Page 262 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘Deprived of that ecosystem, they suffer profound emotional distress, leaving the nervous system trapped in a state of persistent threat. Trauma and sustained stress can force an adaptive response. Senses, hormones, even reproductive function can be rewritten. The longer the deprivation continues, the more extreme the adaptation.’

Riley gets up from the table and turns away.

He keeps his back to all three of them in silence.

Kade watches him, wishing he could offer comfort but knowing Riley wouldn’t want it in front of these two. Blaire looks at Riley with something resembling pity, but it vanishes fast.

‘OK, but Mimi was a Brightling, right?’

‘Jessamine was born a Brightling, yes. Her cord blood results confirm this unequivocally, along with the fact that she inherited anthrodivergent traits from both parents. Together, those traits gave her a regenerative capacity Helixx had never recorded before. She was the child their breeding programmes had been designed to produce, capable of receiving high concentrations of Sway and Wildwane blood without rejecting either.

‘Typically, those traits would have remained partial and subordinate to her Brightling nature. Helixx reinforced them until her body accepted all three as fundamental. Jessamine was not a Brightling borrowing fragments of two other abilities. She was a Brightling, a Sway and a Wildwane in perfect equilibrium. And a Wildwane without blood kin is a danger to themselves and those around them. Mimi had no blood relations in the Estate.’

‘She still had Jules. I know he was only her half-brother, but…’

‘Mimi had no blood relations,’ Blaire cuts across, green eyes flashing, ‘because she was not Penhalyx’s child.’

‘He used a surrogate, but that’s—’

‘Jessamine was the daughter of a woman named Sloane Voss.’

Lachlan goes entirely still.

He stops breathing.

‘What did you say?’

‘Sloane Voss served in a special division called Resolution Branch.’

‘How do you—?’

‘She trained with you and four others for months in a black site.’

‘Once she fell pregnant, Sloane was transferred silently and swiftly into a different kind of division. One named Project Spectrum.’

‘This… this isn’t…’ Lachlan’s voice breaks.

His eyes are wide and haunted, his chest rising and falling.

‘Resolution Branch was your Project Spectrum,’ Blaire tells him.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The division followed the same framework as Project Spectrum. High-stress conditioning, prolonged exposure, controlled variables. You were selected for latent markers after your induction bloodwork flagged them.’

‘No,’ he says, frowning. ‘No, I chose it.’

‘You were chosen.’

‘I chose it. I could have refused.’

‘The money was too good for anyone in your sphere to refuse.’

‘They didn’t only train your pain tolerance. You took turns drugging each other, drowning each other, torturing each other and also—’

‘Shut the fuck up, you don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘There was a woman in your unit, one of three, who never came back.’