“I’m sure it’ll come out at some point,” I said, and felt a tightness in my throat. “But not yet.”
“All right,” he said soothingly. As always. “Do you want to talk about your mom?”
I felt my throat tighten further. “I don’t know what else to say. She never even saw it coming.”
“Oh, she did,” Zollers said with a nod, drawing my attention back to him. “She knew it was coming. My mind was with her, blocking Claire’s ability to read her as she hitchhiked on the back bumper of Weissman’s car with you. She was at peace, knowing that her end was coming. Most people don’t have the level of serenity—”
“Oh, bullshit,” I said, feeling impatience bubble out of me. “My mother was many things, but serene was not one of them.”
“In this case, she was as close as one could get,” Zollers said quietly. “Don’t get me wrong, there was rage and anger and fear—for you, I might add—but she was as peaceful at the end as I have ever felt her. You were right, Akiyama was there. He allowed her to get the drop on Weissman, and the words they exchanged gave her a sense of peace before the end came.” He shook his head. “Having been present for my share of deaths, I can tell you that it’s more than most get.”
I pushed my lips together hard and let them stay that way for a moment before speaking again. “We said a lot to each other just before she died. But … it doesn’t feel like enough.”
“It would never be enough,” he said quietly. “She has power over you and always will. Parents are like that. You’ll always want her approval.” His eyes glistened faintly. “Her love.”
“She said she was sorry.” I felt the lump in my throat. “For what she’d done. For how she’d failed. Like she knew ahead of time she was going to die.”
“The life expectancy of people engaged in this particular endeavor is not very high,” Zollers said, and he stood. I could hear his joints popping as he did so. “This is war, after all.”
“And my mother is one of its casualties.” Adelaide’s voice came back to me again, soft and warning. Remember. “And not the last, either, if Sovereign has anything to say about it.”
Zollers’s eyes narrowed, just slightly, as if he caught my deeper meaning. It made me wonder if it was something he was reading from my thoughts or something from his own experience with Sovereign that made him react that way. “No. No, it won’t be.” He paused and took a breath. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
I pulled my eyes from Zollers and rested them on the photograph of the Omega stasis chamber, still sitting face up on the table, the glare of the overhead lights blotting out a portion of the picture. Just like my sense of Sovereign’s plans, it looked utterly incomplete this way, unfinished, so much of it out of view. But I could still see a lot of it.
I took a breath, pulled my gaze from the photograph, looked Dr. Zollers in the eyes, and told him what I needed from him.
Chapter 10
I found Janus on the roof, which was the last place I would have looked. There was a helipad up there but it wasn’t in regular use. We used the one on the grounds out of habit, I supposed. Those old habits, they’re a real bitch to get rid of.
Suspicion was an old habit for me, though, and it wasn’t going anywhere.
“Janus,” I said quietly as I stepped out into the gentle breeze blowing across the rooftop. It was an overcast day, late summer, and not nearly as hot as it could have been. Part of me had trouble keeping track of the days. Why did it matter, after all? When the world is roaring to an end around you, who cares whether it’s Tuesday or Saturday? It’s not like I had any days off, after all.
“Sienna,” he said, loud enough to be heard. “Dr. Zollers told you where to find me?”
“He pointed me in the direction of the giant black hole in his mind’s coverage of the campus, yes,” I said. Janus was standing a couple feet from the edge of the roof, staring off. We hadn’t exactly followed safety regulations and installed railings or anything yet. There was nothing but a gaping, open space in front of him leading to the south lawn, and he stared across it as though he had a better view than a four-story building could provide. “You got pretty defensive in there.”
“Yes,” Janus said simply. He did not turn to look at me as I sidled up next to him.
“And then you run up here to … what? Think about your problems?” I stared out onto the lawn. I could still see each individual blade of grass from up here. That was meta eyesight for you.