Chapter 53

Lucas was thankful about any piece of information he could get on the Psy situation. Faith's prediction had rattled the pack deeply. He and two of his sentinels were mated to Psy. And even without that fact the implications of Faith's vision were more than scary. Sascha was worried sick about her mother although she made an effort not to let it show to Naya, their daughter. And Vaughn was always one heartbeat away from snapping since he had to watch his mate suffer under the onslaught of partial visions of doom for her race.

The meeting with SnowDancer and the Councilors had finally given them something to dig into and Dorian had done his best to find out about a Councilor they hadn't paid much interest so far. They'd been busy enough with Henry Scott and Pure Psy until lately. Now Dorian had come by to share what he'd found so they could talk it over before they reported back to the wolves.

"Ok, I had to patch this together from various sources, but I think I have a picture now," the Sentinel began while he unpacked his laptop in the living area Lucas' and Sascha's aerie. Luc's mate settled with them in one of the big cushions, holding a merrily babbling toddler.

"The Krychek family group was dealing in biotechnology back in the 1970s. KRYONIK was only the cryonic-subsidiary. The main corporation run by the family was called KRYTECH. – Very creative choice of name. Man! Psy were lame even before Silence."

"Hm, I think I'll tell that to your mate," Sascha laughed.

"Hey you know the clever girls who mated leopards are always excluded!" he replied laughing, reaching out to stroke her knee affectionately. Sascha and Ashaya as well as Faith had been great enrichments to the pack and their mate's lives.

Lucas had to smile as well but said: "Stop flirting with my mate and go on. I have a feeling it will get more interesting."

"I bet you it will! I could unearth a few things from human sources because KRYTECH was working with humans a lot. They didn't have any strong psychic powers among them, so they couldn't afford to trust their brethren. They had no abilities above midrange for generations but they had some biotechnological knowledge and they were ambitious. There were rumors that they were collecting DNA samples of those Psy who had extraordinary powers to combine them and breed powerful Psy in their genetic lines."

Dorian flipped through various folders pulling up a newspaper page that looked like it had been scanned from a printed version. There is this article: It accuses the company of illegal experiments… here … and further down it says: 'seems they are trying to buy strong genes to add to their pool'. They have never been successful as far as I could discover." But the article led me to another source. He opened another document. "This is a speculative list of Psy the journalist thought KRYTECH approached."

"I know a lot of these names. They were all well-known Psy with unique or very strong abilities, mostly cardinals," Sascha mused. "What do the 'ref.' and '?' behind the names mean?"

"The journalist must've had access to the communication of the company. He added 'ref.' whenever he ascertained they refused. The question marks indicate…"

That moment Lucas surprised exclamation interrupted him. "Whoa! Zaid Adelaja is on that list!"

"Yep, and he has a question mark," Dorian emphasized. Then he opened two pictures on the screen. One showed Zaid Adelaja, the other Kaleb Krychek. "Eldridge sees a resemblance between the two."

"I see a slight one. Could be coincidence." Lucas leaned forward to study the screen more intently. "But I have no idea how this genetic stuff works. Has Ashaya seen this?" Dorians Psy mate was a brilliant scientist and M-Psy who could analyze living matter down to DNA-level.

"Said she is no physiognomist either. But if they secretly continued the experiments and created a viable embryo it might carry some physical resemblance to the gene-donor."

Lucas blew out a long breath. "And what are we gonna do with that now?"

"I could ask my mother…" Sascha began, unsure if that would be the right way to proceed.

"Wait, before you decide. There's more: I also tackled the insanity issue. And here we come to the point where I left any legal ground: I dug up the old medical files of the family group. It is really lucky they were so involved with humans at one point. The files were digitalized for research purposes and kept on the server of a private university. That's one dark family! And I'm focusing to the really interesting stuff only. The first generation after the alleged genetic experiments seemed to have been normal, midrange Psy with slight anomalies in mental stability. But in the second generation those anomalies increased. And there were apparently cumulative genetic diseases in the family, at least for the last three generations."

"Oh my god! They did live trials within their family line?" Sascha gasped. She hadn't been surprised that some Psy had tried to optimize their genomes. But being arrogant enough to think one could manipulate nature that easily and being cruel enough to try it on one's own children… Well really what had she expected?

"Obviously yes, and more than one. They must have been so eager they manipulated the offspring of an entire generation. They probably stopped after the first generation was normal but without the intended abilities. And payoff only came with the following generations. But I'd say we found the reason the line faded." Dorian continued while Lucas slid closer to his mate pulling her and the baby into a tight reassuring embrace. Although she had lived most of her life among them, Sascha reacted always strongly to learning new atrocities her former people committed. "It looks as if the last heir got to money somehow almost thirty years and finally closed the run-down business. Then he – Well... it looks like he just vanished. Officially he didn't have any children. But his possessions weren't seized by the Council as you'd expect in such a case but forwarded to Kaleb Krychek. So there must be a link I couldn't find."

"How come no one else ever dug that up?"

"Well, as I said: this kind of information is not exactly broadcasted on NewsNet and technically there isn't much to notice: A Psy inherits a run-down corporation and some money. He builds it up in a different way, creates a successful business empire. It only gets interesting when you know that Krychek – or respectively his family – had a supposedly dead scientist on ice for the last hundred years, before one of them turned into a notorious rebel, took her out and gave her to us."

"I have no idea what to do with this. We have to talk to the wolves – and probably your mother as well as Faith's father," Lucas stated pulling out his phone just as it started to ring. He answered promptly. "Hawke we were just…"

"Switch on NewsNet at once!" The other alpha barked into the phone.

"Why would I…"

"Just do it!" Lucas was about to tell Hawke where he could shove his commands, when he saw what flickered to life on Dorian's laptop screen. Of course the other changeling had heard Hawke and followed his curiosity at once. In front of them a perfectly prim Psy news anchor read out what the cannel hat titled 'breaking news' in red letters flashing across the screen. They listened in silence for a few minutes.

"Holy shit! I guess I have to take back what I just said about NewsNet not broadcasting something like that. – And what the hell is a reticulist?" Dorian bursted out.

"It's a scientist for the PsyNet," Sascha answered, her voice gentle, her face drawn in a way that told him she was already thinking things through. Lucas too seemed surprised when she didn't react as shocked as expected. Then again, she was the daughter of a Councilor. She was probably the only one besides Faith who could explain what the hell currently went on in the Psy world.