Chapter 17: Reborn in other body
The collapse was sudden and total.
John’s eyes, wide with the overwhelming flood of new sensory data—his own body, the voices, the pain, the warmth of Lina’s hand—simply rolled back. His knees buckled. The powerful musculature that was a perfect copy of Pace’s went slack, surrendering to the neural overload.
Lina was moving before he hit the marble. Her scientist’s mind calculated the trajectory, the mass, the potential for cranial impact. She wasn’t fast enough to catch him fully, but she got an arm under his shoulder, her body twisting to take the brunt of his weight and steer his fall away from the sharp corner of the obsidian table. They went down together in a clumsy, heavy tangle of limbs, her breath huffing out as his dead weight slammed into her.
“Sebastian!” she barked, the word sharp with strain.
The little man was already there, his fear forgotten in the face of a medical crisis. Together, they manhandled John’s unconscious form—a solid two hundred pounds of unresponsive muscle—back onto the high medical bed. Lina’s hands were quick, clinical, checking his pulse at the throat, peeling back an eyelid to see the pupil dilated and unseeing.
“Vasovagal syncope, likely,” she muttered, more to herself than to Sebastian. “Extreme psychological stress on a nascent nervous system. Vital signs?”
“Stable. Elevated, but stabilizing,” Sebastian reported, his fingers skimming over the portable monitor. “Cortical activity is… chaotic. It’s like a storm in there.”
From his place by the bedpost, Pace watched, his own pain a distant, throbbing echo. He saw the way Lina’s hands moved over John’s body, efficient but not impersonal. A faint crease of worry marred the space between her brows. He saw the sheen of sweat on her temple from the effort of catching him. He said nothing. The ghost of Jace’s laughter still seemed to cling to the gilded ceiling.
Hours bled into the deep, silent stretches of the mansion’s night. The gas lamps were dimmed. Sebastian, exhausted, had been ordered to his cot in an adjacent chamber. Pace refused to leave. He had dragged a heavy, leather-winged chair from the library annex, positioning it in the corner of the medical chamber like a shadowed throne. He sat there, immobile, a crystal glass of amber whiskey in his hand, untouched. His eyes never left the bed.
Lina did not leave either. She paced for a while, a silver-blonde wraith in the low light, checking readings, adjusting the saline drip she’d started. Finally, fatigue carved hollows under her violet eyes. She pulled a wooden stool to the edge of the bed, perched on it, and rested her head on her arms, crossed next to John’s hip. Within minutes, the relentless pull of exhaustion dragged her under. She slept sitting up, her breath a shallow, even rhythm in the quiet room.
Pace watched her sleep. He watched the slow rise and fall of John’s chest. Two vulnerabilities. One born of flesh, the other of will. He drank the whiskey. It burned, but it was a familiar, anchoring burn.
Dawn came not as a sunrise, but as a gradual graying of the high, narrow windows in the medical chamber. The storm had passed, leaving a bruised, watery light.
John’s consciousness returned not with a jolt, but with a slow seep. First was the feel of crisp linen under his back. Then the weight of a light blanket. Then a dull, full ache behind his eyes, like the memory of a loud noise. He turned his head on the pillow.
Lina was there, asleep. Her face was turned toward him, pillowed on her arms. In sleep, the icy precision was gone. She looked younger. Tired. A strand of her silver hair had fallen across her cheek, stirring gently with her breath. He watched it, fascinated by the simple, delicate movement.
He remembered her. The fear, then the apology. The warmth of her hand. The pain that followed.
Tentatively, he moved his own hand from under the blanket. He reached out, his fingers stopping just short of touching that stray strand. His voice, when it came, was a dry rustle in the quiet.
“Lina.”
Her eyes flew open. Violet, intelligent, instantly aware. She blinked, straightening with a slight wince at the stiffness in her neck. Her gaze found his, scanned his face, checking. The clinical mask slipped back into place, but it was thinner now, worn at the edges.
“Oh,” she breathed, a soft exhalation of relief. “Thank God. You’re awake.” She leaned forward, her hand coming up almost instinctively to feel his forehead for fever. The touch was cool, professional. “How do you feel?”
“My head is… full,” John said, struggling for the words. He looked past her, taking in the room in the gentle gloom. His eyes landed on the dark shape in the wingback chair. “Him.”
Pace was already awake. He had been awake for hours. He looked like he hadn’t moved, but the whiskey glass was empty on the side table. His color was better, the pallor replaced by his usual olive tone. The rigid set of his shoulders had eased. He looked alert, powerful again, the resilience of his body terrifying. He met John’s gaze across the room, his own dark eyes unreadable.
“I feel fine,” Pace said, his voice a low rumble that dispelled the last of the night’s quiet. He stood, unfolding from the chair with a fluid grace that belied the surgery of the previous day. He rolled his shoulders, a predatory, testing motion. “Nothing a little regeneration and stubbornness won’t fix.” He buttoned his tailored suit jacket, which was wrinkled but still imposing. He was once more the lord of the house, the wound a minor inconvenience.
The intercom on the wall crackled to life, and Jace’s voice, gummed with sleep and something darker, oozed into the room. “Morning, family. Sleep well? Dream of each other?” A wet cough. “He looks cozy, Pace. All tucked in. Getting his vitals checked by the pretty doctor. You sure you’re the original? You’re standing all the way over there.”
Pace didn’t even glance at the speaker. He kept his eyes on John. “Ignore him. He’s an invalid with a microphone.”
“He is me?” John asked Lina quietly, still trying to grasp the impossible.
“In a manner of speaking,” Lina said carefully, withdrawing her hand from his forehead. She stood, putting a small distance between herself and the bed, between herself and the two identical forces in the room.
“He is,” Pace stated, walking toward the bed. His footsteps were quiet on the marble. He stopped at the foot, looking down at his own face looking up at him with open confusion. “Every cell. Every scar.” He lifted his own hand, pointing to a faint, white line across his knuckles. “You’ll have that. Memory of a broken bottle in a Belfast pub.” He then tapped his own temple. “The capacity for the maths I hate is in there. The taste for whiskey. The instinct for violence.” His gaze flicked to Lina, then back to John. “Other instincts, too.”
John’s brow furrowed. He looked at his own unmarked hands. “I don’t remember a bottle.”
“You won’t. You have the hardware, John. Not the software. Not the memories.” Pace’s voice was matter-of-fact, but a current ran beneath it. “I lived thirty-two years to become what I am. You woke up yesterday. You are a potential. A blueprint.”
“So I am… not you?”
“You are John.” The way Pace said it was definitive, a baptism. “And this is your first day.”
Jace’s laughter whispered through the intercom, a dry, papery sound. “Poetic. Are you gonna give him a tour? Show him the weapons locker? The wine cellar? Introduce him to Uncle Silas’s favorite torture chamber?”
Pace finally turned his head toward the speaker grille, his patience a thin, cracking veneer. “What do you want, Jace?”
“I want to meet my new nephew.” The voice turned sly, hungry. “Bring him to the library. Let’s have breakfast. All of us. A family affair.”
Silence stretched. Lina looked at Pace, a warning in her eyes. Pace stared at the intercom as if he could see his brother’s gaunt, pain-ravaged face through the mesh.
“No,” Pace said.
“Why not?” Jace wheedled. “Scared he’ll like me more? Scared I’ll tell him stories about dear old dad? About the things you did in that very library?”
Pace’s jaw tightened. He looked back at John, who was watching the exchange with the attentive, uncomprehending focus of a child observing adults argue.
“He stays here. He’s not ready.”
“He’ll never be ready if you keep him in a crib, brother.” Jace’s tone dropped, becoming venomously intimate. “Or is it the doctor you’re worried about? Doesn’t want her latest experiment out of the petri dish?”
Lina flinched as if struck.
That did it. Pace moved. Not toward the intercom, but toward the bed. He leaned over, his hands closing on the rails on either side of John’s legs, caging him in. He brought his face close, his voice dropping to a tone meant only for the man on the bed.
“Listen to me. The voice on the speaker is my brother. He is sick. He is cruel. He sees you as a tool, or a toy. You will not go near him. Do you understand?”
John stared up into his own eyes, filled with a dark, protective ferocity he had no name for. He nodded, a slow, single dip of his chin.
“Good.” Pace straightened. He turned to Lina, his command absolute. “Get him dressed. Something simple. Then bring him to the morning room. Not the library. The morning room.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. He turned and walked out of the medical chamber, the door closing behind him with a solid, final thud that echoed in the sudden quiet.
John looked at Lina. “He is angry.”
“He is afraid,” Lina corrected softly, walking to a tall oak cabinet. She pulled out a pair of soft linen trousers and a simple cotton shirt. She laid them on the bed. “And when men like him are afraid, they get angry.” She hesitated, then added, “He is right about Jace. You must be careful.”
John sat up, pushing the blanket aside. He looked at the clothes, then at his own naked body. He looked back at her, that pure, unselfconscious confusion returning. “How?”
Lina closed her eyes for a brief second. A long day was already stretching ahead of her, an endless tutorial for a man who knew nothing of zippers or buttons or the dark, intricate family he had been born into.
“Let’s start,” she said, her voice assuming its patient, clinical calm, “with the trousers.”
He stared at the folded fabric, then lifted his own hands, turning them over in front of his face as if seeing them for the first time. Which, in a way, he was.
"Okay," he said, his voice a low rumble of concentration. "Where are my hands?"
Lina let out a breath that was almost a laugh, a short, unexpected release of tension. She picked up the trousers and held them open by the waistband. "Not your hands, John. Your legs. These are for your legs."
He looked from the garment to his own lower body, his forehead wrinkling. "Oh. What is legs?"
"These," Lina said, pointing with her free hand, her touch briefly ghosting over his shin. The contact was purely instructive, but he flinched, then stared at the spot. "Your lower part. From your hips down to your feet. You put them through here."
"Okay. Legs." He said the word like he was testing its weight. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his feet planting solidly on the cold marble. He looked at the trousers, then back at her, waiting.
"You stand," she instructed, stepping back to give him space.
He stood, his naked form towering and unselfconscious in the gray dawn light. She held the trousers low for him. "Step in. One foot at a time."
He obeyed, his movements clumsy, his balance uncertain as he lifted one foot and poked it through the opening. He nearly toppled, grabbing her shoulder to steady himself. His grip was strong, instinctively careful not to crush. She stiffened under the touch, her body rigid with the sudden, overwhelming reality of his physicality—his warmth, his solidness, his sheer, unguarded presence. He righted himself, got his other foot in, and she quickly pulled the trousers up to his waist.
He looked down, patted the soft linen covering his hips and thighs. A slow, amazed smile spread across his face. It transformed him, that smile. It was Pace's smile, but devoid of all irony, all calculation. It was pure, disarming delight.
"Trousers," he announced, as if naming a newfound continent. He looked up at her, his dark eyes catching the pale light. "Wear." His gaze held hers, intense and unnervingly direct. "Lina. You. Beautiful."
Lina froze, her hands still holding the waistband. A flush, hot and unfamiliar, crept up her neck. She took a sharp step back, breaking contact. "What now?" she said, her voice tighter than she intended, a reflexive retreat into clinical distance.
He didn’t seem to notice her withdrawal. He was still looking at her, his head tilted slightly. His smile softened into something more wondering. "You are warm. I like you. You nice." He then leaned forward, as if sharing a secret, and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Pace scary."
From the intercom grille high on the wall, a burst of static-laced laughter exploded into the room. It was raw, wheezing, and utterly derisive.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Jace couldn’t catch his breath. They heard the muffled sound of a medical alarm beeping in his distant room, then a wet cough. When his voice returned, it was choked with vile amusement. "Oh, that's priceless! 'Pace scary.' The man's a poet! He's got your number, brother! And doctor…'you beautiful'? He learns fast, doesn't he? Maybe he's not the baby you think he is."
Lina’s face was stone. She snatched the cotton shirt from the bed and thrust it at John’s chest. "Arms through. Now."
John fumbled with the shirt, his moment of lucid observation shattered by the harsh laughter from the walls. He got one arm in, then struggled to find the other sleeve, the cotton twisting. He looked at the intercom, then at Lina’s stony expression. The earlier warmth in his eyes cooled, replaced by a flicker of the same primal wariness he’d shown when he first woke. The noise was an attack. He understood that much.
In the morning room, Pace stood at a floor-to-ceiling window, watching the mist cling to the grim, sculpted gardens. He had heard every word. His brother’s laughter. John’s blunt, devastatingly accurate assessment. Pace scary.
His reflection in the polished glass showed a man in a perfectly tailored suit, his dark hair swept back, every sign of vulnerability from the night before meticulously sealed away. But his knuckles were white where they gripped the windowsill. The raw, unmediated truth from his own genetic copy was a mirror held up with brutal clarity. It wasn't wrong. He was scary. He had built an empire, held a fractious, violent family together, and survived a dozen assassination attempts by being the most terrifying thing in any room.
He heard their approach before the door opened—John’s heavier, less-assured tread alongside Lina’s quick, sharp heels on the parquet. He didn't turn.
They entered. John was dressed, the simple clothes hanging on his powerful frame with an odd, formal awkwardness. He stopped just inside the room, his eyes scanning the long mahogany table set with silver, the portraits of grim-faced ancestors, the roaring fire in the marble hearth. His gaze finally settled on Pace’s back.
Lina hovered near the doorway, a scientist presenting a volatile specimen. "He's dressed."
Pace turned slowly. His eyes took in John, then Lina. He addressed John, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth he’d briefly shown in the medical chamber. "Sit. Eat."
John approached the table cautiously. He looked at the high-backed chair, then mimicked what he thought was correct, turning it and sitting down heavily. He stared at the plate in front of him: eggs, toast, slices of blood pudding. He picked up a fork, stared at it, then looked at Pace for guidance.
Pace remained standing by the window, a silhouette against the gray light. "It's food. You put it in your mouth. You chew."
John stabbed a piece of egg and brought it to his mouth. He chewed, his expression shifting to one of profound focus. He swallowed. "Good," he stated.
A bleak smile touched Pace's lips. "Some things are instinct."
The door from the main hall swung open then, not with a knock, but with a slow, deliberate push. Silas Augustus stood in the threshold, a mountain of old violence in a tweed vest. His small, piggish eyes swept the room, landing first on Pace, then lingering with disgust on John, before finally settling on Lina with a contempt so deep it was almost palpable.
"Family meeting," Silas grunted, his voice like gravel in a tin can. "And you brought the pet science project to breakfast. Charming." He strode in, ignoring them all, and went straight for the sideboard where a crystal decanter of whiskey sat. He poured three fingers, drank half in one gulp, and turned. "We have a problem. The Sullivans know."
Pace didn't move. "Know what?"
Silas's eyes cut to John, who had stopped eating and was watching the older man with alert, animal caution. "What do you think? The little birds sang. They know about our… new investment. They're calling it an abomination. A provocation. They see it as you preparing an heir."
"It's not an heir," Pace said, his tone dangerously quiet.
"It’s a copy of you sitting at your breakfast table!" Silas slammed his glass down, whiskey sloshing. "What the fuck else would they think? You’ve given them a perfect casus belli. They’re mobilizing. Matteo Sullivan himself is coming to the city."
Lina spoke from the doorway, her voice cold and clear. "He is not an 'it.' His name is John."
Silas turned his venomous gaze on her. "I wasn't talking to you, lab-rat. You've done enough." He looked back at Pace. "This is what your weakness for clever women gets you. A war. Over a thing that doesn't know what a fork is."
John put his fork down. He looked from Silas's florid, angry face to Pace's icy, controlled one. He looked at Lina, who was standing rigid, her fists clenched at her sides. He felt the anger in the room, thick and hot as the fire in the grate. It had a taste, metallic and sour.
He stood up. The chair legs screeched against the floor.
Everyone looked at him. His movement was not aggressive, but deliberate. He met Silas’s stare, and something in his dark eyes shifted. It wasn't Pace's controlled menace. It was something simpler, more primal—a direct, unblinking challenge from one creature to another.
"He has a name," John said, the words slow and deliberate, echoing Lina. Then he added, pointing a finger at the blood pudding on his plate, "This is… not good."
For a second, there was only the crackle of the fire. Then Pace, still by the window, let out a single, sharp bark of laughter. It was a real sound, startling in its genuine surprise.
Silas’s face purpled. "You think this is funny?"
Pace’s laughter died, but a cold, dangerous light remained in his eyes. "I think," he said, finally walking toward the table, "that John just gave his first strategic assessment. The pudding here is shit." He stopped behind John’s chair, placing a firm, possessive hand on his clone’s shoulder. "And the Sullivans are a bigger problem. We’ll handle them."
He looked at Lina over John's head, a silent command passing between them. The morning's fragile tutorial was over. The war they had all been dreading was now, unequivocally, here.