Page 41 of The Beast's Baby
This, he replied.Use your telepathy to reach out to them. They’re your blood kin. There’s a bond there that’s stronger than anything. Even if you don’t know them, once you reach for them, you will.
“No,” she said. “This place is coming down. One way or the other, that’s what must be happening. Especially if you’re here, standing there, asking for my help. You don’t want to save me or my brothers. You want to save yourself. I don’t care if it comes down with me still in it. If you don’t move and let us out of here, it most likely will. But I’m not running intervention for you.”
This place is about so much more than you or me, he said.Ask Jay.
“Jay has already told me everything I need to know about what morals this place is run on,” she spat. “And I have the baby inside of me to prove that everything I think about what he’s told me is true. I don’t give a fuck about the grander scheme of things,dad. And I’m not your go-between.”
This wolf was a stranger. The wolf who said she was her mother was a stranger too. There was the sense of truth, but there was no bond, there was no connection. She felt as though these people were nightmare versions of the parents whom she had always dreamed might come for her one day. And she rejected them both in that moment.
Some part of her had wondered if perhaps there could be the chance to form at least some form of relationship with them, but they were beyond salvation.
The two of them.
“What’s your role here?” she asked him.
If wolves could smile, she would have sworn that’s what he did in that moment, eyes glowing a little brighter in the shadows. And she knew then that he had instigated it. It was as though she could see it all so perfectly clearly, as though he was sharing his memories with her.
The day he walked into a restaurant and passed a table where a beautiful woman was having lunch with a friend. He’d sensed that she was a wolf, just like him. So had she. Their eyes had met. And then met again, as he claimed a table and had lunch by himself. All through the hour and a half where he ate alone and she ate and chatted with her friend, their eyes had found each other until, once she had settled her bill and was headed for the door, she stopped by his table and slipped him a note with her name and number.
She had been married to Milton Maynard for five years. She didn’t have any children by him yet, but they would come soon enough. And together with Brendan—on his initiative—she founded the offshoot of MRM Pharma that would begin to study shifter genetics and how to possibly manipulate them and introduce them into the human population.
That’s where it started, Brendan’s voice spoke in her head.
She snapped out of whatever transfer of memory he had managed to induce between them, shaken by the experience but finding her equilibrium quickly enough.
“It was never about curing anything,” she said, wanting Jay to partake at least in this part of the exchange. “It was about controlling what type of baby is born. And through it, what type of population inhabits the earth.”
No more illness, Brendan said.That is curing the earth, isn’t it?
“It’s not your place to make that decision for everyone!” she exclaimed.
Everyone needs someone to make the decision, he disagreed.Getting rid of the weak to make way for the strong.
“You’re sick,” she said. “How does this drug work? Tell me. I want to know what type of salvation you’ll really unleash.”
“It’s meant to boost the immune system,” Jay filled in.
Yes, and it does, Brendan spoke, apparently deciding to include Jay as well since she noticed Jay’s head snap to the wolf.For a time. But then…
“But then what?” Isobel asked.
Well, as far as we can tell, it starts to disintegrate it.
“What?” Jay asked, the shock thick in his voice. “What do you mean?”
“He means that they’ve found a way to make a medication that keeps people healthy for the rest of their life by replacing their immune system,” she said. “Masked as prenatal supplements, right? You really are insane.”
It’s for their own good. And for the good of their children.
“Because their children…” Jay began, trailing off as it seemed to dawn on him. “Their children will inherit the immune system of a wolf?”
Aren’t you the clever one?Brendan commented.
“Why are you telling us this?” she asked, suspicion creeping in.
So that you can stop wondering about our intentions, he replied.You say that we’re sick and that we’re insane but if you think about it, you’ll see that this is the only way to save the world from itself. You think viruses won’t run rampant on a planet that is in a downward spiral? Once the entire population has the healing capabilities of shifters—
He was cut off by something slamming into his side, dragging him from the window as he was sent tumbling. The something was most definitely another wolf, and within a breath a second wolf followed them, joining in the tumult that ensued. A fight of snarls and snapping jaws that couldn’t be seen, only heard.
