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“I don’t understand.” I bring my gaze to him. “Created? These are genetic blueprints.” My eyes widen, and I stare at him as the pieces click into place. He watches me warily. “They… You were created in that lab?”
He nods slowly. “My people were, and then they bred more of us.”
“You… The humans…” I shake my head, working through it, and he sighs.
“The lab was all we knew. Many died there. The experiments were rough on us. The first few of us were more monster than human, but it was slowly diluted into what we are now. Eventually, my people fought back, tired of being oppressed, abused, and hurt.”
“The war,” I mutter, and he nods again. My whole world shifts, and I grab the table for stability as my world crumbles around me. Everything I thought I knew was wrong, a lie.
“We escaped. We just wanted to be left alone, and we tried to flee, but they would never let us go, not after what they did to us. They trapped us, but they never expected us to fight back. All those genetic predator instincts they bred into our DNA turned on them, and they couldn’t win, but they also couldn’t tell the truth.”
“They lied to us all. I always wondered how you came to be. Some said aliens, some said a natural disaster, but I could never figure it out.” I shake my head. “And no one was ever allowed to ask.”
Dumb. I’m so dumb.
“They created you, and they tried to kill you when you escaped.” I peer at him. So many thoughts run through my head, but one is prominent. “You must hate me.”
“Not you, Tally. You are innocent in this war, just like me. We are just collateral damage, but that is why I took the research, to help me with my own and to stop them from ever getting their hands on it.”
“And then I came to take it.” I sag. “Fuck!” I tug at my hair. “I didn’t know, I swear. I should have, but no one ever questioned it. I grew up with the wall in place and knowledge that monsters were real, but I never even thought to—” His hand covers mine, stopping my rambling.
“It’s okay, Tally,” he whispers.
“No it’s not.” I leap to my feet and pace. “They perverted nature. They tried to play god, and the world could have been destroyed by it! But why now? Why are they coming for the research now…” I turn to him. “They need it, but why? They need the experiments they did on your kind.”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I didn’t even know that was why you were here. How about we find out together?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my whole world crumbling. Are the people I work for truly the enemy? The true monsters?
They created them, a whole new race, and then they tried to eradicate them so the truth couldn’t get out. All of those lives were lost for their lies…and I work for them. I was sent here to give them exactly what they want, and I don’t know how Cato doesn’t hate me, because at this moment, I do. I was so blind, so stupid, thinking I could make a difference.
Not anymore.
Straightening my spine, I meet his eyes. “I won’t give them the research, and I won’t allow them to hurt anyone else again, but I need to know why they sent me here and what they need so I can figure out their plans. If they are willing to not only create a new sentient species and experiment on it, but to start a war to cover it up, then they are capable of anything and I worry what that means, not just for humans, but you as well.”
He watches me with something akin to hope in his eyes as he nods slowly. “Then we will find out. We will figure out what the humans want.” He stands, towering over me, but unlike the humans who do it to overpower me, he simply does it because of his height. “But know this, Talia. I will never let them hurt my people again.”
I nod, knowing it’s not a threat, but a promise. If I ally with the humans, if I get what they want and give it back, then he will kill me, and I don’t blame him. They have been tortured, used, and abused for so long, not to mention killed for simply being alive, for being created, so he has no reason to trust humans.
I want to give him one though.
I want him to trust me, I realise, and something in me warms.
I thought I was supposed to help the people of Athesa, but maybe it was always this. Maybe I was always meant to help these monsters, these people, who have known nothing but pain and betrayal since birth.
Maybe I was always meant to find myself here, with him, to stop it from ever happening again.
THIRTEEN
TALIA
“There are some missing, aren’t there?” I’m cataloguing the research, trying to make sense of it. If I can, hopefully, I can help them.
For once, I feel like I’m actually helping, like I’m doing something I should be doing.
It’s as if fate brought me here, a construct I never believed in before now, but I can admit there must be a guiding hand to land me here in this lab with the capability to read this research and help Cato and his people. He lifts his head from where he’s crouched next to me, reading off labels.
“I think I left some behind,” he murmurs.
