Page 50 of Storm Caller

He arches a brow and looks around the room. “It seems we have time.”

Sol swallows hard, her gaze turning distant. “Many decades ago, I found myself working with a group of scientists in New Georgetown, one of the Neo-Cities near the Great Lake. I’d discovered my ability years earlier, and more and more Keepers were starting to appear. But the madness came on swiftly, exacerbated by regular hits of Spark. I found my passion in my work. I lived for the research. My partner, Dr. Philip Mowry, was a brilliant man who worked alongside me. We were so close to finding a cure.”

She stops, pressing her mouth together.

“But I never stopped missing New Manhattan. I hadn’t seen my family in years. I wanted to return home, and we received regular reports about their struggles with Keeper attacks. No one cared—they had their own problems to deal with. But I cared. I argued with Philip over sharing our knowledge, but he hated New Manhattan more than anyone else. They’d destroyed his home when he was a child, forcing his family to flee.

“We had a . . . falling out. He betrayed me, and I was hurt.” Another pause before she continues. “I’m not proud of what I did next. Something that I have regretted every day since, and that I will regret for the rest of my life.”

Her gaze slides over everyone in the room. “I decided to steal the research and take it back to the city. I thought it could be my chance to return and make a better life for myself. I wanted to be a part of Society. Living in the Tiera Frais was so hard. We struggled. Every day was a fight, and I wanted to return home a hero. When I left, I destroyed everything in the lab, erasing decades of work, and escaped with as much of the data as I could.”

Throughout her speech, my jaw drops lower and lower.

It’s obvious from Rook’s expression that he didn’t know any of this.

“And then what?” he asks, sitting forward. “What happened when you arrived home?”

“I went straight to The Shield. At first, they didn’t believe anything I was saying. They wrote it off as the lunatic ravings of a Scavenger. It was a newly elected Tennessee Marks who finally gave me a chance to explain. During it all, Keepers were wreaking havoc on the city, and no one knew how to control them.

“I made myself useful by deriving methods to collect Spark and using it to power the city. It was a breakthrough that gave us the means to protect ourselves in ways we never had before. New Manhattan began to thrive, but I never gave up my quest for a cure.

“I begged Marks for the resources to continue my research, which he provided in secret. I spent a few more years working with a team of brilliant minds. I also worked to establish the Storm Guard and position myself as its leader. Eventually, I became so popular with the public that I was offered the title of general and sworn into The Shield.

“By then, Colt had also taken his position. He was close with Marks, and immediately, I got the sense it would always be me against them. As much as Tennessee had initially supported my efforts, I was still Hollowborn. An outsider. I should have known they wouldn’t like having me around.

“So, they took everything from me. One day, I showed up to find my lab and my scientists had all been removed, wiped out. I never knew what became of them, but all those decades of research were erased again. There was a certain irony in that, after everything I’d done. Marks and Orsen told me I’d wasted enough time and resources searching for a cure that couldn’t be found. I was devastated. That’s when they created the Extinguishers to help deal with the problem of feral Keepers.”

General Sol falls quiet, her chest heaving, as if reliving her past has taken a lot of effort.

“Does anyone else know about this?” I ask.

“No one,” she says. “Me, Marks, Orsen, and now the people in this room. I have every reason to believe that anyone else who knew the entire truth is now dead.”

She doesn’t elaborate further.

“What happened to Dr. Mowry?” I ask.

The general shakes her head. “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen him since I left New Georgetown.”

“So we could have had a cure by now?” Rook asks, his tone acidic. “But you ruined that because you wanted to be Society?”

He practically spits the words, and the general flinches.

I can’t really blame him.

Her expression tightens, her shoulders dropping.

“I’m ashamed of what I did,” she says softly. “I will forever regret my choices.”

“You should,” Rook practically snarls. No one says anything for a moment until he speaks again. “Okay, so why are you telling us all this?”

Sol rolls her shoulders. “Time is growing scarce. I don’t know how much longer I have left, and you deserve to know the truth if you’re going to help aid my larger goal.”

“What larger goal?” Rook asks.

“I believe Marks and Orsen continued the research after they stole it from me, and they do have the cure,” she says. “But I haven’t been able to prove it.”

“Why would they hide this?” I ask.