Chapter 314
I was really hoping no one would question how this worked with me, but of course someone did. Christian’s tone was accusatory as he asked, “Are you saying you think the reason you’ve been so aggressive lately is because she’s controlling you?”
I probably wouldn’t have had to say anything to defend myself as at least half of the team reacted negatively to his question. Elliott’s hands immediately formed fists, and Jamie’s usually passive countenance turned to a scowl. I decided to speak up for myself, though. “Aggressive? If you’re talking about when I hissed at you the other night, that had nothing to do with Asteria. That was because you’re a moron.”
Elliott laughed, and Christian eyed him like he was ready to take on the Guardian who was easily twice his size. Returning his narrowed gaze to me, Christian said, “Hey, I’ve done a lot to help you get where you are. Seems like you’ve forgotten that, missy.”
Ignoring the “missy” remark that made me want to scratch his eyes out, I asked, “You’ve helped me?” I could remember very little he’d done to be of any assistance to me at all, except for when I’d fooled him and stolen his grenade, which wasn’t his choice. Perhaps he’d helped me get online in the beginning and inserted my IAC, but that wasn’t much. Cadence’s grip on my arm increased, and I decided to try to let his idiocy go. “Whatever, Christian. You’re a jerk.”
“And a pretty big one at that,” Elliott muttered, and I could see he was just as angry at the tech guy as I was.
“Shut up, Sanderson!” Christian scooted his chair back like he was about to get up. “Who asked you anyway?”
“Enough! We don’t have time for this!” I couldn’t remember the last time I heard Aaron sound so angry. “Paul is missing, Melbourne is scrambling, Vampires are closing in on headquarters across the world, and we have no way of tracking them.” I hadn’t realized it was that serious, that the Vampires Holland was moving actually had specific targets, that they were planning on attacking our other campuses. That got my attention. “Christian, if Cassidy got upset at you, and you didn’t like her reaction, you’re going to have to find a way to let it go. She’s sixteen. And the two of you,” he was looking from Elliott back to Christian now, “don’t talk to each other. At all.”
I wouldn’t have been shocked if Elliott had muttered something under his breath about Christian starting it, but he clamped his mouth shut and glowered across the table. Christian folded his arms and leaned back in his seat. I wished he wasn’t on our team, but for now, I’d just have to not think about it. I may only be sixteen, but I can be a mature adult. Sometimes.
“Cassidy?” I turned my head to see the boss looking at me as he continued. “Do you have any idea how Holland is doing this? How she’s disrupting our IACs and the trackers? If we can’t stop her from doing that… this is going to be that much harder.”
I went over what I had figured out while I was in her head and while I was reflecting on my latest intelligence mission. Staring at the table, I said, “I know it’s her telepathy, that she can mimic, that she can tap into our systems. She can send messages to one person from another without the other person or anyone else on the team even knowing it. She sent that message allegedly from Paul earlier, the one you forwarded to me.” I looked at Cadence and she nodded in understanding. “She only sent it to the two of you and Becky.” Becky was the Hunter in charge of Paul’s team now that he was missing. I hadn’t spoken to her, but I’d learned that information from my sister. “Holland can basically do whatever she wants to in order to disrupt our communication.”
The room was quiet again as they took that in. It wasn’t promising, and I wasn’t sure what we could do to fix it, but there had to be something. “You say she used the alarm system in the tagging center for this, right?” Aurora asked, finally cutting through the silence.
“Yes, so I think, in order to communicate with so many people at such a great distance, she must be tapped into something else, but I don’t know what it might be.” I had been trying to figure it out since I left her head, but I was at a loss. Until I solved the puzzle, she’d be able to keep on messing with us. “I honestly think we’d be smarter turning our IACs off completely when we are combating them because she can mess with them. Either that or come up with some sort of code system. But she’d probably decipher that pretty quickly.”
“Do you think she can do that with cell phones, too?” Brandon asked.
I turned and looked at him for the first time. I know how hard it had been for him to keep quiet when Christian was being a jerk, but Brandon is pretty good at letting me fight my own battles, verbally anyway.
“I do think she can disrupt cell phone calls,” I nodded. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I had a feeling that was the case. “Her telepathy is extremely powerful. I think it was before, wasn’t it?” I glanced at Aaron, and he nodded. I thought I remembered something about Holland using her telepathy on the team in the past, but I didn’t know when it was or what she’d done offhand. “It’s like a hundred times stronger now than it used to be.”
“So no IACs and no cell phones. That’ll make this easy,” Elliott said sarcastically.
“Cell phones…. No cell phones….” Aaron was mumbling, staring at the table with his eyes wide, and I realized immediately he was on to something. I glanced at Cadence, and she was looking past me at Elliott. His expression told me they both knew Aaron was about to solve this puzzle.
I followed him down the rabbit hole even though I knew he’d get there first. Where was he going with this? Cell phones….
“That’s it.” He didn’t shout it like I would have if I’d figured it out, but he was just as confident in what he’d discovered. I could see that a weight was lifted from his shoulders, as if he was free of something that had been plaguing him for a while. There was still plenty to figure out, but he had something.
“What’s it?” Cadence asked for all of us.
“The cell towers.” He was looking at me, like I could somehow confirm what it was he’d concluded, though I was still a bit behind him. “That’s the reason the trackers aren’t working once the Vampires close in on their locations. Remember the tower at the RV Park?”
“I do.” I remembered how terrified I’d been that he was going to take me up there with him.
“So, my changing the frequency of the trackers has only made it worse,” Christian said. I didn’t know he’d been doing that, but it made sense that we wouldn’t be able to pick up a scrambled message from the tags if they were still on the same frequency they had been on, and we were on the wrong one now. Holland wasn’t changing the frequency—she was masking it.
Christian continued, “I need to go back to the original frequency and find a way to block Holland’s signal somehow.”
I was up to speed now, but I could tell by everyone else’s expressions most of the team wasn’t there yet. “But then, why did she need the alarm system if she can use cell towers?” Aurora asked.
“The alarm system was used to jam our IACs,” I explained, feeling confident I knew what had happened now. “Not to communicate with the Vampires. I think the bigger the job, the more juice she needs.”
“So she can send a message easily via her telepathy to a couple of us,” Aaron stated.
“But in order to do something large scale, like coordinate thousands of Vampire movements from such a great distance….” Jamie continued.
“She needs something more powerful.” Cadence looked so proud of herself for being the one to finish the thought, I had to pat her on the hand.
