Alien Proliferation

him into solitary almost immediately after he was born.”
    Any time I thought about what Jeff’s childhood had been like, my heart wanted to break. But he was a great adult and didn’t seem to carry too many scars from his youth. Oh, sure, the strained relationship with his family and trauma over losing Christopher’s mother, Terry, when the boys were ten were the biggies. But he didn’t seem damaged otherwise.
    “Tito is doing tests and research, quite a bit of both,” Melanie went on. “Much of it related to genetic mutations. We’re assisting him. We just don’t have any conclusive evidence yet.”
    “Or much to compare to,” Emily added. “Human mutations are much slower than anything you and Jamie have gone through. Even A-Cs mutate at a slower rate than what’s happened with you.”
    “Have her talents manifested?” Melanie asked. “We want to compare her talent manifestations to the other hybrids’ as well as to Jeff and our standard talented people.”
    “Sort of, but Jeff implanted blocks, so that’s keeping her talents in check right now. When Christopher’s better, he’ll implant some, too.”
    Melanie raised her eyebrow. “That’s news.”
    Whoops. Forgot, they hadn’t told anyone they’d done this with all of their nieces and nephews. All of Alpha and Airborne knew, but I guessed the girls hadn’t shared with their mothers, which meant they were doing a lot better with that whole “top secret” thing than I was. Shocker. “Erm . . .”
    Emily laughed. “How’d they figure out how to do that?”
    I knew Jeff didn’t want me telling anyone about the glowing cube Terry had given him, and Melanie and Emily were unlikely to have been the ones who took it way back when, so bringing it up wouldn’t help solve that mystery, either.
    “Not sure. I know they had to implant blocks in all of Jeff’s sisters’ kids. I don’t think they’ve done it for anyone else. I think they were afraid to.” I also wasn’t sure if they could only implant into those with a close DNA strain or not. All the A-Cs were related to each other somewhere back there, so that might be a moot point. But it was a point I’d have to discuss with Jeff.
    Melanie nodded. “The older generation is very resistant to doing anything we haven’t done for centuries. As Clarence exemplified.” Wow, Melanie had a sarcasm knob, too. Knew I loved her.
    Emily sighed. “I can’t believe Clarence willingly helped turn Christopher into an addict. I mean, that’s carrying pathetic jealousy a bit too far. Not that he hasn’t always been a world-class jerk.”
    “All of Jeff’s brothers-in-law seem to hate him and Christopher.”
    “Jonathan isn’t so bad.” Melanie sighed. “No one’s as bad as Clarence.”
    Emily snorted. “That’s like saying a regular superbeing is better than an in-control one. Jonathan’s okay, but that’s about all I’ll say.” Loved Emily, too. My favorite mothers after my own and Chuckie’s.
    “Did Ericka Gower have any kind of reaction to carrying her kids?”
    Melanie shook her head. “None. She’s still fully human. It’s got to be the drug, Kitty. We’ve been monitoring the rest of the babies coming; only Serene’s seems . . . different.”
    “Different?”
    “More like you and Jamie,” Emily answered. “Not like Claudia’s, Lorraine’s, or Doreen’s babies. Nor any of the others’ who are pregnant.” She sighed. “And now Christopher’s altered himself.”
    “Which means any girl he marries is going to be affected, just like me, right?”
    “We don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. One test case isn’t enough to base concrete assumptions.” Melanie was a scientist first, I had to remind myself. All the Dazzlers were, really.
    “What about the addiction factor with him?”
    They both shook their heads. “Again, we don’t have enough experience with this,” Emily said. “We’re looking into it, of course, but unwitting addiction is different from willing. Serene wanted to get the drug out of her system.”
    “Are you saying Christopher doesn’t?”
    “No,” Melanie said quickly. “But from what I’ve read up on human addictions, he’s acting more the way a human addict would than Serene did, in terms of cleaning up, I mean. If we had more help, we’d probably be making faster headway.”
    “Why don’t we get more help on this, then?”
    “Tito doesn’t want too many people working on this project,” Emily explained. “I can’t blame