She made absolutely no mistake about his question. She slowly nodded. “I find it easier. Particularly as I recover.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed, with a nod.
“Hiding what?” Ice asked. “Twins? That’s awesome.”
“Her power,” Terk murmured. “She’s been keeping it hidden, so she didn’t have to answer unnecessary questions.”
“And to keep it safer,” she added matter-of-factly. “It’s been hard to know what’s been going on. Self-preservation took over.”
“Has that been a problem for you?”
“I don’t know many people like me,” she replied, studying him carefully. “Some people with abilities aren’t the most comfortable to be around.”
He gave her a ghost of a smile. “That’s true.”
“So wait. Let me get this straight,” Levi said. “Somebody knew about Terk’s abilities, like maybe a foreign power. It’s possible they also knew about you, perhaps because of the accusations regarding the grant?” He shook his head. “But it still seems like a huge leap for them to then decide that the two of you should have children. And because it wasn’t likely to happen naturally, they went through all that to create this pregnancy? But why wouldn’t they just take the fertilized egg and put it in a surrogate? Why go through the rest of this?”
Terk looked at him and in a flat voice, asked, “How do you know they didn’t?”
Celia sucked back her breath at that. He turned to look at her and nodded. “We have to consider that, if they did this once, there’s a good chance they did it more than once.”
“With our sperm and egg?” she asked in a faint voice.
“I don’t know, but it’s a valid question.”
“Yes,” she agreed softly. “Maybe they thought that we would …” She hesitated, as he waited. “I don’t know, maybe open up their abilities by raising them.”
“That is a possibility,” Terk noted, “and obviously you were better for that than me.”
She snorted. “While I’m carrying it anyway.”
“Them,” he reminded her.
She winced, “Them, I know. I keep trying to avoid that thought.”
“Why?” Ice asked, fascinated.
“It’s just feels like such an overwhelming responsibility as it is, but two?” Celia shook her head. “I don’t even know what to think about that. Especially not knowing how I got this way. I’m afraid of how I’ll react to them, how I’ll treat them.”
“Understood,” Ice agreed, studying her features carefully. “But it’ll help as we find more answers. Plus, you’ve already connected to them in a healthy way, it seems.”
“Hopefully, yes,” Celia noted. “And the issues seem to be growing as we learn more, which seems backward. The question now is whether or not it’s really my egg and Terk’s sperm. Also, has it happened again and are there other embryos out there somewhere? That’s the hardest part, now that he’s verbalized it.” After a moment, she looked at Terk, her brows furrowed. “Presumably, if you know things,” she said, with emphasis, “would you know if there are others?”
“Potentially yes,” he replied. “However, just because there might be others, that doesn’t mean that they are viable or that they aren’t in cryogenics or sitting somewhere dying in a Petri dish.”
“I get that,” Celia said, “and I really hate to even contemplate that it might be better for them to be in that state, but I surely don’t want them raised by anybody else.”
“Agreed,” he murmured. That left a ton of things for them to sort out, but he agreed with her, at least in part. He didn’t know anything about her, except the idea that she was a scientist dealing with this kind of work was fascinating. He’d never met anybody who studied this phenomenon.
That brought up a million questions, but he held them back because they were hardly pertinent to the conversation of the moment. “That does seem to resolve the issue of why you were chosen.”
“Maybe,” she murmured. “At least it gives credence to the one theory. But it could have been something completely different. It could have been completely random.”
He stared at her. “In your line of work, does coincidence come up much?”
She took a deep breath. “No.” She shook her head. “Never.”
“Exactly,” he murmured. “So, I highly doubt that it was a coincidence or a random act. Back to when this medical session happened for you,” he asked. “Were you in Paris?”
“England,” she murmured. “And you?” She already knew the answer, but this was important.
“I was in England too, and it would have been a fairly short scenario, and then I was back on my feet again, supposedly having healed very well.”
“So,” Merk noted, “the accident potentially could have been staged and your injury could have just been a total sham. That’s only one sensible presumption.”
Terk nodded slowly. “If any of this makes sense, and somebody is trying to raise an army,” he murmured, “this is a hell of a way to go about it.”
“If that’s the case, why release me then?” The bewilderment in her voice made him send a gentle stroke of energy across her shoulders. A little reassurance that she wasn’t alone.
“Because it’s a well-known fact that all children do better with their parents, and all expectant mothers do better if they’re not in captivity. So, from the kidnappers’ perspective, as long as they kept track of you, they could come after you and the child at any time. Or even at such a time it was proven that their experiment was successful.”
“So, release me only to steal my children later?” She gasped in horror.
“Well, that’s one theory,” Terk clarified, with a nod, hating to contemplate such a plan himself.
Merk added, “It’s also possible that they were waiting to see if the twins had any abilities, since, of course, it’s certainly not guaranteed.” Merk motioned at himself. “I don’t have the same abilities as Terk.”
“No,” Terk said, “but it’s not that I necessarily have abilities that you don’t, but mine are more defined, whereas it hasn’t been your focus.”
Merk nodded. “Still isn’t. I find that stuff kind of freaky actually.”
Terk snorted. “Of course it’s freaky. But, in my case, I could never shut it off, so I learned to control it.” He looked over at her with raised eyebrows, as she nodded immediately.
“Yes,” she shared, “it started when I was about four. My deceased grandmother came to me and told me that I would have to look after me and my mother, so I think Grandmother had some of the genes too.”
“Not exactly what a four-year-old wants to hear,” Ice noted.
“And hardly appropriate,” Terk said, fascinated.
“No, but my grandmother knew that my mother was an alcoholic and was not likely to spend her time looking after me.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Celia shrugged. “I know perfectly well what it’s like when you’re raised by somebody who shouldn’t have been a parent in the first place. The fact is, I stayed out of foster care as long as I did by keeping my mother relatively functional,” she added. “But it was not easy, and I don’t think I did a very good job of it.”