Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(49)
“Uh, about that . . .” Pete gave her a nervous grin. “It might be difficult since the ones left seem to be off the grid.”
“Find them now. Gather the research Dot read and figure out how they could be doing this. Whoever ‘they’ are. We need to find them.” Sibyl had already turned from us, walking up to the bench against the glass window. Propping herself up, she peered out over the main floor. “Whoever could be involved, wherever they are, bring them in. If those . . . soldiers are any indication, that tech is out of its infancy stage.”
“What are you saying?” Chae Rin asked slowly. “You’re saying they’re . . . making Effigies now?” One lone, incredulous chuckle escaped from her lips, dying the moment it touched air. Her shoulders slumped as she uncrossed her legs and leaned back. The expression on her face was the same as mine.
I studied the waves of particles on the computer screen. Soldiers. But I thought we were the soldiers.
“Rhys,” I said. He stirred at the gentle inflection of my voice. “You really haven’t seen either of them since the fire?”
“I thought they were dead.” I could only see Rhys’s back as he faced the door. “They were just . . . regular kids like me.”
“Regular kids,” Belle repeated with a grave expression. “Turned into Effigies after the fire.”
Pete shook his head. “Well, we don’t know. We can’t even corroborate this yet.”
“But that must be it,” I said. “Whatever Jessie did to that dead soldier, Alex . . . controlling his corpse . . . ordering it to fight for her. That’s . . . supernatural. She could never do that before. Someone must have done something to her.”
I remembered her clearly: the cocky movement of her short, slender frame; the almost erotic pleasure she took in snapping Rhys’s wrist. And how fast she was. This was someone who’d been taught to fight. A girl who reveled in hurting others.
“Communications couldn’t trace her spectrographic signature, if she even had one,” said Pete.
“Oh, she had one.” Dot rolled up the sleeves of her lab coat. “She had to have had one with the cylithium in her system. Perhaps she could mask it. Like Saul.”
Like Saul. “If they’re making Effigies, then Saul could be a fake one too,” I asked, “right?”
Dot didn’t appear surprised to hear the question. “Ever since I saw the autopsy results, I’ve been wondering if that was the case. But we’ve already concluded that Saul—or rather Nick—was born in the nineteenth century, and they certainly didn’t have nanotechnology back then. Given this simple fact, I still strongly believe in my fifth-element theory.”
That was true, though the fact that both he and Jessie could hide their frequencies made it hard to let go of the idea that there could be another connection between them. Even so, the struggle between Nick and Alice was too like the struggle I faced with Natalya. Alice wasn’t just some split personality. I’d seen her the first time I scried inside La Charte hotel; she was real. No matter how good the technology was now, I doubted they could synthesize another life into someone’s head. That was magic.
“Something else to think about,” Dot continued, “is that Jessie came prepared to fight an Effigy.” She picked something familiar off a table: an inoculation pen, the one I’d used against Saul in Argentina. She shuttled the long tube back and forth between her fingers. “It’s the same technology, just a compact version fitted into her glove.” She looked at Belle. “A temporary way to shut down an Effigy’s magic. Don’t know why I didn’t come up with it,” she added bitterly, before shaking her head. “This isn’t something you just have lying around. Someone must have given this to her. Someone. Someone. Someone . . . or someones with access to high-powered tech.”
“?‘Someones’ isn’t a word,” mumbled Pete.
“Like the Sect.” Sibyl straightened up. “It’s Sect technology, after all. Sect technicians from our R & D department helped Saul escape our custody. Then those Sect agents who knew about our top-secret mission helped Jessie, an engineered Effigy with Sect technology, steal back the ring and hand it right to Saul, a terrorist who seemingly appeared out of nowhere and began attacking cities around the world.”
“Seemingly?” I repeated.
“Where did Saul come from?” Sibyl’s sharp gaze passed over each of us. “We know he’s been alive since the nineteenth century. What has he been doing since then? Why did he surface only recently? How did he get linked up with Sect agents, scientists, and now these former students from one of our top training facilities?”
“In Greenland!” A burst of adrenaline rushed through my body as I made the connection. “Agent Chafik said you tracked Saul for a while after our fight in France, but his signal went dead in Greenland.”
“Yes . . . another connection.” Sibyl considered it. “We already sent a team there and found nothing. But perhaps it’s worth another look. It’s clear to me that there are those within the Sect who have forged some kind of partnership with Saul. We knew there were traitors in our organization, but this could be much larger than we ever expected.”
“Much, much larger,” Dot said. “It may not even be limited to the Sect. But whoever these traitors are, they’re working with Saul. They’re supporting him. Whether he’s calling the shots or he’s just one player in a larger team, I don’t know.”