Page 24 of Hunted

August paused from where he’d been typing. “Seems like if they wanted to shut the project down, they would have hit the lab harder last night.”

“They need to take out the project, but do it in a way where they won’t get tagged for it. A bombing, they can blame on rogue werewolves. A vampire attack that kills the scientists. That sort of thing.”

Topher said, “Should they split the researchers up among different labs?”

“They already have,” I said. “They’re sharing data with vampire scientists who are working in tandem at a different site.”

Cal whistled. “Even if it costs Meera her name on the paper?”

“She said they can all share in the credit together. And that when it’s the future of two species and her family on the line, who gets credit starts to matter a whole lot less than just doing the right damn thing.”

“River, have you learned how they were able to breach the wards at the lab?” Guillermo asked.

“Yes. I went to the hospital with Rowan and read the memories of the two lab workers who were hospitalized. They’d had their blood ingested by vampires at some point weeks ago, and their memories altered. Because the hostile vampires had their blood, Jori’s wards would no longer recognize them as a threat.”

“The attack last night was staged?” August said, immediately coming to the same conclusion I had. He set his computer aside, rubbing his temples.

I frowned.

August had a rare autoimmune condition linked to the lycan virus. He’d seen countless physicians and werewolf specialists since its onset when he was five, and now nearly two decades later, we couldn’t really say we knew much more than we had back then. The autoimmune attacks were cyclical, linked to the phases of the moon and triggered when the same virus that turned humans into werewolves caused August’s body to attack itself on a regular basis. I couldn’t even imagine dealing with everything he had to. The seizures, the loss of coordination and other neurological symptoms, the blackouts. His disease frustrated him to no end no matter how much he tried to put on a brave face for the rest of us. Because he was a shapeshifter, he regenerated between the attacks, but as he'd gotten older, they’d also been increasing in frequency and severity.

“They were testing to see if they could get through the wards,” I confirmed. “But that wasn’t their only objective. We believe it’s also how Rossi has been able to take out so many vampire covens. They’re blood warded, too. Now that they’re no longer secure, we have to change our game plan.”

“Can the wards be reset to contain whomever jumps in?” Guillermo mused. “Perhaps we hold Rossi that way long enough for you to disable him with the Blackout autoinjector.”

I rubbed my temples. “Permission to speak freely?”

My uncle’s voice held a note of dry amusement. “Like you weren’t already?”

I ignored that one. “We don’t know what Blackout will do when given to a neural manipulator. Matteo Rossi has rewritten the memories of hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers who are being sent out to assassinate shifters within our territories. With all due respect to my orders to take Rossi alive, I believe he presents too much of a threat to risk the lives of the men and women under my command, not only because of the current and future threat he poses, but also because it’s the only way we can guarantee the brainwashed soldiers we’ve captured can have their true memories restored and resume normal lives. If I dose him with Blackout, all his former rewrites may get stuck in a permanently impaired state.”

“Weren’t there neural manipulators on base when Blackout was released into the ventilation system?” Brody asked.

“Yes,” I said shortly.

“That was almost a year ago. You’re telling me you don’t have any data on what happened to their former rewrites? Seems like that would be the first thing I’d want to check out.”

“There were… mixed outcomes,” I said carefully, aware I was probably sharing classified information. “Some targets had their memories immediately restored, similar to what we expect to see after a neural manipulator dies. Others appeared to have no change. And a few developed instabilities.”

“Why would a target develop mental instabilities months or even years after being rewritten?” Brody’s voice was sharp. “I won’t pretend to understand the way y’all screw around in people’s heads, but I was under the impression rewrites were set at the time they were performed and that was that. This makes them sound more fluid.”

“It’s… complicated. Targets are permanently linked to their neural manipulator. So yes, something like Blackout could impact memory in ways we don’t fully understand, for thousands of cases. Hundreds of thousands, potentially, going back decades.”

Brody swore under his breath. “Well, that’s just what we need at a time when we’re looking to gain the general public’s support.”

“This is all conjecture,” Guillermo said.

“That’s the problem. We’re all just guessing. We know what happens when you kill a neural manipulator. All of their rewrites are erased with them. Clean and simple. We could be talking about permanent psychological damage to hundreds of soldiers—”

“Weighed against the potential harm of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocents.” Guillermo let that sink in. “There are always costs in war. Dosing him with Blackout gives us options. Rossi can be safely held and interrogated.”

I thought of Ellie, of the nightmares, blackouts and anxiety I’d caused by rewriting her memories. We didn’t know enough about the long-term effects of recovery after memory restoration because neural manipulators had only recently started releasing memories and allowing humans to see the truth about werewolves we’d cloaked all these years.

No one had bothered to ask or even care if what we were doing could have devastating long-term consequences for the humans who were being mind wiped. If werewolves had been discovered, it would have been game over. That was what we told ourselves for decades before every memory alteration. For years we had treated humans as if their minds, their memories were secondary to our safety. Could we now blame them for not trusting us?

“Rossi is gaining support within certain factions of the shifter community,” August said quietly. “They’ve always wanted the Tracers to go after the vampire covens more aggressively and these bombings play right into those polarized views.”

“So what’s his end game?” Brody rubbed his jawline, staring out at the sunrise. “Anyone can gain fringe support. In any pack, you’re going to have wolves who are letting the feral side of their mind drive their thinking. That crowd goes out to the cage fights every Friday night because it’s the only way they can burn off a buzz and stay level the rest of the week. But Rossi can’t seriously believe he would amass enough of a following with mainstream werewolves to make a serious challenge against Guillermo or the Tracers.”