Knox (The Boundarylands #12) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,2

already."

The man returned her smile with one that raised goosebumps along Josie's arms. "Well, well. Looks like whoever put together your file overestimated your intelligence. I don't know how to tell you this, my dear, but no one cares about lawyers where we're going."

Josie swallowed down a shiver of fear. Yeah, this was looking worse and worse.

"Well, shit," she drawled in a bored tone, acting for all she was worth. "I guess the latest campaign is working even better than we hoped if it's gotten the attention of the top brass. Let me guess, are you guys FBI? Homeland Security? Shit—CIA? I always wanted my own CIA file."

"And I'm sure you have it," Bad Suit said, dismissing her performance. "But we're not with any of those agencies. Don't get me wrong—they all serve their purpose, but they're also too bogged down by bureaucracy to get anything important done."

"So, on whose authority was I arrested?"

The man's smile broadened as if she'd said something clever. "Mine."

The pit of fear in Josie's gut expanded. "And who the fuck are you?"

"My name isn't important," the man said, waving off her question. "What I've spent the last decade of my life doing, however, is. I oversaw the development of a simple blood test to determine the true nature of any woman."

Bingo. Her suspicions confirmed, outrage took the place of some of Josie's fear. "So you authorized some sort of quasi-legal kidnapping because…why? I hurt your tender feelings?"

The man barked a mirthless laugh. "Don't give yourself so much credit, Miss Price. This had nothing to do with anyone's feelings—other than the terror that most women feel at the prospect of becoming an omega."

"And you think you're helping them by forcing them to be tested?" Josie shot back before she could stop herself. "Spare me your bullshit propaganda. This just another way of controlling women like this country has done for centuries."

"You say controlling; I say liberating."

The chill in the man's voice ought to have served as a warning, but if there was one lesson Josie was crap at learning, it was judging when to back down. "Liberating them from what?"

Bad Suit leaned forward a fraction of an inch, and Josie involuntarily drew back. "Did you know that before I formed the Alpha Control Division, there had been no official scientific studies into the cause of aberrational natures?"

"'Aberrational natures?'" Josie echoed the odious term used by only the worst bigots.

Bad Suit shrugged. "It only took my scientists ten years to discover the link between dormant omega genes in a mother and the birth of alpha sons and omega-carrier daughters."

Josie's skin crawled at the man's matter-of-fact tone, somehow more repulsive than an open show of zealotry. Even at an altitude of thousands of feet off the ground, Josie had an urge to throw herself out the hatch and get as far away from him as possible.

"So?" she forced herself to ask.

Bad Suit seemed almost disappointed in her for not following his logic. Enunciating carefully, he said, "So once every woman has been tested, we can put an end to alpha births once and for all."

Oh, shit. He couldn't mean…but who the fuck was she kidding? Of course he did.

"You cruel son of a bitch," she cried. "You don't just want to test women against their will. You want to sterilize the ones who test positive."

"I'm not the one who's cruel," he said, feigning hurt. "Mother Nature is the one who rips out the hearts of mothers and fathers when their perfect teenage sons turn into monsters. I'm just trying to fix what was broken. By putting a stop to omega births and continuing sanctions against alpha territories, we can end the scourge of aberrational natures in our lifetime. And I'm not about to let a silly little girl with a savior complex get in the way."

Josie recoiled in horror, realizing she was looking at a madman. Just like so many villains throughout history, he hungered for power and believed purity was the way to achieve it.

It was too late to stop the development of the omega test and the sanctions on the Boundarylands. If the agency behind this man succeeded with mandatory testing, it wouldn't be long before they pushed for sterilization. And if they could pluck Josie out of bed in the middle of the night and make her disappear, it wasn't hard to imagine them having the power to bring the rest of their evil plan to fruition.

Even so, there was still one big problem. Josie