quietly at last. “Pithica came first, and it concentrated exclusively on enhancement of the brain. In the beginning, it looked like it would be wildly successful.”
“It was,” I said. “They’d practically taken over the world before we stopped them.”
Simon was intensely silent.
“Okay, I get it, things you can’t tell me lest I start going off the deep end.” I mostly managed to keep a cap on my snippiness. “Go on.”
“With the technology behind Pithica going so well, the next step was to develop abilities that went beyond the neurological. The Holy Grail was allowing not only enhancements of the mind, but discovering ways for those to interact with enhancements to the human body.”
The familiarity dropped through my consciousness like a block of lead.
What did you take?
My medicine.
“Like me,” I said numbly. “That’s what I am.”
The numbers sang under my skin, mathematics come alive, gloving every neuron with theory made flesh …
“Cas?”
I forced myself to breathe. To think. Arthur. We had to find Arthur, and I could dwell on anything else later.
“So, you’re saying this isn’t Pithica,” I said to Simon. “They’re not violating their deal with us.”
More importantly, that meant I wouldn’t be bringing down their retribution if I mowed down everyone who got in my way. First bit of good news we’d had about whoever was behind this.
“That’s my, well—that’s my guess,” Simon confirmed. “From what I know, at least. I haven’t had contact with anyone from those years in a long while, but this also feels far enough removed not to be involved with Daniela’s group. And I don’t think Halberd even exists anymore, as such; their people would all be … scattered, now. But, Cas—don’t take this lightly. If whoever’s behind this is related to Halberd, that might mean they’re just as dangerous as Pithica ever would be.”
Dangerous like me.
At least that felt familiar. Something I could kill.
“Have you heard Teplova’s name before?” I asked Simon. “Was she a part of—did you know her?”
“I haven’t heard the name, but that doesn’t mean anything. She could have been before my time, or separate in some other way. I wouldn’t know everybody.”
Besides, like Rio had said, Teplova could easily be a pseudonym. And now, like everything else at the wellness center, she was nothing more than a sprinkling of ash.
I tried to reorient, to look forward and formulate a plan. I had to use all this somehow to track down Arthur. And meanwhile, protect his family, which would at least be a slightly better use of one of my best people than babysitting Simon’s too-virtuous ethics.
“I need Rio,” I said to him. “If I take him, is this Oscar guy going to try to run? Or, you know, try to kill you?”
He sighed. “He’s not going to attack me. I mean, people don’t in general, but Oscar also likes my company. I think because I can, um, see and interact with him, and him not having had that … but I can’t guarantee he won’t want his freedom. That’s not a villainous need.”
“Then I’ll tell Rio to barricade you two in there together. Put him back on.”
A moment later Rio’s baritone came back on the line.
“Rio,” I said. “I need you to lock Simon and the Australian in together and come babysit Arthur’s family.”
“I shall do so and head there at once. I can arrive within the hour.”
It was like the words didn’t have English meanings. They balled up in my head with no sense attached to them. After everything else tonight …
“Their location was merely intelligence, Cas,” Rio said, misinterpreting my silence. “I have promised not to harm your friends’ families, and I will not.”
Rio fucking knew about Arthur’s family?
Of course. He’d probably background checked all my friends.
“Do that,” I sputtered, and hung up.
I texted Diego a heads-up and a description of Rio and then stomped back to the car.
eleven
I DIDN’T think to call Checker to warn him we were descending on his place, but it turned out he’d expected it. All four of us squeezed into the garage he’d converted into his own personal computer cluster. Despite it being well past midnight, Checker was fully dressed and had clearly been hard at work on Pilar’s data pull from the wellness center. He immediately put Pilar and Willow on the files as well and sent them in to work in his living room with laptops, though we could still see them clearly on his security monitors.
I’d tried to push Willow for answers again, but she’d recovered her previous