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“Because it’s obvious you don’t want to.”
Reese slumped.
“Dr. Dante. Please. Tell me.”
“The files sent tonight.” He cleared his throat. “They had DNA sequencing reports on the betas and other peo—” Reese cleared his throat. “People.”
Harrington walked over to the coffeepot on the small counter and refilled the cup. He returned with hot fresh tea free of whisky. He handed it to Reese. “Who?”
“Some names matched the missing mercenaries, others I’d never seen.”
“What did the reports say?”
“They all shared identical anomalies. Aside from Koda’s betas, all those individuals had been administered the VrK.”
“The ichor changed them.” Harrington made it a statement.
“According to the date, the anomalies were present pre-injection. I think it’s why they were chosen to be injected.”
“Do you think what you read has anything to do with the dead Anubis in your kitchen?”
“Yes, no, maybe? It wasn’t like I had time to interview it. It just came through the window. Then it smashed into the aquarium.” Reese winced. “Goddamn it, my aquarium. Do you know how much Indonesian Euphyllia Glabrescens cost nowadays? And my beautiful Macropharyngodon Choati. I—”
“Dr. Dante.”
“Yes?”
“Quit stalling.”
Was he? Reese couldn’t be sure. “It chased me up the hall, took out a good chunk of the wall. I went into the kitchen, and it followed.”
“When did it wind up dead?”
Reese bit his bottom lip and mumbled.
Harrington’s stare went from heavy to crushing.
“I cut its head off with a meat cleaver. But please don’t ask me how because I don’t know. The thing is, it didn’t purge any ichor, and that isn’t normal.”
“Was there anything else not normal?”
Reese straightened his already straight glasses, then picked a thread in the blanket. It pulled free and fluttered to the floor. “It didn’t move right.”
“How so?”
“It moved normal, like it was real. By that, I mean, not like the subjects did in Phase and not even like the ones made with the VrK.”
“How do you know the ones made with the VrK didn’t move the same?”
Because the only place Reese had seen them up close and personal was when Paul Dekker had bitten him. He’d been terrifying while he’d moved in a near liquid state, but it hadn’t beenimpossiblelike the subjects.
“I don’t remember exactly. I must have caught a glimpse of one when they took me from the woods when I found Nash and Luca.”
“It was dark.”
“The moon was out.” Partly. “And in Phase two, they’re blacker than the night.”
Harrington eyed Reese for a moment, then said, “Okay. And you say the one in your kitchen moved differently?”
