Chapter 264
Tell that to the half-dozen men we shipped back to their families in body bags.
The words make me want to vomit, to scream. Wake and I have left so much blood behind us, but I know deep down that there’s going to be so much more shed before we’re done. That is the reality of war.
Lily continues, “That was a joy to explain, by the way. I had to blame it on a chemical explosion. If this were any other facility, corporate would’ve swarmed the place and we’d have been shut down.”
I press my lips together.
“Needless to say,” she goes on. “When it looked for all the world that Wake had come back leading his own battalion, I figured diplomacy was the better play.”
“How’d that work out for you?”
She scoffs. “Oh, please. What would you have done in my position? How do you explain to an armed stranger that until very recently, you were keeping his twin brother for scientific exploration?”
“I don’t know what I would have done,” I admit. “But I’m pretty sure I know how you responded. You lied.”
She waves a hand. “I omitted some of the more… difficult realities until I understood what they wanted. That’s diplomacy.”
“You’re not a diplomat,” I say. “You’re a scientist.”
“Fortunately for all of us, so is Shoal,” she says smoothly. “Or at least an academic. Learning about his brother was an… unnerving surprise, but one we made peace with, given the circumstances. Once we established mutual curiosity, things moved fast. He wanted the warships. Which, let’s be honest, I hadn’t even known were under this place.”
I nod. “So what did you get out of it?”
Lily’s smile is tight. “Opportunity. Resources. The chance to be more than the woman buried in a forgotten lab.”
“You mean the opportunity to play god.”
“You’re just mad I’m better at it than you.”
I lean forward. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
Lily rolls her eyes. “You like to believe we’re different, Phoebe. But we’re not. You became Enkian because I set the conditions for it. You knocked down the dominoes, but I set them up.”
“Bold of you to take credit for my biology.”
“You think I’m bluffing?” she says. “I was sent here nearly twenty years ago, to monitor a useless alien specimen. And I turned this place into a miracle machine. I built tech that should’ve earned me a Nobel. But Enigma didn’t care about sonar arrays or regenerative tissue.” She glares at me. “They cared about the mermaid in the tube.”
I stare. “And what did you do?”
She smiles darkly. “I figured out how to make one.”
My blood runs cold.
“That’s not what happened, and you know it,” I snap. “You can’t just replicate what happened to me on whomever you want, they already have to carry the DNA.”
“Or have it introduced into their genome.”
My stomach lurches. “The prisoners. That’s what you’re using them for?”
Lily sighs, like I’m being dramatic. “The point is exploration. You of all people should understand that. Shoal offered me something no human organization ever has. Freedom. Autonomy. Answers.”
“And Enigma?” I ask, quietly now. “How do they feel about all these changes?”
She shrugs. “They feel, however, I want them to feel.”
“You’re not reporting to them,” I realize. “Not the truth, anyways.”
“What’s the point of corporate oversight when the world is on the line?”
“Do you actually believe in any of this, Lily?” I ask. “Leviathan? This power struggle between alien gods? You have no actual stake in this conflict at all.”
She tilts her head. “I believe in the hitherto unknown species that are freely mutating in my tank. That’s enough for now.”
And that’s when I see it—the glint in her eyes, the obsession coiled just behind the smugness. She’s not answering to anyone. Not anymore.
I sit back, pulse racing. This is it. This is my angle.
“I want in.”
Lily blinks. “Into what?”
“You’re not gonna let another day go by without understanding what’s happening in that tank,” I say, voice firm. “And I want to be right there next to you when you figure it out.”
She shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”
I lean forward. “You said it yourself. You can lay all the groundwork you want, but it means nothing without me. You hate that you need me—but you do. So stop pretending otherwise.”
Her jaw clenches. She’s seething. I know I’ve got her.
Finally, she hisses through her teeth, “Fine. You can observe. Be in the main theater in an hour.”
And just like that, I’m in.
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