Alien Research

CHAPTER 89

BUT I HAD TO TRY. Because maybe I was wrong. “Mimi, they’re lying. The only way to bring Michael back would be to clone him, like they already threatened to do. That’s not Michael.”

“It’s really us,” Reid said. “And you know it.” He grinned at me, his evil, snake-like grin. “You’re just as scared of me now as you were when I almost did to you what you deserved in the desert.”

“My God, that’s Leventhal Reid?” Jeff asked. “How?”

“Cloning. It’s the next inevitable Bad Guy Plan phase. The chick’s LaRue, too, by the way. ’Cause we’re just that kind of lucky.”

“Kitty already said their names, Jeff,” Chuckie said, voice tight. “Cloning was obvious, based on presumptions from earlier, what we’ve already seen, and what everyone said. Get with the program. Mimi,” he said in a louder voice, “you know they’re lying and even if they can bring Michael back, he wouldn’t want that.”

“How can you say that?” she asked, as she spun toward us. “You don’t have the right to tell me what my brother would want. You can’t understand what it’s like to lose your brother.”

“Oh, not the ‘only children don’t understand our special sibling bond’ crap. Trust me, only children form tight bonds. Why the hell do you think Chuckie and I are so close? Why Amy and I are? We understand, trust me. What we’re all saying, Mimi, is that we also knew your brother, and there’s no way in the world Michael would want you to bring him back from the dead like LaRue’s suggesting.”

My dream came back to me. Michael wanted to move on, but he wasn’t sure that he’d be allowed to go. Because if we held him, brought him back in some way, then what would happen to his soul? These were the kinds of questions I could ask of ACE and the questions I didn’t want to ask of Algar.

“I want my brother back!” Naomi was back to looking and sounding completely crazy.

“Stop it,” Gower said, voice filled with authority, anger, and fear. “Naomi, stop this right now. This is not how we act, not what we do. We don’t become the evil our enemies are.”

“Kind of wish you’d grabbed Christopher,” I said quietly to Buchanan. “Jeff and Serene didn’t addict knowingly or willingly, but he did, and he might get through to her.”

“I can go back and get him, I can still see and maybe even reach my return cube point. But I don’t know that any of it’s going to work. If Reynolds can’t get through to her, don’t expect anyone else to.” He looked around. “We have a bigger issue. I don’t know how much longer this facility is going to hold.”

Naomi was still ranting and the teenagers were egging her on. “I’d shoot them but I know we want the information they hold,” Adriana said. “Kitty, I’m with Mister Buchanan—I think we need to get out of here.”

“Not without Naomi.”

“I’d like my sister back, too, Naomi,” White said calmly, when there was a break in her ranting. “However, that’s not the way the world works. People we love die.”

“What if I could bring Aunt Terry back?” Naomi said. “Would you want to tell me not to do it?”

White shook his head. “You couldn’t bring Terry back. Not really. Any more than those children you’re holding are the real LaRue and Leventhal. Oh, I’m sure they believe they are,” he said quickly as the kids opened their mouths. “But they aren’t. Souls don’t work like this, Naomi. Once the soul leaves the body, once that tie is severed, it can’t come back.”

“People see the light and come back all the time,” Naomi argued. “Kitty died in childbirth but she came back.”

“They do, and she did,” White agreed. “But their ties weren’t severed. Michael has been dead too long, Terry even longer. I don’t know what the children you’re holding really are, but I do know that the real LaRue and Leventhal they are not.”

“Terry’s with ACE, the little bit of her that was left. And Michael could join ACE if—”

“If ACE was back.” Naomi looked at me, then she pulled me up into the air, so I was right next to her. We were really high up now. “I see the dream you had, in your mind. Michael said he wanted to go, to leave us?”

“Michael’s already left us,” I said gently. “He’s not alone—Fuzzball is with him. But neither one of them asked that I find a way to bring them back. They asked me to find a way to make everyone let them go.”

“I don’t want him to go,” she said plaintively.

“I know. But what about Paul and Abby? Paul’s in danger just by being here, and Abby doesn’t want to lose both her brothers and her sister. Jamie doesn’t want to lose her godmother. Your parents don’t want to lose their daughter. I don’t want to lose my friend. Chuckie doesn’t want to lose the wife he loves with all his heart.”

“But I can protect everyone now.”

“It’s not worth losing you, the Mimi we all know and love. Not to any of us, I promise you that. Mimi . . . we need to know who the Mastermind is. Whoever Father is, he hates Chuckie. He wants bad things to happen to you because that will break Chuckie’s heart.”

She looked uncertain. “What if you’re wrong? What if . . .” She looked at Chuckie, then back to me. “What if what we think we know is wrong?”

“It’s not,” I said firmly. “If what we thought was wrong, ACE would have let me know in some way, I know that, for certain. We’ll figure it out, I promise. Please, I’m begging you—let’s go home, all of us, together. Take the creepy teenagers with us, we’ll lock them up and question them. But let’s go back and just be us again. Please?”

She looked into my eyes and I saw the Naomi I knew there again. “I can’t. I can see what I have to do.” She jerked. “He needs me, right now!”

And with that, she dropped me, Reid, and LaRue, and literally flew up through the ceiling, the glow around her formed into an arrow point as it cut through the building.