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“No strings attached?”
“No.”
“You’ll go away and never come back?”
Johnathan clenched his eyes shut. Seung swiped her delicate fingers under one of her eyes. The skin glistened under the fluorescent lights.
Reese stood.
“But,” Jonathan said.
Ah, there it was. The catch. Reese sat.
“I—we can’t protect you if you don’t stay.”
Not exactly the—you leave, we’ll have to kill you—extortion Reese had expected. They could have lied about Phillips and what she knew about Paul biting him or what she’d do if she found out.
If they hadn’t lied, he was a dead man.
There was a chance he still was.
“And what if I can’t do what you want?”
Seung and Johnathan looked at each other.
“Did you even think about that scenario? Did it even cross your mind that I might not be skilled enough to backward-engineer what Echols and Dr. Markus did?
“Because I had nothing to do with making the original serum. I wasn’t even in the Utah Facility when Dr. Echols worked on it. Which means I have no idea how they grafted the ichor with living tissue. Before I could even try, I’d need their research and the data reports. I’d need a lab with cold, dark, and freezer rooms. Equipment like a Cell Sorter, a Microarray Scanner, micro-plate with the capacity to detect fluorescence, Sonicator, nanodrop, and that’s just to start with. Equipment like that isn’t cheap.” Reese waved his hands around. “On top of that, I’m not a physicist. Echols was. Even if he were alive, we’d need a team.” He glared at each of them. “No matter what you think, I can’t fix your problem with a test tube and a microscope in two hours like they do on TV. Real life isn’t MacGyver. And trust me, no matter what you think, some things cannot be fixed with duct tape.”
Frost muffled a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
“My father already has a team of scientists at his disposal,” Johnathan said. “And he’s built you a lab.”
“A lab isn’t an empty room.” Reese doubted someone like Johnathan had ever seen the inside of a research facility.
“This isn’t an empty room. It’s three levels filled with a lot of very expensive equipment. And if the science team stationed in Manitoba isn’t to your liking, you tell Grey who you want, and he’ll recruit them. In fact, anything you need, he’ll make it happen.”
… built a lab… equipment... researchers… recruit… anything…
Reese sat back in his chair and tried to remember how to form words. When he still couldn’t, he drank from his water bottle, hoping to wash down everything so it would process. He finished half and tried to put the lid back on, but it jumped from his hold and rolled under the couch. “Sorry, I…” Reese meant to set the bottle on the table so he could look for the cap but missed the edge.
Seung caught the container before it could spill more than a few drops.
Reese scrubbed his face, then watched Johnathan, Seung, and Frost over the tips of his fingers.
“Dr. Dante?” Seung said.
“What if I still can’t?” There, he said it.
“We think you can.”
“Yeah, well, the probability of you being incorrect is a lot higher than you being right.”
“You’re gifted—”
“No—” Reese pointed at her. “I am not gifted. I am not talented. I worked hard for my degree. I worked my goddamned ass off for it. But I’m average. Do you understand me? I made A’s, sure, but I was mostly B’s. If I’d been gifted, talented, even smarter, or capable of not sleeping, I might have been in the top ten percent of graduates. I was in the top twenty at most. And only the very best, and I mean the top one to two percent, get their dream jobs. That’s why I was teaching high school and not on a research project.” Maybe now they would understand. But just in case… “And honestly, I have no idea why Echols chose me out of all the people he had at his disposal. I couldn’t have been his first choice. I don’t even think I would have been his last. The best I can guess is I was the only one dumb enough to believe him.”
“If that’s true, then he got very lucky.”
Reese narrowed a look at Seung. “Have you listened to anything I’ve said?”
“Yes, I have. And I don’t doubt your honesty. There could be thousands of other molecular biologists out there who are all the things you stated, but none of them has what you have?”
“Do tell.”
The strength in Seung’s dark gaze mirrored the power reflected in the Fenrir’s blue eyes. “Because, Dr. Dante,youunderstand the ichor.”
