“They pulled me for this project because of my background,” he says. “The old Envirotech project, not the refuge like I told you. They lied to me.”
His background—the Envirotech engineer. A thorough, honest, trustworthy engineer who had sailing experience, navigational experience, and wilderness skills, the lead developer on the most coveted project on the planet. What irony: in order to pull off a war against professionals who made too much money, they had to use a professional who made too much money.
“I . . .” I look around the room at every scratch, every scribble, every formula and diagram and coffee-splattered sticky note. He knows how to handle everything, always has—of course they wanted him. I wanted him, too.
“It was either join them or die, sweetheart. Really die.” He averts his eyes. “But I believed in the project, always have, and Zhornov knew it. When I found out what was truly going on, I had to choose. I could refuse, and let the science die with me—or I could do my part to develop it, on their dime, with their blessing, and work like hell to figure out how to lock them out of it.”
It is too much. Too much, all at once.
“It was the same for me,” Pellegrin says. I’m so wrapped up in Dad I’ve forgotten we are not alone.
“Pell and I were pulled in together, same time, same way,” Dad says. “He was the most cutting-edge scientist at MIT when the war broke out, and had been developing for Envirotech almost as long as I had.”
“They wanted me for my first doctoral thesis, which focused on psychobiological security systems,” Pellegrin adds, bubbling over with syllables. He looks so young, at least ten years younger than Dad. He must have been some sort of child prodigy. “I’d figured out how to make human skin cells react to nature in extremely specific ways, and how to individualize the psychological experiences attached to said reactions. I’m afraid my work here has proven quite the nuisance for you.”
What a brazen understatement, that he’d refer to his work as a mere nuisance. I’d been half kidding before, when I’d referred to the beetles and the vipers as security systems, but it sounds like that’s exactly what they were.
“So the snakes—the moss—”
Pellegrin cringes. “Yes, yes. Very sorry about all of that.”
I think of the way I was strapped to the dentist’s chair not five minutes ago. “And the—what do you even call it here? The human spy stuff.” This is uncomfortable. “Whatever you did to me. Did you create that, too?”
“Unfortunately, yes. When your life’s work is devoted to proving to the world just how many scientific barriers you’ve been able to break, people take it upon themselves to twist and push your research to unethical places.”
“And you let them.”
Finnley. Cass. Hope.
Me.
“The sensory modification wasn’t always meant to be used like this,” Pellegrin says. “I developed it for Envirotech initially, a foray into a new realm of silk tech exploration. The ink, the eyepieces—unlike the silk most people are familiar with, these do more than simply transmit digital data for us to observe. When combined with the smartserum, they have the capacity to interact with the human brain and nervous system on a variety of levels.”
The ink. The eyepieces.
How many cocoon-cradled moths have I boiled to stillness in the vat? How many times have I had to talk myself into it—they’ll be turned into medicine, they’ll save lives.
My silk has saved no one but the Wolves.
My silk has saved no one from the Wolves.
“So,” I say, reeling myself back in before I completely unravel, “Envirotech was planting spies?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he says. “But to my knowledge, the technology was primarily intended to be used on the Atlas habitat’s test subjects before the Wolves repurposed it.”
Test subjects. “Like . . . on rats?” Wishful thinking, I know.
One look confirms it: the test subjects were living, breathing, sentient. Very clearly not rats. At least Pellegrin looks sorry about it. “We needed to make sure humanity would actually be able to survive down there,” he says. “Subsea conditions were unpredictable.”
“And hostile,” my father adds. “We had to test oxygen levels, ensure there were no water or air leaks in any of our chambers, figure out the generator situation, make certain the entire development was structurally sound against creature collisions and ocean currents. Along with a hundred thousand other things.”
“Couldn’t you have sent test subjects down there after you’d checked those out, though?” My stomach turns at the thought of sending people into such conditions, sense-altered or not. Who knew blueprints, ink on paper, could be so dangerous?
“Someone had to build it first,” Dad says. “The sensory modification enables our construction team to work efficiently, without fearing for their lives.”
“And it allows them to have a peaceful end, without suffering, whenever things don’t go as planned,” Pellegrin says. “All for a greater good, of course.” Just like Lonan said.
Fire floods me. “A greater good? You’re telling me all of these ‘test subjects’ are on board with risking their lives for this? Seriously?” Pellegrin opens his mouth, but I keep talking. “And never mind what all of this was originally meant for—it’s doing tons of damage now. Hope nearly drowned me out there.”
“Our hands were tied when it came to Hope and Finnley—we tried to make the best of it,” Dad says, intervening between us. “We kept Hope with you for your own protection, so we could keep a close eye out—especially since you arrived here with a Wolf in your presence, a volatile one, and we didn’t know if you’d be in danger. But what happened in the water was not supposed to happen, Eden, trust me! It was an oversight, a side effect of the science—”
“Oversights like that are kind of a big deal.”
“Oversights like that are what happens when sociopaths push science past its natural limits,” Pellegrin says. “We don’t like it any more than you do.”
“So why do it, then?” Somewhere, rationally, I know it’s more complicated than this. The words come out anyway. “Pellegrin creates the drug—”
“Formula,” they both correct at once.
“Drug, formula, whatever,” I amend. “Pellegrin creates it, and what, Dad—you activate it? And where do your ‘test subjects’ come from? What, do you just pluck them out of the camps, one at a time so no one will notice?”
Shame mixed with guilt washes over his face. “The construction crew is largely composed of my old Envirotech team. We’ve only lost a handful of them to the project, good guys who did solid work. Every single one of them knew what they were getting into when we pulled them out to resume work on the project. I told Zhornov it was the only way I’d do it,” he says. “But the rest of all this—when I’m not on site at the habitat island, I’m stationed here at HQ—half of the Aries team.” He gestures to the wall of display screens. “Aries is all about sowing lookouts into the sectors so Wolfpack can keep a close eye on the movement around camp.”