The reporters started shouting again, and Lisa stepped forward. “Take it easy, folks. You, in the blue shirt.”
He stretched out his arm, holding his recorder up. “I thought bonds were between two people, usually people who were already together.” He glanced at Duncan and Jake. “Or close to being together.”
Duncan dropped Emma’s hand and sat up straighter on his stool. “That’s been our understanding as well. We don’t know of any other people who have bonded with two partners, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing some. There has been a suppression of information regarding this in the last few weeks.” He laughed as some of the reporters shook their heads in agreement. “I know, I know, it’s absurd considering that the reports of the phenomenon only started coming out around a month ago, but it’s true. And the lack of information is largely because someone found a way to manufacture a drug using the blood from bonded couples.”
If Emma though the noise was bad before when Jake announced the bond with Duncan and Emma, it was nothing to what happened now. She lifted her hand and put it over Duncan’s on his leg and Jake shifted closer, the three of them seeking comfort. This was the true purpose of the press conference. After they’d dealt with the police at the warehouse two nights ago, they had agreed to keep quiet about the victims’ identities but not about bonding or the drug. Duncan firmly believed that the public deserved to know what was happening and the three of them were in a position to get it out there because of Duncan’s fame. They were also clearly able to protect themselves because of their new abilities. Emma and Jake agreed with Duncan. It was up to them to spread the word. Emma shifted on the hard stool, thinking back to that night. They never caught Ms. Brown when she snuck out during the commotion. Jake thought it was because she was the person who’d invented the drug, one of the people in charge of the whole thing. Given her pharmaceutical background, that made her extremely powerful. Anyone who had the resources to kidnap people, suppress information of that magnitude, then disappear in the middle of that chaos was clearly a dangerous individual. Emma hated that she’d escaped.
Lisa pointed again as the noise subsided.
A woman in a blue blazer moved forward, fighting her way to the front. “What kind of drug? What does it do?”
Emma nodded at Jake and he answered. “It’s a liquid. We don’t know the exact chemical composition but we know that it’s extracted from our blood. I don’t know how much you know about bonded couples, but most of us can sense the emotions of our bond-mates. It’s sort of like empathy, only not as perfect as you see in sci-fi movies.” He smiled and Emma relaxed. The hard part was over. They’d agreed not to mention their heightened sense of empathy, their telepathy, or their extra powers, but she knew they needed to explain how bonded couples sensed each other. Jake continued, “And it hurts, a lot, if you’re separated, especially in the initial stages. We need to have a honeymoon week. Eventually the bond settles down and we can be apart, but only for short periods of time.”
“How long can you be separated?” someone shouted.
Jake shrugged. “A week? Maybe more? After the bond is complete, it doesn’t hurt, but you get irritable. It feels like you’re itchy or like something’s missing. It’s unpleasant.”
Emma watched the crowd. Their surprise was genuine. They really didn’t have any information about bonding, did they? she thought.
Duncan glanced at her. No.
We need to make sure as many people as possible see this, she realized.
Duncan nodded. We will. That’s why we’re doing it this way. They didn’t know we were going to talk about bonding like this. They thought they were just getting a good scandal story about me and Jake. He grinned and turned back to the crowd.
Lisa picked out a man dressed in a grey T-shirt. “How did you find out about the drug?”
Emma answered this question. “Two of my students were kidnapped. One of them managed to get to a phone and she called me, telling me some information about where she was being held. She explained that their kidnappers were drawing blood and that she and the others had been separated from their bond-mates. She was in a lot of pain because of the separation. She knew I would help find her because I’d talked to her and her bond-mate in school, trying to help their parents understand what it meant to be bonded. She went missing a few days ago.” She took a deep breath. “The police didn’t believe us when we called them with the information about my student. I was afraid of what would happen if she was kept from her bond-mate for much longer. She’s young and I was unable to convince her parents that bond-mates need a great deal of physical contact until the bond settles, so she was already in distress from the lack of touch. It’s difficult for a parent to accept that their child has suddenly formed a permanent connection to another person, particularly such an intimate connection.” Emma shook her head as she saw the mixed emotions of the crowd. Their expressions ranged from sympathy to outrage to disbelief.
“Duncan, Jake, and I tracked down where she was being held. With the help of Duncan’s security, we managed to free the kidnapped couples. One of Duncan’s men, Charlie Williams, lost his life that day. We’re all going to miss him terribly.”
Jake coughed and Emma knew he was using it to cover up his grief. Lisa pointed to another journalist who stepped closer. “What did the police say about this drug? I haven’t heard anything on the news.”
Duncan answered this question. “The police don’t know anything about the drug. That’s why you haven’t heard a report. They didn’t even know it existed.”
Another reporter asked a question before Lisa could pick again. “What does the drug do?”
“It heightens the mental senses of the person who takes it, for a short time,” Jake said, not elaborating.
“What does that mean?” the reporter asked, looking confused. “Mental senses?”
“It means that it gives the person a limited sense of empathy. The person taking the drug can read the emotions of others while on the drug. I’m sure you can see how dangerous that is. When the drug wears off, the user experiences a sort of mania, then disorientation. We don’t know what the long-term effects are yet or how addictive it is. It’s called ’Path’ on the street.”
“Why are you giving us this information instead of the police?”
“We think that the origin of the drug is tied to a large, underground criminal organization.” Duncan held up his hands, trying to quiet the crowd down. “No, we don’t have a lot of evidence and, no, we don’t know where it began or who is behind the drug. All we know is that we rescued eighteen people and one of the seven kidnappers escaped. Clearly there is something larger going on. It’s not easy to draw blood and synthesize a drug based on a new phenomenon like bonding then get the drug on the streets in a little over a month. That takes a great deal of money.”
The crowd was quiet as everyone considered the implications of what Duncan had just said. Then one man moved forward. Lisa nodded at him when he looked to her for permission.
“How safe is it for you to be telling us this?”
Duncan snorted. “Not safe at all. But we’ll be a lot safer the sooner you write your articles and post the video of this interview on the web. The more people who understand what’s happening the better.”
Jake slid off his stool and moved closer to Duncan. “And we’re going to be hiring more security in the near future.” Duncan looked at Jake with surprise. Jake looked back, clearly serious. Duncan smiled.
Lisa pointed at the crowd. “One more question.” She gestured to a woman near the front.