At the southernmost edge of Brockton Bay, the tenements, megabuilidings and Richard Anders’ immense infrastructure projects fell in a rapid descent back to ground level, giving way to an expanse of old towns that had kept at least some of their original identity even if their municipalities had long since been subsumed by the sprawl.
It was like stepping through time to pre-history, when the skyscraper was king and American cities were defined by tiny clusters of towers surrounded by endless fields of suburban homes spreading out to fill a seemingly infinite land. When everyone had their lawn and their dog, and drove their cars down wide streets lined with trees.
The modern sprawls of the UCAS built upwards, rather than out. They piled like anthills atop the carcasses of those old cities, gutted by the VITAS pandemic then swollen by the exodus of half the country after the territorial losses in the Ghost Dance War. They were urban jungles of heaped infrastructure; people piled upon people, sheltering against the storms of an awakened world until the sprawl became a wholly insular world in its own right; one that could only ever see itself. If you lived in a sprawl, the sprawl was all you knew.
Standing in the back garden of a five bedroom suburban home, I started up at a sky that was so large it felt oppressive, swallowing down my unease at its vast emptiness. It was nothing like the welcoming void of the matrix, that vast field of potential energy waiting to be cut through by transmissions. It was different to the ocean, too, where there was a clear barrier between the city and the endless expanse of blue over blue, like looking out of a window. Here I was inland, among metahuman society, but the world simply ended above the second floor.
It didn’t help that the yard faced south. Out of the rooms on the northern side – from the top floor, at least – I could still see the distant skyline of the city, blurred by miles into an artificial mound of concrete and steel rising as high as the hills around it. But to the south there was just more suburbia broken by the occasional unimpressive tower.
The safehouse was a short-term rental marketed to wealthy tourists with families, according to its listing in the matrix. The property consisted of a five bedroom house with white-painted walls and a lot of floor to ceiling glass on the ground floor, with an expansive lawn out the front and back and a heated pool tucked up against the side of the house. Its attraction to Calvert had almost definitely come from the nine foot privacy fence that surrounded the property, complete with electric wire running along the top and an alarm system that was linked into a pair of home defence drones, in case anyone tried to break in.
After Bitch and Regent had safely delivered Kayden and her daughter, Calvert got in touch again asking if we would be willing to play bodyguard until he could arrange them transport out of the country, offering us a generous daily rate that was too tempting to turn down.
So we’d set up shop in suburbia, as Tattletale and Regent spent a day daubing magical runes on the perimeter fence to ward off any attempt to locate our two guests through blood samples, while Rachel and I worked on subverting the security system and turning the traffic management cameras on nearby intersections into a wider early warning system. There was now a sprite logging every vehicle in the neighbourhood that wasn’t registered to any local addresses, and it would report to me if it detected any that weren’t registered to major utility or delivery companies.
The lawn itself had been freshly trimmed down before we arrived, no doubt as part of the whole package of cleaning and maintenance the building went through between tenants. I stepped off the patio and onto the green field, breathing in the indescribable smell of it as I knelt down and brushed my organic hand through the fine strands of vegetation. It wouldn’t be wholly natural, I knew. It was probably too green; the product of corporate bioengineering working to produce the perfect lawn for its customers. Thinking about it, I was surprised it needed mowing at all, but I supposed that was part of the authentic experience.
It wasn’t my world, I knew that much. We’d passed through less prosperous suburbs on our way down; neighbourhoods with cracked roads, derelict buildings and more trailers than homes, where the increased costs of travelling to work in the sprawl had left communities sliding into decline. Overall, however, this was the domain of the well-paid experts, portfolio holders and anyone rich whose work could be conducted from a home office. I knew I’d draw plenty of stares if I left the screened safety of the privacy fence.
In truth my discomfort didn’t just come from the place, though that didn’t help, but the inactivity. Once more I’d been reduced to waiting around in case something happened, sidelined from whatever machinations Calvert was up to. Instead, I was on babysitting duty.
At least it wasn’t literal. Aster freaked out whenever she was in the same room as me and I often heard the sound of scampering feet as she caught sight of me and ran from the great grey monster with her scary horns. In all honesty, the feeling was mutual. It was stupidly petty, but I hated what that kid represented. I hated all the prejudices she’d picked up from her mother, and how she’d only pick up more from here unless Tattletale was right and Calvert was going to use Evo’s courts to steal her away from Kayden.
Part of me also hated that a four year old was somehow a prized resource; a tool to advance the ambitions of both her mother and a megacorporate climber. It didn’t feel right knowing that no matter what happened, she was going to grow up being someone else’s pawn.
“What’s crawled up your ass?” Aisha asked as she stepped through the patio door, wearing only a sports bra and a pair of shorts.
“Suburbia, I guess.”
“You jealous of how the other half live?” She rested one hand on her hip, looking up at me with a quizzical expression. “Don’t be. Those soulless wageslaves don’t know what they’re missing. There’s not a gram of life in a McMansion.”
“You sure?” I asked, smirking. “You certainly looked happy when you were making the fridge spit ice for five minutes straight.”
“I had a muscle I needed to cool down. It takes effort to look this dangerous, you know? Besides, taking this stuff is fine. It’s what it’s for; instant gratification, or whatever. So stick around for a while, enjoy the pool, douse the place in gasoline and toss a match through the door on the way out.”
As if to punctuate her point, she sprinted at full tilt towards the pool, rolling into a cartwheel at the last second before flipping back over the water and curling herself into a ball to make the biggest splash. About five seconds after impact she broke the surface with a giddy cry and started to tread water.
It was interesting to watch; I don’t think she knew how to swim before jumping in, but she was very quickly figuring out which movements were the most efficient and which were pointless paddling. It was the sort of rapid adaptation and perfect understanding of their own physicality that only an Adept was capable of, and pretty soon she was sprinting up and down with a picture-perfect front crawl.
I left her to it, leaving the open sky behind in favour of the only slightly less disconcerting climate-controlled house, where all the rooms were too big even for a troll and each had been furnished with the typical impermanence of any short term rental space; people came to this place and left a week later, but nobody lived in it.
I found Brian in the living room, watching a boxing match on the trideo set. He was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a tight black t-shirt, with a can of soda on the coffee table. If it wasn’t for the heavy pistol in his shoulder holster, it’d be an almost domestic image. That impression was only heightened when he caught sight of me and patted the couch next to him.
I sunk down into the cushions, fidgeting a little as I leant against his side and tried to follow the match even though I didn’t understand the first thing about boxing. Brian was still as serious as ever, having set up a watch rota to make sure at least one of us was awake and manning the watch at all hours of the day and night, but when he wasn’t on shift he seemed to have taken this assignment as a welcome opportunity to relax.
I tried to support him in that – more than any of us, he deserved some time to de-stress – but I found it hard to take my mind off things. We were sleeping together in one of the spare rooms, in a massive double bed that was still too short for my legs, but we’d only slept together on the first of our three nights here, and I think that was mostly for the novelty of it.
“Still antsy?” he asked, not without warmth.
“Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I guess.”
“No, you’re always like this,” he said, outright smiling now. “As soon as one job ends you start thinking about the next one.”
“Sure?” I admitted. “It’s stupid, but I feel like if I stop moving then I’ll just stop. I spent too long lost in my head and I don’t want to slide back into that.”
“You know this is different, right?”
“I know.”
I’m not alone anymore, for one.
So I tried. I left the room, grabbed my own soda from the fridge, and returned. I still had no idea what I was watching – except that it involved two buff guys beating the shit out of each other – but instead of wallowing in ignorance or looking the answers up online I started asking Brian about what exactly was going on beyond the obvious. It wasn’t enough to stop my mind from wandering, but at least I was making a conscious effort to bring it back to the present.
Unfortunately – or perhaps not – we couldn’t stay ‘off duty’ forever. Kayden had an appointment to keep, which meant I cleared out a space in the middle of the home office and set up a trid projector on the desk, tuning it into a secure channel I’d created as I tested the connection to the other end. I’d pushed the office chair against the wall for Kayden, rather liking the way it would leave her stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“You good?” Lisa asked. She was dressed for the neighbourhood, in a knee-length dress and stockings, and her and Alec had been acting as our designated shoppers for the duration of our stay.
“Should be,” I said. “The connection is solid. Just waiting for the players to take their seats.”
“So do you want to listen in from here or another room?” Lisa flashed me a grin.
“From here.” I leaned to the side, peering out into the corridor behind Lisa. “Maybe Calvert will think I have to be here to work the link.”
“I doubt it. You hacked him yet?”
I blanched.
“That’s a… complicated question.”
“Ooh.” Lisa leaned in close, looking rather like a cat that had cornered a wounded bird. “What have you been working on?”
A shard of a dead god, I thought, but didn’t say. After a moment, Lisa simply tapped me on the nose and gave me a wry look.
“Alright fine, you can keep that secret. For now.”
Alec brought Kayden down a couple of minutes later. She’d claimed the master bedroom for herself, of course, as well as a secondary living room on the ground floor, and she’d spent most of her time in the safehouse alone with Aster. I think she was trying to explain some concepts that were very hard for a four year old to get, and I know that she’d spent a lot of her first day just trying to calm down her terrified daughter.
Once Alec departed, the first words Kayden said to me were “you aren’t leaving?”
She’d disliked me from the start simply because of what I was. She felt similarly about all our nonhuman teammates, of course – plus Rachel, but I suspected that was because she looked like Chosen – but that dislike had catalysed into hatred once she realised I was the one who’d hacked her comm. As for Alec, she seemed to have pinned him as the sensible one, which was just really funny to think about.
“We’re staying,” I said, nodding to Lisa. “We’ve come too far not to see this through.”
“I’m surprised Calvert indulges the curiosity of hired guns.”
“He respects results,” I said, gesturing to her chair. “We deliver them.”
“It’s time,” Lisa said, as Kayden rolled her eyes and took her seat.
I opened the connection to audio and visual, the holographic projector blinking into life as it sent out a random pattern of bright lines of light before going dark. Once it had mapped out the available floor space and checked for obstructions, the lights returned as a holographic image of our client appeared in the centre of the room.
I savoured the full-body shiver that passed over Kayden as the naga was revealed in all his immense bulk, his body coiled up on top of itself in his makeshift command and control centre back in the city’s CrashCart hospital. He, in turn, seemed to be drinking in the sight of Kayden, his serpentine eyes coldly judging her as his tongue flicked out in what I presumed was a deliberate attempt to unsettle her further, rather than a biological habit. He was like a cat playing with its food.
“Mrs Anders,” he began, his tone smooth but a little more sibilant than usual, “or would you prefer Ms Russel, now that you and your husband are separated?”
“I’ll keep the ‘Anders’,” Kayden retorted, adapting annoyingly well to the giant snake in the room. “There’s power in names.”
“On that we agree. They can be a useful reminder, whether for ourselves or for others.”
“Besides,” Kayden said, her eyes narrowing. “I’ll be a widow, not a divorcee. I assume that’s why you set this up? To talk about how you’re going to bury my husband?”
Calvert opened his mouth slightly in what I realised was his approximation of a smile.
“I would prefer not to bury him myself. I am engineering circumstances to ensure that others will perform the deed on my behalf. Specifically, I intend to turn this nation’s law enforcement on him. Through my sources in America As One, I have already learned much of Medhall’s role in the New Revolution.”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
It was my turn to shiver, while Lisa’s eyes widened in naked hunger. I had very few memories of the New Revolution. It had happened six years ago, only a day after Crash 2.0, when I first touched the resonance and found the experience almost too much to bear. I was nearly insensate, struggling against headaches in my bedroom but still conscious enough to hear my parents worrying just the other side of the door. Dad had taken his gun out of the safe and kept trying to reach other dockworkers through a comm network that didn’t work anymore, while mom kept shouting back from the balcony to report what she could see on the streets below.
Kayden actually smiled when she heard those two words from the serpent’s mouth.
“You need me to provide you with the silver bullet. To tie Max to that night in a way that can’t be avoided.”
“You’ll never have to testify in a trial, if that concerns you,” Calvert said. “Mr Anders will never see the inside of a courtroom.”
Kayden fell silent for a moment. It was far too late for her to still be thinking this over, but I supposed it was still a difficult step to take, even if you were a self-interested bigot.
“Fine. I’ll tell you what I know and what I’ve picked up. Max didn’t tell me everything, of course, but his people all like me and they all like to talk to me. Liked, I suppose.”
She paused, turning to me.
“Could I have a glass of water?”
I scowled, sending off a ping.
“Bitch is bringing one now.”
“Whatever,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “If you want to understand Max and the New Revolution, you have to look back to his father, Richard Anders. He was one of its architects, after all.”
Lisa was struggling not to smile now and her hand had shot up to her pendant. For a follower of the spirit of secrets, this had to be an almost religious moment for her, but I could taste ash in my mouth.
“The Anders family inherited a legacy going back to the thirties, when Max’s father first leant his support to a group called Alamos Twenty-Thousand. This was before his own father died, but he still did what he could to provide them with resources.”
I’d heard the name. It would have been impossible not to. They were one of the oldest human supremacist terror groups in the world, beginning their life with the napalm bombing of a church in thirty-six before bottling the lightning that attack generated to bomb the Sears Tower in thirty-nine, ultimately killing twenty-six thousand in a false flag attack aimed at sparking reprisals against metahumans. They’d been found out, but only after Chicago had corralled its non-human population into ghettoes. More recently, the UCAS government had named Alamos 20k as the ultimate backers of the New Revolution.
“He was a true patriot, who idolised the old USA and believed that everything could only be put right when it was restored as the world’s foremost superpower. It’s a common enough belief in our circles; people look back to a time before the genome started to break and decide to idolise everything else about that time as well.”
Kayden face shifted a little, her mouth curling up into a vaguely fond smile. I wondered which of her own immediate relatives had been that sort of patriot, as well as how she could hold fondness for anyone while talking about the ‘broken genome’ with a straight face.
“Once he inherited Medhall, he went from useful to vital. Alamos wasn’t a unified organisation, it was more like five. It was led by a Central Executive of five men, each with his own largely separate faction, spheres of influence and some mutually contradictory ideas of what they should be working towards. Richard did some business for all of them, but he was part of the faction behind the New Revolution. For every dollar of profit Medhall earned, he sent a cent to the cause.”
That was when Bitch entered the room, a glass of water in her hand. Kayden took the glass, sipping at the water and leaning back in her seat.
“And then, in sixty-two, he died and left his life’s work to his children. Max’s control of Medhall was ironclad, thanks to his father’s will, but his part of the Revolution was a little less clear-cut. It was a loose collection of different nationalist or human supremacist cells across New England, most of them completely unaware that they’d all been created for the same purpose. Max wasn’t really interested in them, but his sister was.”
Kayden gave Calvert a look then. A pointed, knowing glare that seemed to serve to goad him, rather than coming from any real malice.
“It’s interesting how Diane died right as you kicked off your gang war,” she remarked, casually. “Max looked into it, of course, but the private detectives he hired couldn’t find any evidence it wasn’t the overdose it appeared to be – and besides, he had bigger issues on his plate.”
I felt like kicking myself. I’d seen that story on the news when I was recovering in the hospital, then I’d relearned the information once I’d established my tap on their comms and I started to gather all the data I could find about that family. I should have realised the timing was too weird to be a coincidence.
Calvert, of course, didn’t say anything. He just silently waited for Kayden to continue.
“I always felt sorry for Diana. She was so desperate for her father’s respect that she’d convinced herself she had it, but she couldn’t see that the old fossil would never be able to leave his legacy in a woman’s hands. He might have loved her, but he never expected anything of her.”
Kayden set the glass aside and leant forwards in her seat, resting her elbows on the armrest and lacing her fingers together.
“So when Diana was left a trust fund while her younger brother was given everything, she took it as a sign that her father wanted her to continue his real work. She started making contact with the gangs and the policlubs and the Central Executive, presenting herself as the inheritor of Richard’s legacy. Two years later and Richard Anders’ empire had almost split in two.”
“Then, everything exploded,” she said, parting her hands to emphasise the word. “The Matrix goes down worldwide, but the New Revolution were all using outdated tech for secrecy. The word came down through telephone wires, shortwave radios and bike couriers. The revolution was on, ahead of schedule. All across the continent, cells sprang into action. Assassins hit both governments, the natives and the elves, while militias and army units moved to seize control of key targets.”
She smiled at the memory.
“Diana was magnificent. I saw her on her way out, dressed in full tactical gear and carrying herself like a conquering general. She was a true believer, absolutely convinced in her victory before she’d even begun. The last words she ever said to me were ‘it will be beautiful.’ But she hadn’t understood Max.”
The smile turned brittle, before Kayden seemed to shrink in on herself a little. For the first time, she looked like she was confessing something.
“None of us did. Nobody ever does. It took me far too long to realise that Max is loyal to no cause other than his name. It’s all about the dynasty for him. All about keeping the Anders name respected and prosperous. I thought I was watching an amicable divorce between the Revolution and the company, but Max had been undermining Diana from within for two years.”
“He’d been talking to Alamos the whole time, using his father’s phonebook to go over and under her head. He talked to his father’s patron in the Central Executive, Senator Jonathan Braddock, as well as a few other people in the organisation. He talked down to the troops on the ground, sounding out allegiances and figuring out what each of them needed. Always, he offered a friendly ear and meaningful aid.”
“I mischaracterised him,” Calvert remarked – the first words he’d spoken since Kayden bengan, and with more emotion than I’d ever heard from him. It was almost admiration, mixed with a little surprise. “It’s quite the performance; masks over masks over masks.”
“Good enough to fool everyone,” Kayden acknowledged. “He used Braddock’s infrastructure to move in battalions of mercenaries for the revolution, disguising them as security guards, but when it kicked off he held them back and dangled them over the besieged governor’s head to get his vote on extraterritoriality.
“He used the New Revolution’s old-school tech to get in touch with the loyalists in DeeCee, letting General Colloton’s staff know about Braddock’s involvement and what he knew about the broader plan – all anonymously, of course. Once the tide turned in Washington, he called in every favour he had to get Diana’s forces to withdraw from his mercenaries in a feigned retreat, bringing the whole empire back underground and under his control.”
“And his sister?” I asked, even though I could already guess.
“Hookwolf snatched her off the street himself. Max offered to make him a cyberzombie if he did it, and since Hookwolf is a deranged psychopath he accepted. They dragged her back to Medhall and dosed her with enough drugs that she didn’t know the day of the week, then quietly shipped her off to a well-bribed rehab clinic for the rest of her life. I think Max saw it as pruning the tree; stopping her from disgracing their name by tying it to a doomed insurrection.”
It was interesting, the way a flash of guilt passed through her eyes as she spoke about Max’s sister. Perhaps she felt she’d failed her, or saw her as a kindred spirit. Two women at the mercy of a powerful man, but she’d at least kept her mind. Calvert, on the other hand, seemed to have a respectful look on his inhuman features and when he spoke it was like he was summarising a well-played game of chess.
“Which left him in control of a shadow infrastructure of human supremacist political organisations and gangs that escaped the crackdown the UCAS launched against Alamos Twenty-Thousand,” he said. “Tell me, though, what benefit does he gain from keeping such oversized infrastructure for a cause you’ve said yourself he doesn’t believe in? Where’s the profit in it?”
Kayden paused, clamming up completely as her hands gripped the armrest of the seat. Nothing she’d said or done had left her this conflicted before, which had me terrified and Tattletale on tenterhooks.
“If you want to kill Max, this will do it. He didn’t just find Alamos Twenty-Thousand in his father’s phonebook, he found their backers as well. The Human Nation.”
“That’s a myth of a myth,” Tattletale said, her eyes narrowed in strained disbelief. “It’s just a theory; a catch-all term for any number of conspiracies.”
“It’s real,” Kayden said, shaking her head. “An international fraternity of wealthy and influential social Darwinists working to eradicate the metahuman problem once and for all, not through overt violence but careful, gradual intervention to shape society. Max isn’t one of them and he doesn’t know any of their names, but he has a contact. A man named James Fleischer, who works as their ambassador and their spy in Medhall.”
“Social Darwinists…” I repeated, as ice seized my bones. Kayden latched onto my horror immediately, a wicked grin spreading across her face.
“That’s right, hacker. Max may not care about the cause, but he knows an exclusive service industry when he sees it. The Chosen sends their most promising recruits to join the Human Nation’s paramilitary wing – their Flaming Sword – while Medhall consultants work with a number of their shell corporations that operate free clinics in metahuman-heavy areas, where they’re gradually sterilising the population until they reach a negative birth rate. Like boiling a frog.”
“Fascinating,” Calvert said, shifting forwards on his coiled tail. “We have our own suspicions that such a network may exist, but to have it confirmed…”
“It won’t be confirmed,” Kayden said, smiling. “If you tell the FBI about this, the Human Nation would kill Max to close the leak, then work their way through everyone who found out.”
“Including yourself,” I pointed out.
“No,” she said, outright smiling now. “Not me. This is the part where I make my offer.”
She turned back to Calvert.
“You say you’re happy to give me a free hand in how I run Medhall,” she said. “When Max is gone I want you to get me into a room with James Fleischer, escorted by human bodyguards. Guards who answer to me alone.”
She leant forwards, looking the serpent dead in the eyes. “I’ll tell him how I couldn’t stand Max’s hypocrisy, or just Max himself, and how I reached out to whoever I could find to help me take his place. I’ll work towards full membership in the Nation, trading whatever Evo secrets you’re prepared to tell me in exchange for all the information I can gather.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I knew I should reach out and crush her skull with my cybernetic arm, or slam a data spike into the projector before another word could be spoken, but I was frozen in place.
“All while continuing to support the Human Nation’s programmes,” Calvert pointed out.
“Don’t pretend you care,” Kayden retorted. “I won’t insult you by referencing your fiduciary duty, but do you seriously think the Human Nation aren’t working to destroy Evo and all it’s become under your ork CEO? Your own social Darwinism is their direct antithesis, only you don’t hide that you’re doing it.”
Calvert stiffened, rearing back and turning to one side – presumably to where the window was in his headquarters. I took a half step forwards.
“You can’t seriously be-”
“Quiet. You propose a very bold undertaking, Ms Anders. But you are right; a source of actionable intelligence on this Human Nation would be very valuable indeed. I will be in touch again to arrange your clandestine contact with the FBI. Tell them about the New Revolution, but leave the Human Nation out for now.”
With that, he just hung up, leaving before I could do so much as get a word in edgeways. Kayden stood up, craning her neck back as she met my gaze with a look of abject, insufferable triumph. For a mad moment I wondered if she’d come up with that whole scheme on the fly just to get back at me, but then she left the room, showing me her back without a hint of fear.
“Taylor…” Lisa began, her cheeks drawn and pale.
“How could he…” I started to ask, but I couldn’t make the words form. “What have we done, Lisa?”
“We did a job,” she answered. “We found a client who wanted something and we got it for them. We dug into what we could and found out enough that we were forewarned about a lot of things, but there’s always another secret. Yesterday nobody outside Max’s circle knew about… about any of that, but now we do. We have to live with knowing.”
“We can’t just sit on something like this! We can’t let this happen, Lisa,” I said, my voice heavy with desperation.
“It might not,” Lisa said, in a conciliatory tone. “Calvert is smart. He has to know that Kayden is more ideologically aligned to the Human Nation than to Evo, and she could very easily become a triple agent. Besides, it would mean giving up on his plan to seize Aster from her. It’s far too risky.”
“Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you think it’s what I want to hear?” I demanded. For the first time, I felt properly angry at her. Angry at her manipulations and how selective she was in using them.
“Don’t answer that,” I said, cutting her off the moment she opened her mouth. “I’m going out. I need to clear my head.”
I pushed past her, ignoring the world as I strode through the front door and wandered down to the gate in the fence. With a mental flick I rolled the gate open and left our little poisoned paradise, stuffing my hands into the pocket of my hoodie as I started wandering in a completely random direction.
The sound of my feet on the pavement was like a metronome moving my thoughts forwards with ceaseless regularity. I couldn’t comprehend what I’d heard in there. I’d been so eager to make a name for myself, so thrilled to entangle a whole corporation in a web of my own creation even if I was following someone else’s designs. I’d chased power and the thrill of the chase itself, but when I’d finally caught my pray I took a bite and found it disgusting.
I was horrified by the scale of what I’d found. I’d shackled the corpse of a god, but in Medhall I’d found the periphery of a truly unfathomable conspiracy slowly driving the world towards its perfect order – an order that had no place for me. What was worse, I was part of it now. I’d contributed.
I didn’t believe Tattletale when she said that Calvert would be happy with what he could get because I was beginning to understand how Calvert thought. I should have seen it sooner; he thought like I did.
His only interest in this city was in exceeding in whatever task he’d been set, to demonstrate to his superiors how wasted he was in whatever position he currently held in the Evo hierarchy. He would never pass up the chance to return in triumph with a profitable subsidiary and the inside track on a threat Evo didn’t even know existed. Even if Kayden’s intel was unreliable, it was still better than no intel at all, and all it would cost were a few thousand desperate people who couldn’t have kids anymore.
I hoped I wouldn’t go that far, in the same position, but it was hard to convince myself of that when I looked at all my work had achieved so far. I’d told myself once that even if my parents weren’t happy about the turns my life has taken and the part I played in getting onto this path, they would at least understand why I chose this life. But I’d killed people for this monstrosity, and even if I walked away right now then thousands more would never be born.
Then there were the deaths that were yet to come. The thought occurred to me as I crossed an intersection, ignoring the way a middle-aged human woman hurried to the other side of the street to avoid crossing my path. With what Kayden had said about Max and his commitment to his family’s legacy, the succession in the event of his death would be set in stone.
There would be no shareholder vote or legal battle Kayden could take advantage of to claim control of the company; Max wouldn’t suffer a guardian for his legacy. If he died right this instant, Theo’s inheritance would be ironclad and watertight. He might not be the perfect heir in Max’s eyes, but he carried Max’s blood and their family’s legacy.
Calvert was going to kill him as well. A good man, perhaps the most innocent person I’d found anywhere near the high society of this city, was going to be assassinated for the sake of a racist bitch who thought nothing about the forced sterilisation of whole neighbourhoods.
My parents had dedicated their lives to causes; to standing up for what was right no matter what the world threw at them. They hadn’t been able to change much, but they’d still tried and little by little they made the world a better place, or at least stopped it from becoming worse. They could never accept this. They could never understand it.
Every step of this journey, I’d taken willingly out of the belief that I was making myself a better, more complete person. But if they could see me now, I was afraid they’d hate what I’ve become.
More than afraid, I was determined to try and put this right.