12
FAILURE. BETRAYAL. TWENTY-TWO HOURS passed in disarray as Sibyl conducted an internal review of the London facility’s entire roster, though many agents had no idea what had even happened in the underground tunnels.
But that wasn’t enough for the Council. Apparently, after an emergency meeting, they’d called someone in from another facility to “aid in operations.” Whether that meant helping Sibyl or interrogating her, I didn’t know. Still, after what had happened, nobody could blame them for taking action. Only two agents had helped those mysterious soldiers attack us, but it was two too many. Lake’s and Chae Rin’s unit had successfully delivered their ring to its new fortified hiding spot. But Jessie had managed to make off with the one we were supposed to deliver. If backup hadn’t come when it did, she might have made off with me, too.
Sibyl had told us to stay in our dorms, out of the way, while she conducted the investigation, but that didn’t last long.
“Open up! Open up, it’s an emergency!” Rhys was pounding on the door.
Chae Rin glanced up from her laptop. Lake and Belle burst out of their rooms on the second floor. Jumping up from the table, I ran to let him in.
“What is it?” I asked, taking in the sight of a blue cast on the arm Jessie had snapped. Dark circles caved in the skin around his eyes, his full lips cracked from dehydration. He looked like he’d been grilled all night.
“Bloemfontein’s APD was hacked. Parts of the city have just been attacked by phantoms.”
I sucked in a deep breath, my shoulders lifting with my chest as I let the dread sink in. Saul was back in business.
“Have agents been dispatched to the area?” Belle kept her eyes on Rhys as she walked down the stairs, her body mostly healed from her wounds thanks to her Effigy abilities.
“Yeah. It didn’t look like it was a full-scale attack. The phantoms rampaged a farmers’ market for a while before disappearing again.”
“How do we know it was him?” asked Lake from behind the second-floor railing.
“It’s his pattern,” I said quietly, remembering New York. “Plus, phantoms wouldn’t just target a specific area, then disappear.”
Phantoms were forces of nature. They followed no will but chaos. So far, only the ring could channel that pandemonium into some instrumental purpose. It was him.
“We’ve been called to Communications.” Rhys was already turning. “Dot’s found something.”
“Is it about that girl who attacked us?” I asked, following him through the door. “Jessie?”
Rhys’s expression darkened as he tilted his head away from me. He rubbed his cast almost absently as he glared at something in the distance. “It’ll come up. Let’s get there first.”
Under the night sky, we crossed the grounds to Communications, following Rhys up the elevator to the third floor. The room in which Sibyl, Dot, and Pete had been waiting for us overlooked the main floor, its front wall made entirely of glass.
I assumed it worked only one way. Though I could see the agents below clicking away at their keyboards, their monitors lighting up as they tracked disturbances around the globe, they surely, hopefully, couldn’t see Sibyl pacing in front of a red-faced woman sputtering her usual anti-Sect rhetoric on the wide-screen television at the side of the wall. Tracy Ryan, Florida senator: the same woman leading the front on having us Effigies officially classified by international law as biological weapons of mass destruction so we could be quarantined accordingly.
“You can see the Sect’s incompetence with your own eyes,” she said as CNN split-screened her slim, pigeon-sharp face with live footage of the phantom attack in Bloemfontein.
My hands went cold as I saw large, spiderlike phantoms crash through streets with their clawlike legs. People screamed as they rushed past makeshift booths to save themselves from beasts almost half the size of buildings.
“I’ve said this before: The Greenwich Accords is nothing more than a locked and loaded gun holding the international community hostage while the Sect parades around, pretending to ‘handle’ these threats. But they’re not doing that. What they’re really doing is shoring up their arsenal and power while pretending to protect the rest of the world. They are waiting to strike.”
“Well,” said the host, “there’s no evidence of them shoring up their power for any specific purpose.”
“What more evidence do you need?” The big, blunt red headline beneath her face seemed to agree with her: TERROR IN BLOEMFONTEIN: ANOTHER SECT FAILURE? “If we don’t do something first, they will make their power known. It’s time for the international community to come together to protect ourselves. More military spending and fortifying our borders is where we need to start domestically. But we need to unify against this dark threat.”
“Threat,” said the host, his head cocked. “Do you mean the phantoms? The terrorist Saul? Or the Sect?”
“At this point, is there even a difference anymore?”
“Idiot.” Sibyl grabbed the remote from the round table in the center of the room and clicked the television off. “I wouldn’t expect anything less than nonsensical fearmongering from that woman, especially when she’s up for reelection. But this is really—”
She shook her head, staring at the black television screen for a moment, chewing her lip. Then, suddenly, she threw the remote to the floor.
“Uh . . .” Pete stared at the broken pieces of plastic on the ground before glancing up and seeing us. “Oh, hey!” he said, his voice a little too high. “Lake! And the others! Lake! Come here. Please.” With a nervous grin, he waved us over frantically as he inched away from Sibyl.
Dot was bent over in front of one of two large monitors atop the long bench pressed up against the window. She clicked the screen twice and pictures popped up, each of the same white corpse laid out on a metal table. Lake gagged behind me, but after the guy I’d seen in the tunnels, this maggotless body was actually a nice change of pace as far as the grotesque went.
“No.” Rhys spoke in a quiet whisper, his lips parted as he stared at the screen. Having been with the Sect for so long, he was certainly no stranger to death. Surely he’d seen bodies like this before, but the color drained from his skin the longer he looked at the corpse on the metal table. “It can’t be. I can’t . . . tell . . .”
“What is it?” I asked Rhys as he rushed up to Dot’s side. “Who is this?”
“This,” Dot said, pointing her pen at the screen, “this is another question. A question named Philip.”
“Philip.” Rhys sounded each syllable as if it were a foreign language. “Is that him? Maybe it just looks like him?”
“Rhys, you know him?” I looked from him to the screen and back again. “I don’t understand.”
Pete scratched the back of his neck. “You know that dead guy you found in the desert?”
“That’s him?” The mysterious young man we’d found in the Sahara hideout. Silently, I watched Rhys’s face turn white as the body on the screen.
Lake covered her mouth. “Gosh. He’s . . . really dead.”
“Well, these pictures are from before he got dissected. You should see the ‘after’ pictures—there’s loads more information to get from those!” Pete’s tone was a little too flippant for Lake, as if he’d forgotten that dissections and autopsies were only delightfully interesting to a select group of people with very special interests. A group Lake didn’t belong to. Her expression soured as if she was about to throw up.
“Rhys,” I said carefully. “How do you know this guy?”
“Th-that’s . . .” He stopped. Rhys was shaking a little, his eyes blinking rapidly, struggling to focus. He steadied his breath. “I think that’s—”
“Philip Anglebart.” When Dot tapped the screen, it went dark and what looked like a graduation photo appeared. There he was, the boy who’d died in Belle’s arms, but with a few key differences. His blond hair was cut close to his skull in a buzz cut, his face not pale but rosy-cheeked. He was younger in this photo, as if he’d just entered his teens. But the downward slope of his close-set eyes was the same. “One of the seven chosen for the final cohort of the Fisk-Hoffman Training Facility in Greenland.” She flipped her pen around between her fingers. “Along with Agent Rhys and Agent Volkov.”
There must have been some kind of dark magic in those simple words Dot had spoken; at the very sound of the name, the life slipped and fell from Rhys’s eyes. His neck muscles twitched as he clenched his teeth and nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s him. I know him. We . . .” His eyes darted in my direction before he cleared his throat. “We trained together.” He wouldn’t look at me.
Rhys had told me before that he’d trained for a time in Greenland. Some training facilities are a little tougher than others. That’s what he’d told me, though he’d never elaborated.
Rhys shook his head. “But he’s dead. They’re all supposed to be dead. Only Vasily and I survived the . . . the fire.”
“What fire?” Walking up to him, I gripped his broad shoulder tightly, tilting my head low to catch his eyes. It slackened beneath my touch. “What are you talking about, Rhys?”
“The facility shut down four years ago,” Sibyl answered instead, her piercing expression hardening as she stared at the picture of the young man. “Because of a wide-scale fire caused by an electrical fault.”
My body stiffened involuntarily. A fire. Electrical fault. It sounded too familiar. But I couldn’t let myself slip back into painful memories.
“It never reopened. Too many of the staff died, including all the doctors. And the students. Only Rhys and Agent Volkov survived and were relocated.”
“I didn’t know . . .” I trailed off as Rhys turned on his heel, pivoting out of my touch.
“Wait, so he’s alive after all?” Lake asked, and thought about it. “Well, I mean, now he’s dead. But before, you know, before, how could he have been alive to die if he’d already died?” She sighed impatiently. “Ugh, you get what I mean, right?”
“The other five students were only presumed dead,” Sibyl explained. “Their bodies were never recovered after the fire.”
“Wait, let me draw up their profiles.” A few series of clicks from Dot’s fingers and the seven were on the screen.
Philip Anglebart. Talia Nassar. Gabriel Moore. Alexander Drywater. Jessie Stone. Aidan Rhys. Vasily Volkov. Each was young in their photo, barely into their teens, wearing the same blazer as if taking a school photo. Talia’s long dark hair was split at the edges as it draped down her chest. Gabriel was very slight and handsome, his small eyes peering out from coal-dark skin. Alexander was the biggest of all of them by far, the size of a football player, his red hair as closely shaven to his skull as Philip’s.
“Jessie . . . ,” I whispered, and could sense Rhys reacting to the name. Jessie, in this picture, was very chubby with a hooked nose and a square jaw that turned her face into a box. Her brown hair fell around her face and her green eyes sparkled as she smiled cheerfully for the cameras. Innocent. Hard to believe it was the same girl who’d almost killed us in the tunnels.
“Wait. Alex?” I stared at the burly boy in the photo before turning to Belle by the round table behind me. “You remember, right?” I asked before shifting to Chae Rin, who was sitting on top of the table, swinging her legs. “Before he died, Philip told us to find Alex. Remember?”
Pete shuffled uncomfortably on his feet. “Yeah, I think we did. Well, you did. In the tunnels.” When he saw that I wasn’t following, he let out a weary sigh. “Um . . . we were able to identify the dead body that attacked you.”
Oh. Oh. As my stomach lurched, Rhys whipped around. “You’re kidding. You’re . . .”
He turned to each of us as if hoping we would tell him this had all been some kind of cruel joke. Scrunching up his face from the torture of it, he took a few hurried steps toward the door and bent over. For a minute I thought he’d throw up, but he kept himself together. I couldn’t blame him. That this young boy could have turned into the mass of dead flesh that murdered our comrades . . . It was too much for anyone to take.
“Care to explain what’s happening?” Sibyl folded her arms. “These kids disappear from an old facility and reemerge as monsters?”
“Well, they’re monsters, certainly. But of what sort? That’s the question.” Dot tapped the screen again, switching to a black-and-white diagnostic image of Philip’s body. “The Marrakesh facility found cylithium-like particles all through his body.”
“So he is an Effigy.” With a grim frown, Belle folded her arms by the round table.
My heart sank. I wanted to believe it was Saul we’d tracked to that hideout before disappearing and leaving the other boy there to fend for himself. But Chafik was right. There was no reason why he’d have risked traveling through a Dead Zone of phantoms when he could simply appear and disappear at will. It was Philip all along. An Effigy.
“Effigy? Not quite,” Dot answered, and at her urging, Pete brought up a diagram with a touch of his finger. “This chemical compound is certainly cylithium, but his body isn’t producing it naturally.”
“His body isn’t producing it?” Chae Rin crossed her legs atop the table. “What do you mean? Was that guy an Effigy or was he not?”
“I can’t tell yet.” Dot straightened up, flipping back her sloppily braided ponytail. “Like I said, questions, questions, and more questions. But what I can tell you is that they found a network of electromechanical devices all down his spinal cord. We’ve just begun to study Alex’s body in the lab, but we’ve noticed similar compounds. I would bet money that all the children have it—well, save for Vasily and Rhys, according to their recent physical exams.”
“Nanomachine, we think. But this is really . . . advanced. Way advanced, even for us,” Pete said, and as he touched the screen, a path down the back of the body lit up the dark diagnostic image. “There’s a network down his spine. We think this may have been delivering the cylithium into his system. And then there’s another one at the base of his neck, but it’s too degraded to study.”
The base of his neck. I remembered the red bruise on his skin.
“In fact, his whole body was dying long before you found him,” Pete added, pointing at parts of the diagrams. “Cellular degradation, muscular atrophy. The cells couldn’t maintain their integrity. It’s as if his body couldn’t handle the magic. Basically, he was burning out.”
Maybe that was how Belle’s attack had killed him so quickly. He’d already been dying.
“Mellie’s still in the lab trying to figure out some of the structure,” Pete said. “But Dot did say she recognized part of the chemical signature.”
“What do you mean?” Sibyl’s high heels clicked sharply as she stepped forward. “Do you know who might be behind this technology?”
Dot ran a hand through her unwashed black hair. Her dark eyes dimmed with fatigue. Someone else who probably hadn’t gotten any sleep. “I’m not sure,” she answered. “This kind of nanotechnology is still in its infancy. But this . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know for sure, but this reminds me of a lot of work that began in the sixties, after the Seattle Siege. A decade ago, they were making advancements in nanotechnology over at a university in Scandinavia before it was shut down. I read about this years before in a thesis that linked nanotechnology to synthetic telepathy.”
I blinked. “Synthetic what?”
“Synthetic telepathy,” Dot repeated. “It’s when you inject nanotechnology inside someone’s head. . . . The chip acts like a receiver that can channel someone’s coded voice signal directly into the human brain.”
“Brainwashing,” added Pete.
Dot shrugged. “Yeah, that’s what this work was on. But cylithium delivery has nothing to do with that. Meanwhile, this is more complex than I’ve seen. I’m not sure—”
“Find them,” Sibyl said. “Find the other kids.”
“Uh, about that . . .” Pete gave her a nervous grin. “It might be difficult since the ones left seem to be off the grid.”
“Find them now. Gather the research Dot read and figure out how they could be doing this. Whoever ‘they’ are. We need to find them.” Sibyl had already turned from us, walking up to the bench against the glass window. Propping herself up, she peered out over the main floor. “Whoever could be involved, wherever they are, bring them in. If those . . . soldiers are any indication, that tech is out of its infancy stage.”
“What are you saying?” Chae Rin asked slowly. “You’re saying they’re . . . making Effigies now?” One lone, incredulous chuckle escaped from her lips, dying the moment it touched air. Her shoulders slumped as she uncrossed her legs and leaned back. The expression on her face was the same as mine.
I studied the waves of particles on the computer screen. Soldiers. But I thought we were the soldiers.
“Rhys,” I said. He stirred at the gentle inflection of my voice. “You really haven’t seen either of them since the fire?”
“I thought they were dead.” I could only see Rhys’s back as he faced the door. “They were just . . . regular kids like me.”
“Regular kids,” Belle repeated with a grave expression. “Turned into Effigies after the fire.”
Pete shook his head. “Well, we don’t know. We can’t even corroborate this yet.”
“But that must be it,” I said. “Whatever Jessie did to that dead soldier, Alex . . . controlling his corpse . . . ordering it to fight for her. That’s . . . supernatural. She could never do that before. Someone must have done something to her.”
I remembered her clearly: the cocky movement of her short, slender frame; the almost erotic pleasure she took in snapping Rhys’s wrist. And how fast she was. This was someone who’d been taught to fight. A girl who reveled in hurting others.
“Communications couldn’t trace her spectrographic signature, if she even had one,” said Pete.
“Oh, she had one.” Dot rolled up the sleeves of her lab coat. “She had to have had one with the cylithium in her system. Perhaps she could mask it. Like Saul.”
Like Saul. “If they’re making Effigies, then Saul could be a fake one too,” I asked, “right?”
Dot didn’t appear surprised to hear the question. “Ever since I saw the autopsy results, I’ve been wondering if that was the case. But we’ve already concluded that Saul—or rather Nick—was born in the nineteenth century, and they certainly didn’t have nanotechnology back then. Given this simple fact, I still strongly believe in my fifth-element theory.”
That was true, though the fact that both he and Jessie could hide their frequencies made it hard to let go of the idea that there could be another connection between them. Even so, the struggle between Nick and Alice was too like the struggle I faced with Natalya. Alice wasn’t just some split personality. I’d seen her the first time I scried inside La Charte hotel; she was real. No matter how good the technology was now, I doubted they could synthesize another life into someone’s head. That was magic.
“Something else to think about,” Dot continued, “is that Jessie came prepared to fight an Effigy.” She picked something familiar off a table: an inoculation pen, the one I’d used against Saul in Argentina. She shuttled the long tube back and forth between her fingers. “It’s the same technology, just a compact version fitted into her glove.” She looked at Belle. “A temporary way to shut down an Effigy’s magic. Don’t know why I didn’t come up with it,” she added bitterly, before shaking her head. “This isn’t something you just have lying around. Someone must have given this to her. Someone. Someone. Someone . . . or someones with access to high-powered tech.”
“ ‘Someones’ isn’t a word,” mumbled Pete.
“Like the Sect.” Sibyl straightened up. “It’s Sect technology, after all. Sect technicians from our R & D department helped Saul escape our custody. Then those Sect agents who knew about our top-secret mission helped Jessie, an engineered Effigy with Sect technology, steal back the ring and hand it right to Saul, a terrorist who seemingly appeared out of nowhere and began attacking cities around the world.”
“Seemingly?” I repeated.
“Where did Saul come from?” Sibyl’s sharp gaze passed over each of us. “We know he’s been alive since the nineteenth century. What has he been doing since then? Why did he surface only recently? How did he get linked up with Sect agents, scientists, and now these former students from one of our top training facilities?”
“In Greenland!” A burst of adrenaline rushed through my body as I made the connection. “Agent Chafik said you tracked Saul for a while after our fight in France, but his signal went dead in Greenland.”
“Yes . . . another connection.” Sibyl considered it. “We already sent a team there and found nothing. But perhaps it’s worth another look. It’s clear to me that there are those within the Sect who have forged some kind of partnership with Saul. We knew there were traitors in our organization, but this could be much larger than we ever expected.”
“Much, much larger,” Dot said. “It may not even be limited to the Sect. But whoever these traitors are, they’re working with Saul. They’re supporting him. Whether he’s calling the shots or he’s just one player in a larger team, I don’t know.”
Saul told me himself in Marrakesh that he wasn’t the one I needed to worry about. They were his backup. His soldiers. But at least one of them had tried to escape. Why?
“So, how long do you think it’ll be before the entire Sect collapses at our feet?” Dot tossed the pen into the air and caught it. “Shall we flip a coin?”
“Can someone just . . .” Hanging my head, I let out a haggard sigh. “Some freaks attacked us. They could do stuff. Weird stuff. And now Saul has a ring and he’s attacking people again. That’s what I care about. I just want to know what the hell we’re supposed to be doing here.”
The door burst open. Cheryl scurried into the room. “I’m sorry, Director,” she said hurriedly, too flustered to hide her Cockney accent like she usually did. With a hand, she pushed up her glasses. “I would have warned you, but I didn’t even know he’d be here—”
“That’s quite fine, thanks. You can go.”
A young man brushed by her, knocking her shoulder as he passed. His self-importance seemed to expand with his puffed-out chest, though his slender—well, scrawny—body didn’t inspire much awe.
His dirty-blond hair appeared to have been slicked back with antifrizz styling gel, keeping the wave of his combed-back bangs in exactly the angle and the direction he’d calculated. His prim dark suit and blue tie gave him the model student look, his silver-rimmed glasses perfectly perched on the ridge of his nose. He was at least attempting to project an air of confidence as he surveyed the room. Maybe it was confidence to him, though the smug lift in his chin as he straightened his tie screamed false bravado.
“Oh god.” Rhys shook his head. “You’re kidding me. Dad sent you? Is this a joke?”
The young man spared Rhys a quick glance but looked entirely unfazed when he responded with, “Oh good, Aidan, you’re here too. It’s been a while. Nice to see you.”
Rhys didn’t respond. They shared the same American accent, but the uptightness in the young man’s voice made all the difference between them, as if he regulated his tone as staunchly as he did his appearance.
Chae Rin leaned sideways from the table. “Rhys, you know this guy?”
The young man straightened his back as he took his cue. “Assistant Director—”
“Brendan Prince.” Sibyl kicked the broken pieces of controller away from her with a swift sweep of her shoe. “Formerly of the Munich facility. And the oldest son of the director of the North American Division.”
Rhys squirmed, embarrassed as I stared at him with arched eyebrows.
“Rhys’s brother?” Lake glanced from one to the other. “I guess . . . Yeah, I can see it. Oh, this might be fun.”
Well, I didn’t know about fun, but I could see the resemblance too. Brendan looked more like his father than Rhys did, but the straight nose, the high, handsome cheekbones—they were the same. But as Brendan preened in his well-cut suit, Rhys slouched in his baseball jacket, curling his fingers against his old jeans. Something told me their similarities ended with genetics.
“Prince.” Chae Rin snorted and added under her breath, “Definitely acts like one.”
“So, you’re the one the Council called in. Interesting.” If Sibyl was trying to mask the disdain in her voice and stay neutral, she failed. Her lips had already quirked into an amused grin as she took in the sight of him. “Prince’s very ambitious son. And he criticized Blackwell for having a family position. Looks like he couldn’t wait to put in a good word to upgrade his own son’s career.”
“Why not? He ‘put in a good word’ to give you your job,” he said. “Or so I hear.”
“But I didn’t steal anyone’s position,” Sibyl retorted. “That’s the difference between you and me, Brendan. I don’t go behind people’s backs.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying.” Brendan straightened his blazer. “My father may have recommended me, but it was the Council that brought me here because of the poor job you’ve done in handling things.”
“Poor job,” Sibyl spat, but Brendan had already passed by her.
“You’ve seen the news. You were instrumental in capturing Saul, but since then you’ve not only let him escape but botched the mission that led to his retrieval of the very weapon he used to slaughter innocents in the first place. It’s only natural that the Council has lost faith in you.” The pause he left after his last word was a dagger pointed at Sibyl. He gave her a meaningful look before stopping behind Pete, leaning over his shoulder as he looked up at the monitor. “This is the information you’ve received from the Marrakesh facility, right?”
He must have been leaning a little too closely to Pete, because the lab assistant scooted out of the way. “Uh, yeah. These are the autopsy reports, but, uh . . .” He turned to Dot for help, but she just shrugged.
“So what does the Council plan on doing with you here?” Sibyl folded her arms over her chest. “Are you here to investigate me?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I mean, you will be investigated—that goes without saying—but not by me. I’ve brought my own people for that.”
Sibyl’s eyes darkened by the second. “I’ve already submitted myself to the internal review.”
“Submitted yourself to your own people?” He laughed. “Well, that’s a comfort.”
“Hey, relax,” I said, frowning. I’d seen how hard Sibyl worked at her job, how desperately she tried to steer the ship even with new unimaginable threats popping up like a twisted game of whack-a-mole.
“Sibyl’s been doing literally everything she could under insane circumstances,” I insisted.
“Yes, that’s all well and good,” he replied. “It’s clear there’s an issue here at this facility that needs to be sorted out by outside agents. This is a drastic problem. Drastic problems require drastic solutions.”
“And what solution did Daddy come up with?” said Rhys.
Brendan bristled at the word “daddy,” especially with the mocking emphasis Rhys had placed on it. But while he shot his little brother a dirty expression, he managed himself nonetheless. “Sibyl is to be removed from leadership immediately until further notice,” he said, letting the words fall to silence before he spoke again. “I will be assuming leadership for the time being. The Council voted on the recommendation. It’s done. You’ll be escorted back to your home in Philadelphia and looked after while the Sect conducts a more thorough investigation of you and your methods.”
“Looked after.” Sibyl rolled her eyes as she shook her head in disbelief. “That’s what they’re calling house arrest.”
“They can’t do that!” Cheryl cried. “This isn’t Director Langley’s fault.”
“The APDs,” said Belle, taking a seat on the bench by one of the monitors. “All over the world. Hacked. Who do you think is behind this?” She trained her sharp gaze on Brendan. “Now we have soldiers the like of which we’ve never seen before. They have power—the kind of mysterious power only we possess.” She lifted her arm. Clouds of snow wafted up from her palm. “Who created them? Could it be just one person? Or one facility?” The snow dissipated into nothingness the moment she clenched her hand into a fist. “This issue is larger and more insidious then we ever thought possible. Suspending Director Langley is nothing more than an act for the public, to make it appear as if something is being done. But placing the blame squarely on her shoulders will not save the Sect from public scrutiny.”
“She’s right, Bren,” Rhys said. “You really want to take charge of things, you’ve got to do more than take someone else’s job.”
Brendan obviously didn’t like being challenged, but he stood his ground nonetheless. “The Council voted,” he said as if this were the only argument he needed. He straightened his back. “I’m in charge now. If any of you are worried about my intentions or credentials, you’re welcome to check my references.”
“Yeah, your dad.” Chae Rin snickered.
“I already figured that if I’m going to be convincing to you as command, I’m going to have to show a little more initiative. That’s why, on top of bringing my own people to investigate this facility, I’ve brought in a specialist to deal with some of our more . . . difficult subjects.”
Sibyl narrowed her eyes. “Specialist?”
“He’s with Vasily Volkov in the holding cells as we speak,” Brendan said. “I was just on my way there now—and actually, Aidan and Ms. Finley, I’d like you both to come with me.”
Rhys and I exchanged wary glances. I hadn’t seen that psycho since he’d tried to kill me in France. I wasn’t exactly aching to see him again, but Rhys’s brother was in charge now. That meant whatever he said was law.
“If it’s who you’re talking about, I’d ask you to reconsider,” Sibyl said. “Even I could never approve of certain methods of investigation.”
“Well, what you would approve or disapprove of doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” Brendan pressed the button by one of the monitors, and in just a few moments, five Sect agents marched through the door, their expressionless faces half hidden behind pairs of dark shades. “Don’t worry,” Brendan said. “They’ve been thoroughly vetted. My people are loyal.”
My insides churned as I watched Sibyl, her head high, the defiance still burning from her eyes as she silently followed the agents out the door.