Their familiar banter gave me something to latch onto, a safe harbor from the tumult of my emotions. My friends were still here, still joking. The world hadn’t collapsed yet. I felt the set of my shoulders relaxing, and while a reasonable amount of anxiety remained, I wasn’t in danger of getting sucked into the worst of my fears.
On the other end of the spectrum, Luca—a recent addition to my field team who worked the video feed for us—was all business. When I’d first met him, I assumed he had Middle Eastern heritage, possibly from the refugees who’d migrated to Italy at the beginning of the century—or at least the pre-Boom part of the century. Little did I know that he hailed from a legendary House whose heritage spanned the Mediterranean—encompassing Rome, Troy, and Carthage.
“What happened?” he asked, dark eyes on me.
I shook my head. “Inside.”
The last thing I wanted to do was discuss an impending famine in public. That was just asking for all kinds of rumors to start.
Without any arguments from my teammates, we made our way up to the lab. Our five lab benches took up the majority of the space, each filled with different equipment and reagents depending on our individual needs. A chemical fume hood stood in the corner for general use. The place was fairly empty, filled only by the hum of our lonely equipment, probably because the other field team wasn’t here. Only a new pair of technicians huddled together in the back, giving us weird looks as we stormed past them en masse, headed for Dr. Berti’s office.
Stepping out of the blandly colored lab and its practical set-up into Berti’s office was like stepping into another world. Covered with a deep rug and even furnished with a lush green couch, the office was aesthetically sparse—whereas the lab was filled to the brim with equipment both old and new. It would have been comfortable if Berti had a couple of visitors inside, instead of the mob we made as we arrived at her door.
Well technically, there was plenty of room behind Dr. Berti’s desk, but no one was going to venture into her personal space. That left us cramming ourselves into the space in front of it, encroaching onto Pradip’s—her assistant’s—work area. Since Hayley and Carter plopped down on the coach, while Luca and Tony stayed just inside the doorway, I huddled between the door and Pradip’s desk.
Probably earning his eternal hatred in the process.
Berti sat at her desk with her usual straight-backed posture, greying blond hair pulled back from her face. With a calm turn of her head, she shifted her attention to me without even glancing at anyone else. Completely ignoring the half dozen unnecessary ears surrounding us.
“Well?” she asked. “Have you assessed their situation, Jordan?”
I gave my audience the basics of what the guy at the agricultural complex had told me. Keeping the worst of my speculations to myself, because at least half of these people were perfectly capable of filling the blanks in our knowledge with their own theories.
As the others listened intently, I glimpsed one of the technicians nonchalantly passing by the door, way slower than he had to. So just in case—because while I trusted everyone here to greater or lesser extents, the concept of need-to-know existed for a reason—I kept words like ‘famine’ out of my mouth.
Dr. Berti shifted back in her chair as I finished up. “I suppose then that we’ll have to do something about this,” she said.
I swore I caught a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. And why not? The more people that depended on her to solve their problems, the more power she had, right?
“But there have to be better people to handle a situation like this than us,” Luca said, daring to speak up when no one else did. There was his protective side coming out, and at completely the wrong time. Damn it, Luca, fight the battles you have a chance of winning. “Look around,” he continued. “This room is filled with...academics.”
—excuse me, but where did he get off saying the word ‘academics’ with that kind of skepticism?
“Luca,” Berti admonished. “There are perfectly valid reasons why this office has been contacted in particular. Think of how many lives are at stake here. Don’t you believe that this is the right thing to do?”
There was a weight to the way she shaped her words that I didn’t understand. But Luca obviously did, because he stiffened at her statement. I glanced between the two of them, wondering what I was missing.
A hesitation passed over Berti’s expression, and her voice turned conciliatory. “I only meant that someone needs to take responsibility for a matter this important.”
Did she just...back down? What the hell kind of conversation did they have that Berti actually felt bad about referencing it?
“That’s not the problem. Why us?” Luca demanded. Because if there was one thing guaranteed to make Luca unreasonable, it was the people around him being placed in danger. “We aren’t the police. This isn’t what we’re supposed to do.”
“No one is supposed to do this,” Dr. Berti replied, this time with what sounded like genuine regret. “These conflicts with the legends are new territory for Rome. Before the Boom, governments had agents who could investigate transgressions in other governing states in secret. After, the world we knew had changed entirely. Smaller communities, harder to infiltrate. Local conflicts that faced no need for such investigations. This is no longer a specialty that exists.”
“But there are still trained investigators—”
“Trained in investigating their own societies, yes,” Berti interrupted. “Where they are given authority to exercise over the population. But they have no authority over the surrounding legends. And these legends have no reason to submit to police questioning. Or to associate with any unknown investigators. But they might speak with us, because they already know of us through other channels. Because our lab has already had dealings with multiple legend Houses. Please be aware that no one is equipped to deal with situations like this, but nonetheless, the people in this room have the most experience.”
“The most experience,” Luca scoffed. “Sure, maybe. But only because someone tried to kill us. That’s why we got dragged into all of this, do you remember? Someone tried to kill all of us, multiple times, for going outside the safety zone and crossing their path. What do you think is going to happen if we invite trouble by actively intruding on the territories of the legends here to question them?”
“You may choose not to believe me, Luca, but I know.” And to my surprise, I could almost detect a hint of something personal behind her usual diplomatic tones. “But people will die if we do nothing. Perhaps you’re too young to remember how many of us stepped into roles we were not prepared for during the worst of the Boom. Too young to know how much we owe to those who rose to the challenge when no one was ready, but someone had to do it. And it may well be too much to ask of any of you to emulate them—I admit that you’re right about that. As such, this will naturally be a volunteer-only assignment. Compensation will be provided to those who choose to participate.”
Luca faced me immediately, his eyes pleading with me not to do it. But we both knew better. I had a stake in making this place as safe as possible, for the sake of the family I wanted to bring here. Luca couldn’t turn away from people who needed his help even if he wanted to. Neither of us was letting the other go alone.
End of contemplation.
I sighed. “I’ll do it.”
Luca turned away, disappointed. “Me too,” he said, though he didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
Hayley’s eyes shifted from me to Luca and back. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
I waved my hand to indicate that I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I wanted anyone else getting involved, and there was no point anyway. It’d just provide more potential hostages.
“Me neither,” Carter said. “I’m a nature photographer. I don’t have any business with these legends, and there’s no reason for them to talk to me.”
I’d wondered if Carter would want to tag along just for the adventure of it all, but his re
asoning was solid. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment. If there was someone I wanted watching my back, it was Carter. That feeling had been ingrained into me over the years we’d spent working together. Luca was great and all, not to mention the advantage of having a secret legend spy like him on my side. But he didn’t have the history with me that Carter had.
Berti’s office filled with silence for a moment, laced with expectation as we tried to figure out who hadn’t spoken yet.
A heavy sigh escaped from Tony. “I’ll drive,” he said. Every gaze in the room turned to him. Other than Hayley, he’d be the last person I’d expect to jump into danger. At least, not without some serious bribery involved.
He met each of our eyes with a look of exasperation. “What?” he challenged.
“Are you sure?” Hayley ventured.
Tony scowled back at her. “Look, we all know I don’t like danger. We also all know that I’m willing to risk it for the opportunity to learn more about legends.”
...okay, now it made sense. There was serious bribery involved, but in this case, he was the one bribing himself with a chance to indulge his intellectual anthropology side.
But that wasn’t the biggest surprise of the day. The biggest surprise was when Pradip spoke up. “You’re going to need me there, too.”
“You?” Tony asked, dubiously.
“Yeah well, for all your obsequious sucking up to anyone with the right genetic patterning, you’re still more likely to ask intrusive questions than to be diplomatic.”
Tony actually flinched at the statement. Wow, that was harsh, even for Pradip.
Hayley and I exchanged startled looks, while Carter tried to seem too deliberately nonchalant.
Luca, on the other hand, gave Pradip an assessing look. “Diplomatic, huh?” he questioned, looking back and forth between Pradip and Tony. That gave Tony a moment to recover, enough time to stick a bored expression onto his face.
Pradip just shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
We’d take it. There was no question. He’d been kind of mean about it, but Tony did inspire irritation in a lot of people. And Pradip might not have been the nicest person to us in particular, but he’d pulled off quite a bit in the time I’d known him. He was the one who was actually interested in politics, and Dr. Berti chose him as her intern because he was good at this.
Which wasn’t to say that Pradip’s presence wouldn’t upset Tony. I could already imagine the headache that would cause.
“Alright people, let’s go,” I said, knowing they’d infer my decision from that.
I grabbed a set of car keys from Pradip’s desk, not even bothering to look at which ones they were. Though Berti’s parting words—“Please refrain from destroying this one” —gave me a pretty good hint. Still, she didn’t ask us to take the pick-up instead. I suppose even Berti had a limit to how far she would push us.
And we started moving out, not even discussing where we’d go first, because there was only one logical option. We needed to consult with Berti’s greatest ally in the legend community. The man she trusted even when she doubted other legends on principle. The one who’d helped and advised us before, even if he’d demonstrated the limits of what he’d do for us pretty clearly.
The Remus.
Terrestrial Magic (Jordan Sanders, #1) Page 28