Page 20 of Reverie

“And they—The Legion—just…took you?” I rub my top lip.

“Not quite. My mother had already died. I didn’t know my father. My aunt and uncle were my guardians, but they didn’t care about what happened to me. Especially once I got sick and started draining their time and money.”

Even though she looks tough on the outside now, a flash of softness returns to her gaze.

“When it was clear I was going to die, I was left to pass in a county hospital. Alone.” I track the movement when Misha rubs her wrist with his thumb.

“Got it,” Leo says when I don’t reply. “So they took you from the hospital and brought you to their lab.”

“Yes, I was on Isla Cara. That’s where I met Misha.” She looks at him. “He saved me.”

I blink against the immediate image of Isla Cara and all its horrors. Another memory—a dark underground room with a young blonde girl with dark tanned skin in the middle of a stage—comes up too.

I open my eyes to look at Luna. To really look at her.

She was there. I saw her.

“So, the serum…they gave you the serum?” I ask.

“Yes,” Luna says after clearing her throat. “I was apparently the first person to survive the testing. They kept me in a coma for three months. But in that time, they cured my cancer. The biggest question was how long the serum lasted.” She shrugs. “Turns out the answer is about five years. There’s a lot we don’t know about it, and when I left Isla Cara, we took a ton of serum. But we ran out. I’m a year overdue for my next dose, so I’ve been falling apart ever since.”

She gestures to the now-healed cut on her arm. “Something like this would have healed before the blade left my skin a few years ago.”

“I see,” I say. “So when you got sick again, and the cancer was aggressive….”

“I needed help to get another cure. Obviously, I wasn’t going to go back to The Legion to get it. Plus, they think I’m dead.” She shrugs.

“So Panacea did help you,” Leo says.

“Yes, it cured me.” She shrugs again.

“And now that technology is in the hands of this Knights Templar-slash-Illuminati gang?” This comes from Leo.

“Pretty much,” Misha pipes up.

“Uh huh,” Leo says.

I resist the urge to rub my temples. “Okay, so bring it back around to what the hell it is you want me to do,” I say.

Silence falls over the room.

“You were on Isla Cara the most out of any of us. You have to know where your father hides his deepest secrets on that island.”

Nausea blooms in my stomach.

“I was a kid when I was there, and he certainly didn’t tell me anything. Certainly not anything that resembles the shit you’re talking about.”

Misha turns his sharp gaze toward Leo as my friend resumes tapping his fingers on the table.

“Do you remember something, Polanco? You were on Isla Cara fairly often too,” Misha says. I don’t miss the twitch in Leo’s shoulder as Misha’s words land.

“Listen, you’re going to have to give us more direction than this. But even still, I doubt I have anything helpful,” I say.

Misha stares at me hard, his face impassive, for several seconds. When he speaks, his voice is calm.

“We know from our intel that Benjamin documented significant information about The Legion in a black journal. Our informant saw him writing in the journal shortly before they were killed, but they didn’t have it in their possession long enough to decipher the code except for two words: Elysium and Panacea.” This comes from Amelia.

That information lands in my stomach like lead.