“There was an altercation with the authorities.”
“Right, don’t blame anyone or elaborate. Excellent. Let’s keep going—what happened during the alleged altercation?”
“My friends and I were traveling to Union Medical University Hospital when authorities confronted us by crashing their vehicles into us. There was physical engagement between the two groups causing injuries to both sides.”
“Excellent. You’re ready for this, Sloan. One more question: How was the physical engagement stopped?”
“Meg Winter told them to drop their weapons and stand down.”
“And did they?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think they would have done that?”
“She can be very insistent.”
“Has she ever insisted you do anything you didn’t want to do?”
“No.”
“Where is she now?”
“I do not know.”
“There,” Evan nodded. “You’ve got this. They can’t squeeze juice out of a rock. Just be that rock and don’t let them intimidate you.”
“Right,” Sloan nodded psyching herself up.
“Are you ready?”
“What time is it?”
The cold wind lifted her blond hair off her neck and tousled it around her shoulders. She looked at Evan’s profile with her wide-set gray eyes. “What time is it?” she repeated.
“It’s time to go,” he said and waited for her to hop off the bike first. He felt her legs shaking as she adjusted her feet to accomplish the act. Evan slipped off the cycle easily and set the alarm he’d rigged.
“You’re going to be just fine, okay? No matter what they show you, or say to you—whoever you see, you’re going to be okay, Sloan. Understand?”
Sloan nodded and swallowed the pool of nervous saliva gathered at the back of her otherwise dry mouth.
“I’ll meet you out here in exactly four hours.”
“Four hours,” She repeated.
“Here,” he handed her keys to the motorcycle, “you hang on to these.”
“Evan?” Sloan frowned.
“Listen, trust me. You hang on to the keys. I may need to use that as leverage to get you out of there. But listen, if I’m not out in four and a half hours, I want you to take the bike and get home.”
“Well how are you going to get home if I take the bike?”
“If they interview my butt for that long, they sure as heck can give me a lift home,” Evan reassured.
Sloan frowned but pocketed the keys anyway.
They walked side-by-side toward the four-story sand-colored building nestled in downtown Cairo. US agents would be waiting right inside the doors.
Chapter 80 US Special Agents Boyle and Garza versus Evan Winter
“Let’s start again.” The agent who had introduced himself as Special Agent Marcus Boyle sat with his arms crossed and stared, unflinching at the fourteen-year-old sitting across the cheap particleboard desk. A second agent had just walked into the room, pulled up a chair and flipped open her computer.
Evan rubbed his tired eyes. He’d been sitting in the same metal, foldout chair for the past two hours. He’d told Sloan to play it safe; he was playing a different ball game entirely. He had an agenda.
“I’ve already repeated the events twice,” Evan said, dropping his hands and staring back at the agent.
“Then you will have no problem repeating the tale you’ve already told,” the new agent quipped. “I’m agent Rosario Garza.” She slid a business card across the table—a courtesy Marcus Boyle neglected to demonstrate.
Agent Boyle ran his finger across the track pad of his laptop and squinted at the screen through the stream of smoke trailing into his eyes from the cigarette held tightly between his pursed lips.
“You say you aren’t human?”
“No, I’m not, though I was born human.” Evan sighed. “Where is Sloan?”
“She’s still working down the hall with my associates, but if I were you, I’d worry more about what’s happening right here in this room.”
“Why should I worry? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The agent took a deep drag on his smoke and crushed it into the half-full ashtray beside him.
“The beginning, Mr. Winter.” Agent Garza checked the video recording device to be sure it was still running.
Resigning himself to their methods, he began again. “Alik, Meg and I were babies at the Institute of Neurobiological Studies owned and operated by Dr. Kenneth Williams in Upland, California. Williams hired top scientists under the guise that he was searching for a cure for autism. We were forced to be a part of a secret project that tested the serum engineered and named “Infinite Serum” on children without the disorder. What he found was he’d developed a way to alter the DNA of a human—to enhance them. Make them more, or ‘meta’.”