"You're his fated mate."Evie's voice was flat, clinical."Normally, bonding allows both parties to grow stronger.”
"And without it?”Hannah asked, not sure that she really wanted to know.
"You’ll never be whole without him."Evie leaned forward."But that's not all.Vera Seer had a vision.Protogenus is planning a nightmare.Multiple cities, simultaneous attacks.They want the world watching when they deploy the power-stripping weapons."
Hannah's breath caught."The weapons are ready?"
"Ready and waiting.Three days.Maybe four."Evie stood, moving toward the door."Gray won't ask you to come back.He thinks it would be forcing you into something you don't want.He'd rather face this alone than make you feel obligated."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Evie paused with her hand on the doorknob."Because I understand wanting a normal life.I spent years trying to get one after the Mercury serum changed me.Thought if I just ran far enough, hid well enough, I could pretend none of it had ever happened."She glanced back over her shoulder."But we don't get that choice.We only get to choose whether we hide or fight."
The door clicked shut behind her, and Hannah was alone again.
Hannah stared at her laptop screen for a long time after Evie left.
The files were still there.Three weeks of evidence, painstakingly assembled, proving that Protogenus had deliberately destroyed her life as part of a larger campaign to turn humanity against variants.Proof that the fear gripping the nation wasn't organic, wasn't earned, wasn't based on anything real.It was manufactured.Weaponized.Deployed with the same cold calculation as any bomb or bullet.
She thought about Gray, standing alone in whatever office or bunker he ran the Gemini Initiative from, watching her face on the news and refusing to ask for help because he was too stubborn or too noble or too stupid to admit he needed it.
She thought about the power-stripping weapons, about what it would mean for every variant on the planet if Protogenus succeeded.No more hiding.No more choice.Just a world where anyone who'd ever been touched by the Aethor Institute serum was stripped of everything that made them different, everything that made them powerful, everything that made them a threat to the people who wanted to control them.
She thought about three days.
Hannah opened a new document and started typing.
They Want You to Fear Us: A Firsthand Account of Protogenus Manipulation
By Hannah Charge
The words came faster than she expected.She wrote about being outed, about the anonymous tips and the shell corporations and the media blitz that followed.She wrote about the pattern of exposures, the staged attacks, the funding flowing from Protogenus coffers into the pockets of anyone willing to spread fear.She named names.She provided links.She included screenshots and financial records and everything she'd gathered in three weeks of obsessive research.
She wrote about being kidnapped and used as a battery, about the other supes in those cells, about the children.She wrote about the rescue and the hope that had flickered in her chest when Gray Spark told her she was safe.She wrote about watching that hope die as the world turned against her for the crime of existing.
When she finished, it was three in the morning.Her eyes burned and her fingers ached and the room was full of the ozone smell of barely contained electricity.
She read it through once, fixed a handful of typos, and then sent it everywhere she could think of.Every major news outlet.Every social media platform.Every forum where norms gathered to discuss the "supe problem."She uploaded the supporting files to three different cloud services and included the links in the body of the article.
If Protogenus wanted to use her as a weapon against her own people, she was going to make sure the weapon cut both ways.
Then she packed her bag.
It didn't take long.She'd been living out of a suitcase since the motel, hadn't accumulated anything worth keeping.Clothes.Laptop.The cracked phone.A charger and a toothbrush and the running shoes she'd worn to the gym in another life.
She left the key on the nightstand and walked out to the parking lot, where her battered sedan waited under the flickering neon sign.The engine turned over on the second try, and she pulled out onto the empty highway, headlights cutting through the predawn darkness.
Behind her, in the motel room she'd never see again, the television flickered to life on its own, responding to some residue of her power.A news anchor appeared on screen, eyes bright with the kind of excitement that only came with breaking news.
"...explosive allegations tonight against Protogenus, the organization at the center of ongoing controversy regarding supernatural citizens.A detailed report from Hannah Charge, the bank manager recently outed as a variant, claims that her exposure was deliberately orchestrated as part of a wider propaganda campaign..."
Hannah didn't hear any of it.She was already miles down the road, the lights of New Athens City glowing on the horizon like a promise or a threat.
Protogenus had destroyed her life to create fear.They'd used her as an example, a warning, proof of everything the norms were supposed to dread about supes living among them.
Now she was going to use that fear against them.For a moment she saw Gray’s face as he’d been before she walked out on him: storm-eyed, fierce, terrifying, unforgettable.And damn it, some traitorous part of her wanted to see that look again.
