"Fine," I said, though my legs felt wobbly. "Just need a second."
The restricted section was behind a glass door with a biometric scanner. Two armed guards stood outside, their posture rigid and alert.
Varkolak studied the setup. "I can get us through, but we'll need a distraction for the guards."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small device Lena had given us. "This should overload the electrical systems for about ninety seconds."
"That's not much time."
"It's all we've got."
His fingers brushed mine as he took the device. "Always surprising me, aren't you, Fletcher?"
I couldn't help the smile that tugged at my lips. "You haven't seen anything yet."
He activated the device and tossed it toward the opposite end of the room. Within seconds, the lights flickered and alarms blared throughout the facility. The guards' radios crackled with urgent voices, and they exchanged concerned looks before hurrying toward the commotion.
"Now," Varkolak said, pulling me back into the shadows.
We slipped through the glass door and materialized in front of the main terminal. My fingers flew over the keyboard, bypassing security protocols using the codes Mei had provided.
"How long do we have?" Varkolak asked, keeping watch by the door.
"Maybe ten minutes before they realize this is a distraction." I accessed the main database, scrolling through files until I found what we were looking for. "Here, the matching algorithms."
What I saw made my blood run cold.
"Varkolak, look at this."
He moved behind me, his chest pressing against my back as he leaned in to see the screen. "What am I looking at?"
"These are override codes. Someone's been manually adjusting match results." I pointed to a series of entries. "These are all political figures, corporate leaders, they're manipulating who gets matched with whom."
I dug deeper, downloading files onto the secure drive we'd brought. The more I uncovered, the sicker I felt.
"They're preventing certain combinations altogether," I said, my voice tight with anger. "Look at these genetic markers specifically filtering out shadow-human matches with potential for certain abilities."
Varkolak's jaw clenched. "They're afraid of what we could become together."
I opened another file and gasped. "This goes back generations. There's correspondence here between the Umbra Council and human officials dating back sixty years."
"What does it say?"
"They agreed to prevent shadow-human matches that might result in shared abilities. They were afraid of creating people like..." I swallowed hard. "Like what we've become."
Varkolak's expression darkened. "The Umbra Council has always preached separation of our kinds. I never thought they'd go this far."
I found my name in the database, saw how they'd flagged my DNA. "They knew," I whispered. "They knew what could happen if I was matched with you, and they tried to prevent it."
"But they failed." Varkolak's hand found mine, squeezing gently. "We happened anyway."
The sound of boots against the floor outside snapped us back to reality.
"Someone's coming," Varkolak warned.
I grabbed the drive, now full of damning evidence. "We've got what we need."
Before we could move back into the shadows, the door burst open. Four armed guards rushed in, weapons raised.
