Alia winced. “Jason, have you lost your damn mind?”
“I’m just being cautious,” he said softly. “The way I always have.”
Nim planted her hands on her hips. “But you helped us! You could have flown us anywhere on that jet and—”
“My team was waiting for us on the ground in Araxos, but our enemies had other plans. After the crash, there were too many hostiles in the area. If I’d called in my forces, they might have led Alia’s pursuers straight to us. So I had them track us and follow at a safe distance.”
“The tracker for the parachute packs,” said Theo suddenly. “It wasn’t just receiving signals. It was transmitting, too.”
Jason lifted a brow. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out before now.”
Nim pointed her finger at Jason. “That’s why you didn’t want Theo to use his phone to start the car. You weren’t afraid of us being found. You were trying to slow us down.” Her eyes widened. “Oh God…That first day driving, you were handing me soda.”
Diana remembered Jason digging through the medical kit on the jet, pocketing pills. “You drugged her?” she asked incredulously. Could he have done such a thing to a girl he’d known his whole life? Who was this boy standing before her? This boy she’d whispered secrets to in the dark?
“I’m not proud of it,” he said, and he sounded ashamed. “But I had to do something. You were all so determined.”
“To stop a war!” shouted Alia, her voice fraying.
“Humans aren’t made for peace,” said Jason. “We’ve proven it again and again. Give us the chance and we’ll find something to fight over. Territory. Religion. Love. It’s our natural state. Ask Diana why her people turned their backs on us. They know what humans are.”
“Diana?” Alia asked.
Diana wasn’t sure what to say. She had been taught her whole life that mortals hungered for war, that they couldn’t resist the urge to destroy one another, that there was no point in trying to stem the tide of bloodshed.
As if he could read her mind, Jason said, “Don’t look to her for answers. Her people don’t care about us. And why should they? Look what we’ve become. Cowards and weaklings playing with weapons like they’re toys.”
“Weaklings,” Alia repeated. “Every generation weaker than the last….” She reared back as realization struck. “Our parents’ work. You didn’t continue it.”
“I did. Our father’s work.”
“What does Dad have to do with any of this?” Alia asked desperately.
“The files,” said Diana, remembering the missing pages, the blacked-out passages. “You redacted the text.”
“Dad saw the potential for what our blood could do, what it might mean for the world, before Mom interfered.”
“You mean before she talked sense into him?” Alia shot back.
Jason gave her arm a slight shake. “Vaccines. Gene therapy. Supercures. That’s what they ended up using our bloodline for. The blood of heroes like Ajax and Achilles. To prolong the lives of those who had no right to their strength.”
What had Jason said on that winding road through the cliffs? It’s just biology. I’m not saying it’s good or bad.
Alia tried to pull away from him, and Diana stepped forward. A bullet struck the water by Theo’s feet.
“Shit!” shouted Theo, backing up and nearly falling. Nim shrieked.
“Jason,” pleaded Alia, “call them off!”
“Behind me,” commanded Diana, spreading her arms wide, eyes scanning the road above and the ridge of the ruins beyond it for snipers.
They stood in strange formation: Jason and Alia on the sandy riverbank, Diana with Nim and Theo crowded against her in the shallows—as if she could protect them when they were surrounded by men on all sides.
Theo held his hands up. “Jason,” he said, voice reasonable. “Think about what you’re saying. Who are you to decide who’s weak and who’s strong?”
Jason blew out a breath. “I don’t expect you to understand, Theo. You’d rather hide from the world behind a screen than face it.”
Theo’s head snapped back as if Jason had struck him. “Is that really what you think of me?” He lowered his hands slowly, his face bewildered. All of Jason’s jibes and judgments—they hadn’t been the teasing of someone who wanted more for his friend, but actual contempt. “I thought—”
“That we were friends? Because we collected comic books together when we were twelve? Because we liked the same cartoons? What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been wasting your life on games and make-believe?”
“If you say ‘growing up,’ I’m going to punch that smug expression right off your face.”
Jason’s smile flashed again. “Do you even know how to make a fist?”
Theo’s lip curled. “If I’m such a loser, why waste your time on me?”
“It was an easy way to keep tabs on your father.”
“My father?”
“He was always trying to track expenditures at the labs, monitoring the projects I wanted to approve. He thought it was about money. It’s never been about money. It’s about the future.”
The future. Jason’s words by the waterfall came back to her. I wanted to remake the world. The ferocity in his eyes when he’d said, I still do. A boy who’d lost his parents in a single terrible moment. A boy who longed to be remembered, who longed to see his gifts recognized. Diana could see him standing at the party at the museum, like a soldier surrounded by enemies. She’d thought she’d understood, but she hadn’t come close to grasping the scope of his vision. The tension she’d sensed in him as they’d drawn closer to Helen’s tomb hadn’t been fear for their safety. He’d just been afraid he would have to reveal his true goals before he was ready.
“You were never with us,” said Diana. The betrayal was worse for the shame it brought, the feeling that she should have known, anticipated the wound, stanched the bleeding. “You never wanted to stop this war.”
“We can’t stop war,” said Jason. “But we can change the way wars are waged.”
“War is war,” said Alia. “People will die.”
Jason rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and took a deep breath. He released Alia’s arm and put up his palms as if in surrender. “I know how this looks,” he said, gesturing to the artillery and the stone-faced men gathered around him. He gave a short laugh. “I know how I sound. But think for a minute. What if we weren’t fighting one another? What if the monsters from the stories were real and we had to band together to face them? What if war could bring us together instead of tearing us apart?”
“Monsters?” said Alia.
“Real enemies. Scylla, Charybdis, the Nemean Lion, Echidna, the mother of all grotesques.”
From inside the Humvee, Diana heard a slithering thump, as if something massive had shifted its weight.
And then Diana knew. The thing Tek had faced in the Oracle’s vision, the monster with the jackal’s head—it was one of Jason’s creations. She remembered the images on the laptop. How many of those creatures had he found? How many would he bring back?
“You don’t understand what you’ll unleash upon the world,” said Diana. “This won’t be like one of the stories you loved. It won’t be a heroic quest. I’ve seen the future you speak of, and it is not glorious. It’s a nightmare of loss.”
Jason waved her words away. “Whatever vision the Oracle showed you was only one version of the future, one possible outcome.”
“It’s not a risk worth taking!”