“I could scan through their entire lives,” I said, “but without specifics that would take a while, as Gavrikov is over a hundred years old and is the youngest of the three. Otherwise, no, I can’t just hop to a specific memory when they’re in my head.”
“You actually can,” my mother said, a little clipped. “But it takes practice. I’ll give you some pointers when we have time.”
“So that’d be in another few years, after we’re dead, then?” Breandan asked with a small, unamused smile.
“No need to be so down, Irish,” Reed said with a smirk. “We’re doing pretty well so far at swinging down the fastballs Century’s been tossing our way.”
“And I, for one, certainly hope that lasts,” Breandan said. “Because I rather like my petty, thieving life, even though I’m no longer a petty thief.”
“Now that we know about these encounters,” my mother said, leaning forward against the black glass conference table top, “what do they tell us?”
“A couple of things,” I said, frowning. In truth, there really wasn’t a ton I could use from the memories. Wolfe had gotten his ass handed to him by Sovereign, and in near-record time. I could feel myself cringe because every strike, every broken bone was mine to relive as I went through the memory, and all of them hurt. “Sovereign dished an epic ass-whooping on Wolfe. That tells us he’s mega-tough. He did the same thing to Bjorn, except even quicker. Physical combat with this guy is not something I’m looking forward to.” I looked across the table, and saw a sea of unnerved people, so I tried to bring it back to better topics. “He’s also got at least some of the powers of Gavrikov—flame skin, flight—”
Ariadne interrupted me. “According to our research, Gavrikov was already something of a hybrid. His father was rumored to be capable of flight, but not—”
“His dad couldn’t cast fire, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said. I’d seen that memory a long while back, and the roots of it were a deeply disturbing journey into how Aleksandr had discovered his power. It was at least a nine on my heebie-jeebie scale, and that was maybe being charitable. His childhood made mine look like a trip to Disney by comparison. I cast a look at Kat, who sat, placid, totally unaware of her part in it. That made her the lucky one, I supposed.
“Right, well,” Ariadne said, a little nonplussed, “is this going to be a meta genetics discussion? Because I’m not sure any of us are really qualified for that.”
Li’s phone chirped, drawing every eye in the room toward him and bringing the momentum of the discussion to a halt. He plucked it out of the front pocket of his suit and took a look. “Excuse me,” he said, and stepped out of the conference room without further explanation.
As the door closed, Scott leaned his elbows onto the table. “What’s the next move?”
“Continue waiting for actionable intelligence to roll in,” I said after a moment’s pause.
“Sit back and wait for them to come for us?” Breandan asked, more than a little skeptical. “I don’t care for this plan.”
“Neither do I,” I said with a sigh. “We’ve hit them hard, made them stagger, in all probability, but we have no idea where to go next. We’ve got no leads, no line on the specifics of their goals, and thus we’re sitting here on our ass until we have some idea of what to do. It’s hard to be in a fight when you have no target.”
“We have a target,” Scott said. “Sovereign.”
“Yes. I suppose we do.” I almost rolled my eyes but didn’t. “But he’s not in view. Good luck hitting something you can’t see.”
“He’s like game, and we can’t seem to flush him out,” Reed said.
“He’s like something we can’t flush away,” Breandan muttered.
“And the Irishman goes for the trusty poop joke,” Scott said with a grin. “Figures.”
“Go with what you know, I always say.” Breandan shot Scott a returned grin of his own.
“That’s interesting, because from where I’m sitting it looks like we don’t know shit,” Reed said, bringing the discussion back down. I waited, and started to clear my throat to voice something when the door swung open and Li reentered, his cheeks flushed. “What?” I asked.
He got as far as the table before slamming the phone against the hard surface, shattering it and causing Breandan, Kat and Ariadne to start in surprise. “That was Foreman. We have a new directive.” I kept my mouth firmly shut, waiting for the rest. “Katheryn Hildegarde and her team just killed four FBI agents in Portland.” Li put his knuckles down against the smooth surface of the black table, and I heard them crack as he did it. “You’re to get your ass on a plane, track her down, and bring her in, however you have to do it.”