Chapter 57
"How is Alice?" Judd asked Lara as he entered the infirmary.
"I thought she was getting better and at least physically she is. She can walk a little and dress by herself now. But since she read that file, she seems upset. I don't think she remembers everything. She still seems confused but she's crying a lot and she's trying to hide it."
"So she hasn't said any more about what she meant, when she read the file?" Judd had hoped he might get some more information about the past of the Krychek family from Lara's patient, since all his other sources had turned up dry.
"I'm not sure whether she cannot or doesn't want to say. Maybe the shock of awakening so far beyond her time wears off and the impact of the emotions finally hit. I really don't know. I called Sascha. She's coming over tonight."
"Maybe I can talk to her. She seems to have some connection to me." He had been the first to talk to her after she awoke. And she'd recognized him as an Arrow. Somewhere locked inside that brilliant scientist's mind there must be more knowledge about the beginnings of Silence and the connection to Kaleb's family.
"But don't push her. Leave her alone as soon as she starts to act stressed," the healer instructed.
As he entered her room, Alice greeted him with the saddest smile he'd ever seen.
"Ah, the former Arrow." At once tears threatened to spill from her eyes. "You remind me so much of him, just like that Krychek descendant… that Councilor." She shook her head in desperate disbelief. "It should not be…"
She was still speaking jerkily, her sentences incomplete, disjointed. But Judd could see this was not disorientation or any other aftereffect of her cryonic state. She was deeply shaken, emotionally at breaking point. "You remembered something." Something that knocked all the joyous scientific curiosity of the last weeks right out of her.
"And I wish I hadn't. All of it is just so… This world turned out so wrong. Why wouldn't he listen?"
"Who wouldn't listen, Alice?" Judd tried to sound as gentle as he could. Maybe he should wait for Sascha. The empath would be better at this.
"None of them wanted to listen to a human. But in the end it was him – Zaid." She spoke the name of the first Arrow and fiercest defender of the Silence Protocol with a shuddering longing. "He said they'd be after me, but that he knew a way to protect me – forever. But he shouldn't have. I would rather have gone with him than… than this. But he couldn't understand it anymore. He'd turned so cold. And he sold himself so they could create their aberration."
So she knew something after all. "You're talking about the Krychek family. They were trying to enhance their abilities via genetic modeling."
"Enhance? They were cutting the genome of a monster out of every strand of powerful Psy DNA they could find."
Alice got increasingly agitated but her mind seemed exceptionally clear today. So he decided to try for just a little more. "How do you know about the experiments?"
"I…" She hesitated as if she was trying to find a memory she couldn't yet access. "I think I was working for them. They funded my research on the X-Psy… I did what I could to stop it, when I found out what they needed my research for. That's why I told him... Oh dear God I told him! I gave him the idea, that his DNA might be valuable to them." She sobbed now, tears trailing down her face.
"Judd get out!" Lara hissed from the doorway.
He obeyed at once, realizing he might have pushed Alice too far already. As he left, he heard her whisper: "Please don't let them have found an X."