Aren’t you concerned the preacher was right about what happens to men like you’ve become?”

I actually had no idea if he went to church as a child, but considering what Carter found out about his mother, it seemed like a safe bet.

“I mean, it’s not like that. I just...”

“Damion, you know what you do for a living. Do you think that’s what your mother wanted?”

“No,” he said, his body language changing from that of a scared dog lashing out to one who was being scolded, but then back to hostile as he tried to fight what his body was telling him. “I don’t even know why I’m listening to you?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because these are all thoughts you have had before, but you’ve been too afraid to confront them. Ask yourself, deep down, do you trust what I’m saying?”

“N...yes.”

“And am I right? Are these things you’ve been too afraid to ask yourself?”

“Yes,” he said, more confidently, finally looking at me directly in something other than disgrace or hostility.

“It’s not too late to change, you know?”

“It is. You don’t walk away from these guys. Ever.”

“You could if they weren’t around anymore.”

“How? That’s not even possible. You don’t know who these people are!”

“I know enough. I know they have their hands on everything; but I also know they’re vulnerable. You can free yourself from them if you’re willing to take a chance.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Damion, look at me.”

He looked up, and his eyes were filled with shame.

“You can. I won’t let you do it alone. I have resources of my own. I’ll help you break free, if you’re willing to help yourself.”

He was silent, staring at me for a full minute. I could see the wheels turning as he thought about the personal danger this would bring, consider why he should listen to some kid who just showed up out of nowhere, and why he was listening, feeling an overwhelming level of trust.

“What would I need to do?”

“First, tell me about the Syndicate. Everything you know. Names. What you're involved with, everything. After that we will use what you know, and what we’ve learned from other people who have dealings with the Syndicate, and we'll figure out our next step.”

Just like that, everything he knew about the men who’d hounded me started spilling out. I held eye contact as he talked, making affirmative noises as needed. I saw Jawarski pull out a small digital recorder, about the size of a Walkman and hit the record button. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask her to do that. I was glad she’d thought of it. I knew she wasn’t going to accept putting her gun down, not until she was confident he wasn’t going to be a danger to either of us, so I needed to keep his attention focused on me. The change had clearly taken effect, but it seemed to get stronger over time, and this sudden transition was a bit outside of our experience so far, making this a tricky time before we could trust him completely. Which meant we had to have some way to get the names, addresses, and actions he was familiar with, so we could look into them later.

It was becoming clear that he was a small player in the syndicate, and his information was limited. Still, it would be useful in helping us map out the players, at least in lower and mid-levels of the organization, and building up some information on them we could use later. It seemed a safe bet that we would need him to get more information for us, later down the road. This would do for now, and would give the change a little more time to cement his loyalty to us or me at least.

“That’s everything I can think of. Man, the boss is going to have me killed.”

“No, he won’t. He won’t even find out about this. Just go about your business like you never talked to me. I know they are going to ask you to do more of those things you shouldn't be doing, but for now, you should do them. Don’t let them suspect you are having a change of heart. We’ll be in contact.”

I slid out of the car, with Jawarski right behind me. She started to shut the door, but I put my hand on it, stopping her. She gave me an annoyed look, but I ignored it and leaned back in the car.

“Damion, you’re doing the right thing. I’m really proud of you. You’re on the path to getting out. Just stay strong.”

The look that I'd seen on his face as I got out had been one of extreme worry. That expression changed as I offered a little extra encouragement. I even got a smile when I told him I was proud of him. I hoped it would be enough to help him hold it together, until we could figure out what we needed from this man.

“You’re proud of him?” Jawarski asked as we walked back to our car where Carter was waiting. “You realize this guy is a scumbag?”

“He was a scumbag. He’s gone through the change, and that makes me responsible for him. Yes, we need him to get to tell us everything he knows, but I meant everything I said. I know you see him as just a tool to get what we need from these guys, but I take the responsibility of what happens when we change someone, seriously. We are genetically forcing someone to be loyal to me, without their approval in this case. I’ve accepted the necessity of that; but in return, I need to offer my loyalty to them.”

“You realize that if we manage to bring these guys down, he’s going to spend some time in jail.”

“Probably, and he’ll do it. But once he’s out, we can rehabilitate him. Isn’t that the point of putting people in jail? He’ll be in a better place once he’s out of jail, than he ever would be if we’d never picked him as the one to change. He at least has a chance, now.”

“You really are a goody-two-shoes, aren’t you,” Jarwarski said as she pulled open the front passenger door and slid in next to Carter.

“Some days,” I said, getting in behind her, “but isn’t that preferable to the alternative?”

Chapter 6

On the way back home, I worked over something I’d been thinking of for some time, ever since we decided to get information from the judge. My main problem was, I didn’t know exactly how to go about it… or at least, parts of it.

“How would I make an untraceable phone call?” I asked Jawarski and Carter as we walked into my house.

“Why? It’s too early to bring in the Feds,” she said, suspiciously.

“It’s not for calling the Feds, although we’ll need the same thing when it comes time to call them, I guess. But for now, I want to make a call to a journalist and pass them some of the information we’ve gathered so far, anonymously. Preferably a reporter at one of the local papers.”

“That’s a terrible idea. When it’s time, we can hand it over to the Feds and let them do their thing. I don’t see any reason why we should have some journalist running around, getting in the way, and maybe ruining the later investigation.”

“Because we need to roll this whole organization up, to make sure they don’t go after any of us, again. That thing with CPS shows they mean business, and I’m not going to give them another shot. You know how prosecutors work. If they don’t think they have a strong enough case, they’ll let these guys walk; and they’ll go for the easy win, offering up deals to make sure they get a few of the biggest names. I want a second bullet ready to go if we need to take another shot at these guys. A reporter just wants to dig up as much dirt as they can on a good story, and this has corruption and organized crime, it’s almost as sexy as you can get for a story. A reporter will just keep putting out the dirt until they have to be investigated. I’m not saying we give everything to the reporter now. I’m saying we prime them. Just give them enough to make them believe it’s happening, and then let them dig on their own for a while. If the feds look like they are going to balk, then we pass everything off to the reporter. If not, then the guy reports what he can find on his own and gets a little bit of a head start, while the Feds still get everything we can dig up.”

“Kid's got a point,” Carter said.

“I thought you wanted to stay away from reporters. Isn’t there a chance they'll start looking at you, instead?” Mom asked, having met us at the door as we came into the house.

“That’s why I want it to be anonymous.”

“I know a few guys who do that kind of work. Not the most trustworthy guys, but I’m sure we could set something up.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to go and buy one of those cash, prepaid cell phones and use that?” Mom asked.

“Sometimes, but it’s not as anonymous as you think. It takes a little longer to track down, but the police, or someone who has hooks into the department or the company that runs the cell phone, can tell you what store that phone was sold out of. They keep logs of what stores get what phones, so they know if anyone is stealing from them. They can also tell you when that particular phone was delivered to the store for sale. Then, all you have to do is go and watch any surveillance that might be in the store or around it, for people buying the phone. It’s a lot of legwork, but ‘burners’ are not as anonymous as you think they are. For it to work, you’d want to have someone barely or not at all connected to you buy it from a store at least a few hundred miles away from where you live. If it were me, I’d drive to another state and pay a bum to go in and buy it. But that takes a fair amount of time. If you’re bent on doing this soon, then finding a way to hide your number is the way to go.”

“I can do that,” Zoe said, having caught the last half of the conversation when we’d moved into the den.

“You can?” Mom asked, sounding surprised.

“Yeah. I’ve been talking to some people on a few BBSs, while I’ve been trying to learn more stuff. There are these guys I met that do phone spoofing, bouncing the signal through multiple exchanges by connecting with the computers used by the exchanges and routing the call through them, so you can’t find the actual sender. It doesn’t work everywhere since some places are just now putting their exchange on the net, but, enough have done it that it works.”

“And you’ve actually learned how to do it?”

Zoe started to answer, and then looked sideways at her mother, a guilty expression on her face.

“The cat's out of the bag, now, so just answer him. I’ll deal with you later.”

“I’ve done it a couple of times,” she said, and then turned to her mom. “Only to see how to do it. I didn’t actually do anything, I swear.”

“Does it take long to set up?”

“No, not really.”

“Ok, let me sit down and work out what I’m going to say. I want to keep it as short as possible. Give me thirty minutes, and then we’ll call him. We’ll call the newsroom, and ask for a staff reporter. I read once they keep someone in the newsroom at all times, to answer tips like this.”

“While he does that, you and I are going to have a little conversation about what you should and should not be doing,” Mom said, gripping Zoe by the arm and leading her out of the room.

I felt bad that Zoe got in trouble. It hadn’t occurred to me that she would know anything about that kind of thing. I knew she’d been spending her free time dabbling in some very grey areas, but I didn’t realize she’d put more into practice, especially since Mom came down on her last year for her early attempts at hacking.

I sat down and worked out what I wanted to give the reporter. I knew I needed to give up a few things that could be verified, to prove my story was real. Then I'd hint that there was more if they dug for it, and that I could give more information once I was ready. But what I gave up needed to not have my name on it if at all possible, which meant the CPS investigation was out. It also meant the attempt by the MilTech executives the year before was also out. That left me with only the various people disappearing out of police custody as something obviously illegal and verifiable. I went through all the paperwork I’d been given, looking for things I could pass on if needed.

It took a little longer than she had expected to set up the call. Zoe had read only the basic ideas behind how to make untraceable calls, having predicted our need to do something like that in the future as we ran up against the Syndicate and its corrupt henchmen in the city government, but theory is different than putting it into practice. Even with Carter and Jarwarski working with her, and a brief stop for Carter to call a guy he knew for a few answers they couldn’t figure out, it took almost three hours before they said they were set up. The sun was already starting to go down. As confident as I had sounded about there being someone always manning the newsroom, I was beginning to worry we would call and get an answering machine.

“So we’re sure this is going to work?” Mom asked Carter as they finished hooking up.

“Yeah, it will work. We’ve bounced the call through a bunch of exchanges, the call will look like it originated in New York City. Your kid seems to have a sense for this kind of thing.”

Zoe beamed at the compliment, but her mother was less amused. “I’m not sure this is something I want her excelling at.”

Zoe rolled her eyes and looked at me, “So we’re calling the paper here in Alice?”

“No. I have been thinking about that, and these guys seem to be inside every group we’ve talked to. I think it’s better if we go somewhere close enough to care about the story, but big enough and far enough away to not be compromised. I was thinking Houston?”

“Which one? Houston has several. You could call the Chronicle or the Post or …”

“I don’t know, the Chronicle, I guess.”

Zoe found the number, and then looked at me, “Ready?”

“No, but go ahead and dial anyway.”

She gave me a reassuring smile as she dialed, which actually helped settle me down a little bit.

“Houston Chronicle?” a voice said when they answered.

“Hi, I’d like to talk to one of your reporters.”

“What is this regarding?”

“I have information on a story, a … ahh .. tip, I guess.”

“Which department did you need to talk to?”

I started to respond but wasn’t sure what she was asking. Thankfully, I looked up while trying to think and saw Carter mouthing something.

“City Desk, please.”

“One moment.”

Muzak played for several minutes while we waited. The gathered faces slowly turned from on edge and excited to bored as we listened. Finally, however, someone answered.

“City desk,” a man said, sounding a bit rushed.

“Hi. I needed to talk to a reporter.”

“And you are. What can I help you with?”

“Can I get your name?”

“Dan Figeroa,” the man said. “Can I get yours?”

I ignored that, instead saying, “I have a story for you … well, information I guess … that should make a good story.”

“Ok. And that information is?”

“Have you heard of the town of Alice?”

“No, should I?”

“It’s a small town about an hour east of you, kind of north of Beaumont.”

“You know this is the Houston paper, right?”

“Yes, I do. Once I explain, it should make sense why I’m calling you and not that town’s local paper.”

“Ok, I’m all ears then.”

“I guess in the simplest terms, there is a large criminal organization in Alice, that has managed to buy or get control of large parts of the government.”

“Alice doesn’t sound like a particularly large city, how big can the organization be?”

“It seems fairly large, from what I’ve learned. I know they’ve co-opted at least one county judge and a significant part of the county sheriff's department.”

“That’s a pretty big claim. I hope you have more than just your word on it.”

“I have some I can give you now, and more information I can give you later, to back up a lot of this.”

“If you think I should chase this story, why not give me everything you have now?”

“Because these guys mean business, and I don't want anything that can be traced back to me. At least, not until I know they’re going down for good.”

“What do you mean by ‘they mean business’?”

“They’ve shown little problem with kidnapping and attempted murder. I have people I care about, and I don’t want them being put in danger.”

“Is any of the information you have about these kidnappings or murder attempts?”

“Some, but it’s not what I’m going to give you right now.”

“Then what are you going to give me?”

“Two things. One is a list of names of people, including some police officers, who have been taken into custody, only to disappear from the jail, along with all reports of their arrests and crimes. If you were to contact the city, you would find all evidence of these people being arrested or brought to the jail completely gone. I, however, do have the name of the arresting officer in some cases and will include that. These people were arrested, booked into the jail, only to disappear out of the system and vanish from the jail with no trace. The other thing I have for you are a few pages of a ledger showing some of the books of the organization. It’s in code so it will take some effort to sift through, and it’s not everything, but it will be enough to get you started, and to show you that something very screwed up is happening in the town.”

“A few pages? The way you said that makes me think you have more than just a few pages.”

“For now, that’s all I can pass on. As soon as I am able, I’ll give you more of the evidence I’ve collected, but for now, you’ll have to do your own digging.”

“Sounds like a giant pain in the ass. Your deep throat act is making me really suspicious. Why should I jump through hoops for you?”

“Being able to show a massive criminal conspiracy that has taken over most, if not all, of a town in the US, including its law enforcement? That will be a juicy story! Your editors will love it, and you’ll get some acclaim when you break it.”

“I’m not promising anything, but send me over your information. If it checks out, I’ll look into it. How do I get hold of you?”

“For now, you don’t, I’ll call you,” I said, and hung up the phone.

“You realize all of the names we know of for the people who vanished out of the jails will at some point lead back to you?” Jawarski said after I hung up the phone.

“Not all of them. You said the report you submitted about what happened when we got Vicki back, disappeared when the guy we managed to arrest vanished out of jail.”

“Yeah?”

“Then you’re the arresting officer, now retired, and there is no word on me being involved, just you.”

“And I now work for you, how is that not leading back to you?”

“You're in charge of a subsidiary company, I’m not actually on your corporate documents. If he wanted to, he could track back to me, but as long as my name doesn’t come up over and over, there is nothing that would flag him to look at me.”

“You know if he starts really looking into this, your name will come up over and over.”

“Maybe. Like I said, none of the reports exist, so there is nothing with my name on it.”

“I’m not sure you’ve thought this through all the way. If he starts asking around, you will show up. Enough people in the department have noticed your name with these incidents that someone is going to mention you.”

“I know, but I still think we need to have someone outside of law enforcement looking into this. It’s why I want to only give him a couple of names of people to look up, for now, and a few pages of the book we got from Vicki’s dad. Hopefully it'll be enough to pique his interest.”

“I still think this is a bad idea.”

“Cas,” Zoe said, “Maybe you should listen to her.”

“I am. But I still don’t think we have a lot of choices. These guys have surprised us with their reach a bunch of times. Do you want to chance it that they have no in with the FBI?”

“Well …”

“My thoughts exactly. If my name comes up, then it comes up. I’m just a kid with a bit of weird stuff in my recent past. Do you think someone's going to make the leap from that to a genetic mutant with superpowers?”

“Maybe not right away, but the more of your plan you put into place, the closer people will look at you. With that kind of scrutiny, it takes only one screw up to bring everything crashing down,” Jawarski said.

“What should I do then? Just rely on the FBI and hope they go fast enough and there’s no one in their local offices to short-circuit the investigation?”

Jawarski thought for a long moment and then said, “No, but I still don’t like it.”

“Me either, but it’s what we have. Plus, what’s done is done. Carter, do you think you can get copies of this stuff made up and dropped off, so that the reporter won’t notice?”

“Yeah. We can manage it.”

“Good. Now we need to start digging up some more specific stuff. Between the Judge and Damion, we can get some information. We just need to figure out what kind of information we need to get from them. We need evidence of specific people they’ve bribed, including amounts and times, criminal activity, anything.”

“That’s not very specific,” Zoe said.

“I know. For now, I will ask Damion to write down a list of everything he can think of that the Syndicate is involved in, and go from there. We should ask the Judge, too, but I don’t think we’ll get much from him. He’s more of a pawn than a member.”

“Let one of Carter’s guys go talk to him, you have somewhere to be tomorrow. The contractor said he could push us to the front of the line. We’re starting construction on the Evolve center in Houston tomorrow. I want to go see it,” Zoe said.

“You ok with doing that?” I asked Carter.

“Yeah, sure kid. I live to be your errand boy.”

I just nodded, ignoring his jab. Carter liked to give people a hard time. I’d already come to a conclusion if he was insulting or complaining about me, then he liked me.

The next day we got an early start. Zoe had arranged to meet the contractors at eight am, and we were an hour away with light traffic. Thankfully, it was a Saturday, so we didn’t have to worry about dealing with Houston's rush hour; which, according to Mom, could be pretty bad.

Jawarski was already at the house, drinking coffee when I got up. She still wasn’t happy with me and the girls getting separated during the last outing and having the run-in with the preacher. There was no way she was letting us take that kind of a trip again without her in the car. Of course, thanks to her surly nature when I was around, that also killed most conversation, or at least, conversation I got to be involved in.

The contractors were already set up when we arrived, with several carloads of guys milling about a panel van with an older guy sitting in the driver's seat. He got out and met us by our car as we pulled up.

“You must be Ms. Bell,” he said walking past Zoe and the rest of the girls, who had been a little in front and putting his hand out to Jawarski, who’d been walking next to me.

“Not me,” she said with a smirk, pointing at Zoe, “her.”

The guy looked perplexed for a moment as he looked from Jawarski to Zoe and back, trying to rework his preconceptions, albeit slowly.

My annoyance flared up seeing the brief expression that crossed Zoe’s face at the unintended snub. It was a fairly irrational reaction since I often got the same kind of treatment, and honestly, I didn’t blame him. If I’d been hired to do tens of thousands of dollars in construction, and then when the car I’d been waiting on showed up turned out to hold five teenagers and an adult, I’d have assumed the adult was the person in charge too.

Knowing that his mistake had been honest, and that it was a natural assumption, didn’t keep me from getting angry. When it came to Zoe or the rest of the girls, my rationality sometimes went out the door. Thankfully, Zoe had a cooler head, as usual. The hurt expression she’d had at first, disappeared almost as soon as it had shown up, and her face went into her ‘all business’ expression.

“Yep, me. I’d be happy to call Fred and let him know you decided to pass on the job, and bring out another crew to do the work.”

“No, no. That won’t be necessary. If Fred says you guys are ok, then that’s enough for me. Sorry, he didn’t … uhh … give me an accurate description of the person I was supposed to be meeting.”

You had to hand it to the guy, he managed to recover quickly.

“Don’t worry about it. Do you have the notes he drew up?”

“Yeah. We’ve done a once over on the site, and he was right, a lot of demo needs to be done first, before we can start with the additions. He’s got an architect drawing up real plans, but once you give the ok, we’ll be able to start gutting the place and getting it ready for the new construction. By the time we have the site prepped, Fred should have the plans over to us for the buildup.”

“Ok, let's do a once-through just to make sure we’re on the same page, and then I’ll sign off on you guys getting to work,” Zoe said with a smile, turning and heading towards the cavernous building.

“Zoe,” I said, quick stepping to catch up to her, “I looked over the financials with Jonathan, but I’m not clear on what these guys are going to be doing here. The place seemed pretty empty to me.”

“There’s more than you’d think,” the foreman said from behind me, “The floors all need to come up. Besides the new materials that have been requested for the flooring in most of the building, there are a couple of questionable areas we need to check out once the linoleum's been pulled. We then gotta prep the entire floor so when we get the go ahead, we can float it and put down the tile or get it prepped for carpeting in those areas. Then there’s the warehouse area.”

“That was all cement floors, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Sure, but whoever cleared out the old store's stuff when they closed this place made a hash of it. Damage to the ceiling and walls, the rolling doors are totally jammed, and someone made a home in one corner and left … well, ya don’t wanna know. And then there’s the front area where the carts used to get stored. That’s gotta all get ripped out.”

“Huh, and I guess the cart things in the parking lot have to go, too?”

“Yep. It’s not a big wrecking ball kinda thing, you’re right; but there are a lot of little things we gotta do to get ready. We were told to be ready by mid-week to start the buildup. That will be a bit more, what with the new flooring, a bunch of walls, some offices, the small playroom and its special floor, and the medical area. All of that requires different set ups, pretty much everything, and it's gonna take some time.”

“Ok, sorry, didn’t mean to question you guys. I know Zoe has it in hand, I’ll just leave it to her.”

“Finally, he gets a clue,” Vicki said, eliciting a laugh from the rest of the girls.

We spent an hour and a half going through every square foot of the building as Zoe literally checked off step by step what she was expecting. I’d managed to get a look at her folder and all the printed sheets tucked in it, and the level of prep she’d done was incredibly thorough. I might have said extreme, but I’d learned it was in my best interest to not to 'poke the bear.' To his credit, the foreman had everything on his list that she had on hers, and was ready for every question she hit him with. I was sure Jonathan had them checked out once Zoe picked the group she wanted to hire.

Still, when Zoe went for something, she clearly didn’t play around. After she finished up, we all piled back into the cars and headed back to Alice. Thankfully, we were at the start of Winter break, which at least took school off the table. Work, Next Step, and dealing with the Syndicate were still around; but just having one thing to not have to worry about, made it feel like a weight had been lifted.

Now if only no new fires would spring up, we could get to Christmas and relax a bit.

Chapter 7

For the next week, things were quiet, which I should have known was a sign. If I was honest with myself, I didn’t even consider it for a second. I just relaxed and, for a few days at least, pretended I was a teenager.

Next Step was progressing, and by the end of the week, they’d started building, which was great but didn’t give us a lot to do. Work was almost on autopilot, with a lot of the staff taking off for Christmas, MilTech was dealing with everything on their Navy contract, with only minimal input from us on the technical specs for the desalination system. Even the plant being built in Papua, New Guinea, was progressing without any hiccups.

I’d checked in with Damion once, which was not easy, as we didn’t want to compromise him, but he didn’t have anything for us. I’d made sure he knew that any snooping he did for us, I didn’t want him to put himself in any danger, so it was taking time. The Judge had done his part and, unless the syndicate came back to him for something, there wasn’t much he could do for us.

So, early Friday evening found me curled up on the couch with Tami, reading a book. Something I hadn’t done since recuperating from the gunshot last year. Tami had fallen asleep at some point. I was starting to drift off myself, enjoying the moment, when my cell phone started to ring. I was a little surprised, since we generally didn’t use our cell phones that much. It wasn’t so much because the cost per minute for them was high, since all the girls agreed I made enough money and they were happy to spend it, but more out of habit. I almost always called the house, and they generally called the house, or my office, if they needed something.

I, however, didn’t bother looking at caller ID on the screen, since the only people who had the number were members of our family or a couple of people at work. We hadn’t really mentioned it to anyone at the school since we were noticeable enough without flaunting money around, too.

All that came together to pull me quickly out of my relaxing Friday afternoon, when a voice I didn’t recognize responded to my ‘hello.’

“Is this Caspian Grey?”

I froze in place, hearing the voice, but said: “Who is this?”

“I’m going to take that as a yes. Mr. Grey, my name is Frances Keen. I would like to meet with you soon, about a possible donation to your charitable foundation.”

Her voice sounded like the classic ‘rich person’ voice, stereotyped in movies and television, with careful pronunciation and diction as she spoke. She didn’t sound young, but I didn’t have enough experience hobnobbing with blue bloods to have any guess of age other than a very subjective ‘old.’

“How did you get this number?” I asked, still more concerned how someone I didn’t know managed to call me than with anything this woman had to offer.

“A friend of yours, named Megan, gave it to me.”

“You know Megan?”

“My granddaughter goes, or rather went, to college with Ms. Beck. She suggested you might be of some help with a problem I have, and indicated you are involved in some way with a charitable organization that could use donations.”

“What kind of problem?”

“I believe this is a conversation that would be better to have, person to person, Mr. Grey. I understand you have some kind of an office there in town. Would you be available to meet in the morning? I can be in your town by, say, ten AM.”

I gave it all of two seconds thought; but, as my interest was piqued, I said, “Uhh, yeah. I’m free, and I can meet you at ten. The address is ...”

“I have the address. I will see you then, Mr. Grey. Goodbye.”

With that, she hung up abruptly.

“That was weird,” I said out-loud to no one in particular.

“Whuzat?” Tami said groggily.

“Nothing, baby,” I said, slipping out from underneath her and gently setting her head down on the corner cushion I’d been sitting next to, “just a weird phone call. Go back to sleep.”

I leaned down and kissed her gently on the cheek, getting a sleepy “mmmm” in response, as she curled into a ball and drifted off to sleep. Slipping out of the room, I headed for the kitchen. I found Jawarski with her feet kicked up on another chair, drinking coffee and reading an issue of Cosmo magazine of all things.

“Cosmo?” I asked, looking at the unexpected magazine.

“Mind your own business,” she said with a glare. “Did you want something?”

Since she’d come on board with Carter and declared herself in charge of my personal security, it seemed she was always around. I didn’t mind, really. While it meant getting sneered at and called an idiot on a regular basis, she meant well, and it wasn’t her fault that she hated me.

Alex had begun to test anti-me treatments that were supposed to counter the effects of my presence on the genetically negative people. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t seem to make her disposition to me any better, but Alex assured me that it was working. She made a good point that continued exposure seemed to make the condition progressively worse. Margaret had been a good example of that, and while Jawarski hadn’t become suddenly nice to me, she also hadn’t gone full psycho on me, yet. So there was that.

“Yeah, something weird just happened. A lady I’ve never met named Frances Keen called me on my cell phone, knew a whole lot about me, and asked for a meeting at my office tomorrow morning.”

“She called you on your cell? Aren't those numbers unlisted?”

“That’s what I thought. She said something about getting my name from Megan, who apparently goes to school with the woman’s granddaughter. She said she wouldn’t tell me what she wanted to talk about, that she wanted to do it face to face. I was about to call Megan, and ask her what this was all about, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“I’m glad you finally did something smart. I want to hear the call with Megan, but let me make a call first.”

She grabbed wall mounted phone and dialed a number.

“Hey, a woman named Frances Keen called Cas on his cell and asked for a meeting. I ... yeah, that’s what I said. Apparently, she got the number from one of his little friends. We’re going to look into it on this end, but could you work up a background on this Keen woman? I don’t want Cas walking into the meeting without us giving her the once over. Okay, thanks, Carter.”

She hung up and turned to me, “Okay, let’s call your little friend.”

Calling Megan my ‘little friend’ was a little insulting to her, and felt like it was insulting to me, but I let it pass. I’d given up on trying to keep Jawarski from dropping casual insults. Instead, I hit the speaker button on the phone and called Megan’s dorm.

“Hello?” said a voice I didn’t recognize,

“Hi, is Megan there?”

“She should be back in a sec. Who’s this?”

“Caspian.”

“The great Caspian Grey?”

“Huh?” I asked. “I mean, that is my name. Well, not the great part, but the rest of it.”

“So what’s your deal? From hearing her talk, you’re like, Einstein crossed with Superman.”

“I’m neither of those.”

“Come on. You’re in high school, right? Like a freshman or something at her old school? Why is she .... heeey.”

That last was said faintly from the background, her voice quickly fading out.

“Sorry about that,” Megan’s voice said, cutting in, “We’ve been planning on muzzling Darci, but haven't found one that can keep her fat trap shut yet.”

I heard what was probably a raspberry being blown at her in the background.

“It’s fine. Although when you come back next week for Christmas, I wanna hear what you’ve been telling people about me.”

“Cas, I haven’t said...”

“I know. I’m teasing you. Listen, the reason I’m calling is 'cause I got this weird call from a woman named Frances Keen, who said she got my cell number from you.”

“Ohh, yeah. I was planning on calling you today and telling you about that. I’m in some classes with her granddaughter, and I'm kinda friends with her, or I was. She disappeared off campus, and her grandmother showed up last week, interrogating me about what she’d been doing. She seemed nice at first, and really concerned, and so I talked to her a while. She said Celia had gotten involved in some kind of designer drug, and become a train wreck. This was, apparently, a relapse, and they’d tried everything, and nothing has worked, and she was terrified that Celia was going to OD in a gutter, somewhere. I don’t know why I did it, but I said I had a friend who could probably fix Celia, thinking about the blood mixing and how it keeps drugs from taking effect.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said.

“I know. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized it was a mistake. But Celia was nice enough when she was sober. I never even saw her high, at least I don’t think I did. And her grandmother was really upset, you know. She asked for your name and information about you, how to get hold of you. I tried to tell it was a stupid idea or that I at least needed to talk to you about it, but she became really insistent. When I still wouldn’t say, she started making threats and, I didn’t know what to do, and ...”

The entire explanation came out in a rush, and her voice started to tremble as she spoke halfway through, until the words became unintelligible, coming out as higher pitched mumbles. It was weird actually. Megan had always been super confident and assured of herself, and I couldn’t remember ever hearing her cry.

“Hey, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. She just knows that I’m involved with a charity, that’s it. We’ll take care of it, from here.”

“Cas, I’m so sorry. I promise I won’t say anything like that again. You know I would never ...”

“I know. It’s fine. Really. We haven’t talked in a while, how’s school?”

We spent the next ten minutes catching up, although she tried to apologize several more times. While I wasn’t thrilled she’d given my name out to someone who, from the sounds of it, was going to be a pain in the ass; it wasn’t even in the same league as some of the boneheaded stuff I’d pulled over the last year or so!

“You need to keep your groupies on a tighter leash,” Jawarski said when I hung up.

“That’s not fair. She screwed up, it happens. Tell me you’ve never let something slip or dropped the ball before? She realized she messed up as soon as she said it, and I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about her doing it again.”

Jawarski made a face, but I knew she wouldn’t yell at Megan. When I wasn’t around, she was apparently a really nice person. She just didn’t like to miss an opportunity to give me shit.

“Well, it’s still going to be a pain in the ass.”

“Probably. I assume you’re going to be at the meeting?”

“Yes. I’m also going to ask Jonathan to be there. From Megan’s description, the woman sounds like an entitled battleaxe, and might end up being a problem.”

“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Of course it isn’t, I had it. Now get lost. I need to look into this lady, and you annoy me.”

I rolled my eyes, turned, and walked out of the room to rejoin Tami on the couch. I couldn’t do anything about the woman until tomorrow, or at least until we found out more about her. And a nap with Tami sounded like just the thing to pass the evening.

I must have needed more rest then I thought because when a hand pushed on my shoulder, waking me up, the sun had gone down and the only light was coming from the hallway. Tami, was still asleep, her head resting on my stomach.

“Hey,” Zoe’s voice came from above me, “It’s still early, but how about you two move upstairs so Vicki, Emily and I can join you?”

“Where is everyone else?” I asked, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

While the house wasn’t small by any measure, we had so many people living here now that it was unusual for it to be so quiet before the middle of the night.

“Judy has some kind of Christmas performance thing for school, and Tina, Mom and Mrs. Hollabrand went to see her.”

“Aww, man. How did I miss that? I would'a gone and supported her if I’d known about it.”

“I don’t think she thought it was a big deal. It’s some class-wide performance thing, and she only mentioned it tonight. They decided to let you and Tami sleep.”

“Did they take...”

“One of Carter’s guys went with them. They’ll be fine.”

“Okay. I guess since I apparently have a meeting in the morning, let's go ahead and call it a night. Hey,” I said, shaking Tami. “Wake up sleepy head.”

“When did it get dark?” Tami said sitting up.

“The normal time. You’re just being a bum today and sleeping all afternoon.”

“Don’t blame me. You’re always doing a million things. If I get the chance to curl up and sleep with you, I’m gonna take it.”

“That was our plan, too,” Vicki said, standing behind Zoe and giving Tami a smirk.

“Goodie,” she said, hopping up.

Laughing, I followed the girls up the stairs to our room.

“Hey, Tami, you know your sister is in some kind of school thing tonight, right?”

“Yeah, she told me yesterday, but she said she's just in the background and didn’t care if anyone went. She said if it wasn’t required, she would'a bailed on it.”

I shrugged and headed into our room.

“Okay, so let's get changed for bed, and do this cuddling thing,” I said.

“It’s so cute when he thinks he’s in charge,” Emily said coming around me, grabbing my ass for good measure as she passed.

“Sweetie,” Zoe said, as she and Emily each grabbed a hand and led me to the bed, “‘cuddle’ is a euphemism.”

*******

It took me a second to get my bearings, when the pounding on the door that had woken me up started again.

“Get up,” Jawarski said in her cop voice through the door.

“Go away,” Emily mumbled sleepily.

“She wouldn’t be yelling if it wasn’t important. Go back to sleep, and I’ll see what she wants.”

I pulled myself out from between Tami and Emily, who rolled together each in part of the spot I had vacated. While all of the girls loved each other, both physically and emotionally, as a side effect of mating with me, Tami and Emily weren’t as close as Emily was with either Zoe or Vicki or as Tami was with Zoe or Vicki. They got along fine, just didn’t spend a lot of alone time together. Seeing them cuddle together now, arms and legs intertwining, made my heart warm, and I spent a second looking down at them until Jawarski pounded on the door again.

“Okay, I'm coming. Keep it down, the girls are sleeping,” I said through the door as I pulled on underwear and a robe.

It might have been meaningless now, considering the racket Jawarski had made, but I quietly left the room, pulling the door silently closed behind me.

“What?” I asked, a little snippier then I intended.

“We might have a problem. This Keen woman is a bigger deal than your phone call led me to believe. She has serious money, and already has a team of investigators looking into you, your company, and Next Step.”

“Really?”

“She apparently comes from old money. Her family got rich back at the turn of the last century and managed to make it through the depression with her fortune more or less intact.”

“Okay, that means her offer to give funding to Next Step is serious. I don’t see the problem.”

“You heard the part about her having investigators looking into you, right? How could that not be a problem?”

“What do you think they’re going to find? Some records somewhere that says ‘this teenager is secretly a genetic freak with the ability to mind control people who come in contact with his blood?’”

“I thought you said it wasn’t mind control.”

“I was being hyperbolic. There’s nothing to find. I’m a kid who came into some money and lucked into owning part of a company. Am I weird? Sure, and that’s what she’s going to find. She’s not going to start thinking there’s a deeper conspiracy there. People don’t normally jump to considering the impossible. You dealt with me a bunch before you came into the know, did you guess the truth?”

“Well, I guessed the weird part.”

“We could use this money. For one, the company can only fund so much; for another, it’d be nice to point to some outside sources of funding. I’ve been thinking of mentioning to the girls to start looking for outside donors already.”

“And how, exactly, are you going to explain this ‘miracle’ cure for addiction?”

I started down the stairs, away from the bedroom door, since this was turning out to be a longer conversation that I had originally expected.

“Well first, we don’t claim it’s a miracle. We need to stay away from proclamations that we can definitely do something, even if we know it’s true. While we know it works, the last thing we want to do, is try and back it up. We don’t promise anything. I’m not even sure we’re going to do this. Let's just hear her out, and see where it goes.”

“I still think this is a bad idea.”

“That’s what I pay you for.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go get dressed. Jonathan’s going to meet us there. And don’t stop to play with your harem, I want to be there when they show up.”

I rolled my eyes and went back up to get dressed. The girls made a few noises about going with me, but I waved them off. Better they should get some sleep.

We did manage to arrive ahead of Mrs. Keen, which thankfully gave me a little time to go over some of the information Jonathan had gathered about her. Sadly, the fact that she and her small entourage also arrived early, limited the amount of study I was able to do on her.

Since it was early no one was in the front office yet, so Jawarski went and brought them in. While I knew from the information Jonathan had put together that she was in her early 70’s, Mrs. Keen was every bit the grand dame. A short well-styled coif of gray hair framed a lined and serious face. The two men accompanying her could have come out of 'central casting.' One was a bookish, hawk-nosed man in a tailored suit that screamed lawyer, who helped her into a chair and then took a seat next to her. The other positioned himself near the door, wearing an ill-fitting suit that barely contained his bulk. I could see Jawarski professionally sizing him up.

“Mrs. Keen, I’m Caspian Grey ...”

“Yes, I am aware of that, young man. And I believe this is your attorney Jonathan Colletta and that would be the one-time police officer turned bodyguard Bethany Jawarski.”

“I see you’ve done your homework on us.”

“Young man, I haven’t gotten where I am today without knowing with whom I’m dealing. Now ... you say you have some way to help my granddaughter. As I said on the phone if you do and your program seems on the up, and up, I’m happy to give a sizable donation to this charity outfit of yours, with the bulk of the donation being after you’ve shown results.”

“Mrs. Keen, I’m sorry but...”

“Son,” the attorney said, cutting me off again, “What we need from you, is a detailed breakdown of what you have to offer and a chance to interview your staff about the program. We’ll also need a list of success cases you’ve previously dealt with.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, standing up. “I think there may have been some kind of miscommunication. I apologize for wasting your time.”

“Young man, I know this comes off as forceful, but we’ve had years of dealing with hucksters. I’m sure you understand this is the way we do things.”

“Like I said, I think we’ve had a miscommunication. I don’t believe I’ve ever once said we have a program for drug addicts, nor requested a donation or payment, nor even contacted you. You called me, and asked for a meeting to talk about your daughter. You were rather insistent and seemed genuinely concerned about her wellbeing. So, I was willing to meet with you, hear you out, and see if there was something I might be able to do to help her.. Since it seems as though we aren’t on the same page, I think it best if we just call it a day here, before I waste any more of what I’m sure is 'your very valuable time.'”

I circled the conference table as I spoke, ending next to the attorney with my arm outstretched, palm open, indicating the door.

“Mrs. Keen, I think it might be best if we ...” the lawyer started to say before she interrupted him.

“No. He’s right, Allan. I called for this meeting, and then came charging in like a bull in a china shop. I do believe we’ve offended our young friend, and gotten off on the wrong foot. I would like to ask one question, young man. Do you think you can help my daughter?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, Mrs. Keen. I’d have to hear more about her situation first. All I can say now, is that I’d be happy to hear you out, if I don’t think I can, I’ll say so and, I will note your research has probably turned up that ‘Son’ and ‘young man’ are not what I go by.”

“Ma’am, I think it best ...”

“No, Allan. Please take Roger, and wait outside. I’d like to stay and talk to Mr. Grey.”

Neither the lawyer nor the bodyguard looked happy about the decision, but neither argued with her.

“You are, of course, correct, Mr. Grey. I should apologize. I have a tendency to charge headlong and take what I want.”

“I got that impression, and I’m betting it works most the time,” I said, sitting in the chair next to her and turning to face her. “And it's 'Caspian', please.”

She gave a smile at that, saying “Not many stand up to me, let alone tell me not to let the door hit my ass on the way out. I’m impressed.”

“I’d like to think I was more tactful than that.”

“Ohh, you were excellent. If you weren’t already wealthy in your own right, I’d try and hire you away to work for me.”

“I appreciate that. Now please, tell me about your granddaughter.”

“Celia’s always been a strong minded girl, even when she was little. Her parents were hard-pressed to keep up with her. She was always getting into things she shouldn’t and convincing the staff to do things for her. Her parents passed suddenly about five years ago, and it hit her hard. I hadn’t spent a lot of time with her at this point, unfortunately. I was mourning my daughter also, and we were in the middle of talks for some new property in Macao. It was a mistake, I will admit, since she didn’t have anyone who wasn’t an employee to lean on. I’d paid for therapy, of course, but I think it’s clear she needs some kind of parental surrogate to help her mourn.”

“I’m sure you did your best,” I offered.

“Caspian, you’ve shown promise so far. Please don’t now hide behind platitudes. It’s important for people in power to acknowledge their own failings and mistakes. It’s something I’ve always lived by, and you should, too. No, this was a mistake. I left a void in her life, and in stepped some elements from her private school that I wish I’d been around to help her avoid. These are the children of people with power and money, but lacking the ability to admit their weaknesses. Their children turn into the people on the news ten years later giving press conferences about how they are entering a clinic.”

“I’d point out that this is the point your daughter is at now.”

“Ha, that’s more like it. Yes, you’re right of course. She ran wild for several years with other children who had wealth and power, and no self-control. There was one abortion I know about, and one OD that I know about. We lost track of her several times, once finding her in a seedy strip motel off Miami Beach, holed up in a crack den.”

“I’m guessing you’ve tried the traditional options?”

“Yes. Sadly, most of the ones where people of status go, tend to introduce them to other substance abusers, rather than help them kick the habit long term. We’ve tried leaving her in jail for a time, lower end clinics, even an aggressive outfit that practically kidnaps them off the street and detoxes them. Even the times she’s gotten clean, she’s managed to slip back.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t understand my granddaughter. I’ve never been an addict myself. In my day, family members who had problems would be shuffled out of the way and left to drink or take pills out of the public eye, with the family hoping they’d just disappear. Had you asked me twenty years ago, I’d have said that is what I would do now. But, with my daughter gone, I find I don’t want to lose Celia. Maybe it's old age talking.”

“Or maybe it’s just that you love her.”

“Perhaps. So your friend indicated you would be able to help her. Why would she say that?”

“Since you’ve looked into my life, I’m betting you know some of the people around me, and some of the things I’ve dealt with. While none have been addicts, several have had serious problems to deal with. Parents in a cult, domestic abuse that led to one parent killing another, or a parent being murdered.”

“Yes, I read about all of that.”

“Well, each had hurdles to deal with, but we were able to help each of them deal with their trauma and find a way to not only survive but start to thrive again.”

“And how did you manage that?”

“It’s not a program. There isn’t one way to deal with it. Each situation was unique, and we dealt with each, as best we could. I know those are generalities, but I can’t really give you specifics. One, because it’s true. There isn’t a set program or a methodic way we helped them. We honestly winged it. And two, because it’s not my place to talk about what they went through.”

“But you were able to help them?”

“Yes.”

“And do you think you could do the same for Celia?”

“Again, honestly? I don’t know. Jonathan and Jawarski here both say I should stay away from other people's problems. That there’s no upside to it.”

“That’s what advisers always say.”

“I am, however, terrible at listening to them, and am not one to stand aside, while someone's in trouble. I can’t promise anything. Hell, I can’t even give you specifics on what I’m going to do since until I meet her and get into the situation, I don't know myself. All I can promise is that I’ll try and help her. If nothing else, I'll return her no worse for the wear if I fail.”

“I see.”

“It’s your decision if you want her to come stay with us for a little while, and see if we can help her. I won’t hold you to any donations if I can’t help; and I, of course, would understand if you choose to go another direction. I know I'm unhelpful and vague, but I am trying to be honest.”

She sat looking at me for what seemed like minutes, but was probably only several seconds.

“I think of myself as an excellent judge of people. Honestly, it’s the one skill I have that's actually helped me succeed. If I were being honest, I’d admit I don’t have very many other options. But I do think you’ll try your best, and you do seem to have succeeded in some rather unique circumstances.”

“I promise I will do everything in my ability to help.”

“Good. Now, of course, there will need to be some paperwork. My people won’t let me just turn over my granddaughter to you and cross my fingers. I’ll make sure they keep it to a minimum, but they will want a non-disclosure agreement at the minimum, and probably some kind of clause in case harm befalls my granddaughter or you brainwash her and try and bring her into some kind of cult.”

I tried not to flinch at that last part. While what she meant by the statement wasn’t in any way a description of my family, the actual words were closer to home that she’d ever know.

“Jonathan can sit down with your people and get it all worked out. I look forward to meeting Celia.”

We exchanged pleasantness and saw them out, with information exchanged between Jonathan and the lawyer.

I had to sit through quite a lecture from both Jonathan and Jawarski about the mistake I was making, but I knew we’d be able to help. I was able to shut down the scolding by reminding both of them that helping people was the entire point of everything we were doing.

Of course, that all assumed I didn’t screw this up.

Chapter 8

Christmas Eve came around, and the group we’d all started considering part of ‘the family’ were present, plus a good collection of people who were variously attached to people in the know, but weren’t themselves privy to our secret. I’d discussed it with Mom, and she’d agreed to hold our Christmas on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning, as was traditional, to allow people who would otherwise need to spend the time with their own families to be present.

There was the immediate household, of course: me, Mom, the girls, Tina and Judy, and Mrs. Hollabrand. Carter had just snorted and shook his head when I’d invited him. Jawarski said she’d rather be anywhere else on Christmas than in a room with me, which I got; but she still showed up, saying someone needed to watch over us when there were so many gathered in one place. I’d said we’d be fine, and she could take the holiday off; but she told me to shut up, and let her do her job.

Alex, who had always been so focused on her job and had no real close friends or family in the US, was present. She and Mom had become good friends, thanks to all the time they spent working together, and were already sitting together chatting about something I didn’t really understand. Megan had come home from college and, while she was spending Christmas with her family tomorrow, had managed to make it. I’d had Vicki call her, and make sure she knew not to mention it to Amanda. I knew it would get back to Amanda anyway, and I was just passing off drama for the future; but she would have come with Josh, and I didn’t want to deal with that. Friends from work and their spouses had shown up, and it was interesting seeing teenagers and couples in their 50’s mixing so well.

Mom had whipped up some food, and most of the older folks brought dishes with them, making a pretty nice spread when everything was laid out. We ate, socialized, and exchanged gifts. All in all, it was a pretty good time.

I’d talked to everyone in the know, or at least those without spouses present, that I wanted to have a short family meeting when the party wound down. I’d helped Mom pack up all the food and was surprised to find Jonathan still in the big room when all the rest had headed out.

“I asked Ted to give Peggy a ride back,” he said when I asked why he was still there, and not headed home with his wife. “I know you said I didn’t need to stay, but I’m betting one of the things you were going to talk about is the deal with Mrs. Keen, and since I’m the one who will have to deal with anything that’s decided, I need to be here to hear out what’s decided.”

“Okay. I promise to make it as quick as possible. I don’t want to keep you from your wife on Christmas Eve.”

“That I’d appreciate.”

“It looks like this is all of us,” I said, standing in the front of the room and facing the group. “I know some of you have family to get back to, so I’ll make this quick. I know many of you have heard about the meeting I had a few days ago with Francis Keen, about helping her granddaughter with her substance abuse problem. I figure we should get some specifics out of the way since I’m expecting this to happen sometime shortly after the start of the New Year.”

“Cas, I want to say again that I’m …”

“I know, Megan. You’re fine. Really. This is actually a good opportunity for us. Their family is extremely wealthy, and according to the records Jonathan was able to get, their charitable contributions range well above a hundred million every year. I’ve talked to the girls about this and I do think we need to get a significant amount of outside funding for Next Step, to offer it legitimacy as well as to make some of the bigger goals we’ve talked about possible. Of course, the flip side is that this does open us up to scrutiny from Mrs. Keen and her people at a minimum. And if she does put in serious money, then other charities will also be looking at Next Step as competition for donations and others wondering what this new organization did to warrant the attention.”

“Do we want people looking at us?” Alex asked. “Not just Next Step but the work Angela and I are doing or your household in particular?”

“No, not really; but our plan has always included the idea that at some point the public would become aware of us. The company is already getting attention in some technical and business circles, so it’s going to happen, and sooner rather than later. So what we’re left with is controlling what people see about us.”

“Okay, so is this how we want to come out?” Mom asked.

“There’s no guarantee this will bring us any more notice than the company has brought. People in some charitable circles might look at us, but there are a lot of charities, even very well-funded ones, that the public doesn’t really know much about.”

“So the risk is that it might expose us, but that’s going to happen sooner or later. And the upside is money?”

“Money is a part of it, but not all of it. If we have someone like Francis Keen in our orbit, it will make it easier to get others to support us when the time comes, and not just financially. Eventually, we’re going to butt up against the government. Be it the IRS, or regulators, or just curious lawmakers. Mrs. Keen, and those like her that she might be able to connect us with, don’t come with just money. They come with influence, which at some point we’re going to need. That, of course, is all secondary to the biggest benefit.”

“Which is?” Jonathan asked.

“Saving a young girl’s life.”

“Ahh,” Mom said, flashing me one of her heart melting, motherly smiles, “that.”

“But this isn’t a dictatorship. I always refer to us as a family, and I mean it. We all get a say. Who thinks we shouldn’t do this?”

Jawarski and Jonathan raised their hands.

“And who thinks we should?”

I was happy to see everyone else on board. I wasn’t surprised by either Jonathan or Jawarski being opposed. Both were opposed to anything that opened us up to any kind of danger or liability, depending on which of them you asked. Unfortunately, that would have us cowering in our small part of the world, and making it likely that we’d eventually die out as another evolutionary dead end.

“So the next question is, how do we do it? We know that once she goes through the change, narcotics will have no effect on her, either good or bad. And without the high, there’s no reason to take them anymore. But we can’t sit her down and inject her when she walks in the door, and we can’t just do it secretly and have no explanation for what’s going on. So, how do we go about infecting her, with an explanation for the sickness and why she’s suddenly better?”

“I think I can handle that,” Alex said. “We put her through a ‘detox’ program and explain an injection as an anti-narcotic. We have to be careful how we present it. If it’s a drug, we might have questions about how we’re able to give it to people, which could bring us back around to those regulators you mentioned.”

“So, how do we present it?” I asked.

“Something herbal maybe,” Mom said. “We can mix in plasma with say, a B12 shot and give her a random mixture of innocuous herbs. We don’t claim it’s curing her, just say it’s to help her through the detox. There are some fairly well-known rehab centers on the west coast giving that kind of crap. The B12 shot might help with the sickness a bit, but the rest is just expensive-ass placebos. Then we just go through a non-medical program to ‘change her lifestyle habits,’ which is mostly what rehabs do anyways. It’s why there’s so many relapses from people after they finish their programs, since addiction is a lifetime thing … well, normally.”

“So we get her to focus on doing something else, helping people for instance, after her ‘detox;’ and then explain the lack of effectiveness to her as she just ‘doesn’t need it anymore’?”

“Pretty much,” Alex said. ‘Would this stand up to actual scrutiny by a regulator? No. But most people will write it off in their own head to reconcile the facts they can see, like drugs no longer working. She’ll try and relapse once, I’d bet money on it, since her addiction isn’t really cured. She’ll still think she wants to get high, not knowing she isn’t able to. But once she finds out nothing works, she’ll believe that we were right. People will always find a way to explain away things that don’t add up. And of course, the loyalty side effect of the change means if you tell her it works, she’ll believe you.”

“So we have her come in. Give her an injection, and let the natural sickness that sets in when the body changes act as her ‘detox,’ and then just keep her busy doing stuff for a while, the entire time telling her what she’s doing is going to change her life and make her have new priorities?”

“Yep,” Alex said. “I’d want to keep her under tight observation during the actual change. We haven’t infected a long-term drug user before, and we don’t know what effects narcotics will have on your biology.”

“Plus you haven’t been able to study it, and you can’t keep away from new data points,” I offered with a smile.

“Pretty much, but it’s more than that. When we open the clinics, one of the things we are going to see a lot of, is addicts. Eventually, there will be a point when we want to spread out of our existing circle, or at least help more addicts, and this is info we’ll need.”

“This is my big problem with the plan. One, you know how I feel about changing someone without giving them a choice. And beyond that, we’re going to be actively lying to her. When she finds out the truth, then that’ll become a problem.”

“No it won’t,” Vicki said.

“Of course it will.”

“Cas, with the way the change affects how people feel towards you, it’s unlikely she’d see not telling her everything as an outright lie. You’re not on this side of it, but when you tell us something, it’s hard to not want to see the best intentions, and giving you way more than the benefit of the doubt. Plus, the need to keep it secret is pretty obvious, even without the genetic pull to believe you. Has anyone who’s gone through the change, and had it explained to them, argued that the secret was a bad idea?”

“I still don’t like doing it without giving her a choice.”

“We are, after an effect,” Tami said. “We’re telling her we will change the way she feels about drugs, so that’s part of the truth. The alternative is to say no and let her remain an addict.”

I frowned. That, of course, was the bigger issue. Are principles more important than someone’s life?

“Alright. Well, it sounds like we have a plan. I know we’re all already careful when it comes to not letting things slip, but she’ll be around for a while at least, so we need to be extra careful. As for the ‘getting her involved in helping other people’ part of the plan, I’m going to lean on you guys for that,” I said to the girls.

“We’ll take care of it,” Zoe said.

“Great. Okay, so I guess we have a plan. That was all I had so …”

“I have something,” Mom said, coming to the front of the room.

I gave a ‘be my guest’ gesture, and went over to the girls. Emily made room for me by giving me her seat and then claiming a new one in my lap.

“The night that awful preacher surprised you here at the house, we’d talked about building something more secure. With things with the Syndicate heating up and that phone call with the reporter, Beth and I agree we need to start on this sooner rather than later. With that, Beth and I, with Jonathan’s help, have been looking into property, and we think we found something. But, there are a few pretty big points, so we wanted to bring it up to the whole family,”

“We’re listening,” I said.

“One, we’re not talking about a small piece of land. We’re talking about a fairly large piece of property and a lot of construction.”

“What are we calling large?”

“Twenty-Five acres.”

“What, are we going to live on a farm?”

“No,” Jawarski said, “We need enough property for the main house plus several additional buildings to be used by security, a large secure wall surrounding the property and a proper gatehouse at the front.”

“It sounds more like a compound than a house.”

“That’s what you’re going to need. I don’t think you realize how precarious your situation is. Living here, if the Syndicate or some other group decides to come at you, they’ll be on top of us before we know there’s a problem. If it was just you, you could take all the chances you want, but right now you’re risking almost a dozen other lives.”

I nodded. It had occurred to me, but I hadn’t made the jump needed to wall us off from the rest of the world. At least, not yet.

“Cas,” Mom said, “we’re also going to need a really big house. Mansion might be a more accurate word. There are nine of us living here now, ten if you include Beth, who would probably already be living with us to protect you if there was a room available. You’re also talking about adding this Keen girl, at least temporarily; and we know how you collect people in your orbit. Do you think this is where it’s going to end? We’re crammed in here, and this place is huge. We need a lot more room.”

“Okay, I get it. We need a lot of room, and we need it to be secure. It sounds really expensive.”

“Millions. But you can afford it, and we need it.”

“What about school,” Vicki asked.

“I talked to your principal about that. You will, of course, have to leave the current school district. The place we’ve found to build is part of a rural school district, which is both badly underfunded and would involve a lot of travel time getting you guys to school and back every day. All that considered, we’d have to switch to homeschooling. That, however, might not be a bad thing. Right now, the school has practically split you all off into your own curriculum, and Ms. Polaski said they’re already having trouble keeping you challenged since the school district has specific topics for each year that have to be covered. Switching to homeschooling will allow a more aggressive curriculum to be built for you guys.”

“So what, you’ll …”

“Ohh, heavens no, not me. I thought we’d hire someone with the credentials to come in and teach you guys. It will be more like an in-house, private school than traditional homeschooling.”

“I’ll miss our friends,” Tami said.

“I know, baby,” Mom said, giving her a warm smile.

Since Tami and Judy had come to live with us, and considering how they’d been treated by their own parents; she’d been giving them as much motherly affection as she could, trying to make up for their past. It was already having an effect, like with how I felt when she took me in. Tami and Judy were both responding to the attention, and it had gone a long way to healing the damage their parents had done. Mom was doing the same thing with Emily, too. It was hard not to see her as some kind of matronly superhero, and it made me love her even more, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible.

“But,” she continued, “it’s for the best. You’re already progressing so much faster, that you’ll probably graduate ahead of them, anyway. They’ll be able to come out and visit, though. We’re not moving to the moon.”

“Speaking of that,” I asked. “Where exactly are we talking about building?”

“Actually, that’s a good part,” Jawarski said. “It’s not far from the new office complex you bought and are building out.”

“That’s another problem. If I go, I’ll either have to drive all the way back to Alice to go to the office; or do all my work over the phone, which I’m not crazy about; or relocate our offices.”

“I’ve spoken with Jonathan and Ted about that. They already agree that with the new office complex, there are advantages to moving operations there. Ted would prefer to have the engineers near the production facilities, especially when working on prototypes. He said he was already concerned that with the way the company has been going, you guys were outgrowing both your offices. He said most of the employees would be okay with moving to Houston, which would make them closer, or commuting from Alice. He also said it would make getting new staff easier since the company was now too large for the labor force available around Alice.”

“I guess you’ve got this all covered then, huh?”

“Pretty much. I’m serious about this Cas. We need more room, and we need to make sure we’re all safe.”

“Okay, I’m in. Let's take a vote.”

Everyone agreed that it was a good idea. Tami was still iffy on leaving her friends at school, especially our lunch group; but we had some time to figure out how to deal with that. Long-term, I had some thoughts on how we might make sure not to leave our friends behind.

“Okay, I guess that about finishes us up. Let’s not take any more time. I know some of you have a family you want to get back to. I appreciate you guys all staying, and Merry Christmas.”

The good part about Christmas, was that there were a few days without any new emergencies. The stuff with Celia wouldn’t happen until the New Year, nor would anything with the company. So we had just family time, with friends dropping in for visits, for a full week. It was, honestly, the happiest week I could remember. No crises, no fires, no life-threatening events, no machinations. Just friends and family.

The universe could only let that last for so long, of course. The breaks on our peaceful Christmas week came three days after Christmas, with a call from the judge.

Mom and Alex were back at work. They were close to submitting their new cancer therapy to the FDA for approval. The animal trial part was, apparently, difficult to deal with since my cells did not have any effect on animal cells. But, as expected, applying my cells to cancer-ridden cells had startling effects. While neither of them was concerned about getting to the human trials, the results they were able to show allowed them to be fast-tracked by the FDA, which meant a lot of late nights for both of them.

The girls were all out doing some post-holiday shopping with Levi, in his capacity as one of the heads of the new security company, and one of Carter's guys, who are all to be integrated into the security company and changed by this point, both shadowing them. Vicki had tried to argue that since there was a whole group of them, including Tina and Judy and a bunch of the girls from the lunch crew, that they were fine and didn’t need babysitters, but I stood firm. Things with the syndicate were going to be heating up soon, and I didn’t want to take any more chances. Thankfully, Jawarski was around and backed me up.

That left me alone at home with just Jawarski, who usually stayed in a different room unless something specific was needed when my cell rang.

“Caspian, it’s Tillman. They know,” the excited voice of the Judge said when I answered.

“Jawarski,” I yelled out, cupping the recover, before removing my hand and answering. “What do you mean they know?”

Jawarski came into the room, looking in each direction as she did, I guess thinking maybe the threat was more immediate. I pointed at the phone, and put it on speaker, holding it up between us as she walked over to me.

“I got a call from one of them, one of the guys who they normally send to give me orders. He said they weren’t happy with how I was dealing with you. They said to expect someone to come by and talk to me soon to remind me of my responsibilities. They know, and they’re coming to kill us.”

“Judge Davis,” Jawarski said, “if they were coming to kill you, they wouldn’t have called to make an appointment. They are trying to scare you, to get you to find some new way to go after Cas.”

“You didn’t hear them. They sounded pissed.”

“I think Jawarski’s right. They wouldn’t call if they were going to kill you, but I don’t think we can rule out some kind of physical threat, either,” I said.

“Probably not. But if we intervene and stop them, that’s it. He’s blown, and they will try and kill him. If we stop them, we have to pull them out and stash them in a safe place until we need them.”

“You can’t let them hurt Diane,” Tillman said.

“We won’t. Jawarski, you’re right, but now that … we’re involved with Judge Davis, we’re responsible for him and his wife. We can’t let them be hurt. If we pull them out, we need to find a place to take them.”

“We’ve got that covered,” Jawarski said. “When Judge Davis first agreed to go against the Syndicate’s demands, we set up a safe house for him and his wife.”

“Good. Let’s get one of our guys down there and ...”

“No,” Tillman said, sounding frantic again. “I want someone I know to come and get us, and I don’t know any of your ‘guys.’”

“Fine. Get packed up with the essentials, and be ready to go in the next twenty minutes. We’ll deal with the specifics once you’re with us.”

“Thank you,” Judge Davis said and hung up.

“Caspian, that’s not a good idea.”

“Maybe, but I said we were responsible for him and his wife, and I meant it. He doesn’t know any of Carter's people, and with some unknown person from the syndicate also headed his way, I can see why expecting a stranger would make him nervous, and possibly cause problems for us. No, you and I are going to go get him. On the way, you can have one of Carters guys meet us at some place where we can hand off the Judge and his wife without us being seen, and take them to the safe-house.”

“Fine,” Jawarski said, her expression making it clear the decision was anything but fine with her. “But you’re going to listen to me. The slightest hint of danger and I want you out of the way. You’re not going to go all Rambo on me, like you always do.”

“You’re the boss,” I said, heading to the car, eliciting an eye-roll.

I made the call to Carter to let him know what was going on, and to find me a good place to drop off the Judge and his wife and get them on to the safe-house. To his credit, he only called my plan stupid once. After looking into whatever shady ex-cop directory he had on hand, he told me to go a parking garage not far from the Judge’s house, where he’d have a guy waiting.

Alice isn’t a big town, and we were at the Judge’s house in under ten minutes and found a black Lincoln town car parked in the driveway. I had the door open and was headed towards the judge's house before we even came to a full stop.

“Cas,” Jawarski said as she slid over the hood of the car and sprinted towards me. “Get your ass behind me.”

I slowed down and let Jawarski get ahead of me, knowing if I ignored her it wouldn’t just be her wrath I’d have to deal with when I got home.

“What are the odds I could talk you into going back to the car and wait for me to bring the Judge out on my own.”

“Slim to none.”

“Fine, but stay behind me.”

We got the front porch we both noticed the door was slightly opened, causing Jawarski to reach and pull her sidearm from the holster she always wore on her hip, usually concealed by her jacket or shirt.

“Just, stay behind me,” she said again, pushing the door open with her foot and stepping into the house, weapon at the ready.

She didn’t get a chance to use it. A guy was standing next to the door when we went through, his hand coming down on Jawarski’s outstretched arm as soon as she was in the doorway.

He pulled her away from the door and towards the floor. She was already off balance enough from pushing the door open that she started to fall as soon as he yanked her forward. His other hand had a gun in it, and he started to move the barrel towards her.

I didn’t hesitate. Using what Levi had helped me figure out, I slipped into 'the flow.' Instantly, the world around us slowing to a crawl. I started forward towards the gunman, but his weapon was pointed at Jawarski by the time I could get to him. The ship had sailed on stopping him from aiming at Jawarski, leaving me only the option of forcing him to overshoot her instead.

Reaching out, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, much as he had grabbed Jawarski, and started pulling the arm in towards me, while I grabbed his jacket with my right hand, pushing down hard. The two motions together and my enhanced strength caused his body to start spinning, feet coming off the floor.

Both because it was certainly what he was going to do anyway, and because of the sudden impact of my hands on him, the gun in the man's hand went off. The bullet flew over Jawarski’s prone body and into the marbled front entryway. The whizzing sound of the bullet ricocheting off the marble was audible, to me at least; but it didn’t hit me, and didn’t seem to hit Jawarski, so I ignored it for the moment.

I continued with my pushing and pulling motions, causing the man to come down on the hard floor on his shoulders, his head bouncing hard on its white surface. As soon as his head impacted, I felt his whole body go slack. Coming out of the flow, I released his arm and coat, causing him to flop limply onto the floor. I was just bending down to check and see if he still had a pulse when a sound caused me to look up, directly into another man standing at the end of the hall, pointing a gun at me.

I was completely flat-footed, and my brain was taking a second to yell it's warning at me when I heard the bark of a gunshot. It took me another second to realize that the flash I saw hadn’t come from his gun, but was something I registered in my peripheral vision. By that point, the man, who looked almost as surprised as I had a moment before, dropped his weapon and crumpled.

Looking down I could still see the smoke slipping out of the end of Jawarski’s gun, which she had fired lying prone on the ground, clearly having had much better situational awareness than I’d had. The judge’s head poked around the door and looked at us.

“Ohh! Thank God!” he said, stepping over the shot man and coming towards us.

“Are there any others?” I asked as I finished checking the man’s pulse, which was still strong and indicated he was only unconscious.

“No, just these two.”

“Okay, let's get you guys out of here, now.”

“No, we need to call the police,” Jawarski said, holstering her weapon.

“No, we should leave them here. The Syndicate has too many people in the department. They’ll know we’re involved, and it proves to them that the judge was involved with us, putting them in more danger, along with you, the rest of the family and me. If we leave now, it’s a mystery. One of their people is dead, the other hurt but alive. If the cops get here and check it out, it looks like a burglary or some other crime, with the Judge missing. A mystery, but one that doesn’t point at us. And the Syndicate doesn’t have anything specific telling them to step up action against us.”

“But …”

“He’s right,” the Judge said. “There are too many people in the city who're in their pocket. A mystery is better than us sitting in jail, waiting for the untainted police to investigate, giving the Syndicate’s people time to come for us, while we’re easy pickings.”

“Fine, let's go,” Jawarski said, not sounding happy about the decision.

Chapter 9

We got the judge handed off with little problem. For now, at least, it seemed he and his wife would be safe. I promised them we’d do what we could to get the Syndicate out of his life, and mine, as fast as we could.

Any hesitancy he might have had about walking away from his life, even if only for a few days or weeks, pretty much vanished when armed men came into his home and threatened to take his wife with them to ensure he towed the line. Jawarski and I went back to my house and waited, occasionally turning on the news to see if there were any mention of a body found and a missing local judge.

Jawarski said she could check at the precinct with people she knew there, but I nixed that idea. The Syndicate would be trying to find out what happened, and they’d have all their dirty cops and probably other civil servants we didn’t even know about yet, trying to get a line on who took Judge Davis and killed one of their men. Jawarski coming out and asking about it, especially with her known connection to me, would be a big red flag for them.

While they knew I was a pain in their ass, they mostly knew it from my connection to the company and the foiled attempt on my life. While it meant I definitely had their attention, it would be a stretch for them to make the leap to my being actively engaged in a plot against them. They’d figure that part out eventually, but the longer we could delay that, the better.

That didn’t save me from hearing the displeasure of both Mom and the girls, who didn’t like my taking risks, no matter the reason. Aside from that, nothing new happened on the Syndicate front for a week. There was a small story about the mysterious disappearance of Judge Davis, whose home was found locked up, but nothing out of place. No word about the body, or the mess left by both of the two Syndicate men or our confrontation with them, meaning the Syndicate cleaned up after themselves.

Carter had the Judge on lock-down, neither he nor his wife were being allowed outside. I could imagine they were going a little stir crazy, but considering the alternative, it didn’t seem like there was any other choice.

By the end of the week, I had something new to worry about; which, as they always seemed to be, was heralded by a phone call. This time it was Jonathan. He said he needed to come by and talk to me, and wanted to make sure Mom, at the very least, was there. The process of calling Mom away from work somehow ended up as a signal for pretty much everyone from the household - except Judy and Tina - to be present when he showed up.

“Hey, Cas,” Jonathan said when I let him in, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting this many people.”

“Yeah, you asked for me to make sure Mom was here, and that got the rest of them curious. You know how nosy they all are.”

That last part I said staring at the girls, which was promptly ignored.

“So what’s up?”

“We finished up the paperwork with Mrs. Keen this morning, and she is pushing for us to start working with her daughter as soon as possible. I told her I’d have a timetable for her this afternoon.”

“That’s easy. She comes and stays with us, we give her the injection, she gets sick and then kicks the habit. Sure we have to make it look good, convince her what’s happening is more conventional than it is, but I’m not sure what the big deal is.”

“That isn’t going to work,” Mom said.

“Why? We’ll put her through the change, she’ll be clear of the drugs, and we won’t have to worry about her giving anything away.”

“Except, it isn’t that easy. Problem one, we can’t just give her an injection the moment she comes through the door. Even to a twenty-something junkie, that’d seem weird, and there’s the window between injection and when the loyalty part of the change takes effect. Are you suggesting we grab her and tie her down the minute she comes in the door? We need to go through steps to make our ‘procedure’ seem legitimate. You have argued that the change isn’t brainwashing. We agreed we weren’t going to tell her the whole truth, at least not for a while. She might be loyal to you after the change, but she will still have suspicions and, unless you specifically tell her not to talk to anyone about what happened, she’ll probably talk to someone about the suspicions.”

“Okay, I see that, but …”

“Two,” Mom said, rolling over my protest, “is the living conditions, here. How are you going to explain you sleeping in the master bedroom with four girls every night? Of whom two of the girls’ mothers live in the same house. Hell, I love you as my own son, and I know everything; but I still have to try and not think too hard about it, or I start to freak out.”

“Okay,” I said, realizing I wasn’t going to be able to say anything until she was done.

“Three, where the hell are you going to put her? We’re already packed in here pretty tight. So much so that you okayed spending a giant chunk of cash to build a new, much larger home to contain us all.”

I hadn’t considered that last part, and I should have. The first two were problems I thought we could deal with, but Mom was right, there was literally nowhere to put her.

“So what should we do?”

“Rent a place for her,” Vicki said.

“Wouldn’t that also seem strange, putting her up by herself? Also, if we’re going to put in sometime between when we take her in and when we ‘treat’ her, to make it seem real, we’d be leaving a junkie by herself, completely unsupervised.”

“I wasn’t suggesting renting a one bedroom apartment. You’re right, she can’t be left alone, so we rent a two bedroom apartment and someone stays with her, or we take turns or something.”

“That might work. Could we rent a place quick?” I asked Jonathan.

“Sure, we’d have to pay a bit upfront, but I don’t see why not. We’d have to rent under either Next Step or Evolve since no one would rent to a minor.”

“We do it under Next Step, since, if this works, it might be something we end up doing again. Maybe. So who stays with her? It can’t be me. I have too many balls in the air right now with the Syndicate and some of the stuff at work for me to play babysitter. Probably not Zoe either, since she’s in charge of the building going on at the new center.”

“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Hollabrand said.

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I’ve been living here, just kind of doing nothing since … since we moved in. I haven’t really been carrying my weight.”

“Mom,” Vicki said, in a concerned voice.

“Nora,” I said, waving Vicki back into her seat and sitting down next to her mom. I don’t think I’d ever used her first name before, but I hoped it would get her attention. “You aren’t expected to do anything but what you need to do. You are part of our family.”

“I know,” she said, patting my hand. “I appreciate it. You and everyone else have been so kind to Vicki and me since Richard passed. I’m not sure that if I’d known then what I know now I would have let you date Vicki, but I can honestly say I’m happy about how things are, even as strange as it is. I’m really happy to see my daughter with a purpose in her life, and I actually want a little bit of that. I can’t just sit around, I need to get life going again. I’ve been a rich housewife for so long, I’m not sure I could go out and get a job again. But this, I can help take care of a troubled girl. That I know how to do. And, it would be nice to feel like I’m contributing to something again.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Mom said.

“Okay, so that’s the plan. We rent a two bedroom apartment, and Nora goes and stays with her. I’d like, as much as possible, for someone to be there with her. No telling where in her recovery Celia is. It might be more than one person can handle.”

“Do you think we should put someone on them, for safety's sake?” Jawarski asked.

“Do you think that’s necessary?”

“Not really. Just make sure anyone who’s staying with this girl has Levi's and my numbers, and know to call us if anything goes wrong. It should only be for a couple of days. Once the change takes hold, the only trouble would be external, which is true every time any of us leave the house.”

“Okay, so let's not put anyone armed with them. It might bring questions why a non-profit helping with drug rehabilitation needs armed security. So, how long until we can get her in for the change, to make it look good?”

“A few days. It’s not all for appearance's sake. We will need at least two days to bring her in, draw some blood, and run some tests to make sure she’s not a genetic negative. The last thing we want is to put her through the change and drive her insane. That will also work for appearance's sake since anything like this would need at least a standard physical and some blood work. Depending on what time she’s dropped off we’ll get her in that first day, or the next if it’s late. We'll be able to put her through the change two days after that. Another day for her body to process the change, when she’ll be down sick and not able to do much, and then we’ll be on the other side of it.”

“I hadn’t thought about checking her for being a negative. Okay, I think we’re set. Jonathan, can you get one of your people onto renting an apartment? Tami, would you and Emily mind doing some shopping, getting food and whatnot needed for the apartment for a couple of days, plus bedding and whatnot? Let’s plan on them not doing cooking there, at least not right away, someone will drop off their meals.”

“We’re on it.”

“Okay. I guess as soon as you have the apartment arranged for her to join us. Make sure my schedule is clear when she shows up. I want to meet her.”

Two days later I was meeting Jonathan at an apartment a mile and a half away from the house, to meet Celia, who was supposed to arrive anytime.

“So, that happened fast,” I said to Jonathan as we stood in the apartment complex parking lot.

“Yeah. Her grandmother has basically been keeping the girl locked up for a week and is pretty desperate. She’s been pushing for us to go faster since your meeting.”

A black town car pulled up, and a man in a suit got out, coming around to open the rear passenger door. Out stepped Celia, who somehow managed to look styled and fancy, and like a complete mess, all at once. Her clothes, which even I could tell was probably pretty expensive, were neat and looked freshly pressed, with sharp creases down the pants legs and her hair was clean and neatly cut to shoulder level

But looking past the superficial things it was impossible to miss the signs of someone with a serious problem. There were bags under her eyes, which overall seemed almost sunken and her skin was grayish and sickly. On top of that were small lesions on her neck and the back of her hand. If she weren’t wearing pants and a long sleeve shirt, I’d bet money she had more of those. Her grandmother had tried her hardest to hide the signs of serious drug use, but all the makeup in the world wasn’t going to do the trick.

“Hi, Celia, I’m Caspi…”

“Wow, she must really be getting desperate. We’ve gone from the fancy, fenced in country club, to some skank apartment in East Bumblefuck. It’s cute you guys thought that sending someone’s kid to greet me would put me at ease, or whatever, but I couldn’t give a crap. Just show me where you’re locking me up.”

“We’re not planning on locking you up,” I said, trying to smile.

“Whatever. Just show me where I’m staying. I feel like shit and wanna lie down.”

I stepped aside and gestured up the stairs. Jonathan, thinking prudently, had gotten a third floor apartment. Odds were, if she could get out, this girl would make a try to get a fix. He’d pointed out we couldn’t very well put bars over windows without getting some questions asked, so a third-floor apartment would have to do as a deterrent from trying to go out a window.

I was already thinking about the fact that we’d probably have to get a third person to stay in the apartment, so someone was always there to block the front door as an exit when I was tapped on the shoulder.

“Megan,” I said in surprise. “How did you …”

“I followed their car. I know you said Vicki’s mom would stay and watch Celia, but I figured she could use some help. I have three weeks until classes start again. It’s my fault you’re in this fix, so I thought I could come out and help.”

“Well … great. That solves a problem I was just thinking about. It’s only a two bedroom, though.”

“I can sleep on the couch. It can’t be more uncomfortable than the bed in my dorm.”

“You know if you wanted to stay somewhere off campus …”

“I know, Mr. Moneybags, but I want to spend my first year in the dorms, get the whole college experience. Plus, I already take advantage of you too much.”

“Megan, you’re part of the family. All you have to do is ask. Plus, what high school kid doesn’t want to be able to say he’s keeping older women in an apartment out of town?”

“The high school kid whose girlfriends, plural, would neuter him with hedge clippers if they thought he was serious.”

“Psh … them. Seriously, though, if you need to get out of the dorm, just tell me.”

“What would I do without my little buddy,” she said, putting an arm around me.

“I’m taller than you, ya know?”

“Details, details. Anyway, you should head home. I’m betting Celia stays locked in her room as much as possible, but between Mrs. Hollabrand and me, we’ll make sure she gets settled and gets to the lab tomorrow to get blood drawn. We got this, Boss man.”

“Alright, well … call me if you guys need anything.”

I headed back to Jonathan’s car since I’d ridden over with him, working over what, if anything, we needed to get set to put Celia through the change when he broke through my train of thought.

“That’s something you need to get better at,” he said.

“What that?”

“Delegating,” he said as we got into his car, “It’s something most of us learn as we work our way up. You learn that if you try and do everything yourself, you burn out. You also learn that if you put good people into managing things for you, and then you step over them to do their job yourself, even if your intention is just to help, you make them feel unneeded and chase them away.”

“And you’re saying I’m bad at delegating?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes you pass off a project and let the other person run with it, but other times you have to double-check everything. You have to find a balance.”

“I guess,” I said, looking out the window.

“It’s not a criticism, Cas, just some helpful advice from someone who’s been through the trenches. You’ve been blessed, and your abilities have helped you move faster than maybe anyone ever has before, but there are downsides. You missed the learning and failing that most of us have to go through.”

“If you think I’ve skipped over the failing part, you haven’t been paying attention the last year.”

“Sure, you’ve had some stumbles, but you’ve always managed to pull things out, for the most part at least. You haven’t landed flat on your ass, at least not yet. Nothing teaches you better than abject failure. I honestly don’t want you to ever have to learn lessons like that, but until you do, you’re going to have to settle for lectures from those of us who have.”

“So you’re saying I should hand people tasks and walk away?”

“No, that leads to you missing things. But you do need to hand off portions and just check in on them, letting the person you delegated handle the details. The amount you let them handle depends on how much you trust them to get the job done. Some of this you’re going to have to just learn by doing. And handing off items to other people isn’t the worst part.”

“What is?”

“Sometimes those people are going to drop the ball, and you’re going to have to be okay with that. Sure, if they screw up, you can jump on them, and get them straightened out; or, not hand over responsibility to them. But sometimes things come apart despite the person's best efforts, and you have to find a way to not blame them, and not blame yourself for giving them the job in the first place. You just have to accept that sometimes shit happens, and pick up the pieces as best you can.”

I kept looking out the window and lapsed into silence as I thought about what he’d said. He was right, of course, but I hadn’t really thought about how much micromanaging I’d done. Looking back, I could see it was probably too much. One example that jumped to mind was second-guessing, vocally, the decisions the girls had made about Next Step, even though I’d handed the project to them.

It was something I’d have to think about. Thankfully, I was saved from falling into one of my funks by the girls when I walked in the door.

“Cas, how’d you feel about a party tomorrow?” Zoe said when I walked through the door.

“What? What party?”

“Some kind of the end of winter party. One of the guys from the football team’s parents are out of town on a ski trip, and he’s throwing a party. Amanda called to make sure we knew about it.”

“Sure, I guess it’d be fun.”

“Yes,” Vicki said, pumping her fist.

“You know you guys don’t need my permission to go to parties, right?”

“Well, yeah, we know. But it’d be less fun if you weren’t there,” Tami said.

“Really? I’ve never been much of a party animal. I can’t see how I’d make the party more fun.”

“It gives us someone to make fun of at the party,” Emily said with a smirk.

“Ahh, okay, got it. Yeah, I’m on board I guess.”

The group of them ran upstairs, I was guessing to call Amanda and tell her we’d go. I went looking for something to eat.

The next day rolled around and, heeding Jonathan’s advice, I told Mrs. Hollabrand to take Celia to the appointment without me. Celia was a hundred pounds soaking wet, so I figured between Mrs. Hollabrand and Megan they could manage her. And Alex was just drawing blood and then doing a few other things to make it seem more complex than that. They didn’t need me to hover over them. Tomorrow we’d know the results, and we could go to the next step.

Instead, I spent the day hanging out with the girls, which was nice. I think I spent more time with them, collectively and singularly, over the winter break than I had during the previous several months combined.

I did get a call after the appointment from both Alex and Megan. They confirmed that, except for some pointed insults at everyone in earshot, Celia put up with the poking and prodding. Alex had everything she needed and Mrs. Hollabrand and Megan successfully got Celia back to the apartment.

By nine, we were headed to the party. Thanks to the problems with CPS, the Syndicate’s go at grabbing me at the beginning of the year, and then the attempt on my life just a few months after that; the girls had all been forced to keep a lower profile than in the previous year. While I didn’t mind it so much since until last year I’d never been invited to parties, most of the girls, save Emily, had been popular and outgoing. This year had really crimped their style. While they’d never complained, it was obvious from how excited they were that they were looking forward to it.

Jawarski, however, wasn’t pleased at all. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t be so unusual, but her displeasure being focused on someone other than me was new. She knew going to a party wasn’t my idea and, although she chastised me for ‘not keeping my women in check,’ she left it at that, choosing to grumble about how it was a security nightmare.

She was doubly annoyed when Zoe told her she didn’t want Jawarski walking around the party. Considering there would almost certainly be underage drinking, bringing a cop, even an ex-cop, would be a huge party foul. They had it out, the night before when we told Jawarski our plans, and to my surprise, Zoe, with helpful backup from Vicki, managed to get Jawarski to cave. She agreed to stay outside the party, a discreet distance away. The concession she required was we each carry panic buttons that would let her know if something was wrong. She also said she was going to have Levi and at least two of Carter’s guys on side streets around the house, in case something happened.

So with that, the five of us rolled into the party, panic buttons in our pockets and babysitters waiting in the wings. Thankfully, the party was filled with people we knew and, for the most part, got along with. I was drinking soda and talking to one of the regulars from last years morning workout group when I noticed the first problem area.

“Scuse me a sec,” I said and got up moving quickly towards the kitchen, which I’d been able to see part of through an open door.

“You have a sec,” I whispered as I came up behind Vicki and leaned over.

“One sec,” she said, slamming down a red cup. “He’s on his last leg.”

The second string linebacker, whose name I wasn’t quite sure of, finished his cup, a line of beer trickling down his chin. Lewis’ eyes were already turning glassy as he poured two more.

“Now, please,” I said more firmly.

“Yeah, okay. One sec, boys.”

She followed me into an empty corner of the next room, where I leaned in close so we could talk without being able to be heard. Her hands snaked around my waist, and from a distance, it must have looked like we were flirting, what with my lips near her ear, and hers near mine.

“You need to back off on the drinking.”

“Why? We can drink forever and not get drunk.”

“Yeah, and what are people going to think when the hundred and ten-pound cheerleader drinks the linebacker under the table and walks away not even buzzed.”

“I didn’t think about that.”

“Well, people will notice. That’s why I’ve made it a point to drink only sodas.”

“Okay, I’ll back off. Sorry, Cas.”

“No harm was done. They probably won’t notice, and as hammered as he is, I don’t think he’ll remember. But, better safe than sorry.”

“Maybe give the others a heads up if you see them.”

“Will do.”

She leaned back and laid a kiss on me, her hands moving south to grip my ass. After almost a minute of that, of which I was happy to oblige, she pulled back, smacked me on the ass, and fake staggered back towards the kitchen. It wouldn’t win her any Oscars, but it’d probably be enough to convince the guys watching the drinking match, to see what they expected.

“I have no idea how you managed that,” Andy Simons said, coming up to me.

“Managed what?”

“Manage to pull off so many of girlfriends without one of them killing you or each other.”

“I have no idea. I know it’s weird, but it’s working, and we’re all happy.”

“Ohh, I don’t doubt that. My sister says she’s never seen Zoe or Vicki happier. It’s just, strange.”

“Yeah, I know. But, if you were me, would you say no if two girls both wanted to date you simultaneously?”

“Probably not.”

“There ya go. So, a rough season this year?”

The football team had started off well, their defense being so strong it made up for a lot of the weaknesses on the offense. But once Josh was bounced from the team for testing positive, the defense fell apart, and they got hammered the second half of the season.

“Yeah, it really sucked. I wish you’d reconsider being part of the team next year. I still remember some of those plays you pulled off last year before you dropped. I’m sure your injury is better now, at least good enough to come work out with us.”

Vicki and Zoe had convinced me last year to drop out of sports before my abilities, which we didn’t quite understand back then, got noticed. I’d used damage from the shooting early last year, which didn’t really exist, as a reason for giving up sports entirely.

“I don’t think so. I wish I could, but my doctor is worried about future permanent problems with the shoulder if I start getting hit there a lot.”

“That sucks. You were on your way to being the best on the team.”

“I don’t know abo …”

“Of course he was the best on the team,” Josh’s drunken voice broke in as he stumbled over. “I’da been the best, too, if I’d been allowed superpowers. But noooooo, you take a little help, and you get kicked off the team.”

“Josh, how about we …” I started to say, but he kept rolling on.

“How about we talk ‘bout how you never got thrown off the team. It'sss … bullshit”

“JOSH!,” Amanda’s voice broke in as she ran over.

She seemed pretty sober and gave me an apologetic look as she got to Josh and put her arm around him.

“You’re hammered. Let’s get you outta here before you boot all over the floor.”

“No,” he said, anger starting to seep into his voice, “I wanna…”

“I wanna get out of here. You can come with me, or walk to your house by yourself.”

“Fine, whatever.”

He glared at me as they walked away, while Amanda next to him mouthed ‘I’m sorry.’

“He has really become an asshole,” Andy said.

Thankfully, he was blowing off what Josh had said as just drunk rambling, but I was starting to think we’d need to do something about Josh sooner or later. If he pulled this shit a bunch of times, he only needed one person to believe him.

“He’s just not dealing well with getting kicked off the team. Give him some time.”

“I guess,” he said, not sounding convinced.

“I think that's my cue to leave, too. People are starting to get rowdy, and I don’t wanna be here when the cops show up.”

“Good call. See ya at school, and think about what I said. We could really use you back on the team.”

“I will,” I lied and went to collect the girls, running into Zoe just as I headed to another room to find them.

“Josh is starting to…”

“Cas, Megan called. She went to check on Celia in her room, and she was gone.”

Chapter 10

“Get the others. I’ll call Jawarski and have her come pick us up. Meet me out front.”

Zoe nodded and disappeared into the crowd to find the rest of our group, while I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and headed for the front door.

“What happened, now?” was the first thing she said when she picked up the phone. “I knew I should’ve been there with you.”

“Nothing happened, come pick us up. Something’s gone wrong with Celia.”

“I told you helping her was a bad idea,” she said as she hung up, saving me from getting caught in an argument.

Of course, she wasn’t wrong. Both Jawarski and Jonathan had warned me about getting involved with a junkie, and especially that one from a rich and hands-on family was a bad idea. I was certain I’d be hearing more about this once things got sorted out.

First, we had to get this sorted out, though. Jawarski came zooming up in front of the house right as the girls all rushed out the front door. There were enough of us that we were a little cramped in Jawarski’s SUV, with Tami being forced to sit on Zoe’s lap in the back seat.

“So what happened?” Jawarski asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

“I don’t know. Head toward the apartment while I figure that out.”

I dialed the phone number we’d put into the apartment, and put my phone on speaker. Megan must have been sitting literally by the phone, as it was picked up before the first ring had finished.

“Cas?” she said in a panicked voice.

“What happened?”

“Cas, I’m so sorry. I swear we didn’t...”

“Megan, it’s okay. What happened?”

“Celia’s gone. We got back late this afternoon from Alex’s lab, and Celia headed straight for her room. I sat up in the front room talking to Mrs. Hollabrand for a few hours, and then she went to the kitchen to get dinner ready. I went to Celia’s room to tell her dinner would be ready soon, and she wasn’t there. I swear, we were in the front room the whole time. There is no way she got past us.”

“But she wasn’t in the room?”

“No. The window was open, but we’re on the third floor. There’s no way she could’ve gotten out the window.”

“Never doubt what junkies will do when they’re jonesing for a fix,” Jawarski said. “So she’s been gone for a few hours?”

“Yeah.”

Jawarski looked to make sure she was clear, and then threw the car into a U-turn, and headed in the other direction.

“Where’re you going? The apartment’s that way,” I said, pointing over my shoulder.

“We won’t learn anything else at the apartment. By now she’s found a fix and somewhere to shoot up.”

“She’s never been here. How would she have already found a place to buy drugs?”

“It’s what Junkie’s do. Trust me.”

“So where are we headed?”

“There’s a place junkie’s go to shoot up. It’s an old department store that shut down about five years ago. So far, no one’s bought the property. We ... I mean, the police, roust it every few weeks. But within days the place is infested again. Especially when it starts turning cooler.”

“We have enough addicts living here for that?”

“Yeah. Alice isn’t a big town, but it’s big enough. Maybe not ten years ago when cocaine was the thing, but with crack taking over and now meth-amphetamines, which they make out of cough medicine, we’re seeing more and more people getting hooked. So, yeah, with both the addicts and the homeless, and there’s some crossover there, we have enough for that.”

“And you think she would know how to find something like that?”

“Yeah. She’s been scoring long enough she’s probably able to figure it out. It’s a place to start.”

We turned into an older section of the city. It would at one time have been a major commercial street, but had several boarded up shops, now. There were still places that looked occupied. Antique and boutique style shops, but they looked to be holdouts from before the big box stores opened across town, and started putting these smaller places out of business.

The building where Jawarski pulled up was smaller than I’d been expecting. If it’d been a department store, then it was one of the mom and pop variety. The windows were boarded up with a ‘for sale’ sign plastered on one of them.

“How do we get in?”

“Front door. The lock’s been broken so many times, the property owners gave up trying to fix it, since the junkies get in anyway.”

I headed to the front door, only to have Jawarski grab the back of my shirt and pull me back.

“Me first.”

It was really dark inside, the boarded-up windows keeping all but the smallest slivers of light from the streetlights outside from getting in. As promised, there were almost a half a dozen people scattered across the big open room, and there were probably more in some of the closed off rooms in the back of the store.

Occasionally, a little light flared here or there from a small flashlight or a burning cigarette. The place smelled like a cesspool. We split apart, although Jawarski remained on my heels, walking past people who didn’t seem to realize we were even there. The few people that even looked in our direction seemed to look past us, instead of at us.

“Over here,” Vicki called out from across the room

Celia was pushed up into a small corner, her eyes closed and her head lolled to one side. Jawarski reached down and felt at her neck.

“She has a pulse. It’s not strong, but it’s there,” she said. Gripping Celia by the shoulders, Jawarski started to shake her side to side, “Celia. Celia. Hey.”

She didn’t even stir.

“She’s totally out of it,” Tami said.

“Is it normal to be that out of it?” I asked.

“Depends on what she took,” Jawarski said, pulling out a small flashlight from her pocket.

Kneeling down in front of Celia, she pried the girl's eyelid open with one hand, and shined the light with the other. Putting the flashlight down, she lifted Celia’s arm up and released it, the arm flopping back down uncontrolled.

“It’s not normally like this, though. There’s usually some sign of consciousness, even if she was just passed out. The pupils aren’t responding. I’m not an expert, but she’s more out of it than most junkies I’ve encountered.”

“But she’s alive? She didn’t OD or anything?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s alive.”

Jawarski leaned in close, putting her ear to Celia’s chest.

“I can’t tell, but her breathing seems weird. She’s alive, now, but I think we need to call an ambulance.”

“No. Let’s pick her up,” I said.

“What?” Jawarski said. “Cas, we need to get her to a hospital.”

“I know, but we already have a better fix for her. The change will clear any of the shit she took, out of her system, for good. It'll repair any damage it did, to boot. Once she’s in a hospital, we won’t be able to put her through the change without someone noticing. Zoe, call Alex. She should know by now if Celia is negative. If she is, we’ll take her to the hospital. If not, tell Alex to meet us at her lab. We need to put her through the change, now.”

“Cas, I think we should listen to Jawarski,” Zoe said.

“I know, but I’m right about this. If she is having a reaction to whatever she took, the damage to her system might be irreparable by conventional means. Just listen to me, please.”

I reached down and picked Celia up, cradling her in my arms. She was surprisingly light.

By the time we got through the front door and to the car, Zoe was hanging up her phone.

“Alex said Celia is not a negative. I described what we saw, and she said it could be a drug-induced coma. She agreed with you that, if Celia was breathing and had a pulse, we should bring her there.”

“Okay. Emily, you and Tami squeeze into the passenger seat together. Zoe, you and Vicki get in the back seat, and I’ll put her on top of you, and then get in and hold the rest of her. We need to keep her steady, so she doesn’t hurt her neck or anything.”

Once we were all jammed into Jawarski’s SUV, she took off. In ten minutes, we were pulling up in front of Alex and Mom’s lab, where Alex was waiting outside.

“Cas, bring her in and lay her down on the examination table,” Alex said, holding open the front door for me.

I followed her instructions and had her in the lab's one examination room, laid out. As soon as she was down, Alex pushed me out of the way and started checking on Celia, listing to her chest, lifting her eyelid, and repeating the flashlight thing Jawarski had done.

“She appears to be in a coma. Her pulse is weak, her breathing is uneven and labored, and she has a limited autonomic response. Do any of you know what she took?”

“No, we found her like this,” I said.

“There was a syringe lying near her, but we didn’t bring it with us,” Emily said.

“Shouldn’t the change flush her system, regardless of the drug?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’m more worried that she's going to have some kind of seizure or cardiac episode while we wait for the change to take place. Still, it’s our best shot. I’m going to administer your blood to her now, and then we have to wait. I’ll stay and keep watch on her, but I’d like someone else here with me, so there’s always someone with her if I need to check on something else.”

Alex went to one of the wood cabinets along one wall, pulled open a drawer, and picked up a packaged syringe. Pulling off the paper covering identifying it as clean and unused, she removed the syringe and carried it over to a large metal cabinet sitting on one corner top.

The cabinet had a keypad on the front, into which Alex tapped several numbers, before pulling the door open. Inside were rows of small vials, some clear and some blood red. She extracted one of the red ones, pulled off the small plastic covering on the tip of the syringe, and inserted it, quickly pulling blood into the syringe.

“I’ll stay,” Zoe said, as we watched Alex replace the vial in the metal cabinet and walk over to Celia with the now filled syringe.

“Do you want the rest of us to stay?”

“No, we’ll be okay, Cas,” Zoe said. “It’s getting late, and we don’t all need to be up all night. You guys go get some rest.”

“Call Megan. I guarantee she and Mrs. Hollabrand are going to still be upset about Celia getting out. They are going to want to be here, too.”

“Okay,” Zoe said, looking back at Celia, who didn’t flinch when the syringe plugged into her arm vein.

I stepped up to Zoe and pulled her into my arms.

“I know I made the decision to bring her here,” I said. “Thanks for staying with her.”

“Hey, once the change takes place, she’ll be clean forever. I can lose a night of sleep to save someone's life.”

“And that’s why I love you,” I said, leaning in and kissing her.

“Please call me if anything at all happens.”

“I will,” Zoe said.

“We’ll be fine, Caspian,” Alex said. “The blood’s been introduced, and we know she’s not a negative. All we can do now is wait while it takes over and pushes that crap out of her system. Then it'll start fixing whatever damage this girl’s done to herself. There won’t be much to see here for a while.”

“Okay, you’re the doctor.”

As we headed out to Jawarski’s car, I noticed one of Carter’s men sitting in the previously empty front waiting room.

“What’s he doing here,” I asked as we headed into the parking lot.

“Better safe than sorry. We’ve had enough surprises for one night. If she wakes up and decides to fly the coop again, I want a professional here to stop her. Should have insisted on having someone stationed at the apartment in the first place, then we wouldn’t have had to chase her down at all.”

“'Cause they would have predicted a twenty-year-old girl would somehow find a way to climb out and down from a third story window?”

“Maybe,” Jawarski said as we all got in her car.

Her tone said she didn’t really believe that, but there was no way she’d willingly concede the point to me, so I let it drop. It was late when we got home, so we all just piled into bed and called it a night.

We had one more day until school started back up, and I’d hoped to spend half of it lounging around the house before going and checking on Celia. An early morning knock on the door killed that plan, and I found myself sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee with Ted, Charles, Marcus, and Jonathan.

“So what’s up, guys?”

“Well, I know your Christmas break is almost up, and I thought it would be a good time for us to catch up on stuff now before school started back. Let you focus on getting your semester started without having to also burn the midnight oil in the office.”

“Thanks, Ted. That’s really thoughtful. You know I don’t mind coming into the office though. I managed to maintain that schedule last semester.”

“Sure you can, but why do it when we can swing by today, so you don’t have to? You push yourself too hard, sometimes, Cas.”

“He’s right. That’s like what I was saying the other day,” Jonathan added. “There’s no reason to push yourself to the edge, when you don’t have to. Save it for times when you have no choice.”

“I know, you’re right. Okay, I can hear mom in the kitchen, and if I know her, she’ll be putting breakfast in front of each of you soon, so let’s get started before we have to take a waffle break. I spoke to Douglas late last week. He said the battery and solar panels are coming along well and he’d have something for us as soon as next month.”

“Cas,” Marcus said, “I know you’ve looked at the specs he’s getting and some of his plans, and you no doubt understand everything he’s sent over, I’m not sure you realize how revolutionary some of the stuff he’s producing is. Let me tell you, what I’ve seen in his lab so far has blown me away. I know batteries and solar panels aren’t sexy like drones, but he is really pushing some boundaries on what I thought was possible. The man’s exceptional.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. Hopefully, you’re there when he presents his prototype. Douglas can get a little over excited when he gets ramped up about something, and it gets hard to keep him from getting into the nitty-gritty techno-speak.”

“Ohh, trust me, I’ll be there.”

“How’s Ronald doing?” I asked.

“Great. They took a few days off for Christmas but got back at it hard this last week. The plant is, for all intents and purposes, finished. There’s some minor finishing work to do and safety checks to perform, but we’ll be up and running in less than two weeks. He’s already got the people he’s bringing into the states to manage the individual shifts and some on-site engineers out there, and he’s starting hiring and training locals.”

“So how far in the red are we?”

“Pretty far,” Charles said. “Even with the down payment from the local government, the costs have run on the high side of our projections. Ted told Ronald, and I eventually agreed, to keep or beat the timetable, even if it meant spending more and Ronald listened.”

“How bad is it?”

“Eight hundred and twenty-five thousand over our initial projections.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Yes, and no. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but every construction project’s going to have overruns, so this wasn’t a complete surprise. Once we start operations, we’ll start making that back. Ted’s already negotiated some contracts to use our plant for ships that refill on the island's potable water, which will be revenue on top of what the government is paying to rent the facility.”

“If they’re renting it, how are we making money off that?”

“We negotiated the deal, with some help from MilTech. Thanks to their Navy contacts, they have connections with a lot of foreign navies, shipping lines and other groups who operate significant fleets in the Pacific. We have to split the fee of course, but we’ll still make some decent money off it, and what the locals get will help offset their expenses in renting the facility from us in the first place. So it’s a win-win. They were happy when we brought it to them.”

“Well, great, I guess. I’d like to get down there and visit the plant.”

“Let's let it get up and running. Plus, you can’t fly in and out over a weekend, at least not and be at your best. I’ll talk to Ronald, and we’ll see about maybe scheduling it for your spring break.”

“Good point. Thanks, Ted. I know it’s a pain to work around my schedule.”

“Hey, it gets me in magazines being interviewed about working with the company run by that wunderkind CEO.”

“Ha. Well, make sure they spell my name right. So what else?”

“Some little stuff I’ll send over, but those are the two biggies. The deal with MilTech is going well, and they’ve got the first Navy ship retrofitted with our system. If trials go well, we’ll be installing a whole bunch more, which will be a nice windfall.”

“Great. Well, I guess that wasn’t so long of a meeting.”

“I did have one other thing,” Ted said.

“Shoot.”

“We’ve already started moving some staff to the new facilities, and Jonathan had brought me up to speed on the land your family was buying to build the new house, and he mentioned you guys were far enough out of Houston that there were still some large tracts of land available.”

“Mom didn’t mention it,” I said, turning to Jonathan. “How far out are we?”

“Northeast of the facility, there’s some not so great pasture land and farms that are up for sale. A guy looking to build a cookie cutter suburb was looking at it too, and it did drive up the price a bit, but it’s a good location for you, based on where the new facilities are.”

“And he mentioned,” Ted continued, “that since you already bought up a chunk, it shrunk the available land more than the competition wanted, making it small for them to build on. Which is true for them, but I was thinking might not be true for us. I’d thought it might be worthwhile for us to build up housing for our people. A lot of them are going to have to relocate, and decent housing in Houston or Beaumont are both a bit far away. Plus, if we’re building it specifically for our people, we can offer to help with mortgages or even do some kind of cost-sharing plan as a form of compensation. We'll keep some units for us to rent out to less permanent staff.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.

I actually had some kind of idea like that when we first started looking at moving to the new facility further out, but my knowledge of this area was limited, so I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Keep in mind it’s just an idea right now, we have a lot of details to work out. I don’t like the idea of the company sitting on a bunch of mortgage notes,” Charles said.

“It’s not as bad as that. Keep in mind we’ll have a lien on the houses, and as long as the company is going strong, we’ll have need of housing out there. So any houses that do foreclose, we’ll have a ready market to resell into,” Jonathan said.

“I’m not crazy about that line of thinking,” I said. “The last thing I’d want to do is foreclose on our own people.”

“Of course. I’m not saying we’re going to do that. We’ll figure out a plan that protects us, but is more than fair to our people. I was just talking worst case scenario.”

“Okay. I think its fine to explore, and it’s a pretty good idea. But I don’t want to become a predatory landlord or anything.”

“We’ll do the right thing with it, Cas.”

“Okay. Well, I guess that about does it. Start working on plans for us to visit Ronald’s plant over spring break, and let me know what you come up with on this housing thing.”

About that point, Mom and Tami brought in plates of food for everyone, and the conversations switched to more personal matters as I caught up with my friends and coworkers.

After the impromptu brunch, I saw the group off and headed back to Alex’s lab, Jawarski in tow. Since it was Sunday, the front office was empty; but I had a key, and let myself in. I walked past Mom’s office and saw Zoe stretched out on the couch. Since she was asleep, I decided to leave her alone and headed back to the one exam room I’d left Celia in the day before. Just before the room was the office bathroom and I could hear someone retching their guts out from the other side of the closed door.

Two more steps brought me to the examination room. It was totally empty, which suggested the person heaving in the restroom was Celia. I leaned against the wall across from the examination room and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long, as Alex, with Megan on her heels, came out of one of the labs.

“I thought I heard the front door,” Alex said.

“I’m guessing Celia’s in there?” I said, pointing at the bathroom.

“Yes. She came to about an hour or so ago, and the change has already started taking hold. Her respiratory rate has returned to normal, more or less. I’d have to do a biopsy to be sure the damage she’d done to her kidneys was being repaired, but I’m betting she’ll be as good as new, well, better really, by tomorrow.”

“So this is just part of the change, right?”

“Mostly. She is sicker than anyone else I’ve observed going through the change. She's running a higher fever and with a greater degree of nausea. From the samples I’ve taken in between her trips to the bathroom, it seems that whatever the drugs were cut with, had already caused significant damage to her system, forcing the change to kick into overdrive to compensate.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“Well, she’s gone through detox a couple of times before. While this is worse, it’s not that much worse, so she wasn’t surprised when she started getting sick. This is probably worse than what she experienced before, but I explained it’s a side effect of the new medication interacting with the narcotics she took and flushing her system.”

“So we’re still looking at tomorrow until she’s finished the change?”

“Yes. While the effects of the change are greater, the timetable seems to be holding.”

“Okay. I’m going to take Zoe home, since you don’t need me much for this part. Where’s Mrs. Hollabrand?”

“I sent her home last night. Megan refused to leave, and Zoe refused to leave Megan, but Nora didn’t need to sleep on a couch, and there wasn’t much for her to do. Before you go, I’d like you to talk to Celia, just ask her to stay here until you get back. It won’t have an effect now, but interacting will help cement the loyalty portion of the change, and she’ll most likely follow your command when it does kick in.”

“I can do that. Megan, I’d like you to go back with Zoe and me. You look like you didn’t sleep at all.”

“I’m fine. I want to stay here as long as Celia does. I can take the couch Zoe’s using and catch some sleep while Celia takes a nap.”

“Megan, you don’t have to stay. I told you I don’t blame you for what happened. Celia’s fine. You don’t have to make up for anything.”

“I still want to stay,” she said.

It was pretty clear she was still blaming herself, but any further argument from me was put on hold when the bathroom door opened.

“Ohh,” Celia said, pulling up short, “you.”

She looked like hell. There were dark circles under her eyes, her hair was a mess, and she looked very pale.

“How are you feeling?”

“Terrible. I think this drug of yours is going to kill me.”

“It wouldn’t have been as bad if you hadn’t shot up last night.”

“I’ve detoxed, before; this is worse.”

“Well, as much as it sucks now, just think; once you’re past this, you won’t ever get hooked again.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Do me a favor. Don’t run off again, okay? Your grandmother wouldn’t be happy with me if I lost you again.”

“Nothing makes that old bag happy,” she said, walking slowly towards Alex’s office, her arm on the wall steadying herself.

“Maybe. But you had a pretty close call last night. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either. So please, stay here until you feel better, and we can talk again, okay?”

“Just leave me alone,” she said.

I saw that Alex’s office also had a couch, and there were a pillow and blanket on it. Celia walked slowly to the couch, pulled the blanket over herself and turned her back on us, doubling down on her wanting to be left alone.

I headed towards the front of the lab, the others in tow.

“Hopefully, that’s enough,” I said in a low voice. “I’ll be back tomorrow after school to check on her.”

“It should be. Once the full change takes place, she won’t really understand why, but she’ll find herself wanting to stay here since you asked. Then comes the hard part.”

“Yeah, figuring out what to do with her once she’s clean,” I said with a sigh.

Alex gave me a pat on the shoulder, and headed back towards the lab, Megan was close at her heels. I collected Zoe and headed back home to try and relax a little before school started.

Chapter 11

The new semester did start with surprises, just not the ones I expected. The teachers had stacked us with homework and additional studies over the winter break, although the girls and I sailed through that within the first week of the break. We spent the beginning of the day going over that work and talking about what the new semester would bring.

I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but listening to the breakdown, I started to think that Mom’s idea of switching to a homeschooling setup was a good idea, regardless of its necessity because of the move. There was only so fast a school district was able to accept the progression of their students, and the girls and I had started having to hold back at school, in case someone noticed just how accelerated our studies were and came up with an answer we wouldn’t like.

None of that, however, was the surprise. That came just before lunch as I headed towards the cafeteria when a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind. I turned and found the owner of the hand was Josh, and I felt the pit of my stomach go out.

‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘He’s really going to make me fight him.’

Josh had been getting steadily more aggressive over the last year that, if he hadn’t been friendly the previous year, I would’ve thought he was a genetic negative. I knew I’d have to deal with him sooner or later, but I was having trouble coming up with any plan that didn’t end in a fight. It wasn’t that I was afraid of Josh. Sure, he was huge, but despite everything, I’d held out a hope we could recover from whatever insanity had taken him over. Plus, Amanda was close to the girls, and I knew any fight with Josh would jeopardize that as well.

I tensed up for him to make a move, but he simply said, “Can we talk for a second.”

He was gesturing to an empty classroom, and I followed him into it, expecting maybe an ambush by some other kids he’d talked into helping. But the room was empty. Josh closed the door to the classroom to shut off the noise from the hallway and came over to stand across from me, looking at the ground.

“Cas, I want to apologize.”

That, I hadn’t been expecting.

“For what,” I said, mostly to buy time to think through the situation.

“I know I’ve been an ass. When I haven’t been begging you for whatever you’ve done to yourself and your … uh, friends, I’ve been threatening you. Amanda pointed out to me that not only was I making it less likely that you’d be willing to do whatever it is you’ve done to the others for me too, but I was making it so I couldn’t be friends with any of our group anymore.”

“Josh …”

“Wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “I want to be clear this isn’t a play to get you to change your mind, or whatever. Not only have I made it so you and I aren’t friends anymore, but Amanda’s had to avoid the rest of the group, too. That’s made her pretty upset. I’d like to fix all that. So … I’m sorry.”

He had a look on his face I couldn’t decipher. I was half sure that, despite his denial, this was some kind of ploy to convince me to change my mind after all. But I’d also been upset over the state of our friendship. I realized that, at this point, it was up to me if we fixed it. So, despite mistrusting his intentions, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Thanks. Our friendship was important to me, too. I’d like to fix this, too.”

“Great,” he said with one of his big smiles. “Well, I’m meeting Amanda off campus for lunch. You go meet the rest of the gang, and we’ll talk later.”

“Sure, Josh,” I said.

The look on his face was still there, but he gave me one last grin and headed out of the classroom. I walked towards the cafeteria lost in thought, sitting at the table without even getting food. I was trying to work through all the possibilities of what Josh might be up too. But there were just too many possibilities. I had just landed on deciding to take a “wait and see stance” when a push on my shoulder pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Hey,” Zoe said, her hand rubbing my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just … something strange happened, and it’s got me a little out of whack.”

“What happened?”

“Josh apologized for how he’s been acting.”

“Great,” Tami said. “Amanda said she was going to push him to fix things. So maybe stuff will go back to how it was.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“You don’t think he meant it?” Zoe asked.

“I … I don’t know. But I think we should accept it at face value for now, and just pay attention. Just in case.”

“Good,” Vicki said. “Amanda’s been avoiding us for weeks now, ever since the party where he threatened you outside. I’ve missed her.”

“I know,” I said, patting her on the hand. “Hopefully this will fix all that.”

We let the conversation drift off to other topics, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.

After school, I met up with Jawarski, who was waiting to pick me up. I’d left my keys with Zoe so she and the rest of the girls would get it home. They had all pulled out of cheer-leading this semester, claiming it was because of their advanced class load. The real reason was their coach had made a few comments about how fast they were progressing in performing harder routines.

It seemed like that was going to be a problem across the board, and one more that would be fixed with us moving.

Jawarski left me alone as we drove, letting me stare out of the window and think through the changes that were coming, and puzzling over Josh some more. Sadly, the answer to both of those seemed to be the same: 'wait and see.'

When I came out of my own head and looked around, I realized we were pulling into the complex we’d rented an apartment in.

“We’re not going to Alex’s lab?”

“No. Did you think they’d just keep the girl sleeping on a couch? Once she was stabilized and not baffling every five minutes, they brought her here to rest. Use your head.”

She had a point. As with many other things lately, I hadn’t thought it through. She parked the car, and we headed upstairs. Inside I found Celia sitting on the couch next to Megan, drinking a Gatorade and still looking ragged.

From the look she gave me when I came through the door, it was clear the change had finished. It was the same general expression everyone who’d gone through the change seemed to give me. It was part of the reason I hated changing people. None of the others seemed to be able to see it, Zoe said it was in my head, but I could see it. Every time.

“How are you feeling,” I asked as I found a seat next to Celia.

“Better. I’ve stopped puking my guts out, thankfully. Whatever you guys gave me was like every detox I’ve ever had, put together at once.”

“Well, you were pretty messed up when we found you.”

“Megan told me. Apparently, I was in a coma?”

“Apparently. You were breathing, but we couldn’t snap you out of it. Alex was worried what would happen if the coma stayed for a long time, so we decided to go ahead with the treatment, hoping it would clear out your system and wake you up. And … it did.”

“I’m … I’m sorry about running out.”

“It’s not your fault. I’m told addiction is really hard to fight.”

“He’s not kidding,” Jawarski said, sitting in one of the open chairs in the room. “The stuff I’ve seen ju … addicts do to get a fix would blow your mind.”

“See,” I said. “But now, you’re clean. More or less.”

“I don’t get that. Every other detox was weeks of weaning me off, a little at a time. You guys have something that’s one or two shots and boom, you’re clean? How is this stuff not in every hospital in America?”

“Because it’s still new and in testing, and we haven’t figured out how to make it in any significant quantity, yet.”

“What happens if I get hooked again?” she asked, seeming genuinely concerned.

“We’re not sure, so I’d say don’t change it,” I lied.

Of course, the truth was she couldn’t get high again. Ever. But that would require more explanations, so Alex had suggested we skirt the truth as much as we could, or at least while we could.

“What, will it kill me?”

“Like I said, we don’t know.”

“So what’s next? I guess I just go home?”

“No, the medication’s only the first part. The drugs made you want to take more drugs, but we need to address what got you started in the first place. This week, Zoe, the girl who was with you when you woke up in Alex’s lab, will get together with you. She’s going to start getting you involved in working on some stuff?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Part of addiction is medical. Some people are just wired to become addicts easily. But part of it is psychological. A need to escape from something. I believe that one of the things that will help you is to have something else, something more productive, to put your energies into. Something to give you some purpose. We run a growing charitable organization … well, when I say we, I mean Zoe and a few others run it.”

“So what? You get some free labor and the giving work gives me some touchy-feely vibes that will keep me from getting hooked again,” she asked, sounding skeptical.

“I know, it’s hard to believe, but I think it will help. I’m just asking you to give it a shot. Do your best and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, you can go back to your old life, and all you’ll have lost is a little time. Just try it, for me,” I said, putting emphasis on those last words.

In actually, I didn’t believe charitable works would necessarily keep someone from getting hooked. I mean, I’m sure it worked for some people, but it wasn’t something I really thought was the key to kicking an addiction. What it was, was a good excuse to explain why she was not feeling the need to get wasted anymore, instead of her subconsciously going with what I was asking of her.

“Okay. I’ll give it a try, for a little while at least.”

“That’s all I asked.”

We stayed and chatted for a while longer, and it was dark by the time we headed home. The entire drive back to the house, I kept thinking I forgot something. It wasn’t until I walked in the front door that I remembered what I’d forgotten to do.

“So, I’m supposed to have a new assistant, I hear,” Zoe said as soon as I walked over the threshold, hands on her hips and an expression I was starting to recognize.

She wasn’t mad at me, but she also wasn’t particularly happy. Generally, she was just annoyed at me.

“Sorry, I meant to talk to you about it …”

“I’m sure,” she said, sounding anything but. “So, talk to me now. What am I doing?”

“I needed something to use as a reason why she doesn’t get hooked again. We can’t peg everything to our new miracle detox procedure since at some point we’ll need to explain what it does to someone who might notice how full of shit we are. So, I was thinking …”

“That never bodes well,” Jawarski said, pushing past me and heading into the house, proper.

“Anyway,” I continued, ignoring the fact that Zoe was laughing at Jawarski’s comment, “I was thinking that we could explain our real process is giving an addict drive and focus, a reason for kicking their habit, and say it works with anyone if done ‘right.’”

“Instead of explaining they weren’t able to get hooked again, and the reason they were turning their lives around was that they were now physically bonded to you and we're doing it just because you asked.”

“Precisely.”

“Have you run this by Mom or Alex?”

“Not … as such.”

“'Cause it might work for Celia, but any of these theoretical people you mentioned who might look into your treatment would still not be fooled by it since at some point you have to give the person an injection. Not to mention the fact that this isn’t replicable by anyone other than you. Someone’s bound to put that together.”

“I’d thought about that.”

“And?”

“I decided we’d figure that out when we had to.”

“For someone who’s got a souped-up brain, you’re pretty dense sometimes.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

“Don’t get mad. You just really need to bounce these ideas off of Mom or Alex. Coming up with ideas that you have to push off into the future is never a good idea.”

She was right, but I’d already said ‘yeah, you’re right’ enough times this week and was getting a little tired of being hoisted by my own petard.

“I’ll talk to them.”

“That’s all I asked.”

“So what am I supposed to do with her?”

“Just show her what you guys are doing with Next Step and get her to do some of the work. Preferably the closer to helping someone the better. While it’s the loyalty part of the change doing the work, I think there’s probably something to be gained from helping a specific person out, someone whose face you’ve looked into and can identify as an actual person as opposed to some name on a form.”

“Past that, it’s up to me to figure out?”

“Pretty much.”

“Ugg. Fine. You better be glad you’re cute,” she said, turning and storming off in a pretend huff.

“I am,” I called after her.

I ran my ideas past Mom later that night, and she agreed with Zoe that my idea would work for Celia but had problems if we tried to do this enough times that someone noticed the flaw in the system. Mom said she and Alex would look into it. I left it at that, happy to have the problem in someone else's lap.

The next day Zoe, with help from Tami and Vicki, started working with Celia. Megan had made noises about staying and helping too, but the new semester was starting up soon. We all put our foot down on that idea.

That left just Mrs. Hollabrand staying with Celia. This was fine, since post-change, we weren’t worried about Celia doing something that might get Vicki’s mom hurt or in some kind of trouble. Still, Vicki or one of the other girls would spend the night over there. They did it on the pretense of working on something till late and just staying there, 'cause it was easier; but everyone, probably including Celia, knew the real reason was to keep an eye on her.

That did allow me to spend more one on one time with Emily, which was nice. She was the least involved with Next Step, not for any particular reason, it was just the way it worked out. She usually seemed more interested in what I was doing with the company, and since the others were often either over at the apartment working or, as was the case the following weekend, down at the new center under construction, Emily would go to the office with me just to ‘see what it was all about.’

Not that I minded. It was nice to occasionally take a small break from work, close my office door, and make out for a bit. Ted found our antics funny, generally. He probably would have had more of an issue if we’d been less discreet, but he did give the occasional look or smirk that made it clear he knew what we’d been up to.

Another week and a half rolled past with everyone doing their thing when Ted found his way into my office. I’d been showing Emily some of the stuff we’d been working on for the battery. She’d been doing a lot of reading lately, trying to fill in gaps in knowledge, and spent time with some of the engineers, who loved to talk show and was happy to explain everything they were doing, Douglas especially.

Thankfully the change the girls went through had pushed their mental processes almost as far as it pushed mine. Several people had already commented on how fast she was picking everything up.

“I’ll go wait out front,” Emily said as Ted came in carrying some kind of rolled up documents, followed by Marcus and Jonathan.

“No, stay,” Ted said. “If you’re going to be staying on as Cas’s assistant or partner or whatever, I think it’d be good for you to hear all this.”

“We hadn’t been …” I started to say …

“I wasn’t …” she began …

“I know,” Ted said with a smile. “I may be old, but I know why you started coming to work with Cas. The others are all working on the charity thing. You were bored, and this was a good way for you kids to spend time together. But everyone’s been impressed with how fast you’ve been learning, and we’ve been talking about finding some kind of assistant for Cas. Not a secretary, mind you, but an actual assistant. Someone to handle some of the extra load, watch projects, and the like. He pushes a lot of things off on Jonathan and me that, frankly, aren’t really our purview. It’s not like we don’t both already have a bunch of stuff to do.”

“Cas?” she asked.

The look she gave me was so wide-eyed, hopeful, and downright eager that it was adorable. It was all I could do not to kick the others out of my office for a little while. However, I managed to resist the impulse.

“I think it’s a great idea. I have enjoyed having you here, and Jonathan pointed out a few weeks ago about how I need to delegate better. I like it.”

“Great. We’ll get you on the payroll, I guess. We’ll have to figure all this out as we go along. Someone your age as an assistant is unorthodox, but since everything else Cas touches is too, we figured it made sense,” Jonathan said.

“Seeing those plans, I’m guessing that wasn’t the whole reason you were here.”

“No, it wasn’t. We bought the property we discussed for the subdivision, and we’ve had a team of architects working overtime getting plans for the houses we’ll be making available for our staff to buy or rent; or whatever we eventually decided to go with. Jonathan also got back the plans for your house. We figured we could go over all of it at the same time.”

“Okay, let's see them.”

“I’ll go first,” Ted said. “We have two sets of plans actually. The group we’re looking to contract to build the housing does community planning, in addition to designing individual homes.”

“Community planning?” Emily asked.

“In this case, that means designing and laying out small communities or sub-divisions outside of larger cities, usually as part of a larger suburban area. They find farmland on the outskirts of a growing suburb, buy it, and build small communities of fifty to two-hundred homes, put a house on each parcel, and then sell those parcels off. They don’t normally do projects for other people, but I was able to talk them into designing our housing.”

“Really? How’d you manage that?”

“There was some property outside of San Antonio they were trying to get, and I happened to know the guy who was selling it. I talked to my friend and helped get them in on the bidding.”

“In exchange for helping us,” I said with a smile.

“Yes, though we’re still paying them well.”

“I looked at some of the numbers Charles had worked up for this whole idea. It was all estimates since when I saw the numbers, we didn’t have any plans yet, but even with that, this is going to cost a lot.”

“It is, but I think we’ll more than make our money back. We’re going to be renting out most of these houses. We’ll make it affordable, but even then we’ll be able to get our money back out of them, eventually. We keep our employees close, which will be useful. And we own the property, so we have something tangible that, if worst comes to worst, we need to sell. Right now, they’re a little far out to be that salable, but Houston is continuing to grow in all directions, including ours. Eventually, it will grow out far enough that developers will be interested.”

“What about the houses we are selling? We won’t have that property anymore.”

“We’re still working up details,” Jonathan said, “but we’re going to include a right of first refusal on buying the house if it goes up for sale into the contract we write up when we sell it.”

“What about employees who don’t want to buy into ‘company housing’?”

“We’re close enough to Beaumont and Houston that it won’t be that much further than the drive people in one of the suburbs outside of Houston make into the city every day. So there are options.”

“Okay, I guess we can look at that more when we get there. I don’t know a lot about housing, but these look nice, I mean, the layout does.”

“Yea, I think so. The two basic designs we talking about are a smaller one story and a larger two-story, so we have one with more room and one that’s more economical.”

“Good. I just want to make sure we aren’t trying to take our people for a ride,” I said, and then held up my hand, to stop the retort that Ted was about to make. “Not that I think you’re doing that.”

“I agree then.”

“Okay, what about the plans for our house? I’m assuming you showed these to Mom?”

“Of course,” Jonathan said. “I’m not suicidal. She was very involved in the design of your house, although I should probably say compound since that’s a lot more accurate. I just thought you’d like to see it.”

“Ohh, I do. I just wanted to make it clear I wasn’t the one who had to okay the plans. Show me what you’ve got.”

“Here’s the main building, the house. As you can see, it’s essentially broken into three sections. In the center are the communal rooms. In the front will be the foyer, which will stretch up to the second floor, with the main staircase. Behind the staircase, on the bottom floor, is the kitchen and dining room while upstairs is a family room on one side, and an open area that joins the area the stairs feeds into. You mother wasn’t sure what she’d use this for, but she liked the idea of a big open area. Upstairs will also include a fairly substantial office area since so many of you like to work from home.”

“That seems simple enough. The front area and big stairway are a bit ostentatious.”

“She agreed, but I think the girls, who’ve also given their input, liked it and talked her into it.”

“I should have known they’d have given their two cents by now.”

“The two wings are generally larger than the central house, although most of that size goes back, making them seem even from the front. The area in between the two wings will be an outdoor patio and swimming pool. The two wings are essentially the same, with one small deviation. The west side of the house will have four bedrooms upstairs and three downstairs, and a small open sitting area downstairs in place of a fourth bedroom. Each bedroom will have a small, but adequate, full bathroom. There will also be a half bath in the open downstairs area.”

“That’s as many bedrooms in each wing, as we have in our house now.”

“Consider how many people you have in your house now, and how many visitors you get.”

“Okay, that’s a point. Why so many bathrooms?”

“Your mother pointed out the extremely unbalanced male to female ratio in the house, and expressed frustration at ‘waiting in line for the bathroom like it was a stadium and not her own damn house’ I think is how she put it.

“The east side of the house will also have three bedrooms downstairs and an open area, but upstairs three of the bedrooms have been merged into a single, very large room, with an unusually large bathroom area. Since I’d rather not spend a lot of time thinking about the whys of that particular space, I’ll let you look at it on your own time and get your questions answered by your mother, or the girls, who I believe generally gave all the input for this space themselves.”

Jonathan was having trouble not smiling as he explained this, and Ted wasn’t even trying to hide it. They visited the house enough to know the separate bedrooms for me, and the girls were a sham. Ted, especially, had made offhand comments to give me grief about it over the last several months.

“Where the fourth bedroom would have been upstairs, that is now an office for your use at home.”

“Want to take bets on how long until it gets taken over by some very pretty Mongols?”

“No takers,” Ted said.

“It is large enough that we assume you will put multiple work spaces in there so several of you can work at once,” Jonathan said.

“Keep in mind, this isn’t a replacement for your actual office at the new facility. It’s great to work at home, but you don’t want to lose the benefits you gain from being in the same office like everyone else. It’s not the same working remotely,” Ted added.

“Yeah, plus I bet the office will be a lot quieter. What’s this section?”

“That is the lower level. We all agreed it would be best, for everyone’s protection, that we have a ‘safe’ area of the house. For instance, your garage will be under the house. You’ll notice this is the ramp of the driveway that leads down to it. There will also be some rooms on the other half of the area, including a medical suite that doctor Chang consulted on. All of the rooms down here, including a large storage area and backup generators for the entire compound, is essentially a bunker. Besides Carter’s input, I spoke to some people over at MilTech to get ideas for how to make a truly secure area of the house. It will have high-end HEPA filters and scrubbers for air coming into the bunker that the military uses for their underground shelters, thanks again to our friends at MilTech.”

“I didn’t think Houston could have basements?”

“In general that’s true, but this is going to be built using the same methods as some of the skyscrapers in downtown or hospitals in the medical center, using trucked in clay and dirt, along with watertight construction. The contractor we have to build it out has already warned us that if any part of the house is going to cause cost overruns, it’s this section. But, and your mother agrees, I think this is a non-negotiable part of the house.”

“I wish I could argue, but we’ve had too many near misses. There’s still all this land behind the house. If we were going for safety, why put the house so close up to the front gate? Why not put it at the back?”

“Because it wouldn’t matter at that point. Yes, part of this design is for safety, but it isn’t being built as a military installation. We picked up more property than you needed right now, just to be on the safe side. The house is large, but you’ve had a tendency of picking up people to live with you pretty fast, so your mom wanted the option to grow.”

“I guess that makes sense. I like it. When do we start building?”

“The contractor will be out breaking ground on Monday.”

“Do we have any idea when it will be done?”

“This summer, most likely. It’s a big job, so there’s a lot to do, but we’re pushing for speed, even if it costs more. Your mother wanted you situated before the new school year starts so she can arrange whatever you guys finally decide to do about that setup.”

“Great. I think it’s time we have a company-wide meeting and talk to our team here about moving. Can you set something up?”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I'll set up a company-wide meeting, or at least one that includes everyone working out here, for tomorrow afternoon. We’ll simulcast it with the new facilities so the people working down there can see it, too.”

“Good. Now we need to just figure out, specifically, what we’re offering them.”

Chapter 12

It turned out we couldn’t have a company-wide meeting right away. We faced some hurdles when it came to setting it up so everyone in the new facility could participate in the company-wide meeting. Since TV stations did it every day for decades, it didn’t occur to me how difficult it would be, but Ted wisely pointed out that those were studios set up for it, and unless we wanted to install a broadcast studio and connections directly to the new facilities, we had to find another way to do it.

We tested out some of the stuff from Microsoft and a few others who had been working on software to broadcast over the internet, but bandwidths were just too slow for it to work well. At least, in all of our tests. Marcus said there were already areas with much faster connections that could handle that kind of bandwidth, but that places like Alice wouldn’t see it until sometime in the early two-thousands.

In the end, Ted found a company that could set up a remote satellite broadcast, basically setting up a news van on our end and a satellite relay plugged into a TV on the other end. It cost enough that Ted made noises about just doing the presentation twice, once here and once there, but I wanted everyone to hear the news at the same time.

Thankfully, the delay to get that set up gave Jonathan and me the time to sort out some of the additional details we hadn’t nailed down yet.

Monday afternoon, after school, I found myself standing on a sorting table in the warehouse of our Alice offices, which had been basically had everything shoved as far against the walls as possible so we could shove everyone into the one room. Emily, who had taken up a spot next to Jonathan, was beaming up at me.

One benefit of having her as my assistant was, when I had to tackle something new like this, I was guaranteed support.

“Alright everyone,” Ted, who was standing on the table next to me, said, his hands making settle down gestures. “I know a lot of rumors have been circling around since we opened the new facilities outside of Houston. I’m sorry we’ve left you guys in the dark for so long, but we wanted to make sure we knew what our full plan was before we made any announcements. Well, we now know what the plan is. So, without further ado, I’ll let Cas here jump in and tell you what’s what.”

“Thanks, Ted,” I said, steeling myself as all the eyes turned to me. “I’m not one for making big speeches, so I’m just going to get to it. By now, you all probably know we built the larger facilities down near Houston to accommodate our new projects, as well as the ones we’ve been doing since before I was working as a gopher for Mr. Farber. I know … that was a long time ago.”

That got a small chuckle from the crowd since that had been just over a year ago, while most of the people here had worked for Ted for years.

“We’ve talked about it, and we all agreed that there was no reason to maintain the offices here as well as the new, larger, and frankly better offices and work areas at the new facilities. So we’ve decided to move all operations to the new facilities and close the offices here in Alice.”

That got a few gasps and started up a low mummer of chatter.

“I know,” I said, raising my voice but not shouting, something I’d had Jawarski show me how she did it during her police days, “This is a big change, and probably pretty scary. A couple of things. Everyone who currently works here is welcome to move with us to the new facility. That will, probably, require you to relocate, since I couldn’t imagine anyone would want a couple of hours drive every day for work. We will be offering relocation assistance to everyone who decides to relocate. If any of you have looked at a map, you’ve probably noticed that the two closest cities, Beaumont and Houston, aren’t all that much closer than just commuting from Alice. We’ve looked at the area surrounding the new facility, and it quickly became evident that there aren’t a lot of housing options in the area, which is mostly farmland at the moment, leaving you with only those two cities for a place to live, and the guarantee of a commute.”

“To that end, we’ve decided to build housing that we can offer our employees who decide they would like to relocate and still be close to the new facilities. We will be building houses, plans for which we are making available so you can see what’s on offer. We have looked at what houses here in Alice cost to both rent and to buy, and will be making these homes available to employees for a comparable rate. We will also work with you to ensure that, if you want to buy, we'll find a way to get you a mortgage on the house, even if we have to underwrite it ourselves. We will ensure that it’s affordable for you and work with you on making sure you can get one if you want it. HR has information on this now, and will be glad to answer any of your questions, either on renting or purchasing one of the homes we are building.”

“I want you to know, there are downsides to this. Alice may not be a big city, but it’s a city none the less. You will, for all intents and purposes, be living in the country if you decided to live near the new facilities. I know that doesn’t appeal to everyone, and if you decide you don’t want either that or the commute from one of the nearby cities, we understand. HR will also have information on severance packages for any employees that choose not to relocate with us, as well as assistance with finding new employment.”

“Finally, I know a lot of you have families and are more concerned with schooling for your kids if you move into a rural area. As someone who is currently in the public school system, I can guarantee it’s something I’m concerned with. We’ve already reached out to the school system and will be making investments into those schools that the new homes will be zoned to, to help ensure your kids get the education you want for them.”

“I know this is a big change. Unfortunately, for everything we’ve been trying to do, we’ve just outgrown the facilities we have here, and it’s a change we need to make. As for the time frame of this, we’re hoping to be moved fully to the new facilities this summer. Over the next month or so, we’ll have a better time frame of when everything’s happening, and I promise as soon as we know anything, we’ll let you know. If you have any concerns, know you can talk to your managers, HR or come find Ted and me and we’ll try and answer any questions you might have. Thank you.”

There was a little bit of awkward applause as I hopped off the table and headed back into the offices, stopping to talk here or there to people who had questions. We’d spent the last week going over options and worked out a lot, but far from all the details on what we needed to do. I was sure that, once we got into the process of moving, we’d find a lot of new problems that we’d have to deal with.

Charles, for one, couldn’t seem to stop finding problems. He was not happy that we’d decided to help finance employees mortgages, pointing out that we were not set up for, prepared for, or licensed to give out mortgages. Unfortunately for him, he knew what we needed to do to change that, so I dropped it all in his lap with instructions to ‘make it work.’ He also wasn’t happy with the amount of money this was going to cost the company. He agreed that it wouldn’t be so much that it would break us and even agreed that after we got over the initial construction and investments, next year and the years after it wouldn’t be a huge burden on the company. Especially if Douglas’ new project came through, which it looked very close to happening. None of that kept him from grumbling, but I knew it would ease off once his plate wasn’t quite so full.

I was surprised that once I got back to my office from the warehouse, I found Jawarski and Carter sitting in chairs across my desk. The building had its own security, so Jawarski normally came back to meet up with me when it was time for me to head home, or wandered off to somewhere else in the office. And Carter normally met us at the house, rarely coming into the office.

“What happened?” I asked, stopping suddenly causing Emily to crash into me.

“Nothing,” Jawarski said.

“You two don’t normally come to see me together unless something’s gone wrong.”

“That’s not always true,” Carter pointed out.

“Ok, then what’s up?”

“I saw on your schedule you were set to meet with the CEO from MilTech this week,” Jawarski said.

“Yeah. Douglas said he’s ready to show us the battery prototype, and he was going to use his contacts to help us get in with NASA, and perhaps look at it for another joint venture with MilTech. Why?”

“We noticed you’ve started talking to them more and are starting to do more business with them. Considering their previous connections with the Syndicate, we are a little concerned about security.”

“Aaron wasn’t involved in that, it was one of the VPs that brought them in.”

“So he says,” Jawarski said.

“There’s no reason …”

She held up a hand, interrupting me, “I do not doubt him, just pointing out that we only have his word on it. You are trusting to the point of being naive Caspian.”

“I can be. But he also turned the VP into the cops, which goes a long way towards proving his innocence in the whole affair.”

“Sure,” Carter said, “but they’re still involved. And you can agree the Syndicate has shown they aren’t ones to give up easily.”

“Ok. I’m assuming you’re not here just to point out a problem.”

“No, we think you should take him. Put him through the change.”

“We’ve talked about this…”

“And you agreed that sometimes it would be necessary,” Jawarski said. “We aren’t talking about changing people willy-nilly without their consent, but there are those whose very proximity to you makes you vulnerable. This isn’t just someone with a tie to the criminal organization you’re working to bring down, although that would be bad enough. This man runs a successful defense contractor, which says he’s smart. He’s also tied to the very people you know would want to either eliminate you as a threat or exploit you as some kind of resource. He may have no bad intentions for you at all, and still be a considerable danger.”

“I’m still not crazy about changing people without their consent.”

“That’s what I meant about being naive.”

“Cas,” Carter said, ignoring Jawarski’s jab, “you’re in the real world, and not everything’s black and white. You just recently allowed that girl to be changed without really knowing what she was doing.”

“That was different.”

“Was it,” he continued. “You did it to help her, but also to help yourself.”

“I didn’t. I agreed because Megan asked and it was important to her.”

“Get real,” Jawarski said. “The money played a part of it. And even with that, you still decided that you’d have to hide from her the truth behind the change, for everyone’s safety. At this point, you’re digging in your heels just to be obstinate.”

“We talked to Angela, and she agrees,” Carter said.

I finally sat down and put my head in my hands. I knew this was a slippery slope from the beginning. Once we started changing people without their permission, it would get easier, and there’d be more justification the next time. It’s how Vicki convinced herself changing everyone around me was a good idea.

And yet, they had a point. I was about to bring Baxter in on another deal, and they were right about the Syndicate not giving up. Maybe I was naive.

“What do you think?” I asked, turning to Emily.

“I think they’re right. Maybe not about being naive, but you are very trusting sometimes. You have to think about what’s best for you and all the people counting on you. And it’s not like you’re hurting him. Sure, there’s the loyalty thing, but in return, you are also making sure he never gets sick again and magically gets to be in the best shape of his life.”

“I gotta say, that was a nice perk,” Carter said, patting his stomach, which had previously been on its way to being a mid-sized gut.

“I’m not happy about it …. but fine. I suppose you’ll do it when he visits later this week?”

“That was our plan.”

“Fine, I guess,” I said grumpily.

Neither one was much for small talk and on a decision being made they both excused themselves and headed out.

“It really bugs you, huh?” Emily said as she lowered herself into my lap.

“It does. Everyone seems to think I'm obstinate, silly or naive. But I lived for so long with no control over my future, passed from this home to that or thrown into a group home, having to watch the couple of things I could call my own, to keep them from getting stolen. I never got to make my own choices, everyone else was telling me what’s best for me. This isn’t quite the same, but still … I don’t think you should change someone's life without telling them.”

“I guess.”

“Look how you took the news when we told you. And that was just over the small manipulations my biology does without my control. And I don’t blame you for that reaction since even that is taking some of your own self-determination away.”

“I over-reacted,” she said, looking sad.

“No, your reaction was perfectly normal, and totally understandable. It’s why I took so long to tell you because I was worried about it. Now imagine if I’d put you through the change without asking you.”

“I mean, wouldn’t I be ok with it, because of what the change does?”

“Sure, but if that wasn’t a factor, or you were aware of what you would have felt before you were changed, outside of how you’d feel because of the change. No one else seems to get that.”

“You know they do Cas. You know your Mom. Zoe. Vicki and Tami. None of them are bad people. None of them would want to take away someone’s free choice. Hell, look at what Tami went through, and how her parents tried to take her and Judy’s choices away, trying to marry Judy off to that … monster. And yet, they all agree there are times you have to accept reality as it is. There are people out there who would hurt you. And even more, who’d want to put you in a cage, and study and exploit you if they knew what you could do.”

“Doesn’t make it better.”

“And does digging in your heels and complaining every time someone has to point out reality to you again make it any better? Does it make reality different?”

“No.”

“They why do you make everyone have to fight this battle with you every time. They aren’t arguing that you go and contaminate hospital's blood supplies, changing a huge number of people indiscriminately. They don’t want to take away people's free choice any more than you do and only suggest you change someone when it’s important.”

“Vicki didn’t,” I said.

Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me I was still a little angry at her for that.

“She admitted what she did was wrong, and feels bad about it. And yet, had she brought it to you and asked about each person she wanted to change, would you have said no? Would it have been the wrong decision?”

“I don’t know,” I said obstinately.

“Yes, you do. Stop digging in your heels.”

“Ok, no, probably not.”

“So don’t hold it over her. She did wrong, but out of a good place.”

“Ok,” I said, sheepishly.

“And stop making everyone fight you. They shouldn’t have to get a lecture for doing what they’re supposed to do. Listen to them, and decide to say yes or no. If no, then you can argue with them. But don’t fight with them when you know they’re right, just to relieve your own guilt. That’s not fair to them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Now, you don’t really have anything that can’t wait until tomorrow, and we don’t have to head home yet.”

I smiled at her as she leaned in towards me, thankful that I had her, and everyone else, to point out when I was foolish, among other things.

The company had taken to scheduling their presentations and demos on Saturdays when I had the chance to devote an entire day to them. I knew that was one thing I wanted to shift around when we moved to the new house and started homeschooling. A flexible school schedule would allow the company to operate a bit more normally, instead of regularly having to bend to my schedule.

Thankfully, all of our people and Aaron Baxter, the CEO of MilTech, were used to the way we did things now, and no one had a problem with it. Aaron had flown in on Thursday, to go over some changes he’d requested with Ronald’s team about the desalinization system, but that had to be pushed back, extending his trip through early the following week, thanks to a sudden and unexpected case of food poisoning.

Or at least, that’s what he declared his sudden illness was.

“Feeling better?” I asked, trying to remember what Emily said and push the guilt I felt away.

“Yeah. That was so weird. I travel quite a bit, eat all kinds of weird things when I do, and it never fazes me. My wife even jokes about my cast iron stomach. I’m never going to hear the end of this when I get home.”

“Tell her we’re sorry you had to extend your trip, and next time we’ll have someone taste test your food for you.”

“Ha. Right.”

“You’re seeing Ronald’s people on Monday, right?”

“Yeah. We’ve got the scaling down, but something about the ship is causing the bacteria you guys created to clean the water to die off. It didn’t happen in our trials, but when we put it in the first Navy ship, they last less than a week.”

“Do they have you set to meet with Joan?”

“Yep. Ronald offered to fly back and be here for the meeting, but he and the rest of the team all said when it came to the bacteria, she was the girl to talk to.”

“Let me know if there is anything you need from me.”

“I’m confident we can work it out. It’s so specific to Navy ships, it has to be something we can trace down and fix. What I really need from you is the next thing. Between the drone and the desalinization system, your company is starting to make a real name for yourselves for engineering products that work. With so many companies trying to make end to end systems, which more often than not turn into boondoggles, there’s a real need for a company that sees a specific problem, and fixes it.”

“Well, if you can keep getting us in the door, we’ll keep coming up with new ideas. Thanks for the NASA connection, by the way.”

“Sadly, that’s all it is. There is a little rivalry between departments, and we’d prefer not to ruffle any feathers. So we can’t shop your stuff directly to them. If, however, this battery and solar panel turns out to be what it sounds like, I can think of a few of our systems that might find a home for it on the military side.”

“I’m not sure the solar panels will be good for you guys. From what I’ve seen, they’re over-designed for what you need, since they’re targeted specifically at space-based operations.”

“I don’t know about the first part. There are a lot of military installations that have to rely only on diesel power and flown in fuel because solar power is just not effective enough. They’d have to install a field of panels to get enough power for their needs. If you have something that generates enough power, and a battery able to charge fast enough, and with enough storage, there will be a lot of interest in that. I will admit that a faster charging, safer and larger storage battery all by itself is very interesting.”

“Yeah, I think you’ll definitely be able to find applications for that. First, let’s go in and see what Douglas has to say.”

He nodded and headed into the conference room Douglas had set up in. I made my way around the room to the engineer, who was busy typing away on the small, boxy laptop he’d set up and connected to a large monitor.

We all sat and waited patiently as Douglas flipped through his notes, apparently oblivious to everything around him, mumbling occasionally. He’d been so wrapped up in his lab that I hadn’t seen him much over the last two months, but I had noticed an increasing eccentricity that was starting to bother me. I made a mental note to talk to Ted about him, to make sure we didn’t let him work himself into a self-destructive state. Based on what he’d told me when we first met about how things had gone bad for him at his last job, I guessed that it wasn’t completely unusual for him to go off the deep end. But I didn’t want him to go too far.

“We’re all here when you want to start,” I said out loud.

His head shot up, and it was like he’d just noticed we were in the room.

“Yes, of course,” he said, standing up. “We are getting closer to the end of the space shuttles, and everyone believes they’ll be phased out in the next ten years for something more modern. We’re less than a year away from the scheduled first pieces of the international space station getting launched. With the growth of new technologies here on earth we’re going to see more and more satellites go up. All these will require new forms of power. Much of the technology we currently use is almost ten years old, with only some advancements. That’s why I’ve been so determined to find new, long-term forms of power. I’ve been working on two ideas simultaneously, a better, more rugged solar panel capable of more efficient transfers of solar energy into usable power; and a lighter, more stable battery with both faster charge times, and longer storage capacity. I’ll start with the batteries.”

He clicked a small button in his hand, and the slide projector lit up, throwing a mass of fairly disorganized data up for everyone to see.

“As you are probably aware, NASA has been transitioning from the silver-zinc batteries and nickel-hydrogen used during the 70s and 80s to lithium-ion batteries over the last few years, although the nickel-hydrogen models are still getting a lot of use in satellites.”

Most of us probably weren’t aware, but Douglas was one of those geniuses who had difficulty understanding that not everyone thought the same way as he did.

“The problem with the lithium-ion batteries is they are more susceptible to temperature extremes, with both their storage and transfer capabilities being affected by both very high and very low-temperature environments. Environments commonly found in space. They’ve gotten around this for the time being with heavy shielding on the battery to keep a more constant temperature, but that adds to the weight ratio and limits the number any satellite or manned vehicle can carry.”

“I believe that, instead of liquid or polymer electrolytes that are most commonly used now, the future will be in a true solid state battery. Lithium-ion batteries were close, but clearly, it isn’t the answer, and I believe we are already close to hitting the maximum potential for that medium, regardless of its other stability drawbacks. Now, my former colleagues were fast to remind me that the big barrier to practical large capacity solid state batteries was the cost, and they aren’t wrong. While we’ve been able to make solid-state rechargeable batteries for some time, cost has always been the major limiting factor.”

“My goal has been to find a medium that would be both efficient and affordable, and I think I finally have. The answer is graphene. It’s an excellent conductor of thermal and electrical energy, it's chemically inert, and it's both flexible and extremely lightweight. We can start by using a graphene lithium-ion hybrid incorporated into the cathodes of a lithium-sulfur cell. While it isn’t what I expect the end goal to be, it will be a lighter, safer and more efficient battery and a good starting place.”

“As to the specifics …” he started to say before I held up a hand, stopping him.

He’d switched the screen to a dense run of numbers, graphs and math that was way too technical for this kind of meeting.

“I think we can hold off on the specifics and save that for another day.”

“Ohh, right.”

“I have a question,” Aaron said.

“Yes?”

“You said it was safer, how so?”

“Well, an inherent problem in batteries using a liquid medium is its instability. Even the most stable ones can be made to burn or explode if sufficient force or temperature variance is applied. A graphene-based solid-state battery would not be nearly as susceptible to violent reactions.”

“I’d be interested to see the tolerance levels of your new batteries.”

“We haven’t done field testing yet to get specific numbers. However, that is planned soon. It was made clear to me that there might be military applications and we needed to know how the solid state batteries handled impact damage and thermal extremes.”

“I’d be very interested to see that data when you have it.”

“I’ll make sure we send it over once we’ve run some more tests,” I said. “Let's move on to the Solar Panels.”

“Right. Current solar cells are limited by their very nature in the amount of energy they can capture, with single digit efficiency in most cases. We’ve come at the problem from a few directions, and have had several breakthroughs that can be used in conjunction.”

“One of the main problems in current solar cells, is they are limited to a thin slice of the light spectrum. We’ve developed a multi-cell panel that uses layers of solar cells together, with each layer pulling from a different range of the light spectrum. While this does up the cost of the solar panel, and would normally up the weight, barring something I’ll speak of in a moment, it ups the efficiency of our solar panel to just shy of forty percent, which is a significant step up from the current panels. The reason for the higher weight and greater cost is the need for intermediate bands of varying materials as it covers each range of the available light.”

“The second breakthrough we made is that, instead of using a silicon base for the cells, we’ve switched to a material called Perovskite. There’s actually more than one type of Perovskite, as that relates to both a natural mineral and synthetic compounds that have had their structure changed to mimic the crystalline structure of the naturally occurring Perovskite. While naturally occurring Perovskite isn’t effective for our purposes, we’ve developed a synthetic version using the same structure, that we can grow into a near defect-free micro-millimeter scale film. Now, the problem with this, as our friends in Sweden found out, was that the band gap was greater than what you get in Silicon, lowering its efficiency. But we can actually use that larger gap to our benefit when layering it with slightly different formulations of the crystal lattice made for different wavelengths, as I said before. The two advances go hand in hand, each benefiting from the other’s shortcomings to make a material that, while the end product is essentially the same weight as current models of solar panel, has a significantly higher efficiency in energy production.”

“And, of course, you can see the need for a battery able to take a faster charge when you have a higher efficiency solar panel pushing more energy into that battery. We still have a few kinks to work out, but our small-scale pro-types have been extremely encouraging.”

I’d been looking in on his work, but I hadn’t realized how far he’d come with the package of technologies as a whole. But he was right when seen together, these would be a pretty major breakthrough. Of course, we’d need some other people in his field to look at it if we were going to get this past either NASA or the military. I’d been looking over the technical notes in the packet Douglas had handed out, but even my genetic enhancements didn’t help me when I lacked the technical training to understand pretty much anything beyond the explanation Douglas had just given.

Still, it seemed pretty exciting, and hopefully, we’d get our meeting with NASA and convince them of the viability of our technology. It seemed like a good sign toward another windfall for the company, which we needed with the amount of money we were pouring into Next Step.

Thanks to the change, and the shared ideals we had before my coworkers were changed, we all agreed on where we were going with Next Step, but that didn’t mean we could ignore all fundamentals of business. If we wanted to get to the next level and take the non-profit beyond our local boards into a national or even international scope (which I believed long term would be needed to really make humanity ready for the taking the final leap in evolution), we needed more money. A lot more.

And if Douglas could deliver on half of what he was promising, this was a good step in that direction.

Chapter 13

Emily and I trudged in late Friday evening, after a very long week. Douglas’s presentation had lit a fire under Ted and Marcus; and Aaron Baxter, who’d extended his stay through yesterday. We’d spent the first two days after the presentation getting a first-hand look at both the new solar panels and the new battery.

While charts and graphs on a screen are fine for a first step, it’s all just numbers until you see it in action. Not that there was a lot of action to be seen from more mundane technology; at least, not compared to testing drones. There was a lot of watching computer screens that recorded and outputted things like kilowatt-hours produced and conversion efficiency. Still, if you knew what you were looking at, it was exciting.

I’d spent so long looking at more mechanical engineering, starting with the drone and then months familiarizing myself with Ronald’s project, I’d looked up enough information once it seemed Douglas was getting close, to know what I was seeing was important. Baxter spent half the time on the phone with someone at his office, reading them numbers and repeating the person's first disbelieving and then excited responses.

The battery was even better than that. It was larger than I expected, the size of a good piece of luggage, but we loaded it all the way and then simulated the power draw from various items, including some military components whose energy needs Baxter echoed from the engineer on the other end of the call.

The big things on satellites aren’t the amount of storage time, although that’s important, or even so much the energy throughput of the battery, but the battery mass required. They could put as many batteries as they needed to power a satellite; but, as with anything that goes into space, the real problem is weight. Every kilogram that needs to be sent up adds significantly to the fuel requirements and cost. Satellites needed enough battery time to completely power a device through one and a half eclipses, or the estimated time a satellite is expected to be out of direct sunlight, and not powered by solar panels. They also needed to be able to charge back to full during the non-eclipse period, but that was an equation that involved both the battery and solar panels. The requirements for one and a half eclipses includes a power cushion, allowing for issues or increased inefficiency in the solar panels over time, and just for the safety of the platform.

The current run of batteries NASA was using came in at 20.74kg battery mass required to power most satellites during eclipse periods. The higher storage limits of our battery, mostly from the lighter metals we were using in our batteries and more efficient charge and discharge rates, allowed our batteries to come in at 14.61kg. That might not seem like a lot, but consider the average cost of launching a kg into space was just over fifteen-thousand dollars, you’re talking about just shy of a hundred thousand dollar savings.

And that didn’t include that our battery would be less susceptible to degradation, or at least would degrade slower than the current batteries being used.

So, it had been an exciting week to be sure, but also exhausting. I’d been leaning on Emily a lot to help pick up the slack. She'd been keeping track of other things like the new facility progress and updates on Ronald’s new plant, while I locked myself in with Ted and Aaron Baxter, working out the preliminaries of a new deal between us to use our new battery in their upcoming projects.

We both slumped down on the couch, not even bothering to go upstairs, Emily slouching over on me as a convenient pillow. We’d been down all of five minutes, long enough for Emily to already be breathing slowly and evenly in sleep, and I was just thinking this would be a good place for a nap before heading upstairs to bed when Zoe, Vicki, and Celia came tumbling down the stairs.

“Finally, you’re …” Zoe said and stopped as I held up a finger to my lips. She continued in a whisper, saying, “Ohh, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” a sleepy voice came from my shoulder. “I’m not asleep, or at least not all the way.”

Emily sat up, stretching.

“Good,” Zoe said, sitting next to Emily and putting an arm around here. “Celia has something she wants to talk to you about.”

“Well, a question,” Celia said, somewhat nervously.

It was strange seeing her standing there, one foot scratching the back of the other and her hands, half covered with the long sleeve shirt she was wearing, clasped together in front of her, fidgeting. She reminded me most of a kid being nervous, trying to ask permission for something. It was a very different attitude then the girl I’d met just a week and a half or so ago, the one who didn’t care what happened to her, and was angry at everyone around her.

Not just her personality had changed. The scars and marks from months of abuse that I’d seen on her face were gone, cleared up quickly thanks to the change. Her hair was washed, and she didn’t wear the thick eye shadow and dark lipstick she’d worn when we first met. She’d also started putting on weight, which was good considering how emaciated she’d looked before.

I was actually a little startled. Before, the change had produced very gradual, minimal changes. People got fitter, losing fat and gaining muscle. Their skin cleared up, and hair became healthy. That was it. Cosmetically there just wasn’t a lot of changes. Personalities hadn’t changed radically either. Alex was probably the biggest. She’d lost some, although not all, of the brusque, always right edge she’d had when I’d first met her. Not that it was all gone, of course, but she was more considerate and thoughtful of her actions now. I knew, or at least thought I knew, most of that wasn't the constant evaluation of how her actions affected others. It was more an evaluation of how I’d perceived her actions, as part of the loyalty changes. It was something that actively bothered me.

Even in Alex, however, the change hadn’t been dramatic, and it was only because I’d spent some time with her, before the change and after, that I noticed the difference. And yet the change in Celia, even at first glance, was startlingly noticeable. Maybe it was because she had so much farther to go to get back to her baseline while everyone else was fairly stable when they changed that caused such a stark difference.

“Shoot,” I said, smiling and trying to put her at ease.

“I was wondering when I’d be done with this part of the treatment, or whatever.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. You’re the first person we’ve actually worked with using this … so, we’re playing it by ear. Is there a problem? Your grandmother said you’d be allowed an exception from school this semester, and it seemed like your schedule was open. Is there something you need to be doing back at home, or a problem working with the girls?”

“No, no, no, “ she said quickly, hands still gripping the edge of the shirt sleeves waving in front of her. “It’s nothing like that. I’ve loved the last week. Your friends have been so nice to me, and some of the work we’ve been doing. I’ve never felt … I don’t know … like this before. At least, I don’t remember feeling like this. I’ve loved every minute. I wanted to know how much longer I had, because …”

She paused for a minute, almost like she was working to remove some kind of mental block or reorganize her thoughts. When she spoke again, her words tumbled from her in a tidal wave.

“Because of we, or you, or … there are all these plans for Next Steps, like the new center opening. I definitely want to be there for that, 'cause I was talking to Vicki and she was telling me about the clinic, and I’d started learning about nursing at school or, I mean, uh. I wanted to learn about nursing, before … and she said I could observe, and even work sometimes, not as a nurse of course, but helping while I went back and got my nursing degree. And then there’s the food programs, we’re close to getting deals on buying unsold produce, and there was this idea for retraining I’d had, and Zoe said …”

“Okay, okay, okay,” I said, chuckling and holding up a hand. “So you’re worried we’ll finish the program and send you back to your grandmother, and that’d be it?”

“Yes. I mean,” she started and then paused, digging the toe of her shoe into the floor. “What happens if I go back, and I backslide. I’ve kicked it before; and every time, once I got back in my old life, I’d just go back to the old me and start using again.”

“That’s always the hard part, I think. It’s easy to get clean when you’re away from the stuff that pushed you into using the first place. Being back in that environment is harder,” Emily said, sleepily.

“Exactly,” Celia said. “What if I go back, get bored again, and go get high.”

“How about this. Let’s call your grandmother to come down and talk. We’ll see what she thinks about your recovery so far, and float the idea of your staying on, long-term. There will be a couple of caveats if you want to stay with us.”

“Name it,” Celia said.

“You have to go back to school. It’s close enough you can still come back on weekends and work. Once we move to our new home, you could even stay with us while you go to school. During the week the girls will make sure you stay involved, as long … and I want to be very clear on this point … as long as it doesn’t hurt your school work.”

“I can do that,” Celia said, smiling so wide it looked like she was going to break something.

“Go ahead and call her. See when she can find some time to come down and see your progress and talk to us about what’s next.”

“Thank you, Caspian,” She said, throwing her arms around my neck and hugging tight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said as I pulled Emily to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I gotta get some sleep.”

“Ditto,” Emily said, half leaning on me as we walked out of the room and up the stairs.

“Cas,” a voice said from somewhere.

It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t still a dream and register the hand pushing on me.

“Cas,” the voice said again.

“Huh?” I said, trying to push out of the sleep, cracking open an eye.

Mom stood over the bed, shaking me. Thankfully, we were all in pajamas. I didn’t even remember when Tami, Zoe or Vicki came to bed. Emily and I had called it a night pretty early.

“Some man showed up. Beth’s with him downstairs, but he says he needs to see you, and Beth said it was okay.”

“What man?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t say. Beth intercepted him before he even rang the bell. He was really excited about something, and just kept saying he had to see you. Beth seemed to recognize him though.”

“Okay, I’m coming,” I said, and slid out of bed, trying not to wake up the rest.

I wasn’t sure what this would be about, but if Jawarski agreed I needed to see him, then it was probably important. We had enough irons in the fire now that it was hard to say which crisis this might deal with. Outside the window, I saw the blueish light of pre-dawn.

I grabbed my white t-shirt from where I’d dropped it the night before, and hitched up my pajama pants. Following behind Mom, I pulled the shirt on as we went downstairs. In the front hallway, I found Jawarski standing next to a very nervous looking Damion.

“Damion, what are you doing here? There’s every chance someone from the Syndicate could be watching the house.”

“Doesn’t matter now, I’m blown.”

“What happened?”

“I got moved over to protection for one of the higher up guys. Bodyguarding or whatever. This guy, he’s a real piece of work; but he's kinda lazy, ya know? So a lot of times when one of his bosses tells him something, he’ll farm it off on us as soon as they’re gone. So I was watchin’ his back as he was with one of the workin’ girls, he likes to tell em he can get them moved off the street if they’re ‘nice’ to him. Anyways, he gets a call that he needs to pick up some files from one of the nerds that work directly for Richards, he’s the main dude, and take them to one of the other nerds.”

“Nerds,” I asked, but instinctively annoyed at the labeling and because I still had no idea what he was talking about.

“You know, guys who do the books and stuff. Anyways, he calls the guy with the package, and tells them he’s sending one of his guys to go pick it up. He then tells me to go deal with it, and gives me the address and tells me to get out so he can get back to … 'sampling the product' I think is how he said it.”

“Eww,” Mom, who was still standing right behind me, said.

“Like I said, guy's a real piece of work. Even before you talked to me, or whatever, I thought he was kinda a dick. After my, umm, conversion I guess, I can barely stand to be around the guy. But you guys said I needed to lay low and watch for something good you could use, so I just tried not think about how much I wanted to kick his ass.”

“About the package,” I prompted.

“Ohh, right,” he said and reached around into the backpack he was wearing.

Jawarski’s hand went to the small of her back as the other reached out to stop him. As her gun started to clear her shirt, Damion froze, letting go of the backpack, which swung loosely off one shoulder.

“Whoa! I was just goin' for the package. I swear.”

Jawarski didn’t point the gun at him, but she didn’t put it away, either. Mom looked at Jawarski’s gun and then stepped around me.

“Beth can get a little jumpy sometimes. How about I get it for you?”

“Sure, sure. I don’t mean no trouble, honest.”

Mom pulled the pack off his shoulder and, holding it with one hand, unzipped it and pulled out a large accordion style file folder.

“Is this it?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Beth, you can put that away,” Mom said, handing the backpack back to Damion and handing me the file.

“What is this?” I asked as I pulled the strap off it and opened it up, finding three, somewhat large, ledger-style books.

“They didn’t say, but I looked when I got in the car. It’s last year’s numbers. Richards likes to run everything like it was some kinda legit business, and he makes each of the … uhhh … he likes to call them 'departments,' give him their year-end numbers. This is that. It shows what each group in charge of different rackets money in and money out. I don’t speak 'accountant,' so I don’t really know what the numbers all say, but I figured if you were looking for proof you guys could use against them, this would be it.”

“You’re right. If this is what you say it is, this should be enough to take them down,” I said.

“If we can use it right,” Jawarski said.

“Yeah. So you took this to deliver to someone else and instead came right here.”

“Yeah,” Damion said. “Well, not right here. I made sure I didn’t have no tail, and I tried to look and make sure you people weren’t being watched.”

“But they’re going to know you stole this?”

“No doubt.”

“Okay. Jawarski, we’re going to have to find a place to put him until it’s time.”

“I’ll call Carter, and we’ll find something.

“What’re you guys gonna do with me?”

“We’re going to find somewhere safe to hide you, until you can testify against the Syndicate. We’ll make sure you have a good lawyer and try to keep you out of jail, get you some kind of deal.”

“And after that? I never was much for schoolin', and I just blew the best job I’d ever had. Moneywise I mean. Not that I’m upset about that. You were right, we had to stop them, but I can’t exactly put 'muscle for hire' on my work history.”

“We’ll help you with that,” I said. “I told you that you needed to turn your life around, and you’ve just made a good first step. We won’t drop you after you've redeemed yourself.”

“Thanks, kid. I knew I could trust you.”

‘You have no idea,’ I thought.

“Let’s go have a seat, and wait for Jawarski to find out where to put you.”

“They know about my ma. If I go missing, they might …”

“We’ll put some people on her,” I said. “If it looks like they’re going to hurt her or kidnap her, we’ll get her out.”

“Thanks, man. I don’t know if I could live if something happened to Ma.”

As he followed Jawarski into the den, Mom grabbed my shoulder and turned me around to face her.

“Cas, can we trust this man in our house?”

“Yes. We put him through the change. He’s on our side, now.”

“You know they’ll figure out eventually you had something to do with this, right? These people aren’t idiots, and they’ll start putting pieces together. I’m going to talk to Beth. This is getting dangerous enough, I want some of Mr. Carter’s men on all of you kids at all times, and some watching the house. We are getting too far into this.”

She folded her arms over her chest, a worried expression on her face.

“They were already after us. Twice they’d sent men to get me, and they corrupted a judge just to break apart our family. We were already in danger. Our only out, is to take them down before they get lucky and actually hurt one of us.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“I know. And you’re right, we’ll get men on everyone, not just me. Even if we have to hire bodyguards, no one goes anywhere without a shadow until this is over. What can I do? We didn’t tell him to come here, didn’t even give him the address. He found out where we live and came here on his own.”

“I just don’t like this putting you kids in more danger. You all are already involved in too much stuff that scares the hell out of me, we don’t need anymore.”

“I get it, really I do. The damage is done, now we just have to roll with it. He’s here now, and I can’t just throw him out in the street. Can I?”

“No. Please, just be careful.”

“I’d say ‘I will,’ but we both know that probably isn’t true, but I promise to try.”

“That will have to do, I guess. Although Beth and I are going to sit down and have a talk.”

“Don’t go too hard on her. A lot of this she was against, and I overruled her.”

“Then you and I are going to have to have a talk soon about your ability to overrule your keepers. They can’t protect you if you don't let them.”

“Okay, we can all sit down and talk about that. But right now, I think we need to deal with this situation.”

“Fine. Go. I’ll put on some coffee.”

She turned and headed to the kitchen while I went into the den. Jawarski was standing just inside the door, her focus on the man in the middle of the room, pacing back and forth.

“You called Carter?”

“Yeah,” Jawarski said. “He said to give him an hour, and he’ll have a few guys come pick this guy up and take him somewhere safe.”

“Which gives us some time to go through what he brought us,” I said, sitting down on a couch and putting the file folder on the coffee table.

“Damion, stop pacing and sit down. You’re making Jawarski itchy.”

“Right. Sorry. It’s just, man, I can’t believe I did this. I’m so screwed.”

“No. You did the right thing. I know this is a big leap, and you’re scared, but we’ll take care of you, I promise.”

“Heh! Yeah, you’ll take care of me … or they will.”

I ignored that and pulled out the ledgers from inside the file folder.

“He’s not a danger, Jawarski. Come here and look through these.”

She made some kind of guttural noise, but after a seconds pause, did as I asked. She sat on the couch, although a decent distance away from me, and took the ledger I held out.

I opened up the one I was holding, and started thumbing through it. The first thing I noticed, was it wasn’t in any kind of code like the one Vicki’s dad had. As I flipped, I noticed a few things that seemed familiar, however.

“Look at this,” I said, holding open the page I was looking at, pointing at one entry. “Does that name there look familiar? Not just the name, but the amounts next to it?”

“Yeah, it’s from your girlfriend’s dad’s ledger. I already noticed two from that in here. Whatever he had was an offshoot of this. He wasn’t seeing the whole picture though. Maybe a clearinghouse for payments, 'cause it only covered some of them.”

“I’m seeing some other names here that I recognize, and … some of them are pretty big names.”

“No shit. I see two state reps and a congressman.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I said. “These guys are paying off people at the local, state and from one of these companies, federal level, and yet they’re operating out of a small town like Alice.”

“I don’t know man, don’t look at me,” Damion said, holding up his hands.

“My guess is it’s 'cause they were able to get their hooks into enough people in this town, they could remain invisible. A bigger city, they wouldn’t be able to pay off or blackmail enough people to hide, long term. The more people they have to deal with, the harder it is to hide their activities. That’s just a guess, though. One thing stands out to me, though.”

“What?”

“They’re not into drugs or prostitution or anything like that. I don’t have a lot of experience in financial operations mind you, but everything I’m seeing is … bigger than that. I’m not seeing what I’d expect from some kind of street-level operation. That’s also another guess. Right now, it’s just names, dates and numbers. That could be something; or it could be nothing, if we can’t tie it to something specifically illegal.”

“So what do we do with this?”

“I’ll sit down with Carter and go over this. We’ll probably have to rope in Jonathan, and that financial guy of yours, and have them look at it. Once we know what we’re actually looking at, we’ll be able to figure out our next move.”

“You know just holding onto these will be dangerous, right?”

“We’ll be fine. Let the grownups deal with this and your friend over here, and you just do your little projects.”

I sighed and reminded myself she couldn’t help being an ass, at least to me. Everyone else said she was nice, but that didn’t help much. We kept looking through the ledgers, but other than realizing it was connected to some fairly important people, we couldn’t figure out anything. This would take research, and it just wasn’t my area of expertise.

As promised, at just under an hour, Carter showed up with four guys. Jawarski had Carter leave two of the guys with us for protection and called Levi to ask him to come babysit me, as she put it, and then she, Damion and Carter left, taking the ledgers with them.

I was pretty restless the entire morning, pacing around, wondering what would be in the ledgers. The names we’d found in it made it seem pretty major; but Jawarski was right, just having a list of names with numbers that looked like payments wasn’t enough. So I had to wait, which was the thing I was worst at even trying to do.

“Hey, you’re up,” a voice broke into my brooding.

Looking up I saw Celia standing in the doorway. It was still early and, other than Mom (who’d left me more or less to my own thoughts), I hadn’t seen anyone else yet.

“Yep,” I said, trying to sound casual and let my worry over the latest turn with the Syndicate go since there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

“I called grandma, and she said she had time today. She’ll be here in a few hours. I mean, if that’s okay.”

“It’s fine.”

“What do you think she’s gonna say?”

“I don’t know. But even if she says she wants you to go back to school right away or back home, you’ll be okay. I guarantee that now that the girls have their hooks into you, they won’t let go. You won’t shake us that easy.”

“I guess. I’m just … worried, ya know?”

“I do. I was just thinking about this, actually. Sometimes, there are things out of our control. We do our best, make the best decisions we can; but eventually, whatever the thing we’re concerned about will be out of our control, and we’ll have to wait. You can either choose to focus on the problem and worry yourself to a nub; or wait, know that you’ve done everything you can, and let things be as they’ll be.”

“Say’s the guy who’s been pacing a hole in the floor for an hour and a half.” I turned to find Mom standing in the other doorway, looking at me. “That’s really good advice,” she continued. “You should consider taking it, yourself.”

“I’m trying. I didn’t say it’d be easy, just that worrying doesn’t help anything. You’ve told me that often enough.”

“Why don’t you go wake up the rest of them and let's eat some breakfast. Once your day gets going, you’ll have fewer things to worry about; and we need to pick up around here some, if we’re having a guest over.”

“See?” I said, looking at Celia. “If it’s out of control, tell someone you love that you’re worried, and they’ll stack you so full of chores you won’t have time to be upset.”

“Exactly,” Mom said, smiling.

Chapter 14

True to her word, by the time Celia’s grandmother knocked on the front door late that afternoon, I’d stopped thinking about the ledgers Damion had brought, entirely. She’d kept us hustling for nearly four hours, getting the house nearly spotless. I had to admit, I was feeling much better. There’s something to be said for doing a little hard work, and getting something done you can look at, like a perfectly clean house and say: ‘I did that!’

Of course, Tina and Judy managed to get out of helping. They’d argued that they weren’t upset about anything, and they’d planned a mall trip to look at clothes or something. Mom was a little worried, but Jawarski had been true to her word, and several of Carter's guys showed up at the house and said they had several more out in cars if we more of us were going to leave the house.

Actually, they’d corrected me. They weren’t Carter's guys anymore, and not all of them had even worked for Carter, at least not for him alone. Jawarski, Carter, and Levi had made the move to form their own security company, and they’d already started hiring some new people. Now that Mom had declared she wanted everyone in our family to have security, that was probably a good thing. As far as I could tell, Carter normally only had five to ten guys working for him at a time.

Tina and Judy headed out with two guys in tow, getting to skip out on the cleaning bonanza.

Thankfully, we’d finished the cleaning in enough time for me to take a shower, and I was happy I didn’t smell like cleaner supplies anymore as I opened the door and smiled at the older woman standing outside.

“Mrs. Keen!” I said stepping back to give her room to come inside. “Welcome to our home. Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“Mr. Gr … Caspian,” she said, acknowledging my greeting with a bob of her head. “I came as soon as my granddaughter called. I’m a little concerned. She managed to last much longer in the other programs we’d tried. Although, I guess it’s really my fault. I was expecting quite a lot, and you did warn me that you weren’t set up to take in patients. But … I’d held out hope. Please show me to Celia so I can collect her and we’ll be out of your way.”

I stopped and looked at her, my head cocked at an angle in question, “I think there might have been some miscommunication. What did Celia say when she called?”

“Just that she needed to see me, and it was urgent.”

I repressed a grimace. It hadn’t occurred to me how much enthusiasm someone who’d gone through the change might have towards staying with us. I mentally kicked myself, since I’d had enough experience with people going through the change that I should have seen it coming.

“We aren’t looking to get rid of Ceilia or concerned with how her progress has been. The opposite, in fact. I’m sorry if she gave you the wrong impression. She’s just been really excited and wanted to run somethings by you as soon as she could.”

“So she hasn’t relapsed,” she asked, her voice tinged with surprise.

That also explained how the message got garbled. Celia had told us, or rather she’d told Zoe who then told me, how many times she’d been to rehab, and the success, or lack thereof, she’d had. Her grandmother had probably received a call about picking up her granddaughter many times before and had jumped to a conclusion, helped along by Celia’s lack of detail.

“How about you see her for yourself,” I said as I led her into the living room.

Celia was seated on one of the couches, beaming as she saw her grandmother and holding Zoe’s hand. Mrs. Keen stopped cold in her tracks as her granddaughter came into view, her eyes going wide.

“Oh my,” she said, her hand resting on her chest as she took her granddaughter in.

I’d been surprised at the change in Celia and I’d seen it occur, while not slowly, at least progressively. From her grandmother’s point of view, she’d dropped the girl off just a few weeks ago, looking almost like the walking dead in a nice sweater. The Celia she’d delivered had been almost emaciated, with sunken eyes and greying skin, open wounds scattered across her body, bad acne, and dirty, stringy hair.

The girl sitting on the couch had put on weight, and was almost back to a normal. Her skin had cleared up and returned to a natural color. Her eyes were alive, the dull glaze of the drugs gone completely, and her hair now had the life and bounce you’d see in a shampoo commercial.

She squeezed Zoe’s hand and release it, moving forward to stand in front of her grandmother, again with the combination of excitement and shyness.

“Hello, Gran.”

“Celia?” Mrs. Keen asked, a wary look on her face.

“Yes,” Celia said, a bright smile breaking out across her face.

That was another change. Her teeth had been rotting in her mouth when we got her; again, thanks to all the crap she’d been shoving in her body. The chemistry of the change worked fast, and while they were still a little yellow, most of the damage she’d done to them had been repaired, making her smile an actual smile. Not that she’d smiled a lot before we’d put her through the change.

“Child, you look … so … so,” a tear formed at the corner of her eye as she looked at her granddaughter.

“She’s really responded to the treatments,” Zoe said coming to stand next to Celia, putting an arm around the daughter. “Also to everything afterward. We’re very proud of her.”

“How about we leave you two together to talk,” I said. “Have a seat and chat. We’ll be in the kitchen, just through there when you’re done.”

I took Zoe’s hand, and we headed out of the room as Mrs. Keen just gaped at her granddaughter in disbelief. We went into the kitchen and just chatted, Zoe filled me in on some of the stuff she’d been up to that week, while Emily and I’d been locked away at the office.

While normally we’d take the chance to snuggle up in one chair, the presence of an outsider tampered down the displays of affection. Mrs. Keen found us almost an hour later, sitting at the table, talking.

“Have a seat,” I said, pointing at a chair.

“Celia, how about we go upstairs,” Zoe said, sliding out of her seat as Mrs. Keen found hers.

Before the pair had come in to find us, Zoe and I’d agreed it would be best if I could talk with her grandmother separate from her so we could be franker. Zoe didn’t like the idea of ‘talking behind Celia’s back,’ but I’d countered that. If we really wanted Celia to hang around and work with them on Next Step, her grandmother would need to be on board. For that to happen, she needed to feel comfortable with everything we’d done.

“I am floored,” she said as her granddaughter left the room. “I almost don’t recognize her, both how she looks and her attitude. She’s like a bigger version of the little girl I remember from … before her parents died. I was sure I’d lost that girl.”

“She was always in there. She just didn’t know how to deal with the pain of losing her parents, and she’d found she could at least numb it with drugs. As she got sober each time, she had both the pain from her parents still there, with shame over her habit added on top of it.”

“How’d you do this?”

“First, I want to make it clear, she isn’t cured. We managed to get all that crap out of her system, and more importantly, we’ve been giving her things to do that she could feel proud of. But, she still needs to get some therapy, to deal with the underlying problems. She still has a lot of pain, down deep.”

“That makes sense, I guess. I should have probably gotten her to counseling when it happened, but she was young. I thought maybe, if she just had the right environment…”

“I come from a very different background, so maybe I’m not the best informed on this subject. I think giving someone everything they think they want isn’t the same as giving them what they need.”

“Maybe. No, definitely you’re right. I guess it was that when I was a girl, and in my family, we just didn’t talk about things. Feelings and what not.”

“That’s fine. You don’t have to, not if you don’t want to, but you do need to make it available to her. We can help with that if you want.”

“She told me she wanted to stay here, with you all. She seemed very excited about working on that charity of yours.”

“Like I said, we gave her something she could do and be proud of. It’s part of what she really needs. We’d be happy to have her keep working with us, but I think there is a better middle ground.”

“Do tell.”

“For one, my household is already pretty full. While I think our non-profit has a place for her, and would be a good fit for her, I think she also needs to get back to the life she’s been turning her back on. She can’t change one crutch for another.”

“What do you suggest then?”

“I think she should go back to school. I’m not sure if it can be arranged this year, but it’ll be good if she could still room with Megan, that way she’d still have that tether to something and someone with positive associations. Also, we’d have someone to give us a warning if she relapsed.”

Of course, I knew she wasn’t going to relapse. Thanks to the change, she wouldn’t be able to get high, or drunk, or stoned, ever again. I wasn’t going to tell her grandmother that, but I was serious about our household not having room for more family members. It was a point I’d made painfully clear to the girls, in case they got any ideas.

“She can work with us on the weekends, especially since we’ll all be moving closer to Houston, and hence her school, at the end of the year. We’ll keep her involved as much as we can, with the stipulation that it doesn't interfere with her school work.”

“I do like the sound of that.”

“Finally, she gets regular, weekly counseling. I think if we do that, this change has a good chance of sticking.”

“You know, when I came to see you, I was desperate. I honestly didn’t think it would work but, seeing her now. Yes, I’m willing to do all of that. I also like the idea of her continuing school. I’ll talk to the school and take care of it. I’ll also call your Mr. Colletta and see about that donation we discussed.”

“You know that isn’t why we helped her.”

“Yes, I get that impression; but a deal is a deal, and I am a woman of my word. You have more than lived up to your side of the bargain,” she said, reaching out a hand.

“Well, I appreciate it,” I replied, taking her hand and shaking it.

“I’ll be in touch after I talk to the school" she said. "Hopefully, her friend Megan will still be available to be her roommate. I’d feel better if someone was still around her regularly, for support and to warn us if she backslides.”

“I’m sure Megan would be happy to be Celia’s roommate again. We’ll be waiting for your call. Since you’re here, why don’t you and Celia spend some time together? Maybe go out to lunch, just the two of you. After everything you’ve been through together, it would be a good start on repairing your relationship.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion. Yes, I think we’ll do that,” she said.

The grumpy ‘old lady’ expression she seemed to wear as an armor had stripped away, and she was beaming. It was quite the change and a pretty good look for her, I thought to myself as I headed upstairs to get Celia and give her the good news.

While they were out, I called Megan, and gave her a heads up on what was happening. As I predicted, she had no problem taking Celia on again as a roommate, especially since she knew that Celia had gone through the change, making drugs a complete non-issue. Celia might not have known it, something I strongly reminded Megan of, but she still saw her as some kind of sister in the little but growing club of people who’d been changed.

Since she’d already made herself known in our household, and was therefore a potential target, I’d sent one of Carter's … no, one of the security … people to follow them, unobtrusively as a safeguard. I didn’t think they’d actually need someone, but it did ease concerns I might have had when Celia called later to tell me she and her grandmother were making a day of it and she’d get dropped off at the apartment later that evening.

I was sitting in the kitchen, feeling insufferably pleased with myself when the next crisis burst it’s way into the kitchen.

I’d heard the front door open and, since we had security people in the house now, didn’t think anything about it. I’d assumed it was Judy and Tina returning from their mall trip, and it turned out I was right. What I hadn’t expected, was to find Judy in a crying fit and Tina trying to comfort her as they came into the kitchen.

Seeing her state, I yelled up at Tami to hurry downstairs and then went to sit next to the crying girl.

“What happened?” I said, putting my arm around her.

Tina slid out of the seat next to Judy as Tami appeared, the rest of the girls in tow behind her.

“We ran into her parents,” Tina said meekly.

Tami’s head flashed up, looking at Tina first and then over at me, worry filling her brown eyes as Tina continued.

“Judy went to say hi to them, and they ignored her and kept walking. We just stood there, watching them, when these two girls came out of the food court and ran up to them. We heard one of the girls call her ‘mom’ and then Judy’s mom said ‘I’m glad we finally got the daughters God promised.’”

“What does that mean,” Tami asked, her worry turned to confusion. “Who were the girls? Judy, did you recognize them?”

“Yes,” Judy said in a small voice. “It was the Sanderson’s kids, well two of them anyways. The older one Samantha and one of the middle ones, I don’t remember her name.”

“Who are the Sandersons?” I asked.

“One of the original families to join the ‘church.’ They believed in the whole ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing. I think the last time I saw them, Mrs. Sanderson was on number nine.”

“Nine?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah, there was always an army of them. I’m not sure why they’d be calling our mom ‘Mom.’”

“Because …” Judy started to say and then broke down into tears again.

“Judy heard that and went right up to them and asked ‘Why’d she just call you Mom?’ Her mom turned on her, put her finger in Judy’s face and said ‘Because these are my real children, not godless ingrates like you and …’,” Tina paused, her eyes flicking to Tami, and bit her lower lip.

“Go ahead,” Tami said. “I know what that bitch thinks about me.”

“Well, uhh,” Tina started, still clearly unsure about repeating their mother’s words. “She said ‘not godless ingrates like you and your whore sister. Pastor Joseph blessed us with new children worthy of our love. Go away Satan child. Go back to that bastard you’ve all flocked to,’ She turned around, and they all left, didn’t look back or anything. uhh … sorry.”

Tina looked back and forth between us, clearly upset that she had to say those words to us, even if she was just relaying what Tami and Judy’s mother had said.

“It’s ok,” I said, reaching across and squeezing her hand. “You didn’t say it, and we needed to know what happened.”

Tami nodded, but I could see tears welling up in her eyes.

“What does that mean, though?” Emily said softly from the back of the group that had formed around the table.

“Tami,” I said, ignoring the question for now. “Why don’t you take Judy upstairs, and have her lay down for a bit. I think some peace and quiet, and time with her sister is what’s in order.”

“Ok,” Tami said.

“Well, talk later,” I said to her as she helped Judy up.

“Can Tina come?” Judy squeaked out.

I looked over at Tina, who nodded.

“Yes, sweetie, of course.” I said, kissing her on her forehead, “It will be ok. We love you.”

I stood up and helped Tami to her feet. She nodded absently, and the three of them headed upstairs.

“I’m done screwing around with this guy,” I said once they’d disappeared through the door, sitting back down and staring at my hands while I struggled to get hold of my anger.

“What can we do?” Zoe asked. “We’ve checked! The cops can’t do anything. He may be a piece of shit, but he’s managed to stay just on this side of the law. At least in ways, we could prove.”

“What about the stuff we got last year?” Vicki said.

“I thought we couldn’t actually use it to stop him, since we’d obtained it illegally,” Zoe replied, growling. “If we handed it to the police, they couldn’t use it against him; but they could use it as another way to go after us! Anyone who listens to the recordings will realize we, or someone connected to us, tapped his phones. With all the hooks the Syndicate has in the police force, we’d be handing them a weapon to use against us.”

“What about if we just released it, anonymously, to the public?”

“Won’t work,” I said. “Everyone who isn’t in his church already thinks he’s a scumbag … well, most do, at least. And still, the cops couldn’t do anything with it. It might annoy him and make his life a little harder, but it doesn’t remove him as a future threat.”

“I still don’t understand what their mother meant,” Emily said.

“This is a guess, but I’m betting they ‘gave’ some of those children from the one family to Tami and Judy’s parents as ‘replacements.’”

“That … How could someone do that? My Dad was a fucking monster, but even he wouldn’t trade me for another kid. And how could that other family just give up two kids like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, reaching over and patting Emily’s hand. “The preacher clearly has a lot of sway over all these families. I guess if you can convince someone to give up their child to a pedophile as a new ‘bride,’ convincing them to trade kids is no big deal.”

“I’ll never understand these people,” Emily said, shaking her head.

“So, like Zoe said, what can we do?” Vicki asked, her face drooping in forlorn.

“We go after his flock.”

“How? Do you think they’ve been less careful in hiding their actions?”

“No. We take them. Put them through the change, and tell them they need to walk away from the preacher.”

All three girls looked at me with shocked expressions on their faces.

“We’ve always had to bring you kicking and screaming to the decision to change someone?” Zoe pointed out.

“I know. And I still believe we should try to avoid changing people without their permission, but this is a different situation. People don’t agree to do the thing his followers have done, easily. He’s prayed for them. Found ways to get into their heads, and made them believe in his twisted message. It’s what cult leaders do. They’re victims. And their kids? They don’t even get a choice. I see changing them as a way to save them, just as if I’d come across someone dying in the street. Do I want to change them? No. But I don’t have a choice, not really. To be clear, I’m not talking about everyone, just the parents. I don’t see any reason to change the kids. Once their parents quit, the kids will come with them.”

“And the preacher?” Zoe asked. “Will you change him?”

“Hell, no! There’s no way in hell I want him in our circle, even peripherally.”

“You changed that other criminal.”

“Out of necessity; and as soon as I did, I became responsible for him. I do not want to be responsible for that walking pile of trash.”

“What about Tami and Judy’s parents.”

“Fuck them,” a voice said.

We all turned to find Tami standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest in defiance, and her voice harsh.

“But …” Emily said.

“No. I know they’re brainwashed or whatever, but I’m done with them. I don’t want them back even if we could. I want them to suffer from Pastor Joseph.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes. They aren’t under mind control. They made a decision, and that decision was to first try and pimp their daughter and then to abandon her. The only family I have, is in this house.”

“What about Judy?”

“No. I know it’s not fair to make this decision for her. Once we get over this, I don’t want her to have to face them hurting her again. I want them out of our lives, forever.”

“Ok. If that’s what you want, then I’ll go along with it,” I said. “Is Judy ok?”

“She will be, eventually. I just came down to get some water for us.”

“Ok. Babe, I’m really sorry this happened to you guys.”

“I know,” she said, the venom gone from her voice. “I just … I don’t have any more fucks to give, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Go get your water.”

She gave me a kiss on the cheek and headed to the fridge, to retrieve three bottles of water. She gave a weak smile to everyone at the table, and then headed back the way she’d come.

“So how do we do this?”

“I’ll talk to Jawarski and Carter. We’ll identify all their church’s members, and have some of the security people start hitting them with the ampules.”

“It’s gonna put a dent in our supply. We used a lot when we … uhh…”

“Went rogue and changed everyone around us,” I said, with a smile to let her know I wasn’t chastising her again.

“Yeah, when I did that,” she said, shaking her head. “Going after all these people, it’s really going to put a dent in our supply. You can only give up so much blood.”

“I know. We’ll deal with that I guess, but we need to do this. Agreed?”

They all nodded in agreement, faces grim but set.

Chapter 15

One of the frustrating realities of life is that, just because you’re resolved to do something, doesn’t mean you can jump right into action

“... and with all of his followers gone, he won’t have the power base to cause any more problems,” I said as I finished explaining the plan we’d come up with to Jawarski, Carter and Levi.

“Finally,” Carter huffed. “I was wonder how long you were going to let this sit out there. He’s unstable enough that, as long as he has the ability, there’s a chance he could cause trouble.”

“I don’t disagree that it’s a good idea to take care of him,” Levi added, his fingers stroking his chin. “I think you need to consider the dangers going at him will cause.”

“He’s a danger every minute he’s breathing,” Carter said ominously.

“Yes, but right now he has his flock to protect. Sure, he’s volatile, but he has something to lose. You take that away from him, and there’ll be nothing holding him back.”

“I get that,” I said in response to Levi, “but I want him out of the picture. We’ve been dealing with his crap for a year, and I’m through with it. Will he be more dangerous after we break his world? Yes, but if we let things stay as they are, he’ll still have the potential of going off the deep end, with enough backing that he might be able to succeed.”

“You just want to hurt him,” Jawarski said.

“Yes, but that doesn’t make my reasoning wrong. Look, I’ve considered your argument, and I still say it’s time to deal with him. Either he’s a problem now or he’s a problem later, but we all know he’s going to make trouble for us.”

“Is taking him on while we’ve got the Syndicate out there gunning for us a good idea,” Jarwarski said.

“Probably not. But he keeps hurting people I care about. The longer we leave him able to do that, the more damage he’ll do, and I’m done. I know you guys are looking out for my best interest,s and I appreciate it, but my mind's made up.”

“No problem Cas,” Levi said. “I just wanted to make sure you looked at all the angles.”

“That’s what you guys are for,” I said with a smile, slapping him on the shoulder. “So, I guess we need to get several of your people together to start dosing his followers. It probably needs to be done by any of any people you have that’ve gone through the change, or at least won’t ask questions.”

“All of our people have gone through the change,” Jawarski said. “We’re able to guarantee a loyal security staff and guarantee they’re in constant peak physical condition. We’d be idiots not to rely on that.”

“All of them? I’m not sure I like that idea.”

“Like I give a crap what you like,” Jawarski said with a sneer.

“Cas,” Levi said, casting a side glance at Jawarski, “we all knew you’d have a problem with it, but Beth’s right. Considering what we’re up against, we couldn’t leave room for anyone we don’t trust working security for you guys.”

“Do any of them ...”

“Kid, drop it. Let us run our people,” Carter said.

“Fine,” I said, knowing there was no way I was going to talk Jawarski and Beth into anything. I wasn’t going to drop it, but this was something I’d have to work on Levi about, since he was the most reasonable of the three. “So, about going after the preacher. How soon can we get your people out there?”

“That’s the part of your plan that won’t work,” Jawarski said.

“Why not? Dosing them is the whole plan. Considering how casual you are about changing your employees, I’m surprised you have a problem with this.”

“I have no problem with it, or at least not the idea of it. What I have a problem with is the porposed execution. You can’t go change all of his people right away.”

“Why?”

“Because if all of his people come down sick all at the same time, and then bail on him, it’s going to raise a red flag,” Carter said. “It might not make him jump right to someone chemically brainwashing his people, but he’s going to notice the coincidence.”

“It’s not brainwashing,” I said defensively.

“We know that,” Levi said diplomatically, shooting another glance, this time at Carter. “But his point still stands. We need to do this strategically. A mass exodus or his whole flock getting sick, with the exception of your girlfriend's parents, will make him twig to something. We need to be smarter about it.”

“Ok,” I said. That hadn’t occurred to me when I came up with the plan, but it made total sense. In my defense, I’d come up with the plan on the fly while being pissed at Tami’s parents. It’s one of the reasons I brought it to them in the first place. “So what do we do then?”

“We do it a little at a time, take them in sets,” Jawarski said. “We’ll look at it and work it up. My first thought is we need to do it at least by family groups. If we do one parent, but not the other, at the same time, we’ll end up tearing those families apart like your girlfriends.”

“That I don’t want to do. These people are his victims too, in a way. I want to minimize any damage to them as much as possible.”

“We’ll do our best,” Levi said. “Just be prepared for this to take some time, ok?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

I groused as they went off to plan their move. I knew I shouldn’t be unhappy, really. This is why I brought it to them in the first place. When it came to something like this, experience was the most important thing. My error had been clear to all three of them, probably as soon as I finished explaining it. Once they pointed out the problem with my plan, it was pretty obvious. That didn’t make me any happier about it though. Once your mind is made it, its only natural to want to get moving.

So, I had to wait.

Thankfully, there always seemed to be a distraction around the corner. The latest distraction came two days later when Alex and Mom told me and the girls they wanted to talk with us. That alone was enough to pique my interest, since things that involved both Mom and Alex rarely involved the girls, and stuff that involved the girls and me rarely involved Alex. Unless it was an update on some study she was running on our particular subset of the change, which as far as I was aware of, she wasn’t.

“Cas, how has school been?” Mom asked when we all sat down.

“Fine I guess. Honestly we’ve had so much to deal with, I haven’t been paying as much attention as I probably should.”

“How about the rest of you?” Mom asked.

They all said variations on what I’d said. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was dropping so much on them, but they’d been as involved in other projects as I had been, and had let attention on school slip too.

“When you say you’ve not paid attention, did you notice how that affected your grades?”

“Not really. Actually, since the report cards at the end of last semester, I’m not sure I’ve seen any of my grades. I hadn’t actually thought about it until just now.”

“Because you’ve been so caught up in other things?”

“Yea.”

“That’s because we asked your teachers to hold your grades back at the beginning of this semester.”

“Why?” Zoe asked.

“We wanted to look into some things. I’d noticed how little attention you kids were putting on school, and Alex thought this would be a time to test something she’d been working on.”

“Which is?” I prompted.

“From observing all of you, following your grades, which Angela was providing me, and additional tests I’d been running on new samples from you, I was pretty sure you were all continuing to evolve.”

“I thought you said you knew the girls were still evolving, since they weren’t at the point to ... uhh..” I paused, realizing where the sentence was going and turning red.

“Reproduce with you?” Tami offered helpfully, which caused my face to turn more red.

“Yeh. You said you thought they would continue to change until we were biologically compatible again.”

“I said I thought they were, and I still do. But its more than that. They’re not the only ones still evolving. You are too.”

“Really? But, I thought I was the next evolutionary step already.”

“We haven’t been sure, but I think you’re still progressing towards that. We know that you went from seemingly normal biology to what you are now at some point after the onset of puberty. I have your medical records Margaret got from the state when they adopted you, and you’d had several tests over the years that would have identified what we see now from you. So we know when you were a child, your biology at least appeared normal, and didn’t start mutating to the point where it was noticeable until some point after you were adopted, again, probably at puberty.”

“We knew that already.”

“We also knew that the changes you went through didn’t all happen at once. While you were well into the change by the time I was able to start investigating your biology, it seems pretty clear it was a progressive change.”

“Ok, by why do you think I’m continuing to change?”

“It’s just supposition, at the moment. We have nothing to compare your genetics to, and a lot of it isn’t something that shows up in blood tests. It’s hard to gauge things like intelligence in any kind of quantitative way that takes into account your biology.”

“Because we couldn’t do it medically, we decided to start using other things. Keep in mind, this is not definitive and is pretty subjective, but we’ve been using your grades and tracking the time you all spend studying and preparing for school. Would it surprise any of you to learn that you’ve all scored a perfect score on every assignment and test you’ve taken since we started tracking your grades this semester?”

“Not really,” Vicki said. “We pretty much did that last semester too.”

“Yes, but you actually spent time studying last semester. Except to complete homework, we haven’t seen any of you study. Are we wrong?”

I thought back to over the last several months. I’d always seemed to have things that needed to be done, so I hadn’t actually paid much attention before she asked.

“No, I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. I haven’t studied once this semester.”

The girls all said the same thing after they thought about it.

“We’ve also been working with your advisers, we’ve had them gradually increase the difficulty of your work. We’re to the point now where they’ve been consulting professors at U of H to build lesson plans. For all intends and purposes, you five are doing sophomore level college courses now, not studying, and acing everything that goes in front of you.”

“Really? But, I hadn’t noticed it getting any more difficult...”

“Like you said, you’ve been really distracted. And we’ve tried to do it gradually, increasing the speed of study as you master previous lessons, cutting out any time spent on incremental lessons or review. We hadn’t planned on moving this fast, but as you shrugged off every increase in difficulty, your teachers took it as a challenge to throw more and more at you. Honestly, I’m a little worried we may have taken it too far. They’ve started asking questions we’d rather not answer.”

“But it does tell us that your capacity for learning has increased. You were doing well last year, but not this well,” Alex said. “We looked at your grades and while you were all scoring well, it wasn’t perfect scores on everything.”

“So what does this mean?” I asked.

“We’ve discussed it,” Mom said after a sidelong glance to Alex, “and we think the best thing we can do is get you placed out of your next two years. It’s not unheard of, but placing out of two years isn’t normal either. The fact that five of you will be doing it at once is going to raise some attention, but since it’s something that does happen, we think it’s better than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“You stay in school, perhaps evolve further over the next two years, and through regular contact with educators they notice how really gifted you are. We don’t know when, or even if, your evolution is going to stop, and we don’t know where it’s going. The longer you’re in contact with people trained to evaluate and notice how students perform, the more risk we have. We think getting all of you graduated early is our best bet. It also solves a different issue we had.”

“Which is?”

“What do do with you guys next year, since you’d no longer be in the same school district. We’d discussed home schooling, but, I’m not sure Alex or I, even having gone through the change, will be able to keep up with you five. We’re seeing more divergence between people going through the full change and those of us who’ve gone through the lesser version of the change. I’m not sure if any of us are qualified to teach you to the level you could achieve.”

“So then what do we do next year?” Zoe asked.

“That would be up to you. While our plan has always been sending you to a good college, things have clearly changed. We aren’t sure traditional education is the way to go. One, it introduces the same danger you’re running into from teachers now. Two, like I said, you five have advanced to a degree we aren’t equipped to cope with. I think, maybe, you just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s not like we have to worry about your being able to support yourselves when you ‘grow up’, and you’ve clearly found what you want to do.”

“Huh,” was all I could say as I processed it.

We were all young enough that ‘the future’ still seemed to be more schooling, with our post school lives an amorphous, undefined thing. Being confronted with the idea of jumping ahead, straight to the end game, was hard to really contemplate.

She wasn’t wrong, of course. We’d already started on what we wanted to do, long term. Next Step was the real goal, a way to solve issues and hopefully, find a way to spread our evolution through to the rest of the planet. Even the company was just a way to facilitate that. And since we were figuring this out as we went, it was hard to see what, exactly, we’d be getting from future education and training. On top of that, they were right. It hadn’t occurred to me how noticeable we’d be to people who worked with kids every day. Of course, once it was pointed out it was hard not to see.

“But do we all want to graduate two years early? If the idea was not to draw attention to us, I’d think that wouldn’t be the way to do it. We aren’t in a large school district. The idea of having five students all graduate two years early has to draw some attention. Wouldn’t it be better to just, pretend to be more normal at school.”

“We thought about that,” Mom said, “but there are two big problems with that. One, it would be obvious to anyone who knows you guys, especially if they’ve already been working with you, that you were holding back. That would create even more questions as they asked why. Two, we don’t want to hold you guys back. You’ve already started on some amazing stuff. The last thing we want to do is delay that, just to keep you hidden. Especially since we don’t think it would be all that successful at hiding you.”

“So, how do we do this?”

“We’ve already been talking to your principal. There will be some testing but, like I said, this isn’t an unknown. Other kids, have tested out early. Two years isn’t even the earliest it’s happened. There have been kids starting college as yearly as eleven or twelve, so you guys wouldn’t be shattering any records. The only thing that will draw attention is that there are so many of you at one time. We’ll work with your principal to try and keep that attention as minimal as possible, but ...”

She trailed off, letting the thought sit.

“Ok, well you guys figure it out,” Zoe said. “I’m actually a little excited to think that, in just a few months, we could be done with school. It will give us time to really focus on what’s important.”

“Speaking of that,” Vicki said. “We do have something. We talked to the contractor, and it looks like we’re way ahead of schedule. It looks like we’ll be able to open the new center as early as this weekend. We thought some of the inspection process would take longer, but I guess some people have gotten wind of what we are doing, and there’s hopes that our center will take some of the load off of the surrounding social services and clinics, so they agreed to speed things up.”

“Just because the building’s ready doesn’t mean we’ll be ready to actually open, does it?”

“No, but we’d already started staging some of the stuff, since we didn’t know when we’d be ready. Jonathan and Ted let us store it at one of the warehouses in your new facility. We have most of the stuff we need for the shelter part and everything we need for the classrooms and clinic. All of that can be ready as soon as Saturday. The food distribution will take longer, since we couldn’t actually start bringing in food until we were set up to store and distribute it. Especially the perishables. But if we’re ready for at least the clinic and to start planning out job training and getting people signed up, we want to do that.”

“What about marketing?”

“Yeah, it will be light,” Zoe said. “We can put out a press release tomorrow, and start spreading the word, but turnout won’t be huge. That’s probably a good thing. It will keep the initial run of people low, and only ramp up as people hear about us. That’ll let us work out the bugs before we start getting really slammed.”

“Which you will be,” Mom said. “I think you guys need to be prepared for the volume of people who will be looking for help. A lot of the charities in Houston are already strained to the max. There are a lot of people looking for help.”

“We know. We’ve talked to some of those organizations already. For a while, we’ll have to turn people away, at least until we can expand further, but that is, apparently, just the way it is in the charitable services world.”

“So this weekend huh?” I said.

“We were thinking Saturday,” Zoe said almost hesitatingly.

While I actually agreed with mom that this was a little premature, I couldn’t fault them for wanting to get started right away. They put a lot of time and energy into getting the center open, so it was only natural. And Zoe was probably right, this would keep the initial volume of demand down, letting them ease into this thing.

I had to eat that thought two days later when we pulled up in front of the new center, a large banner draped across the front of the building declaring it to be opened for business.

A line of people stretched from the front door, down one side of the long building and around the corner out of sight.

“Where did all these people come from?” I asked as I stepped out of the car.

“I don’t know,” Zoe said, looking more astonished than I felt. “Olivia said she’d talked to a few people to get the word out, but she made it seem like it wouldn’t do any thing. Speaking of...”

Zoe cut off as she looked in the direction of a Hispanic women walking quickly towards us. She was a small, thin woman with dark haired pulled into a non-nonsense bun, wearing jeans and a dark red blouse. A good combination of comfortable enough to do physical work and still professional.

“This is amazing,” Zoe said to her as she reached us. “From what you said on the phone, I thought the turnout would be much smaller.”

“I know, it’s crazy. I didn’t think we’d have time to get the word out, but I was able to get hold of a friend at social services. We’d already discussed some of what we wanted to do here and she had a long list of people who’d ... fallen through the cracks in the state system.”

“Are we ready for this kind of turnout?” Vicki asked.

“Partially. I’ve already spoken to most of the people in line and told them delays were going to be long today. Like I said on the phone, we aren’t set up at all for food distribution. I had to turn away a few people who were looking for that, but I called the food bank and got them a place in line over there.”

“How about the rest?”

“We’ll start taking signups for the continuing education class, but won’t actually start them for a few weeks, so we have time to get that taken care of. We were able to get one of the job counselors to come in today. She said she will also mostly be taking names and info, since she hasn’t had time to start reaching out to companies yet. The other three weren’t scheduled to have them start for a few weeks, and they all have to finish up their current jobs, so for the next few weeks, Niki, that’s the counselor who was able to start early, is going to be a little slammed. The one shining spot is the clinic. Your doctor friend called me right after you did, and said she’d heard we were opening early, and assured me we’d have a full staff here today ... which we do. She also made sure the mental health specialist was here.”

“It seems you’ve got a much better handle on this than you made it sound,” I offered.

She turned to look at me with a mixed expression of pride and confusion.

“Yea, I guess I do have a handle on it,” she said. “But we aren’t as ready as I’d hoped. I had some big plans for this.”

“Sorry to jump right into that. Cas, this is Olivia Presciado. We snagged her away from the Star of Hope, where she was the number two person over there. Olivia, this is Caspian Grey.”

“The infamous Caspian,” she said reaching out a hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Good, I hope,” I said, throwing a side glance at Zoe.

“Well, interesting at least. Still, I understand we really have you to thank for all this. I’ve been working in charities for almost ten years, and I haven’t heard of anything with such a broad mission before, or at least not one with the funding to pull it off.”

“I just want us to help people,” I said with a blush.

“That’s a good place to start. Well, I gotta run,” Olivia said looking at her watch. “Still have a lot to do, and we gotta start getting people inside. It was good meeting you Caspian. Zoe, Vicki, I’ll be around.”

“She sure has a lot of energy,” I said.

“You haven’t seen anything yet. She’s really very impressive.”

“Well, I guess we should go see what she’s accomplished.”

“Actually,” Zoe said, laying a hand on my forearm. “Before we go inside, there’s something you should probably know.”

Some of the things Olivia said raised red flags, and Zoe’s wanting to give me a warning about something before we went inside more or less confirmed those suspicions.

“Yeah,” I said, my face darkening. “This has to do with the medical setup, I’m guessing.”

“Alex did talk some of her techs into volunteering in the clinic, offering to count one day a week of volunteer work here as a work week in their lab. But that’s not what I wanted to mention.”

“Ok,” I said.

I hadn’t known Alex had done that, but I liked that part. Getting medical professionals to volunteer their time at clinics like this was not always easy.

“It has to do with the mental health professional,” she said, then paused.

“Whatever you’ve done, I’m sure you did it because you thought it was the right thing to do. You all seemed to be determined to do whatever you think is in my best interest, regardless of what my position on the matter is. It’s done now, so just say it.”

I made sure my tone wasn’t angry or accusatory. I knew they really did mean for the best, and had accepted this was going to be the way things went sometimes.

“In talking to people in the charity field, everyone seems to agree one of the biggest challenges they face is people with mental health problems, ranging from schizophrenia to PTSD and everything in between, having no real place to turn. These are people who need ongoing, monitored treatment and don’t have the personal safety net to help them. Since the eighties there hasn’t been much in the way of support for people with long term mental health problems, and the charities and social services that do exist to help them can only offer short term band-aids.”

“And we have something more long term,” I said.

It was a statement, not a question, and I was pretty sure what the long term solution was.

“Yes. We know what the change does to people with physical problems, and I talked to Alex and she is pretty sure it will do the same thing for most mental ailments as well. Well have to check them for being a genetic negative, of course, but those that aren’t we can cure. Their only option is life long medication with really bad side effects that, many times, drives the people off the drugs. It creates a big cycle that never fixes anything. I know you hate changing people without their permission, but these are people whose lives are, often, really really bad. I don’t think we should stand by when we can do something about it.”

“Won’t people notice if we start curing a lot of people with incurable problems?”

“Maybe, but maybe not. These are people who’ve fallen out of civilized society. Most of them live on the streets. No one is looking for them, no one is paying attention to them. I won’t lie, there’s some risk, but I think the risk is worth it.

I paused, pinching the bridge of my nose, and then said, “Well, I guess you’ve already done it. I’m not crazy about the solution, but I can’t argue your heart's not in the right place, and it seems you’ve thought this through. So who’s going to be doing the testing and giving the injections?”

“One of Alex’s people. She officially quit the lab and is working for Next Step. She was one of the first researchers, who were changed when we...uhh...”

“Went behind my back and changed everyone around me?”

Zoe rolled her eyes, but kept going, “She’s been changed, and because she was working on your samples, helping study your biology, she’s been told the full truth.”

“I didn’t know you guys were explaining everything to people I didn’t know.”

“Mom has,” Zoe said, crossing her arms defiantly. “She said some of her people had to know to do their jobs properly.”

“I guess I’m going to have to talk to her about this then,” I said, putting a smile on my face. I knew Zoe wouldn’t buy the attitude switch for a second, but she didn’t call me out on it either. “Let’s go check out opening day.”

Chapter 16

It was pretty late when we all got back to the house. Aside from the drive to get home, we stayed at the Center until it shut down for the night, and I have to say, I was pretty impressed with what they’d accomplished. I didn’t get to talk to the person they’d hired as a jobs counselor since, as Olivia had said, she was totally swamped. From our brief introduction, she seemed highly competent, though.

The clinic was also very impressive, and I’d met the person on duty at Mom’s lab during one of my previous visits. Most of the things she was dealing with, at least while I was there, were smaller ailments that people without insurance let go untreated. Things like rashes, infections, and poorly set breaks. Not difficult to treat really, but things that could become serious if not dealt with.

I avoided the ‘mental health’ office, and it was something I’d let fester on the drive home. I got why they wanted to change people with otherwise incurable mental conditions although I was still unhappy with putting people through the change without their permission. It was the idea that they’d told someone I hadn’t met or okayed the entire truth that bugged me. As much as Mom and Jawarski pressed me about the need for secrecy and not letting the truth slip, the fact that they just went and told someone new really bugged me.

I had to pull back from some of the people I met at school, quit all sports and keep my every move in check every day, and here they were just telling people.

By the time I walked into the house, I had built up a good mad and was ready for a fight.

“So, I hear we’re just telling anybody about our secret now, huh?” I said to Mom, who was in the den waiting for us to get home.

“If you want to discuss something specific, I’d be happy to talk with you,” she said, laying her book down on the couch next to her. “If you’re going to come at me with that attitude, you should just keep walking and go to your room until you calm down. Then we can discuss whatever has your pants in a bunch.”

I’d expected an angry response, or surprise. I had not expected a calm, even-tempered response, nor being put in my place in the same calm tone.

“I … that is …”

“How about you sit down and tell me why you’re upset?”

“I went to the Next Step center today,” I said, sitting down, “and I found out you gave the ok on telling their ‘mental health’ professional everything and gave the ok to change people without telling them what was happening.”

“Partially. I told Janet, that’s the ‘mental health professional’ you mentioned, the whole truth before we decided to let her work at the center. She was doing research on your blood with us, and we found there was no way we could use her and not tell her what she was seeing. She’d already asked questions and was starting to figure out some of the facts on her own. Not about evolution and all that, but that she was studying the blood from someone we had access to, since we kept getting new samples, and that person’s blood had some pretty amazing properties. We had to change her, and then explain everything to her to keep her from, in her excitement, mentioning what she figured out on her own to anyone else.”

“Why didn’t you ask me first?”

“For one, because I don’t work for you. You are my son in fact, if not through birth. I will, from time to time, make decisions on your behalf. I know you didn’t grow up in the normal nuclear family, so you haven’t encountered this before, but this is what parents do. You might be super smart and the cutting edge of what it is to be human, but you’re also sixteen years old. Experience counts for a lot, and I’m not too shabby in the brains department if I say so myself. Alex and I realized she had figured enough out to be a danger to us, and decided we needed to act fast to keep her from putting us in danger, even unintentionally. She’d met you already, so the loyalty portion of the change kicked in when we dosed her, and the scientist in her understood the benefits our study could produce, and the dangers you would be in if this became common knowledge.”

She was right. I hadn’t had a real parent before, but I understood what she said about a parent's job was true. Now that it was explained out to me, I couldn’t immediately see another option they had with the woman, nor any reason to doubt her description of what had or could have happened. I, however, did not like being shut down so easily when I’d come in knowing how right I was. It was a childish stubbornness, but like she pointed out, I was still sixteen.

“I still don’t think we should change people without their permission,” I said petulantly.

“Cas, we’ve been over this. You’ve said many times your end goal was to get the world ready for the next step of human evolution and spread that evolution to better mankind. Which is a stance I’ve always applauded. But we can’t do that and stay our small family group. We are at the point where we need to start expanding out or accept we will never be more than a small enclave that will eventually wither and disappear. This is an ideal place to start. One, these people have an illness that science cannot cure. Two, the people we are talking about are affected by their illness to the degree that they aren’t able to live in society anymore. They’re forced to live on the fringes in terrible conditions. Three, they have fallen off society's radar. It’s a selfish point, but they are a group we can change without coming under too much scrutiny. We are making their lives better, and forwarding our cause at the same time. This is as much a win-win scenario as I could ever imagine. Can you imagine a single person we treat would rather live in the grips of whatever’s troubling them if they knew the truth and could make a choice? Heck kid, this is the exact same argument you went with when changing Celia.”

She had me. I folded my arms and said, “Fine. I guess.”

“Don’t pout,” she said with a laugh. “It looks bad on you. I know you almost always get your way. You have followers that love you, and you’re regularly treated as the kid genius leading us into the future. Well, kiddo, you too are human. Another one of a mom’s jobs, is keeping your head from getting too big.”

“You’re doing excellent work then,” I groused.

“Why thank you,” she said with a smile, ignoring my tone. “Now, if you’re done with your snit, I have some news.”

I let out a huff of air. I knew she would only do what was best for me. I also knew I could trust her to make the right decision.

“I’m done being a brat. Go ahead with your news.”

“We passed our animal trials,” she said.

“Really? I thought it was going to take longer?”

“Normally, it would; but thanks to your new friends at MilTech, they put us in touch with some NIH folks that could help us push things along. I’m not a fan of the favoritism that drives so much of our government, but I figure if I have to live with it, I can take advantage of it. It helps that we encountered no complications at all with our treatment. It helps that our process includes no actual drugs, so there’s nothing to actually cause side effects.”

“So what does this mean?”

“Next we begin Phase I clinical trials. Its main goal is to identify negative side effects of the drug in otherwise healthy patients. We give small doses of our ‘drug’ to them, and record everything that happens.”

“Aren’t you worried about someone from the FDA seeing something they shouldn’t?”

“Not particularly. They are only looking for what they're expecting to see, or something actively happening to patients. People who go through the change don’t get radically stronger, or radically smarter. They do become immune to disease and alcohol, and drugs will no longer have an effect on them, but that isn’t something people will notice right away. We screen for both, and tell people those are not allowed on trial. And even afterward, how quickly do you think people will notice they’re no longer getting sick? How easily do you think they’ll connect the medical trial they got paid to do, with the fact that they aren’t getting drunk or high anymore? It requires a pretty huge leap to get there.”

“I guess,” I said, working through what she said and not immediately being able to plug holes in it. I wasn’t sure there would be no danger in it, but that was just a worry in the back of my brain for the moment. “How long will this last?”

“If everything goes right, which I can’t imagine it won’t, considering what our ‘treatment’ really is, we should probably move to Phase II trials this summer.”

“What’s Phase II?”

“We start testing the treatment on terminally ill patients, to see its effectiveness.”

“Won’t they notice when it’s one hundred percent effective?”

“That, they would notice. That’s going to be the hardest part, honestly. We’ve mixed your plasma with some other innocuous materials, to mask its presence. Some of the people we test will get the actual treatment and go through the change, and others will have to go through a version of the treatment without your plasma in it.”

“But, then they’ll probably die!”

“I know, and I hate it, but it means those we do give the actual treatment to will live. The alternative is we keep this to ourselves, and they all die. Or we give it to everyone, your secret becomes publicly known, something you seemed very concerned with earlier, and the chances of something happening that takes you from us, and gets rid of any future chances of doing this treatment, increases. I don’t like the idea of purposefully not helping some people any more than you do, but it’s what we have to do if we are going to help others. We won’t make them any worse than they are, at least.”

“But, while they’re on our trial, they won’t be on any others or taking any other medication which might save them.”

“I know. I’ve wrestled with this, I really have. The people in this trial will already be very sick, and their odds under any other trials I know of would already be pretty bad.”

“But after that? I know we said we are going to claim it requires a component that cannot be synthesized, and only our clinic can administer it, but wouldn’t someone notice if everyone who comes through gets cured?”

“Yes, and we’ll deal with that when we get there, but honestly, it’s this or not doing it at all. Which would you rather?”

“Yeah, ok. I just don’t like it.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s one of the reasons we all love you. We can only do the best we can, sweetie. No one asks you to be perfect or solve all of the world's problems. The only one who does that is you.”

“I guess.”

“We have some time anyway. Phase I we can do with the facilities we have now, but Phase II requires the new lab we’re building down near the new house, and your new offices. It’s not really going to be a lab anymore, but a small medical facility, including rooms for patients to stay while we’re doing tests on them. Anyway, that’s for another day. For right now, it’s late. I’m sorry to keep you up, but I wanted to share the news since its pretty exciting for us. You run off to bed.”

She held out her arms, and I got up, walked over to her, and got a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then headed up to join the girls.

I still wasn’t settled with the decision the next day, but I also realized this wasn’t going to be a battle I was going to win, at least not directly. I still wanted there to be some kind of actual process we went through if we decided to change someone, and definitely if we were going to bring someone into the circle.

I was sitting out on one of the benches in front of the school mulling that over a few days later. I didn’t need to head into the office since a lot of what we normally do was being moved to the new facility. That was actually a good thing since we’d already started moving a lot of our production down here, which meant moving most of the engineers. We were starting to become less productive as the administrative staff and the rest of the company were so far apart. Most of the office staff had headed down, renting apartments until the new sub-division was finished. Ted, Jonathan, and Marcus were all following my lead and building their own homes, although much smaller than what my family was doing.

I’d talked to Ted’s wife, and she was particularly happy. She always wanted to live in the country but had thought it would be something that would have to wait until he retired. Now, she had a small country house with a couple of acres. It was close enough for Ted to drive to work every day, and close enough to a large city to have access to that as needed.

What this all meant was that, for a few months at least, my schedule was more like that of a normal high school kid again, including waiting while my girlfriend finished cheerleading practice. I didn’t have to run to the offices every afternoon and would be doing most of my work remotely. It did mean I’d have to drive down to the new facilities every weekend, but the girls were going to need to go to the new Next Step center anyway, so we’d still all be together.

It did mean more of a headache for Jawarski since we’d be in hotel rooms every weekend. We’d keep switching where we stayed for security, but it still made it a pain for her. Mom was of two minds. She would have a little more peace and quiet on the weekends, since half the people who lived there would be gone, but she wasn’t crazy about her kids spending weekends away from home. At least she still had Tina and Judy in the house, and I had noticed her mothering of them had picked up. With Megan going back to school and Celia ‘cured’, Vicki’s mom would be back in the house next week, which was sure to multiply the mothering those two got.

I was pulled out of my thoughts by someone clearing their throat next to me. I looked up to find Josh standing next to me, and my stomach knotted. He had been acting more like the old Josh since his apology a few weeks before, but I was still waiting for Mister Hyde to come back.

“Mind if I sit,” he asked.

“Uhh, sure,” I said, sliding over to make room for him.

We sat next to each other for several minutes in awkward silence, while I tried to figure out what to do with my hands.

“Why are you here so late?” I finally asked, deciding I’d rather talk to him than live with the weirdness.

“Waiting on Amanda to finish practice.”

“Ohh, yeah, sorry. I guess missing all the games all year and taking off before they finish practice, I forgot she was on the team.”

“I get it. All that work must have paid off. Uncle Ted’s pretty excited to be moving down to his new house. Mom’s a little annoyed he’s going to be further away. I think she liked being able to call on him every time she needed something.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Stop apologizing dude. You guys are kicking ass. I haven’t seen Uncle Ted this excited in a long time. I just have to keep remembering that I found you, and hinting around at a finder’s fee.”

I gave a quick sidelong glance at him.

“Easy, it was a joke dude.”

“I know,” I said, although we both know that wasn’t true.

“Hey, I know I apologized and everything, but I don’t blame you for not trusting that, or me. I’ve been a giant pain in the ass all year. If I were you, I’m not sure I’d even talk to me. I get it I have a lot of work to do to get back in your good graces.”

“You’re good. I know learning about … everything hits everyone differently. To be fair, if I were you and found out what you did, I probably would have done the same thing. Especially with … everything.”

“If by ‘everything’ you mean blowing off school and taking steroids, basically screwing any future I have, then no, you wouldn’t have. I started down that road a long time before I found out you were a mutant.”

“It didn’t help.”

“Maybe not, but I was feeling sorry for myself. Here I was, a guy that got handed everything all his life, and I wasn’t cutting it. It’s tough to admit I was the one letting myself down.”

“It’s not too late to turn things around.”

“You haven’t seen my GPA yet dude.”

“We can fix that. You’re a smart guy. Some tutoring, we could turn your GPA around.”

“Maybe. No, not maybe. You’re right. Amanda’s been saying the same thing, but you know how pig-headed I am. I know you’re pretty busy, but I’ll talk to ‘Manda and see if she can help me set something up.”

“I’m never too busy for my friends. If you need something, want us to help set up a study program, or whatever, just ask.”

“Thanks, man, I’ll probably do that.”

We sat in silence a bit longer. It was still somewhat uncomfortable, but at least it wasn’t as weird as it was before.

“So I gotta ask. I’m dying to know what all this … thing of yours is.”

“Josh,” I said, warningly.

“No, no,” he said, holding up a hand defensively. “I’m not asking for you to tell me stuff you don’t want to, or asking you for anything really. I guess before when you explained it to me, I was too much in my own head and wasn’t really listening. I’m just curious what it all is. I mean, I know you’re faster than regular people, from what Amanda told me originally. And I know you and the girls are all in good shape and can run for damn near ever without tiring. But like, is it more than that. Is that why you’re such a good fighter?”

I didn’t answer right away. I could, and probably should shut down this conversation right where it was. But he’d offered an olive branch, and he wasn’t asking anything Amanda or anyone else who found out the truth hadn’t asked. It was perfectly natural curiosity.

If I shut him down now, I’d be shutting down any chance to salvage our friendship. More than that, it seemed like he was coming to terms with his own self-destructive habits. I knew I’d feel terrible if I was the cause of a backslide.

Of course, I really didn’t trust Josh, not yet at least. Meaning I’d have to be cagey on what I shared with him.

“Not really. It’s actually a pretty new thing. None of it really became ‘active’ until I was shot, last year. I’m a good fighter 'cause of all the training I did, although I won’t lie, my new abilities do make me better at it.”

“So like, you have super reflexes or something?”

“I’m not saying super. Better than average. From what we can tell, it’s not superhuman or anything, just heightened. There are probably people who’ve honed their body and reflexes who are better than me.”

“And you’re fast.”

“Again, not superhuman or anything. Just faster than the average person should be. Whatever it is that’s changed me, and we still have no idea why I started having these changes, basically heightened my physical abilities to the edge of what people can do. So I’m not the fastest person there is, not the strongest, not themost  agile. But I could reasonably compete with those who are.”

“Wow, that’s so cool. I wish your injury hadn’t driven you off the team last year.”

“It … didn’t.”

“Huh?”

“We were starting to worry about people noticing my, unusual increase in ability. It was decided that it would be better for everyone if I stopped playing sports.”

“Ohh, but, you could be in the NFL. That's awesome.”

“Don’t think the idea didn’t cross my mind, but that would be a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“What would the government do if they knew there was someone like me out here, with special abilities? I’d end up being grabbed by military guys in the middle of the night, and put on an autopsy table so they could figure out what makes me special, and use it to make a newer, better soldier. 'No thank you,' to that.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“That’s what I’d tried to warn you and Amanda about before when you guys first learned the truth. If people found out about the girls and me, it would almost certainly end up in our deaths. What government wouldn’t want to find out how to reproduce that? There’d be a bounty on our heads for sure.”

“Ohh. Dude. I didn’t tell anyone, I swear.”

“I know, I wasn’t suggesting anything. I was just trying to explain why I couldn’t use this to be in the NFL or get rich or famous.”

“Well, you already managed to get rich.”

“That was just dumb luck.”

“That’s not what Uncle Ted says.”

“He’s just being nice.”

“Ha. You never spent Thanksgiving with him them. So, like, do the girls you sleep with get these powers? I mean you passed them on to Vicki and Zoe and Tami, and I think the Emily girl too.”

“Yeah. The … uhh … mixing of our biology alters their physical structures. Not like mine, but close. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t change you. I mean, I like you and all, but I’m not ok doing what I’d need to do to pass it on to you.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to do that either. Can the girls do the same thing? Pass on the powers and stuff I mean?”

“We don’t think so. You know Zoe’s mom’s a geneticist right? She and a doctor friend of ours have been researching my biology for more than a year now, and everything they can find says I’m the only one who can make the change.”

“Too bad. 'Cause if you could then you could, like, hook up with Amanda and then she’d be able to pass it on.”

I looked at Josh in surprise. Even aside from the fact that I wouldn’t possibly want to sleep with someone just to pass over the change, he and Amanda had been practically tied together since I met them. On top of that, I’d always had the impression that Josh was the jealous type. That he’d be willing to let someone sleep with Amanda just to benefit him boggled the mind. That didn’t even count Amanda’s reaction to being handed off to someone else. She’d always been very vocal in her beliefs on women's rights, and the idea that a man could trade her for anything would go against everything I’d ever seen from her.

“Uhh, I’m not sure that would have been a good idea, even if it was possible.”

“I’m just joking,” he said, slapping me on the back.

Every time someone says something with a totally straight face and then says it was a joke when the reaction goes against them practically confirmed that it wasn’t a joke in the slightest.

“Don’t let Amanda hear you joke like that, she’d have you neutered if she heard it,” I said with a feigned laugh.

Thankfully, the girls and Amanda all emerged from the field at that moment, carrying their bags, ending the conversation.

The girls chatted for a few minutes, and then we all split off, with Josh and Amanda going their own way. My mind, however, was not in their conversation at all, and I replayed what Josh had said while we talked.

I was glad Josh was over the aggressively angry behavior he’d had for the last several months, and he was making an attempt to repair our relationship. But that last bit made me stop and reconsider. Was this really an attempt to fix things, or was this just a new strategy to get what he wanted?

Chapter 17

The week went by, and I kept getting weird vibes off of Josh. Most of the time he seemed genuine, acting like the guy I made friends with the previous year. Every now and then though, that mask would slip, and I’d see a glimpse of something else. Josh had always been fairly blunt and straight forward, both when he was being friendly and when he was threatening me. This new scheming Josh had me concerned. I didn’t think he’d make this type of behavioral change on his own, especially since in no other part of his life had he seemed to make a major shift.

I didn’t ask him directly, but I kept my eyes open, and what I saw said this wasn’t a genuine change. His grades continued to suffer, and he’d been caught cheating again just recently. It was hard to say if he was still taking steroids since he’d always been huge and he wasn’t in any organized sports anymore.

I’d talked it over with the girls, and they confirmed that Amanda had been concerned about his behavior too. They did say she’d told them he’d gone back to being the ‘old Josh’ recently, but I was nearly certain that was another ploy, like the one he was trying on me. We all agreed that for now at least, we didn’t want to start pointing that out to Amanda. She’d already had a tough few months dealing with his darkening personality, and I didn’t want to start poking holes in her current good mood until we had something more than just my suspicions.

Yet again, Josh was something that would have to go on the back burner until something new happened to change the current status quo. Which was good; because even with my workload being lower while the company moved, we still had a lot going on.

By the weekend we were back down near Houston, we met at the new offices, catching up on what had happened the previous week; and with the girls over at the center, which after the grand opening had only gotten busier.

Thankfully, work was actually easing up a bit. While we had Ronald out in the field working out issues and getting the new desalination plant fully operational, and Douglass working with some consultants from MilTech on the new battery and solar panels, the move had still put a freeze on a lot of things.

About ten percent of the staff had decided to take the severance packages we’d offered, deciding they didn’t want to move. The rest were in the process of moving into the new offices. Most of them were doing what I was doing, but in reverse. They’d spend their weeks down at the new facilities staying in extended stay apartments and then commute back to Alice to be with their families on the weekends.

They were all planning on buying into the new houses or condos we were building, but until those were finished, they’d have to commute. A third group of employees were already making their moves. These were the people that decided to live in one of the suburbs that made up the outskirts of Houston, deciding that having a thirty to forty-five-minute commute to the office every day was offset by living closer to a built-up area with more amenities.

Of course, the office moving slower didn’t mean it had stopped moving. Within thirty minutes of getting to the office Saturday morning, Douglass and Ted came bursting into my new office.

“We’ve got good news my boy,” Ted said as Douglass threw himself into a chair facing my desk.

“Good news?” I asked.

Considering how things had gone over the last year, it was always fifty-fifty.

“You could say that,” Douglass said.

“Aaron must have been more impressed by the demonstration than it seemed, because he’s been pushing to get us in to do a 'show and tell' with the folks at NASA, and he’s been using some of his bigger contacts to make it happen.”

Considering the kind of contacts that MilTech, the company Aaron Baxter ran, had, that was saying something.

“And?”

“He got us a presentation with them three weeks from this coming Monday,” Douglass said excitedly. “I just hope some of the people that called my ideas ‘a waste of resources’ will be there to see it.”

“Me too,” I said.

Douglass had been let go of his job with NASA when he pushed some of his ideas for more efficient batteries and solar panels. They’d felt that technology was stable, and NASA resources were better used in other areas.

“The question is,” I continued, “will we be ready? This could be big for us.”

“No doubt,” Ted said. “We’ve been going over everything this week, and so far, we look good. We plan on running the demonstration a few more times internally over the next few weeks to make sure we don’t have any surprises.”

“Trust me, I’m not going to ruin the chance to show those jerks what they missed,” Douglass added.

I’d never seen him worked up like this. Normally, he was one of the nicest if a bit scatterbrained, people I’d met. It was unusual to see a vindictive side come out. Of course, considering what had been done to him, and the fact that he’d been ready to kill himself over it when I found him, his attitude was understandable.

“I have no doubt. If you don’t mind, let's go over how we present it a few times now. I’d like to see what our plan is and see if I can come up with any ideas to screw it up.”

Thankfully, they laughed at my self-depreciation, not that I was completely joking. If I stopped to think about it, sometimes I still had problems adapting to where my life had gone, and the idea I was here giving input and suggestions on things like this.

Those thoughts were quickly pushed aside as we began going over the presentation, spending the rest of the day making small refinements.

By the time the girls called and said they were ready to knock off for the day, my mind had been wrung out. While the repetition of going through a major presentation is a good idea, it can become draining after a while.

They had the SUV we’d driven down in, dropping Emily, Jawarski, and I off at the offices earlier that morning, so we had to wait as they got waved through the security gate and pulled up to the office building to pick us up.

“I want to go by the new house before we head home,” I said when they pulled up.

“Why? It’s barely started,” Vicki said.

“I know, I just want to see it.”

She shrugged and got out of the driver's seat so Jawarski could take over. She’d declared some time back that she wasn’t going to trust her life to any punk teenagers, no matter how superhuman they may be, and that she’d drive whenever we went anywhere.

Emily and I piled into the back with Zoe and Vicki, with Tami up front. It was a modest size SUV, but it was still just a five-seater, making the back seat cozy. Not that I minded much, considering who the other occupants were.

Vicki hadn’t been wrong. The house was only in the beginning stages, and couldn’t even be called a house yet. Rather, it was a giant hole in the ground, with concrete going down as they built out the underground portions of the house, which were more accurately called a bunker.

Still, seeing what was essentially the footprint of the house in person, was much different than just looking at the blueprints. While it was clear the house would be fairly massive in size, seeing the giant hole in the ground brought home how big this thing would be.

I had a moment of embarrassment, if only internally, as I considered how absurd it was that my new house was going to be so huge. But it was only a moment, since I also realized just how many people would be living there every day, and that didn’t count the security people who would be around all the time. Jawarski had already started interviewing new staff, specifically to guard the house.

We didn’t spend long looking it over since everyone was tired, but I was glad we’d stopped at seeing it.

“Now that that’s done, we had an idea we wanted to float past you,” Zoe said once we were all back in the car and headed home.

“You don’t have to float anything by me, you know. Next Step is your baby, I’m just the money.”

“Yeah, but after talking to some of the people at the center, we’ve started to realize a big area we’ve ignored.”

“Which is?”

“Legal help,” Vicki said. “You’d be surprised how much something as simple as a speeding ticket or a ticket for out of date registration can destroy a family living hand to mouth. And once they get into the cycle of trying to clear up the first ticket which has started getting added fines and fees. It can quickly become a massive problem. That doesn’t count people who're family members make poor choices, usually drugs, and end up bankrupting the whole family in the process. We also met a man who’d taken out everything he had to buy a new car from a guy but was pulled over in a not so great neighborhood, and the money was taken from him in a civil forfeiture.”

“I’ve seen some of that on the news before, but how does that intersect with the center?”

“Because some of these people are really being affected by it, and they can’t afford any kind of legal help. Landlord disputes where people don’t have hot water or electricity, people who were scammed out of money, all these things require lawyers, and they can’t afford them. Sometimes it pushes people out on the street.”

“I can see how it’s something we could use. If not actually legal help, maybe some form of counseling, but you should probably talk to Jonathan about that.”

“I actually called him. He said he’d talk to us about the idea, but also suggested you talk to the Judge of yours. The one from the CPS investigation you changed. He said that guy was probably looking for a way to make restitution, and also there was a good chance he was bored in the apartment you stashed him in. Besides all that, he’ll have a very different view of what people do or don’t need than Jonathan said he did and would be a good judge of what we should be looking at doing.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I needed to go by there sometime this week and follow up on some of the stuff we’d copied from the stuff Damion got for us. I’ll go by tomorrow and talk to him.”

Something between a grunt and a snarl came from the front seat, drawing my attention.

“You made your opinion very clear,” I said to Jawarski, who glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “I know you think it’s a bad idea from safety. I can even see why that’s probably true, but if we don’t find a way to take these guys down, we’ll spend the rest of our lives dealing with safety concerns. I can’t do that bundled up inside a house.”

“You’re the boss, do whatever the hell you want to do. What do I know about protecting people anyways,” she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Don’t be like that. I’ve been trying to listen to you more about this stuff, but you know I’m right.”

“I know you’re something alright,” she muttered under her breath.

Over the last several months I’d figured out how to read Jawarski’s responses, since everything was being filtered through her genetic annoyance at me. I was happy that thanks to the shots Mom and Alex had devised, it had thankfully dropped from genetic hatred to genetic annoyance at least. But that annoyance was still very strong, and I’d been forced to learn to interpret it.

Even without being a genetic negative, Jawarski was as stubborn as a mule. I’d already had to intercede between her, Carter and Levi. It hadn’t happened a lot, but sometimes she would dig in and refuse to compromise, despite the arguments being made. So, adding that to the genetic response to me specifically, she couldn’t seem to ever just agree to something I’d said, or even let me get the last word. I’d figured out by now that generally, if she started muttering insults at me, it meant she’d accepted my argument and was prepared to go with it, even if she wouldn’t say that out loud.

The next day found us heading towards where Jawarski had stashed Davis and his wife. While they weren’t that far from our house, only a mile or so outside of Alice, it took us almost forty-five minutes to get there, as Jawarski doubled and tripled back, checking the mirrors for a tail.

Eventually, she must have accepted that her maneuvers had been successful since we pulled up to a row of townhouses she’d rented through some third party cutout. I’d asked for more information on how that worked, but she told me to let her do her job, and that I should keep my mind on what I needed to do. She also added in the normal descriptions of my various flaws, but that was just punctuation at this point.

Davis opened the door and let us in, a surprised look on his face.

“Caspian,” he said as he shut the door. “I thought we’d only be seeing your intermediaries until this business was resolved.”

“That was the plan, but something came up I wanted to talk to you about.”

“More problems?” he said as we sat down on one of the couches in their front room.

“No, it’s totally separate issue. First, let's talk about what you found in that information we dropped off?”

“Like I said, I wasn’t actually involved with the organization …”

I held up a hand stopping him and said, “I know. I just wanted your insight.”

“I wrote all my notes here,” he said, handing over a small notebook. “Some of the company names I saw mentioned in the ledgers you had, I recognized. They’d had me fix a few cases before I moved over to family court when I was still assigned to civil cases. Those companies were the ones involved. Usually, the cases had to do with accusations of fraud or inconsistencies with their books. I wrote down everything I could remember from those cases. A few of the names also seemed familiar, again from the same cases. People who were listed as principals of the companies under review.”

Jawarski took the notebook from him, “That will actually help. We’ve been trying to figure out how the syndicate is organized. It's pretty clear they aren’t into traditional criminal venues, at least not in any major way. Everything we can find, is made up of smaller companies gaming the system, or completely twisting the system, to make money; and it looks like a lot of money.”

“Does that mean you’re ready to do something about them?” Davis said, sounding hopeful.

“Not yet. We know more about their operation, but we’re not even sure we can do anything about them. We’re still working on options.”

“Ohh,” he said, deflated.

“We’re getting there though,” I interjected, seeing his reaction. “We’re closer now, thanks to your help.”

He gave a wan smile, knowing I was offering more in the way of platitudes than actual hope.

“Well, that’s all I had on that. What else did you need?”

“This is completely separate to our dealings with the syndicate. Some of my family have been working on a large charity project, trying to help people who’ve fallen off society's radar.”

“I remember seeing mentions of some kind of charity work in the papers Mrs. Bell submitted. Considering I’d been ordered to torpedo your case, I honestly didn’t take a look at them though.”

I frowned at the memory of the load the whole event had put mom under, but I knew he wasn’t ultimately the one to blame. And considering he’d had to basically walk away from a career he’d worked on his whole adult life, he’d paid for his mistakes.

“Well, we’ve opened a new center near Houston, offering things like free medical checkups, job training and placement assistance, and stuff like that. But it was brought up that another thing we could do, is to offer some sort of legal help for people who can’t afford a decent lawyer.”

“Whoever told you that is right.”

“I was hoping I could pick your brain a bit on what’s needed. I’m not sure I understand what the problem we’re trying to solve is.”

“Well,” he said, leaning back, “the problem is, the current system we have for legal defense is overloaded to the point of being nearly useless. The system itself is well-intentioned but massively underfunded. The government pays out a very small amount for lawyers to act as court-appointed attorneys, meaning very few except the inexperienced looking to get court time, or the occasional true believer, volunteer for the work. Most counties maintain a public defender’s office, funded directly by the state, but again, not very much money is put into that, so their staff is, again, extremely green in most cases. Some states require law firms to put in a set number of hours handling court-appointed cases, but the firms basically use that as a dumping ground for lawyers they can’t get rid of, but don’t want to be involved in their real cases, or to try out some of their more green attorneys.”

“So the people who work as public defenders are usually not very good at their job?”

“I don’t want to make it sound like they’re bad lawyers, some of them are very smart. But when it comes to criminal defense and dealing with prosecutors, experience counts for a whole lot. That’s not the biggest problem, though.”

“What is the biggest problem?”

“The volume of cases. Most of the cases get assigned to state-run public defenders offices. Even in very large jurisdictions, these offices do not have very many lawyers, and each is usually dealing with dozens of open cases at a time. I’ve even seen some instances of a public defender actively working on more than a hundred cases. They just don’t have the time to do the work needed for most trials. Which leads us to the problem of the current plea bargain system.”

“What’s the problem, people admit what they did and save the courts money, and get lower sentences, right?”

Jawarski snorted at me, but I ignored it.

“That’s the idea of plea bargains, and in theory, they’re a good idea; but that’s not how they work out in practice.”

“Then how does it actually work out?”

“Most prosecutors don’t want to go to trial. There’s a chance they could lose, something no prosecutor wants, and trials take a lot of work. They’d rather save their time for the high profile cases, and get some good press, and not have to focus on the smaller cases that make up the bulk of our criminal system. Keep in mind prosecutors are elected, so the prosecutorial record is very important to them.”

“Okay.”

“So they generally find it in their best interest to get cases to plead out and never go to court. To make sure that happens, most prosecutors tend to significantly overcharge, in hopes of scaring a defendant into agreeing with something lower. They stack up the charges, many of which couldn’t actually hold up through trial, and tell the defendant they are looking at two lifetimes of jail, or whatever. Then they tell them they would settle for two years if they plead guilty. A guilty plea saves the prosecutor from having to find evidence, prepare witnesses, and so on.”

“Doesn’t the public defender point out most of the charges wouldn’t stick in court?”

“Sometimes, but usually they don’t know which charges are the weak charges. Remember, they have so many cases. Usually, they only have time to look at the facts briefly. Also, keep in mind these guys defend both the people being railroaded into charges and the actual bad guys who deserve that kind of treatment, and both groups always maintain their innocence. It’s hard to tell which client is someone who made a mistake, but isn’t a bad guy from the real scum that our system was meant to catch up.”

“I can see how that would be a problem.”

“Also, our justice system handles a lot of people not able to assist in their own defense. Our courts and jails have become the main venue to deal with people suffering from major mental illnesses, and police and lawyers their main caretakers. Which makes cases no one has time for, often even more complex.”

“So what can be done to make it better?”

“Aside from some better state funding of the public defender's system or a law taking the burden of mental health off the courts, not a lot. There are the people who are generally innocent but railroaded into pleading guilty. It’s not that common, but it happens more than you’d think. There are a lot of people who make mistakes, small amounts of drugs, fights that get out of hand, that are generally not bad people. They could use a real defense with the time to look at their case and push back against overcharging. I’m not talking about keeping people from paying for their crimes but making sure they’re only paying for the crimes they actually committed. That would take money and a process for weeding out the bad apples looking to get a good, free defense, but who will be back in trouble the minute they get out.”

“What if someone was willing to find the money to do that? Maybe not for everyone, but for some people? What if they could find a dependable way to weed out the bad apples? Could someone like that make a difference?”

“Maybe, if it was handled right. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone really tried so I couldn’t say.”

“What if I said we wanted to do something like that, we were willing to put up serious money, but we needed to find someone who knew the legal system, and was willing to do what it took to make it work?”

“I’d say whoever you found would be in for a hell of a big job.”

“How would you feel about taking on a big job like that?”

“Me?” he said, surprised.

“Why not you? You definitely know the legal system.”

“But, I mean, after what I did. Why would you want me? Hell, I might even have to spend some time in jail myself, for what I did.”

“Maybe, but Jonathan said he didn’t think so, considering the situation. I know you aren’t a bad person, and what you did wasn’t what you wanted. I just want you to think about it. You have a lot of knowledge about something we know very little about. Considering everything, we have every reason to trust you, now. Also, I’m afraid even if you don’t go to jail, you won’t be able to be a judge again.”

“I don’t …”

“Think about it. I need to talk to the people actually in charge of the charity, but the more I think about this, the better of an idea I think it is. You don’t have to decide now. We can’t let you come out of hiding or have a whole lot of contact with the outside world until after everything is settled, so you have some time. Once it is decided, though, I think it’s an excellent idea.

“Well, we have to get going, but think about it,” I said, standing up.

“It’s something to think about,” he said with a distracted expression.

We said our goodbyes and left a somewhat flummoxed Judge Davis in our wake.

I was looking forward to telling the girls the good news. We hadn’t actually discussed bringing the Judge in to take up their idea of legal defense, but I was pretty sure they’d like the idea when I presented it to them. Not that it was set in stone. Next Step was still their baby, and I wasn’t going to force any decisions on them.

My good mood fell as soon as I stepped into the living room. Amanda was sitting on one of the couches, surrounded by Mom, all of the girls, and Megan, who must have driven up from school. Everyone looked up as I walked in, and their expressions were grim.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Zoe hurried over to me. Taking me by the arm, she nudged me out of the room and back into the hallway.

“Josh is missing.”

“What do you mean missing?”

“I mean no one can find him. He was supposed to go out with Amanda tonight, and he didn’t show. She called his mom, and apparently, he left, saying he was going to pick Amanda up around the time of their date, and that’s the last anyone heard from him.”

“Have you called the cops?”

“She did, but they said there was nothing they could do yet.”

“Why?”

“Because he hasn’t been missing very long,” Jawarski said from behind me.

I hadn’t heard her walking up, but she must have realized something was wrong and hung around instead of heading home after seeing me safely in my house.

“But he’s missing?”

“I know, but the policy on missing person cases is at least seventy-two hours must have passed before you can file an incident on it.”

“Why? I mean, he told his mom he was going somewhere, but he didn’t show up. That means he's missing.”

“To give it a chance for the person to come back. A lot of missing person cases turn out just to be the person deciding to go somewhere without telling anyone, or getting hurt and ending up in the hospital, unable to call home yet. If the police chased every missing person case as soon as someone didn’t show up where they were supposed to be, they’d never have time to do anything else.”

“Ok, but that doesn’t stop us from looking for him, right? I mean, has Josh ever blown Amanda off before?”

“Not without at least texting or calling her,” Zoe said.

“Then we go look for him. Check accident reports, hospitals, stuff like that. I’ll go …”

“No,” Jawarski said forcefully.

“I know you don’t want me roaming around town, but …”

“No buts. He’s someone in your circle, if not close to you. This could be a move by the Syndicate. I’ll call my people, and we’ll look into it if you want, but you aren’t going anywhere.”

“Why in the world would they go after Josh of all people?”

“We don’t know how much they know about people in your orbit. From the outside, it might look like he’s closer to you than he is. I’m not saying that’s what’s happening, but we have to take it into account.”

“Fine, I’ll stay here, you go look for him.”

“Sure,” she said, giving a glance at Zoe and then headed out towards her car.

Zoe and I headed back into the living room and over to Amanda. She looked up, her eyes red and puffy.

“Hey,” I said, kneeling down in front of her.

“Hey,” she said.

“I’ve talked to some of my people, and they’re going to start looking for Josh, right now. Jawarski and Carter both used to be cops, so they’ll know where to start. We’ll find him, okay?”

“Thanks, Cas,” she said with a sad smile. “I appreciate it, especially with how he’s been.”

“That doesn’t matter. He’s still our friend, and so are you. We’ll do our best to find him.”

She sighed, new tears leaking down her face as she nodded. She whipped away the fresh tears and sniffed, but her shoulders had relaxed some, and I hoped she was at least a little reassured.

I only hoped I wasn’t making a hollow promise. If the Syndicate did get a hold of him, it was hard to say what they’d do with him. Anything I could think of wasn’t very good.

Chapter 18

Two days passed with no word from Josh. Amanda and Josh’s parents went to the cops after the ‘waiting’ period to report a missing person, but the cops didn’t seem concerned. Considering Josh’s behavior lately - especially the steroid use - they seemed to not take it very seriously. According to Amanda, they made hints that they thought he had perhaps gotten into other drugs, or just run away. They’d promised to look for him, but no one was taking that seriously.

More worryingly, Jawarski and Carter weren’t having any luck either. They were able to track his last movements after he talked to Amanda and said he was on his way. They’d gotten surveillance video from the business that showed Josh pulling up to a pump and walking off camera. The car sat there for almost twenty minutes, with Josh never returning to put gas in the car.

In one top corner of the video, you could see what looked to be Josh’s legs, identified by the shoes he was wearing, next to another set. From the small frame, it seemed to show Josh and the other person, apparently a man from the stance and style of clothing, but that wasn’t certain, talking for ten minutes. Then the two sets of feet walk away, disappearing off screen.

Ten minutes after that, two unknown men walked up to Josh’s car. One got in the passenger’s seat, and the other filled the car with gas. Then he joined his buddy, and they drove off in Josh’s car. That was the last Jawarski had been able to find of the vehicle. They’d had people talking to witnesses near the gas station and in all directions away from it, as well as talking their way into a video that pointed in the direction of the street, but they hadn’t found anything. The car, and Josh, just vanished.

Carter talked to the clerk in the convenience store, but he’d burned himself out on who knows what over the years and had wasn’t able to remember anyone who’d stopped at the station that day, let alone Josh. Both Levi and Jawarski agreed that the two people that left with Josh’s car had been in the military, and both kept the style after the service, with modern style combat boots currently used by the military, and the prototypical GI haircuts. They said it went beyond that to the way the two guys carried themselves.

Of course, that didn’t say what military they’d been in, or how long they’d been out. Both agreed that the men looked to be armed. They also both agreed these were not the same types of people we’d encountered so far, when dealing with the Syndicate. That didn’t mean the Syndicate wasn’t involved of course, since they could have easily hired outside contractors; but it also left the door open to other possibilities, which wasn’t helpful.

Carter had started searches for the two men from the surveillance video pictures of them, but so far they’d had no luck.

I’d talked to Amanda, who was still distraught, and told her some of what we'd found. That he’d been seen at the gas station after talking to her on the phone and two men had been seen driving off in his car. We also shared the information with the police, who once again found reasons to brush it off. After talking to the girls, we all agreed to not tell her about the men who’d left in Josh’s car. We showed the police of course, but Amanda spent most days on the verge of a breakdown. Knowing about the men would open up new paths of thought for her that were much more ominous, and might have pushed her over the edge.

Thankfully, not everything we’d been looking into had stalled. Two days after we hit a brick wall into looking for Josh, Jawarski had shown up at my house with Carter in tow.

“Where are we?” I asked as soon as they sat down.

“Nowhere,” Jawarski said bluntly. “Both he and his car are in the wind.”

“So what’s our next step?”

“We wait,” Carter said.

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much. Sometimes you just have to wait until something changes.”

“Well, that’s great. I’m surprised cases ever get solved by the police, if part of their strategy is just ‘wait until something changes’.”

I knew I was snotty, but I felt responsible for what happened to Josh.

“A lot of cases don’t get solved,” Carter said. “Think of investigations as trying to read a story when you only have a few pages in the book which have writing on them. In this case, we just see part of the front cover. We are missing a lot of information, and even the information that would lead us to the information we need to understand what’s happening. Without context, we could forever be looking in the wrong place. It’s why cases go cold. Eventually, something new will pop up, and we’ll see a little more of the story, and be able to make new guesses. We’ll find his car, or he’ll pop up on a surveillance tape, or one of a million things, and we’ll know a little bit more. Maybe that little bit more will be the key to cracking the whole thing.”

“But we already know a lot. I mean, it seems impossible that this isn’t connected to us. Considering everything we’ve been up against, it has to be. If I wasn’t here, and more likely if we weren’t poking at the Syndicate, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“We have no way to know that,” Jawarski said. “As much as you like to think so, the world doesn’t revolve around you. People go missing every single day, and Josh was already in the vulnerable category. He’s been taking drugs, alienating himself from friends and family, cut off from the things that he valued the most. It’s just as likely his disappearance would have happened, had you never stepped foot in this town.”

“So that’s it, we just do nothing?”

“We aren’t doing nothing.”

“Carter just said…”

“That we wait, and that’s what we are going to do. That doesn’t mean we’re doing nothing. We will continue to monitor for him, look for his car, and search for anything connected to him.”

“Fine, we’re ‘monitoring’ the situation. If that’s it, then why are you here? We seem to be exactly where we were two days ago.”

“We’re here because we do have something in other areas,” Carter said.

“What other areas?”

“The Syndicate. We’ve finished going over everything we got from Damion, and cross-referencing it with what we got from the Ledger you and Beth recovered, along with stuff publicly available.”

“Ohh,” I said, moving to the edge of my seat.

I was still upset about Josh, but this was also big news. The faster we got rid of the Syndicate, the better since it’d make everyone around me instantly safer.

“We’ve nailed down a huge number of payoffs, and we’ve identified several public figures and members of several police departments on their payroll. We’re certain what we can identify is only a fraction of what they’ve bought off, but it’s still enough to create a major scandal. Beyond that, we’ve also identified dozens of financial crimes, and millions of dollars in graft and straight out theft. Less certain, we’ve also identified what we think are several connected murders, although those are a bit murkier.”

“Ok. And what do we do with all that? How do we use that to take them down? Do we just slip it to that reporter Deep Throat style?”

“No,” Carter said with a head shake. “At least not now. That would generate scandal and public attention, but isn’t guaranteed to sweep the operation up. Once we pull the trigger on this, we want to make sure we take them down. Wounding an organization like this but not taking them down for good would make them more dangerous to you than if we’d just left them alone.”

“To that end,” Jawarski said, picking up the explanation. “We’ve talked to Jonathan, and he has a contact at the FBI. From everything we can find, the Syndicate's influence is limited. They’ve completely infested the local and county governments, and have a lot of hooks into the state government, but have limited infiltration at the federal levels. From what we can find, their work at getting control of MilTech was an early attempt at moving into bigger ponds. The VP they’d used as a primary contact was apparently corrupted by them much earlier, and they just got lucky he’d gotten an offer for a management position at a defense contractor. That’s part of why they have such a hate on for you. It seems you’re interference with that, basically shutting them out of Miltech altogether, has stymied their attempts to get the real money that comes from feeding off of bigger fish. For right now at least, it seems we’re clearly going to the FBI.”

“So we pass the info to the FBI, and then what?”

“We wait.”

“There seems to be a lot of that.”

“This is different,” Carter said. “We’re handing over what will be a career-making case for someone running a field office. It's enough corruption with just enough murders, to be national news when it breaks. We’ve already done a lot of the groundwork for them, identifying a lot of the players in the organizations, and obtained original documents from that group. This is a no-brainer, and they’ll move fast to build a case and make arrests. No, this won’t be like Josh. We might not see anything in a few weeks or even a month, but in a few months, there will definitely be a big movement. We just have to keep out of sight, and more specifically, keep your head down, till that happens.”

“So, what do we do?”

“We don’t do anything. You keep avoiding them, and let us get the info into the right hands. If they take the case, and we think they will, you’ll need to stay as far from them as you can. The last thing we need is the FBI to start poking around us as well. We might not be dirty, but we do have things we want to hide from them."

“Fine, I’ll be a good boy and keep my head down. Please keep looking for Josh, but I appreciate the hard work. Good job both of you.”

Carter gave me a nod, and Jarwarski an eye roll, but I could tell they both liked hearing compliments on their work, despite how little they showed.

Of course, now I had to do the thing I was the worst at: waiting.

There were some distractions, at least. We’d been keeping most of what was happening with the Syndicate away from Tina and Judy, trying to let the girls have as normal of a high school life as they could. We still weren’t sure what we were going to do about them when we moved.

The girls and I could test out and graduate early, no problem, but Tina and Judy still needed to go to school. While the normal change, which both girls had been through, increased intelligence, it did so to a much smaller degree than what the girls, who went through the more advanced form of the change, got.

Tina and Judy would have advantages that would help them in school, and would ensure that they’d graduate at the top of their class, but it was unlikely they’d be able to graduate multiple years early. Also, considering they were a couple of years behind us, we’d need to figure out something for next year. Mom was working on that, but so far we hadn’t figured anything out.

This all, however, meant that both girls were doing all the normal high school things. To help that, we’d also limited how much they were allowed to be involved in the various other projects the family had going. They were aware of them, of course, but we all agreed it was better for them to enjoy high school. I might not have had the experience the girls all did, and they all thought the younger two would regret giving up those experiences later.

So it wasn’t terribly unsurprising when Tina came downstairs on Friday night and announced a boy was coming by to pick her up. I remembered the boy she’d dated the previous year, and how badly that’d gone, so to say I was worried was an understatement.

“A what?” I asked when she blurted out her announcement.

“A date. For a guy with, like, ten girlfriends, I’d assumed you knew what one of those was.”

“Smartass,” I said, giving a side-eye to Tami, who was chuckling. “Who is this kid?”

“His name’s Rick. He’s in my English class.”

“And you’re just telling us now?” I asked.

“I told Mrs. Bell a couple of days ago, she said it was ok.”

“You didn’t tell me?” I said petulantly.

“Well, you’re not my parent or my guardian. I don’t have to get your permission. I’m just telling you now so you won’t freak out when he comes to pick me up. I figured you could get your freak out done now instead.”

“She’s got your number,” Tami said off-handedly.

“Sure, you don’t need my permission,” I said, ignoring Tami. “I just thought, considering how things went last time …”

“He isn’t Steven,” she said, cutting me off. “I know you mean well Cas, but sometimes you think you’re responsible for everyone around you, and you aren’t. I do care what you think of the boy I choose to date, but I still have the right to choose, preferably without a lecture.”

“Fine,” I said, sitting back, “no lecture from me. If he turns out to be another jackass though, I’m not gonna hold my tongue.”

“Yes, ‘Dad.’ He should be here any minute. I’ll let you meet him if you promise to be nice.”

“Scouts honor,” I said holding up a hand.

“I don’t think that’s how that goes,” Tami said again, looking up from her book with a smirk.

I stuck my tongue out at her. As if on cue, the doorbell rang, and Tina bounced out of the room. I waited as she answered the door, although maybe not patiently since Tami had to reach out a hand to stop my knee from bouncing nervously.

I didn’t actually care who Tina dated really, as long as she was happy. I just had flashes of the jackass from last year, and really wanted to avoid a repeat.

The boy who followed Tina into the den wasn’t what I expected. He had sandy blond hair, was only a few inches taller than her, and the only word I could think of to describe him was nerdy. He wasn’t wearing broken glasses with tape holding the bridge together, but he wasn’t far from that either.

I don’t know why I should be surprised, since Tina had said she’d met him in English class, and both Judy and her were taking advanced classes. He had to be a little nerdy to be in the class with her, especially since he didn’t have the benefit of the change to fall back on.

“Cas, this is Rick. Rick, this is my brother Cas and our friend Tami,” she said, making introductions.

Until that moment, I hadn’t thought of how Tina was going to introduce Tami. Considering it was general knowledge that I was dating Zoe at school, with whispers that I was also dating some other girls at the same time, outside of our immediate friend group the actual details weren’t common knowledge, or at least not in any acknowledged way.

The odds were good that someone a few years behind us wouldn’t know the deal. Thankfully, Tina had thought about it, and sidestepped the issue.

“Nice to meet you, Rick,” I said, sticking out my hand.

His handshake was a little timid, but not weak, and to his credit, he met my gaze directly.

“Yeah,” he said awkwardly.

“What are you guys doing tonight?”

“Uhh,” he said, glancing at Tina and then looking back towards me. “We were going to go see a movie.”

“Then you’ll get her right home, right?”

“I…”

“Ignore him,” Tina said, pulling Ricks hand out of mine. “He’s just trying to intimidate you. He’s ok, but he can be a bully sometimes.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said a bit too defensively, and heard another snort from Tami. “Fine, maybe I was. Just take care of my little sister, and you have no problems.”

“Sure, I promise,” Rick said, stepping back.

“Good. You guys have a ride?”

“My Mom’s waiting outside,” he said.

“Good,” I said before turning to Tina. “Be home by eleven.”

“Bite me,” she said with a grin.

I rolled my eyes, and went back to sit down with Tina laughing, as Tami walked them back out.

“You’ve got no game,” Tami said when she came back in and sat next to me.

“Enough game for you,” I said, suddenly lunging at her, my fingers digging into her ribs.

We continued horseplaying until Mom came in and told us to get a room. Which we did.

Tina didn’t have much interest in talking to me about her date, but according to Zoe, who she did talk to, she had lots of fun on her date and Tim had been a complete gentleman. Tami had also done a bit of checking, which mostly amounted to asking Judy about him, and by all accounts, Tim was a good guy. That, I was happy to hear about, since I didn’t want a repeat of her previous go at dating.

We were actually discussing that on the way into school the next Monday when Mrs. Polaski stopped us and asked us to come to her office. It wasn’t just me, but all of us, and we found Alison Hauge waiting in her office as well.

“I know you’ve all got to get to class, so I’ll keep this short, and I’ve already let your teacher know you’ll be late. There have been some changes to the advanced studies class, and I wanted you to all hear it from me.”

None of us responded, but waited patiently.

“I guess I’ll just jump right into it. This will be the last year we run this program, and there will be no accelerated classes this year. We’re still working out how reintegrating you all back into the standard classes will work, and we’ll have more information on that before the end of the year.”

“Why is it ending?” Vicki asked. “Our teachers all made it sound like we were making good progress.”

“I want to be clear. This decision has nothing to do with you kids. It was made at the district level, who decided school funds could be spent in a better way.”

We hadn’t talked to her yet about our plans of testing out, although Mom was saying she needed to talk to Mrs. Polaski, soon. We hadn’t really talked about it at home yet, but me and the girls all pulling out would inevitably kill the program anyway, since that would just leave Alison by herself. I had thought they might keep the program up for Alison, and even considered donating money to ensure the program stayed open. I didn’t think Alison should have to suffer for our decisions.

“I’ll be honest,” she said, continuing. “this isn’t about school funds, not really. Since part way through last year, there have been those in the district who believe we shouldn’t be offering these classes at all. It was a fight to get it this year, and I just don’t have it in me to deal with this fight again next year. I've decided that I’ll be retiring at the end of this school year, and the person who will be taking over for me has agreed to end the program. I’m honestly sorry since you guys have been working really hard, and I’m really proud of you. Honestly, I wouldn’t have told you this, but since I’m leaving …”

She gave a shrug at the last statement, as she stood up.

“Go ahead to class. Once we know how this change will work, I’ll have more information for you.”

We all trooped out of the room and headed to class. Alison and the girls were all talking about Mrs. Polaski retiring, and the end of the program. Actually, the girls were doing most of the talking, speculating on who the new principal would be, going with the assumption one of the vice principals would be promoted, and how they’d managed to reintegrate us back into class. To the girls, it was just something interesting that was happening; since with our decision to test out, it wouldn’t directly affect us. Alison, however, was mostly listening and giving the occasional mumble in response, since she was more affected by this than we were.

I had things on my mind and stayed quiet all the way to class. By lunch, I’d made a decision, or at least worked out all my thoughts, and stopped on the way back to class to make a phone call. At the end of the day, I begged off meeting the girls for practice, and instead headed to the school's office. Mom was already there waiting for me. Mrs. Polaski waved us into her office and shut the door.

“Caspian, I know my announcement this morning was a surprise, and I promise I’ll try my best to keep this from hurting the next two years of schooling. I’m happy to answer any questions you and Mrs. Bell may have, but I really don’t have any other information beyond what I told you this morning. It’s the main reason we haven’t contacted parents yet since we have no details beyond the fact that it’s ending.”

“That’s not actually why I’m here,” Mom said, sitting down in one of the seats across from Mrs. Polaski’s desk. “There are some things we haven’t spoken of to you yet, but we think it will make some of your decisions easier. Caspian called me at lunch, and asked me to come in and talk to you about it. Honestly, we should have come to you before now, but we wanted to get our ducks in a row before we did. I’ve also had some things at work that have kept me busy enough, that I haven’t had time to come to talk to you before now. I feel bad about that, since it might have saved you some trouble.”

“You’ve got my attention.”

“Next year, we’ll be moving close to Houston. By 'we,' I’m including not just Caspian and my daughter, but also Emily Deakins, Vicki Hollabrand, and Tami Smith. As well as Caspian's sister and Tami's sister, although they’re not in the program. Because we didn’t want or weren’t even sure how to move their current progress to a new district, we’ve decided to test all five of them for early graduation. Basically, we aren’t going to be a factor one way or another, next year.”

“Really? While early graduation isn’t unheard of, they’d all be effectively graduating two years early. That’s exceedingly rare, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of more than two kids in one school doing that in the same year. Five would be unprecedented. I’m not sure of the specifics of testing out of two years; but I’ve been involved with a student who tested out of one year, and it was pretty extensive and difficult.”

“We’ve looked into it, and I’ve spent some time on the phone with the state education board, who played out the requirements for me. They also suggested it would be very difficult, but you know these five kids. Do you have any doubt they are capable of this?”

“Honestly, no. We’ve already been running into issues, trying to keep them challenged, and Mrs. Runkle has already said she thought by the middle of next year they’d all have every credit they’d need to graduate. Alison is a little further behind, and has been doing a somewhat lower level of work. For her, we’d be able to furnish a large number of AP classes by the time she graduated. I’m not sure we have enough AP classes for your group, at least not to keep them busy for two years with the way they’re moving through the material.”

“I still feel bad for Alison,” I said.

“Actually, don’t. Her father is getting transferred to Chicago. Actually, he’s already been transferred, and she and her mother are planning on following him at the end of the year.”

“Well, that makes this a lot easier then,” Mom said. “I guess you can just tell the folks at the district they don’t have to go out of their way figuring anything out since all the students in the program are leaving anyway.”

“I’m … not sure that’s a great idea.”

“Why?” I asked, catching a look she sent my way as she said it.

“Nothing has been said specifically, but I have the impression that the main reason that the program is ending, is Caspian.”

“What?” Mom and I both said.

“There have been suggestions that if some students could be removed from the program, the money to continue the program for the rest could be found. They weren’t specific, but reading between the lines, they made it clear that if I somehow found a way to take Caspian out, we’d get to keep the program going. I’m not sure they know Caspain’s … relationship with some of the other students in advanced class, or I’m sure they would have been included in the suggestion.”

“I’m not sure I know…” I started, but Mrs. Polaski held up a hand.

“Caspian, I’ve been in school administration for twenty-five years, there is very little I haven’t seen from schools in my career. I’ll admit you take things to new extremes, but I can see what’s happening.”

Mom gave me a worried look, which Mrs. Polaski also caught.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Bell, I have no intention of making trouble for you. I know the … difficulties you had earlier this year, and I know it was all BS. I’ve spent enough time with these kids, and decades of kids before that, to know healthy, well-adjusted young men and women when I see them.”

I let out the breath of air I’d unconsciously been holding in, and Mom looked equally relieved.

“Anyway,” I said, continuing, “we don't hear about our leaving, at least not really. That was just some context. Based on what you’ve just said, and the fact that you seem to be retiring well short of the normal time, I’m thinking I am part of the reason that you’re retiring so suddenly.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re the reason, and I don’t want you to feel like you’re to blame for this. It’s true, the reason I’m retiring is that I won’t be a party to this kind of stuff. We’re here to nurture students and the idea that one student … anyway, no, it’s not you. I’m retiring because I’m not willing to compromise my principles.”

“Well, the reason I called Mom at lunch, is that I have a proposal for you.”

“A proposal is it? I swear you never stop amazing me. What’s your proposal?”

“I want to offer you a job. My sister and Tami’s sister are not going to be able to test out like the rest of us, they just have too far to go. Where we are moving to is … remote. Not unimaginable, we’ll be less than an hour outside of Houston, but far enough out that we’d be forced into a rural school district. We’ve discussed it, and have agreed that homeschooling might be the best option. We haven't worked out the details or even given it a ton of thought yet, since we are still getting things with the move sorted out; but knowing that you were retiring early, it seemed like a good opportunity. We’d like to hire you to design a curriculum and teach those two through to graduation.”

“That's … a very generous offer. I know you’ve come into some money, but I think I might be out of your price range. We’re talking about four years of education, and there are programs and tutors already in existence you could use.”

“We want something beyond that. These girls are very bright, and we want to make sure they get every opportunity. As for money, we hadn’t discussed it yet, but I know Mom will agree with me that we’d be willing to pay you at least what you’re making now.”

“I don’t think …”

“Mrs. Polaski, I don’t advertise it around here, but I am very well off. We are moving because we’re in the process of building a new home that will be close to my company's new facilities. So trust me, I can afford it. I’m aware that there are cheaper alternatives, but I’m looking to do right by Judy and my sister. You’re an excellent educator, and I feel responsible you’re being forced out early, because you got caught up in something that’s not your fault. This is a win-win.”

“Why do I get the feeling you might know more about what’s going on than I do?”

“Because I do. I promise I’ll explain it to you when I can, and Mom will be available to answer any questions you have, and hopefully put your mind at ease. I know its tough taking this kind of thing on faith from a kid …”

“It’s not that at all. Like I said, I’ve known a lot of kids, and I have a good idea what kind of person you are. I won’t promise anything now, but I will take you up on the offer to speak to Mrs. Bell about this over the next week. I’ll also want to meet the two girls in question.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem,” Mom said. “It’s Cas’s money, so I let him take the lead on this kind of thing, but I agreed to come down here because I also thought it was a great fit. Since this is a bit of a conflict, maybe you can call me at home tonight, and we'll talk.”

“I’ll say this, Caspian, you certainly do keep life interesting. I’ll call you tonight, Mrs. Bell. I look forward to finding out what’s really going on around here.”

Chapter 19

Since I wouldn’t be involved in hiring Mrs. Polaski to continue Tina and Judy’s education - aside from the little side note about actually paying for it - they’d agreed to work out the details of how it would all work out, together. That actually was fine by me, since it gave me one less thing to have to worry about. I was feeling proud of coming up with the idea when I’d heard she was retiring, but I'd kept that to myself. Both Mom and the girls had a way of punching holes in my ego, whenever it seemed I might be getting too full of myself.

Still, I was happy with how things would work out. Aside from anything else, Mrs. Polaski had already started giving some excellent advice on what we should be doing to get tested out of the last two years of school, and for the best ways to set up homeschooling for Judy and Tina.

More good news came in the form of a call from the office when I got home. Miltech had come through with the contacts at NASA. Between Jonathan, Colonel Ron (who was still our point man on anything to do with Miltech), and Douglass (who still had a fair number of contacts at NASA, despite how he’d left employment there), we’d worked through all the initial phases of getting NASA to look at our battery and solar panel prototypes.

They’d worked out a demonstration on Wednesday for both, which was a big step for us. Apparently, NASA was in the process of working on a probe they wanted to send into Jupiter’s orbit. They weren’t happy with the power draw of some of their new instruments, and were very interested in seeing our battery. They were ok with their current solar panels, but Colonel Ron seemed to think that, if we pitched them as a combo only, they’d buy both.

I was a little annoyed that the test was scheduled for a Wednesday, since I’d be in school. Now that I knew someone was in the ear of the school board and had painted a target on me, I wanted to avoid missing more days and opening myself up to more problems. Jonathan, however, seemed to think it was for the best. For one, it was tough to get government contracts worked on over the weekend, since civil servants tended to frown on working on weekends. For another, he pointed out that government agencies tend to be less flexible with things that are outside the norm, like a contractor with a teenage CEO, for instance.

I suggested they probably did at least a minimal amount of research on us, and already knew this. He said knowing it, and putting it in front of their faces, were two different things.

So I was sidelined, at least for the actual meeting.

They were right, however. If it went through, it would mean a serious payday.

So, even though I was sidelined, I was in a pretty good mood that night and was spending some quality time with Emily, Zoe, and Vicki. Tami was delayed, and would join us later. She and Judy had to run to the courthouse after school with Mom, and sign some paperwork that would make the guardianship permanent. I didn’t realize there was a “permanent” guardianship, but apparently, that was a legal definition. I just thought she should be home any time, when I heard squealing from outside, and the distinct crack of a gunshot.

I was on my feet before I’d had a chance to consider what those sounds could actually mean, and was hurtling down the stairs and towards the door just as it opened. Judy, Mom, and Tami all piled through the door, slowing me down. I could see Jawarski in the doorway, her gun in her hand.

I dodged around the women, and started to make it to the door when Jawarski’s head turned ever so slightly, bringing me into her peripheral vision. She instantly changed her position, so she was entirely blocking the front door.

“Do not even think about coming out here,” she said, angrily.

“What happened?”

“Just shut the door, have Angela call the cops, and stay inside until I say you can come out.”

Her tone was serious, and I knew this was not the time to test her. Since everyone I cared about was confirmed as safe, either inside the house or, in Jawarski’s case in the doorway, healthy, and armed, I decided it was best to listen to her.

Shutting the door, I turned to the women. Judy was freaking out, and I could see the collar of her shirt was torn. Other than that, she wasn’t any worse for wear.

“Jawarski said you should call the cops,” I said to Mom once I finished my quick once over of all three of them.

She’d had her hands on her knees and was shaking a bit, but nodded and headed towards the house phone.

“What happened?” I asked Tami as soon as she was on her way.

“I don’t know. We were coming inside, and Judy said she left her backpack in the car and turned to go back and get it. Jawarski said to wait, and started to turn to go back with her, but was a bunch of steps behind since Judy was in a good mood and ran off towards the car like she always does.”

She sat on the ground, putting her back against the wall, and I could see her legs were wobbly.

“A car came tearing up to the house, slamming its brakes on so hard smoke came off the tires. This guy, arms covered in tattoos, jumped out of the back seat and rushed at Judy, grabbing at her. She jumped back, and he only managed to grab part of her shirt. Jaworski yelled, and the guy let go, and he reached to his back and started to pull something out, and Jawarski fired her gun. I didn’t even see her draw it just … Blam!, and the guy fell to the ground. The car squealed its tires again as it tore off down the street, leaving the guy with the tattoos laying in the yard. Then Jawarski yelled at us to get Judy inside. That’s when you showed up.”

“Is he …?”

“Dead? Yes. I also got the plate on the car.”

“Good. I mean, not that he’s dead. I’m not sad about that, not really, considering what he was doing; but I’d rather we had someone we could ask questions.”

“Next time you stay out here and stop him, then,” Jawarski said annoyed.

“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands, “I’m not criticizing. You did what you had to do, and you did a good job. I just wish we had things we don’t. You got the license plate, so maybe that will lead us to the driver, at least.”

“I doubt it. Things like this, the car’s always hot.”

“Ok, I can see that. Well, I guess we’ll have to just find out who he is, and go from there. Although, we have a pretty good idea who he is.”

I could hear sirens, meaning the cops would be here any minute.

“Don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve pissed off a lot of people lately, some of them pretty dangerous. Although, I’ll grant you the Syndicate’s our best suspect.”

“Get everything you have on this. Find out who he is. We’ve already started taking steps to take these guys down, but they may have wised up and decided to branch out of going after just me. And hire a few more guys. I want everyone in our immediate circle protected at all times.”

“I have people on everyone, now. The only reason I did the shooting, is because I went with them earlier, since the guy who’s normally on your sister had something to do.”

“That’s good. I’m serious though, I want everything we have looking into this guy.”

Something caught her attention, and she looked down the street, where the first flashing lights could be seen.

“Go inside. You’ve had enough run-ins with the Department, I’d rather you sat this one out.”

That I could absolutely agree with.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, heading back into the house.

I didn’t get out of dealing with them entirely. They had everyone who was in the house come out and give statements. I hadn’t actually seen anything though, so I managed to skate out from having to do more than give my statement. Thankfully, the detective who showed up was friendly with Jawarski, and she was able to skip the whole going down to the station thing.

She had to agree to come down to the station later, to answer follow up questions once they’d done some poking around on who the guy was. He did tell her the plate she got was already in the system as stolen, so she’d been right about that.

I called Jonathan to let him know we had something happening. He admonished me to leave everything to Jawarski, which I’d already done, and said he was on his way. I laid out everything that had happened so far, and he said he’d go to the station with her when she went to answer the questions. He didn’t sound particularly worried, which was a good sign at least. The last thing I wanted was for Jawarski to get locked up, and have to her out of play while we figured out what this latest attack on us was about.

The rest of the night was spent calming Tina and Judy down. Tami was actually pretty Zen about it, at least at the moment. I knew she’d break down later when it was just us, and she was just keeping up a solid front for her sister. Judy, in particular, was pretty rattled by it. Both she and Tina had been kept from all our conflicts with the Syndicate, so far. While they knew there’d been some violence, they’d never seen it or been involved with it. This brought it all home for her, and she wasn’t handling it well.

As Jonathan had predicted, the trip to the police station was straightforward. Everyone agreed it was self-defense, plain and simple. The assistant district attorney who got assigned the case apparently made some noises about vigilantism, but Jawarski had enough friends on the force saying it was clearly self-defense, that he let it drop. After hearing Jonathan’s description of how determined the man had been, even before seeing any of the evidence, to find some kind of charge to hit her with (including pulling her concealed carry permit), I added him to my list of people possibly in the Syndicate's pocket. I was nearly certain that, had Jawarski not had enough friends on the force, he would have found something to pin on her.

As it was, they declared the shooting self-defense. She also managed to snag a copy of the guy’s file after her interview. The guy was from Dallas, and his file was really long, with dozens of small crimes like purse snatching, drug dealing, and extortion. It had escalated in the last few years, and apparently, he was a person of interest in a killing the previous year, but they couldn’t pin down any direct connection between him and the victim.

Jawarski said, reading between the lines, it looked like the detective on that case though it might have been murder for hire, though they’d never been able to prove it. The thing that worried me was, this was out of character for everything the Syndicate had done before. Every other attempt had been made by someone local, someone they'd had their hooks into. This guy had been brought in from out of town.

It’d be different if he were a specialist, an expert brought in since their local resources hadn’t worked, yet. That didn’t make sense in this case, though. For one, the guy didn’t seem all that great at it. He’d gotten away with the one killing, true; but he’d been convicted a whole lot of times over the years, spending more time in prison than not. It also looked like the hit-man thing was a fairly recent gig for him, which made the 'imported expert' idea not a great fit.

Additionally, they didn’t send him after me. He was clearly sent for Judy, he’d gone right for her. He was incompetent, but not so much that he’d mistake me for her. It didn’t make sense that they’d switch from me to people I cared about, and took the trouble of importing talent to do it.

I was still certain that the Syndicate was behind it, but I also knew I was missing something.

And that bothered me.

Days slipped by and nothing happened. I’d pushed Carter and Jarwarski to put on more staff, specifically investigators instead of bodyguard types. They both said more people wouldn’t solve the problem. Even though their standing policy was to change anyone who came on board, to ensure the people in charge of protecting us weren’t somehow infiltrated by the Syndicate, they were quick to point out that this did not mean we told them what was going on. I was pretty sure they were incredibly vague on the ‘inoculation’ employees for the security company were getting and even more sure that they didn’t understand what they agreed to. That aside, Jawarski and Carter had a point. There was a wide difference between the way the change worked, and the inner workings of my nature and our long-term goals, and why those put us in conflict with the Syndicate.

Carter also said that everything that could be done to find the people behind Josh’s disappearance and the attempted abduction was being done. That I wasn’t sold on. Several weeks had passed since Josh’s disappearance, and we had nothing beyond the brief glimpse of legs, on a fuzzy video. I was worried that the same was happening on the attempt on Judy, and we’d get nowhere on that, and it was making me a pain in the ass to everyone.

I’d already gotten several lectures from the girls, but so far my anger was building at being at the Syndicate's mercy, who I was surer every day was behind all this. I tried to push Jonathan to get something going on the investigation into them, but he said there wasn’t anything we could do to speed up the FBI. He’d insulated us from the investigation, and the more we pushed them, the more we’d include ourselves in the investigation, which was the last thing we wanted.

So I waited, and stewed.

Saturday morning after I got dressed, I went to find the girls. They’d been getting ready to head to the center. We’d planned on riding down together, with me getting dropped off at the new facilities. It was one of the few places Jawarski was ok with me being at, with only one of the security guys following me. The entire facility was secure, allowing her to go with the girls to the center. That was something I’d insisted on, on the off chance that the Syndicate tried with one of them.

They had their own guards by now; but I didn’t really trust anyone as much as I did Jawarski or Levi, and he had something else to do today.

“Are we ready to go?”

“We’re ready to go,” Zoe said, setting down her backpack and looking at me. “We’ve talked, and we’d prefer if you stayed here today.”

“What? Why?”

“Cas,” Vicky said, “you’ve been a jackass all week. We’ve put up with it, but none of us want to spend an hour in the car with you. We have a lot of work to do, and the people at the center deserve us at our best, which we won’t be if we have to listen to you tell us how everyone’s incompetent.”

‘I haven’t said everyone’s incompetent.”

“Not in those words, but it’s what you’ve been getting at. We get it, you’re frustrated, but what do you think the constant complaints do to everyone else? You’re lucky Jawarski hasn’t shot you yet.”

I looked over at Jawarski, who glowered at me. I hadn’t really paid attention until now, but she’d been doing that a lot over the last few days, along with some of her people.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think you guys are incompetent. I’m just …”

“Frustrated,” Zoe and Vicki both said.

“Yeah, we know,” Zoe continued. “You’ve said it once or twice. Cas, they’re doing everything they can. Until you get that through your head, or have something constructive to say instead of just complaining, we’re going to need a break from it every now and then.”

I was mad. They were taking everything I’d said out of context.

“Look, I know I’m a pain in the ass, but someone tried to kidnap Judy. Don’t any of you care about that?”

“You’re joking, right?” Tami said, folding her arms in front of her. “Of course I care about that, she’s my sister for Christ's sake. Everyone has guards now, everything that can be done is being done. Being mad doesn’t make it any better.”

“It does if we just sit and wait until someone tries again,” I said, patiently.

I knew what she was saying, and I knew she was right. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself from digging in my heels.

“Fine. Well, Emily and I are going with them to help out. You can hang out here, until you pull your head out of your ass,” Tami said.

All four girls grabbed their stuff and headed out of the front door.

“Don’t think about leaving this house until I get back,” Jawarski said as she followed them out. “I’ve ordered my guys to do anything short of shooting you, if you try.”

“Goddamnit,” I yelled at the closed door.

“Feel better?” Mom asked from behind me.

“No.”

“Then maybe you could give the yelling curses a rest. Sweetie, you know how those girls, and the rest of us, feel about you. If we’re all telling you that you’re out of control, maybe you should think about that.”

“I’m not…”

“I’m not here to argue with you,” she said, interrupting me. “I’m going to head to the lab. I’d listen to Beth, though. She’s got her people watching the house, and she isn’t kidding. She took the Judy thing, and all of your comments, very personally. She’s determined to keep you out of harm, even if she has to kill you to do it.”

“So you’re deserting me, too.”

“Yep. While I’m gone, you might want to consider why everyone who loves you, can’t stand to be around you; and you might think about if that’s how you want to live.”

I flopped on the couch and fumed, listening to her lock the door behind her. I’m not sure how long I sat there, brooding when I heard the doorbell ring. I headed to see who it was when one of the security guys intercepted me and waved me back as he said something into his radio, listening to the response on his earpiece.

“It’s Celia Keen, she’s on the cleared list,” he said over his shoulder and opened the door for her.

“Wow, you’ve got this place locked down,” she said to me as she looked at the guard, who closed the door behind her, and headed to wherever he’d been hiding before the doorbell rang. “Two guys stopped me outside and asked to see my ID.”

“Someone tried to grab Tami’s sister last weekend, and Jawarski's stepped up our protection.”

“Megan mentioned that. It’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” I said offhandedly.

“Where is everyone?”

“They all left. Apparently, I’ve developed an attitude problem they can’t deal with.”

“I did that, too. Of course, that was mostly because of the drugs,” she said with a smile.

I gave her a weak smile and said, “Sorry if you came all this way and the girls aren’t here.”

“I’m not here to see them, I came to see you. Vicki said you were going to have some free time today.”

“I'll bet she did,” I said sullenly.

“Well, whatever. Look, I’ve been talking to some of my … old friends, and it’s got me thinking.”

“You haven’t …” I started to say out of reflex and then stop.

The words were already out of my mouth, almost out of reflex, before I caught myself. Of course, she hadn’t relapsed. After going through the change, that was impossible. From the expression on her face, she clearly thought my stopping the question was more out of hesitation than realization.

“No, no,” she said, holding up her hands. “I haven’t touched anything, I swear. I haven’t even tried to. That’s what got me thinking, actually. I’ve been through rehab before. Some of these people have been through five or six times. You get clean, you’re good for a week, or a month, or whatever, and then you backslide. It’s like, even when you’re clean, you can feel it calling to you; but I haven’t felt that, not even once. One of them offered me some in exchange for … well, how I use to get my stuff sometimes. It's how I backslid last time. Someone offered me a taste. This time I didn’t want it at all. I even stopped and thought about it when I realized I didn’t want it. I realized that even the thought of it turned me off.”

“Good, that means it worked.”

“Exactly,” she said, standing up and starting to pace in short jags. “That’s what I was thinking. There are so many people who keep going to rehab, and can’t kick it. Here you are, with a drug that, after one treatment - bang - no more addiction. These people could really use your treatment.”

“I know, but right now we aren’t in the place to treat a bunch of people. One, there’s only limited supply, and we can’t synthesize it in larger quantities. Two, we’re also not cleared by the FDA to give it to people. Honestly, we shouldn’t have given to you, but … your grandmother was very convincing.”

“Couldn’t you just make an exception for a few more people? These guys, they weren’t … they are a little rough, but they were my friends. They see I’m clean and they really want to try it.”

“Celia, it’s not possible.”

“But…”

“Celia, we already exposed ourselves to serious trouble, when we gave it to you. Please, just let it drop. Tell them it was a trial program, and they can’t take any more people. I’m sorry for your friends, and as soon as we can give it to more people, I promise we will.”

That was, of course, only partly true. We really didn’t have the supplies to treat others. Not when we had to use so much to take all of the preacher's flock from him. I also wasn’t crazy about the word spreading about the treatment. Nothing draws attention like a miracle treatment, and attention was the last thing we wanted.”

“Ok,” she said, dejected.

“Hey, I’m glad you came and asked. The girl I met when you first came here, she wouldn’t have thought of other people. She would’ve just worried about getting hers, and nothing else. I like this Celia a lot better.”

“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “So why are you here anyway? I thought you worked on Saturdays.”

“I’m … I guess grounded is the word for it.”

“You?”

“Yeah, I know. We had some issues here over the last week and, honestly, I haven’t been dealing with it well.”

I explained what happened, leaving out anything about the change, but otherwise filled her in on everything.

“Wow,” she said when I finished. “I had no idea. I feel bad about bringing my problem to you when you’re here fighting a whole city.”

“We aren’t fighting a whole city, just some corrupt people in it. Don’t feel bad, and always feel free to come to me with any problems you have. This isn’t something that can be solved right away, anyway.”

“Considering everything that’s happening, I'm surprised they came down on you so hard for complaining about it.”

“No, they were right. I’ve been an ass. They’re dealing with it too, and they're doing a better job of it. I just don’t take it well when I’m unable to protect my family.”

I realized I meant it, too. My problem was, I wanted to be in control of everything, and I didn’t like it when I was reminded that I wasn’t.

“Cas, you’re still a kid. I know you’re Mr. Important Businessman and everything, but you’re not even seventeen yet. How in the hell can you be expected to handle this kind of stuff? It’s ok to go off, sometimes. Hell, look at what I did when my parents died. At least you didn’t get hooked on drugs and try to ruin your life.”

“Yeah, but look at the girls. They’re not going off the deep end.”

“No 'buts!' Stop being so obstinate and just listen to me. Everyone deals with stress differently. You’re one of those ‘I can shape the world to my will’ kind of people, which makes you succeed in your business, but I bet it doesn’t help you when the world goes sideways.”

“Ok, I’ll keep that in mind. This helped. Actually, I’m feeling much calmer.”

“Good. How about I bust you out of here and we go get something to eat.”

“That is not a good idea. Jawarski will have my ass if I leave when she’s not here, and the girls and Mom will help. How about instead we find something in the kitchen to make and just hang out.”

“That sounds good, too,” she said with a smile.

Chapter 20

Celia hung out for a few more hours, and I found I really did like her, now that she was not working on getting her next fix. I can see the girl that Megan became friends with, and why she stuck her neck out for her. By the time she left to head back to school, I was over my funk about being left behind by the girls.

I was looking forward to welcoming them back when I heard their car pull up to the house, but stopped as I opened the front door, surprised to see a second car following behind them. As they got out, Jonathan and Colonel Ron, who we’d hired to be our liaison with MilTech, got out of the second car. I hadn’t seen Ron since he’d left the Air Force and I’d offered him the job, which wasn’t surprising considering he was normally based out of MilTech's offices,.

Ron had missed the round of changes the girls had done to office personnel because of that, and wasn't in the know about our unusual family structure. Because of that, the girls just waved and went into the house, keeping the public displays of affection to a minimum in front of other people.

Jawarski veered away from the group and fell in behind me as I headed to intercept Jonathan and Ron, hand outstretched.

“I’m surprised to see you guys here,” I said, shaking their hands.

“I had some stuff to finish up here in town, and Ron heard you were on lockdown and asked if he could tag along.”

“Really? You’re going to be stuck here for the rest of the weekend?”

“No,” Ron said. “Jonathan needed to pick up his wife’s car, so I’m dropping him off at the garage they’re storing it at, and I’ll drive this car back tonight. I’d heard you were … uhhh, grounded, and figured this was my best way of getting a few minutes to talk to you. I already spoke to Ted and Marcus, but both of them said I should talk to you, too.”

I could image that, from his perspective, it was still weird to report to a kid decades younger, especially when other adults suggested he talk to the kid about whatever it is he needed. To his credit, he rolled with it pretty well, probably because he saw everyone else doing the same thing.

“It’s a long drive for you back if you’re going tonight, so let's go ahead and get to it then.”

I led the two men, trailed by Jawarski into the dining room. The house had everyone back in it now, and we were crowded enough that it was the only room where we’d be able to have a conversation.

“So, what’s up?” I asked as we sat down.

“Since you mentioned our new battery to Aaron, he’s been asking questions. We’ve been looking to see if our product would work in any of their systems, and sounding out the various branches for interest in it. While MilTech themselves didn’t have a use for it; after a few talks, the Army is very interested for some of their mobile command units. Currently, they’re running their portable units off of either diesel generators or what is basically a car battery. They like how much more lightweight ours is, and its storage capacity. I know we have that test with NASA coming up next week, so they can look at your newest prototype. They want to have a rep - and a MilTech rep, I guess - present to see it.”

“So we’re going to test it with them, but MilTech is still going to handle the sale and take their cut,” I asked skeptically.

“They’ll still be doing all the legwork, Cas,” Jonathan said. “They’ll also do the production for the Army version, if we do move forward with the contract, out of their facility. Which means the auditors from the Army would go to their facilities and not ours. I actually thought it might be a plus to have them handle any NASA contract we may get as well. There are standards government entities require, that we aren’t set up for.”

Jonathan was very careful to add that last sentence to his statement, but I read through what he was saying, and he was right. Having inspectors inside our facilities was something we’d rather avoid. While Destiny, Inc. didn’t have any connection to studying or information on my unique biology, every step closer to us was one step closer to a larger entity learning the truth. It was one of the main reasons we separated out Alex and Mom’s project, since they were directly working with it. Jonathan, as with most lawyers, was fairly careful. So I knew he preferred to keep things as removed as possible. In this case, I couldn’t agree more.

“Hmm,” is all I said, digesting it.

“I actually agree with Jonathan here. It’s not just the government contracts. You’re not set up for larger scale production. All of your facilities are nice, but they’re pretty much all geared up for prototype construction. You’d need something significantly larger, and it’d have to be tooled completely differently. Your workforce would also have to be expanded. Since we are talking about proprietary tech, some parts of which will be licensed by the government, we can’t just hand it off to some outsourced manufacturer, and we definitely can’t have it produced overseas.”

“So you think it should go beyond just anything purchased by the Army?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve seen a lot of military contractors, and some commercial ones, while I was doing procurement for the Air Force. I can say MilTech’s setup is top notch. You’ve also apparently sold Aaron pretty hard on yourself. That guy thinks you walk on water, and everything I see says he’ll deal honestly with us. Considering everything, I don’t think I’ve seen a better manufacturing partnership.”

“Do they have the scale to manufacture for us if we go outside of government contracts?”

“Non-military contracts, yes. Non-government contracts, maybe not, but we can work with them at that point. We don’t actually know where we’re going to go with these, anyway. If we do end up making a commercial option (which is going to be harder than you think if we also have government contracts on the same product), we can make a change, then. It gives us some time at least.”

“I hadn’t considered that. Do you think the government would block us selling the battery outside of the military or groups like NASA?”

“Quite possibly. If they think it gives the Army a military advantage, they might decide it’s strategically important and classify it.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“If it does become classified, it makes it harder for us to sell, but it also makes it worth more to those who can buy it, and we’ll be able to charge more for it. Either way, it’ll work out well for us.”

“Well, you’ve certainly thought this all through. If Ted, Marcus, and Jonathan don’t have a problem with it, then count me in, too.”

“Great. I’ve gotta get heading back. On the drive here I thought of a few more things I wanted to talk to Douglass about before I make a call to the guys over at MilTech,” Ron said, standing up and stretching out his hand, which I shook.

“I’ll meet you out there in a second, there was something I needed to mention to Caspian real quick.”

“Sure,” he said and gave another smile before heading out of my office.

“What’s up?”

“I got a call from Ronald, he’s out at the new desalinization plant. He thinks they are nearing one-hundred percent, but asked if it is possible for you and Ted to make a trip out there sometime this summer. Apparently, you’ve won over several of the officials, and to them, this kind of thing isn’t official until the boss on one side comes by and breaks bread, or whatever, with the boss on the other.”

“If it’s this summer, I don’t see why not. I’ll have to clear it through Mom, but I think we can arrange something.”

“Good. You talk to her, and I’ll let Ronald know to tell them it’s in the works.”

That night I explained everything to Mom, and she also didn’t see a problem with it. The next week went by fast, since after that it was spring break, and the school year was winding down. The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea of graduating early. I didn’t particularly have anything against school, really; I just had so many things going on, that having the bulk of every week taken up by school, made everything more complicated. I wouldn’t say it out loud normally, but I’d realized that there was very little school could teach me at this point. Not that the teachers were incapable of teaching me something new, just that the school system wasn’t set up for people like me and the girls. Of course, considering we were some kind of step forward in evolution, there wasn’t any reason they should be set up for it.

In the short term though, the prepping for testing out of two years of school was one more thing to juggle. The main issue was that, while our ability to retain information and work problems was exceptional, these tests weren’t designed to show capability or readiness. They were designed to meet specific lists of things the student was expected to know. It was more a test to memorize requirement lists than a sort of actual knowledge, but that’s what you get when you design a test by committee. Especially when that committee isn’t made up of teachers.

Since we had friends coming, Mom convinced me to treat spring break as a vacation, letting Ted and Jonathan handle things. I wasn’t crazy about that, since I’d already been pushing a lot of things on them since the offices moved. Ted reminded me that he’d been running a business all by himself before I came around, but I was the one determined to change the world, it taught me that I had to then pass that off on someone else. The girls had the same problem, but they’d always planned on having a manager run the center. There were also four of them although Tami had made it clear she was a supporting member of the team.

So our first day off of school found me and the girls at home studying when we heard a car pull into the driveway. We all set down our books and rushed towards the front door, only to come to a nearly crashing halt when Jawarski blocked the doorway to the front hall.

“If you think you're just going to run outside at the sound of a car, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“But it’s just Charlie and Sandy,” Zoe said.

“Sure, and it was just Judy the last time, and look what happened. You can live with the extra two minutes waiting for them to come to the door.”

Zoe looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. A minute later the doorbell rang, and Jawarski pulled the door open. Standing on the other side was Charlie and Sandy. They both eyed Jawarski nervously as she stepped out of the way to let them in, her eyes looking at each of them in turn.

“This is Beth Jawarski, she’s in charge of our security, and she takes it really seriously.”

“Why do you need security? It isn’t anything from last summer, is it?” Charlie asked.

Jawarski looked over at me, an eyebrow raised.

“We had some trouble in Mexico during our summer vacation,” I explained to her, before looking at our guests. “No, it’s nothing like that. Those gangs don’t operate outside of the city they’re in, let alone into the US. She’s here because of other issues.”

“Going around rescuing too many people, making too many enemies?” Charlie said with a grin.

“You’re not that far off,” Vicki said under her breath.

“Don’t worry, you guys will be safe. It’s just a precaution. We're overcautious.”

“Let's stop standing in the hall,” Zoe said. “Let’s drop your bags in the room you’ll be staying in, and then we can catch up.”

She led them up the stairs to the room we’d set aside for Tami, but had cleaned out so they could use it.

“Where’s Eddie?” I asked.

Charlie shrugged and said, “He couldn’t get away. He’s started volunteering for a shelter out there, and since a lot of their volunteers are college kids, they are short-staffed this week. He agreed to stick around and help out.”

“Good for him,” Tami said.

“What about you two? You were pretty gung-ho about volunteering last time we saw you.”

“We volunteer there, too,” Sandy said. “But Zoe’s been telling me about the center as it was getting set up, and I’m excited to see it. Plus, she mentioned that, maybe, we could do something like that.”

I looked over at Zoe, who read my expression and shrugged and said, “It’s a good idea. What we want to do isn’t going to happen with one center. We’re going to need a bunch of them if we’re going to make it work.”

“It’s not a bad idea, but maybe we should talk about it first?”

“That’s what I’m doing now,” she said with a smile, as Charlie and Sandy dropped their stuff in their room.

I just rolled my eyes.

“Are you two hungry? Maybe we can get you something to eat while we talk about Zoe’s idea.”

“I could eat,” Charlie said.

As we all trudged down to the kitchen, I turned to Zoe and asked, “So what were your thoughts?”

“I hadn’t gotten much beyond, 'we’re going to have to expand at some point.' I thought that when we do, it’ll be good to have people we know and trust out there running things, or at least as eyes on the ground.”

“From the way you sounded, I’m guessing you two are hoping this happens sooner, rather than ‘at some point.’”

“I mean, I hadn’t thought about it,” Sandy said, “but yeah.”

“Ok. I agree with Zoe, actually. It’s a pretty good idea. But there are some hurdles we’re going to have to face.”

“We’re going to need funding,” Zoe said as we got to the kitchen.

Using some form of non-verbal girl thing they all seemed to know to do, Tami broke off and started fixing the food, while Zoe and Vicki directed everyone else to the table. Emily sat right next to me, scooting her chair a little closer after I sat down.

While she had come a long way, and she was with people she knew, she was still a little shy with people she wasn’t close to. On top of that, Next Step wasn’t really her thing, since she’d ended up with me, working on Destiny projects instead.

“That’s one of the problems. The company can put in some money but were already stretched, funding the bulk of the first center. The startup costs are pretty high. The actual operational cost isn’t so bad, especially with Celia’s grandmother's contributions covering most of that, but we can’t duplicate that model indefinitely. One of the main jobs for whoever takes on the responsibility of getting a new center up and running will be fundraising. One of the reasons I thought we’d wait at least a year before we tried to expand, was so we could use the first one as a show piece for corporate sponsors.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Zoe said, her head hanging slightly.

“We can figure something out,” I said, reaching across the table and taking her hand. “Seeing how pumped these two are to get involved, I can’t help but think it would be a waste to let them slip away.”

“You don’t have to worry about us,” Charlie said. “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll be ready.”

“I have some thoughts on where we can get the money,” I said. “That isn’t the only hurdle though. I’m glad you two are excited to work on this, but we also need to make sure it’s doable with your schedules.”

“What do you mean?” Sandy asked.

“I won’t do this if it’s going to hurt your schooling.”

“It won’t,” Sandy said defensively.

“Cas has a point,” Vicki said. “Before we started, I had no idea how much work this would be. We had more people working on it, and it still affected our work in school. That’s just high school. I’m sure you guys have a higher workload.”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “This is going to be part of our schooling, sort of. We switched our majors. Charlie was already further along than me, since he placed out of more basics, so he’s staying on the business track still, but with a focus on supply chains instead of marketing. We figured that would be somewhat applicable. I’m changing mine to sociology and hopefully do a Masters in nonprofit management after that. We’ve already talked about incorporating this into our actual classes. It won’t work for all of them, but the dean said it could take the place of our capstone project.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s only a fraction of your degree.”

“Yeah, but…”

“It's ok,” I said. “I’m not saying no. I’m just saying we need to look at it. How about this? Spend the week at the center and get an idea of what’s involved. Then we’ll talk about the next step.”

“That’s fair,” Sandy said. “Thanks, Cas.”

“See,” Zoe said. “I said Cas wouldn’t say no.”

Business out of the way, we got down to socializing. While everyone was headed down to the center - or in my case, to the new facilities, since we had the test for NASA on Wednesday - we were all still kids, really, and social time couldn’t be ignored.

That night, after Charlie and Sandy went to bed, I closed the door and turned to the girls.

“I think we should put Charlie and Sandy through the change.”

All four girls were dumbstruck.

“I thought you were against changing anyone unless you had to,” Vicki said.

“No. I’m against changing anyone without their consent, unless we have to. I mean we sit down and get their consent, explain the downsides, then change them. Of course, we can’t tell them everything,” I added, seeing Emily’s mouth open and guessing what she was going to say. “We can tell them enough to make an informed decision, and ask them to trust us on the parts they don’t know.”

“Still,” Zoe said, “I’m a little surprised you’d decide to change them all of a sudden.”

“It’s mostly because of what they, and you, said you all wanted to do. As it stands now, they’ll only be able to devote a fraction of their time to this, since they need to focus on school. If they got a … boost, I guess … then they’d have an easier time with school, and more time for other stuff. It’s not just selfish so they can work more with us it would also mean they’d do better in school. That doesn’t even mention the health benefits.”

“I’m surprised,” Tami said.

“Why?”

“Normally you’re all moralistic when it comes to this. That was … I wouldn’t even call it practical. It was almost mercenary.”

“Mercenary? I don’t think that’s fair.”

“She didn’t mean it in the negative, get what you want even if you have to hurt people way,” Zoe said. “I think what she meant was, you’re not thinking about if someone should be changed, but why. That’s a big change.”

“I guess. I mean, they’re our friends. I want them to have the best chance in life, ya know?”

“Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say we agree. We should change them. I guess we’re all just surprised.”

“Ok, well, let's see how things go this week, and I can stop and talk to them on Friday. That would give us Saturday for them to get over the sickness part, and then head back on Sunday.”

“Why wait?” Tami asked.

“Because you guys have a bunch going on, and I wouldn’t want them being out of commission for a day to keep them from learning all the parts of what you’re doing. Plus, I’ve got a bunch going on the first half of this week. If we do this, I want to be there for them when we do.”

“Makes sense,” Vicki said. “So, if we’re done with that now…”

She began moving towards me, the expression on her face one I recognized.

The next day we all headed out, taking separate cars with Tami and Emily joining me, and Zoe and Vicki in the other car with Charlie and Sandy. We’d agreed to drop Tami off at the center before Emily and I headed off to the new facilities.

Jawarski had arranged for a hotel that was roughly between the two sites for all of us, and a third car trailed behind with Levi and a few of their security people, I guess so they could rotate people out. Every time I looked at our balance sheets, I was a bit chagrined on how much the company was paying for my protection, even if those payments were going to a subsidiary, where some of the profit came back to us.

Once I got to the office, I put the issue of Charlie and Sandy out of my head. While Ted, Marcus, and Douglas had gotten everything together and ready for the demonstration for NASA, I was worried about it. While I can’t say this was a bigger deal than the demonstration we did for the drone project, it had wider implications. The drone project was basically always going to be limited to the military. For the batteries - and to a lesser extent, the solar panels - once we got one agency to buy in on them, we could use that to leverage us into other areas. It had the potential of being a big windfall. Considering how fast the girls were thinking about expanding, we’d need that extra cash.

“So how are things going?” I asked Douglass as I stepped onto the factory floor where they were still making small changes to the prototype.

I didn’t actually come out to the factory often, so the hard hat and safety goggles felt weird, but it was interesting to watch what they were doing.

“You have three prototypes?”

“Yes. It’s always a good idea to build multiples, always having one a design stage or two behind the first, and maybe a third a little behind that. If the first one has a problem, you can alter the later ones, and have a chance to fix the issue, but not fall behind schedule too much. It’s not something we did a lot at JPL, but if you have the cash flow to burn …”

“We have the cash flow to burn? I mean, JPL was government funded. The resources there dwarfed what we’re doing here.”

“True, but there’ve been enough congressional investigations about five hundred dollar ashtrays, that the administrators get gun shy about doing anything that a congressman who isn’t familiar with, well, anything, might find objectionable. Being in front of a committee answering questions about wasting taxpayers money isn’t good for later job prospects. Here, you don’t even have shareholders to answer to. As long as you and Ted and whoever thinks it’s a good idea, that’s all we need.”

“I’m not against limiting wasteful spending, either,” I said, still having bought into the multiple prototype idea.

“Sure, but you’d be less happy if something happens to the prototype, and we had to rebuild it from scratch. I know you haven’t had a big failure yet, but it’s going to happen eventually. That’s just the way it is. The more experimental you get, the bigger the chance it's happens.”

“I guess that makes sense. Let’s do some dry runs of the demo first, and make sure we’ve worked out all the kinks.”

Douglass gave the nod, and we got down to making sure the presentation was a success.

Chapter 21

I was up and off to the office Wednesday before the girls were up, not that there was much for me to do at this point. We’d done several test runs of our presentation, and everything was in Douglass' hands.

“You're here early,” I said when I walked into the cleared area of one of the factory floors which we’d set up for the presentation.

“We notice a slight fluctuation on the last trial run yesterday. It wasn’t that noticeable, but I wanted to run some tests before we showed it off.”

“Did we do too many runs through?”

“No. We’ve run this up to full power dozens of times so far, one more wouldn’t matter. It could have been an error in our analytics and not the battery itself for all we know, but I thought it would be best to check it over anyway.”

I left him to it and headed off to find Ted and Marcus. We more or less made ourselves look busy since we’d already done everything that needed to be done. About an hour later, a rep from MilTech and four people I assumed were from NASA showed up.

We made the requisite small talk and then headed off to the presentation. We had a row of chairs about fifty feet back from a small platform we’d set up, flanked by large screens showing performance data from the battery. Two of the NASA guys were administrators, and I wasn’t sure if the data would mean much to them. While I guess you had to send some of the guys who could sign off on purchases, this wasn’t going to be much to see except data output, and I was pretty sure they were going to be fairly bored.

The other two, however, were engineers. One was a team lead on power systems, and the other was the head engineer on the probe they were considering using the battery on.

“Good morning,” Douglass  said, stepping in front of the group. “I know you’ve seen our proposal papers and the basic technical details of the new battery. In short, this is a solid-state battery that isn’t as volatile as those currently in use, thanks to the synthetic Perovskite we have developed. This helps make them lightweight and should cut the weight you allot for batteries on launches by sixty percent. In addition to weight, the new material takes a charge at nearly seven times the speed of your current batteries, allowing them to more reliably recharge as needed. Finally, they should give you almost four times as much storage capacity as the current batteries you use, allowing you to either use that additional power storage or cut down the number of batteries needed, further lowering your launch weight.”

He turned and pointed at the screens, which had come to life and were starting to show data input from the batteries.

“Here you can see we are loading the batteries with the same energy output as the current solar panels you are using now. As you see, the batteries are taking in a higher percentage of the power, removing it, or at least limiting it, as a bottleneck in your power systems chain.”

As he spoke, numbers for current storage of the battery climbed displayed alongside power being outputted to the batteries. He waited a few minutes while the numbers on the screen continued to climb.

“While it will still be a little while for the battery to pass the load level of your current batteries, you’ll see it is getting there much quicker.”

One of the admin guys started whispering to the engineers, who whispered answers back. From their body language, I’d have to say their report to him was fairly positive. I was allowing myself to relax when I heard the first sound of something out of place.

I’m not sure when I first noticed it since it started so gradually, but at some point I definitely noticed a buzzing sound coming from the area of the battery. As I started to walk to Douglass, so I could quietly ask him about it, I noticed the screens showed a sudden, substantial decrease in the power consumption of the batteries.

Douglass clearly noticed it and had started to turn, and head towards the battery when I started smelling a sharp ozone smell. After he had taken one step, I noticed the buzzing sound grow significantly louder, a few sharp pops emanated from the battery, and the ozone smell was joined by a charred smell.

I’m not sure why, but something made me reach out and grab Douglass’s arm, and pull him backward. I must have pulled with too much power, because I managed to slightly lift him off his feet, and he stumbled back towards the spectators, who had started to get to their feet as they saw Douglass get manhandled.

As I turned to follow after him, both to make sure he was okay as he hit the floor in front of the chairs, and to give myself distance from the battery, all hell broke loose. The battery let out a whoomp sound, there was a sharp flash of light, and heat radiated out as it exploded.

A piece of something snaked past my neck, leaving a burning feeling, accompanied by the smell of burning flesh. The blast wasn’t strong enough to make me stumble, but my hand shot up to my neck, and I could feel wetness when I pressed my hand to my skin.

Technicians ran past with foam extinguishers and started dousing the smoking ruin of the battery and shattered screens. I reached down and pulled Douglass up while looking at the people in suits, whose mouths were hanging open.

“Are you all ok?”

They didn’t reply, so I repeated the questions.

“Yeah,” the guy from MilTech, said after a beat, “you’re bleeding!”

“Move your hand,” Emily said, who’d rushed over as soon as she got over her own shock.

Pulling my hand away, she looked at the wound and giving me a once over to make sure I was in one piece.

“I got nicked by something, I’ll be ok,” I told her.

“I thought you said this thing was more stable?” One of the engineers said.

“It is. We’ve put it through this test dozens of times.”

“Folks, I think clearly this is the end of our presentation. Our friend from MilTech will get you back to Houston while we figure out what’s going on.”

Emily finally decided I wasn’t going to die immediately, and headed to one side of the factory. I could see she was going for a first aid box.

They all headed towards the exit, some turning their heads back to look at the smoking prototype. I grabbed the MilTech guy and slowed him up.

“Once they are over their surprise, start sounding them out about letting us get another shot at this, once we determine the cause of the failure. Tell them we’d be happy to share a report of what happened with them, regardless if it shows a problem with our base design, some technical flaw, or something else. Tell Aaron I’ll call him later today and we’ll see what we have to do to salvage this.”

He nodded once and headed after the retreating officials.

“Are you ok?” I asked Douglass

“Yeah. I ... I don’t know what could have happened.”

“You said there was some kind of fluctuation, do you think that’s part of it?”

“Probably, but I have no idea what caused the fluctuation. We’re going to have to put all the pieces of that thing back together and try and find out what happened.”

Emily had returned with some gauze and medical tape and had started tending my wound when Jawarski burst through the door at a jog. Since the facility had controlled access and widespread video surveillance, she usually just hung out near the security offices and let me have more space when I was here.

“What the hell?” she said as she ran up.

“Don’t worry, it looks to be some kind of malfunction. The prototype failed, and since it’s a battery, that means it exploded. It wasn’t nefarious or anything.”

“Are we sure about that,” she said to Douglass.

“Fairly, but like I told Caspian here, we’ll do a full diagnostics on everything until we figure out what happened. If there’s a systemic problem, we don’t want to power up the other two prototypes until we’re sure they won't fail catastrophically also.”

“See, nothing happened.”

“And yet here you stand bleeding.”

“It’s practically stopped.”

I pulled my hand away, and the blood had already turned thick and sticky. I knew she was mostly giving me grief since she was well aware I’d heal a wound like that quickly. We, however, couldn’t discuss that in front of Douglass or the technicians. It occurred to me that, if I came out to the facilities over the next month, I’d probably have to wear a bandage over that area to hide the fact that it had healed so quickly.

“I probably need to go see a doctor about this, just to be sure. I’ll get out of your hair so you guys can figure out what happened.”

“I just can’t believe it failed on the presentation. A perfect chance to show all those jerks I was right about this.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get with Ted and Jonathan. I’m sure we can talk our way into another presentation. This can’t be the first time new tech crashed and burned, so to speak.”

He just grunted and went to join the technicians around the blackened prototype.

“You don’t actually want to see a doctor, do you?” Emily said quietly as we walked out.

“No, but if I were anyone else, I’d probably need to, so it’s best if we make them all think that’s what we’re doing.”

“So then where are we going?”

“Back to the hotel. That way I’m off site, and I can start making calls, and see if we can fix this mess.”

As we left, I looked back at Douglass, who had his hands on the top of his head, and looked as exasperated as a person could.

I spent the rest of the day, and most of the next making phone calls to everyone involved, trying to salvage the disaster and somehow swing another test. By Friday, it was out of my hands and mostly up to Ted and Aaron from MilTech.

Jawarski had some stuff to do with the security company, since they were starting to take on outside contracts to hopefully offset the gigantic bill I was racking up. They left me in the care of their people.

That worked out, as I was pretty much tired of being on the phone. I had something to do, anyway. Instead of going to work, I went with the girls to the center and helped out there. It was long and tiring, but rewarding in a way not even working at the company was.

When we went back to the hotel to pack up, I got us all together in Charlie and Sandy’s room, minus the security people.

“So how did this week go?”

“It was amazing,” Sandy said enthusiastically. “You guys have done so much. Seeing it in person makes me want to spread these places even more now.”

“So you’re still determined about that then?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “I know it might be a long while and there are a lot of hurdles, but if we could bring one of these to our town, I know it will make a difference. I’ve done volunteer work at a clinic and at a food shelter, and while both of those were great, what you guys are doing is the next step past that.”

“If you can’t manage it though-” Sandy said, her head hanging slightly and her voice at just above a whisper.

“I talked to the girls about this, and there are challenges we’ll have to get past, but I do think it’s doable. Maybe not immediately, but we can start working towards it now. Like I said, the first hurdle is for you guys to still do good in school, and have time to focus on getting past the other hurdles.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but it’s going to require a little ... trust on your part.”

“How so,” Sandy asked, suddenly sounding skeptical.

“Because, while I can explain to you what we can do and what to expect, there’s going to be stuff I can’t explain to you. There will also be parts that will be difficult to believe. I’ll understand if you guys want to pass, we just wanted to give you the option.”

“What would we have to do,” Sandy asked, a glance shooting towards Charlie in concern.

“We have a doctor friend who will give you both a once over to make sure there aren’t going to be negative reactions, although right now I can say I’m pretty sure you won’t have any. After that, you take a single shot. I will warn you, there will be a twenty-four hour period where you get very sick, sort of like extreme food poisoning or the flu. It’s what happens as your body adjusts to the injection. I won’t lie, that part is particularly nasty and why we’ll have to do this by early tomorrow to give you time to bounce back and head back to school on Sunday. The good news is, after twenty-four hours, you’ll feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”

“What do you mean ‘better,’” Charlie asked.

“Healthier. As time goes on, you’ll find your health getting steadily better. Allergies will disappear, your metabolism will speed up, it’ll be easier to put on muscle, and you’ll also find it easier to retain and process information in school. The retention of information and increased ability to learn is the main reason I thought about offering this to you since that’ll help you do better in school with less study. Besides that, you won’t get the cold any more, won’t get the flu anymore ... basically, you won’t get sick again. There are a few side effects, however.”

“Like what?”

“For one, you won’t be able to get drunk or high ever again.”

“What happens if we drink?”

“Nothing. You can drink alcohol, it just won’t have an effect on you. You won’t even get a buzz off it anymore.”

“And that’s it?”

“No. The other major side effect is kind of hard to explain, mostly because we’re not sure exactly how it happens. You’ll find yourselves drawn towards me more, being almost loyal towards me. It has to do with something in the biochemistry of the process.”

“So like, what? Brainwashed?” Sandy asked, involuntarily stepping back, putting separation between us.

“Not ... exactly. Like I said, it’s really hard to explain. It’s not like you’ll do what I say or anything. As you’ve seen already, they all have no problem disagreeing with me, doing the exact opposite I asked, and calling me an idiot. You’ll still be yourselves. There will just be this innate caring of what I think. Not an agreement or anything, just a feeling that you have to take it into consideration.”

“It’s not as bad as he’s making it sound,” Vicki said. “He has a real problem with this, and it’s one of the reasons he’s pretty firm about not giving it to anyone until he’s had a chance to explain the side effects, which is too bad when you consider all the benefits it gives you. Trust me though, it’s not brainwashing. People who already like Cas and are loyal to him actually don’t see a difference, since it basically makes you want to do what you’re doing already. The only people who really notice a change are those who were hostile or ambivalent to him.”

“You were right, this all sounds pretty hard to believe,” Charlie said. “What is it exactly?”

“That is what I can’t tell you. It’s not that we don’t trust you guys, because we totally do, but if this were to get out, it could make some serious problems for us. Think of all the benefits we listed. Who wouldn’t want that? More importantly, can you imagine what some people, or groups, or governments, would do to get their hands on something like that?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Sandy said.

“That’s the other thing. You can’t tell anyone. At all. Ever.”

“Can we have a minute?”

“Sure, we’ll be in our room. Take as much time as you need.”

The girls and I headed back to our room and very conspicuously didn’t speculate on what their decision was going to be. After a little while, there was a knock on our door, and Zoe went to let in. They looked nervous but determined as they stepped into the room and closed the door behind them.

“We’ve talked about it, and we’ve decided. We’ll do it.”

“Ok,” Zoe said, hopping up. “We should do this here since you guys will need some time to get over the adjustment period and still have time to drive back to school.”

“You don’t think we should go back and let Alex do it?”

“No. Vicki and I spent some time with her .... before and learned how to do everything. We don’t have everything we need, but I can make a quick run to the clinic and get a few things, and we should be good. You guys hang out, and I’ll be back in a bit.”

I knew by ‘before’ she meant when they’d changed a lot of people without telling me. Zoe headed out, and we sat around chatting. Charlie kept trying to get a little more information on what it was we were going to do, which was natural I guess. I know if I’d heard what he heard and agreed to take some unknown shot, I’d have a lot of questions.

After thirty minutes, Zoe got back, and we ducked out of the room to take a couple of small draws of my blood, making sure to keep the injection points in places where my clothing would cover it. I trusted them, and would so even more once they went through the change, but the fewer people that knew all the details of everything, the better.

“Why is it dark?” Charlie asked. “Aren’t shots normally clear?”

“Yes, but that’s the way it is. It’s ok if you want to back out, we’d totally get it. You’re taking a lot on faith.”

“No, we’ll do it,” Sandy said.

Charlie looked less sure but put his arm out, and Zoe gave him the shot, followed by Sandy. Sure enough, in just over an hour they both started feeling queasy, and after two hours the real sickness kicked in. We took turns watching over the very happy pair and taking care of them through the night.

Multiple times Charlie commented that, had he known it would get that bad, he wouldn’t have agreed; but I knew once this was all over, they’d be fine, and would forget about how sick they were. Megan was just as pissed at me when she got sick. On the plus side, this would be the very last time, at least as far as we could tell, they’d ever be sick like this again. I didn’t point that out, at least at the moment. No one wants that guy around when they're hugging a toilet.

We were packing up the next morning to head back home, with Tami next door helping Charlie and Sandy. They were on the back half of the sickness now, but both were dragging. In a perfect world, we would have given them another day to rest and recover before spending a few hours in the car, but we needed to have them home in time for them to turn around, and drive back to school.

It wasn’t an ideal solution, but by the first day back from Spring Break, they’d be better than ever, in a very literal sense. I’d been kicked out of the room for helping poorly and was standing at the railing in front of the rooms when, much to my surprise, I saw Jonathan pull into the motel parking lot. I hadn’t been expecting him, but I headed down the stairs and out into the lot to meet him at his car.

“Hey,” I said, pulling his door open and stepping back so he could get out. “This is unexpected. Is everything ok?”

“Everything’s fine. I knew you were headed out this morning, and I wanted to catch you before you did. I heard back from my friend in the Bureau and, while this is very unofficial, he gave me some updates on their investigation.”

“Really? I'm surprised. Aren’t they usually pretty tight-lipped about this kind of thing?”

“They are, but he owes me some favors, and made me swear on my first born that I wouldn’t let this get out.”

“Why’d you rush over here? You could have just called me.”

“Because I wanted to keep this as secret as possible. Not that I think phones would be bugged or anything, but if we talked in person, there was less of a chance someone could overhear. He went out on a limb for me, and I’m going out on a limb telling you, so we need to keep this between us. For now, you shouldn’t even tell the girls, just to be safe.”

“Ok, I swear I won’t tell anyone. So what’s going on?”

“They’ve started assigning more agents to the case. He wouldn’t say what, but apparently, they’ve found something big enough for the southern district US Attorney to start getting updates on the case. I’m reading between the lines, but I think this goes higher than bought off police officers.”

“Really? Have they tied it back to, what was that guy's name, the one who sent goons for me at the beginning of the year?”

“Joe Richards.”

“Yeah, him.”

“He wouldn’t give me specific names, so I don’t know. We did give his name to them when they took everything else, so they know who he is, at least.”

“That’s something. So what happens next, and when does it happen?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I think, considering the rush of new agents heading down to help with the investigation. As far as what happens, we wait. They’ll make their move when they’re ready. There still isn’t much we can do before then.”

“What about that journalist we called? I’m tired of being trailed everywhere by bodyguards. If we talk to him, do you think it’d put more pressure on them to move sooner?”

“Maybe. We have to be careful about it though. My friend went out on a ledge, I don’t want to burn him.”

“Then you make the call. It’s probably better if the same person doesn’t keep talking to him about this every time, lowers our exposure. Make sure you do it in a way he can’t just look up your phone number.”

“I’ll figure something else,” he said in a voice of suffering patience.

“I know you know what you’re doing. It just made me feel better to say it out loud, ok?”

He gave me a smile and patted my shoulder, “You probably need to get going, if your friends are going to leave on time. I’ll let you know what happens.”

I stood back as he got back in his car and drove off, waving to him as he left the parking lot. This was actually pretty good news. Hopefully, it meant that the threat we’d been under all year would soon be over.

My relief at the FBI investigation making progress came crashing down when I walked back into the room to find Vicki holding the phone, her face stricken.

“Beth shot someone,” she said when she saw me, holding the phone out towards me. “Someone tried to grab your sister, and she shot him.”

Chapter 22

I stood stock still for several beats, staring at the phone in her hands, my brain resisting her words. It couldn’t be ... not again. It was the incident with Judy all over again.

“Cas,” Vicki said, prompting me.

I hesitantly reached forward and took the phone from her.

“What happened?” I said into the receiver.

Moms voice came back through the earpiece, comforting me somewhat.

“Everyone’s ok. Tina and Beth are both fine.”

“What happened?” I repeated.

“A man broke into the house. I was at the lab and Beth was here doing some work, waiting for you to get home. One of her people had taken her car, so I think whoever the man was thought Tina and Judy were here alone. He kicked in the back door, carrying a gun. Beth went to see what was happening, but Tina had been in the kitchen, and by the time Beth got there, he had Tina by the arm and was pulling her towards the door. Beth shot him in the chest. The police have taken her in for questioning.”

“But everyone’s ok?”

“Tina’s a little scared, she got a bunch of blood on her, but she’s calming down. Jonathan’s our next call so he can have someone come to be with a Beth. She doesn’t think she needs it of course.”

“I don’t care what she thinks she needs, make sure she has a lawyer.”

“We’re already on it. We have everything under control, and both Carter and Levi are here. I just wanted to let you know what was happening. Just come home, and drive carefully.”

I took a breath to calm down and said, “Sure. We’ll see you in a few hours.”

I handed the phone to Zoe, who talked to her mom for a few minutes while we got the car loaded, and then we were on the way home. I may have been calm on the outside, but inside I was seething.

If I stepped back and considered it, intellectually, I knew the smart move was to just hunker down and wait. Jonathan had made it clear that the feds were closing in, and he made it sound like they’d pounce soon.

I, however, wasn’t able to look at it intellectually. The attempt on Judy was bad, but Tina and I had gotten a lot closer over the last year, and I really cherished my relationship with her. The attempt on her was a step too far. By the time we hit home, I had a plan that I knew Jawarski would tie me to a chair if she knew about it. She, however, was still at the police station being questioned. While it seemed pretty clear it was self-defense, two bodies in less than two months raised all kinds of eyebrows.

I also knew I was going to catch all kinds of hell from both Mom and the girls, but that was something I was willing to accept.

When we pulled up to the house, I pulled out some paperwork from the glove box as they got out, acting as if I were looking for something specific. Zoe stopped when she saw me, and I gave her a wave with one hand.

“Go on, I’ll be right behind you. I needed to find something for Jonathan so the cars can be listed out of the new facilities, or something. He’s been bugging me about it, and I keep forgetting.”

She gave me a look and, for a second, I thought she was going to call me on the lie. Thankfully, after a brief pause, she closed her door and headed towards the house. As soon as she was far enough away, I put the car in reverse and pulled out of the driveway. As the house fell behind me, I could see the look of surprise and confusion on her face.

I felt a pang of guilt over what I was doing, but I pushed that down and ignored it as something I’d deal with later. I also felt bad that I wouldn’t see Charlie or Sandy, since they would have to head back to school almost immediately if they didn’t want to miss classes. I knew I could count on Mom making sure they got on the road, even if everyone was focused on my actions. As bad as I felt though, I’d made a promise to myself to keep my family safe, and I wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines any longer.

Ever since we found out a criminal organization put us in their sights, Carter had been putting together as much info as possible on them. The actual goal was to gather together the information that Jonathan had handed over to the Feds, but along the way, Carter and his people had found a good deal of info on who were the players in the Syndicate and how they operated. This included who seemed to be the group's leader, Joe Richards.

Carter had the man, and his lieutenants followed for months, getting an idea of their schedules and who they talked to. For a man running a criminal enterprise, Richards kept an incredibly regular schedule, and Carter was now able to predict where he’d be on any given day.

I’d read every report Carter had written up, or more likely had one of his guys write up since Carter wasn’t really the report writing type. That meant I knew exactly where to find the man. He’d gone after my family twice now, and it was time he learned there were consequences.

Alice’s downtown was more of the main street than an actual downtown, covering about a half of a mile line with a scattering of storefronts mixed with three to five-story office type buildings, with the courthouse at one end of that section. Near the opposite end, in one of those storefront sections, was a small Italian restaurant. According to Carter’s reporters, Richards could be found there every afternoon for a very long lunch.

Carter had dug up some old filings that suggested that Richards was a part owner in the restaurant, and it was clear he did a good percentage of his business out of it. It was well after lunch; and, according to Carter’s notes, the restaurant was never particularly busy. Mostly, it was living off of handouts from Richards rather than paying customers, so there was plenty of parking up front.

I walked in straight past a stammering hostess, who I ignored completely, making a beeline for a table in the back corner. The hostess was hot on my heels, demanding that I stop.

Richards was at the table by himself, reading something, no food in sight, with two bodyguard types standing near him. Over the last year, Levi had given me a wide rundown of how bodyguards worked. At first, it was to help me understand better what to expect from the people Jawarski assigned to me, but once we got started, I got really interested and talked him into going through the basic training he’d given to soldiers assigned as guards during his days in Israeli intelligence.

While I wasn’t in any way qualified to be a bodyguard, it had given me an appreciation for what they did, and it told me that these two weren’t very good at the job. That was to be expected, actually. This was a small east Texas town, not Gambino era New York or Meyer Lansky era Vegas. It seemed hard to fathom these guys had actually done much in the way of body guarding.

For starters, neither was very attentive. They seemed oblivious to my approach until I was almost on top of the table. Considering I had a yammering hostess right behind me and the restaurant was empty, there wasn’t much more I could have done to announce my approach. Once they did seem to notice me, both men moved away from their boss towards me. One should have kept his distance, while the other approached me. Instead, they came towards me shoulder to shoulder. It meant that, as long as I could come to grips with both men, once they were down there weren’t any threats beyond them save Richards himself.

“Hold it,” the guard on my left said, putting his hand up inches from my chest.

In reply, I exploded into action. Grabbing the man's hand in a joint lock, I twisted hard, applying more force than Levi would have approved of. While I’m sure it wasn’t actually audible, I thought I could almost hear the sound of the brittle bones in the man's hand snapping as I twisted.

Instead of going for a weapon, which he should have done, he had the normal human reaction, reaching for the cause of his pain, trying to get me to release. I was able to ignore that for a second and, thanks to my dropping into the flow, I was able to divide my attention between the two attackers.

The second guard was clearly better trained, his hand moving towards what I was sure was a weapon as soon as I started my attack. Unfortunately for him, I was significantly faster. I slammed my flat palm into his diaphragm with a burst of power, causing him to double over slightly as I pushed all the air out of his lungs.

The hand continued its movement, snaking around the man's head that was dropping as he doubled over and grabbing him by the hair. Just as he started regaining some composure to fight against my grip, I pushed his head down hard while bringing my knee up, smashing into his jaw, which gave way to the impact. I released my grip on his hair as the man’s body slumped like a marionette with its strings cut. I turned my attention to his friend who was trying to pry my hand loose.

Using the leg that was still returning from kneeing his friend, I smashed into the side of his leg as I pulled him in my direction by his injured hand, the impact caused his knee joint to pop out of place. The combination of the dislocated knee and the jerk I gave his hand caused the man to pull sideways, off balance. As he started to topple, I used the hand now freed from dealing with his friend to smash his face into the side of a table. Like his friend, his body went limp on impact.

Releasing his hair, I let him slump down next to his partner.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Richards said, surprisingly nonplussed by the sudden eruption of violence. “They were simply going to check you for weapons.”

“Your men have a bad habit of trying to hurt my family and me,” I said, glaring down at him from across the table.

“Ahh, you’re the kid,” he said, his eyes lighting up with recognition. “What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?”

“You can stop having your men come after my family and me.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he said, the slight upturn of his mouth putting lie to his statement.

Maybe he thought I was wearing a wire or maybe he just liked being cagey, but I wasn’t in the mood for games.

“I’m sure you don’t. Let's say - hypothetically, if you prefer - someone who works for you comes after my family again, I want you to be clear on the consequences.”

“Consequences?” he asked, his tone making it clear he thought that was funny.

“I will burn your whole organization down around you! I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life in jail, as long as my family’s safe. I can live with you taking shots at me. I clearly screwed up a lot of your plans, and you have it in for me. That’s life. But you’ve taken two shots at my people, in the last two months. I’m not going to let a third happen.”

“Two ...” he started and stopped, seeming genuinely surprised.

I had no doubt he could feign innocence with the best of them, but he hadn’t even tried to hide his guilt up to this point, so it made no sense for him to start now.

“First my girlfriend's sister, and now my sister. I’m giving you fair warning, besides the two dead men you sent, of course.”

“I don’t ...,” he started, still confused, and then composed himself. “Son, I think you have me confused with someone else. I don’t have ‘people’ and certainly didn’t send anyone.”

The denial I expected, but the shift in attitude - even after he recovered from the shock, which I also couldn’t tell if it was feigned or not - bothered me. I heard a grunt as one of his men, the one without the broken jaw, started to stir.

He hadn’t called the cops, but I didn’t want to push my luck any longer.

“This is your only warning,” I said, backing away.

“Thank you,” he said, the smile finally returning. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

I didn’t get quite back out of the restaurant, but I made sure he and his slowly waking guard were in my sight until I exited the building.

Once I was on the way home, I let my mind wander. That exchange went very different than what I’d expected, and I was having trouble wrapping my mind around it. He went from a mocking denial to fairly convincing surprise, back to mocking denials. The switch didn’t make sense, and I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

My confusion quickly abated when I pulled into my driveway, and a storm of angry women rushed out of the house before I even got my door open. I did notice, as they approached, that Jawarski wasn’t among them, which was probably for the best. As soon as I stepped out, the flood of words rushed over me as they all tried to yell at me at once, blocking me from moving away from the car.

“Hey. Hey. STOP!” I said, getting progressively louder with each shout so I could be heard over the din.

Thankfully, the torrent stopped with the last word, which came out as more of a guttural shout than actual words.

“Let’s take this inside, where you can all yell at me to your heart's content.”

I pushed past them and headed through the front door and into the living room, where I sat on the couch, knowing this would take a while. As soon as I sat down, the screaming started again. Eventually, Mom took control of the group, seeing the mass of screaming wasn’t getting anywhere.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she said as they all settled down.

“I was thinking I wasn’t going to sit back and wait for another attack on one of you. I’m done being passive.”

“Do you realize what would have happened if you were killed?” Zoe said, still in a near panic.

“That’s not an easy thing to do.”

“You’re not invulnerable kiddo,” Mom said.

“I’m aware of that. I’m also not an easy target. Was it risky? Sure, but it needed to be done. We can’t just sit here and wait until the FBI finally decides to make their move. They’ve taken shots at us. We can’t just sit back and let that happen.”

“We have to be smart about this,” Vicki said.

“I was. I didn’t do anything, well ... not really. I just made it clear to him that there would be repercussions if he did it again.”

“And how did that work?” Emily said folding her arms.

“I didn’t expect it to actually work, but I wanted him to know that we were done sitting back. Next time, I won’t go and just talk.”

“Cas, I talked to Jonathan. We’re close. We just have to wait a little longer.” Mom said.

“How long is a little longer?” I asked, becoming annoyed. “Do we wait until they try a third time? A fourth? Do we wait until they actually manage to grab one of you, or worse? When is it enough?”

“We just have to play it smart,” Mom said, sounding exasperated but ignoring my questions altogether.

“I agree, and I thought I was doing the smart thing. We needed to push back.”

“Well, what’s done is what’s done, although I guarantee you’re going to have this same conversation again.”

“Yeah, I know Jawarski’s going to rip me a new one. I accepted that when I pulled out of the driveway. Although...”

“Although?” Zoe said.

“Something did happen, and I’m not sure how to take it.”

“What?”

“While he denied everything I threw at him, he did it in a way that made it clear he absolutely came after us, and that he was okay with it. Except, he seemed genuinely confused when I mentioned there’d been two attempts to grab one of the younger girls. Considering he was so unabashed about making it clear he did the other stuff, his response left me wondering.”

“You don’t think he was just trying to throw you?” Vicki asked.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t fit with everything else he did. Are we sure of what we’re sure of?”

“How would we know?” Mom asked. “If you think it’s important we should ask Beth to go over it all again, once she’s done having you skinned alive, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

The group broke up after that. While none of the girls felt I was properly chastised, they were willing to let the subject drop until Jawarski got home.

True to my prediction, Jawarski did lay into me as soon as she heard what I’d done while she was being held. The girls, who I have to remind myself are on my side, made sure she heard about it the second she walked in the door.

While Jawarski made her displeasure at my ‘poor judgment’ clear, she also found Richard’s reaction when I mentioned the two attacks interesting, and said she’d look into it. Thankfully, that mystery was enough to distract her, limiting the lecture to only a few minutes.

We did get some good news that night when Charlie and Sandy called, let us know they got back to school ok, and that both were feeling much better. It was too early for the real benefits to kick in, but I was happy to hear they were over the sickness at least.

Several days passed and nothing more happened on the Syndicate front. Jawarski just told me to wait, that there would definitely be blow-back from my visit to Richards. She was more of an expert than me, but I was hoping I had thrown them off balance some, buying us time until the FBI made their move, which Jonathan still swore was going to happen any time, now.

There were, however, distractions from waiting for the other shoe to drop. The big one was school. We’d worked out all the details of testing out of the rest of high school, and now we were down to the point of prepping for the tests, and there were more of them then you would think. We had to show a full proficiency in every subject we’d be expected to finish, across standard Junior and Senior years.

We were partly helped by the fact that we’d been taking classes already that covered some of the subjects from those last two years of high school, but even with that, we had a lot of tests coming up. None of us were actually worried about the tests themselves. The change had given us near-perfect recall of our study materials, making all but the essay portions just a matter of learning and repeat. But the scope of information we had to study so we could later recall it for the test was pretty wide, giving us a lot more homework then we’d had to this point, at least since the change occurred.

We also had to prepare for the essays, where our recall would be less of a help. Thankfully, our teachers, who were still upset about the ending of the advanced program, were supportive of us and helped us prepare for that part, too. Still, I was glad I wasn’t needed at the office on weekdays, or at least had already planned on being unavailable during the time between the company's move and my move. It gave me some wider latitude to study, which for the first time in two years I needed.

We were finishing up a study session when Mom and Alex showed up carrying pizza. While Mom coming home with dinner wasn’t surprising, Alex coming with her was. Alex was the singularly most focused person I’d ever met, more so since the change. She tended to spend insane hours at the lab, some nights sleeping on the couch in her office in between running tests. I wasn’t even sure if I’d seen her since my last trip to visit the lab.

“Study break's over, kids,” Mom said, setting the pizza and paper plates down on the coffee table.

“What’s up?” I asked as I started handing plates out to the girls.

“We have good news,” She said, looking over at Alex. “We passed Phase I trials.”

“Really?” Zoe said.

“Yep. We just have some paperwork to get processed, and we’ll be cleared to set up our protocols for Phase II trials.”

“So you didn’t run into any problems?” I asked skeptically.

“No. There were some questions about why it works, since the science behind our submission doesn’t really make sense unless you know what our ‘serum’ actually is. We gave them a song and dance, and it’s hard to actually argue with the efficacy we were able to show. They went over our data twice, because they couldn’t make it work on paper; but eventually, they just threw their hands up when we showed repeated examples of it working.”

“If they don’t understand how it works, and are curious, isn’t that going to cause some problems in later stages?”

“It will put us under higher scrutiny, sure. We’ll have to file more reports, and have primary physicians sign-off on our work, but they won’t look all that closely 'under the hood,' if we show positive results.”

“Aren’t you worried about something that’s one-hundred percent effective? That has to raise eyebrows,” Emily asked.

“We will be giving doses without Cas’s plasma added in for a percentage of patients, in addition to the control. Honestly, I hate doing that, since it will doom those people to traditional cancer treatments; but in the long run, we'll be able to help a lot more people if we can get through trials.”

“I’m not a huge fan of 'the greater good' argument for letting people die,” I groused.

“I’m not either, sweetie, but what else can we do. Emily’s right. If we have a drug that’s one-hundred percent effective, some people are going to claim we're cheating the system, and then they will look 'under the hood.' That would expose you, and that we’re not willing to do. So honestly, it’s this, or we don’t do anything at all. Unless you have a better idea?”

“No, I don’t. I agree there aren’t a lot of choices, I just don’t like the ones available to us.”

“Neither do we, but this is where we are. Keep in mind there will be those on the control as well, who won’t receive any medication. Patients go in knowing they might get a placebo instead of the medication, and have given their consent. It won’t be any different than that.”

“So when do you start,” Vicki asked.

“A couple of months at best, probably middle of the summer. Besides finishing our Phase I paperwork, we have to set up the protocols and get with a testing team at one of the hospitals. That'll probably be in Houston, considering where we’re going to be based. That’ll all take time to get set up. We also have to move our labs into our new facilities, which are almost done. All that’s going to take time. But, come the end of summer, we’ll actually start to cure some very sick people, which, confidentially, will start changing people not directly connected to us.”

“That part I’m not crazy about still. You know how I feel about people getting the change without knowing what they're getting.”

“Again, I know. We’ve been through that. We’re not going to be able to go through and explain the process to every single person we change. There are just too many people in the world. At some point, we’re going to get recognized, if not for what we exactly are, then something going on with us. We will need people at that point for support. A lot of people. These patients aren’t able to give the full consent to everything, but we’re not only curing their cancer but guaranteeing it never ever comes back. I can tell you, from my experience, they’ll make that deal every day.”

It was hard to argue with her when she pointed out we’d done the same thing to her. Of course, we didn’t understand the repercussions when we dosed Mom, but I didn’t doubt she was wrong.

“Plus,” she continued, “this will be an excellent way to start really widening the base of people we change. You may not like it, but there’s benefit there.”

“Okay, okay. I know we’ve been through this, and I’m the only one who really has a problem with it. I just wanted to make the point, not stop you from doing it.”

“I know, but at some point, you’re going to have to get over this guilt trip you’re laying on yourself. Besides, I have other good news too. We’re about a month or so away from having the house done.”

Everyone cheered up at that. While we loved this house, it was too cramped for the number of people living here, even with so many sleeping in the master bedroom.

“So, we just have to make it a little longer, and we’ll be further out of the grip of the Syndicate,” I said, thinking-out-loud. “Jawarski will be happy about that. The new house will be much more secure than what we have now. We just have to make it a little longer, and we’ll all be a lot safer.”

Chapter 23

A week passed that was, thankfully uneventful, aside from the girls and I studying, and everyone else beginning the packing process. I wasn’t sure why we were starting this early, considering the house wasn’t even finished yet. Of course, when I voiced my confusion, Mom looked at me with amusement like I was a small child asking where the people on the TV went when it wasn’t on.

We were in the midst of this, when Jawarski told me she and Carter needed a few minutes. I’d had them on a lot of things lately, from dealing with the preacher's followers to the Syndicate, so I wasn’t sure which crisis area was in trouble, but I was sure one of them were. The only time these two pulled me aside collectively was when something was on fire somewhere.

“What’s up?” I asked as we all sat at the kitchen table.

“We’ve gotten some new info about Josh,” Jawarski said.

“You found him?”

“No,” Carter said, unusually quietly for him. “We had some help from the people at MilTech and were able to pull a street cam that was further away. It’s grainy as hell, and we couldn’t make out faces or license plates, but we could see the side of the vehicle that the boots were next to in the gas station video. You can see Josh getting into the vehicle after talking to the two men. There weren’t any weapons we could see, and there didn’t seem to be an argument or threats. It was just a quiet conversation, and then he got in.”

Jawarski picked up from Carter saying, “We can make out the type of dress and haircuts of the men, and it screams military. Their dress is civilian, but we’re pretty sure their boots are current issue combat boots. We’re now more certain that whoever he went with, is either current or recently discharged military. It’s now pretty clear he went with them willingly.”

“That just doesn’t make any sense. He just up and left Amanda and his parents without saying a word? Josh was always selfish, but that seems too far even for him. I just don’t buy it!”

“I get that,” Carter said. “It’s however really clear on the tape. He got in the van, willingly. You can’t see when they first start talking so we don’t know if he drove there to meet them, or if he just ran into them, but we’re certain he knew them already.”

“Everything points to one conclusion,” Jawarski added. “He didn’t get grabbed. He left with those people of his own free will.”

“I’m just having a lot of trouble wrapping my brain around that. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t keep it from being true,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, “You’re right. I just don’t like it, and I’m not sure how we’re going to break this to Amanda. She’s going to freak the hell out.”

“That’s up to you. For now, we’re going to shut this down on our end. There doesn’t seem to be much we can do anymore, and we need the manpower on looking into the other stuff you asked for.”

“Yeah, fine,” I said absently. “Thanks for everything guys.”

“We have more,” Jawarski said.

I looked up and saw Jawarski nervously give the side eye to Carter. That alone set off an alarm in the back of my head, since I couldn’t remember Jawarski ever getting nervous.

“What?”

“After your stupid meeting with Richards, we went back and looked over both the attempt to grab Judy, and the attempt on Tina. Your suspicion was right.”

“In what way?”

“The guy who I shot, the one that tried to grab Tina, was one-hundred percent one of Richards people. He’s connected to one of the men you shot at the Dojo, and we have connections between him and multiple businesses we’ve linked to Richards.”

“Ok, that’s not a surprise.”

“No, but the other attempt, the one on Judy; is, or maybe it isn’t, but it’s not what we thought. The guy who went after her had no connection to anyone or anything at all associated with Richards. He’s a straight up criminal, and looks like he was hired just because he was willing to grab a little girl.”

“What does that mean then? Maybe Richards went outside to keep things deniable.”

“Even if that wasn’t ridiculous on its face, considering all the people Richards sent who were directly connected to him, there’s more. I have a friend who managed to get us a look at the guy's bank accounts. There was a payment. What’s surprising is, it wasn’t cash. They wrote the guy a fucking check, with his name on it. It was complete amateur hour.”

“Who wrote the check.”

“One of the preacher's flock.”

I sat and stared at her. She was right, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. The guy had made multiple attempts at getting her back after we messed up her ‘destiny’ as his next child bride. He wasn’t the kind of guy to give up after one failure, or five, so it made sense. The more I thought about it, the more I seethed. I’d warned him, more times then I should, that I’d tear his world down if he messed with my people. Of course, I’d already made plans for doing that, but this put things in a new light.

“We’re done screwing around with him. I want every resource we can take from him, pulled, now. Every member of his flock not currently changed, whatever list we had to still work through, I want them out of his reach. Change them all, now. I don’t want a single follower giving him money, giving him support, or giving him their children. I also want to all the information we have on him sent to the state cops and feds; anonymously, of course. I want his 'church' gone, and his ass in jail.”

“What about Emily’s family?”

“We still don’t change them. I want their support base and friends all gone, and I don’t want these people connected to us even a little bit.”

They looked at each other, and I slapped the table.

“I’m serious. This needs to be done, now.”

Jawarski gave a shrug, and they both headed off. I still needed to talk to the girls about Amanda, and I needed to calm down first. I sat, staring at my hands, trying to control my breathing, but it was tough.

Eventually, I calmed down enough to talk to the girls. Emily didn’t really know Amanda well but was supportive of however I decided to handle it. The other three, who were very close to Amanda, unanimously agreed that I needed to talk to her and explain it. They said that, if they were in her place, they’d want to know.

I let them call her and ask her to come over. A part of me wished they’d just tell her what happened and save me from having to do it. Unfortunately, they were extremely vague when she asked them what was going on.

Five minutes later she was sitting on the couch opposite me, glaring. I knew that Amanda was angry at me, that some part of her blamed me for what happened. Considering what I was about to tell her, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t feel any different after I explained what Jawarski and Carter had found. Hell, I knew everything she didn’t know, and Josh’s leaving was a mystery to me too.  I couldn’t blame her since I partially blamed myself for his taking off too.

I realized I’d been staring at her, mouth half open, as I thought through what to say, or at least wishing someone else had told her. I opened my mouth the rest of the way to just jump into it when she cut me off.

“What? I’m here, and they wouldn’t say what you want, so spit it out.” she was definitely still blaming me, and was still angry.

“We do have new info on Josh. We found a new video showing more of what happened. Not enough to be able to track him down, but enough to know he went with whoever it was willingly.”

“He would only have left ‘cause you were such a dick,” she spat at me.

“Maybe; but, either way, he left on his own. It was his choice, and if that’s the one he made, then I made the right choice by not giving him what he wanted.”

“Would have been so bad?” she asked, her voice changing from outright anger to almost pleading.

“Yes. My first priority is protecting all the people I love. Imagine what would happen if people found out what was really going on. Josh’s problems didn’t start with me, Amanda. The cheating, the steroids, now him leaving in the middle of the night. You have to accept that Josh has not been making good decisions! I won’t put the fate of my family in the hands of someone who’s making bad decisions.”

“He already knew everything though, and he never said anything.”

“He got close several times. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have ever changed you guys; but it needed to happen on my schedule, and Josh couldn’t deal with that.”

She didn’t respond, just staring over my shoulder. Tami sat next to her, holding her hand, but not saying anything.

“Why wouldn’t he have said anything to me about leaving? How could he just ... go?”

“I don’t know. Even with everything he’s done, I was certain that what he felt for you would be enough to make him do the right thing.”

“Maybe he didn’t really love me,” she said, looking at Tami.

“Don’t think that way. He loved you. It was obvious. He just has problems he has to work through. Maybe he left because whatever in him that made him do all this stuff was getting worse, and maybe he realized it. He’d leave without telling you, if he thought it was to protect you.”

I wouldn’t have put my money on that. Several times he’d lashed out at Amanda when he couldn’t get what he wanted. It seemed clear to me that, deep down, Josh was incredibly selfish, and only really thought about himself and getting what he wanted. Nothing else would fit with his behavior. I, however, would never say that to Amanda, who was really hurting.

“But how do we know when he’s better? Will he come back for me?”

“I’m sure if he thinks he’s gotten over this, he will, sweetie,” Tami said.

She looked up at me and nodded her head for me to take off. Amanda was falling apart, and starting to cling to Tami in desperation. It was clear she’d be breaking down completely any minute. My heart felt for Amanda, but I was glad I didn’t have to be there for that. Not because I wouldn’t have wanted to comfort her, but because I’d already seen how she could switch from sadness to anger and back on a dime. It wasn’t hard to see that, when she did, I’d be back to being the target of her rage.

She couldn’t go after Josh, who ultimately made the decision to leave, so she’d go after me as the next best target. I don’t she actually blamed me for all of Josh’s problems, but he certainly had; and that was enough for her to transfer her anger from him, to me.

I made myself scarce as Tami, and the rest of the girls tried to sooth Amanda’s anguish overhearing Josh hadn’t been taken by someone else, or nothing nefarious had happened, but instead, he’d made the decision to leave and not tell her.

Of all the shitty things Josh had done during his self-destructive spiral over the last years; to me, this was the worst. He hadn’t just hurt himself, but someone he was supposed to really care about. This was a new low, even for him.

I was up in my room cooling my heels, when the phone rang. Wanting to give the girls as much time as possible to help Amanda, I reached and answered it quickly, so that they wouldn’t.

“Caspian?” Jonathan said after I answered.

He sounded excited and distracted, almost breathless, which was unusual for him.

“Yeah?”

“It’s happening!”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

My mind was still partially on the girls downstairs, which kept me from jumping to the most likely answer to that.

“The FBI! They're making their move. My friend told me a bunch of agents are headed to Alice right now. He couldn’t tell me specifics, but I got the impression that they found a whole lot of dirt, and a lot of people are going on their list of warrants.”

“Really? Is Richards…?”

“That my friend did confirm. He is definitely on their list.”

My mind reeled. This was it, it was all over. The danger we’d been under for more than a year, the need for protection, it was all coming to an end. I couldn’t believe it.

“How long?”

“Soon. No more than a couple of hours.”

“I want to call that journalist in Houston. I want enough of a public eye on this that he doesn’t manage to wiggle out from underneath the charges.”

“I understand. I’m on my way to town now, and will be there in under an hour. I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

“Right, see you then,” I said and hung up.

“Zoe,” I yelled downstairs. “I need your help. It’s an emergency.”

The sound of a small army banging up the stairs told me that Zoe wasn’t the only one coming. This was confirmed seconds later when the whole group, including Amanda, burst through the door.

“What?” Zoe said, looking around anxiously.

My call, coming out of the blue and sounding much more animated thanks to my own excitement over the news, had sounded more serious than I would have intended.

“Jonathan called. The FBI is moving. Today!”

“Really?”

We then proceeded to have the exact conversation I had with Jonathan, with me taking his part, and the girls collectively taking mine. Amanda seemed a little bewildered. She knew that there had been some assaults in the past, and heard enough to know that something was happening, but she’d never heard the full details, before. To say the idea that we’d somehow been in contact with the FBI and there was a raid about to happen here in our small town blew her mind, would be a huge understatement.

“Zoe, I need you to set up that untraceable deal we used when I called the reporter last time,” I said when we finished the twenty questions.

“You’re telling a reporter?” Amanda asked.

“We gave a guy a heads up, and enough info to start building a story. We told him something big would be coming. We want him there when they haul these guys out in handcuffs, so that the word gets out. We want to keep this from happening here, again.”

“I had no idea ...” she said quietly.

“Ok, ready,” Zoe said after a minute.

She didn’t have to do much to set it up, since she used the same setup as before, and just had to do her magic to make sure it remained untraceable.

“City desk,” Dan Figeroa said when he answered.

“Dan, this is ... the anonymous source that sent you the information about what was happening in Alice.”

“The mystery man with so little information. I hope you have more for me than vague suggestions of corruption this time. I was able to corroborate some of it, but there isn’t even close to enough for this to become a real story.”

“You’ll have a lot more, now. When we handed the information off to you, we also handed off information to the FBI, who’s been looking into the group behind everything we told you about. In about two hours, there will be a very large raid in the town of Alice. I’d suggest you hurry over here if you want to get the scoop on a very big story.”

“How big is it? I’ll give you an FBI raid is notable, but arresting a bunch of small-town gangsters isn’t going to make the news.”

“It’s not just gangsters. Local leaders, politicians, business owners, judges, and cops are going to be led off in handcuffs. I’d be surprised if the whole city weren’t under federal jurisdiction by the time everything’s done.”

“How sure of you about that? That sounds much bigger than what you gave me suggested.”

“We left out some information from what we gave you that could identify my friends and me, so you didn’t get the full scope. It’s going to be that big. Feel free to call around and confirm some of it if you want, but it’s an almost two-hour drive from Houston, and I guarantee you’ll want some perp walking pics.”

“How can I get ahold of you for follow up information, or will you contact me again when this is all done?”

“Neither. This’ll be the last time you hear from me. Good luck.”

I hung up without waiting for him to respond. Considering what I told him, I was a little concerned that I may have given away a bit too much. Knowing that there was information around that could lead to us, it might be enough for him to go looking for that information. That had been a mistake. Hopefully, he’d have his hand's full, reporting on the arrests to actively look into it.

The next two hours were agonizing as we waited for Jonathan to show up. My brain spent the entire time working through all the ways this could go wrong, or we’d get screwed, and nothing would happen to these people. Considering what we sent the Feds, that seemed unlikely, but we’d been disappointed plenty of times before, so there was no a reason to believe that this would be an exception.

As promised, Jonathan showed just before the two-hour mark, and waved us to the car. The girls elected to stay behind since we didn’t know what Jonathan had in mind. Besides, we couldn’t all fit in his car. Since there was no chance of leaving Jawarski behind, we both climbed into his car.

“We should have just enough time,” he said as he backed out of the driveway.

“For what?”

“To see the perps walk. If we find a good place to wait, we can see both the restaurant where Richards holes up and the police station. I’m fairly confident they have enough to clear out his people from the force.”

“Drive faster,” I said with a smile.

Seeing that pile of shit getting walked out of his cliché as hell Italian restaurant in handcuffs, would almost make up for all the bullshit he had put me through over the years. Almost.

There was a small park just near the courthouse that Jonathan pulled up to. There were already enough black SUVs parked in front of it, that it was clear something was going on. Looking down the other end of the street, I didn’t see a whole lot of movement, so they’d either grabbed Richards and taken him away or hadn’t gotten to him yet.

My best guess was they hadn’t gotten to him yet. The public corruption angle would be the biggest part of this, so they’d go after the politicians first. Sure enough, after only a few minutes people started coming out of the courthouse.

First, a woman in a windbreaker that said FBI exited, followed a bunch more, each with their hand holding onto the arm of a person in handcuffs. I didn’t recognize all of them, but some I did, including the deputy mayor. I hadn’t even realized it had gotten to that level.

I also noticed a photographer came out with them, snapping pictures, while another man next to the photographer scribbled in his notepad. If I had to guess, that was Dan Figeroa, or at least I hoped it was. While I was glad someone was on it, and surely more would be showing up any minute, after giving the guy so little to start with, I hoped he was able to get the scoop.

I saw several agents pile into two SUVs without handcuffed prisoners, and pull down the street, stopping in front of the restaurant.

I couldn’t help but smile.

I was a little taken aback when they came back out just moments after going in and started talking to each other. One pulled out a radio and started saying something into it.

“That doesn’t look good,” I said, looking at Jonathan.

“Yeah. Let's head back to your house, and I’ll make some calls.”

I nodded, but frowned. If Richards had slipped away, it meant he'd been tipped off. There was also a good chance he knew I was somehow behind the raid on his little empire. That left some very troubling doors open.

Chapter 24

We got back to the house and I paced, while Jonathan made his calls. It took some time, since his contact was actually involved in the raid, and couldn’t respond right away.

Eventually, Jonathan’s phone rang, and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from hovering over his shoulder while he talked. When he finally finished and turned around, I could immediately tell the news wasn’t good.

“They missed Richards.”

“What happened?”

“As best they can tell, he took off, late this morning. He must have gotten word of the raid.”

“He has someone in the FBI?” I asked, dropping all pretense of being cool and collected.

The one thing that had given me hope was that Richard's organization was, for all intents and purposes, local, or at least regional. If he had his hooks into FBI agents, things would get a lot more problematic and the likelihood of him skating and coming after me in retribution, a lot higher.

“Not necessarily. There was a fair amount of work done ahead of this, and even though they tried to keep it quiet, that many Feds on the move would draw attention. I can think of a dozen ways he would have heard about the raid, today. Honestly, it suggests to me that he doesn’t have anyone on the inside. My friend said it looked like he left in a hurry. He left behind not only people he’d paid off, many of whom will happily testify against him for some sort of consideration, but also paperwork that confirmed a lot of what we gave to the Feds.”

He put his phone on the table and folded his arms, continuing. “If he had connections into the Feds, he would have heard about this sooner, and would have covered his tracks better. It seems clear he heard about it for the first time, today. Don’t worry Cas, they’ll catch him. They’ve frozen his bank accounts, tagged his cards and everything he owns. This is what these guys do.”

“Sure,” I said, and knew I didn’t sound convinced.

Jonathan just patted me on the shoulder and went to find Mom and explain it to her. I turned to Jawarski.

“If we hurt him as bad as it sounds like we did, he’s going to want revenge.”

“No shit. I’ve already called half of our people in and informed the other half they are on night duty. We suspended all non-closed contracts, or at least told the other parties we were going to have to wait a few days, when we heard it was happening today.”

“Really?”

“I’ve seen a few of these things before. I know Jonathan sounded confident that they’d roll everything up today, but that’s not ever how it works. I wanted as many of our people available as possible, just in case.”

“Thanks for that. I’m sorry this is going to affect your business, but I’m happy to hear you have people watching us.”

“Well, we’re going to charge you a crap load of money for all the overtime, so we should be ok.”

Ultimately, I owned the lion's share of the security company, so I was essentially paying myself. That pay rate wasn’t the same as new customers, but I was willing to make that sacrifice, even if it meant I had to put additional money into the company while it found its legs.

“It’s worth it.”

“That’s not all I have for you. We’ve finished with all of the church’s followers except Emily’s parents, like you asked. As of now, that really hasn’t caused any changes, since the personality effects only really kick in, after suggestions from you, or if something ends up affecting you. If you’re out of the picture, and if they aren’t knowingly dealing with someone they know is connected to you; they never notice that portion of the change. I got the sense that the ultimate goal was to do more than just change them since all we’ve done so far is make the church have a whole bunch of much healthier members.”

“Yeah, that's just step one. The next step is for me to talk to all of them, point out the error of their ways, and get them out from under that man’s control.”

“So, how do you want to do this?”

“I don’t want to go one by one, we just have too little time for that to be practical. Is there a way to get all the ones together and let me talk to them at once? It’ll also give us - and by us, I, of course, mean Alex - a chance to observe how it works on a mass scale, as opposed to one-on-one interactions.”

“Yeah, we can manage that.”

“Please keep in mind that, no matter what they’ve done to this point, we’re now responsible for them. I’ll make sure the ones who have crossed the line turn themselves into the authorities, but I don’t want any of your people taking things into their own hands. We need to treat them like they're one of ours now that they’ve gone through the change.”

“That’ll be tough, some of these people have crossed really, really far over the line.”

“We’ll make sure they get what’s coming to them, but we’ll do it the right way.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to my people and set something up.”

We spent the next day all crammed into the house, waiting. Everyone was getting a little stir crazy, but I was insistent that I wasn’t going to put them into any more danger than I had to. Jawarski and a few of her people hovered just off school property, waiting for when they could come back and pick us up. Thankfully we did have the ending rounds of tests to finish, which at least took our minds off thinking about whatever Richards was up to.

By Saturday, everyone had started to let their guards down. The girls really wanted to go down to the center, and we were getting close to a second test with NASA, who’d sent a few observers to the plant to see what we’d found about the battery.

I discussed it with Mom, Jawarski, Levi, and Carter. Levi and Carter seemed to think it would be ok. They didn’t rule out the idea of something happening, but they were confident they could handle it. Mom was solidly against it. If it were up to her, we’d barricade the doors and not leave until Richards was caught.

Jawarski was on the fence. Given her preference, she’d prefer we didn’t leave, since that would be the opportune moment for Richards to hit us if that’s what he was planning. On the other hand, she pointed out that the manhunt could go on for a long time. Richards had resources and contacts still out there, and the most likely thing that had happened was that he’d gone to ground to wait it out. Even if he hadn’t, we had nothing, other than the attempt on Tina, that suggested he was going to come after us.

She pointed out that coming after us would put Richards more at risk, and increase the chances that he would be caught, since every public sighting was one more piece of information that the authorities would use to track him down. Jawarski thought that Richards was smart enough to realize that.

She also said that, at some point, we’d have to come out of hiding, and deal with all the other stuff going on. We had no idea what was actually happening, and we couldn’t just lock ourselves away forever.

She, however, made it clear that, if Richards found out we were behind the FBI raid, he would have a lot more incentive to come after us, and the math would all change.

While she made some good points, she didn’t actually help all that much. She wasn’t suggesting one course or the other, just pointing out the possibilities.

We were in our third day of discussions about what to do, when a new wrinkle came up. The reporter, whom we recognized from the courthouse, was pulling into our driveway.

“Shit,” I said, looking out at him. “Someone call Jonathan!”

I knew that wouldn’t be a huge help. He was already back at his office at the new facilities, and too far away to actually do anything for us.

“I could tell him to get lost,” Jawarski offered. “It’s private property.”

“That would be the sure fire way to tell him something was going on, and we had something to hide.”

“He’s going to figure that out the second he hears you speak,” she pointed out.

“No, he won’t,” Zoe said from behind me.

Both Jawarski and I turned to look at her.

“One of the things I did, besides making the call hard to trace, was that I scrambled your voice.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I said. “Good work!”

“So what are you going to do?” Jawarski asked.

“I guess Mom and I are just going to talk to him. It’s probably best if you and everyone else made yourselves scarce.”

“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” Jawarski said.

“Do you really think he’s a danger to us? If he were here for some kind of hit, we would have had to randomly call a reporter who just happened to be in Richards back pocket. If what you guys said was true, and Richards was surprised by the raid; then this guy couldn’t be in his pocket, since he knew enough to make it clear we were looking into him. Unless you think he works for Richards but just chose not to say anything, and that seems like a pretty far reach.”

The doorbell rang as she looked at me.

“I guess,” she finally said. “I’m going to be close enough I can listen in, though.”

“That’s fine. Just stay out of sight, and everyone keep quiet.”

I headed with Mom to the door as everyone else headed off.

“Can we help you?” Mom said as she answered the door.

“Hi. My name’s Dan Figeroa, and I’m with the Houston Chronicle. I wanted to ask you a few questions?”

“About?” Mom said, playing it cool.

I stayed just out of sight, behind the front door, figuring it was best to keep my options open.

“Are you Angela Bell?”

“Yes.”

I don’t know if he picked it up, but I knew her well enough to hear the hard edge to her tone. I could see how him knowing her name would be upsetting, but considering he knew which house to drive up to, it wasn’t that big of a surprise.

“You’re the legal guardian of Caspian Grey?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there has been a lot of commotion over the last few days. The town administration has been put under temporary federal jurisdiction, after many local leaders, judges and law enforcement officials were arrested on federal racketeering charges.”

Mom didn’t say anything one way or another, and maintained a pretty impressive poker face.

“Anyway,” he said after it was clear she wasn’t going to reply. “Caspian’s name has come up multiple times about some of the activity around the alleged criminal activity. I wanted to ask you, and hopefully him, a few questions about it.”

“I can tell you now, he has not been charged with anything.”

“No, ma’am, I know he wasn’t. But it seems like he’s a witness to some of the events. I have reports of multiple instances of shoot-outs with criminals and discouraged law enforcement officers.”

Mom just stared at him again, choosing to remain silent.

“Look, I get it. You’re trying to protect him, which is fine. You can choose to give no comment to my questions, but that will leave me with only what I’ve been able to dig up, and my own suppositions.”

“Just let him in,” I said, coming around the door frame.

“You must be Caspian.”

“I am. Come on in, and we’ll talk.”

We got seated at the kitchen table, and he set up a small recorder.

“Do you mind if I record this?”

“Yes. You can take notes, but no recording.”

He frowned, but put the tape recorder away.

“So, are you aware of what’s been happening in town?”

“Somewhat. My company's lawyer has also been representing me in some personal matters … some of which, like you said, had to do with the arrests. He told us about a raid that was happening, but only a little bit about who was arrested, or what they were charged with.”

“Can you tell me about how you got mixed up with this group?”

“First, I want to make it clear I’m not ‘mixed up’ with anyone. My company bought into a failing industrial park a little east of Houston. Members of this group apparently had their eyes on it, too. They tried to ... dissuade me from making the purchase. Thankfully, I was lucky, and they were not successful and were arrested.”

“By dissuade, you mean they threatened you?”

“Kind of. It wasn’t me precisely. There was an owner of a small factory who hadn’t agreed to sell to them. I was in talks with him to purchase his company and fold his factory into our own planned facilities. I happened to stop by to talk with him when they were trying to beat him into signing over to them instead. I stepped in and stopped them.”

“How, exactly, did you manage that?”

“I got lucky. I surprised them. The combination of that and some physical training allowed me to help out the business owner enough to get the upper hand.”

“Did they retaliate?”

“Yes. They managed to get someone in the child protective services to file an order against Mrs. Bell, and a judge to ram it through. When they came to serve the protective order, two policemen separated me from everyone else and took me to an abandoned warehouse, where they planned on beating me into signing over all the property to them. Thankfully, more legitimate officers showed up, and put a stop to them.”

“These would be the same two officers who later showed up at the martial arts studio you train at?”

“Yes. Thankfully, my sensei happens to also be ex-Israeli special forces, or something. I’ve never gotten a straight answer on what he did for them. Anyway, they made a bad decision coming for me there.”

“This is all a little hard to believe. You’re not even eighteen yet, you train with an Israeli soldier, and you own what, from my research, is a very successful business.”

“I’ve gotten lucky a few times. Look, let me level with you. I know the story of the attacks on me is sexy. It’s got gangsters and shootouts. It, however, doesn’t have a lot of connection to what’s happened in this town. I just bumped into them in a small way. From what I’ve heard, they were into a whole lot more than just dealing with me.”

“Like you said, it’s a good story.”

“Yes, but I don’t want me - or, more importantly, my family - attached to it. We’re just trying to live our lives. We aren’t involved with these people. We were, at least potentially, their victims.”

“The story still needs to be told.”

I sat silently for a moment, staring at him, racking my brain trying to think of a way out of this. I don’t know why I turned and looked out of the window. At that moment, it seemed like a random act; but something in my subconscious must have been triggered, because as I looked, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something was wrong, and it took me a moment to put the pieces together.

Three large, black SUVs had pulled up to the house. I watched the doors start to open, and I felt myself fall into 'the flow,' unconsciously. I’d barely registered the guns when I started moving. I reached over and shoved Mom’s chair hard, pushing myself diagonally as I simultaneous stood, pushing my chair back and leaping across the table at the journalist.

Mom went flying, her chair toppling over, banging into the ground hard. I hoped I hadn’t hurt her, but I knew what was going to happen next, and I wanted her out of danger, at least as much as possible. I had just reached Dan when the first bullets tore through the window. I felt a burning sensation on the back of one calf as I tackled Dan out of his chair and held my body over him.

Everything sped back up as I dropped out of 'the flow.'

“Get down,” Jawarski screamed as she crouch-walked out of the room.

Seeing Mom and Dan were safe, for the moment, I ignored Jawarski. I crawled out the other door, towards the dining room and the back of the house. As I made it out of the door and into the kitchen, the slightly muffled staccato fire of automatic rifles was offset by a much closer, and somewhat slower, pop-pop of a handgun.

I assumed that was Jawarski, returning fire on our attackers. I listened intently to the sounds of the gunfight as I got to the back door. I could hear a few more handguns joining the firing. Some seemed to be coming from inside the house. Others, somewhat muffled like the assault rifles, indicated that the rest of my security people were in on the battle as well.

As I got to the back door and stood, I felt a slight twinge. I looked and saw a gash across the lower leg of my jeans. It hurt, but not unbearably; and I could still walk, so I ignored it for now. I went out the back door, staying low, and around the side of the house.

Jawarski would kill me when she found out I was putting myself in danger, but there was no way I was staying put when my family was on the line. As I came around the house, I had just a moment to react when I almost ran into a man with a web harness and carrying an assault rifle of some kind.

He started to lift the barrel, reacting as soon as he saw me. My reactions were quicker. I grabbed the side of the barrel and shoved it away, while punching him in the neck with everything I had.

I rarely let go with my full force, but I held nothing back this time. I felt something give, and he dropped like a stone, making a single gargling noise before smacking into the pavement, and remaining still. I’d held onto the barrel, and as soon as he started dropping, his grip had released.

I didn’t have a ton of experience with rifles, but I’d read up on them, and had a basic understanding of how they worked. I flipped the weapon around and made sure it was ready to fire. Everything seemed ok, so I started sneaking around the side of the house.

I saw several men using an SUV as cover and firing into the front of the house. Two bodies were part way between the SUVs opposite side of the house, and one part way between the SUVs and me. Those must have been more men that tried to get around us, that Jawarski or one of her people took care of. The number of people I’d seen get out of the vehicles and the number of people and bodies I could see from where I stood, told me some of these guys were unaccounted for. Of course, before I could worry about that, I had to deal with the guys in front of me.

I lifted the weapon and felt myself drop into 'the flow'. I was silently thankful for all of Levi’s training with me on that, as it was now almost an automatic response and not something I had to really focus on. Jawarski had once said that, if you were going to shoot someone, you shoot them center mass, and that taking ‘shots to wound’ is a good way to get people killed. That was probably good advice for most people.

It occurred to me as I took aim, that the town was crawling with cops, who would almost certainly already be on their way, considering our house sounded more like a war zone than a suburban street. When the Feds - who were currently in charge of the police department, while the city was being reorganized - finally showed up, it would probably be better for us if we hadn’t stacked up a lot of bodies.

I took careful aim at each person I could see. Clearly, they were wearing body armor, so I began aiming for shoulders and upper arms, hoping that a bullet there would make it hard, if not impossible, to keep shooting at us.

I started pulling the trigger, working methodically down the men visible to me. While each one seemed to take forever from my point of view, I knew there were only a second between each shot. I was feeling good about myself when the last guy fell, until a bullet struck the wall next to me, forcing me back around the corner.

I’d been overconfident. Two of the men had switched their guns to their other hands, and started returning fire. They weren’t accurate, but it didn’t seem like these guys cared. They were just spraying at the house, hoping to do damage. They kept up enough fire that I had to back away, hoping to circle back around the house. In the distance, I could hear sirens.

I was coming around the edge of the house, into the backyard, considering if I should drop the rifle, since I didn’t want to be one of the people carrying one when the cops showed up. I should have been more focused, and it took me several beats to realize there was a person just around the corner. My reaction was further slowed by my surprise at realizing the person in front of me was Richards. I started swinging my rifle towards him, when Richards’ handgun fired.

The only thing that saved me was he was clearly as surprised as I was. The bullet slammed into the side of the rifle, sending shards of metal tearing into my arm. I could still work my fingers, but it hurt like hell. The other thing that saved me was that his gun clicked empty.

At that moment, everything that had happened over the last year - from trying to separate our family with trumped up child endangerment charges, to trying to grab Tina, to his final attempt on my family right now - hit me. I saw red and charged. He took a clumsy swing which I slapped away, sending it sailing harmlessly past me.

Lowering my center of gravity, I exploded upwards. My left hand grabbed him by the neck and lifted Richards off his feet putting him in almost an arc as his body swept upwards. I redirected my force as he hit the apex of the shallow arc, slamming his shoulders and chest into the ground. I released his neck, not wanting to kill him as the air in his lungs was forced out by the impact. I could see him turning red as he tried to unlock his muscles enough to take a breath.

I didn’t hesitate. Standing up, I smashed the heel of my foot into his wrist, feeling a snapping sensation from the joint. I followed it up with a stomp to his knee. I knew it was overboard. Richards was already incapacitated, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t run away again. With one hand and one leg, I was confident he wasn’t going to get anywhere before this was all over. I kicked the rifle he’d been carrying across the back porch, well out of his reach, just to be sure.

As if on cue, the sirens sounded from the front of the house, and I heard men yelling. I turned my back on Richards, and headed to find Jawarski and my family.

The door was just swinging open when I heard a soft metallic sound behind me. I twisted around in time to see fire erupt from the end of a handgun in Richard’s left hand.

Chapter 25

Considering the number of times, someone’s pointed a gun at me over the last few years and my enhanced reflexes, I would have said I was ready to deal with situations like this. In fact, I’d done alright in nearly the exact situation, once before.

This time, however, I froze. Maybe it was because I was coming down from the adrenaline high of everything that had happened, or maybe because, in my head, Richards had been neutralized. Either way, when I saw the end of the barrel explode, I froze in place, my brain locking up, somewhere between fight or flight.

I was drawn back into reality when the bullet smacked into my chest.

One of the things I remembered from the last time someone shot me was the initial impact didn’t hurt nearly as much as I would have thought it would be especially when your adrenaline’s running.

Maybe it was because I’d already started coming down from the excitement, or maybe it’s just different every time; but this time there was pain, lots of it.

My body screamed, the feeling of fire radiating from somewhere just below my breastbone. I’d been off balance with the turn to see what the sound had been, half turned towards Richards when the bullet smacked into me. The combination of being half on one foot and the impact of the bullet sent me falling backward into, and the through, the door I’d partially opened.

I involuntarily put a hand to my chest, feeling warm wetness seeping out between my fingers as I tried to cover the wound. I was lying at an angle, and could still see Richards, also lying on the ground, his brow furrowed in concentration.

In that brief moment, as we looked at each other, it occurred to me that I probably got off lucky. He’d been shooting with his left hand, and it was clear from the awkward way he was holding the weapon that he was not left-handed. From what I knew about him, he wouldn’t have tried to just hurt me or put me out of action. He wanted to kill me, especially after I’d hurt him so badly. I’d bet he hadn’t been aiming for a simple chest shot.

He also clearly wasn’t done yet. He lifted the gun up, concentration clear on his face as he aimed. I tried to stand, move, get out of the way when I found I couldn’t move my legs. It hadn’t occurred to me, as I was falling, that there was another reason I would have not fallen back. I willed my body to move, and nothing happened. I could feel my arms, but I realized I couldn’t feel my legs at all.

His finger tightened, and I imagined I could almost see the bullet down the length of the barrel. I didn’t close my eyes, nor flinch as I looked into his hate-filled eyes.

There was a tremendous boom! It took my brain a second to register that I was still alive. No fire leapt from the end of his gun, no bullet exploded from its shadowy depths. For a moment, I was confused. I’d accepted what was about to happen, visualized my last moment. The mental whiplash slowed me down, until I saw his expression. It’d changed from one of hateful victory to utter surprise, his mouth opening slightly.

I looked up, trying to figure out what was going on, and saw Jawarski standing over me, a gun extended in her hand, wisps of smoke still leaking out the spout.

Yelling voices screamed from the other side of the house. Jawarski holstered her weapon and knelt next to me.

“Caspian?” She said worry creasing her brow.

Her hands went to my chest, moving my blood soaked fingers.

“Can’t .... move .... legs,” I managed to get out, each word an effort.

“HELP,” she shouted. “We need EMTs in here.”

Her voice sounded far away, dimming.

“Alex,” I managed to say.

We learned about my abilities last time I ended up in the hospital. Even the most basic tests showed there was something different about me.

I don’t know why, but at that moment, keeping our secret was what I was worried about. Intellectually, I knew not being able to feel my legs, and how hard it was starting to get to take a breath, was bad. My injuries were critical, I knew that.

I couldn’t hear Jawarski anymore. I got the impression that there were other people in the room with us now, but I couldn’t look up anymore. My head had flopped back on its side, looking back out the door.

As my vision grayed, the edges going black, I looked back at Richards. His face was blank and expressionless. As I felt reality slip away from me, I couldn’t help but think, if this was it, at least I took that son of a bitch with me.

The world returned to me slowly, my eyes straining to keep out the light. The sudden realization that something was in my throat, made me open them as I started to reach up. Whatever it was hurt like hell, and it was keeping me from swallowing. I started to panic and had almost got my hands around whatever it was to pull it out when someone grabbed my wrists.

I looked over and saw Mom, who was holding my wrists down.

“ALEX,” she shouted before looking down at me.

“It’s ok, sweetie, just wait a second. It’s a tube that was helping you breathe. I know it hurts, but Alex will be here in a minute to take it out, ok?”

She was right, it was starting to hurt like hell. I could feel it rubbing against my esophagus, which felt raw and abused. The feeling of helplessness was hard to get over, and I was still fighting down panic, but her gentle rubbing on my arm helped calm me down.

I nodded to let her know I was ok, and stopped struggling.

I took my first look around. We weren’t in a hospital. I recognized the room we were in, as one of the private rooms inside their new lab down near our new house. They’d added on several patient rooms to accommodate people who stayed overnight, in preparation for the next phase of their cancer trials.

Alex had explained that, beyond the need to look like we were doing legitimate trials, it would be easier to deal with each person as they went through the change, instead of sending them home, and having them potentially go to another doctor when they got sick.

I looked over at the door to the room as it opened and Alex came through.

“He’s awake,” Mom said. “I think he wants to pull out the tube.”

“Good. The last time he woke up, he didn’t even notice it was there.”

She looked at some readouts on one of the machines and then looked into my eyes, flashing a light she kept with the pens in her pocket, making me squint.

“Cas, this is going to feel weird as it comes out. Just try and keep your throat relaxed.”

I nodded. She pulled off the tape that was holding the tube in place, then did something I couldn’t see, but felt like a slight click along the plastic. She then began pulling the tube. She was right, it was weird and was really uncomfortable.

As soon as it was out, I tried to say something, but it came out as a croak.

“Don’t try and speak yet. Your throat's going to be really dry. Drink some water, and give it time to hydrate. ”

I nodded and took the water that Mom was handing me. It burned as I took the first sip, and swallowing it felt like agony. I shifted in bed, moving my legs to sit up, and then froze in place.

One of the last things I remembered before blacking out was my legs not working. I looked over at Mom, and the surprise must have been evident on my face.

“You’re fine. Alex will explain everything, but you’re recovering really well, and in a couple of weeks you’ll be able to walk around like nothing happened.”

While not being able to walk for a couple of weeks sounded like pure hell, the fact that I was one, alive, and two, able to feel my legs; was enough to make me not care about that, right now. I was, however, pretty certain that I’d feel different about it after a couple of days on my back.

I turned to look at Alex, who was jotting down something on a chart.

“What .... happened?” I managed to get out.

“You were shot,” she said with a small smile.

I tilted my head slightly and glared at her, to let her know I wasn’t amused.

“More importantly, you were shot in the spine. Well, not directly, but the bullet clipped your spine, and caused some pretty nasty damage. It also took a small chunk of one of your lungs. You were taken to the hospital, and thankfully Beth thought to call me and have me meet you there. I’m glad I was there in town closing up the old lab, and not here at the time. I got there just as you were being wheeled in. We patched you up in the ER, mostly to stop the bleeding and reinflate your lung. From there you were taken up to surgery. I’m not a surgeon, so it was quite an ordeal to get them to let me into your operation, as an observer. Angela managed to convince them, thankfully. I let them clean the fragments of bone and bullet out, and repair what they could; but was only just able to stop them from trying to repair your spine themselves. Again, Angela had to throw a fit about not signing off on the procedure to get that okay’d. I’m not sure how she did that, although I think there was something about a religious sect that doesn’t allow foreign objects inside the body, or some such rubbish.”

I looked over at Mom, who just shrugged at me.

“If ... they didn’t ...” I started to say and then fell into a coughing fit, my throat burning.

“It was a gamble, I’ll give you that. What they would have done was stabilize the area and try and limit any future damage, which for the average person would be the right thing to do. My concern was, it might inhibit your body’s ability to heal itself. I was concerned since, while we’ve seen some pretty spectacular stuff, we haven’t seen anything like this before. The damage to your spine didn’t just need to scab over and heal like the damage to your lung or your bullet wound last year. It would need part of the spinal cord to be put back together. I wasn’t sure it was possible, but I knew the other option would definitely leave you paralyzed from the waist down. If worse came to worst, we could always go back in and do what they initially wanted to do, later. Although there would have been significant ethical questions raised, and it would have ended up getting me hauled in front of the medical board. That’s something that’s always bugged me. We make the ...”

I rapped my knuckles on the frame of the bed to get her attention, and then gave her a look when she stopped.

“Right. Anyway, we took a chance that your body could repair the damage, and it did. It’s actually more than that. Not only has your spine more or less put itself back together, but I’m also seeing that a missing piece of the vertebrae that got chipped off, is starting to build back up. The bone is actually regenerating, which is ... I can’t even explain how crazy that is! There are days I wish I could publish a book about your body, because it’s a freaking carnival!”

She stopped, and I gave her another look. I knew she was excited, and she had a tendency to become over-enthusiastic when she really got into something. It made her bedside manner crazily annoying, but her love of what she did made up for that. Usually.

“Your lung is almost healed all the way, and probably will be fully healed in a few days. We’re out of any danger there. The spine, honestly, I have no idea how long that will take. I know you can move your legs, but I want you off your feet until the cracks in the vertebrae, and the missing piece all get fixed. Right now, your spinal cord isn’t as protected as it should be, and a lot of movement could re-injure it. I know it looks like your body will fix that, too; but let's not tempt fate. My best guess is two to three weeks, but we’ll have to see.”

“Was ... anyone...”

“Yes,” Mom said, a sad look on her face. “Emily and Nora were both hurt.”

She must have seen the look in my eye at the mention of Emily being hurt.

“They’re both fine,” she said, holding up her hands. “Emily had a bullet go through her thigh, but it didn’t hit the bone or any arteries. The wound's already halfway healed. Nora’s was worse. She was in the shower when it started and fell down hard when she tried to dive to the floor. She had a serious break in her upper right arm.”

“A compound fracture,” Alex added. “Really, really nasty.”

“She went into surgery, too. They set the bone, putting it back together. Unfortunately, she picked up an infection, and it was in the bone itself. She’s been in and out, and you were out, so I made the decision that she should be put through the change. The doctors felt confident they could clear up the infection with intravenous antibiotics, but I didn’t want to take the chance. We’ll talk to her later and explain everything, but we figured we could wait a few days for that.”

I’m glad Mom thought about my distaste for changing people without their permission, but I agreed that in life or death situations. Considering the rate of resistant bacteria in hospitals, I had to agree with her decision.

I gave her a smile to let her know she did the right thing.

“So ... ,” I started to say and then coughed.

My throat was feeling better, enough to speak in whole sentences at least, but it was still really tender. I took a big drink of water, and tried again. “Me, Emily and Vicki’s mom. I guess considering what was thrown at us, it could have been a lot worse.”

I saw Mom exchange a glance with Alex.

“What?”

“Carter, and one of the men that worked for him and Beth, were killed.”

I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. I wasn’t very close to the various men Carter and Jawarski had following us around, since they generally kept their distance. Still, they were only in harm’s way because of me, which made me feel incredibly responsible for his death.

Carter was another story. I’d grown to really like the gruff ex-detective. He had a sense of humor when you got past his stoic outer shell. He’d originally signed on for some simple PI work, and not this kind of thing. Once he’d been changed, and I’d assume the other man as well; it was no longer really their choice to be with me, putting themselves in harm's way.

We’d gone round and round about the change not being mind control or anything, but it did affect them, and make them want to be here. I felt a tear slip down my cheek.

“Cas, they would have been here, even without the change,” Mom said, correctly interpreting the direction of my thoughts. “If you’ll remember, they were here before the change, even after there’d been more than one attempt on your life.”

“Don’t take away from their sacrifice by trying to take responsibility for it,” Jawarski said from the doorway.

I hadn’t heard her come in, which was surprising. Normally, I was pretty observant, and didn’t miss that kind of thing.

“Carter was a professional, Caspian. Joel, too. They knew exactly what they signed on to, before they were ever changed. I get your feeling responsible, and your empathy is one of the things people seem to like about you, but don’t let that cheapen them. They did a job, and they did it proudly. We all knew, especially lately, that something like this was coming. We accepted what that could mean.”

“But ...” I started, and she cut me off.

“But nothing. Remember, I haven’t been given your whammy. Apparently, I have whatever the opposite of that is, and I’m still here. I was next to Joel when he was hit. It could have just as easily been me. I’m still here. So don’t think for a second it’s your fault that some gangster piece of shit did what he did.”

I locked eyes with Jawarski, and for once she didn’t look away. I don’t think I will ever get over how strong she is. Considering what we knew about negatives, and their reaction to me; the fact that she was here and doing what she was doing, was nothing short of mind-blowing.

I looked away and mumbled, “Ok.”

“Good,” she said and turned to walk out of the room. “Now we need to talk about you ignoring your responsibilities, and being a dumb ass.”

“They were kicking our asses. We were totally pinned down, and they were sending people around the house. You didn’t have enough men if they would have started coming at us from both sides.”

“I know that. I’m not crazy about having the principal putting himself in harm’s way, but we did need to do something; and with your abilities, you were the obvious candidate. You did a good job with the guys flanking us, and suppressing the guys in front of the house. That’s not what I was talking about.”

“So why am I a dumbass?”

“Because you ended up to face to face with Richards, and you opted to get fancy and try and incapacitate him, instead of neutralizing him as a threat. That was mistake one. Once committed to that course, though; you doubled down by leaving him an operating hand, and a gun within reach. If you take a guy out and leave him alive, you make sure he can’t shoot you in the back when you walk away.”

“I wanted to make sure everyone was ok,” I said defensively.

“How did that work out for you? What would half a minute, spent tossing his weapon away from him, and patting him down, gain you?”

I looked away again. She was right.

“I said you were the right person to try and stop their push to get around us, but you did it like a total amateur. I know you’re working on stuff with Levi, but that’s a different world than combat. Once you're up and around, I expect you to start learning how to deal with situations like this. You seem bent on pissing off really dangerous people, and I don’t want to have to worry about you doing something stupid, and getting yourself killed; or worse, getting me killed.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good.”

“So what happened after I was out?”

“After you got yourself shot, like a dumbass?”

“Yes, after that.”

“The EMTs came in and started working on you, Carter, and two of Richards' guys. Richards and Joel, and three of their guys were all DOA, and left for the coroner.”

“What about the Feds?”

“Yeah. They put everyone without a bullet wound in handcuffs, as they worked through what happened. Thankfully we put up that camera after the grab attempt on Judy, so we had clear evidence that they drove up and started blasting away at our house. While they were looking at the video, Jonathan finally showed up. Apparently, he already knew a couple of people, so things went smoother after that. They took all of us out of cuffs, and two of Richards' men were taken away to be interviewed. Jonathan went with them to try and make sure we were all in the clear, and has basically spent two days at the courthouse, answering questions.”

“So, we’re ok?”

“Yeah. They know we were the ones who turned over the info to them. With Richards dead and pretty much everyone else involved in jail, that’s less of a concern that it was before.”

“What about the reporter?” I asked.

Mom and Jawarski exchanged another look.

“Let me guess, you decided to change him, too?”

“It seemed like the only option,” Mom said apologetically. “Even during the interview with him, it became clear he knew more about us than we’d like. Maybe enough to expose us. And then you went and leapt from a seated position across the table like you were some kind of ninja. I’m still worried it won’t take effect until after he’s told someone, or published something.”

She looked at me, waiting to see my reaction.

“Good,” I said with a smirk, “ that was what I was going to recommend, anyway.”

“Ohh.”

“We might be ok until the change takes place,” Jawarski said.

“Oh, really?”

“I might have mentioned something about an exclusive, where we’d tell him more if he held off printing the details about us. Specifically, a blow by blow breakdown of what happened in the shootout.”

“If you guys keep this up, there’ll be nothing left for me to do. Good work.”

“She was worried you’d be mad she overstepped,” Mom said.

“I don’t care about anything he thinks,” Jawarski said defensively.

You could tell from her expression, that was a lie. I knew that once she was away from me, she managed to dump a lot of her hatred of me, and was able to consider me rationally. It once again spoke to how strong she was.

“With Richards really gone this time, I guess all I have to do is lie here until I can walk again?”

“Did you forget about the tests?”

“Tests?” I asked.

I spent a moment wracking my brain. With everything going on over the last few days, I was a bit scrambled. Then it hit me.

“Damn. I forgot. I need to call Mrs. Polaski, and see if there is something we can work out. I don’t want everyone else to test out, and then me go back for another year.”

“I already talked to her. She’s agreed to come down here, and proctor your exams here.”

“Really? With her bosses giving her so much grief about the advanced program, I’m surprised they went along with it.”

“I guess you didn’t hear. Several of the higher-ups, specifically the people who were pushing to end the program, got picked up by the FBI.”

“I knew it,” I said, thumping the bed with a fist. “I knew he was somehow behind it. That was all just too well-timed and sudden, trying to screw us and keep us distracted.”

“Uh-huh,” Mom said with a smile. “That’s probably why you haven’t said anything till now. We all know how you like to keep your theories to yourself.”

“Fine, I didn’t ‘know it,’ but I suspected.”

“Well, they cleared it up. The new bosses seemed to realize how she’d been targeted, and basically forced to retire. It seems like they're willing to bend over backwards to keep from pissing her off. I think they're scared of a lawsuit.”

“She should sue them. She gave so much to that school, and they just walked over her.”

“She wouldn’t do that. She knows that any payout to her would come out of the money that would go to the kids, and she’d never take money away that could go to programs.”

“Yeah, there’s that. So. Tests, huh?”

“Right now,” Alex interjected, “you need to get some rest. You seem to heal faster when you're asleep, and I’m not thrilled with how exposed your spine is. Even strapped down, you could injure yourself, and I don’t want to keep relying on your abilities to patch yourself up. We don’t know enough about them to be certain they won’t stop on you at some point.”

“Sure, Doc.”

Chapter 26

When I’d said I was going to get tired of being on bed rest for multiple weeks, I hadn’t known the half of it. A week and a half into my recovery period, and I was starting to go stir crazy just laying here.

The girls had come in to keep me company, and I’d spent a very strange couple of days with Mrs. Polaski as she had me take one test after another. Our original schedule called for us to be tested over a week and a half, with the tests spread out to one each day. I’m not sure if it was some sick game of hers, or she just wanted to see how far she could push my abilities.

She didn’t actually know about my abilities, but she’d spent enough time with me to realize the girls, and I weren’t average students. I think she suspected there was more I was capable of that I didn’t show in school. Whether she chalked that up to laziness, or something deliberate, I couldn’t say. I did get the distinct impression that she was trying to learn more about me though.

Every time I finished a test, she would just set another one down in front of me, until Alex showed up and told her I needed my rest. I swear I could have kissed Alex in those moments.

Not that the tests were hard. I’d done the work to study for them, and my memory was basically eidetic by now, so the recall was really easy. It’s just mind-numbing to mark in scantron after scantron or write out long rambling essays about the themes of Midsummer's Nights dreams, or the causes of the Civil War. I was going out of my mind, when she finally announced I was done with all my tests.

The girls couldn’t stay with me as much as I’d have wanted, because they still had almost a week of classes, and they wanted to finish out the school year and say goodbye to all our friends. Alex had already told me I wasn’t going to be up and around by the time the school year ended, which was kind of a bummer.

Josh was missing, and Amanda was pissed at me, but I was still tight with the rest of our gang, who’d seen past the front Josh had put up to how he was starting to go off the deep end. They’d all come by to see me, which was nice. We’d talked, and they’d all promised to visit us at our new place when they could.

Several had worked it out to do volunteer work at the center, both to help their college applications, and because they wanted to spend more time with the girls. Several had already spent some weekends down there helping. There seemed to be a never-ending demand for volunteers.

Still, as the year came to a close and I laid on my back in the hotel at night, after everyone had headed home, I got a little melancholy. When I started last year, I’d been worried about what High School would mean for me. My adoptive father was dead, and Margaret had moved Tina and me to a new town where we didn’t know anyone.

The rollercoaster of the last two years had been pretty extreme, but I think the thing I was most surprised at was the friends I'd made. Not just the girls, although that was something, but all the people in our group. Now I was done with school two years early and heading into something new. I wouldn’t ever admit it to anyone else, but I was a little terrified.

We were set up really well and had plans for how we were going to take everything forward, but there were still so many unanswered questions.

Thankfully, after the third week of bed rest, I got a reprieve of sorts. Jonathan showed up with Douglass in tow.

“Hey, guys,” I said as they’d walked through the door.

Vicki had left about an hour before to help pack up the house, so I’d spent the last hour just staring at the wall.

“We’ve got good news!” Douglass said excitedly.

“You’ve decided to go around Alex and bust me out of this place?”

“Not quite,” Jonathan said with a laugh. “We do have news, however.”

“Ok, consider me properly in a state of suspense.”

“We’ve worked out the kinks, and several internal runs on the battery look good. Your Colonel Ron has managed to arrange another demonstration with NASA.”

“That is good news. What did we finally find out about the failures?”

I’d been getting regular reports, but they’d slowed to a trickle while I was recovering. I think Alex had put her foot down about how much work people were bringing me. Until that moment, I don’t think Mom realized all the paperwork they’d been sending up to me to read over every week since they all moved to the new facilities. The one thing that I hadn’t seen in any of the reports, was what - exactly - failed.

“We found a manufacturing defect in the material we were using for the solid-state storage. Going back over it, the same defect is in every prototype we made. It seems this failure isn’t something that happens every time, or very often with the defect, but it’s a ticking time bomb.”

“Literally. While I’m not happy we had to wait until our demonstration with NASA to find out about it, I guess its better that we get through all the trials, rather than have our battery go up in space and fail.”

“That’s true.”

“So what are we doing about it?”

“We retooled how we were manufacturing the plates and our quality assurance of them. It’s going to take more time to produce and cost more, but in the long run, it will be worth it.”

“So they are on board with another test?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said. “There are a lot of skeptical people over there still, and it’s going to take more on our part to really sell them on it now, but I think we’ll be ok. Aaron has done a really good job of calming them down. He reminded them of a couple of other high profile failures that happened on parts that are now standard on most stuff NASA sends up.”

“I’m sure these guys like to be reminded of their failures.”

‘Well, they weren't NASA’s failures, just failures of the producers of those other parts. It did make it clear to them they can benefit from second chances.”

“We’ll still be fighting an uphill battle,” Douglass said. “There are some people who’ve already made up their minds. Luckily, we don’t have to convince everyone. Just the right people.”

“So when does the test happen.”

“Two weeks.”

I looked over at Alex, who’d walked in a moments after Jonathan and Douglass had shown up, probably so she could chase them out of the room if they stayed too long.

“Will I be out by then?”

“Maybe,” she said. “You’re healing well, faster than I could have ever dreamed, but you still need more time. You’d probably heal faster if you weren’t being interrupted so much by all these visits.”

“These visits are the only thing keeping me sane.”

She just harrumphed at me.

“Just keep me in the loop on what’s going on,” I said the Douglass, ignoring her grumpiness. “I’ll work on the warden, here, and see if I can get out on parole.”

She glared at me, but I ignored it.

“What else is going on?”

They gave me a rundown on what had happened since I’d been laid up. Things were going well on the desalination plant. We were running full bore and already had it in several of the ships MilTech had refurbished. We were out of the trial phase all the way, and the technology was proving itself and making us some good money to boot.

Jonathan also had some news on more fallout from Richards' downfall. They’d managed to round up a bunch of his flunkies that had gone into hiding at the same time. With Richards dead, the flunkies had started nosing around other criminals, looking for new employment, which put them back on the FBI's radar.

I was happy to hear there. It seemed like no one notable, or at least no one who might decide to come and finish what Richards had started, was still in the wind.

Jonathan and Douglass finished their rundown and left.

“Since you in business mode, I guess I should tell you that Angela and I also have some news.”

“You’re going to let me out of here?” I said, lifting my head off the pillow, which was as close to sitting up as I could get.

“Not a chance.”

I let my head flop back down and said, “Damn.”

“I probably should wait for Angela to get here before I tell you, but honestly, I’m too excited. We got word today that we’ve been cleared to test our ‘protocol’ on our first live patients.”

“Really? When? How many people?”

“In the proposal we submitted, our plan was to test five patients in the initial batch and then after the reports on that batch cleared. As for when not until July. Angela wanted to leave some time open at the end of this month and the beginning of June for your move, which actually works because we have to go over our protocol a few more times.”

“Why? I thought you'd already submitted it.”

“We submitted a draft of our protocol. Considering that, while we know without a doubt that this treatment will cure everyone we give it to; it doesn’t work like we’re telling the FDA it does. We have to make sure we’ve covered ourselves enough to explain how it’s working, without giving away what’s really happening.”

“Is that even possible?”

“We think so. For the FDA, unless something goes wrong, they generally go off of the results submitted to them. Its how medication has slipped through in the past. They get test results from the team conducting the trial as well as the patient’s primary physician has signed off on. In those other cases, results were fudged, and only later when the medication was widely used and people started getting sick was it looked into. We know our medication isn’t going to go bad since it’s not really medication.”

“What if a genetic negative slips through?”

“That’s our big weak spot, and why our ‘treatment’ will have to be performed only by us. We’ll have to screen multiple times before we put anyone through the change, just to be sure.”

“If it’s as successful as it’s going to be, aren’t pharmaceutical companies going to try and backward engineer us?”

“Probably, but I’m not worried about that.”

“Really?”

“Think about it. They would need to make the leap that our ‘medication’ is essentially genetically mutated plasma that itself mutates the DNA of the patient, creating a new strain of antibodies, that aggressively seeks out and changes the foreign substance into something the body can absorb and use. I’ve studied your biology for a full year, and I can barely wrap my brain around it.”

“I guess that’d be a bit much.”

“By default, people see what they want to see, or at least what they expect to see. It’s what makes people able to live next to serial killers and never suspect or why average Germans were able to live a few miles from concentration camps and never suspect. In hindsight, the clues are there, but since it’s so unfathomable, you just look past it and see something else.”

“That makes sense.”

“The key is, we need to fly under the radar. That means we are going to have to do something that none of us, you especially, are going to like.”

“What?” I said in a flat tone.

I had a guess at what she was about to say since it’s something I’d already thought about but hoped we’d avoid.

“Some of the people we treat will have to get a version that doesn’t work.”

“Because if it were one-hundred percent effective, someone would notice,” I said, again in the flat, emotionless tone.

“Yes. I’m glad you got that. I was worried you’d dig in your heels.”

“I’m glad everyone thinks I’m so unreasonable.”

“I don’t think that, Caspian.”

“No, but I know you, and pretty much everyone else, thinks I take my ethical decisions too seriously.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“I know. I know you guys are just being practical and looking out for all of our best interests, mine especially. I also know that I’ve hobbled us at times when I ‘dig in my heels’ and made things harder. This isn’t one of those times. I figured this out a while ago. If we help everyone, there’s no way we won’t be noticed; which in turn, makes it probable that we won’t even be around anymore to help anyone, once people in a place to make money off of my biology get into the game. I’d rather help half the people we could, but operate for years; over helping everyone we talk to, but have to shut down too soon.”

Mom came into the room but didn’t say anything, just closed the door and stood back to listen.

“So you get it.”

“I do. I also have some rules we’re going to have to go by.”

“Of course you do.”

“One. Every child we help gets the real thing. Two, while I know we can’t do this one hundred percent, I’d prefer we give the ineffective versions to much older people or single people. If we’re going to only help some of the people, I’d prefer we default to people who will be able to enjoy their newfound lease on life for a while or people with families.”

“So you’re going to choose who lives and who dies?” Mom asked from her spot by the door.

“No. We aren’t saying this person gets it because they deserve it and this person doesn’t because their bad. It’s not a judgment call. We are giving the limited number of cures we have at a given time to those who’ll objectively get the most benefit out of it. Parents with young children have not just their lives they will get to live, but their lives will also affect their children’s. Helping them, helps two generations, and one dose affects exponentially more people. That’s not playing God, that’s making decisions based on the greatest impact.”

“You’re growing up,” she said with a smile. “I agree, I just wanted to make sure you were making the decision for the right reason.”

“Great. We all agree. So, can I get out of here, now?”

“No. You can, however, have a nap.” Alex said.

“Uhh, I am going to go insane.”

“You’ll live,” Mom said. “Zoe said she’ll be back in a few hours to spend some time with you. They were busy last night coming up with a schedule to have people keep you company at all times, or at least until we kick them out so you can get some sleep.”

“I appreciate them thinking about me, but I know they’ve all got a lot to do. They don’t have to have someone here all the time.”

“Cas, only the fact that they knew you were counting on them to keep the charity program moving forward has them from all camping out on the floor all day and night. You forget that you mean more to these girls than literally anyone else on the planet. They are genetically tied to you in a way no one else is. They are holding to their responsibilities, but it’s killing them that you’re here by yourself. They’ve roped in some others like Celia and Megan to take shifts keeping you company.”

“As long as no ones giving up something they should or would rather be doing to just sit next to the bed, holding my hand.”

“I can guarantee what they’d rather be doing is holding your hand, but they know how you feel. Don’t worry, they’re being very responsible about the whole thing. Just be gracious and let them mother you, ok. You’re the one who wanted an army of girlfriends without thinking through what would happen if you got sick.”

“It’s not that I wanted...”

“I know, I know. I was teasing. Don’t be so sensitive.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Now, get some rest.”

I was feeling tired. I won’t say I wasn’t happy to learn I had some kind of Wolverinesque healing, even if that wasn’t exactly what I had. If it was up to me, though, I would have it take less out of me. I was exhausted all the time since I'd been shot, and was sleeping a minimum of twelve hours a day.

Alex explained it wasn’t that much different than how people got tired and slept so much when they had the flu. The body used the energy it would have burned to support the systems that naturally helped the human body recover. Since my body was recovering so much more than the normal body, like regrowing bone rather than, say fusing a broken bone, it required that much more energy.

Even though I was in bed all day, she was still feeding me almost four-thousand calories a day just to fuel my system so it could heal. I accused her of trying to make me fat, but she swore she’d worked out the math. Since she didn’t even know I’d be able to heal to this degree before Richards shot me, I found that doubtful. I suspected she was varying my calorie intake and making notes. She was a researcher at heart, and me being stuck in bed was the perfect time for her to experiment away. Normally she had to make do with me stopping in every few weeks to give blood samples or let her poke away at me.

I spent another month in bed. I hadn’t spent this much time being still, in my entire life, and I was becoming a pain in the ass. I was glad the girls had worked out a schedule to keep me company pretty much all the time, but I could tell I was wearing on them too. I would owe everyone big when I was finally up and around, considering how much of an asshole I was becoming in my convalescence.

Things did happen while I was on my back.

The first was that I passed my tests. The girls were allowed to walk with the senior class since they were graduating early. The school actually made a big deal of it, since they’d only ever had a handful of people graduate early in the history of the town, let alone five in one go. The girls told me they’d called my name, and Zoe had taken my diploma for me, which was nice.

I got a little bit wistful, which surprised me. I’d never really loved school, and considering everything that happened to me in the last two years, I wouldn’t have thought I’d care much that I wasn’t going back. Holding my diploma though, I realized I would miss it. There’s something to be said for watching the doors close on one chapter of your life that makes you reminisce.

The other major thing that happened was that the NASA tests went off perfectly. We didn’t have a repeat of the previous failures, although they required repeated tests and additional stress tests to prove to them that we’d actually solved the issues and it wasn’t something that was going to happen again.

Contracts were being signed, and our solar panels and batteries were going into a satellite that would go up sometime in the fall. I’d always been somewhat of a nerd, and the idea something I’d had a hand in was going into space was pretty exciting.

We also had some contracts with the Army for the new battery. They liked that it was solid state, less susceptible to problems their traditional batteries faced and had a higher capacity. I wasn’t sure where they’d use it, since the contracts all went through MilTech, and the end uses were classified. We may be the original developer, but the actual integration was being done by MilTech. It’s the whole reason we started working with them since they had all the clearances needed to actually get this kind of thing done. Aaron promised he knew what they were doing, for the most part, and everything was fine. Since he’d gone through the change, I felt ok taking his word for it.

By late June I was out of bed, and moving around. I felt weak as a kitten, and Alex said I needed to stay in a wheelchair until the middle of July. At least I wasn’t in one room looking at the same walls every day, so I took it without too much complaining. Zoe found a music festival the week after I was scheduled to be up and moving again, and we all agreed that’d be a great way to celebrate being self-mobile again.

The day they wheeled me out of Alex and Mom’s new facilities, was one of the happiest I could remember. Sun and the smell of outside air were amazing, even if it was the soupy mixture of east Texas in the summer.

I was surprised when they didn’t head towards the highway that would take us back to Alice, but instead headed towards the new house.

“Alex’ll have your ass if she learns you aren’t taking me straight home for more ‘rest.’”

“She knows about this,” Mom said from up front.

They’d rented a wheelchair accessible van, since Alex didn’t want me walking at all if I could help it. Just getting in and out of it was almost more than she’d been willing to accept.

“We’re headed to the new house?”

“Yep,” Zoe said.

They all had goofy smiles, so I knew something was up.

“What? They finished the next stage of construction? I’ve seen the plans, we don’t need to go by and see it now. Don’t tell Alex, but I am feeling pretty tired.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fast,” Zoe said.

I laid my head back on the wheelchairs headrest and closed my eyes. Their new lab wasn’t far from our new house, so it didn’t take us long to get there. I opened my eyes when they stopped at the gate, which had gone in shortly before Richards had shot me. They’d made it and the wall pretty high, something Jawarski had insisted on.

I was prepared to make some kind of comment when the gates opened, hoping they’d get the point and take us home so I could get some more sleep. Just the act of moving into the wheelchair had made me feel weak, and I was starting to get a little annoyed that they’d decided now was a good time for another tour of the construction site.

I felt the words catch in my throat as I looked through the opening gates.

The construction equipment that had been all over when I’d been here last was gone. The scaffolding was gone. It looked like ... well, it looked like a house. A big ass house, but finished.

“Is it...?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “We got the construction rushed. Everything’s finished, and we’ve finished our move. We live here, now.”

“Really?”

Zoe looked at me, her heart in her eyes.

“Welcome home.”

The End

About The Author

T. Starnes is a freelance writing living in Texas. He has a love for books of all types, but preferably sci-fi, mystery and the occasional history.

Find out more at

amazon.com/T-Starnes/e/B016APILAY

Or visit tstarnes.com

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Other Books By Travis Starnes

Destiny Saga

Destiny’s Road

The Ties That Bind

A Summer Cruise (A Destiny Interlude)

What Lies Ahead

Cry Havok (Coming Soon)