The Eve Genome (5 page)

“Is Marcus albino too?”

He smiled and shot a mischievous sidelong glance my way. “Wait and see.”

#

Kalan pulled his sports car into the parking lot of a three story hotel on the outskirts of the city. As we approached the white stucco building, he pulled a key card from his jeans pocket and we went in through a side door. Inside, vacuums whirred away by the housecleaning staff hard at work, the scent of industrial cleaner intermingling with something minty and fresh, tickling at the back of my throat. It was a decent hotel, the gold and red carpet underfoot soft and spongy beneath my feet, the white stucco on the outside echoed on the interior walls. Every few feet was an ornate oil painting in jewel tones set above a table that held a large red vase of flowers.

Kalan slowed as we approach room four-twelve. “He’s waiting for us.” He opened the door and stepped in, holding the door open for me to follow.

I stepped into the room and stopped midstride. My legs felt like they’d turned to spaghetti beneath me. The face smiling at me from the chair at the other end of the hotel room was exactly the same as Kalan, except the colouring. Where Kalan was fair, Marcus was tanned. Where Kalan’s hair was a silvery-blonde, Marcus had a shock of pitch-black hair. Where Kalan’s eyes were greyish-pewter, Marcus’s were as black as shiny obsidian.

He smiled at me, the same winning smile that Kalan had. He stood up. “Hello. You must be Adriana. My name is Marcus. Marcus Kane.”

“Hi, Marcus.” I blurted. Why did I feel awe-struck? Was it the way they were both so similar and yet different? Was it because Marcus’s colouring shocked me? Or was there something actually different about Marcus? “Nice to meet you.”

Marcus dipped his head forward in a gentlemanly gesture. “And you. Has my brother filled you in on our quest?”

“Yes, he has.”

“I’m surprised to see you. I wasn’t sure you would agree to come with Kalan, especially so soon after meeting him,” Marcus said.

Kalan shot him a look. “There was a turn of events. Adriana’s sister’s body has gone missing from NHGRI. I didn’t have the luxury of getting to know her before I had to explain the whole story.”

Marcus’s eyebrows shot up. “Her body has gone missing?”

I nodded. “Yes. Disappeared. Police have been called.”

“Oh. That changes things, doesn’t it?” Marcus said, more musing to himself than asking a question. “What do you think this means, Kalan?”

“I’ve been going over and over it in my head, and I just don’t know.” Kalan rubbed his jaw. “I believe there are others besides NHGRI people who have an interest in our blood type.”

“I’m afraid this will cause us to lose sight of our goal, Kalan. The reason we came to Stonewood in the first place,” Marcus said to his brother. Then he spoke to me. “Not that the mystery surrounding your sister’s body isn’t of concern. But that’s not why we are here.”

This first impression of Marcus was not off to a good start. I already didn’t like him.

“Marcus, we can’t expect Adriana to want to help us find our mother right now. Her sister’s missing body is more urgent. We’ve never even met our mother. We’ve gone almost twenty years without her. I think we can wait a little longer.” Marcus pursed his lips together in response, but Kalan continued. “I personally think this situation with Analiese and Adriana is directly related to us. I bet we’ll find out about our mother in the process.”

Marcus looked skyward, his eyes almost a roll, but not quite. He was really not winning any points with me. “Fine. Where do you plan to start? NHGRI in Bethesda? Because if I have to pay for hotel, food and gas for days on end I’m going to have a problem.”

“Marcus, if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. You can stay here and work on mom’s case, I just won’t be here to help you,” Kalan paused. “Maybe that’s a better plan. You stay, do some digging on your own, and we’ll head to Maryland. I’ll check in with you in a day or so.”

Marcus shrugged and peered at me, his mouth a tight line. “If that’s what you think is best. But I don’t know anyone here. It’s going to be a lot harder trying to navigate this city on my own.”

“I can introduce you to my friends, Tait and Zoe,” I said. “I’m sure they’d be willing to show you around and help out.”

Marcus’s expression brightened considerably. “Perfect, yes. When can I meet them?”

I dug my phone out of my purse and texted a joint message:
Can u show some1 around Stnwood?
Both responded almost simultaneously. Tait’s response was,
Who is it?
and Zoe’s was,
K, who
?

“They said they would. I’ll hook you up tonight,” I said. I wanted to get to Bethesda as soon as possible, preferably without my falling-apart-at-the-seams mother.

Marcus smiled. “Great.”

#

              Introductions were arranged for that night at Kalan and Marcus’s hotel. We met in the courtyard out back, where a pretty white gazebo was lit up inside with tiny white lights, lending a fairy tale feel to the evening. Outside, it was dusk, the mountains shadowed black against the indigo backdrop of the night sky. The autumn air was cool and crisp, and there was a faint scent of lilac in the air. Marcus and Kalan hadn’t yet arrived, so I took the opportunity to give Zoe and Tait the full explanation about Kalan and Marcus and the blood mystery we had in common. 

              Tait was first to respond. “This seems suspicious. The guy may as well have told you he is stalking you.”

              “It’s not stalking if you tell the person immediately,” I said. “It’s not like he followed me around for days on end. He came and found me and told me.”

              “Aren’t you a little nervous to go to Maryland alone with him?” Zoe asked.

              Was I afraid? Did I even know what I was getting into here? I could be hooking up with a mass murderer or serial killer for all I knew.
Blood spatter expert by day…
I shivered and shrugged it off. “At this point, with my sister dead and her body missing, I’m not feeling particularly patient. I don’t want to babysit my mother, whose mental health is seriously deteriorating, and I also don’t want to go alone.”

              Tait cocked his head to the side and his lips pinched together. “We will come with you. All you have to do is ask.” He glanced at Zoe. “Well, I would.”

              “I know,” I said. “But I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m willing to stay until I find out what’s going on, and if it means I have to drop out of college this term, I’ll do it. This is not your problem. But it is Kalan’s.”

              “I don’t know,” Tait said.

              Footsteps approached us, two sets. It was them. Twin yin and yang. “Hi guys.” I said, as soon as they stepped onto the platform. They looked amazing together, their faces and bodies exactly the same, the colouring the polar opposite. Kalan looked like some kind of fallen angel, his silver hair glossy in the glow of the tiny white lights. He wore a thin cotton t-shirt and jeans that showed off an athletic build. Beside him, Marcus’s black hair glowed almost blue. His shirt glowed in fiery shades against metallic colours, an image of a burning mechanism with parts that looked like part chainsaw and part clock. It gave him a demon-machine look. The two of them side by side almost didn’t look real. Two perfect specimens, models made to demonstrate the epitome of the male of the species, at polar opposite ends of the coloring spectrum.

              “Hello, Adriana,” Marcus said. His gaze swept across to Zoe, then to Tait.

              “Hey,” Kalan said to the group.

              I did a round of introductions and after a moment or two we sat down on the concrete ledges of the gazebo. It was cold and hard against my bottom and a chill ran through me. Colorado fall evenings were always cool. Kalan and Marcus sat side by side on one end of the gazebo, me, Tait and Zoe on the other side.

              “When will you leave for Maryland?” Zoe asked.

              I glanced at Kalan. He nodded. “Tomorrow.”

              Tait leaned forward beside me, his head turned in my direction. “Flying or driving?”

              I looked back at Kalan. It was his call. I wasn’t taking my ratty old beater on the Interstate.

              “Flying,” Kalan said. “Marcus and I are hopeful there will be something or someone here in Stonewood who might know something about our mother. I was wondering if you two would be willing to give Marcus a hand while I’m gone? You might have some ideas of where he could go since you’re from here.”

              Tait responded, his gaze on Marcus for a lingering moment before he spoke to Kalan. “Of course. We’ll do anything to help out. We just want Adriana to figure out what happened to Analiese. We all loved her very much.” Tait’s voice broke on the last words, and his eyes filled.

              A gasp burst from my own mouth and tears erupted from my eyes, streaming down my face. Tait put his arm around me and pulled me close. Temple to temple, he whispered soothing words to me in hushed tones until I got a grip on my relentless crying. When I opened my eyes, Kalan and Marcus were no longer across from me. They were talking outside the gazebo.

              “Do you think this is okay? Showing Marcus around?” I asked.

              “He seems harmless enough,” Tait said. “I don’t mind. Do you, Zoe?”

              “He gives me the creeps. Actually they both do.” Zoe paused. “But I guess it’s because it’s not every day I see people that look like… like
that
.”

              Kalan and Marcus re-entered the gazebo.

              Marcus came to us and got down on his haunches in front of me. “Adriana, I’m so sorry for your loss.” I nodded in acknowledgement and he stood back up. “Tait and Zoe—what do you think of our request?” His gaze lingered on Tait.

              Tait leaned forward, closer to Marcus. “We can help you.”

              Marcus placed his hand on Tait’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

              My phone buzzed in my pocket. I dug it out.
Damn
. “Hi, Mom.”

              “Hi, dear.” Her speech was clipped and rapid, once again. It was like she was running on rocket fuel. “We are going to visit grandma and Aunt Bethany tomorrow. They might have some history for us, maybe give us a lead.”

              This was a crimp in the plan, but would be a better plan than heading off without making sure we’d covered every base here first.

“Okay,” I said.

“I’ll meet you at Grandma’s.” I hung up. Tait observed me with a steadfast gaze. “We have a delay in our plans.”

Old Earth Creationism: An interpretation of Genesis in which days are taken to be figurative lengths of time, and the time scales given by geologists are generally correct. However, the special creation of man precludes common descent.

-Talk Origins

CHAPTER FIVE

ADRIANA SINCLAIR

Ten more minutes before I had to leave for our visit with Grandma and Aunt Bethany. I quickly opened up my laptop and typed in the keywords,
extra+ rib+ bloodline
. Search results came up, all of the websites conspiracy theorists who referred to people in various different parts of the world, popping up randomly though the years. Some postulated the bloodline was possibly part of an alien race. Other websites spoke about the direct connection to Adam and Eve from a Creation standpoint, “The immaculate humans are living proof that God exists, and that Creation is, in fact, true.”

Other websites referred to the connection with the ancestral ‘Eve,’ an African ancestor all modern humans were supposedly descended from, some 200,000 years ago that scientists called the ‘Mitochondrial Eve.’ These websites appeared more scientific than the others, and somewhat matched what the geneticists had told me. Was the extra rib part of the Mitochondrial Eve mutation, or was it simply an unrelated recessive trait? I thought about the stiff debate that occurred between Dr. Bomer and Dr. Halan at the institute. Some sort of theory. An endo-symbiosis theory, or something that sounded like it.

I typed in
mitochondrion+symbiosis+theory
. Immediately a Wiki page popped up, “Endosymbiotic theory.” The thrust of the theory was based on the idea that mitochondria originated as symbioses between two independent, free-living, single-celled organisms that were taken inside another cell as an endosymbiont. I stared at the electron micrograph image at the right corner of the screen of a mitochondrion, showing the interlacing matrix within the membrane. Was it possible? Was the mitochondria the product of symbiosis? Did that mean the mitochondrial DNA was once a parasitic organism? I went on to read the rest of the article.
“There is some biochemical and molecular proof to suggest the mitochondrion is the result of symbiosis of proteobacteria and the plastids from cyanobacteria.”

Not that I truly understood the meaning of it all, other than the basic biological concepts I’d learned last year in Bio and that it had something to do with me and Analiese, and the fact that we were
different
. Obviously we were far more different than I ever could have imagined.

Dr. Halan’s and Bomer’s arguments ran through my mind.

“We are considering the possibility that the mutation is an evolution into the original mitochondria,” Dr. Bomer had said.

“The likelihood of that is one in twenty billion,” Dr. Halan had responded.

Dr. Bomer: “There are seven billion people on the planet, Dr. Halan.”

Dr. Halan: “There is some debate within the scientific community, that the maximum energy potential was much stronger in the original mitochondrion. A theory we would like to test out.”

“The Endosymbiotic Theory is highly disputed,” Dr. Bomer had finished.

I tried to find another site, but the only thing I could find based on the endosymtiotic theory was a video game about a parasitic evil superwoman. I glanced at my watch and shut down my computer. I’d have to finish my research later.

I rolled up to grandma’s care home where my mom was waiting for me just inside the entry. The home was named The Legion. It was a brown brick structure with nicely maintained yard space where several weeping willows that had lost their leaves. The gnarled, bowing trees created a canopy overhead, with one small apple tree beneath them.  Rotten apples spotted the ground around the miniature tree, and as we got closer, I saw there was still one overripe apple left on the tree.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. My mouth felt twitchy with the news about Analiese’s missing body, but I kept it shut.

“Hi, dear.”

I felt a pang of guilt for not visiting in so long. It was increasingly difficult to visit, ever since grandma had begun losing her short-term memory. The first time she’d forgotten my name was the worst, like a butter knife to the ribs. But now with Analiese gone, I had a whole new appreciation of family because I knew they could be wrenched from my fingertips at any moment.

Grandma Marion and Aunt Bethany were all we had left of Mom’s side of the family. Mom’s dad was dead, having died on a construction site when Mom was three years old. They were older parents when they had her, both in their mid-forties, and mom was their only child. Now, Grandma, Bethany, me and Mom were the only ones left.

Aunt Bethany was grandma’s baby sister. She’d been a source of entertainment for years with her exaggerated innocence and dry wit. Dad always referred to her as a ‘spinster’ on account of the fact that she never married. The seventy-five year-old lived in Stonewood, and was still spry and active in her senior’s community, as far as I knew.

A few steps in and we were at Grandma Marion’s door. I knocked three times, hoping she would remember we were coming and be dressed appropriately, or… at least dressed.

She answered the door and her face drew up into a big smile I hoped was recognition.

“Hello my dears!” she said, hugging us. “Come in.”

I exchanged a glance with Mom as we stepped into the small room Grandma called home. All that was left of the personal belongings of her life she shared with Grandpa was the intricately carved antique jewellery chest and two flowery blue sofas. Aunt Bethany was already seated in the living room. She reached out to greet us, since her hips prevented her from getting up off the couch without pain. “Hello!”

We greeted Aunt Bethany with hugs and kisses and sat down next to her on the sofa, Grandma joining us in the chair across the living area. Bethany was a slightly younger version of Grandma, with slightly darker hair, her complexion a tiny bit rosier.

“I’m so happy you could come today,” Grandma said. “I’ve been thinking it must be time for you to visit.” Grandma’s mossy blue-green eyes were still as bright as ever. Her hair was grey along the sides, but the top and back were darker, the length of her hair tied up into a neat bun at the back of her head. No matter who or what she forgot in her life, be it her grandchildren or her boiling tea kettle, she somehow always remembered to wear her hair in a bun.

“I’ve been thinking so too, Grandma,” I said. “How are you?” Would she even remember Analiese’s death?

Grandma smiled. “Just fine, dear. Just fine.” Obviously she’d forgotten about Analiese altogether. She turned to Mom. “And you?”

“We’re both doing well,” Mom said perfunctorily. Clearly she wasn’t going to bring up Analiese and experience the fallout from the entire discussion. “We came to talk to you both about something important,” Mom said.

“Oh?” Grandma glanced back and forth at us, her eyes wide, revealing yellowed whites.

“Adriana has been asking about the bloodline, and the extra rib,” Mom said. “I remember hearing you, Aunt Bethany and Virginia whispering about it once. What do you know about it?”

Grandma Marion merely blinked at first, her eyes unfocused as if her mind was in some faraway place. Then she snapped out of it and glanced at Bethany. “When I first heard about it, I was a new mother, having just had you, Carla. I was introduced to a woman, about your age, who had an extra rib. I was told she had the same rare blood type as my niece, Virginia. No rhesus factor. Do you know what that is?”

“Rh factor refers to antigens, right?” I asked, not to clarify what I knew, but to confirm that grandma knew what she was talking about.

Grandma Marion nodded. “Antigens are what make the blood impure. Your blood has no antigens. No impurities. It is like O-negative, but yet it’s not O-negative.”

I still felt no more informed than I had when I walked through the door. 

“What about her extra rib, Mom?”

“What other story in history talks about a rib?” Grandma prompted, eyebrows high on her forehead as she waited for us to figure it out.

My mind whirred. “Eve?”

Grandma Marion’s face lit up into a wide grin, showing off long teeth. She nodded with enthusiasm and then all at once her face fell. My mother’s complexion was an ashy shade of pale, her expression clouded over.

“You’re not saying Adriana is… somehow connected to the Biblical Eve?” Mom asked.

“That is exactly what I’m telling you, dear,” Grandma said.

Mom’s pallor was still a chalky grey. “I think that assumption is going a bit too far, Mom.”

Grandma held my mother’s gaze. “I suppose only God would know for sure.”

Damnit, Alzheimer’s
.

Thankfully, Aunt Bethany finally spoke up. “The strangest thing about that girl with the extra rib and the blood type was that she could have been Virginia’s twin sister. I’ve never seen anyone resemble another person like that, especially when there’s no blood relation. They even sounded the same. Do you remember that, Marion? Remember her dark hair and strange green eyes? She was the spitting image of Virginia.”

“That’s right,” Grandma said. “Gosh, I almost forgot. Remember how we debated that for years after? We researched her family tree, trying to find a connection, a long lost relative we’d forgotten about. It was uncanny, how they looked exactly the same. Carbon copies.”

Who was this woman? Perhaps I already knew. “Did you find anything?” I asked.

Grandma wrung her hands in her lap. “No. Nothing. There were no relatives, not even distant. Genevieve said she was French, but Virginia was Scottish. No overlap whatsoever, not that we could find, anyway.”

“Genevieve,” I said. It sounded an awful lot like the extended version of Jennie or Jeannie.

Mom shook her head. “Why has nobody ever told us this before?”

Grandma Marion’s face flushed pink, and her expression looked like she’d been caught stealing. “An omission of necessity, I suppose. When Virginia was alive, we thought we had to keep it a secret, even from our own family members. Government officials were speculating about the blood, wondering where in the world it came from. Of course, some crazies thought Virginia was an alien.” Grandma chuckled at the memory, but grew serious immediately after. “Once she realized she was so different, special, a kind of scientific curiosity, she tried to hide, disappear, for privacy, and for safety. She became a hermit, as my mother would say.”

I stared at Grandma in a whole new light. “For safety? What safety risks were there?” I considered the experience I had with the National Human Genome Research Institute and their request that I stay for testing, followed by my mother’s wacky response.

“The scientists.”

“Scientists? Who? The Human Genome researchers?” I asked.

Grandma glanced to Bethany, who shrugged. “We’re not sure.”

It now seemed like an appropriate time to tell everyone about Kalan and Marcus. “I have something I think I’d better tell you all.” I did so, explaining that they were here in search of their biological mother, who also had the blood type and the extra rib.

Auntie Bethany looked like she’d just gotten an incurable diagnosis. “Oh, no. Marion, the worst has happened, hasn’t it? They’ve found each other.”

“Wait. What do you know about them?” I asked.             

Grandma and Bethany locked gazes and something passed between them, an unspoken communication.

“The girl, the one that looked exactly like Virginia,” Aunt Bethany looked like she was about to cry, “their meeting wasn’t accidental. Virginia was told by government officials she had to report to the Center for Inherited Disease Research, following an incident involving her blood when Virginia was ten.”

An unwanted image of Analiese lying lifeless atop the stretcher following the botched blood transfusion flashed through my mind and soured my stomach. That moment was inexorably burned into my brain.

“What was the incident?” Mom asked.

Bethany continued. “A blood donation. Virginia had donated her blood for the first time, and when it was typed, they placed it in the O-negative category. But as we all know, it isn’t O-negative, is it? The blood she donated killed a seven-year-old girl with nonfatal leukemia.”

My stomach flipped. “No.”

Bethany spoke next. “After that, they wanted Virginia and bothered her for years. Even eighteen years later, they continued to hassle her. And apparently, they wanted this girl as well. She also had the strange blood. Eighteen years after the fatal blood donation, Virginia and this girl were both asked to come to the Center for Inherited Disease Research on the same day.”

“Who was the girl?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.

“The mother of those twins,” said Aunt Bethany.

An icy shiver tiptoed up my back.

“Genevieve!” Mom said, less of a question and more like she’d finally made the connection.

Grandma nodded. “Yes. You remember her, Carla?”

My mom nodded, her eyes glassy, absent.

“Poor Genevieve. And to top it all off, she was already pregnant with twins!” My heart thumped so loudly in my ears I barely heard the rest of what grandma said.

“How old was she? Genevieve?” I asked.

“Still in high school, I believe.” Bethany replied. “About the same age as you, Carla.”

“The same age?” I said.

“Well, within a few years of one another,” Bethany looked at grandma for corroboration. Grandma blinked. “I think Genevieve was about ten years younger than Virginia.”

Virginia and Genevieve were ten years apart. Virginia was ten when she made the fatal donation of blood. They looked like carbon copies of one another. And yet, they weren’t related, not even distantly. What were the odds?

“She was absolutely hysterical with fear,” Bethany said. “She couldn’t abort them. She tried, but it didn’t work. Those demon babies refused to be terminated.”

Demon babies
. My skin crawled at the idea of Kalan having nearly been aborted. “She tried to abort them? Why?”

“Because,” Bethany answered. “Genevieve was used. The scientists used her body for a scientific experiment. They used her body, like she was an animal, to create a new breed.”

A new breed
. I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “What did she do?”

“She came to live with us,” Grandma said. “And spent the remainder of her pregnancy with Virginia, who took care of her, tried to keep her protected from those people. But Virginia couldn’t protect her, and they both knew that. That’s why they were so secretive, those two. They couldn’t have been more like twins if they’d come out of the same womb. They had secrets they never told anybody, not even us. Those scientists already knew exactly where Virginia lived. She was being monitored, wire-tapped, everything.” Grandma turned to her sister. “Remember when Les found that wire-tap, Bethany?”