I finally find the data I’m looking for and I slam it into the computer while moving back and watching the oversized screen change.
“He told me it wasn’t the Unaligned. He said to look at this footage,” I murmur quietly, my eyes staying focused on the footage.
“Fuck. He knows what we’re talking about in here,” Jase growls.
“What?” I ask in bemusement.
“He called at the exact moment we’re in here speaking about this, and you don’t find that coincidental?” he snaps, and then he starts scouring the walls with his hands, rapping against every surface.
“Damn it,” Rex growls while leaping up and pulling out a bug tracker.
The machine doesn’t go off like it should. It doesn’t ring out an alarm of anything even being present. There’s no beeping telling whether he’s too far away or close.
A buzzing finds my ears as I tune out all other senses. My eyes close, my sense of smell shuts down, my taste goes into hibernation, and my feeling is lost as I focus solely on the buzzing sound.
The voices in the room grow duller as I push them to the side of my mind. Jase’s incessant rapping fades into nothing as I drown it out to make the buzzing sound grow stronger. My blind body moves through the room as I near the humming beauty, and I open my eyes in front of a place Jase has already moved away from.
“It’s here,” I murmur, all eyes falling on me in a different way as I step back.
Jase slams his fist into the wall, and the soundproof padding is ripped out as he digs in to find the eavesdropping beast. He jerks out the small box and shakes his head in disbelief. I take it from his hand, and I jerk out the wire on the side to disable it.
"How did you do that? I didn't think you could control it," Rex says, his eyes gaping.
"My senses? I can't, usually. They seem to be getting a little better these days. I think there are more important things to worry about right now."
Jase punches the wall, exploding more of the padding from its place.
“Yeah, a hell of a lot more. He knows about you now, damn it,” Jase says while rolling his fingers through his hair, his panic only growing.
“He already knew. I think he’s trying to help us,” I murmur causally while my eyes rest on the footage ahead.
“Why do you think that?” Melania interjects.
“Because he didn’t mention the emergents at all. He spoke of the people after the emergents. This bug has the same signature design as the landmines we found that obliterated the Unaligned ambushers. He did it. He warned us of the aerial strike, and now he pointed out this footage which I never intended on looking at,” I murmur while pausing the screen.
“What about it?” Jase asks while leaning on the back of a chair, his eyes studying and searching the screen.
“This,” I murmur while pointing to the bloody symbol of a scorpion. “And this,” I murmur while rewinding the footage and pausing it again.
His eyes study the footage once more, and he gasps when he finds what I wanted him to see for himself.
“What is it?” Uncle Grayson prompts while staring harder.
Finally his eyes find the monitor that is hanging in the bloody room, the screen stained red with an image of a girl bound to a steel table - her body bare, her eyes held open by a metal contraption, and her skin pale from blood loss as the needles and lines in her veins bleed her dry. Tears stroll down the conscious girl’s cheeks when I press play, and we all watch the horror show we overlooked while we were there - our eyes distracted by all of the other horrific images.
Her blue contacts melt against the acidic tears, and her violet eyes emerge. Everyone gasps, and the video of the screen cuts away as the small drone continues capturing other images.
“They’re studying my kind. We know that for sure now. I just wonder how they subdued her. An emergent hybrid is too strong to be held down unless their powers have been blocked,” I gripe, my eyes shooting to my brother, and he lowers his head.
“Damn it. We have to call Araya,” my uncle sighs.
“Not a chance in hell,” I snap. “You know damn well my mother will go after this threat, and she’ll do it alone. She’ll die, Uncle Grayson. Whatever did this, it was powerful enough to kill this many without letting anyone get a shot off. It was probably an emergent hybrid who was sick of being toyed with the way this girl was. Hell, it could have been this girl for all we know. She could be out there now.”
“We should be more afraid of who these people are than whatever did this to them,” Rex interjects. “What if you’re right? What if an emergent hybrid did that in self defense? Why would we fear them? These people obviously deserved to die, and whoever or whatever did this did the world a favor - did you and Mom a favor.”
I move the screen back to the men whose bodies are mangled in different ways. I shake my head, and then I pause the screen again.
“No, Rex. We should be scared of them both. If they’ve used emergent blood to bond with someone or something else all together, we should be terrified of what they might have created. Do you see that?” I ask while pointing to the screen, and his eyes move upward.
