Page 75 of Gluttony
“Wealllooked. She wasn’t there.” Parker folded his arms and ran his eyes around the room, stopping briefly on every person: Griffin at the back with his wife Lilo, Sloan and Max at the table, Evan and Grace next to them… and Mary and Flint, on the other end of the sectional. Mary’s face was drawn and dark circles darkened her eyes. She was once a fit, vibrant, fifty-something-year-old, and now looked her age. Flint also appeared older. His beard went unshaven, and his clothes were rumpled.
Their appearance plunged a guilty knife through Tony’s heart. While he’d been with Bailey, satisfying his urges, they’d been earning a few more gray hairs.
Snapping a worried glance back to Parker, Tony asked through a lump in his throat, “Do you think she’s dead?”
Parker solemnly shook his head and then gestured for Evan to bring him something.
Evan gathered some sheets of paper from the table and walked over. In his hands were scribbled works of art, portraits and scenes most likely taken from his prophetic dreams. Most nights, Evan would see snapshots of the future, or the present, and when he woke, he drew them. Lately, his dreams had been full of whatever subject was most on his mind—Grace. But occasionally, something else would slip through. As the mood turned somber, Tony took Bailey’s hand.
There was something on those papers, something no one liked. He could see it in their eyes. Parker shuffled through the papers and picked out one to display. Leaning forward, Tony squinted to make out the picture. Angry black charcoal strokes came together to make a shadowed picture of a crying woman wearing a gag, lying on a bed. She had straps on her wrists and ankles. Evan had overlaid versions of her face, as though she were shaking her head, screaming. The tendons in her neck protruded. But the worst was the sheer terror in her eyes, coming through all layers to hit home. It looked like the drawing of a traumatized, disturbed patient, and Evan had been dreaming it.
Tony looked closer and recognized familiar features. A line formed between his brows. He glanced over at Liza sitting between Misha and their parents. “That looks like you.”
She returned his look with trepidation.
“There’s more.” Parker replaced the sheet with another.
Same scene, different woman. This time, her hair was white. Her features were remarkably similar, but she had fine scarring over half her face. “Is that Daisy?”
So she was alive. His momentary elation deflated when he realized Daisy, too, was being tortured, in pain, or… something not right.
Parker put the third and final sheet on the front of the display. “And we don’t know who this is.”
A faceless, interchangeable woman. It could be anyone, or lots of them.
“But what does it mean?” he asked, looking to Evan now back at his space with Grace. Evan folded his tattooed arms defensively. Tony got the impression the man was sleep deprived. “Why did you have three dreams of the same thing, but with different women?”
A helpless look flashed in Evan’s eyes. “I don’t know.”
Parker cleared his throat. He paced the floor, as though he were in a board meeting. “Why don’t you tell everyone about the dreams.”
Evan looked to his mate for reassurance. She gave him a kind smile and a gentle nod of encouragement.
“Okay,” Evan started. “I’ll try.” He took a deep breath and then exhaled. “For the past few nights, I’ve been dreaming about women being taken and subjected to physical examinations… No, it’s worse than that because they’re screaming. They’re always screaming so hard that someone puts a gag on their mouth, and then they start crying. I can’t make out much, but each time I dream, the face of the woman turns into another, and another. Sometimes it’s Liza, sometimes Daisy… some of the time, it’s a faceless woman I don’t recognize. Every time, there are more replicate tanks in the background.”
Those goddamned tanks again? Tony shook his head. “Replicate tanks. I thought you destroyed all of those.”
“Apparently not,” Parker added.
“It’s been over a year,” Flint pointed out. “The clones only took around two years to grow. These could be a new batch.”
“So it’s the Syndicate,” Tony stated. He rubbed his thumb over Bailey’s hand. The repetitive motion soothed him while he mused. “They’ve rebuilt their army of psycho soldiers, they have at least”—he counted quietly on his fingers—“at least four samples of our DNA. Unless Daisy somehow managed to collect a sample of my blood last night. Then it’s five. I don’t think she had time, though.”
Parker steepled his fingers and tapped them to his lips. “Four out of eight unblocked genome sequences might be all they need to replicate our abilities in new clones.”
“But do they know how to stop them from expiring? Wasn’t that the issue with Sara?” Grace asked. She reached across the table and clasped hands with Evan.
Sara was Wyatt’s ex, a Syndicate spy, a suicide bomber, and after that, a failed clone. She only lived for a few months after being born as a replicate of her original self—with advanced soldier muscle memory—and then her body failed her. As far as the Seven knew, the clones were still failing.
“What did Barry Pinkerton say?” Flint asked Parker.
“He said he’d always known how to fix the expiration problem, but never told them.”
“And you believe him?”
“So cynical. But yes, I believe him. Doesn’t mean the problem won’t be fixed. Barry went out of his way to hide the solution because he didn’t want the project to succeed, but now that he’s gone, it won’t take long for someone to find a work around. They’ve probably already hired a new geneticist. One without scruples.”
Parker’s words sparked something in Tony’s memory. A name. He picked at the hem of his shirt for a moment, trying to pull it from his mind. When he remembered, his eyes lit up, and he hit his thigh. “Daisy said there was a geneticist whose name was Wayne Bosch.”
