He lifted a blade from his kit, and I recognized it as the same blade I’d embedded into his thigh year one.
The same one Jesper had confiscated but never gave me back.
I shot him a look. “How did you get that?”
“I have my ways, pretty little poison.” He winked at me.
The scientist started sobbing.
“Non-lethal,” Eleanor reminded faintly.
Zuko sighed dramatically. “Fine.”
“At least until the data is destroyed,” Eleanor added.
He pressed the blade flat against the man’s throat with a feral smile. “Open the door.”
The scientist’s shaking hand slapped the panel.
It lit up green.
Then, Zuko pushed his head toward the scanner, and it scanned his eye before turning green again.
The door hissed open.
Inside, the server room was colder than the corridors, packed with humming towers and blinking lights. A central console glowed with data streams of files, logs, charts, and readings.
“Slater,” I snapped into comms. “We’re in the server room.”
“I see you,” Slater replied instantly. “I’m patching in. Dimitri, there’s an admin terminal on the right. If you can compel the scientist, make him destroy all the data.”
Dimitri’s eyes glowed brighter. “Gladly.”
Zuko shoved the scientist into a chair before Dimitri leaned down, gaze locking onto the human’s eyes.
“Look at me,” Dimitri ordered. “Don’t look away.”
The man’s breath hitched before his eyes glazed.
“You are going to access every file you have. You are going to delete all supernatural data, all experimental logs, all backups, and you will wipe every trace of information you’ve taken from supernatural bodies and minds.” Dimitri’s voice was coated with compulsion magic.
The scientist’s lips parted and closed before opening again. “Yes.”
He started typing.
I watched the screen as files vanished one by one.
Zuko leaned against a server tower, looking at the blood on his knuckles. “I found out more than this, by the way.”
I glanced at him. “What else?”
He nodded toward the scientist. “He told me where the other human facilities are.”
If only that were true in real life.
My pulse spiked anyway. “He did?”
Zuko’s grin widened. “Names and locations.”
