Chapter 47
MIA
I see Moresby Island before Nate does.
It rises out of the black water like a memory I’ve been trying to outrun for years—dark Douglas firs, rocky shores, the faint glow of the facility’s lights through the trees.
Six hours of flying through the night, my face buried against Nate’s chest to block the wind, then ten minutes of circling the Gulf Islands until I could pick it out from the others. Now we’re here.
Home. If you can call it that.
“That’s it?” Nate asks, his voice cutting through the rush of air as we descend.
“That’s it.”
He banks left, circling the island from a distance.
I can see the main compound through the gaps in the forest—low concrete buildings, a couple of cottages, a helipad, the perimeter fence with its discreet sensors, the dock.
The place where I learned exactly what I was and the cost it would have on my life.
My father works here. Has worked here for almost twenty years, ever since he packed up what was left of our family and fled across an ocean.
“Where do I land?” Nate asks.
“There’s a dock on the north side. Staff housing is nearby—a couple of cottages. That’s where my father lives.” I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “Where I grew up. After.”
He doesn’t ask after what. He already knows about the car accident.
What he doesn’t know is everything else. I haven’t told him about Toby, haven’t told him it was my parents that created the monster in me. I hope I don’t have to. If I did it would change his perception of my father at a time we need him the most.
We drop lower, skimming the treetops, making the branches of the shore pines and arbutus trees shake, and slow as we approach the dock that juts out into the water, a dingy, small powerboat, and a fishing trawler tied up along it.
A single light burns at the end of it. And standing beneath that light, hands in his pockets, watching the sky—
A figure in a white lab coat.
He knew we were coming. Of course he did. My father is ex-MI6. He has contacts everywhere. He probably knew we were coming before we even figured it out.
Nate lands on the dock with barely a sound, setting me down gently before stepping back and becoming fully visible. I pull off the balaclava, shake out my hair, and face the man I haven’t spoken to in almost a year.
“Erasmia,” my father says gently, adjusting his wire-framed glasses.
My father looks older than I remember, in a way that I find profoundly sad, a reminder that time is less on our side now than it’s ever been.
His hair has gone fully grey now, cropped short, and there are deeper lines around his eyes that weren’t there last Christmas.
He’s still tall, still lean, still has that particular way of holding himself—shoulders back, chin up, like he’s perpetually bracing for impact.
I’m the impact. Always have been.
“Dad,” I say.
The word feels foreign in my mouth. I stopped calling him that years ago, switched to “James” when I was angry, which was most of the time, then switched to nothing at all when I stopped calling altogether.
We stand there for a moment, the silence heavy between us. I can feel Nate at my shoulder, watchful and tense, probably cataloging every micro-expression on both our faces.
“You look…” My father stops, starts again. His eyes travel over my face, lingering on the fading bruises, the still-healing eye. “You’ve been hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Your eye, your—”
“Is healing,” I snap, already reverting back to my old role in our dynamic. That lasted, like, thirty seconds. “I’m fine. You know how the job is.”
You know better than anyone.
Another silence. He wants to hug me, I can tell. His weight shifts forward slightly, his hands twitch in his pockets. But he doesn’t move, because he knows I won’t welcome it, and we’ve been doing this dance for so long that the steps are automatic now.
“You must be Vanguard,” he says finally, turning to Nate. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. Seen you on the news, of course, but Mia’s reports were always more, shall we say, illuminating.”
“You’ve been reading her mission reports?” Nate asks, an edge to his voice. It’s as much a surprise to me as it is to him.
“I have contacts at SOE. Old friends who keep me informed about my daughter’s whereabouts.” He’s talking about Mank, I know he is. He pulls his hands from his pockets, extends one toward Nate. “Dr. James Reeves. You can call me James. Welcome to Moresby Island.”
Nate hesitates, then shakes his hand. “Wish I could say I’ve heard a lot about you too, James. But Mia’s been pretty tight-lipped.”
My father’s mouth twitches. Is that a look of pride in his eyes? “That sounds like her.” He gestures toward the path through the trees. “We should get inside. It’s not safe to be out in the open, even here.”
“Not safe from what?” Nate asks.
“Border patrol boats, mainly,” he says. “There’s a chance someone saw you land here. Small chance, but a chance. I don’t want to be standing here if they come by. You’d have a lot to answer for.”
You have no idea.
We walk up the dock, past the fields that long ago used to have cattle, then through the trees, my nose filling with salal bushes and moss and fir.
Under the lone deck light, flittering with moths, the cabin looks the same as before on the outside, though it looks in need of a new coat of paint.
Inside it’s like nothing has changed at all, still small, wood-paneled, smelling of black tea and old books and chemicals, the particular scent of a scientist who brings his work home with him.
The same faded rug in the living room, the same mismatched furniture we shipped from London, the same photograph on the mantel.
Me and Oliver. Ages six and eleven. Grinning at the camera with ice cream smeared on our faces, the London Zoo blurry in the background.
I look away from it quickly.
“Sit,” my father says, gesturing at the couch. “I’ll make tea. Or coffee, if you prefer.”
“We don’t need tea,” I say, wanting to cut the pleasantries and get right down to it. “We need help.”
“You can have both.” He disappears into the kitchen. I hear the click of the kettle, the rattle of mugs, and him humming to himself the same song he always does, “Eight Days a Week” by the Beatles. It used to drive me crazy when I was seventeen and desperate to escape this island.
Nate and I exchange a look.
“He’s very…” Nate searches for the word.
“British?”
“I was going to say calm.”
“He’s always calm. Even when everything’s falling apart.” I lower myself onto the couch, exhaustion hitting me like a delayed wave. The six-hour flight, the cold, the constant low-grade terror of being hunted—it’s all catching up. “It’s bloody annoying, actually.”
Nate sits beside me. Close, but not touching. We’ve gotten good at that particular geometry, for better or for worse.
My father returns with biscuits and three mugs on a tray—tea for him, coffee for us. He sets them on the table and takes the armchair across from us, sitting back with an ankle crossed over a knee.
“Right then,” he says, lifting his mug. “Tell me everything.”
So we do.
We tell him all of it, skipping over the stuff he already knows from the mission reports to Mank and filling in the rest—including the kiss that should have killed Nate but didn’t.
Here he stops me and makes me repeat myself.
He seems genuinely emotional that I’ve been able to kiss Nate without killing him, like this somehow makes up for what was done to me, absolves me of my poisoned years.
I ignore it and continue, launching into the growing suspicions, the confrontations, the warehouse in Red Hook. The facility in Jersey, the torture, the test. Nate’s hands around my throat and the moment he broke through.
By the time we’re finished, my father is leaning back in his chair, blinking slowly, processing.
“Marsh is dead,” I say finally. “Nate killed him.”
“I know. And it’s been all over the news.” My father takes a measured sip of tea. “Not Nate’s involvement, but ‘tragic accident at a private facility.’ Very convenient narrative if you don’t know the truth.”
“And Julia Van Veen,” I continue. “I kissed her. She should be dead, too, though no one has reported it.”
My father goes very still, his brows raised.
“What?” I ask him.
“She’s not dead.”
I stare at him, certain I’ve misheard.
“What do you mean?” Nate says, leaning forward.
“Dr. Van Veen is alive.” He sets down his mug with careful precision. “In hiding, from what my contact at Global tells me. Recovering somewhere off the grid. But very much not dead. Very much alive.”
“That’s not possible,” Nate says, his whole body rigid beside me. “Mia’s poison—”
“The poison takes four minutes,” I hear myself say. “It’s always four minutes. But it works. No one’s ever survived.” I eye Nate. “Except for you.”
But even as I say it, I remember how I spit on her when I was getting tortured, the way she wiped it off with her handkerchief and put it back in her pocket, how she told me she would try and use it.
“She has a sample of my spit,” I say, explaining to them what happened. “Could she have made an antidote? That quickly?”
“Possibly. It’s hard to say.” He picks up his tea again, not meeting my eyes. “We’ve never been able to develop one ourselves, and I—” He stops abruptly.
Nate looks between us. “You what?”
My father doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks at me, and in that glance is a question: He doesn’t know, does he? About my involvement?
I give a tiny shake of my head.
Nate catches it. Of course he does. “What am I missing here?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “Old family history. Not relevant right now.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it drop. For now. He’s a stubborn bastard so I’m sure he’s going to bring it up later.
“The point is,” my father says, steering us back, “Julia Van Veen is alive. Which means Global Dynamix still has leadership. Which means you’re both still in considerable danger.”