by E. A. Copen
As I sat, I cleared my mind, blocking out pain and distraction. The overbearing warmth in the room was the most difficult thing to ignore, but I worked past it in time. Once I’d cleared my mind, I focused my attention on the tooth resting between my thumb and forefinger, giving it a little pulse of will. In my mind’s eye, I worked at reconstructing Gideon Reed.
I made him slightly taller than the average man, with broad shoulders and short, perfectly trimmed auburn hair. A well-proportioned nose, attractive face, piercing eyes and hands worn by work in a low-moisture environment. But people are more than just what they look like on the outside, so I threw in a dash of kindness, represented by a sparkle in the eyes, and a firm belief in justice, represented by the sword he gripped firmly in both hands. Finally, the last and most important ingredient went into forming a complete picture of Gideon Reed in my mind: his unshakable faith in his God. I placed it on him in the form of a plain, silver crucifix, one I had seen him carry on several occasions. It shone in imagined light, the reflection of it filling in the missing contours of his face and body. This image of Gideon Reed was as complete as any I could make.
Once I had that, I sent another stream of my will down into the tooth in my hand. If the tooth belonged to Reed, the magick should have resonated in the image I created. That was, if I had created a complete enough picture, and if the tooth was still fresh enough evidence. After all I’d been through, the psychic connection between Reed and the tooth could have been broken because I’d waited too long.
Reed’s image shimmered in a wave beginning in the center of the image and moving outward like ripples.
I’d been right all along. It was his tooth. Now, I just had to muster enough energy and the right ingredients for a tracking spell and we could use the tooth to track him down.
A buzz on the nightstand caught my attention. I turned to see the burner phone Espinoza had given me dancing and glowing, Ed’s number displayed on the screen. I grabbed for it and answered, hoping Sal hadn’t heard it buzzing in the next room. “Ed, did you get those video files decoded?”
“It’s called decrypting, Judah, and I told you hours ago that I did.”
“Sorry. I hit my head. Memory’s fuzzy.”
“Why are we whispering?”
I cast a long glance at the door. No one had come through it and the TV was still on. That didn’t mean they couldn’t hear me. Werewolves have an uncanny sense of hearing. “Because if Sal hears me planning to go out, I’m sure he’ll stop me. He doesn’t want you involved either, Ed.”
“This line might not be secure, so the shorter a conversation we have, the better. You need to see what I’ve seen, even if that means bringing an escort. In fact, you might not want to come alone. This is bigger than we thought.”
I sighed and rubbed the back of my aching head. “Alright, Ed. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Don’t take too long.” Ed hung up.
He didn’t have to tell me why. Eventually, Abe would figure out I knew something. They might find the laptop in the wreckage of the fire. Even if it was damaged, they’d probably notice the missing hard drive. Abe knew who I’d go to for help with that. Dammit, I had to see what was on it that and then destroy it for Ed’s sake.
Walking across the room wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I was still dizzy, but once I managed to get my feet under me, it was just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.
Outside of the bedroom, all the lights were off and the curtains drawn. Only the blue light of the television was available to cast shadows. Hunter and Sal sat on the sofa, both of them turning around when I came out of the room. I tried to catch a glimpse of what they were watching, but my eyes were too sensitive to the light and I had to look away.
I used dodging into the bathroom as an excuse not to talk to them just yet. While I was in there, they turned whatever they were watching off. Sal stood outside the door when I opened it, leaning against the washing machine. He had his arms crossed, an eyebrow raised, waiting for me to give him some kind of report. Best cut to the chase then.
“I need to go over to Ed’s.” I felt like a teenager asking to borrow the car.
Sal eyed me with heavy scrutiny. “You want me to take you?”
“Unless Hunter suddenly learned to drive.”
Hunter, who had remained on the sofa, turned around, his proverbial ears perked at the prospect of driving.
I held a finger out at him. “Don’t even think about bringing that up until you’re sixteen.”
He turned around, grumbling. “I can get a learner’s permit at fifteen and a half.”
“I’ll take you over to Ed’s. I need to talk to him anyway. Get your coat.”
“My coat?” I scrunched up my nose. “It’s got to be eighty outside.”
“Storm coming in.” Sal went and grabbed my coat from the back of a chair, tossing it to me. “I figure once you see what Ed has to say, you’ll go running off to save the day. I can’t stop you, but I can at least make sure you stay dry while you’re out there.”
I caught the coat and then stood on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on his chin. “Thanks for looking out for me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He winked at me. “Now move it, Kimosabe. Tanto’s got shit of his own to do.”
Chapter Eighteen
Shauna and Daphne weren’t home when we got there. Ed threw open the door as soon as I reached the porch, my hand raised to press the buzzer. His mouth hung open, halfway through saying something, but the words halted when he saw Sal standing behind me. Ed blinked once, straightened and swallowed. “Alpha. I didn’t expect… I mean… Good to see you?”
Sal tilted his head to the side. “You’ve been dodging my calls.”
There was no hint of malice or anger in Sal’s voice that I could hear, but Ed shrank. “Uh, yeah, sorry about that. I’ve been busy.”
“That’s fine. This time. In the future, you’re not going to be too busy to answer my calls again, are you, Ed?”
Ed cleared his throat. “No, no. Once I get all this figured out, I’ll be golden.” He pulled the door open wider. “Come in, both of you. Judah, is he up to speed?”
“Not really.” I stepped through the door and steadied myself on the other side by holding onto the arm of a chair.
“How much does he know?”
I held onto the chair as I turned to gauge Sal’s reaction to Ed’s question. I knew Sal wasn’t happy about Ed keeping secrets from him. He was also perplexed by it. Ed shouldn’t have been able to lie to Sal without Sal detecting it. Keeping secrets from his alpha should have been even more difficult. Werewolves in a pack instinctually shared information with each other. Sal was supposed to be his guidance, his mentor, like an older brother or a parent.
Sal put his hands in his pockets as the screen door bounced closed behind him. “Let’s just say I know enough and leave it at that, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” Ed gestured back toward his bedroom. “This way.”
Ed rushed on ahead and, by the time Sal and I made it to his room, he’d picked up most of the clothes on his floor and tossed them into a growing mountain in the far corner. With a quick sweep of his arm, he pushed half the trash on his desk into a trash can on one side before sinking down into his chair.
“Now, there were five video files on the computer and I managed to get three totally decrypted. The fourth and fifth ones are corrupted beyond repair. Let’s start at the beginning.”
He moved his cursor to the first file and double-clicked it. Just like last time, the video player opened, but no error came on the screen. Instead, the video displayed the image of a young woman on a bed in a minimally furnished room. She wore a pale blue hospital gown with a dizzying Greek key pattern on it, open in the back. Her back was to the camera, which also sat several feet above her head. The woman stood and paced several feet from the camera before turning and glaring up at it. The look on her face, it was raw hatred.
A familiar voice started up over
the video footage. Doctor Han’s. “Subject Thirty-Six upon entering week three of the program. All tests confirm that she entered the program in good health, optimal mental function, alert and responsive to all stimuli. After the initial batch of tests and exposure to serums one through twenty, tests indicate no change in anything other than her mood. Of course, that could be due to hormonal changes. Female subjects were less than ideal on that front because of such a variable, but for phase two of the program, we will need both viable male and female subjects. Tomorrow, Thirty-Six will be the first female subject exposed to Doctor LeDuc’s twenty-first serum. He may have discarded the effects initially, but as time has proven, he was far less interested in the program than in his own side project. Nevertheless, his work will fuel the future for both man and supernatural kind. I must admit, I wish he were here to see it.”
All through the video, the woman just stood, staring at the camera, rage in her eyes. The more I stared at that gaunt face, the more I noticed. Bruises of varying sizes and ages colored her cheeks, neck and arms. A cut on her forehead looked like it had been stitched closed.
I swallowed growing tightness in my throat. “Anyone else recognize that voice?”
“Doctor Han,” Sal growled next to me. “Marcus’ personal physician and the asshole who helped keep Mia from me.”
“If you don’t like him now, just wait until you’ve seen all the videos.” Ed snorted and opened another video file.
The same woman appeared on the screen in the middle of a different room, this one without any furnishings. She stood, surrounded by men in guard uniforms, her fists balled and raised. The men held batons. It didn’t take much imagination to see what was about to happen.
The woman, Subject Thirty-Six, leapt forward first with a roar and drove her fist into the stomach of one of the guards. It was all for nothing, as the guard must have been wearing some type of armor. She cried out and drew her fist back. Then, the beating started. They beat her down without mercy or regard for her life. Again and again, the clubs came down and lifted away bloody. All the while, Han’s voice droned on excitedly in the background.
“There was a breakthrough with one of the other subjects yesterday. When final preparations for his liquidation began, the subject was able to conjure fire in the palm of his hand! We subdued the subject and proceeded with liquidation, but the event sparked an epiphany. Some organisms develop defense mechanisms under extreme duress.”
Here, Han’s commentary paused while a bright flash covered the screen. I flinched away, squinting in the darkness. When I turned back, Subject Thirty-Six stood, bloodied and with her fists clenched, in the center of a massacre. Body parts had been scattered all over the room. Blood spatter painted the wall. One of the poor guards was still alive and used his one remaining stub of an arm to try and crawl away from her. Thirty-Six marched over, grabbed him by the head, and twisted. The guard fell limp.
“We’ve done it,” Han whispered into the microphone. “Forced evolution, manifesting the powers of magic in mundane humans. If it can be done with human DNA, then we are only a breath away from taking the healing powers of the werewolves, the speed of the vampire, and combining them to make something entirely new.”
Ed paused the video with less than two seconds remaining.
Silence fell on the room. Blood rushed in my ears and my palm ached from where I had dug my fingernails into the meat of it. “Human experimentation. Doctor Han is doing this? What did he mean by liquidation?”
Sal crossed his arms next to me. “When the government uses words like liquidation, assets, and casualty, it usually means some politician is getting rich while someone else is getting dead.”
Ed shook his head. “But Han doesn’t work for the government. He works for Marcus Kelley.”
I dug my fingernails in harder. “Yeah, Marcus Kelley who owns Fitz Pharmaceuticals, which has the largest medical government contract in history. Not only does Fitz get federal funding to develop and manufacture supernatural testing and medical supplies, but they get one hell of a block research grant.”
Ed’s eyes widened. “Shit, you’re right. Do you think Marcus knows?”
“If he doesn’t, he’s about to hear about it from me.” I took a deep breath and let it out. That was another problem, a big one, but a distraction from the issue at hand. “What does any of this have to do with Hector and Reed?”
Ed turned his chair back to the computer. “All answered in video number three.”
He queued the next video up. It was security footage from somewhere else, maybe another building entirely. The image was a grainy black and white sequence taken from the corner of a small room, showing a group of men standing in front of a large wall. They all had their backs to the camera, making it impossible to know who they were.
“We had an inspection today,” Han’s voice announced. “Those damned Sicarii showed up again to inspect the facility with a group from the BSI board of directors. As much as I would have liked to turn them all away to focus on the research, that’s impossible, considering they’re funding it.” He sighed. “I owe too much to the Sicarii. Without the rem, all my efforts would be fruitless. It really is the key to forcing the mutation, while extreme stress seems to be what causes the expression of the genetic mutation. It may be brutal to drug the subjects and then beat them, boil them, or freeze them until they show their true colors, but all scientific advancement comes at a cost. Today, thousands of lives are saved thanks to the advancements the Nazis made. Yet Hitler is remembered as a monster. He wasn’t. He was a man. Misguided perhaps, but a man of true vision. These Sicarii are much like him. They have a vision for how they wish to shape this world, but their execution is lacking. No matter. So long as I am free to learn, it is of no consequence to me.”
At the end of his speech, three of the men in the security footage turned, their faces captured by the camera.
“Pause it!”
Ed jammed his thumb down on the space bar and the image held, the tops and bottoms of the screen blurred by tracking marks.
“Is that…?” Sal leaned forward.
I raised a shaky finger to point at the screen, first pointing to the man on the right. “Hector Demetrius.” My finger moved to the man on the left. “And that’s Gideon Reed.”
“And the man in the center is Senator Robert Grahm,” Ed finished, pointing to the man in the center. “He’s the Ohio state senator who’s credited for thinking up this whole reservation in some committee somewhere.”
I frowned. “I remember him. Dealt with him once in Ohio. My very last case. I’d hoped to never see him again.”
“Outspoken anti-supernaturalist, pro-humanist and suspected member of the Vanguards of Humanity,” Ed continued.
“I don’t get it.” Sal leaned back away from Ed. “What’s Reed doing with guys like that? He’s a nobody sitting on the ruling council of the reservation. A priest of some barely-attended church in the middle of nowhere. What’s he doing with a senator and…whatever the hell Hector Demetrius is?”
“I think the better question has to do with these Sicarii,” I said. “Han said they have a vision for the world. What does that mean?”
Ed spun his chair around and flashed his hands in the air. “Illuminati confirmed!” When I glared at him, he added, “What? That’s exactly what they sound like. Look, if you’re interested, I did do a quick Google search. The Sicarii were supposed to have been a group of assassins living in Ancient Rome. They opposed the Roman occupation of the province of Judea. Apparently killed a lot of Romans in crowds and were branded terrorists and enemies of the state. Judas Iscariot might have been one of these guys, but the last time they were mentioned in history was in like 70 A.D. There’s nothing else anywhere about them since then. They just kind of disappeared.”
I raised a finger in the air. “So, the million-dollar question is what do a bigot senator, a magick-using cult leader, a small-town priest, and a secret government experiment have in common?”
“To find that answer, you’ll have to talk to one of them,” Sal said.
Ed nodded. “And, unfortunately, Hector’s not talking and Reed is missing.”
“The senator isn’t going to talk to me.” I folded my arms over my chest. “But, armed with this information, Hector just might.”
That meant keeping the footage to use as leverage, something that would put Ed in danger. I turned to look at Sal, who had probably concluded the same thing.
He stared hard at Ed. “How secure is this information? Any chance someone else is going to figure out we know what we know?”
“It’s always a possibility.” Ed shrugged. “But there are things I can do to reduce the likelihood of that happening. I’ll disconnect from the internet and pop the hard drive, store it in a safe place. Unless you want me to destroy it?”
Sal looked at me. “Your call.”
I chewed on my bottom lip a minute, imagining those paramilitary goons busting down Ed’s door and hauling him away. If that happened, there’d be nothing I could do to get him back. He’d be as good as dead.
I sighed and closed my eyes. “Not yet. Give me until tomorrow morning to think about it. Do what you can to protect the information. If you haven’t heard from me by tomorrow night, get rid of it. No one else knows about this, understand, Ed? Not Daphne, not Mara. This has to be a secret.”
Ed nodded once. “Got it. You stay safe, Judah.”
“You too, Ed,” I said and showed myself out.
~
I walked outside and stood under the cloud-covered sky, watching the silver crescent moon rise. It seemed peaceful, more peaceful than the world had any right to be. Everything felt like chaos.
All this time, I had been defending BSI. I knew they weren’t perfect—no branch of the government is—but it had always seemed better than the alternative. Without BSI, people would live in fear. The whole country might have risen up and killed the supernaturals soon after the Revelation, just like what had happened to Alex. Back then, BSI put a stop to it. Maybe they’d gotten too strict and let fear cloud their judgement, but the bare bones of the idea were still there. With the right people and enough time and effort, I had believed it could all be fixed from the inside.