Page 72 of Reverie

Misha blows out a breath, but Luna is the one who speaks.

“Well, the first bright, shining symbol was the campaign slogan,” she says. “‘Picture a Better America’ is very close to the statement that all Engineers echo from The Architect: They ‘see’ the bigger picture.”

I shake my head, still not drawing all the connections.

“Nonetheless, his announcing a run for the presidency isn’t news to anyone, but we have intel that’s confident that the announcement is the signal to the rest of the Engineers and the low-level Designers that the time has come to activate Elysium.” This all comes from Misha. He doesn’t look at anyone as he speaks. Instead, he stands with his palms flat on the tabletop as his eyes scan the swirling patterns in the wood.

“So, should we go underground to avoid their plague? How much time do we have? Or should we just all say our last goodbyes?” I say, my tone derisive. I’m not trying to be an asshole, but fuck if everything just feels fucking hopeless.

“Not necessarily,” Misha says, lifting his head. “But it does mean that you need to get out of the fucking way and let us end this. It’s time to stop playing around, Hunter.”

A chill descends upon the room.

“I can appreciate the gravity of the situation. But you need to come up with alternative ideas that don’t include sending my sister into a den of psychopaths.”

Misha makes a rough sound in his chest. “Oursister,” he grinds out.

I bark a laugh. “Our? Since fucking when? You don’t even know Ella. If you did, you wouldn’t feel so comfortable going along with this asinine plan.”

“Fuck!” The word bursts from Max’s lips, and he whirls around to face his computer, pulling Misha and me out of our stare off. “I just thought of something. Shit!”

Max continues to tap away at the computer, and when lines of code pop on the screen, we all move to stare over his shoulder. He lifts his hip and empties his pocket. Loose change, a toothpick, and what looks like a used cotton swab spill out on the table next to his keyboard, but he rummages through the mess until he finds a thumb drive.

“Erasure, erasure…Goddamn it, they’re clever,” Max says, his face going from serious to laughing, then back to serious in the span of a few seconds.

“Start talking in complete sentences, Max,” Leo says, staring hard at the man.

“Okay, so boom,” he says. “A year ago, I made a copy of all the Project Panacea data as a safeguard against attacks. We were getting throttled by some anonymous team, and if they ever cracked in, I set things up to self-destruct, but I wanted to make sure I had a backup.”

Leo and I share a look. “Okay,” we say at the same time.

“But what was fucking stupid of me was that I didn’t plan on a physical data breach,” he adds. He lets out a frustrated growl, but his fingers continue to fly over the screen.

“Shortly before you came back to D.C., there was this blip in the tracking. I didn’t think much of it because when the team investigated it, it looked like nothing. But I think…” He stops talking mid-sentence as lines of code roll on the screen.

When a pressed “Fuck,” bursts from his mouth, Leo and I share a look.

“Look here,” Max says, and we lean closer as Max pulls up two windows side by side, code scrolling like we’re in the movieTron.

“What the fuck am I looking at, Max? In plain English.” This comes from Leo.

“The codes are different. What you’re looking at is a big ole ‘control-x’ from our tech that they pasted somewhere else. So basically, this is proof that they’ve had the technology all along. The vault thing…that didn’t actually do anything because they’ve been working on this for the last year. That was just a calling card from The Legion.”

Leo lets out a choked sound and pulls out his phone. Scrolling through the screen, his lips move as he counts under his breath.

“Fifteen,” Leo says, his voice incredulous. His eyes meet mine. “There are fifteen voluntary terminations across the R&D team.”

“And how large is your R&D team?” Luna asks.

“Thirty-two employees,” Leo adds.

Fuck. The implications spider through my brain. “When were they hired? Fired? Who are their?—”

“There’s no time for this, Hunter.” Misha’s voice grates on my nerves.

“No one asked you, Hroshko,” I grind out.

Luna lowers her legs lazily and stands next to her husband.