The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,34

could’ve done something.

“I don’t even want to believe it,” Zoe admitted. “See? That’s the human part of me screaming it sounds too impossible, but I know better.”

And I now also knew better.

“Damn. If they release that flu more widely and a whole crap ton of people fall ill or if some of them start acting like Coop did, raging out like rabies-infected zombies, people are going to panic, and the Daedalus can then swoop in, giving frightened people someone to blame. The Luxen.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “It will be bad.”

It would be catastrophic.

“How many people even get the flu shot?” she asked, and I knew she wasn’t expecting an answer.

“A little over forty percent, sometimes higher if there’s a bad seasonal flu.” When she blinked at me, a weak smile formed. “Um, Mom used to rant about vaccines a lot. I only know that because of her.”

Zoe studied me for a moment and then said, “Well, over fifty percent will either mutate or die. That’s a hell of an army, or that’s a whole lot of thinning the herd.”

And the herd had already been thinned when the Luxen invaded four years prior—220 million people had died then.

Fewer people who could think and who could fight would be easier to control.

Pulling my legs up to my chest, I folded my arms around my knees. “We have to stop them before they release that virus, because it will be too late by then.”

Zoe’s pupils gleamed bright white for a handful of seconds before returning to black. She didn’t respond, and I figured she was too caught up in imagining what it would be like if that virus were released.

Anger resurfaced once more, but this time it didn’t slither; it roared through me like a raging river. “Even if the Daedalus didn’t have this flu virus, something needs to be done to them.”

“Preaching to the choir, babe.”

“I know I am. I know you and Luc and probably a hell of a lot of people here want nothing more than to see them gone, and I may not remember my time with them. I know that is probably a blessing.”

Zoe’s gaze flickered away. “It is.”

I swallowed hard. “But I keep thinking about that Trojan Eaton saw—the one who slammed his head into the wall until he died. All Dasher had done was tell him to do so, and he did it without hesitation.”

“I don’t even know what to say about that,” she said, jaw working. “They could never get that kind of control over us or the hybrids—definitely not the Luxen. Not that they didn’t try. I think the only reason why the Daedalus haven’t taken over was because they couldn’t replicate the hive mind the Luxen and Arum can have.”

“But they have now. Eaton said that the Trojans view Dasher as if the man is their god. Luc thinks that the whole coded thing doesn’t matter, that I won’t end up under Dasher’s control, but we really don’t know that,” I admitted, then took a deep, steady breath. “It doesn’t matter if I can control myself or not. Those other Trojans? They were probably like me or like you and Luc. They might not have had a choice before this was done to them, but they sure as hell don’t have a choice now. We need to stop the Daedalus before they have the ability to command hundreds of thousands of newly mutated people who don’t live up to their expectations into killing themselves. I can’t let that happen.”

Determination reverberated through me. I had to do something, because those Trojans and the ones yet to be mutated were like a part of me. Sounded crazy, but that was how I felt. I couldn’t explain the connection with the other Trojans, faces and names I couldn’t remember and might not have even known. Maybe it was there, buried deep within me, because I’d been trained with them. Perhaps it was far simpler than that and had everything to do with the lurking, insidious fear that I could become the Trojan commanded to do something too horrible to conjure to others or to myself. I had no idea, but the Daedalus needed to be stopped. They needed to be wiped from the face of this planet and from history, for real this time.

7

Our appetites pretty much shriveled up and died at that point. Talking about power-hungry organizations that had the potential to wipe out or mutate over half the United States population