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I pressed my ear to the door of my grandfather’s office. The cold from the metal seeped into my skin, but I balanced myself, trying not to put too much weight against the wall. If it groaned, I’d give away my position. I had come upstairs to ask about the pendant and see if Pops could contact my parents, but apparently this wasn’t the best time.
“This is the second time we’ve gone on a ‘simple’ mission that nearly got us killed. You sent Gwen after a stone?” Jack’s enraged voice filtered through the cracks in the door’s insulation.
“I sent Gwen on a mission of diplomacy,” Pops retorted. “Whether the stone is helpful or not, we responded to an allied call for help.”
“You wanted an artifact,” Jack growled, followed by the loud clang of metal. I backed away from the door and edged nearer to the wall. If he stormed out, I wanted to at least look like I was passing by instead of standing there the whole time.
“I didn’t send her for the artifact.” Pops’ voice was strained.
“Gwen was tortured! What did her message say? Did it warn you there might be danger?”
“There was no sign of immediate danger during her first week, though the villagers had suspicions that their temple was being scoped by mercenaries. Right before she lost contact, Gwen said three mercenaries had been spotted in the area. All elementals. Electricity, earth, and plant. She didn’t mention anything about Master Matoska. You think I would send her somewhere that isn’t safe? I can retrieve my conversations, if you like.”
There was a pause, and this time, Jack’s voice was quiet. “Next time, if there’s even the hint of danger, tell me. Or have Inese do whatever she does and give me a heads up.”
A bit of metal clanged behind me and I jumped, but the hallway was clear.
Must’ve been the vents.
“I do my best,” Pops said. “What about the kids? How’d they do on the field?”
“Well, Lance has a good hand with swords, and he’s exactly the type of guy we need right now, but he’s inexperienced and brash.”
Pops snorted. “You’re one to talk. What about Tim?”
“Besides being Community, he’s a good kid with a good heart, and he managed to hack the Camaraderie’s communications without them batting an eye. I didn’t get a chance to see his shooting skills, but if you want to get Crush on the ground again, Tim should be able to run navigation without a problem.”
Pops cleared his throat. “And my granddaughter?”
I pressed closer to the wall.
Jack grunted. “She needs Inese to teach her to gather intelligence without being caught.”
“What do you mean?”
“Given that she’s been listening for the past five minutes...”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as the door swung open. Jack smirked. “Come in, kid. Your ears must be burning.” I stared at him, mortified, but he waved me in and pulled the door shut behind us.
Pops stroked his beard, evaluating me. “How long have you been out there?”
“Since you were arguing about the reason you sent Gwen to Guatemala,” I said sheepishly.
Jack patted my shoulder. “See? What’d I tell ya? She has a knack for the sneaky spy stuff. All she needs now is some training.”
Pops fixed him with a glare and sipped at his coffee. “I’m guessing you have questions about the mission?”
“Actually—my parents.”
Pops motioned to a chair with his coffee mug and I sat, twining my fingers around the pendant’s chain in my pocket. “I want them to know I’m alive, and what’s going on in the world. The beasties, the powers. Everything.”
“Jenna...” Pops sat the mug aside. “We can’t afford to make outside contact.”
“But—”
“Here’s why: every communication we make runs the risk of being traced. When we contact each other, or other rebellions, those messages are encrypted. Your parents don’t have access to the decryption technology.”
I knew Mom might, but if she broke the code, she’d probably report our location to security. “How are they supposed to know I’m alive?”
Jack slapped me on the back. “For now, they won’t. But if it makes you feel any better, we could ask Crush to check EYEnet and figure out what they’ve been told.”
“I thought you couldn’t access EYEnet.”
Pops sighed and rested in his chair. “We can’t scan or hack EYEnet directly. But we can access archival files that aren’t directly connected to the network.”
“The archive isn’t as up-to-date,” Jack said, “but it’s not as risky, either.”
“That’s better than nothing,” I agreed. But there had to be some way of contacting them. I glanced at Pops. “About yesterday; I didn’t think there were supposed to be beasts.”
“Neither did I. But you handled the situation well, from what I’m told. I’m proud of you.”
“For what? Nearly killing a leader?”
Jack cracked his knuckles and grinned. “That is impressive. Not all of us can snap their necks and be done with it.”
I stared at him. They were respected leaders. How could he be so callous?
Pops rubbed his forehead. “I was impressed that you stayed alive. Lady Winters is... difficult.”
I wrung my hands and glanced at the two of them. Lady Winters had confirmed my relation to my grandfather, and I didn’t see any reason for her to lie about that connection. “What did you do before you joined the Coalition? Why were you banished?”
Pops’ hands closed tight and his beard twitched. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to tell me anything, but then his shoulders slouched and he cast his gaze on the torn photograph hanging on the wall. The family looked happy and proud, dressed in the simple garb of the Community. But the rip marred the image, and with the brown stain in the corner, the photograph took a different meaning.
“Perhaps we should talk about this later,” Jack suggested. He crossed his arms over his chest and raised his chin. His eyes betrayed concern.
“No, I’ll tell her. Can we have a bit of privacy?”
Jack blinked his surprise and quirked an eyebrow in my direction. “Let me know if you need anything.” He shut the door behind him, and Pops cleared his desk of the keyboard and mouse pad.
I waited. The vents clacked overtime, trying to pump heat into the chilly room. The computer fan whirred, filling in the gaps of silence that the vents missed. Hints of my grandfather’s cologne sifted through the air.
“Lady Winters said to ask you about creating beasts. She said ‘betrayal runs in the family.’ ”
“Did she?” His eyes darkened. Goosebumps prickled my skin as he stood and limped to a metal file cabinet near the giant, arched window behind him. The cabinet drawer scrolled open, and he flipped through several manila folders before tossing one on his desk. “I did my dissertation on radiological genetics. People with powers give off trace amounts of radiation that correlates with the type of power we use. Individual powers give off a radio wave with a very specific frequency, which can be predicted by using DNA sequencing on a person’s genetic sample. It’s how the scanners work. The device reads the radio frequencies coming from a person’s body.”
“That’s how it reads powers,” I guessed. With all this stuff about radiation, I knew I should’ve taken a physics class alongside advanced biology.
“Right.” He pushed the folder toward me. The whole document was a couple hundred pages of small, double-sided print. Diagrams, charts, and footnotes led to obscure, esoteric references. The document contained a list of powers and their related genetic sequences; written so strangely that it looked like a foreign language.
I had no clue how to read this, though I suspected it would’ve been a lot easier to sort through on a tablet. But maybe they didn’t have tablets back then.
Pops drummed his fingers on the desk, waiting. Once I pushed the folder back, he looked at the thing as if it were diseased.
“How were you studying powers if powers were thought to be delusions caused by theophrenia?” I asked.
He sighed. “At the time, the Community was still in development in Eastern Europe and Russia. Our experience with theophrenia was limited, and memories of powers were still commonplace. The Camaraderie wasn’t scanning for powers on a regular basis then. That came later.”
“So you knew how powers worked.”
“I had the general idea, yes. As theophrenia closed in, E-Leadership commandeered the hospital where I worked and repurposed it to house those who were infected. That’s when they discovered my research.”
“What does this have to do with creating beasts?”
“My knowledge of powers gave me an edge in administering the scan.”
I frowned. “I thought only certain doctors were allowed to perform the scan.”
“I was one of those doctors. They needed people with persuasion, and they needed beasts to fight their war.”
“But if you knew—”
“I didn’t, at first. The Camaraderie’s agents came to me under the guise that I’d been infected. They explained that I could learn to control theophrenia’s effects and use my resulting abilities and current knowledge to help others. Eventually I learned what was really going on, but I believed it was for the better of the Community. I continued my research on radiological genetics and linked it to the work I was doing in the hospital. I inadvertently drew the attention of Lord Black” —he spat the name— “who was impressed with my resume. He offered me a job improving the treatment.”
I gaped at him. “Lord Black spoke with you?”
Pops refused my gaze. “The treatment, of course, is the process they use to turn people into beasts. I needed money for my family, so I accepted the job. One day, Lord Black introduced me to his young granddaughter, Miss Emily. She had a talent for persuasion, he said, and she was interested in working a job similar to mine. He asked me to train her.”
My jaw dropped. “You taught Lady Black?” No wonder she was trying to use me as bait—and no wonder Pops knew about her powers.
“She excelled, and though I didn’t know the details, she informed me that Lord Black was considering me for placement in the highest levels of E-Leadership.”
Despite the cold, beads of sweat formed on my forehead and the back of my neck.
“Then one of my patients refused my persuasion. Instead of agreeing to join the commander’s army, which would have transformed her into a beast, she asked for my help. It was as if she knew the fate I had planned for her. Her minor power was telepathy, and the emotion she conveyed—” He shook his head. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I shut down the hospital. I persuaded the workers that there was a malfunction in the gas lines and that everyone should be released. The prisoners escaped, and so did I. I returned home, planning to tell your grandmother goodbye...” His voice cracked. He clenched his jaw and didn’t say anything for a long, uncomfortable moment. Finally, his lip quivered and he spoke bitterly. “I found her dead.”
All warmth drained from my body. “Dead?”
“Special Forces told your father that your grandmother had contracted the early stages of theophrenia, and that she’d been killed to protect the rest of the population. They said I’d created a more deadly, mutated version of the disease and set it loose near the facility where I worked.” He clamped his jaw shut, not saying anything for a long, uncomfortable minute. “They leveled the facility and the nearby town, so the truth of the place could never be discovered. There was no warning. Everyone there was murdered, as were the prisoners I had released. The workers I’d convinced to evacuate were killed—all because I tried to help.”
The town north of St. Petersburg, the one that was wiped out when a mutated form of theophrenia struck it, that was because of him?
Pops gritted his teeth, his lips twisted in firm determination. “Your father was told that I was a danger to the Community, and for the Camaraderie’s sake, they told him that I’d died. But I never created this deadlier version of their plague. I developed a more humane ‘treatment’ that resulted in better control of their beasts and a faster transformation. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I tried to make amends. In the end, my actions killed more people than I saved.”
“But if you have your research, there might be a way to change the beasts back,” I pointed out.
“I lost all my beast research when I ran away,” he said, his voice stiff. “Any chance we had at recovering that is gone. We don’t have the manpower to get inside one of their laboratories and retrieve it. Without the equipment and skills necessary to continue the research, the mission and lives would be wasted.”
“So what do you plan to do? Run around and steal artifacts? How’s that any better than what the mercs do? If you really want to make a difference—”
“Jenna—” He rubbed his temples and looked at me from under his wrinkled hands. “You may not be able to understand this, but I’m responsible for every death that occurs on this team. I do everything in my power to ensure that a mission is set up properly, but a single, unknown element can cause an entire mission to fail.”
“Like when I didn’t leave the Community,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “If I had a way to undo this, I would. But right now, we don’t have that option.”
“I’d still like to look at what research you have, if you don’t mind.” It might take me a while to understand, but I could at least try.
Pops motioned to the cabinet. “Go ahead. All I have is my notes on radiological genetics. But understand, the transformation is permanent. Once the memories have been erased and the body changed, the process cannot be reversed.”
“I understand,” I whispered. But maybe I could find something he missed.
Pops eyed me cautiously, then handed me the folder. He caught my eyes with his. “Be careful, Jenna. Not all monsters are beasts. Don’t get caught up trying to fix what’s broken beyond repair.” He glanced at the torn photograph. “It’s better to protect what you still have.”
