“This is missing a whole wing. Obviously Smith is hiding this from you. There is a door here” —I point to where it should be— “and there is a whole wing of cells that are more like living quarters. The beings kept there are used as breeding experiments. Smith is hoping to breed his own army of aliens to do his bidding.” The room is silent, and I look up and see the four of them gaping at me with wide-mouthed shock.
“Seriously? And you didn’t think to tell us this before?” Tirrian growls, smoke drifting out of his nose.
I shrug my shoulders. “It hasn’t been relevant until now. There was nothing we could do about it until we prepared to go back to Earth. The Adams were not going to detour from their goals of fixing John and then retrieving their wife from stasis,” I say blandly, not feeling guilty in the least. My own child is being held captive, and I still knew it wasn’t going to make a difference to them. I do understand though, because I would have felt the same way in their place. After all, as far as they knew, I was a detainee who had committed a crime.
The dragon continues to growl at me, and I lose my shit, slamming my hands down on the table and glaring at him, my spines bristling with my mood.
“Don’t forget that my daughter is locked behind those walls. They want to breed her. Believe me when I tell you this has been harder on me than anyone else.”
Tirrian closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before opening them and giving me a nod. “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. Please forgive me, my friend. The thought of forced breeding is a trigger for my dragon for some reason.”
“It’s a trigger for all of us.” Silac shudders. “Heck, I can relate. Being forced to marry Kinga was the same kind of violation. Thank fuck for Lila.” He grabs a pen and draws on the tablet on the table, adding the wing to the diagram and labeling it, as well as circling the access door.
“Okay, so we need to get through that door. It shouldn’t be a problem. Xavier should be able to teleport us all in there, but it might be a moot point. Once we take over the facility and round everyone up, we can just force Smith to let us in and free the captives.” Saxon shrugs like it’s no big deal, and normally, he would be right.
I shake my head. “Smith has a failsafe on that wing. The second he expects an incursion, he will press a button, releasing a toxic agent which will kill everything inside that wing of the facility. If he can’t have them, no one can.”
“He’s going to suspect something the minute we return earlier than planned, isn’t he?” Tirrian looks to me for confirmation, and I nod.
“I would guess so. There is no reason for us to return to Vegas since you already did those performances. If the circus was going to resume its tour, it would be in Asia.”
“Okay, so we need to provide a decoy for him. We will need to set up to perform in Singapore while the rest of us plan a sneak attack on the base,” Silac suggests.
“Smith will still be on high alert. It doesn’t make sense for you to return too quickly, and he will be suspicious and quick to pull the trigger,” I warn them, my panic about my daughter’s safety making me anxious.
“Hey, easy, man.” Silac grabs my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “We have the warlock. There is nothing Smith can do to us that Xavier can’t counter. He is only human.”
Before I can reply, the door to the war room opens, and the Adams brothers enter. “What are you doing here?” Saxon asks in surprise. “We thought you would be doing the family bonding thing this morning.”
William claps Saxon on the shoulder as John and Eric take a seat at the large conference table, looking at the schematic we have displayed. “Liliana asked to speak to Lila alone. We wanted to talk to Brannock about something.” He looks at me, and I feel my eyebrows jump in surprise.
“Oh?” I ask, curious about what they want.
“Before we get into that, what’s going on here?” Eric gestures at the schematics before rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Are we planning the attack on Smith?”
“Yes. We are just trying to work out the logistics.” I explain what I just told the others, and the brothers exchange one of those glances that I know drives Lila mad. I’m almost certain the three of them can speak telepathically.
“We may have a solution to that problem. We now know that Agent Smith is a member of the Syndicate,” William announces, and some of the things I overheard him say finally makes sense.
I nod. “Yes, I can see that. Recently, he became even more smug and gleeful, and he bragged about having some very goodfriends in very high places. He said it would allow him to become a very important man on Earth.”
“Agent Smith is the reason our wife gave up the location of the orb,” John states before the three of them tell us their wife’s tale. I know I’m not the only one of us who is stunned with the information. “She said that Vivax told her about all the aliens he is holding for his breeding experiments and that they would start executing them one by one starting with the children unless she told them where they were. They also said they would take Lila because she was powerless and add her to the rotation.”
My mouth drops open in horrified shock at the thought of them killing my daughter.
“Liliana caved, not willing to risk that they would go through with the threat. She decided that we would be able to protect it, even if the Syndicate knew, especially with all the powerful people aboard the ship,” John explains, waving his hands around in agitation.
“Although she had no memory of why, she was the one who organized to have the powerful children of the ruling families of Westalin, Aquilia, Vilax, and Fluxx on our ship. She said she had a vision. Although she was drained of her goddess abilities and reincarnated as a Skarrian, one of her gifts was occasional visions. She thinks it was her powers trying to return to her, especially because she was so close to the orb for so long.” William is looking at the blueprints of the base where Silac added the new wing to the drawings. “What’s this?”
I share the information with them, and Eric slams his hands down on the conference table much like I just did. “We need to kill that rat.”
“We were just saying we need to find a way to get him out of the office, but he barely ever leaves,” Tirrian says, and William smirks.
“What if he is summoned to a Syndicate meeting in space?”
“Huh?” Silac sounds confused, but Saxon’s eyes widen, and he nods his head before turning to me.
“You still have that communication device we confiscated from the Madovian?” he asks me, and I nod.
