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“What are you talking about?”
“You. All of you. And apparently me too.” Dr. Dante set the bottle on the coffee table. “I mean, a species based on the foundation of being a mosaic just doesn’t seem probable.”
“Did the Anubis seem probable when you first saw it manifest?” Johnathan knew what he’d felt the first time he’d seen it.
“No, it didn’t. It couldn’t.” Dr. Dante stared at nothing. “The Fenrir, the Sarvari, Mah, Varu, the Anubis, how does it all connect? Evolution, I understand. Origin, I understand. But I need to knowwhy? And there has to be awhybecause there’s always a reason, some necessity, some catalyst that forces an organism to change. Especially like this.”
Johnathan looked at Seung. She was way better at explaining stuff than he was.
“No one knows for sure. We’ve lost so many of our people and even the wolves lose their memory if given enough time.”
“Wait. The wolves remember?”
“Yes. Not exactly like us, but they remember and share those memories with each other.”
Dr. Dante picked up the bowl of soup. “There still has to be more.” He took a bite. “I mean, there has to be something tangible. I know history has a way of being written by the winner, but your existence can’t possibly have gone unnoticed.” His spoon clinked against the bowl.
“We never hid,” Seung said. “Governments and religious groups just worked very hard to erase us. They have records. The rest they destroyed.”
“Nothing is completely erased. There’s always something left. Even if it’s only mythology.”
“Sarvari, Fenrir, Varu, Mah, and the Anubis, those are the names that stayed,” Seung said. “The stories surrounding those names are irrelevant.”
Dr. Dante scrubbed his hand over his mouth, knocking his glasses, leaving them crooked on the bridge of his nose. “I would argue, but…” The wolf sat in front of him, and they watched each other. “That right there makes it very difficult.” He leaned closer, and the wolf cocked its head. “Since physicists proposed string theory, the scientific community has entertained the concept of a multiverse. They’ve even looked for evidence by utilizing the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Lots of talk. Even more math. Hundreds of papers with crazy theories that seem absolutely insane written by some of the most gifted minds in the field.
“But your wolves are more convincing than anything I’ve ever read. I bet every physicist in the world would sell their soul to see this.” He extended a hand the same way someone petted a dog, but his fingers passed through the Fenrir. The area broke apart into tiny particles, then reformed again. “And I’d bet they still wouldn’t believe it. I’m looking at it, and I keep questioning my sanity.” Dr. Dante waved a hand at the room. “Do you have any idea what knowledge like this would do to the world, let alone the scientific community?”
Johnathan had never really thought about it. He glanced at Seung, who wore a look of worry.
Dr. Dante shook his head as if answering an internal question. “Why am I here?” He met Jonathan’s gaze.
Eyes wide, some shade of moss green with bronze flecks, framed by long features. His ears stuck out from under the curls of hair at his temples, and his lips were glossy from where he’d licked them.
Thank God for whatever Frost had dosed Jonathan with because he knew, for a fact, he would have never stayed in his chair without it.
Dr. Dante pushed his glasses higher. “Seung said a man named Isaiah needs Luca to bring back their wolves, so you have to want something from me. Why else would I be here?”
“We need your help with the VrK,” Johnathan said.
“Yeah, I read it was unstable. Your bro… he said it wasn’t. He said New World thought—”
“My brother was a self-serving zealot who didn’t give a shit about anything but getting the ichor for himself no matter how many people he had to kill to do it. I’m sorry he did what he did. I wish I had stopped him.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Dr. Dante said.
“He was First Beta to our pack, in the middle of building his own territory. My father had no idea he’d made plans to go after the ichor.” Johnathan deflated. “When we realized the tissue samples from the tombs were inside the Utah Facility, we planned on breaking in, retrieving them, and burning down the rest. But we needed reconnaissance. That was Paul’s job.”
“How did you find out? New World monitored everything about everyone. An employee didn’t even sneeze without there being a record of it.”
“The town where New World required employees to live needed people to repair things, deliver mail, run restaurants, grocery stores. And people talk. When they did, we listened. But what we heard went way beyond a bunch of stolen mummies from that tomb.”
“The ichor.”
“Yeah, and The Book of Anubis.” One of the most incredible and terrifying moments in Johnathan’s life. Irrefutable evidence of the Anubis and the realization someone had created a formula to remake it using a Cana. “Grey pulled Paul out. He wasn’t happy about it, but if what we heard was true, it was too big a risk going in blind. That’s when Grey bribed a CEO at New World to push for the installation of a new computer system. One with moresecurity.”
“You still had to get the data off the systems.”
The doubt in Dr. Dante’s tone didn’t surprise Johnathan. He knew damn well he didn’t sound smart enough to be a computer technician.
