Page 113 of Greed
She gently patted him on the arm and surveyed the dried blood on his face. “Are you badly injured?”
He nodded, then shook his head. It was sore, but nothing he couldn’t handle. “I’m good.”
She went to stand beside her husband, rubbing his shoulders with affection. Seeing their love only made him long for Lilo again, and his power surged, blanking out every screen in the room.
“Yeah, we need to keep you away from the tech,” Flint said and waved in the opposite direction. “Shoo. You’re disrupting the feed, and I’m listening to scanners to make sure nothing else happened.”
Parker gripped his shoulder and tugged him back. “This ability of yours is going to affect your new suit. Damn it, I’ll have to insulate it to keep the tech functional. In fact, I’ll have to insulate all of them. Come. Distract your mind while you wait.”
For the first time, Griffin noticed a dark figure inside a glass display cabinet at the corner of the room. It was a mannequin wearing a new version of their combat gear—gray, not black, and made from a slick fabric that looked both mat and glossy, depending on the angle you approached from. The hood was a familiar shape. A face guard covering the nose and mouth. It was streamlined and without seams.
That made Griffin extremely happy. The seams on his outfit sometimes irritated and rubbed the wrong way. But… if there were no seams…
“How do you get it on?” he asked.
“I’ll go into the details when everyone is here,” Parker replied. “Where is Tony, by the way?” he asked Mary.
Her gaze darkened with disapproval. “Sleeping off a hangover.”
“It’s after lunch,” Parker scoffed. “I was hoping to discuss our progress with the Syndicate.”
“More like lack of progress, don’t you mean?” Sloan muttered, without taking her eyes from her game.
Parker stormed to Sloan and slammed her laptop lid closed, almost catching her fingers on the keyboard. “Exactly!”
“You asshole. I was in the middle of a battle.”
“You should be focused onthisbattle. The one where you can actually lose your life.”
Sloan screwed up her nose and slumped in her seat. But she didn’t say a word because she knew Parker was right.
“The Syndicate is dangerous, and they’re up to something,” Griffin said, trying to divert their hate filled attention from each other. “We’ve learned that they can grow clones and give them enhanced abilities. They can now, by the flick of a syringe, alter someone’s DNA and give them enhanced abilities instantly.”
“We also know that their clones—or replicates as they called them—expired after a few months of being awake.” Parker went to the central bench which also doubled as a computer screen, cleared the surface and wrote with an erasable marker:2 month life expectancy. “And the serum was instant, but the effects were temporary. What else do we know?” He looked at them.
“They want samples of our blood,” Griffin offered and Parker wrote it down.
“Why?” Mary asked. “Can they use your blood to clone you?”
“No. Not the way they’ve taken the samples.”
“But if they got more blood, fresh from the vein?”
Parker shrugged. “It’s possible. Scientists in Japan have successfully cloned mice from a drop of blood.”
“Jesus,” Flint cursed from his corner and met Mary’s worried eyes.
“But I don’t think that’s what they’re doing.” Parker tapped the pen on the bench. “I think they don’t have enough information yet.”
“Why do you say that?” Evan walked over to join Griffin and Parker at the bench.
“Because they wanted Griffin’s blood. It seems like Evan’s one sample wasn’t enough. They could go after Evan, but they’ve stopped. They went after Griffin the instant they discovered he had powers. It’s like they’re collecting new information when they can get it.”
“They’ve been unable to replicate the initial experiment. Your biological mother did something to your DNA,” Mary said. “Maybe the Syndicate need all of you to complete the puzzle.”
An ominous thread drew all the evidence together, leaving an unanswered question hanging in the air.What would the Syndicate do if it completed the puzzle?
Parker answered: “If they get all the information they need, they could create an army of instant, powered soldiers.”
