“I suppose.” She frowned. “What are you getting at? You’ve never questioned the way I do my research before.”
No, he hadn’t, had he? Hadn’t been interested enough—all he’d wanted was results. Now, he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was about to come face-to-face with some unpleasant truths. He wasn’t sure he wanted to continue with this, but he forced himself to go on with the questions.
“Who were these people? Where did they come from?”
“How do I know?”
“Then find out. And now. You must have access to the records.”
Her face took on a mutinous expression, and for a moment, it looked like she might refuse. But obeying him was too inbred, and she opened the palm screen on her left hand and started flicking through the files. “What is it you want to know?”
“The subjects, where did they come from and what happened to them?” The ones who survived at least. He waited, impatient for her to give him the answers he knew he wasn’t going to want to hear.
“Well?” he prompted.
She shrugged. “They came from different places. Some were prisoners heading for the Meridian mines—we just borrowed them for a while.”
“Some? What about the others?”
“We bought some from the Church.”
He shook his head, then wished he hadn’t as pain shot through him, piercing his skull. “How can you buy people from the Church?”
“They weren’t people. They were GMs.” She sounded defensive now.
“Since when have GMs not been people?”
“Since we condoned the Church’s purge for political reasons,” she retorted.
They hadn’t condoned it, just done nothing about it. They’d needed the Church’s support. He’d not been involved in the negotiations, and he presumed his Council hadn’t been aware of the consequences when they’d agreed to downgrade GMs to nonhuman status. The Purge that had followed had torn the universe apart. He’d eventually managed to put a stop to the overt slaughter of GMs, though the nonhuman status had never been reversed. But that was politics.
He swallowed and drove himself to go on. “Where did they come from—these GMs.”
“The Church still kills them if they believe they can get away with it. It goes on all the time on the outer planets. When they knew we’d pay, they would often keep the children alive and sell them to the research center.” She must have seen something in his expression. Her lips thinned. “They would have died anyway.”
“Yeah, no doubt you were doing them a favor.”
“Don’t you mean we? You paid for this, so don’t go all sanctimonious on me now, Callum. You never asked for the details. You never wanted to know how I got results.”
Christ, children. He felt sick again, and this time it was nothing to do with the poison. “What happened to them?”
“Some died during the experiments.”
“And the rest?”
“Any survivors were sent to the mines. It was part of the agreement with the Church.”
So Tannis couldn’t have been there. “Everyone? There were no survivors?”
“What are you trying to get at?”
“You asked why Tannis poisoned me.” He gestured at the piece of material, with its incriminating mark lying on the bed between them. “This was on the floor when I woke up. She left it there for me to find.”
Enlightenment washed across her face. “She’s a GM.” Sinking onto the mattress beside him, she closed her eyes for a minute. “Jesus, we’re fucked.”
“What is it? What have you remembered?”
She examined the palm screen for a few moments, nibbling on her lower lip, her eyes narrowing as she read the information. Callum bit back his impatience as he waited for her to continue.
“Just before we closed down the facility, there was an escape. One of the subjects killed a guard and managed to escape. They freed another prisoner.”
“Another GM?”
“No—this was someone our forces had captured and delivered—they thought he might be an interesting study. Would you believe a suspected vampire?”
“Yeah, I’d believe it.”
“Anyway they both escaped on this guy’s ship. They were never recaptured, but then we didn’t try very hard. They had no real value. The GM was scheduled to be shipped to the mines the next day.
“Who was the subject?”
“Wait a second. A GM—shit—designated reptile/human DNA. Double shit. You think Captain Tannis is…”
He nodded. “Tell me about her.”
“She was bought from the Church—estimated age four. Two siblings, she was the older.”
“What happened to the sister?”
She tapped into the pad. “Terminated after an adverse reaction to one of the experiments.”
Callum rested his head against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. She must hate his guts. Along with the rest of him. “How long was she in that place?”
“Fourteen years.”
“Jesus.”