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“I don’t. I saw your picture in the paper.”

“Read the news a lot? Looking to end up in it, too?”

“They need to stop writing about Umbra.” She ignored my question, tilting her head up. “There’s no such thing as Umbra.”

“Is this why you brought us out here?” I muttered, my patience wearing thin, and pushed my chair back to stand up. Just as I did, she reached out and grabbed my hand on the table.

Her hands were as cold as ice, but also trembling like she needed my help. Or like a corpse fresh out of the grave trying to drag me down with her. Prisne cast a cautious glance at me, but I gave her a tiny smile.

“There is no Umbra element.” The woman repeated. “This phenomenon is actually a biological pathogen that emerged from the remains of corpses buried in Martian soil. I called you here to tell you that.”

When I couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was saying, I turned to Coretta, but she was staring at the woman with a furrowed brow, too.

“We all watched that little kid. He’s immortal.”

“Only on Mars. If he leaves for another planet, his body will fall to pieces. This phenomenon—or rather, this virus—replicates indefinitely by activating the host’s telomerase enzyme. It never stops. Mars’ radiation is the only thing keeping it in check. Without it, that child would have died of cancer.”

For a moment, I could only stare at her, stunned by her words. Then my eyes narrowed, I scrutinized her.

“Who are you, and how do you know all this?”

“I was Eleanor Kern’s assistant.”

“Then why show up after all these years?”

“After seeing the poor kid… I couldn’t take it anymore.”

As she muttered this, I turned to Prisne. She was inspecting the woman just as intently as the rest of us.

“Do you have any proof? Anything you actually worked for Kern?”

The woman pulled a sheet of polymer paper from her pocket and slid it across. The three of us bent our heads and fixed our eyes on the document. It was a patient’s medical record. Raymond Kern’s.

Without a second thought, I made a grab for the paper, but Coretta beat me to the draw. Holding my breath, my heart hammering against my chest as if I’d just run a marathon, I locked my eyes on her and the paper in her hands.

“I need to make sure this isn’t a fake.”

“Examine it all you want.” The woman shrugged. “That’s the kid’s record.”

Coretta’s suspicious gaze fixed on the paper in astonishment, then she murmured. “Little doll…?”

“That’s what Eleanor used to call the child. There were a few other families assigned like that. The children who served as test subjects were called dolls.”

My blood ran cold. “Because you guys treated them like lifeless toys?”

“Because they’re meant to awaken from the curse.”

I glanced away. “What curse? Is he really immortal?”

Prisne slapped the back of my neck with her palm. “Hey!” I rubbed the spot, glaring at her with a scowl.

But her warning gaze didn’t waver. All right, this mission was getting personal, and I was fully aware of it. Awareness, unfortunately, wasn’t the same as restraint.

“No.” With the woman’s cold answer, I straightened my sour face. “His mother never finished the experiment. So the virus can still leave his body, but he doesn’t have much time left. If the phenomenon doesn’t fully merge with the host, it will slowly start to destroy him. The Loxton heir will either die within this year or emit enough radiation to affect the entire city.”

I felt the eyes turning on me, but I tried to keep my cool.

“Die?”