Part 41

Michael followed Charles as he walked out of the house and headed towards… nothing. He didn't know why Maria was insisting that he needed to talk to the cranky old bastard. They had nothing in common so it made no sense for him to have to waste his time talking to his genetic donor.

"Tell me about yourself," Charles said after they had been walking for a while.

"What d'you wanna know?" he asked, his tone suspicious.

Charles shook his head as he wondered what kind of life his… son? Had lived that had made him so angry and wary of people. "Boy, you don't trust anyone, do you?"

This was all Maria's fault, once again. Here he was bein' forced to talk to this old guy that he didn't want anything to do with. Why did he always end up doin' what she wanted him to do? Michael tried to keep his calm as he answered through gritted teeth, "Not until they give me reason to, and you haven't given me any - "

"You're here, aren't you? You wouldn't even be alive without the use of my DNA!" Charles paced, his agitated movements hindered by his arthritic joints. He couldn't believe how hostile, difficult, and ungrateful this boy was!

Michael watched him, his expression indignant. "Hey, it's not like you volunteered it."

"You people didn't give me the chance to either accept or decline an invitation to be tortured and experimented on. They abducted me and performed their heinous tests without my consent." Why would anyone volunteer to what he had been put through? Charles asked himself as he rolled his eyes to the heavens above. He wasn't a masochist.

"Like you would've agreed." Michael shook his head as he stared off in the distance. This was a colossal waste of his time and it was seriously cutting into his plans to get to Santa Fe and get laid.

"Well, I guess we'll never know now, will we?"

"Like it matters."

Charles shook his head. "Why don't we just go back to my original question?"

The original question? Hmmm… what to say? Maybe his lonely childhood… or how about how he killed people for a living? Great discussion! But, he answered anyway. The guy wanted to know who he really was? Fine, then he was gonna learn the whole dirty, ugly truth. Old man wouldn't want anything to do with him once he knew the truth. "What d'you wanna know? That I grew up in an orphanage and had a really shitty childhood? Or maybe that when I turned 17 I joined a military unit and became one of the country's top assassins? What exactly do you wanna know?"

"So, you're a soldier," the old man mused thoughtfully.

"Does it matter?"

"It's just interesting that you chose a career path similar to what you did in your previous life." He scratched his stubbled chin as his gaze raked over the younger man, taking in his rigid posture and his cold demeanor. "I wonder how much genetic memory you actually retained when they cloned you."

Michael shrugged but his mind was following the same line of thought. He had never really given it much thought, but now he wondered if it was coincidence or something else altogether that had set him on the path he had taken. What had made him choose to follow his more violent instincts when his counterpart in Maria's universe had clearly chosen a different path? He didn't understand it and he wasn't sure he wanted to devote much time to thinking about it.

"I did a little research of my own this mornin'; it would appear that you've done well for yourself in spite of the fact that you basically came from nothing." Charles nodded in approval. "I can respect that since I'm a self-made man myself."

"Yeah, well, nobody ever gave me a damn thing. I learned early on that if you want somethin' in life you've gotta take it. There ain't a damn thing I own that I didn't bust my ass for."

"So, you don't use your powers to - "

Michael's gaze shot to the old man and his eyes narrowed warily. "What do you know about my abilities?"

"Again with the suspicion!" Charles exploded. "Why can't you just answer a simple question with a simple answer?"

"I don't have to take this from you."

He frowned when Michael turned, clearly intending to walk back to the house so he could get Maria and leave. It took a considerable effort to bring his temper under control and he forced his voice to remain level as he called the younger man back. "Look, I'm just curious, it's nothin' more than that. Your race seemed to communicate telepathically; I don't recall ever seein' them actually speakin'."

"They had other powers?" Michael asked, his tone grudging.

"Some had the ability to heal, some seemed to be able to enter the subconscious of others, and on a couple of occasions I saw them reconstructing things out of almost nothing." He shook his head. "Their powers seemed to vary; they didn't all share the same ones. I was just wonderin' if you had any of those powers."

Michael shrugged. "I can blow shit up," he muttered finally. "We've been workin' on my ability to focus on specific targets an' I'm getting better at it." He paused for a moment, realizing that he was eager to show off his ability. "Wanna see me blow somethin' up?"

Charles nodded, keeping silent when he saw the combination of pride and enthusiasm on Michael's face; he doubted that the younger man was even aware of it. He watched as lines of concentration formed around Michael's eyes, saw him shake his right hand out and flex it several times before he finally relaxed his stance and his gaze zeroed in on his target. He had a feeling that the man was a formidable opponent in battle and he could only imagine how deadly he was in combat situations.

"You seem to be able to focus on specific targets pretty well," he observed after watching the destruction of inanimate objects for a while.

"I'm getting better," Michael said with a shrug. "It's a little tricky when it involves things that're in motion, but even that's getting easier." He hooked his thumbs in his back pockets as he looked at the old man.

"Go on an' ask whatever you've got on your mind," Charles growled, uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

Where should he start? With his abduction maybe? How and when did they select Dupree? Why had he been chosen to be his donor? Maybe the old man didn't know the answer to that one. Well, at least he had inherited good genes, something that had helped when it came to taking a woman to bed… or wherever else happened to be convenient. "Do you remember the first time you were abducted?"

Charles automatically went on the defensive as soon as the question was voiced. "Not exactly the kinda thing a person's likely to forget, is it? You want the details? Or is it enough to simply say that I was workin' in an oil field late at night the first time they snatched my ass off of this planet?"

"How long were you gone?"

"I was returned within moments based on Earth time; based on my calculations they kept me for close to seven months the first time." He shook his head. "Either time moves at a different rate there or Maria's right and your race has the capability to alter or control the passage of time. Regardless of which is true, it felt like an eternity." He looked away for a few moments to compose himself as the memories assaulted him. "I won't talk about what they did… I just… I won't."

Michael nodded. "I wouldn't ask you to talk about that; captivity's a bitch and there's no reason to ever go into any kinda details. Were you taken on a ship?"

"Yeah, I was transported along with others to another planet."

Michael was surprised. Yeah, Dupree had mentioned bein' taken there the day before, but it seemed weird that his human donor had actually BEEN on Antar while he, Michael Guerin, hybrid extraordinaire, had never been there and would probably never set foot on his own planet. "You were taken to Antar?"

"I would imagine that's where they took us. I never saw anything beyond the walls of the building we were kept in; it was very sterile, very… cold." He shivered at the memory as a feeling of cold permeated his skin. "There were no windows and we were all kept in separate cells; we were never allowed to talk to each other. The aliens never spoke aloud…" He frowned. "The only sounds were the sounds of movement, the sounds of steel instruments being handled and placed back into their correct places… the sound of silence."

Michael observed the old man as he stared into the past. He had been captured before; he had gone through beatings by his captors and he had spent time in solitary confinement so he knew how that could affect a person's mind. The silence was sometimes the worst part of confinement and he had seen its maddening effect on people with weaker minds.

"I've always led a solitary life, and even more so after that first abduction. I became obsessed with findin' the answers, discovering why they had taken me and before I even realized it I had lost everyone that meant anything to me." He chuckled humorlessly. "Not that there were a lot of people to lose, but I managed to drive away the one person who I had ever given a damn about. I never was able to let many people in, but she got all the way in and knew me better than anyone else. I pushed her away and practically destroyed her when I did it; I was so obsessed with findin' the truth that I shut her out. I've lived most of my life with that regret; if I had been able to let go of the past, to put the obsession with my abduction to rest, I might've been able to salvage my relationship with her." He shook his head. "Don't make the same mistakes, boy. Carryin' the past around because it's comprised of all the mistakes you made and all the decisions that you regret… that's no way to live."

For the first time Michael didn't go on the attack as the old man handed out advice. He listened without responding; taking it in and when Charles fell silent once more he respected the silence and kept quiet.

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Maria wandered around Charles' home while the men were gone, eventually finding herself in the basement office. Her curious gaze moving over the dusty shelves packed with books about aliens, encounters, UFOs, and abductions. The wall was filled with maps of constellations and sighting locations, sketches of people and what she could only assume were aliens, and blurry photographs of UFOs.

She leaned closer to see the sheets of newspaper filled with a nearly illegible scrawl that only got more difficult to decipher as the years passed. She sat down in the chair behind the desk, her gaze moving over the things stacked haphazardly in several places. It looked like it had all been placed there in a hurry, as if no thought had been put into the order of the items.

Her fingers traced over an old photograph that was lying on top of a stack of notebooks, the image faded by age. It was still a shock to see how much he and Michael looked alike, she thought. The photograph had been taken when he was much younger and his image was identical to Michael at 25 years old. It had obviously been taken before his abduction; he looked happy in the picture, his arms around a woman who was looking up at him with an expression filled with love.

Her attention was drawn to a few pages scattered on what little clear space there was on the surface of the desk and she reached over to pick them up. The handwriting was feminine and the tone of the letter identified it as being written from a lover and she glanced at the photograph in her other hand before turning her attention back to the letter. For the briefest moment she felt a flash of guilt for reading it, but the words and feelings pulled her in and she quickly lost herself in it.

The woman had poured her heart out, putting all of her feelings down on paper as she said her final farewell to the man she had loved her entire life. Her final request had been for her beloved to accept the plot next to hers as his final resting place, believing that in death they would finally be able to find peace and that they would be able to be together. There were several places throughout the letter where the ink was smeared from drops of moisture… tears maybe, and she wondered if they belonged to Charles or the woman who had written the letter. The letter was signed by Aja and she assumed that it had been a pet name Charles had given to the woman. If her recollections were correct, Laurie had mentioned that her grandmother's name was Ada-Jane.

She carefully replaced the letter and photograph before looking around once more and then going back upstairs. There was no way to know how long the guys would be gone and she just hoped it wouldn't end with them getting into a fight. It wouldn't surprise her though, she mused. Both men had strong personalities and neither one was willing to give an inch.

Charles lived in a huge, rambling two-story house that he had purchased decades earlier and she wondered if he had bought it with the intention of marrying the woman in the photograph and filling the many bedrooms with children. Most of the rooms were empty, closed off to the rest of the house, and it created a very depressing atmosphere. The windows were all covered, shutting the rest of the world out and keeping him safely hidden from prying eyes.

She had a feeling that he had been a completely different person before the abduction had occurred and it made her sad to know that he hadn't been able to let the woman he loved help him find a way to deal with what had happened to him. She wondered if Michael - in her universe or this one - could've turned out like Charles if circumstances had been different.

Maria pushed the heavy curtains back from the doors that led out onto the back deck and she opened them up, walking out onto the deck and looking at the large pool. Charles must use the pool, she thought, noticing that it was well-maintained; the water gently lapping at the sides was clean and she could smell the chlorine in the water. It was still way too cold to use an outdoor pool in her opinion, but she knew there were some people who actually liked it like that.

Unless… She shifted slightly and watched the surface of the water, nodding to herself when she saw the steam rising into the air before quickly disappearing. She should've known. The man was rich so of course he'd have a pool with capabilities built into it to maintain a set water temperature regardless of the weather. She glanced around, taking in the miles of nothing that surrounded the house, and she wondered if Charles would mind if she made use of his pool. Nah, she decided after several minutes of internal debating, he wouldn't mind.

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Michael entered the darkened house behind Charles and glanced around when he heard nothing but silence. His gaze turned suspicious as they moved further into the house and he turned to look at the old man. "Where's she at?"

"What?"

"Maria," he growled. "The woman cannot be close by and be this silent, trust me." He shook his head when Charles just looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "It's too quiet, old man; she's not in the house."

Charles paused and reached up to scratch his eyebrow with his right thumb. The house was too silent. He looked around and motioned toward the deck doors with his cane. "Maybe she's out back."

Michael brushed past the old man and jerked the double doors open, stepping out on the deck and looking around. His gaze located Maria with ease and he grinned when he saw that she had stripped down to her underwear. Okay, so maybe the pain and suffering he had been forced to endure for the past three hours was gonna be worth it. It was near the end of January and it was colder in Texas than it was in Los Angeles, but apparently that wasn't enough of a deterrent to keep Maria out of the pool.