Page 70 of Reverie

If at all.

I look down at the reports Leo has collected. This would have taken time to create.

“Of course I care,” I say. I try to keep the look of guilt off my face. “The situation doesn’t give me warm fuzzies, but what do we do? They have our goddamn technology.”

Leo sighs, putting his face in his hand. “Okay, since you clearly haven’t been listening to me, let me give you the CliffsNotes version.”

I grimace.

“With Panacea not passing the FDA and now being in the hands of these fuckers, you do realize we can’t move forward, right? Not that it’s even possible to move forward, given that we’re hiding in the Ukrainian’s safe house.”

His words hit me in the gut. BwP means more to Leo than it does to me. It always has. So the fact thathe’ssaying this is the end….

“So you’re really giving up on it?” I try to keep all judgment out of my voice.

“No, everyone else has given up on us. We can expect some lawsuits from investors to roll down sometime in the next few months.”

I make a rough sound in my chest, and Leo rubs his eyes.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” I ask him, making a show of flipping through the pages. I pick up the Mont Blanc pen just to give my hands something else to do.

“Couldyousleep?” Leo shakes his head, continuing before I can respond. “No, I did not. There’s too much to do.”

I grunt in response.

Rubbing my top lip with my thumbnail, I commit to focusing on Leo for the next half hour. Then I’ll go to Winter. She’ll know what to do with August.

She always does.

So why can’t I trust her to share the burden of the rest of it?

When the door claps open and Misha, Max, and…Amelia walk in, I raise an eyebrow as I stare at them but don’t move otherwise.

“Problem?” Leo asks, his voice gruff.

Max moves to the screen where Amelia presented information about The Legion yesterday. Was it only yesterday?

It feels like forever ago.

“What’s going on?” Leo says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Luna walks in a moment later.

“Has the press conference started?” she says as she grabs a chair. She falls into the seat at the head of the table and kicks her legs up to rest on the top of it. She crosses them at the ankle.

Max fumbles with the control, and the screen lights up. My jaw goes slack when two people appear on the screen.

“Deep fake, right?” Leo asks, not turning to look at Max, who practically bounced to his favorite spot at the wall of computers behind us.

“Yeah…” Max replies. The way he answers causes me to spin in my chair to assess him. He doesn’t look giddy. Instead, he tilts his head and stares at the screen.

I frown but spin back to face the table and speak up.

“Are we sure Blair is dead?”

“As a doornail,” Luna drawls. “In fact, her body is in our morgue right now.”

I blink. “Here?”