“My orders are not suggestions,” Victor snarled, his voice low and sharp as glass.
“We harnessed the ability to travel through time, and you felt that the best course of action was to attack the Triad in our time?” Kael scoffed. “I came up with a much better plan. I sent the top three Assets to a time they would be vulnerable, to a time before any vampires had been recorded in valid historical records.”
“When was that?” Victor fumed.
“Thirteen-forty-eight.”
Victor’s eyes bulged. “Thirteen-forty-eight? No wonder you can’t track them! It makes sense why their communicators don’t work. Will it even be possible for them to return to the present?”
“When I am ready for them to, yes.”
“You’ve overstepped your authority and undermined mine, Kael. You’ve committed treason.”
“Careful, Victor.” Kael’s features darkened. “Don’t forget that I’m the one you trusted to develop the technology behind your plan, the one you trusted with nuclear energy. The one who has sacrificed human after human just to make your plan a success, and then you,” Kael sputtered, standing and bracing his palms on the table, “you wanted me to send all that hard work to a ridiculous vampire gala? When we could eradicate them entirely…when we could stop the Triad from siring vampires at all…when we could stop this country from being torn apart?”
Victor rose from his seat and opened his mouth to speak, but Kael narrowed his eyes and spoke first. “You wanted to be a hero. If the vampires had never swept over this land, you would be nothing.”
“And neither would you.”
“You’re wrong,” Kael argued. “I would still be brilliant. I’d be the man who prevented mankind’s extinction.”
Victor became icily calm. “Why is there a year tattooed on the clone?”
“Because I sent a second army. A trio of clones from all three top Assets were deployed to every year between thirteen-forty-eight and the present. If your army of Eve clones failed, and thus far they have, the second generation of clones might succeed, because they have a separate mission.”
“What do you mean?”
“I instructed them to do everything in their power to be bitten and turned. Only when their transition to vampire was complete, were they to return home.”
“You want venom.” Victor gave a mirthless laugh. “Imagine – a vaccination against vampirism.”
“If we can’t kill them, we can at least protect the future generations of humanity from them.” Kael stood up and straightened his lab coat.
Victor was quiet, contemplative as he looked across the table at his former underling. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“The top Assets aren’t dead. They left thirteen-forty-eight by jumping, but I directed their landing to the year seventeen-seventeen. From there, they jumped again. They’re currently in seventeen seventy-seven, in the newly declared United States of America, in the Colony of South Carolina.”
“Why are you guiding them?”
“Because I have a third plan, using Eve as bait,” Kael answered callously.
Victor shook his head. “I underestimated you.”
Kael gave him a wide smile. “But Eve didn’t. She told me something once. She said I didn’t realize how powerful I could be if I stopped taking orders. She was right.”
I held my breath as I waited for Victor’s explosion, but Kael’s declaration was met with a beat or two of stony silence. Victor didn’t outright threaten him. He didn’t utter a word, but revenge darkened his features and hatred settled in his eyes.
“Cheer up, Victor. I only did what was best for this country and its people, and despite my methods being unconventional and perhaps something others won’t understand, I don’t regret any of the steps I took along the way.”
“Your pride will be your downfall, Kael.”
“Only if I don’t succeed. If any part of this works… if we collect venom and I develop an anti-venin, if one of the Triad gets staked and their entire bloodline of sires dies with them, or if Eve is the one thing that draws them to us, we have a real chance at extinguishing the threat. For good.”
“At which time you will claim the victory. And you call yourself altruistic…” Victor guessed.
Kael smiled. “I never claimed to be anything but brilliant and ruthless. Both were attributes you appreciated when we first began this journey.”
“And now those attributes have become the swords that stabbed me in the back. I should have you—”
“Don’t bother threatening me, Victor. We both know I’m more valuable alive than dead.”
The feed cut off.
I looked up from the screen and into Yarrow’s eyes. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
“Neither did Victor.”
“First, Kael challenged him, and now General Ticher is going to ignore his orders and command the military his way. Victor will either fold or make them pay, and my money is on the latter.”
“There are a few other things you should see.” Her thumb scrolled through the data, searching.
“What about the purple smoke Special Containment used when the clones started falling from the sky? What was that?”
She tensed. “You’re not going to like it.”
“He poisoned the witnesses?” I guessed.
She shook her head. “Sort of. The smoke is a neurological agent, developed by Kael, of course. It erases short term memory.”
“What?” I breathed.
“They used it on everyone who saw the Eve clones, but they’ve been using it for years. They’ve used it on Eve. And, Maru, they’ve used it on you.”
“On me?”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You… I don’t know if you want to know all the things they did to the Assets, Maru. It’s horrific. Inhumane on a level I can’t even…”
“I need to know,” I told her, steeling my voice and bracing for what she was about to show me. If she was crying, I might, too. Especially after reading Eve’s letter and knowing Kael was using her to bait Enoch, and that the two were walking into their trap together.
She handed me the second communicator and hugged her knees to her chest. “I can’t watch it again.”
With her head turned away, she cried as I played the videos she’d queued. In the first one, Eve sat in a hard, partially-reclined plastic chair. The fluorescent lighting cast a ghostly glow over her skin. She wore a hospital gown and squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. Her wrists and ankles were bound tightly in metal clamps, and there was a leather strap across her abdomen that secured her body to the chair.
Kael entered the room holding something round in the crook of his arm. “Good afternoon, Asset Eve,” he greeted cheerfully.
“Kael,” she groaned. “I’ve been in here forever.”
“I apologize for the delay.”
“What is that?” she asked, nodding to the metal device in his hand.
He brought it out from under his arm and showed her. “This is a replica of a vampire skull.”
“A stainless-steel mannequin?”