30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Sure enough, when my alarm went off I knew even blood wouldn’t revive me enough to face the day. Exhaustion dragged at my limbs and every fibre of my being wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.

I couldn’t though: I still had a lesson to do with Fluffy, still had the attaché case to look through, still had Sergeant Marks thinking this was all a school finance issue – and I still didn’t know who we could trust. As a former MIB, Engell was right up there as a suspect, but the thing with Patkotak was giving me pause, unless Engell knew that Patkotak was on a hunt and couldn’t be contacted.

The conspiracy theories were making my head spin. Knowing that the MIB was behind everything made me trust Sergeant Marks a little more, although I knew that the MIB did employ some supernats so he wasn’t completely in the clear.

We mustered, did PT with a grumpy Wilson, then had a takedown test with Blake before class. I was anxious to see how well my attempt at vampire mind control had worked, so I kept Thorsen and Miller firmly in my tired gaze. It felt odd when Thorsen strolled in and didn’t barge into my shoulder; he still looked at me, but his gaze wasn’t filled with the usual vitriol.

But whatever fates existed, they certainly had it in for us. First to do the mat test were Sidnee and Thorsen – and Thorsen had a very distinct bruise on his face. If my mesmerising hadn’t worked…

‘I don’t know how it happened,’ Thorsen was saying to one of his friends. ‘I must have fallen out of bed.’ He was frowning as if he didn’t quite believe his own explanation, and with good reason: it was total bullshit.

In the end, the takedown between Sidnee and Thorsen was fairly routine. Both of them toed the line and, for whatever reason, Sidnee let him win. He didn’t crow in triumph or shove her around, so I guessed I was officially competent at mesmerising. Go me.

I shivered a little; it wasn’t a skill I really wanted.

Danny and I were paired up and passed our test with flying colours. Naturally.

When we were dismissed for breakfast, I ran up to the dorm, took the case from my closet, flipped through the top folder and started taking pictures of each page. I hadn’t gone far when Danny and Sidnee joined me. ‘Hand me another one,’ Sidnee said.

‘And one for me,’ Danny added. I passed them both a file.

‘Scan-read for now and look for familiar names,’ I instructed. ‘We’re trying to see who we can trust.’ After a few moments, I huffed in annoyance. ‘There’s nothing in mine.’

Sidnee finished a few minutes later. ‘Me neither.’

‘Nor this one.’ Danny sounded discouraged. ‘It’s talking about subject blah-blah and reeling off a list of numbers, but nobody identified by name.’

I glanced at the clock. ‘That’ll have to do for now. Let’s go to breakfast before anyone gets suspicious.’

After I’d slugged back my cold blood, we ran down to the cafeteria. ‘I’ll look at another file while you’re getting ready for your Fluffy lesson,’ Sidnee said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Then maybe I can slip away while you do your thing with him. I don’t think anyone will notice,’ she suggested.

I considered it before nodding. ‘Okay, it’s worth the risk. It won’t be long before someone realises the papers have been taken.’

‘I’ve sent the pictures we’ve already taken to my Nomo so he can start examining them,’ Danny said.

‘Great.’ I didn’t suggest sending them to our Nomo. Gunnar had enough on his plate, and the last thing he needed was me dropping some sort of conspiracy into his lap.

When I went to get Fluffy, Sidnee slipped upstairs for another round of file photographing.

‘Everything go okay with the mes?’ Connor asked as I strolled out to meet him.

‘Mes?’ I asked, momentarily confused.

‘Sorry. Mesmerising.’

‘Oh.’ I blinked. Duh. ‘Yeah, everything seemed okay. I told them to forget the whole thing and to be nice to supernats.’

Connor frowned. ‘Were they nice to supernats before?’

‘No. They were assholes.’

Connor’s frown deepened. ‘I’m sorry, I should have said. Making someone forget is easy enough but making them change a long-held attitude is all but impossible.’

I thought of Thorsen’s lack of a shoulder barge. ‘It does seem to have taken, though.’

‘For now,’ Connor warned. ‘It’ll start to unravel soon. Hopefully their lack of antagonism won’t be noted and flagged up to the wrong person.’

Shitsticks. I hadn’t thought of that. I led Fluffy out of the car and gave Connor a brush of the lips goodbye. ‘Keep your eyes peeled, Officer Barrington,’ he ordered me as I walked away.

‘Like prawns,’ I agreed, making him smile.

Once again, I took the recruits outside for my demonstration. When we’d assembled, I started talking about finding drugs but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept thinking about how fisheye had devastated Portlock and led to Connor losing his number two, Juan Torres. I’d liked Juan.

The idea of the MIB kidnapping and experimenting on supernaturals had me doubting what we’d always assumed, that the black-ops team hadn’t been sanctioned. Maybe the whole thing was an MIB-sanctioned project that sought to contain or cull supernats as if we were animals . The thought was making me feel sick and my focus on the demonstration just wasn’t there.

Halfway through the demonstration, Sidnee slipped into the back of the group. She mouthed something to me but I didn’t catch it, then she hopped nervously from foot to foot, which distracted me. At the end of the demo she followed me to the truck to return Fluffy to Connor. Once we were alone, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. ‘It’s Lieutenant Fischer,’ she blurted out.

Fuck: that was as bad as it could get. The head of the academy was involved? He was human, but he knew about us supernats.

As soon as we joined Connor, I told him about the documents. ‘We’re still going through the attaché case but can you take it back to Gunnar when you leave Sitka?’

Connor’s eyes flashed. ‘If you think I’m leaving you here alone when you’re in danger, you have another thought coming.’

‘Please, Connor. You need to take it to Gunnar or the Nomo in Ugiuvak. There might be something they can use to track down the black-ops group that was peddling fisheye in Portlock. And it will definitely help get the word out to the other communities.’ I hesitated, not sure if what I was about to say would go down well. ‘And maybe you need to let your dad know, too.’ Fisheye was deadly to vampires.

Connor’s eyes snapped back to mine. ‘My father? No.’ He shook his head firmly.

‘He can tell all the vampires in Alaska to be careful. I was the target this time, Connor.’

‘Even so, we don’t want my father to be thinking about us or Portlock – or even the whole of Alaska.’ There was no time left to discuss the matter. ‘I’ll handle it,’ he said, but the anger was rolling off him at the situation we’d found ourselves in and the big old target on my back.

I didn’t want to leave it like that but I had no choice; I was due back at class and I didn’t want to raise suspicion any further. ‘Come by tonight and we’ll bring the attaché case out to you.’

Connor nodded, though he wasn’t happy. I reached up and kissed him gently, then turned to my four-legged friend and thanked Fluffy for his hard work. He’d really carried the afternoon since I’d been exhausted and darn right spacey.

‘Be careful, Doe,’ Connor entreated. ‘Your lieutenant will be missing that case at some point.’ He climbed into the truck and motored away, still looking pissed off. I didn’t blame him; I felt pissed off, too. Someone had us in their sights – and it was because of what we were, not because of our actions.

Well, fuck them: we’d show them how wrong their ignorance was.