"Their names came up during our investigations on a recent series of murders." She hesitated, meeting King's icy gaze. "All the victims were in their mid-twenties, were adopted from Greenwood state care, and had red hair. Just like your friend here."
"I see." If he detected her slight lie, he gave no indication of it. "Then you have heard of the Generation Eighteen project?"
She raised her eyebrows. Gabriel was right — the general was just a little too eager to talk about military secrets. He had an agenda of his own. If the heat washing a warning across her skin was any indication, it boded her no good.
"It's been mentioned, yes."
The general leaned back in his chair. "By who? Allars or Haynes?"
He was direct, if nothing else. She shrugged lightly. "We pieced together details from what they've both said. Which wasn't much, believe me."
"Nor should it be. Both had behavior modifications." He hesitated, as if waiting for a reaction.
She crossed her arms and returned his gaze steadily. After a few seconds, he continued.
"The first eight people on your list — Allars included — have nothing to do with Generation Eighteen."
A point she already knew, as Allars had already told her that those eight — the names on her birth certificate — were test subjects rather than scientists. But for his safety, and maybe even her own, it was best to pretend ignorance. "Then what were they involved in?"
The general considered her for a moment. "Have you ever heard of the Penumbra project?"
She didn't bat an eyelid. "No."
He continued to stare at her, his expression neither believing nor disbelieving, just blank. As if, in that moment in time, there was absolutely no one at home in the general's mind. King had a similar blankness. Were the two conferring mind to mind?
"The two projects," the general said, "were only connected by the fact that the same five scientists worked on both."
A waitress came in, carrying two coffees. Sam waited until she'd left before continuing. "But from what we can gather, Emma Pierce did not. She was only a part of the Generation Eighteen project."
"That's true."
"Then what, exactly, was Generation Eighteen?"
The general picked up his coffee and sipped at it slowly. Then he reached for the tray of savories, sampling several. Obviously trying to decide just how much to tell her.
"King here is a product of Generation Eighteen."
So he was Maxwell's brother — or, at the very least, his test tube brother. She raised an eyebrow. "So Hopeworth is breeding children?"
"Special children, with special gifts. Not all weapons are mechanical, you know."
The hint of pride in his voice rolled revulsion through her. Tiny children growing in a bloodless, emotionless vacuum, pawns to the military's whims? What madness was that? No wonder King acted like a robot. He'd probably had any sort of humanity hammered out of him. "And the seventeen children placed into Greenwood twenty-two years ago?"
"Failures. Nowadays, we place them into care."
Meaning that in the past they'd been discarded with the other rubbish? God, what sort of monsters were these men? "Why were they considered failures?"
"Because they were born human."
And that was a failure? That they'd even managed to survive made them successful, surely. "But why adopt them out? Why not keep them in the military environment? Surely even mere humans could find a place of worth in Hopeworth?"
His smile was cold. "If we wanted human soldiers, we could recruit them. Besides, we don't have the facilities to raise children."
Yet they had the facilities to raise "gifted" children? What was the damn difference? "Then why were the failures being prescribed Jadrone? The drug has no effect on humans."
The general raised an eyebrow. "The SIU system is better than we thought."
Meaning, she gathered, such information would be buried deeper in the future. "The autopsies revealed severe bone degeneration in King and Maxwell. Why would that be?"