Dusting my hands, I placed my back against the wall and slid down it until I was sitting across from her. She gave me a wry look.
“You know, I think you might be sending love letters wrong,” I commented. “You were supposed to give it to me to give to Henrik.” I rubbed my hands over my pants with a congenial smile.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Please, as if I’d be interested in that old coot.”
“He’s certainly interested in you, considering he went out of his way to play delivery boy on your behalf. Practicing a play from your Patrian seduction book?”
If looks could murder, I would have been vaporized in an instant, given the way she was eyeballing me. She took a deep breath, relaxing the hard edges of her face, and nodded at me. “How are you recovering?” she asked.
“Is that why you brought me down here?”
She gave me a stern glare.
“Better,” I replied. “I’ve started doing some jogging and I feel stronger.”
“Good… We need to start moving with alacrity,” she said, her voice grim.
I arched a brow. “Alacrity? Sure you don’t want to try moving with obfuscation first?”
Ms. Dale shot me a disdainful smirk and leaned forward, draping her arms over her knees. “Mr. Croft, big fancy words aside, we have a problem.”
“What’s up?”
Her eyes glittered dangerously. “Surely you’ve noticed the change in the boys by now, right?”
I frowned, my mind racing through recent events. My work with the boys had kept me busy—so busy in fact, that more and more Liberators were coming to me to see if I needed help. They seemed like good people, so I had agreed and shown them the ropes.
As for the boys—they seemed… determined. A lot of the initial excitement was gone, but there was a fire in their eyes when they did the exercises. A hungry desire that manifested itself during class. They were attentive—far more than any child should be—but I had just attributed it to their genetic modifications.
“The boys have seemed… eager lately.”
“No, Viggo. They’re thirsty. For blood.”
I paused, and then broke out in a laugh. Ms. Dale stared at me with a mixture of irritation, impatience and incredulity. “I’m sorry,” I said, once the laughter had subsided, “but that is really melodramatic.”
Ms. Dale huffed in annoyance. “Did you know Desmond has been meeting with the boys in the training program?”
The smile dropped from my face as if someone had turned off a switch.
“What?”
“I guess they didn’t mention it to you,” she said, a smug smile playing on her lips.
I had to hand it to her, she was quite good at gloating. Well, that was fair—I had spent the majority of my time with her gloating. However, if she was keeping information from me out of spite, then that was a whole other story.
“No. They did not. Care to fill me in?”
“Desmond has been spending time with the boys in the evenings and before breakfast. She knows all their names and has even given some of them gifts. She goes on walks with them, and encourages them to tell her all about what they are learning.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“I got tipped off the other night… By Henrik of all people.”
I suppressed a smile at that bit of information. “Interesting. And you’re sure nothing’s going on between you?”
“Be serious, Viggo,” she hissed. I watched her reach into her pocket and pull out a folded piece of paper. “She’s giving them this to read,” she said, thrusting out the paper.
I grabbed the piece of paper from her hand and gingerly unfolded it. It was a pamphlet, written in noticeably basic language. I read the first line, blinked, and re-read it.
“The Patrus/Matrus Threat?” I said, meeting her gaze.
“It’s propaganda. Bad propaganda. It paints both nations as bigots.”
I winced. “Well… it’s not exactly a lie,” I said slowly.
Ms. Dale’s face darkened. “Viggo, it’s fear-mongering. I thought you were trying to actively avoid that.”
I nodded, considering the implications of what she was saying. I tried to follow Desmond’s logic, searching for some rational explanation as to why she was doing this. It seemed strange that she wouldn’t run it by me first. After all, she had seemed very positive at the onset, even offering to send more help in her electronic messages.
I considered that maybe she was wanting to do it to spend time with them and do her part to help out the program. But that didn’t explain why she would keep it secret, or why she would feel the need to make something like the pamphlet to back up her assertions.