He lets go of my hand and advances to place the phone on the table and slide it to the middle.
Rasmus brightens and leans in to scoop it up. “My realm.” He rotates the phone, peering at the ports, unclips the back and checks in there before clipping it back together. “That’s some strange foreign manufacture. The port is different, so are some of the other internal parts. I can try, though.”
He checks on us all, and we are staring, waiting.
“We okay with me doing this?”
“Sure.” Kail backs away, takes my hand, and, kisses the back. “In case you’re wondering. I’m doing this, helping you all, because of Hailey. Nobody hurts her and gets away with it. Not Clay, not anyone.”
“Good to know,” Esau says. “I have my own reasons to hate Clay Skinner, and if the institute is somehow in league with the LHC corporation?Bam.I’m psyched. I’ll walk over molten Lego to get that man in jail.” He makes a hissing noise through his teeth. “Where the hell do we think they got the bodies to make you?”
He’s hit on the biggest question there.
Melody answers first. “If they’ve been creating these frankenstructs, or doing research on it at the institute, they have to be using cryonics, and we know that’s already established there, legally. It’d be easy to add some more bodies. If you had absolute control inside that building.”
“They what?” I did not know this. “Cryonics? They’re doing it legally?”
“Yep.” Ron sniffs, drums the armrest of his chair. “Some of us oldies who have a few million and who fancy living on in the future are stored there. They’re hoping to be revived. Supposed to be less than ten people, last I heard. Expensive thing to do.”
“Welp,” Rasmus drawls, looking up from the phone that he has again dismantled and is peering into, “it isn’t them that you’re made of, Kail.”
“True. I’m young.” He lifts his opposite arm, blinks, seems frozen in thought. “I don’t know why or when memories get triggered but one just arrived. I think I was in the military.” His Adams apple moves. “I just remembered the day I died in a helicopter crash.”
Oh noes. I wrap my other hand around his arm and whisper, “You okay?”
“I will be.” His face has gone pale, but the color returns as he speaks. He pats my hand. “I am okay.”
“Wow. You got me in the feels there, Kail.” Esau cups his hands over his face, hides for a moment, then lets them fall. “My brother was a marine. He died last year. In action, overseas. Fuck me, though…if they’re using guys like him and…you, for this, without asking.” His jaw works. “No words. No fucking words. We need to stop this.”
“Aye. We do. We have to help stop this happening.” Rasmus nods then everyone joins in. Even me.
The consensus shakes me. We are in agreement. This is what Kail and I wished for.
“Ahem.” Molly interrupts this quiet swell of harmony.
These people. I’m so glad I could meet them all.
“We need plans. What and how and who and all that,” she continues. “Rasmus, you have the phone to explore. That is super important. It could hold some info that will give us Clay’s liver on a platter.”
“Yup.” Rasmus taps the phone. “One addition, before I forget. I recall there was mention of a cache your dad left you, Miss Hailey?”
“Yes. Something I don’t remember him telling me about.”
“It could be on your computer.”
I shake my head slowly. “He never touched mine. Ever. Except, you know, when I was a teenager.”
“Okay. If so…” He sits thinking. “What about your old email addresses? Ones he might’ve known the passwords to that you don’t use now.”
“If they still exist then yes. I had one, but aren’t those deleted by the email provider after a while?”
“Not if your dad kept them alive. Check the draft emails in there. The cache could be in there in the drafts folder. Never sent but you can read them.”
Interesting. “Sure.” I guess it is possible, if a roundabout way of doing this. What if I never looked? But also, what if he knew how curious I get, banked on that, and he wanted a really secret method? “Okay. I will check there. I’ll have to find the old password. Thanks, Rasmus.”
“If you need any help with that, just say. Here’s another idea for a plan, because if Clay Skinner is after you, Hailey, he has the manpower to surveil you.”
“They’re spread out up in the hills, right now,” Ron says. “The institute doesn’t have an army.”
