Probably in an effort to not think about what he’d just said, I suddenly remembered something I had to ask Dr. Zollers. “When Claire attacked me, you said she didn’t read my mind?” I watched him, and he centered his look on me. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure.” He gave me a nod, and his placid expression was soothing in its way.
“So what if she had?” Reed asked, frowning at me. “It’s not like we’ve got plans aplenty of how to deal with Century right now. The worst she could have learned was that we were going for Weissman’s computer, which they probably already knew since she left it behind when she fled the scene of his death.”
“I wouldn’t want anyone else in my head, either,” Kat said, and I could tell she was trying to be supportive. “I mean, that’s a real violation of privacy, the thought that someone might see your most intimate thoughts and moments—”
“Okay, let’s just use our ten-foot pole to push away from the shoals that Kat is guiding us toward,” I said. “We still need ideas.”
“We still need some clue about how they’re going to execute this ‘phase two,’” Reed said. “I mean, it’s not like world domination comes in three easy steps—‘Step one, kill all metas, step three, world conquest’!”
“You skipped step two,” Kat pointed out helpfully.
Reed slumped in his seat. “That was the point.”
“So,” Scott glanced around the table, “if you were going to take over the world with your meta powers, how would you do it?”
“I wouldn’t,” Reed said acidly, “because unless the world’s staunchest defenders were windmills and their destruction cowed the human race into instant submission, I wouldn’t have a chance. Which brings us to another unknown—how many different kinds of meta powers does Sovereign have access to?”
“More than you would care to count,” Janus said, breaking his silence. I looked over at him and felt an immediate sense of discomfort at the look on his face. He was stern. “There are only rumors as to the exact number, but he could have absorbed hundreds or thousands of metas in his life. He could have countless powers at his disposal.”
“He can fly,” I said, ticking them off, “he’s a telepath, can create flame the way Gavrikov can, is nearly invulnerable—”
“He absorbed Wolfe’s father,” Janus said.
I watched Janus carefully for a moment. “Did you know him?”
Janus shook his head. “I do not know Sovereign.” I caught something in his expression that hinted at more.
“What about before he was Sovereign?” I asked, not letting up.
Janus’s face was almost impassive. “Before he was Sovereign? Yes, I knew him before he was Sovereign,” he said at last, letting it out like a great rush of air.
“What the hell?” Reed slapped the table and leaned forward. “God, you are just determined not to give us an ounce of help unless we drag it from you forcibly, are you?”
“It is more or less irrelevant at this point,” Janus said with what amounted to a shrug. “He is not who he once was. He is not the man I knew—when I knew him.”
I let the silence hold for a second before breaking it myself, before Reed could do it with an apoplectic rant that would make him seem like the Omega-hating fanatic that he was. “If I’m going to fight him, I need to know everything I can about him.” Janus did not stir in his seat. “Do you understand me?”
“There are elements of my involvement with him that I am not proud of,” Janus said, glancing up at me. “They are personal and bring me no pride and more than a little shame. I have no desire to root through them so that I may wallow in the particular bit of feces that was my life at the point when I met him.”
“You’re still keeping secrets,” I said, pre-empting Reed again. His dark face was twisted with rage looking for a moment to explode from him, pressure in search of a release valve. “I don’t care about your past. The whole world is on the line and the truth needs to come out, right now.”
“And yet I sense you are holding more than a few things back yourself,” Janus said with a resigned air. It was not accusing at all, just a statement of fact.
It still caught me off guard, and everyone’s attention turned to me. “You’re speculating.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your response confirms my speculation.”
I took a breath and glanced, just for a second at Zollers. He shook his head in the negative. “If I am, I have a good reason for it, I promise.” I placed my palms flat on the table. “What’s yours?”