She scrunched her nose. “Uh, no. Science was not my best subject in school.”
Hmm, how to explain it? The best way would be to get Paulson in here, but somehow he thought Allison would object. “The scientists figured out how to make stronger humans at the DNA level. They determined that every human has a perfect match for breeding purposes. And when those two people meet and combine DNA, the result is an enhanced human. The scientists also help the enhancement along when the baby is in utero by a little gene therapy. Make sense?”
She nodded then shook her head. “Let me get this straight. If two people are a good match…”
“At the DNA level,” he interjected.
“At the DNA level,” she repeated, “then they can have a baby and the baby would be like Superman or something?”
He nodded.
“And”—she visibly swallowed—“are you a super baby?”
Another nod.
“Oh,” she whispered and scooted back into the arm of the couch as far as she could manage.
“Please don’t be scared, Allison. You know me. I’m still Peter, the same guy who’s kissed you, made love to you, loves you.” He leaned in to touch her, but she inched back.
“Back off, Peter. You can’t drop a bomb like this and expect me to go on like normal.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Would answering more questions help? Ask me anything.”
He felt both exhilarated and disappointed. Allison had never seen him as anything but a normal man, and now she was looking at him like the rest of the occupants of the Program. Like he was a freak. Yet now he could be himself around her. He didn’t have to hide his strength or the reason he didn’t know a lot about movies or popular music that she took for granted.
“Can you fly?” she finally asked.
He blinked at her then smiled. He hadn’t been expecting that question. “No. But that would be amazing.”
“Well, what can you do?”
“Not much more than you can do. I can run really fast, and I’m fairly strong. And I pretty much can memorize anything I read or see.”
“Like my phone number,” she remembered. “At the concert the first time we met. I didn’t believe you were going to call me. I thought you were faking about memorizing my number.”
Now he touched her cheek, and she let him. “I’d never lie about calling you.”
“Are there more of you?” she asked.
“I was the very first enhanced baby born on the Program campus, but now there’s about ten others. They’re all two or three years younger than I am. Sometimes I feel like a lab experiment,” he confessed. “Everyone watches me all the time, and they make me take tests to see how far they can push my body and my mind.”
“Oh, Peter,” she said, and for a hopeful second he thought she might reach and give him a hug, but she hung back. “Is this why you’re so weird sometimes?”
“Weird how?”
“Like how you’d never kissed a girl or seen a movie.”
“I’d never been allowed off campus until the day of the concert.”
“No way.” Her eyes were wide. “Basically they bred you and then made you stay in jail your whole life?”
He’d never thought of it in exactly those terms. In his mind, he’d had a normal upbringing. He had a mom and a dad and went to school. It was only as he aged toward adulthood he’d realized there was a whole world outside of the Program that he was missing. “Well, sort of, I guess. I’d started a campaign to let me off campus. I claimed it was strategic, that I needed to be able to operate in a public situation.”
“But?” she asked, obviously sensing there was more to the story.
“But mostly I wanted to meet a girl.” He smiled at her sheepishly.
“Well, you met one.” She held her hands out. “But I still don’t understand why I’m here now.”