Chapter One
Gray
The Protogenus operative had been lying for three hours.
Gray Spark stood across the metal table from Larsen, watching the man's eyes dart toward the mirrored observation window for the hundredth time.The interrogation room was standard issue: reinforced walls, dampening field generators humming in the corners, the kind of sterile institutional lighting that made everyone look like a corpse.Larsen was sweating despite the cool air, his Protogenus coordinator uniform wrinkled from three weeks in a holding cell.
"I've already told you everything I know."Larsen spread his hands on the table, palms up, the picture of cooperation."I was just logistics.Shipping manifests, supply chains.I didn't have access to the weapons programs."
Another lie.Gray's fingers twitched against his thigh, and he clamped down on the urge to let electricity arc between them.Three weeks of dead ends.Three weeks since they'd raided the facility where Larsen had been captured, fleeing through a service tunnel with a hard drive full of encrypted files.Three weeks since Keeley Arnold had torn through Protogenus's Bridgeport lab like a force of nature, and their leadership had scattered like roaches when the lights came on.
"The Dioscuri program," Gray said."What's the current status?"
Larsen's eye twitched."Discontinued."
"Lie."
"Relocated, then.I don't know where.Pierce moved everything after Bridgeport fell."He swallowed hard."But I heard rumors.They weren't just trying to make new variants anymore.They were studying the bonded pairs.Your offspring."
That wasn’t new information, but it didn’t make him happy to have it confirmed that they were looking at children of the bonded pairs.
"The power-stripping weapons," Gray said, keeping his voice level."Where are they being manufactured now?"
"I don't know anything about weapons.I handled supply logistics.Food, medical equipment, transportation.That's all."
"You were a coordinator.You had clearance."
"Compartmentalized clearance."Larsen's smile was thin, almost pitying."Protogenus learned from the Aethor Institute's mistakes.Nobody knows more than they need to.I could tell you who ordered the toilet paper for the eastern seaboard facilities, but the weapons program?"He shrugged."Above my pay grade."
The lights flickered.Gray realized his hands had started crackling, tiny forks of electricity dancing across his knuckles like living things.He shoved them into his pockets, but not before Larsen noticed.
"Having trouble with the equipment?"Larsen asked, all false innocence."Or is that you?"
"Where did Dr.Pierce relocate after Bridgeport?"
"Don't know."
"What about the Dioscuri production facilities?"
"Never heard of them."
"You're lying."
Larsen leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms."Prove it."
The rage came up from somewhere deep, a hot tide that crested behind Gray's eyes and sent static singing through his veins.He'd been holding it back for weeks now, tamping it down with meditation techniques and endless paperwork and the crushing weight of responsibility.But Larsen sat there with his smug expression and his rehearsed denials while somewhere out there, Protogenus was building weapons that could strip every variant on the planet of their powers.
While Tasha's daughter was growing up without a mother.
While Kumar's family was planning a funeral.
He kept a list in his head.Names of everyone they'd lost.Tasha.Kumar.The Arizona Eight—Jem clones who'd never even had real names, just numbers, who'd brought down an entire Protogenus facility with their combined power and their lives.He owed it to them to remember.
"You think you're better than us?"Larsen said, reading something in Gray's expression that made him bold."You're not.You're exactly like us.A monster playing dress-up, pretending to be civilized."He leaned forward, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper."The Brewster clones understood what you really are.They saw through the act.Deep down, you're just another Pollux animal waiting to get off the leash."
Lightning erupted from Gray’s hands before he could stop it, a brilliant white arc that slammed into the metal table and sent voltage screaming through the bolted-down frame.Larsen convulsed as the current jumped to him through the chair, his body going rigid, a choked sound escaping his throat.
Gray watched it happen.Part of him, the part that had built the Gemini Initiative and preached cooperation and spent a decade proving that Pollux variants could be more than weapons, screamed at him to stop.But another part, the part that had been growing stronger with every funeral and every failure, that part just watched Larsen's heart stutter and thought: good.
