“Why him?” My voice, though fatigued, is tinged with anger. “Why didn’t someone else go? Why not you?”

He scratches his wrist. “You think it’s so easy, don’t you? You think it’s a little chess game and you can simply move pieces where you want, when you want. But it’s not like that at all. Your father was the only one who had the knowledge to convincingly play the part of a scientist.”

He stops, pauses, forces himself to breathe slower. “Besides, he knew he’d trained you well enough by that point. Even if you were still a little pipsqueak. But he was worried about Sis. Thought she mightn’t have the necessary survivor skills. Turns out he was wrong, of course. She’s every bit as tenacious as you, isn’t she?”

“But why did he have to fake his death?” I ask. “Why not just tell me the reason he was leaving?” I ask.

“Because unless you believed him dead, you’d have gone after him.” He turns his eyes to me and for the first time I detect a kindling of warmth. “Isn’t that the truth, Gene?”

My eyes drop.

“It was a tortured decision, okay?” the chief advisor says. “Your father was against it initially. Does that make you feel better? Only when he realized there was no other choice did he go along. It was the only way his brainchild would work.”

“What brainchild?”

“A plan to make the two of you disappear without any suspicions raised. That was key. And the Heper Hunt was the keyhole. Because out there in the Vast during the Hunt, hepers are devoured. Nobody is taking inventory or recording the kills. It’s a bloodbath. If we were able to extricate Sissy during the Hunt, no one would give her disappearance a second thought. Nor would anyone question your disappearance, either, Gene. Everyone knows the Hunt is violent, with hunters turning on one another, hunters left to melt away in the sunlight. What happens out there stays out there, no questions asked. Ever. It was the perfect plan to extract you two without suspicion.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Sissy mumbles, deep in thought.

“What doesn’t?” The chief advisor stares down his nose at her.

“If this was the Scientist’s plan,” Sissy asks, “his life’s goal, why did he disappear from the Institute mere months before it was executed? Before the Heper Hunt was to take place?”

A flicker of uncertainty in the chief advisor’s eyes.

“You don’t know, do you?” she says.

His voice comes out strained. “I’ll admit it. I don’t. When he disappeared, we were flummoxed. Why he would suddenly leave at that point, so close to seeing his life’s work come to fruition . . . I don’t know.” He falls into a sullen silence.

I frown. Sissy’s right: my father’s disappearance defies logic. And it makes his subsequent disappearance from the Mission—so shortly before we were supposed to arrive—all the more inexplicable. My eyes swim uncertainly around me, at my feet, my wrists, at the bags filling with my blood.

“But all that is academic now, isn’t it?” the chief advisor says. “Why he disappeared doesn’t matter. What does matter is the fact that his dream has been realized. Look around you. At the Origin weapons. At the Origin blood! At the Origin together and intact at last!” he says. “His dream come true!”

I stare at the curtains sectioning me off from the rest of the room, from the rest of the world. At the handcuffs chafing my wrists. At the bags, dark and full with my blood. This is the destination my father’s grand plan brought me? This is why he raised me, why he protected me all those years? This is the life he envisioned for me? This is all I meant to him?

“There are children beneath us,” Sissy whispers as if to herself, but her eyes are trained on the chief advisor. “Living in horrifying conditions, waiting for a gruesome and certain death. How can you call this a dream come true?”

The chief advisor stares at her without answering. He sniffs.

She turns to look at me, and her large eyes reflect shock and horror. Her face, wan and drained, frighteningly sapped of color. They’ve pumped too much blood from her.

“Sissy,” I say quietly. “Are you okay?”

She shakes her head. Something is erupting in her eyes, and it takes a moment for me to realize it is fury.

“I wouldn’t worry about her,” the chief advisor says, noting my concern. “It might feel like we’re draining life out of you both, but trust me, we aren’t. And over time, we’ll calibrate our transfusions more efficiently and maximally. Can’t kill the hand that feeds—”

“We never agreed to this,” Sissy whispers in a voice much softer than his, almost inaudible under his loud tone. But somehow that whisper cuts him off, silences him. She meets his cold stare, doesn’t blink. “And we never will. Not while there are young boys and girls in the catacombs.”

The chief advisor stares at her for a long time. Not quite with a glare, but with a clinical look bereft of any warmth.

What he does next takes Sissy and me by surprise. He removes a key from his pocket and unlocks our cuffs. Sissy and I sit up, rubbing our wrists and ankles, wary.

“This younger generation,” he says, scratching his wrist, “unable to think of anyone but themselves.” He walks to the curtain, pulls it wide-open. “Coming?” he asks.

Sissy and I stare at each other.

He and the other Originators walk away from our beds. They know we will follow.

And after a few seconds of indecision, we do.

Fourteen

ON THE OTHER side of the curtains we step into a pool of darkness, the size of which we’re not fully aware of until—

“Lights coming on in three, two, one,” the chief advisor says in a surprisingly tender voice.

White light washes over us.

We’re in a large room with two distinct halves. On one side is what appears to be a laboratory. Test tubes, vials, burners, incubators, microscopes, blenders, dry block heaters, compressors, centrifuges are placed in orderly fashion atop workbenches and inside glass storage cabinets. On a shelf that runs the entire length of the wall test tubes filled with blood sit in racks. A soft hum emanates from several machines, gently shaking flasks half-filled with our blood.

On the other side of the room are shelves of artillery and weapons. There are rows of guns, all in varying shapes and sizes, pistols and revolvers, as well as double-barreled and long-cylindered weapons gleaming in the light. Boxes of cartridges and shells and bullets sit on the bottom shelf.

“As you might have guessed, this is a top-secret humans-only section of the Palace,” the chief advisor says. “Humans-only, as in only humans know about it, only humans enter it. Specifically, only the four us,” he says, indicating the other three Originators.

“Four?” Sissy says incredulously. “Any reason why you’re not counting those in the catacombs? As in, the hundreds of other humans?”

The chief advisor. His face smooth and unreadable. He pulls on the cuff of his left sleeve, once, twice. “If not for the ones in the catacombs, there would be none of us up here. And if none of us are up here, there would be no hope for those in the catacombs. That is to say, they are necessary. For our existence as much as their own.”

“Fancy talk,” Sissy says. “A nice cover for your betrayal. Let’s be honest. You’re sacrificing them for your own protection. And as I said before, I won’t have any part in it. You won’t be getting another drop of blood from me until everyone down there is free.”

The chief advisor walks over to a desk, picks up an electronic tablet. “We tried to be civil,” he says to us. “We tried appealing to your better senses, being rational with you. We even tried the Father-angle, hoping you’d see how this was your father’s lifelong dream and passion. Clearly nothing has worked.” He taps on the tablet screen, punches a sequence of buttons.

“Listen to us,” Sissy says, stepping toward him. His right eyebrow arches slightly higher, a minute but rare slip of emotion. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Sissy continues. “I told you before! We get on the train, escape from here, all of us, including everyone in the catacombs. No more humans have to die. You have access to the Palace controls. You’ll know how to open the right doors, how to get the train moving. From there—”

“Well, you’re right about my access to the controls. This tablet really does control everything. The movement of the enclaves, the train.” A muscle under his left eye twitches. “So, yes, let’s. Let’s all get on the train. Let’s squeeze into the train cars, ride off into the mountains, and live happily ever after.” He strokes his wrist. “What pretty dreams you have. Let me guess, do we head east on purple ponies under the wide arches of brilliant rainbows?”

“Why don’t you—” Sissy begins to say.

His eyes settle on her before flicking to me. I know why Sissy has fallen silent. It’s the look in his eyes: like dead fish floating on the surface, scales gleaming but lifeless inside.

He punches a few buttons on the tablet.

Nobody moves.

“Let me disabuse you of these fantastical notions. Take a look at the lab. It has been primed and ready for years now. For what? you might be asking if you weren’t so besotted with your silly notions. Well, so glad you asked. All the equipment here is for one purpose: to produce Origin artillery. Your blood will be combined, then congealed into all manner of weapons: bullets for pistols and revolvers, dissolvable pills, shotgun shells. Once we have enough of your blood, of course.”

He gazes fondly down at a line of darts on the table. He picks one up. Its translucent length is filled with a dark-red liquid. “For now, we’re starting with darts and grenades. In fact, these darts have just been filled with a serum of your combined blood, plus some preservatives. They’re good to go. And take a look at these two grenades here, fully loaded. Pull the pin and they’ll explode shrapnel of jellied Origin blood. Just prototypes for now, but awesome stuff.” His tongue darts out, moistens his lips. “One dart or piece of shrapnel pierces its skin and the dusker is re-turned to human within minutes. That’s how potent your combined, concentrated blood is.”