“But you’re twins too, right?”
“We are.” He nodded. “With one very important difference.”
“He has no abilities?”
“None. We didn’t even realize I did, until I hit about nine or ten.”
“Huh. What if he has abilities now?” Damon asked. “And, if he does, and they’re latent, that’s an entirely different issue.”
“Very latent. He’s never been tested and has never shown any interest in being tested.”
“Yet, as long as he’s been supportive of you, maybe we can utilize that.”
“And again, it would not be my choice. Anybody who even has any inkling of what we’re doing still doesn’t understand the kind of predators that we’re dealing with. How could anyone? Although my brother would more than most.”
“Do you think somebody else can do what we do?” Damon asked instantly.
“We took care of that—right? In Iran? But, if there was one group, maybe there are others.”
“I’m not sure.” Damon slowly reached up to rub his temples.
“And because my energy is split, trying to individually funnel a guard around our team, I don’t have the power I need to defend you and me properly.”
“And that is not acceptable,” Damon snapped. “I get we have to save everybody, but you are the strongest of us all. We must have you at the forefront of every investigation in order to make it all work.”
“Well, that’s the theory,” Terk agreed, “but each and every one of us will have to pull a little bit more, if we can.”
“You know we might need to bring in Wade, regardless of whether he’s fully healed or not.”
“And that could kill him,” Terk replied instantly.
“It might.” Damon hesitated. “Look. I know. I don’t want to do it either, but, if he can do anything, even if just run basic comms for us, so that we can get out and start hunting, then he needs to.” He could see that Terk was torn. “Maybe think about it from his perspective. Right now you’re saying he’s completely useless, even though so many other people out there would say that, even without his extra abilities, he is a hell of a better man than most.”
“He absolutely is,” Terk noted quietly. “But I also know that the more he drains his energy, the less he’ll utilize to help us, and, with his energy drained, it will stop his healing. Not to mention he’s slowly waking, but he’s not conscious. And yanking him out of that state could kill him.”
“Dammit,” Damon muttered because Terk was correct. But when did this stop and start being something that they could utilize in a different way? “We have to do something,” he replied. “We’re sitting ducks right now.”
“We’ve already been taken down,” he stated. “What we have to do is keep anybody from finding out that we may not recover from this.” And then he stopped and whispered, “Not all of us, but maybe a few of us.”
“Do you really think not everybody will recover?”
“I don’t want to say,” he murmured. “But, in some cases, we’re definitely on low life support.”
Frowning, Damon stared at the table and the tablet of notes. “Where do we start?”
“I’d say Iran, in the cell that we shut down, doing the same kind of work as we are doing, but of course for the other side.”
“And how many other sides are there now?” Damon snapped bitterly. “It seems like we’re up against the Russians and the Chinese all the time. Now you’re saying Iran.”
“And I can’t say for sure it’s them. It could all be connected.” He took a slow deep breath. “And it could be connected to our bosses.”
Damon leaned back, dropped the pencil. “I know, and that means that we need to investigate them and Iran, while keeping an eye on China and Russia. And we don’t have anybody to help us do that.”
“I can bring in some help,” Terk replied. “I don’t think our three admins are doing anything right now. We all went our separate ways that night, with the expectation of the team getting in touch in a few days. Only we never got that chance.” He cast Damon a raised eyebrow.
Damon realized who he was talking about. “Interesting.” He hated the idea. He didn’t want her in any more danger than she already was. “I’m not so sure that that’s even a wise idea.”
“But at least they understood what we were doing, and we still need people to run searches and people to do tracking.”
Damon frowned, still not liking the idea. “You mean Tasha. She was good at that.”
“I’ll contact her. I think they’re still working for the government though, and, if we don’t want the government to know that we’re alive and well …” Terk raised his eyebrows.
Damon shook his head. “Tasha was given her walking papers the same day the government shut us down.”
“Why?” Terk asked in surprise.
“Mostly I think because of the connection to us.”
“Has anybody talked to her since? I haven’t.” Terk looked at Damon.
“Neither have I.” Damon immediately snatched up his phone. “If they killed off our abilities, hoping that they would completely close down the department,” he noted with emphasis, “what are the chances that they did something to permanently injure her?”
“Well, they sure as hell better not have. We had three great hackers, IT staff. Let’s see if we can find any of them.”
“I’ll check in with Tasha.”
Terk nodded. “I’ll contact Wilson, and then we’ll have to look for Mera.”
“Yes, and, if any or all three of them want to come back and work for us while we sort this out, we need them. That just brings back one other issue.” Damon turned toward Terk. “When we got shut down, they removed our access, I presume?”
“Yes, access to databases, access to security, access to everything.”
“What about the bank accounts?”
Terk gave him a ghost of a smile. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”
“Will they accuse you of stealing?”
“I highly doubt it because they didn’t know about it in the first place.” He was torn on that because, of course, that was in theory how it was supposed to be. “It was access we had before anyway.”
“What are the odds that this annihilation was actually done because of that money? How much money are we talking about?” When Terk gave him a ballpark figure, Damon whistled silently. “We could have all been targeted just to get access to the money. Hell, they hide our budget from Congress so nobody without the highest of clearances knows what we’re up to. This money is dark. Someone steals it, and who’d be the wiser? If it would never openly go into the government coffers because they didn’t know about it, because it was hidden money, maybe someone did know and decided to get it for themselves.”
“It’s possible, but they could have done that without taking us out,” he reminded Damon. “We would never have known once we were ousted.”
“No, that’s quite true. But still, it makes me suspicious.”