Ulbrine stifled a frown, clearly not liking where the conversation was going. “Captain,” he said pleasantly, “could I trouble you for a coffee? Black. No sugar?”
Clearly reading between the lines, Pelhan looked between him and Trisk, hesitating only briefly before rising. “Of course,” he said, just as pleasantly and accommodating. “Trisk. Herbal tea for you?”
“Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” she said, her stomach tightening. Ulbrine was getting rid of him, and they all knew it. She’d crossed two thousand plague-torn miles to talk to Ulbrine, and she wasn’t sure anymore that she wanted this conversation.
Silent, Pelhan gathered his old coffee mugs and left, closing the door softly behind him.
Trisk’s lip curled, her outrage at the unfairness of the world rising thick. “Have you found Kal yet? He’s loose somewhere in Chicago.”
Ulbrine sighed. “You have no idea of the forces I’m trying to keep in balance.”
She uncrossed her legs and set both feet firmly on the floor. “You’re going to let him walk, aren’t you,” she said, making it more of a statement than a question. “Kal modified Daniel’s virus to infect my tomato. He’s the only one with the skill and motivation, and you’re going to let him walk. Unbelievable.”
Ulbrine looked up from the floor. “What would you say his motivation was?”
“To destroy my reputation,” Trisk said. “Steal my work, maybe. I’m sure the plague was an accident, the idiot not knowing what he was doing.”
Ulbrine ran a hand across his stubbled chin, his dexterous fingers rising to push into his temples as if he was getting a headache. He might have one, with that tattered aura of his. “Kal didn’t modify your tomato or Dr. Plank’s virus. We think he created a bridge between the two.”
“Semantics—” she said, taking a quick breath to continue when Ulbrine raised a tired hand. “He’s responsible. You can’t just slap him on the wrist and let him go as if he cheated on a spelling test,” she said, pointing at the hallway. “He intentionally bridged the two species without doing the research to find out what might happen, that with a carrier, the virus could pool itself until the toxin levels were high enough to kill. He’s a hack!”
“Trisk,” Ulbrine cajoled, but she stood, her body demanding she do something.
“You’re too late to cover this up,” she said, fingers tapping her arm in frustration. “They’re already figuring it out, and once the general populace realizes eating a tomato can kill you, it won’t be long before they put two and two together and get escaped virus.”
“Which is why the enclave decided that Dr. Plank will be responsible,” Ulbrine said.
Trisk felt her face go slack. “Daniel?” she said as her arms fell from about her middle, but the man didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “You can’t blame Daniel. It was Kal.”
“The virus originated in a human lab,” Ulbrine said, his voice coaxing but his eyes hard. “Even with that TV broadcast about your tomato, very few people, elves included, will know you’re an elf. Promoting that the problem is with the virus, not the tomato, won’t be hard.”
“But that’s not what happened,” she said, the feeling of betrayal hardening in her.
“What happened is what we say happened,” Ulbrine said tightly. “We cannot allow the elves to be the source of the plague.” He took a breath, his mood shifting. “We’re already on a knife’s edge, and if the rest of Inderland knew we were behind the plague—definitively knew—they would hound us into extinction.”
She could not believe this. Not trusting her legs to hold her, she sat down.
“Yes, Kal made an error,” Ulbrine said, his voice softer as he probably took her abrupt move to sit as compliance. “If it’s any consolation, he will not be allowed in a lab ever again.”
Her eyes flicked up to Ulbrine’s. “You fired him. That’s it? Told him to go to his room and spend his parents’ money? He’s killing an entire species. One we need. One we all need. And you want to blame it on humans and walk away?”
Ulbrine’s jaw clenched. “You will go along with this, Trisk, or you will be banned from working in a lab and someone else will develop your universal donor virus.”
Trisk’s lips parted. She couldn’t breathe as everything fell into place. “Give me a lab, Ulbrine,” she said, no longer able to grace him with the elven honorific he deserved. “I am more than willing to do my job, but I’m not going to let a sniveling, copycat, no-talent hack get the credit simply because he has a Y chromosome and all you men feel more comfortable with a blond god saving you than a dark elf from a small family of no note.”
“Trisk, it’s not like that,” Ulbrine said.