Deadly Game (GhostWalkers, #5)(51)

Ken remained lying on the bed, holding Mari close to him. She was awake; he could tell by the racing energy in her mind. She’d awakened the moment Lily entered the room, but she hadn’t stirred, keeping her breath slow and even.

Lily carefully cut off the cast and gently prodded the wrist. “She’s probably a remarkable healer anyway and the Zenith just pushed her body relentlessly.” She placed Mari’s arm back on the mattress and covered it with a sheet. “Has she mentioned my father much?”

Ken didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to lie to her, but Lily was fragile in her pregnant state and it wasn’t her fault that her father was a madman.

She sighed. “I have to know about this breeding program he’s got going, Ken.” She glanced toward the door to where the others were resting, a small frown on her face. “I think he’s inserting animal DNA into the soldiers. I think some of you already carry it, especially the men. Has she mentioned aggression? Anything that might indicate a few of the soldiers in his programs are showing signs of instinct rather than intellectual behavior?”

Mari’s fingers touched his. He enfolded her hand in his. “I’ll ask about it, Lily.”

“He needs help desperately, Ken.” Lily shook her head. “I should have known. I should have gotten him help. Look at this.” She pushed the thin sheet from Mari’s leg, running her hand along the skin there, feeling the bone. “She doesn’t really even need this splint anymore either. She was shot. Her leg was broken, and yet in a few short hours her body has healed. Peter Whitney did that. He created the drug and engineered the biotic enhancements to accelerate her body’s healing capabilities to phenomenal speeds. Just imagine how much the world could have benefited from his discoveries if he hadn’t gone crazy.”

Ken tightened his fingers around Mari’s as Lily removed the splint. “But he did go crazy, Lily. No matter how brilliant he was—or is—he’s become a monster. We can’t allow him to continue and you know that. He’s holding women captive and forcing them to get pregnant. They’re prisoners, held in a remote facility somewhere, with no hope of ever getting out. And he plans to experiment on their babies.”

Lily let out her breath in a long sound of distress. “I’m doing everything I can to find the women, Ken.”

Ask her if what Whitney is doing to the men can be reversed. If he’s inserting animal DNA into theirs or raising their testosterone levels, can she undo what he’s done?

Ken cleared his throat and tried to look intellectual. “Lily, if Dr. Whitney is using animal DNA, or if he raised the testosterone levels in any of the soldiers, is there a way to reverse it or get rid of it?”

Lily’s gaze jumped from his face to Mari’s then skidded back as if she’d seen too much. “The testosterone levels might be managed with drugs. Depending on what he did and how much he raised the levels, I might be able to level the men out. But if he really is inserting animal DNA into theirs, which I’m beginning to suspect, there isn’t anything I can do. With the extra pair of chromosomes he inserted, he has a lot of genetic code to work with.”

She examined Mari’s leg a second time, paying close attention to the wound. “She’ll need more rest, Ken. Try to get her to sleep as much as possible, and she’ll need to drink a lot of fluids. Really push the water. The bathroom is over there,” she indicated a door to their left. “Walk with her so she can test the leg, but only to the bathroom and back until I take X-rays. It ‘looks’ good when I feel it, but psychic ability doesn’t always catch the little nuances.”

“Thanks, Lily. I’ll watch over her.”

Ken waited until Lily had left him alone again with Mari. “What are you thinking?”

Mari opened her eyes, and his heart reacted with a peculiar leap. She had the darkest brown eyes, large and heavily fringed. He hadn’t noticed before because he had been too busy fixating on her mouth, but a man could get seriously lost in her eyes. He was in trouble and getting in deeper by the moment.

“Brett acts more like an animal than a man. He doesn’t care at all what I want or don’t want. It really doesn’t matter to him, other than that I cooperate with him. When I don’t, he’s furious. He wasn’t always like that. Not to say he didn’t have brutish behavior. I think he liked being strong and he picked fights, and none of us liked him all that much, but his behavior is even worse now.”

Ken took a deep breath and let it out. Jack and he had always had better than average eyesight, but now both of them could see not only at night, but at distances more like those an eagle could see than a man. They had assumed it was due to genetic enhancement of vision and hearing, simply increasing their own capabilities, but they could both see heat sources as well. They could change skin color and hold the outside temperature of their skin at a different temperature than their internal body heat, which negated anyone else’s ability to see their heat images. Did that mean Whitney had inserted animal DNA into each of them? Was that part of the reason he had been so adamant that Briony have Jack’s baby?

“What is it?” Mari turned her head to look him directly in the eye. Her fingertip traced the frown on his lips.

“Jack and I have always had dominant personalities,” Ken said. Whitney couldn’t have added animal DNA to our genetic code, could he, Jack? Is it possible he made us even more aggressive, knowing our history? “We’re both aggressive and neither has much backup in him. We had certain traits, both physical and mental, far before we volunteered for Whitney’s psychic program.”