eyes open just in case this was Recombinant-related. Then we were dismissed.
Instead of trying to casually corner her on her way out, I darted around the conference table and said, “I need a minute, T.”
Teresa’s lips parted and her eyebrows furrowed—she was about to ask if it could wait—so I fixed her with a dead stare. My I-mean-it face. To Gage she said, “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
Gage pressed a kiss to her temple, then followed the others out. Even Marco left for some kind of errand, so I went over and shut the door.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I know what’s happening with Noah and Dahlia,” I said.
She blinked once. “What do you know?”
“I saw them in the infirmary. I know that Ace is starting to reject them and it’s making him sick.”
“Okay.” She sat down on the edge of the conference table, weariness settling over her like a heavy blanket.
“Are we doing anything to help them?”
“Everything we can, which is mostly keeping them comfortable. Dr. Kinsey has been reaching out to some old colleagues, but it’s difficult when so many could still be connected to the other Recombinant projects. He isn’t sure who to trust.”
“Makes sense.” I could hear that her voice lacked the fighting edge it usually had when she really believed in something. “Do you think we’ll find a way to save them both?”
She bit hard on her lower lip, her lavender eyes glimmering with grief. “I honestly don’t know, Renee. There’s so much we don’t know about the Changelings, that even Dr. Kinsey doesn’t know, and they were his project. We’ve even sent their medical histories to Dr. Bennett.”
My hand jerked in surprise.
Dr. Nancy Bennett was a former colleague of Dr. Kinsey’s from his earliest days at Weatherfield Research and Development and now worked for a private company in the field of genetic cloning. Last month, after the death of one of the clones, we sent the body to Nancy’s facility in Richmond, Virginia. She signed a confidentiality agreement—for her protection, as well as ours. The autopsy showed the body was a perfect genetic clone of the late Patricia Swift, right down to her Meta abilities and how they affected her system.
“What can Dr. Bennett do?” I asked. “Clone Dahlia’s dead body?”
“No, that’s not what she’s looking into.”
“Cloning Noah?”
“No.” Teresa wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “She’s attempting to clone the Changeling.”
I stared at her, stuck somewhere between confused and horrified. “Ace? Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know, but Dr. Bennett and Dr. Kinsey are going to try.”
“So if they do manage to clone another Ace, how do you know we can transfer Noah or Dahlia over to him?”
“We don’t. We’re guessing on all of this.”
“What if Dr. Bennett is successful and Ace 2.0 doesn’t want to join with one of them?”
Teresa’s expression shifted from surprise to calm faster than most people might notice—but I’d known her for too long to miss it. She didn’t like the answer she was about to give me, but she had to say it like she meant it. “Ace 2.0, as you said, would be raised knowing his purpose,” she said.
God, she was in a tough place right now—wanting to do everything she could to save two of her friends, and wanting to protect the rights of other living creatures to exist. And as much as I knew this decision would pain her, I couldn’t quite let it go. “Ace, King, and Joker made a choice to join with each of the Scott brothers, T.”
She glared at me. “Yes, they did. But Noah Scott made the choice for both Jimmy and Aaron to join with Joker and King. Those two brothers didn’t have a say. Dahlia didn’t have a say, either, when Noah absorbed her.”
Annoyance prickled across my skin. “From the way I heard the story, if he hadn’t absorbed her, they all would have died when Queen and Deuce went apeshit, not just Jimmy. Maybe even you, too.”
“I know that. I think about it a lot, trust me. But I think about something else, too. Something Dahlia told me a long time ago, when we were first house-hunting in Beverly Hills.” Teresa’s eyes went liquid again, and I couldn’t help it. I sat down and slipped my arm around her waist. She leaned into me and put her head on my shoulder.
“What did she tell you?” I asked gently. Curious, because Dahlia and I never really talked about anything, before or after she combined with Noah.
“Dal told me again about her mom dying of cancer, and how she was there for every moment of it.” She shuddered, and I held her tighter. I knew this tidbit already. “I don’t remember why it came up, but Dahlia told me she was kind of grateful for finding the Rangers. Her greatest fear was a slow, painful, lingering death like her mother’s. She thought a fast, heroic death was better.”
My chest ached, and I had the oddest urge to cry. Mostly for the grief thick in Teresa’s voice, and for the power of the words she’d spoken to me. Dahlia could have had her fast, heroic death back in June, and now she was slowly fading away, trapped in someone else’s body.
“Dahlia doesn’t blame Noah for this,” Teresa continued, her voice raspy with tears. “Not that she’s admitted to me, anyway. They care about each other. I hope I can give them the life they want together. Everyone deserves their own happiness.”
“Like you and Gage?”
She tensed, then relaxed, but the tell was still there—things weren’t a hundred percent with those two. “I love Gage.”
“I know that. He loves you more than oxygen, T. You’re his world.”
“And he’s mine. Most of it.”
I angled to see her face better. Her tears hadn’t spilled yet, and she looked utterly miserable. Teresa rarely let herself break down anymore. She was always playing the part of the stoic leader, the one with all of the answers, when most of the time she was as uncertain as the rest of us. I hated seeing my best friend in the world so unhappy and torn. “But you have to keep a little room in your heart for the rest of us, right? For the team?”
She wilted a bit, and I pulled her into a real hug. Her chin rested on my shoulder, breath tickling my hair. “He knows I’ll always think of the good of the team first, above him or myself. I have to, Renee. He’s always known that, but lately . . .”
“He’s taking it more personally?”
“Yeah.”
I held her for a little while, hoping she’d just let go and have a good cry, but she didn’t. She pulled herself together, then pulled away from me.
“You’re our leader, T,” I said. “He’s known that from the start. He can’t change the rules this late in the game.”
“The rules are always changing. We can’t seem to stop things from changing.” She heaved a deep sigh, then stood up. “I don’t think I have to ask you to keep the Noah and Dahlia thing to yourself.”
“Does Aaron know?”
She flinched. “No.”
“Shouldn’t he?”
“Noah doesn’t want him to know yet. All he’ll do is worry.”
“He has a right to worry. Noah’s his brother.”
“Believe me, I understand, but it isn’t my call. Please don’t say anything.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She left first. I wasn’t sure where to go next, or what to do. A shower and a nap sounded like heaven, but I found myself wandering outside. My favorite bench was empty, so I sat down and pulled my knees up to my chest. No one was exercising or fake-fighting on the lawn this afternoon. I honestly had no idea what time it was, but the sun was low on the horizon.
