Zina felt the slightest uncoiling of the tension in her belly, even as she wasn’t really sure Trentcompletelyunderstood what he was saying. Otherwise, how could he be so blasé about it all?
No one’s seen these creatures for thousands of years, after all. Can he really be so casual about the fact they may still exist in the world?!
“You do?” she couldn’t help herself from asking.
“I do.”
Trent sounded certain, but Zina still wasn’t quite sure why he seemed to be having such an easy time with it.
“Okay… so… nothing really to say about… all that, then?” Zina asked, though she knew that really, her relief that Trent didn’t think she’d ruined her life and career – andhis,most likely – over delusions about dragons and unicorns and basilisks should override everything else she might be feeling just now.
“No – unless youwantme to say something?” Trent said, cocking his head. “I’d prefer to wait until I have the full story before commenting, to be honest.”
Zina pursed her lips. She supposed she at least owed him that much. Herownquestions for him about why he didn’t seem that surprised about dragons, alicorns, basilisks and pegasi existing could wait until later.
“Well, I’ll start at the start, then. It’s been a project of Hargreaves’s for some time – ever since they first heard that maybe there were some of these eggs lying dormant, forgotten, somewhere out there. A lot of people thought it was a wild goose chase, but evidently someone far enough up the food chain decided it was worth pursuing.”
“You mean, looking into whether these creatures – or at least their eggs – still exist in the world?” Trent asked.
Zina nodded. Trent was taking thismuchbetter than she’d thought he would. She wondered what the catch was – there wasalwaysa catch.
“That’s right. They’ve spent a lot of money and time on it – getting in contact with people who trade in rare artifacts, doing a lot of the searching themselves to find these eggs – the eggs of creatures that everyone’s assumed have been extinct for thousands upon thousands of years, lying dormant in caves, buried deep underground, or other places like that. I’ve heard rumors that they’re even looking in places like active volcanoes.”
“Any idea why?” Trent’s tone gave nothing away.
“Because they think a lot of these creatures will still have the primal powers that modern-day shifters have lost over the centuries,” Zina said, holding his gaze. “Powers that we can only imagine. Things like… the ability to heal any disease, almost, with just a drop of blood. Things like mind control, and the ability to alter memories. The power to turn people to stone with a single glance. Things that sound like something out of a fairytale.”
“So in other words, the kind of things that a company like Hargreaves would absolutelyloveto get their hands on,” Trent said.
Zina nodded. “Exactly. If they could find out how a basilisk’s power works – well, can you imagine? Soldiers who could turn an opposing army into stone just likethat.” She clicked her fingers. “Or a flying, fire-breathing dragon with armored scales. Or having a shifter that can control people’s minds – they could do just about anything with that. It’s terrifying to think about. That kind of power in anyone’s hands could be scary, butespeciallyin the hands of the people who run Hargreaves.”
“I can agree with you there. Not good at all,” said Trent, nodding. Which seemed to Zina to be just atinybit of an understatement.
“It’s taken them a lot of years anda lotof money,” Zina said. “But they finally managed to acquire what they think are some of the eggs they’ve been looking for.”
“Hmm.” Trent’s eyes didn’t leave her face. “Whichyou, apparently have now acquired yourself.”
Zina nodded, feeling her face flush. “That’s right.”
“And the chain of events leading up to this was…?”
Looking down at her hands, Zina swallowed. She could feel her throat getting tight – maybe it was nerves, but it was also embarrassment.
She’dneverlost her head like this before. She had a reputation for being a consummate professional: always cool, always calm. She’d had long years of training. She’d always been able to tell herself that the mission was the only thing that mattered – not her thoughts, not her feelings, not her opinions.
Until it came to these eggs….
“I…” Zina started, before taking a breath, and starting again. “I assume you know I was working undercover at Hargreaves.” When Trent nodded, she continued, “I wasn’t very high up – that wasn’t the plan. I was just a data analyst. I was just supposed to do my job and keep my head down, and occasionally hack into whatever top secret work Hargreaves were up to and pass it along to my superiors. It wasn’t exciting – just information gathering. I wasn’t authorized to make any actual moves on my own, no matter what I found out about what Hargreaves was doing.”
“Until?” Trent prompted, seeming to anticipate where this story was going.
Zina pulled in a shaking breath. “Yeah.Until. I knew somethingbighad gone down, because of all the chatter in the servers I was supposed to be monitoring, but they were behind an extra layer of security and it took me a while to get past it. So I didn’t know for a while that Hargreaves had hit the jackpot – some rich guy in Monaco was putting up some stuff from his great-grandfather’s estate, and two of these eggs were part of that, though they were billed as rare items of ancient sculpture. Hargreaves knew better, though. The third one they found in Bermuda, after they funded an archaeological dig there. They really spared no expense.”
“Right – so I’m guessing that they weren’t completely legally acquired, then,” Trent said. “No tax declarations or cultural evaluations or anything like that.”
Zina let out a short, sharp laugh. “That’s one way of putting it, yeah.”
Trent glanced down at where the bag sat behind her leg. “So… what will hatch out of them that Hargreaves was so desperate to get its hands on?”
