Chapter 23: Epilogue

"So what's with the surprise," Alex asked as they neared their room. "I was expecting to see someone in the lobby, so unless it's a pet snake to take care of your mice, I don't know what to expect."

"Don't worry," Cate assured him. "You'll see in due time."

"Hey, there you are. It's about time!" Sammy was waving from the the band's room on the far side of Alex's. He turned back and shouted to the others inside. "Hey, the big man is in the house."

Before the threesome could reach the room, Patricia's whole group swarmed into the hall and gathered around, as if waiting for something.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Alex asked.

Patricia enveloped him in a hug. "Nope, we just missed you. After all, it's been several days since we last saw you, and knowing you, a lot must have occurred."

"Oh, it did," Cate said, happy to have someone to tell. "He cured a whole bunch of people and several of the villagers had 'spirit visions' of him getting one of them pregnant with a 'glowing spirit' baby who'd finish the job of healing the whole village. Oh, by the way, could one of you take some of these cages for me. They're getting hard to carry."

"You're shitting me," the normally demur Patricia swore. "You mean we know who's going to bear Alex's heir?"

"Yep, her name is Winona. She's gorgeous, if a bit obnoxious while hanging onto Alex, but hopefully she'll be better once she realizes she's not his only girl."

"Man, we've been waiting for this for ages," Erica said, stating what everyone was thinking.

"Do we have any proof of their claim?" Chelsea asked.

"Of course not," Alex responded shortly. "It's only been a day and a pregnancy doesn't show for several days even with our vision, and for all we know, we won't know definitively for another five or ten years. Gail, are you opening the door or what?"

Gail didn't say anything, just turned and held the keycard out to Alex. Grumbling, he dropped his bag and took it from her. He opened the door, only to be confronted by two people he never expected to see.

"Surprise!" everyone behind him chorused.

Haley Hewitt enveloped him in her arms, even as Kayla Odell was trying to quickly limp up to join in the hug.

"What the hell are you two doing here?" Alex asked.

"We knew you were upset about not being able to help us, so when everyone was planning this experiment Gail suggested we join them. But Cate thought it would be a bigger surprise if we waited, and since Kayla is still having trouble walking we figured it would be better to stay here."

Alex gave them both a long hug, and when he finally broke long enough to usher them inside, he found his eyes were tearing.

"Before we do anything, lay down on the bed, one on each. I'll see if I can do anything for you after all this time."

They did as he asked, smiling at him as he approached them.

"We understand you're not likely to be able to do anything, after all, the scarring of the wounds has already set in," Kayla answered. "We're in rehab, but that takes a long time."

As Alex waited, Gail and Gini carried in the bags, while Cate happily filmed the three of them with her cellphone. Gail started to go back for the animal cages but the other girls brought them in for her, so she finally joined Alex and examined Haley first.

"It was an in-and-out without hitting anything major, but there's minor scarring on either end and some along the path as well. But the tissue in between is still a bit dim, showing it's still not at full strength."

"OK, check out Kayla while I work on Haley," Alex instructed her.

Since Gail hadn't laid out where to do the work, Alex examined both her entrance and exit wounds, calculating the path the bullet had taken. He figured out the trajectory from there, and began applying his energy evenly across the whole pathway. He doubted it would make any difference this long after the fact, but Haley's smile grew bigger the longer he worked. Since he felt guilty, he kept the treatment up longer than he really needed.

"So, make any difference?" Alex asked doubtfully.

"You'd better believe it. This is the only time it hasn't hurt since it first happened."

"Well, I don't think I actually did anything, so it probably just relaxed the muscles. After all, I can't imagine how it could serve as a pain killer. I suggest you do the exercises they gave you to stretch the muscles, and it may be more effective than it would be otherwise."

Haley practically jumped up and moved to the far side, doing just that, her smile never fading the whole time. Alex felt bad, since she seemed convinced he'd cured her, while Alex didn't have any such confidence. Instead, he turned to Kayla.

"She had a through-and-through right here in her outer thigh. Again it's mostly minor scar tissue restricting the movements of the leg. It will probably ease on its own with the exercises they have her doing, but..."

Alex stepped up and did essentially the same thing he'd done with Haley, only this time he ran his hand along her thigh as well as treating it from either end. She started to purr halfway through.

"Now, you can't be feeling anything from what I'm doing," Alex complained.

"Hey, when someone cures you, you can complain to them, but if you're not the one who's been shot, and who's been struggling with her recovery, then you don't get a vote," she shot back.

"Still... ," he complained.

"Actually, if the scarring isn't extreme, it may have a healing effect," Cate offered.

"Well, I'd suggest you do like Haley is. If nothing else, it should make the exercises you normally do more effective," Alex suggested.

She sat up and kissed Alex in thanks before getting up and moving to the end of the bed to start her exercises.

"I'm really sorry I couldn't stay to help after you were shot," Alex said again.

"Alex, I was the one who told you to leave us alone," Kayla reminded him. "Besides, your community contributed so much to help us that we started a small non-profit to help other injured people in the city.

"Really? You got that much?" Alex asked, stunned it amounted to so much.

"Well, it wasn't all from them. They covered the basic costs of treatment and planned therapies as soon as Gail announced the fund, but once they did, the other contributions started, and when everyone noticed how large the collection was getting it kind of snowballed. We talked about what to do with the funds, and after discussing it with some of your people, we called a lawyer and had them set up the "Guardian Angel Foundation", which is assigned to help accident and victims of crime in the Dallas region. There was enough money that, as long as we don't spend it too fast, should last for some time. Especially if we use it to cover whatever insurance, Medicaid and Medicare doesn't."

"And no one asked about the name?" Alex asked skeptically.

"We just explained we named it to spite the shooter, who thought he was trying to kill an angel. This was our revenge, since it was our guardian angel who kept us from being killed. The public loved it, especially when we smiled as we said it, wearing our low cut tops," she answered with a cheeky grin.

They proceeded to talk for quite a while, detailing what had happened to each one, but mostly Alex. Cate explained about what happened after the shooting, covering the events in Oklahoma City and the other cities, Gini explained about what happened after he left Phoenix, and Cate resumed describing their adventures in the Paiute village.

"So let me get this straight," Kayla said. "Not only have you expanded your mission to include whoever wants to join, and you've quit trying to hide from the public, but you've effectively solved the whole heir problem, and you've figured out how to boost more people than you can through simply having sex with everyone, and you've included a whole 'nother nation of people to your mission. Is that about it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm telling the public at large about me, but essentially, yeah," Alex admitted.

"Then it sounds like you have reason to celebrate. You've apparently assured the survival of your people after you're gone, which hopefully won't be for some time. You've not only healed a bunch of people, but your treatments are likely to change what treatments people get. Cate and Becky have officially documented your energy, and your followers are more organized and enthused than they've ever been. So just what the hell do you have to complain about now?"

Alex couldn't say much to deny it, but he considered what she said as he sat there with a crooked smile. She was right. While it had been a complicated and busy month, he'd managed to accomplish a lot. And even if he died that night it was very likely his mission would live on after him, and after the people he'd already activated died out. He couldn't have expected any more. Anything he achieved from then was pure gravy, it helped, but it wasn't essential. He accomplished what he sought to.

"How about we go get some food?" Alex asked. "If I stay here and everyone keeps congratulating me, my head will expand so much I won't be able to fit it in the elevator."

The others laughed and they headed downstairs, looking forward to meeting everyone else.

"Becky? This is Alex, I understand you wanted to talk to me."

"What, you don't want to talk to me unless I've got an agenda?" she asked.

"No, of course not," he replied, blushing from his oversight.

"Turn on the speakerphone," Cate suggested.

Alex did so before speaking again. "You know I miss you, but everyone has been surprising me with one thing after another today, so I'm a bit anxious about what you want to discuss with me."

"Yeah, and we love you too," Becky reassured him. "Actually, we knew you were going to call, so Melinda is here with me. She's been involved with a lot of what I do, as well as supporting your other activities. Not only that, but she's been studying up on both general genetics and physics, so hopefully she can make some sense of all the mysteries you bring up. She's going to start her science sub-major when school starts in the fall, but right now, she can understand most of what I'm going to cover."

"Well, I'm proud of her, that is if it's what she really wants to do," Alex added.

"It is," Melinda said. "I figure determining what's going on with you is a family affair, so I'm doing my part. I may not have the leg up that Becky and Cate do, but I plan to catch up."

"OK, that's fine, but the point you wanted to discuss was?" Alex asked, trying to get them back on target. He always felt he was being set up in these prearranged encounters.

"Don't worry," Becky reassured him, "it's nothing bad. Instead I wanted to reveal what I've managed to uncover in my research. You do remember I took over the entire genetic lab here for the summer to try to isolate which genes are affected, don't you?"

"Yeah, of course I remember. In fact, if I remember correctly, I'm the one paying for this little 'experiment' of yours."

"Yes, you are, and as such you need to be kept apprised of what we've discovered. I was ready to give you some updates a little while ago, but Cate suggested it would be better if I saved the updates until I had something specific to tell you. Well, that time is now."

"Wait, you've already got results? I thought the whole idea was to run full scans on all the women, and then analyze the results after we had to give the lab back?"

"That was the initial idea, but I started to make some assumptions which helped me isolate where to look. I figured the 'S' gene is in a small region of the X chromosome inhibited by the male SRY gene, thus it's turned off in males. It's a region of the X-chromosome excluded by the presence of the SRY gene on the male Y-chromosome. That's why most of your followers are female. What's more, if it were placed anywhere else there would be more things which would cause its nonexpression. But, by focusing on that region, I was able to cut out a lot of unnecessary research and analysis. I still did the full workup on your women here, but I'm focusing the analysis on these specific regions, and I think I've got it identified, at least to three or four specific locations. I'm not positive which one it is yet, but I'm pretty sure I know. That means we can run tests to identify who has the gene, and we could even run the test on either the baby's blood or the mother's placenta blood to identify whether anyone's child will be either a Seer or a Seeker."