“Aries, I will not hesitate to shatter this door myself.” His tone isn’t so even now—it’s the rumbling before an earthquake. “Comply at once, for your own good.” He adds something in the same codespeak as before. The only word I understand is kingpin.
The word alone is enough to make my stomach roil. The kingpins are every jewel-colored viper combined; they are fang and venom and suffocation. They would devour their own Wolves if any ever turned against them.
Gray’s finger hovers over his ear device, ready to rip the world in half.
The green door finally slides open. It is so neat, so clean, so seamless.
I am led inside by the tight vise of Gray’s grip, which digs just above my elbow in spots still tender with the memory of snakebites. It would be easy to let the numbness take over, and not just on the outside. But I wear my pain like a badge of honor, a trophy of pride engraved with I am still alive.
The room is the cluttered mess of a maniac, an insomniac, a person with too much pressure and too little sleep. Screens and keyboards and strung-up twine and charts and maps and a grid of Post-its and full-to-the-brim corkboards and whiteboards covered in tiny black letters. And.
The handwriting. And.
The colored pencils. And.
The coffee mug I gave my father for his birthday ten years ago. It is at his lips.
SIXTY-FIVE
MY OLDEST MEMORY is not a nice one.
Two-year-olds, by nature, are fascinated with the bright and shiny, the colorful, and the bright, shiny, colorful pull of independence.
I stole my mother’s phone.
I stole it to play with it, to push all its flashy squares and pull at all its moving screens. I vaguely remember her asking if I’d seen it and I vaguely remember answering no. I need to message Daddy, she said. He’s late. I didn’t know its purpose wasn’t simply to entertain me—that my mother relied on it in emergencies.
That others relied on it in emergencies.
I thought the vibrations were part of a game for me to play, the red IGNORE button that popped up at the bottom the way to win it. The vibrations came, over and over again, every time I pushed the red button. And I pushed it a lot.
I pushed it until the police showed up at our door. My mother left our kitchen sink full of soapy water, full of the knives I knew I shouldn’t touch, to answer it.
“Stay out of the kitchen, Eden,” she called. She thought I was playing with crayons.
When she came back, two men with uniforms and badges at her side, she scooped me up in her arms. I remember burying my head in her neck so I wouldn’t have to see her face anymore: it was the first time I’d ever seen either of my parents cry, the first time I’d ever seen either of them afraid of anything. When the phone fell out of my hands and into the sink, she didn’t even scold me. Not that day. That day was for hugs and tears and hospital waiting rooms and animal crackers and a brand-new set of crayons.
“Never lie to me again, honey.” She handed me another animal cracker. To this day, I associate zebras with the importance of being honest. “Lying is one of the worst things you can do.”
My parents modeled this well. They never lied, not even about little things. They were meticulously exact in their speech.
And yet.
I’ve believed my father dead for nearly two years. I’ve been alone—I’ve suffered a war on my own—I’ve grieved everyone and everything I’ve ever had or known. I made a religion out of his field guide; I carried his blood and teeth like they could somehow bring him back. I wear till death do us part on the chain at my neck.
My field guide is wet and wilted. My vial is shattered and spilled. And it is the vows that have died, not my father. He drinks coffee from the mug I gave him when we were both honest, before we found ourselves deep in the heart of Wolfpack headquarters.
This is a betrayal on so many levels.
SIXTY-SIX
HIS WRIST IS dark with the classic Wolfpack tattoo.
It is not a hologram, but a black and bold display of his choice to join them.
His choice.
It’s possible he was forced into this, but it isn’t like he’s in chains—he had the opportunity to go back and get the mug I gave him, it looks like, along with a number of other things I recognize from home. This doesn’t exactly scream taken against his will.
All this time, he’s been developing the Atlas habitat for the Wolves. All this time, he’s let me believe he was dead.
Our eyes lock. “I kept your book.” My lips, jaw, voice, confidence: all of me trembles. Not out of fear, for once. “I’ve read this”—I pull the still-drying field guide from where it sits at my back—“like the Bible, every day and night and midnight since you died.” I fracture, I break. I spill through the cracks.
He sets his coffee mug on a messy stack of papers. His face shows none of the softness I remember from him, none of the remorse I expect.
What. Happened?
Gray’s grip tightens on my arm. As if it weren’t tight enough already. “What is your daughter doing here, Aries? What information did you leak?” He pries the field guide from me with his free hand, lays it open on the paper-covered island. Water marks bloom on the papers where water seeps from the book.
Aries is not my father’s name. It is William.
William wears glasses; Aries does not.
William is young and happy; Aries is not.
William has a daughter. Aries has an underground lair.
“Search it.” My father’s voice is unchanged at least, brimming with soft-spoken authority. “There is nothing conclusive there—the plans are secure, bloodlocked. And if there is any question, check the records. I fought to keep it, but Zhornov insisted it be sent back to my daughter as proof of my death.”
Zhornov. Of course. He knew Dad from Envirotech, knew exactly the guy he’d need to resurrect the project and see it through. No wonder they named him fifth kingpin: he pulled off the greatest heist in history, with the most exclusive payoff.
Gray gives a little grunt, flips another page. It is still so saturated with water, it tears as he turns it. And I am still so saturated with love for the book—for my father, despite all the things I see and cannot understand—that I tear, too.
Whatever information Gray thinks Dad put in the field guide doesn’t matter anyway. The blue ink is so muddled now, it’s nearly impossible to read. While the printed text and scattered colored pencil markings are undisturbed, the legibility of any given page corresponds directly to how much ink Dad put on it. This particular page, with the Morse code, is completely useless—most will be, I suspect. I can think of a few pages that will be easier to read, but only a few.
Gray doesn’t have the patience to seek them out.
“Explain.” His voice is a low rumble. “Explain how your daughter ends up with the captain and inside HQ. Explain, or your benefits will expire.”