“As far as I know,” I said and tried to keep the regret out of it.
It took us a few more minutes to search the rest of the cabinets, but they were empty. Not another scrap of paper was in them, nothing. Kat rejoined us after looking over the laboratory area, her face locked into a look of puzzlement. “Kind of weird,” she said.
I waited for a minute to see if anyone else would bite before I did. “What?” I asked finally.
“Just equipment I’ve never seen before.” She gestured to the room around us. “The furniture is hundreds of years old, the treasure is probably from thousands of years of collecting,” she nodded at Breandan as he rejoined us, sporting three solid gold necklaces and with his pants weighed down from heavy pockets, “the filing cabinets are from the seventies, but this equipment is … I dunno. Nineties, I think.
“The former Primus was a real Renaissance man,” I said. “And I mean that in the sense that he should have stayed there. Look at this place. It’s like a mausoleum, a crypt dedicated to a man who didn’t know where the hell he belonged. For all we know, that equipment was there so he could preserve his own life, extend it. I see a man with so much ego that he couldn’t see past his own nose, couldn’t see the point of leaving any kind of legacy for those he was leaving behind.” I looked up at the concrete ceiling. “I mean, look at the kid he left. Some punk that got dragged in from Los Angeles based on name recognition alone by the ministers, just hoping he wouldn’t make waves, I guess. Did he even seem like the kind of guy who knew his father?”
I let that thought sink in with them even as it crept up on me, and I thumbed the folder in my hands open to the photograph again.
Chapter 37
“So you’re really going to go back to Minneapolis, huh?” Reed’s voice was calm, smooth, talking to me almost as if we were both rational people. I could see in his face that he didn’t think it was okay, though.
We were back upstairs in the office, just the two of us now, me sitting on the desk of the Primus and him on the couch against the wall by the door. “I’m really going back to Minneapolis,” I said.
“Have you thought this through?” he asked, trying to gauge my reaction. “I mean, this … all this, I know it wasn’t what you came to London for.”
I let out a faint chuckle at the irony of what he said. “I came to London for a three-month tour of duty with Omega so they’d help me track down Old Man Winter so I could kill him.”
“Really?” Reed looked at me, perplexed. “So none of this thought of higher duty was around then, this faint idea that you should help other people?”
“The ghost of it, yeah,” I said. “I drove through the parking lot of Southdale Mall just before I hunted down Fries. Saw the place where Wolfe killed all those people while he was trying to smoke me out. It had been rattling in my head for a while, those people who died, the two hundred and fifty-four, but I didn’t know what to do with it.” I rested my palm on my chest, over my heart. “I didn’t know what good I could do with Omega, especially since they were the ones who sent Wolfe after me to begin with.”
We sat in silence for a moment, until Reed spoke. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
I let him wait for a beat. “No,” I said, my voice hoarse. “No, I’m not.” I let a grim smile cross my face. “But it’s okay. It’s not like that would have been all I have left of him. He’s still in here, after all,” I said, tapping my head. “Besides, right now I feel like I’m the mother of the whole damned meta race,” I said. “Like it’s my job to protect them, because no one else will.”
“But not to lock them in a box, right?” Reed said with a smirk.
“I think I’d like to avoid that particular parenting pitfall,” I said ruefully. “Though I do hope you and the rest stay in the underground apartments for a few days.” Breandan had found an emergency pantry with enough food to last for years. “Or at least until we figure out where you’re going.”
“The informal poll we took suggests everyone wants to follow you,” Reed said, looking somewhat puckish. “Something about seeing someone beat down all your enemies, I guess. Puts the inspiration in you.”
“They’re all pretty much British citizens, right?” I asked.
“Right,” he said. “They’ll need a few days to get passports. Karthik says Omega has some connections he’s familiar with, so we should be able to get them issued soon. Hopefully, we can all head to Minneapolis in the next few days.”