Nightshade went ice cold, held in a paralyzed shock.
“She didn’t want that.” Cotter pointed to Reaper. “You’ve sucked the humanity out of him. When did you start giving him the drugs? When did you start Midnight?”
“A very long time ago. I only brought you in on the idea a few years ago so that I could garner additional funding for synthesizing the old formula. I should have known your stupid sense of righteousness would interfere.”
Cotter shifted, just slightly, and Nightshade glanced down to see him slowly lifting the tail of his suit jacket to reveal a hint of a pistol. “My daughter has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh but she has everything to do with it.”
She went cold, her mind seeming to go distant as she tried to process the info overload. Rainier captured her team. He was doing some kind of sick experiment on them. He’d set her up.
Mouth dry, she said, “Why do you need me then if you’ve got the team? Why set up my father?”
The first time Nightshade sensed a crack in the General’s unruffled exterior. His eyes narrowed into sharp slits and he said in a low tone, “Because that bastard Mankel stole all the remaining samples of the serum. I’ve had Dr. Winter working her ass off trying to come up with the correct formula for proper synthetization, but despite rigorous testing and trial and error, we’ve been unable to correctly reproduce the effects. But your father didn’t destroy all of it. He left one sample.”
An anxious dread crawled over her and Nightshade gulped down the hard knot forming in her throat. “Your trial and error tests – who were the subjects?”
The General’s answering smile caused her dread to shift into fear.
“Your team. Only the most elite and strong can handle the effects of the drug. Unfortunately, Dr. Winters miscalculations on the administration caused some slight side effects. I couldn’t let her destroy my entire test base.” General Rainier cocked his head to the side, studying her, focusing on her. “But now that I have you, we won’t have to worry about that anymore.”
Her team, her sisters in arms – he’d been torturing them, performing some kind of sick experiment on them. “Are they still alive?”
“For now, Dr. Winters thinks she can reverse some of the side effects. We shall see.”
“What do you mean – now that you have me?”
“You are the key to reinstating Operation Midnight. Now that I have you we can pull the drug from your blood, and manufacture it on a full-scale operation. I’ll be able to sell it at whatever price I want. Can you imagine how much countries like Russia and China would pay for a drug that creates the perfect operative?”
Her head was spinning trying to make sense of it all. Rainier. Cotter. Mankel. They’d all been in on it together.
Mankel had known about Operation Midnight. He’d known about Mayhem. Nightshade started to shake. He sent her over here to raid Cotter’s computer for what then? “Mankel knew where my team was all along.”
But Rainier just shook his head. “He did not. Mankel might be a pro at disappearing, but so am I. He’s scrambling to get his team back, but he’ll never find them.” Rainier took a step closer and Nightshade leaned into Cotter, wrapping her hand around the pistol grip. She began to tug the weapon out of Cotter’s waistline.
“And you’ll never see them alive again unless you come with me.”
She froze. “What do you mean?”
Rainier said, “I mean,youare the key. Your blood is the catalyst—yours and your sister’s.”
She took a beat, tried to draw in a breath and failed. “How?”
“Who do you think was the original test subject?”
Holy mother of Christ.
Cotter stopped moving all together. “Sarah. She dosed herself, didn’t she?”
Rainier nodded, certainty lining his face. “Yes, she insisted. She wouldn’t test the drug on anyone else until she was sure it was safe. She must not have known she was pregnant at the time she did it.”
“And you let her?” Cotter roared.
“Of course I did. I needed her cooperation to get the formula. I’d have let her do whatever she damn well pleased.”
“You bastard!” Cotter lunged for Rainier, and Nightshade held firm to his pistol, keeping it in her grip as Cotter wrapped his hands around the General’s throat.
Rainier struggled, trying to pry Cotter’s hands off even as his face turned bright red. Nightshade stood rooted in shock at the knowledge her entire life had been a lie. She glanced down at herself, looking for some kind of quirk or difference that would show signs of the foreign drug in her system, but saw nothing different. Nothing to label her as the test tube that she was.
