Chapter 3
Brooke
With Rav gone, I could be Dr. Brooke McAllister again. Not ‘the Canadian girl’ with butterflies in her stomach at the sight of a big, sexy operator. Let alone an operator who’d used her and discarded her when things got tough.
Percival said, “Our team will coordinate with Interpol, and if Naples is our target, the Carabinieri, as well.”
We’d return to DC, then fly out with our team.
I hadn’t expected to have a target location so quickly, but it was a relief.
With the formula destroyed, we were tracking down the last party who’d tried to grab it.
Maybe the only party who’d been after it all along, if the hacker in Warsaw had been one of Fenix’s employees.
“Tell us more about the Greek Fire.” Brie shut off her display on the wall screen, and Will took the seat next to her, which Rav had vacated.
She nudged her glasses up on her nose and tilted her head.
“Fenix says they’re building something that will heal all disease, but they went after a bioweapon? ”
Through her joint presentation with Will, the stress she’d been through faded from her features. I didn’t know the woman, but I recognized the way she’d closed her eyes when certain words came up, or the slight tremble in her fingers. I’d seen those looks in my own mirror, years ago.
The details of our work pushed the bad things aside, providing clarity and purpose. It was what we both needed.
Percival leaned toward me. “If we fill them in, they may be able to help more.”
I tapped the keys on my keyboard. Pendragon had authorized me to share what details I deemed fit. And Percival was right. This team was far smaller than ours, but they had data we needed.
“May I?” I gestured toward the wall screen.
At Brie’s nod, I connected remotely and broadcast a 12th-century image from the Madrid Skylitzes.
In it, men sat in a boat, shooting fire out of a long tube toward another ship.
“Greek Fire was what saved the Byzantine Empire. But it was so secret, it was passed down from emperor to emperor and eventually lost.”
Percival slid my laptop toward himself as I stood. When I reached the wall and turned to face the group, I couldn’t stop myself from looking through the glass walls. Where had Rav gone? Was he so disgusted by me—
Stop it.
“Dr. Sayid Haddad stumbled across a parchment he believed changed the story about the chemical.” I gestured for Percival to advance to the next image, of the parchment.
We’d found several images of it on the server he’d hidden in Mnemis.
“It was a fragment from an ancient medical text, which hinted at Greek Fire being used for healing. Much like how a spear or a sword might be heated in a fire to cauterize a wound, the text seemed to indicate small and targeted quantities of Greek Fire could be regenerative. But as he got closer to recreating the compound, he discovered its destructive potential.”
“Like the dichotomy of the atom bomb,” Will said. “A spectacular energy source or a world-altering weapon.”
“Exactly.” My left hand crept toward my neck, but I stopped it short, forcing it to run over the silk scarf and nothing more. “At least one intelligence agency saw the military applications and… encouraged Haddad to explore them. That’s when Project Hephaestus was born.”
Will’s brows drew down. “The Greek god of blacksmiths, fire, and volcanoes?”
“It was appropriate. The powder variant is an incendiary that burns at over one thousand degrees Celsius and adheres to any surface, including water.”
Will whistled softly. “Which explains the tie to the phoenix imagery.”
“There are plenty of chemicals that do similar things, such as thermite and white phosphorus.” I nodded to Percival, who advanced the slides to a three-dimensional molecular model. “This one’s based on a stabilized Lewisite derivative—essentially an organometallic arsenic compound.”
“Nothing special there?” asked Will.
“Not really.” Memories of a jury-rigged fume hood in a makeshift lab flooded my brain. Hazy orange sunlight filtering through a window. Gunfire. The scent of geraniums in the air. I would not look through the glass walls again.
Focus, Brooke.
I found Percival’s eyes, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.
You’ve got this. “Taking inspiration from the parchment he’d discovered, he constructed a method to suspend it in a synthetic lipid carrier.
The carrier allowed it to penetrate most protective barriers, clinging to skin and delivering both chemical burns and systemic arsenic toxicity. ”
The image on the screen animated, showing a layer of oily particles covering the molecule, encapsulating it.
“Bloody hell,” breathed Will.
“I still don’t understand.” Brie joined me in front of the wall monitor, looking more closely at the molecule. “How could something so destructive possibly heal anything?”
“That’s what makes Greek Fire truly fascinating.
” I’d received plenty of sidelong looks when I spoke about Haddad’s research.
It was terrifying and yet beautiful, and the biochemist in me couldn’t separate one from the other.
“In highly diluted form, the liquid compound triggers rapid cell division.”
“Like a tumor?” she said.
I nodded. “The effect is chaotic, uncontrolled—but undeniably regenerative.”
“Which means Noah isn’t completely delusional when he talks about healing and curing disease,” Scarlett said.
“The theoretical foundation exists.” I watched the image change again, replacing the chemicals with graphs. Safe. Simple. “That’s why some view it as salvation rather than destruction. The line between weapon and miracle cure becomes dangerously thin.”
Brie traced one of the graphs with a finger. “Mortality rate ninety-five percent?”
“That’s what our lab simulations show.”
Haddad’s simulations reported eighty percent, but I hadn’t been able to reproduce those results. Of course, I hadn’t been allowed to produce the actual chemical itself, either.
Brie turned to me as though we were the only two people in the room. “You have firsthand experience with this, don’t you?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. How did she figure that out?
“Not Greek Fire directly.” Percival’s voice pulled everyone’s attention to him. Off of me. He lifted his right arm, slid his sleeve up higher to show off the puckered skin dotting his forearm. “This was from Lewisite, which it’s derived from. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”
That was an understatement.
“We’ll need to move quickly once we have a location.” Percival rolled his sleeve down. “If Fenix has been behind more than one of our hackers searching for the formula, they may have more of it than we expected.”
“From Haddad’s original research?” asked Brie.
“Possibly.”
“Thank you,” said Scarlett with a frown. “But it sounds like a stupid idea to go straight after them. They’re a bunch of murderous and delusional zealots. What if they turn this weapon on you?”
“We’ve developed a presumptive test kit for field use.
” I prompted Percival to show our first line of defense.
A one-by-two-inch clear pouch with reactive agents inside, plus the reaction strips that would change color for a presumptive positive result.
“The multi-zone papers are inserted into the test pouch, and when the inner ampule is snapped, it will trigger a color change if either form or some of the components are present.”
“Would it detect residual traces?” Brie studied the schematic, pushing her glasses higher. “If we can track Fenix’s most recent movements, you might arrive after they’ve already cleared a site.”
“Ideally, yes. The test kit will react to microscopic amounts. They could identify a lot of things, but hopefully when we get to Naples, we won’t be chasing hydrocarbons around the city.”
“And if someone gets too close?”
“RSX decontamination pads.” I nodded to Percival, who switched to the next image. “Reactive Skin Neutralizer, based on the military RSDL lotion. But these are specifically formulated to neutralize Greek Fire on contact if exposure does occur.”
Most people were appalled when I presented these details, but this team was soaking up every piece of intel.
Will leaned back in his seat, folding his arms. “What happens if someone is exposed?”
“Pain,” I said, before my throat closed over. I forced a slow swallow. What the fuck was wrong with me? I’d talked about this a hundred times before. I’d researched the damn chemical for years. Why was my heart skipping around like it had forgotten how to beat a steady rhythm?
Percival continued for me. “With the liquid form, you have seconds. Pain is immediate—burning that starts on the surface but quickly penetrates deeper. Within thirty seconds, visible redness appears. Blistering begins within minutes.”
“Without immediate decontamination, it follows lymphatic vessels beneath the skin.” Phantom ants began crawling along my side, and I adjusted my left arm to clear the sensation. “It moves like something alive, following tissue planes.”
“That’s why we developed a specialized hazmat system,” Percival interjected smoothly, drawing attention back to the screen.
“We have suits with a custom coating that chars under heat, buying precious seconds; a topcoat that repels liquid splashes; and disposable cuffs and collars that can be removed if contaminated.”
Malcolm studied me with newfound understanding. “And the powder form?”
“Not a danger, unless it’s ignited.” I forced myself back to the present. “But then? It burns hot enough to melt through light armor.”