"How old was she when she had him?" Mattie asked, her voice muffled behind her hand.
"Fourteen. When I was taken to the training camp, she must have entered the breeding program and become pregnant shortly thereafter."
Mattie closed her eyes. "That's terrible."
Dimitri felt the anger rise in his chest, but he channeled it into the steady, practiced motion of the next injection. Number Five. Swab. Position. Inject. Withdraw. The routine was a lifeline, something concrete and manageable in a conversation that was rapidly becoming neither.
Twelve hundred women and over eight hundred children, that was over two thousand people. It should be higher, especially since they started breeding at such a young age. Sullha was a child herself when she became pregnant with her son. Butperhaps the Dormants were not as fertile as purely human women, or maybe the breeding was more selective than he had assumed.
"Did Sullha have any more children?" Mattie asked.
"No, just the one boy," Dave said. "I am not sure how the program works, but most women have only two or three children. It might be a fertility issue."
That confirmed Dimitri's suspicion. Human females could have ten or more children if bred consistently. Were the Dormants naturally less fertile because of their immortal genes? Or were there other factors involved?
Navuh wanted warriors for his army, so his incentive was to have the women produce as many children as possible. But he could have been selective with the type of men he had brought to the island for that purpose, and it was also possible that he hadn't wanted to overwhelm the existing army with too many young recruits.
But those were issues that he shouldn't concern himself with at the moment. There were much more pressing matters they needed to figure out.
He put the syringe down and turned to face Dave.
"You're agreeing to Mattie's condition, and I appreciate that. But I need you to walk me through the logistics, because from where I'm standing, I don't see a way to get over two thousand women and children off this island."
"We are still working on it," Number One said.
"How? We're talking about a population the size of a small town. You can't sneak two thousand people onto a cargo ship,even with your thralling and compelling. You can't even compel two thousand people to move in silence through an island full of warriors. And even if you could, where do they go? What happens when they reach the other side?"
"We have been considering all that?—"
"Yeah, I'm sure you have, and while you are at it, why stop at the Dormant enclosure?" Dimitri's voice was getting higher despite his efforts to keep it level. "There are thousands of trafficked women in the brothel. Are we going to leave them behind while we rescue the Dormants? On what moral basis do we make that distinction? Because the Dormant women carry immortal genes and the brothel women don't?"
He knew he sounded hysterical. He could hear it in his own voice, and he hated it. He was supposed to be rational and measured, but the absurdity and the false hope Dave was giving Mattie were grating on his nerves.
This plan grew more ridiculous by the minute, swelling like a balloon inflated by good intentions and blind optimism, and someone had to point out that balloons filled with hot air eventually burst.
"Every person we save matters," Mattie said. "Even if we can't save everyone."
"I know that. I'm not arguing against saving people. I'm arguing against a plan that has no realistic chance of success and will likely get us all killed in the process, and that includes the women and children you are trying to save."
"We have resources you are not aware of," Number One said.
He stared at the warrior. "What resources are you talking about?"
Dave was silent for a moment, all eight bodies perfectly still, and Dimitri recognized the processing pause. The collective was deciding how much to reveal and in what order.
"There are other immortals out there," Number One said. "Not on this island. Outside. Adversaries of the Brotherhood."
The lab went very quiet.
Petrov, who had been working at his station with a single-minded focus and ignoring the conversation happening behind him, set his beaker down and turned around.
"What other immortals?" he asked.
"We call them the clan because they are basically just one big family, and they are led by a female named Annani, who is Lord Navuh's greatest enemy. The rumor is that they operate from somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area. They have always been more technologically advanced than the Brotherhood, and they have resources. We know that they don't have large numbers like we do, which is why they hide from us instead of facing us on the battlefield, but they have money, and they are do-gooders for humans. They might agree to help us."
Dimitri's mind went blank for a full two seconds, which was, in his experience, the neurological equivalent of a system reboot. When it came back online, the questions arrived in a flood.
"How do you know this?"
