Drawing in a shallow breath, I let go of Dawson’s shoulder. The soldier waited until Dawson joined him. Nancy stepped aside, allowing them both to pass through. I didn’t like it, but he had one focus—Bethany. He didn’t look back, not once.
Just like Dee hadn’t looked back.
Thinking of my sister slammed weight down on my shoulders, and I let out another breath as I reached for Kat’s hand. She was already there, threading her fingers through mine.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Luc clapped his hands together as he pivoted on his heel. We headed down the tunnel, veering off to the right, when Dawson had gone in the other direction. The place reminded me of Area 51. Wide halls. A lot of closed doors. Strange antiseptic smell.
In some ways, it was better than being with the other Luxen. At least this was the enemy we knew and all that jazz.
Luc kneed open a set of double doors and caught one side with his hand. Nancy followed him in, and like he’d claimed, at one side of a long table was a Lunchables. Archer sat at the other side, his legs kicked up, arms folded behind his neck.
When the door shut behind us and only Nancy had come in, I knew something really strange was up. Before, the woman had traveled with an entourage.
“You’re okay,” Kat breathed out as she broke free, limping around the side of the table. “I’ve been so worried.”
Archer pulled his long legs off the table and rose. A second later, he enveloped Kat in a hug. “I told you to stay where you were. But oh no, you didn’t listen.” He looked over her head at me. “I totally told her to stay.”
Luc scowled. “Why didn’t I get a hug?”
He was ignored.
“Sorry.” Kat’s voice was muffled. “I had to, you know?”
“I get it. But damn, girl, it might not have worked out so well,” Archer replied. “Could’ve all gone to shit, and then who would take me to Olive Garden so I can try out the endless breadsticks?”
Kat laughed, but the sound was thick and choked.
I stood where I was, telling myself that the ugly heat invading my veins was indigestion and not jealousy. Totally not that, because Archer had nothing on me.
But did he need to hug her that long? And that hard? Come the hell on.
Archer’s purple gaze met mine over her shoulder. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of do.
My eyes narrowed. I still don’t like you.
Grinning, he pulled back, relinquishing his embrace, and then reached for a chair. “You look like you’re about to fall down. Why don’t you grab a seat?”
Kat did look worn out as she eased into one of the metal folding chairs. “What’s going on, guys? Why are you all here and with her?”
Archer glanced at me again as he sat. “Where’s Dee?”
The pressure increased as I moved to the seat beside Kat. As I sat, tension flickered across Archer’s face, gathering around his eyes. “She . . .” I shook my head, at a loss as to how to explain what was up with her.
His hands clenched together atop the table. “She’s not . . . she’s not gone, is she?”
“No,” Kat spoke up. “She’s not the same. She’s kind of batting for the other team right now.”
Archer opened his mouth, but as he sat back, he snapped it shut. I wasn’t sure how much they knew about everything, but I couldn’t get into that stuff until I knew what the hell was going on here.
I turned to Luc, arching a brow as I watched him stack slices of cheese and ham on a cracker. “What’s going on?”
“Nancy’s going to play nice,” he said, nudging the cheese onto the center.
She had sat next to Luc and looked like she wanted to start breaking things. Her gaze met mine. “Trust me, if I had a choice right now, you’d all be dead.”
Luc tsked softly. “Now, that isn’t very nice.”
I didn’t understand. As Luc chomped down on his snack, I leaned forward. “What’s stopping you from taking us out?”
“Let’s just say everyone has an Achilles’ heel, and I found hers.” Luc set about making another cracker. “It’s not pretty. Not something even I wanted to stoop to. But oh wells.”
That didn’t tell us jack.
Kat shifted closer. “How did you all end up together?”
“I made it back to the cabin. And after I told Luc what went down at the store, we considered hitting the road,” Archer explained. “But we didn’t get the chance before Daedalus showed up.”
Nancy’s lips formed a tight line.
“She thought she had us.” Luc plopped a mini Oreo on top of his ham-and-cheese cracker, and well, that was just sick. “But—”
“You said you were working on that,” Kat said, glancing at a silent Nancy. “A way to deal with Daedalus? You found something?”
“I’m a very well-connected person,” Luc said around a mouthful of junk. “When they kicked down our door and Nancy strode in as if she was the biggest, baddest thing this side of the country, I proved just how well connected I am.”
“How?” I watched Nancy.
“Like I said, everyone has an Achilles’ heel. Nancy’s is pretty obvious.” Luc stabbed a straw through his Capri Sun. “There’s only one thing that she cares about in this whole entire world, that she’d throw her family in front of a tank for—if she even has a family, because I’m pretty sure she was hatched from an egg—and it’s those baby Origins.”
“Baby Origins?” I repeated.
“Micah? Those?” Kat asked.
Luc nodded. “Yep.”
“Fun fact is that most of the hybrids and older Origins, the ones who left with her to retrieve you guys, aren’t really thrilled with the Daedalus treatment.” Archer smiled, but there was no humor. “The ones who were loyal, well . . .”
“Bastards,” Nancy hissed. “Do you know how long it took to cultivate something that was so loyal and so tested—?”
“Something?” Kat’s voice rose. “See, that’s why you’re so messed up. The hybrids and the Origins, they aren’t a something. They are living, breathing people.”
“You don’t understand.” Nancy turned a dark look on Kat. “You’ve never created anything.”
“And you have? Just because you forced two people to have children and then ripped them away doesn’t mean you created anything.” Anger tightened Kat’s lips. “You’re not their mother. You aren’t anything but a monster to them.”
Something akin to pain flickered across Nancy’s face.
“Either way, they mean a lot to her, and I know where they’re being kept,” Luc explained, finishing up his last cracker. “Tell them what the bigwigs wanted, Fancy Nancy.”
She gripped the edges of the table. “After the arrival of the Luxen, I was told to dismantle the Daedalus project.”
“Dismantle?” whispered Kat, and I already knew what she meant. I think Kat did, too, but didn’t want to believe it.
“I was told to clear out the program, erase everything,” Nancy explained.
“Oh my God,” Kat murmured.
I closed my eyes. Dismantle. Erase everything. In other words, she’d been given an order from someone higher up than her in the food chain to wipe out any proof of the program. “They wanted you to kill them?”
She exhaled noisily as she nodded. “Plausible deniability, they said. That the public couldn’t know that we had not only been aware of alien life-forms but had been working with them for decades.”
“Jesus.” I rubbed a hand across my brow. “Not just the kids, right? Every Luxen who was in there of their own free will? The ones who were allowing you to do tests? And even the ones who hadn’t assimilated to your standards?”
“Yes,” she responded.
“Of course, she had no problem wiping them out. They are expendable after all, at least according to her. But those Origins?” Luc shook his head slowly. “She couldn’t do it.”
My brows rose. Did the woman have a heart somewhere in her chest?
Luc laughed as he picked up on my thoughts. “No, Daemon, she doesn’t have a heart. Not in the way a normal person would grow attached to a classroom full of little freaky, and yet oddly adorable, kids. She didn’t want all of her work to go to waste, so she moved them out of Area 51, and she thought she had them hidden.”
“But she didn’t?” Kat tucked her hair behind her ear.
He shook his head. “As I said, I’m pretty damn well connected. I know where they are and I know how badly Nancy wants to return to them when this is all over, given that any of us are still alive, and cultivate the little freaks into big freaks.”