by Chant, Zoe
“I locked them up in the safe overnight,” Hector said, standing. “Back in a moment.”
It wasn’t until all the documents were laid out on the table in front of her that Ella really had a chance to examine them in detail. There’d been no time when they’d first found them, and yesterday she’d simply been too exhausted even to think about it.
Looking at them now, however, simply made her heart sink.
What does any of this mean?
Whoever had encoded the information seemed to have done a very thorough job of it, as far as she could tell. Not that she expected anything less, of course.
All of this was clearly a massive riddle wrapped in an enigma, and if Hargreaves were as evil as Callan had said, then clearly the stakes were high. Not for the first time, Ella felt like she was in completely over her head.
But still, someone sent me to that place, she thought. Someone wanted me to find these. They knew it had something to do with me, something to do with my father. So there has to be something here for me to see.
“All right,” Trent said, nodding as he looked down at the pages spread out on the table. “I’m already starting to see some patterns here. Euan?”
Euan nodded. “Yeah. I can work with this.” He reached into the bag by his side, removing a small tablet computer.
That was the difference between her and professional code crackers, Ella supposed. It had all looked absolutely incomprehensible to her.
Trent cracked his knuckles, frowning. “It might be just me, but it looks like this was made in a hurry – and whoever wrote it wasn’t a cryptographer by trade.”
“Well, seems like you two have plenty to get cracking on with,” Hector said. “Let me know if you need something to eat or drink.”
But it was clear to Ella that both Trent and Euan were already absorbed in their work, their heads down, Euan’s finger poking at the screen of his tablet.
Nothing to do now but wait, I guess.
* * *
As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait for long.
“I’m telling you, that’s the correct decryption,” Trent was saying. “I’m working with the code you worked out.”
“Then I don’t get why this doesn’t make any sense.” Euan’s voice was low, but Ella could still hear the frustration in it. “What does any of this mean? You’ve done something wrong.”
“If there’s something wrong, it’s because you made a mistake in the code,” Trent shot back. “Don’t put this on me.”
Ella glanced at Callan. They were with Hector in the kitchen making up some refreshments, having decided they were probably of more use in here than they were out there.
“Better go see what’s up,” Callan said. “You might not have noticed, but Trent and Euan are not what I’d call BFFs.”
Ella couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. She’d noticed their differing personalities, of course, but it seemed like they worked well together – or they had, until this argument had broken out.
“C’mon, calm down you two,” Callan said as they made their way out to the dining room. His tone was soft and reasonable, and Ella was coming to realize more and more that he was the peacemaker of this group. He always seemed calm, collected, and never one to fly off the handle. “What’s the problem?”
Euan just huffed, his face dark as a storm cloud.
Trent shook his head, clearly annoyed. “This guy reckons I’m so stupid I can’t follow simple instructions.” He jerked his head in Euan’s direction.
Euan’s face darkened even more – something which Ella hadn’t thought was possible a moment ago.
“That’s not what I said.” His voice was little more than a growl. “If your ego wasn’t so –”
“Just calm down, both of you.” Callan raised his hands placatingly, but there was more warning in his voice this time. “Getting angry isn’t helping. What’s the problem?”
Euan and Trent both went to talk at the same time, before Trent let out an exasperated sigh, gesturing for Euan to go first.
Ella took in a few words of what he was saying – which was enough for her to understand that things weren’t going well. What had seemed like a simple encryption wasn’t yielding anything that either Trent or Euan could make sense of.
Feeling her heart sinking once more, Ella looked down at the tablet screen and pieces of paper strewn across the table.
I guess it’s going to be a longer process than I thought.
She knew she ought to be patient. But she was burning to know what was happening – why all the things that had happened to her over the past few days had happened, and what exactly the necklace her father had given her had to do with things. What her father had to do with it full stop.
Taking a deep breath and blinking, Ella looked away from the tablet screen.
And suddenly, it hit her.
Wait – hang on a moment –
Eyes wide, Ella sat down at the table, grabbing the tablet and scrolling through the working document Euan had open.
“Hey,” Euan yelled, noticing what she was doing. “Don’t touch that –”
“Don’t shout at her.” Callan’s voice was a low, warning growl. His eyes were flashing in a way she’d never seen them do before. When he looked at her, however, the fire had left them, and she saw only curiosity. “Ella, what is it?”
“It’s not nonsense,” Ella said, staring up at him, her heart beating wildly in her chest. “You guys got the code right – it’s just that what you’re decoding isn’t writing or a message, or anything like that. They’re chemical formulas.”
There was silence as the men glanced at each other.
“What’re you saying, Ella?” Callan asked, coming to stand behind her.
“It’s easy if you know what you’re looking at,” Ella said, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Look, this is describing enzyme catalysis. But… it’s tricky. I don’t know much about this, and this is… weird-looking.”
“I’ll really have to take your word for that,” Callan said, looking at the screen.
Ella continued to scroll, struggling between the competing impulses to stop and attempt to read everything carefully, and to try to race through all the material at once.
“This is about ribozymes,” Ella murmured. “But it’s not like anything I’ve seen before.”
“Ribozymes?” Callan asked.
“It’s complicated.” Ella looked up at him – she’d been teaching undergraduates for long enough that she thought she could summarize things in a simple way. “They’re a relatively new discovery, and there’s lots of different kinds of them, including ones made by humans. They can help create biochemical reactions within cells.”
She watched as Callan exchanged a glance with Hector, Euan and Trent. “So… in other words, what we saw back there – those guys, with their weird shifting and their extra shifted forms…”
Ella nodded. “This might be the formula for whatever gave them their extra powers.”
“They’re working on beefing themselves up,” Hector said.
“That would make sense. We already know they’re interested in suppressing shifter powers. Why wouldn’t they be working on making their private armies into super-shifters?” Callan paused for a moment, frowning. “Or making non-shifters into shifters?”
“Hang on, wait,” Trent cut in. “But no one even knows how shifter powers work, right? How could they do that? You’re telling me it’s written down there on that page?”
Ella shook her head, scrolling through the screen again. “I don’t know for sure. It’s not just that this isn’t my area. It’s also that it looks like there’s a lot of information missing from this. You wouldn’t be able to do much with what’s here.” She looked up at Trent and Euan. “Is this everything?”
Euan nodded. “Yes. It’s everything you gave us.”
Biting her lip, Ella looked down at the screen.
Am I just missing something? Where’s the rest of it? C’mon,
Ella. Think. There has to be something. Think…
“Oh – are we interrupting?”
She looked up at the sound of Myrtle’s voice. She stood in the doorway, a carton of fat, ripe raspberries in her arms.
Callan and Ella shook their heads at the same time.
“No,” Callan said. “In fact, it might be good to take a break.”
“You’re never an interruption anyway,” Hector said, moving across the room to put an arm around her and kiss the top of her head. “Everything else is just a distraction from you.”
“Oh, stop, please,” Myrtle laughed. “It’s not like I don’t know you’re working on important stuff. I just thought you might like some of the raspberries we’ve been picking. Penny’s going to put some of them into some homemade ice cream, but there’s more than enough to go ’round. We picked them ourselves.”
“Mee-ehh!”
The sound of Ruby’s indignant whinny was enough to make Ella smile. A moment later she appeared on Myrtle’s shoulder, popping her head up from beneath her thick blonde hair.
“Ruby helped, of course,” Myrtle said. “At least in making sure there’ll be a lot fewer leftovers.”
Ruby seemed fairly satisfied with that assessment of her role, and flittered up from Myrtle’s shoulder, circling the table, before plopping down on one of the documents.
“Hey, Rubes, don’t walk on that,” Hector said gently, leaning over to scoop her up in one hand. She pranced away, clearly thinking this was a new and extremely fun kind of game.
“Meeh!”
Ruby cavorted across the table, tiny hooves tapping. Ella knew she ought to be worried about the documents, but for now, she just couldn’t help but feel her heart lift at the sight of the tiny creature, her wings spread joyously, eyes wide and playful, tail swishing with delight at the game she was playing.
“Come on, Rubes. That’s kind of important,” Hector said, as he finally managed to scoop her up. Ruby, on being caught, snuggled against his hand, seeming satisfied with their game.
“Sorry, looks like she got some, uh, raspberry juice? On this bit here.” Hector rubbed a thumb over a couple of the pages.
“It doesn’t matter as long as it’s still legible,” Euan said.
“Should be,” Hector said, poking at it. “That used to be an ‘N’. Pretty sure.” He moved to another letter. “That one was a ‘CK’.”
Ella frowned, something jabbing her in the brain.
NCK…
She looked up, only to see that Callan had moved around the table and was looking down at the paper.
“Was that letter bolded, or is it just the juice?” he asked.
“Not sure,” Hector said. “Though the CK is underlined.”
“Are there any other letters marked out like that?” Trent said with interest. “Is there more to this than we thought?”
Ella stood up, feeling lightheaded.
“There’s an E here with a mark next to it,” she said, pointing.
“And an L,” Hector said.
“N-E-C-K-L,” Euan spelled out. “Pretty obvious.”
Ella felt like her knees were about to collapse beneath her.
Of course. Of course! How could I have been so blind?!
The necklace her father had given her. The missing sections of the research.
You need them both, Ella realized suddenly. These papers have half, and the necklace, somehow, has half.
Maybe there was something inside the stone, she thought, mind racing. Someone had sent her to find these papers. Someone who knew her father, who might have known the secret of the necklace he’d given her.
Someone wanted to make sure I had all the research, she thought. She looked up at Callan, eyes wide, and knew he’d figured it out too.
But Hargreaves have the necklace now…
Maybe they hadn’t realized the papers existed. Maybe they thought everything they needed was in the necklace.
That would definitely explain why they’d been so desperate to get it, but hadn’t seemed to know or care about the papers. They hadn’t even known they were there.
But why would my father… why would he –
“There’s more letters marked, though,” Trent said, breaking into her thoughts. “There’s a V, and an O. Here’s an I.”
“There’s a Y and a U here too. Is it just something to throw people off?” Hector asked. “That doesn’t spell anything.”
“No, it doesn’t. But combine it with some of the letters of necklace,” Callan said, his voice quiet.
Ella looked up and met his gaze, her breath shuddering.
Combine them with the E, the L, the A. Double some of them and use them twice.
For a moment, her mind refused to understand it. But she couldn’t hold back the truth of what the message said for long.
I love you Ella.
She hadn’t realized her hands were bunched into fists until she felt her nails cutting into the soft skin of her palms. Or how short of breath she was, until she felt the ache in her chest.
The skin of her shoulder tingled as Callan’s large hand rested on it, squeezing gently.
“Ella…”
His voice was soft and low, and the glow in Ella’s chest throbbed brighter to hear it.
She could feel tears trembling behind her eyelids.
Does it mean that all this time… all this time I’ve hated him, and thought he sent me away because he didn’t love me…
She shook her head. She didn’t know what it meant yet. She didn’t even know why her father had wanted her to have these notes, and regardless of the fact he might have loved her after all – or at least wanted her to believe he had – it didn’t change the fact that he worked for a place like Hargreaves.
I can’t condone that, even if he does love me. It goes against everything I’ve ever believed in as a scientist.
“Ella, do you need some time to yourself?”
Callan crouched down in front of her, his hand still on her shoulder. When she looked him in the face, his eyes, like dark pools, were soft and filled with love.
Love.
Ella had never been sure she even knew what it looked like, but she knew it when she saw it now in Callan’s eyes.
That’s what love is.
And Ella knew what she felt in her own heart. The force of the realization surprised her as she looked into Callan’s eyes. But for all its swiftness, she knew it was true.
Regardless of the mated bond or anything else, Ella knew what she felt. The bond might be fate, but she liked to think she had a hand in her own destiny too.
“Maybe,” she finally said. “But not right now.”
Ella had never been very good if left to simply ruminate. She tended to stew over things and become lost in her own thoughts, drifting into depression. What she needed at times like these was action.
In the past, her need for action had often taken the form of something wild and silly, like running away from home. Then she’d learned how to channel it productively, focusing on school and work.
And now, I need to focus on this.
She held Callan’s gaze steadily. He seemed to see her determination in her eyes, and he squeezed her shoulder again, nodding, trusting her to know what she needed.
“We might have these notes, but Hargreaves has the necklace. We still only have half of what we need,” Ella said.
“On the bright side, so do they,” Trent said. “That code wasn’t too hard to crack. If they know even slightly what they’re doing, they should have worked out by now that what they have isn’t worth much.”
“What do you think their next move will be, then?” Hector asked. “And do you think we can track them down to wherever they went?”
“That might be our best bet,” Callan replied, standing, though his hand remained where it was on Ella’s shoulder. “We’d need to get clearance from Robb first, though. And get some intel on where a couple of Hargreaves operatives might be likely to go to ground around here.
”
There was a brief pause in the conversation, as the men glanced at each other.
It was during this pause that a short, low bzzz! sounded, barely audible.
“Is that your phone?” Callan asked Hector.
“Not mine,” Hector said. “You guys?”
Euan and Trent checked their phones, frowning and shaking their heads.
“Oh – it’s Ella’s, out in the loungeroom,” Myrtle said. “I put it on to charge before.”
“It’s probably Priyanka or my supervisor, wondering where I am,” Ella said, jumping up, feeling immediately guilty that she hadn’t thought to let them know she wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere. “I’ll go deal with it. Back in a moment.”
She went out to the loungeroom – and sure enough, her phone was flashing and vibrating on the shelf where Myrtle had plugged it in for her. Picking it up, she frowned.
Caller blocked.
It might be Priyanka anyway, she thought, answering the call. She had a lot of ex-boyfriends trying to call her from time to time – she might have changed her number.
“Hello? Pri?”
“Guess again.”
Ella’s blood ran cold at the sound of the voice on the other end of the phone. A man’s voice, cold and gravelly. And definitely not someone she knew. It did sound familiar though, and Ella thought she knew from where.
“Nice trick,” the man said, his voice still cold, though it now held a hint of amusement. “Or maybe you really didn’t know. Still, sending us up the garden path with that necklace decoy – I should’ve known it was too easy.”
Ella swallowed.
What should I say? What am I supposed to say?!
“Necklace decoy?” she said, just as Callan’s head popped around the doorway, his face concerned. Maybe he’d sensed what was happening. “I – I don’t know what you mean,” she continued. Playing dumb wasn’t much of a strategy, she supposed – but still, maybe it’d mean they’d underestimate her, and let something slip.
“I’m supposed to believe that, am I?” The man’s voice had become a snarl. “No – you’ve clearly got those notes stashed somewhere else. You’ve probably gone and collected them already, now that you know we’ve finally come for them.”