"They wouldn't fear that, because most of us can't speak about them."
"Why not?"
Haynes tapped his head. "Blocks have been placed on our memories."
Blocks could be removed, but it would take time. Time they didn't have. "So, you can't talk about the projects at all?"
"Wouldn't think so."
"Mind if I test?" When Haynes shrugged, he added, "Tell me about Penumbra."
Haynes frowned. "Nope. Can't do."
"Lyle, Benson and White, along with you and Cooper, are the only survivors from the fire that destroyed the Penumbra project — that true?"
Haynes nodded.
"From what Allars said, it sounded like an inside job."
"Impossible. We were tagged and watched, twenty-four hours a day."
"What was Penumbra?"
"I can't say... I can't."
"The five of you also worked on Generation 18, that right?"
Haynes nodded. Yes and no answers were outside the limits of the blocks, it seemed.
"Emma Pierce was one of the test subjects?" Again a nod. "From which you took her ovaries?"
Haynes looked uncomfortable and dropped his gaze from Gabriel's.
"Generation 18 test subjects were either shifter or changers. What were you hoping to achieve?"
"Hy... Hyb..." Haynes scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck, his expression uncomfortable.
"Hybrids?" Gabriel finished. Haynes nodded.
So the military were trying to develop shifter-changer hybrids — something that occurred only rarely in the natural order of things.
"What about Penumbra? What were you trying to create there?"
Haynes could only shrug. The conditioning was stronger for that project than the more recent one. Gabriel wondered why.
"Did the Generation Eighteen project succeed?"
A brief, sharp nod. And a hint of pride in the old man's eyes.
"How many successful crosses did you achieve?"
The other man shrugged. Either he wasn't sure of exact numbers, or he couldn't say.
"Were there many failures?"
"All experiments have failures."
"What happened to them? Did they all die, or did some live?"