There's something about the way Jonah reads people. Fast and accurate, the same instincts that made him a good journalist. He looks at Jinx and sees past the chaos to the sharp intelligence underneath.
"You must be the third brother," Jonah says. "The crazy one."
"I prefer 'creatively unhinged.'" Jinx drops onto the couch beside him, sprawling with the easy confidence of someonewho's never met a situation he couldn't charm or kill his way out of. "And you're the journalist who got his brain scrambled and somehow fell for the dick that did it to you. Nice work."
"Fell isn't exactly the word I'd use."
"Crashed into? Collided with? Aggressively pursued despite all common sense?"
"Getting warmer."
Jinx laughs, delighted. The sound bounces off the cabin walls, too loud for the space. Everything about Jinx is too loud, too much, too intense. It's exhausting and also, I have to admit, occasionally refreshing.
"I like him," he announces to the room. "We're keeping him."
"He's not a pet," Jace says mildly from his armchair.
"Everything's a pet if you're determined enough." Jinx turns back to me, and beneath the chaos, his eyes are sharp. Focused. This is the real Jinx, the one that most people don't see until it's too late. "So. Project Omega. We doing this or what?"
The room goes quiet. Elliot sets down his coffee cup. Jace leans forward in his chair. Jonah watches me with those dark, knowing eyes.
This is it. The moment I've been building toward since I found those files in Moore's archive. The moment I stop being a weapon and start being something else.
"We're doing this," I say. "But first, I need to tell you everything."
I stand at the window, looking out at the mountains, and I talk.
I tell them about Moore's archive. The thousands of documents I've spent months unravelling. The financial trails that connect Geneva to Singapore to Buenos Aires to Johannesburg. The shell companies, the wire transfers, the careful layering of money designed to hide what it's funding.
I tell them about Andros and the fertility clinic in the Alps. About the children being manufactured right now, grown in surrogates, designed before conception to be weapons without weakness.
I even tell them about the Pineridge Boys. The cohort that went rogue, that remembered too much and felt too deeply, that turned their training against their masters. The purge that followed. The lesson the Custodians learned: you cannot fully control what you did not create.
And then I tell them about the Harrison Protocol.
"We weren't recruited," I say. My voice is steady. It has to be. "We weren't orphans. We were manufactured. Conceived through controlled breeding programs, gestated by surrogates, designed from the cellular level to be perfect weapons."
Jinx has gone still. That manic energy, that constant motion, has drained away, leaving something cold and focused in its place.
"What are you saying?" he asks.
"Marcus Harrison wasn't our father. He was our handler. Assigned to oversee our development until we were old enough for Foundry processing." I turn to face them. "When he started asking questions, when he started seeing us as more than Silentproperty, he became a liability. He died three months later. Training accident. No witnesses."
The silence is loud. I can hear the fire crackling in the hearth, the wind against the windows, my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
"You're sure about this." Jace's voice is flat. Controlled. The same voice he uses when he's about to kill someone.
"I found the files. Harrison Protocol, Phase One. Three viable subjects." I meet his eyes. "Us, Jace. We were products. Manufactured. Designed."
"And you've known this for how long?"
"Weeks. I was trying to confirm it before I said anything."
"Weeks." Jace stands abruptly, crossing to the window, putting his back to the room. His shoulders are rigid. I can see the tension vibrating through him.
Elliot rises and goes to him, placing a hand on his arm. They don't speak, but something passes between them. Some communication that doesn't need words.
Jinx is still staring at me. His face is unreadable.
