He sat on a chair opposite her. Not that he really needed to see her reaction to anything said here this evening, simply because he could feel them. The link that had sprung to life the minute she walked in the door had become a freeway of emotion. If it wasn't for the fact that he was so used to blocking his brother, the assault might have overloaded him.
Karl and Finley helped themselves to coffee and sat down on either side of him. O'Hearn leaned against the edge of her desk.
"Okay, I'll start this off," O'Hearn said. "I've managed to isolate code sequences from four other races—shifter, changer, vampire and were. But there was one I couldn't identify. I called in Finley, but he's been unable to define the sequences, either. Then there was the problem of the unknown chromosome."
"How can there be an extra chromosome?" Sam asked, her voice terse. "From what I understand of genetics, humans have forty-six chromosomes, and they work in pairs. So how can there be just one unknown chromosome?"
O'Hearn raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by the question.
"Human's do have forty-six. Vampire's who were once human have forty-eight. Shifters have fifty, changers and were's fifty- two. If any of those become vamp, then they gain an extra pair of chromosomes. You, my dear, have fifty-five."
"Meaning what?" Sam crossed her arms. The gray ring around the blue of her eyes gleamed ice-bright in the quickly fading light. "You said you detected partial shifter-coding, but even with the extra chromosome that still only gives me a max of fifty-three."
Finley cleared his throat. "The two extra come from the vamp coding we found."
Gabriel frowned. "I thought you had to undergo the change to gain the extra chromosomes?"
"So did I." O'Hearn's voice was dry.
"Normally, yes," Finley said. "But in recent government tests, vamp chromosomes have been successfully introduced into both pig and rat embryos."
Sam's face echoed the horror Gabriel felt. Government meddling with the very beginnings of life could never be a good thing.
"What the hell is the government doing that for?"
Finley shrugged. "Vampires have what humanity has long searched for. Life everlasting."
Sam snorted. "Yeah, but at what cost?"
"To some, the cost doesn't matter." Finley hesitated, frowning slightly. "Anyway, while we were trying to decode the unknown strands, I remembered my father once saying he worked with a man who could melt into shadows. Handy, when you were a member of covert operations. At the time, I thought my father meant a vampire, but since A.D. Stern here questioned me about the existence of Shadow Walkers, I began to wonder."
"So you questioned him?" Gabriel interrupted tersely. Finley had a tendency to ramble if left unchecked.
The young doctor nodded. "He confirmed the man was a walker. One of six the Australian military had on the payroll."
If they were on the payroll, why was there no record of them now? "What happened to them?"
Finley shrugged. "Dad wasn't sure. Seemed they disappeared after the race wars."
Sent to Hopeworth, perhaps? It was certainly a possibility, especially if Sam proved to have walker blood in her.
"Could he point you to anyone who might know more?"
"He did—to two men, actually. Robin Deleware and Frank Lloyd. Deleware died some three years ago, and Lloyd—"
"—is a General stationed at Hopeworth," Sam muttered.
Her gaze met Gabriel's. "That man's name keeps reappearing."
And the reason behind Lloyd's interest in Sam was becoming clearer. "Lloyd's not likely to help us."
"No," Finley agreed. "But Deleware still might. It appears he was Karl's uncle."
"On my mother 's side," Karl explained with a grin. "I inherited all his books when he died, you see. Among them were his journals."
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "I thought personal journals were banned in covert operations?"
Karl's grin widened. "Rules are made to be broken, as you should know."