Kelly Meding: Chimera

Everything around me grayed out except for the woman in the bed, whose simple inquiry drove home a realization with the force of a bullet to the brain. It all made perfect sense now. Switch had come here to free Double Trouble of each other, but not the way we’d assumed.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. I looked into those familiar blue eyes, and I knew.

“What is it?” Rick asked. “What’s wrong with her?”

I glanced at Dr. Kinsey, whose ashen face told me he’d connected the dots, too. He met my gaze and nodded, expression filled with wonder and shock.

“We’ll go get Noah,” I said to her. “He’s fine, I promise.”

She tried to smile, then closed her eyes and drifted off.

“Why does she want to see Noah?” Rick asked. “I don’t get it.”

“Because Dr. Kinsey wasn’t wrong. Bethany didn’t wake up. She’s gone, Rick.”

He blanched. “Then what is this? Who was that?”

“That,” I said, throat clogging with relieved tears, “was Dahlia Perkins.”

An early autumn dusting of snow didn’t stop today’s training session from taking place on the back lawn. It had been unseasonably cold for the first of October, and today’s flurry was the second in less than three days. I’d bundled up and parked my butt on my favorite bench in order to enjoy it while I could. Living in Las Vegas for so many years meant a lot of winters without snow. I wouldn’t have that problem in the Mid-Atlantic.

The training session was the first of what was sure to be many as Dahlia learned how to use two different sets of powers at once. After spending a week going in and out of consciousness, she’d finally recovered enough to discuss what had happened to her and how. She now had both her fire absorption ability and Bethany’s heat blasts. Getting those powers to work together would take a lot of training, but she’d had a little practice already with Noah.

Only this time, she was alone in her own head.

Dahlia was in the field with Aaron, Marco, and Sasha. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but I imagined it was variations on Don’t overexert yourself and Take your time . Her body was healing quickly. Her mind would take a little longer, and we all knew it. Everyone else also needed time to adjust to Dahlia walking around in Bethany’s body, especially Landon and Noah.

Noah, who was nowhere to be seen most days, the jerk.

A shadow fell over my bench as Teresa settled down on the seat next to me. She was tucked into a winter coat, which only accentuated how pale she was and had been for the last couple of days. We watched the quartet on the lawn in silence for a while.

“Has she said anything to you about James?” I asked.

“No,” Teresa replied. “I think she’s afraid of making him a target.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I know. Maybe it’s better she never contacts him.”

Switch’s video for Dahlia had been jam-packed with life-changing revelations. In June, at the height of the Changeling debacle, Dahlia had discovered that she wasn’t a born Meta. She was a Recombinant experiment, created in a lab just like the Changelings. In the last few months, we’d had no leads in discovering her past or the truth of her origin.

Switch confirmed it in her recording. She never explained her reasons for leaving the Rangers and joining the minds behind the Recombinant projects, only that she truly believed in the research—at the beginning. She developed a project that was supposed to produce babies who could absorb massive amounts of radiation, going so far as to donate her own DNA to the experiment. Twins were created, a boy and a girl. Those babies, however, showed no signs of an absorption ability.

“I couldn’t terminate my own flesh and blood,” Switch had said. “So I smuggled you and your brother out and gave you to women who would love you. And as of the recording of this message, your brother James is still alive and well. If you ever want to meet him, he’s a mechanic in a little town called Franklin, North Carolina. To my knowledge, he’s never developed powers. He knows nothing about his origin. Telling him is up to you.”

She went on to apologize for what happened to Bethany and the other children. When she lost her powers at the end of the War, she was stuck in her other persona—becoming Uncle and refocusing on those kids was her way of coping with the loss. She was furious when the Overseer discovered Dahlia was alive and demanded her execution this past June. She was equally furious when the mission resulted in the deaths of three of the five hybrid-Changelings. Everything was spiraling out of control.

“I could no longer blindly follow the Overseer’s orders,” Switch had said at the end of the video. “And I have no place in your world. I hope you can accept this gift, Dahlia. I’ve seen enough of my children die. Good luck.”

So poor Dahlia was Switch’s biological offspring, and she had a twin brother out there in the backwoods of North Carolina, blissfully unaware that he was a science experiment gone wrong. Or right, depending on your point of view. I doubted she would contact James until the Overseer was neutralized as a threat. Dahlia would never purposely make him a target of the Overseer and his wrath. If the Overseer didn’t know where he was, all the better for everyone.

“Is Sasha still squawking about feeling trapped here?” I asked.

“Yes, and honestly, I don’t think it’s a terrible idea for her and her team to leave. We have the resources, and more than enough people.”

Sasha reminded me of Teresa in more ways than one, including her stubborn independence. She wanted her people to learn and to train, but she also didn’t want to stay here permanently. Teresa was floating the idea of returning a team presence to the West Coast, maybe in the Pacific Northwest area. Sasha jumped at the suggestion. I admitted that it had merit.

I missed the West Coast.

Two figures crossed the far side of the lawn, hunched against the chilly air, deep in conversation. I grinned at the sight of them together, both ambulatory and smiling. Landon had been officially released from the infirmary a few days ago, and he was healing well. And Derek had returned just yesterday, after being officially and fully pardoned by the United States government for all past crimes.

We’d had quite the reunion and celebration last night.

I’d briefly floated the West Coast idea to Derek, and he’d been intrigued. Getting Landon away from here for a while was a good idea, he’d said, because of Bethany. Seeing her body walking around with someone else inside was hell on him. I didn’t relish the notion of leaving my friends for the other side of the country, but going with Derek wouldn’t be so bad.

“I take it you two are doing fine,” Teresa said, tilting her chin in Derek’s direction.

“More than fine.” My cheeks warmed. “I have to admit, T, never in a million years did I think I’d fall for an ex-Bane.” And I was falling hard.

“I never thought a lot of things would happen. It’s been a hell of a year.”

“Amen. And we haven’t even made it through the election yet.”

She snorted harshly through her nose. “Don’t remind me.”

Gage walked across the snow-dusted field and stopped to talk with Derek and Landon. Next to me, Teresa tensed enough that I noticed. Gage turned to go and spotted us. He froze. The look he and Teresa shared was indecipherable—like the momentary glance of two perfect strangers wondering if they happened to know each other. And like strangers who realize they aren’t acquainted, they both looked away.

“What was that about?” I asked.