very well. I don’t know how much longer it’ll be before I lose complete control over any aspect of operations.”
He had to get off the phone then, and Josh made more coffee as we kept going over everything.
Bradford Hills Institute was on partial lockdown. Scared parents were pulling their kids out of school, and even some faculty had stopped showing up. Classes continued amid tight security, but the situation was tense and tenuous. Schools all over the country were in a similar situation.
An encrypted message from Charlie described the mood: “People are terrified. It’s like they’re all hunkering down and preparing for Armageddon. The US isn’t in a state of emergency, nor do we have any curfews in place, but there are outbreaks of violence from time to time. The streets are deserted, half the businesses closed. It’s eerie.”
“Who can we trust?” I looked between them all. I needed to know where we stood when push came to shove.
Alec leaned forward on the table. “Uncle Lucian. Aunt Olivia and Uncle Henry. Dot and Charlie. Ed and his brother, maybe. Kyo, Marcus, and Jamie, definitely. A handful of other agents you haven’t met. I know they’re loyal. Other than that . . .”
It was a short list.
“Dana.” I nodded firmly. “She may be jaded and frustrated with the way she’s been treated her whole life, but deep down she’s a good person. She’s shown me that more than once. Plus, she likes me. We’re practically best friends now. Also Mr. Takata and his men. He’s more than proven himself. What about the Lighthunters?” I questioned just as one of them walked through our front door.
Nina had clearly heard the tail end of our conversation, but she didn’t seem offended by it.
“Yes.” She nodded, perching on the arm of the couch. “You can trust the Lighthunters.”
“Are you positive? They were pretty pissed you brought us here.” Josh made a good point.
Nina nodded. “They were, but mostly at me for not informing them. We take the security and secrecy of this facility very seriously. Honestly, we are all horrified at what Davis is doing, the way he is perverting the Light for his own sick reasons, the division it is causing all over the world. We can feel it more than anyone. It is painful. We want to help, but we have stayed silent and secret for so long. Honestly, we just don’t know where to start.”
Nina ran her hands over her cropped hair and stood, starting to pace. “A lot of the meetings recently have been about what our next step needs to be. The more reports that come in from our people on the ground, the more helpless we feel.” She huffed.
I folded my arms and leaned forward. If a super-secret, mega-rich society of badasses was at a loss, what hope did the rest of us have?
Nina kept ranting. I had a feeling she needed to get it all off her chest. “There are some advocating for gathering up as many Vitals as we can, especially the Vivids, and bringing them to our secure locations. They want to bunker down and ride it out from the sidelines, just as we have for centuries. But that is ridiculous! We can’t continue to ignore the tension in the Light, not to mention all the humans! Who is supposed to protect the humans? Granted, some of them need protecting from themselves—I mean, who runs at a Variant with a paralyzing ability armed with nothing more than a baseball bat and their convictions?” She bugged her eyes out incredulously as she referred to footage of one of the riots in Russia that had gone viral.
“Others are arguing we should get involved—come out to the world and tell them of our existence, fight to bring back peace. But people are scared of that too. There is a reason we went underground. I am just not so sure those reasons hold up any longer.”
“Something that unifies people could go a long way. A revelation like this—that Lighthunters are real—could bring real hope to Variants,” Josh mused.
“Yeah, but what about the humans?” Tyler argued. “They could see this as just another advantage the Variants have.”
“Not if you present it in a good light,” Ethan argued. “I mean, shit’s bad, but there are places managing to stay peaceful—look at Iceland, Canada, New Zealand. They’re all managing to keep their shit together. Their governments are pushing messages of unity, and people are following through on the ground, working together and