I wondered if Jack or the lab boys knew. "So how long ago did the three created with you die?"
"Two didn't make it to their teens. One died at sixteen."
I sipped my beer, then asked, "Why?"
He hesitated. "What do you know about cloning?"
"The DNA from a donor egg is sucked out, and the cell of a donor used to replace it. Then it's fried into activity and away it grows."
He grimaced. "Crudely put, but reasonably accurate. The process is far from perfect, even now. There are always problems, and those of us who do make it into adulthood without problems then have to contend with a self-destruct button that somehow is related back to the method used to fuse cell and egg and switch on the DNA sequencing." He took a drink, then added, "Two of the three who died were victims of large offspring syndrome, and one was born with an immune system than was, at best, poor."
From what I'd read about cloning, having two out of five survive into adulthood was a pretty damn good success rate. "Yet despite these difficulties, they obviously survived quite well At least for the first few years."
He nodded. "Medically, we're far enough advanced to keep them alive where once we could not. However, no one has yet uncovered the sequence that becomes the self-destruct button once the clone reaches a certain age. Nor do we know why some clones can reach their forties, like me, and others don't even live to see their tenth birthday."
"I'm amazed Talon never tried to research that - after ail, he had a vested interest in uncovering the answers."
"Talon is a lot less circumspect than his creator, as evident in his approach to cloning He also believes that he will not face what the rest of us have faced, that he is destined for greatness."
I snorted. "And like all mad, would-be dictators, he got his comeuppance."
"In the labs of the Directorate. Quite fitting that he ends in a lab similar to the place where it all began."
I raised an eyebrow. "Is that how you plan to end? In a laboratory?"
His smile was grim and cold. "I intend to go down fighting."
And I had a feeling he wasn't talking about the self-destruct button built within his genes. I frowned "So, are you wolf, or part vampire, like Talon?"
"All wolf."
"Then why not clone yourself a mirror image?"
"Because, for all its advances, cloning still carries too many risks - risks I'd rather not inflict on any offspring of mine. And, as I said to you not so long ago, I am not involved in the cloning side of the research."
"But you are involved in the crossbreeding."
"No. My companies undertake research to discover the secrets of a vampire's long life."
And now I knew why - he was dying. And just in case he didn't discover the secret in time, he wanted a kid to carry his genes and his name.
It was a desire I could sympathize with - which made me wonder just how much he was playing me.
"Given Talon was running Moneisha and Genoveve, does that mean another lab brother runs the crossbreeding facility?"
He hesitated. "Not exactly."
"Meaning?"
He simply smiled, so I tried a different tack, "just how many of you clones are there?" We knew that there was one other, at least, besides Misha, but who knew how many Talon had gotten around to releasing?
He chuckled softly. "Not as many as you seem to think. All up, if you include Talon, there are five of the original cloning attempts left."
"Meaning, non-Talon clones?"
He nodded.
So, given Gautier was one, that left two we didn't know about. "What about the Talon-created clones?"