Gus sat at what looked like a massive boardroom table, elbows on the polished cherry-wood surface, head in his hands. Two men stood nearby, pretending they weren’t watching over him.
I didn’t know what to do, what to say, yet I found myself walking all the way to his side and dropping to my knees.
He looked over to me, met my eyes. I didn’t turn away. I didn’t blink. We just looked at each other. And I waited.
Finally a tear slipped down his cheek and he heaved in a shuddering breath. ‘I pressed the button. I opened the doors.’
I shook my head, grabbing his shoulders and turning him square to me so he couldn’t look away. ‘On my order,’ I said unwaveringly. ‘It was on my order, Gus. This isn’t on you.’
He stared at me for another minute, and though I wanted to curl into a ball and scream and cry, I didn’t. I stayed there on my knees, doing all I could to give him whatever strength I had left, even if that strength would go into hating me.
Finally he blinked and looked around. ‘You get a load of this?’ he murmured.
I followed his gaze. ‘Pretty out there. Did you … Did she ever tell you about it?’
He shook his head. ‘We never talked about this stuff. Never wanted to cross into the wrong territory with one another.’ His voice broke on every second word, and then his shoulders slumped towards me so fast, I barely caught him as he gripped me tight. ‘What have we done, Mags?’
I held him, biting down on the inside of my cheek to try to control myself. ‘We stuffed up,’ I said into his ear.
He trembled even as he gripped me harder.
‘But we’re not the only ones,’ I added softly so only he could hear. ‘All I know for sure is we’re not free to leave and, until we know more, we stick together. Have you still got those gifts I gave you earlier?’
When he nodded, I let out a little breath. ‘I don’t know what to do, or where to go, but we’ll figure it out. I promise you. In the meantime, if you get worried, don’t hesitate to use them.’
Gus glanced around the room filled with every high-tech gizmo you could imagine. He nodded again, sniffing as he sat up, as if he’d suddenly grasped onto a new purpose. ‘I’ve got your back, you know that.’
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me right now.’
Gus smiled sadly. ‘You, me and hate feels a lot like home, Mags.’
I pressed my lips together, barely fighting back the emotion.
Gus glanced towards the ceiling. ‘They’ve taken him upstairs to the infirmary. They wouldn’t let me stay with him.’
I stood, squeezing his hand one last time, and turned to see Grace silently waiting to the side. ‘Take me to Quentin,’ I said to her.
‘I don’t think that’s –’
I stepped right up into her space, my hand around her neck before she’d even flinched. I pressed my thumb into her oesophagus. ‘Take me to Quentin now or you are about to have a new way to eat.’
She held up her hands in defeat. ‘I’ll take you,’ she wheezed.
I nodded, letting go of her instantly. That was easy enough.
She half smiled as she twisted her head from side to side. ‘You do realise there are over a hundred armed troops on site right now? If I screamed, there would be more weapons than you could imagine pointed in your direction in a heartbeat.’
I shrugged. ‘Which way?’
She sighed, then made her decision. ‘Over here.’
I followed Grace up the spiral staircase to the next floor. ‘This place is huge,’ I remarked.
She led us down a series of corridors. ‘We’ve been here about two years now,’ she explained. ‘But most of it was built about a decade ago.’
‘When microchipping first started.’
She looked at me quickly then away, and I could tell she hadn’t meant to reveal so much.
She came to a door and used her M-Band to activate the lock. She held the door open. ‘You can wait in here. They’ve taken him somewhere else to clean him up, but he should be back anytime now.’
I walked into the room that contained nothing but a table and two chairs and turned back to Grace. ‘I said take me to him, not take me to a waiting room.’
Grace smiled. ‘You had your thumb jammed in my throat, Maggie. Did you expect me to argue specifics? And besides, there is someone who wants to speak with you first.’ With that, her smile widened and she stepped back out into the corridor, pulling the door closed and locking me in.
I furrowed my brow. I had totally underestimated her.
I moved over to the small steel table and sat in the chair facing the door. I was trapped and frankly it was taking all of my energy not to fly into some kind of hysterical fit. Instead, I stared at the light, grateful for that at least, and I waited.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
Half an hour.
Eventually weariness won out and I rested my head on my arms on the table. I didn’t even hear the door open. In fact, it wasn’t until the chair across from me screeched along the floor that I looked up.
It was a definite time-stood-still moment.
‘Hello, Maggie.’
I stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. It probably would have been a comical look. That is, if the situation wasn’t so mindboggling and not at all funny.
‘Holy shit,’ I whispered.
Eliza Mercer nodded as she took a seat. ‘I’d say that’s a fair response.’
‘Holy shit,’ I repeated.
‘Yes. I heard you the first time.’ She raised her eyebrows, looking at me patiently. Maternally.
This was it. It was over. M-Corp had won.
‘M-Corp are Preference Evolution,’ I said, suddenly wondering why it had never occurred to me.
Eliza sat there in her black cargo pants and fitted long-sleeved top. Her hair was pulled off her face in a ponytail and she wore almost no makeup. She looked younger. She looked strong.
I blew out a breath. ‘I should’ve known. M-Corp love playing both sides. Controlling the lust-enhancer market … Hell, the way M-Corp has controlled me should’ve been enough to clue me in.’
‘I’m afraid, in this circumstance, it is not M-Corp that has been playing both sides. Just me.’ She watched me carefully.
I half laughed, noting that the sound came across as slightly hysterical. ‘Jesus, I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and right now you must all be laughing at me. But if you think I’m going to fall for that …’ I shook my head.
Eliza leaned forwards. ‘I was once CIA. I was recruited out of school and trained from the age of eighteen. I was like you. Fast. Strong. Quick-witted. And determined to come out on top.’
I swallowed, listening to her words.
‘I travelled the world, working undercover. I was a valuable asset. But when I came back to America in between jobs I met a man. He was gorgeous,’ she explained, smiling at the memory. ‘And charismatic. He didn’t know what I did for a living; he thought I was merely a personal assistant to a government department head. I fell in love. We fell in love. After a year, he asked me to marry him. I said yes and quit my job. We married and had a family, and I never told him the truth.’
‘Why?’ I asked, still refusing to believe a word she said.
She shrugged. ‘I told myself it was to protect them. Perhaps it was to protect me. Or maybe it was intuition. Whatever it was, I later watched his empire grow and grow, and I wasn’t the only one. The year M-Chips were released into the general population, the government could sense its hold on the nation becoming increasingly tenuous. The Mercer Corporation had become so powerful, other countries were turning to it for funding support instead of the government, and M-Corp were only increasing in size. It became apparent that to stand against the corporation would be detrimental, so they did what they could. They set up a sleeper group, one that would appear to have no associations with any government body. This group was given the power and authority to make the ultimate call.’
‘W
hat call?’
‘That, if and when the Mercer Corporation succeeded in taking human life into their own hands, they would be stopped, using any means necessary. It was a covert department. One that needed to be headed by someone capable of large-scale, clandestine operations and who had no recent history with the government. Someone who had displayed only patriotic behaviour in the past. And, most importantly, someone who was –’
‘On the inside,’ I finished for her.
She nodded, pleased with my deduction. ‘Preference Evolution is not part of M-Corp, Maggie. Preference Evolution is the United States of America.’
I tried to ignore what felt like a tonne of bricks landing on my chest. But all of a sudden I was back at the masquerade ball, watching Eliza standing on the balcony talking to the mystery man. The man who later revealed himself to the room. ‘You were talking to the President,’ I whispered.
She sighed. ‘A rare opportunity to deliver some hard news, I’m afraid. I had hoped to speak with you and Quentin that night, but you were being watched too closely and we weren’t expecting you to lose our tail so efficiently once outside.’
‘You’re in charge.’ It wasn’t a question, but she answered.
‘I’m in charge.’
‘What about the rest of the family?’ I asked cautiously.
Something in Eliza’s eyes changed. ‘While our love for one another endures against hope, I lost Garrett to greed a long time ago. As a result, he lost my loyalty in favour of my first love, my country. I thought that by staying in the marriage I would be able to influence the boys. I couldn’t tell them the truth without endangering them too much, but I’d hoped they would instinctively show opposition when they discovered the truth about M-Corp’s activities.’ She looked away, her jaw setting. ‘Zachery was the first to embrace the company. When he found out about the underground hubs, he simply turned a blind eye and even … began to relish the darker side of the business. He has chosen a path I could not save him from, and the things that he’s done …’
Were illegal and most likely brutal. And we both knew it. If her story was true, Eliza was not just spying on her husband anymore, but also her own children.
‘Sebastian?’
She shook her head. ‘Like Quentin, he had always been so moral. I thought at first he might reject the lures, but … he has only become more immersed in the company over the past year. I feared Quentin would go the same way, that there was little chance he’d find the strength to turn away from the temptations. But then you set him up.’ She blew out a breath and leaned back. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I’d never thought of doing such a thing and, even if I had, I couldn’t have brought the extra dynamic you delivered. I worried it had gone too far, but then I saw you at the Mercer Ball,’ she rolled her eyes, ‘bleeding through your dress for all to see. Yet it was then that I realised; just as I was watching him fall apart, I was also seeing him fall in love.’
My breath caught. ‘So you always knew who I was?’ It was only half a question. It was pretty obvious what the answer was.
‘When Quentin first came home and said he rated well with you, Garrett was immediately suspicious you were a gold-digger.’
I rolled my eyes. Typical.
‘But, yes, I’ve known who you were for at least six months. I even knew who you were looking for, though it took me a while to figure it out. Your mother had done a surprisingly good job of distancing you all from your father. And for his part, your father never mentioned anything about the family he’d left behind, so we’d never thought to worry. Originally I assumed you were searching for a regular neg.’
As I let the pieces fall into place, Eliza went on. ‘Part of what I do for M-Corp, and in particular for Garrett, is use our external resources to run background checks on people, so when you first caught his attention it didn’t seem unusual that I be the one to look into your history. I delayed telling Garrett who you were for as long as I could, but eventually …’ She held her hands out as if to say, Sorry I hung you out to dry, but that’s life.
And I suppose she was right. I’d done the same thing myself more times than I cared to admit.
‘Why bother delaying?’ I asked.
Her lips twitched. ‘I wanted to see how things panned out. We’ve known about you for a while, but not the details, and no one had been able to get close enough to get all of the information – something you proved by setting up Quentin with a disruption drug none of us knew was in your possession. We were also aware you had intel. I guess I figured the time would come when we would talk, possibly join forces, and then … I saw how Quentin looked at you and I began to hope I wasn’t entirely alone in my family.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘But eventually you told Garrett the truth about me?’
She nodded. ‘The time came when it was impossible to conceal it without threatening my cover.’
I digested this for a moment before looking back at Eliza. ‘And then you let us go back down there. You let me be captured and tortured so you could … oh yeah, see how things panned out.’
Eliza leaned back in response to the venom in my voice. ‘Actually we were blindsided. We didn’t even know you and Quin had gone into the tunnels that day. All of our manpower had been caught up dealing with a large group of black-market thieves led by your friend, Travis. On that same day they attacked over a dozen of the lust-enhancer labs, and we were scrambling to work out what was happening and how the hell they’d managed to pull it off. For me, it was even harder, as my responsibilities to Garrett and the company kept me equally busy.’
Oh. ‘I sold Travis the lab locations and delivery documents in return for the entry codes and map to the core.’
‘We know that now, but at the time we only found out because of an anonymous tip, which we think came from M-Corp themselves. The tip was a ploy to distract us while they were taking care of you and Quentin.’
I rapped my fingernails on the table. ‘If they felt the need to offer a distration, does that mean they’re onto you?’
She shook her head. ‘Not me. But they’re possibly suspicious of Preference Evolution and who we really are. It may have been a test to see if we mobilised.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s one of the reasons we don’t have much more time before we make our move.’ She softened her features and relaxed her shoulders. ‘Maggie, where I have failed with my other sons, you succeeded with Quentin, and for that I will always be in your debt. The love he feels for you has given him the strength to fight for what is right. But now I must ask, Maggie, what of your love for my son? Do you love him enough to do what is right as well?’
Call me gullible, but I couldn’t help believing her story. Eliza Mercer was the perfect mole. And how she’d done what she’d done for the past however many years, I’ll never know. She clearly still loved Garrett – her consistent and public ratings with him proved it. And yet, here she was, preparing to take him down. She’d had no choice but to stand back and watch her sons be consumed by the very thing she was fighting against. And she hadn’t been able to say a thing to them.
‘What do you want?’
‘A few things. Your intel to start. Your word you will stay here until further notice and not attempt to leave the building. Your maps of the tunnels, and most importantly …’ She straightened. ‘Most importantly, I need to know you won’t tell my son that I’m here or what role I play.’
‘Why?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong. It’s not because I don’t trust him. It’s that if he’s caught, he’ll try to protect me. Or if I’m caught, he’ll try to save me. Both ways will end with him dead. He can’t know. Not until this is over. And I need your word before I let you go to him that you will keep this from him.’
‘Why reveal yourself to me, then?’
She smiled. ‘Would you have let it drop? Not knowing who was in charge? Would you have done what people here asked of you without knowing for sure what side you were playing on?’
I put my chin up. ‘And you think you’ve convinced me you aren’t just part of some elaborate M-Corp scheme?’
‘Need more convincing?’ she challenged, standing up and going to the door. She pulled it open before I could respond.
‘Holy shit,’ I said, standing too.
‘She says that quite often,’ Eliza said.
Master Rua walked into the room, keeping a cautious eye on me. I suspected he was waiting for an attack of some sort. Instead I shocked him by slumping back into my chair, a tear rolling down my cheek.
‘I trusted you.’ And now I knew exactly how the Pre-Evo’s had managed to keep such good tabs on me.
He nodded. ‘And my lies were not as terrible as you are thinking. I am not one of them, merely an ally. I trained you to be a fighter so you would survive. I trained you, Maggie, just like I trained Eliza many years ago. Never have I seen two more alike.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He pressed his hands together. ‘You were not ready to hear. Now you are.’
I looked between Master Rua and Eliza, and I knew, somewhere deep in my gut, they were telling me the truth.
‘I want to let you go to Quentin, Maggie,’ Eliza said. ‘He’s worried and asking after you. But I need your word.’
‘You’re asking me to lie to him. After everything we’ve been through and all I’ve done to him, you’re asking me to betray him again?’
She nodded. ‘I wish there was another way to keep him safe. But this is it, and it’s in your hands.’
I swallowed over the lump in my throat. Looking at Eliza, I could see that she would do whatever it took. She believed there was no other way. I had personal experience delivering a very similar look to people so I knew we had hit her no-negotiation point.
Slowly I nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Thank you,’ she said on an exhale, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d just signed my death warrant.
Twenty-three
Quentin was in what looked like a small clinic. He was lying shirtless on a single bed, his upper arm wrapped in bandages. His eyes were closed when I walked in, but as I approached, they flickered open.