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“Or it would lead to a massacre,” she said. “If Zeus found them first—”
“Yes, and we can’t afford the time to train new recruits from zero to the required peak of ability. We also recruit young, allows us to ensure they understand the Olympus way. We don’t have to deal with bad habits picked up elsewhere or inflated egos. To have such a green team would be dangerous.”
Information was important, hence why she subdued her outrage. The men inside, Harry’s men, weren’t exactly her best buddies, but the idea of them being exterminated horrified her. Hugo talked about them as assets, as property. She couldn’t think of them that way. It would be easier if she could. But those men included Daire. In her eyes, he’d never be dispensable.
“Worked out that you didn’t chip them then,” Tess said.
“The final decision was swayed not by the potential we’d have to destroy ourselves, but by the weakness it would offer for others to exploit. Tech like that can be hacked. It would give our external enemies a way to track our people. And, possibly, damage them from afar.”
By programming the chip to do something it shouldn’t maybe? External enemies were the least of their worries at that moment. Though the thought sent her mind into a frenzy. Daire couldn’t be safe anywhere. Wouldn’t be safe anywhere. He couldn’t trust his own people and there were probably hundreds across the world who’d love a chance to damage Olympus… even if they didn’t know the name of the agency they had beef with.
“That was why we had Poseidon working on the synthetic isotope,” Hugo said. “The biological component couldn’t be hacked like plain old hardware.”
The isotope allowed Garrick, whose code name was Poseidon, to locate the men he had found. Except it was just an experiment at the time of the Exodus when everyone fled to save themselves from Zeus’s wrath.
“It’s not at its full potential,” she said. “It has a maximum radius.”
“A hundred miles, yes,” Hugo said, frowning. “It’s a shame Asclepius is no longer with us.”
That was a code name she hadn’t heard before. “Asclepius?”
“Jeremiah Landyn,” he said, taking a long breath. “Our doctor. For a long time we’ve been aware of the potential for technological corruption. To make tech unbreachable or beyond exploitation, is extremely difficult. Olympus has been at the forefront of developing biological elements, which add another layer of protection.”
Biological elements didn’t sound like something anyone should mess with. Especially when, like he’d already implied, technology could be used against whoever was in proximity to it.
“Jeremiah Landyn helped with that?”
Hugo nodded. “He worked in tandem with Poseidon and outside agencies. Third parties didn’t know the truth of his interest, of course. Poseidon, James Garrick, is a brilliant man. A genius, no doubt about it. He’s made Olympus what it is today. It’s his technology that kept us ahead of our enemies… He is efficient and organized… curious too. That curiosity led to innovations that have saved our people more than once.”
At least Hugo was acknowledging they were people. Though she wasn’t sure he really understood what that meant. They had lives, loves and desires of their own, passions and pursuits they sacrificed to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
“He’s been nice to me.”
She didn’t know James Garrick well. They’d only laid eyes on each other just over a week ago and hadn’t met under the best of circumstances. To lure her father and Daire to the house, and keep themselves alive, Garrick had one of the Olympus men abduct her from a hotel.
“Garrick isn’t much of a fighter,” Hugo said. “He’s a… theorist rather than a man of action. Your father is the man we rely on for that.”
Which put Harry at the most peril of the three principal agents of Olympus. James Garrick, Poseidon, was hardware and resources. Zeus was the strategist, the man in charge of the operations side of the organization. Her father, Harry, was personnel. He dealt with recruitment and training.
“I’m sure he’s good at it,” she said. “Though we can’t ignore that Garrick was the man who put this together.”
“Bringing our people back to the fold, yes, that was a surprise… Less so when you realize how these men rely on Olympus. It’s their world. Zeus was the first recruited. He trained for a year before Hades and Poseidon were brought in. All of them were young, Zeus was about twenty-two, your father and Garrick were eighteen, nineteen. It’s all they’ve known. It’s been their lives for a long time. Without it I imagine Garrick didn’t know what to do with himself.”
Giving one’s life in service of the greater good was noble. Maybe her connection to Daire skewed her view, but there was something sad about what the Olympus men missed out on. The institution controlled and dictated their adult lives. Shore leave wasn’t even a thing, so it wasn’t like they ever kicked back and just enjoyed life.
“It’s a worthy cause.”
“It is,” he said, sucking in a breath and leaning in to take the bottle from the table. “Not a life I could ever live.” Hugo topped off his glass and then offered the bottle her way. Putting a hand over the top, she shook her head. “Come on, you only live once.”
“I don’t like to drink too much.”
He put the bottle down without insisting. “From what I know about your life, you haven’t been positioned to have a lot of fun.”
Like the Olympus men.
“I’ve had my moments,” Tess said, hiding her mouth behind the glass.
He laughed. “I don’t doubt that from such a beautiful woman.”
